Adjusting the Bird Shape

 

Started adjusting the bird shape. Birds are always difficult to get the right shape. A small error causes a big problem "something isn't right". Especially around its head. Also easy to miss proportional errors like head vs. body.

Filling ocean

 I wanted to fill most of the ocean before defining the final rock shapes but encountered problems creating colors I wanted. The right side of the foreground ocean became olive green, which I need to fix one way or the other. But I'm not sure how to make the colors. I know I can't mix yellow, which I did and got olive green.

Shaping vegetation

 Trying to make shapes of vegetation on dunes in the foreground. Curving in the negative (sand) shapes are more effective (or require both) than refining the positive shapes for vegetation. It started popping up in the contrast.

Placing bigger shapes on dunes

 

For the "dune" painting, I'm still trying to place bigger shapes on the dunes. 

The vegitation is the most difficult to determine the shapes without painting leaves. Yet want to make it look like vegitation. And the most importantly color shift and value shift need to be painted in right way even in this early stage, because it's all about this painting.

NorCal Seagull

 I actually started this paining probably close to a month ago. Haven't touched it a while until today.

Before start defining the shape of the main subject, obviously the gull, I wanted to determine the entire atmosphere, overcast ocean scene. The background is just thin underpainting but actually capturing the gloomy day quite well.

It was more than three years ago when I took this shot on my way driving back from Monterey, CA. I don't remember the exact place but I called the gull as "NorCal Seagull" that I remember, so not on Oregon coast.

Low Tide at Harper

 Due to COVID-19 this was my first painting trip this year. I painted at Harper, WA in low tide. I realized my drawing problem after came back and checked with my reference photos. I forgot to bring small sketch book to draw a thumbnail. Next time I will remember. The foreground was unproportionally stretched vertically, which doesn't match the background water and mountains.

New Dune Painting

Started new painting of dunes at Carmel-by-the-Sea. I tried painting there in earier afternoon a little more than two years ago, but didn't go well. This is from a photo I took at sunset that day.

I decided the composition then decided the size of canvas (22"x30"). But after I put the initial rough drawing to place the bigger shapes, I felt the size of sky was similar to sand. So went back to computer and re-cropped it to make sky smaller. I like this composition much better.

Finally, trying to finish "Cape Falcon"

I'm now finally trying to finish this piece. Still can't get rock colors as I want. So keep pushing around them. But I can feel it's near the end.
I'm also working on my new web site so I'm not sure when I can update there even when I finished this painting.