Home!

We are home now. A wonderful 6 weeks of painting and exploring Scotland and Ireland.
I'll continue to post paintings. Here's one from October 3, 2015

"Local 8724", Near Bantry, Ireland, 7x10", oil on panel by Jan Norsetter

And a note about wet panel carrying:

Spent 6 weeks traveling and painting in Scotland and Ireland. Both are beautiful countries but rather wet. I made two boxes, each hold 12 wet panels that are 7” x 10”. Thought that would be enough and that some of the paintings would dry along the way. I ended up with over 40 wet or slightly tacky panels. How to get them home? The really wet paintings went into the carriers. For the rest I bought a package of large, 1/4” wide rubber bands and put them on the short edges of each panel, stacked the panels, and bound them together with stretch wrap. Tape would have worked too - just to keep them from shifting too much. Success.

Tuesday, October 6, 2015 / traveling

We drove to Dublin Airport to return our rental car. It took 3.75 hrs. We made no wrong turns! A major accomplishment. We checked into our airport hotel and took the bus to Dublin's city center to walk around and have dinner. We found Sweetwater Brew Pub, the same pub we visited in 2012. It had a different name then. 

Random shots of Dublin as we rode the bus back to our hotel. 

Monday, October 5, 2015 - rained all day

Good thing we just planned on packing and resting up today because it has been raining and foggy all day. 

Here's the painting from yesterday evening:

Today's view:

Here's what it looks like on a clearer day:

And, of course, we shared another banoffee dessert from Box of Frogs. May have to figure out how to make that:-)

Sunday, October 4, 2015 - Bantry Bay and L8724

It was overcast and super blustery today so I painted in the car this morning.  We parked facing the big tug boat at anchor in Bantry Bay. After several other attempts at painting boats as the wind swung them around their buoys I decided to try a bigger boat that wasn't going to move. We spoke to the captain of the tugboat yesterday. It tows oil freighters into harbor at Widdy Island. They only go out 25 or 30 times a year. We had seen the boat at anchor the whole time we were here until yesterday morning. Of course, I had to ask him where he'd gone. We saw the boat coming back to Bantry. When it settled into the dock I walked over and started asking questions. It seems like a really big boat to me. It's not cruise ship size but I bet it could tow one. 

Box of Frogs was closed today so we tried another bakery. I had a coffee cake. It wasn't coffeecake it was coffee flavored cake with coffee flavored buttercream frosting. It was pretty darn good. Forgot to take a picture of it. 

I painted on L8724 this evening and will post a photo of it later. 

It was super windy again. Plein Ca(i)r. I did have the window down:-)

Saturday, October 3, 2015 - Bantry Bay, Box of Frogs, L8724

Painted on L8724 this evening. Here's a low-res photo of it:

Friday, October 2, 2015 - Bantry Market Day and evening on L4724

Big market day. All the vendors come for the first Friday of the month. 

Our new addiction, banoffee dessert. Banana and toffee (a lot like caramel, not crunchy toffee). 

Painting on L4724. A little bit of a road with the Durrus River running perpendicular to it. 

Thursday, October 1, 2015 - Carriganass Castle and Bantry Bay

We went back to Carriganass Castle yesterday. Another beautiful and sunny day. 

The evening painting was a wiper. But the activity in the bay was worth the time.

Below is a homemade catamaran. They ran out of wind so the wife is in the water kicking like mad to propel the boat to the dock. The husband was paddling with one arm but gave up quickly when his wife jumped in to paddle. They both had wetsuits on.