"The Fish House, Monhegan Island", 14x11

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"The Fish House, Monhegan Island", 14x11

This painting was painted to be a companion piece to "The Red House, Monhegan Island." and has sold through Galerie du Soleil.

I added the fellow in red shirt and the boat with red sail to tie together the color elements from the first painting. Also the path and flowers mimic each other somewhat, as does the island of Manana in the background.  Monhegan Island off the coast of Maine is quite a special little island and paradise for artists, fish lovers, and eccentrics, too lol.

The Red House was made famous by either Jaime or Andrew Wyeth, (can't recall which!) who painted often at Monhegan and had a summer place there. The red house is on Swim Beach and right down the road is Fish Beach which is the location of my second painting of The Fish House on Fish Beach Road.

Here are the two paintings side by side:

"Crow's Nest View", 8x10, oil on linen, plein air, Maryanne Jacobsen, Venice Beach, north Jetty, The Crow's Nest, boats, water, Gulf of Mexico

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"Crow's Nest View", 8x10, oil on linen, plein air study (Note: you can click on the photo to get a better view of the painting)

I painted this morning at the North Jetty. The last time I painted here, I painted the trees along the path over the little footbridge that faces west and north towards the Gulf. Today I elected to paint the south view across the jetty where the boats come out of the inter-coastal on their way to the Gulf of Mexico. There's a restaurant there called "The Crow's Nest" and it's always a fun place to dine.

Unfortunately, the two boats that were docked at The Crow's Nest left before I could finish painting them so I had to wing it from memory. It was a pleasant, though very hot day and there were tons of happy fisherman all around, as well as egrets, pelicans and herons. A manatee passed through the channel and there was also a dolphin sighting.

Because I was so far across the water from the restaurant and south jetty, I had to just squint down to see the shapes. The clouds were in interesting formations so I decided to put them into 'the story', too. Overall a really nice day to paint in the sunshine!

"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!