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with Richard Robinson
This is one of my favorite painting spots, and a great place to slide down sand dunes. Follow me step by step as I show you the techniques I use to paint this inspiring sunset beach scene.
Painting a large glowing light effect, atmospherics and making beautiful brushwork are all demonstrated in the video. Enjoy!
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Richard is a talented full time artist, who loves painting and teaching.
Hi I’m Richard. I’ve been painting my whole life and back in 2001 I traded my graphic design career for the humble life of a full time artist. I love painting, and as it turns out, I love teaching too.
Nowadays I balance my life between parenting, painting, surfing, travelling and teaching. My work is regularly featured in international art magazines, in galleries in New Zealand and America, on TV and in my Mum’s house.
I give outdoor painting workshops in interesting spots around this beautiful planet of ours and love encouraging people to paint. Two of my favourite artists are John Singer Sargent and Joaquín Sorolla.
My painting website: www.nzpainter.com
I’d love to be your new teacher.
Richard is a master artist with an exceptional skill in identifying and communicating key factors to making successful paintings. I have found his video workshops an excellent resource for improving my own work.
"Sunset Beach" 15.5 x 20" Oil on Canvas by Richard Robinson.
"The Beach 2" 11x14" Acrylic on canvas by Susan Burke - Altered
"Sunset Beach" 16 x 12" Oil on Canvas by Denis King
Hi Denis, there's a lot working really well in this painting with just a wee adjustment needed to turn it into a real cracker. Your drawing is spot on, your shapes are nicely designed and the values are mostly perfect AND the brushwork is beautifully succinct. However... all that beautiful warmth in the hillside is not apparent enough in the background, which is looking chalky with too much white. When painting the hills back there start with a warm colour first like a light gray yellow ochre, then go from there, injecting warmth into the sky too and reflecting it in the beach and shallow water. THEN you'll have a complete glowing effect. Beware those light diagonal sand shapes in the foreground that are creating a pattern of similar shapes. I would love to see this painting with those few changes made as I think it'll be outstanding. Great work Denis.
"Sunset Beach" Oil on canvas 25x30cm by Marisa Comana Pessina
Not too shabby Marisa! Nice glowing effect there. Hey see those purplish shadows on the beach? They're not really fitting in with the warm colours surrounding them. The darker area of brown at the base is not helping either. Take another look at my painting to compare. The hills in the distance are a good colour though you've outlined one a little with purple which spoils the effect. Beware straight edged hills too! You've achieved a good variety of grass shapes in the foreground which is always tricky since we have a tendency to clone similar shapes in our paintings. The stark edge where the foreground sand meets the dark hill could be softened by breaking the edge with some stray grasses. Hope that helps. Overall you've achieved a nice effect.
"First Glimpse" 16 x 16" Oil on Canvas by Kadee Hughes
Hi Kadee, welcome to the group. Quite a striking painting you've made here with the contrast between the vibrant red and the gray greens in the ocean. I like the way you've compressed the image into a square format which has made the hills appear even steeper. You've grasped the idea of the glowing effect and the next step is to be a little more subtle with the colours. The yellows, oranges and reds could do with a little more gray in them, which you can do by adding the colour's complement, which is opposite it on the colour wheel. In general, our first paintings tend to be very bright and colourful and over time our colour sense develops greater subtlety. We can not only comprehend more subtle colour shifts in nature but we begin to be able to paint them. Yay! Just takes time. Anyway, your drawing is very good, the grays are pretty good but the lights in your foreground sand could do with some variation. The distant hills should be the same value or darker than the ocean, not lighter. The cast shadow from the yellow section of the hill on the beach should not end with a dark line. Also, just have a look at the resource photo and see how close the colour of the hill is to the colour of the shadow. Very similar really. Actually a lot of the colour problems in this painting could be solved by more carefully comparing one colour to another. Use the fuzzy one eye to help compare colours. Close one eye and make the other eye go out of focus so all you see is the big blurry shapes. Then compare colours that are similar. Ask yourself is it lighter or darker? Warmer or cooler? Grayer or more vibrant? That should help. Ok good luck and happy painting!
"Maui Morning" Oil on Canvas 5x7 by Laurena Beirnes
You've got a pretty good glowing effect there Laurena, principally because of the background gradation from warm light to darker cool, and secondly from your effort to make the palm trees in the foreground a little warmer as well. The shadow cutting across the grass and beach is a nice touch too though I would expect the shadow on the beach to drop down slightly lower than shadow on the grass rather than curving upwards. The drawing of this and the curving edge of the distant beach are the two main things holding this painting back. Compare it with the straight edge of the beach in my painting below.
"The Beach 2" 11x14" Acrylic on canvas by Susan Burke
I used a free online image editor to change the levels and lighten the whole image. See the free editor here: http://www.pixlr.com/editor I opened the image, chose Adjustment > Levels and then pulled the right hand slider left to the edge of the curves. This is a common adjustment I make to photos of paintings that have been taken in the shade. I usually use Photoshop to do this but this free online software does the same job. Anyway, you've got a lovely glowing effect happening here with a everything getting lighter and warmer as it approaches the sun. Nice job. You could perhaps have gone even lighter where the sun would be with white and a touch of bright yellow. Your drawing of the cliffs is very good but you could have done a little better in the distance by leveling and straightening the horizon and making the waves reduce in size as they recede from us. Also the most distant hills could do with being a little lighter to help them recede further. Other than that it's very good, especially considering it's painted in acrylics which make it more difficult to achieve soft atmospheric effects due to their quick drying time. Good job.
Sunny beach
Artist: Brian Caesar
My attempt. Headland should be darker but got bogged down with white paint!
Artist: Laura Searle
Sand Dune Beach 8x10 oil on board by Darla Calhoon-Rice
Hi Darla, wow this has got a real blaze of warmth blasting out from the sun. Nice recession back there, if a little bereft of detail. You've added yellow to all your highlights too which has added beautifully to the lighting effect. Hey just one point, see the big S-curve of the edge of the foreground sand dunes? You've over-simplified it, making it very smooth and manicured, which, yes, is more peaceful, but removes variety and interest from the painting. Think about variety when making the shapes in your paintings, both big and small.
Sunset Beach
Great work, Peter - nice colour, brushwork and attention to detail. Really nice work in the foreground sand and grasses. I'd just caution you about repeating shapes in the rocks on the beach - see how they're clumped randomly, which is great, but the individual rocks are mostly the same size and shape and there's a diagonal string of 4 of them leading up and off to the right like good little soldiers with all the same spacing. It's so easy to make this mistake because our brains adore a good pattern, so you need to consciously work against it with every shape and brushstroke in your painting.
‘Sunlit beach at Perranporth’ (painted after 6 month’s break!)
Hi Barbara, thanks for your painting. Looks to me like a great start, and with some more study of the demo painting this could be improved. Don't you hate it when the teacher says 'great start'! :-) The first thing, and the biggest, is the big hill on the right. You weren't quite sure what to do with that, possibly because that's how the hill looked in your photograph, like a big area of flat colour with barely any detail. Well you've achieved that, but now you could add some interest by introducing a big soft radial transition getting gradually lighter and more orange towards the sun. Then you could reshape the base of that hill, turning it up to the left a little, and darkening the beach with a darker grey where the hill would cast a shadow upon the sand. You could also add a few little bumps and bushes to the edge of the hill to give it more interest. Next, you could add a similar soft orange glow in the distant hills on the right, close to the sun. To finish, add a few soft darker shadow clumps in the foreground grasses. Then sign it, put your feet up and enjoy with a good coffee.
Sunset Beach, acrylic
Really nice work here Evelyn. Beautiful lyrical brushwork and good drawing. The only thing I'd bring your attention to is the dark brown outline you've created around the grasses in the left foreground. Outlines tend to flatten depth in a painting, and this painting is all about depth, so it'll pay to fix this. You can remedy it simply by painting the top outline shape a touch lighter. (about 10% lighter. If you look at my painting and the photograph you'll see that that section is actually the hill behind the foreground grasses, and goes down to the beach, so it should be a little lighter than the darks in the foreground. When you do that you'll see that the rocks on the beach would look better a little lighter as well to separate them from the foreground. In the daytime you'll observe that the lights stay relatively the same value as they recede the distance, but the darks get progressively lighter. That's atmospheric perspective in action.
Aug workshop
Hi Mérie, that's a lovely from painting you've made with a convincing glowing light effect from warms to cools. Exciting brushwork and some beautiful shapes in there too. I'm just thinking that the details in the foreground seem a little unfinished - being so close to the bottom of the canvas I'd like to see all the edges in that bottom inch softened and made more suggestive rather than descriptive. Its harshness is interrupting the otherwise soft feel of the painting for me. Beautiful work!
Weekly Class Recommendations- Sunset Beach 10”x11” Acrylic on canvas by Karen Woodhouse (South Australia)
Great job, Karen! This is a tricky one for acrylics because of all the soft gradations of colour but you've managed that well. Your brushwork is gestural and l considered. I'd like to see a little gradation of warmth on the beach close to the sun, as the cool grey there is spoiling the glowing light effect currently. Also, as the yellow light reaches the base of the mid-ground hill it is darkening abruptly at the moment into a red-brown, disturbing the light effect. A soft transition there would be more convincing. The gulls are a nice addition. Nice!
"First Glimpse" 16 x 16" Oil on Canvas by Kadee Hughes
Hi Kadee, welcome to the group. Quite a striking painting you've made here with the contrast between the vibrant red and the gray greens in the ocean. I like the way you've compressed the image into a square format which has made the hills appear even steeper. You've grasped the idea of the glowing effect and the next step is to be a little more subtle with the colours. The yellows, oranges and reds could do with a little more gray in them, which you can do by adding the colour's complement, which is opposite it on the colour wheel. In general, our first paintings tend to be very bright and colourful and over time our colour sense develops greater subtlety. We can not only comprehend more subtle colour shifts in nature but we begin to be able to paint them. Yay! Just takes time. Anyway, your drawing is very good, the grays are pretty good but the lights in your foreground sand could do with some variation. The distant hills should be the same value or darker than the ocean, not lighter. The cast shadow from the yellow section of the hill on the beach should not end with a dark line. Also, just have a look at the resource photo and see how close the colour of the hill is to the colour of the shadow. Very similar really. Actually a lot of the colour problems in this painting could be solved by more carefully comparing one colour to another. Use the fuzzy one eye to help compare colours. Close one eye and make the other eye go out of focus so all you see is the big blurry shapes. Then compare colours that are similar. Ask yourself is it lighter or darker? Warmer or cooler? Grayer or more vibrant? That should help. Ok good luck and happy painting!
"Sunset Beach" 16 x 12" Oil on Canvas by Denis King
Hi Denis, there's a lot working really well in this painting with just a wee adjustment needed to turn it into a real cracker. Your drawing is spot on, your shapes are nicely designed and the values are mostly perfect AND the brushwork is beautifully succinct. However... all that beautiful warmth in the hillside is not apparent enough in the background, which is looking chalky with too much white. When painting the hills back there start with a warm colour first like a light gray yellow ochre, then go from there, injecting warmth into the sky too and reflecting it in the beach and shallow water. THEN you'll have a complete glowing effect. Beware those light diagonal sand shapes in the foreground that are creating a pattern of similar shapes. I would love to see this painting with those few changes made as I think it'll be outstanding. Great work Denis.
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