St Augustine Residency Day 2

Butler Park

Red Cedar

7x5 inches

acrylic on panel

Washington Oaks Palms

5x7 inches

acrylic on panel

Notes From My Residency

I slept fabulously in Chad and Sarah's Condo. This is the best condo I've stayed in at the beach, cozy and homey.

Today I explored Butler Park.It is a local park that I discovered about 7 years ago during a paint out at Crescent Beach. It is a fairly large park for fishermen and their boats, with a nice boat ramp and parking area. There are nice shade trees on the other side and it faces the inter coastal waterway. I saw quite a few water birds fishing as well. I love to find the local spots which are less formal and that have fewer visitors.

 It's a  really good place to take photos and to paint in the cooler months. There isn't much shade in the area where I want to paint. It's pretty hot this time of year and after so many years of painting outdoors, I am more careful about not getting skin cancer. I spent about a half hour there taking some really good reference photos for larger work in the studio. I did manage to get a start on a Red Cedar and finished it in the cool condo. 

In the hotter months, I like to explore a lot and then use the images on my computer screen to paint studies while I am at the residency, back at the cool place where I stay. In the cool months I love to paint on location. Actually, doing small studies and starts is the most practical way to gather as much information as possible during the residency. I take hundreds of photos to use later.  I will enjoy most of the summer, painting from the images I take this trip, later in my cool studio.

Observation is such an important part of being a landscape painter. I spend a lot of time on location just looking at trees and the land,water and sky. This observation serves me very well later in studio work.

After the park I headed for the Oasis for breakfast on A1A. It is a great breakfast place, ugly as sin, painted in swimming pool blue with yellow trim, but the food is very good, and the service friendly and good.

I spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon, finishing up these studies and now will goof off for a couple of hours before I start working on the patio, continuing on my 18x24 dunes painting. About 5:30 PM, the Pelican Interstate Highway will start up. I love watching them go by in pairs or threesomes, talking about the office and which fish place they will stop off to on their way home to the family.

More to come........