Crash

I was able to catch this wave in my camera the other day at Windansea Beach in La Jolla while I was painting.  It was such a beautiful afternoon. It started out as an overcast day, then the sun broke through - and I didn't have my umbrella up to shield my setup, so I started chasing a painting - I didn't stick to the value sketch I did at the beginning, and I had my palette in direct sun so I started using colors and values that - well who knows what I was doing - I couldn't see!  Couldn't see the value on the canvas, couldn't see for the reflections on the palette.   But I thought, hunky-dory, this will be great!!!  It was almost a good thing that the one I painted in plein air flipped onto the dirt patch where I was, because when I got home and looked at it - what a mess I had made of it.   The dirt and pebbles that were stuck to the surface didn't really ruin anything, quite the opposite.  All said and done, I moved on to paint this from reference, and in the process learned something about crashing waves.