Turtle in Turquoise

 

 

Turtle in Turquoise

This sea turtle is rehabilitating in Florida thus my close proximity.   They are really magnificent creatures, and hopefully this guy will be back in the deep blue ocean before long.     I took some liberty with the water color - not deep ocean ultramarine but turquoise.   The added design of twirly ripples and glare are the backdrop for this crusty, old guy.

Under, At & Over Water (Aka - The Span of Angels)

Folded Sections of 7 foot canvas

This piece is a fairly ambitious undertaking at 84 by 36 inches.   I plan to hang vertically, envisioning a wall with a cathedral ceiling.   I was breaking my own norms and truly making it up as I went.   (What?  Not the usual formula?)

I'll be in a much larger studio soon and it will be a real treat.   In my current studio I worked on sections of the canvas, unfurling each section and clipping up the folded parts.  I worked the elements in succession, the sky, the far distant mountains, the mid-ground meadow, the shrubs on the shoreline, a sandy beach, the chop, and finally, the underwater world.  

The Span of Angels

The angelic cherub in the clouds is fishing (of course :)) and the fishing line spans all the elevations down into the tropical reef, where an angel fish is deciding whether to bite.     Well I've told you too much already, but there is much left to do on this one - mainly making the elements more harmonious with one another.  

Stay tuned for the final product in a few weeks.

Painting and Sketching in Tropical Paradise

In the beautiful island country of Jamaica, the delights were many: people, music, balmy breezes, cuisine and most of all, a rainbow of vibrant and colorful scenes.   I longed to paint with my oils, but this vacation was designed around the theme of "R&R."  Dealing with wet oil paintings in a beautiful hotel setting would have been too scary, and frankly stressful.    My fallback was watercolor and sketching, adequate substitutes and actually good for brushing up on different skills.    

There were many talented musicians strolling along the beach.  They periodically pausing to perform a few songs for tips.   They stayed long enough to be captured in pencil, which I share here.  Sketching on the fly was good practice, especially for a plein air painter like myself.

My favorite musician was Donnavan Darymple, who also performed some evenings at the hotel

We snorkeling along a reef about a mile from the hotel with local guides.   Back ashore, painting the underwater world with watercolor seemed pretty natural. Although I do find watercolor challenging, letting the wet colors run together was fun, as was playing with the masking fluid.      

Underwater I

Underwater II

Underwater III

Bullfrog

The frog is a New England "feller" painted from a photograph.   I actually painted this one first, as I was getting re-accustomed to watercolor.   As you can see, I approached it very much like an oil painting (covering the whole surface, layering, accentuating the darks).

Under the Shade Tree

One very nice aspect of the hotel's beach was that it had a large swathe of shade trees.    There was no problem shifting our chairs from shade to sunshine and back again.   This painting was done from under the tree where I spent most of my vacation.

Watercolor by Paul Thomas

 Last but not least is a painting done by Jamaican Watercolorist Paul Thomas.  He and I had a nice conversation at our beach where he was set up selling his beautiful depictions of the local scenes.   His hummingbird paintings were amazing - I wish I had taken a photo!    I gave him a block of watercolor paper as it had come to my attention that getting supplies on the island was not easy.   He most graciously painted the scene shown here.   He sure knows how to mix that beautiful turquoise that I was having a hard time achieving!  Thank you Paul!

Tropical Watercolors - Loose

View from Mars

Yellow Lady Slipper

I was fortunate to be able to travel to Aruba this year and just like in years past, I brought my watercolors.  Watercolors, although not my preferred medium - provided a nice to change.   I used 4x6 inch and 6x9 inch Canon brand blocks, but I relaxed my past ways.  Rather than using photos or framing tight little scenes,  I just tried to match scenery color, only loosely matching the view.   I let the colors flow into one another using lots of Caribbean Sea water.   


This was more like playing around and experimenting, with no expectation of a worthwhile end product. What was worthwhile was more the process and relaxation of staring at swirling color starting to dry under the strong Equator sun.

These few are the "loosest" of the watercolors.  A forthcoming post will include some "tighter" watercolors.




Yellow Flower Spray





Sea Monster Emerging at Sunset





Tropical Fish

Tropical Fish World

It seems like a year ago that we were enjoying our trip to Aruba, but it has only been a few weeks. 
 


Snorkeling became one of our favorite activities, having first discovered it on an island tour a few years ago.   Now whenever we go, we bring our own snorkeling things and delight in the underwater world of tropical fish.   This year we added another item, a disposable, waterproof camera.    The photos do not nearly capture the amazing color, but they certainly help recall some vivid memories of it, and serve as good reference material for painting it.  



Underwater World

The real trick would be to convey with a painting the other sensory elements of the encounter, such as:  the muffled sound of lapping waves above, a strange crackling noise (fish gills flapping?), or the feeling of the warm, tropical water and an occasionally bump or brush against of curious fish.

One of the funniest things to watch was my husband swimming ahead and watching a thousand fish trail behind him, they obviously were thinking he was the dominant, boss fish.   I also experienced being the big fish and if I swam a bit, then twirled around, there would be a thousand pairs of fish eyes and big fish lips facing me.  Wild!

I started this painting of the underwater world with a wildly colorful underpainting of cool yellows, greens and pinks.   Close range fish and coral seemed crystal clear in person.    They were actually magnified as evidenced by my erroneous perception of how close the bottom was when I tried to set my feet down.  As things were further away it got murky fast, and as it turns out, the camera had trouble focussing on anything too far away.  Stripes of wavelet fractured light crisscrossed everything under the water.   It too got dimmer in the distance.   These were the environment observations that I tried to include in the painting.

We had a plastic reference card that had pictures of various Aruba reef creatures and could match up what we saw which included all kinds of parrotfish, grouper and lots of yellowtail snapper.   I had some good pictures of the following fish which is why they made it into the painting.  The yellow fish with black stripes are called Sergeant Major.   The fish with a pinkish body and light periwinkle bluefins and tail was either a blue angelfish or a grey angelfish.  The large black fish with yellow dots and a greyish face is a French Angelfish.   Down in the crevices between the rocks and coral we spotted many Long-spined Sea Urchins, the black prickly-looking creature.

I loved painting this because of the variety of color and coral texture and am thinking I'll try another one soon while the learnings are fresh in my mind.