First lay in of color

[Patricia Joyce]

Alexandra,
I am printing up your advice as well, and will play with these combinations as well.
You are a great help with your knowledge about clouds, sea, shadows, waves. I need all of this having never taken a landscape painting class. To be honest, this is my first landscape in more years than I want to count...

[Allan Rahbek]

Patricia,
to make it easy I will suggest that you paint the sky and sea first, before the children, and keep the values light, in the upper third of the value scale.

[Debra Norton]

Patty, I think it's looking great so far! At first glance my eye had to travel over the sand to get to the children, which shows depth already!

One thing I would encourage you to do is work on the children the same time you're working on the surroundings. My teacher called this "working a passage." She would draw an imaginary circle (like I've tried to do on your picture - hope it worked) around an area and say "paint inside the circle." Then she'd "draw" another circle somewhere else and say the same thing. And if you keep "painting inside the circle" you end up with a unified painting and avoid a cut out look. When you paint inside the circle you paint everything at once, rather than painting the individual objects. It took me a long time to understand this concept myself and I hope I've explained it in a way that makes sense.

[Patricia Joyce]

Thank you Debra,
I will try that today. It is Saturday and I have a whole day AND tomorrow afternoon - will be posting my progress....

[Patricia Joyce]

I am posting before I paint today with a question about the boy's face. The photo reference has no more detail than what I have painted. How can I made the face more present? I'm stumped...

Thank you
Patty

[Patricia Joyce]

here's a closeup of the kids. Everything is still very unfinished. i want to made the kids the true center of attention...

[Alexandra Tyng]

Patty, can you post a closeup of the reference photo and even an extreme closeup of just the boy's face, even if it is blurry? This might help with generating some suggestions.

Sometimes if I have to work from bad references I enlarge them a lot even if they are not detailed. It helps to look at a very large image to see how I might interpret the information that I have.

I'm wondering what the client expects. I think that even with little detail you can make a successful figurative piece with painterly touches of color and light. Maybe this would be fine with your client. But next time, you might want to think out the size relevant to the information in the photo, and talk to the clients beforehand.

[Patricia Joyce]

Thank you for your comments, Alex. It does help to look at it close up, even though it is poor quality. I know that the parents are not expecting a portrait. I do, however, want to capture enough of a likeness that they know it is their son. I think I have that, but am afraid to take it to the next level...

Here is a close up of the pic and here is also the painting so far. I have worked on the sky, sea, wave, a bit of the foreground. Am now working on their hair and am beginning to go into their skin/clothes before I work on the shadow and reflection. I would love your input, or anyone who wants to put in their critique!

Thank you for looking
Patty