Beer

Beer is a lovely little seaside town in West Dorset. It's also a working harbour though, only without the harbour; all the fishing boats get hauled up onto the shingle beach by winches. The boats themselves are very characterful and an easy target for sketching. This started off as a drawing with my brushpen but I decided to colour it up once as it turned out OK.

I quite like watercolouring on this cheap cartridge paper. The paint stays fluid for quite a while and I'm not so precious about the paper so I get more done. Only problem is the paper buckles badly so I've got myself some heavier weight stuff to work with.

This pic is all very twee, make a good postcard, but there's still some good stuff going on with the paint which I was happy with.

West Bay

Back in Dorset. Lovely place lovely weather. I promised myself I'd try to capture something of the crazy cliffs in West Bay and Burton Bradstock. all this area was a river delta millions of years ago and the ebb and flow of the water has resulted in really striking strata. Add some uplifting (?) and erosion and you get something very unique. It feels like the setting of the closing sequence of Planet Of The Apes "You maniacs! You blew it up! God damn you! God damn you all to

hell!" As so well re-enacted by Alberto G' V' when we were there last year.
I made a few attempts with varying success. I quite like the graphicy one but either way you get the idea.

Holycombe

We visited holycombe for my daughter's birthday http://www.hollycombe.co.uk/. It's an amazing collection of steam machines and engines going back 150 years or so. The centrepiece is a fully working steam powered fairground which looked fantastic in the sunshine and is surprising fun but I was really drawn to the rusty old industrial iron in the repair yard. This is, I'm told, the last steam crane used on british railways, oooh! fancy that.

Graveyards

I spent some time in graveyards this weekend, another great place to put things in perspective:-) Anyway, once I was suitably humbled I got sketching. Graveyards are interesting places to paint, nice mixture of hard structers and organic stuff. However, despite the potential I didn't really come back with much to look at.
I did discover that painting without drawing first (at least less than I normally do) can be surprisingly rewarding and is something I will try more of. It could be a good way to being more free with the paint.

The Rec'

The last effort for this weekend. A view of the old manor house over the beech hedge to the side of Elstead recreation ground. This sort of subject matter seems to suit me even if it doesn't especially excite me. I would like to be looser and more expressive with paint but I still incline towards drawing and 'colouring in'. I'm working on it though, so watch this space.

Chindhurst Hill

We went for a trek up Chindhurst hill to take in the glorious May sunshine. I tried a few times to pin down what was happening with the trees across from me. I found it hard to identify the hues and this was the third and best attempt. I think the image is nice enough but I would have done better after couple of trys. You'll have to take my word that the green of the backlit ferns really was that vivid, amazing. BTW, all of these recent watercolours are A5.

Hens

I keep three hens in the garden. They're pretty dim but are nice to have around and begging to be sketched. Unfortunately they spent most of their time with their arse in the air and head in the ground and the rest of the time were too quick for me.