Back to black…

I spent the weekend sitting on a hidden bench above the rocks at Borth-y-Gest looking out to sea and watching the ever changing light on the mountains as the sun came and went, and the threat of rain came and went, and the warm sunshine came and went.

I must have sat for hours across a couple of days, observing the boats, the brave walkers dodging the tides as they trekked across the flats to Portmeirion, staring fixated at the tops of the mountains in the distance, sitting with my heart in my mouth for the families in flip-flops climbing rocks too steep and sharp and occasionally rushing to their rescue.

- And of course thinking about scribbling something down onto the blank open page before me. The white emptiness of that page is always so daunting.

I’ve taken to using a sketch book again. Not carrying it all of the time as instructed by my old drawing teacher when I was up at Oxford (polytechnic) but putting it in my pocket when I get a chance. Not that I ever really stopped carrying one completely, but the gaps between my outdoor scribbles have grown increasingly longer and longer.

I like landscape.

For years I’ve spent hours sketching in pencil, then agonising with a tiny set of watercolours over the exact mix of the blue of the sky or the pink of the sand, losing precious time - the light changing as I dither.

So this time and for a while I’m keeping it simple and going back to black pen, black ink, a brush, and a tube of pelican white. It’s limiting, but it makes you look harder and think. And you have no choice but to be bolder. It makes me want to keep it simple, both my subject and my attitude. No embellishment, no complexity, and no dither – you have to work quickly, the ink dries fast on paper in the wind. That’s what it’s like when all you have is black to work with.

Back to black. It’ll take a little practice, but I will get there.