Bonita Bay x 2. Paintings #75 & #76.

After an afternoon of kayak fishing where I caught dinner, I pulled my kayak onto shore to load my gear. As I’m loaded up my SUV with my fishing gear, I see the sun setting and a heron hunting for his dinner. Thought it would make a nice painting so I snapped a photo.

Yes, you are seeing double. These are two separate paintings. These are two paintings of the same scene but on different size canvases and painted a week apart. They are paintings #75 and #76 respectively.

The first version of this, the 11 x 14 size, took longer than I expected it to. A lot of times when I do a landscape or seascape on a smaller canvas it’s because I want to get an idea how it would look or how a certain technique would work without wasting a larger canvas or too many materials if it didn’t work out.

The second version, the 16 x 20 was painted a week later. I thought the first version looked so good that I had to put it on a larger canvas. I wish I had done it on the larger canvas to begin with. It’s not as easy as you would think to duplicate an original painting. Especially if you’re forgetful like me and forget what colors or technique you used. Sometimes when you do a painting, you’re just feeling it. You get in the zone. If you try to replicate it, you don’t always have that.

On the large version, the palette knife wasn’t being steady when I was adding the ripples and small waves to the water. I surprised myself with the palm tree on the first one. I just used Bob’s technique for doing palm trees. I filled in bare spots where needed. That technique is using some midnight black and mixing in a little paint thinner. A combination of the fan brush and the liner brush works well. The fan brush will create the basic shape then pull out some little things with the liner brush.

I really love how the first one turned out. The second one wasn’t bad but I wasn’t quite feeling it when I was doing that one. Anyway, here’s the reference photo. As you can see, I took a bit of creative liberties.

Bonita Bay 2 is available for sale in my Art Sale.

Happy painting!