Welcome to Sophie's Nature Art!

Ahoy you landlubbers! 

I really love the sea and the good old sailing ships! 

Some time has passed since the last entry. During this time, I was able to make my first trip lasting several days on the training sailboat for traditional seamanship, the “Roald Amundsen” experience. It was an incredible experience. But perhaps more on that in a later post! 🙂 

But you can take a small but impressive look at this beautiful ship as we sailed along the coast of Sweden: 

Today we are talking about a ship of a similar size. It is the “USS Philadelphia”, an American 36-gun frigate. She began her service in the West Indies on April 5, 1800. Unfortunately, she only had a short life. Just three years later, on October 31, 1803, she ran aground. She and another US Navy ship pursued and fired on a Libyan warship. Our “Philadelphia” ran aground in the port of Tripoli, the capital of Libya, and could no longer be pulled out. The ship was rendered unfit for action by the crew and the crew themselves became slaves of a Pasha. The Lybians borrowed the ship and the “Philadelphia” was made seaworthy again at the cost of a large amount of money. The Americans could not tolerate this! A ship like that in enemy hands was a great danger. 

So it was either recapture or destroy! So a ruse was used. A captured Libyan ship was converted, or rather re-rigged, so that it looked like a local ship. A young lieutenant was given command. They sailed into the harbor under cover of night and pretended they had lost all their anchors in a storm. Now they needed a safe harbor. So they came to the “Philadelphia”. The ship was recaptured by the Americans, rendered unseaworthy and burned. Thus ended the story of the “USS Philadelphia” on February 16, 1804. 

But how did I actually get on this ship?
I have Instagram to thank for that. I follow a few artists and sailors there.
One fine day I discovered the Dutch artist Maarten Platje and his paintings. No artist paints such realistic pictures! He became my role model.
He likes to paint historical scenes. For example, he painted a beautiful picture of the “USS Philadelphia” off Gibraltar. When I saw this picture, I immediately fell in love with it. It's still my desktop wallpaper on my computer today. 

I really wanted to paint this ship! It was a new challenge for me because this painting is very detailed. But that was the exciting thing for me! 

However, I didn't want to paint the picture one-to-one, just the ship. So I chose a stormy sea as the background. Initially, I wanted to paint a storm scene.  

But shortly before the end, I changed my mind and turned it into a romantic full moon. I painted over the sky at least three or four times. The ship itself was quite easy to paint. I only misjudged the masts a little. I moved the main mast a little aft at the very end. In the past, I would never have thought that you could touch up and paint over acyrl painting so well. But I did that several times in this painting.  

I also underestimated the height of the masts, so that the main mast and unfortunately the US flag are no longer visible.  

Another big mistake is the light and shadow. The moon gives the light from behind, but I painted the picture as if the light was coming from the front.  

Expert eyes would certainly discover other errors in the picture. 

But I wanted to create a new masterpiece for myself and talk about my beloved painting “Sailing” grow beyond that. I also wanted to see where my limits were. I found them in this picture, but I was also able to expand them. 

It was an incredible pleasure for me to paint this picture. It was a process that took a little over three months. There were long breaks from painting as I had several other painting projects to complete, which I will also present later. 

Overall, I love this painting dearly and it really is my new masterpiece! 

One thing is certain for me: painting traditional sailing ships is my passion! 
Now the two sisters hang side by side:

Finally, I would like to thank the most creative artist who has given me this joy of painting! Only with God is all this possible, therefore: Soli Deo Gloria - Glory to God alone! 

Two more close-ups: