Essential question: What is small?

the first attempt

What is small? What makes an object small? Its size? Its characteristics? The environment it's in? I decided to explore these questions in a painting of a ship in the sea. Large, powerful and strong, a ship is the last thing you would label as small.  
Yet, the ship's size is only relative to the situation and environment it's in. Out in a storm, with waves crashing down and tossing the small wooden box around, the ship is small and powerless. It is at the mercy of the environment. In my painting, I presented this idea, by showing dark stormy skies, and strong powerful waves. The size of the ship is small in comparison to the nature surrounding it.

The painting is done in acrylics. To make the clouds in the sky, I made swirly motions with white paint, and then brushed over it with a huge dry brush. For the waves (and this took forever!), I used a dry brush to stroke the paint upward. At the tip of the waves, I used the bristles of the brush to add the "spray effects" with white paint. for the sky I used the dry brush to apply different shades of blue in a gradient.

What about the end? Well, it took a lot of effort to avoid painting the ship, but now I'm on it. I'll post a picture of it soon!

Going back to fix the waves