September 18, 2008 -- Here's the Thumbnail Sketch for this painting. As with the other paintings this will give me a place to start the large scale drawing. And as with "Storm Over the Desert" the final piece may end up looking nothing like this. Ugh! But it's a place to start from and see where it leads. Anyway, what you're looking at here is NY harbor with lots of various boats and ships and helicopters and planes. When I visited NYC in '06 one of the things that really struck me was the strong presence of the Coast Guard in the waterways around NY. In fact some of the images I will use for reference will be the pictures that I took myself. Now on to the large scale drawing.

September 23, 2008 -- I've got the full scale drawing now. But I think that I'm missing something in the middle. Although at this time I'm not too sure what that is. I'm going to put in the wakes from the boats and the ship and see if that makes a difference. A bit more work to be done on this I think.

September 23, 2008 (again) - Thought I would post this update tonight. I'm off to a conference on Art in Public Places for the next 2 days so I wouldn't get a chance to put this up tomorrow morning. Sorry about the quality of the photo but using a flash just makes it worse.

Let's see, there's a few changes here - the back side of Liberty Island is now in behind the Cutter on the left side - The waterfront of Brooklyn is just visible on the right side about midway up the drawing - I added a third helicopter - And there are 2 more ships. The one right of center has actually already moved once. That's why you see the taped section. The original drawing didn't erase completely so I drew on a separate sheet and taped it over the original. The boat I added on the left is way too small for the position it's in. So that will have to change too. So there will be another taped on section.

September 26, 2008 - Back from the conference, which was wonderful by the way, and now I think this if the finished drawing. When I took out that small ship on the left to change it's size, I sat for a minute and looked at the drawing and realized that it looked much better without anything in that space. It opened up the piece a bit more, it was crowded with that element in there. Then I added the flag on the end of the island. I used a bit of artistic license there and made it a bit oversized. Now I think the ships and boats in the composition lead your eye back to the flag. And that flag stands just to the left of where the World Trade Center Buildings would have stood. Now I wait for approval on this before I go to canvas.

Oh, BTW, I've titled this piece. It's called -- "Standing Watch"

September 28, 2008 - WooHoo!!! I received approval for the drawing!! So I transferred the drawing to the wood panel. The image above is the wood panel with the transferred elements. Since I did the drawing full size, I was able to use artist transfer paper to move the drawing to the panel without having to redraw the elements. This saves loads of time. Now on to paint!

September 29, 2008 - I love the first day of painting. It's the day when the most difference on a piece is made and you can usually begin to tell whether the concept is a good one or not and whether the composition is going to work. There is of course lots of work from here and lots more layers to be done on the areas that have paint. But it's already pretty neat, even if I do say so myself *giggle*!

October 1, 2008 -- Talk about small details!! I got a bit cross eyed putting in the skyline of Manhattan. I worked with several images of the skyline as reference so that I was able to get the buildings in just about the right configuration. The smaller line of buildings on the right side is the view of Brooklyn, NY. The buildings are both farther away and actually smaller in size. Along with having the details accurate in the ships and boats, I wanted to make sure that the buildings were accurate also.

In addition the first layer of the clouds went in and the start of the first layer of the USCG Seal is in. The sky will receive several more layers which will help to add depth to it, but the first layer of paint needs to dry first. The same thing will happen to the water.

October 3, 2008 - The sun was shining pretty bright yesterday afternoon when I took this photo. That's why the image is a bit yellow. Sunshine isn't good for taking photos of your work, but it's great for the soul! Anyway, slow work yesterday too. Got the base of the USCG Seal in. It'll need cleaned up once this layer dries. Then put a second layer into the sky. I used the same basic color tone and value for this though out, but I did it in a bit of cross hatching. Other colors will be added later to give more depth to the sky and the cross hatching will pretty much disappear.

October 7, 2008 - I wanted to see what all the red-orange would do to the painting so I painted in a bunch of it yesterday. And I think it really helps to highlight the ships and boats. I also added in some of the wakes and a bit more color in the sky. More work on ships and boats today.

October 8, 2008 - Worked on the boats some more, adding the top sections to the 3 front boats and worked a bit more on the lower section of those boats too. Did a little more work on the water in the very center, it just didn't look right yet do I added more detail and that helped.

October 10, 2008 -- More on work on the boats, on the personnel on those boats, a bit more on the sky and another layer on the background of the seal. Still laying in the first layers in places with all those details!

October 13, 2008 - These photos really help me to know that the painting is progressing a lot better than I think that it is. I would have sworn to you that I hadn't done much of anything in the last few days, but in comparing the two photos I find that that's not true at all. ---- I worked on the city skyline and put in a bit more color and a bit more definition. Then I did more work on the USCG Seal. Cleaned it up and added some shading to give a depth. Then I did a lot of work on the clouds and the sky. There are more clouds with more detail and depth. And finally the planes and the helicopters are starting to go in. Whew!

October 16th, 2008 - I worked on the two boats in the back. They now have their details and their wakes and waves. More work on boats today.

Air Force	Army	Coast Guard	Marines	Merchant Marines	Navy