Please scroll below images for a text version of this posting.
Winter Surf FiendsSurf Fiends 22.02.2025
Winter Surf Fiends July 31st 2025
I sketched this idea back in late winter: on a lovely afternoon down at Marloes Sands, I hadn’t been the only person for whom the lure of the surf proved irresistible. By happy coincidence, I found that a piece of marine plywood beachcombed from the Sands suited the composition; at last, I’ve got round to realising the scene in oils. No point, this time, in taking the panel down to the beach: summer sea and sky colours are very different!
Oil on panel Original sketch February 22nd 2025 16” x 32” Painted July 2025
Please scroll below images for a text version of this posting.
Dive
Dive detail
Dive July 25th 2025
You could say, another in my Blue Series – if that doesn’t seem too pretentious! Admittedly we don’t ever enjoy sea water clarity such as I have depicted around these shores; and, I think that such conditions would be bad news for some marine wildlife, So, this is where Artistic Licence has a part to play. I know that an expert watercolourist could create this visual effect, but I’d be afraid of overworking, and turning the colours muddy: oils let you gradually find your way.
Please scroll below image for a text version of this posting.
Cartwheels
Cartwheels July 22nd 2025
This girl and her sister have Indian ancestry, I assume, with their rich skin colouring and hair looking blue-black in the summer sun. Perhaps they both learn traditional dancing because each has a great awareness of their balance and pose as natural gymnasts but, also, between moves, they strike poses with hand gestures one might see on temple carvings. Of course this sketch isn’t accurate; but it’s good exercise for any artist, trying to “freeze-frame” a fast and most graceful motion.
For a text version of this posting, please scroll below the image.
High Jump
High Jump July 19th 2025
The irregular shape gives it away: a piece of plywood from a wrecked yacht, found on Marloes Sands some time back. The blue paint spattered on it unevenly had suggested bubbles, streaming up; one recent hot afternoon I set this board up on my easel in a shady part of the garden, and got to work. Getting the compostion right took much standing well back, and checking with a mirror; I don’t think the figures want any more detailing, as this picture needs to be viewed from a reasonable distance.
To see this posting in text format, please scroll below the image.
Pottering
Pottering July 18th 2025
This girl was supposed to be leaving the beach: it was home time, and the tide was returning. But like many children, she had so many things left to do: their beaches are always busy places. So, regardless, out into the shallows to rinse the sand off a piece of driftwood, and see how that made it look… with no sense of urgency, naturally. In the end she splashed her way round the rocks, following her father who carried her younger brother slung across his shoulders, out of the reach of the waves.
Black Conté & pencil Sketched July 13th 2025, Musselwick Sands 6” x 6”
Yesterday’s drizzly grey sky cleared in time for the afternoon low tide. You don’t spurn such opportunities – so, to Musselwick Sands for a swim. As I was walking back along the beach, from a large family group having great fun in the waves came one girl, who sat herself at the sea’s edge… I don’t normally try doing fast sketches in full colour, but luckily I had the wherewithal: such a wonderful contrast, with the bay’s blues and greens so strong thanks to the air having been recently rain-washed. She wasn’t there long, looking out to sea; you can see from the marks how I hurried. I think the cropped composition is best – although with that red catching the eye so, one might manage a painting with the figure small in a great expanse of beach. The title works nicely in Welsh: Gwisg Goch
Today’s sketch – from the imagination, of course. Very late, I know, but I have just finished planting my potatoes and I usually gather seaweed to lay between the rows: technically it may not be much of a manure, but it definitely enhances the flavour of potatoes; tomatoes, too. Having been looking at some art books recently, I had the idea of portraying a typical coastal village children’s task in previous generations: seaweed was free, so it must be fetched for the kitchen garden in large quantities. Quite a few artists of the later Victorian/Edwardian era well portrayed busy children: one feels for those girls in their heavy long dresses, probably the same patched handmedown worn every day except perhaps Sundays! As for the mothers, many of whom felt obliged to put their daughters in starched white pinafores, regardless of how grubby their work… The Newlyn artists Stanhope Forbes and Harold Harvey typically showed girls charged with looking after their younger siblings or doing lighter tasks such as gathering apples; but George Clausen’s subjects raked hay, picked stones, and joined in with other tough jobs like gleaning. And the photographer Frank Meadow Sutcliffe certainly showed the hard side of life around Whitby from an early age.
The lower sketch, done yesterday, hadn’t worked so well because the poses weren’t right; today’s effort, though completed faster, works better I think because I carefully worked out the “framing” of the figures before clothing them. Plus, those forward leans give a better impression of effort. Maybe a painting one day…?
