A sea change - in membership of Watermarks

Since Watermarks was created nearly three years ago, this blog has:

• published 273 posts on a wide range of topics relating to the drawing, painting or printing of art related to water in different places around the world - and its contents
• attracted nearly 100,000 visitors and 
• publishes content to nearly 500 subscribers as well as many ad hoc readers

A sea change

The Wave by Gustave Courbet
52 x 79.5 cm Private Collection

However as time has passed, members' individual agendas have changed, new work commitments (artistic and otherwise) have arisen and life gets very full from time to time.

Four of our members have now retired and we will be seeking to recruit new members in the near future.

We have a number of people in mind and intend to start approaching artists with blogs in the near future.

However if you're interested in being a member of this group and think you might be a good fit we'd be interested to hear from you.

In general we're going to be recruiting from people we already know but don't let that stop you.  If you know a member of the group please get in touch with them in the first instance.

Below you can find out:

• About Watermarks
• How Watermarks works

Do also take a look at past blog posts to get a sense of the sort of posts we publish.

Leave a comment below or get in contact with us (see "Contact Watermarks" at the top of the side column) if you'd like to be considered for membership.

It's important to note that not all those who express an interest can become members - but we do thank you in advance for putting yourselves forward.

About Watermarks

Watermarks is a small community of artists who make art from water. We like to sketch, draw and/or paint water - the sea, the coastline, beaches, rivers, streams, waterfalls, fountains - in all contexts, styles, genres and media.

In this blog we will display our works in progress as well as completed art, highlight other artists (past and present) whose art involves water, and discuss various media matters and tips and techniques for creating art out of water

You can find out more about the artists by clicking this link

How Watermarks works

The basic way the group works is:

• each artist has an interest in and a track record of painting water and aspects related to water (eg aquatic life) - in whatever form you prefer.  (For potential new members this means you have a body of work where this is already demonstrated)
• We particularly like people who are:
• interested in exploring different ways in which water (or fish or other sea life) can be portrayed 
• are supportive of the endeavours of others
• can provide constructive and informative feedback rather than "happy clappies"
• each artist makes a a commitment to produce one post per month - but can also post more often
• it's OK to post an image you've already included on your own blog - so long as you rewrite the text which accompanies it.  Duplicated content is NOT allowed.
• fresh art is great but we don't mind seeing past artwork you are proud of
• every new member will need to write a post about themselves to post on the blog -  by way of introduction to our readers.

In return, the artist member gets to list their blog and website in the side column and to be a part of this great group!

Over to you........

Bring out Your Inner Artist and Shine!

As an artist you are probably very similar to me, bold and brash on the outside but full of self doubt and shy of "exposing" your work. I grew up with a wildly enthusiastic mother who's glass was always half full, well to be honest, overflowing! As a result I have a sunny disposition but inside I actually think that anyone who says that my work is "good" is just being nice!
Whats all this got to do with anything?
I started blogging in January 2006 and seriously posting my work up about six months later. It was very much a case of learning on the job and as a result I made many mistakes, more about them in a minute.
The very first thing that I realised was that having and maintaining an Internet "presence" is quite a lot of work but it pays off. I was able to supplement my income as an illustrator quite quickly.  Plus selling paintings was slowly chipping away at that self doubt voice.
Being English as well I was, and still am, a bit embarrassed by the "look at me" aspect of self promotion. I rush to tell people who I know that I do it because it helps to sell my work. Actually by far the best thing to come out of it is getting to know so many other artists, even if it is cybernetics!
Being an artist is a terribly solitary occupation, you wander lonely as a cloud, seeking inspiration, wanting to chew the fat with other artists by joining groups but also jealously guarding your solitude at the same time. Blogging enables you to have those conversations, to see other peoples work and to network. We don't have water coolers, coffee breaks or office parties you see.
Having and maintaining a web identity also gives you the chance to sell your work, and therefor make a living. Some people use E-bay, others Etsy, some favor Folksy and some Imagekind. Some systems are better that others and the best advice is to go and try them out, see which you like, browse and search for things, see who is selling and what they are selling, get your pricing right and don't forget to factor in post and the time it takes to pack everything up. Putting a nice note, or a little card in with purchases makes a lot of difference. Think what you would like from a shop or gallery and go one step further. The other thing to bear in mind is getting people to come to your virtual gallery.
Social networking sites are becoming very popular for that, I don't Twitter so I cant talk about that but I have recently started a "fan page" on Facebook. This lets people who are friends of friends of friends see your work as well as catching a few total strangers along the way. It is possible to link up very easily with your blogs and so the fan page, as well as the fans, can see what you are up to.  Easily is the word, you have to make it easy for people to find and see your work, stick links on your emails, put your website on your car, and network like mad on your blogs. (I am bad about that, too lazy, must try harder!)
I used to toy with the idea of being anonymous and enigmatic, like Banksey, but it doesn't fit with my personality, I think it is a rare person indeed who can maintain an identity on blogs that is not their own, it seems to bring out personalities and show them for what they are.
So in a nutshell:
Blog, it makes you work hard and gets you seen.
Sell, via which ever site you feel happy with.
Network, on Facebook, Flicker, Twitter etc.
Throw away your inhibitions and stop waiting for the world to knock on your studio door, get out there and strut your stuff, after all you put your heart and soul into it so why not let it shine.
Sarah's Etsy shop.  Sarah's Facebook fan page
Katherine's Making-A-Mark fan page on facebook
Vivien's Etsy shop
Jeanette's Etsy shop
Gesah's Etsy shop.

( I have only put this here because I dont like blog posts without pictures and because I like this painting and because it has just sold in the gallery, Beside The Wave, that sells my work in the flesh, as opposed to on the internet, so I am happy!)

Now I know that I haven't put all of us on here as links, so fellow watery ones, please add your networking, selling sites.  After all Christmas is coming, someone out there might well be on the lookout for something extra special...

Introducing Ronell van Wyk

I feel honoured and priviliged to share this journey with eight very talented artists, Vivien, Lindsay, Katherine, Tina, Jeanette, Laura, Gesa and Sarah, whose experiences with and connections to water are each so unique.

As a little girl, the sun and water were my constant companions and it has been that way ever since. I've always been around and/or close to water.

I did my final year research on sea life in the tidal reefs of Tsitsikamma, SA. With its rugged coastline and protected wild life and abundant marine life, it will always be my most favourite place.

...movement, oil on canvas block, 45x20cm...

I then married a man who was an avid snorkeler and scuba diver. Even our honeymoon was spent in a real cave on the rocky side of the Elandsrivier canyon, swimming in the dark pools and basking in the sun like lizards on rocks.

In the Cape winelands, we had a home where our two little girls splashed in the water canals that ran by the garden, losing shoes and hair bands. They ran barefoot off to the Eerste river a few metres further, collecting pebbles and pick nasturtiums.

We lived on a farm with a stream flooding the road to the house every winter, with marshes providing arms full of Arum lilies for our house. A high swing over the stream echoed constant shrieks of mixed fear and delight across the valley on weekends.

We had a family home on the south coast of Natal where endless days were spent on the sun drenched sand beaches; skimboarding in the shallow waters, diving in the clear waters between the reefs, fighting to keep the children from swimming in the warm lagoon and failing, giving medicine at night for upset stomachs and fighting again the next day.

The memories of experiences are vivid: caught by high tides on huge boulders, rescued by helicopters from drifting in to deep at sea, sandboarding down sanddunes, picking mussels from the rocks, diving for abelone and pulling lobster from a dilapidated canoe, watching the play of animals in the bush by the waterholes, swimming under waterfalls, catching fish with handlines...

..castles in the sand, oil on linen, 73x60cm...

We lived a short while in an old watermill in Wickham Market, and then a flight of stairs away from the promenade on the seafront in Felixstowe, Suffolk.
We lived on a lake with magical views and sailboats on sunset cruises.
We had a home high on a cliff, overlooking the Vienne river down below. And now we are living at the foot of a cliff in Montlouis sur Loire, right next to the river Loire. And the cherry on my cake is our small house in the mountains of Corréze, facing south into the sun and looking down on yet another stream.

My connection with water has a very physical element to it and I can see every day here by the Loire continuing this element; animating an activity, telling a story: the birds nesting on the islands in spring, just to suddenly have it all swept away by rains. The violent floods in winter. The melancholy flow in summer, exposing the treacherous sandbanks. Cyclists. Photographers. Kayaks. Gypsies. Determined fishermen early mornings. Strollers. Powerwalkers. Picnickers. Coffeedrinkers(me).

...a corner of the Loire, watercolour, 30x23cm...

I'm not a landscape painter. I enjoy capturing, with exaggeration on certain aspects, a corner of a scene, a colourful detail of a story, a frozen moment of an activity, I'm not interested in a realistic rendering, but rather a reflection of reality, a suggestion of stillness or energy and movement .
With sketching I hope to capture the spontaneity of a water related moment in studies, and then work that into more defined oil paintings. We regularly return to most of these places and experiences and I'm looking forward to capturing some moments.

...moments...

Introducing Sarah Wimperis

When I was little, a very long time ago, there were two certainties in my mind.

The first was to "be an artist when I grew up" This cunning plan came from the fact that my family was peppered with artists all bearing the name Wimperis going far back into dusty history.

So it was a given, Sarah was going to be an artist. I was encouraged in this endeavor by my hugely enthusiastic mother, given little easels and paints and brushes on every gift giving opportunity, allowed up into my Grandmothers attic to draw using my Great Grandfathers ancient art materials.

So that was that and that was what I became.

The other must for me was that I would live my life in the place of my heart, Cornwall.

During my childhood, my folks had moved all over the country, it felt like every two years. This transitory life turned me into a clown at the various schools I went to. How to make friends: make them laugh, be good at drawing and be very very naughty. My despairing parents decided, early on, that what was called for was a sense of place, somewhere that we kids could judge how we were growing by our changing height compared to things like rocks and big cedar trees. Well that's what I thought they were doing as every summer, without fail, we spent weeks camping by the same beach in Cornwall.

That was it, I was smitten by the light, the sound of crashing waves and the iodine smell of the sea. As soon as my destiny became my own I ran away to sea...well not really I chose to go to Art School in Falmouth, in Cornwall, by the sea. After college I stayed on for a few years until the travel bug hit taking me all over the place, Israel, China, Norway (for 6 years there), always returning to Cornwall.

Five years ago I thought I could leave for good, so I packed my bags, the last remaining child, (I had five by then) my very patient and supportive other half, and moved to Brittany in France. It was lovely, a lot like Cornwall, I loved it. But maybe not enough because I came home.

Now I am staying, here in Cornwall, for good.

I have a lovely little house, twenty minutes walk from the sea and the Helford River and every day I walk the shore and along the creeks and I know that I am home, and happy and so I paint.

Now why do I need to make art? I don't really know, there is nothing really profound about it. I have always done it. It is my language, how I understand myself. I like to record the tiny things that slip by, like the light on the water, a cloudscape, the way the trees look at a certain time of day. I also like paintings, as things. It seems to me that they are a magic window into another world, put one on your wall and, for your lifetime, you have a glimpse of somewhere else. Plus I like a challenge, I never know if I can pull it off, if I can take the materials that I am using and work that alchemy, make the magic happen and capture what I want to. So I suppose I like the craft of painting.

In 2006, while still in France, my youngest left home. I began a blog Muddy Red Shoes to keep in touch with the kids and our folks back in England. The title came from a love of shoes, (I buy ones with heels sometimes because I like them as objects but only ever wear flat, clumpy and utilitarian ones) plus a life long love of fairy tales. There is a fairy tale "The Red Shoes" where the little girl who put on the red shoes couldn't stop dancing, until her feet were cut off. I feel a bit like that about what I do, I cant stop even if sometimes I think I might like to. That's the Red Shoe part and Muddy because my shoes usually are. This has become the blog where I witter on about my daily life and occasionally talk about how I sketch and paint.

Six months into the world of Blog and I was hooked. I had been watching the progress of the best (in my opinion) of all daily painters, Julian Merrow-Smith , as I had always maintained that practice was the key to good painting (can you guess that I used to teach!) I thought I should take my own advice, up my painting a notch or two and join in with the Daily painting movement on the Internet. A second blog for me then, a gallery blog, The Red Shoes where I would post all my paintings, day by day. Blogging became a really good incentive to working hard. I have always supported my family by illustrating but now I had committed to a daily painting as well. I love it, I love the record of the changing seasons, I love the way everything that I see becomes a painting, it has highlighted to me the need to have projects and passions in paint. Best of all it has introduced many people to each other. To share an interest, an obsession is great. No longer the lonely artist, there is a whole community of like minded people...

I am very happy to be invited to join this group of artists who also have a thing for water. I love seeing how other people interpret a subject, I am looking forward to seeing what I and the others produce under this subject heading, although I feel this is more that just a subject, it is a bit of a passion, or even a possession.

Introducing Tina Mammoser

Hello!

I first learned to paint here in London so my water paintings used to be of the dark, gloomy Thames river running through the city or rivers and coast in Scotland (where I first lived here in the UK). In fact I remember my very first attempt at painting the river - it was awful! Until then I had mainly painted figures and still lives, but soon became obsessed with the structures of bridges and piers along my shoreline. It was a seascape teacher at a local conservatoire who showed me how to paint light and shadow and colour of water, not lines and not what you think you see. But still, the objects and buildings were my focus.
(Hay's Gap, London Oil on board, 2001)

A few years later I spent time painting in Pouch Cove, Newfoundland (hi Jeanette!) which changed my work, in technique and vision, completely. I was snowbound on the seafront surrounded by the reflection of blue and lavender. How different was that from dark grey London? Light was like a revelation.

Now light is what my work is about. The first project really exploring the idea in depth was my Lake Michigan series, since I was born and raised in Chicago. (hi Lindsay! my parents live in Algonquin so I still visit often) The paintings first grew from studies I'd done plein air on the lakefront. But then the series became based on memories of seasons and times spent at Foster and Oak Street Beach, Belmont Harbour, and runs home from the Loop to Lakeview. This memory based work focused on mainly on light and colour more than any of my paintings previously.
(Lake Michigan study of Navy Pier, acrylic on paper, 2007)

• The gallery of the Lake Michigan paintings
  

Of course Lake Michigan is far away... and my nearer water provided a wealth of inspiration! I went to the Kent coast cycling for Christmas one year (to Deal) and realised how much subject matter was on my doorstep! Almost all of the Kent coast is within a couple hours on the train. But me being me once I have an obsession that's it, so I had to cycle and paint the whole UK coast. In time. So far I've done Kent, Sussex, the Isle of Wight, and parts of Hampshire, Yorkshire and Essex.
(Photo of studio and cycle assistant the Lt Col., at Scarborough beach on Yorkshire ride)

• The gallery of the English Coast series so far, including map of my journey!
• My blog, where I share tales of the journey and work in progress
  

Rather than paint a representation water I try to capture the way light and weather affects and reflects the water surface and sky. Part of that is because of the scientist in me; I'm fascinating by optics and colour theory and the way light works and reacts to mediums and surfaces. How movement and depth of water changes the reflections or colours seen through the surface. Unlike some of the other artists in Watermarks I'm not aiming for a sense of place, but more a sense of space.

(Slideshow: The English Coast series)

Introducing Jeanette Jobson

I live on a farm on the northeast coast of Newfoundland and you may consider that to be a strange bedfellow for an artist with aquatic leanings. However, even in farm life, the sea isn't far away and it pulls me like a magnet and has done since I was a child.

I was the water-wrinkled child pulled unwillingly from the seashore, teeth chattering with cold but still unwilling to let go of the water. I was the child unwilling to be removed from the cocoon of a warm bath, as the water had much more appeal than a towel and bed. I was the child scouring streams and rivers, 'rescuing' tadpoles and frogs and lugging them home in jam jars.

Living on this rocky island in the Atlantic, I'm surrounded by many forms of water. The landscape is dotted with ponds, lakes, rivers and streams and the ocean holds it all together. There are 29,000 kilometres of coastline in this province - enough to cross the continent four times and back.

Less than five minutes from my house I can stand at the foot of the ocean. I drive past the Atlantic every day, close enough to see it, hear it and smell it. Its funny how being surrounded by it, I take it for granted and it becomes part of my landscape without me realizing it.

I lived previously in a house in Pouch Cove that was overlooked the water, almost on the cliff edge. I could watch whales from my kitchen window or deck. On stormy nights, the sound of the waves hitting the rocky shoreline would vibrate the house gently and I always found it soothing while it worried others.

I still look to the sea to predict the weather and watch the changing light on the water and cliffs. I watch small and large boats come and go and marvel at sea life from tiny capelin to giant whales. Even the work I do is related directly to water, so something is telling me to stop resisting it and 'go with the flow'. My Piscean nature can be blamed for moving up and down stream at the same time - or at least trying to.

My background in art pushes me towards dry media as a first love, however, oils and watercolours are playing a more prominent role and often waterscapes beg for colour. Water is conducive to being reproduced in many forms from quick sketches to complex paintings, all of which capture the movement, transparency and life that makes it such a unique element.

The oil painting at the left shows an outcrop of jagged rocks in Logy Bay that are synonymous with Newfoundland's coastline and that have spelled disaster for many ships whose navigational ability was inadequate in either equipment, skills or being unable to manhandle a ship through severe weather conditions.

The movement of water around rocks is one of its most compelling features. Without the relentless waves and tides brushing against the shore, how else could we measure the ocean's strength? The ripples and light reflections created by skipping stones on ponds and lakes is measured only through the effect the stone has on the water.

I have threatened for some time to capture some of the island's watery charms and Watermarks is the push for me to do so. Newfoundland's coast and inlands are ancient, pure and full of secrets to be revealed through my eyes and hands. The pieces that I will undertake will be as much my discovery as that of those who follow me.

While my work will predominantly be based in Newfoundland my travels pull me to capturing other waters such as this sea arch in Laguna Beach, California where I visited last year. The sea arch here is similar to those found in Newfoundland and many other parts of the world. It will be interesting to compare the geological makeup and colour changes from the Pacific to the Atlantic ocean.

I have been bound to detail, being a realist, and that may come across in some pieces when I choose to intimately examine a small part of ocean life. I also want to explore the painterly side of me that will work on larger, looser pieces, perhaps finding a new style or niche as I explore the water around me in colour.

A lot of the water around me will be in a frozen lockdown for the winter, depending on how the weather decides to treat the island, so I'll be almost like a diviner, searching for pockets of open water. Or I will be exploring ice and how to capture water's frozen essence.

Spring provides crops of icebergs that float by or come to rest in bays and coves, grounded on the ocean floor. Sometimes, depending on the direction of the wind, sheets of pack ice push into the same coves and bays and bring with it seals who surface and bask in the sun. There are so many possibilities.

My blog, Illustrated Life, gives a sampling of my art, my thoughts and my life in rural Newfoundland. The creation of Watermarks and its talented members will provide room for exploration and learning.
Many thanks to its founders Vivien Blackburn, Lindsay Olsen and Katherine Tyrrell, who made this possible and invited me to join in.

There is something hypnotic about the ocean and its ceaseless movement. It is vast and cold and ever changing in terms of light and colour.

I want each piece to tell its own story, from 16th century shipwrecks to modern waterways.

I want to show you the seasons as they are reflected in the water.

I want to introduce you to other local artists who also share a love for the seascapes and coastline of this rocky place.

I want to take you to places with names that link the sea and history. Names such as Tickle Cove, Heart's Delight and Cupids conjure images of happy times while Wreck Cove, Bleak Island, Famine Point or Mistaken Point tell a different story of hardship and death. The water around me maps the roots that stretch from 15th century Europe to Newfoundland and plots the success and failure of life on this island that depended on the Atlantic ocean to exist and still does in many ways.

I hope you'll join me on my journey.

Introducing Gesa Helms

The sea is yellow, 70x50m Pastel on board

Since Lindsay sent me that email inviting me to join Watermarks, my mind had been providing more and more water-based facts, stories, incidences and connections. Like Laura, I've begun to write in water-related puns, and some of mine are definitely far worse than others.

Some of those facts, stories and connections by way of introduction.

I love the sea. Which more appropriately far too often in reality is: I would love to see the sea. It's love at a distance. Definitely when I grew up amidst fields, woods and more fields and woods. It's a bit less so since I've been living on an -admittedly rather large - island for the past 10 years.

Seascape, Monotype 25x20cm

Just yesterday, we talked about the river Clyde and its importance for the city of Glasgow. And what a small, narrow and shallow river the Clyde is. But Clydeside and Clyde Built are inextricably linked with this city, and so is the existence of the river.

There's for instance, Black is the Colour, sung here by Christy Moore



Or, the monument of La Pasionaria just down from St Enoch Square on the River banks.

I like how Katherine talks about water - the river Thames or other waterscapes - providing a sense of place. I studied geography too. But in many ways, my geography is a distinctly urban one... see above in relation to Glasgow.

And as I discovered in my recent experiments with seascapes - the sea, and my fascination with it, and in particular shorelines is much more mediated, at a distance, somewhat abstract. So, while I do have many photos of holidays spent at the sea, and sketches of the sea and shorelines, most of my sea art is from a distance.

Seabirds Swim, Ink and neo ii in Moleskine, 24x21cm

I hadn't really thought about that before but that distance is quite important. It's about 'here and elsewhere', the elsewhere being quite simply 'across the sea'. It's about being here and elsewhere and the sea, the water providing that link. It's quite a powerful link: to people, places, pasts and futures all the time while being at the seashore. Or on a ferry crossing: inbetween, neither here nor there and yet present.

Some of my seascapes in photo and fine art are in these flickr sets:

• For Photos, this set here; and
• For Fine art the set here

As for my art, much of it is mixed media with a lot of pastel, as in The sea is yellow; I've been doing more and more sketches in ink; and also been playing with printmaking processes. Yet, pastels seem to be the medium of choice to come back too.

• My blog Paint & Pastel: http://gesah.blogspot.com
• My website: http://ghelms.com

• And definitely one of my favourite artist of seascapes is Joan Eardley, see an image search here

Sanna Shores, Pastel on paper, 30x40cm

Introducing Laura Frankstone

I believe that restless spirits attend the birth of those of us born on islands and, in our lives thereafter, we are propelled by them. I started life on a tiny volcanic island in the middle of the Bering Sea, during a blizzard, literally encompassed by water. Though we left that island when I was a baby, I have carried those images of primordial water with me through my life. As an artist, I've turned and returned to watery motifs, most recently at the beginning of this year, when I embarked on an extended, multi-faceted search for water, in the face of a terrible drought in my area.

My islander's innate restlessness manifests itself in the variety of ways I've explored the topic of water and the watery life,

from fountains to sea creatures to rocky bays,

and to the trips I've taken in pursuit of water, from Hawaii to Paris to Iceland, with some stops in North Carolina creeks along the way.

As I painted and drew this year, I realized that it is NOT vast panoramas of water that interest me as an artist, though I admire this approach when it is taken by others. And I am not drawn to painting specific locales or rendering picturesque scenes.

What excites me is the play of water around rock - the old idea of the irresistible force and the immovable object,the elemental calligraphy recorded by wave, rivulet, and reflection.

In the next year, and who knows how many to follow, I aim to find and refine my personal artistic watery idiom, always hoping (and sometimes trusting) that I will be equal to the task.

Introducing Katherine Tyrrell

I've never talked about my interest in water before joining this group and starting this project. What happened while writing this post was I discovered what I do when drawing water. The back of the brain had known it all along - but now it's got the front of the brain engaged and able to explain it!

When I draw water I want to produce a sketch or a drawing that has a clear sense of "place".

A very long time ago I did a degree in geography (and also studied geology!) which used to involve me in doing a lot of thinking about very different places and then analysing them from a lot of different perspectives. It's not easy to leave all that behind! What this all means is that when I make a drawing of a place as it is today, besides the conventional artistic considerations, I also like to try and understand the place, what it represents and why it looks the way it does.

In a way I'm trying to see the story of the landscape behind the surface of what I can see.

What that means for me is that I also tend to think about water as my subject in terms of:

• where it is in the world
  
• what the water has done to the land and/or how it has influenced structures on the land
  
• how the water has influenced the importance of this place in the past
  

For example, I live in London and never forget that this city is what it is today because of the River Thames! The slideshow at the top is some images of water in London - the lakes at Kew Gardens and in St James Park and various views along the Thames starting at Westminster and finishing at the Old Royal Naval College at Greenwich - which actually stands on the ground where Henry VIII had his Palace of Placentia (see Greenwich - very nearly sitting on zero).

This is me standing on the hill at the top of Greenwich Park. It contains places with huge significance to maritime history . I'm looking at the Meridian at the Royal Observatory, the place where Greenwich Mean Time starts, the Old Royal Naval College is just behind my head down on the banks of the river and the big loop in the River Thames is just above my fringe!

I'm really passionate about drawing and sketching. I sometimes draw in pen and ink but usually draw in colour using dry media - coloured pencils and soft pastels. I often sketch scenes up and down the River Thames. On my website I have a gallery of sketches of the River Thames and London Canals - from Kew in the west to Greenwich in the east plus the lakes in the Parks and Gardens - hence the slideshow!

Here's an extract from the text which accompanied this sketch in The shoreline at Bankside on my blog Travels with a Sketchbook in......

Bankside shoreline
8" x 10", pencil and coloured pencils in Moleskine
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

Out of the picture and on the other river bank, next to the railway station was the site of the Norman fortress Baynard's Castle which stood in the southwest corner of the City of London, where the walls met the River Thames. It burned down in the Great Fire and the site is currently occupied by an awful lot of concrete. I used to have an office (on the same site) in a completely undistinguished concrete slab office block at Puddle Dock where I was based while working all over the UK in the nineties. Those bridges were the view out of my office window - so they're a very familiar sight for me.
The shoreline at Bankside

I also find that I often think about which artists have painted this place and this water before me! In the past, I've also tried to study and work out how certain painters I admire - Turner, Monet, Singer Sargent, Whistler and Winslow Homer - actually created their paintings involving water. A project I've had in mind for some time is to try and draw the Thames from the same places where people like Monet and Whistler stood to create their own artwork involving the Thames in London.

I also have a waterscapes gallery on my website devoted to various coloured pencil and pastel drawings of the watery aspects I've found on my travels in places as diverse as Big Sur in California, Cape Cod and Maine in New England, Greece, France, Venice, Bali, Singapore, Suffolk and Sussex!

Path to Nauset Beach
coloured pencils
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

I really like learning about how water varies in different places and different contexts - such as why the water becomes a deep blue off Cape Cod when the waters affected by a major hurricane in Florida are moving north - as was happening the day I visited Nauset Beach on Cape Cod. I even read Thoreau's Cape Cod to find out about how he found the beaches and the sea in his day and ended up discovering all about the phenomenal erosion rates on Cape Cod and the fact they had to move the lighthouse! (See Cape Cod National Seashore). I also visited Prouts Neck in Maine to inspect the water that Winslow Homer used to paint next to his home there! (See Travels with a Sketchbook in New England)

Vivien was the person who had the bright idea for this new project - and I've had a lot of fun with both Vivien and Lindsay in working through the logistics to get it off the ground - besides the blog we've now also got a ning community - also called Watermarks!

We're now getting underway as a group of nine artists and I hope you'll come back to see what the rest of the group are about and what we're likely to get up to in future. If you'd like to keep up with us the links to how you can subscribe are near the top of the sidebar column.

Speaking personally, I'm finding that I'm walking around at the moment having little lightbulb moments as I realise more and more things that come within the watery remit of this project.........ice skating anybody?

Links:

• Sketchblog - Travels with a Sketchbook in......
• Main blog - Making A Mark
• Website - Pastels and Pencils
  

Introducing Vivien Blackburn

I've loved the coast ever since I can remember.

When I was young we lived by the sea in Gibraltar, Cornwall, Scotland and Malta and I loved the colours and light that constantly changed with weather, time of day, season and tide.

Returning home to our house in Cornwall from visits to family 'up country', we could tell when we were getting nearer the coast long before we could see the sea, simply because of a special quality in the light. I'm sure Sarah, a member of our group who is lucky enough to live there now, (turning me viridian with envy), will confirm this :>)

The sheen of wet sand, the wild surf, the way the waves move, reflections, skies, the particular colours of a place and sense of place are what interest me.

Cornwall in all areas and all moods is my favourite county to be in and to paint. The north coast is wild and rocky. The colour of the sea here changes from vivid blue to green and silver, jade and lilac. It has caves, high cliffs and sand carved into ripples and pools by the ebbing sea. There are rock pools, reflections of the high cliffs and clouds, gulls wheeling up above and rough seas coming in straight across the Atlantic.

The colour of the rocks changes from amber to almost black as you round Lands End and head towards Cape Cornwall.

The south is gentle with flooded valleys and creeks, herons and woods that overhang the water. Inland are moors, patchwork fields, high banked hedges, full of flowers, lining incredibly narrow roads and wooded valleys

• This is a gallery of paintings of Cornwall and Norfolk
• This is a sketchbook of Cornwall and another sketchbook of Norfolk
  

North Norfolk is 100 miles away and our nearest coastline but is a total contrast to Cornwall. The beaches shelve gently and the tide goes out a very long way, leaving shallow water in pools and channels reflecting the sky, until the sand dries in the sun and wind.

The sea is also much calmer except for winter storms and the colours are often greyer or silver, sometimes muddier from the silt washed down through rich farmland that was once a vast area of marsh. In good weather the sea can still be a vivid blue. Along the edge of the beaches that stretch for miles are dunes and salt marshes.

This is a gallery of paintings of Norfolk in oil, watercolour and mixed media - done plein air on the North Norfolk coast

Leicestershire - Another strand of work associated with water is a series I started on local, inland waterways. I decided to look at the river, canals, pools and streams, making it a slow-burn, long term project that would weave in and out of other work as I had the time or opportunity.

(rough sketches testing out Inktense pencils)

Unlike the seascapes, which concentrate mainly on the quiet lonely stretches of beach that I love, the waterways project includes industrial landscapes as The Soar, our local river, and the the canal weave through the city. River and canal also weave through pleasant countryside, through villages, past medieval packhorse bridges and farmland.

• This is a gallery of waterways drawings on my website
• These are all the blog posts relating to waterways on my blog

Whilst talking about my work some time ago I realised that I like the edges of things - where water meets land, where sky meets sea, the edges of woods but never deep forests - the edge where things change.

Watermarks - the group

I thought it would be interesting to set up a group blog of like minded artists - all with our own particular interest in water, our own concerns about what and why we painted and different ways of making the marks that knit together to create our images - so the title had to be Watermarks :>)

Lindsay and Katherine agreed to be co-founders and Katherine has been wonderful with her organisational skills and technical knowledge - thank you Katherine. The 3 of us bounced my original idea about and it evolved and grew with their fantastic input into ...... this ...... far better than I could have created alone :>).

I hope you enjoy it. The members are extremely talented and with their widely different ways of working in different parts of the world it should be a fascinating journey. We've got lots of interesting things planned so ........ sign up to follow us ......... and please let us know what you think.

Links:

• Vivien's blog
  
• Vivien's website
  
• Vivien's book

Welcome to Watermarks!

Welcome to Watermarks!

Watermarks is a small community of artists who create art from water. We like to sketch, draw and/or paint all forms of water - the sea, the coastline, beaches, rivers, streams, waterfalls, fountains - in all styles, genres and media.

Left to right: Tina, Lindsay and Laura

With this brand new group blog we aim to:

• display works in progress as well as completed art
• highlight other artists (past and present) whose art involves water
• highlight exhibitions of relevant artwork and
  
• discuss media matters and tips and techniques for creating art out of water

Left to right: Ronell, Sarah and Vivien

You can find the names of the members of the group and all our blogs in the sidebar. We are (in alphabetical order):

• Vivien Blackburn - in Leicester, England
  
• Laura Frankstone - in North Carolina, USA
  
• Gesa Helms - in Glasgow, Scotland
  
• Jeanette Jobson - in Newfoundland
  
• Tina Mammoser - on the south side of the Thames, in London, England
  
• Lindsay Olson - in the Chicago area USA
  
• Katherine Tyrrell - on the north side of the Thames, in London, England
  
• Sarah Wimperis - in Cornwall, England
  
• Ronell van Wyck - in Montlouis sur Loire, France
  

Each of us will be introducing ourselves and our interest in water and, in some cases, projects we've done or are doing or have planned in posts over the next few days. Vivien is going to start as she had the original idea!

Left to Right: Gesa, Jeanette and Katherine

If you're interested and want to see what we're up to why not subscribe to this blog? You can find the subscription links near the top of the right hand column. Alternatively maybe you'd like to follow us on your Blogger blog?

We'd love to know what you think about the idea underpinning this new group and blog - and you are welcome to leave a comment below.

Thanks for reading about our new blog and we hope to see you again soon.