Moonlight sonata

I decided that it was a good time to try painting sea at night. I liked the idea of combined dark sea, night sky and the moonlight.
As usual, I searched google images for a good quality photo. And as usual, I could not find the one. Instead, the search engine provided me with couple photos that I used as a reference:

Igor Sakharov generously shared his knowledge and tips on similar topic in this youtube lesson. I used his lesson as well as a reference material.

I started with an underpaiting of dark blue color, divided the canvas into two parts (sea and sky) and created the moon spot with several layers: bottom layer of white+yellow+red, middle-yellow,and top layer of almost white (with a little yellow). The moon was mostly created simply with fingers to create the blurred effect of the moonlight.

After that I proceeded with the sea: adding horizontal strokes of different tones to create the wavy background sea.

The moon light reflection can be seen on the water as well as on the wet shore. What is interesting is that the wet shore acts as a puddle in terms of light reflection. The “puddle effect” means flat horizontal surface plane without any water movements. This kind of plane reflects the light source in straight vertical lines emphasizing the “puddle” or “glass” effect.

I did the vertical palette knife strokes. After that I added horizontal lines of sea foam.

The front wave seen on this picture was repainted as I thought it was too small 🙂 The reflection was done with light pink and yellow colors to show the shimmering effect of the light on water.