Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Painting the Dunes

16" x20" – Spring Dune

One would think that by shear location, I would paint the Indiana National Dunes Lakeshore a lot. In truth, I rarely paint it at all. Having been born and raised in eastern Iowa, dunes and beaches weren't around me. I think because of that, I don't have any nostalgia or affinity for them. It commonly doesn't interest me. That said, however, like any place, you can always find something beautiful about an area. I often feel the abstract patterns of the dunes are not portrayed well, if at all. So I challenged myself to try to capture that wonderful abstraction where the dunes meet the grassland.

I had taken the photo of this scene a few years ago. While digging through my photo box I found it and painted a little study of it (see below). I liked the study so much I tried my hand at making it into a larger painting. Fortunately, I am not too disappointed in either of them. Though I will say, the main focal area is still trees. For some reason I can't seem to pull myself away from them.

6" x 8" Small Work


3 comments:

Dogs by Bri said...

You really captured the light and feeling of the place beautifully.

Nice work on both.

Bri-

enb said...

great painting there. both of them. tricky to keep the life of the quicksketch in the final, but you did it! well done.
cheers

Mark Vander Vinne said...

Thanks Bri and enb. Much appreciated.