Dan Marshall

Watercolors and watercolor sketches, throwing paint around and making a mess blog
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Tugboat pushing a barge up the east river. watercolor 9x12 I had originally just planned to paint the Domino sugar factory today when along came this great tugboat!  I sketched it as quick as i could and of course it was long gone by the time it came to paint it. This was much to the amazement of a 6 yr old who stopped by with his dad to see what i was up to. “Whe….ehe…whe..where is the boat he’s painting, dad?!!? “How does he know what a tugboat looks like?!?!” ” I wish i could draw like that, i cant wait to go home and draw a tugboat!” He said. hahaha Anyway, when i returned home i decided to do some research on tugboats in the east river and came across this story about the children’s classic book, Little Toot.   First published in 1939, “Little Toot” is the story of the lessons a small tug learns while navigating the waters of New York City’s East River.  Gramatky is the author of several children’s books, including Hercules, Loopy, and Creeper’s Jeep, and a series of adventures about the tug including Little Toot on the Thames, Little Toot on the Grand Canal, Little Toot on the Mississippi, and Little Toot and the Loch Ness Monster.  A graduate of Stanford University and Chouinard School of Art, Gramatky started the California Watercolor movement in the late 1920s and worked as an animator for Walt Disney Studios. When his contract was up in 1936, he moved to New York City to work as an illustrator.  In 1939 Gramatky watched a small Moran tugboat on the East River, did a series of watercolors of her, and conceived the idea for a children’s book. Little Toot was one of publisher G. P. Putnam’s first children’s books.  Elected to the National Academy of Design and hailed by Andrew Wyeth as one of the twenty great American watercolorists, Gramatky was honored by the Library of Congress when it named Little Toot a classic in children’s literature.Over six million copies of the book have sold, and it has been translated into Japanese, Thai, Danish, South African, and Afrikaans, among other languages. Wow, too cool. Who know’s who that little boy will grow up to be!

Tugboat pushing a barge up the east river. watercolor 9x12

I had originally just planned to paint the Domino sugar factory today when along came this great tugboat!  I sketched it as quick as i could and of course it was long gone by the time it came to paint it. This was much to the amazement of a 6 yr old who stopped by with his dad to see what i was up to. “Whe….ehe…whe..where is the boat he’s painting, dad?!!? “How does he know what a tugboat looks like?!?!” ” I wish i could draw like that, i cant wait to go home and draw a tugboat!” He said. hahaha

Anyway, when i returned home i decided to do some research on tugboats in the east river and came across this story about the children’s classic book, Little Toot.

 

First published in 1939, “Little Toot” is the story of the lessons a small tug learns while navigating the waters of New York City’s East River.  Gramatky is the author of several children’s books, including Hercules, Loopy, and Creeper’s Jeep, and a series of adventures about the tug including Little Toot on the Thames, Little Toot on the Grand Canal, Little Toot on the Mississippi, and Little Toot and the Loch Ness Monster.  A graduate of Stanford University and Chouinard School of Art, Gramatky started the California Watercolor movement in the late 1920s and worked as an animator for Walt Disney Studios. When his contract was up in 1936, he moved to New York City to work as an illustrator.  In 1939 Gramatky watched a small Moran tugboat on the East River, did a series of watercolors of her, and conceived the idea for a children’s book. Little Toot was one of publisher G. P. Putnam’s first children’s books.  Elected to the National Academy of Design and hailed by Andrew Wyeth as one of the twenty great American watercolorists, Gramatky was honored by the Library of Congress when it named Little Toot a classic in children’s literature.Over six million copies of the book have sold, and it has been translated into Japanese, Thai, Danish, South African, and Afrikaans, among other languages.

Wow, too cool. Who know’s who that little boy will grow up to be!