Michael P. Ives

Painting an Atmospheric Seascape

A Summer Day

BY MICHAEL P. IVES

Artist

Arizona, USA

This talented artist gives a detailed description of his methods in the app “Brushes” in the creation of his piece A Summer Day.

Picture 1: The Rough Sketch

For this painting, created in the “Brushes” app, I wanted to create the feeling of a gentle summer day at the beach. A strong horizontal composition will help convey a lazy, easy feeling. So first I sketched the outline with a solid #1 brush at 1 px width using a light teal color at 100 percent transparency.

Picture 2: Background Colors

I used the slightly textured #2 brush with about a 40–50 width px diameter at 100 percent transparency from the color wheel to lay in the sky, ocean, and beach, being careful to totally cover the areas so no white shows through.

Picture 3: Sizing

By pinching with my thumb and index finger to enlarge the image, I again use the #2 textured brush but reduce the diameter to 10–15 px at 100 percent transparency and begin laying in the brightly colored umbrellas and, by reducing to a 2–3 px width, some of their shadowing.

Picture 4: Perspective

”Brushes” allows you to go in and out of full frame with a double-tap of your finger to see how it’s coming along. It’s a good idea to use this tool many times during the painting process. In this picture, I’ve gone back to full frame and can see that everything is clean and I’m ready to proceed to the next phase.

Picture 5: Smaller Areas

I use the #2 textured brush, reducing the size to 3–6 px at 100 percent transparency as I paint in the smaller figures and the light bouncing inside the umbrellas.

Picture 6: The Finesse of Transparencies

Now that the basic colors and composition are laid in, the painting begins to come to life. I use the #2 textured brush at varying sizes for the sky, ocean, and beach, with the transparency down to only 10–15 percent, and begin “finessing” each area with thin layers of pinks, teals, light yellows, all overlaying to create the impressionistic effect of movement of light.

Picture 7: Celebrate

Isolated swatches of unexpected red and orange celebrate and divide the long horizontal format. Use the #2 textured brush, 5 px width and 100 percent transparency. To smooth out the strength of the red, I keep my finger down on the teal water next to it (which selects that color with the eyedropper tool), put the transparency down to about 20 percent and move it over the red until it’s softened to my liking. This last step is repeated many times throughout the later stages of the painting to help give a softened overall effect as I finish detailing the people, chairs, and umbrellas.

Picture 8: Mists of Color

I want to give the painting an ethereal feeling—atmosphere, if you will—so once again I choose the #2 brush with a 10 px diameter and keep the transparency level way down to 5–10 percent, just pulling the existing color of the umbrellas up and away. Slowly it evolves. If it’s too much, I can backtrack with the always forgiving “undo” arrow (a wonderful tool).

Picture 9: Signature

To finish off the painting, I use the #1 finest brush at 1 px width and a complementary color, pinching the image all the way up to 1,600 magnification so I can easily write with my finger.

Voila! The painting is now ready to upload to my online “Brushes” gallery where I can make high resolution copies for prints, post onto my Flickr groups, and download a movie file of all the behind-the-scenes strokes it took to create the piece. I like to then take this “QuickTime” video into Apple’s “iMovie” and create a custom video with accompanying title, music, and narration for a professional look suitable for the classes I teach or for speaking engagements.