Original oil on hardwood painting of Bray Harbour by

Description

This is a quite detailed and carefully planned painting of Bray harbour based on a number of photographs I took this summer. The time was late afternoon or early evening and some young sailors seemed to be winding it down for the day. I took some pics and figured this scene would make for a nice painting especially with the dramatic cloud formation in the background and the high contrast sunlight.
I dropped my usual loose impressionist style and went for something a lot tighter to capture all the details of the scene. I wasn’t aiming for photorealism, I still wanted it to look reasonably painterly.

I am very pleased with the result, although it took quite a lot of work to get there both at the sketching stage and on the painting which often required several layers of colour to get the right effect.