New Year's Day Visits

Happy New Year!!!

On New Year's Day I decided to drive over to the beach. This is sort of an unofficial tradition for me if I am home and don't have any other plans. 

In the morning I had watched a few youtube videos about painting with gouache. That is something I'm hoping to practice this year...no, I will still do most of my work in watercolors, so don't worry. This past year I bought a starter set of Holbein gouache tubes containing a primary red, blue and yellow as well as a white and black. 

My first stop was at Captree State Park. The parking lot was covered with the remains of the snow from the other day. There were also some pockets of snow along the dune fences and on the dunes themselves. I should have experimented a bit with the gouache paints beforehand to see what combinations would produce what shades, but I dove right in.

Next I headed over the bridge to Robert Moses State Park which is on Fire Island. It was amazing to see the frozen areas around the pilings of the bridge. They made such beautiful patterns and textures, but there was no way to stop and take photos. 

It seems that a lot of people have the same tradition of visiting the beach on the first day of the year. When I was there last Jan 1st there were a lot of people tailgating and celebrating in the parking lot and walking to the lighthouse. I usually walk along the boardwalk to the lighthouse, but it was too cold on Monday.  This year there were some people hanging around and some diehearts that were heading down to the beach with beach chairs and coolers. (They did actually sit there on the sand.) The thermometer in my car said it was 19 degrees and the wind was really strong. I got out of the car long enough to walk over to the boardwalk and take a few photos.  This is what it looked like...beautiful but frosty!

I did sit in the car and do a watercolor sketch of the dunes and snow, but I was cold and soon headed home with my heater blowing nice hot air.