On the Beach

My inspiration for the painting I describe in this post was a video I viewed this week of a Dutch artist named Roos Schuring.   She paints outside year round and in this particular video she was set up on a cold rainy beach that looked identical to the beach I walk everyday.  Her interviewer was a painter as well, their side-by-side easels being spritzed by the moist wind.  Her result was amazing; the interviewer's result was nice too.  I thought if this woman can paint outside everyday in an exposed locale that looks just like my own geography, then I should be able to paint outside on this perfectly lovely 60 degree day - and what am I doing inside anyway?

I packed up my gear and walked across to the beach.    I took the liberty of descending the only set of beach steps that were installed to haul my equipment to the sand.   Right away I copied something that Roos did in her video.  I filled a plastic bag with wet sand and tied it to my tripod style easel to weigh it down against the wind.   It worked well and instead of having to keep one hand on my painting board, I could step back more freely.

I used a super smooth gesso board and frankly I struggled with it because the paint was just sliding around with each stroke.   My block in was thin and dripping but once the spirits had evaporated, the next layer of paint adhered better.   I also switched to my palette knife.  The beach was so bright that the colors looked spectacular. especially those applied thickly with palette knife strokes.   I remembered the color brightness issue I had with the Aruba paintings - the fact that the colors that looked so vibrant on the beach were washed out once viewed inside.   I strove for a true color match but brighter to alleviate this issue.


Bright Beach

As I painted, two women who were taking their beach walk had come up behind me to watch.  After a short discussion with them, they continued their walk to the jetty, and upon their return along the shore, I painted them in at a distance as they approached.
This 9 x 12 inch board is one of my recent favorites.   I like the texture and impressionistic feel of it.   Although I have been blogging lately about revisiting my initial paintings, I vow to resist touching this one to retain the fresh loose color.