My very first blog was of a painting done at Titchwell bird reserve in March last year. Now, as we head helter-skelter through Autumn, my favourite landscape colours will soon be returning, and the reeds, which are green in Summer, will have taken on their ochre mantle. This painting is one of my favourite Titchwell subjects and features the little hide on the edge of the freshwater lagoon. I was much taken both by the sear reeds and the silvery light on the water. There are three lagoons at Titchwell, the freshwater, brackish and saltwater. In Summer the brackish lagoon is kept flooded to protect nesting birds, and in Autumn and Winter it is drained to provided muddy feeding grounds for waders. I visited with friends, plus camera and sketchbook, on a Sunday afternoon a week or two back. The place was crowded with birdwatchers, all dressed in camouflage, and each armed with a succession of ever bigger telescopes - some of which I'll swear would be powerful enough to pick out grains of dust on the moon. We walked the half mile track to the beach, the rustling of the reeds gradually giving way to the roar of the waves. Tramping up and over the dunes, we were met by the sight of a deep metallic sea with racing breakers. This little watercolour was done on a 6 x 4 inch mount middle. I have lots of these bits of card, left over from cutting picture mounts, and they make an ideal postcard size surface for field sketches. We strolled back, taking photos of heron, redshank, egrets, while all about us was the haunting 'peeewhitt' cry of the lapwing. When we finally got back to the visitor centre, contemplating a well-earned drinking chocolate, one of my companions discovered that she had lost her glasses. She knew at once that she had taken them off 'to see better', back at the beach. So off we went, back along the half mile track to the beach, to look for them. Enroute we must have passed the person who had picked them up and who was heading back inland to hand them into the visitor centre... By the time we had trudged the return trip back to the visitor centre to ask if anyone had handed them in, it was about three minutes before closing time. Fortunately, the glasses were recovered (we had a choice of several, plus a hearing aid), but it was too late for the coveted chocolate. 'All's well that ends well', as the saying goes, but I wonder what the outcome would have been, had it been a bird, not a visitor, who had found them... Someone has already asked me what kind of birds they were. Heaven knows. The only thing I can say for certain is that they were obviously extremely short sighted. This little cartoon, like the field sketch of Titchwell beach, was done in pencil and watercolour on a 6 x 4 inch offcut of mount card, which, though not intended for painting, takes watercolour like a dream. The main subject of the Freshwater Lagoon was painted in watercolour on quarter-royal Wookey Hole paper.
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Judith Key
Judith Key is a Norfolk based artist, working in watercolour and pastel. She has exhibited with the Society of Graphic Fine Artists and New English Art Club at the Mall Galleries, London. Her paintings are in collections worldwide. Categories
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May 2018
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