Tone, texture, colour and line! Caroline had quite a boring picture of brown cliffs going into a distance. With the use of acrylic paints
She mapped out a rough line of the picture, then starting with the nearest, the foreground, she used warm colours to bring the cliff forward, yellow, red and blue to make a warm brown. She mixed the cooler colours for the distance, primary blue, phthalo green and red to dull things down, making a kind of turquoise.
With lots of underpainting and thick brush strokes the first cliff started to appear from the paper, lots of reflective light into the sea and the sea colour, to the lower part of the cliff face building up lots of texture, adding rocks in the sea, the top of the cliff in contrast was light to give line and impact. As she continued down the line of the cliffs, duller colours and less texture to give them distance, adding dark shadows to separate the different sections.
The movement of the sea imitated by the movement of the brush, tapping in different textures and blending whilst wet. Remember to cool colour down with a red in necessary.
A wild sky was added with all the colours of the cliffs and the sea, giving a very moody storm look.
To get different textures use old bristle brushes adding red or blue to give the tonal values, foreground or distance.
Play with the paints adding purples to bring out the rocks and cliff edges to separate them.
To give the white water movement, add a touch of lemon to the white, tap the white over the rocks and the bottom of the cliff and scratch for more texture and movement. Add light and dark to the top of the cliffs to give light using different angle brush strokes, going cooler into the distance.
Contrast draws the eye, fiery colours to the foreground, cool and calm to the distance
