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.

Mud Berths ~ Daily Sketch 03/11/2013

Jetty/Strood Channel ~ Daily Sketch 01/11/2013