Progress

The weather on the island continues to be unsettled and not very summery. Until yesterday early afternoon we had been in the midst of a week long showery and foggy time. The fourth of July was pretty quiet what with all the canceled fireworks and parades because of the pandemic social distancing. Then yesterday the clouds blew out, the sun appeared and the air became noticeably cooler and drier. I was up at about 4:30 and the moon was out, still pretty dark but the birds were all abuzz (kind of weird). So I went out to get a few snaps of the early morning moon. The morning started with clear skied and lovely sunshine. I thought it was going to be a continuation of yesterday afternoon, but at the time of this posting it has disappeared again behind overcast skies.

While waiting for my seascape to dry for detailing,  I used the last couple of days to paint the requisite yearly self portrait. I thought it turned out pretty well, and this morning it was dry enough to varnish. Hope to spend the day back painting the seascape I started a number of days ago.

"2020 Self Portrait," 9x12inches, acrylic on canvas panel

This morning's moon

Osmo Pocket

The open box DJI Osmo Pocket that I purchased on Ebay arrived in yesterday's mail, a day earlier than expected. Cool little (and I mean little) video camera, gimbal and action camera all in one. It looks like the camera DJI  uses on some of their drones, only made to fit in your hand. This Osmo can shoot in 4k, 60fps and will basically allow you to all the things that their gimbal for your cell phone would let you do. It comes with an iPhone and Android adapter that works with their app that you can download. I found some great YouTube videos on how to get the most out of using it. It will fun to use in preparing Instagram stories. The pocket is also expandable with a whole host of accessories. The app is quite good and have found the camera to very compatible with my Samsung Note 10+. Hope to take it for a test drive later this afternoon on a walk.

I have also been fooling around with my Samsung Gear 360 Immersive and wide angle photography has always interested me. I have been looking to use photos taken with the 360 as references for paintings. It takes beautiful stills. Here is a couple of snaps taken in my garden.

Progress

Have spent some time over the last few days switching gears from painting with acrylic paints to painting with oils. The biggest thing to get used to, for me, is the dry times. The acrylics dry so fast which enables you to move from one area of a painting to another while different parts of the canvas dry. Now that I have blocked in all the color for this oil painting, its all wet, so I am going to wait a couple of days for it to skin over before working on the details. Otherwise, I will in all likelihood produce a muddy mess. In the mean time I think that I will start a new painting and get that going. I can keep painting and then switch between the two. A few progress pictures follow: