Sunrise over the St. Johns River

I did a second painting last night as the group art session. The other morning I was taking an early drive to St. Augustine to go on a bird walk, and I was awestruck by the gorgeous sunrise over the St. John River. It was so lovely I stopped at the approach to the Shands Bridge to take a photo. That was the reference I used for this painting, which was done on 9x12 Art Spectrum paper.

Night Heron

Tonight I went to the open studio hosted by a fellow member of the Art Guild of Orange Park at her house. It's a great opportunity to get out and see fellow artists and work on something at the same time. I went on a great birding walk yesterday with the St. Johns Audubon Society and one of the things we saw was a colony of black-crested night herons, both juveniles and adults. I got a few good photos of them and decided I would try to paint the adult tonight. This was done on my usual 9x12 Art Spectrum paper.

The Salt Marsh

This is the second painting I did at our group plein air paint-out at The Fountain of Youth this past Saturday. I love the salt marshes. So totally gorgeous, lots of birds. The weather was lovely and sunny and breezy with blues skies and puffy white clouds. We're just about at my favorite time of the year right now. This was done on 9x12 Art Spectrum paper.

Twisted tree

Today was the first plein air paint-out of the First Coast Pastel Society for our fall season. A group of us all went to the Fountain of Youth in St. Augustine for a lovely day of painting. The weather was perfect for an early fall day in Florida. It started out a bit cloudy, but the sun later came out, and there was a wonderful breeze blowing in from the salt marshes. I was attracted  by a gnarled and twisted tree growing alongside the edge of the marsh and decided I had to paint it, so this was my first painting of the day, though I later did a second one as well.

This was done on 9x12 Art Spectrum paper. The twisted tree was such an attraction that two of the other plein air participants painted it also!