Receding Tide, Mousehole

Oil on Board, 10x17 inches

This is another studio painting for the RSMA show at the Mall Galleries. I liked the placement of the boats with the intense morning sunlight coming from stage right, casting gorgeous, rich shadows over the exposed sand. The rivulets of water with the mini-sandbanks around them were joyous to paint, and of course the ropes and chains provide the perfect lead-ins to the colourful main players.

 

A painting like this is such a different kettle of fish (did you see what I did there?) to my landscape work, because I use so many different tools. It's almost like a different medium in fact. My big 1" household brush is redundant and I made full use of the alkyd paint, letting the basic mud and sand colours of the foreground dry off a little whilst I painted in all the fiddly boat details. Then, I had a lot of fun with my slim palette knife, an implement I rarely use for landscapes, dragging assorted colours over the sticky paint, also using the texture of the board, to give the lovely broken effects of the light catching all the stones and seaweed and sand. Hmm, almost as good as Lindt chocolates, or Crunchy nut Cornflakes...