Sunday, September 4, 2016

On solid ground

(C) 2016 Dale DiMauro

Last week I started this watercolor of my wife at the beach along the Maine coast. I like the composition with the figure off center and the great rocks in the foreground. I have been adding a touch of red into my blues for the sky, which seems to add an element of drama, setting the stage for the painting. I have begun to appreciate an unsettled sky over the shoreline, second only to the setting sun, particularly since the viewer cannot see the water.

At this point I have not put much time into this painting but the most laborious aspect of the painting has been the rocks. I have been building up the quality of the rocks through various color washes, which has included spattering. By spattering I am attempting to suggest the texture of the rocks and create some variation of their form as they are in the foreground. In order to spatter, I tap a brush loaded with dark pigment against my forefinger, and the paint is thrown randomly in small areas.

My wife's left arm is darker than the rest of her body, which will have to be corrected further along in the painting's development. I will most likely be required to lift paint by wetting the area and wiping it with a paper towel.

With my art mentor, Gerard Doucette's input, I added a sliver of land to the right of the figure providing more depth to the picture and further uniting the landscape. In reality the scene is a very small island connected at low tide by a sand bar to Pompham Beach State Park.

No comments:

Post a Comment