After success with the “blob painting” technique I wanted to go a step further. The delight of blob painting is what shows up, like images in the clouds. Starting a larger piece on better paper, my initial blobs were without intent, just color and movement. I don’t have a photo of that stage, but you can see it under the white line drawing below.
Then I started in on turtle patterns. One thing I love in my reference photos is the bright aqua highlights. Since I’d killed all my what’s paper, I got out the acrylic. I always feel like I’m not making a watercolor anymore when I take this step. But, painting the fine highlights of yellow @ aqua gave me the turtles I wanted.
At this point I can see that I need more of the deeper aqua moving thru the background, indicating clear sandy bottom in places.
I didn’t want to turn this into an acrylic painting but I think I have already!
Any other ideas? I’d love your thoughts. Here or on Facebook.
I’m unable to walk now, due to degenerating bones in my right knee, and at 63 I’m getting worried about an early departure.
Most of my life, in New York and Michigan, winter arrived and laid down it’s coating of snow and ice, transforming the world. This year in southern Maryland, Winter and Spring are doing a see-saw dance, from frosty to balmy as the temperature swings from the teens to the 70s.
Despite it’s tragic ending, most of us of a certain age remember with great fondness the Disney film 
Yet the artist responsible for the backgrounds, the atmosphere, the ‘look and feel’ of the film is still largely unknown. 
If we’re consumers of art, literature, film, TV and news, we think about what’s true, and what we need. We reward those who are taking risks to provide it.
I am fortunate that I have the flexibility to walk the woodlands and visit the marsh this morning. Where else would I go on such a troubling day? I went into this election, determined that no matter the outcome, I would continue to do my best to live as salt and light in a world that always needs both. As an unashamed follower of Christ, I have and continue to attempt to live in accordance with what matters to Him…treating people with love, treating the Creation with care, and recognizing my dependence on the Spirit to help me to know and name my blindness and shortcomings.
I was thinking these thoughts, and wondering whether I had anything at all to say in this space this morning, anything gleaned from the natural world around me, as I walked along the boardwalk, when I heard the crashing and say the dried cattails waving wildly. I had seen possible traces before of deer in the marsh, but was never quite sure. “How would they maneuver through the muck?”
On a late October night the river bears no resemblance to the brilliant, blue-green paradise of summer. Our island home was now unpopulated – summer homes closed up, their dark windows staring blindly across the river, where a chill wind shoved angry waves up the river.
