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I've been working on my advertising page for the Directory of Illustration. I decided to do all new art work…here's one of the paintings I finished for the directory. 

Under the algae that carpets the swamp, near the duck who paddles in ooze, close to the turtle who takes a snooze . . . hides a gator! Still as a log, only his watchful eyes can be seen. But when gator moves, he really moves! What happens to the duck, the turtle, the egret, the deer, and the many other critters of the swamp when gator makes his move!

A great time was had with the kids at The Lighthouse! We learned about the plants and the animals that inhabit the Everglades and studied the layers of swamp water that enables gators and other animals the ability to hide. What a great time we had!

“Here’s a fun tale that introduces young readers to concepts of camouflage and predator-prey interactions. And kids will love searching for the hidden alligator in the beautiful illustrations.”

–Annie Oxarart, Board Member, League of Environmental Educators in Florida                           Available HERE

I want to do a watercolor painting.

An excuse to draw an alligator…who tends to live in a swamp. This one’s having a hard time getting a phone signal. You know how swamps can be.

I'd never realized before that swamps seem to be one of my favorite settings for paintings until I started thinking about today's Illustration Friday topic. I discovered I have a number of paintings set in the swamp, so I thought I'd cheat a little bit and drag another one out from the archives. If you've been to my website, then you've probably already seen this and if you haven't, then it'll be brand new to you!
This painting is available as a print on my Etsy shop.

This topic seems unusually appropriate to me since only just a couple weeks ago we visited the Heard Natural Museum & Wildlife Sanctuary where there's a beautiful wetlands trail:

I'm glad I found some local inspiration for future set-in-the-swamp paintings!

Dat Loretta and Rango was no regular gators
Why dem swamp dogs was known from da bayou to Decatur
Dey dance da Lambada, da Salsa, an Tango…
But dey pack the house when dey dance

ZY-DEE-CO!

Never dare was a team dats mo betta
Den two steppen Rango and his sweet boo Loretta!

Fo True!!!

By Roberta Baird

www.robertabaird.com

I  seem to have a theme going on here… if it isn’t  dancing, it’s gators….. so why not dancing gators!

Happy Friday!

At long last I have a new finished piece of art to post:

I suppose I'm reasonably satisfied with this piece. It seemed like it went a little smoother than usual and I managed to keep the paint fairly thin on the background which helps to cut down on time spent on the piece. What bothers me a bit is this isolated pool of red-orange that is the squirrel/boat. The warm yellow of the dragonflies was intended to balance out the orange of the squirrel, but I think they are too small to be as effective as I'd like. I did push some orange-ish color around in the background, but maybe not enough... All the same I think it came out okay.
Prints are in my Shop.

Not only have I finally gotten back to painting, but we've also gotten back to our frequent weekend hiking. We had a good long walk at nearby Bull Creek this past weekend. This trail was about three miles one way meandering back and forth across the wide creek. Where in LA we could clearly see the extremely parched condition of the land in the form of dry creek-beds and trickling waterfalls, here we could see the opposite - an abundance of water. We've heard the reason for this is that the soil's quite thin and underneath lies a layer of rock, so the water can't really soak into the ground and therefore channels into the many waterways that wind around the hills here. You can see how rocky the land is around the water in these pictures:

The trail came to an end in a small dog park. I have never seen so many happy dogs together in one place at the same time. It was fun to watch them splashing around in the water so exuberantly. I think they had the right idea too - it was surprisingly warm that day and the water looked so inviting!

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