Fishing Boats

Teacher Painting

"Sunday Repairs" 14 x 16" Oil on Canvas by Richard Robinson.

This scene was a joy to paint. It took 90 minutes to paint, but only the last 15 minutes were spent on detail. The majority of the work lay in building the big beautiful shapes containing subtle colour shifts. The few details are the small stitches that hold the whole garment together and give it realism. The most difficult colour to analyse was the shadowed white sides of the boats. In the video I show you exactly how to see, analyse and mix these subtle greys.

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Student Painting

'Dry Dock' 30x40cm Oil on Canvas by Gunther Andree - Altered

Foreground directional lines added to make the shadow areas lie flatter and to help direct the eye.

Student Painting

'Getting Summer Ready' 9x12" Oil on Linen Panel by Chris Bloom

Great energy in the brushwork here Chris and you've got the shadow and light colours in the hull just right. The only small thing spoiling this painting for me at the moment is the too-thick painting of the rigging which seems to be fairly common among the other paintings. If you remember in the video I demonstrated first how not to do it (not intentionally!) and then scraped it off and repainted the rigging using a mahlstick to rest my hand on and painting each line in one swift stroke with a rigger brush (also called a liner brush). The thickness of the paint on your brush is all-important when you do this so it pays to practice on your palette with different viscosities of paint before you attempt those few crucial lines on your painting. Other than that, great work!

Student Painting

'Dry Dock' 30x40cm Oil on Canvas by Gunther Andree

Beautiful detailed work here Gunther, especially in the modelling of the form of the hull with light and shadow. Love the sky glinting of the window too. Nice! The drawing of the boat is excellent, but not so for a few other details - the placement of the bases of the stabilisers on the ground, the spacing of the rungs on the ladder and the left most boat. They're letting the team down, but the team is great. Last thing, the cast shadow on the ground is looking a bit flat and stand-up-ish. To connect this better to the light on the ground you can run a couple of subtle darkish lines from the foreground light, through the shadows and into the background light. The lines should diminish in size darken with the shadow. When you do this with shadow areas it makes them irrefutably connected to the lights. Here's an example:

Student Painting

'Drydock' 8x10" Oil on Panel by Jim Baldoumas

Great energy in this Jim, beautiful colours versus subtle greys. Your drawing like many of the paintings submitted needs some tweaking and for that I suggest viewing this reversed in a mirror. As SOON as you do that you'll be able to see the problems in the drawing. Works every time.

Student Painting

'Boat Repair' 16x20" Oil on Canvas by Jim Delk

Great work Jim - LOVE the brushwork and colour in this. Again, check the drawing in the mirror. You've inadvertently made a bit of an Escher illusion by moving the base of the ladder. There's something odd happening in the tree with the blue-grey painted over top of them - needs reworking. Shadow on building is too blue. Overall it's great - just a few things to look at.

Student Painting

'On the Hard' 8x100" Oil on Canvas by Laurena Beirnes

Love the bold design here Laurena. Good drawing. Great sense of the power, colour and direction of the light. Note that you've mixed your shadows a bit though - a strong light like this would give the boats sharper edged cast shadows on the ground. I'd like to see you try using much thicker paint in the lights - this will help create a more painterly look.