Gannet 3

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Coming along nicely - and since a clumsy painting of the sea can ruin a painting, you're going the right way: getting quite excited here!

Thanks for the encouragement Robert, it's much appreciated

I am enjoying this very much. I hope you don't spoil it!

Time to add the sea which I'm a bit worried about as it's all to easy to make it simply look like a solid mass rather than the moving living being it is. Being water it naturally reflects the colour of the sky above it but owing to various factors such as depth and rocks below the surface other colours show within it as well. Therefore I began by washing the sea area with clean water and starting from the bottom where the colour would be darkest I dropped in ultramarine blue and worked upward thinning the paint with water as I went adding green wet in wet to add a bit of variety. As I approached the horizon I left a narrow band of white where the sky and sea met. Towards the foreground I then added some darker blue again for variety. The next stage was to create an impression of waves. I didn't want to show these simple parallel to the horizon so angled them to suggest them coming in to the foot of the cliff the birds will be sitting on. I decided that it would be all to easy to swamp the area with waves so decided to only put a few rows in with a blue green colour and a white leading front edge to suggest the ones closest to the shore were starting to break. I felt this was fairly bland though so placed a rock stack towards the base of the picture for a bit of interest. This was simply ultramarine blue for the darker area and the same colour lightened with white for the highlights. I then decided that waves breaking around it could be added with a small brush laid on its side with just a touch of white lightly skimmed across the surface using a fairly dry brush technique. I then left it to dry and on coming back felt something was needed in the background to break up the join between sea and horizon so using a mix of ultramarine blue and white laid in the distant land mass that can be seen.