Mexican Pacific

I can't believe how long I have not posted anything. I have painted a lot though in that time, but have been slow photographing the new pieces. Here's one, it's called Playa Los Cocos.

The moment I saw the evening light on that scene, I knew I had to paint it. Colors and shadows were changing rapidly and I had to come back to finish the painting the following evening.

Capturing the angle and temperature of the light is extremely important for a successful landscape painting, all the shapes and colors depend on those two qualities. It makes me feel warm just looking at this scene of the Mexican Pacific coast - kind of nice, now that the temperatures have dropped!

August Rains

August is wet in Mexico. You´ll never know when it will be sunny or raining, but you´ll get plenty of both, depending on what path storms and hurricanes decide to take.
I painted this plein air piece from a balcony of a friend´s house in Tapalpa, in Central Mexico. The clouds hurried across the sky and the shadow patterns on the ground changed rapidly. Luckily I had a previously stained linen panel with me, which made the painting go much faster.

Yet Another Seascape

Here´s another one.
Different beach, different view point.

In this scene I loved the fact that the ocean, though in constant motion, gives a feeling of tranquility and, because of the repetitiveness and predictability of it´s movements, a sense of permanence.

Another Seascape

My best client loves seascapes.
This one is not sold yet and I would not mind keeping it for myself. I have been to this beach dozens of times and on every occasion I find a new view that I simply have to paint. I can´t keep up!

Seascapes

A couple of decades ago I was reluctant to paint seascapes. It seemed dangerous ground, not because I did not know how to paint one, but because so many hobby painters love this theme. (Along with reclining nudes and children´s portraits.)
And I did not want to be thrown in with the wrong group.

But no topic should be too intimidating nor too banal for a serious painter. In the end it´s what you make of it and I learned that among buyers, there is a taste for both good and bad interpretations. So, who´s to say?

Black

Black, just like white, is not a color.

Colors have three dimensions:
Hue, value and chroma.
Black is undoubtedly a hue.
As far as value goes, it is the darkest of all values on the scale, but it cannot vary in value like colors can. As soon as it is a bit lighter, it is not black any more.
And chroma, or intensity is fixed too, there is no blacker than black.

In painting, black has to be treated with a lot of respect. First of all, black easily dirties other colors. Also, black objects show a variety of color and values where the light hits them and it is important to look carefully to determine the hue of those colors. The most illuminated spot on a black object can be lighter than the darkest shadow on a white object.
I hardly ever use black (I believe there is still some paint in the one and only tube of black I ever bought), but rather mix the colors to interprete black with the three darkest transparent colors on the palette: Alizarin Crimson, Ultramarine Blue and Viridian Green. Real Black is only needed in the deepest of all accents, where no direct, nor reflected light hits the object.

White - is it a Color?

No, it isn´t.

Many years ago, when I studied oil painting with Sebastian Capella, I learned that White and Black are not colors.
Let me explain:
Color has three dimensions, hue, value and croma.
Hue, as in the tone like red, yellow, blue, etc.;
Value, referring to the degree of light or dark on a scale between black and white;
And Croma, as in intensity or purity of the color.

White fits within the first dimension, it does have a name, so it qualifies as a hue, but it does not have any variation in value, nor in croma. White will always be the lightest on the value scale and there is no more than one intensity - white is white.

Any color, added to another one, will change that color´s hue. For example, if you add red to yellow you get orange, blue to yellow makes green, and so on.
White, added to any other color does not change that color´s hue, it will only affect its value and diminish its intensity.

I don´t use pure white when painting a white object, pure white is rarely found in nature, there is always a hint of another hue present. Shadows and reflected colors will show us the white object in a lovely variety of colors! It´s only our brain which reads them as white.