Tuesday, September 30, 2008

3 blue bottles


Cathy G put a great image of 2 blue bottles on her website, and I thought they had a certain queasiness about them.

So I could not resist trying to paint one of the many stinging coelenterate 'bluebottles' washed up on the beach at the weekend. I brought one up to the house in a bag full of sand, as I didn't want to be stung ... the main stinging tentacle is some feet long! I put it to wash in fresh water with salt, where it immediately shed a huge quantity of blue stuff. It was already dead, I'm sure.

Not in great health anyway, because after trying a couple of watercolour portraits, it smelt so bad I had to go and pop it and bury it!

For the sake of the record, but not posterity, here's a photo of my terribly bad efforts, and the model. Not such a great idea after all!


8 comments:

Gillian said...

Ah memories! Side stepping blue bottles on Sunrise Beach, Muizenberg! Their delicate construction, colour and shape certainly lend themselves to the eye of the watercolourist (and the biologist!) I can't believe how glad I am to see them again albeit safely on cyber 'paper.' Your w/c allows me to enjoy their prettiness and forget the sting. (Never mind the pong!) Glad you had a lovely time at Yl-up.

Cathy Gatland said...

Well your paintings of them don't look that terribly bad to me... though hard to tell at that angle, which I guess is the point! ;o) I wonder if you could paint with the blue that comes out of them, except you'd have a stinky painting! You know it's time to get to a beach when even the bluebottles make you nostalgic!

Jo Castillo said...

Euuuuuu! We live in land locked New Mexico. Never heard of these. They look and sound pretty awful. The painting looks fine. :)

laura said...

These are really cool!! Wet and mysterious ...
I see you mastered the blogroll! Thanks for including me.
(If you click on "Customize" at the top right of your blog; then "add or arrange page elements" then "add a gadget"--a whole bunch of neato things you can clog your sidebar with will appear!)

Vivienne said...

Thanks for comments, Gillian, Cathy, Jo and Laura.
I'd like to say that the photo did not do justice to the paintings, but they really are very bad. Flat and shapeless.Nice blues! I could not get the white to describe the ballooning as well as the pales to describe the transparency; when I did have whites the hard edge was wrong, and the softening washed them out to more blue.I should try from the photo as an exercise in perseverance. It was really a seduction by the blue and Cath's bottles. Glad they gave a little nostalgia anyway.
Jo, they are a smaller,less toxic relation of the Portuguese Man O' War... actually a colony of floating, stinging, feeding, digesting beasties ... all blue!
Laura, thanks for the help on the blog roll. Now the VSD is over (wow) I'll find some time to do that. As CPG says, bloggers' bum is becoming an affliction.

Kari Gibson said...

Oh, I love the painting, it is great from this angle of a very difficult subject. Ew, stinky still life, done that too often myself, beach findings, road kill...eugh!

Unknown said...

What weird, cool creatures! I don't think we get them here sadly. I once spent about an hour drawing a dead starling on a pavement in Spain which got me some pretty odd looks but at least it wasn't smelling bad at that stage!

Vivienne said...

Oh dear you've all seen my bad painting.But the road-kill subject is one of universal interest, obviously! Hi Kari and Claudia. Wonderful landscapes on both your blogs... wish I could do that. I think your plein air dedication is an important element.Perhaps the bluebottles may have been better if done on the beach! And maybe not.