Marine Painting of Storm Tossed Ship

Clouds and ocean go together like peanut butter and jelly. Or at least it seems so to me. I've been practicing skyscapes a lot over the past year and with them, I've painted a lot of water as well. So after all this practice, I decided to put it all together and drop a ship into that water. Now despite living on the water, or at least close to it, I don't know much about ships and less about sailing. But I figured I could do a decent job of painting one. So in my typical - "let's just dive right in" attitude, I pulled out the stops and started to paint one.

The elements for this painting were drawn from stock photos. I pulled separate pictures for the sky, mid ground (er, water) and foreground. Then I searched for a masted ship photo that would serve for my subject. Then I put it all together and Photoshopped the color and values until I was satisfied. So here are the first two iterations. The painting is much further along than this now but I want to show how I have been building toward the final image so stay tuned over the next few days.I've skipped a couple of steps in order not to bore you.