To The Lighthouse!

Having woken up with an urge to develop a piece using the seal colony as subject, and with the sun out, my last Sunday off this year saw me heading for Godrevy armed with sketchbook and camera. Seals are notoriously difficult to photograph as they camouflage so well on their rocky beach, but I recognised the need for reference pictures as the physical distance from the top of the cliff did not allow sufficient detail to draw by eye, and I would need the zoom capability later on.

Luckily there proved to be 50 or so prone on the beach, with four or five pups, allowing me to take a good set of pictures from a couple of vantage points before making a sketch of the most interesting group of shapes.

I decided to walk around Godrevy head. Normally I walk it the other way round, coming to the seal's beach last, so it was interesting to reverse the viewpoint and find new ways of looking at familiar places. On the top I stopped to draw the cliffs, at a safe distance from the edge as only last week a massive section of cliff fell less than 2 miles north of here, and the geology is the same on the headland. (The video of the fall can be viewed here )

As I walked towards the lighthouse it was apparently sat at the end of the path, until as I crested the hill the island came into view. I chose deliberately to draw it in portrait format to fix it on the page.



I left the headland and descended the path to the carpark. About halfway down I noticed the patterns in the grass made by foot traffic and the fact that my current viewpoint exactly aligned with the stone wall along the clifftop. I stopped to record it as I can see potential for a great abstract piece here.

I only had a few drawing pens with me, so the colour was added later when I returned home, as with the seal colony. I like the olive and mauvy colours and think I will develop the idea with those colours as the focus, although some tonal adjustments will be needed.

I found it an interesting exercise both in seeing new things in very familiar places, and in continuing regular use of a sketchbook, of which I have started a new one after my Welsh marathon drawing jag. Actually this one has more pages, if slightly inferior paper, but I am getting a lot less precious about saving it for drawing, and it is already becoming a bit of a journal.