Marine Painting -- Latest Work "Evening Harbour"

Evening Harbour

This is the latest painting I have been working on. This was a difficult subject due to all the shapes which I had to draw accurately and painting all the small parts with varied colours took a long time. I underpainted with scarlet before painting this painting. I did that after seeing another artist do this. I found it interesting to paint on the undercoat but not sure if I liked it so much. It helped see what was painted but beyond that it takes some getting used to. This is 16" x 12" on canvas. Painting this difficult subject has helped me get used to more intricate painting but it was definitely harder. I think it helps though in that I become less wary of attempting difficult compositions. Hence I should be able to paint more subject matter.

I took this image from the photo reference library of domain free photos on wet canvas and it is somewhere in Alaska / Canada. Not sure where. I hope it will appeal to anyone who has done a bit of sailing or likes boats in general. That's it for now, as always comments are welcome be they good or bad. That's how I will know if this is a hit or a miss. Thanks, until next post...

My Art is up for Auction at Nora Dunne Gallery Oct 4th

One of my recent paintings has been accepted into the Auction which Gormleys Fine Art are holding in the Nora Dunne Gallery on October 4th. Gormleys Fine Art have an online auction site which is showing all the paintings and you can bid on them in the days prior to the auction. Here is my painting, Howth Head from Portmarnock. Gormleys is a well established gallery chain, having two galleries in the north of Ireland and one in Dublin. They are renting the Auction Showroom from the Nora Dunne Gallery/Auctionhouse.

Croagh Patrick -- Paintings of Ireland

Croagh Patrick -- Finished Painting.

First step, I drew out the image, using a small paint brush and raw umber paint. Next step, I put in a sky of cerulean blue and white using large brushes. I can refine this later using smaller brushes, but for now it is fine. I mixed a variety of off-greens and semi-neutrals using ultramarine blue, cadmium yellow, and permanent mauve with lemon yellow. I also created dark browns using orange and ultramarine blue. I didn't use greens straight from the tube as I can vary the green colours easily by varying the proportions of the mixes. It makes for more varied colours, if I need them.
I created light grays in a bit of an unusual way but it worked out nicely. I mixed viridian green with permanent rose. I got a dark almost purple black and I used this on outlining the rocks. I mixed white with this to get a light gray for the side of the mountain. I didn't use any black in the painting. I might have used a little paynes grey in extreme dark areas.

Continuing on the rocks using the white grey colours.
It may look like there isn't so much happening at this stage but I have been working on the rocks to make them appear more natural and graduate the shadows from dark to lighter as they get further away. Also I have begun to green up the mountain using my ultramarine blue with cadmium yellow mix.

A lot of refining is going on at this stage - I have worked on smoothing out the sky brushstrokes and I have been going over the whole picture with alterations here and there to create a balanced look. What I actually do is a kind of instinctive thing, so difficult to describe, but it's mostly tweaking of colours and tones to make the sense of distance more apparent. Finally I put in the figures and signed the painting. The finished image is up the top of this post. Enjoy!