Tag: seaweed

Fishing Boats in a Misty Harbor

This ink and wash painting sort of drew itself. I wanted to paint some more boats, inspired by yesterday’s fortress / citadel / rock ship! I found some photos of fishing boats, drew them first with pencil and then inked them in. From there, lines and misty buildings, and seaweed in the foreground. Now, if you are fishing boat person, you will probably laugh at what I have done – and I don’t blame you – what are some of those things on the boats?!

That said, I think the boats turned out fairly good. The swoop and curve of a boat is always a challenge as most things look like rectangles and squares, with corners rather than a bulging curve out of the water. Reflections, too, are a challenge. I think the direction of the sun influences if reflections are shorter or longer in water – maybe I read it in Ted Kautzky’s classic Ways with Watercolor.

And so I leave you to ponder the boats, the fog, and what might lurk in the distance . . .

Along the Coast

The same painting, scanned with an Epson V600 and merged. However, two different software were used to merge. One was Microsoft Ice. The other was the photo merge bit of Lightroom. It’s hard to really tell which software impacted the final image more as both were manipulated a bit in post. However, the difference was that the LR version had dark paper around the edge and was rather muddy. The MS Ice was lighter and more clean in overall appearance.

This is the image merged in Lightroom. .

This is the one merged in MS Ice.

It’s hard to see the difference in some ways, but I think either is fine to my eye.

Anyway, I am rather pleased with the result here. I think I got the depth of field properly done for once. Perspective doesn’t seem off. The sandy berm really pleases me because sand is hard to do! I mixed together ochre, alizarin, and cobalt blue and then added a gallon of water to make the wash. The shadows are ultramarine with a bit of carbazole violet.

Another thing I like is the murky, seaweed filled foreground on the right that fills the shallow water. And, too, I did some justice to the reflections of the island in the right background. In the end, I applied a light glaze to the foreground water on the right and to the grasses to the left of the sandy shore in the middle left background. Painted on 300# Kilimanjaro from Cheap Joe’s.

I have few other WIPs, but they need a bit more consideration at present.