3a. "Three Boats at Night"

Before I start talking about painting, I thought I would share a little about my morning at Playa Esterillos Este on Costa Rica's Central Pacific Coast.

I wake up early here, usually at about 4:30 a.m. In the tropics the sun sets and rises at about the same time year round, and there is no daylight savings time. The sun rises at about 5:30 and sets at about 5:30. I'm a morning person and I am usually asleep by ten.

This morning I woke, fixed my coffee and waited for the light. Then, I walked out my backyard path to the beach.

I stood there looking down the beach in both directions. There was no one to be seen.

I saw this shrimpboat out in front and noticed how close he had come to the shore. Its nice to know that I moved somewhere that still had the old wooden shrimpboats that I grew up loving on the Texas Coast. The Pacific is very calm this morning, so I assume that is why he is so close in.

The dogs love it when I walk out to the beach because they love to run and play early. I stood there for a few minutes while finishing up my second cup of fabulous Costa Rican coffee. Then, I headed back to the studio and started on this post.

I brought with me to Costa Rica another unfinished canvas called, "Three Boats at Night," so I think I will finish it before starting a completely new one. I know. I have yet to start one from scratch on this blog, but I will soon. Unfinished business needs attention.

I started this painting about three years ago and put it aside for other challenges. Maybe I did so because this one was such a challenge! Here's how it started.

One overcast day, several years back, I was down at Casterline's Fish House in Fulton Harbor, which is on the Texas Coast, not too far from where we lived near Aransas Pass.

I walked out on Casterline's dock and took the following two photos of boats docked there. I was limited on my viewpoint because of where I was able to stand to take the photos. 

So, I took one for a view to my left and another to the right with the idea of putting them together in Photoshop.

This was before I discovered panoramic cameras and stitching software that would have made this a lot easier. But, remember that I am not trying to create a wonderful photo, I'm just trying to get information to be used in a painting.

So, this is what I had when I crudely put them together.

Just to get a better feeling, I did a little Photoshop touchup, duplicating the sky to fill the white areas and eliminating the grey back of a boat in the foreground. I will have to fill in the bottom of the boats and add water reflections to make this work.

I take hundreds of photos, most don't make the cut for a painting. This one is pretty boring at this point and wouldn't normally make my list. There isn't a good light source on this cloudy day, but I really like these little bay shrimpboats, particularly the cute little one on the right. It is becoming rare to find them all lined up like this. 

Okay, so how am I going to make this more dramatic? I know! I'll make a night scene out of it!

I had already stretched a 36" x 36" canvas to use. Those proportions will work well because I need more space at the bottom for water reflections.

To get started I converted the photo to lines, placed that in InDesign and tiled out the pages to create the drawing. Converting to lines saves printer ink. Since I would be changing all the colors to be a night scene, all I needed was the basic information of the boats and rigging. Here are the lines I printed out:

I made a tracing and transferred the drawing to my canvas. I started with making a dark background sky, but still light enough to see. The lights of the town keeps the sky from going black. This will allow me to put objects in front of the sky and still see them. 

I did take a couple of shots of rigging detail on the boats so I can get that right. But, this painting is more about the lighting and reflections on the water then it is about the rigging details, since they will be relatively dark on the sky.

I roughed in Moondog's restaurant in the background to the left, Casterline's metal building on the right, and put in the boats and rigging. I roughed in the lighting on the boats to get an idea of how a light on one of the boats would interact with the others. If i get this right I will have some killer reflections to create in front of the boats. And, that's where I stopped.

Here's is what I have now on my easel in front of me:

It has the drama I want, but there are some serious issues that I now have to work out. 

For one thing, the boat on the right should not be lighted like it is. I think I changed my mind in mid-stream about where the light source was coming from. Maybe that is what has been keeping me from coming back to this. Now, I'm ready to tackle it!

I'm going to start by painting out the light on the two boats to the right, and knock down the light on the left one. Then, I will come back and add light. I think the light should come from behind the middle boat. I'll be thinking about how to do that as I paint out the existing light on the boats. Remember, nothing is cast in stone on an oil painting. 

Sometimes you have to try a technique or direction in painting before you know whether it will work or not. However, you can't be lazy about making changes. Laziness leads to mediocrity. 

It is important to have a commitment to quality in your work, regardless of the time. Working in oils requires a certain mindset. Patience to allow the paint to dry when it needs to is probably the biggest hurdle for artists who want to work in oils. 

But, the intensity of the colors, the lack of change in color and brightness when drying and the ability to paint a color right over another far outweighs the fact that you can't get in a hurry.

Think about this. The drawing on this painting is done, and the underpaint is dry. If I wanted to, I could actually turn this painting back into a daylight scene in one session.

But I won't because I have to make this work. I can do daylight scenes all day long (no pun intended), but night scenes are a challenge. I've seen some great ones in my time. They take a little practice, which I have had very little of when it comes to making a night scene.

I'll try to share my thinking as I go. Keep an open mind with what you are seeing in the process of getting this right. That's what I will have to do. I guess a little confidence is in order. I assure you that I'm not stopping until I like it.

You can see my rough reflections in front of the boats, but they lack completion. This night scene will have to have a lot of dark (almost black) wave shapes in the foreground. Those will have to come later. Now, I have to get the light on these boats right.

Next post I will start painting.