Inside the Wave from Magic Seaweed

Any good seascape painter must know the anatomy of a wave, why and how it forms, what shapes it and how it moves from swell to breaking over to foam to scud. The internet is the best place to find this or I highly recommend E. John Robinsons' books especially his "Marine Painting in Oil" where it is all laid out in diagram form. For beginning seascape painters this is the very best book out there, to cover all the aspects of painting. It holds up well though written some time ago, and works for acrylics or pastel as well.

Few of us would ever get this view  in the barrel of the wave as it curls over. The website this comes from is one of my favorites, pointed out to me by a reader of this blog. Magic Seaweed gives me all the surf reports for the area I live in, and daily has photos and videos of the sea and waves all over the planet. If you go to their homepage and scroll down on the right you can find surf reports and information from all over the world and select your local area. If you are lucky enough to  live near the water, you should be able to find something near you.

I check these reports for days I want to go paint, where the surf is, how big it is, and what I'm likely to find. It sometimes is not quite what the report says, but most days are close. I also have bookmarked a cam put up by the Bodega Marine Lab from Davis CA, This cam is 24/7 and is updated every 15 min. So I check to see what kind of day it is, if the clouds are good, or clear enough to see the sunset. Of course sometimes it changes very fast, and what was clear at 2pm is completely fogged in by 3pm, but it gives me a fighting chance. I live about 25 miles from the Sonoma Coast so I'm blessed with having my subject very close at hand whenever I want. I can't imagine how anyone would try to seriously paint the sea unless they had a way of observing it closely day after day. If you are landlocked and hunger for the sea, I hope someday you choose to own a painting of it, from me( check the top link of my blog for Currently Available)  or other artists who really know and love it and have spent the time to faithfully capture its essence not from a photo, but by really being there.

Perspective on the Beach

I had the good fortune to be given a helpful hint for painters and permission to share it here from a very good painter on the other side of the pond as they put it in England, Rob Adams

This is how you can get your figures on the beach (or street) in proper size and perspective, we have and innate sensitivity to the figure so it's quite noticeable when it's not right.  It also works for birds or rocks or bits of drift wood. Its an easy simple way to get it right.

He made it very basic, 

I just tried this with some gulls on the beach  it works very well...


 First get the nearest figure to a size that looks right for you. Then draw vanishing lines from the head and feet to the horizon. Use the lines to measure the figures at the points you want to place them.

 Now cut out the different sized figures and fit them on the canvas. now you can pull horizontally to where they need to be, which allows you to check out the size and place for composition.

The Moveable Horizon

I just completed this trio of small studies. I wanted to see what influence the horizon has on a seascape.
Basically you have 3 choices, up high, mid or low on your canvas. Psychologically you place your viewer in a different relationship to your painting by where you place it. This is only part of the equation, the size of the foreground counts too. If you want a lot of wave action, place it high, you need the space to get the wave up close. If you want a grand view place it low, that means you will be featuring a lot of sky so make it worth watching with subtle colors or cloud patterns.  These studies will be available in the Current Paintings page link at the top of the blog. All are views of North Salmon Creek beach where I go for the long rolling waves, the only place along the coast where this happens,

In these quick studies I tried to keep everything the same except where the horizon hits. You can learn a lot by looking for where the artists put their horizon lines in landscape, as a viewer try to be aware of how that changes your own feeling as you go into the work, and then take that understanding outside to the sea, and standing on a cliff, tilt your head so the horizon is high or low, and catch the fleeting changes of mood inside you. There are so many ways to appreciate Art and Nature, but it all starts inside first.

The Luminous Moment

                                                         No. Salmon Creek Beach at Twilight  7x11 oil on linen
When this is dry I'll soften the transition of fog and sky, but I'm leaving it as is, not quite tweaked to finish, because TA DAH it is the first one that has a particular color effect I've been going for over weeks of time, while progressing through the current 100 Challenge studies of the sea, working to master the longer views of the sea. I'll do a post later on what a 100 Challenge is and why I find them so useful. Keep in mind I have done only studies for over two years to give myself mastery of the basics  in preparation to do my first larger scale works. My own private seascape atelier program


There is an amazingly beautiful light after sunset, that lasts for about 10 min max and turns the sea into a luminous, heart wrenchingly exquisite moment. Most people leave after the sun goes down, next time you are at the sea stay a bit and see if you can see this moment.  It shows best if the sky has thin overcast. Of course I will never be able to really paint it, but coming close will count.


At this time of light all the values are close, if you squint, the sea and foam make one area with just a bit of the top foam lighter where it goes above the main wave, and the scud coming in is a violet shade against the more viridian of the waves...then the sky reflects brilliantly into the sheeting of the spent wave. I have brushed in the foam more directly without fussing with it, much harder to do than laboring over it, by the way, if it is not right the whole area is scraped down and you load the brushes to paint it again. One or two excellent strokes will get it right. Sargent was known for this in his portraits. Often spending a whole day on a face only to wipe it out at the end. The dashing in energy of just the right stroke and fresh paint really adds to the movement I'm trying to get in the foam. 

Here is a detail of the lightest light and darkest dark, the values are very close which is what makes it such a challenge to capture. 

Is It Blue or Is It Yellow

Many years ago I read a shocking book called Blue and Yellow Don't Make Green. Since every painter knows they do I was intrigued. It turned out to be one of the best books on color I've ever come across, it must be as years later it's still published, although I think the original cover was far more attractive.

I came across a statement lately that ties in with this book, so sorry can't remember where on the web I saw it, so if you know please leave a link in the comments.

Color choice is so hard for beginning painters, and for the more advanced and even expert is still challenging. As you learn to paint there are all kinds of formulas and methods, it can become very confusing. So I like this little aid, because it's so simple.... here it is in my words and how it applies to seascapes.

The premise is painter only needs to ask 2 questions about color in the landscape. Is it blue or is it yellow? Red is either a blue red, like alizarin, or a yellow red like cadmium, so you don't have to think about that.

When I look out across the view of my latest paintings, from No. Salmon Creek Beach at sunset......

You can see the choices I made, the very late light this time of year, makes the thicker water in the waves a kind of green blue, and where the water is thinner it becomes shades of yellow.  Yellow also is the color of the reflections from the sky and sun. In landscapes,  the distant land will be in blue ranges, some of it warmed with yellow earth tones, like bt, quin orange, or bt. siennas, but still toned by blues.  Next time you're outside painting or even just looking, scan your view and see how it looks to you if you are just seeing the parts,  is it blue family or is it yellow family. It does make things easier to decide, and changes the old is it warm or is it cool mind set, a cool yellow and a warm blue are possible after all.

Enjoy the view!

Steve Jobs 1955-2011

No way to say how much he has changed our times and lives. This quote is from his 2005 Stanford address. 

 ".. almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart."  - Steven P. Jobs

Thank you Steve for your life and your courage, but most of all for your belief in what is possible

the Grand View and Intervals

One of the hardest things about these very big coastline views is to make sure no two intervals are the same. When our linear left brain gets ahold of things it starts making spaces the same and gets  repetitive. A way you can test this is to take a 4x5 space and put in 9 dots at random...now look and see how many are about the same space apart. Do this again and make every space between every dot different,  You will see this is quite a job.

 Nature does not repeat intervals or shapes, even with thousands of leaves on a tree each one will be different. Our eyes through millions of years of evolution are geared for that.  One of the differences between top professional artists and ranks below them is the pros know this secret. Waugh the great American  seaacape artist  said never repeat spaces or shapes, and if you look at his work you'll see he didn't. (He is one of the greats I study and will speak more of him later)

  So in these grand views, it's very easy to start to make things repeat spaces, both positive and negative. Remember every time you make an edge you make two shapes one of the object and one for the space around it. We painters work on 2 D surfaces. So since the tendency is to make the same spaces, one has to be very vigilant to keep that from happening and killing off some of the pleasure the eye and mind take in looking around our paintings, we have, after all, only a few square inches, and Nature has hundreds of miles. So I have finally hit on a method to help me in this.  Most well trained painters are aware of this same interval thing, and on a simpler work it can be done by eye, but on these very small very complex works of  the grandview, I've found it very hard, so the tool is a big help.

I'll still have to be careful when painting to not put them back the same again.

Above  you will find a beginning painting worked out in charcoal, and a little drafting tool with points. With this I can measure an interval and then take that measure and move it around the painting to see if any spaces are repeated. If they are, then now is the time to adjust them I've found several, and each one I changed  helped the painting shapes be more interesting and graceful

The Sonoma Coast reorganized

This is the hardest seascape  composition for me. Our spectacular Sonoma Coast is so beautiful to see and SO hard to paint. After all Nature has hundreds of miles to place her stuff and I only have a few inches.

There's a lot to handle, no two shapes should be alike, and each time a rock is placed it affects all the others, the logical mind wants to line up all the edges, points the ends, and forgets perspective, and then that makes the shapes between like runways. Notice everything in Nature is different, no 2 leaves an a tree of thousands is exactly alike, and neither are the rocks. Our eye is always after novelty an grows bored very easliy, so on a painting it's important to keep that variety. Every time a rock is placed it means carefully looking to see how it affects the overall space relationships. There are 19 rocks in this work each took quite some time to get the shape and exact place it needed to be.

There is  a lot to get right, and only practice can give the painter the skills needed to do it.

In the first drawing you see the orange pastel pencil I use to compose, it easily rubs off for changes.
Next is the bright underpainting that helps me check out the shapes over all
Then the rocks are blocked in

And finally  the painting is fully blocked in the local colors and values. Now I'll let it dry and do the final details which I will post later.

Alexander Harrison

In my quest to become a seascape painter I've searched back through time to find the very best examples of the genre. I have lots to share as we go.... today  it's Alexander Harrison, an Am. Tonalist painter of great repute in his day. In particular one painting called The Wave.  You can enlarge the link I gave, but what we can't get is the real impact. The painting is 40 inches high(99.7 cm) by almost TEN FEET long (299.7) Can you imagine the experience this must give you! Even in the poor internet reproduction you can see the amazing subtle colors he's captured in the overcast light I love so much...Here are just a few things to appreciate and for painters to learn from.

Horizion line
notice how it changes across the work, nowhere is it hard, which would flatten the space, and in some places it's obscured altogether,

Lead ins. 
notice how he leads our eye into the painting with the little wavelets and on a more subconscious level with the reflected darks of the wave in the foreground wet sand linking us to the dark of the wave.

Gradated color/value shifts.
In the sky, a deeper value fog is played off against the light on the water on the right side of the painting, if the sky tone had not shifted that light would not glow so much

The wave itself is pure magic, notice how much he varies the top line, the intervals of dark water and lighter foam, the dimension of the foam and the treatment of the bottom edge shadows and reflections into the water below.

I will be doing some small studies based on some of his paintings. This is how I'm teaching myself seascape painting. I have a few good books by E John Robinson, and one by Roger Curtis, most of the others out there have not been useful to the way I want to paint. But I've learned much more, once past the basics, from study of the great painters who've gone before me.  They are not painters on the radar of the art world anymore, except maybe Homer, but in their day were greatly respected and well known.

more links for Harrison
artencyclopedia.com the way to find all his work on the internet, some have large files
wikipedia.org

and on American Tonalism, (Harrison was a Tonalist) the only home grown Americn art movement, that crashed when Impressionism came along. The paintings are very quiet and subtle and have an intentional spiritual quality. Tonalism has a great influence on my current work as the quality of light along the N. California coast, is that way in nature.

Wave Eye View

One of the new friends I've made with this blog sent me a link to a photographer who lives in Hawaii
Clark Little I love the photos and what it encourages me to do is add more color to my waves. I see it very fleetingly out there but the freeze action of the photo lets me see how much more there is. So I can use my Artistic License( #4736 issued to me for a lifetime)  to add more. Of course the water in Hawaii is a very different situation than here along the No California coast. I lived on the Big Island for 3 years( so blessed to be there before a huge amount of development took place) the color and light here make it a different animal all together.

My new friend and I love waves and chase them along the Sonoma Coast, and someday we might meet out there. I'll post what he shares with me as we go along. Friday is supposed to be a big wave day, so I'll be out there. Enjoy!

On Creativity, and Beyond

Vik Muniz, takes image making beyond the box of paints and brushes, his humor and quirky take on art will refresh you in this TED Talk. He uses chocolate, sugar, even dust from the floors of the Whitney Museum to make amazing representational pictures.  It is so easy as a painter or just a human being to get settled in one point of view. People like Muniz wake us up, one of the purposes of art and creativity.

 This painting is made entirely with sugar on black paper of one of the children on a plantation he visited in Saint Kitts. is "Sugar Children" series consists of photographs of drawings he made in sugar of children whose parents and grandparents have worked on the sugar plantation on the island of Saint Kitts.

The World's Most Beautiful Wave

I have a guilty pleasure,  I love surfer movies, and I have  a link on the internet that gives me the surf reports for North Salmon Creek so I know when the big waves will come. On that site is a video of the big waves at Cortes Bank off San Diego, the biggest most beautiful wave. On this vid is also some great computer modeling of wave forms so enjoy and see this primordial wave move and develop, Click on the link below the photo to see the video.

                                                           CORTES BANK WAVE 

Final Exam

I set myself a challenge of 100 paintings of waves a little over a  month ago, and as I completed it, I set myself a final exam. I did these four little paintings from memory, to test all my skills. Most of the old seascape masters I've read say you must be able to paint the sea from memory to do it well. They used sketches and studies made on the spot but all of them spent many many hours just watching and studying the water and weather.William Trost Richards son said his father spent so much time standing in a trance on the beach watching water that people thought him insane. Then in the studio( many painted before the camera was so easy) they would rely on their memory and maybe a few small sketches. We artists today do not have or use our memories so much, and even in school kids don't have to memorize poems or the Gettysburg address like  they used to. For  seascape painter memory is a must, you can't just stop the water and light.  A camera is not much use either if you want to paint like the eye sees, it is a blind mechanical thing, the human eye is attached to the heart and mind of a person with feelings, something no camera has.

So this is my exam, 4 little works about 4.5 x5 inches each...this is a great exercise to try, it tells you what you know and what you don't.  This took about an hour total

The Far Horizon

The " horizon line" in a painting is where the sea and sky meet,  at the eye level of the viewer, so if you are standing looking at the sea, it is one place, if you sit down it will shift higher. Here is the wiki definition if you want to get more technical and a picture of the horizon line from space 

The horizon line is the first thing I put down in a seascape. I have lots more to say about horzions, but placement is the basis of the painting so we'll start here. Where you draw the horizon line  dictates the point of view of the entire work, where you will stand in your own mind as you enter and enjoy the painting. It has great psychological effect and sets the tone and mood. After all it is where you are placing your viewer, so think carefully about where you put it.  Placed high you have room for a foreground and plenty of wave action, placed low the sky will start to dominate. One of the painting principals I use is; What ever is most important gets the most real estate.  So if I'm interested in the wave, it will have a big chunk of square inches in the work. I will not have room for a big wave unless I place the horizon line high.

Here are some samples of seascapes, some contemporary most from 1850-1950. Notice where the horizon line is, and how that affects the emotional state as well as you look at these. 

 Clyde Aspevig, The Headlands

Here he has put us way up in the air, on a high cliff looking down. This could be tricky except in the hands of a master like Aspevig.

 Alexander Harrison, The Wave

Here we are standing on the beach, perhaps sitting on a small sandbank, your eyes are level with the true horizon

Charles Vickery, Pacific Voyage

notice on this one the horizon is only implied, we'd have to be in a small dingy to get this view, and I would be hanging over the side getting rid of lunch. Vickery really knew his water and his ships.

Frederick Waugh, Evening Surf

We are standing on the beach or maybe some low rocks

Frederick Waugh, Glint of Sun

this is more ambiguous , we could be on a surfboard, or standing in the water or on a jetty.

                                                                                           William Trost Richards, Summer

We know exactly where we are here and not worried about storms or big waves, riptides, so we can completely relax into this tranquillity.

It is possible to paint a seascape without any horizon line at all, as in this David Curtis painting a view common if you stand overlooking the ocean from a high cliff, but here our eyes are directed down, not out as in the first Aspevig work.

When a painting goes wrong

While this painting is working ok, my eye tells me its heading downhill. First I made an error in putting the birds so close to the edge, which will become a center of interest,  even if I mute them down, as living things catch our attention.  So this close to the edge it's not going to work well, there will be a fight between the  foreground and midground. So most of the birds have to go. then there is the sort of ho hum line of the foam of the wave, too much action in the background, and the pull of the center rock with a  big empty space in front.

Here the wonders of Photoshop come to our aid. With PS I used the clone tool, and paintbrush tool to try out some possible solutions. I deleted most of the birds, raised the front rocks on the right side, added some water to marry it to the rest of the painting and changed the line of the wave, it looks better now to me anyway....so I can go ahead and alter the painting. I will make more changes as I actually paint, to create a more interesting space below the center rock.

 No artists in history have been able to try out without messing up all the real thing until now. It could be this will never really quite work, but improving it will satisfy me anyway, and I can take the learning into the next painting. Stay tuned.  See if you think these changes help.

here is the previous version

A Great Compliment

One of the biggest compliments a painter can get is when another artist buys your painting. Carolyn Wilson is a fine artist in her own right.

I was so lucky to have her gracious even tempered presence next to me at the Gravenstein Apple Fair, my first outdoor show. She is a veteran of these events, and really helped me out. It was very busy, 20,000 people go to this event now in it's 35th year. She bought not one but 3 of my seascape studies, one was a gift for a friend.  Her luminous watercolors over a delicate surface of rice paper are truly beautiful. Thank you Carolyn!

Here she is with her two paintings of waves inside the rolled up white paper, my sturdy if some what inelegant solution of how people could take home the raw canvas studies I stuck up on peg board with double sided tape. Twenty six painting sold,  the most I've ever sold in one go. I wanted to see if there would be a response to my new direction and the answer was a big YES.  Besides Carolyn 4 more artists bought works, that is something I really treasure.

On the Easel : Shoreline Delights 11x14 oil on oil primed linen

One of the best times I have out plein air painting at the sea is watching the bird life. One day at North Salmon Creek Beach, I wandered along studying the rocks. I was staring at some of them and the surface began to move. It was covered with small birds, called surfbirds, that hang out near the smaller waves...They were fascinating to watch, dodging the water and working hard for their meal. I always wanted to include them in a painting and when doing one of the 100 wave studies I just finished I came up with a sketch and this work is based on that.

The trick here is to get the birds to be one of the last things you see, just like I discovered them for the first time...so the rocks and birds must blend, as they do in nature... most of the rest of the painting is finished, and I'm working now on the bottom rocks and birds are just sketched in, I'm trying to decide if I can sneak in  a couple more.

I'm moving up in size at last this is 11x14 oil on oil primed linen

Why do we paint?

 In the midst of all our complex and sometimes scary world, I wonder what I'm doing at my easel daubing away. Painting is not just a personal act, it is a human one. At these times I remember the earliest humans painted, 32,000 years ago. And not just crude likenesses but exquisite works that speak to us today, and move us with their beauty like the Chauvet Caves. Here they are not just flat or crudely done, but carefully modeled and realistic, even using the form of the rock to create sculptural dimension.

This speaks to me so deeply, and connects me as a painter to all of human history, I started out in representational work as an animal artist, you can find it on this blog Artist for Animals where I will still occasionally post new work. The act of making an image on a flat surface, is calling out to Creation, I see you, I know you, I am part of you, and I bow with my small gifts to you! that is the most human of all endeavors.

Werner Herzog , made a film of these caves  Chauvet - Cave of Forgotten Dreams. 
 

Painting seascape: lines of flow

Painting the sea is not for the faint of heart. Turner had himself tied to the mast of a ship in a storm to observe the big waves, Frederick Judd Waugh one of America's greatest seascape artists, had a place on  an island on the East Coast where he used handholds stuck in the rock by pirates a century ago, so he could hang out over the stormy sea. What they were doing and what any seascape painter has to figure out is what I call the flow lines of the water. You must know which way each part of the water is moving. Put these lines down as a sketch, I even use arrows, before you start.

Here is a painting I'm working on. I did a small study first, when I began the larger work I started with a sketch of flowlines

sketch lines of flow

underpainted layout

Closeup of brushwork

This is the under painting close up so you can see the brushmarks.  I have changed it from my sketch to create more rhythm with my wave. So if those flowlines were drawn now what would they look like?

How to Mount Canvas on a Panel

I promised a post on how to mount canvas on a panel for some of the wonderful art collectors who bought my little studies this weekend at a local fair. Twenty three of them sold, most on loose canvas, the way I generally paint.

So here are the simple steps, and the materials you need. This also works if you want to make your own panels to paint on. Materials Acrylic Gel medium, hardboard panel cut to size( MDF, wood or hardboard), foam or bristle brush,

You need Acrylic gel medium and a panel cut to the size of the canvas. You need a foam brush or cheap bristle brush you can get at the hardware store.                                                                                              

Paint a thin even coat on the surface of the panel, make sure the panel is wiped free of dust etc before you paint.

Lay the canvas down lining up the edges very well before you press down, when it's right, then smooth it down with the palm of your hand.

Check to see if any of the gel got on the surface if you see any wipe with a damp sponge. Sometimes you need a dab more on the corners if they don't stick

let it dry with a book on top, that's it all done.

Brushes I found useful for painting the sea.

Before I started this blog I did a long thread  on painting waves on Wet Canvas, some of the photos disappeared so I will be pulling over the best ones for this blog and tag them technical information so you (and me too) can find it later. Here is the thread, Wave Studies 100 its big but if you want to paint the sea, it has some real gems I discovered, and you can see where I started and began to work up to higher levels.

I'm beginning to have a feel for certain brushes for making seascapes. More than any other painting I've done I'm using my brushes more specifically for effects. When I paint larger I will have to buy bigger ones, nothing over 3/4 inch here. The bristle brushes are more costly, the rest are synthetic so more affordable. They are arranged in the order of most use.

The top favorite is the Da Vinci Top Acryl, quite stiff, great for rocks and also laying on thick foam, used almost like a palette knife sometimes. Makes thin lines, layins, lifting off back to canvas with turps, makes edges, dragged over paint moves it without blending, my all around brush, pretty pricey for a synthetic brush so look for a sale.

next the short bristle Winton fine hog...for laying out the rocks scrubbing fast and thin. not for upper painting of rocks except for some soft places where they meet the water

DaVinci makes a synthetic cheap student brush line called College, which are perfect substitutes for sable, very soft, great for blending and foam or laying a glaze over wet colors below

Princeton, only one I have that is useful is the long flat, for water and rocks

Round, need this on upper layers foam, maybe to adjust edges

the rigger , for the top breaking up surface foam, the foam trails.

Syn Mongoose, gets me small bits little lines and shadows, and good for tweaking areas, not much use painting, does not leave a defined stroke. Soft enough not to disturb lower layers.

A hog basting brush from the cooking store, for knocking down ridges of paint, softly pulling paint to show movement, and stippling scatters of foam.

You can see by the numbers of the sizes that they mean nothing except within the brand line.

One more thing not here, a short palette knife. For scraping off errors, and very carefully using the edge to create accidental blends in rocks, or smushing edges in the water layers.

you can see I keep the paint to the tips of the brushes , I wipe between colors so there is not a lot of cleaning in solvents, just now and then when it gets too mixed

Thanks to My New Collectors

Today was a banner day, I put my first seascape studies out in public at a lovely local summer event in Sebastopol CA  called Gravenstein Apple Fair one of the best attended events in my area which has a 30 year  history. The weather was glorious, ( it can be hot) the music superb and 20 people walked away with my art and my heart as well. You know who you are, and I'm just saying a big thanks for all the comments and positive response to my new work. I'm over the moon, including the ultimate compliment of 5 different artists who purchased, it just doesn't get any better.  You really give me the courage to go for it and become one of the top seascape painters on the West coast.

 here are some of the sold works they all have wonderful homes!

I am getting help here in blog land to get some new posts for people who'd like to paint the sea, to share some of my secrets with you...Stay tuned,

Thanks to My New Collectors

Today was a banner day, I put my first seascape studies out in public at a lovely local summer event in Sebastopol CA  called Gravenstein Apple Fair one of the best attended events in my area which has a 30 year history. The weather was glorious, ( it can be hot) the music superb and 20 people walked away with my art and my heart as well. You know who you are, and I'm just saying a big thanks for all the comments and positive response to my new work. I'm over the moon, including the ultimate compliment of 5 different artists who purchased, it just doesn't get any better. You really give me the courage to go for it and become one of the top seascape painters on the West coast.

I am getting help here to get some new posts for people who'd like to paint the sea, to share some of my secrets with you...Stay tuned, as soon as I recover I'll put them up, in the meantime here are some of the sold works

Welcome to the Beginning of my Dream

This moment is the beginning of the unfolding of a big dream, to drive and live along the Pacific Coast and paint the sea for a year. I've just completed 100 studies of waves from various places along the Sonoma Coast, and I'm making them available first in an art show this weekend. When it is over I will post some of them here.

I've spent the last year plein air ( painting in the open air) all along the coast where I live, traveling at least twice a week to paint both winter and summer.  As I prepare this year I hope to post the paintings I'm doing, making them available for you to enjoy or purchase, and have many join me in this adventure.

This is a dream right now, a sort of build it and they will come place. I have no idea how it is coming about, but my vision is blazing in my heart and on my canvas. Stay posted.

I also have to figure out how to do this blog thing as I go so it will evolve technically too as I go. Thanks for being part of it.