Recently I posted my painting process, and progress on Instagram while I worked on a      piece. It was fun and seemed to work out pretty well, so I decided to see how it would work  in a  blog. This will be my first blog posting, and I'm not the most computer savvy person, so  here  goes nothing, well hopefully not nothing.

          Image number one is the photo that I chose for my painting. I took it while on a trip to  Patrick's Point with my mother before she passed away, so it is very special to me.

         The grey sky is typical of the northern California coast, but it actually seems to enhance  the  gorgeous teal greens in the water and give a velvety softness to the atmosphere.  My mother was an artist also, she loved to paint in an oval shape and collected antique frames. When she passed I kept her unused frames, so I am using a 12" x 16" oval board with linen mounted on it to fit into one of her antique frames.

     You can see in my sketch above that I have lowered the horizon line to go behind the large rocks that are out in the water, I did this to avoid the appearance of dividing off the top of the composition, however I ended up moving it back up because It altered the perspective too much. Diffusing the horizon edge worked better.

     Above I have blocked in the underpainting and main shapes, got my colors mapped out on the board.                                                                       The image below left now has the wet sand added in as well as some lighter colors in the water. As you look at the images from left to right below you can see how the painting progresses as I develop the sea foam, reflections, deeper color in the water where the waves are, and highlights.                                                                                     

Below is the completed painting, notice the color tone looks a bit bluer than the other images, that is because this picture was taken in natural daylight while the others were taken with indoor lighting.

     I did find it a bit tricky to control what goes where for this blog, couldn't seem to move the pictures, and text around where I wanted them to go. Hope you have enjoyed my posting despite those issues. If this is well received I may feel encouraged to do it again, and hopefully without the flubs.

Thank you.

- Cathryn