#snailshell

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!