Mission Accomplished!

My thirty seashell paintings are complete! The month pushed me to use variety of watercolor techniques resulting in increased competence. I've learned a lot and I'm a better painter for it!

I hope you enjoyed the journey! I have appreciated all the nice comments. I've enjoyed looking at the art of all the other artists too. Well done, my friends!

Remember to sign up for my newsletter in the margin. Subscribers will receive a special offer related to these paintings.

28 of 30 Tulip Shell (Broken Shell Series)

Shining Through (Tulip Shell)

4" X 6"

Watercolor

$75

Click here to purchase

Tulip shells tend to break beautifully and the thin nature of the shell allows light to shine in. I am obviously drawn to them.

The shell in the painting is this center fragment. I'm painting the striped on on the right for tomorrow.

27 of 30 Crown Conch

About to Bloom (Crown Conch)

5" X 7"

Watercolor

$85

Click here to purchase

This is one of my favorite shells. It isn't broken. I thought that it was just developing strangely, but after "googling," it appears that this is typical for crown conchs. I'd describe it as the awkward middle school stage before they get the wonderful crown.

I had only seen the "grown" conchs below:

 

I'm off to a three day watercolor workshop, so my blog posts may be less informative....we will see!

25 of 30 Pear Whelk (Broken Shell Series)

Fading Away (Pear Whelk)

9" X 12"

Watercolor

$175

Click here to purchase

If you look really closely at this shell, you can see where there was once some golden coloration, but it has been bleached to the point it is not readily noticeable.

I had fully intended to paint this shell "white." Meaning, of course to pick a color of shading and render the shadows monochromatically. I'm not sure how early in the painting I abandoned this plan. First, I masked the whitest whites and put a dark in for the shadow. Next, I painted some purple in the background. After a few coats in the background, I put a light wash of yellow over the shell. Then, I started layering the lines of the tiny ridges. At some point, I must have gotten bored and moved to brighter and brighter colors! Despite the finished product being quite different than my original vision, I'm not at all upset about it. I think it is interesting in the same way as the tulip shell from day 10, but instead of using colors to build a brown, I used them to portray a white shell. I hope you like it!

13 of 30 Four-tooth Nerite

Baby Teeth (Four-tooth Nerite)

4" X 6"

Watercolor

$75

Click here to purchase

The teeth on these shells make me smile. They resemble that phase where a child only has 6 or 8 teeth with spaces between. This particular specimen has bright magenta markings. It seemed an obvious choice to play off this for the background color.

There are a lot of nerites on rocks on the gulf side of Key West. The often get left out of the water at low tide, but fortunately for them, they have a "door" that they can close to protect themselves. They eat algae, which is a good thing. I'm happy to have them around.

12 of 30 Jasper Cone

Oh, Conus! (Jasper Cone)

4" X 6"

Watercolor

$75

Click here to purchase

I picked a different sketch today than originally slotted for Day 12. This may be the smallest shell I paint during the challenge. It's truly tiny! In fact, twice when using my hairdryer to speed dry the paint, I nearly blew it off the work table!

(BTW, the title is a sort of play on words related to military life; Conus is the scientific name for cone, but CONUS is the acronym for CONtinental United States, which seems to be my destiny for our entire military life.)

10 of 30 Tulip Shell

Brown is Beautiful (Tulip)

5" X 7"

Watercolor

$85

Click Here to Purchase

For Day 10 of the thirty paintings in thirty days challenge, I decided to do something a bit different as far as the blogpost goes. I took progress photos as I went along and put them into a "video." (Really, just a slideshow/digital flipbook). Here is also a collage of the progress photos individually.

Note to self: Do not wear a hot pink shirt if you plan to take progress photos while you paint. :(

The shell I painted from doesn't actually have all the colors that I painted (at least to my eye), but it did have a warm glow that I wanted to capture. Plus, it is fun to paint neutrals without using neutral paints. (Thanks Jane Angelhart for teaching me how to do that!)

Larger photo of finished painting (pre-signing...oops):

9 of 30 Juvenile Conch, Revisited

Moody Teen (Juvenile Queen Conch)

5" X 7"

Watercolor

$85

Click here to purchase

Before the thirty paintings in thirty days challenge began, I chose reference photos and printed them out. Then, I laid them out on the floor, put them in an order that looked interesting, numbered them and put them into a stack. Each morning, I go to the studio and take the top reference photo and get to work. I was a little worried that this would result in petulance and whining, but it has worked out well so far. Upon seeing the reference photo for this painting, I thought, "No, I've already painted the juvenile conch. I should pick a different photo." But, as it is with momentum, I decided it was easier to just paint and not overthink it.

Here is the photo I was working from:

Painting the shell went pretty well. The biggest challenge was figuring out how I wanted to treat the shadowed areas that disappear. I debated painting the background grey or brown, but it just didn't feel right. I decided to go in the opposite direction and paint it blue. Something was still missing. Then, I decided to lift some angled lines from the background. By the time I did the second one, I knew that it was the correct choice! The white on navy gives the composition a nautical flair that works perfectly with the shell theme!

8 of 30 Long-spined Star Shell

"Prickly" (Long-spined Star Shell)

5" X 7"

Watercolor

$85

Click here to purchase

The long-spined star shell may have been the first shell that I picked up when I realized there were shells on the beach by our house. I had never seen them before, so they were like a wonderful treasure! Although (five months later) I still like them, there are a lot of them around, so they do not seem quite as special anymore. I still pick them up if none of the spines are broken and they are particularly spiky. The one in this painting is one of the largest that I've found (over 1").

As far as the process goes, this painting started well. I took one work-in-progress (WIP) photo:

About half-way through painting, I got "off" on my spirals. I kept working on it, but was just really unhappy with the result. I debated starting over. In fact, I set the painting aside and did a "sketch" painting to see if I could reclaim what appealed to me about the subject.

In a way, this painting is more how I envisioned painting the shells before the challenge began. Quick! Fresh! But, I have a way of painting and I am trying to incorporate new skills and ideas without remaking myself completely, so I refuse to stress over whether or not paintings end up as I envisioned before beginning.

After the sketch, I took another look at the painting and lifted and reworked a few things. I found my opaque white and used it to highlight a little (something I rarely do). When I stood back and looked, I decided that it turned out well despite the pain involved in bringing it to the finished state.

Sidenote: On Monday, I was three days ahead. I've since squandered my stockpile of paintings while grocery shopping and putting about 25 crockpot meals in the freezer. I need to get back ahead at some point because I am taking a watercolor workshop with Lian Zhen the 27th-29th.

7 of 30 Lightning Whelk

Striking (Lightning Whelk)

9" X 12"

Watercolor

$175

Click here to purchase

I have a fair amount of Lightning Whelks in my collection. I consider them elegant....sort of the ballet dancer of shells. The one I painted helped me to realize that even in great beauty, there lacks symmetry if you look close enough. The stripes are not evenly spaced. It made me wonder if they work in the way of tree growth rings....farther apart in hearty years and closer together in lean years. I think I will attempt to find out if that is true.

Most of the lightning whelks here are beautifully colored, but small. I seem to remember finding large (but faded) ones on the Gulf Coast as a child.

6 of 30 Comb Bittersweet Clam

You Can't Change Your Stripes (Comb Bittersweet Clam)

4" X 6"

Watercolor

$75

Click here to purchase

This is the first bivalve that I've painted in the challenge. Gastropods seem to steal my attention, but the stripes on this shell won my favor. It is the size of a quarter with lovely color, not at all faded by the sun.

This painting would be a perfect accompaniment to yesterday's painting. I think they would look very nice hanging together. In fact, I'll offer them as a pair at a reduced price; click here.

5 of 30 Mudsnail Maybe?

Everyone Loves a Mystery (Mudsnail family?)

4" X 6"

Watercolor

$75

Click here to purchase

I picked this shell to paint because It is so different than most of the shells in my collection. It isn't quite translucent, but it is thin. I thought it was unusual that half was white (with a few markings) and the other half an orangish-brown. I think I found this shell here in Florida since our move in August, but it is possible I had it before that. It is not readily identifiable as any shell in my new Florida Seashell book or with any image search could concoct for Google. It bears closest resemblance to the mudsnails, but it is too big and I think the aperture is too prominent. (Guesses or a knowledgeable answer in comments are welcome!)

When I started painting, I wanted to "lose" the dark edge into the painting's background. Instead of painting the background the same color as the dark in the shell to make the task simple, I chose to make it the complete opposite color on the color wheel and stir up some drama. Orange and blue are opposites. They are also the colors of my favorite college team.

Because I blended contrasting colors from the shell and background, the style of this painting is more contemporary. I really intended to do my shell series in a more simple way than I have so far. At one point, I contemplated only allowing myself a limited number of strokes per painting. (I was thinking 25.) After working on the painting to be posted Day 7 today, that seems like a joke that I should have taken more seriously. Maybe I'll try that in September.

3 of 31 Colorful Moonsnail

Show Your Stripes (Colorful Moonsnail)

4" X 6"

Watercolor

$75

Click here to purchase

These shells remind me of the shark's eye shells that were so prevalent in the Panhandle during my childhood, most often with hermit crabs living in them. It turns out that they are in the same family biologically. I've never seen one with the snail still living in it, but apparently they can spread out to ten times the size of the shell and have a similar coloration (as many gastropods do).

I have also seen a few milk moonsnails, but I rarely pick them up. I do love the stripes on the colorful variety, maybe it's the tiger fan in me (foreshadowing of days 5 and 6). The only shark's eye shells I have found here are bleached white on the Atlantic side of the island. I did find a sand collar on the Gulf side this week, so there must be some shark's eye snail around unless all these guys make them and they only mentioned it on the shark's eye entry of my book.

2 of 30 Juvenile Queen Conch

Someday I'll Be Queen (Juvenile Queen Conch)

5" X 7"

Watercolor

$85

Click here to purchase

Juvenile Queen Conch, symbol of Key West

Rarely a day goes by in Key West that the word "conch" isn't heard. People who are born here are called "Conchs"; Key West is the Conch Republic, which once briefly declared independence from the United States.

I didn't grow up here. I did come here back in the eighties for lobster season. I also spent a lot of my childhood in the Florida Panhandle, where we had crown conchs, so I knew "conch" rhymed with "bonk." For this reason, the Spongebob episodes that pronounce the shell with the "ch" at the end grate on every nerve. In the days that my TV was on Nickelodeon every afternoon, I cannot tell you how many times I grumpily told Spongebob and Patrick, "IT'S [KONK]!"

It wasn't until we moved here that I learned that the queen conch was in decline and was nearly extinct in the Keys. All of the conch fritters that you eat around here are imported from the Bahamas. That said, on any given day, I can walk out into the bay and pluck a conch out of the seagrass.

my hand....holding live adult queen conch by our dock

 If they are occupied, of course, I put them back. Occasionally, they end up stranded by the ebbing tide. I put them back in the seagrass, but they don't always make it. That's how I end up with the shells. I only have a few queen conch shells; I seem to find more hawk-wing conch shells, but the juvenile queen conch that I painted today was a nice find, if tinier than you would expect.

I have a crush on my painting at present; I'm considering printing it (larger) on canvas and hanging it in my bathroom. above my shell collection.

By the way, being a Key Westie, more conchs are coming in the days ahead.

1 of 30 Marginella

Subtle Beauty (Marginella)

4" X 6"

Watercolor

$75

Click here to purchase

Since moving to Key West in August, I've developed an almost daily habit of looking for shells, sea glass, coral, etc. along the water's edge. Some would say that my collection is getting out of control. (Perhaps a family member or two HAS said that....) But, as I find more and more specimens of a certain shell, I go back through and return some of the shells to the shore, keeping the ones that have best color, are largest or smallest, etc.

White-spot marginella

When I found this shell, I thought they were juvenile olive shell. The shell book that I got for Christmas (Florida's Living Beaches by Blair and Dawn Witherington) corrected me. I find the Atlantic and the White-spot versions of the marginella in the line of seaweed and such on a regular basis. I don't think I've seen the Orange version yet, but I'll keep looking!

All of the shells that I will be painting are from my own collection. I did a photoshoot with dramatic lighting for most of my reference photos, even though I have the shell in front of me while I paint. I'm experimenting with painting lost and hard edges in some of the paintings.

I hope you will return each day and see what I've come up with!

Revving My Artistic Engine....!!!!

I think I'm more excited about New Year's arrival than I was about Christmas. I've spent the last month preparing for the 30 Paintings in 30 Days Challenge that runs Jan 1-30. (It's free and it's not too late to sign up.)

To prepare, I collected, curated, photographed and chosen shells from my beachcombing to serve as the theme for this challenge. (About halfway through, I'm adding a bit of a twist, which I hope to be moving and well-received.)

I've even taken the last few days of 2015 to paint ahead. This will hopefully enable me to post each day without staying up to the wee hours to get THAT DAY'S painting done as I have other times that I've done the challenge. I have also chosen a few complex compositions that I want to tackle and I hope to paint a little on each of those on days that go quickly.

The collage at the top of this post shows nine of my sketches, captured from photos of my shells. I'm hoping to work a bit on losing edges in the darkness and using hard edges to make the shells pop or glow on the paper. I'm sure every day will not be a success, but I'm really happy with the first three that I've done.

(IF YOU WANT TO SEE THE FIRST THREE PAINTINGS FOR THIS CHALLENGE, THEY ARE IN MY NEWSLETTER, WHICH I PLAN TO SEND OUT TODAY. SIGN UP HERE.)

All original paintings will be available for purchase. Sizes and prices will vary. The smallest will be 4" X 6." The largest will be somewhere around 16" X 20." Once a painting sells, the "click here to purchase" link will be removed.

Once the challenge is complete, I will make reproductions available of my favorites and/or those that are most enthusiastically received. I will also do a notecard set.

My daily painting will be posted here on my blog, which will also be posted on my Facebook page. I also plan to post on Instagram. If you would like to follow other artists on this journey, you can do that on the Thirty Paintings in Thirty Days webpage.

Wish me luck! And, Happy New Year!