Lovin’ the light

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Nantucket Dreamin’  © 2012 Karen Mathison Schmidt

8 x 8 x 7/8 inches • acrylic on cradled GessobordTM

private collection • Salem, Massachusetts

Yesterday I was working on a large iris painting when this happened. I just had to stop what I was doing and indulge myself.

Ray snoozing on one of my favorite browsing books, a photo book of Nantucket that I got years ago on a fondly remembered trip to that charming place, the afternoon sun filtering through the leaves of the tree outside the window, that light dancing all over everything ... now tell me: how on earth could I resist?

Since Ray has a habit of waking up and stretching as soon as I go for my camera, I quickly slipped my iPhone out of my pocket and clicked a couple of shots to capture the scene. Then I realized that the background was my really messy, cluttered desk. So I did some clearing up, during which Ray removed himself to his bowl in the other room for a snack. I took more reference photos, this time with my camera, planning to use Photoshop later to put this background together with the picture of Ray for my reference. And then, lo and behold, Ray came back and settled himself in the exact same spot as before. I couldn’t believe it! So as the afternoon light became more and more dramatic, I snapped away to my heart’s content, trying different degrees of zoom, this angle and that, until I had way more than enough pictures to choose from for reference.

Didn’t get much else done on the iris painting, but ended the day smiling, knowing that today when I awoke and hit the studio I was going to have a blast of a day painting this.

And I did.

Ray did, too.