Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Fort Fincastle

I'm still trying to get a few paintings out of my Bahamas cruise earlier in the month, even though I didn't get the landscape photos I had hoped for. But when will I ever get to the Bahamas again? Probably never. So I have to take my tourist snapshots and *try* to get a few paintings from them. LOL. One of the spots I visited was Fort Fincastle in Nassau, up near the highest point on the island of New Providence. This painting is from a photo I took of the entrance to the fort area itself, though there is not a whole lot left of the actual fort!

This was done, like my last few paintings, on a sheet from a 9x12 of Wallis paper. I had not liked Wallis for the longest time because it is such a pastel-eater. But I'm starting to warm to it now. I wonder if it is a bit less toothy these days? When I first tried it my fingers were worn raw and bleeding from trying to use them to blend - but it has never happened on these sheets of Wallis. Could be because I blend less these days too. :-)

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Nassau Harbor

It's been weeks since I have been able to get to my art work, but tonight I finally got to to class again for the first time in over a month. I'm just home from a cruise to the Bahamas which is how I managed to miss two classes, LOL. I was hoping to get a bunch of great reference photos to be able to do a Bahamas series of paintings, but for various reasons didn't get many at all. Mainly as I was only in Nassau and I was hoping for more landscapey type shots, not city shots. But our trip to Half Moon Cay, where I had hoped to get the nature shots, got cancelled because of problems with the ship.

But I have a small number of photos that *might* make paintings, so I could still have a small series I suppose. This is the first one I tried to work with. The water truly was that amazing blue color you see in all the travel literature. I loved it.

This was done on a 9x12 sheet of Wallis paper - various pastels.