The symphony of color is best revealed to the artist during the hours of sunrise or sunset. At this time of day the colors in the sky and the ocean are at their height. A meadow overlooking the rocks and ocean and cove is a world of its own, a good vantage point. One may spend hours here observing the beauty of the quick-changing sunset with the following after-glow. The sketches for “Late Afternoon” and “Evening” were made here with the companionship of a mild summer breeze, the graceful movements of the grasses and the outcropping of the rocks leading to the ocean below. This evening the ocean is caught in slow motion, its large gentle swells easing into the rocks, playing into the crevices and creating eddies, the spumes splashing skyward, foam in abundance. The war of ocean and rocks has ceased, the evening sky is now advancing to play her melody of color upon the shimmering surface of the earth.
Read the rest of this entry »
Painting Color and Light
Posted by admin | Under Color Saturday Apr 24, 2010Paint Water in the Ocean
Posted by admin | Under Still Life Saturday Apr 24, 2010
Paint Water
When I first turned my attention to painting the water in the ocean and its surroundings, I came face to face with the exasperating and ridiculous task of trying to make it stand still long enough for me to study and paint.
I soon learned that the very thing that had brought me to the ocean as a subject was the quality I was trying to take away from it. I came to realize it was not just the ocean that had movement-tides, currents, changing surface –but so did the sky and the sun. Our source of light, the great zenith of the sky, the clouds ever changing, all reveal to the artist reflection and reflected light, with the atmosphere breaking up the light and allowing us to observe and live with the colors on nature’s palette. Even the stately rocks had their days of movement when the Ice Age pushed, shoved, and arranged them in the beautiful patterns and shapes that we see today, the ocean constantly gnawing at their polished surfaces, breaking and chipping, creating new forms to delight the eye. Read the rest of this entry »
