Portraiture course: week 4
Working in oils this week, with a new model.
By the end I looked like Mel Gibson in Braveheart. Note to self: less paint on me, more on the canvas.
Darks and mid-tones coming along. Next week those tricky lights!
Getting grumpier
On week three of my portraiture course I chose the challenging ‘head on’ view. Which is my excuse for why our cheery model looks so very miserable.
Ran out of time to fix that hand!
No Nudes
My faces are often a bit dodgy, so I’m doing a portraiture course (before you ask, that is the type without naked people.) Here are the results of week 1 & 2.
Why bother with Whitstable?
The Old Neptune pub, Whitstable
Why? Because it’s the finest place on the North Kent coast. Although, I will admit it’s the only place I’ve ever been to on the North Kent coast.
When I set out with the intention of sketching in Broadstairs, somewhere on the M2 I fell into a deep trance. I heard a ghostly rattle of oyster shells, the distant creek of beach hut doors, then a faint aroma of dead fish, and knew… Broadstairs would have to wait.
Mounds of empty Oyster shells rise out of the mist. Known as cultch, they are put back in the estuary, providing an ideal surface for the baby oysters to attach themselves to, helping to form new oyster reefs.
I last visited Whitstable about 10 years ago, arriving in a sleepy little fishing town and waking up to the mania of the Whitstable Oyster festival. The town has lots of hidden nooks and crannies, and some of the best bits are easy to miss, so use a map.
The sea looked so inviting on that trip, so I bought a hideous yellow speedo swimming costume from a bargain bin, only to find that the sea was ankle deep, even half a mile out.
Whitstable. Bring your own swimwear.
The cement factory. Something completely different. With beach huts.
To learn more about Whitstable, read Sarah Waters’ novel ‘Tipping the Velvet,’ there’s only a brief mention, but you may learn something new.
The Oyster festival is on between 25th and 31st July 2015.
The colour of fear
Porthminster beach, St Ives
St Ives Harbour – pen and ink
Be warned that there is a dark underworld of gull-gangs hanging out in St Ives.
They swig bootleg cider and place bets on whether tourist scalp has more protein than Cornish pasty. Then feed endlessly off both between 12 and 2pm every day.
My advice is NEVER sketch near someone eating a Cornish pasty in St Ives. Not unless you have a bucket and several heavy duty wet-wipes to clear up the mess. I know from experience.
So ferocious they mess with your brain
The intense lightning storms over the UK this week started here in the South West.
I would have loved to sketch them, but it’s hard to mix up a good ivory black when you are cowering behind the sofa!
St Ives Harbour
After all that drama, you might think those vivid colours were a result of adrenaline rush, but the light here is truly something else. Even a grim misty morning blazes with an eerie quality.
“The Island” from Barnoon cemetery
It’s not surprising that this landscape inspired an art movement.
I took a trip to Barnoon cemetery to find fisherman and self taught painter Alfred Wallis.
His grave is beautifully tiled by Bernard Leach. I was moved by this tribute to a man whose honest paintings, with their wacky perspective, inspired the early St Ives artists.
Pencil in the mizzle
The morning after the storms
cmoorelife 