The Challenges of Watercolours at the Beach

I now have a very comfy beach chair that is perfect to sit and do some sketching at the beach. I also have a nice little backpack that holds my art gear. So I should have little trouble making decent sketches. However there are two challenges wind & sand that introduce a fair bit of stress to the watercolour sketching process.
Using my wet/watercolour portable pallette on the beach is a like a magnet for sand. The mixing areas in particular have areas of wet paint being mixed and any small sand grains tend to collect here. The sketch book itself often collects a lots of sand on the damp areas and the little grains tend to suck in the surrounding moisture and pigments creating a speckled effect (nice for foliage and sand but not attractive in the flat wash of sky). If I put the sketch book down on the beach to dry … sand everywhere.

However it is the wind even just a brisk breeze that plays more havoc. It blows around more sand and also pulls at the pages of my sketch book )one sketch book was pretty much unbound on this trip so it is now a lot of loose pages. Also the wind makes it hard to balance my portable paint pallette, brushes and water
There are a couple of  good solution to windy days, that I discovered, and relied on, on my recent trip. The first is big bulldog clips and/or masking tape. to hold my sketch book securely on my drawing board. The second is my set of Derwent Inktense Blocks which I use little like a “dry” pallette. Using a water brush I can just pick up the paint I need from the blocks and essentially leave the blocks dry (and less sand attracting). I tend to then mix the colours on the sketchbook page and I’m pleased with the results.

Against the wind

 

Photography doesn’t have to be just a fair weather persuit. As long as it safe to do so, rug up and go out and enjoy the atmosphere, keep you camera and gear dry . Then look for that moment that conveys the place and time (and cold!)

Bad Hair Day

The return to cold and windy wintery weather has apparently forced a lot of the birds to ground. This galah suffered the double indignity of being photographed as the wind ruffled his head feathers. Then the image suffered further as I has a play around with textures, layering and boarders in Perfect Photo Suite 8. I’ve also had a play with watermarking, adding a little to alvin’s campaign to bring creative commons licences back to prominence on the social webs

The Offshore wind

This may look like a winter scene but yesterday hot northerly wind whipped up an angry sea, at least it was cool in.

Green power or not?

Another area of state planning that is the subject of significant community protests are the wind farms. South Gippsland is a windy place for sure and thus ideal for wind turbine power, one would assume. However secrecy in the licensing and other blunders have given rise to considerable community concern. I suspect "wind energy = green energy" in the minds of a few state politicians and that they got carried away! They granted a number of sites to operators without consulting the local councils or residents (sound a familiar story?)

From a technical perspective wind energy has a significant limitation, it is nearly impossible to efficiently store the all the potential electricity from fluctuating winds. In Germany where they have lots of wind turbines they estimate that these can only supply up to 11% of their capacity, they still need conventional power stations to supply the base load.

There is one wind farm already established just behind Toora, which claims to be the regions smallest town. I was interested to find out the noise level, which is an often quoted complaint? And not having a tape recorded I took some pictures ;)




I can't help but notice the cows don't seem too disturbed

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