People on the Beach

Elihu Veder, Greek Girls Bathing.
Frederik Hendrik Kaemmerer, A Beach Stroll.
Gabriel-Charles Deneux, Les peintres de retour du Mont Saint-Michel.
Frederick A Bridgman, Seaweed Gatherers.
Thomas Cooper Gotch, The Sand Bar.
.

These painters have used figures to great effect in enlivening their beachscapes. Rods and pitchforks carried by the figures add diagonal linear elements. Clothing is also an opportunity to introduce some red or dark accents to contrast with the neutral coloured surf and sand.

Reflections

These are watercolors, not oils, and wonderful ones at that, by the American master watercolorist, Steve Hanks.

Reflections are an important means of evoking the water element and the marine environment.

“The ocean made a strong and lasting impression on me. It was good for the soul to be out in the water—surfing, swimming, or simply getting in touch with its mysterious power.”

-From Steve's website

Square Format

Jaume Laporta was born in Barcelona, in 1940, to a family with a long artistic tradition. He started painting when he was 14 years old.

After moving to the Costa Brava, he found himself attracted to the beauty of the Mediterranean, and decided to devote himself to capturing it's fishing and seafaring life. 

In his oil and pastel paintings, Laporta tries to maintain a realistic feel while playing with his media and brushstrokes  to avoid slavish reproduction of the real world. 

I seem to be posting a lot of square format paintings lately. I often wonder if CD covers, and the square thumbnails on Flickr etc, have increased public acceptance of square images.

An artist once told me many years ago: "Never try to sell square paintings, people don't like them." But public acceptance of square canvases seems to have increased since then, perhaps due to CD covers and the square thumbnails in Flickr etc. 

It's best to chose a format that suits the subject, but chosing a square format can help an artist to break out of cliched compositions.

Zen Sand

Through it's encounter with Japanese art, in the late nineteenth century, the western seascape began to exhibit characteristics of Zen-inspired painting: simplicity, empty space and quiet, subdued tones.  Norwegian/Danish painter Peder Krøyer captured the luminous emptiness of sandy expanses at Skagen, Denmark, where a community of Danish and Nordic artists gathered, especially during the final decades of the 19th century. Krøyer was the unofficial leader of the group.

A Zen contemplative mood persists in contemporary marines such as this work by the Australian painter Peter Churcher (lower image).

Pattern

Stephen Strickland is based in the Southern US.

Top: Boarder's Beach
Bottom: Packing Up 2, 30 x 30 inches

The visual possibilities of figurative representations repeated over and over to make texture and the puzzle-like effects of positive and negative shapes are significant to me. This configuration made from an aerial view gives me the freedom to see the abstract, two dimensional arrangement of parts to a whole.

- From the artist's website

Another Newlyn School Artist

Mary McCrossan, Wind and Surf.











There are often purple/violet shades to be seen in the wet beach.

Neil Taylor - Australian

Balmoral Nocturne, Acrylic

Works like this remind us that we should aim to paint light, not things.

Wilhelm Simmler - German 1840-1914

A Sunny Day At The Beach

Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida (1863 - 1923) - Spanish

Promenade


After the Bath


Mallorca

Kroyer - Danish

John Frederick Kensett - American

Joachin Sorolla y Bastida

Infancia

John Singer Sargent - American (born Italy)

Seascape, 11 x 8 inches



Coast of Algiers, 1879-1880

Note the importance of white contrasted to black in the beach scene,
and in the images in recent previous posts.