Greys

I've been experimenting mixing greys from complementary colors. (If anyone has any other favourite tube greys or mixed greys, please let me know).




The top row consists of tube greys.
The Warm Grey Light shown here is by Old Holland.
The Torrit Grey is a very colourless gray produced by Gamblin from leftover pigments (it varies from batch to batch apparently, depending which pigments are left over).
The Davy's Gray is Winsor and Newton and very transparent. Davy's Gray is useful for darkening bright colors without dirtying them too much. It leans toward green.

The other three rows are greys mixed from complementaries.
In some of the mixes I may not have spent enough time getting the colors to neutralise each other.
The Cad Yellow Deep I used to mix with Ultramarine looked very orange, but was not orange enough and produced a yellow ochre rather than a grey.

Burnt Sienna + Cobalt Blue and Raw Sienna + French Ultramarine look pretty much like Davy's Gray.
Viridian + Quinacridone Rose looks very much like Payne's Grey.
Prussian Blue +Venetian Red is a lovely grey that looks like Indigo.
These mixes could be used as substitutes if you don't have those tube greys.



If the complementary colours are not mixed completely, an interesting vibrant grey is produced.

Payne's Grey, Davy's Gray and Indigo, would be useful for marine painting. The mixes of Alizarine or Quinacridone reds with and Viridian or Phthalo Greens, look like useful greys for skies.

If you mix greys from complementary colors that you have already used in other parts of the painting, the effect will be to unify and harmonise the painting.

The Bridgewater Sea Piece

Possibly my favourite marine painting, J.M.W. Turner's Dutch Boats in a Gale (the Bridgewater Sea Piece), 1801, was painted as a pendant (companion piece hanging below) to a similar scene by Willem van de Velde for the 3rd Duke of Bridgewater. See below:

Turner's application of oil paint became increasing transparent and washy as he matured, and his oils began to look more and more like watercolours. This fluidity allowed him to create wonderfully subtle and luminous atmospheric effects.

The Fighting Temeraire, 1839

Textured supports

Konstantin Westchilov (Russian), Rocky Coast.
Some of the art auction houses have zoomable images of the lots. This allows you to see the brushstrokes up close, and is very instructive. By looking closely at the distant cliffs, this painting looks as if it's been done on the rough side of masonite; a texture I find distracting. I prefer the look of canvas. But Westchilov seems to have applied the paint thickly enough to cover it.
As a general rule, the thickness and texture of the paint should be reduced from foreground to background. This helps create the illusion of distance. The distant cliffs in this work have been painted thinly and this is where the texture of the support is quite visible, to the point where it becomes a bit of a problem (see cliff in bottom detail). There are some paintings where the artist has deliberately chosen to express the texture of the  support, but this is usually in an area of the painting where is simulates the weave of fabric in clothing, for example.
Some say that masonite contains acid and eventually degrades, potentially destroying a painting, but perhaps it depends on the manufacturing quality. The more thoroughly the masonite is primed the better, to create a barrier between the oil paint and the wood acids in the masonite.
I love Westchilov's brushstrokes in the waves.

Geoff Hunt

HMAS Belona
Nina and Pinta Racing Home, 1493.
I think I've posted the top image before but this one is of better quality.

A photo of UK marine artist Geoff Hunt using a mahl stick: a support for the brush hand, padded at one end so as not to damage the canvas. A mahl stick is particularly handy for detail work... and for fending off stray animals who wander into the studio. 

Here's a link to instructions for making your own mahl stick: kimcpell artblog

Geoff's work combines painstakingly accurate detail with dramatic compositions.

Neil Pinkett

Neil Pinkett, Crashing Waves, Sennen Quay.

This image of the sea overflowing a seawall reminded me of the horrific scenes of the tsunami in Japan.

Neil Pinkett is from Cornwall, England; another coastal region that has inspired seascape artists.

Neil paints with a knife in order to convey the rugged power of the Cornish landscape.

He is gradually progressing towards bigger works. 

Larger works have more impact and stretch a painter's technique.

You often have to learn to paint with the whole arm and body rather than just the hand.

Generally it's best to start small and gradually work your way up to larger canvases over time.
neilpinkett.co.uk

Josette Nicolle

Top: Affrontement, 80 x 80 cm
Bottom: La Vague Folle

Josette Nicolle is an a painter from Brittany, France. This is a coastline which has inspired many artists for two hundred years or more.

Foam and spray are chaotic but still have form and shadow. Most of it has been suggested with expressionistic brushwork but there are also small areas of precise detail which give the impression of reality. It's not necessary to reproduce photographic detail over the entire canvas. In fact, doing so usually destroys the sense of a real, moving subject.

In the top painting the random nebulousness of the spray is nicely contrasted to the crisp, defined edge of the wave as it runs up the sand.
The medium is acrylic and oil. Acrylics are used in the initial layers of the painting. You can't paint acrylic over oil. Acrylic paint is often used as an underpainting as it's cheaper and much faster drying.

Palette Knife

Mian Situ probably used a palette knife for this seascape.
His historical paintings are amazing: website

Leaving Something Out

The Headlands, 24 x 36 inches
California Coast, 50 x 60 inches
Aqua Music, 20 x 30 inches

Here's a quote from the American painter Clyde Aspevig's website:

"As far as Clyde is concerned, some of the most powerful representations he developed were those that left something out."

He also says of his work that he tries not to let his technical skills (which are considerable) take over the concept for the piece, and he is conscious of bringing a sense of music into his brushwork passages. There's a video on the site, in which he talks about his approach to painting.

E Phillips Fox - Australian 1865 - 1915

Birthday 12 March

Note the reflection of the white foam in the wave. Also the progression of colour from warm tones in the sand to light emerald and light ultramarine in the nearest wave, to dark blue middle distance, and violet in the distance. To create the impression of recession in space, landscape artists use warm hues in the foreground, and cool, desaturated colours in the background.

Unfortunately this is not a very good reproduction of the painting and doesn't convey the iridescent effect the artist has produced by interweaving strokes of different colours.

Monochrome

Jennifer Day,
oil on panel,
36 x 48 inches

Monochrome studies allow you to concentrate on tone and detail without the distraction of colour. An old master oil paining technique is to start with a monochrome underpainting and then (after waiting for it to dry) add glazes of colour. It requires patience, but gives the painting depth, purity and richness. A monochrome underpainting need not be black and white or grey scale. Warm, earth tones were the most used for underpainting by the old masters, although cooler hues, would be better for watery subjects. It's advisable to use a pigment that dries relatively quickly.
The artist has chosen to use panel for the support. A smooth support can be more suitable than canvas for the subtle detail in the clouds and waves (unless working on a very large scale).

John Morris - Irish

Minimalist Impressionist - capturing the essence of a subject with the smallest number of strokes. With this kind of painting, attention to the direction, weight, and texture of each mark becomes critical.

Brian Cook - Australian

Visual energy/interest is created through contrasts of movement, tone and colour. The diagonal movements of water - foreground water draining downwards; background waves rising. The very darkest and lightest tones are contrasted. Warm yellow ochre highlights on the rocks complement blue/violet shadows.

Paul Lewin - British 1967-

Carn Trevean Cove, Cornwall,
34 x 34 cm,
mixed media on paper

The artist has rendered the cliffs in loose, transparent washes; the water in fine, clear, solid detail. Too much fussy detail in the cliffs would only compete with the detail of white foam and reflections, reducing the impression of dazzling, moving water. Indistinctness also gives the impression of distance and immensity to the cliffs. The background washes are probably watercolour; the bright white areas could be gouache or acrylic. These contrasting textures can also be achieved in oils with the use of solvents to create washes.

Check out this artist's website here.

Of his working method the poet Christine Evans has written:

His relationship with landscape is intense; he seems absorbed, almost subsumed into it, driven by a restless energy that is characteristic of the sort of places he is drawn to - the extreme edges of land, jutting promontories and tidal shores where frontiers between land and sea are blurred and perspectives ever changing as the sky. His practice is to complete a painting at a single sitting if possible. Sometimes a piece will resolve itself quickly, in a couple of hours or so; more often, he will be working out in the open for five or six hours or until the light goes.

Robert Henri - American 1865-1929

Top: Barnacle Rock 8 x 10 inches, Portland Museum of Art

"Brush strokes carry a message whether you will it or not. The stroke is just like the artist at the time he makes it. All the certainties, all the uncertainties, all the bigness of his spirit and all the littleness are in it." -Robert Henri

I found this wonderful quote posted on the blog Art and Influence by Armand Cabrera, and thought I should repost it here. Brushtrokes are so fundamental to painting. Expressionist painters emphasize them, while photorealist painters aim to eliminate them altogether.

The comments to the original post recommend a book by Henri called Art Spirit.

Ralph Feyl - American

Morning Waves,
20 x 24 inches

The spray looks convincing because the artist has worked in a variety of hues to produce a pearly, rainbow effect, as light is refracted in the supended drops of water.
click here for more works by Ralph Feyl

Andrew Slatter - British

The swirls of foam have a wonderful abstract quality. A square format is often used to bring out the abstract element of an image. The speckled sand, and spray lifting off the breakers, may have been created by flicking the bristles of a brush loaded with oil paint diluted with turpentine or some other diluent.

Edward Minoff - American

Poseidon's Fury, 44 x 64 inches, 2008

Inspired by the monumental oil landscapes of the 19th century, Edward Minoff produced some large scale seascapes. Upscaling requires a different way of working. Read about the process he used here:

http://www.edwardminoff.com/synthesis.html

Neil Taylor - Australian

Neil uses acrylics.

Some acrylics have an unpleasant plastic gloss to them, but there are some brands that produce a more matte finish.

Church's technique

Frederick Church - Coast Of Mount Desert
Source: gurneyjourney.blogspot.com

This unfinished oil painting shows Church's technique: a salmon pink underpainting unifies the image and adds warmth to the sky, gives vibrancy to the green areas through complementary colour. The fine detail of the drawing is visible. Church has painted area by area, rather than doing what many teachers advise: covering the whole canvas with rough massing first, adding detail later.