Coast Guard Cutter Print

 "USCGC Blackfin"

16"x20" pen & ink

Years ago I made a pen & ink drawing of a Coast Guard cutter. The drawing is done using the stippling technique...a pen & ink technique where the drawing is composed of just dots of ink...there are no straight lines....just dots. I use Koh In Noor rapidographs to do this. Rapidographs are mechanical pens that have a steel wire in the barrel that allows only one drop of ink to come out each time you press down on the paper....it's prefect for stippling.

Anyway, I was just looking at the drawing again thinking about a woman who had asked me if I had prints available of that drawing and at the time I hadn't even scanned the drawing. I used to make my early prints here in the studio. Each drawing had to be scanned in sections then put back together in photoshop...lots of clean up to the scans and then I'd print a test scan. Printing was done on an Epson 1520 wide format printer I had bought with archival inks so the prints would last. I printed on good quality hot pressed watercolor paper. I'd print about 5-10 prints and then sold the prints as people ordered them. When I needed more I'd buy more WC paper and print up another batch. Making your own prints was a lot of work and "a lot of work" is a major understatement.

I did get around to scanning the drawing but that was on an older scanner that wasn't that good to begin with. Scanners, for those of you who have only bought one in the last 10 years, used to suck on ice! Software didn't work with operating systems, bad scanning quality, lots of  "noise" in the scan...ghost lines...ugh! I'd like to rescan the whole thing now with my newer killer scanner I have. It's a scanner/copier/printer combo but scans better than any scanner I ever had in the old days!  In the detail photo you can see the scan quality...not that good, ugh!

I was thinking about finally getting to making some prints but there might be a few snags...one, my old printer and printer drivers might not work with my newer computer. I also might have a major problem finding archival inks for it since I bought the printer way back around the late 90's....you know how fast the computer world is. It's a dinosaur at this point. Damn progress!  I'll have to check some things out before I even attempt this.
 

Morro Rock Surf

I remembered to take some work in progress shots with this painting. This is titled Morro Rock Surf but shows nothing of Morro Rock which majestically juts out of the waters edge in Morro Bay. The title just sounds better than Morro Rock Jetty Surf...and I wasn't that far out on the jetty. Morro Bay gets some huge surf so no messing around out there for me.

Here's the start. Not much of a sketch but that's not needed much in painting...it's all done on the fly and with color.

Painting in the base colors of the rocks and water. I try to do 2 things here...get it as close to what I'm looking for and to fill up the canvas fast so it seems like you are making progress, haha. You are painting over these base colors so the sooner they are in the sooner I can begin the "real" painting.  

Adding detail to the rocks while the water sets up a bit. I don't like working wet on wet so I will move around to let areas get as tacky as they can.

 Adding the water detail and shaded foam of the wave. This is the beginning of dialing it all in which really is more of the work. As this stage progresses things get altered and changed around quite a bit to get the finish I want. In looking at the final image you can see how many changes were made from this stage. 

 

The final painting. In the upper stage you can see how the rocks vary in color. In my final version I went back over some of them to tie them in more with a tan/reddish tint leaving only foreground rocks grey. The last two marine paintings were primarily blue colors so for this one I wanted something different...reddish grey water, tan rocks with a reddish tint and an overall lighter value to the painting. 

"Morro Bay Surf"

12" X 16" Oil on Panel