One of my reasons for selecting Portree harbour as the subject for September’s monthly painting project was to get me past the point of merely thinking about painting it and to give it a go, all that perspective in the buildings or not. The video below is of my very first attempt at this subject.
I regard it more as an exploratory study than an resolved painting, there are bits that I like and bits I don’t. Most of all it’s a painting that has got me past my fear of the subject, made me study the scene, and motivated me to try again.
I have since changed the building that shouldn’t have been pink to yellow using acrylic paint, but otherwise am not going to ‘fix’ this painting. Its job is to help me create other, future paintings. I think there’s too much black on the hillside, and some of the ink work is too messy rather than linear. My favourite bit is the water, and that I did it at all.
The non-photo blue pencil I started theoretically is easy to eliminate from photos; I like it for its soft colour that gives me a round of sketching before I get to graphite. I used a propelling pencil with 2B because it means I don’t have to stop to sharpen a pencil.
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