Early Stage of Kayak Painting
pencil on raw wood panel, nails, hammer, bendable yard stick, clear ruler, carpenter's pencil, and an eraser

This afternoon I began a project that is diverting my attention from a commission I have been asked to paint.  I'm not ready for the commission...they're always unnerving to do, because you can't just 'go with it'.. you need to end up with something that looks like whatever it is they've requested.  I'm keen to paint the commissioned work.. it's a beautiful boat, a colourful double-ended rowboat, but I'm a bit chicken to begin.  So I'm painting this instead.. a warm up practice perhaps.. or at least a good diversion.

So this is my process..

I start with a raw (not primed) wood panel..(this one's 12" x 36"..) sometimes I sand it down, sometimes I don't.  I didn't. It was pretty smooth to begin with, and I was being a tad lazy.
Then I get my aluminium (bendy) yard stick, a carpenter's pencil, eraser, a clear ruler and hammer and nails.. and begin to map out the boat.  I use the nails to anchor the yardstick in place for the sheer line of the boat.. Pic coming if I can download it. Hard to explain.  Then I measure centre of panel, vertical and horizontal, then centre of the boat.. placed within the confines of the panel... centred and in perspective... bow to stern.  Bow down, stern up.  At that point I decide on scale.. how do I transfer the scale of the pic of the boat to the scale of the panel?  With the clear ruler... I measure the dimensions of the boat in the pic and scale it up for the painting.  I don't do grids, I do 'guess-imations'.  Good enough.  Does it look right?  Good. Or, erase it and get it right.

At this point I'm ready for the hammer and nails... I nail 3 x two inch, thinnish nails with a head into the top of the panel- about 1/8th inch apart in the centre, and left and right of centre... both top and bottom. (See pic... you can see the holes)
At this point I also determine the centre line of the boat side-to-side, and in perspective... and put a nail on each side of the panel at that centre line. (See holes in pic) Using the bendy yard-stick I place it top to bottom between the nails, and curve it out to the side, anchored behind the side nails.  This forms the shear line. I pencil in the sheer line using the ruler as a guide.. and repeat on the other side.. Voila! The shape of the boat is visible!
Did I mention all the vertical lines running from bow to stern spaced evenly? No? That's because they're a pain in the ass to do, and take forever, and it would take a long time to explain how I did them, so let's just pass on that part. Suffice it to say they are the floor boards and thevertical struts.. they run stem to stern, evenly spaced.

I haven't drawn in the kayak ribs... that's for tomorrow. Too tired today for such finicky work that involves perspective, intuition and a ruler. It's tedious.  And I can get it way out of whack easily and have to do it all over again (like the last boat)... so I need to start fresh.

After I get it all mapped out, I can start staining... that's the exciting part. It becomes a real-live boat (almost)...

SO... stay tuned.