A Fog and A Mood In Big Sur

I have always love the west coast, Big Sur in particular.  It gets socked in with fog in certain locations, and gives an air of Avalon to it.   Being an old hippie, it seems a place where dreams are born.  Anyway, I used some reference that illustrated this mood well.  First I showed the class how to sketch the piece out very basically.

Next I lightly draw the composition on, keeping the pencil light by erasing excess with kneaded eraser.  Then the masking fluid (in yellow ) is used to save the whites for later.  This allows me to get liberal with the washes in the background.

 

I did a wash horizontally across the page with pale cerulean and ultramarine keeping it very wet then into the wash i started adding the colors for the trees in the background first, moving to the foreground, darkening as I go. 

  After some work on the foreground details, I remove the masking fluid to expose the whites.

I finish up the foreground details, trying to keep the tree and grass details loose and connected by not one, but a variety of greens cools and warms., I also take a moment to touch up some of the whites with tint, and wave and rock details.