Braye Bay

Apart from lacking a little strength of tone in places this is very good. You have good recession into the distance; a lovely sweep of bay; the jetty bringing the eye into the picture and a person to give scale. Very well thought out. Maybe turn the person round so they are going into the painting. All I can suggest is that you make the nearest beach darker , sort of sweeping in from each side with shadows or stones or even grasses so the eye gets pulled into the painting more. Don't be afraid of darks. Well done.

Thank you for your suggestions Diana, much appreciated.

I agree with Diana here, on all fronts - a few stronger darks and bolder colours in foreground would give you greater depth, and it does usually help to have figures looking and walking into, rather than out of, the picture. I too like the sweep of shapes in this, and by the way it looks slightly more interesting (not the right word, but it's getting late and is the best I can do!) in thumbnail size: this suggests to me that if it were just that bit more focussed and balanced in tone and, to some extent anyway, drawing, it would be a better painting. That's a particularly lovely foreground blue, by the way, and I like the way you've blended it into the colour of the beach.

I agree with diana and roberts comments also I would cut two inches off the bottom ,and add two inches to the sky ,,the horizon then would be lower,,some times a lower horizon goves a more pleasing view ,take your hand and place it across the bottom just to try .but over all it is a good painting ,reminds me a bit of marston quey

Thanks for your encouraging comments on my big pastel- sea shore -. Looking at the range of your work I think you might enjoy having a go at a larger work. I used the Fisher400 paper, which has a sort of very very fine sandpaper finish and you can put a water colour wash on first. I did that with my sea shore to work out the compostion and frankly to save a layer of pastel. It does eat up quite a bit of pastel to cover the larger size, but I enjoyed using the larger scale for a landscape. The nice thing about this type of paper is that you have a reasonable chance of changing your mind - at least once- without turning the pastel to mud. I did a bit of fixing here and there but not on the whole picture. I just fixed the parts i wanted to do more work on so the colours wouldnt get too muddly. i found it worked quite well compared to watercolour paper not , which is what i was using before. I have also tried the Golden pastel ground which you can apply to watercolour paper to give it more tooth. I quite like it as you can use the paper which you may have lying around. ie all shapes and sizes but i did prefer the Fisher paper, even if it is more expensive. Anyway, good luck with your pastels and i will look out for them in the gallery.

Thank you Angela for your very helpful advice and to Alan and Robert for yout contructive comments. I will keep going with pastels as I really enjoy using them.

This is a very good first attempt at pastels.......look forward to seeing more.