Lady with curly red hair in beach setting - WIP stages

Lady with curly red hair in beach setting - WIP stages

WIP stages of the figure in progress.

Painted during Autumn 2019 this oil painting, sized at 33” x 23”, features a woman with a deep interest in spirituality and other mysterious aspects of life. She was painted against a made up sea background to reflect her Aquarius astrological star sign, the original photo being taken in a car park! The first panel shows a drawing, done in brown acrylic paint on a lighter brown wash. Suggestions of tones and highlights have been added, again in acrylic. In the middle panel a rough underpainting has been applied in oils, which provides a base to the final intended colours. These under-painted layers are thinly applied, using an artists paint thinner or similar medium. In the final panel we see the completed painting with thicker paint applied. All of the colours and details are correctly done to the intended values of colour and tone. On top of this completed painted layer when dry is a 'glaze' layer, which is a further coat of paint applied thinly within a thickish transparent medium. This is used to highlight certain elements in the painting and empathise the colour. The under layer of paint partly shows through the glaze layer adding depth to the colour as seen by the human eye, and not really a camera lens however. The face and hair were tackled in such a way while the sky and sand were left as is. This portrait oil painting can be seen in greater detail here.

Bournemouth beach:Pier theatre

Bournemouth beach: pier theatre

This was painted in oils on a 16" x 20" canvas and is of the sunny, sandy beach at Bournemouth, Dorset ,UK.
The pier itself was originally built in the 1800s, but was extensively rebuilt in 1950 and the theatre (or theater) was built in 1960, and shill holds summer shows and plays.
This was painted during late January/early February 2011 when the UK was caught in an ice/snowy grip!
Other paintings of the beach can be seen here .

from the website...
This is a painting of Bournemouth Beach, in the UK, showing the famous pier, with the pier theatre at the end of it, in the background. The artwork is based on a number of photographs, combined and repositioned in photoshop. The final resulting image is then printed out, scaled up and redrawn by hand on to the canvas.

The people and their activities are always fun and interesting to paint. The water is always tricky to do but fun. There is a change of tone in the sea as it changes from one shade of blue/green to a more yellowy green, as the water becomes shallower. The feeling of bright sun seems to come across in the painting. It is painted on a canvas measuring 20" x 16" using oil paints.