Friday, August 19, 2011

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?

2 comments:

  1. Colleen, thank you. Thanks for giving me a term for it. When I try to paint any water I look for them and if I look at paintings where the flowlines don't look natural, it bugs me and doesn't look real. This is brilliant.

    I love seascapes and you're a genius with them. Thanks for a golden nugget!

    ReplyDelete
  2. you're welcome Robert, it also helps if you can get a kinesthetic awareness in your own body so the muscles can feel it. Its confusing out there watching it so try some sketches on site or at least from a video where it is moving not static. I am no genius, but a lover of the sea, fortunately for me many great painters have come before so I can learn from them. If only Frederic Judd Waugh had published his seascape painting book, he wrote it and it was never published....I'll do a post on him soon, he is one of my main mentors and deserves the term genius IMO...so sad to think a lifetime of painting didn't get passed on to us.

    ReplyDelete