shore line 4.5x5

I have been thinking and reading a lot about painting water lately and I wanted to try some things. I decided to approach things a little differently and, instead of going outside to paint today, I copied a painting that I found on Armand Cabrera's excellent blog. I didn't try to reproduce his piece stroke for stroke. I was trying to use color in a similar way to capture the dual transparent and reflective quality of the water. I've been wanting to try this from life for a while but it's a fairly daunting prospect for me and I felt like I would be better prepared for a plein air session if I copied a couple by people who had already mastered the idea. There are some wonderful articles on painting water on James Gurney's blog. If you look closely you can see a bunch of dirt stuck to this painting. I cleverly dropped it face down so it would look more like a plein air piece.