sketching at the beach

quick sketch of moving figures in watercolour, pencil, biro and coloured pencil copyright Vivien Blackburn


Yesterday I went to the coast to deliver the work to the Neptune gallery. My husband went with me and I decided to sketch - not a good idea! It's not the same as going with friends who also paint - I was conscious of having to hurry up so he wouldn't be bored, the beach was busy with bank holiday visitors, who constantly walked in front of me, moved, put up windbreaks or tents or took them down just as I was going to sketch them ..... not ideal !

So I only got this quick sketch done ... not good, a very bad composition as I just sketched people when they held a position long enough and they are both looking out to the left. I didn't have time to consider properly and even though I had my back to the seawall, people came to look, which is distracting. (excuses excuses!) I thought I'd post it just to prove that I did manage to get a bit of sketching done. :)

I've added the photo to show how photos don't give you all the information - the scene was brightly backlit and so the camera shows the breakwater as intensely dark with no detail - in fact, though it was dark, the cracks in the wood and the grain were interesting and there was a greeniness of ?algae. The wide angle lens doesn't see distances the same as the human eye (I did move some things around a little in the sketch) but like the green in the breakwater, some subtle colour changes aren't there as I saw them. (the people are all strangers, husband was sitting next to me chilling out :) )

It was a lovely hot sunny day though and it was just so nice to be by the sea, even on a busy beach, when I prefer isolated quiet ones.

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