About the Image

There's something about wrecked and sunken boats that really fascinates me and not only because they're good subjects to paint. I find them quite interesting because they can also tell stories through their look, color, structure, location, damage and even their name. And if you really think about how that may have happened, a lot of pictures and stories can come to mind just by looking at a boat. When I paint, this is what I mostly try to evoke.

I started by making a very basic 3D model in Maya (Google SketchUp is good as well). I often use a 3D model just for some insurance about perspective and such. I still wasn't sure what was going to be what at this point, but I had an idea about the composition and where my elements could be (Fig.01).


I started painting over my 3D model, erasing a few unnecessary parts of it. Then I added boats on the sides. I already had lots of objects in mind like rope, flags, barrels, sprays etc. that I could use to make the image more interesting and complete later on (Fig.02).


At this stage, I messed around a lot, trying things out for a better composition. I erased the buildings (boxes) in the background so that I could block in another boat instead. This edit changed what I had in mind at first, so I had to re-think my composition (Fig.03).



Flipping your image horizontally is something I do quite often to make sure I get a balanced image. By doing this I figured my boat in the background was really overwhelming the whole scene so I just moved it on the left (Fig.04).