Beach Painting Time Again

It's nice to have enough daylight after work to go paint....... and today I decided it is time to start Beach Painting Season.

Of course it is still quite cold and gets colder as the sun sets, but that's fine by me!

I did have a dog friend come up and want me to throw his frisbee, and I was happy to oblige.

Today I decided to focus on the sky mostly, because there were some nice silver-lined clouds.

I am critical of them even though the values work... i don't know, maybe I will never be happy with my clouds and water.....

My new Vasaris are like glowy butter and are proving extremely useful for the sky, especially getting it down quickly.  This painting is glowier in person than I could get in the photos; cameras can only do so much but that is true of all paintings.

Next week my goal is to get a second painting in but during the actual sunset colors.  I didn't do it tonight because it was getting a bit cold and also I wasn't up for it mentally... I had the overnight on the hotline last night and I'm running on 2 hours of sleep.

Beach 94th, Far Rockaway 8x10 oil

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I am very grateful to have access to so many different kinds of places within an hour of home.

Maybe an hour sounds like a lot of travel time, but for NYC it really isn't.

Or I am just used to it. It's an easy trip for me, just a long bus ride, no transfers, and a short walk home.

Here, if you have a commute one hour or less it is considered good.

I need to work on my water more.

Clouds and water.

Maybe I need to do some quick practice paintings at home.

Quick gestures, like 20 minutes.

For some reason when I attempt water from a photo I can't do it very well, I get too fussy and it just feels so different than being out there working from life. But I think some practice drills at home with the water not moving constantly might be helpful.

Here are a few beach photos from tonight's sunset: