Morning Light, Beer Beach

Oil on Belgian Linen Canvas, 20 x 30 inches

This leviathan has taken me ages to complete - there being so much in it, so many nuances of tone and colour and detail, phew!

I loved the glare of the morning sun on the water, and with a bit of artistic licence, I put the silhouetted figure looking down the steep shingle beach, in between the boats, almost obliterated by the intense light effect. I liked the way the rubber mat, crumpled up into interesting folds, and the rope and red foreground boat and other pots and paraphernalia, formed perspective lines towards the little boy with his dad.

One interesting effect here is the tone of the sky just above the horizon - it appears lighter on the left third of the picture, and darker above the sunlit water on the right two-thirds of the picture, but that is an optical illusion...if you click on the photo to enlarge and hold a piece of paper, or any straight edge up to obscure the sea, you will see that the tone and colur just above the sea is the same all along.  I love things like that - is it me?