Seashells

I guess this is our last visit to the beach for this year.  LOL   Thanks, JoAnn, for the great photos.  I chose this one because I liked the circle and the placement of the shells.  

After I did my drawing, I did the background first, because the shells are all really light, some of them with white edges.  I used a mixture of yellow ochre, burnt sienna, and ultramarine blue.  I was hoping that since my paper is a little textured, and two of the colors are "granular", that it would make a sand-like texture.  I was a bit disappointed.

Next, I put a tint of yellow ochre on each of the shells, and softened with a little water so that I didn't get hard edges.  

I started painting the stripes and darker areas on some of the shells using a mixture of burnt sienna and alizarin crimson, with a tiny bit of ultramarine.  If the burnt sienna and alizarin crimson look good to you, you can skip the blue for now.

I used some very pale ultramarine blue/burnt sienna on the bluish side for the pattern in the sand dollar and the shadows on the clam shell and the layers on the nose of the conch shell.

I finished all the shells, and darkened where needed.  I used a darker version of the original colors, and added ultramarine blue to darken.  

I used burnt sienna and ultramarine blue to make a grayish brown and added the darker areas where the sand was indented.  I just scumbled it in roughly.  

I covered all the shells with bits of torn paper to protect them, and I spattered some of the burnt sienna/ultramarine mixture, then removed the paper when the spatter dried.