Sea, Waves and Beach - Saltwick Bay, North Yorkshire

"Streams on the Beach", Saltwick Bay, North Yorkshire.
Oil. Alistair Butt © 2008.

An 'almost finished' oil painting of the superb Saltwick Bay on the North Yorkshire coast just below Whitby. Remaining to be done, when the under paint is tough dry, is some glazing for a soft haze (sea spray) over the lower background cliffs, plus some small work (detailing) of areas like the main wave and sand (small stones etc).

It was just one of those days when the light, tide etc all combined to produce a wonderful subject... a falling tide provided some wonderful refection's on the beach and thanks to the flat shelve of rock in the bay the waves were much smaller than those just north at Whitby.

As I've mentioned in a previous post about this location, this is by no means an easy one to get to due to the steep cliff, and best avoided after any period of rain as the path down becomes very slippery but the location is also a favourite amongst photographers as it's one of the east coast beaches that you can see both the sunrise and sunset (for two weeks either side mid summer) plus fossil hunters but the flat rocks beyond the beach are again very slippery and the cliffs very unstable as I witnessed.

At the beginning of the post I stated that the painting was 'almost' finished... having not looked at it for a number of days more haze was added to lower areas of cliffs , reworked some of the wave form (highlights and mid tones) and adding some gulls. It doesn't really show up well on the image but next the whole beach area was lightened slightly, some further work on the small streams/water (highlights, mid tones) with finally some additional work, though not a lot, on the two main rocks (more modeling of form) completed the painting.

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