"Van Gogh"s Boats", 8x10, oil, Vincent Van Gogh, French Boats, empaths, highly sensitive personalities, French seacapes, impressionism, Bouzique, France, old fishing boats, Maryanne JAcobsen art

"Van Gogh"s Boats", 8x10, oil

Nothing is sadder than an artist that cannot find his footings in a cold world. Such was the case with Vincent Van Gogh.

Today we have a name for people like Vincent. They are called empaths, or highly sensitive personalities, or whatever. I understand Vincent. Sometimes the world is hard. Sometimes the world is cold.

And sometimes the world is beautiful!

 Empaths struggle to find their footing because everything is bigger for empaths than the life that most individuals see and live each day. Bigger and scarier.

Anyhow. That's all I have to say about Vincent's mental state. Vincent painted colorful fishing boats in a  painting titled, Boats at St. Marie.

Here is an image of his painting:

These colorful old fishing boats dating back to Van Gogh's era can still be seen in the small fishing port of Bouziques, in the south of France. How cool is that?

This little painting was painted a few years ago and I took it out recently and re-worked a couple passages. If you like it, send me an email at maryannejacobsen@aol.com

"Purple Haze", 10x8, oil on panel, paintings of baots, sailboats, colorful boats, riviera boats, purple

"Purple Haze", 10x8, oil on panel

I made a conscious effort to make sure that the drawing on this painting was correct. After watching Calvin Liang's demo last week, it re-enforced to me the neccesity of good drawing skills in order to have a successful painting. So I took my time with this painting and carefully sketched out the compostion in a sketch book. That actually gave me a lot of confidence because there's a lot of perspective and foreshortening going on in this scene.

Then I did exactly what Calvin did, I sketched the whole composition out again on my panel with soft charcoal before beginning the painting. I do think the painting would have been much less successful if I had not taken these initial steps. I also tried my best to soften edges, as I saw him do. I was happy with the result and the photo does not do justice to the painting.

If you read this blog, please drop me a comment about what you think my painting style is predominantly- realism, expressionism or impressionism. I am just curious what you think so please let me hear from you!