Step by Step

Here is a plein air painting I did for the San Clemente show last month (“Sea Moments” 9x12). After a request from Plein Air Magazine to do a step by step sequence of my painting process, I chose this pier and wave scene while I was competing in the competition. This painting and a feature article on me will be in the fall issue of Plein Air.

When painting the ocean, as I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, it’s important for me to “select” a moment in time that piques my interest the most. I always enjoy the wave mid-break—you get some of the white foam along with the water lights and shadows created by the cresting wave. Once I’ve selected a spot to paint, I sit and watch many sets roll in to determine the best layout of the wave. So, here is the sequence from start to finish:

Step 1

This is the overall scene before I began, with one of the waves breaking.

Step 2

My initial sketch of the scene. A rough idea of shapes and where I want to put elements.

Step 3

A block in of the darkest part of the painting. Simplifying the underside of the pier.

Step 4

Roughed in the top part of the pier and the small structures at the end.

Step 5

Getting the correct color and value for the darkest part of the ocean and shadow of the cresting wave.

Step 6

Laying in the distant water and where it peeks through the underside of the pier.

Step 7

Finding the color notes in the white wash area of the wave.

Step 8

More work in the foam area.

Step 9

More on the foam, and adjusting the values where it goes into the slight shadow casted from the pier. Also, small color and value nuances are added into the whites.

Step 10

I had left some white canvas where the foam would appear in the foreground water. I’ve painted in those lighter areas in this step. The final details in the wave foam were completed.

Step 11

The sky was dropped in next, plus the beginnings of the small wave in the foreground.

Step 12

The wet sand of the foreground is added. I kept the color intense to give it a feeling of closeness to the viewer.

Step 13

More details were added in the small foreground wave.

Step 14

Fixed the “air holes” and adjusted the edges where the sky and water peek through the pier.

Step 15

Details on the top of the pier were painted in next. The light posts add a nice vertical to break up the sky. The underside of the pier subtleties were finished too.

Step 16

More details in the foreground wave and wet sand. The little dark shadow areas under the wave gave it more dimension.

Step 17

The last of the details were added in the water and this was the final.

Step 18

The final painting and overall scene. If you wish to view this sequence in a slide show click below. Enjoy!

Looky Here

Just returned from the San Luis Obispo plein air event that wrapped up last weekend. One of the features during the event was a lecture by Jean Stern, executive director of the Irvine Museum, on “The Art of Looking at Art.” Part of his educational discussion which I found intriguing, was his breakdown of directional eye movement throughout a painting. A thorough example of how artists use shape, line, value and contrast to move you around their compositions. Once he finished, I quickly went to look at my work to see if I accomplished what he was talking about. I was happy to find that (in my humble opinion) I felt I succeeded. Above is one of my paintings from the week-long event and the inset is how I saw the movement within the work.

This 9x12 scene, “Girls at Bay” depicted one of the inlets at the south end of Morro Bay. I loved the colorful buildings and boats in the distance and wanted to make that my focus. Guiding the viewer around your painting and getting them to look at the things you want them to is always one of my main goals. Just like a good author or director guides you through their novel or movie, the same holds true for a painting. As I composed this scene, my objective was to give the viewer a few nuggets of information and the rest of the elements were used to support and guide you along the way. Keeping the foreground simple and minimizing hard edges and high contrasts, allows your eye to “look past” those elements and move up to the structures. The sweep of the shoreline invites the viewer into the scene. I kept the two overturned boat values very similar to the ground color to give them a less important feel. Your eye should move past those and curve around to the left. Once there, you’re in the focus and invited to move between the three circled areas of the harbor, the orange house and the contrast between the brighter boats on the shore with the dark mass of the foreground tree. The tops of the distant trees help guide you back down to the harbor, as does the verticals of the boat masts. The hard-edged arc of the dark foreground tree keeps you from exiting to the right. The little blue boat I felt was the most critical element in the painting. In actuality, it was white and blended in with the large boat behind it. I changed it a dark blue, to give it contrast and used the hard edge and direction of the bow to point you back into the painting instead of letting your eye exit to the left. I kept all of the tree and bush shapes simple to keep you focused on the structural elements. Since my focus is in the mid-ground of the painting, I didn’t add too much detail to the buildings and boats. Just a few hints of windows and things to keep them feeling farther away and yet still describing what they are. This lets the viewer use their imagination to fill in the story instead of painting in every little detail.

Good direction is always key. Although nobody likes to be told what to do, a gentle nudge down the right path never hurts. Enjoy!

My Wave, Baby

My apologies for taking so long to post. This has been an extremely busy time with three plein air shows in a little over a month, commissions to finish, and two good friends staying with us: artists Ken DeWaard and Jill Carver. So, I’ve had a few hats to wear!

With the close of the Laguna Invitational event yesterday mixed with spotty weather, I thought I’d discuss my approach to the beach and waves. Since I’m near the ocean, painting at the beach is a popular subject for me. But even as I’ve done my share, the ocean and its waves are endlessly challenging. The above scene, titled “Foam Rollers” was one of my Laguna entries, a 9x12 plein air painting on our first sunny afternoon late in the week. I usually prefer the afternoon here on the west coast as you get some nice shadows on the crashing waves. And with that, here’s my take on painting waves.

First up is composition: I like the juxtaposed angle of the incoming waves as opposed to the angle of the bluffs, if I have that scenery option. Both are little wedges that lead the eye into one another and that creates a natural “S” composition, which is the solution above. Next up is observation and study of the wave sets to choose what I want in my painting. There are several sea “events”: flat ocean, the start of a cresting wave, the wave just beginning to break, half breaking/cresting and a fully broken wave with a roll of whitewash. Once I’ve chosen (I mostly go with a mix of breaking and cresting) I sketch in my placement of the wave(s). Planning is critical for me to end up with good results. Next is understanding the shape. When you watch the ocean, it’s usually a jumbled mess. There are so many lights and shadows happening that it doesn’t seem to make sense. To simplify the process, I try to visualize the wave as a cylinder and how the angle of sunlight will create a highlight at the top, putting the whole side in shadow. I then observe a middle shadow color for the foam and paint it in. This unifies the shape without getting confused by the action of the surf. I’ll vary the blueish whites and purple notes to give it interest, then hit the top of the wave with a yellow/white highlight to create the top of the “cylinder”. Same goes for the cresting part, but I'll add a dash of lighter water color at the tip to give the appearance of light penetrating the wave. I also make sure the foam rushing in on the wet sand has a “thickness” to it by painting a shadow at the base. Adding touches of yellow and/or viridian in the whitewash helps keep the whites more interesting.

This approach to painting waves has given me better success in believability. Thinking of it as a basic shape keeps it simple, but I’ll spend a lot of time working on the little color and edge nuances to make it look and feel complex. Enjoy!

Depth and Atmosphere

Above was my award-winning painting from the San Clemente show two months ago. This 11x14 plein air scene, “Crystal Rocks,” was painted down at Crystal Cove beach in Laguna in the late afternoon. I love the great atmosphere that can pick up at this time of day. And if you hit a low tide too, the rocks can give you wonderful compositional choices.

The challenge for me is trying to capture the shear depth of the beach and bluffs. I love the golden haze, but it’s usually not that hazy in actuality. Value stepping and edge work becomes critical here. Making sure I get the right amount of hard to soft balances and utilizing a full value scale can make or break the illusion of distance. I started with a pencil map of where I wanted my rocks placed. In reality, they were pretty much as shown, but actual size, shape, distances between and whether they overlap were all adjusted slightly. I did this to eliminate repetitive shapes but also to create visual contrasts. For instance, the closest large rock on the left was enlarged so I could create the top white highlight and have it contrast with the dark rock behind it. Also, the second rock was raised a bit so the small wave behind it was visually “broken” and I could further contrast the whitewash with the right side of the rock. This gave me some nice focal points, plus created a sweeping arc that leads your eye up to the main splash on the rocks behind.

In the painting process, once I established my values in the foreground rocks, I made sure to make the mid-ground rocks lighter, and the far bluff even lighter than that. These conditions existed, but I pushed the values to create greater depth in the painting. Ditto for the sand and water. With the far bluff, I began on the right side, established a value I felt appropriate, and then gradually lightened it as I proceeded to the left and most distant part of the scene. The structures were painted as shadow and highlighted sides to suggest buildings but not drawing your eye there directly. I added the slightly darker cloud shapes in the upper left to force your eye back in the painting and lastly a handful of figures to complete the story.

Even in plein air, I find you need to adjust everything a bit to make a painting sing. Enjoy!

Quick Draw

I apologize for the delay in posts. Been busy after my return from Italy getting things ready for the Festival of Arts in Laguna this summer, Telluride Plein Air, commission finalization, etc. (It’s good to be busy ... I think!)

This past week was the local Paint San Clemente competition and above was my winning painting from the Quick Draw that started off the week. Since they extended the duration of the quick draw to 3 hours this year, I used the extra time to get down to their local pier and set up. And the threat of rain kept the normally crowded beach parking manageable.

When faced with such a complex subject as an old wooden pier, the most important thing is simplicity. First, I try to set up at an angle where all the pier pylons appear as a mass instead of from the side where they look equally spaced. This eliminates the temptation to paint them all the same size and distance apart which is not very dynamic. Then I massed in a general pylon color for the middle to distant underside of the pier gradually moving forward in space and intensifying my colors. I pulled down dark suggestions of where I wanted the closer pylons, rather than trying to draw exactly what was there. The idea is to get a good “feeling” of the pier rather than attempting to paint in every piece of wood. After the whole pier was massed in loosely, I moved to the water and sky. I painted in a rough aqua color for the water leaving the white wash areas for later in the painting. The sky was painted next as it appears with no revisions. Now that the canvas was filled, the trick to making it look believable without being overworked is a slow building process of nuances, varying the temperature and not the value in the large masses of the water and pier underside. The only real details in the pier are the just the small edge highlights. I finished with the whitewash of the waves making sure I carried them through the pylons and keeping the shadows more purple. Lastly, I added the side support planks that nicely move your eye down the length of the pier. With some light poles and suggestions of people along the top, the painting was finished.

These old structures can be challenging, but they make a great subject if you succeed. Enjoy!