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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.

Surfside

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.

SurfsideSurfsideSurfside

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

Surfside, by Ron Sanders Surfside, by Ron Sanders
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.

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About Bryan Larsen ~

Bryan Larsen

"I was born on February 12, 1975, and have been drawing as long as I can remember. By the time I was in high school, I knew I wanted to be an artist, although at the time I didn't have a clear idea of how exactly I would use my talents to make a living.

"As I continued studying art, I began to suspect that fine visual art was dead. No one seemed interested in teaching students how to draw well, or paint well. More often than not, my own skills exceeded those of my instructors.

"The only field left that seemed to require good drawing, painting, and compositional skills was illustration, and therefore I began studying illustration at Utah State University in Logan, Utah. I became even more convinced that I had made the right decision in staying away from fine art as I endured course after course of required "drawing" and "painting" classes in which instructors required me to draw with "less focus", or use ridiculous materials such as shellac, glue, sand, salt, etc.

"My second year at Utah State, I met Damon Denys. In discussing Art with him I realized that there were other people who believed that technique and subject matter were indispensable components of any work of art. I then decided that I would work to develop my own painting skills with the purpose of creating artwork that I considered worthy of being called Fine Art.

"Since that time, I have studied on my own: Drawing from live models to learn the human form, studying proper painting techniques from any source I could find ample reason to trust, and developing a philosophy of Art based on reason, and life on earth.

"My goal is to portray the heroic and romantic in human nature and human achievement in a realistic style and a modern setting. I place particular emphasis on composition, technique, realistic detail, proper craftsmanship and consistency of style."