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« Surfside: Step 9
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Surfside: Step 10

As I concluded my evening of painting one night, I was trying to decide exactly how I would paint the light on the ocean. To give me a better sense of the areas of color and value I decided to throw on a simple wash of thin paint down to the bottom of the painting. Knowing that this would be dry when I returned, I knew that I could paint over it as I pleased.

After studying several photos I had of ocean waves at various stages of sunset and sunrise, I painted the darkest parts of the water lighter on the right side of the painting nearest the sun. I reduced the value contrast of the foam in the middle and background by adding subdued purples and blues so that it would not distract from the figure, and I played up the warmth of the foreground shallow water and wet sand.

As I painted the water, I realized that I had the waves rising too high on the land at the left so that my horizon lines on either side of the figure did not align properly. At the same time I had been thinking that the rocky shoreline needed more emphasis. The solution to both problems was to paint more rocks below the land mass, doubling the height of the rocky cliff.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, September 30th, 2004 at 7:02 pm and is filed under Surfside. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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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."