I made a lot of progress today on this painting. I only stopped because my back twinged. Oh no. How long was I painting? Three hours? Four? Something like that. It is so nice to be able to stand and paint again!
My Process
I don’t work from a set drawing or from one reference photo. I will sketch the overall shape, horizon line and key points as guide posts. My sketch is more of a hand drawn road map. This is because I have to explore my painting, change is always a possibility. I also like to add my own ideas, along the way. It could be as simple as changing the shape of a wave, or creating a different number of waves.
Approaching Realism is how I think of my work.
Well, it’s time for a snooze. Who knows, maybe I can work on this later today.
I created this series of clouds to bring peace and a sense of hope. We all need a little hope right now. It is crazy out there. A few weeks ago we were just worried about the novel coronavirus. Who knew those would turn out to be simpler times .
Well, let’s forget about that for a minute and talk about art. The clouds are starting to pull my interest away from all the waves I have been painting. It is too hard to paint waves from photo references alone. I need to be at the beach and seeing the water turn into waves and roll towards me. Actually, it’s more than that. I need to be irritated by noisy gulls, hot sun or overcast skies. Anything except air conditioned, well lit rooms.
The problem with painting inside is it doesn’t help with a sense of urgency. Fear of getting sunburned, or sand in my iPad are real things I have to contend with and it makes me work harder! Well, for me, that is a ways off since I am still recovering from damaged lungs due to painting in oil. I can almost walk two blocks. Yeah, it IS going to be quite a while.
So, I am looking up and up and up. Clouds don’t care if you are quarantined, they are still there. They are accessible and challenging to paint. Right now, I am painting them digitally. Later I will explore acrylics and gouache. I really do like painting digitally because I can carry a whole studio in my iPad Pro.
If you can, take a hike and cloud search. Pay attention to the subtle color changes and see if it connects you a little more to the present. That is what it does for me. My cloud paintings are now available in my shop with some of them also available as prints and some smaller sizes too.
California Surf
