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!

Colonsay postcards - on arrival

The first thing I do, once we have unpacked our car, which has been groaning with all the stuff we need for a week's stay in the holiday cottage, is head for the outer gardens of Colonsay House. It is a place of wonder for me! I particularly love the leaves of the giant rhododendrons. There are many different varieties, all planted in the early 1930s. The outer gardens are generally overgrown, having had little tending over the decades. That makes them even more magical! The old woodmill falls apart a little more every year, but that's fine by me because I love corrugated iron and especially if it's rusted! And of course the bees. Colonsay's beekeeper, Andrew Abrahams, has one of his apiaries on the edge of the pine wood. So lovely - the hum of busy bees and the heady smell of the pines. We are here - finally! Delayed by four months by the wretched virus, but now I am on holiday! Hooray!

Found items IAVOM

I am on holiday on the Inner Hebridean island of Colonsay. It is my happy place. Thoughts of Colonsay rattle around in my head each and every day I am not here! I haven't got a vase to share this week but some lovely things I have found over the past few days, which are just as beautiful as a vase of flowers! I hope you agree! Here are some leaves of giant rhododendrons, growing in the outer gardens of Colonsay House. Some skeleton leaves of magnolia. The dried stem of a kelp seaweed. A couple of conkers (can never resist those!), and a branch heavily populated by a number of lichens. The air on Colonsay is so clean that lichens flourish here!