It all began with a photo, my photo, taken on a sunrise walk at the beach. I truly believe that a painting is not all mine unless I am the one who took the photo, the one who visited the setting, the one who had the experience in order to be able to share it.
Back in the studio, I revisited that morning by first painting a small study to establish colors, lines and composition.
9×12 Oil
About a week later, I progressed to a 24×36 canvas. I sketched the shoreline with charcoal and washed in a rose underpainting with Gamsol.
The second photo shows the underpainting with liquid (Gamsol) washes of color. The third step was to look for “darkest darks” and apply them with thicker paint.
I thought I was finished when I reached this point pictured below, but after consulting some other artists, realized I needed to pull the viewer’s eye back into the painting. An artist friend pointed out some “con trails” (I had to look that one up) in the photo reference. I call them “airplane trails” and had intentionally left them out because they didn’t seem a part of nature. But looking at my photo, I realized that was what attracted me to the composition in the first place. The position of the trails were needed to hold the viewer in the picture plane.
I love the addition –the “wake up, it’s morning!” feeling that the lines contribute to the painting. And once again, an allegory comes to mind: in trying to leave out the impact of civilization on the natural world, I was leaving out the accent mark that added much to the composition. The Creator made this earth beautiful and then He added humanity as His icing on the cake. I’ll remember that and try to stay sweet!