Portland, Maine

I took photos of lobster boats in Portland, Maine when I drove home from a painting trip this past summer. The colorful reflections, lobster boats, traps and shipping containers tell a story and I plan to do more pieces along the same lines. This is the first, a smaller 11" x 14" where I made the boat the center of interest.

12" x 12" Portland Harbor

Trying Other Methods

For the most part I'm an alla prima painter. I like to work wet in wet and finish quickly, blending as I go. I had some time on my hands recently and decided to try an older method where an underpainting is applied using a greenish tone and lead white is mixed with the green to paint the lights and halftones. It's important to identify the darks early and try to maintain them. I suppose you can use a drying agent like Liquin to speed up the process but I didn't.

I ended up painting some of the warm colors into the lead white mixture when it was wet, which is  not what I was supposed to do. If I try it again I'll use a drying solvent.

Here are a few progress images and the final, which I was pretty happy with. Why did I attempt this? Because I visited a museum a couple weeks ago and noticed that all the paintings I really liked had the red-green complimentary color scheme going on, and the green was very visible in the shadows.

I used a photo for my painting but this method was used extensively in the 16th and 17th centuries from life. Yeah- they didn't have camera back then. :)

Log Cabin Oil Painting

11 x 14 oil on linen

This house was a recent commissioned piece from Etsy.

Commissioned Pet Portrait

This lovely girl has a degenerative hip disease and I was commissioned to paint her portrait as a gift for the owners.

16x12 oil on canvas

Quick Paintings

When you challenge yourself to complete a painting within a set time period, you're testing yourself to see how instinctively you can paint. I think this is important, especially when you're painting using the alla prima method. It's also a prerequisite if you're going to paint outdoors, where you need to capture an image in under two hours, due to the changing light. I spent just under 45 minutes capturing this pair.

I like apples. They're paintable, seasonal and best of all, edible. :) There are McIntosh apples. They're delicious.

McInstosh Apples

5x7 oil on panel