Greetings from St. Lucia! I am here for a month with my sons, visiting family & gathering inspiration for my paintings. I will also be teaching a few art classes at the St. Lucia Yacht Club while I’m here – scroll to the end of this post for the *link.
It truly was a spectacular first day back home. A beautiful sunny day at the beach. The dry season has been a particularly rough one here & is lingering, so we have to be careful not to waste water, and when it rains … we’re all happy! There was no rain while we were at the beach though, the scenery was breathtaking, a true tropical paradise.
I brought some Golden Open acrylics to try out on this trip, I thought it might be useful when painting in such a sunny climate. So far I like them … just when you think the paint has dried on the palette, you wet your brush and mix the colour you want and the paint is reconstituted.
The down side is that it’s easy to get really messy, because the paint is wet for longer than I’m used to … if I get paint on my hands, I have to wipe it off immediately before I then get it on everything else. With my regular acrylics, the paint dries so fast I only realize when I’m washing up later – it peels off my skin very easily.
I also tried out a 6″x9″ Grey Matters Paper Palette by Jack Richeson & Co. for the first time. In theory, the neutral colour should be helpful in mixing colour, instead of a white palette which will reflect the light even more when painting outside in the sun. The slippery surface was nice with the Open acrylics, I’m not sure if they would work very well with my staywet palette, but I will give that a try at some point. The down side was when the wind blew the page off of the pad & it flew away with wet paint.
I will have to tape the page down next time. I am generally a studio painter, although I often pack my gear & paint in various locations (eg. a friend’s studio), I usually paint indoors. So, I have to make some adjustments to my set-up so that I can paint on location this summer.
I was caught up in the last stages of my painting – realizing that I committed the rookie mistake of trying to get too much detail in too early & then running out of time before the light changed – when I heard my son’s voice. “Mom, you might want to paint this instead”… and I looked up & saw the beautiful sunset!
If you would like to see more photos of my trip, I will probably post at least one a day on Instagram, I don’t want to spend my whole vacation (even if it’s a working vacation) on my computer!
*Art Classes in St.Lucia Flyer
If you would like to take art classes with me, e-mail donna@bluerootsartstudio.com and let me know what you are looking for. I might be able to open up another time/day/location etc.
