Are you peeking at my underpaints?

There's a conscious effort on my part here to create some interesting colors and optical effects by laying in some complimentary colors as underpainting. You can be the judge as to how successful this is when I'm finished.

I did this kind of underpainting in the composition at top. You can see traces of the orange underpainting peeking out from beneath the pale blue surface on which the two shells sit.

Finito?

Sometimes I sign these things and then a few days later come back and add another couple of daubs...

And speaking of signing, I have used only initials here. Can you blame me? With a name like this? On a canvas that is only 9 x 12?

My son, Chris, is going to a reception tonight at the Chicago Public Library which is exhibiting, among others, the poster design he did for them. In an email to me he made reference to his incipient fame as a graphic designer on his way to becoming a 'household name.'

"With a name like ours?" I replied.

Almost finished

I still need to adjust the highlights in the smaller shells. And that cone shaped whitish shell in the lower center is still too bright but I'm fairly happy with how this has gone. A little more work and it might be signature time.

Half-finished

A gallery in Michigan expressed interest in my work and suggested I prepare a group of paintings for this summer. "Anything having to do with boats and the water," the dealer told me. He had been attracted by the seashell paintings I've done, of which there are many. But I thought about what he said and thought I ought to do more boating landscapes and seascapes.

Somewhat surprisingly I've had difficulty building up a backlog of these kinds of paintings. I had three and was working on this fourth but a friend of my wife bought two of them before Christmas.

This one is 12 by 9 inches and entirely made-up, except for the perspective of the rowboat itself which I took from a photo of Huntington harbor. The setting and background are off the top of my head.

This is a Belgian linen that is primed with clear acrylic so you see the color and texture of the linen as you work the painting. I have no idea whether this has any archival soundness but it makes for a great tone under the painting.

Things I want to do with this painting as I try to finish it: I want to manipulate the color of the rowboat away from the monochromatic sand color that dominates at the moment. I'm thinking an opaque pale bluish gray overpainting with some of this sand color peeking through in places. The weeds in the foreground need to be more specifically delineated but I'll leave them for last.