Fisherman’s friend
Posted: July 30, 2025 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: boat painting, Chania, Crete, Greece, plein air painting 13 CommentsAs much as I try to complete a painting on site, it’s not always possible. Here’s one from our trip to Crete in the spring. I started this on location in April but was interrupted when a sponge seller on another boat docked in front of me. Apparently I was in his spot, but he politely waited while I packed up my gear.
Before the sponge boat pulled in, I was happily painting this scene of a fisherman untangling his nets and chatting with a friend. I witnessed this often in the morning in Chania. Usually two fisherman in side-by-side boats, having coffee, and working on their nets. I’m not sure if they were just coming in or on their way out but I suspect it was the former. This time the conversation was between the friend on the pier and the fisherman just below. In a scene like this I always try to draw the figures first in case they move away. The boats are likely to stay there longer so I draw them second.
As I mentioned, I always prefer to finish the painting on site but this time it wasn’t possible. I brought the watercolour home and it sat on my drawing table for months. It was really only missing details of nets, rigging and some waves in the water, so I added those in this week. Hopefully it still has the freshness of a scene painted in the early morning in one of my favourite places in Greece.
Cape Ann paintings and a lesson learned
Posted: July 26, 2025 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: cape ann, gloucester, Halibut Point State Park, plein air painting, rockport, rocky neck, watercolour 22 CommentsOn my first morning in Rockport, I rushed down to the harbour to paint. I have a favourite bench in a shady spot, a little bit away from the pedestrian traffic of Bearskin Neck. It’s fitting that my first painting in the town this year was of the visitor’s centre across the water. That was where I did my first boat sketch of Rockport all those years ago, and where my love of Cape Ann began.
It was a misty day when I painted this one, but the lack of light and shadow is offset by the multitude of shapes in the harbour. I can always find something to paint in Rockport.
I also spent a very hot morning painting at Halibut Point State Park, again in a shady spot across from a visitor’s centre. I love the description of the park on the Mass.gov link: a granite edge between the Atlantic Ocean and the mainland. It’s those granite edges of the former quarry that make painting there such a challenge, especially on a calm day when the rock reflects in the reservoir. Truly a place of quiet beauty when sometimes the only sound is of flapping gull wings in the still water.
I also returned to one of my favourite Gloucester painting spots: the view of Low Tide Yacht Club on Rocky Neck. Again, a favourite bench, a misty morning, the tide coming in, and no lack of shapes to paint. This one comes with a near-disaster and lesson learned: don’t take the tape off the painting until you are indoors. As you can imagine, that is not what I did. I won’t get into all the details, but the short story is that the tape came off, the wind grabbed the painting which was only lightly clipped to the plexi board, the painting landed upside down about an inch from the incoming tide and I managed to rescue it from floated away before the next gust of wind came along. This also included a fair bit of shrieking and scrambling down rocks. A story with a good ending but as I mentioned: a lesson learned.
Seven port views plus a lighthouse
Posted: May 7, 2025 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: boats, Chania, Crete, Greece, harbour, plein air painting, watercolour 43 CommentsSometime after my first week of touring in Crete, I gave up on posting remotely. I am just never satisfied with images that are photographed from my iPhone. I much prefer to scan paintings on my trusty Epson Perfection V600 scanner, clean the images up in Photoshop (bring the whites back to white, make sure the colour matches the original, etc.) and then post them. So here I am, one week after returning home, finally over the jet lag and back at my desk scanning paintings and sketches.
In all, I painted 8 views around the Old Venetian Port of Chania, Crete (mostly 16″ x 12″). I originally thought it was seven but then realized that my final painting of the lighthouse is really the entrance to the historic port so I added that to the count. There would have been a ninth view if it hadn’t rained on my last day. Forgive me if you have already seen a few of these but the colour is not accurate in the previous images so here they are again.
I could paint this port for a year or more and never get tired of it. If you look it up on Google maps you’ll see that it has several bays. The one on the western side is lined with shops and restaurants and it has a wide strolling promenade. The eastern side is where you’ll find the docks and the boats — little fishing boats, great white yachts and catamarans, speedboats that you can charter to take you to beaches inaccessible by car, and strangely, a mini red submarine that allows you to have an underwater view if you choose. You’ll also find the remaining Neoria there. These are the old Venetian shipyards with the peaked facades that you can see in the third painting below.
On the outer edges of the port there’s also a long, narrow seawall that takes you to the lighthouse. I painted in a shaded spot along that wall for several of these paintings. In all of these, I tried to convey a sense of architectural history (bits of the remaining Byzantine and Roman walls, the clay-roofed colourful Venetian buildings, the only remaining Ottoman mosque that forms the corner of the Western section of the port) as well as a sense of what the port is like at different times of day. I was there during the period around Easter when it’s quite crowded so I included lots of people, but I imagine that a place as beautiful as this is crowded well into the autumn.
It was wonderful to live a bit like a local for a few weeks in Chania — to set off in the morning with my palette and easel in my backpack, not knowing where in the port I would stop to paint. I don’t think I’ve ever had the luxury of so much painting time in any other place.
In the next post: the sketches from our frequent road trips to different villages in western Crete.
Pond and lake
Posted: April 24, 2014 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Montreal, plein air painting, pond, watercolour 5 CommentsThere’s a certain thrill painting outdoors when you have the elements working against you, and I guess that’s what makes it such an adventure. It’s really still too cold to paint outside because of this freezing spring we are experiencing, but I’m trying to get out there anyway and catch some quick impressions despite the frigid winds near the lake. I set up my easel by the pond in Baie d’Urfé, and tried to capture the layers of blue: sky, lake, far pond, near pond. I think my lake section could probably have been a bit darker but I was painting in full sun and that makes it hard to see. Now that I’ve scanned the sketch and see it on screen I may go back in with a light wash to separate the lake from the bit of sky. Or not.
