Normandy Coast

There’s a lot of issues that need sorting out here Neil, but they can be sorted out as you have a reasonably good base layer laid down to work over. You seem to be applying the oil paint as you would a watercolour! I’ll have a closer look later on this morning when I have more time. I’m interested in what make of board that is… it has a very ‘mechanical’ surface to it, this isn’t good, I would have applied a coat of gesso first, followed by a luminous colour wash.

Yes, most come with a coat of gesso, but I would apply another decent coat to these next time. I can’t go through everything but I’ll pick out a few basic tips that may help. You might find my numerous WIP features useful, they’re on this site under menu>tips & techniques> oils>alan bickley  Composition wise it’s excellent, and it’s good to use thinned down paint at the first stage. Leave your lightest sky areas translucent but ‘body up’ areas of the work that you want to give an appearance of solidity, those cloud structures in particular. Steer clear of using black out of the tube. Be aware of aerial perspective in cloud formations, they get smaller and lighter as they near the horizon. The foreground isn’t too dark, all it needs is more body paint, particularly in the foreground. The lightest flash of colour would be the strip of light on the horizon - use a mix of titanium white with a touch a yellow ochre and drag a dryish flat hog brush of this mix across this strip - you could also use a similar tone of this colour on the lightest areas if you so wanted - particularly useful to get rid of those stripes on the canvas. That’s enough for now, let’s see how you get on. A good canvas board to paint on is Jackson’s Bell Arti canvas board, I use nothing else!

I’m not all that familiar with water miscible oils, but I know that they don’t have the vibrancy and strength of traditional oils. However, carry on and let’s see your next stage, build your layers up thinly at first.

What's the medium you're using with these?  Fat over lean isn't really a huge problem if you're painting in a build-up from thinnish paint to thicker, starting and finishing in a matter of days to a week.  It is important if you're using the traditional layering approach - very thin paint; let it dry; add another, thicker layer; let that dry; glaze with transparent colours or scumbles - a process that can take weeks to finish (that's not a criticism, it's quite a satisfying way of working).  If working on a rigid surface, however - there are many that are much smoother than the one you're using - fat over lean really isn't much of an issue.   On the other hand, if you're using your first coats let down with a variant of Liquin, and then adding colour on top, problems are likely to ensue.  Best advice is to add the very minimum of medium (that sounds wrong, doesn't it.....?) in the early layers, and no solvent thereafter.   Water miscible oils - well; I don't like them; Alan doesn't use them; a friend of mine does use them and gets very satisfactory results - but he's a cleverer painter than I am!  I would recommend "real" oils. Aside from all of which - Alan is (as usual) spot on in his comments: that's a good composition, your brush-work is pleasing, you have quite a pronounced surface texture there (what brand of canvas board?  Are you finding the paint spreads easily, or are you having to fight it?), and a more full-bodied paint application will help liven it up. There was by the way a painter named Victor Voysey - whom I met once (I also met his son: he sold double-glazing - the artistic gene had not been inherited.....) - who painted extremely thinly in oil, at least at one stage in his career; he normally got away with it, other than in a painting of his in which a seagull featured: the bird really needed a bit of modelling, given he'd placed it somewhat prominently in the middle of the road, and the artist himself confessed that it looked a lot more like a turkey, escaped from a flock somewhere, than a gull.  Here's the snag with painting thinly, or one of them - if you just have to paint an object of any kind more thickly, it does tend to stick out like an inflamed digit: better perhaps to aim for a reasonably even surface, since even highly skilled draughtsmen can make mistakes: as with watercolour, they can be hard to correct without ruining the overall impression.  Nothing wrong with painting thinly, but it's actually quite difficult - and I'm with Alan here: your chances of success with it would be enhanced if using a higher quality paint, and on a smoother texture. 

PS - the next day .....  if you can keep that simplicity you've achieved, i.e. the absence of fussiness in the treatment of the sea, for instance, you should get a really good painting out of this.   Just enhance the colour, apply thicker paint selectively and thoughtfully. (Oh, it's so easy to give advice when it's not your painting!) 

The trees are fine, they’re acting as a stop to hold the focus in the composition. The path does need looking at, even taking out in fact! It just doesn’t work! The silhouette ground in your small sketch has more impact. The sky as I said previously is really good, it just needs beefing up with some body paint. Also the other suggestions that Robert and myself have made such as highlights and so on. You’ve got a good ground or base to work over, you could finish this in an hour or so.

The path - I don't really see a path, just a sweep of your brush in the penultimate image; and I'd keep it like that.  It's a good shape, but it doesn't need to be detailed into anything more.  

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