Cat. No. 1253 Isola del Tino, Cinque Terre, Italy – 17.3cm x 16.8cm – Oil on Linen
I painted this immediately after a boat trip in the Gulf of Poets in Liguria, Italy. This is a little island just south of the Cinque Terre area. The composition was deliberately simple, since my focus was to capture the brilliant shimmering cool colors in the water, contrasting with the brilliant sunshine on the cliffs. The warm late summer sky formed a neutral warm pink gray for the composition.
Watch this short video to see how I created this composition:
I took a lot of artistic license in this piece, almost bordering on the abstract but still wanting to retain the feeling and atmosphere of the day. You can see the actual scene in this photograph.
The painting has the colors I saw in the water when we drove the boat close to the cliffs and went for a swim. Lovely warm water!
why did you paint the sky in a darker value than what appears in the photo? it feels like it is very close to the value of the trees at the top of the island in your painting but in the photo the sky and trees are at opposite ends of the value scale.
Good question. This was applying artistic license to create a greater contrast of value between the sky and the rocks of the cliffs. The subject of the painting is the interesting warm colors in the clifs, rather than the sky. When painting, you express your feelings about the subject, and that sometimes means you have to exaggerate reality in order to better express those feelings. I hope this answers your question.
This is what James McNeil Whistler meant when he said: “To say to the painter that Nature is to be taken as she is, is to say to the player that he may sit on the piano.
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I’m curious to the brush you are using since you have thick juicy beautiful paint. Is it a soft bristle one?
Thanks for your emails.
I use both filbert and long bristle brushes. The bushes are normal stiffness and not particularly soft. Hope that helps.
Barry
How do you decide on the colors you will use, such as lavender pink sky, etc..
It is a combination of using the principles of nature, such as the changes you see in colors due to atmospheric perspective, capturing color relationships in the actual scene accurately, and making certain changes to those colors in order to improve the color harmony and create an interesting abstract design. The color you start with in one area determines all the other colors because of these factors. But actually you can start with almost any color. It is the color relationships that matter, not so much the colors themselves.
It seems you missed to paint the little mountains in the further way, as well the clouds in the sky, the green grass with small stone near the front right conner before the little island. If you paint completly , it will be more a perspective and fantastice piece.
Katherine, this painting is very small (a few inches square). If you add too much detail it will lose its strength. This is the reason why I kept it simple.
However your suggestions are good ones to consider when scaling this painting up into a larger version which I plan to do someday. Thanks for your comments!