I re-visited an old hobby.....

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PSG-1

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South Carolina (redneck riviera)
When I was younger, I did a little bit of painting. It's been 20 years since I picked up a paintbrush.
Last year, around the middle of April, I took an excellent photograph that I thought would also make a great painting. I told my girlfriend that I would paint that picture one day, and I'd teach her the basics of painting.


After a year of putting it off, I finally got around to doing that painting.


Here's the original photo:

100_3773.JPG


And here's the painting:

100_0509.JPG



Not too shabby, considering the fact that I haven't picked up a paintbrush in nearly 20 years.
 
Nice. Hard to truly duplicate nature. I've done the same thing...paint for a week or two, then let it go for a couple of years.

Hardest thing for me was to NOT TRY to replicate exactly what I was looking at. A little bit of "artistic license" is a strange power.

Keep it up. Let's see more. Rich
 
The photo of the painting really doesn't do it justice, as it was taken with a cheap camera, unlike the actual photo, which was taken with a Kodak Hi-def camera.

What you can't see in the photo of the painting is the wash of iridescent blue and violet on the water, when the light hits the painting just right, it shimmers, like the surface of the water.

Now my girlfriend wants to try to paint a picture of the Ocracoke lighthouse, with my help, so, we'll give that a shot and see what we can do.
 
We started painting the picture of the Ocracoke lighthouse last night, got the beach done, with the wrack line (the line of debris and grass at the tide line), the wet and dry sand, the sky, the little light keeper house, and the cedar trees in the background. (The original photo was taken from aboard the Cedar Island ferry, approaching Ocracoke on the Pamlico Sound.)

I coached her on how to do the gradient of blue and white for the sky, how to do the gradient from bright yellow/white to a gray/white for the transition from dry to wet sand at the tide line. Also coached her on how to do the trees. She painted the light keeper house by herself, without my assistance.....I told her she was on her own with that one, as I suck at drawing things in 3-D, which is why I never really went anywhere with painting back in my youth. She did REALLY good at drawing it, and even got the shading and shadowing about right, without me telling her how to do that.




So far, it's looking really good. Now we just have the lighthouse to do, then she can go back and fine-tune a few things. In the past, she did a lot of painting by numbers, and did pretty good with it. But I think she's grasped the concept of free-hand painting, and is starting to enjoy it. I showed her how acrylic paint is very forgiving of mistakes, as long as you hit the last coat with the hair dryer to dry it out, any mistake you make over that, can be quickly erased with a wet foam brush, just like using an eraser. (one of my little painting tricks I learned in my youth) Or the old-fashioned method, you can always fix a mistake by painting over it.

Once she figured that out, it wasn't as difficult for her. And of course, my coaching and showing her the tricks of using different brushes for different effect, like using a fan brush to create grass, a toothbrush for stippling, a cotton ball for doing the white-wash for clouds (creates a really good effect)....I think she's picked up a new hobby!

Anyhow, when we get 'er done, I'll take a picture of it and post it here!
 
I'm sorry....which one is the painting? :roll: They both look awesome.

Great job! It take a great amount of patience to be proficient with a brush. Something I've never been able to do. I'm impressed. =D> =D>
 
Thanks for the compliments, guys!

Kinda fun re-visiting an old hobby, and passing it along to my girlfriend, as I know she will enjoy it, and it will also serve as a form of therapy for her, her dad passed away last week and it's been kinda tough for her.

I gave up painting when I discovered competition shooting years ago....then I got burned out on that after a few years of shooting about 25,000 rounds a year.... and at that point, I started fishing, and have done that for several years as my pastime. I plan to get back to doing some shooting soon, though.
 
here we go:
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And the original photo, taken from aboard the "Carteret" Cedar Island-Ocracoke Ferry in June of 2010
Ocracoke Light.JPG



Pretty good for the first attempt at a painting! Much better than my first attempt. Heck, probably better than I could do right now, especially trying to get something in 3 dimension detail, such as the light keeper house.
 
Thanks!

We plan to do another painting soon....this time, I think we'll do this one:


100_4474.JPG

This is a photo my girlfriend took last November. It's also posted to google earth. This is a place I spent a lot of my childhood, this is Eden Saltworks Creek, in Dunn Sound, Cherry Grove Beach. I moved from there in 1991, and this was my first time re-visting the area in 20 years.

We were up there harvesting some oysters, as last year was the first time those beds had been open in 25 years. And yeah, we were in my jetboat, we blasted through the entrance to the sound, the water was so shallow, it barely came up to my ankles when I was trying to guage whether or not we could make it through there.


Anyhow, this should be a fun painting to do. It should be fairly easy, the only difficulty I see is the ripples in the sand. But I'm sure we'll figure out how to replicate that effect.
 
Eden Saltworks Creek:

100_5688.jpg


Been working on a few others, as well. Here's a video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uy3AC1rSIAs

I also pulled my airbrush out of storage, of course, after being stored for 20 years, it was FUBAR, so, I bought a new one. I've been playing around with it, teaching my girlfriend how to use it to create all kinds of neat effects.
 
Thanks!

And heres the latest one, where I've been playing with the airbrush, trying to re-learn it after so many years:

100_0579.JPG


Note the halo around the moon, as well as the reflection on the water. Also, the color gradient from blue to violet. All airbrushed effects. Hard to do that with a regular brush, at least, not without visible brush strokes, that's for sure!
 

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