Another sunless sunrise!

Friday 18th June 2010
Was up at 4am. A sunless sunrise!

Painting Notes - Use pastels and oils. There are no ‘rules’. The important thing is that I manage to record what I see and with sunrises that means with speed.

Even with all the 18 colours laid out on my palette and I ‘know’ my palette so well, the mixing takes valuable time. Then there’s the choice of brushes, for different colour, then there’s the choice of how to apply the paint – a lot of turps or a little etc etc. There are too many decisions to make with too little time. So despite gearing myself up to use oil and preparing 30 little hard boards to paint on over the next three days – it just didn’t work. It takes too much time to ‘do oil’ and with the subject changing before my eyes and being so fleeting and ephemeral as the nature of the sunrise is I will have to return to my tried and tested means of pastels for ‘speed recording’. This is my usual practice to take those rough sketches back home and build them into big polished paintings over time.

I’m going to keep the paints here and the next visit bring a large board A1 size and use that to do a more considered slowly drawn painting of the headland which I can work on on sunless days like today.

A day like today there’s no drama in the sky (apart from the ungodly screeching of the Eurofighters out doing target practice at Donna Nook and doing a right turn at the lighthouse) a thick blanket of cloud covers the sky with no holes to let in a bit of drama in the form of light pools on the sea. Nope! Just a reliably constant blanket of cloud. Though the winds picking up so the cloud may be pushed away. I’ll try working on the prep’d boards in pastels but I’ll need to prep some paper for next time. Friday pm
I can’t believe how many ships are dotted around the horizon and that come up and down the river and indeed enter and leave Grimsby Docks which can be seen from here. Being familiar with the view across to Spurn from Grimsby and Cleethorpes and further along the River from my house up on the Wolds, a steady stream of ships can always be seen. But to fully appreciate how busy the River is the open sea needs to be seen. The view today isn’t so clear but I can count at least ten ships. The Humber Pilots who are stationed here have 2 or 3 little boats with huge engines and they seem to be in constant use.

It’s finally brightening up.
Here there is space and light to fill my lungs, heart and mind. I can’t think of any place better to be at this time in my life.