A Walk on the Beach

"A Walk on the Beach"  (oil, 6x6 inches)   click here to bid

This oil painting thing is starting to come back to me after the long Holiday season doing portrait drawings. I decided to take progressive photos this time, to remind myself of how I get to where I'm going in this process...

For this painting I started with a basic pencil drawing on gessoboard, then washed it with a thin blue layer, wiped gently with a paper towel:

The darkest areas first. This was a mixed blackish using a blue, a red and a dab of yellow.

Here's showing how I use my iPad for the reference photo. It hangs on one side of my board.

I stared the colors with some middle blue (..I know, I speak color-speak like a pastelist... I believe this was thalo blue with white)

Then added the other middle and dark-middle tones (ok, don't ask me how I mixed these colors. I go on instinct, not memory - and I still have color-mixing instances that are such nightmares I don't want to remember them! At least I've learned to mix small amounts so as not to waste too much paint.)

Here I've adjusted the color and value of the water and waves:

Then the final highlight colors and white. ...And a bit more attention to the water to pull up the brightness, and make that rear wave recede a little more. And it's finished! Thanks for watching!

(Ignore the slight color shifts in the progression photos, they were taken indoors. The final image shot is most accurate ...aside from the usual my-camera-to-your-monitor variances...)