There are just times when life is too busy or not busy enough. Either way, a deliberate decision to just goof off and let life happen helps me out. So, nothing planned but following my mood. My mood usually requires some kind of art work, and this weekend’s was a bit of gouache. I spied my gouache pan in the refrigerator where I keep it stored to reduce mold growth. Pulling it out, just a bit on my red, rinse it out in the sink, and find some paper and subject matter.
It’s been quite some time since I did gouache, but every time I do it is always a pleasurable experience. It’s opaque like oils, and paints anywhere from dilute like watercolor to opaque. Using artist’s gouache lets me re-wet it and fix things as I go along.
As always, when I am feeling rusty with painting in any medium, I fall back on a landscape. Of late, I have been looking at the works of Wesson and Seago, two British painters who specialized in the eastern bits of England, focusing on marshes and landscapes which are probably long gone now. The landscape is often flat with rivers used for boats. High and low tides run through these areas and the paintings and photos I have seen have boats in the water or tilted on their sides, waiting for the tide to return.
So, based on a lot of paintings and photos, here we are: “A Way to the Sea” – a bit of a pun on “Away to the Sea” – you choose!
Gouache, Bristol paper, about 8×10.
Ink, Yarn & Beer 
Nice picture. 🙂
While the scenes of Wesson and Seago will have undoubtedly altered to a degree, the East Anglia landscape is one that in many ways has resisted change in some aspects. While there may be fewer commercial sailing ships around, there are still plentiful scenes of moored boats, wetlands, fens, quaint villages, and the like to be found in that part of the country.
I have quite a strong yearning to visit that part of the country, probably because the flat landscapes and big skies differ so much from the hilly place where I live.
Thanks for the feedback, FishyFish. I have a strong urge to visit there, too, but very unlikely to happen in this day and age. Imagination will have to suffice. Like you, I live in a hilly to mountainous area – the northernmost part of “southern California” and am inland about 30 miles. There is a mountain barrier between me and the coastal area, known as the Oxnard Plain. While we don’t get the clouds and marshes of East Anglia, the flatness seems so odd to one used to hills. Holland must be very much the same.
If you do get to East Anglia, think of me, okay!?
Lovely landscape N, it looks very English 🙂
Beautiful landscape!