A night on the beach

Chloe Erskine

12x12

Acrylic

2023

My idea for this painting was to paint some sort of landscape.  I got this idea from trying to think of something to paint other than flowers or animals.  My inspiration was thinking about going to the beach this year.  I thought it would be nice to paint a beachy landscape since I haven't gone in four years.  I had a lot of trouble with the sky itself, I wanted to do a pink, orange, and yellow which was very troublesome to blend, but I wanted to add a little bit of blue on the left side.  That didn't blend well with anything, so I ended up going over it with white and just painting the entire sky orange, yellow, and pink.  Then with the sky, I wanted it to reflect on the water so I made it a dark blue and added light and dark blue throughout to make it more detailed.  I had even more trouble with trying to get the water to look good and to have the sunset reflect onto the water.  I also had Mrs. Dunlavey's help with getting the sunset blended and helping make the sunset reflect onto the water.  I used acrylic paint, water and a lot of big brushes.  My Painting doesn't really have a symbolic meaning, maybe just the little parts of sunsets.  I think that I just want people to look at it and think of going to the beach and staying out late or getting up early to see the sunset/sunrise.  The most difficult thing for me while painting this piece was getting the sunset to reflect onto the water.  I messed up several times and had to keep re-doing the water.  I overcame this by asking for help from Mrs. Dunlavey, she put a really good start on it.  If I was to re-do this painting I would have rather had a completely blank canvas instead of a recycled canvas.  I would've also thinned up the reflection of the water a lot more.  The style of art for this piece of work is sort of realistic.  What makes it unique to my own style is what I used to blend the paint with.  I love the sunset part of this painting, especially the glow next to the sun.