beach bokeh inspired artwork

I had a canvas laying around from a project I did last Christmas and I needed to release some creativity. These bokeh (apparently that's what it's called when there are water/sun spots in photographs) beach photos were my inspiration. I love how sparkly and bright they look. They really invoke the feeling of being at the beach and feeling the spray of the waves. I figured it wouldn't be too difficult to recreate something similar using paint and a potato stamp. I pinned a few photos I liked from etsy and tried to copy the colors and landscaped I liked.

Owen helped me paint the water.

Once we had the landscape painted, I used a round potato stamp to make the bokeh dots. I stamped off most of the paint before painting it on the canvas and then used a wet brush over the dots to make them more translucent.

Overall it ended up being pretty close to what I wanted. It's kind of an out-of-focus version of those photos I love. I think the sky needs to be more solid, so I may paint over that part using just one color and see how that looks. I'm also trying to decide if the bokeh dots should have been bigger. I will re-post pictures when I get it just right!