Here are a couple of small sketches of subjects I found wandering around my area the other day. Not all winter paintings have to deal with snow. The first one is an 8 X 10 on a linen panel. It's a scene that a lot of painters here try to capture. This one is with the tide out, so these shacks are left high and dry, so that's what I named the piece, "High and Dry." It took maybe an hour. I really love the texture and tooth of the linen. The overall tone is the yellow-rose light of the early winter morning.
The other picture is something a bit new for me. It also is an 8 X 10 on linen panel. This area, Portland, Maine, has a lot of oil tanker traffic and serves as an oil terminal for parts of northern New England and parts of Canada. The tankers are huge--maybe 1000' long and seem to fill the ship channel as they come in. The are so heavily loaded you wonder how they stay afloat being so low in the water. They usually stay for 24 hours which is what it takes to unload the oil. As they unload, the added buoyancy allows the vessel to arise out of the water like some leviathan, maybe 50-60'higher, and close up they literally fill your view. So I come upon this view and saw the little lobster boat on the lower right cowering behind its pier, like a mouse hiding from a cat. The composition is weird, but it struck me that it might make an interesting painting. Does it?
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