Daisy Bay

Teacher Painting

“Daisy Bay” Acrylic on Board by Richard Robinson.

Teacher Painting

“Daisy Bay” 15 x 18″ Oil on Canvas by Richard Robinson

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Student Painting

“Daisy Bay” 12 x 16″ oil on canvas by Carole Merly

Great to see you using a variety of textures and mark making in this painting Carole. Nice glowing light effect through the hills and a good recession of space. The drawing is pretty decent. Be careful to make the horizon level with the top of the canvas. Sometimes I measure it along its length just to make sure. Some of your colour in the hills and ocean is getting a little muddy from overworking with a dirty brush – just be aware of that. Overall a great painterly result. Keep at it!

Student Painting

“Daisy Bay” Oils on canvas 50 x 40 cm by George

The bay I had intended to use at first because of that beautiful big Pohutukawa tree but I arrived to find it had been blown down in a storm. Perhaps in another few hundred years there will be another to take its place. Or perhaps the beach will have moved up the hill somewhat. I can’t be sure if it’s just the photograph or not but the darks in your distant hill appear to be the same dark value as the ones in the foreground, so perhaps a lost opportunity there to create some visual depth by lightening the background hills a little. The darkness does help intensify the light on the beach but it also loses the chance to make that nice sun-glow area. Those dark shadows are a result of the camera and processing that are not present in the scene when viewed with the eye. You did well in depicting the colour change from the cast shadow across the beach and water, though the reddish colour you’ve used on the sand shadow could do with being greyed down some more with blue so it doesn’t compete with the lights for attention. Your drawing is very nearly spot on. Good to see. I do feel like you missed out on some slightly more interesting shapes in the foreground grass because of oversimplification. I did the same in mine too. Not sure what’s going in the sky there – looks confused to me. If you’re confused and uncomfortable with part of your painting, others will be too. You made the trees really blue which reminds me of one of my earlier paintings of this same scene (see below). Making the tree blue so vibrant in my painting moves the focus off the lights and into the shadows where there’s no real interest, just the colour blue, which makes me think ‘why did I draw attention to blue when that’s not really what I loved about the scene?’ Maybe that rings some bells with you, maybe not. The point is, I would like to gift to you the intention to make everything in your painting work in concert to promote the original spark that you began the painting with. That might sound a bit lofty, but it’s a worthy goal and one that I constantly stumble towards myself.

Student Painting

“Daisy Bay” Acrylic painting on stretched canvas size 12″ x 9″ Gina Ionescu

Some really nice work here Gina. Love your assured brushwork which I know is harder than it looks. Good work on the colour change across the beach in the hills cast shadow. Nice little colours variations throughout the painting to add interest. Your drawing is 99% great, just the bottom of the second distant island should be flatter and the horizon needs to extend behind those hills or else the hills to rise up and cover where the horizon would be. Other than that, fantastic!

Student Painting

“Daisy Bay #1” Oil on canvas by Mark Price

Hey Mark that’s an interesting textural approach in the land contrasted nicely with the smoothness of the water. You’ve achieved a real colour harmony here too – nicely done! The drawing is all good except the left corner of the beach really looks like a corner rather than a curve. Don’t know if beaches do that, but hey it echoes the triangular forms of your hills – a harmony of shapes. Good work bro – nice job.

Student Painting

“Daisy Bay at Sunset” Oils on canvas 8×10″ by Laurena Beirnes

Hi Laurena, your lost edges are really interesting. It drew me to it. Those areas look a little unfinished to me though, but it’s a great setup for a glowing area of colour – just needs a few lighter details in there. The big soft edged dark grey shadow on the beach is telling us it’s overcast lighting in a way, whereas the sharper edged shadow further down the beach speaks of stronger sunlight. Be aware of what the colour and edges of your shadows are saying about the overall lighting condition and keep it consistent throughout a painting for a more convincing lighting effect. Looking over your works I see a tendency to overwork your paintings, well, at least to my eye, and to my eye that takes away some of the vitality of a painting. Your 10 minute studies have more life to them. I would suggest doing a few landscape studies with a time short time limit. The more time we give ourselves, the more we drag out the process – same goes for any endeavour. Squinting helps me a lot to focus on blocking in the big shapes and colour movements quickly, with the last 10% of the time left for details. Whatever you choose, Enjoy.