Next-to-last session, I started adding a lot of detail in the rocks and waves. Waiting until closer to the end to define the little figures by the large rock, because I wouldn't even want them there--but they are important for human scale against those rocks, another good decision by William Stanley Haseltine.
Prior to this session, I was thinking I had the sky color pretty well sorted out--but after a week away, I found it to be too dull. One major handicap that I had not anticipated, was the lighting in the gallery. The exhibited paintings are beautifully illuminated by spotlights, but Copyists' work on the easels are dependent on skylights for lighting. Every time clouds passed across the sun (which happens a lot here), my light changed.
Those figures on the rocks, by the way, are so detailed in the original work that you can see the brim of the hat worn by the male and a ribbon around the hat of the woman seated next to him. I can't see that in the original from six feet away, so I opt out of that much detail in my copy. I also chose not to include the seagulls that were sprinkled about the sky.
Final result, oil on canvas, 18 x 24:
One of my favorite aspects of being a Copyist is talking with people from all over the world. I get to use all the languages I know, and I get to be an ambassador. Given the current political climate, I'm happy and amazed to still see so many visitors from overseas.
I was often asked why I chose this work to copy. As a landscape painter, I have a fondness for the 19th Century artists who made landscape their focus. And, being newly-relocated to the East Coast, I thought this would be a good way to vicariously explore the Atlantic coast, which is so different from the Pacific coast where I have spent most of my life.
