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Gus Diving

40" x 30", oil on wood panel, 2017, private collection

This commissioned piece features one of the boys in the canoe in Life Jackets (his brother, Reed, got his own commissioned painting featuring him underwater). Like in Life Jackets, I had to paint a lot of surface water, but unlike that painting, the surface was more wavy, so I had to get a grip on lots of shadows and reflections and highlights. It was slow going, keeping track of things, but fun.

Many hours into it...

Most of Gus is done here, but that's a lot of water! It's gonna take a lot of work to get this looking anywhere near good. So far, only the basic surface with a gradient getting lighter toward the horizon and wave shadows are done. The sky is blocked-in dark to give some depth to the lighter colours that will go in afterward.

Nearly done.

The sky is now properly lighter and the trees have some highlights of their own. Now, just dozens upon dozens of highlights to do in the water, plus some darkening of the vertical part of the dock. The highlights were quite simple but took a long time due to the size of this piece...wave by wave by wave.




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Anonymous said…
Ditto on this one it capture that summer so beautifully. Thank you again Mave and Mike
12 September, 2020
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