Lobster Still Life

So I've been trying to get a lobster still life together, its been an interesting week to say the least. I am not fond of lobsters as a meal, or any seafood for that matter (tuna is possible). They're pretty much bugs I have learned, and I'm not good with large bugs, so setting one up for a still life wasn't without a little squeamish squeaks from me. I decided to take a lot of photos of one in different positions so to get a good reference to work from. I would then use either a toy lobster or something in the shape of one as a stand in for the still life I was painting from. A little confusing, and I would have loved to have used one for hours on end, but these creatures like their cold and wet environment, which a table next to an open window wouldn't satisfy and he would slowly die. So we bought one, and I tried to find the best way to keep it still for some shots. This is what I came up with:


I put him in a dish with sides because he was pretty active, I can imagine why! (I say 'he' because I just do, I don't know what gender it was.) I put a cool pack under him just so he could stay cool... so the still life set up is still ongoing, I keep changing it around, I'm currently using a dark red shirt molded and wrapped up to shape like a lobster.
I've been looking at other lobster still lifes for inspiration, such as this one by Jan Davidszoon de Heem (Still Life with Lobster and Nautilus, 1634):



and this one by Anna Vallayer-Coster (Still Life 1767):



I'm still getting ideas and making sketches and such, I will post more pictures of painted/drawed on things when they are worth putting up!

This is how our lobster ended up:




N says it was delicious! :)

P.S.-The other blog has been found and taken care of thank goodness... its probably a good thing that I'm a painter and not working with computers ha!

New Blog plus a lobster

Ciao there, I've decided to start one of these things (although I had once already, and it seems to have disappeared, lost somewhere in the Google universe! If someone spots it let me know!). I've never been a journal sort of person, let alone an online journal person, but this seems like it might be a fun experiment. I'm not too sure about how this whole thing should be done, but I will do my best! I'm hoping to put a lot of stuff about art on here, mine and other people's. And maybe some extra stuff about books and music and film and such.
I am a self taught traditional realist painter, living in Maine, painting as often as possible and trying to finish a BA in Art History (which I also love). I say traditional realist because I've found that that is the best description of what I do. Well-known contemporary painter Jacob Collins talks about the phrase in this article from The New Criterion.
At the moment I am starting to work on a piece that features a lobster. There's a whole story behind it, I will post more when I have more concrete evidence to show!