Palm Trees, and Monkeys. Painting of a Beach

In one of the art teams on etsy we have these challenges. We pick a topic and try to paint it. This time the topic is beach/ocean. Well, I must admit, this was actually challenging. Mainly because of all elements in nature, I never got special attachment with the beach. I lived most of my childhood ether close to the forests or mountains. We had rivers and lakes, but they were small and never inspired that great of an ow in me. I only saw sea for the first time when I was in my teens. The earlier memories were much more important to me as far at loving elements in nature goes. Plus, I'm really not "painting the beach" kind of girl.

After thinking about this challenge for a few days, I finally figured out how to combine this topic with my painting style. I finally cracked it, I'm doing it and I'm loving it. This picture shows it as it is so far, I have to put another day into it before I can say I'm done, but so far I think it's going well.

Now, here is how I managed to get this to the point where I can actually enjoy doing it. First of all I needed to figure out how to do it in abstract, more importantly my style of abstract. I googled "abstract beach" images and saw how other people did it. This started bringing me in the right direction. I figured out what I wanted on the painting plus I got the boost of confidence that I can indeed do it. Then I remembered all those cartoons I watched when I was little and how small islands were depicted in them. This helped me develop it further. Now add a simplified version of my crazy lines and here it comes. Beach painting that is my very own and that I can relate to. Now I just have to finish and hope I wouldn't mess something up in the process.

The whole time I was painting, Monkey wanted to be close to me. After trying to get comfortable on the drafting table where I was painting, he figured there was too much water and paint, plus I was moving things around too much. He changed his position by switching to the table just an arm length away and of all places, he went ahead and fell asleep on the printer.

-Monkey, can you print out last month expenses?
-Mew, give me catnip

Oh, and the spiders... I hate spider... For some odd reason they seem to like the idea of moving in with us though. Killed one of them myself (after screaming like a little girl) and Vincent killed the other (after I screamed like a little girl.) Now, this is how the conversation went between Vin and I after I screamed
-Vincent, there is a spider in the bathroom, can you kill it?
-Nah, it's going to keep the flies away (he has a thing against killing things, even spiders)
-No, it's going to keep me away
Anyway, after threatening to spray the spider with chlorine so that it would die a terrible and painful death without me getting near it, Vincent agreed to catch it and release it outside. Killed it in the process of catching though.

Don't forget about the giveaway btw, it's still on at http://artofarmadavolya.blogspot.com/2011/05/giveaway-of-painting-joy-and-my-first.html

Apocalypse update: Good news, it cooled down a bit over here. It was so much nicer today, I didn't even have to turn on the AC. Though I still have to water the plants myself :(
Darn, this end of the world is very sneaky, you can't even see it coming.
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Update: 3 spiders... 3... One of them snack up on me while I was typing the blog post for From the World of Art. My arachnophobic mind can't handle it. Perhaps this is the way the world will end... it'll be huge aggressive spiders... they will scare us all to death...
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Another quick update, there is another giveaway I'm sponsoring. If you would like one of my Ancestor's Spirit paintings, I'm giving away the largest, the most expensive and the one I like the most. It's an $80 painting, so don't miss out