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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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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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Photo Monterey Aquarium
Crystal Girl
Crystal Girl June 23rd 2025 There has been a recent influx of Crystal Jellyfish; rather like Comb Jellies, these seem too insubstantial to survive, at first sight. Colourless, transparent except for fine white radial lines – but apparently spectacular in ultraviolet light! This is not my original drawing, which was in pencil, but a photo manipulation of its negative image, simulating an early technique which predated the plate camera: the Cyanotype. Original sketch pencil on white paper June 2025 Size A4 (Cropped)
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Reluctant Sun
Reluctant Sun zoom
Reluctant Sun Shortly after I sketched “The Red Costume”, in rolled quite dense clouds. Later that day, the sun was briefly showing; that inspired this sketch. I was remembering childhood beach visits when Mum didn’t want us to go in the sea because, our accommodation being pretty basic, she worried about not being able to dry our rinsed towels and costumes. So the deal would be, ‘You can swim if the sun comes out.’ And, of course, any faint glimpse of brightness up there and one of my sea-keen sisters would be racing towards the ocean!
Pencil, graphite stick, coloured pencils, and Conté pencil 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
I can’t help mulling over various energy issues. This sketch arose from a recent meeting with an inventor friend whose electronic device matches the output of a solar PV array to a heating load such as an immersion heater, under any conditions. It is relatively simple, and operates “off grid” – no connection to the electricity mains: I like that!
(See previous post) When the girl had come so far up the tideline, she stopped and looked out to the sea for so long, her family caught her up; so, I had time for this sketch. I wondered, was this the last day of the holidays? She and the “oldies” were delighted to see both sketches. One day, I might work out how to combine both sketches in one painting!
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…?
From August last year (2024). Conte pencils can set ideas down quickly, perhaps with more “personality” than graphite pencil. And with judicious rubbing, you can produce a good area of mid tone. The tricksy wind was making the bowling erratic, and the fielding hard work too!