I am about to embark on a new project with my friend Steph Redfern (you almost certainly know Steph's work - but if you don't .. have a look at stephanieredfern.wordpress.com - she does quite beautiful stuff). As part of this project I am starting work with a new (also old) theme of 'Beach'. No hardship this, as I love the coast and have already worked with seaside imagery in Beach Boy and Master Caster. As a start I thought I would rootle around for images and ideas ... and was delighted to find an old(ish) sketchbook I started on a seaside theme. I have literally hundreds if not thousands of photos from various beaches and also collections of shells, pebbles, driftwood and knick knacks. In all honesty I have enough inspiration for a lifetime of work here .. So let me share some of that abundance with you, before I settle down to try and whittle it all down to some working designs:
Firstly just a few views: Filey ....
Whitby......
Boats at Whitby ...
Beautiful gull, also at Whitby ....
Next up - some of those sketchbook pages ......
Nothing very brilliant here .. but loads and loads of ideas:
Beach huts …
On site watercolour at Mablethorpe ... trying to capture the colours and light ..
Closer in ...
Playing with
filling in magazine images with pastels ..
More beach huts ...
Collage of magazine pages based on photo taken at Mablethorpe ..
Watercolour sketch and photo ...
Acrylics applied very thickly and torn ...
Even a bit of needle felting ....
Collage of images - including painting by Matthew Forster
Close up drawing of shells ...
Filling in spaces in torn photograph .... I'm a bit better at colour mixing now, but this still looks interesting ..
I am SO pleased I re-found this book - it all feeds in to a wonderful mental library of imagery ..
These next are a few images of some of my collected stuff laid out on the table ...
Look at this lot!! - you have to feel excited don't you ...
Closer in - lovely mixes ...
and again ....
and again ...
My head is now teaming with images and ideas, so the next thing to do is to get some firm ideas down and reduce this lot to just a few ideas ... not so easy!! I haven't even started on my shell and pebble collections, but I think I might just over do it if I try to include any more .. so I'll stick with this lot. I can already see some themes and interests repeating and showing .. and I'm itching to get to my sketchbook now.
Just before I do though - I must show you these images of the John Lewis building in Leicester, from inside the cafe, where Steph and I spent most of the day being very business-like and also slurping tea and yummy cheese scones ..
How beautiful is this?? ...
I'll keep you in touch with progress - talk soon - Hilary x
Blimey Hils, lots to work on, will be great, lovely fresh colours too. Sx
ReplyDeleteI know - I am a bit of a hoarder of things ... and love a big pile of stuff. Will probably end up with just one or two images ... but I think all the rest does feed in somehow x
ReplyDeleteThere you two go again! Eating!!
ReplyDeleteIntrigued to learn more as this project develops.
H x
It is an essential part of any proper meeting Hilary .. a girl cannot think on an empty tum. Anyway John Lewis cheese scones are compulsory. You have probably seen on Stephs blog by now that we are writing a book together .. and this work will be part of that. We hope to launch (the book, not us) at FOQ next year and will report on progress as it occurs (or doesn't!!) - Hilary xx
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