Happy Days, is a tall narrow painting, that to be quite honest, I just could not resist painting. It is from a small section of a photograph I took on the Gold Coast. Although not my usual subject matter, I loved the bright yellow bouy sitting on the water, I love the clean edged reflections, and the light from the water reflected back up onto the bouy. I had a lot of fun expressing these qualities in the painting, I decided first on a composition and format of tall and thin with the Yellow bouy sitting near the top, I decided to paint the areas of the water as patches of flat colour, and to warm and darken the blues as they move down the painting. This was to give a sense of recession on the surface of the water. However I decided to paint the tonal structure of the bouy with soft transitions to give it is shape, and to reflect these soft transitions in the yellow reflections, while maintaining a hard edge with the flat colour of the blues. I like the look this has achieved, and I cannot help but smile when I look at this picture, it makes me happy, I hope it makes you happy to. Thank you for reading the story of this painting! I used the following colours - French ultramarine Blue, Cerulean Blue, Cadmium Lemon, Cadmium Yellow Pale, Cadmium Yellow, Cadmium Orange, Burnt Sienna, and Titanium White. If you have any comments or questions feel free to ask, I would love to hear from you :-) |