Seascape Artist

A lady at work is retiring next month - I have decided that I need to paint her a seascape painting but I am not sure yet what exactly to paint … so I am in the planning stages … for me, that means I will look at lots of ocean and sea reference photos and see what colors and format I think will work best for me to give to her.

I’ve already decided that I want to do a large watercolor for her - 18″ x 24″ - though I plan on it being a vignette type in the middle of the paper. I went to Hobby Lobby this week-end to get paper to wrap my grandson’s birthday present - I had to look at art materials while I was there {grin} just in case there might be something I wanted that I do not have. Sure enough … they had a clearance book that I decided I wanted.

The book is about keeping a watercolor sketchbook. I haven’t read it yet but I did leaf through it some and it looks really interesting.

Today I went to my daughter’s for cake for my grandson’s birthday even though his birthday is not until Wednesday - he has football practice on Wednesday anyway and they plan to take him out to eat as well - he isn’t getting his birthday presents from me until Wednesday - he got 1 present today - his step-brother was there this week-end and they wanted him to share in celebrating my grandson’s birthday.

Anyway, that is only one of the reasons I did not get it read from cover to cover today. The name of the book is “Keeping a Watercolor Sketchbook” by Brenda Swenson - it is a Walter Foster Artist’s Libray Series book. Here are some of the highlights from it that have to do with seascape painting - only because a lighthouse is the illustration probably but close enough in my mind.

On page 12 of the book, it talks about shape & corresponding forms. One of the pictures illustrated is a lighthouse. It doesn’t say which shape and form are the lighthouse but to me, the shape is two ovals on a rectangle which makes for a cylinder … until I started seeing these kinds of shapes in objects, I could not get any buildings to ever look even close to “right” when trying to sketch them … when I’m in a hurry … I still just jot down a quick impression but it is enough for me to sketch it much better and true to life in an actual painting because I sketch the shapes instead of trying to get the “reality” without building it.

On page 14, there is another lighthouse sketch that is more developed with shading and details instead of basic shapes / forms - the topic of discussion is about using visual shorthand in your sketchbook and how it needs to make sense to you even if no one else would ever understand it. This is good advice - I tend to write my self notes about the important things I do not want to forget as well as try to indicate where the shading was that I noticed in the light and how things overlap each other - in one sketch I have … I did the background then put the tree over it so I could see what would not be seen in a finished painting to know what I was taking out and to decide if I wanted it there or to move the tree to show some of the background in that spot. The sketch looks a little unusual to anyone else but I know what I was trying to get down to jog my memory later in the studio when I pull the sketch out to create a painting based on it.

On page 37, there is a lovely fully developed color sketch as well as a photograph of the lighthouse the sketches appear to have been based upon (to my eye anyway). The topic is about capturing the spirit of your journeys, vacations, trips here & there and how your sketches of the area may capture flavor and mood that a camera just cannot capture. I find that sketches done on-site many times will give me enough clues to get that flavor in a studio painting later that I would never remember from just looking at a photograph. I do not try to recreate detail by detail paintings anyway so for me … the mood, the colors … the feelings … the weather … all are very important to me later and the sketch will help me find it within my memory whereas the photo images are better for me to use as shapes such as the actual shapes of tree branches and how they make patterns against the sky perhaps if that is what captured my imagination about the scene.

Try to keep your sketchbook with you handy where-ever you go during your regular day to day life - that way if you find something you want to quick sketch for later … you will have it there and handy - before I started carrying mine with me in the car, I would find myself wishing I had one so I could jot down something interesting I saw on the way to work or that I noticed at lunch … don’t just make it something available only on vacations or special trips or outings to sketch on location.

It doesn’t matter if you use watercolors, watercolor pencils like me, ball point ink pens, markers, a school pencil or a set of crayons in your sketchbook - if you put in the sketches .. .they will capture moments of your life for later … that you can paint in the studio or that you can just remember the moment without creating a painting from the sketch. Right now, I have given all my sketches in my car-sketchbook titles as well as signing them. I am doing this on purpose as a reminder to myself that even my quick sketches are important to me and deserve my respect even if they are not something that I would want to put up for sale … though several are really good and would appear to be finished paintings to someone else and they capture something … special … to me anyway.

Painting seascapes and or marine objects such as palm trees or harbor scenes is a lot of fun and can be quite restful and it can be quite exciting - being on location is fairly easy if you use watercolor pencils or pan watercolors (tubes for me mean another pallette to balance and not drop on the ground) - oils, for me anyway, can be used on location (I have done it) but I find them much harder to get all the equipment there when traveling and I felt like I spent all my time getting ready and cleaning up with little time for the actual painting. Once was enough for me to unload & reload a portable easel & paint etc.

Computer laptops for on location digital painting is a luxury I do not have yet but it would be really easy to take one of those on location anywhere in the world if you remember to charge the batteries before the trip and take extra batteries with you too. I don’t work in acrylics so I can only guess they might be fairly similar to tube watercolors and oils in difficulty level for location painting.

Personally, I find the watercolor pencils the very easiest to take on location painting trips - plein air painting or inside at a local shopping mall or the local Denny’s (yes - I took them to breakfast with me and painted while waiting for my food - other customers even noticed and talked to me because of it). You can even take them with you out to dinner if you or your children like to use them. Watercolor pencils are viewed as “magick” from the perspective of a child. That is exactly what my grandson and I call them … my “magick pencils”.

One of the first things I do when painting a seascape is to decide where the horizon line will be - it is important that the horizon line in a seascape painting be straight across. This is important in all paintings but it is CRITICAL “generally” in a seascape painting - especially if you are painting open water with no far off coastal islands or mountains breaking up the from one side of the paper or canvas to the other side. … But … I tend to break this rule sometimes … deliberately … some people like it and some do not …. usually what matters to me when I am painting is if I like it or not and if it says what I have say in this painting. Sometimes I like to do a surrealistic … curvy wavy horizon line … where the sea and the sky merge somewhat together and it is hard to tell where one ends and the other begins … sometimes it works really well for me .. other times it does not.

Another important point to remember is to not cut the painting in half or usually even thirds either - the even thirds is workable but it could appear more geometric than you might want it to look when you are done and detract from the focal point unless that is part of your focal point. Yes … I and many others break this rule .. .sometimes it works well .. and other times it is awful. My daughter HATES for me to put my lone tree slicing across the middle third of a painting generally - it bothers her a lot … she definitely notices the focal point in it though LOL

Remember to be nice to all the people who stop to talk to you while you are painting on location - they are potential collectors of your art! Take business cards with you to hand out to them. Sell them your painting right then that you are working on - quick sketches make lovely “paintings” in themselves - many of my watercolor pencil preliminary sketches are lovely just as they are and the studio oil or digital painting that I have created from them does not have the same “feel” let alone look. Both are great paintings but very different - both vibrant and alive but the medium used definitely changes the look and feel of a painting.

Now that I have discovered watercolor pencils … I have a small set of 24 watercolor pencils and a watercolor pad (small) that both fit in the side pocket of my car - I keep them there all the time. I have a small spray bottle of water in the cup holder if I want to use it … and I just bought some little cups with lids for taking some water for a brush - it will fit in the cup holder with the spray bottle. One small brush fits in the pencils box - whah - la - I am all set to pull it out and sketch very quickly with no need to worry if I remembered to bring my equipment.

I find that at lunch time, I can go make quick sketches - 10 to 15 minutes is a good sketch activity to get the feel and look or colors or shapes down of something I can see in the area surrounding our building or remembering from my drive to work that morning … sometimes I will see a lovely palm tree on my way to work and do a quick sketch of the shape once I get parked before going inside to start my day.

I’ve also found that it improves my mood for the afternoon to do something for me at lunchtime that I find to be fun and as necessary to my life as breathing or eating. Since I lose so much time to being in Houston traffic .. I was finding it very difficult to include time to just sketch and enjoy nature during the work week … now I can do it just fine at lunch and while I drive to work, I am on the lookout for something I want to include in my sketching activity. I showed my sketchbook to my grandson the other day .. he saw one of my palm trees in it .. “It looks just like a real one Grandma!” He was excited … now I have something to share with him also to encourage him to find time away from video games to draw and paint!

Today’s featured art is Resting in the Bay by Barbara Burns

Resting in the Bay by Barbara Burns — View Larger

Tags: Barbara Burns, Resting in the Bay, Imagekind, seascape, sea, ocean, sailboat