The aim of this mural was to allow it’s viewers to imagine they were somewhere far away, somewhere peaceful and calm. I wanted to create a realistic seascape as the seaside is often associated with relaxation and feeling calm.
To create a realistic seascape I needed to create depth within the painting so there were a few things I had to consider – size, colour and detail.
As the mountains are in the distance the viewer would not be able to see much detail in the mountains, if any. I simply painted them as silhouettes in different shades of grey to portray this. Objects in the distance are much less refined and it can be difficult to see their colour and detail.
When painting the water I wanted to create the illusion that the water just below the mountains was much further away than the water lower down in the mural, just above the rocks. When looking at the sea you will notice that you see waves breaking close to the shore, but the water looks calm in the distance. This is how I painted the sea in my mural. I add some definition of the waves just above the rocks and gradually faded this out towards the mountains.
The rocks were another tool that I used to create depth. These are at the forefront of the mural so I painted them with the most detail and different tones. I used light tones of brown and grey for the tops of the rocks where the light would hit them, and darker tones near the bottoms where the rocks are laying on top of each other. This use of light and dark tones helps to create a 3 dimensional effect.
The combination of all these elements creates an overall realistic looking seascape.
Hannah Paints 