The Sea

I painted two of these today, not that I was overly motivated in fact I started out the day with no real idea as to what to paint.

I have a commissioned piece I want to start but I have to cut the paper from my large roll and that means asking my husband for help and clearing everything off my painting table. So I decided I would paint my daily painting and get it out of the way before getting out the big roll of paper which will take over my space.

Lately I have been painting snow scenes and I thought of painting another one but wasn't overly thrilled with that. I decided to clean up my painting area. This sometimes helps... getting organized makes painting easier once you have decided what to paint.


I swept, then I took out the trash... cleaned up my table by throwing away the used Kleenex & wet towels, also put away stray palette knives and pin knives, cleaned my brushes, got my water buckets filled, squeezed out fresh paint ( don't ask me why but this always gives me a bit of a trill) into my palette and looked down at the white paper with a "what now?"

This sometimes happens to all artists, especially if you have a deadline to paint a painting every single day. I decided to look thru some books. Hoping for some inspiration.

I was looking thru a book a pal of mine lent me about oceans and beautiful beaches all over the world and I realized I love the way water look...s not beaches but the actual water itself, its reflective qualities, color, shape, movement, it all intrigues me.
The first surface that I thought of to use was clay board because water on clay board is very slippery and no matter what you do it looks wet.
After doing one wave I did another using alcohol for the white. Alcohol when spritz on (or dropped in) pushes water away from the surface exposing the surface of the paper or in this case the clay board. It has a very natural appearance and is usually very circular in shape. I used it for the foam. It dries very fast and leaves the white area of your paper for you to reintroduce more color or just to leave as is.