You know those painters you see outside on sunny days with their fancy umbrellas, leisurely painting away on the manicured park lawn? I don’t know if they’ve spent much
time in the coastal zone.

I recently got one of those fancy umbrellas for myself. Seemed like a great idea at the time. I even got one that was silver on top to reflect heat and black underneath to
reduce glare, and with about 87 different clamp options to attach to nearly anything. It really is a marvel of modern engineering.

And it’s basically worthless. I used it as I was painting this one on a beautiful windless day until what I’d call a very light breeze finally came up, not much, but magnified by the cliff-face beneath me, and that thing warped itself into all manners of hideous misshapes and bending lines, an origami of umbrellic obscenities, threatening to topple my whole easel and send it down the cliff. I will not be using it again.

On the brighter side, I really like how this turned out and solved a nagging visual problem, using simple horizontal strokes to define bending lines of swell.

Now that is something I will use again.

-Entry on February 16, 2015