A Day at the Beach

Today Mary and I went to Bowman's Beach, which is up-island from where we are staying on Sanibel. It was beautiful and the shelling was better there than near our place (which is closer to the lighthouse). The painting was awesome too. The photography is another story. I'm having a great deal of difficulty taking photographs of the oil paintings. I had it pretty much down for the gouache work, but it seems to be too late in the day before I get to it here on Sanibel for the oils. So despite two successful paintings today (and one wipe off) plus one left over from yesterday, I have no artwork to show you. Instead I thought I would talk about gear for painting on the beach.

Gear is always fun, right? At the top you see my painting backback (just a regular Yakpak from Staples) containing my 10"x12" Open Box M paint box, with tripod attachment, and painting holder (hard to see, but it's in there - more on this in a later post). Note the brushes in the right side pocket and the metal jar of odorless mineral spirits in the left side pocket. The tripod is behind the backpack and the bucket and shovel are for putting together the important ballast of sand to hold the tripod in place in the breeze.

In the second picture you see the beach setup in use, sand ballast in the bucket, held onto the tripod with a plastic grocery bag, with another of those used for paper towel disposal. This setup works really well; there is hardly any time to sit in the chair....

If I can get a good internet connection tomorrow night I'll post the paintings. Tomorrow I drop people off at the airport in Fort Meyers and then drive across the state to meet an artist friend at the Jacksonville airport, and then on to a day on Amelia Island followed by the 3 day Carol Marine course at the Corse Gallery in Jacksonville. Can you think of a better art week in Florida?