Based on a reference photo taken on holiday in Carradale, this was some experimental work again looking at using PostWorkshop 3 to try and work out the steps involved in my art  process and the thinking behind the construction of an image.

The main aim was to try and split the painting of the light and dark into two slightly different styles, with light being thicker more textured paint and dark being translucent washes of colour. That is trying to produce digitally a highly traditional approach.

The first one shows the base painting using some of my custom mark brushes I have been working on.

The second shows the dark areas being brought out through colour washes

Finally combining the two along with some texture detail added

Looking back at this there are some nice areas – some of the marks and colours under the bridge are quite nice and some of the colours in the wash are really nice. The foreground doesn’t work as well – stones are two digitally processed and linear and some of the texture is a little crude, doesn’t integrate well, but overall, not a bad rendition of what I am trying to work towards.

The next one is all digital, including the tears & collage effect. Then manually digitally painted on top. On reflection there is nice marks coming through but the colours aren’t working particularly well. The blue is a little pure and bland and the white isn’t working well with the texture. Also the texture dominates and the main problem I was having (and still do) is to get the painted marks to provide a texture of their own that can override the base textures effectively. When seen at larger scale the marks tend to flatten over the underlying texture without bringing their own through which just looks wrong. The more abstract beach area is quite good though and I like some of the browns and grey in that area.