Process of a painting

From chaos to order - sort of

And we can figure it out. Our brains are capable of filling in an amazing number of omissions and making sense of a scene.

I miss that suggestive looseness and luminosity that watercolour does so well and have worked for years to catch a sense of this in my oils. This crowded beach scene comes close for me.

Starting from chaos and focusing on colour and a sense of sunlight and glare, I pulled it into enough focus for viewers to identify the subject, but not so much that it became a painting about individual figures. In my mind, they were just vehicles for light.

I started by covering the white surface, establishing the overall colour relationships with a focus on purple/yellow complements. I wanted the figures to feel warm despite the fact that they were backlit, so I a lot of raw sienna into their bodies to convey all the bouncing light of a hot, sunny day.

None of the figures are defined but I knew where I want them to be. Mostly.

From this point, I very slowly pulled people into greater focus.

I started by adding information to the focal figures and then moved around the image, putting in big planes of light, and dark bathing suits and heads.

A bit more detail, particularly in the figure on the left, and more hits of light.

It was tempting to add lots of these because I love painting them and seeing how a figure pops when they get light on their shoulders or knees, but I showed amazing restraint:)

I put the piece into one of my gorgeous studio frames to see how far along the piece really was. It showed me that the bent legs of the reclining figure were a mistake. That lower right quadrant felt weak and had too many similar long, thin strokes of light.

The finished painting:

I decided to add a figure where the legs were. The man’s back acts with the woman on the left to frame the view of the focal figures and the reclining man doesn’t seem to miss his legs at all.

This has many favourite moments for me, but one of the best is the obscuring of the woman on the left. If you compare her torso to the previous image, you can see that I had courage and scuffed light flesh colour over her bikini, making it less crisp and eye catching. That mark asks the observer to mentally complete the bikini and to understand that I was more interested in the light on the torso than in the swimsuit particulars.

This quickly found a home with a painter friend, something that I consider to be an honour. When a visually aware person buys my work, I know I’ve done well.

Happy painting!