"Castaway Island Afternoon", an Acrylic Landscape Painting

     One of the many preserves in our coastal North Florida area is relatively small, but is a favorite of mine. Castaway Island Preserve is on the Intracoastal Waterway with residential neighborhoods on both sides. It's an easy drive from our home and has yielded lots of painting reference photos over several visits. Part of the preserve is salt marsh with raised walkways that allow visitors to access the wetlands. I love it there and have made several paintings from Castaway scenes; I'm sure there will be more to come.

     "Castaway Island Afternoon" is a 24" x 18" acrylic on gallery wrapped canvas, designed to be hung as is or to be framed--either way looks great. Apparently my camera was tipped a bit when I took the photos (the reason the cedars look as though they are slightly leaning toward each other). Whoops. Since I have now signed the piece and given it a protective coating (for which I use a combination of matte and gloss acrylic medium), it is more difficult to take a good photo. Now it shows a bit of a sheen in photos, so I'll be content with the one I have.

     There is more than a little artistic license taken here. The hues are punched up from the actual scene, and, as usual, I had to clear out lots of vegetation and plant debris from the exuberant growth we see in coastal North Florida. So, the initial planning of the composition was crucial and involved several tonal sketches (using a range of artist's grey-scale markers) and various arrangements of the elements in the scene. 

     I also experimented with a few possible palettes and finally chose: cerulean blue, ultramarine blue, Paynes grey, lemon yellow, yellow oxide, Indian yellow, burnt sienna, burnt umber, buff (unbleached titanium ecru), and titanium white. The result is lighter and brighter than some of my other Castaway Island paintings, such as "Castaway Island Cedars" and "Castaway Island Palms". A side note on those two: although I used the same palette and canvas size so that they could be hung as companion pieces, they have ended up apart--which is just fine, too. The smaller cedars piece turned out to be a personal favorite and hangs in our home, while the palms piece was a perfect fit for the home of our older son and his interior designer wife. I was honored when she requested the painting and happily made a gift of it.

Question of the Day: Do you have favorite places in nature that you revisit to recharge or for creative or spiritual renewal?