Although I am painting demonstrations for my workshops now, what I would call "personal painting time" has been put on the back burner for now. But I wanted to share with you the steps in my latest natural divider diptych. This is a view of the trail along Raccoon Beach here on Campobello Island. It's one of my favorite view spots, where you can see Herring Cove Beach arcing off to the right, and then the trail ahead on the left side.
The painting presented a few more challenges than previous works in this series. Most notably, the beach on the right is about 60 feet lower than the trail that the viewer is looking back on, and I had to get the effect right.
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| I started off with some high-chroma colors in the block-in. |
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| Then I made some major adjustments in value and color temperature. I added two figures on the beach for scale. This helps to push the beach below and back. |
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| In the final stages, I continued to put distance in the beach with cooler, greyer reds. I also took care to apply a little more detail and warm color to the edge of the bluff in the right corner to indicate that it is much closer than the distant beach. |
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| "The High Route" (final) 12x24, oil |
