Posted on

Hoisting the Blue Peter

Seeing Kirk off on his last voyage.

There’s a signal flag that ships hoist in harbor when it’s time for crew to return to the ship. A blue field with a white square in the center, like a cloud in a clear blue sky. For generations it’s been known as the “Blue Peter”, and those who know it by name know it means it’s time to say your goodbyes, time to depart.

We waved farewell to one of our brothers recently. Captain Kirk tacked suddenly away downwind and crossed the bar. He was a generous friend, funny, and thoughtful. We’ll miss him much. He loved our merry band of misfit sailors, and wanted us to remember him with another sail together – at his favorite spot among fast friends on lovely boats. We were happy to oblige.

Around two dozen of us gathered on a beach where the Chickahominy meets the James. We sent some of Kirk’s ashes off on the sea in a little boat of his own, viking style, and went for a sail ourselves

Rigging Kirk’s boat “Rose of Sharon”

One of my Melonseeds, Aeon, got splashed for the first time this year.

Me and T in “Aeon” – photo by Matt J.
Harris and Barbara’s new catboat “Mariah”
Jim’s Sakonnet 23. photo by T.
Jim’s Sakonnet 23 – photo by T.

After a big cookout on the beach, many of us returned to campfires and tents to sleep under the trees along the shore of the Chickahominy. Perfect weather, with cool breezes and calls of owls and whippoorwills for lullabies.

Posted on

Water Music

It’s hit 100 degrees here past several days. And no significant rain for over a month. Everything brown and dry. Worse elsewhere, but not good.

Good time to spend in the river.

Posted on

Day 6 or 7 Watercolor Self-tutoring ~ Crow

I’ve sort of lost track of time. Things have been weird lately. After a long crappy day, I went back to a sketch I did late last night and this evening spent a half hour adding pigments and ink to it in the sketchbook.

It helped a lot.

Posted on

Almost Equinox

Today was the first full day of Spring. The Equinox officially arrived sometime yesterday. These photos were taken a few days ago.

I was reading about the megalithic passage graves in Ireland and Brittany, aligned with the solstice or equinox. Our house is oriented on the cardinal points, and around those astronomical events it becomes quite apparent. Near the Equinox, the sun rises and streams through from one side to the other.

As we grow older, and parents and friends depart this world, makes you think. 

We spend our days in a Passage Tomb
Souls suspended
Waiting for the return of the sun


I’m OK with that.

Posted on

Day 4 ~ Watercolor Self-tutoring

Got to play some more yesterday. Had to throw away two to get here. Amazing how much you can lose the groove in a week.

This one is done with paint, graphite, and fountain pen. Again using cards and paper towels and some canning paraffin – things that didn’t come from the art supply store. I seem to get better results with unconventional materials.

Posted on

Watercolor Tutor

First success

I’ve been teaching myself some things about watercolor. It’s harder than it looks. That was the easiest part to learn.

The hardest part to learn – which took me until the third day, and half pad of paper – is like many things you can ruin a good thing by overthinking it.

Next after overthinking, is just knowing when to quit. Surest way to ruin something halfway decent is to keep messing with it when it’s done.

This started a couple of weeks ago. While waiting for some cheap paints and paper to arrive, I played around with a digital stylus on a tablet. That has been fun, and I learned a lot from it. Essentially, it lets me use a photo for reference, picking up color from the image to load in the stylus, then you paint over the photo on a new layer. With all my experience editing photos with digital tools I got the hang of that pretty quick, and like the results – enough that I’ll keep doing that. It’s quick and fun.

Stylus and tablet rendering of anchoring out inside Smith Island, just after sundown.

When I finally got analog materials, I wasn’t surprised to learn that working with those is a whole lot different. And a whole lot harder. My first attempts were, to my eye, overworked and overthought. This was the best of that batch:

I couldn’t seem to disconnect my brain from my hands, and it was pretty obvious my brain didn’t know what the heck was going on. Today, I finally gave up on “trying” and just did a handful of mindless experiments, letting the brush and paper lead. That started to show promise. Not only less frustrating, but less effort, and the results are better.

One of the quick exercises.

This let me realize that, when it comes to visual art, at least, breaking the rules is better than following them. The painting at the top of the page was done less with actual paint brushes. Instead, I used a combination of credit card, spray bottle, toothpick, paper towel, crappy glue chip brush, fountain pen, and yes, a watercolor paintbrush or two.

I hope to try more of this soon, and hope to remember to forget what my brain tells me.