Alright, so it's a beautiful day here at Pescadero and it's actually been a while since I painted here. I'm going to try something different today, a different composition. One that's kind of challenged me in the past.
But I'm going to focus on rocks and then also some of the colors. in the shallow water. It's typically pretty rough here, but today's kind of calm, so it's an opportunity to look for those colors in the calm water.
Let me show you what I'm thinking. All right, so I'm thinking of doing something with this scene right here, these light colored rocks. And then also, you know, having some rocks leading into the composition, these rocks in the foreground. And then there's some nice color in the shallow water over here. As you can see, not a lot of whitewater, although occasionally waves do come through.
So I'll be, you know, keeping an eye out for those. But this is a composition like working with this light colored rock here. It's a composition that I've not had a lot of success with. So we'll see how it goes. Alright, so here's the compositional idea.
As I've mentioned, my sketches are usually just to get the big shapes in place. So we've got, you know, this rock right here is right here, and then like I said some rocks in the foreground leading into the composition and those will be right here. You know, at first I just, you know, get the big general shapes in place and then I get more specific afterwards. So the first is going to be looking for the darkest darks and you know there's some shadow shapes in here and then also some dark areas along the waterline.
That's one of the things that has challenged me about this particular scene is that it's pretty flat light. You know there's just direct light on there and not a lot of shadows but I'm up for the challenge. That was just a bunch of pelicans that flew over.
I don't know if you can see the shadows right there. And there they go. Alright, so starting with my darks, I'm using a mixture of ultramarine blue and some burnt sienna. Which makes kind of a dark brown, but both of these colors are transparent so I can get some transparency in these darks.
As usual, I'm just squinting and looking for simple shapes of dark. Alright, there's some shadows in the cliffs, so I'm adding a bit of blue to the mixture. The shadows on the dark rocks are really dark, but the shadows on the light rock actually look bluer and a little bit lighter. It's getting pretty crowded out here. It's Memorial Day weekend, so...
I was the only one here actually about a half hour ago. Alright, so next I'm going to mix up a color for the water. I'm using Titanium White, Ultramarine Blue, a bit of Phthalo Blue, and some Dioxazine Purple. And I'm using my palette as a gauge.
This is a mid-tone value, because my palette is a mid-tone gray. It can be really difficult to judge values when you're mixing in direct sun. And at this point I'm just going for a general sort of color.
there are a lot of different you know variations in the blue lots of green and purples and whatnot but this is a way for me just to kind of establish the composition and i will be leaving little areas of maybe unpainted areas of white water especially like around you know like around rocks and things like that I'm keeping this mixture fairly thin because I want to come over this with thicker paint and adjust the colors and modify some of the colors. I always think of painting as working from the broad to the specific. First with your sketch and then with your colors. Your block-in is just a generalization to get something on the panel so you can decide which ways you need to to modify and push the colors. Alright, I'm actually going to add just a touch of yellow to the water that's in the foreground.
I want to leave this area sort of calm without white water because I want to see some of the transparency of the water. There's some nice colors in here. So... I do find painting like this to be really fun because it's, you know, you're, it's like doing an abstract.
There's a lot of freedom. Just trying to create an interesting design. At first I used to find that really intimidating. You know, it seemed like it'd be easier to have something fixed in front of me to work from.
Instead of like a moving target. And, you know, creating a composition. You know, by just looking for abstract patterns or even creating abstract patterns that are appealing. When I first started doing this kind of painting it was very intimidating and frustrating.
But now I actually really enjoy it. Okay, there we go. So you can see just by laying in that water, it really establishes the composition. And originally I was going to have the rocks kind of go off the edge like this, but I think I'm going to have it run off right here. The one thing you want to avoid is having the rocks go right off at the corner.
Compositionally, that can just look really awkward. Alright, I don't know if you guys caught it, but I did the opposite of what I was wanting to do. I was going to have a little white water right here and then have some you know transparent water right in here.
So yeah, maybe a little bit of white water right there. A lot of times what I do is just come in with a paper towel and erase out white water patterns that I think are interesting or appealing. Alright, so I like that arrangement.
There's some clouds on the horizon. I'm using titanium white, some dioxazine purple, and a bit of just some like of this gray mixture here mixed in to kind of dull it down just a little bit. Since clouds are constantly moving, I'm just looking for, you know, an interesting design or pattern here.
I try to keep things random or not too, you know, perfect as far as shapes go. One of the things I think we do as painters when we start out is like I think we naturally seek order so Kind of make our shapes too orderly And there's a lot of beauty and you know random random shapes So I'm just looking for like an interesting line along the top here I think that's cool. Above the fog on the horizon there's a cerulean sky. I'm using titanium white with a bit of phthalo blue and a touch of cad yellow medium.
I'm going to leave some of the sketch showing through, some of that orange of the sketch. So there are two sort of colors in the rocks. Obviously there are a bunch of different variations but there's these darker almost greenish brown rocks here and then there's more blue in these lighter colored rocks so for the grayer greener rocks I'm using ultramarine blue a bit of yellow ochre titanium white and a touch of alizarin and then I've added some titanium white and also a little bit more blue ultramarine blue for the lighter rocks and there seems to be a pattern where the rocks these darker rocks kind of come down almost like in a pattern like this and then the lighter lighter portion will be in the corner I'm not sure if that'll be a problem I don't want to draw the eye too much over to the corner here but we'll see how it will see how it looks Trying to preserve some of the darks.
You know those initial darks that I laid in. I got a little blue into the mix. That's okay though.
A little variation is good. All right, now load the brush with a little bit of the lighter mixture. And I'm just using a touch of Liquin. Not a lot, but it does allow me to quickly cover the panel and also get some of these transparent ...are in areas and yet still have good paint adhesion to the panel.
If you thin with just odorless mineral spirits, you break down the binder and then the paint, you know, oftentimes you can just scratch it off of a panel. On a canvas, that's not as big of a problem because it's soaking in. I'm adding a little bit of this warmer mixture to it. All right, and that blue is too extreme, but I'll tone that down. The blue for the shadows, yeah, it's a little bit too...
too much, that's alright. Some of these random colors you get in there, even if they're not correct, they do add variety to the finished picture, even if most of it is painted out. Alright, so now the block-in is more or less complete.
I could add white water, you know, just by adding some titanium white with maybe a touch of ultra rain blue, you know, just to establish the lightest value on the panel. But I think before I do that, I'm going to kind of start reinforcing some of the darks. Now I'm just going with the same mixture I used before, which is ultra rain blue and some burnt sienna, but I'm keeping the mixture a little bit thicker. So I will have areas of transparency and then little bits of you know where it's less transparent if I want to increase the transparency I can just kind of swing the brush like that I can also shift the values in temperature of these darks like I'm noticing a little bit of yellow in in some of these shadows so I'm adding some yellow ochre.
I added a bit of blue to the dark mixture and I'm going to add a few little rock shadows in this portion here. All right, so looking at that white water, I realize I've got to darken up the water quite a bit. Okay, so here's what I finished up with and there are a few details that I added after the camera went off For example, there's these sort of dark purple areas here.
These are like represent submerged rocks There was a lot of purple in the water actually there was kind of this purple pattern that came through here and then where it Was shallower it was like more of a blue green color My approach to rocks typically is you know, just as you guys saw like lay out the darks And then develop the rocks using directional strokes that kind of mimic the direction of the different planes of the rocks. And then also try to keep the shoreline from being too straight or too perfect. The weather was changing constantly.
There was like fog and then sun and then fog. But I tried to stick with sort of the original idea. that I started with. All right, so I hope you guys enjoyed this video. Let me know what you think in the comments.
If you'd like to see some extra videos and help support the channel, there's Patreon link down below. Also, I'm in a group show at Studio Gallery. I've got one piece in there. It's a corner store in San Francisco.
I'll put a link to Studio Gallery's website down below. So check it out. Other than that, stay creative and I'll see you guys in the next video.