Monday 27 December 2021

Winters Seascapes


Winters Zeegezicht 1
oil on canvas - 25 x 100 cm
painted on location - Tues 21 Dec. 2021

SOLD

Having been absent from on location painting for just over two months I finally decided to pack my gear and force myself to head out of the studio, to do some on location painting.  Went to my favorite destination,  Zuiderstrand, the beach of the city I live in.  A nice comfortable half hour walk through the dunes of the nature reserve Westduinpark, brings me to the beach.  Fortunately for me the weather, even though it was extremely cold,  was to my favor, sunny and most importantly no wind to speak about.  The light this time of the year remains pleasant for us plein air painters for the most of the day as the Sun doesn't reach it's high zenith as it would in the summer.  From on high in the dunes I observed that the gentle waves where rhythmically  caressing the shoreline.  But what really got my attention was the intensity of warm white tones of the rolling waves, as the angle of the sunlight on them was perfect.   A point I would like to make, that you might find interesting, is that I was faced with the problem, how am I going to paint the color intensity of the water and waves on my canvas. Thus the first thing I did was cover the whole surface of the canvas with the darkest color I could create, a mixture of Indigo Blue and dark red did the job. After approximately 2.5 hrs. what you see above was the result of my creative efforts. 


                                                                                

             

Winters Zeegezicht 2
oil on canvas - 23 x 100 cm
painted on location -  26 Nov. 2019
reworked in the studio -  15 Dec. 2021

€ 745 

Here you have an example of a painting I make retouches to in the studio. at the bottom of this commentary you can see the original version made on location just over two years ago. What I loved most about this view of the Sea was the color of the water which was influenced by the mist in the atmosphere. Here you are looking in a Northly direction from Zuiderstrand, The Hague, to the better known beach resort, Scheveningen, (you can barely make out the tower and ferris wheel of the Pier on the right side of the horizon). The greatest alteration I made was to get rid of 95% of the shoreline, by painting in more of that soft turquoise salty water. Have a look for yourself to see more changes.