Below Deck

Below Deck (16 x 20 – on canvas) – 1.5.2003

The amazing thing about living here in So Cal is the weather. Today it was over 80 degrees and we went to the beach again. Tomorrow will be in the upper 80’s and it is the first week of January!

This was an interesting painting adventure. It began about a month ago and was started from a photograph. There was a really intense sunset that I photographed, and I wanted to paint it. Then when I started to put the brush to the canvas, I got “stuck”. It just did not work for me. I hated the strong contrast that was captured in the photo, but I wanted to make something more like what I saw when I was there. So today, I once again packed up the family and took them on site to capture the scene plein air. The truly hardest part was there was NO light from me to see my palette or canvas. The sun was so bright in my eyes that when I looked at the scene to see what to paint, I was blinded and then I could not see much on the canvas. I knew where the colors were, and I just mixed them from the location on the palette. I used a lot of white and since I was painting over the previous painting, there was already a dark “ground” or under painting that comes through. This painting was over in less than two hours, and the kids were ready for cold showers.