Weekday Beach Day

Weekday Beach Day

Many seasoned beachgoers around southern Massachusetts and Cape Cod area believe that weekdays in June at the ocean are best.   For the most part, I agree. (Once we are in September, I may be singing a different tune as month nine is great too).    June sunrises creep back to five o'clock and earlier and the sun takes its highest angle in the sky.     Great light and the extra daylight maximizes opportunities to paint. 

On this day, I set up at the beach with my wooden tripod easel.   I have come to like this easel better than my French easel which is so much heavier.   I filled a plastic bag with sand and used a bungy cord to weight the easel down. 

What a beautiful, peaceful day!   I chatted briefly with a neighbor, Katelyn, who was getting some time in the sun after dutifully assisting in family graduation preparations.   I decided to paint, yet again, this beautiful beach.   Since Katelyn was the only person closeby, she became my center of interest.  

This year's winter was relatively storm free, allowing the sand to build up nicely.  One bad Nor'easter and five feet of vertical sand can disappear in a couple of days, but the opposite has occured.    For light colored sand, I have been using a color called "Buff Titanium" that I picked up in a clearance bin at ACMoore for three dollars.   I really like this shade and when I touch a dot of ochre or rose to it I can drag out a sandy surface with some embedded strains of color with my palette knife.   The boulders in the foreground are almost covered with sand which is why they appear like long strips of contrast.  
This was a perfect plein air day.     I didn't stay long.  The sun was drying my palette quickly and I felt like I was getting too much sun so I tried to cut it short, which is probably why I think the color is fresh and not overworked.  

Does it need more work?

Beach Crowd



Green Harbor Beach Crowd

The weather is heating up and the beach crowd is multiplying.   I saw a top ten list of New England beaches this week and my beach was not on it.   At first I felt sort of indignant.   I contend that Green Harbor and Duxbury Beach rival the best of beaches, local or not.   On second thought, I was glad that it wasn't highlighted so as to attract even more people to the beach as shown in this small beach painting.

The afternoon brought some big puffy clouds that threatened rain, but never actually delivered.