For his fifth acrylic exercise, which was set in the May issue of The Artist, Paul Talbot-Greaves set a challenge to loosen up an image of a shoreline.

From the variety of paintings sent in by readers (all of which can be seen here), Paul selected the one below by Linda Bradshaw for critique saying: 'Well I’m really touched that so many people are participating in the acrylic challenge series and this month has seen another high standard of work. Well done and my appreciation extends to everyone who has submitted their work or read and absorbed the information in some way.'

Paul's Appraisal

A great feel to this Linda and I’m really impressed that you shifted the focus from the building and onto the pebbles. I think the colours, loose shapes and spatter work really well here. The painting is quite high key but the subject matter carries it off. You didn’t say whether you refrained from toning colours deliberately but I’d say it’s always a good idea to have some ‘grey shades’ here and there at least. You can use a little ivory black or a neutral tint with your colour for this. This brings me onto your building. Leaving it as a simple flat shape is fine however you have painted this in bright colour, which makes it comes forward in the painting. Being bright but devoid of detail and features it looks a little unfinished. Try to involve it more with your distance by using some sky colour in there, maybe losing the shape in places, so that it becomes distant and vague. Take a look at Barry Baxter’s painting (the one next to yours). He’s involved his sky colour with his buildings and they really sit back in the distance.

Happy painting!

Paul

Take a look at Paul's final exercise of the series in the June issue of The Artist, in which he challenges you to paint from a photograph of Fingal's Cave, following the advice offered in his demonstration.