3 of 31 Colorful Moonsnail

Show Your Stripes (Colorful Moonsnail)

4" X 6"

Watercolor

$75

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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

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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

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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!