Just a photo today

OK! What do we have here? An Anenome. (a-NEN-o-mee) And some other critters, also. There's a nearly clear, whitish little fish in front of the Anenome perched on the sand, a Bridled Goby. You almost can't see them until they dart for cover.

If you look closely, with a lot of imagination, you can spot the Squat Anenome Shrimp. They're real cuties, especially the way they dance around wagging their tails. I don't have a camera that's good enough to get decent photos of these shrimp, phooey! When a huge, noisy, bubble blowing diver comes close, they run and hide down amongst the Anenome's tentacles.

Fish! Everyone always swims around looking for fish. I guess because they move. These blurry two are Bicolor Damselfish. Below them is a Feather Duster, or Fan Worm. Worm? Ick! But, no, these creatures are really beautiful. They are all sorts of sizes, up to the palm of your hand, and every color. The part you're seeing here is their crown of feather-like radioles, which act both as gills and for capturing their food, plankton, microscopic plants and animals that drift in the sea.

The Fan/Feather Dusters can feel a diver's approach, and when they decide you're a threat, they instantly retract their fans down into the tubes they build to live in.

Up in the left corner is some Great Star coral. They don't usually have their tentacles out searching for passing food during the daytime. What a life! Food just drifts by, and you grab a bite and stuff it in your mouth! Sleep all day, eat all night. There's some more Great Star under the Damselfish.

I hope the other coral, sort of yellow colored, under the fish, isn't feeling left out, it's a young Massive Starlet Coral. They can grow to be quite big, five or six feet across. That's almost two meters.

Now, to paint this little bit of reef scenery, I'll have to import something reddish to put near the center. That's a good trick to hold a picture's composition together. I have several books of Winslow Homer's work. Almost all of his paintings have a touch of warmpth near the center. I really love his paintings! And we have the same birthday!

OK, all for now. My studio is being rearranged and upgraded. And I don't seem to be the only artist who was thrown off course during December and January. I'm developing a plan, and will be charging along painting every day before long. Yes.

Thanks for stopping by!

sea fans

A small yellow fan that I picked up off the beach. The sea has been rough lately, and this little guy broke off from his footing and washed ashore. I'm guessing this fan to be four to six years old. There are some that are taller than I am, in deeper water, thirty feet and more, sometimes to 100 feet deep. ten to thirty meters, roughly. I have no idea how old they must be! Maybe even over a hundred years.

I love the patterns of the branches.

This is another fan that's lost the chalky covering on it's skeleton. Fans are made up of polyps just like stony coral. The polyps live embedded in this chalky layer that they grow, their bones! When the polyps are out feeding, the fan looks brownish, from the tentacles. I'll have to try to get a detailed photo on my next dive, tho' my camera isn't very good at extreme close-ups. These polyps are teenie tiny! They start out as eggs floating around, hatch, and in several weeks settle to the bottom hopefully finding a good place to stick and grow from. Each fan started out as one teeny tiny little critter that multiplied and gradually got bigger. The polyps do not separate, but form one living growing creature. Nothing on land to compare.

Another yellow fan, and the only purple one I found that day, it's kind of beat up from tossing in the surf. Before I had a good book that taught me that there are only two colors of fans, yellow and purple, I thought they came in lots of different colors. The purple is called 'Common' but sometimes is yellow, and the yellow is called 'Venus' but is sometimes purple!

It's fascinating how the fans grow around the edges, and as they keep going, the inside parts fuse together. Beautiful patterns! I've never seen an accurate drawing of these patterns, a project for me!

They grow flat, sideways to the waves coming into the shore, so they wave back and forth beautifully. The growth habit makes the seawater flow through the fan, so the polyps can catch the most food particles passing through.

Spiney urchins

Spiney urchins are very strange animals. Well named, and if you bump into one, you get stuck! Their spines aren't poisonous, but break easily, so you have a bit of a wound for a while, until the bits dissolve. Best to not bump them! This photo also shows a purple sea fan, a type of coral animal (!!) The brownish, and the white are both Blade Fire Coral, that's a real 'don't touch' coral, it burns, but just for an hour or two. The white color is bleached, not good, the sea was too hot. Sometimes coral can recover from bleaching, but sometimes not.

These urchins have been feasting! See how the rock bottom is clean and white in their vicinity. They move around slowly using tiny rubbery feet that are somewhat sticky. They also use their feet to pick up food, algae, and stuff it in their mouth, which is in the middle of their bottoms.

Looking down at lots of urchins in the rubbly rocks. If you get very close, they can sort of see you, and they wiggle their spines at you. "Go away!!" they cry in their tiny voices that we cannot hear. Funny little cows of the sea, happy to just graze around.

Urchins, a sketchbook page...

Oh, dear, this doesn't read very well! Have to re-do. And I'll now have to go dig up photos, or maybe start a collection of photos to work from. Urchins are so elegant in their own way...

B&W Bug

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Try again, try again

Hum. I had every intention of painting a different image of that little angel fish, but I opened a file of photos of a lobster instead. The group had swimmed/swam/swum?? right on by. I took several photos of the bug, then had to go fast to catch up with the group. I saw a number of other things that everyone on that dive would have liked to see, but there they went! Zoom, too fast! The lobster is almost right in the middle here. I'm trying using a black and white for an "underpainting' I like this. Also learned several brushing techniques. I've never painted so thinly. Perhaps Maria Henley's spirit is hanging around, whispering in my ear. I miss her. She was just becoming very successful with her painting career. Thin thin washes of paint. Beach scenes, and Island scenery. Several years ago she stunned everyone with a large ominous painting of a storm off the north coast of St Croix. One huge lightning bolt from the underneath of the dark purple/black thundercloud, a bolt straight into the sea.

Maria succumbed to cancer last year, only fourty three years old. I do wonder if from breathing turpentine fumes for years. I have a fan blowing strongly over my painting, and on past the pallet, and on out the open window.

Oboy, take away the prompt, cheat? and there goes the picture, and the fledgling painting is left to flop and flounder on it's own. Pitiful little bit right now, but I have obligations taking me away from my brushes this morning, ugh. I don't in the least think I'm cheating with the projected photos. My photos, and I can't really set up my easle underwater! OK. Am looking foreward to spending more time on this one.

Here's a closeup of the lobster that you can't really see in the other images.

Blob gob gooo

This is horrible! I'd forgotten how unmanageable oils are. And the corals are just dead blobs, complain complain complain! At least I did do a painting, all of 80 minute's worth. Boy, is it bad, hahaha! Maybe I'll see what happens in Watercolor, I'm versed in that medium. Painting in your head is just not painting in hand.

Did you see the turtle?

This is a little 8X10 oil sketch I did long ago of one of my favorite places. I named the painting, "Did You See the Turtle?"

Here I'm pointing at a school of wrasses, just about to do a spawning run. They look just like this. During one show where I displayed this painting, a really grouchy fellow said, "You didn't paint their eyes and fins!" Oh, Please! I said, "Mister, that's paint, not a photograph. I was using a brush with three hairs, I couldn't do more detail!"

I started a painting this morning. Had to quit before I got very far. Maybe it's this cold I can't seem to shake, but the critical crowd yelling at me in my head about how bad my painting is even only this far got to be too much, I couldn't defend myself against all their sour thoughts. Maybe next time I'll try to just do a detailed drawing and fill in the blanks. Instead of using a painterly style.

"Looks Is Everything"

I was on the island of Bonaire, at Bongo's, a great beach bar. I was talking to a tall, lean, 19 year old blonde Dutch girl. That's what she said, "Looks is EVERTHING!!"

Without makeup or enhancement of any kind, her posture poised and lovely, she really was absolutely gorgeous. I didn't bother to say much more to her. She mostly wanted to stand around wearing only the bottom of her bikini, apart from the crowd, with a drink in her hand talking to one man or another.

I would love to see her expression as she finds the first wrinkle, that trauma happens to all of us. I wonder if she'll age gracefully?

About a year ago, I was going to some function that required me to dress up. Sometimes I actually am able to dress up, but not much, don't worry! I got over all that when I was younger. Anyway, as I leaned over the bathroom sink, trying to make the mascara go on each spindly lash smoothely, I wished I had a vanity. I had one when I was a kid, funny little curved table with a gathered skirt. I didn't really know what a vanity was for back then, I was only nine or ten years old.

I forgot about that wish. And that's how, the books say, to recieve what you wish for. Form the thought and let it go. But, they warn, make the wish a visiualization as detailed as possible of exactly what you want, down to the last detail. I hadn't done that.

I just recently moved into this partly furnished house, and there, waiting for me was a vanity. Oh, my. What I'd had in mind was more like Guenevere's vanity, where she sat while Lancelot stood behind her brushing her hair. Rosewood, carved in grapevine and lillies and inlaid with precious pearl and abalone, polished to an intoxicating gleam. With an exquisite little chair, the silk seat finely embroidered. They began their trysts that way.

I may have learned a lesson from this. I sure hope so!!! "Looks is everything!"

Saturday's Snorkel

My feet! Properly dressed.
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"Riprap" Big boulders along the side of the pier, some as big as a Volkswagen. Supposed to protect, but the last hurricane, Lenny, tossed them around like they were peanuts.
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A blurry pic of the pier looking to shore from 3/4 of the way to the end. The buildings on shore are two stories tall with high peaked roofs. Long pier! Walking on the pier, I timed it- a seven minute walk.
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A turtle! Haha, this is why I didn't post any underwater photos this time, they're all bad. The turtle is a small Hawksbill, the top blob of the two grey blobs. The other blob is a sponge. He was really feasting on the treats he could find. He was pecking away as I passed him on my way to the end of the pier, and still nibbling as I passed him on my way back to shore, a half hour later. The depth here is about twenty feet, seven meters.