Having chosen my personal theme, I wanted to get straight into making some sketches as this aspect of the course probably causes me the most anxiety. Whilst I can draw, I have always hated sketching in public and have a problem drawing in a sketchbook. Rather than let this become a barrier to starting the course I have decided not to worry about a bound sketchbook and instead take with me pages from various paper pads held by bulldog clips on a wooden drawing board.
To start me off I completed some simple pencil drawings of shells I have at home. The shells were picked up during a recent walk at Folkestone and I particularly liked the broken nature of the shells with the holes and rough edges.
The next weekend I went down to St Margaret's Bay; the sun was out and it was low tide so the rock pools were exposed. I sat on a bench by the seafront and made a sketch of the cliff edges. The vegetation here comes right up to the cliff edge and small outbuildings sit on lawns. At the base of the cliffs rock falls can be seen from the erosion of the cliff face by the sea.
Over at the rock pools the wind and sun were making fascinating patterns on the surface of the pools. The surface was flat near the sheltered part of the pool and then mini oval wave patterns were catching the light from the sun. In the pool the colours were mainly different shades of green from the algae and seaweed but in this particular pool there was a line of vivid blue being reflected and patches of orange and yellow. I made the pencil sketch below as I had not brought any coloured pencils with me.
The colours and patterns made by the reflected light and waves played on my mind when I got home so I decided to develop my sketch and produce some coloured images. For the first drawing I used pastels on a green ground. Whilst this caught some of the colours and pattens, it did not show the translucent nature of the pools or give an impression of depth.
I then tried using acrylic inks. I liked this result better, as it is brighter and gives the impression of the water and reflected light.
I decided to try to take forward my rock pool images by stylising the shapes more and emphasising the reflective depths of the pools. I therefore tried cutting quite bold shapes out of coloured tissue paper and sticking it to cellophane to give a shimmering effect. The photographs did not bring out the boldness of the colours as I tried to catch both the tissue paper and the cellophane. A happy accident in this picture is the texture created by the drying glue on the tissue and the effect it gives of the wind blowing across the pool.
I then created another picture, introduced more colour and struck down a thread which had been soaked in a PVA glue/water mix to bring out the water pattern from the original sketch.
During my next visit to the coast to overcome a creative block, I decided to look at the buildings and pier. I therefore visited Eastbourne, which has real childhood memories for me of days spent going onto the pier and walking up and down the esplanade. As a child this was our special place to visit as it was a bit further from home and therefore involved a longer car journey. We were lucky to have good weather on the day we visited and this is a pencil sketch of the camera obscura building.
When I got home I went over the sketch with black ink, as I think it really brings out the architectural details of the railings etc.
I then added some pencil shading to add form.
Until this visit to Eastbourne I had forgot how long and wide the esplanade was and how the buildings at the seaside front were quite grand whilst those on the side streets quite modest. I had taken some photographs of the buildings and an idea began to form to produce a drawing of a street plan with the building laying horizontial and the perspective wrong. My initial drawing and the details are below:
As I go through the next few weeks I will develop these into a drawing and post the result.
