It’s the middle of winter and I’ve been dreaming about going shelling on a warm beach, which was the inspiration for Snail Shell.
Jay and I found this snail shell during a summer walk along the water at Jones Beach on Long Island. Sometimes we have a lot of luck shelling up here in New York very early in the morning, as we did the day we found this colorful shell.
I was drawn to this by the swirling oranges against the greys and browns, and the irregular shape. I had always thought I would end up painting this exquisite nautilus from my mother-in-law, but that’s not where the spirit moved me today.
During a previous Challenge, I did a drawing of two Snail Shells, with the front and back views of different shells. While I very happy with the delicate pencil drawing, graphite can’t capture the variegated bold colors. As you can see here, I used the drawing as a reference for the painting.
Shells was coming along easily, which is what I had hoped since I had a evening meeting. It turned out the program ran late, and I was gone much longer than expected. Long enough for the browns in this painting to start drying so they were couldn’t blend (like acrylic!). I had forgotten what a fast drying color dark brown was, unlike titanium white which takes days.
When I did return to the easel, I had to repaint whole sections to blend the colors in the spirals together. Other than losing a little sleep, no harm was done.
In the light of day, I wasn’t tempted to touch it either as I took photos for this post. A good day.
On to tomorrow’s painting. Actually, I’ve been thinking about mapping out my paintings for the rest of the Challenge. So if you have any suggestions, it would be a good time to hear from you. Thanks!
I am always fascinated by the colors and swirls in the shells. Some people only see the beauty in the whole ones, but I even love the ones that are broken where you can see into the spirals. This is lovely!!!
Thanks, Joan. Most of all, thanks for your support in readying my blog and commenting. I feel like I found a kindred spirit. FYI. There’s one broken shell that I’ve been thinking about doing with just a hint of the spiral left. It looks cool in the photo but I’m afraid no one would know what it is painted. We shall see… Maybe post-challenge.