Learning to Paint – Croyde Bay

I’ve been away near Croyde for the weekend with a big group of friends. In between beers I had a go at trying to paint the landscape. This is a view towards the bayside painted on the beach. It was a blowy day and the picture, paints and other stuff kept flying around. It was almost impossible to mix colours on the plastic plate I’d brought with me (yup that kept flying away too), and I think I need to buy some….grassier greens.

There’s a lot I don’t like about this picture though some of the folks I was away with were very encouraging about it. I found it very difficult to capture something so….big, I’m hoping things will improve as I gain confidence.

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Author: Doug Shaw

Artist and Consultant. Embracing uncertainty, sketching myself into existence. Helping people do things differently, through an artistic lens.

0 thoughts on “Learning to Paint – Croyde Bay”

  1. Your painting is coming along really nicely. Scale and perspective on large scenes are always difficult. This one has worked really well. There’s a real sense of distance going up over the hills.On the question of the greens – try mixing colours to get what you want. When you use pure colour, the nuances we get in nature are very difficult to get. Try http://onehundredwashes.blogspot.com/ if you want to learn more about colour. And http://maggielathamart.blogspot.com is writing a great series on colour at the moment.

  2. *blush* thanks Vandy. I’m keen to start playing around with mixing more – it was windy when I painted this and stuff kept blowing away. Here’s a link to a picture Rob Harrison took of me just getting ready to paint

    http://twitpic.com/6ffvry

    I was stunned when someone spotted this pic on Facebook earlier today and asked "is this Croyde?" Clearly I managed to capture something about the place. I’ll check out the blogs your recommended and thanks for coming by.

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