Mixed things up

This looks lovely Alicia. But please put it on the gallery. The forum is for discussion .

It is the place for critique - so if such is your desire.... I am most certainly not saying I could do better, in part because I don't really have your sense of adventure and imagination with colour; my colour schemes have been described as 'desaturated', and for better or worse, they usually are. So your painting has an immediate impact, which is all to the good. If criticizing it, I'd be at a bit of a loss because it's a genre with which I'm not especially familiar, having a nasty habit of trying to represent things too accurately (and rather often failing, but that's another story). So bearing all that in mind, he said, pausing for breath - I think your masts could be a little thinner: using the edge of a card to paint them works for some; and I'd like a sharper line under some of the boats, or at least under the foreground one. I don't know how accurate the perspective of the buildings is - but I don't think it matters anyway in this case: it's near enough to convince, and this isn't supposed to be a very exact study. The only other thing I might mention is that there seem to be more masts reflected in the water than actually exist above it - but that's just the sort of thing a nit-picker would notice.

Hi Alicia. I like your painting. I'm not qualified to talk about the mediums you used, I don't use them often enough to have anything reliable to offer. (My mixed media is limited to pen,ink, watercolour and pencil). The first thing I like about it is that it's largely a product of your imagination, you may have used photo reference material (which is just fine), but you've made it yours. The colours are bright, that just suits me fine, others may be divided on this. It didn't read the mast reflections quite the same way as Robert, I took some of the white steaks to be a reflection of the side of the boats. So I had no problem with them. One of the joys (and curses) of painting, is that people can 'read' things differently. You first have to paint pictures that will please YOU, if you're like the rest of us, that will be hard enough. Had you posted this in the Gallery, I would have looked at it...because it sparked my interest. As far as I'm concerned it's a successful painting. Keep going. Best, Lew