I was at the County Show in the rain last week.  Not through choice; I wandered round the show with the same bemused look on my face that a farmer might have if he stumbled into a boat show.  There were children on ponies, large bulls being led round a field accompanied by men with clipboards, and ladies with high heels drinking pimms in the mud. 

I was there demonstrating watercolours in the Learning Pembrokeshire tent, where the great British (or Welsh) public could find out all the marvellous subjects on offer at adult education classes.  Generally people are interested and delightful when I splash paint around in public but there’s always an exception.  I was painting a scene from my sketchbook, not expecting wonders as the drizzle coming into the tent was stopping the paint from drying.  A chap peered at what I was doing and announced, ‘That’s cheating!’.  Eh?  I looked up at him, waiting for this expert to tell me where I’ve been going wrong all these years.  ‘You’re supposed to make it up out of your head’, he said, waggling a finger at me.  ‘It’s cheating copying from a drawing!’ .  In vain I told him it was my own drawing, and artists are often in the habit of going outdoors and… well, drawing things.  It’s what we do. 

I daren’t let him near my studio; he would probably tear up my tracing paper and use it as kindling to burn the light box.  Remind me never to admit to using reference images from google.  I realised that there was no point arguing and explaining that if you want to draw something and don’t know what it looks like, go and find out.  

As it happens, I have been painting from the imagination recently, as a holiday from the relentless demands of  book illustration.  This was from a bigger piece called ‘Hand, heart, eye’, which, as it happens, are the three things David Hockney says you need to be able to draw.  The picture here is only an extract  – not because I’m trying to be arty but because I only have an A4 scanner.  Usually my big paint brushes only get used for getting the biscuit crumbs off my laptop keyboard, but I took myself off to a day’s painting workshop with the excellent Elizabeth Haines a few weeks ago, a great opportunity to get shaken out of my comfort zone.

Hand, heart and eye – I like that.  It’s the ‘heart’ element that takes a drawing beyond copying.

Artistic people have the knack of making ordinary things beautiful.  Last week I went to a concert in Goodwick, at a church overlooking the bay.  It was an overcast evening, grey light on a grey sea and the breakwater cutting across the centre of the bay.  There was half an hour before the concert started and Elizabeth Haines (www.elizabethhaines.co.uk) was sketching the view.  Through her eyes and hand, the dull expanse of bay came alive in a swirling pencil sketch of subtle tones.  Half an hour later and the same alchemy was happening through the voice of baritone Richard Parry (www.dramaticsongrecital.co.uk) as he acted and sang his way through the cleverly composed musical drama ‘An Act of Piracy’.  Wonderful – he could have sung a shopping list and it would have sounded good.  It’s always a challenge to try and sketch moving figures, especially when they’re singing and acting,  but it’s fun to try – after all, I need the practice!  With apologies to Richard who is much better looking in the flesh that he is in my sketchbook.

Meanwhile, back in the studio:

Some people have bad hair days.  Illustrators have bad pencil days.  Sometimes I forget how to draw, which is rather inconvenient.  I looked at yesterday’s drawings and two, possibly three of them needed doing again.  There’s no excuse; sometimes you just know that pencil, hand and eye haven’t quite made the connection.  When this happens I doggedly finish the drawing, ignoring the voice in my head telling me not to bother as it’s going to end up in the bin.  This was the version I tried to persuade myself would do:

It won’t, of course.  You’ll have spotted that the arms are too long for a start and it just lacks a certain something.  In the bin it went, and I returned to the original reference sketch (drawn from a photo of James modelling for me, somewhat reluctantly).   Second attempt – that’s better.    In case you were wondering, the illustration is for a page about marine scientists conducting research.  Caption is: ‘Right, now the next question…..’

 Ah well, life’s a journey.  On my headstone I want the words “Bother, I was just getting the hang of it!”

It’s hard not to take weather personally.  I know it’s pure coincidence that June’s hot spell lasted long enough to get ‘Torhilda’ painted, varnished and slipped gently back into the wet stuff at Llanion boatyard.  She had just settled prettily on her new mooring when the first low pressure system of the summer revved up over the Atlantic and swooped, wet and windy, accompanied by all its gale-infested little friends.  Trip to North Cornwall – cancelled.  Charts and tide tables put to one side.  Perhaps August will be brighter, we say, ever hopeful.   Why do we have a hobby that takes all our available cash and time and that we hardly ever get to do?  That’s a rhetorical question, as any boat owner will tell you. 

Living in a house looking at the forecast on the internet makes you cautious, but if your boat is also your home, you take the weather in your stride.  In the days when I lived on board my 24′ gaff cutter, it was a lot easier to get on with in and not spend too much time fretting over isobars.  I recall a windy trip up channel in ‘Kitty’ one year, coming back from the festival of sail in Brest and setting off from Weymouth, more or less happily, with a force 9 blowing.  Not as mad as it sounds, as the wind was behind us, it was a short coastal hop and the gale was due to ease by the time we got into the shelter of the Solent.    Dealing with rough weather when you’ve already got your sealegs is much easier than sitting indoors with the wind rattling the windows and deciding that you can’t possibly sail today because the ironing needs doing. 

Which is why I’m always fascinated and impressed by that rare breed of sailors who deliberately put themselves in the worst conditions that the oceans can throw at them – offshore racing, especially singlehanded, is as tough as sailing gets and a stark contrast to the gin and tonic pottering about that most of us do.  Sailors like Mike Golding find the extreme conditions of the southern ocean as beautiful and compelling as they are challenging.  My current book (the one everyone wishes I’d get on and finish so I stop going on about it) features a double page spread of Mike’s views on the southern ocean, a humbling and valuable perspective on one of the last true wild places on earth.  I wanted to do a picture of ‘Ecover’, Mike’s Open 60, romping over the waves, albatross in attendance.  It took a few attempts but I got there in the end. 

Back to my world of reading, drawing, researching, writing, singing and dreaming about the sea in all its forms.  Perhaps I should throw buckets of cold water over my head for more authenticity… or go sailing more often, perhaps.   I’ll work on it.

If you’re not into watercolours I recommend a click of the mouse now before your eyes glaze over.  For those who find sketching outdoors strangely exciting and challenging, here’s another of my colour mixing rants.  It was the last day of term today for my art classes, and it’s become a tradition to escape the classroom and spend the time sketching in Llawhaden castle grounds.  Sketching outdoors refreshes the parts that copying photos can’t reach, as well as waking up your colour sense.  How do you paint a stone wall?  Is it light or dark?  Warm or cool?  It’s usually all these things, speckled with white patches of lichen just to make the task even more tricky. 

Letting patches of alizarin, cobalt and raw sienna blend on the page gets you the soft mixed shades of old stone.   Other variations of the three primaries could be used to get similar effects.  More blue in the shadows, more sienna in the sunny spots.  Plenty of white patches of paper left exposed for the lichen.  In the studio you can see what you’re doing, tubes are clearly labelled and there’s a nice big white palette (cunningly disguised as a ten pence white china plate from a charity shop) to mix puddles of colour in.  But when you’re sitting on a wobbly stool with the wind blowing and your pocket paintbox on your knee, it’s not so easy, especially when you look at the range of colours in the average ‘beginners’ sketching boxes.  Gill had 24 colours in her box, most of them unused and unusable.  Four shades of insipid pink, 4 blues all very similar but no windsor blue.  Umpteen sludgy browns, all indistuingishable.   Give it to your grandchildren and start again, I said.  You need the same colours in your field palette as you do in the studio, otherwise you might as well mix your colours blindfold.  Get half a dozen artists quality half pans in a paintbox and give yourself a chance.  The more limited the colour choices, the better your chances of consistency and remembering which colour does what.  Sketching outdoors is challenging enough, what with wind, weather, nowhere to put stuff, tourists getting in the way, getting a numb bum sitting on rocks, and insects landing on your sketchbook.  It’s tough out there, folks. 

So if all those pretty paintboxes with their dozens of obscure colours are all hitting the bins tonight, it’s all my fault.  My own paintbox is messy, but it works.  It’s still got more colours in it than I tend to use, but generally it’s easy to plonk the brush in roughly the right place when working at speed. 

Colours most used?  Raw sienna, cobalt blue, windsor blue, ultramarine, alizarin, aureolin, light red, cobalt violet, cadmium yellow.  So that’s two reds, two blues, three yellows and a voilet.  The palette could do with a wash, though, couldn’t it.  Glass of wine first, I think.

My studio table and floor is disappearing under pieces of paper and chapter five is well under way.  Writing and illustrating a book has its own pace and momentum; you have to keep a part of your brain connected to it or it’s hard to pick up the threads again.  On the other hand, twelve hours at the drawing board (including umpteen cups of tea, hanging out washing, raids on the kitchen and periodic dips into facebook of course) are about as much as I can manage.  As well as being immersed in all things to do with rivers, lakes and reservoirs, the first few chapters are now coming back from the typesetters for editing.  I have an ambiguous view of seeing the proofs, my haphazard layouts transformed into professional looking pages.  Just don’t ask me if it’s any good or not, I haven’t a clue!  Encouraging phrases from publisher and consulting editor ping into my inbox from time to time, so I’m assuming I’m on the right lines. 

Here’s my take on how salmon are able to find their way home from the Atlantic to their home river:  Caption is ‘Right, what’s our postcode?’

Meanwhile, my Wednesday art class has a few weeks to go until the end of term so we’re spending time drawing outdoors for the last few lessons.  This week a good time was had by all in Sandy Haven.  Everyone says they find sketching from life daunting, but the results were so much fresher than labouring to copy a photo, in spite of challenges like the strong breeze and bright sunlight.  Mike had an unusual obstacle to overcome whilst sitting sketching a bank of wild daisies.  A family of six came and sat between him and his scene, laid out a rug and had a picnic, obscuring his view without appearing to notice he was there.  That’s a marvel in itself; Mike is a tall and imposing presence and had never experienced total invisibility before.  Challenges aside, a good time was had by all -  call me single minded but you can never do enough drawing.   Sketching, after all, is just thinking with a pencil.

That’s enough – brain is not firing on all cylinders tonight, must have used up today’s store of wit and creativity in silly salmon cartoons and duck jokes.  Glass of wine, anyone?

‘Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass. It’s about learning to dance in the rain’.

Many blogs ago I mentioned our friend Ken Roberts who was setting off on a solo round the world cycle ride.  We’re still following Ken’s progress on www.acrosscontinents.org and his blogs are becoming more perceptive and fascinating all the time.  At the moment, on the brink of entering China, he has been visiting countries that most of us have never heard of or, if we have heard of them, have no idea where they are.   Many of them are torn apart by political corruption or civil unrest; none of them feature in holiday brochures, and most of them end in ’stan.  Through the middle of all of this pedals a lone Englishman, wrestling with visas and bureaucracy, unreadable roadsigns, unkept roads and extreme temperatures.  What it most striking, though, is not the expected obstacles that he faces, but the kindness of strangers.  Wherever he goes people feed him and ask no payment, help him out, offer hospitality.  Ken talks in his blog about the ‘many individual acts of generosity, the extent unimaginable in supposedly more developed nations ‘.  It gives you faith that humanity, one to one, has a connection and warmth that goes beyond nationality or language and belies the world view that the newspapers would have us believe, that the world outside our garden gate is a dodgy place.    Perhaps it confirms the view that life is a mirror to your attitudes; if you expect strangers to be friendly, they will be.  If you expect fear and hostility, that’s what you’ll get. 

Anyway, the blog is worth a look.  It also makes me realise how quickly we have come to take worldwide internet connection for granted; a few years ago we’d have had to make do with the occasional postcard.  It will be interesting to see how far the regular updates continue once Ken is in deepest China.

I think I become more interested in other people’s travels when my own adventures are mental rather than physical.  Yes, I’m still totally immersed in my RYA marine conservation book, which for a butterfly brain like mine is a major struggle.  More than halfway through now, just finished the chapter on coasts and beaches, so next up is rivers and lakes.  Apologies to all my facebook friends who have to put up with my regular rants when I get stuck and need to let off steam.  The next month or so will see the bulk of the work done, after which I am looking forward to a few days’ sailing, if the weather lets us and if I can remember how!   I did enjoy researching rockpools, though.  New knowledge makes you look at everything with fresh and more appreciative eyes.

Perspective in art is a glorious illusion, something I’ve been using haphazardly for years in my paintings in a ‘hoping for the best’ kind of way.  But the great thing about teaching something is that you have to learn about it first, so over the last few months I’ve been paying more attention.  Perspective in art is defined as ‘the appearance of things relative to one another as determined by their distance from the viewer’.  Everyone knows that, but what surprises people is the extent to which distance shrinks everything.  How many student paintings have you seen with giant sheep in a distant field, or an enormous cottage on a hillside?

I was trying to explain this in the classroom on Wednesday and, as is often the case, practical examples speak loudest.    We were talking about figures in a painting, and how as they recede into the distance, the eye level remains the same but the feet move in relative to the foreground figures (assuming that all the figures are standing on level ground and are the same height, of course).

Sheila stood at the back of the room; Gill at the front.  There was probably about 30’ between them, so Sheila appeared smaller than Gill.  So far, so obvious.  But how much smaller, do you think.  Have a guess.  Their eye levels remained the same as they were similar height, so if you drew a line along Sheila’s feet, where on Gill’s body did they line up?  Would you believe me if I said that Sheila’s feet lined up with Gill’s waist?  She was exactly half her size, and only the width of a room apart.  To be able to draw, you need to remove your perspective goggles, shut your brain up and treat everything you see as if it was two dimensional. 

That’s enough of that.   I did take time away from the drawing board today for a magical walk around Dinas Head.   Kittiwakes hovered on the clifftops;  I recognised them having spent several days last week studying and drawing seabirds for chapter three.   Why does knowing the name of something enhance our appreciation of it?  I’ll have a think about that one, preferably with a glass of Chardonnay in hand.

busman’s holiday!

There’s something rather depressing about a Travelodge.  Plain and simple and ‘no frills’ is fine, but what was most perplexing was the heated towel rail in the bathroom.  It was disconnected, with a neat tag attached to the end of the lead which said ‘This towel rail has been disconnected for your own safety’. 

It rather reinforces the feeling that you’re in a padded cell for the mentally deranged, because of course you can’t open the windows either, which have been locked for your safety.  You spend the night too hot even under the very flimsy duvet, wondering when all the air in the room will have been used up.

We were enjoying this rather dubious hospitality to exhibit at Beaulieu Boat Jumble last weekend and had an early start on the Sunday morning.  To add to our delight, it was raining first thing – the first rain in weeks on the one day we’re doing an outdoor show.   Perry asked the girl on reception if she had a weather forecast.  She frowned and said ‘no, sorry’…. then inspiration struck.  ‘I think it’s raining at the moment’, she said helpfully.  As Perry had just come in from the car park and his coat was dripping all over the reception desk, the information was not strictly necessary.  Ah well, it was very early in the morning, I suppose.

The day did improve – the sun shone, our new marquee didn’t blow away and the crowds were out in force.  Beaulieu is the largest boat jumble, a wonderful event that flies in the face of all the popular misconceptions that yachting is a posh sport.  Boat jumbles are living proof that most sailors like nothing more than rummaging around in a box of odd rusty shackles and heading home with a cut price length of rope, a pair of mismatched oars and some dubious but cheap antifouling.  In the spirit of the occasion we were doing plenty of discounts, especially on the new log books, and it was a good day.  I was very restrained, I thought, restricting my spending to a pair of dinghy oars (matching) and a dinghy rudder which will be the basis for a piece of artwork.  Eventually.    Here’s the outcome of last year’s Beaulieu ‘bargain’.  Why paint a rudder anyway?  Who knows, I just love the shape.    I could probably find something deep and meaningful along the lines of a rudder giving you direction in life, but perhaps not.  I’ll have another glass of wine and think about that one…..

Several days of thinking ‘must update my blog’ usually pass before I get round to it.  The plan is always to sit down in the evening with a clear head and a glass of wine and get inspired.  This rarely happens.  The glass of wine always happens, but not the clear head, or even the inspiration.  Today I’ve been wrestling with the current page of my book about the oceans; trying to find a fun way to put across the problems of over-fishing and the environmental impact is taxing to say the least.  I did do a sketch of a fish in a tutu – the fairy cod-mother – well, it’s a start. 

I also had a slight diversion from the task in hand which was rather enjoyable, in the form of a phone call from Julia Jones in Essex, skipper and owner of Arthur Ransome’s original ‘Peter Duck’ ketch amongst many other talents.  Would I be interested in producing an image for the cover of her forthcoming novel ‘The Salt Stained Book’?    I do love a commission that’s just up my creek!  First of course I needed to read the book – this was no hardship as it’s a great story, a modern and quite edgy version of ‘Swallows and Amazons’.  I’m still working on the design, but there’s more about Julia and her various doings on www.golden-duck.co.uk.

More distraction from the business of getting Chapter Two done came my way on Friday as I was booked for an afternoon drawing lesson with the U3A group in Neyland.  It’s always great fun teaching at U3A; everyone speaks their mind and is very up front about what they want to learn. Usually my prepared lesson descends into happy chaos and I just go with the flow.  This was no exception and turned into a bit of a rant about the reason for wanting to draw in the first place – as a means of connecting to somewhere special, spending time, taking the trouble to look properly.  Contrary to what the tv would have us believe, not everthing in life is a competition; we would always like to improve the way we do things, but sketching is a personal process not open to criticism.  Do enough of it and it will get better all by itself.  Life is too short to be frozen into inactivity by the fear of not being good enough!

Here’s my own sketch of a sunlit moment on East Trewent Head on Sunday, when I decided that I’d had enough of writing about the sea and trying to draw it when I hadn ‘t actually been to look at it for months…..

The left side of the page hasn’t scanned as well as the right….. use your imagination!

That’ll do for now… there’s half a glass of wine left and I’m listening to ‘Pentangle’ on cd while the family are involved in something noisy and American on tv in the other room.

When Thor Heyerdahl took his balsa wood raft  Kon Tiki across the Pacific  in 1947, he did it to show that in theory the Polynesian islanders could have originated from mainland South America.   There’s nothing quite like a bit of practical archaeology; personally, I’d have paid more attention to history lessons at school if they had explained the part trade winds and ocean currents played in deciding the course of human history.

When early seafarers set off in search of new lands to conquer, trade, treasure, knowledge, personal glory, or to escape from a crappy life on shore, they faced hazards and took risks that we can only imagine.  No weather forecasts, no accurate charts, no gps, no real idea of how long their journey might be.  But there’s one thing they didn’t have to face – waste.  Even in Thor Heyerdahl’s time, the oceans were still mostly pristine, but the problem of plastic waste in the oceans is a big enough issue now.  How big exactly?  The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a collection of non-soluble waste gathered together by the relentless motion of the ocean currents, is now almost as big as Europe,  a mess that can be seen from space as a shameful witness to human carelessness.  And there’s one gathering in the Atlantic too.

So what does this have to do with Kon Tiki?  Well, wherever there’s bad news there’s usually hope, and it manifests in many ways.  A handful of American campaigners are taking the lead (after all, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is off their west coast, and the USA gets through 1500 plastic bottles every second) and one of the latest schemes is the Plastiki expedition – a 60 boat made not  from balsa wood but from 12000 plastic bottles.  Plastiki recently set off from San Francisco to Sydney, by way of the Garbage Patch, to raise awareness of the problem.  The website is www.plastiki.com – it’s a bit mad, with great graphics and a day to day account of the trip, but not much in the way of background information on the reason for the voyage, though there’s a fairly sensible statement on their facebook page.  I’m not sure I’d trust my life to plastic bottles any more than to balsa wood – though at least anything made of plastic will outlast us all.  Good luck to the crew of Plastiki and her mission.  I’m going to give it a mention in my current book, which is gradually taking over my life, brain and studio, and is the reason why I’ve become so focussed on all things marine and ecological lately.  I’m still only on the first chapter there are six more to go; drawing board and table are already piled high with books, sketches, abandoned first drafts and assorted bits of paper.  Family are getting used to me babbling about plankton and ocean trenches instead of having normal conversation over the dinner table.  I will emerge blinking in the sunlight at the beginning of July and talk about something else, that’s a promise!

I haven’t drawn a picture of Plastiki yet, so in the meantime, here’s a krill..  one of the smallest creatures in the ocean that makes a tasty snack for the largest creature on the planet  – the blue whale, who chomps through an impressive 4 tons of these every day.