Painting at Mariners Park Museum

Welcome!

Today I had my first of two painting sessions at the Mariners Park Museum in Prince Edward County as part of my big World War One Project entitled To the Sound of Trumpets. I'll be spending two days in each of PEC's five museums (not including the Museum of the Stick), the idea being that people can come out to a museum they might not have been to before (or revisit one), or watch me paint (if they haven't already been bored by that yet), and ask me questions about this project, or general questions about painting...or about anything*, really. Surprise me.

I'd scheduled myself to paint from 1–4, but I arrived early to take a look around the grounds and the museum itself...

House of Light!

Appropriately, they've got a life-sized lighthouse outside (and tiny models of them and parts of ones inside).

They also have bits of ships all over the place, as though they all crashed right here:

What's left of the Florence.

And this thing!

I love this thing.

Like any good ship, they even have an engine room:

My initial setup was just inside the entrance to the main building, but it was a little warm and the light wasn't so great for painting...

Also not boaty enough.

So I went further inside and, not only was it cooler and had much better light, it was full of amazing artifacts (my favourite was the taffrail log that measures a ship's distance travelled –no photo; come and see it!).

Nautical but nice.

So, surrounded by items from and information about hundreds of years of sailing (much of it local history), I got to work on a painting of two soldiers and their mail (one reading, one writing) during a break in the fighting. I had a few visitors (and a couple of friends brought me treats!) and, in a little under three hours, working on and completing small sections at a time, I managed this much:

I kinda like it like this
(but here's the finished painting).

I'll be working further on the above painting during my second session tomorrow (August 7) and then I'll be painting something completely different at the Ameliasburgh Historical Museum on August 13 & 14 from 1–4pm, both days.

*Like: "Do you really think Phil Collins's version of Behind the Lines isn't as good as the original Genesis version?"**

**The answer is yes, and I'll tell you why if you show up to one of my museum sessions.

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