Work In Progress: Ruby Beach, Update 2

Work in Progress: Ruby Beach, Olympic National Park, Update 2

            Progress is slow on this project. It’s not because I’m having problems with it, though. It’s because spring is here, and the plants (and weeds) in my garden are beginning to grow. That means my painting projects will have to share time with my garden work (and, of course, home projects). I love my garden, and I love horticulture. I did it for a living for thirty some years. My wife and I have invested a lot of time and money creating the gardens. We have a great number of shrubs and perennials that need tending to. Trimming, edging, weeding, planting, fertilizing, watering. In addition, I’m still converting an attached room on the back of the house to a studio. That’s coming along nicely and I’m excited about it.

So, as you can see, my time will be divided up among a number of tasks. And, I didn’t mention, I’m doing a graphite drawing on the side that needs to be completed in less than a week. That’s coming along nicely, also.

As always, my first step in the process of creating a painting is developing a composition. I try to plan out my paintings so I don’t have to contend with surprises. That’s not to say that I don’t like some spontaneity in my work – I do, – but the basic plan for me has to be laid out. Once I get into the painting, I can make changes. But, I have to have a somewhat clear path to the goal. I don’t like to leave too much to chance.

The photos I presented during the last session were closeups of another, farther view. I noticed on that original photo a grouping of people walking on the beach, backlit by early morning mist, and felt that group of people would make an interesting focal point for the landscape scene. The eyes are drawn to people, even though they are small and unidentifiable.

From that photo I worked up some thumbnail sketches in gradations of gray to get a feel for the arrangement of tone and masses. The first sketch was pretty much a copy of the cropped photo. I liked the idea of the darker masses surrounding the lighter area of people. The dark mass of the rock in the lower left seemed out of place and was distracting, so I removed it. That helped but the composition seemed unbalanced. All of the masses are on one side. 

In the next sketch I increased the size of the rock mass on the right. That seemed to help but it still seemed a bit unbalanced, with the weight of dark masses still on the left. And, the masses were all too similar in size. It made the composition a little static. Another problem was that the focus area was more in the middle of the picture. That wasn’t good. I had to move that focus area.

My third composition was better. I moved everything down some and a little to the left. That helped. I also increased the size of the rock mass on the right much more to better balance the dark masses on the left. It felt better. One reason I moved the masses down was to better divide the horizontal plane into thirds. Another reason was to get more of the sky in. The cloud formation was interesting and I wanted to keep as much of it as I could.

The fourth composition is similar to the third but is shifted even more, placing the group of people close to the intersection of lines dividing the picture into thirds. To further point in the direction of the people on the beach I emphasized the dark line of the hill side on the left so as to point to the people. I did the same on the right by making the sloping side of the rock formation curve down and toward the people.

Another change I made in this fourth composition was to explore the idea of a beach at the bottom, rather than rolling waves. This way I could make the waves curve in the direction of the people. I was originally drawn to the action of the waves rolling in off the sea, so I’m not sure I want to eliminate that.

The fifth composition was a vertical format. This keeps the beach goers down on the lower left but gives me more sky. I’ve kept the beach in the lower left corner. This is an interesting view also and worth exploring.

            I’ve come up with five compositions and made some improvements along the way. I’ll be looking at these and thinking about other possibilities. There may be other arrangements that look good. No reason to rush at this point. I’ll have to make a decision on whether to keep the beach in or not, how much of the sky to show, and the format, vertical or horizontal.