Big Sur Coast by Maria Bales

From the Artist: I did this transparent watercolor using a 2" hake brush. If any of you have used one you know what a challenge a hake can be. They have no spring to them and once you lay a stroke the bristles stay bent until you dip again in water. I layered my colors (unfortunately the blues don't show up well on this photo) building from the distant background to the foreground where I used richer and darker colours. It took me several hours to do the piece because of the time I had to wait between layers. The actual painting time was probably less than an hour.

From the Painting Guide: It's a pity about the missing blues, no doubt these solve the extreme sun glare in the right-hand corner that we see here. There's beautiful light reflecting off the water which is matched by the bright, white beaches receding into the distance. The middle hill has lovely, complex colors (created by mixing colors on the paper rather than on a palette, which creates solid colors, or painting wet-on-wet). The trees on the right have a great sense of presence, although there's actually a minimum of form to them. A great example of how less can be more.

Things to consider:

• Composition: There's a diagonal line running from corner to corner, cutting the painting in half and leaving the left-hand side a bit heavy. Moving the diagonal down so there's less land and more sea, would create better balance. The trees on the left are closer to the viewer than those on the right, so should have a bit more detail. There's no blending of color between these trees and the ruddy bush in the left corner; you'd probably see some green showing through the red and a bit of red in the green.