Skip to main content

A new challenge

I have embarked on a new journey in life - as a part-time art student.  It's a real challenge for me but one which, I think, will allow me to dig around and find out how deep my ability to draw and paint really goes.  I am attending a one day a week painting and drawing class at the Leith School of Art.  We are blessed with two outstanding tutors and currently they have us spending time in Port Seton.  We were there last week and will visit again this Thursday and once more the week after.  

Port Seton is a fishing community along the Firth of Forth coastline, east of Edinburgh.  It is a sprawling village, dominated by the now decommissioned power station at Cockenzie.  The two chimneys from the plant dominate the skyline from miles around.  It is not a beautiful building by any stretch of the imagination but the towering chimneys have a curious grace and certainly a presence which adds a very significant dimension to almost any drawing you might undertake. The power station draws you in, if you will pardon the pun, and I would be surprised if many of our group do not find a place for the two chimneys in their final piece.  
I really like this view of Arthur's Seat and Edinburgh Castle, and the geometric pattern of the pier stretching out into the water from the power station.
I spent last Thursday morning sitting on the seagull poo spattered ground, leaning against a red painted cast iron bollard on the quayside in Port Seton.  I started off trying to draw some of the trawling paraphernalia which lies in piles against the sea wall.  It is an impenetrable mesh of fishing nets, necklaces of small black floats strung along heavy gauge wire, buoys, rusting chains and metal plates, cleats and heaps of other stuff.  It is almost impossible to draw but I just keeping coming back to it.  I love the colours, the flow of the journey the ribbons of ropes and wire take as they weave their way through the discarded heaps.  I can't imagine any of it will ever be used again.  It would take a lifetime to unravel.  I think, in the end, I am going to have to settle for my photographs to satisfy my need to record these chaotic tangles of fishing tackle.
I have been thinking around the drawings I did last Thursday and I went back to Port Seton yesterday in the hope that one of the trawlers would be tied up where it was beforehand.  Unfortunately it wasn't but maybe it will be again, because I have something in mind and would like to pursue it further.






Comments

Popular posts from this blog

In a vase on Monday - colour

The intense colours in my vase this week come from nasturtiums, sweetpeas and a single glorious zinnia! Their beauty and love of life speak for themselves and need no further words from me! Enjoy!

Possibly the last post and a sizzlingly hot vase on Monday

The border in our tiny garden is in an in-between phase at the moment and not very colourful, but elsewhere there are pops of high summer colour and I have brought them together in my vase today. The running wave uses Blogger as it's vehicle and they are changing the way a post is created but unfortunately I cannot make the new format work. I can't progress beyond the title! I cannot navigate to the main body of the post to create text. The new template has no prompts for adding photos, weblinks, to format the text, change font etc. It may be my old MacBook that's as fault but I can't do anything about that!! Are any other IAVOM bloggers who use Blogger having the same problems? I have tried, three times, to contact Blogger through their 'Help' prompt and received no feedback or contact whatsoever. This post is using the old 'Legacy' format, which no longer permits any kind of formatting of text, and so after four attempts I have finally manage...

Early morning light

There have been some cracking early morning skies this week.  The sunrise has generated a strong rose gold light which has been picked up not only in the clouds but also through the silver-white grasses around the edge of the golf course. I always marvel at the clouds.  Constantly changing, formations that have never been seen before, never to be seen again.