#307 "Hot Sand Cool Water"

I've got a figure show coming up and I needed to start getting some pieces together. My old standby are my self portraits. I love painting them for the historical tradition of the genre, for the challenge of trying to represent oneself accurately and truthfully, and simply for the fact that it's the cheapest model in town. Though I didn't want the entire body of work to be self portraits. . . . that seems a bit self centered (pardon the pun.) So I went back and forth with ideas I had been kicking around and settled on something that I loved to paint. Figurative scenes with the ocean or beach. Maybe it's the long winter, or the desire to get back to South Carolina where my parents live but the pieces I came up with just felt right. This guy is a small sketch for a larger piece that I'll be doing for the show. . . I wanted to really try and capture the intensity of temperature in both the sand and water. As usual the figure is simply an element in the piece rather than the sole focus.