"Stormy Seas", after Ivan Aivazousky, 8x10, Susan Ploughe workshop, waves, boats, ships, storms, seascapes, Maryanne Jacobsen

"Stormy Seas", after Ivan Aivazousky, 8x10

On the third and last day of the excellent Susan Ploughe workshop that I took this week, the topic was waves. I rarely paint waves for a couple reasons. Firstly, they are HARD!!!!!! Second, we really don't have hardly any waves to observe here on the west coast of Florida (Gulf of Mexico) so I don't practice them. Our waters are pretty calm, with the exception of the occasional hurricane. Third, I have often thought that many paintings of waves were rather boring. That was until Wednesday, when Susan showed us a slideshow of how different artists handle waves and I was introduced to Ivan Aivazousky.

Whoa!!!!!! Can I say jaw-dropping, exceptional, mind-blowing beauty? I googled him that night to find out more about him and turns out he is considered one of the greatest maritime artists of all time!
Ivan Aivazovsky was born in 1817 into an Armenian family in the Black Sea port of Feodosia in Crimea and was mostly based there. He died in 1900 and evidently studied the sea extensively throughout his lifetime, producing the most incredibly gorgeous seascapes I have ever seen.

So as with the other days of the workshop, after Susan's demo, we were given chance to choose which wave photo we wanted to paint and how could I resist this?

Original work of Aivazousky above.

I struggled quite a bit with this one. Painting the delicate tracings of foam on the water almost made me cry, but in the end, I learned so much just from trying to copy the work of a true master.

I am going to continue to practice painting the sea, and maybe someday I'll find it less intimidating. 

I highly recommend Susan's workshop "Waterways", if you want to learn some of the many intricacies of painting water in all of of it's delightfully daunting forms.

"Hazy Beach Day", 6x6, oil on board, Maryanne Jacobsen, beach paintings, hazy day, little girls at the beach, red bucket, sand, waves, surf, impressionism

"Hazy Beach Day", 6x6, oil on board

I've been studying the paintings of the 19th century impressionists and the beautiful way in which they handled water and clouds. Water, like clouds, is something that is hard to paint from life, for the simple reason that both clouds and water are moving constantly.

The best we can do as artists is to try to paint the movement of water with some degree of passion and emotion, otherwise, the water has no movement and appears lifeless. The best we can do when painting clouds, is to try to portray their ethereal qualities with a light hand, as clouds have no borders. As Don Quixote said in Man of La Mancha, (though he wasn't speaking of clouds, but of the hem of Dulcinea's garment),  they are like gossamer, sheer, gauze-like, yet having substance that changes constantly through varying times of day and light temperatures.

In this painting, my goal was to create that warm hazy light that we sometimes get on summer days, when the sun is trying to break through, but isn't quite there yet.

I hope you enjoy this painting, because I enjoyed painting it!