Bright Light, Burnham Overy Staithe

This is one of my favourite sleepover destinations when painting the north Norfolk coast and you can see my trusty VW campervan, Uma, parked up in this painting. I was struck by the high-key light effect created by bright skies and the wet road. I like to set out my lightest and darkest early on. The reflection off the water was the brightest of all, so I used that to set the lightest light in the painting and then worked out the values of the sky and road, respectively.

My darkest was underneath the boats closest to me but wasn’t particularly dark so I had to be careful to pitch it correctly to help judge the mid-values. By softening the edges on distant hills and leaving the foreground sharper, I created a sense of aerial perspective and increased this effect by leaving the foreground colours chromatically stronger too. Note that colours are generally more muted when painting contre-jour as well.

18x24in
Oil on canvas
Framed

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