Monday, January 13, 2020

January 13, 2020 - A New Year, Two Views

All images are photographed late in the evening for posting the same night we paint them.  We strive to reproduce the color of the paintings here as close to our originals as we can, but some variation is probable.  The paintings are labeled with our initials preceding the date label and title.  The date label is Month/Day/Order Painted. 

All of these paintings can be purchased on our website.  This link will take you to the page where they're posted... Salt Marsh Studios.

Dottie's Day

Today was Senior Center day :) so we painted in Savannah at Bonaventure Cemetery while mom had her morning social time with her friends.  She enjoys it so, makes me feel guilty that I can't get her there more often.  It was foggy on Tybee as we were driving in but by the time we set up the fog for the most part had lifted.  There was still some light fog and haze in the distance though creating some nice atmosphere.  



DTL 1/13/1 - Around The Bend
I loved the muted color of this scene.  Everything was some version of gray.  It felt peaceful and calm. The breeze was blowing and it was a  nice way to start off the morning.  


DTL - 1/13/2 - Draped 
 I stayed in the same spot to paint the second painting.  The tide was starting to go out and the sky was a little brighter but the sun hadn't burned through the clouds yet.  There were a couple of things about this scene that captured my imagination.  The tree was leaning over the edge of the river and bark was in beautiful shades of pinks, grays and greens.  An old tree, it bore the scars of limbs long cut off.  Another thing that I loved was the way the moss was heavily draped over a couple of the  limbs, like clothes on a clothes line, swaying in the breeze.  I painted in the tree trunk first trying to get all the colors that I saw and was glad I did because not long after the sun came out and the trunk lost all color and just became a dark against the water and sky.


DTL - 1/13/3 - Afternoon Low
This time of year, there is still so much color in the marsh grass.  Oranges, golds and greens.  This was a lovely little view from the bank looking out over the Wilmington River.  There was still a little water in the mud flats that hadn't receded yet, and I liked the way my eye traveled following the color patterns.  


Marc's Day

When the winds are light, the dew point/temperature spread is close to the same, and the temperature at about 9:00am is pushing 70ºF... you know it's going to be a great day!  And it was.  On Instagram I follow a trio of guys who call themselves TybeeIslandFishing, they spend most of their time, from what I can tell... fishing.  And I love watching their enthusiasm for a sport that I also love, and am frequently torn by, that is 'to fish or to paint?'.  This afternoon we were painting our past for the day at the Turners Creek boat ramp parking lot on Whitemarsh Island when a muscle car pulled up with two of the Tybee Island Fishing guys, Andrew and Phil, in it!  We're constantly meeting people out painting, for me it's usually people from Iowa, Wisconsin or Minnesota... I recognize the accents.  Meeting two thirds of this group of friends who spend, from what I can tell, most of their time fishing, was a real treat!  Thinking of Ralph Waldo Emerson's admonition... "Art is a jealous mistress...", I'm reminded that painting is all consuming no matter how many extra 'joys in life' you have in your quiver.  I'm a hunter, fisherman, archer, pilot, skier, like to dabble in woodworking, speed walker, fly tier, and more.  You know what gets 99% of my time, that is aside from family?  Painting...  To become as good as you hope to be, and probably will never be, most of everything else that you like to do has to be sacrificed... dat's da facts ma'am!  Thankfully, with worlds online like Instagram, I can indulge in a lot of those things that I have sacrificed time to, like Tybee Island Fishing!  


MH - 1/13/1 - Park View
This morning, after dropping Dottie's mom off at the Senior Center, we headed over to Bonaventure Cemetery, thinking that it might be fogged in, it wasn't.  But we did have a nice high tide, so there was a lot of water along the river side of the area that we park.  I walked down onto a low area and looked out towards the river.  The amount of dark shapes created by the Spanish Moss was what I was interested in.  



MH - 1/13/2 - Wilmington River
After Park View, I felt like I had to swing a bigger brush.  I walked towards the river and saw a nice composition using the foreground tangled mass of flotsam, grasses in the water, and the layers of marsh heading off into the distance.  I decided I wasn't going to get caught up in painting all those vertical grasses as I saw them.  So I screwed my eyeballs down into a seriously tight squint, and painted what remained.  I'm kind of happy with this one just because I didn't paint it all, but painted the impression with some arm swing.  


MH - 1/13/3 - Almost Low
This spot is where we met the Tybee Island Fishing crew.  It was an interesting tidal flat, still retaining some of the water from being covered earlier, but only about an hour from absolute low tide.  What was so interesting were the dark areas of mud chunks, sitting on the warmer pluff mud, with sky reflecting remnant water spots.  I'm still working on keeping my strokes larger, less concentration on details, looking more for an impression than a description.  


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