update on the seascapes February

High Tide, Sunset. 24in sq oil on canvas. Vivien Blackburn


this one underwent a few changes :>) - I decided to have the tide in, rather than having a beach with pools - the waves made for a better composition and I like the perspective of being in the air, hovering somewhere over the waves. I also sorted that sky that I hated.

You can see the very early stages here http://vivienb.blogspot.com/2008/01/work-in-progress-seascapes-stage-3.html (it's the third image down in this post) and at a later ugly underpainting stage here http://vivienb.blogspot.com/2008/01/seascapes-update-work-in-progress-16th.html when I was planning to keep the foreground as sand and pools.

Lots of that underpainting still shines through in the final version.

I wasn't at all happy about it until I sorted the sky out and made that decision about the high tide, then it came together, at last.


Do you work in series? Do you like to look at the same scene or small area in different lights and seasons?


Monet did and so does this artist http://web.mac.com/suncage/iWeb/Site/Suncage.html who made a contract with himself to paint outside daily and produced some stunning work, often revisiting the same place in different lights and different times of year. His site is well worth a visit.


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Comments

caseytoussaint said…
This is just gorgeous, Vivien! Thank you for posting the links to earlier versions - I learned a lot about your process from this.
2:54 pm
vivien said…
Thanks Casey - this one was an extreme version of disastrous in between stages!
3:35 pm
Shirley Anne Sherris said…
Hi
I don't paint as such but I often like to do variations on a theme if I have several ideas for a piece and can't decide which one to use. I do variation on a theme and do them all.
They can, however, grow into quite a large projects sometimes and some have been big enough to be used as talks for embroidery groups.
Cheers
SAS
12:57 pm
Making A Mark said…
Good to have that link highlighted again!
1:34 pm
vivien said…
Yes, you work around a theme too Shirley and so do you Katherine :)

I like to see variations on a theme and different ways of approaching it :)
5:45 pm
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