I’ve just spent the whole day outside drawing. For one reason or another this is something I haven’t done for quite a long time. It has been a very enjoyable day and I realise that I must get back into the habit of taking a sketchbook out with me as I have refreshed my mind, come up with a few ideas and generally reinvigorated myself. Drawing is good therapy!
I sat in one spot with a good friend for four hours and drew, and chatted, and wrote. We were sitting in a slightly elevated position above the marsh between Stiffkey and Morston almost opposite Blakeney point. The tide was out when we arrived and it was high tide when we finally packed up and left. There was plenty of time to take everything in and to notice the changes taking place before my eyes.
These are my drawings which I have interspersed with some of my written ‘noticings’.
Prickly grass on my back
Itchy
Crickets
Grass gently bobbing
Water laps, wind hisses.
Purple sea lavender is smudged across the marsh. It will have faded to brown in a week or two.
The sun comes out, and sand in the distance out by the sea flashes a bright creamy, white.
Boats move gently back and forth on their moorings. Blown one way by the wind and then pushed back again by the incoming tide.
Pipit
Chaucer
Why Knot
LN5 Kings Lynn – Mary Jane
A cobweb is caught in a gorse bush – the wind blows it but it doesn’t break.
Birds like boats take off from the surface of the water.
Light, dark, light, dark
Seagulls fly over and their wings flap light, dark, light, dark. Reflecting fluttering bunting from boats on the marsh.
Birds, high, high up
Tiny dots
flying together like a pepper pot against the clouds
extend and curve out into the blue sky.