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The Bar Cat
15” x 22” Watercolor by Bill Hudson
Original with Custom Frame …….. $1,650
The Bar Cat, sometimes called a Jenkins Creeker or Scrape Boat, is uniquely designed to catch the Atlantic Blue Crab in its brief moulted or soft state as it hides in the eel grass marshes of the Chesapeake Bay. Roughly 30 feet in length with a 10-foot beam, this distinguished, graceful working-man's boat has a remarkably low 18 inches of draft. This allows a strong waterman to manually lift and sort a full 3-4 wide, 6-foot long net that he has dragged along the bottom of shallow marsh grounds.
Scraping for soft crabs requires no bait. But it does require a long day’s work during summer months. A waterman will head out at 4 a.m., reach his shallow eel grass destination, drop two 40-pound scrape nets, drag them off the stern for 5 minutes at two or three knots, then pull them aboard with each full-net weighing a hundred pounds. Then he carefully sorts his catch from discarded eel grass, shells, buckrams (nearly hard crabs), and occasional oyster toadfish and diamondback terrapins…both of which can inflict significant wounds.
The culled catch includes: pink and red sign peelers, greens (fat crabs) or snots, and busters or fully soft crabs. Occasionally, large Jimmies (hard shell males) that have invaded the grass looking for a mate, are taken. All of the catch is carefully sorted into pails and baskets.
I thank photographer Dave Harp for granting me permission to use his images as reference from two YouTube documentaries, An Island Out of Time (2019) and Beautiful Swimmers Revisited (2016).
Painting Tip
For this painting and many other seascapes, I use the following technique to bring the water surface to life. First, apply a roughly 50% solution of gum arabic and water to the paper. Note: Gum arabic is the binder for most watercolor paints. So, it is not a foreign substance being introduced to a transparent watercolor painting.
The solution of gum arabic will decrease, but not eliminate, the bleeding/mixing of adjacent colors upon their application. This further enhances the amazing mixtures that only watercolor can produce. I sometimes allow the gum arabic solution to dry before further applying watercolors. Other times, I’ve painted while the paper is still wet. I encourage you to play with the percent solutions and degree of drying. I've also mixed gum arabic directly into the paint. All approaches yield dramatic water reflections.
Follow Up
Last month, rather than discuss art, I addressed the 60th anniversary of the assassination of our 35th president, John F. Kennedy. The date, November 22, 1963, was still vivid in many of your memories as evidenced by the huge response of comments. Sadly but understandably I was sorry to receive a record six “unsubscribes,” perhaps today’s consequence of mixing politics with anything else.
Like some of you, I began listening to Rob Reiner’s new 10-part podcast series titled “Who Killed JFK?” It is available on Spotify with a new episode each Wednesday. Seven episodes are now available. They have proven to be a valuable documentary reference.
**** Wishing all of you a joyful 2024 ****
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