Surfside: Step 1
Since the scene to be depicted was an Eastcoast shoreline, and I live in the midwest, I relied on photographic reference that I have taken over the years when traveling.
Here is the composite Photo developed in Photoshop.

This scene was developed through the integration of the following reference material:
A photo of my model here in Indiana + gulls photographed from a boat off of North Carolina. I added to this a black and white photo of a sailboat from a travel book.



The Shoreline was also from my in-stock photo reference material, as was the photograph of the waves.

All these elements were scanned, cropped, isolated, and integrated into several compositions before settling on the arrangement above. This computer generated photo montage was then used as the reference for my composition, while the individual photo sources were viewed for the details, when needed.

