beach painting

Practice practice practice

| Eileen McKenna {my creative resolution}

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My kids are asking why I am painting the same wave over and over. I’m practicing I tell them. My younger son also asked why I was painting the beach and not a snowy scene like what’s outside our window. I’m more into my beach painting project than a week ago. I’m not bored in the least and I feel like I’m learning so much by focusing on the same theme. Of course I don’t want it to be the same painting every time – and it hasn’t been. I did spend time today looking through our old photos for some subjects to paint – at the beach of course. 😉

Week 1 of painting the beach

| Eileen McKenna {my creative resolution}

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I’m really enjoying focusing on painting the beach this month. I kicked it off with a walk on the beach – of course taking lots of photos. I’ve taken the pressure off myself to finish a painting every day and post it. Instead I’m enjoying the process of mixing paints to find the right colors for the ocean and the sand, of starting one painting, and adding details to another, of trying different techniques to capture the depth and movement of the water, and of looking through our old photos to use as reference.

My goal is to sit every day for about an hour and paint or draw the beach. I wrote out a list of prompts, but am only using them as a guide on days I don’t know what to focus on. So far, 6+ days in (I started early), it is very relaxing, but I do worry that without the motivation/accountability to post a final piece, I’ll revert to old habits and not finish anything.

For now I’m going to continue as is. I may not have 6 completed paintings, but I’ve definitely learned a thing or two this week. I can re-evaluate how things are going next week.

A visit to the beach

| Eileen McKenna {my creative resolution}

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We visited the beach on New Year’s Day. It was the perfect way to kick off my January “painting the beach” project. This is the beach I grew up just a few blocks from. Having the beach as our “backyard” was a special thing that instilled in me a love for the beach and the ocean. It’s no wonder it’s often the subject of my paintings.

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It was a sunny but chilly day.

Revisiting an unfinished painting.

| Eileen McKenna {my creative resolution}

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I’ve been playing around with what I’m calling a “practice canvas” (see below) – a painting I never finished, didn’t like where it was going, and recently started mindlessly dabbling with (on). I’ve enjoyed this. While I’m comfortable with watercolor, acrylics still feel new to me. Playing around with this “practice canvas” has pulled me back to acrylics and to another unfinished painting.

Here’s the practice canvas, although now it is unrecognizable!
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Looking through my other canvases, I found an unfinished painting I call “Little Girl Digging.” Even though, I was happy with progress on this painting at the time, I set it aside. Probably because after “sketching” out the figure I wasn’t confident on how to proceed.
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So this past weekend, I decided to work on it again. I wanted to see if I could get the little girl to pop off the sand. I had some success (first picture in this post), so I’m motivated to continue working on it. We’ll see! 🙂