Coastal Maine study

(C) 2018 Dale DiMauro

Painting the shoreline has been a fascination of mine for sometime. The coastline with it's wall of trees and sand rich with ocean smells is imprinted on my psyche. This landscape is full of atmospheric qualities such as fog and moisture which are perfect to convey in the medium of watercolor.

I draw inspiration in capturing the coast from some of the great watercolorists of our time. These include Stephen Scott Young, Dean Mitchell and Andrew Wyeth.

In this watercolor I continue to expand my color palette. I applied royal blue for the sky, wet on dry so the hard edges would give variety above the tree tops. The beach has warm and cool pockets where I added olive green or diluted cobalt to emphasize the contrast with areas that are in the sun. Lastly, all kinds of pigment were added when painting the trees to get variation in temperature and massing. These include ultramarine, payne's gray, raw umber, aureolin and quinacridone gold.