Seagulls Squabbling at Driftway

View of Easel and Scene at Herring River

I cannot remember a finer stretch of New England weather than this year, 2012 A.D..   We had another great day to paint outside so our destination is the Herring River which borders the Driftway in Scituate.  It was mid-morning and a little over an hour until high tide so we needed to keep a watchful eye on the water level.   We set up right next to the water's edge, close enough to enjoy a nice low vantage point, close enough to hear the gentle ripples, and frankly, close enough to call this day perfection.


Standing at my easel, my view was just as shown in the first photo.   Misrepresented in this photo are the blues.  The photo shows a drastic difference in the blues between the painting and the actual scene...a translation problem prevalent in photos.   When comparing the color of the sky in the second photo to the actual scene, they look much closer to each other and to reality.

Get Off My Blasted Ballast
or
Find Your Own Piling

At the end of our paint-out, my painting consisted of sky, water, distant shore and the foreground pilings.   I had wanted to include a seagull sitting atop the tallest piling, but there were no gulls around.      I happen to love the quirky nature of seagulls.   At home, I found an old photo of one gull screaming at another about which one should get to sit on the perfect piling.  I added them to this painting, and from the looks of this, I need to re-draw them to correct the wings of the airborne gull and to better accentuate the beaks, eyes and legs of both.   The title is not decided yet.