Old sailing ship

SO sort of a long hard day at work.  Today's gem is a pencil sketch of an old sailing ship with the sails partial reefed in or being dried I am not sure.  This are part of the sanity sketches, I enjoy them even if they don't really make sense all the time.

Breeches Buoy system

Winslow Homer depicted this life saving system in this famous painting.  I found a picture from WWII, where the US Navy used the system to transfer sailors between ships.  It really makes you appreciate the helicopter today.  Below is Homer's painting from Wikipedia commons.  I would hope to be half the artist Winslow was and I would consider myself a success.

The painting process - The "Yawl" Sloop sailing yacht

Above is the process I used for the oil painting of the sailing boat which is called a Yawl based on the configuration of the sails and masts.  I started with the pencil sketch and I liked the results.  I then did a colored pencil study for figuring out my colors.  I darkened the sea in the foreground and greyed the sky on the horizon since I liked it more than the yellow grey of the sketch.  I don't always follow this process but I find I get better results if I work these things out before commiting to the actual oil painting.

Tug, part 3

Happy Sunday night, this is a simple black and white pen study of a tug with a line back to a tow.  This is an exercise in practicing ship drawing but also a way to look at a picture and plan out the light and dark sections.

Schooner Amistad

I am not who made this ship but it is a re-creation of the Schooner Amistad.  This ship was transporting slaves from Africa and they managed to free themselves and then landed in the U.S.  They were not re-enslaved and it was a historic first in the U.S.  This re-created ship visited D.C. a few years back and this is a pencil sketch of her.

Three Mast Sailing Ship

Part of the fun of living in Maryland is the access to the Chesapeake Bay and the numbers of Tall Ships which are always cruising through the area.   I have a fair amount of reference photos of many of these ships.  This a pencil sketch from an old historic photo.  I can always find books about the sea and ships with black and white photos.

Tugboat - Part 2

This is another sketch in my sketchbook of ships, which is about half sailing ships and half Tugboats.  So this Tug is in choppy seas and is off to calmer waters.  These sketches are part of my evening routine of decompression from the day's work.