Repurposing III

Thanks for the comments on the previous version.

In response I abandoned any attempt to reference the photograph I shot on the same day as this painting was first sketched out.  I kept changes to a minimum: dropping the skyline to give more explanation to the background coastal hills, smoothing out some texture  in the bottom left corner to link better the two halves of the image, scouring back some of the intense white of the nearest sea to reveal colours beneath and selectively glazing the foreground in acrylic to give more shape to the overgrown rock surface and reduce the brightness of the whites.

I now call this a finished piece.

Razorbills and guillemots: pencil sketches

Mid June, at St Abbs Head bordering Scotland and England.

These pencil notes made in a small sketchbook were preparation for a painting. I wrote in comments on the soundscape and distribution of birds on the cliff faces.

The larger painting was done on rough paper.  But I abandoned it incomplete, despairing of capturing the light on the rocks and atmosphere of the bird colony.  Now I regret this.  Looking at this now, I can see that painting in the sky and intensifying the midground might make something of this piece.  I can still do this.

Here are an assortment of pencil sketches on loose paper and in the small pad made at that time.

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And finally a couple of graphite sketches without a home elsewhere.  The first was made on the boat leaving Bass Rock.  The second was the very simple preparatory notes for the painting at Aberlady posted previously.  I had forgotten I had made these notes.