I finished the painting.  Here is the final, just before framing:

Last week I told you how excited I was that my wife asked me to paint some seascapes, and that she actually thought I was good enough at painting that she would hang them on the wall for everyone to see!  Not in the main living room, of course, so not for everyone to see.  But in a side room, for some to see.  So, it’s a start.  Maybe next time I’ll be upgraded to the foyer (not sure what a foyer is, but it sounds important).

Anyway, here was the first step, drafting a rendering for her approval:

After that, I had to prepare the canvass.  I decided to use pre-primed canvass paper.  This is basically a giant pad of paper, like a giant sketch pad, except that the paper is actually canvass.  Since it’s already been prepared, and since acrylic doesn’t wrinkle the canvass like oils would, I decided just to paint straight onto it, instead of stretching it onto a frame like the old masters used to do.  Also, this will make it easier to fit it into the frame my wife wants to use, which currently holds photos, so it’s good that the canvass paper is thin and that I can cut it with scissors.

Next, I had to transfer the rendering to the canvass.  I read somewhere (probably Wikipedia) that one of my heroes Caravaggio didn’t do any preparation. He just positioned his models and started painting. Since I am not a total genius like him, I have to first do an intermediate stage where I can get all the proportions right and erase if I have to.  So, I basically redraw the rendering onto the canvass, using the original as a reference.

Then I got to work on the painting part.  This is the painting about halfway through.  You can see that almost the entire painting is just one tone of various colors.  The shading was going to be next.  I also had to fill in buildings (she likes quaint buildings) and the rigging of the sailboat. This is what I call the awkward stage:

And then I added the various tones, shapes, and details (such as rigging and buildings and clouds) to hopefully give it some depth.  Here is the final, repeated for your pleasure: