Monday, April 21, 2008

Beach Finds Look Like Art

We found things like these on the beach yesterday in a number of locations. Aren't they beautiful and strange? They are a work of art in themselves. They obviously contained seeds belonging to something; however, none of the ones we saw were attached to anything, like the one in the picture is. At the time my friend, Nancy, thought they might be egg casings of perhaps the rays which are so common on Florida's West coast. Upon further research she found a website and conversed with them back and forth by email, and through that exchange, determined that they are egg capsules deposited most likely by the Pear Whelk.


Here's the website to find out about such things: http://www.jaxshells.org/eggch.htm


What is fascinating to me it is that almost every time I'm at the beach, I find different things among the debris deposited by the tides than were there previous times. Nancy grew up in Florida, and has much more beach knowledge than I. Yesterday we poked along and looked at these things while our group walked ahead, determined to set the land speed record for the mile. My artist's soul is thrilled by these small discoveries, and delving into them was just wonderful.

Today's Painting a Day is entitled Rose and Lace. I started by laying down a lace pattern in blue watercolor, then drew the rose in and painted it in shades of red and green. I thought it needed unifying, because the top half had basically nothing going for it other than the texture, so I proceeded to spatter and spray to provide a solution, which seems to satisfy me, at least for the moment. This painting is 6 x 9 inches on Arches Cold Press Watercolor paper and uses 100% watercolor paints. Find it here.

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