I love painting in coastal areas - there's nothing like a bit of light on water to make the heart sing and the brushes dance. But however well equipped one is with outdoor clothing and painting gear, the most important thing of all is to check the tide tables before you set out. Some years ago I went on a painting trip to Mersea Island in Essex, and whilst there paid a visit to nearby Wivenhoe on the River Colne. The lane dropped down towards the water and stopped abruptly at the muddy bank. There, facing me across the river, was Wivenhoe's pretty waterfront. ~ Wivenhoe is a town with a strong maritime history. In AD 43, a battalion of Romans came here, complete with elephants, and established a fort at nearby Colchester. Their ships couldn't make it up river as far as the fort, so they established a port at Wivenhoe, beginning a maritime tradition that was to last through to the 20th century. ~ As you can see from the painting, on the day of my visit, Wivenhoe rested under a soft, greyish light. The tide was out, the boats were all akimbo. I stood for a while, taking in the atmosphere of the place, the profile of St Mary's Church, with its distinctive cupola, the muddle of quaint colour washed cottages and the masts and hulls that partly obscured them. ~ Then I set to work with sketchbook and pencil, recording, distilling, and laying in the groundwork for my chosen subject and future studio-based work. In this sketch on A4 copier paper, I was interested in tonal relationships and the light on the water. ~ When I was ready to paint I set up my easel on the river's muddy edge and began laying a loose sky wash of ultramarine and raw sienna, pulling it down over the pencilled-in waterfront, swilling a deeper tone of it into the foreground river, and laying swathes of violet greys and warm earths to capture the glistening mud. With the broad washes drying fast, I began to superimpose the muddle of buildings and boats. My only concern was whether the sky wash had yet dried enough to get the crisp edges of the rooftops. ~ A preliminary watercolour study from my sketchbook. My aim here was to record colour qualities, especially the pearly pink-grey of the mud. For this little sketch I used the same A4 copier paper as for my pencil work. It is amenable to a light watercolour wash, but being only around 60gsm it does buckle, so you have to use a light touch and not fiddle with it. ~ The morning went by, and I was lost in my work - so lost that if Claudius and his elephants had marched past behind me I would have been quite unaware of their presence. What I was also unaware of was the fact that the tide had turned and was creeping in. And in these parts it creeps in fast. I happened to glance down as I changed brushes and thought nothing of the fact that there was water lapping my hiking boots. A couple of minutes later, I noticed my feet were suddenly wet through and if I didn't move fast I'd soon be ankle deep - or worse... I packed up, collapsed the easel, and hurried back to the car, the water following hard behind. By the time I'd thrown everything aboard and jumped into the driving seat, the water was lapping the car tyres. I set off in reverse with the tide channelling eagerly up the lane in pursuit. ~ I had a lucky escape. Coming from the Norfolk coast, of course, I should have known better than to get caught out. If you're planning a painting trip to the coast, do check the tide tables beforehand, and once you're set up and working, remember time can fly while you're busy, and keep an eye open for advancing water... ~ My forays out and about with sketchbook and camera have been temporarily suspended by a freak accident which caused me to break a bone in my foot. One of my friends said it really would make a good blog and have everyone in stitches, but you will forgive me for not being quite ready to discern the funny side of it yet, and have shelved it for some point in the future. So this month I'm having another dig in the archives, and have found an apt piece involving loss of footing in pursuit of one's art... ~ Always on the look-out for photo-opportunities, I went to Overy Staithe with a couple of friends to show them a favourite painting spot on the Brancaster side of the Staithe. One of my companions was a keen photographer, and we planned to get some good location pictures for the website. The track that side of the staithe isn't suitable for my big easel and trolley, so I had brought my pochade box and rucksack. This was a subject I painted at the same site a couple of weeks previously, looking west. On that occasion the light had been somewhat grey, but today we had a vibrant blue sky, one of those days which, if it weren't for the crisp edge to the air, might pass for summer, and we had high hopes of getting some good photos. Unfortunately, our plans for a photoshoot were scotched because the friend with the camera had omitted to change lenses before setting out and only had his macro fitted. He decided there was no point in carrying it down the marsh track, and left it locked safely in the car. As things turned out it was a wise move... Having followed the track down onto the marsh, we found the path extremely muddy. My friends were reluctant to go any further, but I was unfazed. 'I've tackled muddier places than this,' I assured them, ' - follow me.' I led the way through the mud, but they hung back, still dubious. I cast around, trying to find an easier way for them, only to slip and land on my backside in the mire. This elicited the remark that if only the camera had been available, it would have made the perfect film, unfolding, as it had, in glorious slow-motion. Undeterred, and biting my lip against the escape of an apt retort, I struggled to my feet, found what seemed to be firmer ground just a couple of feet away, and directed my companions there. Gingerly, one of them slithered alongside me, only to find that the tussock I was standing on was an isolated piece of firm ground in the middle of a bog into which he was now sinking. In the next moment one shoe was sucked clean off his foot and he was down on all fours, trying to spread his weight. I tried to tell him that he was perfectly safe, it wasn't the kind of bog that actually sucks people under, and had he stayed upright he would only be ankle deep at the most. But it was a bit late for this, because he was now flat on his face doing the breastroke, and getting slathered. Meanwhile my other friend nearly lost her balance in a heart-stopping show of mud-skating, before she mercifully regained her footing. She wisely decided not to go any further and focussed on trying to retrieve the lost shoe which was well embedded in the mud - it eventually came up with a great sucking noise, full of black water and unwearable. With the shoe retrieved, we now had to extricate ourselves and get back to terra firma. Bad turned to worse, and every attempt we made to rescue each other ended in more of a communal mudbath. Overy mud smells distinctly of dead fish. And by the end of it so did we. We squelched back along the track to the car, an uncomfortable experience for the one who was obliged to tramp along the road wearing only one shoe and a soggy sock.
I tried to cheer my friends up by saying, 'Of course, one has to suffer for one's Art'. They were familiar with the saying, but couldn't quite understand why it had to extend to their suffering for my art. And if any mutual friends are reading this, I will only identify my companions as 'O_______' and 'R________' partly to protect their anonimity and partly because the '_______' bit describes the act of slipping into a quagmire better than any words, and I distinctly recall that 'Oh ______!' and 'Aaagh ______!' were the expletives used as the action unfolded. More results of my artistic suffering can be viewed on the Landscape and Marine pages Autumn is here, and with it has come a lot of weather. Forget the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness. The relentless rainstorms of recent weeks have wreaked havoc across the country, and it hasn't been a time for getting out with an easel and a big painting board. I learned that lesson long ago; there I was, up on an exposed seabank, while the wind buffetted the board and fought me for control of the brush. It ended with both paper and board being whipped into the air by an almighty gust and deposited in a nearby dyke. Whenever I've told that story I've been greeted by the mystified comment of, 'Why do it?' Well, had I been a mountaineer, the answer would probably be 'because it's there.' In the case of a Norfolk wind, it's everywhere at once. The fact is that the most dramatic subjects tend to appear in the worst of the weather. A blustery wind can bring fantastic skies, fast-moving clouds of brilliant white, pale gold and violet-grey, tumbling and racing across the blue. That is when I spend hours walking with sketchbook and camera and jotting down brief plein-air studies. Left: Cloud, Light and Storm-Tossed Birds. In this sky study, the paint was drying quickly, enabling me to superimpose translucent layers of cloud over the first wet-in-wet wash. I was walking along the sea bank at Overy Staithe when I saw a dramatic stormy subject that I just had to paint. The creek shone white under a glowering sky, and from foreground to horizon lay swathes of mingling greens and earth colours. It was a case of 'bung it down fast and pack up before the raincloud catches up with me'. I used a limited palette of French Ultramarine, Raw Sienna, Light Red, and Prussian Blue, working with a size 20 brush on an 1/8th Imperial sheet. For the benefit of non-painters, that's a very big brush on a very small piece of paper. 'Can't you just re-create it from a photo in the studio?' Well, sort of – but working out on site lends a sense of immediacy, of being there in the moment, that is not easy to reproduce in the comfort of 'The Great Indoors'. Right: Rain Blotches. Of course, there are some effects that are not all that desirable to create out of doors either – such as when a passing cloud decides to offload its surplus water directly onto a promising sky study. It's pot luck whether the rain spots create an interesting textural effect or a total write-off. Someone has suggested that it looks a bit like snow. All I can say is I would hate to be bombarded by snowflakes that big...
'Cloud, Light and Storm-tossed Birds', 'Threatening Sky at Overy Staithe' and 'Rain Blotches' were all painted in watercolour on Canson mi teintes paper. A number of people have asked me about the banner of the watercolour sky on this and other pages. Did I just cut a swathe with a big brush to make a nice splashy banner? Well, no. The watercolour sky is a detail from 'Storm Light on The Wash'. Some years ago a painting friend said, 'You're always talking about The Wash, you talk about it more than any other place.' This was true, although half the time I talked about it I was actually thinking aloud about the laundry, but my friend had evidently not picked up on this. 'I'd like to come and paint some time.' I said, 'Fine, how about tomorrow?' 'You're joking - it's January - I'll freeze.' I phoned him again in February, March, April, May, June. The answer in each case was too icy, too windy, too wet, too cold, too hot. Finally in July, the weather was clement enough for him to risk going out with his paints. We drove down an old farm track, parked the car, and followed the footpath about half a mile, across a field and alongside a shallow lagoon. Progress was slow, because my friend had brought enough gear to vie with King John's famous baggage. He had come equipped with both oils and watercolours, a sheaf of papers and a carrier of painting boards, plus an easel on a trolley that threatened to overturn on every rut. Every few minutes we had to stop so he could have a breather. 'They say on a clear day you can see Boston Stump,' I said, to spur him along. 'How much further?' 'Just a few hundred yards.' The response was a barely muffled groan. The path led to a muddy causeway, which cut a slippery way across the lagoon, and having heaved his gear through the morass, we stopped so he could have another gasp, before making the final clamber up and onto the sea bank. And there, at last, stretching away to an almost endless distance, was the vast, haunting wilderness of The Wash. We stood in silence, surveying this great sweep of space where land and sea merge. The tide was out. The mud shone gold, pink and violet between phases of cloud and sunlight. In the middle distance was a sparkling slip of water, and on the horizon was the faint smudge of 'Boston Stump'. The whole space was a symphony of light and colour. I turned on my heel, taking it all in, the paintings already stacking up in my mind. My friend stood beside me, staring out, his mouth open. His heavy gear lay in two heaps at his feet. As we watched, a great flock of gulls rose up and wheeled round, their wings shining pale gold in the morning light. They came down again to settle on the mudflats, transforming the scene into a huge, shimmering presence of birds. 'Wow,' I thought, 'Wow....' I was still mentally 'wowing' and conjuring enough subjects to mount an exhibition, when my companion turned to me with an expression of dismay. What he said has stayed with me to this day: 'Well I can't see anything to paint, can you?' 'Storm Light on The Wash' was painted in watercolour on 140lb Arches paper.
This blog has been up and running for seven years. Where that time went, I have no idea, but I thought the occasion should be marked. So this month I’ve gone back to the very first blog, 'On Titchwell Marsh', to give it an Anniversary showing. For some of you it may be the first time you’ve seen it. For others it will be a case of ‘seven years? You’re joking. It only seems like last month when I read this one.’ Others again will have totally forgotten it amid all the events and crises of the past few years. ‘On Titchwell Marsh’ was one of a number of pieces that came out of a day spent sketching and painting at the RSPB Titchwell nature reserve. It was painted on quarter-imperial Wookey Hole rough watercolour paper, using the size 10 round brush pictured below. Anyway, enough of the preamble. Here it is... ~ On Titchwell Marsh, 2016 I first painted at Titchwell Marsh in 1978, accompanied by the booming of a bittern hidden somewhere in the reeds. When I visited last month, it was the lonely piping of the oystercatcher that greeted me. It was one of those days when there were subjects everywhere, and I hardly knew where to start. Like a little bird trying to decide where to build its nest, I went from this spot to that and back again. I spent a lot of time just looking, taking it all in, mentally editing - mooching up and down, settling on 'angles'. Below me, the waders were doing their own mooching, probing the nutrient-rich mud with knitting pin beaks, and leaving a web of wandering trails behind them. At length, this is the subject I settled on, looking East across the brackish lagoon: People tend to write off mud as brown, but it really isn't. This mud reflected the silvery light, with a diaphanous shimmer of pinkish and violet greys. The swathes were incised by snaking ribbons of water. And that island of reeds in the middle distance - if there was a bittern secreted down there today, it was keeping 'mum'. The only movement down on the mud was the constant mooching of the waders. You'll notice I haven't painted them in. People do comment, 'You never paint the waders in, why?' Well, at this scale they'd be nothing but a peppering of full stops and commas. The light, the mud, the reed bed and the blue-green distance were enough for me. And that haunting call of the oystercatcher followed me home... ~ This and other paintings of Titchwell can be viewed on the Landscape and Marine page under 'Watercolours'. Before anyone queries the brush technique, I should just point out that the flight of birds in the upper left of the subject was not painted with a size 10, but with a rigger. Had I used a size 10 brush for those, they would have come out as clumping great forty-pounders. I know this for a fact, because the first time I attempted a flight of birds, using a size 10 brush, my tutor at the time looked over my shoulder and said, ‘Well, there’s a herd of clumping great forty-pounders, if ever I saw one…’
This month I’ve gone all tonal. As a friend who was given a preview said, ‘Well, what a good choice, with the Christmas decorations all down, the sun barely skimming the top of the garden fence, and everything stark and gloomy. And what do you serve up? A grey picture. Just what your readers need on a grey day in the middle of winter…' I did this subject years ago, and decided to keep it because of the associated memories. It’s a pastel of boats laid up at low tide at Wells-next-the-Sea. I was attracted both by the light on the water and the way the boats leaned at different angles. The reason I’m showing you a tonal copy is because of what happened when the original was photographed. I’m used to odd things happening when I photograph pastels. Strange colour shifts can occur, and sometimes colours can appear to float forward of others, disrupting the image. Just look at what happened when I tried photographing 'Low Tide at Wells'... I hardly need to point out the patch of strong orange-earth behind the left hand boat. You might wonder what it’s doing there, marring the whole scene. Well, that’s what I wondered, too. I made a number of attempts at photographing it in different lights. The result was always the same. A blot appeared, where none existed in the original. Converted to black and white, the problem disappears. I thought the fault lay with my amateur photography, so I took the painting to a professional. The work was photographed in studio lighting, using a top of the range SLR camera. I had high hopes, until…
‘Hmm,’ said the photographer. ‘These fluorescent colours don’t photograph well.’ ‘What fluorescent colours?’ 'That one. See how it jumps out? Fluorescent colour.’ ‘It isn’t fluorescent. It’s just an earth colour.’ ‘It’s fluorescent. You must have picked it up without realising.’ ‘I don’t have fluorescent colours.’ ‘It’s fluorescent,’ he assured me. I came home with a photographic print that showed exactly the same weird effect as the version produced by my own basic camera. I explained the photographic problem to the friend who had objected to this month’s choice of a ‘grey picture’. Being someone with an interest in science and technology, he understood at once. I knew this by the way he was nodding sagely. And when he’d finished nodding he imparted his equally sage verdict. ‘So next time you serve up a blog picture in black and white, we’ll know why. It’s one of your colour ones that went wrong.’ I bridled at this. And having finished bridling, I stood him in front of the original. ‘Do you see an orange blot?’ ‘Er … No.’ He looked from the original (no blot) to the photo (blot) and back to the original (no blot). He looked thoughtful. Then he nodded sagely again. And now all he could say was, ‘Well, that’s odd…’ Indeed, it was. You’ll have to take my word for it that the original work doesn’t exhibit an orange blot; because, of course, the moment I take a photograph, it does! 'Low Tide at Wells' was worked in pastel on half imperial tiziano paper. The blot was provided by some unidentified and annoying gremlin that haunts my pastel box. The holidays are almost upon us, and the coast is alive with visitors. I would normally favour it at quieter times, but on this occasion I was in the mood to sketch some bustling activity, so went along to Overy Staithe, where I found bustle in abundance. Boats were being bailed out, lugged down to the shore and prepared for the off, children were jumping in and out of the water, screaming with excitement, whilst dog owners were striding out with their pooches, to join the many others walking the coastal path. There were any number of subjects to choose from, but one thing was certain - it was no occasion for indulging in detail, because the tide was already swilling in and before long those boats would be heading out. I settled on a subject and distilled it mentally down to the bones. Even as I was sizing it up, I was aware that there was steadily more water and less marsh. It was time for action.
Up went the easel and out came the paints. I spent a few minutes contemplating the pristine white paper, always a daunting prospect, which I generally get around by telling myself, ‘It’s only a study… you can’t make omelettes without breaking eggs… Go for it!’ Then it was straight in with the brush. I was grateful that everyone was too busy doing their own thing to stop and engage me in conversation. Fortunately the paint was drying quickly and I was able to press on… As the saying goes, ‘Time and Tide wait for no man’ and they especially won’t wait for a woman with a paint brush. All too soon the snaking shape of the creek had disappeared under a flat expanse of water, and it was time for the boats to sail. Minutes later, ribbons of small dinghies were weaving down the creek, a variety of red, white and blue sails leaning this way then that, as they turned to catch the breeze. ‘It’s like a dance,’ I thought, watching them skim back and forth, ‘A choreographed dance.’ It was yet another subject, but one that was moving too quickly to get down in paint. I just had to stand and watch… I was shaken out of my reverie by a frantic shout - ‘No! Come Back! Heel! Oh Help!’ I looked across and saw a wringing-wet spaniel heading straight towards me. ‘Don’t let him jump up!’ I’ve had this order from dog owners before - I’ve always been nonplussed, because if they can’t prevent their dog from jumping up, I certainly can’t. The dog was almost at my feet - there was nothing between us but my easel and it soon negotiated that. Now it was jumping up, showering mud, and smelling to high heaven of goodness knows what, although I had a suspicion of what it might be. I had no sooner thought, ‘Oh no, not that - please don’t let it be that,’ than a cry of confirmation arrived hard on the tail of the dog. ‘Don’t let him jump up! He’s just rolled in a dead seal!’ Yes. That’s what it was. Dead seal. What was worse, the muddy spaniel now decided I was its new Best Friend. ‘No! Don’t let him jump up!’ cried the owner uselessly. I was engaged in a bizarre dance with this dog now - the more I tried to avoid it, the more determined it was to cement an alliance. Not until it had jumped and rubbed itself around my trousers and transferred the smell of dead seal liberally onto them, did it race back to its owner, ears flapping and happy. A tad too late, the owner fished out a lead, clipped the dog to the end of it, and hurried away tossing a belated, ‘Sorreeee!’ over their shoulder. And I, with an air of false camaraderie, sang out, ‘That’s all right!’ through, admittedly, gritted teeth. Not wishing to attract the attention of other dogs, who would make a beeline for the scent of dead seal about my person, I packed up, returned to the car, put a sheet of plastic over the driver’s seat, and drove straight home. There, my clothes were consigned to the wash, and I to the shower. Those trousers went through the wash three times before I could convince myself that they were wearable. Even then, whenever I took them out of the wardrobe I would convince myself that the aroma still lingered, and put them back on the hanger. There they remain, still spurned, another souvenir of life as a plein-air painter, together with numerous rain-warped sketchbooks and those duck-nibbled shoes. ‘Preparing to Sail’ was painted in watercolour on 1/4 imperial paper, and whenever I look at it, the first thing that comes to mind is not the bustle and the boats, but receiving that unwelcome souvenir from an over-exuberant dog... I was strolling along the waterfront at Woodbridge, and in the mood for drawing boats. I certainly had plenty to choose from - the whole place was a veritable bustle of boats in all shapes, sizes and colours. Normally I eschew an overly busy scene, but today I was up for a challenge. So where to start? It took me a few minutes to sort the information into three different planes. There were the foreground boats moored up in front of me, their colours reflecting off each other and in the water; behind them was a muddle of partly obscured hulls and cabins, and beyond that the buildings on the quayside. I was attracted to one boat with a partly collapsed ochre sail and two red floats on its deck. This and the two either side made a pleasing combination of shapes, with two ‘head on’ and the third at more of an angle. Then there was that little tender snuggled up on the right, begging to be included…
Working out of doors isn’t like painting a still life in the controlled light of the studio. Out here the scene in front of you is constantly changing. The light fluctuates by the moment, shadows soften and harden and colours change. The millpond stillness of the water is suddenly disrupted by a diving bird, and those perfect reflections break into rippling shards. The tide creeps out, so that the boat that bobbed upright when you started now leans at an angle; or the tide swills in, and the boat that had leaned at an angle is now upright. The moment they’re upright and bobbing, someone is bound to come along, climb aboard the very boat that forms the centrepiece of your composition and sail away in it. So I knew I had to get my information down before any of it had chance to escape. I started with the foreground boats, keyed in the shapes in charcoal, and blocked in the colours with broad pastel strokes. Every time I spotted someone walking along the moorings, my anxiety levels went up, until they had passed the boat I was working on. Then the anxiety levels went down again. Then up… then down… like an outline of the Alps, with each successive passer-by. Finally, behind me came a sudden - ‘Ooh - you’re doing a picture!’ Which caused the charcoal line I was drawing to veer wildly off-course. ‘What a lovely way to relax!’ ‘Hmm!’ I grunted. Fortunately the bad line was easily corrected, and I pressed on. Once I had the foreground boats pinned down, I worked backwards, fitting in the suggestion of all those cabins behind, and finally the distant buildings. I was happy to leave these until last, as buildings don’t generally sail away while you’re in the middle of drawing them! Finally, I took a few photos as back-up, so that I could develop it later in the studio. Sure enough, just as I was finishing, someone climbed aboard one of my foreground boats, and within a few minutes it was sailing away down river. I watched it go, and breathed a quiet ‘Phew!’ 'Moored at Woodbridge' was drawn in charcoal and pastel on quarter royal tiziano paper. During a week’s painting trip to Suffolk, I spent an afternoon by the River Deben at Woodbridge, scouting around for potential subjects. There was plenty to choose from, including the characterful older part of town, the quays with numerous boats moored up alongside, and of course, the famous Tide Mill. I strolled along the riverside, taking in the atmosphere. It was a gorgeous, picture-postcard day - blue sky, blue water, boats with dazzling white hulls, bobbing floats the colour of satsumas. The water reflected it all in dancing shards of light and colour. It was like one of those vivid holiday posters from the days of steam railway. I had already painted those colours in my mind, and with the good weather set to continue, I resolved to return to this spot tomorrow… Of course, as you see from the painting, it doesn’t match up to the description in my opening lines. This is because ‘tomorrow’ the weather changed. A mist had rolled in up river, bringing with it a soft, pearly light - quite different from the sunny colours of yesterday, but magical all the same.
Not everyone, however, appreciated it… Grey,’ said the passer-by to his companion. He waved a stick at various parts of the landscape in turn. ‘Grey sky, grey water, grey boats. What’s to see? Just grey.’ What I was seeing was not ‘just grey.’ There was a hint of violet on the water, a yellowish cast on one of the hulls, the slightest touch of pink in the sky. I pictured the softest, variable mixes of Ultramarine, Raw Sienna and Alizarin, allowed to gently suffuse in broad washes, creating a result that could best be described as - ‘Grey,’ said the blunt voice. Actually, the word in my mind was ‘pearlescent’. But beauty, as the saying goes, is in the eye of the beholder. And I shall never forget the critic's final verdict as he jabbed his stick at that magical light one more time. ‘That sky. Just look at it. As grey as an old vest.’ With that, he moved on - leaving me feeling somewhat grey myself… Whether you see it as 'pearlescent' or simply 'grey', 'Morning Light, Woodbridge' was painted in watercolour on quarter-imperial rough-textured Arches paper. Someone has asked me where I stood to paint the watercolour of ‘Beached at Blakeney’, which is displayed on the Prints page. I stood at the west end of the quay, with my back to the Red House. Off the picture to the right are the quayside and the Blakeney Hotel, and behind me and away to the left is a track that leads on to the North Norfolk Coastal Path. I had come to Blakeney to draw boats, and spent a little time mooching around getting angles on various subjects, before finding this pair laid up on hummocky ground. I knew at once that I had found my subject. Having unpacked all my kit and set out my tubes of colour, I was disgruntled to see that I had no Ultramarine. I remembered that I’d ‘borrowed’ out of my field kit, a day or two back, having run out of Ultramarine in the studio. Rummaging a bit more I saw that I had indeed ‘paid’ back a tube into the field kit, but with Prussian Blue, of which I now had two tubes… I like Prussian, it makes stunning sunlit greens when mixed with yellow, and a range of subtle greens when mixed with the earth colours. The problem now was that I wanted to use a bit of Raw Sienna in the sky, just to convey that sense of warm light, and the last thing I needed was to end up with a green sky… Fortunately I had a tube of Alizarin Crimson, and knew that a judicious touch of it would take the Prussian towards a subtle blue-violet, not as pure at Ultramarine, but perfectly passable. It was better than a miss… * Left: The four colours used to paint Beached at Blakeney. Top to Bottom: Raw Sienna, Alizarin Crimson, Prussian Blue. A pale wash of Raw Sienna made the warm light in the sky. Raw Sienna and Alizarin were mixed to make the foreground mud. A mix of Prussian and Raw Sienna made the greens A touch of Alizarin in the Prussian coaxed the latter towards a more violet blue, avoiding the horror of a green sky. The wavy brown line is Burnt Umber, which was used to draw in the bones of the subject. In case anyone is wondering, this is intended to be a wavy line, not an attempt to paint a mast on a windy day. On windy days, I usually leave the masts until I'm in the more controlled conditions of the studio... * I confined my pencil work to a few horizontal and vertical lines, sufficient to place the subject, and then it was straight in with the brush, using the point of a size 8 and Burnt Umber to get down the bones. Be Bold, I thought to myself, you’ve already forgotten the Ultramarine, and have to make do with a blue in the sky that wants to make green, so what have you to lose? At least I was getting in the practice, and if all went badly I could use the back of the paper. Unless, of course, this side was the back of a previous one that had also gone badly… Be Bold, I kept thinking, laying a light wash of Raw Sienna across the sky, and then following it up with the Prussian and Alizarin mix… Thanks to the touch of Alizarin, the colours merged in a mix of soft blues, golds and violet greys, with not a green to be seen above the horizon line. I pulled the lower sky wash down across the boat hulls and into the foreground water. Once all the darker tones were in place, the hulls would appear as white, with a hint of shadow playing across them. This wash didn’t take long to dry, owing to an obliging Norfolk breeze. Then in went the swathe of mud and the hummocky ground with its textures and shadows. As each wash dried, I moved towards more detail, finishing with the dark base of the foreground hull, the sharp-edged top of the cabin, the portholes, masts and rigging. I keyed in the masts with the point of a size 8 brush, but the rigging was flicked in with - appropriately - a rigger - a thin, long-haired brush that was originally designed to paint the rigging on ships. The idea is to paint the ‘hit and miss’ effect of a line disrupted visually by a play of light. * Right: The brushes used to paint Beached at Blakeney. Top: a rigger, used, as the name suggests, to flick in the rigging. Middle: Size 8, used for initial drawing and points of detail. Bottom: Size 16, used for the sky and other broad areas of colour. * It was when putting in the masts that I recalled an aunt who had come to Blakeney on a painting holiday back in the 1960s. Looking around for subject matter she spotted a number of little boats leaning this way and that, with their masts all at different angles.
‘Oh I do like those upsies!’ she exclaimed. Then, turning to the tutor, ‘How do I paint those?’ The tutor, knowing my aunt was an accomplished musician, reached for an appropriate analogy. ‘It’s easy. Just think of beats in the bar - 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4 - quick-march-quick-march - then in with the brush - ding-ding-ding-ding! - See?’ She demonstrated the technique with professional aplomb, and in went those ‘upsies’, swift, direct, and straight as spears - ‘ding-ding-ding!’ The aunt took a deep breath and tentatively painted in the masts, while slowly mouthing ‘dinnggg ... dinnggg ... dinnggg ...’ then sat back to view the series of wobbly lines that had resulted. ‘Yes…’ said the tutor, in a tone of voice that actually implied, No... ‘Well, of course, it’s the first ten thousand dings that are the most challenging…’ Prints of 'Beached at Blakeney' can be posted out to addresses in the UK. Please use the Contact page to enquire. It’s difficult to get into someone else’s head when it comes to commissions. Quite often the subject they have in mind may not actually exist in reality, but be a composite of various impressions and mental snapshots, a general memory of an enjoyable day out. Some time ago I was asked by a client to do a painting of his favourite haunt. The subject was to be Brancaster, looking west, with the water and shoreline zigzagging into each other. I knew the kind of thing he had in mind, having painted there a lot over the years. The light was dramatic, the breeze was stiff, the sand and water played into each other in perfect zig zags. I made this brief sketch, fixing the composition in my mind. My notes read, ’Golden light, wet sand, birds tossed about, white horses.’ A final sketch with colour notes completed the groundwork, and I settled down to paint... Confident that I'd captured what the client had seen, I presented the finished work. He scrutinised it silently, before passing comment. ‘Hmm… Nice…..’ I sensed a ‘but’. ‘Where are the boats?’ ‘Boats? There aren’t any boats at Brancaster.’ ‘Yes there are. Lots of them. All up and down the creek.’ Ah. ‘You mean Brancaster Staithe…’ A completely different place, two miles further along the coast. ‘Yes. And I was looking west. I remember that. It was late afternoon. The creek was all zig zags. And there were boats. Everywhere. Lots of boats, higgledy-piggledy.’ Armed with fresh information, off I went again - this time to Brancaster Staithe... I did a field sketch looking west up Mow Creek, taking in the zig zag of the water, swathes of mud and lavender marsh. There were boats everywhere, but I had to be selective, and tried out a number of arrangements before choosing the one that worked best. This composition, with the foreground boats facing diagonally into the picture, the left hand boat leaning into the right, and the distant masts a visual 'stop' was the one I chose. Happy that this time I'd got it right, I presented the painting for approval. 'Hmm… Nice...’ and again, with slightly less conviction, ‘Nice…’ But? ‘The boats are a bit small. Can you bring them closer? And I’m sure there was one broadside somewhere. A yellow one.’ ‘Yellow…’ I made a note. ‘Yes.’ He paused for thought. ‘Or it might have been blue…’ Back to Brancaster Staithe. Mow Creek, looking west; zig zag of water, mud and lavender marsh; boats bigger - one of them, I was pleased to note, blue. Job done, commission delivered. I stood back and waited. ‘Hmm… Nice…’ But? ‘There’s too much mud. Not enough water. Can you bring the tide in a bit more? But keep the zig zag. I like that.’ Back I went. Mow Creek, looking west, zig zag, boats, less mud, more water. Job done, commission delivered. ‘Hmm… Nice…’ He smiled. I smiled. I kept smiling even as his smile turned the other way up. ‘There’s too much sky. Could you raise the horizon? Make it less sky, more zig zags and marshy stuff - and that boat, the blue one… ‘You want that keeping in?’ 'Yes - except - I’m sure it was brown…’ And so it continued, this battle to tease the actual image from his memory until, with a sheaf of rejected paintings stored away at home, I went back to Brancaster Staithe for the umpteenth time. I looked up that zig zag of creek and I couldn’t see what else I could do with it. To top it off, the light in that direction was all a bit flat. I turned on my heel, taking in the general lie of the Staithe - then stopped, facing north-east. A ragged sky and birds wheeling; silver water, shining mud; a fishing boat laid up on the sand bank. It wasn’t what the client wanted, but I knew I had to paint it. A couple of days later the client invited me round for coffee. ‘How’s the commission coming?’ ‘It’s coming,’ I said, trying to sound positive. ‘I was there again the other day, but the view you wanted was scuppered by bad light… (Bad light? Now the whole project sounded like an abandoned Test Match). ‘So I painted this subject looking north-east. Not what you want, I know, totally wrong, but I thought you’d like to see what I’ve been up to…’ I set up the painting, and braced myself for a ‘Hmm… Nice…’ But it didn’t come. What did come was a complete surprise. ‘That,’ he declared, pointing emphatically at the painting, ‘Is exactly what I saw!’ So he hadn’t been looking west at all. He’d been looking north-east all along. And somehow, over a period of weeks that turned into months, and umpteen interpretations, we went from looking in the wrong place and wrong direction, to the right place but the wrong direction, before getting the right place and the right direction, completely by chance. As a friend remarked to me later, ‘I’ll bet you can feel a cartoon coming on?’ She was right. I could. And here it is… 'Laid up at Brancaster Staithe' was painted in watercolour on Winsor and Newton 90lb ‘not’ paper.
It isn’t possible for me to get out to the coast at the moment, so this month I've been practising some watercolour techniques in the studio. I leafed through a number of field sketches and chose a simple study of a north Norfolk beach. The tide was on the turn, with tongues of sparkling water dancing under a glowering sky… No sooner had I set to work with the brush than the phone rang. Normally if I’m working I ignore it and they’ll leave a message. But in these days of lock-down, people sometimes just need someone to talk to, and sometimes it can be urgent, so I answered it. The voice on the other end sounded fraught… ‘Have you heard they want us to check our temperatures before we get on the bus?’ ‘Er … no…?’ I’d already started the sky wash and I kept painting. That’s the thing with a watercolour sky, it won’t wait while you conduct a phone call, you just have to keep going. ‘I need to get a new thermometer, but they’re all different these days - they’re all in Centigrade. Do you know what 98.4° is in Centigrade?’ I couldn't have said 'google it', as my friend isn't on the internet. So I pushed the brush about distractedly while I raked up some formula from my school days. ‘It’s somewhere in the mid 30’s. You subtract 32, divide by 9 and multiply by 5.’ There was a pause the other end while the calculator was employed. Meanwhile, I swished the brush around the palette, seeking out a medley of warm and cool greys. ‘Did you say multiply or divide by 9 and what by 5?’ ‘Um...’ I dipped the brush into totally the wrong colour and frantically swilled it out. ‘Um…’ Both halves of my brain were being taxed at once, and it just wasn't working. 'Um...' ‘I don’t know why they had to change it. You knew where you were with 98.4… And I heard somewhere you don’t stick them under your tongue any more.’ ‘What!?…’ A great blob dropped off the end of the brush, making a cauliflower shape in the middle of the painting. ‘So where on Earth do you stick it?’ ‘God knows. In your ear probably. Or worse. Who knows?… You aren’t painting, are you?’ ‘Um…’ I looked from the mess on my palette to the even more unfocussed mess on the paper, and sighed. ‘Not really…’ Watercolour, more than any other medium, requires your undivided attention. Otherwise you can end up with some unintentional results.... While talking thermometers I'd somehow created a cloud formation that resembled a pair of polar bears out for a stroll - or it might be a polar bear with a hippopotamus tagging along. Had I wanted to paint a ghostly animal in the clouds I could have tried for weeks and never managed it. Once I’d put the phone down and was able to apply myself completely to the task in hand, the sought-after sky began to materialise. I wanted to achieve a sense of rain threatening. The first step was to dampen the paper, so that the colours could fuse freely. Then working from light to dark and from watery to dense, I laid swathes of loose colour one against the next. The aim was to get a sense of movement, rather than impose rigid cloud shapes. With watercolour you have to be bold, and don’t force or fiddle with it, otherwise it will look tired and laboured. The colours need to be given chance to separate out in the mix, and that way they will appear fresh and enlivened. I once had a tutor who advised me, ‘Just bung it down and leave it alone to paint itself.’ Easier said than done! The next challenge was to paint the sparkle on water. The example below may look as though it was painstakingly dibbled on with the point of the brush, but in fact it is achieved by pulling the brush briskly across the paper, creating a hit-and-miss effect. The technique works best on a rough-textured paper, which helps to enhance the sparkly appearance... The completed study combines the threatening sky with zig-zag ribbons of sparkling water... The finishing touch was the pair of gulls winging away to sea... It's one of those techniques that combines a deft flick of the brush with endless practice. I will never forget my first tentative attempt at painting the V shape of a gull in flight. My tutor (the same one who told me to bung it down and let the painting get on with the job itself) surveyed my tentative air-borne blob with the damning comment, 'Well, there's 40 pounder, if ever I saw one!'
Sparkle on the Water was painted on Winsor and Newton rough-textured 90lb paper - and the phone was left firmly off the hook! But my friend's phone call made me realise that the only thermometer I have these days is the one my mother used in the kitchen. It tells me that at 212°F I'm boiling, at 240°F I'm fudge, and at 345°F I'm caramel - no help at all should I need clearance to travel on the bus... The nights are drawing in, and the sunsets are getting earlier. Around the shortest day it can feel that daylight never gets a proper toehold, sunrise and sunset never quite let go of each other, and even on the brightest winter’s day a pinkish hue suffuses the sky from dawn to dusk. A few years ago, shortly before Christmas, a couple called in at the studio. The man was keen to buy his wife a painting for Christmas.
‘What do you think of this one?’ He picked out a woodland subject. ‘Or - this one with the boats? - or … this sunset one?’ She viewed each painting, thoughtful, silent, non-committal. ‘This one,’ he said, indicating Winter Light on Snettisham Reserve. ‘It's looking out over the marshes. Look at that sky, and the rippling on the water - that’s really atmospheric, isn’t it? - Imagine it hanging over the fireplace, and us sitting in front of it with the fire crackling and the chestnuts popping.’ He described such an appealing image that I almost didn’t want the sell the painting. I was imagining it hanging over my own fireplace with my own fire crackling and the chestnuts popping. His companion didn’t speak. She just looked thoughtfully at the several paintings he had picked out, perhaps summoning her own picture of fires and chestnuts, and trying to decide which one best fitted her vision. ‘Mmm,’ she said at last, although it was impossible to say which painting had elicited this response. ‘Mmm…’ 'So… which one would you like for Christmas?’ he asked. ‘Take your time. There’s loads of choice. You decide. Anything.’ ‘Anything?’ she brightened. ‘Yes.’ He gestured expansively around the studio, as though he’d be prepared to purchase the whole collection, if that was what she wanted. ‘Anything at all. What would you really like?’ She looked around the room, taking the full display of paintings in turn. ‘Well, what I’d like…’ Her gaze wandered past paintings of boats, trees, churches, stormy skies and sunsets. ‘What I’d really like….’ She’d turned full circle now and was looking at Winter Light - the one that would look so good over the fireplace, with the fire crackling and the chestnuts popping… Her mind was made up. ‘What I’d really like is another kitchen cupboard.’ Here’s wishing you a very merry Christmas, and I hope that when you open your stocking on Christmas morning, you find exactly what you wished for, whether it’s painting shaped… or cupboard shaped! I’ve done a lot of painting at Brancaster Staithe lately - it’s one of those places that’s stuffed full of subjects, from expansive mudflats, to winding creeks, to the harbour with its fishing boats and quirky mussel sheds. The tide was out, just a trickle of water in the harbour bed, and the boats were sitting comfortably down in the mud. The red boat was well positioned - its bright colour drew the eye up the creek and into the middle ground. Had it sat in the place of the foreground boat it would have grabbed the eye and dominated the scene. No way would the viewer have been able to fight their way past it. I spent some time walking all around the harbour and getting a look at the boats from every angle. I wanted to get an idea of what bit of superstructure belonged to which boat - this is where being ‘on the spot’ is an advantage over relying on a photograph. Where one object partially obscures another, a photo alone can give a muddle of misleading information. There was a lot of drawing, both in the boats, and in the buildings behind, and in addition there was a lot of clutter, a muddle of crab pots, ropes, and general paraphernalia lying about. There was just too much - had I drawn everything in that I could see I would have ended up with an awful lot of stuff vying with other stuff and I would have been into the coastal equivalent of not being able to see the wood for the trees. So it was necessary to edit, decide what was essential to the subject, and simplify things in the interest of clarity. I began by drawing the subject in pencil, keeping it all as simple as possible, so that I could give full reign to the brushwork. Areas such as the sky and the mud were painted in broad sweeps of variegated colour, and once dry I could then build detail with the point of the brush. When there’s a breeze blowing it doesn’t take long for washes to dry, but that same breeze can tug at the brush just as I’m painting in the masts. A boat with a wonky mast doesn’t look seaworthy - so I left these until I was in the more controlled situation of the studio. I also resisted the temptation to add fiddling bits of detail - it’s easy to go that step too far, and once I’m able to consider the painting at home I can often judge more readily what, if any, final touches and adjustments are needed to pull the subject together. While I was working on this piece I was so lost in what I was doing that I didn’t realise I had become a subject of interest to members of a local camera club. I carried on painting, oblivious to the ‘clicks’ going on behind me. It wasn’t until I had paused to allow a wash to dry, that I noticed a number of people strolling past with cameras. ‘We’ve got some lovely photos of you at work!’ ‘Oh good,’ I replied, and reaching for my little compact camera, handed it to one of them. ‘Could you take a photo of me at work with this, so I have a record for myself? And if it comes out okay, it might end up on the website.’ They took a number of photos, both with my little camera and their own ‘SDLRs’. We then looked at the subject I’d chosen to paint and discussed the similarities and differences between working with a brush as opposed to a camera. Whether painter or photographer, we were both looking for structure, composition and tone, and when I looked at some of the photos they had taken, it was clear they also liked a picture that told a story. I particularly liked the image reproduced here, which shows the artist at work, the painting in progress and the subject in the background. With thanks to Peter Sorrell, a member of the Hunstanton Camera Club, for providing the photograph. Brancaster Staithe Harbour was painted on 1/4 Imperial Winsor and Newton 90lb paper.
Following on from January’s blog I was asked, ‘Do you have a painting done wearing The Hat?’ Lots - and bearing in mind said Hat is brought into use during the winter months and in exposed places, many of the paintings I have done while wearing it can appear a tad bleak. One of the bleakest days was the tail end of last winter, when the Beast from the East arrived (March 2018 Blog). But rummaging through my portfolio, I alighted on this one, done on the east coast at North Gap, near Eccles beach, and as far as I can tell, from the top of the same sand hill that my younger self is shown struggling to climb with my trolley in last month’s blog. I was definitely wearing The Hat, not to mention top to toe wind proofs, scarf and fingerless mitts. I stood atop the sand hill and looked down on a strip of beach, sliced by the wreckage of the groyne. I could have turned on my heel, thinking, ‘hmm, nothing there,’ but I’ve never been one to dismiss at a glance. I made myself look. There was something about the shape of that groyne, the starkness of it, and the cold sea beyond, that persuaded me that here was a subject. I was determined not to be beaten back to the car without something to show for my observations. ~ Looking directly out to sea, the structure was like this - parallel lines of beach, shore, horizon. But that would have created a step ladder effect, with the groyne reduced to a brief, almost vertical line. There is something static about this arrangement, the eye has to work to climb onto the next ‘rung’ ~ I moved around, getting different angles on the subject. Moving a few steps to left or right, or a couple of feet higher or lower changed the dynamics of the structure and offered in a number of possibilities. ~ Finally I settled on this - a series of curves, diagonals and wedges, with the groyne at more of an angle. The ‘V’ between the sand hills anchors the structure, making a point for the start and end of the visual journey. ~ Bleak Day at North Gap was drawn in pastel and charcoal on Tiziano paper. I drew in the structure with charcoal, and used a limited palette of pinkish earths and purple greys, with a soft green for the marram grass. The fact that it was worked in a direct, simple way, is testament to how cold and exposed it was that day. Considering it later in the studio, I would have moved the distant boats to the left - but trying to recreate that sense of place in the comfort of the Great Indoors would have been challenging indeed.
We’ve had a number of tidal surges since I drew this, so the storm-ravaged groyne has either disappeared under the sand, or it’s floating around the North Sea in bits… |
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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