Portland Pier and Salon

[caption id="attachment_678" align="alignnone" width="500"] Portland Pier[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_688" align="alignnone" width="500"] Painting in the morning[/caption]

I decided to visit Portland for a painting weekend. A row of old white/gray buildings on the pier, working fishermen, fishing boats, buoys and a group of loud seagulls make Portland waterfront very lively. The geometric and abstract nature of colorful patches of woodblocks on these gray building and reconstructed windows and doors really attracted me to this place.

Saturday's weather was between sunny and cloudy but I was able to draw and paint for a few hours. I focused on the colorful abstract woodblocks. This portion of the building had at least 5 windows in a row. Since I already had many geometric colorful shapes, I had to edit most of these windows out except for a small square window. The painting turned out more simplified, but more abstract. It is still in progress.



It has been raining since early morning today. I decided to stay inside the car and painted instead of being on the pier in the rain. I zoomed in to a salon across the street and started to work on simplified geometric shapes of yellow windows and doors. I kept the lamppost but removed all the windows above the salon. The surrounding blue gray color was borrowed from the next building which seemed more suitable than the regular brick color. This painting seemed very flat at the moment and will need more work. I am planning on revisiting Portland.

Borrowing Mistress Blue

 

[caption id="attachment_675" align="alignnone" width="500"] tug boats[/caption]

Between cloud and sun, the tug boats' surrounding color kept changing from gray to blue.  Blue color however did not work well with this painting.   Lighter shade of green worked better to complement red and yellow.  I borrowed darker shade of blue from a near by boat 'Mistress' and added in a few selected places including the lines of the door on a yellow/red tug boat.  After a few hours of working today, the painting looks complete.

Colorful Tug Boats

[caption id="attachment_661" align="alignnone" width="500"] Tug boats[/caption]

New Bedford piers are full of many colorful large and small boats ranging from black to bright Magenta.  Two tug boats with combination of primary colors; yellow, red and white stripes against the blue ocean stood out as a challenge.  I spend a few hours this Saturday drawing and editing then I decided to lay down a first layer of colors.  The white vertical railings against horizontal yellow and red bands seemed attractive but a distraction.   However, I decided to keep a long horizontal bar from the railing.  Among all the squares and the rectangles, a round wheel seemed necessary.  I looked for any other small curves I could find to introduce in this space, fortunately there were plenty.  Around 5 pm I had to stop painting since the light has changed a lot and the boat seemed to be sinking as the water level was lowering down.  I can't wait to return to this place again to complete this painting.