Step by step, an acrylic painting in progress

Painting on board my "floating studio" in Greece

The first four stages of the painting

This painting is 97 cm x 33cm. The step by step photographs were just taken with an iphone in varying light conditions, the quality is not so good but gives you an idea of the work involved.

The beach was bathed in a glowing yellow light just before the sun went down so I started by grounding the white canvas with a flat layer of yellow ochre. Then I added transparent washes of yellow, green, blue and white for the sea.  After that had dried I broke up the surface with short brush strokes of the same colours. The stones at the edge of the sea with their shadows and highlights were added and  blues and greens of the wet sand were worked into the surface. For this I used brushes of varying size and while the colour was still wet I lifted the paint again with a colour shaper. This technique reveals the underlying colour in stripes and dots to render the surface of the beach.

The last four stages of the painting "Evening n the beach"

I added darker shadows between the ripples and small waves and varied the direction slightly to give the impression that the water is flowing onto a slanting beach.

Using brushes and fan-brushes to seamlessly blend the colours I then used toothbrushes to flick tiny spots of colour for the spray and the sand. a colour shaper is great  to move the wet paint into flowing lines, and a natural, wet sponge to lift the colour and merge into diffuse patterns. Lastly I used a ruling pen to draw the light yellow lines across the wet sand.

I decided the painting needed something more in the foreground so I placed a few imagined stones at the bottom, taking care to use the same light and shadow as the existing group of stones in the centre of the painting.

The white foam spray looked a little artificial at first so it took some more work to add shadows between and under the tops of light spray.