Long Beach 8x14
I finished Long Beach a couple days ago. I'm really happy with it and excited to present it to you today. It was a bit of a challenge, but I rose up to it, and I'm going to talk you through some innovations and my approach in this post.
Long Beach 8x14
We're working on hardboard that's been prepped with about three coats of house paint mixed to a color called "Deep Earth" - a beautiful tone. I started the underpainting with burnt umber and you might notice I switched from a brush to a paper towel. This can be very helpful for getting masses in place, especially dark masses. I lean on this technique quite a lot when there's complexity that you could get lost in.
The bunch of trees on the bottom isn't really the subject, and honestly, it's not the kind of thing I typically like to put in my paintings. However, I had no choice here because of the view of the beach. These trees are acting as a framing device, which isn't my favorite approach, but I made it work.
One key strategy was keeping these elements loose, vague, and evocative rather than precisely delineated. If you start defining each tree exactly, the next thing you know, you've put too much focus on an area that you just want viewers to cruise right over to get to the subject.
In the reference image (which channel members can see in the full real-time video), underneath the trees was a road, a park, and other elements that would have killed the painting. I found it almost impossible to eliminate these distracting elements during my Photoshop reference preparation, so I made a mental note about my approach when I got to the actual painting.
My brief for this painting was to use a big brush. I've done this sort of scene before, and it typically took hours and hours because I’m painting a real place. Much of what I do usually is based on concoctions I've developed in Photoshop or riffs on reference images that don't have any real bearing to actual places - that's how I prefer to work.
However, this type of scene is what galleries out here really love. I've painted this specifically for a gallery in Russell, a nice little town not far from Whangarei. It gets many tourists, and Long Beach is the biggest, nicest beach in that area. I've painted it before (that's on my channel here), but I'm prouder of this version because I didn't get as lost in details.
Re the color and technique, as I worked on the darker elements, I used a blackish tone for the foreground, but as things recede, I brought in a bit of gray. The underpainting was completely dry at this point which really helped with the painting process. The brush I'm using is a filbert from Trekell that I really enjoy. It's relatively new which was helpful, but as brushes wear down, they take on different properties that can also be valuable. The new filbert has a side bit where I can cover things quickly, plus a little "toe" at the end which I'll use in place of a smaller brush.
I wanted to avoid getting out my number two brush out and painstakingly rendering various patches of landscape information. Instead, I aimed for a looser, more impressionistic approach. While I'm still very much adhering to tonal values, the brushwork itself is looser and more impressionistic than my usual approach to these scenes. This makes it more exciting for me - I want to interpret the scene and have it look like the place, but without getting into specifics that leave me cold.
About the color, I'm normally quite restrained with color, but here I wanted to really enhance the light green areas. Channel members will know I often discuss how yellow is really green unless you convince it to be something else with a bit of red pigment. These bright greens are made mostly with the introduction of lots of cadmium yellow.
I always do the waves last. In the reference image, I tried using AI fill in Photoshop to give me better wave patterns, but it never really worked. So I decided to just remember what I didn't like about the wave patterns in the reference and minimize those elements while actually painting, and emphasize what I did like. It turned out really well.
Going forward as artists in this age of AI imagery and manipulated references, your sense of what works and what doesn't - what you like and don't like - is everything. It's always been crucial when you're an artist; it informs every decision you make. This is what you bring to the table, and this is where you need to drive things. You're an individuated expression of universal consciousness. No one will ever have your point of view, so make sure you're expressing that in your work.
Until next time, take good care of yourself, your family, and all your loved ones. Stay out of trouble and fight the power.
Cheers,
Mike