A Saturday in January

Just got in from "road testing" my new prochade box.  I did the coast path from Sennen to Mill Bay and back, about 5 miles in total with lots of painting stops to thoroughly test the kit.

This is the first sketch, it was a very cold day but absolutely beautiful, clear sky and blue sea.  The cliffs round Lands End are high and very rocky with dramatic views of the sea below.  I could spend days painting there.

The prochade box was ordered on Wednesday and arrived on Thursday and I am most impressed with it.  It looks great and holds just the right amount of kit.  I have my old rucksack with another little kit for watercolours, gloves and waterproof trousers, flask etc.  All in all a great way to spend a Saturday in January, well it beats shopping!

Afternoon on the Water

The best things seem to happen without being planned.  I had worked all morning and was walking the dog, down through the woods, into the little village of Helford then up past the Sailing Club when I was ambushed and persuaded to go out on our little boat.

What a beautiful day, sun sparkling on the water, a light breeze.  I found some old watercolour crayons, some paper, and a scrappy old brush, the dogs bowl for water and did some sketching.  It soon gave way to a bit of dozing in the sun, sipping white wine from an old tin mug and generally relaxing.

We saw a flock of gannets falling out of the sky over and over again, diving on mackerel.  We saw dolphins leaping through the water, so fast, in joyful packs.

Big Dave does all the work, reefing jibs and hauling mainsails, I am still telling myself that I will learn to sail one day, too busy drawing right now, oh yes and snoozing, and being generally lazy.  We sailed right across the bay to Falmouth, where we went ashore, like salty sea dogs and had a supper of the finest fish and chips from Rick Stine's fish restaurant and then a beer overlooking the harbour.

   We came home just as the sun was dipping behind the trees on the Helford river, bowing out on the longest day of the year.

Watermarks around Mont-Saint-Michel

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

• Le Mont St Michel
• From sketchbook to studio

Sketch and drawing studies of Mont-Saint-Michel
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

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

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

photos of Normandy coastline around Mont-Saint-Michel
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

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

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

Frozen sketches

Its -12C with a windchill of -26 and I'm standing on the edge of a cliff at 7:45am watching the sun rise over the Atlantic ocean. Passing motorists think I'm insane and I'm thinking that they are the insane ones because they're missing something wonderful and only catching a glimpse out of the corner of their eye. I'm frozen. Partially with the cold and partially because I can't tear myself away from the view.

The cold wind finally wins and I head back into my car, having jotted down some basic shapes of land and sea with my Rapidograph, as well as taken some photos to confirm colours in my head for later. I add more detail in the car then put it away, waiting for my day at work to be over so I can really do something with this. Sketches serve as reminders of scenes and inspiration when I need to go back for reference for a painting.

I've been considering a series of photos taking them at the same place at a similar time each day for a few weeks or perhaps a month, to really get a sense of how the light affects the land and the water. As I drive past the water each day to get to work, it would take me a little longer to fight getting back into the mainstream of traffic, but worth it, I think, to help me understand the water and how better to draw or paint it.

Of course this time of year, its not great in terms of temperatures, especially this week, but warming up in a day or two.

This sketch is a view over the bay in Torbay, the next town to where I live. Torbay holds lots of inspiration for drawing and painting with places such as Tapper's Cove, once called Treasure Cove because of its association with pirate John Nutt and is supposedly haunted by a black dog and a little boy. Or Gallow's Cove, again associated with pirating or stories created around it.
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The community of Torbay experienced three French Campaigns the first of which occurred in December 1696. These invasions contributed to the eventual construction of the Torbay Battery in 1781, which was manned by 25 troops from the 71^st Regiment and Royal Artillery. The ordinance was eventually withdrawn in 1795.

The name Torbay comes from an area of the same name in Devonshire, England and was first mapped in 1615 by John Mason. The word is, of course well
known, being the old Anglo-Saxon "Tor" which means a tower, and in a secondary way, a tall cone-like mountain, presenting some appearance of a tower. Both places are geographically similar with wide-open bays that face in a generally northeasterly direction. An extract from Bishop Field's Journal states, "indeed there seems to be a little colony of Devon folk in Torbay."

Training Session

Right, I am off training, keeping myself artistically fit.  It is a very cold winter afternoon.  The wind is howling and it will be dark soon.  I have dashed out to get my "fix" of the sea.  First of all scramble to the top of the cliff, it is a great view from there but when I get there it is way too windy to attempt to draw.  I struggle with my back pack and find my little camera, snap a few pictures of the surf.  It looks and sounds great from up here but the pictures don't do it justice.  So I call the dog, voice lost on the wind, she sees me flapping about and follows me back down to the beach.
It is high tide so there is no beach but I find a space to sit, out of the wind, tucked in between some rocks.  Now I wait and watch.  Trying to see, trying not to assume I concentrate on looking.  After doing this staring thing for a while I feel as if I have waves in my head, I am at one with the wave and have become flotsam and jetsum!  So suitably zenned up I get out my scraps of cardboard and start to draw.
I am using big pens and bits of cardboard box, sometimes I believe it is necessary to just look and draw, not for any other reason than to train.  Yes, that's it, training.  Like a runner or a swimmer would train hard all the time to keep fit, to try to be better. This is what an artist must do.  Out early or after work, fit it in... this is my training.
So that I keep on my toes and don't get fooled into doing anything other than looking and drawing I try using other materials, don't get precious about paper, this isn't for sale, not even to show anyone (except I have just shown you)  
Draw on anything, make your hand do what you want it to do, look more at what you see and less at your drawing, soak it up and breathe it in.  This is why making art is so good for you.  How can you worry about anything when you have to become so absorbed in your subject?

After a while I am too cold and need to head home where I will try to get some of the waves out of my head and into a painting.

Sketching as shorthand - the Dorset coast

For my first post on Watermarks I thought it serendipitous that I've just been on my latest cycle journey for my English Coast project. So last week I cycled part of the Dorset coast, from Poole to Swanage to Lulworth Cove to Weymouth and finally a whole day on Portland Isle. (Which I admit I didn't cycle, I walked the circular coast path around the island. Shh! Don't tell.)

I've posted some landscape-ish sketches on my my regular blog here but thought I would share the water based sketches here. Now the sketches I do are in a small passport-sized sketchbook (rather like a moleskine but much cheaper from Muji) and are very very quick unless it's summer. Heck, even then it can be too cold to sketch for long! Since I take a zillion photographs the sketches aren't to capture exact images but more as a visual shorthand so I can remember which elements of the view I would like to capture or emphasise in a painting. Often it's strong light and shadow, or combinations of horizontal lines.


First is my idea from Portland Island - the combined horzontals of the layers of Portland Stone in the cliff, the stretch of Chesil Beach (that strip of land you see on the water - it connects between Weymouth and Portland), and then haze of the mainland in the distance. I want to simplify all those lines into a flat composition.



Next is Poole Harbour. This is a funny one because I've been to Poole before and it was covered in haze. Wouldn't you know, it was again! But this time it was also low tide so I had a great view of the huge stretches of mud. My sketches were to quickly catch the texture and the different shades of haze at the horizon just in case the photos didn't quite get what my eyes saw.


And finally the rough seas at Portland Bill. I loved this and have been waiting for crashing windy waves like this for my whole project! Right out on the edge of the rocks at the lighthouse I took another zillion photos of the waves (never quite getting the full effect you see, of course a photo never will). There was an amazing hour of light with the sun beaming through but I knew the photos would get that. But what I pondered as I sketch in the pub was how to get that force and power? How to express the rising of those masses of water? So these couple of sketches aren't even shorthand but more experiments in hard movement, looming shadow, trying to get a sense of looming. These are as close as I get to purely abstract instinctive drawing. Just going for a feeling.