Monday Musings

Oh poor me, I must run errands today, instead of sit home!  haha.  My wall clock quit, it's easy to lose hours on the www when you don't have a big time-beast staring at you from above the computer.  And I forgetfully left my cell phone in the big plastic box that I put my dive gear in after a dive.  The phone drowned in just a wee little bit of seawater. 

I started two paintings last night of sponges, one purple, one dark yellow.  I guess a non-diver would think me nuts to say I'm digging around under the kitchen sink for sponges to paint!

I'm starting to feel like something.  For so long, thinking that I am an artist, only drawing and painting in my head, I've felt empty and useless.  Maybe eventulally I'll be able to say I'm an artist when someone asks, "What do you DO?"  I learned early that many people sneer and cut if I dare say, "I'm an artist.".  I'll have to go by The Formula, and be able to prove myself by having business cards, a brochure, and find a gallery or two to represent me.  New York, London and, ??  Tokyo?  Singapore?  Hmm, where are the 'now' hotspots?  Yes, I think big.  Although I'm reading that Globalization is slowing and even reversing some.  That's good, I don't want to be in the USA every place I go.

My paintbox

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I wanted to take my oils to do a plein air painting, an on-location painting, so I stuffed everything in a cardboard box, and off I went in my car. Now I use the box permanently! Hey! Big brushes in a coffee can that has a heavy rock in the bottom so it won't tip over. Little brushes in a little cup. Big tubes of paint in another can, as the little tubes of paint. I like to keep tubes of oils standing on the caps so that the oil that separates doesn't come all squishing out when I try to squeeze out a bit of paint, it rises to the back end of the tube.

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The thing with the holes in it is a brilliant invention, not of my own, for cleaning brushes. A jelly jar with a can that fits inside, upside down with nail holes, nearly full of odorless paint thinner from the hardware store. It was fun in the grocery store, finding a wide mouthed jar with a metal lid, and then carrying it around comparing it to cans of something that the can would be the right size to fit inside. Oops, it's an Apple Butter jar. Hang the price, I think it was nearly six dollars, but the jar/cleaner is great!

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Oh, paint rags around the edges, and for a pallette, an old white saucer, or a tuna fish can bottom! I find I'm happier with little things for little bits of paint for the little paintings I'm doing. Sometimes I hold a pallet knife in my left hand with a blob of paint on it for painting in small details where I have to reload my brush a lot.

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Working on a big painting will need using a bigger pallette, a glass shelf from a discarded refridgerator, on something white. Any paint that dries is easily scraped off after a bit of a soak in soapy water.

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So, since I work from the photos I take, which hide in my computer, I sit in front of my computer and "Lap paint", my trusty paintbox beside me on a little table.

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Ha, two more photos. This works so well for me.

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One point I'd like to make: many of the pigments and solvents used in oil painting are very poisonous. I have a fan blowing from behind me, across my canvas and pallette, and on outside. And I never let stray bits of paint stay on my skin when I see I've been messy, as I always am. Linseed oil is safe, but turpentine and thinner are not. Linseed oil and flaxseed oil are the same thing with different names. I use paint straight out of the tube, sometimes thinning it a little.

If you want to see these photos larger, just click on them.

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OK! All for now, thanks for visiting!

Finished or not?

8 x 10"

Oil on stretched canvas

This is a Queen Angel fish, and a cactus coral. I think the fish looks like he's hiding behind a frisbee, but who am I to say? I may lighten the background some, I don't want to do any dark, creepy scenes, and try to make the coral look like it's not spinning through space. Nothing fits in this composition yet.

I've made another blog with the cumbersome name of "Coral Reef Paintings by Melissa Evangeline Keyes" I will, in the next few weeks, be going commercial. Meaning I'll start selling these little paintings. I've bought myself a house, an old one, and it's going to be a real money gobbler for a while! I think I'll keep this blog for my whining and groaning and half finished paintings. For a while, anyway.

I'll put a link here to the other blog, and I'll advertise. OK, cheerio, until I'm here again! Thanks for stopping by!

Two finished paintings

Porquepine Fish over a Barrel #1
8 X 10"
Oil on stretched canvas

This fellow was hanging out above the coral and the barrel sponge. Usually they hide under a ledge and peek fearfully out at you. They look like cuddly teddy bears with those big round eyes.
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Porquepine fish over a barrel, #2
oil on stretched canvas
8 X 10"
Another view, from one of the eight photos I took. I try to get as many images as I can when I get an opportunity like this. But I always stop and turn and swim away when the fish becomes nervous about my presence and attention.

Puffers are all shy. They must get tired of cowering in dark places, and so come out to enjoy just being up in the water. This fish and his relatives are the fish that the Japanese serve as "Fugu", a slightly hallucinogenic dish. Puffers have also been found to be the source that Voodoo doctors in Haiti use to make people into zombies. One bite too much, and you'll go into a coma, or die! Please pass me the peas!

Barred Buterflyfish

Barred Butterflyfish, 8X10 inches, 20X28cm Oil on stretched canvas
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Finished this one just now, I'm really zooming along. Maybe I'll paint some more of these pretty little fishes. The orange things with the holes are Volcano Octopus Sponges. No, I didn't make up that name, it's in the I.D. book. And the (haha) pile of little round donut things is supposed to look like Great Star Coral.

Photos from the Fredriksted, St. Croix, Pier

Here's a Trumpet Fish trying to hide a under some Rope Sponges.
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My dive buddy Jan, pointing at a lobster. You can see his whisker- antenna, up on the piling. Lobsters try to find hiding places during the day, but you can often spot their antennae out feeling the currents. When you come closer, they start waving their antennae back and forth.
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This is scenery under the Fredriksted Pier. The pilings are five feet in diameter, a little less than two meters. Depth is from twelve feet, four meters, to 93 feet, 60 meters, very roughly.

We found a seahorse, an octopus, and lots of other critters, a fun dive.

Perfectionism raises it's head and snarls

Detail, "Brown Encrusting Octopus Sponge"
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Well, I couldn't do it, just blob blob blob globs of paint. I'll finish this one tonight. The peek-a-boo fish is either an Ocean Surgeon fish, or a Doctor fish. Can't tell from the photo.

I'm going to dive the Fredricksted Pier in a little while. The camera's battery is charging. OK.

Two more

10X8 oil on stretched canvas
Out with perfectionism, in with quantity. I have boxes of these little 8X10 canvasses, might as well get them painted and learn how to better paint in the process.

These might get some tweaking tomorrow. There is a Stoplight Parrotfish near the middle of the deep image, on the left. That was about seventy feet deep. 25 meters.

The Lineup

All oil paintings on canvas, 8X10 inches, 20.5 X 25.5 cm

I've been chugging right along doing little 'vignettes' reef paintings. Nice that the PerFecTionisM is fading, giving way to 'hurry up and do a painting!' Quantity builds quality. As in, the next one will be better. This one is OK, learn from it.

Someday soon I'll find a business partner and start selling these things. I am worse than horrible at numbers, mail, taxes, contracts, and all that's business.

Jan's Turtle

8X10 inches, 20X26 centimeters, roughly, Oil on canvas
Went for a dive with my buddy Jan in Cane Bay and saw this little Hawksbill turtle perched on a coral head, Bommie the Australians call them. We went on by slowly so as to not make him(her?) run away.