Finished ....

I'm finished.  I think I was too uptight when painting this one, but I'm ok with the finished product.  Give me your thoughts?  Do you have any tips you can share that I could try on my next attempt? 

And more......

I'm now thinking I might be getting too picky.  I really would like to paint in loose style, but I don't see it happening on this one.

A little more work done ...

I'm not sure you can tell, but I've done a little more work on the painting.  I particularly enjoy adding the rust to the boat.  Give me more rusty boats.  Fun to paint maybe but not fun to work on in the boat yard.

Adding more color ...

Even though I'm getting more color on the board I'm not feeling all that comfortable as an oil painter yet.  I'm sure with experience I will learn to breath as I paint ... *grin.  I think I am finally learning to wipe my brush off after I apply paint instead of going right into my turps and clean the brush.  I was really getting some dirty thinner/turps and am glad to be changing that habit.  

The next step ...

I was a little nervous when trying to get some sky color on my support.  What colors should I mix ... how do I 'say' it was a sunny day?  All parts of my attempt to learn.  I was painting this from a photograph and I don't think the sky reads the same as in person.  Anyway I am moving forward, writing down some thoughts as I continue on.  If you are wondering what that is in the bottom right corner, its a bulldog clip, holding my support onto my easel ...

The beginning ...

I think a lot of you know the kind subjects I want to paint.  I'm mostly interested in sea and landscapes.  I am very interested in my surroundings of  boats, saltwater, sea life, and birds of the pacific northwest.  Knowing this you won't be too surprised to see the first subject to be painted on my freshly gessoed supports will be a boat.  This reference for this painting was a boat I saw in a 'bone yard',  slang for an area where old or discarded boats etc. are collected before being disposed of.

Above I was playing around with some thumbnails.  Just getting the hang of seeing the boat and the  drawing in the square format.  I decided it was ok and plunged forward.

I was really happy with the warm underpainting I chose for one of my 10 minute Apple exercise
 a few posts earlier and I wanted to try that again.  I chose this bright yellowish gold.  Next I
 used drew a grid and my drawing on the support with a ball point pen.  I don't think I would
ever have thought of using a ball point pen but I had read on Terry Miura's
March 18th blog post that he had used it andI am up for experimenting to see just
what I like and don't like when it comes to any part ofmy new oil painting journey.

I think I'm off to a great start.

Getting ready to get ready

Having a full, well almost a full, bucket of acrylic gesso I decided it was time to gesso some wood and masonite in anticipation of putting some paintings on them.  Somewhere I had read a small sponge roller works well with gesso and I did think it worked very well.  Although being new to oil painting I'm not really sure what texture I should be looking for to paint on ... so this looked great to me after I gave the supports three coats.  I had one masonite piece and forgot to paint the back or at least put an X of gesso on the back.  I also had two 9" x 9" wood panels and 8 small 3.5" x 3.5" wood supports.  On one of the 9" x 9" I did adhere some canvas to it and the other I left just gessoed.  Now I think I'll put a coat of gesso on the canvas as well as the back of the masonite I forgot.  So being I'm new at this ... do any of you have tips or thoughts that I should do next time?