Seaweed 2

There's more!

But first, a couple of seascapes - trying to capture the colours

and now the seaweeds...I think this one could be translated into a fabulous felted scarf, all waves and undulations:

And now the first of the "paddling" sketches

I tried blind contour drawing, where you look at what you are drawing and not your page.  I used a sharp pencil and added the black fineline and the paint when I got back to the tent.

Because the beach is just such a huge expanse of sand, the tide comes in and goes out very quickly - so the seaweed is constantly moving, swirling gently in the currents.  It makes it challenging to draw, but I love these little paintings:

This is what it looks like before I add the paint

Bit faint, nevermind.

Thus emboldened, I tried a crab.  It was alive and I had to mind my toes

and I found it hard to keep track of how many legs it had.

Here is my favourite part of the beach, about 1km from the dunes, where the low tide is at it's furthest point, and where the sea comes round the little island and meets itself, creating fabulous cross-ripples

We also drew in the sand with shells, which was incredible.  Try it!  It is so easy to create fabulous flowing patterns, I'm almost tempted to construct a sandpit at home so I can do some more.  It's either that or looking a twat at Newhaven, and everywhere else round here is shingle!

I forgot the camera so I had to redraw my sand drawing into my sketchbook

I've no idea what this little creature is, but I think it would make a great felt sculpture

I discovered that I can't draw seagulls

and I need to work on my swallows

Finally, here's one from another sketchbook using paper collage.  I added to it today and I'm rather pleased with the result

I am so pleased with all that I did on holiday, and only wish that I'd done more - but injured whippets weren't able to run on the beach in case the "wound" got sandy, so we lost a fair number of days to that.  There's always next year...

When I wasn't falling asleep or sketching, I read two books that really helped with the knotty problem of daring to put pencil to paper.  Actually, one of them is still being read - and the other is going to be re-read very soon.

If I can sort out my Amazon sidebar, I'll put the links up.  The first book is "Art and Fear" by David Bayles and Ted Orland, and the second is "The Confident Creative" by Cat Bennett.  Highly recommended!