Acrylic Painting Lesson 9: Simple reflections

The goal of the ninth lesson is to learn how to make simple reflections in water. It is reminiscent of a prior lesson using the white of the canvas, this time in white highlight of the sails.

Surprise! I didn't have as much of a break between the last painting and this one. This was my first time using the gessobord instead of claybord. It holds the paint slightly better since it is not as smooth, but it is not a big difference. Filling the sky with a flat color was slightly easier.

Subject Matter for Simple Reflections

I wanted to make the subject more local and relevant, so I found some skipjack photos on Wikipedia for inspiration and added a tree line like sailing around the Chesapeake Bay.

Painting in progress, on the easel

It was been several years since I was on a sailboat. I can't quite remember how the sails go, so I was very dependent upon those inspirational photos. I added shadowy suggestions of figures on the boat.

Painting Water and Reflections

The water did not seem right.

I remembered to make it darker in the distance, something not mentioned in the book but an observation I know from doing seaside watercolors. I couldn't decide exactly how the wave ripples should go considering the lighting and land since I was taking ideas from several photos and not just copying one

Ideally if I were painting the water I would spend some time actually on the water studying that, but this is just a quick exercise.

9 of 50 - Skipjack sailboat 6/12/2018

Status: Not for sale yet

I ended up going over the foreground water several times. I finally stopped and called it done so I could fix the next meal. Everyone can tell it's a sailboat, and there is a reflection, so I did reach my goal although I see room for improvement.

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