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
This morning started off cloudy and windy as the cold front started blowing in from the west. Wind and painting isn't a great combination. Clouds are good, though. When the sky is wide enough to see them in all their sweeping glory, they are beautiful and one of my favorite things to paint. They possess such a great variety of mood... calm, dramatic, intimidating. They can feel soothing or energetic. It's no wonder the sky can impact our mood.
DTL - 1/19/1 - Dune Ridge
We decided to paint at the beach since the eastern sky looked the most interesting. As we unloaded our bags it started to sprinkle rain. We set up under the gazebo on the beach walkover. From there, we could great views of the dunes, ocean and sky. We have great dunes at the North Beach. Very overgrown with palms. cedars, grasses and flowers. I loved the contrast of the darkness of the high dune ridge against the sky. The clouds were moving fast but the sky over the ocean was much more open and the clouds were warmed by the rising morning sun. The soft yellows and blues were lovely.
DTL - 1/19/2,3 - Georgia Peach Sky
We took a break and fan a few errands after the morning painting. When your schedule of painting, photographing & posting occupies 12 hours each day, it is very easy to run out of food at home. Thank goodness, we have to grocery shop for my mom every week or we might never make time to get there ourselves!
We decided to try the marsh, in hopes that the afternoon/evening sunset color would be nice. Good sunsets always need clouds and we definitely had good clouds. I decided to do another diptych. It just feels right scale-wise when you are painting the marsh. Composition-wise they both have to make sense independently so it's really like painting two paintings in that sense. I loved the high dark clouds in contrast to the softer thinner clouds below. We finished our paintings about 45 minutes before sunset so this is the color just getting started. The sunset, and after sunset color tonight was full of bright intense pinks and oranges. It was nice to be finished with painting and just stand back and watch it unfold.
Marc's Day
It's hard to remember that a couple of days ago I had on flip-flops and shorts. I have to say though that I am more interested in painting on days like this, than I am on those sunny, bluebird sky "beach days". There's something about a day with an attitude that gets me interested in seeing if I can understand it, and describe it in paint. Everyone loves a beach day, sometimes I think I'm painting for those few people who don't. I'm happy to do that.
Neither Dottie or I are as used these days to painting small as we are painting this month. Dottie has never been a fan of painting small, I have grown to prefer to work larger too, both outside and inside. We've been resisting the urge to haul out some wider panels in the 1:2 ratio, a ratio, or wider, that in all honesty is about the only way to paint this area of big skies and expansive salt marsh, and to stick to our initial decision to paint all of these paintings as 9"x12" paintings. A couple of days ago she broke the ice with the idea of painting a diptych, mounting two of our 9"x12" panels on the easel to make a 9"x24" formatted panel. That's all it took for me to say "hell yeah!, why not?". I'm sure you'll be seeing more of these now. It's simply that it opens up the possibilities for so much more inclusion of all of what we see that is so inspirational, without the restrictions of the smaller formatted panels. Some of this may be that we're a lot more comfortable now, after about 60+ paintings each this month, and want more out of this other than what we thought we'd want in the beginning. I've never believed in restrictions on life in general, but on how I paint, or how I want to paint... NEVER! These have been a blast to paint. I hope that you enjoy them too. I'm going to offer them for sale together, not separately, because they were designed as one composition, even though each could stand alone. I believe, however, that the idea that I painted is the entire composition, not the separate parts.
MH - 1/19/1,2 - Palmettos
We were under a gazebo to paint, due to rain falling, but not too bad of a morning. Then a hell of a wind blew in, and much stronger rain, and that was the end. See the video below. I was afraid that the wind was going to blow the panels off of the panel holder. My Art Box and Panel mast held strong. I took on the challenge of painting the part of the dunes that are carpeted with the patterning of palmettos and cedars. I could have spent another 30-40 minutes on this, but if I had I may have overworked it, who knows? It made it far enough to make the statement, not far enough to go too far, so I'm happy with it. Mostly happy to be painting on a larger surface for a change.
MH - 1/19/3,4 - Marsh Ending
We had some 'daily duty' detours after our morning session, something that we have not paid much attention to since all of this started on January 1st, as our house, dogs, refrigerator, yard, you name it, can attest. When we're getting ready to head out each morning, we truly believe that we will accomplish all of those 'other duties' when we get home in the early afternoon, because we're going to have all of these 3 or 4 paintings done before 2 or 3pm. That almost never happens, in fact we hardly ever get done with all of this before 9 or 10pm, tired, hungry and knowing we have to get up and do it all again, tomorrow, over and over again. But... WE LOVE IT and are already regretting our eventual having to stop our now embedded routine.
Back to the painting, another diptych this afternoon. Much calmer, but still windy, the beauty of the afternoon sky nullifying the conditions. I love this marsh, but I happily acknowledge my debt to Dottie for showing me my new home, and for sharing her love for it, which in turn has grown into a love of my own for it. Thanks for following us along.
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