Every now and then an email falls into my inbox and I smile. My niece sent me a note with a photo of her two children on a beach in New England. Would I be willing to paint it as an anniversary gift for her parents? Oh, my…yes!

What I do with a photograph like this first is to just absorb it. It may sound odd, but I want to think of the sea, the breeze, and the birds before I even put the brush to paper.

Next I crop the image, making the children the focal point and deleting anything that would distract from them. I wanted to give the children a more natural element to look at such as seagulls and I moved them closer to the water. Or did I raise the tide?

I liked the plaid of the little boy’s pants, but the dots on the little girl’s dress were just too distracting.  The blue of the sky and water is lovely, but I wanted more colors in the whole image so I washed a rainbow of colors through the water and sand.

Here is the final result: