Watermarks

Just got in from "road testing" my new prochade box.  I did the coast path from Sennen to Mill Bay and back, about 5 miles in total with lots of painting stops to thoroughly test the kit.
This is the first sketch, it was a very cold day but absolutely beautiful, clear sky and blue sea.  The cliffs round Lands End are high and very rocky with dramatic views of the sea below.  I could spend days painting there.
The prochade box was ordered on Wednesday and arrived on Thursday and I am most impressed with it.  It looks great and holds just the right amount of kit.  I have my old rucksack with another little kit for watercolours, gloves and waterproof trousers, flask etc.  All in all a great way to spend a Saturday in January, well it beats shopping!

My views of the Atlantic Ocean continue to hold a fascination for me.  I love the different shades of blues and turquoises that appear depending on the light quality.



These views are at the water's edge in Flatrock and Pouch Cove and I'm working out my pastel kinks with them.  The subtleties of values is what makes water visually appealing and believable to me.  Trying to capture that on paper isn't always successful.  These are more of works in progress than finished pieces, as I feel my way through waves, foam and rocks in this medium.

Sometimes you have an image which takes quite some time to come to fruition. This is the tale of one such image.

Back in 1987 I went to Singapore for the overseas field trip for my MBA so we could find out how business works in a completely different environment to the UK.

I wasn't even drawing at the time. My art had been left behind at school a long time ago and doing a 'full-on' MBA part-time at the London Business School at same time as holding down a management job meant virtually all my 'spare' time was accounted for. I remember I actually qualified for an NUS card as a full time student because of the number of contact hours we managed each month in School!

However on one evening we went down to the harbour and I saw the fishing boats at dusk. Something about them made me take a photograph. When I got the photographs back, it looked like a painting. I was amazed. I'd not really taken 'arty' photos before and I was very struck by the strength of the image - particularly of the boats in the foreground. However it got filed away along with the rest of my MBA studies and I got on with what was now a senior management job!


Some time later, I decided to try my art again as a completely different activity which would balance out the type of job I was doing at the time - artistic instead of numerical, solitary and peaceful instead of a regular round of meetings. It worked and that's when I started to get back into my art - starting with watercolour.

I subsequently realised that I really enjoyed drawing and in the early 90s started using coloured pencils again. Then joined an art forum in the middle of the last decade.

Eighteen years later I finally got round to drawing the boats. I'd had them in my head for a long time and went searching for them while I was leading a project about drawing water.

Now you've heard the back story, here's the whole sequence of images of how this drawing came about - plus an explanation of what I said back in 2005 when I did it.

Probably the most important thing I did was crop the photo so I started with something manageable from my perspective - the large photo is nice but I'd be doing boats forever as opposed to the water.

Next I printed off a colour print of the cropped photo onto A4 matte photo paper and a greyscale onto plain paper. I then gridded the greyscale and the black Canson into thirds. This is really just a guide for me - I eyeballed the drawing from there using a celadon green (background colour of the water) - not being too precious about super accuracy but enough that the boats don't look too silly and I'm keeping the proportions on the page which I designed into the crop.

This is a slightly smaller version of the image as I got my initial scans wrong and couldn't be bothered to do them again - so there's a bit more at both the top and bottom!

So far as the boats are concerned I'm only focusing on the big shapes at this stage - detail is not allowed until a lot further on when the decision gets made as to which bits get the detail. So there's a nod in the direction of tyres around the boat - but they're not carefully drawn nor will they be for the time being.

Then I started to get a layer down all over the area of water. I started by finding the right colour for the reflections of the boats and then worked on the lighter areas. Bear in mind I'm really scouring the photo for slight changes in colour and looking hard for what the colours are. There's a ton of hues between very dark green (which hasn't made an appearance yet) moving through beep blue greens and mid greens and sky blue and yellow greens through to an awful lot of tints of grey green and just a smidgen of white. (Do you want to know the colours?) I worked colours from both into the boats as I went to help the unity of the painting.

I'm working quite hard at this stage in getting the shape of both the reflections and the negative shapes inbetween them right - as in my experience this is what gives the painting the feeling that the water is 'real'. I'm also working over the edges of the reflections a bit so they don't get too hard (but without losing sight of the underlying shape) - they should be a tad blurry at this stage. I decide where to go for hard edges later.

I'm using the pencils on their side and cover vast amounts of paper really fast this way - plus it stops me being too pernickety about it and helps to merge colours in a pleasing way. I'm not too fussed about which direction I'm doing this in but broadly speaking it's a lateral movement. They're basically quite light layers - I'm not pressing hard at all.

I picked out a few colours to start the boats off - one or two brights hatched onto boat roofs and tarpaulins in the background (as generally this is going to be quite muted and I wanted to see what the brights looked like) plus I wanted to try and find the right colour for the weather beaten wood

Subsequently I included the drawing in a portfolio of work for admission to an art society and worked on it some more to get to the drawing at the top. I do remember adding in a tiny bit more red on the boats. Unfortunately I have to tell you that coloured pencils have an unhappy habit of sinking into black Canson paper over time so although this looked good at the time it had to be 'rescued' to produce the image at the top of the post for the portfolio.

I daren't look at it one more time.......the boats may have sunk yet again!

No, not another Christmas story.  This star is a sea star that I found on Middle Cove beach today.

We've had a couple of days of wild weather which whipped up the seas and sent waves crashing up the cliffs to the tree line.  It was too wet and windy to try to get photos yesterday so early this morning I bundled up and went down to the beach in Flatrock, Torbay and Middle Cove to watch the water and take some photos.


This little sea star was ripped from its ocean bed and placed on the beach, overlooked by seagulls and crows luckily.  I immediately thought - gyotaku printing! and the little fellow came home with me.


I've played around with prints on several papers, including watercolour, card, print paper and tissue.  I will continue to experiment over Christmas to see what I can come up with.  I rather like the effect on tissue paper and recall seeing some experimentation with a sort of collage technique using tissue and printing over it.  I just need to remember where I saw it!



I put a slideshow on my blog of some of the photos that were taken today and will try for a video once I can get it uploaded.

Have a wonderful holiday everyone and the best of new years.

The north Atlantic in winter is a formidable place that has taken its toll on many ships and many lives. In winter, the ocean takes on a wilder, freer form in terms of strength, form and colour.

A visit to a local beach gave me inspiration for a sketch which then turned into a painting.  The sketch was started on a piece of gessoed terraskin paper that I hadn't meant to use, but was at hand at the moment.  I hadn't sanded the surface so the resulting lines almost make it look like it was raining.  However, as a sketch it worked to keep the scene fresh in my head.



The watercolour is a crop of this same wave.  The light was fading that day, nearing twilight and increasing the depth of colour in the water, turning it inky in the shadows.  The foam sprayed upward with the force of the wave hitting the shore and being carried by the wind.  It made me think of those lost at sea and how cold and impossible it would have seemed to be caught in that, making me glad I was standing on the shore.

There is a tangible reminder of the reality of such a situation on the province's north coast at Martin's Cove, where the skeleton of the SS Ethie still remains washed up on the beach and the legend of Hero, the phantom dog.

In 1919, the Reid Company steamer, Ethie, was transporting cargo and passengers up and down the West Coast of Newfoundland between Bonne Bay and Battle Harbour, Labrador. She left Cow Head fully laden at 8:00 p.m. on December 10, heading for Bonne Bay. Shortly afterwards, she ran into one of the worst blizzards ever recorded in that area. The crew slaved all night to keep the engines stoked, heading northwest away from rocky coastline, but at daybreak they had made no progress at all and fuel was low. The decks were swept clean of cargo, the life boats damaged or lost, and a thick rind of ice covered everything from deck to mast top, including livestock lashed to the deck. All seemed doomed. But Walter Young, the purser, knew of one spot where they might manage to beach. Captain Edward English made the courageous decision to steer for the sandy cove tucked behind Martin’s Point. Around noon, he thrust the ship on to the sharp-ridged reef, known as The Whaleback, at its entrance. A surging wave carried the ship up and over the reef and jammed it on the rocks; but a hundred yards of raging sea still boiled between ship and shore.

Last week I had two posts about Mont-Saint-Michel which can be found just off the coast of Normandy:

• Le Mont St Michel
• From sketchbook to studio

Plus I've posted my photos of the coastline around Mont-Saint-Michel on Flickr (see a slideshow).

I know I preferred Mont-Saint-Michel at a distance but I'm also in love with the watermarks in the estuary which could be seen from the place itself - as you'll be able to tell from the slideshow on Flickr.


However I haven't yet worked out how to have a go at them - all suggestions are most welcome.

You can also expect to see my interpretations of them popping up on "Watermarks" at some point in the future.

I find something hynotic about the rush of ocean waves over rocks and there is no shortage of either in my neck of the woods.

This watercolour is of the surf at Pouch Cove. There is no beach there, just jagged rocks that reach out under the sea and appear with the ebb and flow of tides and waves. There is nothing smooth in this cove. History and 'stories' say that it was one of the original settlements in Newfoundland. All the summer fishers from England were to return with their bounty at the end of the summer. It was against the law to stay here. Some rebellious souls decided to chance their luck and chose Pouch Cove because of its inaccessible harbour, making it seem an unlikely place to look should the authorities come searching for the rebels.

I have found that I have learned a lot from my time spent simply watching the movement of waves against the shore and over rocks. When I initially started recording water, it seemed like a daunting task to know where to begin. Watching the repetitive motion and knowing how water reacts and moves over different surfaces; how it reflects the light, the colours of the sea that changes around rocks, the foam that changes colour depending on the weather - there are so many things to see in the water that you don't really consider until you begin to paint.

I still have much to learn about water and how to draw and paint it well. Each image that I create brings me one step closer to satisfaction.

I've added more layers to the water, but its still not doing quite what I want yet. I have a broader base of colours now in the water and rocks and have blocked in the water behind the wave. However, I want the water behind to read flatter and calmer and its not that right now.


The close ups here show more of the detail of the development of the rocks and the water moving over them, leaving pools and rivulets in its wake.

The crest of the wave and the foam on top of it is basic and will be refined more, modeling the form of the wave as I progress.

Last weekend I drove to Pouch Cove and Bauline and watched the waves and whales off the coast, took some photos and came away inspired. Inspiration had to wait til this weekend to take form however, so is the fate of artists who have to work a day job too.

Last night I started a large (20 x 30) oil painting of one of waves breaking over the rocks in Pouch Cove. The movement is very hypnotic and the colours in the water are wonderful in terms of light and shape.

So far I have blocked in colour and am now starting to develop some shading to the water, rocks and the wave itself. I want a more impressionistic image than pure realism. I want to show the strength of the ocean and the gentle colours without it becoming a chocolate box lid, as so many seascapes are and what it looks like at this stage of the painting.

There is no sky in this piece, it will be all water which brings its own set of challenges. Waterscapes are so complex with lighting changing constantly on the surface and in the movement of a wave as it crests. Watching that movement and light over and over helps me know the anatomy of a wave and understand how the shape is formed and how the light shines through the thinner sections of the wall of water.

I'm lucky to have the ocean on my doorstep as a constant model to refer to.

Continuing with the rocks theme - this is my drawing of a view which apparently is very popular with the people who draw and paint when they visit Rockport Massachusetts. So much so that I decided to call this drawing Motif #2 - given that Motif #1 was already taken! ;)


I've managed to find exactly where I sat on Google's Street view and you can see what I saw below. Except they took the film on a cloudy day while I had a lovely blue sky and balmy weather in the mid September 2006.


View Larger Map

That path you can see below is where I sat - as you can see on the right as recounted in my this sketchbook blog post about my trip to Rockport - Sunday 17th September: Rocky Neck and Rockport, Massachusetts.

I found the trick with the rocks was to look for colour and striations in order to provide interest and form. That and work fast when it's late afternoon because the shadows change fast!

I hate to follow hot on the heels of Vivien's post on rocks, but they were squarely in my world all weekend.

Flatrock is named for - well - its flat rocks. they stretch like building blocks out into the sea with a beach of sorts of huge slabs of glacier-smoothed rock. Early on Sunday morning I got up before sunrise to catch the light on the ocean and take some photos and do a little sketching.

I wanted to get a sense of the layers of rocks and how they are formed. This will be a build up to a major drawing in detail of a section of these rock formations. I think that pencil will allow me to create the detail that I want in this piece and its availability for closer inspection is ever present.

On Sunday, I hiked the Manuels River trail downstream and found out that the Avalon Peninsula of Newfoundland was once a section of Africa - albeit 200 million years ago. This river trail is beautiful and the shallow pools are a magnet for young families and children to paddle in. Further down the trail the shallow river is littered with boulders as if a giant hand scattered them there - a paradise for geologists.

Middle Cove beach oils 8 x 16

If you mention Middle Cove to anyone on the Avalon Peninsula, they will know exactly where it is. The pebble beach slopes to the sea and is fed by a river which crosses the beach.

It is synonmous with capelin fishing and during the short season, the roads and beach are impassable with people and cars all trying their hand at getting some fish. The gulls and the humpback whales are usually the heralds of capelin season. This link to some photos on Flickr by Ideaphore show the whales having a feast. Its a true wonder to see this in person as they're so close to shore.

Here's a short video that gives you a feel for the moment and place.

On this day the beach was quiet with few people around, just how I like it! The water was still with just a slight wave lapping on the shore.What interested me was the colour of the water that morning. It was an amazing shade of turquoise, purple and golds of the rocks reflected in the water. I still may tinker with this piece a little to refine the beach and water, but will leave it a few days to percolate.

A closer view of the piece.

And now a little history, as I always think its good to know more about the soil you stand on and its roots.

The area encompassing Logy Bay-Middle Cove-Outer Cove was within the boundaries of lands granted to the London and Bristol Company in 1610. In 1627, the company experienced financial difficulties and evidently made lands available to private groups. The name Logy Bay itself first appeared on a Southwoods map in 1675. Despite this, permanent settlement did not begin until the early 1800’s. The earliest record of settlement in Logy Bay was in 1818 when Luke Ryan, a fisherman, sought permission to build a fishing room. The earliest records of settlement in Outer Cove and Middle Cove appear around 1827, but occupation here most likely predated this year.

The early settlers of Logy Bay-Middle Cove-Outer Cove were Irish immigrants predominately from the Counties of Kilkenny, Waterford, Wexford and Cork. In particular, the town of Inistioge in Kilkenny was the origin of most of the pioneers of Logy Bay. These early settlers were attracted to the area by the easy access to the excellent fishing grounds that lay just offshore and by the good farmland that dotted the region.

Between 1827 and 1830 there were 9 petitions for land in Logy Bay, 3 in Middle Cove and 30 in Outer Cove. By the 1850’s, the Irish had established themselves here and proceeded to shape the landscape. Irish heritage is still strong here today and can be seen through such things as religion, folkways, music, and dialect.

Source: The Logy Bay - Middle Cove - Outer Cove Heritage Committee

A tonic for my recent disappointment regarding not getting selected for an exhibition (which, in all honesty was probably much too high brow for me) I set sail, out into Falmouth Bay on a glorious sunny evening. Armed with a bottle of smooth red wine, the faithful art hound and my dear tame mariner I am going to let rip with the old watercolours and catch the evening light, as difficult to corner as a shole of fish but here goes.

Today is the inaugural World Oceans Day - with the theme “Our oceans, our responsibility”.

It's also the day that a new film asks us to imagine a world without fish.

Oceans cover 70% of the world and are vital to

• the regulation of the global climate
  
• the balance of the ecosystem
  
• the sustenance of people 's livelihoods around the world.
  

The oceans are essential to food security and the health and survival of all life, power our climate and are a critical part of the biosphere. The official designation of World Oceans Day is an opportunity to raise global awareness of the current challenges faced by the international community in connection with the oceans.......The theme of World Oceans Day, “Our oceans, our responsibility”, emphasizes our individual and collective duty to protect the marine environment and carefully manage its resources. Safe, healthy and productive seas and oceans are integral to human well-being, economic security and sustainable development.
Secretary General, UN

Damage to the oceans

Eating fish is good for us, but catching it in the way we do devastates the sea. Nearly nine tenths of European stocks are overfished, and around a third are beyond safe biological limits: that is, the adult population is too depleted to provide replacement stock. Almost all cod caught in the North Sea have not had a chance to breed.
The Guardian - World oceans day: all the fish in the sea

Here are some of the human activities and other changes which we need to be concerned about:

• Overexploitation - through illegal, unreported, unregulated fishing and other destructive fishing practices - is severely damaging important fisheries and vulnerable marine ecosystems, such as corals.
  
• Fisheries are also being damaged by invasive alien species and marine pollution, especially from land-based sources.
  
• Climate change has produced an increase in sea temperatures, sea-levels are rising and there has been a rise in ocean acidification - all pose a further threat to marine life, coastal and island communities and national economies.
• Criminal activities threaten lives and the peace and security of the oceans. Piracy and armed robbery against ships threaten the lives of seafarers and the safety of international shipping, which transports 90 per cent of the world’s goods.
  
• Lives are also threatened through the smuggling of illegal drugs and the trafficking of people by sea and across oceans
  

Raising awareness

The Ocean Project has been one of the organisations which has been promoting the notion of World Ocean Day and for the last six years it has been helping aquariums, zoos, museums, conservation organizations and agencies, universities, schools, and businesses to celebrate World Ocean Day.

It's got a very well developed website which is well worth exploring. Here are some of the aspects which are worth taking a look at:

• Registered Events in 2009 for World Ocean Day
• Wear Blue and Tell Two - an initiative to raise awareness about what's happening to the world's oceans
• Ideas for celebrating World Ocean Day
  

You can also read more about it The Guardian's Editorial today World oceans day: all the fish in the sea

I learned about World Oceans Day through Stephen's Fry's 'tweet' about the film The End of the Line which asks us to imagine a world without fish

Do you eat fish and like fish? I do and that's why I've told you about World Oceans Day. If you're concerned too why not tell somebody about what's happening today?

You know how you struggle to do something for ages then suddenly the light goes on in your head and it becomes clear as to what you were doing wrong? This is the painting that did that for me.

I have been re-learning oils for probably the last six months. My strokes have been timid and I have been stingy with paint. This painting, of a cliff edge in Pouch Cove was started purely as a relaxation piece and a study in rocks, but seemed to flow. The water, the colours, the thickness of paint seemed to come together and point me in the right direction.

Maybe it was the fact that I didn't have a goal with this piece or a deadline that relaxed me enough toe xperiment and be bolder. I know I will never change my style, which does tend to be more subdued rather than bold, but I like to think that I can enhance it and push it to become more refined and natural.

Now can I do it large scale? Small is safe and easy, more or less. I want to have the same impact of water and land but on a large scale. I guess there's only one way to find out, isn't there?

If you descend down a very steep winding road in Torbay, you enter Tapper's Cove. The road is guarded by a padlocked gate warning of vessel traffic only, so venture down with care. I wouldn't want to have to reverse up that steep road when faced with a truck hauling a boat. It has a small wharf and slipway and steps leading up the side of the cliff and on to a walking trail. At water level you look out over Torbay on the opposite side of the cove.

Tappers cove (treasure cove)- Tappers cove was once known as Treasure cove because of it’s known association with pirate John Nutt. It is also haunted by a black dog and a little boy relating, again, to the pirates that buried treasure there.

I didn't see a dog or boy ghost or find any treasure, only sparkling water and a little spruce tree perched on top of a steep rock face, defying the salt spray and sparse soil to grow. Unfortunately, photographed under artificial light, the image caught the glare of wet paint and at only 5 x 7, the impact of the painting doesn't work close up, in my opinion, so another small version to see if that helps.

Sennen Cove in changing light last week. The last 3 are from last September when we had a wild stormy day with heavy rain. The lifeboat launch ramp, that shows in one of the last, is currently demolished and being rebuilt, so it doesn't show in recent photos. It wasn't an easy job for the builders, having to consider the tides :>)

This is why I love Cornwall so much - it's beautiful even in lousy weather :>) Though as you can see from the gorgeous blue skies and seas at the beginning, we were very lucky with the weather generally as most of the country had heavy rain.

The camera never picks up all the colours the eye can see and it can't cope with the same range of tonal values at once - so that's why it's so good to work plein air. You also have the scents and sound that somehow infiltrate your work. I never enjoy working from a photograph as much as working from the 'real thing'.

Take a look at these images of a storm there last year - they are WELL worth looking at.

Storm pictures

now with global warming making the seas rise and giving us more storms would I really want to live there? probably yes :>)