Tuesday, June 05, 2007

Cliffs at Dunbar, a plein air sketch

Cliffs at Dunbar, a plein air sketch

Managed to get down the coast at the weekend again (the sun is being very kind). Found a great spot on the beach at John Muir country park near Dunbar, a small fishing town on the East Lothian coatline.

Really enjoyed this one. Was using Acrylic again for PA this time I was armed with some retarding medium and a water spray gun to stop it drying out too fast. This worked much better than the PA I did at Newhailles house (previous post) as I felt much more in control.

A cool thing that happened was the breeze kept blowing sand into my paint which really added to the painting!! A Scottish artist I really like must do this, as this is the effect he gets and I wasn't sure what he was doing. His name is Davy Brown, if you want to google.



Finished Sketch




Cliffs at Dunbar

12x8 inches
Acrylic on board
(~1 to 1 hour 30)

Cheers
Ryan

2 comments:

Ron Guthrie said...

Hi Ryan,
Nice work on this one. Has a very tonal look due to the medium values of the painting. Funny you mentioned the sand. There is an Art/Craft store near here called Michaels. They sell some decent art products in case you run out of something. They carry a nice line of products for adding to your acrylic medium to add texture...one of them is acrylic medium with sand. You simply brush it on to your board, gesso and then paint.
I've seen paintings done with sand texture and seems to me if you just added playground sand, bought at hardware stores (or found on the beach) and added it to your gesso you would have the same finish.
Nice work Ryan....keep plugging away.

Ryan Evans said...

Yeah free sand is best!

I think though if adding it to finished work its best to ensure that its cleaned and thoroughly dry first. I live next to the beach so its ideal. There's a Scottish painter I like called Davy Brown who does this to great effect- worth a google!

Ryan