Painting at Castle Island

It is another warmer than usual day.  My Aunt Theresa is expecting me today, and what that usually means is lunch and errands.   Since she has been using a walker, we are little more limited in our adventures.   I decide to pack up my painting gear and paint for a couple of hours in Boston before my visit.
I drove straight to Castle Island hoping that the predicted high winds would not be a problem.   I figured that the fort has so many angular walls that I would be able to find a warm spot that was also sheltered from the wind.    I was thinking that perhaps Sullivan's would be opening for the season soon, but I was relying on a vague memory of a handwritten piece of paper that would be taped up on the concession's front door each winter.   "See you in the Spring," followed by the date - always sometime in March.

I parked in the front row and stacked my gear onto a luggage cart.   I didn't have to walk very far to realize I would have to be on the upper sidewalk to find a windfree spot.  There are five major sides to Fort Independence, and I set up facing southeast.    Here is a photo of my vantage point and my set up.

Just beyond the wall in my painting a major runway for Logan International Airport juts out into Boston Harbor.  Every two or three minutes a jet would descend gradually and land at Logan, out of sight from where I was located.   I added a nice white jumbo jet just above the skyline of densely populated Winthrop with its assorted waterfront houses.  Several people stopped to watch the planes from the benches on this sunny sheltered side.   The grass slopes down from the upper sidewalk down to the outer perimeter sidewalk of Castle Island.   In case you haven't seen any of the Boston Harbor Island forts, and were wondering, that is grass on top of the fort.

I am sort of perplexed about the blue colors of the sky and water.   As I stood there, the light blue color of my painted sky was exactly the same as the real sky.   Now, in looking at this photo, the canvas is very light blue, yet the "real" sky in the photo is deep blue.  Similar issue with the water.   I know that photos make things bluer, but it is interesting that it seems to only make distant things bluer - not the blues on my canvas.  Maybe someone has some information they can share on this?

Although there was a steady stream of walkers, few stopped to talk or ask questions.  One woman was interested in having her dog painted.   I haven't ever done a pet portrait, nor am I particularly interested in doing one, but I gave her a card anyway.   She was a very cute dog.  It was also very nice to see a friend from back in the 80's whom I had not seen in decades.    This demonstrates that you cannot accurately depict Castle Island unless you put in the walkers.   That's what is missing from this painting right now; I'll let it dry a bit and then insert the walkers in the sweet spot where the path turns left around the corner.

Watching the Planes at Castle Island

More Red Roses - along with White Wedding Shoes

White Wedding Shoes I, 14 x 18 inches

Today is "leap day" and my Valentine's Day roses are finally going into the compost pile.   I thoroughly enjoyed these red roses for many reasons and the fact that they lasted so long meant they were available for painting several still lives!  Today's post shares two more paintings done using the roses.  The focal point for each of the two paintings is not actually the roses but the white wedding shoes.   Also included in the set up is my pearl pendant, a wedding gift from my husband.  In each painting the shoes are placed atop an old style box suitcase with an antique looking clasp.  

Painting the roses were easier than expected;  I used my palette knife to apply concentric petals.  I then came back to apply highlights and dark shadows onto the box.  These photos came out pretty dark, a result of trying to minimize the shine from the fresh paint.

White Wedding Shoes II, 12 x 16 inches

The white shoes proved to be more manageable than expected too.   I found that painting the negative space around them first made it easy to come back in with shades of dark lavender and white to actually paint the postitive space in.  The remaining challenge with the shoes is that they may look too white and too cool.   I topped off the shoe highlights with a mixture of titanium white, cadmium red light, and cadmium yellow deep, in an attempt to warm them up.   I'm thinking that the shoes are still too white.

Biggest challenge for me were the leaves of the roses.  In my first rough in, the leaves looked terrible; in these photos they look better now than they did - but maybe not much better.   Since they are not a featured item but simply a supporting element, I talked myself into "roughing up the edges" such that they appear somewhat blurred, and becoming subordinate to everything else. 


I'm sure I'll do more on these but for now here are the initial, in-progress paintings, White Wedding Shoes I and II.   As always, comments welcome!