The unbridled zeal for life is hard to epitomize more than watching a big dog playing on a beach. While I don’t support a dog chasing wildlife, in the case of birds I don’t mind because in all my days I’ve never seen a dog come close to catching one. But the pure joy of exploring and running on a beach is something that brings a smile to every doggy parent out there.
Barks & Birds is a study to figure out the technique and subtle variations in hues and values needed for a larger composition. I’ve seen photographs of dogs on the beach in silhouette, but I think a painting lends more atmosphere to the scene than most photographs I’ve seen. I made some basic mistakes with this study, having painted the silhouettes first, but I wanted to get the darks mixed properly and take a crack at the shapes, especially the dog, who I like to call Mr Happy Pants.
The study also allowed me to mix a number of grays to capture that end-of-day post sunset atmosphere. I gambled with the underpainting, using a very saturated orange, but I love how it turned out… a happy accident indeed. I initially thought it would provide some nice highlights around the silhouettes, but as it turns out it nailed the sunset color behind the clouds.
Lastly, the waves. I didn’t really care about this detail as part of this study, but probably because I kept my technique very loose (i.e. didn’t care how it looked) and fast, they turned out really well. I concentrated on the mix of greenish-blue, which will show better in a larger, more finished composition, but I’ll be keeping it very loose when I do the waves next time. Might need a bottle of wine for that part.
Thanks for reading!
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Art Bern 