Littoral Studio

By the end of tonight I had the whole painting blocked in. I did work a bit on detail in the wave, and added some highlight to the sky, which are things often best left to the end, but I wanted to see the direction I was going to be going in this work, so I worked a bit on the wave before doing the foreground.

I’ve been reading a bit from a book called Leonardo on Painting, it’s selected works of his complied and translated here in one work.

Here’s a link to the book on
Amazon.

Here’s a quote: “There is a certain breed of painter who, having studied little, must spend their working lives in thrall to the beauty of gold and azure. With consummate stupidity they argue against executing good work for meager recompense, although they say they would be as able to produce it as another, were they to be well paid. But consider, foolish people, do such as these not realize that they should keep aside some good work saying, this worth a good price, this is medium-priced and this is run-of-the-mill, thus showing they have works in all price ranges.” Page 196

After sketching out a drawing I started with a bit of masking tape on the horizon and got started on the sky.

After blocking in the sky I’ll start working in the middle of the painting, usually starting with the base of the wave. The sky is mostly done at this point, but not completely, I’ll work a bit on it later after it dries.

Here’s a close up, this isn’t the type of wave that is going to have a really transparent section because the sun is below the horizon and there isn’t any direct light hitting it.

The shadow of the foam helps define the wave more. The breaker will need more shaping while the paint is wet and the lights and darks will have to be mixed enough to make it look soft, like foam, but not so much to take away the shadow against light effect.

After the foam was all in the wave had some funny shapes, I reworked some areas and soften some areas up. There is still a lot to do after the block in, but it helps to get the first layer of paint laid in the best you can, each stroke counts, and the more you have to rearrange and fix stuff, the less spontaneous the work will be. The more labored work simply doesn’t end up looking as great as the more natural looking work.