Golden Oats

My favorite time of day to be at the beach is late afternoon ... the sand is cooler, the colors are richer, the shadows offer dramatic contrasts, and the hustle and bustle settles into a quiet peace.  Golden Oats celebrates that time of day.

I started with this image, from a glorious afternoon in Nags Head, NC. 

After sketching basic placements, I squinted my eyes at the photograph and painted an undercoat of cool colors for the shadowed, darker valued areas that I saw.  From this beginning, I felt that it would be a strong composition, leading the viewer's eye in from the bottom left and then moving around to the steps, followed by the dunes on the right, and then  back to the entry point.  At least that's what my eye does :) 

In the first coat of thicker paint, I tried to stay true to my initial dark/light composition while laying in more accurate colors.

This next, and final, step took the most time, with lots of subtleties to show depth, but I feel that it successfully captures my favorite beach time of day.

Golden Oats, 12x16, SOLD

 

Meeting at Elbow Beach

In honor of our family reunion "Beach Week", which starts today (yay!), I am featuring one of my favorite scenes of the beach.  Okay, Bermuda isn't exactly where we go for our family reunion, but it is the right theme :) 

This view is on Elbow Beach in the early evening.  I love the long shafts of light that drape the soft sand and then highlight the ocean foam.  The foam, in turn, seems to point towards the beach walkers, which can make for a romantic story...

Here's the original photo:

And here I have cropped the photo to emphasize the long shadows and to better balance the composition.  Cropping the top of the tallest palm tree was important to stop your eye from following the sky off the canvas and to decrease the attention the palm trees were commanding.

My goal in translating this scene was to capture the glow of the pink coral sand that so often defines the colors of Bermuda.  Add to that a bevy of backlit palm trees and the intrigue of two lovers yet to meet and you have the perfect end to a leisurely beach day.

Meeting at Elbow Beach

18x36 Oil

Available at  The Little Art Gallery

One More from Colley Whisson

I had so much fun at the workshop I took last week with Colley Whisson that I wanted to paint more of his style this week.  Here's a painting I created in my studio using my favorite of Colley's paintings as reference.  I love how the warm colors of the dried grasses really add excitement to the cool colors of the rest of the scene.

It depicts a typical beach day, doesn't it?  You can get sun burned and rained on all in the same hour!  I call my rendition of his painting "Partly Sunny".

Partly Sunny, 8x10 Oil

I haven't posted any of my Colley Whisson paintings on my website yet because I'm pretty sure I want to keep them for my own reference.  Sorry!  :)