Steam Engine

This is a pencil sketch exercise I have been working on for the last few nights.  So my image is not an original but it is for me to practice and improve my drawing skills.  The benefit is I really do like to draw trains, along with other industrial devices and modes of transportation.  I am only limited by my time and skill.  I am working on increasing both.

Happy Father's Day!

So I was blessed with two Dads.  One was my biological Dad, Richard Suitts (Passed) and the other my Step Father, Richard Brandt, who raised me like his own since I was about two years old.  So I have been very lucky to have them both and I used their example for my children.  This is a lighthouse in Chicago and it is drawn from a photo, my Dad, Richard Brandt took last summer.

Whaling Ship

The wife and I recently went to Mystic Seaport in Connecticut.  At the museum they have the Whaling ship, Charles Morgan, the oldest whaling ship still in existence from the 1840s.  So while this is not the Morgan, it is a Whaling ship from a book on the industry.  I find the ships and the tales fascinating and repulsive at the same time.  I admire the handwork and courage of the men on these ships, it is just unfortunate they made their living killing whales and cutting them up.  I really liked the artwork from the book and used it was a teaching device with pen and ink.

Yacht with sails

This is a pen and ink drawing of a yacht with its sails fully filled and making way to its journey's end.  I don't remember where I got this picture but it is not one I took but it was a bit of an experiment in using the ink to depict the darks and lights.  The sailing ships always have great bits of details to make sketches more interesting.

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.