A History of Art part 29

The last couple of days I took walks across the street to Stockton Lake in search of more sea gulls to photograph. Not as many around as I had hoped, and none were hanging around close to where I could stand. (the gulls that frequent the amusement boardwalks are less skittish- I've seen them actually swoop down and try to grab food out of people's mouths) Used my zoom and a higher res setting to get what I could get. Top photo is a typical result- though the egret is easier to see than the tiny gull on the far right. Took what I had to the Studio this afternoon and started drawing my gull flock eating assorted dropped boardwalk treats. Some birds are based on my photos of the past few days, some are sketches from internet sources. I may make changes in this grouping, but the idea is coming along.

Next I went back to the boat ride. Decided to start over completely. I was never happy with the perspective, and today I realized that the boats were backwards. The actual ride has the boats travelling in a counter clockwise circle, and when I did my sketch at Pt Pleasant, I drew the one closest to me, pointing to the right. When I started recreating the ride on the block I reversed the boat to point to the left- standard procedure, but I had forgotten that I wasn't drawing the foreground boat, but the one across on the far side of the ride, which would have been pointing to the left in my original view. So on the block drawing, the boats should be pointing to the right. Kind of a rookie mistake, but it was an excuse to just erase the whole thing and start over. The new version isn't quite there, but it's closer than any of the previous versions, and I know what I need to do to fix it. I haven't yet decided if the raised rim will go back or not. It gave me so much trouble before, I don't know if I want to deal with it again.