Success on Stocking Island

It worked!

Walking around on Stocking Island, enjoying the sun the water and finding
the perfect quiet spot to paint helped to create a successful painting.

While walking down on the beach, there is a bend leading to the quieter side
where the boaters have anchored in a bay for shelter. It is away from the Sunday
crowd, the music from Chat and Chill and very few people seem to wander around there.

I picked a spot with a view of the Salt Beacon atop a hill. Blending greens and yellows and blues I created the hills, surrounded by the turquoise water, and topped
off with the blue sky and fluffy white clouds. The heat and wind actually helped the painting this time as it dried quickly enough to go back in and add the detail.
Adding the white sandy paths down the hill with the Salt Beacon and outlining some trees on the hill added colour and brightened the final piece.

I never mind when people stop and watch me paint and the few that walked by were really quiet, although I had my ipod on, because the music helps to block out the other sounds around me. After going for a swim to wash off the green paint I got on my leg, I headed back to the noisy part of the beach for some mahi mahi and a glass of wine. Yum!

I usually give away my paintings that I do on the beach. To me they never seem perfect enough to sell, like the ones I spend hours on at home.

Tomorrow I think I will just paint on the beach in front of my hotel.

Joanne

"Fall in Exuma"

Its 9:30am and I am sitting on my verandah waiting to catch the water taxi over to Stocking Island. It will be busy at Chat 'N Chill , the restaurant, but I know where to find the quiet spots to paint, and there is the convenience of washrooms to clear up my paints. Not to mention the yummy bb-qued sea food.

Windy cool mornings in the Fall in Exuma, means the best painting time is in the afternoon, but it's taken me a week to relax enough to want to paint and not to be distracted by thoughts of home, work and snow in Canada.

So I think I will have to pull up a beach towel and just start painting and who knows maybe the wait will be worth it. Maybe the wind will help clear the clutter from my mind giving it an opening for that creative energy to move my brushes in a good direction.

During my first week on the island, I have volunteered art lessons to a couple of children on the beach and at my hotel, sharing my painting supplies and my passion for painting. This is great and I packed extra paper for this reason.

I've met up with friends who live on Exuma which is always nice to break up the quiet time of travelling alone, and to see them again is quality time.

Time to get on the sunscreen and pack up my painting supplies for the beach. Maybe
I will try close up scenes of the water the plants, something different. Not that
I am tired of the blue sky, the water and palm trees, I think I am just tired.
I think I just need some vitamin D from the sun to energize me.

Joanne