Small Rock Arch · Sand-Bounced Light

SUBJECT
One small natural rock arch standing on a pale sandy beach, with sunlit sand directly beneath its opening and a quiet strip of sea visible through it. The shaded underside receives warm reflected light from the sand below.

COMPOSITION
Use a low, slightly oblique viewpoint with the arch centered across the middle of the image. Keep its complete opening, both supporting feet, and the sand beneath them visible. Place the sea horizon through the lower half of the opening, leaving enough foreground sand to show the source of the reflected light.

STYLE GUIDE
1. Shape & line
Build the arch from broad, irregular rock planes around one clearly open gap. Use firm, angular contours along the outer silhouette and fewer, softer plane boundaries inside the opening so the shaded underside reads as a continuous curved surface.

2. Color & light
Let sunlight enter from the upper image-left, brightening the arch's upper-left planes and the sand beneath the opening. Paint a muted warm ochre lift on downward-facing rock immediately above that bright sand; keep it darker than the sunlit exterior and let it fade into cooler, deeper shadow higher inside the arch.

3. Texture & material
Use matte, opaque gouache patches for the rock, with sparse broken brush marks suggesting weathered roughness. Keep the sand smoother and lighter, and paint the sea as restrained horizontal strokes; preserve broad value shapes instead of covering every surface with equal detail.

4. Composition
Keep the illuminated sand and its warm reflection vertically adjacent within the central opening so their relationship is immediately visible. Extend the arch's cast shadow toward image-right across the beach, while retaining a clearly sunlit patch beneath the opening; simplify the distant sea and sky to hold attention on this light exchange.

PRIORITY
Preserve the requested identity, count, action, composition and output settings. Apply the style rules within those constraints; a style reference must not replace the subject or layout. Within the style: Make the warm light rising from the sand into the shaded underside the clearest visual lesson.

AVOID
Avoid an evenly glowing underside or reflected light as bright as direct sunlight.

OUTPUT
Create one landscape image in a 3:2 horizontal aspect ratio, rendered as an opaque gouache painting, with no lettering, captions, borders, or watermark.

SELF-CHECK
Check that the warm underside sits directly above visible sunlit sand and remains within the arch's shadow.