Ruakaka Beach

8" x 10" oil on hardboard

This is my painting from Richard Robinson's excellent tutorial DVD. I'll tell you what, it's super-hard painting along with a lesson. I remember years ago when I tried to paint with Bob Ross, and it was infuriating and frustrating—he made it look SO EASY, and I just made a horrible mess.

However, I've learned some things from those days, one of which is that it takes some practice to learn new things. So what I'm doing is: Watch the DVD. Follow along with Richard and try to do what he's doing. Watch the DVD again. Do a new painting, possibly with a different reference photo, on my own.

One of the coolest things in his tutorial is that he mixes ALL the paint beforehand. He fills up his palette with the dark, medium, and light values for each of the main areas of the scene (e.g., sky, clouds, distant hills, water, etc.) There's a lot to be said for that technique: you can evaluate the value and temperature right there next to each other, and see the color scheme for the entire finished painting at once.

Because this is from a tutorial, using someone else's photo reference and technique, I'm starting the bidding very low on the DPW auction.