Catching the Wind
Watercolor on acrylic on illustration board, 15 X 20.
It's time again to put forth a painting for our annual Regatta show at Cape Coral Art League. I'm continuing to try to do something experimental with my work. I don't want to do the "same old, same old" but push the boundaries of the conventional rendering of sailboats. I coated my board with gesso and used molding paste for some texture in the bottom third of my painting. This dried completely. Next I put in my blue sky and water background. After that dried I was able to carve out the sail shapes with a damp brush back to the white of the gesso. I continued with the darker boat shapes. I went back into the sails to create the contour with shadows and added people shapes. Finally, I carved out the small sailboat in the distance. This painting went surprisingly quickly because of the gesso underpainting. It allows me to make corrections as I go along simply by wiping out and adding paint.
