16" X 20" Oil on Canvas
This painting is all finished up now. Took longer than normal but more importantly I've learned a few things on this one. The funniest thing I learned while painting this one was that my D40 camera does have a White Balance setting! hahaha.
I wanted to take work in progress shots while painting this but my 5 year old smaller digital camera that I've used for all of my artwork finally conked out on me. It took the best shots of my artwork simply because it had a White Balance settings. This setting allows you to choose the lighting you are working under. By reading through my manual for the D40 camera I finally found out it had this and how to find it...once I tried a few shots all worked out fine, whew!
Another thing I've learned is to get away from using a pencil for my initial sketch. Way too much messing with those pesky pencil lines so no more of that.
And finally, I'm learning to see color better...not the color things are but the colors that are actually in front of me. Water is not really blue or green....it can be brown, black, yellow, grey or any hundred other colors. What it is is right there in front of your eyes. What it's not is what your mind tells you it is. An important lesson and I'm getting the hang of trusting my eyes more and more.....and one more thing, if you paint bright red floats that have been faded by the sun you're going to end up with what looks like giant salmon eggs in your painting and there's just no way around that.
4 comments:
Love this painting, ESPECIALLY the water! And love your insights, too, Ron. :)
Thanks a lot Christine. You probably see this area much more than I get to. The water is always a lot of fun to paint with these marine scenes.
I've got a lot of reference photos taken down at the harbor in LA and various other marinas there from years back that I want to go through. Lots of fun.
Thanks!
You made me laugh, Ron... I'll never again be able to look at those floats without thinking of your giant salmon eggs!!!
The think with not painting what you "know" but what you really see is probably the most difficult to get into my head ever. I KNOW it but I often ignore what I know... so frustrating.
Love your post and your painting, Ron!!
I've had this ref pic for almost a year but kept putting off painting this because I knew those floats would look like salmon eggs. Reminded me of when my brother and I used to go fishing with my Dad at Puddingstone dam when we were kids, hahaha.
I read a guys blog this morning and he mentioned painting boats as if they weren't boats. This is the same theory...paint what you see...not what you know. If you were to paint a harbor scene and paint what you know you'd have lots of white boats, blue canvas, and blue green water. If you painted what you see you'd have lots of un-white boats, various shades of blue-grey canvas and water with almost the same colors as everything floating on it....and hardly any blue green water at all.
And just for your info Marian...this boat was just leaving the dock at the launch ramp right next to where you boarded the boat to go painting over at the Channel islands....about 20 feet from your dock.
Thanks Marian!!
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