Faithful Tender

I completed this painting a couple of days ago. I had come upon this old-style (wooden) dinghy on one of my beach walks. This time, a walk along the beach at the end of our street, which follows the Oyster River as it dumps into Stage Harbor. At one point, this beach is directly across another one of my favorite subjects, Stage Harbor light (a private lighthouse owned by our next door neighbors). The dinghy was resting half way between that point and the boathouse at Port Fortune Lane (the small structure visible at the left). I was struck by a few things: first, the fact that it is in fact a wooden boat... most I come across are fiberglass or some other modern material. The other was the way the sun was striking its bright, lovingly painted interior and casting a strong shadow on the beach. So... I pulled out my trusty cell phone and snapped a couple of pictures. (This was before my vow to carry my watercolor kit and sketchbook... :-))

The photo I took was almost entirely of the dinghy and its immediate vicinity, I did not include any sky. I decided on a composition with a large sky area featured, to balance the dramatic boat, so I waited to start on this painting until I had a chance to go out on that beach again, in the afternoon, as had been the case in the original picture. At that time, I took a photo of the sky and made a quick sketch with notes when I came home. Then I was ready to start. I did a quick thumbnail of the composition, then went right to the canvas.

As I always do, I started by painting a monochrome underpainting to the level of a complete "drawing" with fairly well developed detail, and clearly stated lights, darks and midtones. I use the "wipe-out" method to get the lights, use colored ground of the canvas as the mid tones, and added darks using more of the chosen monochrome color.

Because of the dominance of the blue sky in this image, I wanted an orange toned ground, so I chose chose Transparent Red Oxide as the color for the underpainting. This is a pretty "fat" paint, so not ideal to use for an underpainting (both because it takes longer to dry, and also because it jeopardizes the "fat over lean" principal for creating stable paintings. I used Winsor and Newton's Griffin Alkyd Fast-Drying Oil Paint to get around these problems. As with many work-arounds, of course, this presented its own challenges: Griffin Alkyds dry fast, alright - so fast that they dry substantially just sitting in the paint tubes! irritatingly tough to get out of the tube in the first place, they aren't smooth and buttery to apply, either... I may experiment with Acrylics in the future, as I doubt that I will buy the Alkyds again.

Meanwhile, however, the underpainting came out serviceable enough... and I was pleased with the base created. One I started the actual painting, I worked on the sky first, putting on three thin coats of blue (an ultramarine mix at he top, shifting to cobalt then cerulean mixed with Zinc white and pink at the horizon) before I added the cloud forms.

Once that was done, I painted the background land mass and structures, painting directly. I also laid in the base for the water. I painted the dinghy and the foreground beach and grass, also directly, at which point the water mass was dry enough to accept some final glazes. I painted the foreground sand mostly with a knife, leaving some of the base ground to show.

I think I am happy with it... I say "I think" because usually I need to look at and reflect on a work for quite a while before I decide if it is "right." I probably make changes less than 25% of the time, but the need to go through this stage is nagging. I plan, however, to take this over to my gallery next week, so I have to condense my reflections this time... what do you think, is it finished?