Oil painting of open sea

Well, today I did my first oil painting in about 30 years.  I have been thinking about trying oils again after being reminded of it by seeing an image of my oil painting "Dory Memories", painted about 30 years ago.  I have been mostly working in acrylics, quicker drying, perhaps a little more forgiving.

But oil paint has a richness to its colour and texture you can't get with acrylic.  So I went to Luke's store "Endeavours" in Fredericton (great store for art supplies, by the way) and picked up some water-soluble oil paints, which are also almost odourless (another problem with regular oil paints).

Since I hadn't done this for so long, I decided my first oil should be a small canvas to try it out, just 11" x 14".  So what to paint? Well, for me it had to be ocean, and what better to paint that open ocean: 

Since it is oil paint, I expect it will take days to dry, so I photgraphed it on the easel:

I hope to make some prints of this too, if it seems that people like it.  As far as the buoy goes, I have no idea whose mark it is, or even if it is a local mark, but the colours worked for me in the picture:

Perhaps the richness of colour and testure will convince me to spend more time working in oils once again:

I enjoyed this return to oils; perhaps I will do some more soon

"Sculling the dory"

This framed print is a reproduction of a painting I just completed, "Sculling the Dory", an art not as common now, with outboard motors being used to propel a dory

This painting depicts a dory being used by weir fishermen to tend a Grand Manan herring weir. 

The two men in the dory are going into a herring weir, to make sure the fish are still inside and see how many are there.

Here, the dory is being manoeuvred into the weir between nets hung on the weir poles and the “drop”, a net across the mouth of the weir to hold the fish inside the weir.  

The fisherman with the oar is “sculling” the dory, working the oar back and forth, twisting it each way so that it cuts through the water like a propeller blade and pushes the dory forward.  The stern of the dory has a notch in it that acts as an oarlock for sculling.  "Sculling" allows a dory to be propelled in tight quarters where there is not room enough to spread oars to row.