The Wave is Cold!

This is for Calypso Moon Artist November 2010 challenge. It's oil on 10x12 canvas board.

This is the first time I'm doing a challenge for this website. The challenge was to capture a moment in time. When saw the challenge, I thought I had to do it, since I had this picture for a couple of years and I always wanted to paint it.

This was taken on Martha's Vineyard, MA a couple of years ago. The kids were playing at the beach, and the north Atlantic water was not exactly the warmest. A wave came in, and the boys were screaming cold and running out of the water.

To paint this, I first used an acrylic ground of a greenish mix yellow orchre and ultramarine blue for the ocean and wave, and yellow orchre for the boys. Then for oil paint I used cerulean, carribean blue, radiant turquiose, terre verde, yellow orchre, radiant violet, and ultramarine blue. For the kids I used lots of naples yellow, yellow orchre, cadmium orange and red, madder, ultramarine violet, ultramarine blue, terre verde, some lemon yellow. Finally I used a fan brush to put in the foreground crashing waves and flying water.

Orange Pudding

This is for Nov 2010 Rookie Painter challenge. It's oil on 6x8 canvas panel.

This month's challenge is an orange colored pudding. (ref photo) To be honest, I've had chocolate pudding before, I've had orange jello before, but I've never had orange pudding. So I'm not sure what it tastes like. From the look of the picture, it looks as if this may taste very sweet, almost like an orange marmalade.

I thought about doing this painting using landscape orientation, but then the bowl would be too small. So I kept the vertical feel of his painting, and made the spoon go out of canvas. I started by putting an acrylic ground of purplish black. The oil palette I used included cadmium yellow pale, cadmium orange, cadmium red, alizarin, burnt sienna, ultramarine violet, ultramarine blue, Payne's Grey and white.

Sugarloaf Mountain - Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

This is for Virtual Paintout November 2010 challenge, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It's oil on 10x12 canvas board.

This is the Sugarloaf Mountain (Pão de Açúcar) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. What attracted me to this scene was the unique shape of the Sugarloaf Mountain, the ocean, the mountains that go farther and farther back in the ocean, the bright sky and people along the path by the ocean.

However, what I was debating was the composition, as it could be too heavy on the right hand side with the mountains. So I made the foreground path more diagonal so to lead the eyes from the right to the left. (This type of arrangement can be seen in some of my prior paintings, like the challenges for Hawaii and Norway.) I put in the wispy clouds also trying to balance out the heavy right hand side. To add in a little more interest, I added in some pure color for the man's backpack and his cap. It also seems like he might be carrying a water bottle in the reference picture, so I added that in as well. (ref photo)

For underpainting, I used a thinned out ultramarine violet oil painting, did a monochromatic value study, since I thought many color in this painting had purple in it, like the sky, mountain and the ocean. The palette included cobalt blue, ultramarine violet, ceruleum, raw and burnt umber, ultramarine blue, madder, sap green, cadmium yellow, Portland grey, white and a tiny touch of vermilion.