by Andy Dolphin | Mar 7, 2013 | issues, oil painting, plein air, seascape, weather
Ever since I started painting, I’ve favoured scenes with sunlight and shadow. I love the hard contrasts of dark against light, warm against cool. And it’s not that it makes painting easier, it just happens to be what catches my eye even when I’m not...
by Andy Dolphin | Mar 2, 2013 | clouds, issues, landscape, limited palette, oil painting, plein air, seascape, tips
It’s not as bad as it sounds…On Wednesday I headed down to Misery Beach, near Albany. I’m not sure how this gorgeous and secluded little beach got its name but one popular suggestion is that waste products from the nearby whaling station used to wash...
by Andy Dolphin | Jan 27, 2013 | issues, seascape, sketch, step-by-step, tips
I have actually been doing a bit of painting recently but all of it has been in the studio and has involved revisiting old paintings that never “made the cut”.This isn’t something I have done a lot of in the past but lately I’ve been driven to...
by Andy Dolphin | Jan 5, 2013 | issues, limited palette, oil painting, plein air, seascape, tips
Lowlands Beach, Denmark. Photo by Andy Dolphin.My second painting for 2013 was, in some ways, an exercise in not giving up.We’ve had pretty strong winds for the last couple of days so I assumed the surf would be pounding along the southern coast. With this...
by Andy Dolphin | Oct 17, 2012 | about, issues, landscape, oil painting, tips
When I first switched from commercial to fine art, I tended to paint with almost painstaking attention to detail. I used fine brushes and painted leaves on shrubbery in forest landscapes or feathers on portraits of birds. It was a hangover from my days working as an...
by Andy Dolphin | Oct 12, 2012 | issues, landscape, limited palette, oil painting, plein air, tips
Over the years I’ve painted a lot of karri trees. I saw most of them as “tree portraits”, each painting trying to capture the character of a tree in a particular location. Ive painted them next to winding tracks, streams and bridges and I’ve...
