At this point I do not know why I wanted to paint another turtle. I was still fascinated by water ripples and reflections and… I don’t know.

When you are taking something out of your head and trying to put it on paper, a lot can go wrong.

Again, I was fascinated by these ripples.

But did not want to paint another crab. I wanted to get that feel of water meeting sand. I found another turtle reference photo and went to it.

I laid out the turtle with Fineline Masking fluid then I took a break. The mask dripped. It happens. It is so not a big deal. With a rubber cement pickup or just your finger, you can pick up any masking that doesn’t work for the design or drips like this. This works only after the masking fluid has dried.

Next is the wash of Quinacridone Gold again “liquid sunshine”. I wanted to to be part of the ripples/reflections.

After that all dried, time for ripples and sand. I did have fun with this!

I guess I was too influenced by the colors in the reference photo and decided to go with more “neutrals” and, well muddy sand colors, perhaps to contrast with the bright turtle.

So I used Zoisite -a wonderful gray/green – and Hematite Violet Genuine – which is a lovely wine violet muddied with gray. This is not so bad… at this point.

I deepened the shadows and started throwing in more color. I deleted a lot of the progress photos I took at this point as they were just painful to edit. At some point I threw a little salt on the wash to get more granulation.

Then to paint the turtle. Mayan Blue and Sienna again as they work so well together. The thing is, I rarely start a painting with a clean palette. I usually have paints on there that I use often. Daniel Smith paints can dry for weeks and then be brought back with water. I do tend to decide on colors to use, then in the middle see another color that I think will work too so I throw that in.

In this case, I did throw in a blue – probably Indanthrone and maybe some Red Iron Oxide as it granulates in a way that Sienna does not.

The thing is, the background colors don’t work together it is just… blah. I do like the way the colors worked on the turtle back but the rest really shouldn’t see the light of day….