When I set out on a painting foray I either take my rucksack with pochade box, or my French field easel on its trolley. This is the easel you'll see on many of the photos on this website. It's a hefty piece of gear, hence the need for wheels. The choice of equipment depends on the terrain - the trolley is great if the path is well made up, but on uneven or soft ground it can be more of a challenge. On a recent visit to Thornham, I chose to take the field easel. Much of the way was good path and board walk, and the trolley clattered along easily behind me. Then I came to the dunes, and it was a case of having to haul the trolley up hill through the soft sand, but once atop my chosen sand hill, I had a good view of the whole beach, stretching away into the blue distance. The clouds scudded in on the back of the wind, and breakers echoed the movement across an almost impossibly blue sea. What appealed to me about this subject was the sense of the wind blowing, that freshness in the air, and the movement in sea and sky. As always, the light was changing rapidly - I find it's never a good thing to chase the light, otherwise you end up with tones and colours that don’t gel, shadows that face in every direction and a landscape that doesn't reflect what's happening in the sky - so I spent time taking in the mood of the place, sorting out the shapes, tones, colours, then holding that in the mind as I painted. (If you compare the photograph of the painting with that of the easel in situ, taken a few minutes after I'd finished, you'll see how very different the light was by then, with the clouds almost cleared away, the scene much brighter, it looks like a completely different day). I was so caught up in the rhythm of the place that I eschewed pencil and went straight in with the brush, drawing with Ultramarine or Raw Sienna, depending on whether the overlying colours were to be blues or earths. When tackling the breakers, I didn’t attempt to paint each individual wave, which would have created a stilted look, but echoed the rhythm of their movement with directional brushwork. Trying to keep a straight edge was challenging as the breeze kept snatching at my hand, so I resorted to using a ruler to key in the horizon. I had this breeze to ‘thank’ for the fact that the distance was more undulating than I would have liked. As it was drying quickly I decided not to mess with it, to leave well alone and retain the freshness of the subject. It wasn’t only the elements that were working against me. With the field easel I always work standing up, but on this occasion the easel was slowly sinking into the soft sand, and I was so wrapped up in my work that I didn’t notice I was gradually getting more hunched over, as I followed its downward movement. Fortunately, the subject was finished before the easel sank too far and I avoided ending up completely on my knees with my nose in the sand! ~ With the subject finished it only remained to pack away the easel and haul the trolley back up and over the sand hills to the board walk. As you can see, I look equipped for a fortnight's holiday. The field easel incorporates a handy box that takes my watercolours, palette and brushes. The white bag contains pastels, which I usually carry just in case the subject strikes me as more of a pastel than a watercolour. Thank goodness I never feel the urge to record a subject in clay, otherwise the trolley really would be bogged down! ~ 'Thornham Beach' was painted on 1/4 Imperial Barcham Green watercolour paper.
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Someone has asked how do I manage painting in watercolour during this heatwave? The answer is, despite it being a scarce resource at present, you just need to take more water with it… A number of factors can affect the appearance of watercolour, including the weather, the balance of water to pigment, and the type of paper used. This is what makes watercolour the most demanding of mediums to work in. This is a plein air watercolour of the dunes at Wells-next-the-Sea, as they appeared before the last big tidal surge which completely obliterated them. I wanted to capture the layers of threatening cloud moving across the sky. With this in mind, I chose a ‘hot pressed’ (smooth) paper, which absorbs washes readily, and lends itself to creating overlapping skeins of colour. First, I spent time observing not only the cloud shapes, but also their character, direction and movement. Once I had a handle on that, I was able to work rapidly with the brush. With watercolour you don’t have the luxury of thinking as you go along - you have to try and be two steps ahead of it - plan what you’re going to do and then do it. The result is like the difference between signing your name with a flourish and painstakingly printing the letters one at a time. I swept a swathe of colour onto the dry paper, following the direction of movement in the sky. So quickly did the paint take to the paper surface, that I was able to build up a series of swathes, some adjacent, some partly overlapping, and the skeins of cloud quickly developed. The warm ochre colour of the sands had to go down directly onto white paper, in order to retain its freshness, and with that purity of colour fixed I could then add the cloud shadows. Had I wanted a softer appearance in the sky, I would have dampened the paper first, then flooded in a variegated wash. The damp surface would have prevented the formation of edges. This is what I have done in the sky on the little study to the right. As you see, it gives a completely different result from the sky in the first painting. By contrast, the lower half of the study is painted using the wet-on-dry approach, and the crisp edges are preserved. There is no right or wrong choice when it comes to painting wet-in-wet or wet-on-dry. The important thing is to practice both watercolour techniques, so that you can use them effectively when painting a subject.
For a plein air painter, the vagaries of the weather will always have an effect on watercolour - whether it’s hot and dry, cold and damp, frosty or breezy, and painters have always found ways to speed up or slow down drying times. I had an aunt who, on a hot summer’s day, would add a few drops of glycerine to her paint water, and this had the effect of retarding the drying time, allowing her to manipulate the washes for longer. In the winter she had another remedy - to help speed drying on a cold, damp morning, she added a few drops of whisky to her paint water. Before any dedicated whisky drinkers among my readers die of apoplexy at the thought of such sacrilege, I understand it was a supermarket blend, not an expensive highland malt! Enjoy your painting while we have this fine weather, but remember, the worst time to go out is the middle of the day when the sun is high and the landscape is all in a flat light. Early morning and evening are better times, when it is not only cooler, but the longer shadows bring shape and contrast to the subject. Last month I showed a painting that was done on the landward side of the sea bank at Overy Staithe, and reported on the crisis that had ensued when one of my painting group decided to venture into a field of cattle. This month I returned to Overy Staithe, and had an animal experience of my own. I’ve been looking after a friend’s dog, a little shi’tzu terrier. Toby is 13 years old and interested in little other than eating and sleeping. So I thought he would be easy company on a painting foray. It started out well. We had a little walk around, while I looked at potential subjects, and then there was a tug on the lead that told me the dog had done enough exercise and was ready to settle down for a nap. I found a comfortable patch of grass where Toby could chill out and catch up on his sleep, while I worked on a study of the old boathouse… I had brought my pochade box and owing to the fact that my painting stool can be a bit rickety, I did what I usually do, which is to set it all out on the ground and paint kneeling down. You may remember from the March blog that this approach had worked well for me even in the face of The Beast from the East, and with the memory of that fresh in my mind, I figured that the use of the pochade box in the face of a 13 year old canine couch potato shouldn’t pose any problem at all. In fact, judging from the painting you would think I had a pleasant afternoon with my paints while the dog slumbered peacefully at my feet. How wrong you would be… The moment I unpacked the pochade box, Toby came alive. He was eager to explore all this new and unfamiliar stuff, and intent on proving it is never too late for an old dog to learn new tricks, he set about trying his paw at a spot of art. Toby’s approach to painting was similar to that of a chef’s to cooking. Everything had to be sampled for its culinary qualities. Spurning the contents of his own water bowl, which I had set out for him, he decided he liked the look of my paint water better. Then he saw the brushes, and the handles looked more tempting than any dog-chew. I snatched both the water and brushes away, and his attention turned to the palette. I always thought dogs were meant to be colour blind, but he was immediately drawn to the array of paints, especially the ultramarine and the alizarin crimson, which had formed a tempting and juicy-looking puddle on the mixing palette. I don’t have a photograph of the ensuing battle between us, because between keeping Toby at bay with one hand, while painting with the other and holding the spare brushes between my teeth, I had nothing left with which to operate the camera. But once the work was done, the paint was dry, and his limited energies spent, I managed to get this one of him posing beside the finished article, looking for all the world as though he'd done the thing himself. All he needed was an upturned cap for receipt of coins, and I'm sure he would have earned our petrol money home... I stood at Snettisham Scalp, looking out across the Wash. The sinuous shape of the creek snaked out across the mudflats, a gleam of silver-white amid a desert of wet mud. In the distance was the grey streak that marked Lincolnshire. Some days you can see Boston Stump, but it wasn’t visible this morning. There was something brooding about the place today. Standing here on the edge of the Wash, I had the disconcerting feeling that the mudflats and the water beyond were on a higher plane than me. As if to confirm the fact, a pair of barnacle geese passed overhead, honking like portents of doom... I climbed back onto the sea bank, and surveyed the subject from what felt like a safer viewpoint. I waited, knowing what a change of light could do to this featureless wetland. And soon I was rewarded. A shaft of sunlight broke through the cloud, the mud shone earthy pink, and a play of ochre light shot across the endless Ferrier Sand. It was bitterly cold, but fortunately I was well layered, with knitted gaiters over my thick trousers, as well as my trusty woollen cap and fingerless thermal mittens (rest assured, it was the mittens that were fingerless, my personal fingers were mercifully still attached, despite the cold threatening to slice them off. Also, I did have a pair of thick gloves to don when not working.) I had already been out here for two hours, walking, observing, sketching and gradually losing feeling in the extremities, but I just had to commit this haunting image to paint. I held that play of colours in my mind as I unpacked my painting gear… ~ Today, because I had been walking, I had left my field easel on its trolley at home, in favour of my rucksack and pochade box. I treasure this little pochade box, as it was made by my uncle back in the '70s, and is still going strong. It is suitable for painting 1/8 imperial studies, which fit into the lid, and the base doubles as a palette and storage place for pencils and brushes. It does tend to leak in transit after a painting session, so it travels in my rucksack within a protective plastic bag. ~ A capricious breeze was getting up and tugging at my arm, so I had to resort to keying in the horizon with the aid of a ruler. Then it got a bit more serious and my sketching stool threatened to blow over, taking me and my equipment with it, so I ended up kneeling on the ground, using the plastic bag to protect my knees from the damp. With the elements working against me, it was a case of capturing the essence of the subject, the quality of light, the character of the place. It was no time to fiddle around indulging in detail.
I chose an 1/8 imperial (7.5” x 11”) sheet of Canson mi teintes paper, and three colours, Prussian Blue, Permanent Rose and Yellow Ochre, plus a size 10 brush, large enough to create sizeable swathes with a minimum of fuss. Starting with the warm light in the sky, then feeding in the purple greys of cloud, I took a paler wash of this down into the creek. Despite the cold, the wind dried the underlying wash rapidly, enabling me to create crisp edges where the mudbanks met the gleaming water. Lost in my work, I was barely aware of the biting cold, but as I finally laid down my brush, I suddenly noticed that my exposed finger ends, though happily still part of me, were a tad numb. Time to pack up! I stood up to survey the finished piece, only to have the plastic bag catch in the wind and toss a spill of mucky paint water across my work. I let out an anguished ‘Aaarghhh!’, grabbed a dry brush, swept the offending marks away, then ‘Phew!’ as my hard-won painting was rescued. I packed the work and pochade box safely back in my rucksack before any more damage could be done, swapped my fingerless work mitts for a pair of thick gloves, and headed back to the warmth of home and a reviving pot of tea... ~ Those barnacle geese were, indeed, portents of doom - not long after this outing, the infamous 'Beast from the East' arrived, the lanes around me were cut off, and it was white-out as far as I could see - which wasn't very far, owing to the blizzard. I would have said, 'Roll on Spring', but as the meteorological date for the start of that had already passed, it would seem that this was it - hmm! 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.
I've been asked about the image that forms the banner for the home page. It's a pastel of Wells-next-the-Sea in Norfolk, entitled 'Evening Light.' It was worked on a half imperial Canson paper, and the amber glow was achieved by using the colour of the paper. Pastel papers come in a variety of tones and colours, and usually I choose a middle tone buff or warm grey, allowing both the darks and lights to stand out equally. But on this occasion I went for a slightly wilder colour. I was attracted by the light on the water, and spent some time observing the contrasting tones that surrounded and intensified its effect. Then I set about mentally stripping out the clutter and choosing which boats I was going to use, and how they sat in relation to each other. I was planning the underlying structure of the piece, which I found to be full of diagonals and triangular shapes - they were everywhere, among the boats, between the masts and rigging and in the interplay of light and dark water - it was endlessly fascinating, until I realised that the sun was threatening to desert me for the night, and it was time to put my observations into practice! I used a balance of painterly and linear marks with this subject - I hadn't planned it that way, but having set the composition, and started work, I found myself drawing in rapid linear strokes. On a another day with a different light and atmosphere, I would possibly have worked in a more painterly way. The colour palette was tonal and spare - 95% of Evening Light was worked with the colours you see here - from top to bottom, a couple of pinkish and purple greys, a deep blue for the hull of the foreground boat, the palest yellow ochre for both sky and the light on the water, a touch of mid-toned ochre, a reddish earth and a deep umber for the superstructure and main masts on the larger boats. Intermediate tones and colours were achieved by playing one colour over another, and this effect can be seen around the edges of the deep blue in this sample swatch. How much paper I leave blank depends on the subject and my interpretation of it - there is no hard and fast rule - a pastel can be anything from a simple pared down line drawing to a full blown painterly piece of work that covers every inch of the paper surface. In the case of 'Evening Light' you can see that a fair percentage of the paper was allowed to play its part in the composition. 'Evening Light' is available as a greetings card, which can be purchased at any of my painting demonstrations and talks - or just flag me down wherever you see me working out of doors, as I normally have a selection to hand. Just don't creep up behind me and take me by surprise when I'm trying to draw a straight horizon - otherwise I may well end up with an unintended and inexplicable profile of Mount Fuji superimposed on the Norfolk coast! 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 doesn't half creep 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. I packed up, collapsed the easel, and hurried back to the car, the water following hard behind. By the time I'd chucked 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... If you are interested in joining me for a plein air painting day this summer, on either a group or one-to-one basis, please use the Contact page to enquire. ~ Following on from the aborted photo-opportunity at Brancaster a few weeks ago, I went to Overy Staithe with the same friends to show them one of my favourite painting spots on the Brancaster side of the staithe. It's a photogenic setting 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 photo-shoot were scotched once again, this time because it was discovered that the camera still had a macro lens fitted from a previous session of close-up work, which meant it was no good for this job. So there was no point in taking the camera, but as things turned out it was fortunate that it was left safely behind in the car... 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 the scene would have made a perfect film, especially if played back 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, attempting to spread his weight. I tried to assure 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 face down doing the breastroke, and getting thoroughly 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 mud bath. 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 down 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! More results of my artistic suffering can be viewed on the Landscape and Marine pages. Autumn is here and with it some exciting painting opportunities. Forget the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness. The blustery weather of recent weeks has brought some fantastic skies, fast-moving clouds of brilliant white, pale gold and violet-grey, tumbling and racing across the blue. This is a time when I spend long hours walking and observing, and painting brief plein air studies. There's no chance to indulge in fiddling detail as the Norfolk wind will fight me for control of the brush, get under the painting board to give it a good buffeting and generally play havoc with any carefully planned subject. I use strong bulldog clips to secure the work, but more than once both paper and board have been whipped into the air by a particularly capricious wind and deposited in a nearby dyke. It's a bit like trying to paint in the company of a poltergeist that fancies having a go at art! 'Cloud, light and wind-tossed birds'. You might spot the letters 'J F' written in the sky - it's the kind of thing that happens when you're keying in a bit of structure and the wind grabs hold of the pencil. Or perhaps the arty poltergeist was trying to leave a message... If it isn't wind, it's rain, and with such ever-changing skies my work is almost guaranteed to fall victim to a passing shower. Sometimes I'm able to whip the board off the easel and place it facing away from the weather, and sometimes I'm just not quick enough off the mark, before the painting has collected a rash of rain spots. This is a detail of one such painting. It's pot luck whether the 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... Even if the painting is wrecked, nothing is wasted, as there is no replacement for getting out there and experiencing the landscape at first hand. Photographs are a useful reference to support on-site sketches for later use in the studio, but there are certain qualities in the landscape that a photograph can't capture. As I say on the Home page, 'I need to taste the salt air and feel the wind in my face - to hear the piping of an oystercatcher evokes the essence of a marsh better than any photograph'. 'Threatening sky at Overy Staithe.' Here I worked 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. A case of bung it down fast, before the rain - and the arty poltergeist - catch up! The three studies shown above were painted in watercolour on Canson mi-teintes paper. Plein air painting is extremely rewarding, but it pays to be suitably prepared. Before you go out painting on site, it's a good idea to get some basic techniques under your belt. If you are an Art Club looking for tuition, please get in touch with me via the Contact page to enquire about Painting Demonstrations, or Day Courses in medium techniques. We recently had a spell of hot weather, and knowing it to be the swansong of summer, I made the most of it and headed out for the coast with my paints. The temperatures that week were in the high 20's, and on the Thursday it was forecast to be even better. So I arranged to go to Brancaster with friends, where, armed with painting gear and cameras we planned to get some publicity shots, set against a glorious blue Norfolk sky, for my website. Unfortunately, we reached Brancaster to find a chilly sea fret awaiting us. Undeterred, I grabbed my pochade box and painting stool, and we hiked along the beach to the creek which meanders its way into the 'seal pool'. The colony of common and grey seals has steadily built up in recent times and now numbers in the teens. ~ The seals were enjoying themselves, diving and bobbing up again (seal watchers call it 'bottling') and engaging in a spot of fog-bathing on the opposite bank. I couldn't resist sketching them. ~ Then I set up my pochade box and paints. My friends were expecting to take a few photos while I posed briefly, brush in hand, and then pack up and head back to the comfort of the car. They didn't expect me to actually paint. After all, it was cold and there was hardly anything to see. What they didn't bargain for was that painters have a habit of seeing subjects in the most unpromising situations. Even fog. ~ Here I am, dressed for a heat wave complete with sun hat and painting into the mist. It's surprising how many colours you can find in grey, and how you can lose track of inclement conditions when you're deep into a painting. ~ Time and tide also have a habit of stealing a march on you while you are otherwise engaged. I forget which of us was the first to notice that the tide had turned and the water was coming in fast... With the tide racing in, we hastily packed up and headed back along the beach. My friends were hurrying me along, with the anxious observation that the sea looked to be on a higher plane than us and we could all be engulfed by the menacing wall of grey water that was set to flood the beach road car park. Despite their protestations, and the fact that my hands were turning blue with cold, I kept stopping to snatch photos, plus a quick sketch of a rolling wave for my studio notes. I may have remarked that this tide was nothing exceptional, and that Turner had himself lashed to a mast in order to experience the energy expelled by a storm at sea. Fortunately there were no masts available for them to lash me to, otherwise they may well have done so and left me to it.
Before we reached the beach road the water was already swilling up against the sea defences, so it was a question of timing a long-jump between waves or just throwing caution to the wind and splashing through the surf. It made no difference either way, as we were already clammy from top to toe, thanks to the salt spray and sea fret. Our fingers numb and our feet wet, we consoled ourselves with the promise of hot chocolate from the beach cafe, but unfortunately the staff had long given up expecting anyone to be so stupid as to be out on the beach in a fog with the tide racing in and they'd pulled down the shutters and gone home. We went instead to the Jolly Sailors at Brancaster Staithe, where we thawed out over a delicious plate of mackerel goujons. And we gave thanks that we had survived the afternoon, even if the mackerel hadn't! 'Tide Racing In, Brancaster', was painted in watercolour on quarter imperial 90lb Barcham Green rag paper. To see more watercolours please visit the Watercolour page under Landscape and Marine. 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, was 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. The paintings were 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 vast, shimmering presence of birds. 'Wow,' I thought, 'Wow...' I was still mentally wowing when my companion turned to me with an expression of dismay. 'Well I can't see anything to paint, can you?' Which just proves the old saying... 'Storm Light on the Wash' was painted in watercolour on 140lb Arches paper. If you want to hear a selection of stories drawn from my painting life, why not book me for a painting demonstration and talk, or as an after-dinner speaker at your next function - full details on the Talks page. 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 decided 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 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?' Because 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 subject was painted on 1/4 Royal Wookey Hole 140lb rough paper. This and other subjects of Titchwell can be viewed on the Watercolour Page under Landscape and Marine. |
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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