Seascape Artist

Yesterday (Saturday, April 28, 2007) was the Texas Adopt-A-Beach community effort to keep Texas beaches clean. The program is a joint effort of Texas General Land Office and a local TV station, KHOU though it is a statewide program and many other local TV stations are also involved in the effort. KHOU was going to Galveston to help cleanup the beach and also publicize not only the event but how important it is to keep our beaches clean.

Anyone who has been to the beach knows just how glorious it is to be there … the wind … the water … the sun … the dolphins swimming and jumping and playing … the swimmers … the sunbathers … the kite flyers … the sailboats … the wind surfers … the sea surfers … the hang and kite gliders on high wind days … but also just how dirty, filthy and full of litter and trash the beach can get from beach visitors but also from ships throwing out their trash at sea to wash up ashore somewhere.

Galveston used to send out crews to clean up the beach and sweep the sand on a daily morning basis (I lived in Galveston for awhile several years ago and am an early morning riser that LOVED to go walk along the beach drinking coffee and taking pictures, I saw the crews and machinery in the mornings beginning around daybreak & on into the day in different places) so it wouldn’t be like that too much for the tourists in the high volume gathering areas of the beach off the Seawall … but even it gets full of trash quickly from people who are too lazy to get up and walk a few feet to the trash barrels with their garbage. The worst though to me from people in person leaving their trash is the broken bottles! Broken glass at the beach means anyone going barefoot … and what child at the beach doesn’t want to go barefoot and get their toes in the sand … cuts and maybe stitches and possibly shots for tetanus and a lot of pain. Just because someone brought glass to the beach. Plastic soda bottles and beer cans are a better choice than glass bottles … not much … they too can hurt someone easily but not like the damage broken glass can do to an un-wary person or toddler.

One of my favorite activities at the beach besides sitting in the shade (under an umbrella) sketching is to walk along and collect seashells … my other most favorite thing to do at the beach is to fly kites! I’m from Iowa … mostly the only time of year it was windy enough to seriously fly kites is in March when it is still rather chilly and sometimes even into April … I love to fly kites! The first time I went to the beach in Galveston … there were a gazillion people flying kites at the beach! You can fly kites almost all the time at the beach in Galveston! The wind is enough - I bought a kite and flew that kite for several hours! It was a glorious time in spite of the nasty sun and wind burn I got - I bought a dragon shaped kite with a great tail on it and took it back to Iowa for my son - he hung it up in his room … it was a costly kite - before going to Galveston, I’d only ever had the cheap paper kites available at the local dimestore that were a bear to get the sticks in the right places and the paper would tear if you looked at it wrongly (those are plastic these days - still a pain but the plastic doesn’t shred just looking at it when trying to insert the sticks) …. it was an annual nightmare that one looked forward to the joy of watching that kite fly in the sky and nose dive into trees … yeah … I’ve lost many kites to the trees over the years … but it was always so much fun to watch those kites spiraling and spinning and being colorful specks in the sky and knowing I had that kite by the string.

I’d also never been in a kite shop before - that was a wonderful experience - it was divine to just see all those kites hung up and spread out - colorful … ready to go fly free in the wind … I suddenly discovered that kites were not all those junky mess nightmares that were all I had ever seen before. I was ruined for those for the rest of my life … when I go fly a kite at the beach … I want a spectacular kite flying machine! And ya need a lot of string down here to fly kites … they do not just go up a few feet and that is all … they can go really high!

If you do not want to fly kites yourself at the beach … take a camera and capture the people that are … and your sketchbook to on-site get the movements … air … wind … flight … color … joy … those will make spectacular seascape paintings that are not the “expected” marketplace for sale painting. Or if you get lucky … find a beach where the hot air ballons fly over it … or a lake that you can turn into a beach scene with the balloons for your painting. Or just a backyard watergarden fountain with balloons … explore new ideas with beach scenes.

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Viking Ship Kite $23.59 Hot Air Balloon w/Twist in Stars and Stripes 41" $25.99 Pirate Ship Kite $23.59 Swallowtail Butterfly Kite $18.99 30 ft. Rainbow of Butterflies Dragon Kite $19.79 11′ Delta Kite - Patriotic USA Colors $99.00 40" Hibiscus Windsock $18.99 150 lb Test Braided Polyester x 500 ft. on Yo-Yo Winder $13.95 40" Labrador Retrievers Windsock $16.99 30 ft. Patriotic Dragon Kite $19.79 40" Merry Monarch Butterfly Windsock $16.99 6.5 ft Wind Generator Patriotic $94.99

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In Galveston, to get to the Island, you have to cross the Causeway - they are rebuilding it right now - I don’t know if it is done yet or not since it has been awhile since I’ve been there. A bridge across waterways is always an exciting visual to me - I find it amazing that people can build bridges that span vast amounts of water. In Iowa, there was a mile long bridge spanning a lake … it was one of my favorite places to drive though the wind driving across it any time of the year could catch you unaware and blow your car into the side of the bridge if you weren’t paying attention. It was a great view of the water though and the Causeway going over to the Island has wonderful views of the Gulf if you are not the driver having to pay attention to the road and your driving. It would be worth it to me to hire a limo just to drive me back and forth across the Causeway a few times to see the view! It’s an up close and personal but aerial view that is much different than being sea level seeing it. Both are wonderful .. but then I love bridges and find them to be some of my favorite architecture - I even like to see freeway over-pass bridges - they are a marvel to me too.

I do not advise flying kites around bridges or electric power lines … stay away from those and enjoy your day at the beach that might start with driving over a bridge to get there and then flying kites or just sketching people flying kites at the beach.

If you are lucky enough to have a beach house and live at or even just close to the beach (or a gorgeous lake) … it can get easy to overlook new ways to portray the ocean (lake) in your paintings … we people have a tendency to get ourselves into ruts and habits and do the same thing over and over - if you live close to the sea (land-locked water too) … get some new lawn beach outdoor furniture in bright colors or paint the old furniture out there … then paint the scene adding some windsocks and/or a kite or perhaps a festival of hot air balloons - when we put some sparkle in our lives - we put sparkle back into our paintings!

I love lighthouses - the only one I have ever seen from a distance has been the privately owned lighthouse at Bolivar Point here in Texas - you can see it from the ferry between Galveston and Bolivar, you can see it from Galveston Island and you can see it from the highway in Bolivar. To me, it looks very dark and gothic looking even in the bright sunshine. This lighthouse is made of iron so it is quite rusty and the rust has turned to a black-dark color at least from a distance against the sky - on gray cloudy days - it can look rather frightening even - it looks like a stark tower of sad darkness to me. It is not a bright and cheerful sight when I see it. The Texas State Historical Association has a lot of information on all the Texas lighthouses if you are interested. The Lighthouse Directory has information on lighthouses all over the world for those who like to know more about them - I have been slowly reading about all of them - I started in Texas which is where I live.

Lighthouse photography to me, whether film or digital, is not about the camera or the method of capture being film or digital - it is about telling a story, showing us what is interesting about the lighthouse itself or the area where it sits that you found & want to share with the world. Sometimes that story is about light, brightness, glorious ocean views and majestic lighthouses standing tall against the horizon. Sometimes it is about taking the photographic image and enhancing something in the photo to make it even more interesting … my friend Lehane Corley McCourt has done that with this lighthouse and it is spectacular - it makes me feel as if I can see the lighthouse doing it’s job along the coast, protecting ships from shoals & reefs … this was done beautifully and even though it really isn’t the colors one would expect in actual true to life nature … it appears very natural and realistic and as if it were a photograph of an actual nature light show event.

Today’s featured art is Old Scituate Light Aura by Lehane Corley McCourt

Old Scituate Light Aura by Lehane Corley McCourt — View Larger

Tags: Lehane Corley McCourt, Old Scituate Light Aura, Imagekind, lighthouse, ocean, sea, Scituate

Lighthouses in art - I’ve done a few lighthouse from a distance type paintings (no pictures - I sold them without photographing them - this was before digital photography and I just did not think of doing so at the time). Lighthouses are not easy to portray well sometimes … getting the perspective and shape correct is very hard for me. I usually always try to put palm trees covering up about half of it or I make it so far in the distance that it doesn’t matter if it is a touch lopsided. The Talent Teacher website has a step by step how to paint a lighthouse - this is about the way I do it … except a lot more distance (more towards the “back” of the painting and probably a lot more lopsided for mine! I have to do a lot of re-working on any lighthouses I paint to get them to be at all acceptable.

Digital painting of lighthouses - I haven’t tried this yet - it just hadn’t crossed my mind to paint lighthouses in my Corel Painter X program yet … I’m still learning how to use it and since I do not have a lot of time, I spend most of my time painting instead of thinking up new topics to paint and learning new ways to paint them as well .. hmmm … not sure that is very understandable English. I paint instead of experimenting with topics and tools. Maybe that is better Many times, lighthouses will be in a remote area that needs a bridge or ferry to reach the lighthouse. I am thinking that I will try painting a lighthouse on an island with a bridge from one land mass to another - I haven’t sketched it out yet to see if I can make it a workable idea or not - I plan to do it in Painter using my Wacom Intuos graphic tablet. Anyway, I found a lighthouse lesson for use in computer paint programs at Reflections Hawaii. She hasn’t done it in Painter but it can be adapted to another computer program like Corel Painter or Adobe PhotoShop - generally they all do the same thing but a bit differently in how to approach accomplishing the same things.