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ANTON of Gibraltar
ANTON of Gibraltar July 27th 2025
A hairdresser? A famous chef? A businessman with a shady past? Actually, an oil/chemical tanker, built in 2010 and previously named HEATH and before that SARAH DEE. She was anchored off Musselwick Sands yesterday, having left Antwerp on July 24th. IMO number 9514456, length 123m, according to AIS destined for Milford Haven. Not an attractive vessel; alas, few ships are these days. But there, so I sketched her.
Black Conté stick, pencil, and fine black biro Page size A4 July 26th 2025
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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.
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Gateholm and Skokholm
Gateholm and Skokholm July 20th 2025
Not so many people know this scene – Albion Sands at high tide, viewed from low level. There’s a simple reason: whilst the water looks so placid, just to my left it was rushing past, creating a fierce tide race you’d never fight, were you to try taking a swim. However, as you will see from my notes, the sea colours made the scramble down and across to this vantage point worthwhile; so, if I can work out a better composition (some foreground interest?), it could be worth hauling all the painting gear to this spot.
Charcoal, pencil, graphite sticks July 13th 2025 Size A4
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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”
To England in a heatwave, at the beginning of the month, attending the funeral of one of my mother’s schoolfriends, who marvellously made it to the age of 102, still keeping up with the news and every event in the farming year. The poem (keep scrolling down) records that occasion: I drafted it sitting in the shade enjoying the view, having been up to the ancient earthworks with my sketchbook… It subsequently got quite a lot of editing!
White Horse Hill, July 4th 2025
This above is straight from my sketchbook: Conte pencil, coloured pencil, and graphite pencil. The colours are all light: first, it was so bright that day; also, that sketching paper doesn’t have enough “tooth” to build up a lot of pigment. So below is a computer-adjusted rendition, giving you a better idea of what I actually saw.
White Horse Hill adjusted
WHITE HORSE HILL Written July 4th 2025 Summoned to a remembrance in The Vale, I came hours early.
Time needed to climb to the Ridgeway, Walk to the White Horse – Which I had last looked down on with my father, Fifty-seven years ago, aged ten: Could I refresh that distant picnic?
Delighted to hear yellowhammers again, The chalkland hot-breezed me past its blue and purple wildflowers, And pale orchids Which I also never see on the western coast, Until there they were: Those stark white sculpts, Flowing over the hillside like a fox’s flight.
And beyond this pagan mystery, Below in the Thames plain, The Christian octagon of Uffington church: A stone She, queening The meadows and browning barley, The coverts and windbreak trees, All that stretching hedgerow geometry…
Until furthest, by distance smoked blue, The Cotswolds – Which, when younger, I knew so well.
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Beacon Moon
Beacon Moon June 16th 2025 We’ve enjoyed some quite dramatic moonrises, recently; coincidentally, I have been working on moon-themed painting ideas. This one uses foreshortening – if you prefer, the telephoto effect. The great advantage that Artistic Licence gives over camera work is – maybe they CAN touch the moon, if they climb the trig pillar and really, really stretch on tiptoe! And, next week, we will reach the night of Midsummer dreams… 6B pencil on paper Size A4
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
A quintet from the Royal Northern College Of Music: Chloe Chen (cello), David Harris (violin), Alexandra Harrison (viola), Thomas Judge (double bass), and Asia Movsovic (piano). They played a belter of a fundraiser gig yesterday evening in the Lobster Pot Inn, Marloes – some pure classics, plus very catchy “classic conversions” of Abba, The Beatles… And after a break they were belting out requests. What a wonderful treat for our village, and our visitors!
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…?
