SUN 19 MARCH
A celebration of blue...
Like an oncoming tide, a new blue floods into the centre-channel (harbour): now the Ship Inn has the right weight and presence, balanced by the pale shape and dark bar, bottom-right. Line, colour and brushmark punctuate and dance around the blues and dominant verticals. Yellow glows, reds sizzle, white line talks to white line.
Details are refinements/adjustments that the painting needs. Now, everything belongs... joyful.
The idea came from a drawing of two views of the Ship Inn Porthleven, where I saw I could put my harbour in the space between them. The two studies that followed became the template for the painting. The motif of the Ship Inn had appeared in two recent Porthleven paintings, but didn't add to the painting and were taken out. With this piece, the title came first, the Ship Inn the main focus. And blue.
'Ship Inn Blue' began as a colour-exercise on the recent online 'BLUE' painting workshop, mixing a variety of blues, before crowbarring the drawing into the painting (1). Then I broke down the shapes, varying the scale, finding out what belongs, bringing in new flowing blues with knife and brush, blue on blue, blue through blue (2). Redrawing, and a punch of red and yellow, bring context and contrast but the four windows of the Ship Inn grabbed too much attention. (3). The new, warmer, brighter blue on the left does a better job, added depth and authority (4). Getting there but still a question about the similarity and weight of the two centre verticals.
