Hope's Art Journey

Sea Oats and Boardwalk     acrylic on canvas  12 x 12

The original appeal of this scene was the fence and sea oats converging to a vanishing point.  The problem was that the photo was cropped on the left side not showing much on the other side of the fence.  I knew I needed to add to this area.  As the painting evolved, so did that problem.  I looked for options of objects to insert there.  I left out part of the boardwalk at one point.  That did not work.  That was where everything was going.  The sky, which I painted first, thinking that would make it easier to paint the sea oats, was not doing it's job.  I have been painting sea oats by sliding the brush in the direction of the oats with two colors or more over each other.  Then, I cut back into them with what is around them, sky or sand or whatever.  That did not work since I finally decided the sky did not have enough color in it.  I painted it several times, went through all my photos to find something suitable and finally slashed some clouds across it.  Then, I started tweaking the yellow areas to give them shape.  All that meant painting around the sea oats again.  The pink helped break up all the blues and yellows.   Tedious!

There was less of the foreground in the first draft of the painting.  That part evolved as I painted by adding and subtracting grasses and sand shapes.  I was really pleased with that from the start.  I narrowed the boardwalk, toned it and the fence down in the distance, and added just a clump of grass on the left.  The yellow over the boardwalk solved that bare area.  At one time, I was thinking of flying birds but now it seems like too much.  There is a multitude of compositions to be had at the beach.  I look forward to exploring more of them