Dune, 2008
oil on canvas board, 16"x20"
private collection
When my buddy Chris asked me if I had any pictures from a walk we took out on the shore of Lake Michigan a while back I found this image. At least a photo with something that this painting started from. In looking back, the photo was quite different, but gave me a place to start from. The basic shapes and composition which I laid out in bold colors.
Next I began to fill in the dunes with paint. Begin to create light on the far hillside and grasses on the near. I am still working in somewhat random colors knowing that I am several steps away from the end.
As I tell my teen painting classes all the time, work from far to near! So here I am working the sky to near completion. The trees and dune will lay over the top of the sky so I want to finish it off first.
Next I wanted to decide how the light would hit the dune. I wanted it on the far hill and to leave the foreground darker. The photo showed a mid day light, an all over brightness that I didn't really want to paint. I have been to this dune so many times and most often it was to watch a sunset so I began to lower the light in that direction to create that time of day.
I filled in the rest of the far hillside and worked the light so that as you came down into the low area it grew darker. This put the viewer's perspective in an area that you would want to go up and into the lit area, which was always the last hill to climb before you saw the Lake and the sunset.
My next step was to begin to darken the grasses on the near hill. I like to paint light into dark rather than dark into light so I often start off darker than I want to end up. In this case I worked the sand and grasses until they were quite dark, too dark for that time of day.
That didn't sit right with me so I decided to re-work all of the sand. It was getting to unnatural for me, with odd roundness that real dunes don't have. I also re thought to brushwork because it was looking too solid for sand. That was a major shift for me, and sometimes those kinds of changes can really jump start me back to what I need to do.
With the dune re-worked and looking more like sand to me, I hit the grassy foreground hill and even began to mess with the trees. That was another spot that stayed sore for a while.
So I settled on the grasses and quit avoiding the trees. In a burst one day I went right through painting the trees to where I really liked them. The final touches of shadows were easy when I had everything so wrapped up. This is one great spot, just when you can start to hear the waves.
