Stormy

Louis Isabey, Shipwreck.
Joseph Abeille, The Tempest.

Phillippe Jaques De Loutherbourg, Shipwreck off a Rocky Coast.

John Chancellor, Survived.

Vernet, detail.

Painting Nature's Moods

Grey Surf under Summer Storm, 24 x 30 inches, © 2010 Katherine Kean. Used with permission.

The American artist Katherine Kean paints the sublime and mysterious moods of nature with a fine touch. 

On her blog she mentions that  she uses cadmium orange mixed with ultramarine blue (complementary opposite color) and a little alizarin to produce a rich and interesting near-black color. 

See more of Katherine's work at her website: www.katherinekean.com

Ludolf Backhuysen

Ludolf Bakhuizen (or Backhuysen) (1630 – 1708) was a German-born Dutch Golden Age painter who was the leading Dutch painter of maritime subjects after the two Willem van de Veldes (father and son) left for England in 1672.
Backhuizen specialized in scenes of ships caught in storms, exploiting the dramatic tonal contrasts of white sails and spray against dark clouds and deep wave troughs. He is said to have risked his life while venturing out into stormy seas to observe the forces of nature. The clouds in these works are wonderful, and just as important as the waves.

Ivan Aivazovsky - Armenian/Russian 1817-1900

The beauty of this work lies in the union of simplicity and complexity. The subject is really just waves (the ship and sky are almost lost) but their structure is rendered with intricate, realistic detail. Simplicity of subject matter alows the artist to concentrate on the abstract qualities of the painting.

Aivazovsky was born to an Armenian family in the Crimea (the family Russianised their name). He was renowned as a master painter of vast seascapes and tempests, Romantic subjects very much in fashion in his time. Delacroix spoke of him with reverence, and Turner considered him a genuis. Aivazovsky's depiction of mariners struggling for survival in turbulent seas has been read as symbolic of the struggle of the Armenian people, caught between warring powers, to maintain their identity.

Thomas Buttersworth

Men o War Running Before a Storm

A familiar device in nautical painting is the contrasting of the dark lines of the masts with an area of bright sky behind.

April Gornik

Storm at Sea, 2005

Ludolf Backhuysen

Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee, 1695

Don't be afraid to use black in a seascape; what better to bring out areas of white foam and spray. When choosing to use black oil colour, there are several variations of black pigment to choose from, just as there are different whites. 

Ivory Black is a deep velvety black that is cooler in mass tone, but warm in tint (slight brownish undertone). Lamp Black, a very old pigment dating back to prehistoric times, is also a deep, velvety black but has a bluish undertone. Mars Black is the strongest black and is warm in both mass tone and tint. Usually, for sea and sky, a cool, bluish black would be more suitable than a brownish black.

Many artists shy away from using black at all because it tends to "dirty" colour in mixing, and instead prefer to use a colour's complement to tint or shade. However, using black as a colour, you can avoid ‘dirtiness’ to some degree by taking note of the colour bias and tinting strength. This is where it becomes important to pay attention to the differences in different blacks and how to use them.

Many oil paint manufacturers also produce Indigo - a very dark blue - not as scary to use as black.

Jan Abrahamsz Beerstraten

Storm at Sea

William McTaggart - Scottish

Running for Shelter

Another scene with children by the sea, but rougher weather.

Claude-Joseph Vernet

Seascape, Evening, 78 x 156 cm


A Seastorm, 1752
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Diagonals create dynamism, but just as the vertical and horizontal lines in a composition should be balanced, diagonal elements should also be balanced. In the work above, the right leaning diagonal of the rain is balanced by left leaning cliffs and rocks, and the tilted ship.  The old masters usually made sure that tilted lines lean inwards towards the centre of the painting. If diagonals lean out of an image, it tends to lose its visual gravity. The human eye has a tendency to follow paths created by lines in an image, especially from left to right. The ship on the right acts as a kind of full stop preventing the viewer's eye running along the horizon line and out of the painting. By tilting inwards, it directs the eye back into the image. A strong image captivates the eye, but keeps it moving around within its frame.

The Port of Sete

Gericault - France

Scene of the Deluge

Ibbetson

Backhuysen

detail and modif