Lazy Hazy Summer Days

"Green Harbor"

6x12 watercolor and ink

Honestly, that's all I can say about this summer. The heat has been unbearable and even though it's calmed down some, we are still in AC mode most of the time.  Saturday evening was beautiful though, and I took myself down to the harbor with a chair and a sketchbook and had a lovely interlude watching the birds and the boats and the shimmer of the late sun on the iridescent marsh grass. Yes, in a very short time the cold will be returning and we'll all be complaining. Well...maybe not all.... :D
I love summer but does it have to be so uncomfortably hot?

Hot Time in Gloucester

PKR (center) with workshop gang

Last week I joined a great group of artists on site at the Castle Manor Inn, in Gloucester for a week long workshop with Peggi Kroll Roberts who never faltered during five days of 90 plus degree heat, topping out at around 98* on Friday! 
These are a couple of exercises I did in class and of course a group shot. (missing Susan Dragoo Lembo).

Model in sunlight

value exercise in grayscale and in color

Gulf Sunset

"Gulf Sunset"

6x6 oil

Our theme for June's Girls Just Wanna Paint challenge was the ee cummings poem, "For whatever we lose (like a you or a me) it's always our self we find in the sea", and who doesn't love the sea? 
When I'm in Naples, Florida I'm an afternoon kind of beach girl because it's not as hot then ;)  
"Squadrons" of pelicans glide along the beach and suddenly plummet into the Gulf of Mexico to feed. Pelicans are most entertaining and I love watching them as the sun sets into the water. 
This is as close as I was able to get to the colors in the actual painting which took on a life of it's own and turned out to be a palette knife painting. There's a tiny touch of glare but it couldn't be avoided with this kind of surface. I'm really happy with this one.