Day 306 "Family Lunch" ink & watercolor 6 x 9

We spent a perfect vacation day, driving to Cape Cod to visit friends visiting from New Jersey for the week.  Great to spend time with them and their exuberant 15 month old grandson.  Then we went to lunch at Marshland, a favorite spot in Sandwich.  It is a small bakery, restaurant with a serpentine counter and about six booths.  While waiting for our food, I drew the crowd in the restaurant, and later added watercolor from my memory. One detail worth mentioning is the navy blue menu I added in front of the woman in the foreground.  I chose the dark color for the opportunity to cut in and define her neck and hand, for contrast, and to grab the eye.  I enjoy sketching public scenes, and deciding where to layer up the people from front to back.  I snagged a photo at the very end, just before the children in front of me collapsed onto the floor, looking for their dropped toy.  It's a good reminder that drawing in public provides a moving target. 
This is my three hundred sixth daily drawing.  Thank you for your attention.  

Day 260 "Commercial Street - Dusk" 9 x 6 ink with pencils

My daughter spent a few days in Provincetown recently and brought back this photo of the street at dusk.  By the way, I love the way Provincetown's skyline is punctuated by power lines.  It adds an intimacy to each street scene that I enjoy.  The wires can be designed to support the picture, as long as they are believable. When I leave them out, I miss them.  They are part of the landscape to me.   
This is my two hundred sixtieth daily drawing.  Thank you for your continued interest and comments.  

Day 261 "Dusk Over Commercial" 9 x 6 ink with pastel

Yesterday I posted a pen and ink drawing of Provincetown's Commercial Street at dusk, taken by my daughter a few days ago.  Today, I looked at the same image, in reverse, laying down a rectangle of ink, and adding color on top of it with pastel to convey the dusk.  You can see the two drawings side by side, below.  
This is my two hundred sixty-first daily drawing.  Thank you for your continued interest.   

"Weekend Escape" 16 X 12 oil on board

"Weekend Escape"  oil 16 x 12

A few years ago we spent a weekend with artist friends at Gabriel's  in Provincetown, MA.  There were about 15 of us.  We painted, hung out, and were given kitchen privileges so we cooked a big potluck dinner.  Great weekend, and a great collection of suites in a few adjacent buildings.  I've always loved this image from the weekend.  Provincetown is an interesting place where cars, pedestrians, bikes can all share the narrow streets cooperatively.  Lots of activity, and everywhere you look is a possible painting.

This is the finished painting that I posted (in process) as part of my painting group's Golden Ratio challenge last month.  You can see the earlier painting here along with several photos of my process and a discussion of the Golden Ratio and how it applies to design.  

Thanks for looking. 

"Commercial St, Provincetown" pen & ink 12 x 7

I love the hustle and bustle of the streets of Provincetown, crowded and friendly and relaxed and visually fascinating.  Here's a line drawing from a photo I took there a few years ago.  Interesting intersections and roof lines and movement and great energy... 
 I love drawing in pen, requires a level of thinking that I like.. you can see that on this drawing, I planned to be shorter, but didn't plan my space appropriately... live and learn.

Thanks for looking.

"Under Sail" oil 6 x 6

Our most recent Girls Just Wanna Paint challenge was based on this line from the e.e. cummings poem "Maggie and Milly and Molly and May" -

"For whatever we lose (like a you or a me) 

it's always ourselves we find in the sea." 

 

I have spent much of my life (so far) living near the sea, love the scents, the breeze, the sounds.  As a child, we had a summer house on a Cape Cod bay.  The first few years we owned it, before high school sports, and jobs, and schedules won out with their relentless demands and interruptions, we went to the house every weekend.  There would be a loud and frenetic packing of the station wagon each Friday afternoon and we'd head off on the hour+ drive down and over the bridge, with a quick stop at the A&P on the rotary just before the Canal.  We'd spend the weekend, playing cards, doing jigsaw puzzles, walking the beach, fishing, even playing an expanded game of hide and seek which took us, and invited friends, through yards, over shed roofs, under porches of the empty-for-the-winter cottages in the neighborhood.  We would enjoy a roast beef and potato dinner on Sunday night and pile back into the car, sleepy-eyed at 6AM Monday for a rapid drive back north, us tumbling out of the car into the school yard (in our plaid uniforms) as the bell was ringing to begin the day.

  

Now that I have my own family, I realize what coordination was involved to get a family of seven packed, and organized for these wonderful weekends.... resulting in two full days on the Cape!  I spent hours sitting on the end of the dock, feeling it float with the waves, listening to the creaks and groans of boats tugging at moorings, buoys, watching gulls drop shellfish on the wharf, listening to the lapping waves and enveloping myself if the sensory joy of the sea.  This month's challenge brought back those memories.  My painting conjures up that sea-air-in-the-face feeling that I crave when I'm away from the sea too long. 

Thanks for looking; feel free to share.

 

"Caleb Creek - Waquoit" oil

I spent THE MOST LOVELY afternoon down on the Cape in Waquoit, a village of Falmouth.  Went to visit my friend Nell, at her wonderful home a short walk from Waquoit Bay.  It was a HOT day north of the bridge, but breezy and not-quite-as-hot on the bay.  We had lunch, talked about life, and I walked down to the creek to paint.  I met Goose, the wonder dog, Bandit, Alto and AJ, saw a big snake (twice), and painted to the backdrop of a busy, windy bay.  Ahhh.

I condensed the "marshscape" to fit some points of interest on both sides. Here are a couple of photos of the painting in progress.
 
The blue boxes:

What are those blue boxes in the marsh?  

The blue boxes, officially called Manitoba Flycatchers, are located in the marsh and attempt to capture greenhead flies.  There is nothing inside of the boxes, it is the blue color which attracts the flies. 

The boxes have become part of the Cape landscape to me..  I guess we have to thank the greenheads for not finding fluorescent orange to be their favorite color.  

Wonderful day, I'm heading back there soon.