Shore Patterns, 11 x 14, UART 320

Underpainting, stage 1

Underpainting with alcohol

I’ve been tardy at posting!  Actually, most of my painting lately has been demos for the Rock Workshop and I didn’t want to post them in the blog.  I needed something for my email newsletter so on Saturday I worked on two paintings from our recent trip to Lewes, DE and Chestertown, MD.  I began with an 11 x 14 of a close up picture of heron and an amazing pattern of water leading up to him.

I began with an underpainting with colors I  really like. I think this could make a really interesting abstract painting!  But, I went on to reality.

I have a lot of new Ludwig “eggplant’ sticks so I couldn’t resist using one for the darks under the reeds. I developed the middle greens then the lighter tops of the grasses in light with a variety of mainly grayed Giraults.  After looking at it more, I realized it was too dark and outlined looking. So I brought more grayed greens over the dark in the far right and work at bringing both grayed greens and some of the lighter colors down.  (I had a very hard time filming this picture due to the darks and lights.)

I tried to keep the foliage above the grass fairly loose and suggestive, but tweaked it a bit too much perhaps.

The reflections came out nicely, however with vertical strokes of warm Girauts and a blue green added on top.

For the water, I used primarily Ludwigs with a variety of blue violets and turquoises.  I began the sand area with a brown Girault, then layered a grayed violet over it. I worked hard at trying to fuse the turquoise water with the more violet wet sand areas.

There were no grasses at the bottom in the photo but I decided it really needed them and used another photo as reference. This made a huge difference compositionally (my husband was happy!).

Finally, I added the heron. I had a number of shots of him.  In the this photo, he was hunkered down and facing left, so I used another photo where he was standing up and facing right.  I like the angle of the water leading to him and him going off in an angle to the right. I think it provides the needed balance.

This was a fun painting to do!  Finding unusual things in nature can be fun but you don’t want to overdo it. It must look natural and believable!