Tampa Artists Welcome RNC

Picnic Island Where Fish are Jumping

Welcome to Tampa Bay! 

We're a little different in these parts and proud to strut our stuff for the RNC. Even the fish are friendly here. Enlarge this photo and you'll see two jumping out of the water as I snapped the shot.

A colorful city of great beauty (full of purple blossom-laden trees today), we're gathering a herd of painted elephants to welcome the RNC gathering in August. Trees courtesy Mother Nature; elephants courtesy local artists. There's sure to be at least one pink pachyderm in the herd.  Tampa's elephants

Picnic Island Shrub Unedited Snapshot

I went to Picnic Island yesterday afternoon to play with my new camera and to prep canvases for a new series. Not much I could photograph, so I staked out my perch for two hours of painting. The beaches were strewn with discarded cans, plastic Easter eggs, Easter basket straw, and other garbage people left behind on the sands, grasses, and in shrubbery, after their Easter reunions. Even the road into the park was badly littered. Plastics in the water and on the shoreline now have to be cleaned-up by taxpayers. No photo ops.

Bird's Eye View from Picnic Island

Tampa is getting a facelift for the RNC.  Already a natural beauty, a facelift will only augment our amenities. Intense planning is underway and all should go well. Don't know that Picnic Island will be a venue for any RNC activities, but the crew has worked very hard for months on improvements and general spruce-up. I've observed what appeared to be shoreline security practice in the bay, as well.


Hate to miss a good party, I'll be on the road in August.


Today's post is loaded with photos that are totally unedited, no color correction, and no cropping. These shots were taken with the new P+S Panasonic Lumix camera which I wrote about in an earlier post along with the link for a recommendation. Artists' Cameras  I haven't yet read the manual and don't yet know how to use the camera very well. The touch screen is wonderful, it's intuitive, and produces quality images. All this for under $100. I could have gotten a model with a view finder to conserve battery life, but my only objective with this camera is a quick fix to photograph my art. That's my next experiment and I'll upload comparisons in a future post.

Comments are always encouraged.
If you're following interesting blogs, feel free to comment or post those links here, too. 

All the best,

Gail Kent
Gail Kent Studio

Find me or my work at the following addresses:
Gail-Kent.artistwebsites.com 
 Twitter -  Twitter.com/@Gail_Kent,  and Facebook -  www.facebook.com/GailKentStudio
www.etsy.com/people/gailkentstudio
https://sites.google.com/site/gailkentstudios
 

Artist at Work on Picnic Island

Visual artists who work in outdoor public spots, and plein air painters, often face challenges:


-  weather (for me it's the beach) can be too wet, too humid, or too windy
-  wildlife when in the natural habitat inland or on the shore can be territorial
-  visitors can be either a distraction or a welcome diversion
-  safety can be a concern in isolated locations
-  medium can be problematic - acrylics dry quickly even with gel medium mixtures
-  electronics don't perform well if you continually drop them in water or hard surfaces! 

Low tide & gentle sailing breeze today

Having worked outdoors a little over six months, (eager to get into my new space indoors), I've enjoyed many hours on our white sand beaches at Picnic Island watching sail boats, kayakers, commercial ships in the channel and an endless stream of  locals and visitors who stop to look at my art. I've even gotten to know a few of the regulars who hike or walk daily.

Parking Lot Picnic Island Style

Mornings are often quiet when I arrive at deserted scenes like this area near the island entrance. Park staff stop by sometimes to be sure everything is okay when I'm painting alone on the shoreline. Owners of vehicles in the parking lots have usually already gone out in kayaks or small fishing boats.

Umm, umm good crabs- only shells left

I walk on the beach with my camera before painting to get lots of reference images for future use. Unfortunately, I drop my camera all too often, and now can't upload to my Fine Art America print site until I get a new one. Present Kodak lasted only three months. A great article link from another artist about getting a new camera  Need a New Camera  I'll review her results and reader input before making my own choice.

Outdoor painting challenges aren't insurmountable.
I've adapted very well by changing my medium, changing from finished works to small studies, and learning to deal with distractions. The bugs: can't say I've adapted to no-see-ums! I'll continue to visit this beautiful estuary from time to time after moving into new space and again painting larger oil works.

My outdoor visitors seldom see my finished works, but I give them my card to look at the "good stuff" online. I stop painting to chat, unless I'm at a critical focus and don't want my paint to dry. In which case I explain that the paint is drying quickly, but to please stay and chat. Got to get that good stuff online for them. Blog and Facebook uploads are often incomplete or cropped differently than works offered as prints, so the camera is now critical--don't want people to only see snapshot uploads.

Comments are always encouraged.
If you're following interesting blogs, feel free to comment or post those links here, too. 

All the best,

Gail Kent
Gail Kent Studio

Find me or my work at the following addresses:
Gail-Kent.artistwebsites.com 
 Twitter -  Twitter.com/@Gail_Kent,  and Facebook -  www.facebook.com/GailKentStudio
www.etsy.com/people/gailkentstudio
https://sites.google.com/site/gailkentstudios