I receive great enjoyment from painting plein air at the marina. Some of the boat owners may not enjoyed the Mayflies as they tried to clean their boats, but this was of no consequence to me since I was focusing more on the big picture (no pun intended).
Painting plein air sets the pace of the painting. Painting Knives seem to help me lay down large amounts of color quickly though you do not want to rush or hurry any of your decisions, but you must be able to get your overall impression of light down as quickly as you can, because we all know that light changes. I wanted to have a focus on the main boat and let everything else fall off into my peripheral vision of my eye. Color temperature and light are very important to me, but my primary concern is to make you feel the brightness of the light as it glared off those beautiful boats. The brightness of the boats in the sunlight adding to my eyes not being able to see all the detail around my center focus, but more like abstract shapes of color all blurring together, trying to form some other objects around me.
I met a very nice gentleman that day, Todd Schweitzer whom ended up being the owner of the boat I was painting and we seem to be on the same conversational page and enjoyed talking for some time. You can see him standing next to the almost finished painting, not wearing a shirt. View I was painting was behind him.
When I got back to the studio I could begin seeing what was lacking in the painting, and using some reference shots I was able to make a few adjustments that benefited the painting. I had not been able to paint from my Mac Computer before, but this seemed to be the perfect solution on this particular day.
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Great Day at the Marina 2, Oil on Panel, 11 x 14 inches
© 2011 Daryl Urig
