HCRart Travel : Beach

Showing posts with label Beach. Show all posts

First off, forgive the silly title; I can't resist a pun.

Last weekend I took a trip up the coast and did my first outdoor watercolour sketch of the year. On reflection, I should really be taking more advantage of the current, surreal heatwave conditions the UK is having but I have been out in it a lot, just not actually painting. I have a tan to prove it - an odd one where my hands are a few shades darker than the rest of my skin - but a tan nonetheless.

The location of my outdoor painting was a small village on the east coast of Scotland called Inverbervie. It's south of Aberdeen and north of Dundee to give some general spatial idea of the geography. On setting off to Inverbervie it was really warm and sunny but not long after I arrived at the village's bay, fog started to arrive. Well, to be more accurate, a haar (sea fog), which was slowly drifting across the water and towards the coast.

Things like that are one of the reasons I enjoy sketching outdoors so much - you never know what will happen. Weather is so interchangeable which can create lots of changes to lighting, visibility, and shadows etc. This affects how a scene is depicted in any art.

On this occasion, it made me sketch my fine-liner pen landscape image somewhat quicker than I'd intended. By the time I'd finished the haar's persistence lessened up a bit.

I then got going with adding the colour using one of my trusted travel sets of watercolour paints. I can't believe I hadn't painted in watercolour for so long before the weekend! Despite not having painted outdoors for ages, I drifted into a wonderful creative flow. It's definitely a sort of meditative state as even though I'm consciously moving my head up and down to switch between the landscape view and the view of my sketchbook, I'm fully focused on painting and nothing else around distracts me. It really helps the sense of being completely in the present moment, very mindful if you're into psychology like I am.

The subject of my sketch was the unusually shaped hills approaching the cliff-bordered coastline. Due to the heatwave, much of the green in the landscape was more of an ochre. Landscapes really speak volumes about what's going on around them; another reason I love painting the natural world!

Notice I'm stood facing away from the camera so as to hide the awkward patch of sunburn on one of my legs...! My Scottish skin is clearly not used to the heatwave climate.

Here are some more photos from the trip:

Walking on a pebble beach is a great workout. It's like being on an unstructured cross trainer!

I want to go explore this another time. Another interest of mine is "urbex" which means urban exploration. The above structure looks like a great place for it!

With the dissipating of the haar, the dense blue of the sky got ever richer.

Hope you enjoyed this wander along the beach, for more of my art, follow my mostly daily-updated Instagram account @HCRart. Not on IG? No problem. I also use Facebook and Twitter

Hx

Sketching at Inverbervie bay

This place lovely place to be; perfect for walking, picnics, and, naturally, sketching. There were also a number of people fishing in the sea. Much as I enjoy fresh fish, however, fishing has never appealed to me. There's no way I'd have the patience for it. Even more so if I was hungry at the time!

For the painting I did here, I chose a general view of the bay from a conveniently placed number of large rocks which made for a reasonably comfy seat and table for my paints and water pot. I used a few wee pebbles from the beach to prop up my watercolour box and I was all set.

The thing that was most troublesome while painting was, as is pretty standard in Scotland, moving clouds changing the light every so often. This is always annoying but I've become quite used to it by now. I usually go with the most flattering light and try to work from memory when the light is obscured by the pesky clouds!

Here are some pics showing various progress stages of my painting.

In the final moments of painting it got a bit chilly but once I'd finished the sun came out again so I went for a stroll along the pebble-y beach to warm up. It's so calming walking along a beach, looking out to sea and seeing the vast stretch of water all around.

I liked this fishing boat planter. Great way to re-use an old boat.

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On Sunday I took a trip to St Cyrus beach for a walk and, naturally, ended up sketching too. This beach is one of the hidden delights of Scotland. It's entirely hidden from the main road and is gotten to by a single track road winding through farms. Once you arrive at the car park the beach is still hidden from view and is reached by a foot trail over protected natural environment and up over sand dunes where you are greeted with the stretch of sand and sea.

When I arrived I was surprised that the place was so busy; the car park was full and there were cars parked at the side of the narrow country road too. This was unusual for a beach in this part of Scotland especially on a breezy, Sunday evening. While walking towards the beach there was a continual stream of people coming back from the coast. Some had large, cameras with professional-looking telephoto lenses. Puzzled, I asked one if there was a reason it was so busy and they replied that there was a humpback whale which had been swimming near the coast. Ooh, I thought, that would be great to see!

Once I reached the beach, I noticed some people had brought camping chairs to it on while using binoculars to keep an eye on happenings in the sea.

Unfortunately I did not have binoculars nor a decent camera so I didn't spot anything.

Instead I sketched some other subjects in the area. A beach is not somewhere I would have chosen to sketch much in the past as I'd have considered the main thing to sketch to have been sand and water, the 'ebb and flow' of the tide. This is not something the would be easy to sketch in pen! Recently I have been making myself look deeper at what I see around me, however, and see shapes and textures to sketch I would have, in the past, thought not to be of much interest. Having this view of my surroundings means I can find things to sketch everywhere and never have an excuse to not pause, embrace what is around me, and try to capture a snapshot of it with my pen on paper.

The first sketch I started was this one of the cliffs which are significantly set back from the coast due to changing tides over hundreds of years. It fascinates me how the landscape has changed so much with time. I thinks that's one reason I like coastlines so much and am appreciative of the fact I don't live in a landlocked country.

Climbing over the sand dunes and approaching the beach.

I may not have seen the humpback whale, but I did see the most seagulls I've ever seen at once. Not really something I wanted to see...! The noise they make in unison - wow - what a noise.

Sketching odd 3D patterns in driftwood. This looked like multiple eyes to me!

How I like reflections. So calming.

The finished sketches. Cliff study, sand dune grasses, driftwood, pebbles, shells, and little seascape studies.

Maybe the next time I go to that beach I'll see a whale! There had also been sightings of dolphins and buzzards there that week so I'm keen to go back wildlife spotting. It's the best place to see marine life - where they should be, in the wild, roaming free.

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Driving further north skirting right round the coast, the most famous beach in the area, Camusdarach, can be found. Now this is truly a hidden gem of a beach as you really have to be knowing what to look out for in order to find it successfully. The beach cannot be seen from the road. You first have to park in a small car park and walk through a couple of gates before following a narrow trail through the sand dunes until the coast unfolds before you.

If the sun is out, like it was when I was there, it makes the sand a gorgeous bright sandy white. I'm pretty happy with it as you can see in the photo below!

The beach is partly sheltered by towering sand dunes and looks out across to islands off the coast which creates a lovely atmosphere. Quite a few films have used parts of this beach as filming locations and I could see why.

I loved the fact there was a reflection like this on the beach. Rolling, rocky hills with sand and a reflection below. My favourite things all together. I'm majorly into reflections whether they be Lochs, lakes, ponds, rivers, streams, puddles, wet paving... You get the picture, I'm sure!

The beach stretches for quite a distance along the coast but it depends on the tide. On the day I was there you can see that further down the beach was inaccessible due to the tide being too far in.

Despite the sun, the wind counteracted quite a bit of it's warmth so it wasn't ideal for sketching outdoors. It didn't stop me doing a quick sketch though and then had a nice windswept walk along the beach to warm me up!

When the clouds started to smother the sun, I left the beach and headed back along the trail through the sand dunes to the car park.

The next beach I stopped at was completely in the shade and really cold cause of that so I didn't stop long enough to sketch. Here's a few photos of the beach anyway.

The area is called The White Sands of Morar and on a sunnier day the sands would be true to their name. Even on this day, though, you can see the sand is completely different to East Coast Scottish beaches. After going that far up the coast, there was one final stop I wished to make before heading back in the direction I'd come to check in to the guest house I'd booked for the night.

That final stop was Malliag, the harbour of which you can see below. Arrived with perfect timing as the clouds had cleared and the sun was once again visible. Look at the depths of blue in the sky, incredible natural beauty, isn't it?!

Malliag is the end of both the road and railway north through that part of Scotland. The way to get further north from there is by means of the sea, hence the many boats in the harbour. From there you can get to the Small Isles, the Southern part of the Isle of Skye, and from there to the Western Isles such as Harris. Harris has some magnificent beaches I would very much like to visit someday. Although Malliag is a small town, it has most services - places to eat, post office, B&Bs and guest houses, a couple of hotels, petrol station, banks, public transport links, gift shops, a supermarket, book shop, and also an art gallery - always a plus in my book, unsurprisingly.

H x

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Here are some more photos from the trip:

Sketching at Inverbervie bay

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