Imagine being on the beach as the sun sets, the tide coming in and watching the silhouetted clouds cross the sky. Listen to the waves as they crash onto the shore and marvel at how the yellows, oranges and blues come together.

After much cooler temperature paintings I decided to switch to warmer. I used my standard vertical-horizontal palette knife technique for the background but gave the foreground waves more movement by following the flow of the sea. Waiting a week for the paint to dry helped to layer on my small brush work for the tops of the waves with finger smudged paint to blend the sun’s reflections on top of the water. In the past I’ve made a point of just using my one palette knife for a piece of work but mixing up the styles got me closer to my desired end result. There’s a lesson in there somewhere.