It started with a Sketch. “Sea Gazing”, the work in Progress

It started with a fleeting glimpse of winter light over the sea with a heavy sky, a snapshot put to memory whilst walking the cliff path between Summerleaze and Crooklets Beach  on a winters afternoon in January.

Quick watercolour sketch from memory , the starting point

I wanted it on a large scale and put some initial colour down on a piece of unstretched canvas. The canvas was thenstretched and measured 130 x 110 cm, so I found myself straddling it when it wasn’t on the easel.  I like to move the paint around and let it do it’s own thing; create surprises and happy accidents

As I started painting, the perspective just wasn’t right and it was sending mixed messages.  Don thought it was the middle of the breakwater and I could see that would work, so several photographs later, I changed the angle completely and decided to record the progress.

1.  Added some rocks to left and drippy foreground
2. Depth to the sea, highlights to sky and sea and different rocks. The perspective was wrong.
3. I added the breakwater base and worked on the cliffs and mid ground rocks, highlighting.
4. The bigger pebbles of the back of the breakwater added and more work on the sea and highlights to horizon
5. Definition to the water and foreground and softening the light on the sea and Finished!

Loose Foreground developing

Adding rocks and sea changes

Changing the rocks and adding breakwater foreground

Highlights to the rocks and creating pebbles

Movement in the waves and finished

Completed only four days before the show opening, it is now hanging at the Willoughby Gallery, The castle as part of my solo exhibition titled “The View From The Shore” on until the 16th May.

“Sea Gazing” 130 x 110cm on canvas

 

“Tom’s Wave”

“Toms Wave” has been delivered to my son, so its safe for me to post it here now. He had no idea I was bringing it with me on my last visit and was really chuffed.  He loves it and it looks great in his airy flat.  It really was a loose painting, dripping, smudging and dragging using big sweeping arm movements which needed to be very confident and bold.

“Toms Wave” – a promised piece of Art for my son

Part of me thinks I could have taken it further, but it would have become much tighter and lost some of the freshness and energy in the movement.  Up close there are lovely areas where the ink had mixed into the wet acrylic and where the drizzle had left its own marks after I had left it outside. (forgot to take photos before I left it.. sorry!)

Phalto Blue  (green shade) has become a favourite addition to my colour palette but I have to be careful not to use too much.  It really lifts all the other blues into a beautiful turquoise but gives lovely contrast to darker blue mixes.

 

Two paintings sold at exhibition

Wow!  Did I get a lovely surprise today….. Two of my paintings at the “An Eye To Cornwall” exhibition have sold, and they are the biggest ones too.  I feel mixed emotions.  These two paintings were my most recent and I was not really ready to part with them.  Having put so much time, energy and emotion into painting them, I was still quite attached to them.  In common with many painters, each new painting is always the best!!         My one regret is that I didn’t put SAE’s on the back so that purchasers can let me know where the paintings have gone, so if you are reading this and you kindly bought “Dancing Surf on an Incoming Tide” or “The Brilliance of Gorse 2 – Wanson Mouth”, would you please drop me an email or a note to let me know.  The purchasers must have been visitors to the area, as the paintings have been taken down and replaced with two others.