I know what it’s like to flick through your photos looking for inspiration but never finding something that sparks you. 

Richard Robinson Smugglers Bay, oil on canvas, 12 x 12" (30 x 30 cm)

 

It’s a frustrating waste of time! You can spend hours online looking for the perfect shot too, but the reality is, with a little knowledge of light and form, you can actually turn a pretty average photo into a great painting. All it takes is a little extra thinking and planning. The main ingredient is the light. I’ve begun to use an iPad to digitally design my paintings in a painting app called Procreate. 

Reference Photo: Smugglers Bay, New Zealand.

 

Smugglers Bay iPad sketch. 

 

Once you get the hang of it, it’s a hugely efficient way to create the plan for a studio painting, getting most of the problems solved before you uncap your paints.

Student Critiques

Rock at the sea, oil on canvas, 12 x 12" (30 x 30 cm) 

Elena Sokolova

Good work Elena–nothing to improve upon there.

Smugglers Bay

Anne-Dore Leisering

Thanks Anne-Dore, nice work. Great color and good variety of hard and soft edges. Just two suggestions for you. The first is possibly a problem of the camera angle that you took the photo of your painting on. The lines of white foam in front of the rock need to be sloped very slightly down to the right. Currently they are horizontal, giving the impression that the whole ocean is tilting a little to the left. Secondly the seagull, although nicely done, is about three times too small for its position in the foreground. Easy to get that wrong.

Smugglers Bay

Barbara Magor

Nice one, Barabara. You really cut loose with that palette knife, eh!? Great to see all that interesting texture. I do feel that it spoils the smooth reflective surface of the wet sand and that if you made that smooth there would be a beautiful contrast between the rough and the smooth.

Smugglers Bay, acrylic

Evelyn Tuhi-Herewini

Good job Evelyn. Good color and drawing. It’s tricky getting those soft edges with acrylic. Knowing that going in, it pays to plan those blends ahead of time, particularly in the wet reflective sand. It means pre-mixing larger piles of paint so that you can paint it all really quickly, avoiding hard edges.

Smugglers Bay, acrylic

Claudia Morgan

Ooh that’s some beautiful crisp brushwork there in the rocks! Nice. Great color variations there too–it’s all too easy to keep it all the same color in the darks or the lights, but you’ve conquered that particular pitfall well. A little softer blending in the rock’s reflection would stop that from jumping out at us and a touch more continuation of the blue hill and and green sky background behind the tree trunk would help make more sense of that top left corner. Otherwise, all good.

Smuggler’s Bay

Jim Neilson

Great color and bold brushwork on a large canvas Jim. Nicely done! In your next painting I challenge you to avoid blending out your brushwork so much. It’s mostly noticeable here in the rocks because they have an obvious blocky structure that needs to be painted as such. Looks great on the wall!

Smugglers Bay, acrylic on canvas, 10 x 10" (25 x 25 cm)

Karen Woodhouse

Really nicely done, Karen. Love the way you’ve rounded some of the rocks going from light to dark, contrasted with other edges that you’ve made sharp. The waves and the beach look great too. Just haven’t quite achieved the hazy light effect from the top left, simply because you didn’t add enough white and orange into those mixtures there so they turned out a little too dark to convey light. You could glaze that in now that it’s dry if you wanted to. Check out my video on glazing with acrylics: www.mypaintingclub.com/blog/post/109-glazing-with-acrylics.

Smugglers Bay

Jose Felix

Some really nice work in here, Jose. Particularly nice colors with a warm feel to the whole thing. The main rock and the waves look great. The section that the tree grows upon could be a little darker. Beautiful sky with billowing clouds. Great stuff!

Smugglers Bay, acrylic

Eric Hillmer

Great to see the big improvement from the initial digital sketch to this painting, Eric. I’m seeing strong rocky forms, bold brushwork and attention to detail here. I’d like to see some more variety in the color families in the darks, not in value, but in hue. For instance in the darks in the rocks you could have introduced some cooler grays the same value (darkness) as the other darks. Then you could have added darker accents in the cracks and fissures. Also, the reflection of the sky in the wet sand should be lighter the closer it gets to the rock.

Smugglers Bay

Nancy Newton

Hi Nancy, nice work. Good color, drawing and brushwork. Tree looks a little odd stuck onto a rock of lighter value; the rock there should be the same value as the trunk. Also be mindful of those little white spots of canvas showing through. Looks like it might be the result of a canvas that’s a little too absorbent. A coat of gesso should fix that for the next painting, or simply be more aware of it and use more paint.

painting in oil, 12 x 12" (30 x 30 cm)

Scott Dyer

Hi Scott, strong painting! For some reason this strongly reminds me of Goya’s “The Third of May 1808”. I guess it’s a combination of your brushwork, the spotlight effect and the colors and the powerful angles. Very nice. I’d just like to see a few dark accents in the rocks on the left and a few bits of flotsam on the beach for more interest.

Get the full video lesson here: www.mypaintingclub.com/lessons/224-smugglers-bay