Pa Bay Great Barrier Island

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Comment by Richard Robinson on December 23, 2011 at 13:47

Hi Barbara, thanks for the painting. Here are some thoughts:

Design

I like the design which is quite close to my own studio painting design except that with mine I was careful to add colour interest into all that gray foreground - something that you haven’t managed to do which makes the whole foreground look a bit like a desolate moonscape. So the grayscale design itself is good and strong but it would work better with more colour interest in the foreground.

Colour

That foreground gray would look better with more variation thrown in - like a good salad, lots of colour is yummy. You’ve tentatively added some warms in there but before you go adding colour in there willy nilly you need to understand where and why the colour variations occur. In my own painting I was concentrating on warm planes and cool planes. Warm planes occur where the warm sunlight hits them directly. Darker warm planes occur where they are tilted towards sunlit areas of rock or sand which are a reflecting their own warm colours into the shadows. Cool dark planes occur where they are turned to the sky or away from the sun, reflecting the blue of the sky. The tree could do with some light thrown on it and the hill behind could have been pushed further back in space by lightening and adding gray/blue to help separate the tree from the background. 

Brushwork

You’ve used a variety of large and small brushes which is good to see and you’ve created some interesting texture in the rocks. The water seems to be a little overworked as does the sky and furthest hill, removing most evidence of brushstrokes which takes a bit of the interest out of it. Some waves or wind lines in the water would have helped to add interest there and softening the edges of your distant hill and clouds would have helped push them even further back into space.

Realism

Except for the few things I’ve mentioned the realism is pretty good in this piece. The dappled light over the rocks is such a complex subject you’ve done well to try to paint that at all whereas some people avoided it altogether. You haven’t quite managed to convey the effect of a tree casting a shadow - the shadows need to be linked together the same way a tree is linked together. Good try though, and hey, I didn’t manage it even in my studio painting either which I spent a week on. The cast shadow on the water is a bit conspicuous too - it should be bluer and the shape larger, because it looks like it’s not quite sure if it should be there, and the white foam isn’t helping either because it should be a blue grey in the shadow there. Those are pretty minor things though. Good work.