MUNDESLEY BEACH HUTS

Mundesley is a small seaside resort on the north east coast of Norfolk. There is a sloping path leading down to a beach backed by colourful wooden beach huts. I must admit though I coloured two of them pink to add some warm colours to the cool palette. Another watercolour on my Lana Vanguard shiny support, mounted and framed in white to exhibit at the forthcoming Worstead Festival.

Here's an early stage of the watercolour:

CELEBRATION - title for my latest piece

Although I finished this in oils, in fact you could say its mixed media as it was originally started in acrylic a couple of years back with lots of different kinds of modelling pastes and Liquitex glass beads textured gel for the vase and wine glasses.

Over the past few weeks I have worked on it in oils and it has changed radically. I think the original idea of two people preparing to celebrate came from an advertisement but I added the flowers, vase and reflections and shadows. ... and it probably has no bearing to the original image now its finished.

Developed on a 20" square box canvas using Michael Harding oils and keeping my colour palette quite restricted. There was a period when I was inspired by the idea of painting scenes by a window from a row of pansies in bloom in little terracotta pots painted first in watercolour and then an acrylic version, snowdrops in the window and a couple of works I did for my sister in law with little white flowers with window boxes. I think I'll plan some more for a Christmas show I will have to prepare for later in the year.

Oh! yes, here's the CELEBRATION PAINTING:

... and here are images of some of the earlier window series paintings:

PAINTING THE GARDEN ON TWO RAINY DAYS

On Thursday last week when Philippa came to join me painting we could not go out into the garden because it was raining 'cats and dogs', so I drew the archway through the rain splattered window. The clematis had twined itself around the archway and then the hanging basket !!

I added the iris to the border because at the bottom of the right upright to the arch is the start of our little pond with these lovely soft pinky lavender iris in bloom.

Then I fancied doing another sketch in the garden a couple of days later when I had the afternoon to while away but - yes again - it was raining. So this view of our water feature was painted looking through the sunroom windows.

Needless to say they were both sketched in my lovely Columbine covered garden sketchbook.

COASTAL EROSION NORTH NORFOLK

From another acrylic painting depicting the North Norfolk Coast I was never happy with, I have now completed the OIL version on canvas 20" x 16" ... and again realise how much I prefer oil paintings for their more subtle finish.

I kept the little boat in the distance much more restrained to help with recession and showed much more light hitting the mud flats on the left. The rocks in the front are held in place with glued on pieces of netting from a lemon bag!! In real fact it was restraining metal netting but a lot had collapsed.

Here's a close up of a part of the water and posts, so you can see how I applied the paint in layers and created texture.