Mary's post finally got me up to paint my skimmer lid. Here's my experience, not good. The lid is big, a roughly textured simulated rock. I figured I didn't need any preparation but decided to use a primer anyway. I selected a Rust-oleum stone textured paint only because I found it easily. It was tricky to spray with all the ridges and lips and took a couple of coats to be even. But it looked grand. Then my mistake--instead of listening to the advice here and use a marine sealant, I used a clear matte sealant companion product to my paint(for outdoors it said). Everything looked really great, and then it rained and rained some more. Patches of the stone paint are still there, but mostly the lid looks like the primer. Now the remaining stone texture paint is gooey but can't be scraped off the rough surface. I welcome any suggestions about how to deal with this mess. I believe the "sealer" failed and when I get to the final step again I will find marine sealer. There is a silver lining - I had a piece of liner above the water and next to the skimmer that for various reasons I could never hide. I painted it, sealed it, and it looked like part of the skimmer. The rain did not affect it. I just wanted to share my experience while Mary is painting away and caution to use the marine sealer. Hope this helps someone. Mike

I checked him out on Askart.com. He wasn't a Hudson River school painter, although your painting could be of the Hudson River Valley. As Linda said, he was associated with Old Lyme, and he worked primarily in the early 20th century. For $13.50, you can get 24-hour access to Askart, which is a database of artist info and auction records. It shows images and auction sale price for many Hal Robinson paintings, so you could see if yours resembles those. It also shows a sample of his signature. Your local public library may also have a reference book that shows artist signatures, and they may have access to auction records.

Duron has better quality. Is that true? Absolutly, Duron is good quality paint, not up there with Aura but not nearly as expensive either. Their Plastic Coat is a good over all paint and their Signiture is top quality if you can afford it.

Ha, I have been accused many times as seeing things only in black or white, no middle ground! I know what you mean. When I was taking art classes, I would do my best to make the picture very realistic, but tried to get away from that as I really like abstract art. There were a couple of classes I took where we used black chalk (messy, but I loved the way you can use it). This one male instructor did a set up of rocks and about 2-3" plastic pigs on a white board. It was amazing to capture that setup with the light coming from one direction and the shadows casted by the rocks and pigs -- very abstract! Think my funniest experience was when we had a live male model. It was so funny how each student drew that model using black chalk, e.g., there was this guy who drew the model from the front and I told him his looked like a fetus! It really did, and we were using something like 24x36" paper, and this guy only drew towards one corner about a 4" very dark, full frontal picture! Another student drew the head and chest and spent all her time making individual chest hairs! This female instructor was very blunt and called those that didn't use the entire piece of paper or were too shy and only drew the top half of the male. We also had a couple of female live models. I don't have any paintings to show because eventually I got rid of them all or tried painting over the canvas and screwed them up. I've also done quick background (stage) pictures for our vacation bible school, which range anywhere from 6'x30' and 15'x10' -- if I find pictures, I'll scan and post. Have done pictures on bedroom walls when my grandkids were small, and also would do something according to a theme my DD would do for my grandkids birthday parties, e.g., this one Batman for my grandson's b.d. with a cut out face. Each kid got their picture taken and their name printed on the photo as a souvenir to take home. It's simple, but the kids were impressed and that's what counts!