Leaving Port

Oil on Board, 10 x 14 inches

Another one for my solo show in Beer. The early morning fishermen gather on Beer beach and go off on the gloriously colourful boats for a day's Mackerel fishing with rod and line. These boats are a dream for artists like me, especially in the morning light, when the dawn sun pierces through from the east, lighting up the sides of the vessels.

I liked the nicely placed old conveyer belt on the right, which provided a nice lead-in, and on the right the ruts in the stones did similar, to push the eye into the picture plane to the triangular focal point.

The boats are relatively straightforward when you've done the drawing, a bit fiddly, but straightforward. The most difficult part of the painting is making the pebble beach look convincing. Sand's a doddle, but depicting a million pebbles, all lit by the sun, is more tricky. I tackled them by laying down a relatively thin underpainting, then dragged progressive layers of colour with a pallette knife, then when the whole surface was just tacky, dragged the lightest tone over with the knife again to simulate the sparkling highlights.