Painting one- Croney's Beach

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

 I am attaching a watercolor I did this morning in my studio(no sun, threatening rain-welcome to New England).  It is a copy of a painting by Claude Croney an artist I greatly admire.  Croney was a New England painter who died several years ago after a long, successful career as painter, teacher and author.  I especially like his watercolors which have great strength and tonality.  He actually taught the three-value system that I use in teaching my watercolor students.  This particular painting depicts a beach scene and although I used Mr. Croney's composition, I modified the approach somewhat because I am working on perfecting the tonal layering method of watercolor.  So here was my approach:  Underpainting from top to bottom using graded washes of ultramarine blue, to raw sienna back to ultramarine back to the sienna.  While wet I wiped out continuous areas of white for flow/let dry.  When dry I worked from back to front laying in correct tones and colors.  I had to go back to glaze the distant mountain because it dried with too much texture to carry illusion of distance.  I had to work hard on establishing focal point(can you tell where it is)  ? and had to determine sun direction to create light and dark sides of rocks.  I made the rocks go out of the picture to make open style composition which I like and linked dark passage from one end to the other.   If I had to do it again (which I guess I do) I would pay more attention to the tone of the sky in initial wash.  From now on I will make sure that my initial underpainting will include a sky that is as accurate as possible in terms of color and value.  Remember watercolor dries lighter that applied so go a little darker than you think it looks.  Overall I am happy with the result and look forward to doing my own beach scene plein air when the weather gets better.

Attached Files   

Croney's Beach.jpg

BobbyFarrell

Jun 30, 2009

688 KB