Water, Water Everywhere

"View from the Jetty" 9 x 12 Chalk Pastel on Paper
Click here to purchase

I took the photo that inspired this painting last year, on a cold day at the beach.  I didn't get around to painting it until this year, on an extremely hot day at home.

Looking around at the finished pieces and works in progress sitting around my kitchen, I realized that every one of them had a common element: water.  Even my landscapes have a bit of water in them.  I thought back to my high school days, when I first really tried to make paintings of my own.  I remembered that they usually had some water or waves in them too.

I don't live near water, but it's not too far to drive to the beach.  I'm also happy to paint swimming pools, ponds, and lakes.  I'm not sure what it is about water, but a painting feels much more comfortable to me if it has some in it. 

One thing I've learned about painting all these water scenes is the importance of shadow under the light.  Even the brightest reflection on water needs that shadowy element to give it depth.  I end up using a lot of tiny, horizontal darks to work that depth into the water I paint.

If there's something that appears over and over in your paintings, it probably has more to do with your artistic self than a moment's inspiration.  I can see a beautiful sky and feel inspired to paint it, but when I sit down to work, it's usually a water scene that gets me to commit to painting.  I love the challenge of capturing a reflection, or balancing the lights and darks, or making water shimmer with a range of values.  I'm always happy to sit by water, and watch its motion.   

Go through an artist's work, and see what common themes come out.  This tells you not just what the artist's strengths are, it also gives you a little insight into what moves that particular artist to sit down and create.  Even if you've never met that person, you know a little something about that artist by going through the work.  Much more meaningful than a Facebook profile, don't you think?

"Horseshoe Bay" 9 x 12
Chalk Pastel on Paper
Click here to view listing
Please stop by and visit my new website!  You'll find plenty of water in my Land and Seascapes Gallery, as well as my California Scenes.  I'm still adding a little artwork each day, and will hopefully have all my originals moved to that site in the next week or two.

I'll be running a shipping special through the summer to celebrate!




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Painting Cats

Image
"The Bookeeper" Click here to view auction After many years of painting cats, I've learned a few things.  Every time I start a new cat painting, it follows its own unique path, bringing challenges that I don't seem to face when I paint my more traditional material (landscapes, birds, floral and botanical pieces, etc.) For example, cats don't stay put for too long (unless they're asleep, and even then they'll often stretch and change positions when you're least expecting it).  To combat this challenge, I end up working mostly from photographs.  That means adjusting the proportions, since the camera angle causes some distortion depending on the position and location of the cat. "Eye Contact" Oil Pastel Not for Sale "Side Glance" Oil Pastel Available on Etsy  One of the reasons cats are enjoyable to paint is that they have strong facial expressions.  When I'm painting a cat, I get so focused on rendering the cat
Read more

Inspired by Light (Pastels on Canvas)

Image
"Morning Glow" 12 x 16 Chalk Pastel on Flat Canvas Email nicolehilsabeck@yahoo.com if interested in purchasing Been trying to get back into the daily painting routine, which for me either means a small painting a day, or a larger painting spread over two days.  It's a bit of a challenge with the growing belly and a very inquisitive firstborn, but I was lucky enough to get a little extra inspiration from an odd source: Sunday's eclipse. We have beautiful views of the canyon and hills behind us, and I watched the light change on this hill as the sunlight waned throughout the course of the eclipse.  I noted how the normally stunning lights and shadows on this hill were blunted by the general darkening (as opposed to the usual sunrise or sunset glow).  I thought I would be a little more appreciative of those lights and darks and try a painting of the trees and hills the next morning. I completed this painting in several steps, having struggled a little recentl
Read more

A Hot Mess of Water Lilies!

Image
"Balboa Water Lilies" 9 x 12 Chalk Pastel on Paper Click here to view large or purchase So, every time I take great photos to paint later it turns into a learning experience for me. We took a little day trip in September down to Balboa Park in San Diego, California.  There wasn't much left of the water lilies after some recent vandalism (a bunch of geniuses decided to have a water gun fight and ended up destroying the lilypond).  It was a strangely hot day for downtown San Diego-- part of a series of heat waves that dogged me throughout the last months of my pregnancy.  I was thrilled to get some pretty photos while down there, particularly of the lilypads and turtles. I love to paint water, but I forget how time consuming it can be.  There are lots of layers involved, and I ended up using fixative as I layered in the lights and darks in this piece.  I also didn't anticipate how difficult it is to depict those peaceful, floating lilypads.  After a couple of
Read more