Painting at Crescent Bay Laguna

This is the beach that I went to the most when I first moved to California.  This is the view to the south.  I think the view to the north is even better.

I set up next to this stairway because the tide was still coming in and I did not want to move because of the waves.  The stairs also helped keep some of my stuff out of the sand.

I started with a water color underpainting.  The underpainting dictated the composition.  I left out the palm trees because I wanted to focus on the shadows and the rocks on the point.  I thought if I included them then I would have left out the water or the rocks would be too small for the size of the painting.

In this photo and the others it is hard to appreciate the shadows in the rocks.

I could have done better at driving the values deeper in the underpainting.  The darker the underpainting the better.  The pastels become so much more vibrant when they are set against a dark ground or underpainting.

The day was so warm that as soon as I was finished with the underpainting I could begin the application of pastel.

I used pastel to further define the shapes within the masses and to capture the color of the shadows before the sun moved and changed everything.

I found the biggest challenge for the painting was the rocks in the water.  Deciding how I was going to capture them was difficult.  I reworked them too many times.  The rocks in the foreground need to be defined more.

I will rework some of the elements of this painting in the studio.  The main reason being that as I was walking back to the car the blanket I was standing on rubbed against the painting and I lost too much of the detail of the rocks and the shadows.  When I have completed this work I will post the finished painting.