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!

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