Thursday, February 28, 2013

Daily Painting Practice - Boat on the lake - sizing it up

Here I go again.

Taking the color  study and  up sizing it to a larger  canvas. Unlike the last painting, I am not using pastel pencil to mark the grid lines. Instead I am using a  method to grid the  painting without leaving a mark.
 I used  white thread. If you look closely, you can see the fine line of thread. I measured and marked the sides.

 
 Then taped the thread on the back.
The canvas is 18"x24". I divided it in thirds. I put the horizon line right on the bottom third transfer line.
I am trying to decide where to place the sail boat In the original color study the  boat is more to the left.  First I was thinking of moving it to exactly where the  grid lines cross, but I think moving it farther to the left  opens the painting up a bit.  Now, I have two boats in the water.
 I begin blocking in some tone and color, keeping the paint very thin, almost like watercolor.
 I am concentrating on the sky, trying to keep my colors  clean and fresh. For me, this means trying not to overwork the brush strokes. I placed a dot of white to check the placement of the sail again.  It needs to move to the left. 
 Here you can see how thin I am keeping the paint. Also, I am trying to keep lots of color in the white clouds; purples, oranges, warm and cool grays and yellows.
 I think the sky is coming along. The clouds have a nice rhythm and work their way back towards the horizon.  Next, I'll work on the distant shoreline and start on the trees.

2 comments:

Scott Cooper said...

Lovely luminous sky. I expect you have talked about your palette in previous posts, but I would be interested to know how broad or restricted it is.

sharon said...

will these clouds stay thin or will you go fat later? thank you for being generous about your process i like to see how others approach but it seems everyone wants to sell a dvd...