Seaside Trees 4x6
The painting I'm bringing you today is called "Seaside Trees." It's a 4x6 I painted yesterday and I'm very happy to present it to you today. I hope you enjoy watching the process reading this blog post and get something from it!
Seaside Trees 4x6
The board is MDF. It has about two or three good solid coats of house paint tinted to "Deep Earth." which has reddish overtones but isn't overly red, so it's perfect as a ground color. It's also not too light or dark - that's important. If you're looking for a good ground color to paint on. You want something in a middle range.
I’ve done the underpainting with burnt umber, which is the perfect complement to the Deep Earth ground color. My brief on this painting was to try and go a bit brighter than usual. The other part of the brief was to keep everything fresh. The entire painting session in the members area is just over an hour. My approach was to use big brush strokes – make the painting a loose sort of study.
I used a #2 for the sky, but not a worn-in two. It had a bit of spread to it. Also, I'm not repainting much - just laying things down and then moving on. That's not always the way I work. Often I don't hesitate to go over a passage again to adjust it. A good example would be when I do darker masses of clouds in the sky. Once I get the rest of the lighter stuff in, I may decide they're too dark and need to adjust accordingly. I did some re-painting, but the brief was to keep things really loose and expressive
When I was learning oil painting, I had a tendency to overworking. Even now I can occasionally overwork a passage, but I've done enough bad paintings due to overworking that I'm pretty cognizant of it now. One remedy is counting the number of strokes used for a painting. I have suggested this idea to students who tend to "lick" – which when you keep stroking the canvas without adding new paint. If you're doing the "licking" thing, the best approach is to just pick the brush up off the board and think about the next thing you're going to do. Don't ruin the expressive strokes you laid down.
If you are an amateur painter starting out, you need to gain experience before you are doing awesome, expressive work. However, you are a human being having a unique experience of reality, and that will come through in your painting if you have the confidence to lay down your brush strokes and just leave them alone. To get that expressive quality across is really the key thing.
BTW we shipped a couple books out this week which is great! The book is only available as a physical book, not an ebook. It's $60 US with international shipping included! Also check out my YouTube Members area, in the members area, you get a good look at my reference image at the fore of each video as well as see the painting happen in real time in 4k!
About this composition, I don't really like big triangle shapes in my paintings, and this has several. Compositionally triangles can be very intense, so you need to think of ways to balance and soften them. It's mostly a matter of proportion. That little peninsula in the reference image came out much further into the water, but I wanted more balance between water and land so I shortened it. Also, In the reference image, there were too many grasses. For a coastal scene, that doesn't read well - there should be rocks and things. I started inventing rock shapes by laying down a series of patterns starting with dark, then working to middle and light. I tried to lay down strokes that looked good without overdoing it.
Rocks are hard to paint, they have an interesting combination of light and dark, sharp and soft. You don't want them looking round, but if they're too sharp, they attract too much attention. Rocks can be incredibly complex so you must simplify them. In this painting, what was mostly grass in the reference, I did as rocks and then just put in a few splashes of green among the rocks.
Here's a really big tip: The viewer of your painting knows nature and can easily provide the missing details from your painting. Err on the side of getting shapes in the right place - the big shapes, then middle-sized shapes, and maybe a few details from there. Then leave it alone, especially if you're inexperienced. Your paintings will come off so much better - probably the biggest, best tip I've ever shared on this blog.
Until I come back, please take good care of yourself, your family, and all your loved ones. Stay out of trouble, God bless you and your family, and fight the power!
Cheers,
Mike