I'm such a beginner! Ha!

I am really stuck with this painting. It looks like confetti to me. Below is the original photo that I am working from. Blue. Divers who take photos never do this, publish blue pictures. But this is what the camera sees below about ten to fifteen feet, four or five meters, roughly. I was at about thirty five feet of depth when I took this photo.

I am closely reading and making up exercises for myself from a discussion of color by David Rourke, at:

http://rourkevisualart.com/wordpress/articles/color-and-color-mixing/

All for now. I seem to be painting a lot of small abstracts lately. They paint themselves, so much easier, I just hold the brush and watch what the colors are doing. I'll put them on another blog, once I get a new camera. The little 'SeaLife' is broken, booo.

Teenie tiny bit more

Some cerulean blue water at the top and around the edges. Anything and everything is easier to do than painting. I mowed the yard today. Grocery shopped.

Anyway, I'm really happy with this blue, am going to put on some more. It makes the painting really "pretty".

Yesterday I went diving for the first time in months. I found this exact place. Proud of me! But now the sea has gotten rough because of a storm far north in the Atlantic, at least two thousand miles away. Sending waves all the way here. For diving, there would be a lot of current, surge, which is a back-and-forth movement of water that can be quite pesky for trying to hold still to take a photo, and the visibility is probably terrible with all the sand and silt stirred up. Here are calm and rough photos, taken yesterday and today.

And one day later. Isn't there a song, "What a difference a day makes? Twenty four little hours..."
I can handle this mess if need be. But when the sea has been calm for months the sediment and fluff settles, and then on the first bumpy day the little particles get all stirred up and you can't see much. Like thick fog.

I've gotten in the water here many times over the years, since the late 1980's, maybe a couple of hundred times, right here. I'm sad that I haven't kept a log of every dive I've ever done. When I read back over the detailed logbooks that I have occasionally kept, I remember each dive like yesterday. Strange phenomenon

Miracle Computer

Black and white AND backwards, funny! This really is a help, thoough, as I build this beast, to analyse the composition, interest points, light and dark and contrasts. I need some things lighter, some darker. I'm using so many photos!

As I dive, I take distance scenery images, as well as specific corals, and fish that turn away just as I press the shutter button. Usually about three hundred shots per dive. I had to buy an external storage device because my poor computer was totally full, I couldn't save one more picture!

Many underwater photographers strive for "ID" pictures, flat, broadside poses so the fish don't look like they know how to move. I see this in other painter's pictures. A school of fish is sometimes one fish painted over and over. Hello? But it's so difficult as to be nearly impossible, or else there'd be lots of paintings and painters of underwater scenery.

I found that someone has the 'coral reef paintings dot com' name. Owell, that's OK. Once I decide to get enthusiastic about producing, and go commercial, IF I go commercial, just a little marketing will get me out there real quick. Too frightening right now for me. Anytime I tell someone that I now have a studio, and am painting, they immediately start in on me about exhibiting and selling. Like as if I have dozens of finished paintings laying around, and can do ten a day. I'm comfortable with only painting a wee little bit every day. I don't know why I don't paint for hours and hours.

OK

OK, I added a few more fishes. The one I like, and who'll get some friends, is the little Black Durgon up in the right side.

There's such a strong diagonal now, that we need something to anchor the composition, a loose school of Black Durgons, that could easily be there.

Great fish, Black Durgons! Up close, they have gorgeous turquoise designs running around on their faces. I'll see if I have a photo up close someplace to post.

Hmmm

This could get boring, how slowly I am progressing on this painting. I am doing other paintings on the side, once they're done I'll post them.

O no, I like it backwards better!

I like it backwards better. Ho hum. What do you think?