Critiques for Dune Impressions

Impress yourself with your expressive impressionism.

Follow me one brushstroke at a time as I take you through the process of creating a painterly impressionistic sunset dunes scene in oils. Learn how to use digital tools to create a painter's sketch from the original photo, making it much easier to paint from. Learn to create large movements of light, convincing depth, soft edged brushwork and sparkling impasto highlights.

Good design, colour mixing, passionate brushwork and a variety of fun techniques are all demonstrated in the video. Enjoy!

Acrylics are fine for this lesson too.

Learn About

• Expressive brushwork
• Edge control
• Digital design
• Following a simple process
• Much more!

Get the Full lesson here: https://mypaintingclub.com/lessons/219-Dune-Impressions

Dune Impressions 16x18" Oil on Canvas by Richard Robinson

Resource Photo

Digital Sketch on Ipad Pro using Procreate App. 

Student Critiques

Dune, oil, canvas, 40 cm x 50 cm by Elena Sokolova

Great work Elena. Lovely bold expressive brushwork and good colour control.

Dune Impression by Evelyn Tuhi-Herewini

Good job Evelyn. Nice contrast of large brushwork versus small marks. Colour's good except for the edge of the orange sunglow area - use more red there to lower the value but keep the colour intense as it moves into the muted greens. A touch more white and yellow in the sunlit sand would give this a little more punch too.

Sunset at the Beach by Diana

Hi Diana, nice work. You've tidied things up a lot - run the vacuum around the dunes! :-) It's everyone's tendency to do that, to make things more symbolic rather than real. It's all those unexpected little shapes and variations that make things interesting to look at, so when you over-prune things in a painting it takes away some of that enjoyment in my opinion. A great way to avoid tightening up is to keep stepping back 10 feet from the painting and assessing it from there. If you can read the section you're working on from back there, leave it! Job done. Move on. If a section looks too tight, break that shape aggressively with a few choice strokes, and rebuild where necessary until you achieve something that's looser than the original.

Looking at your yellow to blue sun transition there, it's a little abrupt and could do with some pink-orange between the yellow and blue.

Hope that helps.

"Dune Impressions" with Atelier Interactive Acrylics, Eric Hillmer, Toronto, ON, Canada.

Hi Eric, that's a really interesting take on it. I like all the different textures you've achieved, adding variety which is the key to interesting paintings. I'd just like to see a little more red-orange sun glow pushing into the landscape around the sun. That would help clarify the lighting condition. A little more colour in the mid ground too would add more variety.

Dunes Impression by Nancy Newton

Great work Nancy! Lovely colour work and bold brushwork. Great to see.

Dunes by Sharon Repple

Very colourful, Sharon! Nicely done. Loving all the little colour variations you've achieved and the careful use of soft vs hard edges.

Dunes at dusk, oils, 16 x 16 by Marie-France L’Ecuyer

Really nice gestural brushwork Marie-France. Good work.