Painting "Fat Boy"–– Part One.

I took this photo from our boat cruising out of Cove Harbor near Rockport, Texas one morning about six years ago. We were headed out for a day of bay fishing and had gotten a late start. The sun was still low however, and was in a perfect position to flood these work boats with light from the left side. I held my camera down low to the water so I could get some of the larger, dark waves at the bottom of the frame.

The clear blue sky is a key element in the reflection and I want to play that up. So, I'm planning on a simple blue sky too. The emphasis will be on the water.

There are a lot of metal buildings and junk in the background. I plan on getting rid of most of it to simplify the composition, so I will only sketch in what I want from the photo.

On this painting, I decided to scale it up with the old division method, dividing the canvas into equal parts and doing the same with the photo on my screen. 

I determined the size of the canvas first. Then, I cropped the photo in Photoshop to match the proportions of my canvas, and pulled it into Adobe inDesign to place a grid over the image. There are other ways to do this, but this one was quick and easy for me. Using a pencil, I created a similar grid on my canvas. Now all I have to do is look at what is in one of the rectangles in the photo and draw the image in the corresponding rectangle on the canvas. They are already in the same proportion because I enlarged my photo to be the same size as my canvas. Not rocket science, but you have to understand the concept. If a line crosses about half way up one side of the rectangle on the photo, then it will cross about half way up that same side on the canvas, even though the canvas is larger. 

Even though the photo is a little dark, you can see the drawing better in this closeup. It might get a little smudgy with the pencil lead, but most of it will be covered up with oil paint. When I do get a lot of pencil lead in an area, and am worried that the excess #2 lead might be picked up into a light color of oil and darken it, I go over it lightly with a kneaded eraser and that takes care of the issue. 

If I don't have some of the details right, I will correct those with paint. Right now, I'm just trying to get everything close to where it belongs.

I thought I would start with the sky color, because it is the farthest to the back and a large area of canvas. So using my palette knife, I mixed some cobalt blue and violet with white. I know that if I start out with these basic colors for the sky, I will always know what colors to use when going back in and making corrections later. Its hard to guess how much paint I will use at this point. I think I had to remix about three batches for the sky. I leave an area of the palette with the sky color on it, which tells me when I have the new batch correct next to it.

With my number two flat oil brush, I started painting in where the sky meets the boat objects. I want to make sure I don't have a lot of white spaces when I go back to paint the objects, so I paint inside most of the lines, keeping just enough to know where things are supposed to be. At this point, I'm not looking at the original photo, but just trying to get all this color down.

I continue the blue sky all the way around the top of the boats. I'm using short strokes of the blue paint in different directions. This will give the sky a bit of a shimmer. I think it is interesting and is in contrast with the horizontal lines of the water. It will also make it hard to tell when I make small corrections later.

Now the sky is done, and I put in a water horizon. The Aransas Bay is large enough to not see land in some areas. I kept the bulkhead and put in some grass. I also put in some posts that were not in the original photos. They make great reflections, and I can put ropes going to them that adds a nice touch. 

I haven't mentioned it, but there are about three inches all the way around the painting that won't be in the final frontal view. That three inches is what will wrap around the sides of the "gallery wrap" canvas when it is re-stretched back at the Felder Gallery in Texas. So, I have to remind myself that the frame I am working within is actually smaller than what I am seeing. Thus, the post on the far left side will be on the side of the canvas and not the front. You won't see it in photos, but it will look cool hanging on the wall as you approach the piece.

Next, I've started roughing in the boats. I'm doing the main areas, and will come back to paint the details later. I work from left to right and top to bottom, so I have a place to rest my hand on the canvas as I paint. I've also started to rough in the color of the water, even though I will most likely change that color before I am done. It helps to see what value and color contrast will be next to what you are working on. Again, the water is darker than the sky.

Here is more of it roughed in. The water requires horizontal brush strokes.

I started painting in some details of the back of the blue tugboat. Its my favorite area of the painting because of the contrast between the warm, rusty colors and the cool blue paint of the boat.

I'm sure I will be coming back to this area to get it just right. Now, I'm ready to start on the third boat. In the original photo, this boat was also blue, probably because they belonged to the same company. But, I pulled out my "artist's license" and decided it would separate more from the big boat if it was a different color. I chose green.

I wasn't sure which green would be best, so I started off with a mixture of emerald green and white. I wasn't convinced I liked it, but thought I would continue on and see how it looks when surrounded with more colors.

 Now I've got some of the basic colors in around the green. The shadows of the white parts are blue/violet like the other boat and the blacks are roughed in. I'm not liking the green, so now is the time for changing it. The first green is a little dry now, so I can go right on top of it with a green that has more yellow in it.

There, that's working better, so I've added some more detail to the green boat, and a little bit more on the blue one. Still feel like things are rough. I am looking forward to putting in the railings as that will crispen up things and bring the eye into focus on the boats. 


Now its time to start some reflections. I want to start with the main subject, being the largest boat in the middle of the composition. That will be the dominate reflection and where your eye will land first. At least that's the plan.

For this I will need a warm-colored palette. I scraped my wooden palette with a palette knife, then wiped it with a rag and squeezed out some new colors. I will work with all these warm colors, and then I'll scrape that when it's too messy and put out my cool colors to work with. Once you are working in a warm palette, it is easy to pick around the scene and look for places to put the color on your brush. You get a lot of continuity of colors that way, as your eye can jump from spots of the same color.

The idea for creating a good reflection is that the colors in the water needs to be the same hue as what is being reflected, only a shade darker. I strive to do that on the first layer, but end up changing a lot towards the end of the painting, when I can see everything that just doesn't look right.

For me, its almost like watching the painting come into focus like a lens, only this visual is made of colors and shapes instead of blurs and sharpness. So, when you are trying to make a reflection look real, you have to adjust the colors, darkening and lightening, until your eye tells you they are in balance.

The thing is, however, that your eye plays tricks on you while you paint. One problem to overcome is  called "simultaneous contrast." You learn about it in art class. When you place light and dark colors next to each other, each will have an effect on the other, by making them look lighter or darker, particularly where the colors touch each other.

So, for instance, I put down the gold color at the bottom of the photo above. It looks darker than the one on the object, so I'm feeling good to move to the next color down. I put down the next color, which in the case above would be blue/black, and lo and behold, the gold got brighter.

Yes, the dark blue/black made a color contrast with the gold and the gold now looks lighter. A pain in the butt for sure when you are painting. Hard to plan for, but not impossible. I would say that ability improves over years of practice.

On this reflection, I am working fast, wet on wet, putting plenty of wiggles into my brush strokes. Much of this will be covered up over the course of the painting, but sometimes I get lucky and can leave some places just as I painted them on the first round of paint.

Here's the blue painted in, along with some roughed in reflections from the other boats. The tires need to look like they are partially in the water, so there will be a flat spot at their base. Its a challenge, I have noticed, to get something like a round tire to wiggle in the water. I'm still working on the shape of the wiggle that I like.

I'm bringing another layer of reflection down, the side of the boat and the dark color of the rope bumbers. I use my measuring tape hooked to the side of the canvas, to measure the vertical distances so I will know where to put the reflection below. You have to wiggle the reflections without getting them too far out of the vertical match with their object above.

Looks like the left edge of the black rope is about 17 inches from the left edge of the canvas. I measure constantly when doing reflections, sometime just using the length of my brush where the placement of my fingers do the measuring.

So now I've brought down the white and shadow areas of the main boat. I'm just roughing in right now, but I'm liking where it is headed. I put in the rough reflections of the posts, and that helped things settle down.

Well, I'm tired of reflections. I'll move on and work on some other parts. I'll let the water dry for awhile. The tops of these boats need work, and everything is pretty dry up there now.

I think its time for some railings and finish on the equipment on top of the cabins. 

I know I should have more patience and get all the stuff behind the railing perfect before doing the railing. But, its like I really need to see the railing in order to know how the other stuff will look. Beside, even if I wait, I will undoubtedly mess up some railing while I paint and have to touch up the background anyway. So, a railing it is.

Now I'm starting to like things better, and see where some of these objects have more dominance than others. The light green color where the sun hits the side of the green boat is very important. I threw some light orange color into the green cabin to catch the sunlight coming through the windows. The photo had some, but I will exaggerate that for sure.

Now I have added the railing into the reflection and worked on the green boat's reflection. This is all still going to need a lot of work. Stay tuned.