January Florida Getaway

Boy, I've sure been lax on posting on the blog! I finally have a subject to post! I was fortunate to be invited down to Florida with a couple of my traveling art buddies. We had a great time, although it was cooler than most people would expect, since we were in the Panhandle, not Key West.

My host was very familiar with this area, and had planned a great week of sand, water, food, and plein air! While I was there, I posted snapshots on InstaGram but I have cropped the photos as shown below.

The first time I walked on the beach, I was intrigued with how blue the shadows appeared from the sea grass on the white sand. So similar to how the shadows appear in Ohio on winter snow!

I'd only taken a tiny watercolor kit with hot press paper, and some gel pens, and a very small selection of pastels and PastelMat paper. So, the first painting was the watercolor/gel pen:

I loved how this came out!  So then, I painted the scene again with the pastels:

Not bad. I like both for different reasons.
The next day we went to a local park, and I decided to paint one of the palms in watercolor/gel pens:

The next day, we went to another park which had really interesting sand dunes. This is pastel on PastelMat. I'm really happy with this one!

Then we went to a local shop which was in a setting similar to Monet's garden. I decided to paint the cool blue door in the back in pastel on PastelMat. I didn't finish this, but I think it works:

While we were there we found a tree full of kumquats! We stole a small branch with several fruits and took it back to the condo. We had to cut into one and all gave it a taste! I don't think it was quite ripe, but we got some comical expressions on our faces at the taste! Two of us painted the fruit on the dining room table.

We had a great time! A very relaxing vacation in the middle of the grey Ohio winter!