Jacksonville Beach Painting Progress--Focus on Sky and Sea

It has finally been possible to get back to the Jacksonville Beach scene I began painting a few weeks ago, a small piece in a panoramic format, 6" X 12". Sky and sea were my main interest in this little study, which I worked to keep quick and minimal. Although the piece is not finished, I wanted to show you its present form. The birds are just quick-sketched in with white and grey tones and need some adjustment. There will be a few other refinements in the clouds, beach sand, and waves, but the basics are all here.

As I mentioned a couple of posts ago, working more quickly was a goal for this piece. I work slowly and include a great deal of detail in my larger paintings--perhaps too much at times. The point of this exercise was to help me fight a tendency to be too fussy and instead to take a breezy, minimal approach, intentionally working in shorter sessions.

The palette is very simple: ultramarine blue, cerulean blue, paynes grey, cad red light, a touch of burnt umber (a warm brown), and titanium white. The top photo shows the entire piece; the other is a detail shot. This has been a satisfying study, and I am looking forward to more exercises in a breezier style in the future as well as to planning some larger paintings in my more typical style.

Question of the day: Are you trying something at least a little new and different this summer?

Creativity, Spontaneity, and Planning--Starting a Beach Painting

My regular readers (bless you, one and all!) know that I am a planner. Too a fault! Even in my creative endeavors, I plan. Previous posts have described my usual painting process (if you are interested, enter "painting process" as a search term in the box in the upper left corner of this blog). However, I know planning and taking care with things can be overdone--especially in projects like making a painting. You will chuckle to hear that this week, I am "working on spontaneity".

Since the flurry of finishing paintings for the exhibit at Paddiwhack, I have been working on a vertical piece showing a curving path. It has been moving ahead very slowly, and recently seemed as though the adjustments I made to try to improve it were making things worse. Some paintings are just very stubborn, even though they looked like a great idea in planning and sketching. The best response is sometimes to put it away for awhile and to begin a new piece.

This time, I decided to plunge into the new piece with minimal planning, no sketches, and no tonal studies. It seemed that I had become too careful, too picky over details--and, stuck. What appealed was to start a smallish piece in unusual proportions (12" x 6") with a fairly low horizon focusing on an interesting sky. With a few reference photos and four paint colors (so far), I forced myself to quickly lay in the first coat for the piece in about 20 minutes. It was fun!

Here are a couple of the reference photos--including one of our Shih-Tzu, Magnolia (aka Maggie) tearing down Jacksonville Beach--one of her favorite spots. The block-in of the painting is rough, but seems like a good start. The sky is a mix of cerulean blue and white near the horizon and ultramarine blue and white further up; the ocean uses the same colors, plus a bit of Paynes grey near the horizon. All blues are tempered with a bit of Cadmium red light to neutralize them (tube colors sometimes look phony in landscapes). The beach under-layer is mostly Cad red light and white. This will be adjusted, as our sand is actually somewhat grey-beige, but I want a warm tone present in both the sand and the clouds (which are yet to come).

Question of the day: Am I the only nut who sometimes needs to "work at spontaneity"? How do you overcome creative blocks?