"Catch of the Day"

It seems like everything is delayed this year. Normally the St Michaels Art League banner art work has been displayed at our local library and we are getting ready for them to hang along Talbot Street. I usually post my banner image at the beginning of the year. COVID 19 has closed the library so there have been no shows. 

However, I did paint an image and the banner program is in full swing. 

I began thinking about what to paint last summer. What would Mikey do this year? ("Mikey" is the name of the crab that I paint each year. He wears different hats and represents various activities around our town: licking an ice cream cone wearing a baseball cap, steering a boat wearing a captain's hat, holding an anchor wearing a sailor hat or shopping the many festivals that are held each year...wearing a hat with a ribbon...technically, that was probably Michelle, Mikey.)

This year he has been fishing... I began with a sketch just to see what might work.

I liked the idea, but there were too many fish - they got lost. What about just one fish?

One big fish works better, but the pole is too short! I'm switching to a cane pole so I won't have to worry about any kind of reel.

The cane pole works better. I asked my art group about backgrounds. Rather than paint it again multiple time, I cut it out and laid the cut out on different colors...yellow!

blue!

We all agreed on white!

The next question was the size of Mikey. I wanted to make him narrower so that he fit entirely on the paper. One way to try that was to take my cutout and fold it! You can see the fold around his eyes.There, he fits!

I used that as the model for my final sketch

It was fun doing the final painting. It went through a lot of tweaking to get here. We even had a discussion about what color the fishing line should be! I did not want it to be too distracting... it ended up being light green (almost transparent) pencil.

And, here it is! I am calling it "Catch of the Day."

If you are driving through St Michaels mid-April through mid-November, look for Mikey hanging up on a pole! There are also posters available for purchase at Creative Xpressions in St Michaels.