Just the Sound of the Ocean, pastel, 9 x 12

This was the last in our series of beach scenes in my Wed./Thurs. pastel classes. For today's demo we observed how layering warm and cool colors together gives a shimmering, reflective effect on the water and sand. Since the composition of the scene is fairly simple, especially in the foreground, there's lots of room to play with this warm/cool effect.

The land mass on the left is much darker than everything else in the scene and required darker values, but I still wanted to make sure to harmonize color with the rest of the painting. Even if I couldn't use the exact same colors in the rest of the painting, since the values wouldn't be correct, I used lighter values of those same colors.

For Just the Sound of the Ocean, I worked on mounted Uart paper, starting with large blocks of warm colors (pinks, oranges and warm purples) with an alcohol wash underpainting. I allowed some of the warm colors of the underpainting to show through the finished piece, noticeable especially in the foreground.