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Painting Footprints in the Sand |
| One way to add special interest to any beach painting is to add footprints in the sand. For the method I'll show you here, you first need to dampen the entire area where you want the footprints to be placed with clear water. Wet your paper well beyond where you will be painting. (It's ok to put water over dried watercolor paint.) By painting into the damp area the edges will be soft (not hard) -that's important for the ground to look sandy. Next, paint the foot shaped prints starting with the nearest point and getting smaller and lighter in color as the footprints move into the distance. |
| Allow the footprints to dry completely. These footprints could have been found on an abandoned beach, but I decided that adding a little girl carrying a beach bucket would add more interest to my painting. You can see in this second illustration where I painted in the shape of the girl. The previously painted water was very pale so it was easy to paint over it. (The bathing suit covered the water line.) Again. allow this to dry completely. |
| Before I can add the shadows to my painting I need to decide which direction the light is coming from. |
| I selected this one with the light coming from the right and pointing toward my focal point instead of away from where I want the viewers eye to go. |
| www.susieshort.net Copyright (c) 2002 2008 Susie Short Studio All Rights Reserved Premission to print and paint for personal study only. Happy Painting! |
| Details of the footprints > |
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In the two illustrations above I have placed a piece of clear acetate over my painting to "test" for the best direction. This allows me to try several shadow applications BEFORE I actually put the paint on my paper. |
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