Wednesday 29 September 2010

Where Is Everybody?

Tuesday 24th August 2010

5.46am

Why isn’t everyone here?!? Stunned at what I’ve just seen! Forgotten this was going to happen when I got up 10 minutes ago. My mobile phone alarm work me up at 5.30am and I noticed I’d received a text from my friend Rebecca in New Zealand. She’d ended the text ‘Watch out for the full moon!’ I looked out of the little window and saw a bit fat, pale pink moon just above the horizon as I looked across the river to Grimsby/Cleethorpes. Amazing.

Made a few scribbles but my camera not up to it.

Wait for the next show. My word coming here when it’s full moon is amazing. As the moon sank into the horizon the P&O ‘Merry Ferry’ passed through my ‘shot’! The street lights across the river cease to twinkle at dawn. It becomes a continuous strip of orange lighting just above the water line.

Received a text back from my friend in NZ she was watching the moon rise looking out from her back door. A clear cold winters evening in Wellington.

5.54am

Sun shifted loads along the horizon since I was here last month. It was quite funny because I was looking in the wrong place and then noticed the glow starting further to the right along the horizon at East North East.

6.04am

Sketch 1 – observed and sketched distortion at the horizon as the power of the rising sun burns out the straight horizon of the sea.

Sketch 2 – observed and sketched a distortion of the sun as it’s just about to emerge fully from the horizon. Reminds me of the omega symbol from the Greek alphabet. I can imagine that this is where the symbol derives. The ancient Greeks were a sea faring nation after all. I also imagine that this only occurs when the sun rises from the sea. It is like a circle with a flat bottom.

Sketch 3 – I like this – the sun has just cleared the sea.


Sketch 4 By this sketch the sun is becoming impossible to look at – only such a small distance from the horizon.

Just realised the sunrise and sunset are the only times when we can look at the sun.


A clear sky at sunrise (and sunset) doesn’t make for a great painting but it’s great for the soul! Not great for the artist but great for the ‘human’ in me. An affirmation of being a conscious being, that awe and those feelings of insignificance business … with or without an observer the sun will always rise and has always done so and will continue to long after we are gone etc etc. Unless you are a fisherman, Humber pilot, farmer or a milk man, it is a rare opportunity to see this for us mere mortals. So for all those reasons it’s great… but it doesn’t make for a great painting!

I wonder if milk men have a spiritual/religious wobble each morning on their milk rounds. I like to think so.


Technical note – Important use reverse side of new paper when priming for next trip. Too much texture. No good.

Draw initial sunrise sketch in red, crimson or orange. Not purple.

10.30am

The Eurofighter boys are playing their wargames in the heavens.

10.45am

Cloud chaos out there this morning. Far too complicated and fast moving for me!

11.55am

Blasted by rain from the West. The wind is making whistling sounds like a kettle on the boil and I can smell the sea as I’m blasted by cold air. Inhale Inhale!

12.10 am

Well totally enveloped in cloud. Blasted by rain. It’s that inside out fishbowl phenomenon again!

Afternoon

It’s been a pleasure to get out all my ‘blues’. All my blue Sennelier oil pastels that is, which have been boxed away since the Cook Islands. Just remembered I had downsized my carrying sketch box for ‘landwork’ or rather landscapes local to my home. Now I am back ‘at sea’ out they come. It gives me colour precision when sketching to have so many blues. Though I’m confident I shant be needing my turquoise blue, phtalo turquoise and light turquoise. They can remain boxed away sadly. I remember now that that turquoise blue was what inspired me to sketch the lagoon. As simple as that. That colour moves me.

I think I’ll have to invest in all the greys Sennelier produce and develop a new appreciation for this subdued colour palette. Sennelier do an English Grey which makes me smile. The Prussians have their blue, the French have not only marine but ultra marine. But as greys go English Grey is a pleasant grey! I think they should produce a North Sea Grey.

The North Sea has a distinct hue!

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