The Red Triangle

I began a 16x20” a week ago, of a boat and a small jet ski.

my image of the first day’s work is poor, but here’s how it looked at the end of the second day:

And here’s the end of Day Three:

That red boat in the background just happened to be there. As the image was crisped up a bit, the red boat began to dominate the picture, despite the small area it occupies.

At the end of the fourth day, I thought I was done. But a high school chum with an excellent visual sense mentioned that the his “eye kept getting pulled to the red Bimini cover in the background.” And once he spoke up, it was obvious that he was absolutely right.

So I went back to the locale this afternoon. I was hoping to borrow one of the orange bumpers which are tied to boats at marinas all over the place, but no one was around to loan me one. But to my delight, the owner of the jet ski had a gas can on the other side of the craft. Miraculously, it wasn’t tied down. I carried it to the foreground of the picture, pointing its spout leftward and into the middle distance.

I’d brought along a red towel, which I placed on the trailer’s fender. The towel, the gas can and the red boat seemed to tie the foreground and background together.

One final fling. I returned with a yard of red velour. Exactly what a bolt of fabric is doing on the gravel at the Riverside Marina is anybody’s guess, but it describes the third vertex of our red triangle. Actually, the bolt of cloth, the gas can and the red towel line up more or less, counterbalancing the Bimini cover — whatever the heck a Bimini cover is — in the middleground.

Enough already, time to move on.