Beached Boats at Portloe Harbour

look at those cobalt and burnt sienna (?) washes in the roofs. Love the suggestion of receding stonework between the white washed foreground buildings. Lovely! The shadows on the left hand side of the buildings are so believable, they barely seem painted.

My goodness, Philip - you certainly know how to cheer a girl up! Thank you for such a lovely comment - so much appreciated. The colours on the roofs are actually Daniel Smith's Quinacridone Sienna and W & N Indigo, with touches of cerulean here and there. It is difficult to tell the colours on a computer screen, isn't it? Also, I am usually so rubbish at shadows that I am heartened by your reference to them looking believable - so thank you for that as well.

Beautifully painted Thea! I too like the rooves colours and shadows on the buildings. Light and airy too!

These are getting better and better Thea!! The beautiful play with light and shadows and the detailed drawing!!! Wow!

I love is picture, Thea. The composition and colours are lovely.

Lovely composition Thea and you've made that hill look convincingly steep.

Thank you so much Sarah, Satu, Shirley and Frank for such encouragement. I am in a bit of a low phase at the moment, constantly feeling that I am mucking up everything I do, so it is jolly nice to have a bit of a boost with all your lovely comments. Why do us artists put ourselves through these bouts of self-doubt?? I thought painting was supposed to be relaxing, lol!

I like your care free approach Thea. A very attractive pen and wash.

This picture is very nice thea straight forward pen and wash ,it has a nice feel to it and is not overworked resulting in a very fresh piece ,well done Thea

This is so beautiful Thea. Stunning work as always

Thank you very much Chris, Dennis and Petra - lovely comments and very much appreciated.

Yes indeed - another super piece - reminds me of my little houses.

Painting is never relaxing is it? Just the opposite really, very stressful and frustrating. Thankfully we have this site to encourage us and drive us on. I don't know about you, but comments here, as well as being encouraging give me ideas and inspiration for new paintings. This one of yours is a beauty. Your shadows are good and will have taken a bit of nerve to get right first time, which you have. All together, it's a lovely sunny scene.

I'm with everyone else. I thought immediately how these pen and wash are just going from strenght. They have their own uniqueness, which is your style.

Lovely pen and wash Thea, I think this is one of my favourites of yours.

Thank you very much Michael, Louise, Gudrun and Stephen - you are very kind and I appreciate it. Louise, I find painting a mixture of pleasure, frustration, despair, elation and it is just plain annoying sometimes. Who needs soap operas when you can experience that variety of emotions in your own studio, lol!

A painting of the month in anyone's language!

As I said before, this is a super painting Thea. Looking at it again, I wonder if the shadow of the right hand boat is correct, i would have thought it would be to the left of the boat rather than to the right, as the building behind it is in shadow on it's left. Sorry to be picky on such a lovely piece.

Smashing work Thea as alweays. I know the feeling and also the concentration, who said relaxing?

Clean and crisp, another lovely piece of work.

Another lovely sunlit piece, Thea, with a lovely composition and gorgeous palette, and atmosphere in spades!

Thank you very much Philip, Stephen, Derek, Debs and Seok for such interesting and lively comments. Philip - that's a really generous compliment, so thank you for that. Stephen, I have to confess that I tend to employ a lot of artistic licence in my paintings and accuracy isn't high on my priority list. I totally agree with you about the shadows of the right hand boat and all I can say is that I felt it needed some tone on that section so I shoved some shadow colour on to give this. I probably should have used some other colour or tone that couldn't be confused with a shadow. Mental note to self- be more careful about misleading shadows!

Delighful Thea, just delightful. The eye dances round, alighting on this detail and on that, then rejoicing in the whole. You've hinted with great subtlety at the fractional difference in lighting on the big white walls, but not overdone it. An hour did you say? Sounds like a whoppa to me!

Just an hour !! It's brilliant....... A pleasure to see.

Thank you Kim and Avril for such nice comments. Kim, perhaps my intro piece was misleading. The painting of the sketch took about an hour as I had done the drawing a few days before and I was referring to the time I finally had a brush in my hand. Perhaps that is a bit more believable as it doesn't actually take that long to shove a bit of wash on a drawing. I bet more competent people than me can do it a lot faster!