Lambertville Boat Club

"Lambertville Boat Club"
8x10 oil on linen panel

My 2-person show with Carol at the Artists' Gallery is over - we both did well, and it was fun while it lasted. Yesterday I took down my half of the show and while I was in town, I did this painting at the boat launch area, just behind the Lambertville Station. I think it's my first painting of boats. These pontoon boats are mostly straight lines - much easier to draw than the curvy lines in other boats. But I did have one big challenge: I have a checklist which I check before heading out to paint - it's frustrating to setup somewhere and realize you forgot something. This time I forgot my big tube of titanium white. All I had was a tube of zinc white. Non-painters are probably thinking "so what - white is white!". But that's not really true with oil paints. There are several varieties of white paint, all chemically different, all with different handling characteristics. Titanium white is very opaque and has great covering power. Zinc white is the most transparent white - it's great for mixing with other colors to lighten them without making them look chalky as titanium white can do. But, that transparency is a problem when you want to cover something up, and titanium white would have made certain parts of this scene much easier to paint. Still, I'm happy with how it turned out. And a little extra challenge now and then can't be a bad thing.