Mermaid Musings: Pay No Attention To That Mermaid I'm Working On!

Sundial

watercolor

SOLD!

...And can't show you! Nope! Not yet. I'll show you everything at the end – when it's done, and we send it out into the world.

In the meantime, I'll distract you with two things. Firstly, the above painting I sold to my dear friend Roni. I painted it mostly (and when I say mostly, I mean 85ish%) plein air at Planting Fields Arboretum. It's a wonderful place in Oyster Bay, NY. I have to confess that I watched a woman paint a fabulous version of this, in acrylic, the day before. I liked hers so much that I went back the next day and did my own painting. This painting showed at the Port Jeff/Bridgeport show Port-to-Port, and at the Love Of Art Show at the Atria in Roslyn.

Secondly, with something I started in the waaaaay back. The sketch for this watercolor was actually done at the schoolhouse on Monhegan Island, Maine. It's called "After School" (or something like that). I started painting it in October.

Here's the beginning. I ALWAYS forget to take the very FIRST picture - of just the sketch. (Oh and look – there's the Sundial right underneath!)

I went to Monhegan in September of 2013. It was an artist's bucket list trip (check out the blog posts starting here) and overlapped with the start of a 30/30 Challenge. The weather started out lovely enough, but once I was on island it rapidly became a grey, dreary, drippy three days punctuated with momentary glimpses of the sun. I'll explain as I go along what I'm doing to this painting to bring out the sun!

Here are a couple of the original photos:
Day 1 on Monhegan. Notice the clouds rolling in.

Day 3. The sun came out and I got my hopes up. Ran back to the hotel, grabbed my gear and went to the schoolhouse. But, the sun disappeared and though I could have toughed it out and painted fog and grey clouds, the misty rain returned again. You can't really paint with watercolor in the open, in the rain.