Michelle Cote Fontaine Fine Art

A few months ago a friend took a photo of the sun setting as he and his wife were walking along the shoreline and posted it to Facebook.  I instantly knew that I wanted to paint this reference at some point in time and had no idea how quickly that time would come.  About a week after the posting of the photo, my daughter asked me to paint “something colorful” for her office.  I immediately showed her the photo and began to paint!  The charm of the photo is the warmth created by the richness of the evening sky.  Much like my kayak painting, the main challenge was to place the multitude of colo present in the sky onto the ocean, the rocks, the walkway, the lawn/bushes and the house. To accomplish this, I would start with a section of the sky and then place the color reflected in the other areas of the picture.  Although the colors simply lay on the ocean, they become a different color when combined with the natural colors of the rocks, walkway, landscape and house.  Once the colors combined in these areas, they became a richer color that your mind’s eye does not tend to remember.  For example, on the rocks the sun’s reflection on the grey/black rocks came from a mixture of reds, orange, blues and white.  I think the use of a wide variety of colors and color combinations throughout the entire painting added a depth and warmth to the overall painting. It was certainly “something colorful” and an expansion of my typical palette.