A View With Some Room: A Ship of the Line

Well, we celebrated my Dad's Birthday yesterdays at Heather and Paul's house in Didcot (place of the mightly cooling towers if you manage to look out to the East whilst on the A34 South of Oxford).

The hush hush painting was unveiled as my present to my Dad. He also received a hamper full of goodies from my Sister none which would be recommended by a Dr, luckily there wasn't one about and a bottle of something alcoholic from Brother Paul.

So, A Ship of the Line, what is that all about? This is the Ship of The Line that my Dad had mentioned back at Xmas that he would like to have me paint. I postponed and postponed it for weeks, but eventually I had to have a go at starting it (strangely the more it was postponed, the closer it came to the Birthday that it had to be done for - time management ed).

The hardest part was doing the initial sketch. Did some research on the web and found a number of photos and paintings of the HMS Victory. Used them as a basis for my creation and used a second hand artistic licence I picked up on the cheap from EBay.

Took quite some time before I got the prow right, if you look at pictures of the actual ship, it has a really odd look about the front which I struggled to capture. The sails were a breeze (ho ho - ed).

I noticed that I got caught (again - art ed) with having to do detail around the edges of the ship which was much harder than I expected (or wanted - ed), and that was all very fiddly. Howerver, all a good learning experience, will read up on a couple of things to see if I can find ways of making my life a little easier on this front, presumably I am missing some easy technique (or at least he is hoping that is the case, maybe it is simply hard - ed)

So where am I now on my adventure in oil painting land. I have painted a ship, various flowers, a cat, a dog, a lion, a b&w person, various sunrises and sunsets, seas and skies, one landscape and trees, so what next?

On my own personal list (of paintings to be done - ed), I have a painting to do of Bridget ('er indoors - ed), and that is an interesting one, have a good range of photos, just need to pick the right one and see how it turns out. Also, quite fancy doing a tiger, full facial, because that will have some lovely colours.

Also, speaking to Esmerelda of Oz this morning (she really is a real person, though the name may have been changed to protect some innocent person or other - ed), and talked about the painting of Tanhouse Lane that she wanted, and it seems that what is needed is an essence of Tanhouse lane, i.e. not realistic, but an almalgam of the bits that she likes. Fancy trying that in a Impressionist vein, will keep you posted on that.

Anyhow, here you go, a subset of the photos I took whilst doing the painting, which in elapsed days and actual time spent was the longest that I have had to do.