New Movement Painting

Following a recent holiday in Devon, where I unfortunately forgot to take my sketching equipment, I took lots of interesting photos which I was hoping would provide me with lots of images to incorporate into the "Movement" project. A wonderful set of photo's I took was of my children swimming in the outdoor pool, on a gloriously sunny day, which gave loads of ripples and reflections. My daughter was the most willing model for me, as being older than her brother she can swim under the water. So I was getting her to swim around so I could photograph her. What made this such a novelty for me is that where I live we are forbidden to take photo's of our own children in the local swimming pools.

There was one photo in particular which I took of her, that really caught my interest, where she fully submerged but looking up at the sky. This photo here is the beginning of my painting of it. I started off with a layer of ultramarine blue, but when I saw that the colour didn't match up with the turquoise of the water, and not even adding white made any difference, I decided to invest in a new shade of blue. A visit to the art shop helped me decide on Cerulean Blue Hue, which when mixed with pale green, ultramarine and white, like I've done here, has perfectly captured the rippling sun dappled effect of the water.

I roughly filled in the area of the figure, just so I could see it in its position, but I'm not being too precious about painting over it in areas, because there are areas on the legs, arms and head which are fragmented by the water, so this will help to give that effect. When I first started blocking in the areas of paint for the figure and the water I did my brush strokes going horizontally, but I realised that this deadened the image, and made it look flat and motionless. Changing the brushstrokes to diagonals, as shown above, has created greater movement, and made the effect of the sun and water rippling much more effective.

I'm again using acrylics here so I can layer the paint quicker than oils. I did think about using oil paints, but I was worried about how much smudging would occur between the paint. However I am planning on copying another one of the swimming photo's, this time of my son, for my own use (as it does not convey movement as effectively as this image) and I will try and use oils for this version, then I can compare the effects of both images.