Postcard No:8
I drive past Franklin 3 or 4 times a week and I always take a few minutes to admire the boats. Franklin is the home of The Wooden Boat Centre so there are some beautiful small wooden boats moored by the bank and a few drawn up onto the grass waiting to be set free on the water. Then there are all the yachts and motor boats tied up at the jetty as well as all sorts of boats moored in the river up and down from the jetty. Rain or shine there’s always something to stir my artistic senses.
This little boat often catches my attention because it creates a lovely lead in to the rest of the river scene. Sometimes it’s leaning one way and sometimes another so it’s always fresh and interesting.
Boats are a great way of adding interest to any water scene. They provide a manmade contrast to all that Nature, something hard edged against the organic shapes. There’s the sense of life and vitality they bring when there are people on deck doing nautical stuff but they can also bring a mood of tranquility because the river is so calm and reflective here at Franklin.
I like how the grass is parted by the boat so we get a good, dark value to contrast with the light hull. I continued the darks in a diagonal up to the corner, together with the rope, there’s a handy little triangular shape formed that points towards the boat.
The dark corner also helps to prevent the eye travelling out of the picture plane because without it the grasses would attract too much attention and head us towards the edge and out.
I simplified the boats at the jetty but there’s enough information to give a sense of a busy jetty with lots of different boats.
Boats are a great way to add interest to any water scene…
I’m so luckly to be living beside the Huon River with a whole variety of boats of different shapes, sizes and colours moored, motoring or sailing right in front of my house. They’re not the easiest of subjects for me to get right but I’m thinking that they’ll be featuring quite often in my year’s worth of postcards so hopefully I’ll be much better at them this time next year!
Of course there are other subjects that can add interest and create mood when added to an otherwise ordinary scene, what do you find crops up regularly in your paintings? Is it flowers, fruit, shells, horses, cats, old barns, rusty cars or something entirely unexpected that I would never guess? Drop me a comment and put a stop to all my guessing!
Lindy Whitton Studio 
Leave a comment