The Art of Shawna Apps
This piece was a rollercoaster ride to create!
I started out with this being an 18″ x 24″ piece, and some times it went well, others…not so much. Paint was running everywhere, the paper was warping from the water, colors were blending beautifully…like I said, a rollercoaster ride with its ups and downs!
It wasn’t until I was so close to being finished and getting ready to frame it that the unthinkable happened….
My youngest was home for a couple days this past week with a fever. After what felt like his thousandth movie, he decided he was bored and was looking for a change of scenery. He loves to paint, and as I was behind in Boathouse illustrating, I suggested breaking out our watercolors. He jumped at the chance, and we got to work.
It was so much fun watching him be creative! He puts colors together that I wouldn’t think of, puts more detail and thought into each painting than I would imagine, and even watching him try to work through his struggles inspires me.
Every year, we go on a week long vacation with my husband’s family during the summer. We’ve gone to a couple different lakes fairly close to home in the past, but this year we decided to do something different: we went to the Outer Banks in North Carolina during Easter/Spring break!
The week away came at the perfect time; we all live in western New York, and this winter was loooooong. Getting a break from the snow and frigid cold was wonderful, and it’s always nice to just get away from home and work.
However, my work followed me on vacation, but in a very good way…
For starters, I’m 31, and had never seen the ocean before this. Let me just say this: It. Is. Amazing.
All the color variations in the water, the bright colors of the sky, and all the cloud formations? It got my brain a twirlin’ coming up with all these new paintings I want to do, either in oil or watercolors.
One of my friends lived in North Carolina (actually, her dad is RV, the author I’m working with!), and she requested/mentioned that I should take pictures of all five of the lighthouses along the Outer Banks and make note cards and/or paintings/prints out of them. We only managed to get to three of them (Bodie, Hatteras and Ocracoke), but we’ll just have to make a trip back for the other two 🙂
As we were already in North Carolina and just a few short hours away, we left the beach house a day early and went to visit RV and his wife Jennie. After putting our kids to bed, we got to meet in person and discuss The Adventures of Boathouse Mouse series and look over illustrations in person while having coffee and cookies. It was so much fun spending time with them, and honestly, so hard to leave the following morning.
This is only a small fraction of pictures we took during our week away; I have over 1,800 pictures to go through. I’m not sure when I’ll have time to get painting, but I’m so anxious to get into my studio and work!
Which subject are you more excited about, the lighthouses or the clouds? Let me know below!
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