sketchbook drawing, fine liner
It’s back to the grindstone of lecturing
today as I return to work after the summer break. As ever I have had a busy
summer with two lively children, aged 10 and 5, to look after- which is nice
but is pretty physically and mentally exhausting. However, in the last few
weeks I have completed a lot of drawing in my sketchbook whilst on the coast on
our annual family holidays and feel quite buzzing with some new ideas.
sketchbook drawing, ink
sketchbook drawing, graphite
I
always do quite a bit of ‘plein air’ drawing and painting whilst sat on the
beach. This year I became very preoccupied on our trip to Filey on the East
Yorkshire coast, which we have now been visiting for about 6 years, with
drawing the many, many ruins of defence posts that were hastily built along the
shoreline during the Second World War in case of invasion from the Nazi’s.
Thankfully, they were never needed, and since then they have slowly collapsed
and eroded and become covered in barnacles and seaweed from the power of the
incoming tides and also as the cliffs have collapsed and changed. What you are
left with all along the beach, amongst the green, silver and red natural rocks
and stones, are huge blocks and slabs of concrete upended, overturned and set
at strange unnatural angles often with rusted metal supports embedded, twisting
and jutting from them. I draw them most years, but this year they seized my
interest more keenly and I found myself obsessively drawing them every day.
i-pad painting
sketchbook drawing, graphite
sketchbook drawing, ink
Their symbolic nature, as redundant,
decaying objects created to protect our shores from foreign invaders seemed to
chime somehow with Brexit and the sorry state the country seems to be in, with
I fear much worse to follow post-Brexit. I’m reminded of all the nasty
propaganda by the Leave campaign and their posters of ‘invading immigrants’
aimed at stoking racist fear and division and how we are all living with these
consequences now with an increasingly frightening rise in far right activity
and debate.
sketchbook drawing, ink and watercolour
Anyway…..I thought these drawings could be
a possible natural follow on into creating some new painting and print work
from my recent Brexit influenced ‘Street’ paintings and a chance to take my
landscape work into uncharted waters (excuse the pun).
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