How to Survive a Heat Wave 6 '10

We're in the midst of  a record breaking heat wave... Seven continuous days with temperatures above 90  degrees was the past record for June days in this area.  We've already more than doubled that, and there is no end in sight.  Several days last week broke the old record for highest temperatures on record.   With what is called "the heat index factor" (which means humidity, heavy air pressure, and lack of clouds), mid-day feels about 10 degrees hotter than what the thermometer is reading.  Nights aren't much better.  About the lowest it has dropped to is 80 at night.  Thank goodness for AC.  Well almost.... ours went out  for several days last week.

"So how does one survive one of the worst heat waves on record without AC?",  you ask.

 My answer:   Seal of as much of the outside heat as possible, eat fresh (no cooking) , drink lots of fluids,  stay in the coolest rooms, do minimal movement, and have lots of fans blowing into the room you are using.  The  other trick is to do something that takes your mind off of the temperatures.   In my case,  I painted beach scenes.... lots of them. You can see a one of them below.  The rest will show up on my website as soon as I can get them loaded..

One of the projects on my list of to-dos this year  was to paint a series of small format paintings that I could take to local sidewalk shows.  I  also had been wanting to experiment with a minimalist and almost abstract approach . I decided to work upon a series of big skies with clouds reflecting onto the wet beach.   I guess all of that water and cool colors seemed the right thing to think about when it was really hot.  I got eight  8"x 8" canvases painted while the AC was out (about two a day).

Only one of the five days we were without an AC, did I find it too hot too work in the studio. I had been painting near a window so I wouldn't warm up the studio with artificial lighting.  When the temperature reached 98 outside the heat radiating in through the blinds on the window was overwhelming me.  I retreated into my husbands office  and sketched out a 16" x 20" beach scene to scale to paint on another day.