Beached Boats

The red star on the map to the left is the location where I painted on this day.   This is a peninsula that is situated between Duxbury Bay and Kingston Bay.   I found a fantastic spot at the end of Samoset Road.   There even was a railing at the edge of a grassy access to which I could tie my easel.    The weather was glorious so I shot a video of it so you can get the sense of the bright, windy day at this shoreline.  Okay, and the bagpipes weren't there but I swear the beach (strand) views up in Donegal were quite similar. :)

I've painted water and dunes before and I'll paint them again because they are never the same.   For this painting, I used my palette knife almost exclusively.    I squirted out a generous pile of my fast-drying titanium white and mixed in Prussian blue.   This blue gives a nice fair weather sky color.   I didn't completely blend on the palette, but rather let some of the streaks of white and blue spread out as they were applied onto the canvas with the knife.   The effect came out like high, wispy fair weather clouds.   Next was the greenish blue sea color which was made from white, viridian and Prussian blue.   The mid distance ocean color had yellow from the shallow sandy bars just beneath.   As the tide hit its lowest point, the small boats that were moored just offshore, were now sitting directly on the sand, each leaning to one side.   

The beach grasses were all sorts of greens so I began with the far left, mixing in extra blue and cool naples yellow to help it sit back.  As the grasses and greenery got closer, I mixed in warmer yellows, golds and reds.   Some beach roses were to my immediate left and they cast interesting and deeper shadows on the sand than most of the thin grasses.    I decided on placing a sailboat and a small motorized boat next to each other.   They were sitting directly on the sand so they were leaning to one side.

Add caption