Painting The Seashore

A few weeks ago I had a wonderful holiday with family by the sea in South Wales. We stayed at Amroth, a tiny little village 5 miles east of Tenby. This is a piece of the UK coast I’ve never explored before. I love how the UK coast line varies so much from place to place. Amroth is on the coast of course and when the tide goes out there is a huge expanse of beautiful sand… 

But it also has rocky, pebbly sections too, with plenty of rock pools. And it’s on these parts of the beach that the most interesting things can be found…

Above are two lovely examples of Otter Shells found on the beach at Amroth among the pebbles and rock pools. I have done two fairly quick watercolour interpretations of them in my sketchbook. As soon as I find these things on the beach, straight away in my head I’m translating them into watercolour shades. For the first example it clearly had to be blue-grey shades with Buff Titanium and Goethite; for the second, I instantly knew Indanthrone Blue was the right shade of blue complemented with Buff Titanium and swipes of Aussie Red Gold. Notice the ruler placed over the pages, this was just to give the viewer an indication of the size of these shells – they’re big – around 12 – 13 cm in diameter! With each sketch also I swatched out the colours I used for my future reference (I’ll never remember otherwise… !). 

There were dozens of these shells on the beach – I don’t know if that’s normal for Amroth or whether we were just very fortunate that week…

Here are the same two Otter Shells painted in the same watercolour shades, but painted using different techniques. Isn’t it interesting how applying the same colours in different ways completely changes the appearance of the shell sketches? Painting these small watercolour sketches helps me to get a feel for the shapes, textures, patterns and lines. And I have to remember, that in painting these shells I am NOT trying to recreate the shells exactly in every detail, but instead I’m creating a watercolour interpretation of them. 

The week we stayed at Amroth there were literally hundreds upon hundreds of razor shells to be found on the beach. We could have collected them by the bucket load every day! Most of them were the very common type you see on most beaches. But I singled these because of their more unusual blue-gray and earthy colours. Aren’t they beautiful? Look at them more closely – the colours and textures are awesome. But how do they translate into watercolour? If anyone struggles with putting colours together in their art, a huge amount can be learnt from studying things we find in the natural world, like these beautiful razor shells. Lets look at their colours more closely…

When I look at these beautiful razor shells, these are the watercolour shades I can “see” in them – dark blue toned greys, a rich assortment of earth yellows and reds and small areas of soft earthy greens. Above are the watercolours I have available to me to paint these beautiful shells. Each primary colour is represented. Obviously, I can’t use all these colours to paint my razor shells… or can I ?? Why not?? All these colours go beautifully together, except for one of them. One of the colours in the chart above sticks out “like a sore thumb” as being completely “wrong”,  at least it does to me. Do you know which one it is? The Gray Titanium! It’s completely the wrong shade of grey (not blue toned) and not enough yellow tones in it either for painting my shells. The other colour I can also eliminate is the Cobalt Blue, because I prefer the slightly warmer toned Ultramarine Blue, French Ultramarine and Indanthrone Blue for painting my razor shells.  

So, taking time to swatch out the colours above has been a very useful exercise; it has prevented me from using two colours that might potentially ruin my razor shell painting. The soft earthy greens in the far right column I have mixed because none of my ready made greens, utterly gorgeous though they are, are not quite the right shades of green for these razor shells. I do trust my instincts a lot regarding colour. If it’s not right – don’t use it! Learn to trust your instincts… listen to that little voice in your head that nags you when something is not right…

One of the colours in the chart above is a new colour in my palette – JANE’S GREY…

This is a beautiful grey created by artist Jane Blundell and produced by Daniel Smith. When I get a new watercolour shade I always give it a little “workout”, which you can see above. Jane’s Grey has been on my “to buy” list for some time now. I really like it. This grey is a superb alternative to my Paynes Blue Gray (DS).

Jane’s Grey is a blue grey with a subtle granulation. It will lift very nicely when necessary. It granulates beautifully with W/N granulation medium. You can create lovely salt patterns in it – I have used cheap table salt in the example above. It also mixes really well with other colours – it creates lovely clean muted shades. In my “workout” above I have used different shades of yellow to mix with Jane’s Grey and I’ve created some really lovely natural greens. This grey doesn’t create dull colours when you mix with it, like I often get when mixing with Paynes Blue Gray (DS). It’s the black pigment in Paynes Blue Gray that creates dull mixes; Jane’s Grey has no black pigment in it. In my tests above, I have warmed Jane’s Grey nicely with a touch of  Pyrrol Scarlet; and I have “neutralized” it with a touch of Monte Amiata Natural Sienna. By “neutralized” I mean that it doesn’t have any bias towards blue (cool) or red/yellow (warm) – it is completely neutral. 

Here is Jane’s Grey on it’s own on the left, washed out from dark to light. At it’s darkest it’s almost black but not quite; at it’s lightest it’s a beautiful soft neutral grey, which I love. To the right I have mixed Jane’s Grey with a few blues. This is my favourite:

Winsor & Newton’s Professional Indigo watercolour leans very heavily towards the green side of blue. I absolutely love it! Above however, I also love how mixing it with Jane’s Grey pulls it away from the green side of blue but it is still clearly identifiable as an indigo colour. This illustrates to me that Jane’s Grey can be used as a neutral tint – useful to know. I’m not a lover of standard neutral tint and never use it (that’s another story!) but I do very much like Jane’s Grey and would happily use that as a neutral tint.

In short, Jane’s Grey does exactly what it says on the tin! It does do everything Jane says it does. You can read one of her blog posts about it HERE. When it comes to colour Jane Blundell knows her stuff! Jane’s Grey will now become a permanent resident in my studio and travel palette.

I will do another post for my razor shell paintings and other beach treasures I want to paint and share. To share them now would make this post far too long. In the meantime I want to leave you with a view of the beautiful Amroth beach: