Houses Near Water

22" x 30" oil on canvas.
To take this photo the painting was lit by lights on the right and left, and I couldn't gt rid of the glare on the upper left.

I didn't want to paint a blue sky because the majority of the painting is blue ocean. However I wanted to paint it a color that wouldn't be distracting (as it would be if there was too much contrast between the ocean and sky), and worked well with the color of light in the painting.

It may be difficult to see but the sky is actually two horizontal bands of orange...a lighter orange on the bottom and a darker band of orange on the top. It may sound silly but I painted it four or five times to get the colors and values right. Also I wanted the island with houses to be the focal point and not the sky.

As I was doing this painting I decided to make the water have a graphic pattern which I think is pretty successful. The ocean takes up so much of the painting and I wanted to see if I could get a pattern to work.
2.As usual I wanted the light to have a color, and the shadow to have a color too.

3. The light and shadow colors for the foreground houses is the same as on the island houses. However they don't distract from the main focal point.

4. I like the design created by the palm trees. The pattern on the water is interesting too.