Custard Cream ~ Daily Sketch 05/02/2014

Today's sketch, the ubiquitous custard cream. Nicey and Wifey  say of this great British biscuit barrel staple "with it's baroque detailing the Custard Cream defies us to pin it down to any particular period of history. It is tempting to think that it was knocking around in the sixteenth century, it's ornate swirls providing the muse for such great artists as Rubens or Caravaggio, as they nibbled on one over a late morning cuppa."

Splash! ~ Daily Sketch 02/02/2014

Mersea Beach ~ Daily Sketch 12/01/2014

Ten minutes sketch with gloved hands

As you can see from my hasty, wobbly pencil offering today I went to the beach. It is the first time i've walked along the beach for some time and although the sky was beautifully clear and the sun was bright the wind was nipping at my fingers. However I resolved to make a sketch but kept it brief with a few notes, simply in pencil, my gloves stayed on for the ten minutes it took.

This particular stretch of the shore is mostly shingle and shells at the water line giving way to finer sand higher up by the beach huts. As is often the case I picked up one or two shells for further reference and to accompany the many others that grace the window sill of my studio.

The few shells that made it home

As it has been quite a while since the last one, I'm now pondering another bigger studio painting of the huts and the beach/foreshore which will be an amalgamation of various sketches, photo's and found bits. 

Gigas Oyster ~ Daily Sketch 08/01/2014

The Gigas oyster or Crassostrea gigas to give it it's latin name is now so abundant on the beach here on Mersea Island that it is pretty much the dominant species along the shoreline. You can't walk along the beach without treading on great clumps of them in the sand and mud and it makes me wonder what will be the fate of the more precious native Ostrea edulis with it's more sought after zinky flavour.

Houseboats at Spring Tide ~ Daily Sketch 05/01/2014

The spring tides are still pretty big at the moment, leaving debris on the roads and verges along the seafront. Today the salt marsh around the house boats was well flooded and the sky threatened rain but did not deliver until the evening. I took a walk along past the boats and up through the village with Mabel my four legged black furry friend.

Yellow Skiff on the Hard ~ Daily Sketch 03/01/2014

Selfie ~ Daily Sketch 02/01/2014

A New Year Begins

Daily Sketch 01/01/2014 'A Cup of Beach Finds'

A new year began today, with continuing blustery showers. I had a few hours to myself in my studio and the chance to think a bit about how to proceed creatively into 2014. Not too keen to venture out I stayed inside and sketched a cup of shells on the window sill for my daily sketch. 

To me the new year represents among thousands of other things a peculiar new challenge since deciding to sketch daily. It's a funny thing really, looking forward into the next 365 days as if down the wrong end of a telescope, with December 31st 2014 a mere dot on the horizon. But that's what we do isn't it, in an effort to make some sense of where we are in time and space? We have our calendar more or less shoehorned into the various rotations and perturbations of our solar system and it works and makes sense for us most of the time. However when I see the 365 neat little blank squares on my planner I can easily go from feeling a huge sense of opportunity to make and do good 'stuff' to feeling an equal sense of responsibility not to waste a single square! 

Happy new year friends.