July 27, Painting Seven -Castle Island

Monday, July 27, 2009

I was at Castle Island again today but didn't get much further than the Pine trees I painted last week.  Today's scene was the Castle itself as you take the first turn about twenty yards past the trees.  I found a nice shady spot, rigged up my portable bike easel and after a few rough sketches in pencil tried my hand at the first watercolor.  I learned a couple of valuable lessons.  First, I wished I had brought a larger pad of paper.  The wall itself is so large that in order to draw it to correct scale I would need at least an 18x24 sheet.  You can see that although I measured everything and therefore every dimension is correctly proportioned, I had to make the height of the wall smaller than it should be in order to fit everything In.  I started by measuring the wall closest to me and used the halfway point of that wall as my key measurement.  Then I made sure all other lines in the scene were related to that size.  But, as I said, I needed a larger sheet to set everything to look accurate.

I also learned that the Castle wall has very beautiful grays and I am anxious to do that again with even better jewel tones of grays.  More wet-in-wet application, not in the pallette.  Overall, I am happy with the study as it will give me ample information for a larger version in oil , pastel or watercolor in the studio.  I am going to Dennis in Cape Cod tomorrow to see my grandkids.  I will try to do a quick watercolor in the morning before we go to the beach for the day.  Anybody painting out there? Send me some photos and I  will post and critique.

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