After reviving ourselves with a snack and cold drinks by the water, we headed out again to a few spots we noticed that had potential. We had passed this boat several times by the side of the road and it looked interesting enough to investigate. The light was coming in nice from the side so all 3 of us set up alongside the road and painted the boat. We could have gotten a job there as official traffic-calmers, the way the cars slowed to a crawl when passing by to see.

It was around 6 pm and the sun was dropping, which also brought out the no-see-ums, mosquitoes and buzzing swarms of gnats. That meant fast painting and really put pressure on us to just get down the key information and get out of there before we lost the effect of the light. I had been warned before about painting boats...they often get moved so you have to paint quickly to get them down. In this case we thought the boat laying on the grass made it pretty unlikely we would lose our focal point until a disheveled, heavily bearded man muttering to himself came over and started checking out the boat. He piddled around it a bit, moved a few things inside, but thankfully he left the boat where it was. He came over to see what we were doing and was surprised to see his boat as the subject of all our paintings.

Even more suicidal gnats came out and pitched themselves onto the wet paint, plus the no-see-ums were fierce. I sprayed down again with bugspray and that may have driven more of the pesty creatures onto Perri and Jeanine because they soon packed it up. I spent another 20 minutes on my painting, determined to get close to finishing, and then called it a day too. I was able to make some finishing touches at home. Overall we had a great time painting at Cedar Key and it's someplace I would love to go back to visit and paint some more. The salt marshes were a new challenge, and I heard the outer keys are also very beautiful to see. That sounds like another painting roadtrip in the future.
  Me and Perri, traffic calmers