[Early Years] "Boat & Bay" (14x11 oil on panel) painting process

Good Morning Steemians,

San Francisco and the Bay Bridge. Here is another throwback painting from 2011. The full uncropped version is at the end of the post.

This painting was almost exclusively painted with a knife. (Around half of my paintings are knife, the other by brush). Here is the first stage (apologies for the blurry photo). While I typically advocate for painting the focal area first, I decided to do the opposite here. If I remember correctly, I needed to start resolving the sky and water first because it was the element that I was altering from reality the most:

Next stage:

Next stage. You'll notice that I decided to isolate and exaggerate the brightest portion of the sky to right around the stack on the boat. I'm always looking for more ways to create focus:

And the finished painting, "Boat & Bay" (14x11 oil on panel, 2011):

Thanks for reading! -David

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