During the past week i worked more on the wavy water; repainted the upper calm water; and repainted the sky. (The photo does not capture the brightness and new colors very well.  ‘Next time will try to get more “true” photo.)  Today had class and teacher thought i’d Done enough on those waves to be able to begin to add foam.  First did a glaze on the water to soften some of those countless lines.  then started on the foam.  What fun: all the effort it took me to get to this point seems like ancient history.

I worked on the “squiggly lines” approach to making the waves but had a lot of difficulty getting an idea of the big picture.  So in class asked teacher to demonstrate making waves from squiggly lines.  Interestingly enough, he painted in very short order some lovely waves, but i didn’t see him doing it using squiggly wormy lines.  However, i did get a bit of a better idea about how to go about the challenge.  Lines, ok: wavy lines, ok; wavy lines that cross, ok.  but no worms.  Anyhow, have continued working on this area — from the left towards the center.  I attach photo of my progress, and also photo of teacher’s wave.

Note that teacher wants me to resist the temptation to add light foamy stuff on top of my waves till i’m Just about finished with the section.  He, however, did add foam to his   Little project!

 

During the past week i worked on rocks at home.  Today had class and teacher was willing to leave the rocks alone, and begin work on the waves.  (I’ll go back to the rocks on my own, but not today.) So first I tried to outline major large shapes in the water.  Then teacher wanted me to make lots of “worms” — squiggly shapes that would kind of follow the larger shapes that i had outlined.  Most of the lesson was focus on brush stroke.  I am used to holding the brush at about a 45 degree angle from the canvas.  Sometimes, as with painting clouds, i use an even more acute angle.  But today i was told for painting this water, hold the brush at a 90 degree angle from the canvas, and, using the long brush, stand back from the canvas.  This of course gave me even less control than usual.  Also, was to focus on continuously changing the degree of pressure on the brush.  The messy big wave in the middle is a result of me trying to demonstrate to teacher how i might do this on my own, without the “worms”.  Really bad idea — what you can see at this point is my beginning efforts to correct this error.  Live and learn!