A Walk on the Beach

Another 8x10 acrylic, done from a photo I took during a walk on the beach. I never get tired of the beach and could easily do beach scene paintings all the time! I need to sort through all my (thousands) of photos and see if I find other references I like.

This is actually a mirror image of one I did a few years ago in pastel here.  I like the pastel better in most ways, but it did have a couple things I wanted to change:
1) The horizon line was too harsh and dark. This is easily correctable if I choose to do it.
2) The lines of incoming wavelets are too perfectly straight, as if I'd drawn them with a ruler; not quite the way they are in real life.

I tried to correct both of those things with my acrylic, but I'm still less than happy with how it turned out. Still, as they say, you can't hit a home run every time. It was still fun to do.

Gold Head in the Morning

LOL, I had a reference photo all picked out and sitting on my table - with oranges and golds, that I was going to paint for my next project, as a change from the cool colors I'd been doing. Then, the morning I sat down to paint, the reference photo was gone! I looked everywhere. It had been sitting on top of the table and I had not touched a thing, but there was no photo there. As I scrabbled around I did pull up a reference for the scene about, always one of my favorite scenes, so I painted this instead, another 8x10 acrylic.

The funny thing is that this is the third time I have painted from this exact same reference, all small. I first did it as a small 6x9 pastel here, and then again I tried it as an 8x10 acrylic here. That was one of my very first acrylics when I was just beginning to dabble in them. Well I still feel like a dabbler since I've had no formal training in acrylic, but I'm enjoying them a bit more now.

Chalupa - Foubtain of Youth

This is also from the reference photos I took at the Fountain of Youth last week. I took a bunch of photos of this boat - a "chalupa" or replica of the sort of work boats they built here in the 16th century when the colony at St, Augustine was first founded. 8x10 acrylic/

Early Morning - Calico Creek

This is a scene down the road from my sister's house in coastal North Carolina.  Whenever I visit her I walk my dog down here in the morning. My dog is an early riser so I usually get to see the pinks and violets of the soft early morning light.

This is another 8x10 acrylic.

I love this spot so much I've even done a couple pastels from this same location, namely here and here. If you stand on the path for those two paintings and turn to face left you will see the scene in the acrylic painting above. 

Peacock - Fountain of Youth

This is another 4x12 acrylic. This is sort of a fun size to work with. I was at the Fountain of Youth last Saturday with the First Coast Pastel Society, and it was a chilly, windy, blustery day. Not really good for plein air, and the lighting was not so great, but I enjoyed all the peacocks strutting around, took a variety of photos, and enjoyed the 16th century reenactment going on for the weekend.

So now I'm looking at the photos for references and could not resist starting with a peacock. :-)

The Wave

Another small 8x10 acrylic. I admit that pastel will always be my first love, but I've been having fun with these small acrylics, and they are great to take to the Starving Artist Gallery since they don't need framing under glass. In fact don't need framing at all since I paint the sides of the canvas too and just present them as gallery-wrapped and helps keep my costs down, LOL.