First Painting for 2015

by Jane McElvany Coonce

I finished my first painting for 2015.  I have a private student that wanted to do crabs.  So I used photographs from a still life I had set up in the summer time when crabs were plentiful.  Might be hard find crabs this time of year.  Previously, I had done a crab painting with a suduko game on the newspaper.   I made this one a crossword puzzle.  My student and I did a paint-a-long, and she would do what I did on my canvas.  She added a few more crabs and a beer bottle, so the paintings aren't exactly alike.

The basket in the painting is the same old basket that my dad used to use to catch crabs in the Chesapeake Bay when I was a child.  We would camp at Seashore State Park, and every morning, he would go out on the beach with his chicken necks and string and a weight to hold the bate down on the ocean floor.  I was my dad's shadow, and he taught me how to slowly pull the trap line in and get the chicken neck off the ocean floor so that we could take a net and scoop them up.  We caught enough to fill the basket each day.  It was fun and I enjoyed "the hunt."  Later, we would carry them over to my grandmother's house who lived in Norfolk, and she would steam them up.  Of course, back then, I didn't eat crabs (what an idiot!)  Now I have to pay for them and they cost a pretty penny.
 However, it needs a title.  If you have any suggestions, please feel free to make them.  I am not very gifted in the titling paintings.