Happy Friday!

Today the weather was gorgeous. In fact, I think it was warmer up here in Caithness than in most of the rest of the country! So this afternoon I took advantage and followed the example of Lucy at Attic 24 and went for a trip down to the beach.

Unlike Lucy, I really have no excuse for finding the time to visit the seaside, as I live less than a mile away! So I parked in the town and after a quick visit to the bank, set off down to the beach.

Thurso is a lovely town - we are very fortunate to still have a lot of little independent shops here. It has real character and plenty of useful stores where you can get what you need.

This is one of my favourite gift shops in the town - there's lots of lovely bits and pieces in here. The sun was so bright at this point that I found it very hard to take a picture!

Then on down the road for my first glimpse of the sea. What wonderful colours!

It was lovely and quiet at the beach.

The beach is a mix of sand and stones. The stones are wonderful, a lovely palette of colours and different shapes, all sharing the same characteristic flat surfaces. Very nice to walk on, and to look at.

(Incidentally, I had initially uploaded this picture the wrong way up. How can you possibly tell? I hear you ask. I honestly don't know! But it looked "wrong" the other way up and "right" this way up. Logic tells me it must be something to do with the shadows but I can't see how!)

The other lovely thing about the stones is that, being flat, they make great towers:

I can never resist leaving at least one or two behind when I leave. It's the child in me.

After sitting and enjoying the sun, the sounds of the gently breaking waves, the birdsong, and the rather stiff breeze, I settled down with my ipod set to Radio 3 with the sound turned down low (so I could still hear all the above!).

(and yes, for the eagle-eyed amongst you, that is the battery indicator right down to the red, and yet it happily lasted right up until I left the beach!).

I then got out my sketchbook and did a rapid sketch of the cliffs looking towards Scrabster. The breeze was really getting up by the time I finished so I had to hold the paper still whilst I  took the picture!

I was struck by the number of straight lines in the view, and decided to concentrate on emphasising those. A very rough sketch, but very pleasing to carry out. (Though next time I might take something to sit on as I was rather cold and numb round the rear end by the time I finished!). Sadly, the picture I took of the actual view I was sketching didn't come out very well, so you'll just have to take my word for it that it's a very accurate drawing ;-)

I was very tempted on the way back to town to have an ice-cream from the seafront cafe:

But I resisted. Maybe another day.

More adventures in drawing

As a member of a brilliant local arts group, I had the opportunity yesterday to be go to a drawing class, the first I had done in about 15 years. Despite being an inveterate doodler, I am no artist, but very keen to brush up my skills (excuse the very bad pun!). At the start of the class we were presented with a fabulous A3 pink pig art pad to keep (yay!), and given lots of tips and ideas on how to draw faces.

My major problem is this (and I wonder if other people find the same): if I have a tutor standing behind me (not literally, but in the room offering encouragement), the artistry flows and I produce some nice pieces. M'lud, the first exhibit:

This one took me about ten minutes, and I didn't try very hard, I was just trying to capture the essence of the shapes. Yet it's not bad.

Exhibit two:

This one I did even faster, as I was running out of time, and very keen to try out the technique of using bleach as a highlighter (it's a bit blobby but you can see how well it works along the nose). Again, not perfect (I didn't look back at the eyes so they don't match up very well in size!), but not bad. And each of these portraits I did in pen, so no rubbing out involved.

So - this afternoon I decided to have a go on my own. I pick a photograph as a reference, and spend about forty minutes producing a sketch. I hope you realise how selfless I am being in sharing this with you!

As you can see, the proportions are all wrong ... and somehow, there's no life in it. Although I enjoyed the process I am not at all happy with the end result, and despite lots of rubbing out and repositioning of just about everything, I still couldn't get it right. I haven't the confidence to draw without someone standing behind me saying "go on, you can do it!" - which would work out very expensive if I needed a cheerer every time I got the sketchbook out!

Never mind, we will get another session with the tutor soon and I will have another go at honing my skills. In the meantime, I shall carry on practicing (though I may not be brave enough to share the results!)