Less than perfect painting day

Day one of Digby Scallop Days

The weather conditions were great.  There was gorgeous fog clearing as I drove into town at 8:30am.  When I got to the wharf these boats were highlit by the sunshine while the wharf behind them was muted by the fog hanging just off shore.  The fog allowed me to play peekaboo with thewharf for an hour and a half as it moved in and out.  Finally the fog burned off around 10:30.  All this made for great painting conditions. 

But by 10:30 I had discovered that I was having technical problems with one of the types of paper that I use.  So of the 4 paintings that I started this is the only one that is acceptable for people to see!  

Marina in Fog, 7 x 10", watercolour

I may do somemore to this here at home in the studio.  To me the black of the right most boat is too dark compared to the rest of the painting, so I need to do something about that.  There are some posts and some rigging that I could add and I think that would help.

 I did have some fun this morning,  messing around on the back of the paintings that failed, testing different ways of painting water but they do not make for finished "art".   However, the reason I paint out of doors ("plein air" if you want to talk artist-speak) is to learn to better portray my subjects.  To learn to see what things look like when there is no camera in the way.  Even though cameras are a wonderful tool for artists they do create distortions and in some ways get in the way of responding directly to the subject at hand.  So even though I have not much finished "art" for the day it was still a good painting day.

Day Two of Digby Scallop Days will not see me painting as I have other commitments but I will be downtown most of the day on Saturday and Sunday.