Fishing Shanties

 

Reading this many blogs about our PEI trip must be like looking at somebodies vacation photos when they took too many of them! You know that feeling, when you are stuck in a living room flipping through 300 photos or worse yet seeing them on a big screen TV with no polite way to escape. At least on the internet you can just go to another web page and it wont hurt my feelings! This was one of the last of the shanty paintings, I decided to show the rustic textures and colours here, with stacks of rectangular lobster traps and other fishing gear containers.

Turquoise and rustic red shanties, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, August  2024 (No. 3974b)

 

Going back to the beginning of the trip, this was the first painting of a shanty. They are not complex structures, however, the white trim can be hard to capture in watercolour paint. Some of the local fisherman saw me painting and dropped by to take a look, they seemed to be impressed. I should have traded a painting for a fish, that would have been a neat story.

Green shanty, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, August  2024 (No. 3978a)

 

In this view, the shanties are placed in their environment, surrounded by water and electrical wires. There were more than a dozen similar structures all along the fishing dock. Many of the vessels were set up for commercial deep sea fishing, where tourists could pay to go catch a fish or two. It must be lucrative because there were a dozen or more such boats. 

Pair of shanties, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, August  2024 (No. 3984b)

Each shanty belongs to a fisherman, and they can choose to decorate it in a unique way. Most of them were made from wood paneling, while some had the more traditional wooden shingles that are common around the area including on residential homes. Lobster was clearly the reason of living here, so perhaps they take tourists out in the off season and set lobster traps during lobster season. Hundreds of traps were stacked up along the row of shanties, some traps were semi-circular half cylinders, other were rectangular boxes. You could also buy an old trap for ten bucks for a decoration.

Colourful shanties, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, August  2024 (No. 3985a)

World Inspired Landscapes: Papua New Guinea

 

While there are still about half a dozen or so PEI paintings to blog on about, here is a change of theme with a World Inspired painting. It is also a palette cleanser since my palette was pretty mucked up after the trip and I wanted to clean off the little blobs of paint remaining. Perhaps I was also inspired by the trip, where we saw some pretty intense colours in the sky when the sun set. Papua New Guinea is of course another island all together, in the Oceania region north of Australia. The country underwent various changes politically most recently as an independent country under the common wealth as of 1975. It must be a rather intense place to live, due to its location on the so called ring of fire they have active volcanoes and frequent earthquakes. It is a hot and humid jungle with highlands, lowlands and cute looking animals like tree kangaroos that are probably not as nice as they look, although local indigenous people seem to keep them as pets. The painting is mostly composed of a progression of colours along the rainbow spectrum, with a varied treatment to the water. Some tree trunks and branches were painted over in yellow ochre and raw sienna (PY43, PBr7), or carbon black (PBk6). Every paint on the palette was used!  

World Inspired Landscapes: Papua New Guinea, watercolour 9 x 12" watercolour paper, August  2024 (No 3884)

Pink Sky over Fishing Village

As the sun set on the fishing village in North Rustico, PE, the sky turned a brilliant magenta colour, with purple clouds and blue sky around the edges. The tops of the clouds had a subtle yellowish glow. Capturing the effect required speed and precision with the brush moisture levels and colours. The whole scene barely lasted ten minutes. After a busy day at this active fishing port, there were no other people around other then me and Cilei, who was walking around, took some pictures and watched me finish the painting. Being the last painting of the trip I wanted it to be spectacular, featuring a big colourful sky and the humble shanties with lobster traps. You never know how a painting like this will turn out because its dark by the time you're finished it. Luckily, the sky looks wonderful, with soft sweeping lilac clouds spread across a cotton-candy sky. I edited out the row of fishing boats, and some artificial lighting posts to keep the focus on the sky line and amazing colours in the sky.

Pink Sky over Fishing Village, watercolour 8 x 10" cold press, August  2024 (No. 3902)

Lighthouse, twisted old dock, breakwater near beach

This is one of the many lighthouses kept up by parks Canada, and featured in a lot of travel brochures. You could not visit the inside of it, or go play with the light or anything, but it was well photographed (and painted). The pale cream shingles looked purple on the shadow side. Surrounding it, was the rugged peninsula at the end of the beach, strewn with old beams and new grassy growths.

Lighthouse North Rustico, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, August  2024 (No. 3983b)

 

This dock looks laser beam straight from this vantage point, but off to the left it was twisted up like a pretzel. Built like a fortress, the whole thing was still standing but not in use apparently. Since it was low tide, people were parking around here, you can see tire tracks in the sand in amongst the kelp. If you forgot your car was here for awhile the tide would eventually come in.

Sturdy twisty wharf, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, August  2024 (No. 3981b)

Standing at the end of the beach, there was a view of an iron breakwater and long row of charcoal-coloured rocks. Presumably it was all there to protect the fishing town area to the right, and the parking lot on the other side of these rocks. Since the sun was almost down, the iron part in the distance was a bright red-orange.

Breakwater structures, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, August  2024 (No. 3984a)

More beach scenes from North Rustico Beach

PEI has a lot of nice beaches especially along its North Shore between Cavendish and North Rustico, a small Acadian fishing village. In this painting you can see one of the many small peninsulas made from red clay and topped with scrub trees and pine trees. The sand on the beach was a fleshy beige due to mixtures of the red earth and crushed seashells. Bits of kelp added green to the beach.

Beach with kelp, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, August  2024 (No. 3973b)

 

Looking closer, the red clay cliffs were actively eroding. Mounds of earth and rocks of all sizes accumulate at the water line, as if the sea is eating the land. All of the sand bars are likely due to beach erosion. Despite all the evidence, it is a beautiful beach and made for some good swimming and lounging around time.

Red clay cliffs and beach, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, August  2024 (No. 3974a)

 

Here you see the sand dune give way to the red earth cliff. Amazingly, small delicate looking plants could grow in the sand. This beach stretched on for what must have been a kilometer.

Two toned dune, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, August  2024 (No. 3975a)

On the last day I reeled off several paintings of the beach using the observations and experience of the trip. In this one, I left white spaces for the sun-bleached wood and showed the various colours of rocks and plants. Some rocks were a greenish-grey, others eggshell white, with yet others red, blue or charcoal coloured. And there was the occasional hunk of charcoal too.

Sand dune with rocks and bleached wood, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, August  2024 (No. 3976a)

Gull over water, North Rustico Beach

It was very windy and you can see how the paint splattered on the paper as my palette was blowing around. Gulls were soaring through the air looking for signs of free food. There was always one standing nearby waiting expectantly for us to throw some tidbit out. Of course if you throw one piece of food they make the squawking noise and a dozen more show up. By now I had begun to understand the complexities of the sea colours... on the horizon it was a pretty standard neutral navy blue and green, which faded to emerald with bands of blue-green, then a orange-yellow neutral on the beach line. The effect was created by consecutive washes, then over-painting small hatched brush strokes of varying colours.

Gull over water, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, August 2024 (No. 3986)

 

Many colours of the Atlantic Ocean

Fully dialed into the colour scheme, this was one of the last paintings I did on the PEI trip using the accumulated knowledge from the past few days. Deep blue and navy gave way to successive bands of emerald, yellow, blue, beige, and reddish tones, interspersed with foamy white waves. The North Rustico beach was the colour of a cardboard box, it was wet and heavy sand near the shore, textured with red potato-shaped rocks and plenty of dried kelp. This painting pretty much nails the technical aspects of the scene. You can imagine just walking in, as we did, and it was quite warm and shallow, good for paddling around. Luckily the weather stayed near perfect for the whole week, just rain this morning as we flew out. There are still a lot more paintings to blog about including scenes near the beach, one from Charlottetown, and a whole bunch from the fishing village.

Many colours of the Atlantic Ocean, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, August  2024 (No. 3977)