Sunsets sell more kits than any other subject and get ruined more often than any other subject, for one reason. A real sunset is a continuous gradient. A numbered canvas turns it into six or seven bands. If you fill each band and stop, you get a striped sky, and no amount of good work lower down on the canvas rescues it.
The fix takes about ten minutes of extra work and nothing else: paint two neighbouring bands one after the other without letting the first dry, then drag a dry brush back and forth along the seam. Do that at every boundary and the bands disappear. Let a band dry before you touch its neighbour and you have committed to the stripe.
With that out of the way, here is what is actually in the Seascape collection and worth painting in July.
Sunsets over water
Fiery Ocean Dusk and Golden Waves at Dusk are the two most demanding, because the sky gradient continues into the water as a reflection and the seams have to match on both halves. Blushing Waters is the gentlest version of the same idea.
Sunset Pier and Sailboat at Golden Hour both put a dark silhouette in front of the gradient, which is a gift: the eye goes to the hard edge and forgives a rougher sky behind it. If you have never blended before, start with one of these rather than with an open horizon.
Sailing into the Sunset and Evening Sail work the same way with more sail and less sky.
Water without the sunset
Not every summer canvas has to be orange. Infinite Sea and Ocean's First Light are cold and blue, and they hang better in a room that already has a lot of warm wood in it.
Beach Waves is the closest thing here to a straightforward beach scene. Serene Ocean Alcove and Coastal Embrace put rock into it, which means hard edges and less blending.
Breaking wave subjects are their own difficulty class. Crimson Waves, Waves of Life and Dusky Ocean Rhythms all have foam, and foam is dozens of small pale regions that each need two coats. Budget a couple of extra evenings.
The Mediterranean group
Golden Hour in Santorini is the best seller of this set and the reason is architecture: whitewashed blocks and blue domes give you clean shapes and a strong colour scheme without any blending at all.
Sunlit Mediterranean Coast and Blue Door sit in the same world. The Blue Door is small in scope, a single doorway and some flowers, and finishes in one long evening rather than a week.
Vintage Havana is filed here by colour rather than geography, all pastel facades and old cars.
Tropical and the animals that come with it
Paradise in the Sun and Tropical Beach House are the palm-and-sand pair. Lilies of the Lagoon trades the sand for still water.
On the animal side, Vibrant Turtle, Colorful Parrot and Pink Flamingo are all high-saturation and all forgiving, since nothing in them depends on a subtle transition. Corgi at the Shore is the one people buy as a gift.
Two that do not belong in any of those groups
Great Wave after Hokusai is a print rather than a photograph, so the regions are flat colour with no gradient anywhere. It is the only seascape here where blending would actively make it worse.
Anime Seaside Railway belongs to the anime range and has the same property: large flat fields, hard outlines, quick to finish and very tolerant of an unsteady hand.
Practical
Sky-heavy subjects want size. Sixteen by twenty inches is $24.95 at 24 colours, $34.95 at 36, $39.95 at 48; twenty by twenty six is $29.95, $44.95 and $48.95. For anything with a gradient, take 36 colours at minimum. The 24 colour version of a sunset is a genuinely harder painting, not an easier one, because the bands are wider and the seams more obvious.
Printing takes one to three business days and delivery seven to fifteen, free to the US, Canada, the UK, the EU, Australia and New Zealand with no minimum. Order in the second half of May if you want it on the wall for the summer rather than after it.
If the canvas disappoints, the thirty day guarantee covers a prepaid return and a full refund including original shipping.
The blending method above is set out properly in how to mix colours for smooth blending, and varnishing matters more on a seascape than on most subjects, since a matt finish flattens water.
Three recent summer canvases: the Teal Camper Van at Sunset, the Sailboat in a Tropical Cove and the Palm Trees on a Turquoise Beach.
