HIGH TIDE AT FRESHFIELD BEACH – WATERCOLOUR PAINTING

Well Happy New Year to you all and here is a view from our Christmas day walk. We set off along the route known around here as the Fishermans Path and when we arrived at the dunes we saw that the tide was almost fully in. Walking along the narrow strip of beach under the towering dunes what struck me was the light on the wet sand and water. I thought that it might make an interesting painting.

Unfortunately as I started to work on the sea in this painting I realised that the ferrule of my brush had scratched the paper when I was laying down the sky wash resulting in dark lines where the pigment settled in the score marks. You might just make this out on the low res image above. So the whole thing will need to be done again. I thought that I would complete this version to see what other problems I will encounter, so hopefully I will be better prepared for the second go – start the new year off with a success.

Other beach scenes and seascapes are available for sale on my website: grahammcquadefineart.com

AFTERNOON AT FORMBY POINT – PASTEL PAINTING

This was the last of a series I recently painted of our local coastline. They have familiar themes to others I have painted. In this one I liked the shadows cast by the nearest clump of marram grass and the distant beach as it drifts away into infinity. It is an expansive area of sand where, in some areas, you barely see a soul as you walk beneath the towering dunes.

This set of paintings gives me some choice when I come to select paintings for the exhibitions which are fast approaching.

Other seaside and beach paintings are available for sale on my website: grahammcquadefineart.com

BACK TO THE BEACH – PASTEL PAINTING

With this painting I’m staying with the pastels and riffing on a familiar theme in preparation for upcoming exhibitions. I was pleased with the colours I got into this familiar view of the beach at Formby – simple pleasures, but I’m a simple man. I had to include some old fencing as I was demonstrating a similar painting at a club in Blackpool on Thursday, so the practice helped. Tomorrow I will be running a pastel workshop. Hopefully, after that, things will quieten down and I’ll try to explore some other themes and media, though I do want to do a larger version of the mixed media offering of breaking waves I posted a week or so ago.

Today I am off to a life session run by an old mate of mine. He told me that he has got a great model, someone I havent seen since before covid. I just hope we can get some good lighting as well.

Other seaside paintings are available for sale on my website: grahammcquadefineart.com

AUTUMN ON THE ALT ESTUARY – PASTEL PAINTING

I’ve painted this view before but had forgotten about it until I was preparing this blog.

With the sale of a coastal painting this week as well as preparing for a couple of exhibitions and doing a lot of pastel work, especially for the demos and workshops I’m running this month and next, I was looking around for likely subjects.

So I had a go at this, which is the estuary of a small river, the Alt, as it empties out into the bigger Mersey Estuary at the north end of Liverpool. In the summer, the channel, close to the dunes, is lined with moored yachts, but as the year dwindles towards its end they are brought ashore and placed in a compound.

This view is from the dunes looking over the Mersey towards the Wirral peninsular that can be just picked out in the haze. If you look hard there is a tanker making a break for the Irish sea.

The dark headland behind the marram grasses is made up of building rubble from the bombed out Liverpool, which was dumped there after the second world war. As you walk along the beach you can find carved fascias to old buildings amongst the sea smoothed bricks and concrete. Someone once told me that they found half of a tombstone there.

Other Sefton beach scenes are available for sale on my website: grahammcquadefineart.com

MERSEY MORNING – ACRYLIC PAINTING

Sitting atop of a sand dune just south of Formby, I had a good view of the mouth of the Mersey. Reflective objects sang bright in the morning sun and I painted this view in watercolour, disturbed only by distant cries of gulls and lapwings. Not a bad way to start the day.

When I got home and looked at my endeavours I thought that pastel or acrylic would be a better medium for this painting. Eventually I plumped for acrylic because of the fiddly nature of the wind turbine and ship, though other aspects would have been easier in pastel.

I did debate about putting wind turbines in at all – there are quite a few more off to the right. In the end you got a token wind turbine and anyway, it adds a bit of balance to the piece.

Other views of the Mersey are available for sale on my website: grahammcquadefineart.com

CLIMBING TO THE TOP OF THE DUNE – PASTEL PAINTING

Undeterred by the sand flowing away from under your feet, you struggle on, brushing past the coarse marram grass and then glimpse sight of the sea. Now, you realise you’ve reached your objective.

This is the last of the short series of beach pastels I have been doing of late. All used the technique of underpainting with gouache and then overworking with pastel. I was trying to get a feeling of intimacy with this one, compared to the others which had a more panoramic detachment.

Other beach paintings are available for sale on my website: grahammcquadefineart.com

EVENING ON BIRKDALE DUNES – PASTEL PAINTING

You may recall in the post before last the gloomy vista of rain clouds about to come over Birkdale beach – and I said it was part of a series, so here is the next one, a contrasting evening on the beach, with the sun hanging low and the light shimmering off the wet sands in the distance. I did this type of evening view in watercolour and it sold a year or two back, so I thought that I would try a version in pastels, placing tonal washes down in gouache first and then working over them in pastel as I had in my earlier pastel.

Mystery encroaches at this hour. The low light casts shadows and darkens ravines between marram covered dunes. Tracks of past beachgoers get highlighted by a glow on the raised edges that is then underscored by the shadow of the depression. Wisps of grass, catch the low sun and seem to glow against shadowed inclines. Soon the mystery will be complete.

Other beach scenes are available on my website for sale: grahammcquadefineart.com

THE VIEW FROM THE FORMBY DUNES – ACRYLIC PAINTING

I managed to sell a few paintings at an exhibition I held at my framers after Christmas. All of them were beach scenes. So, I just completed another view of the Formby beach from my visit last summer.

I like the remnants of the fences that stand forlornly in the shifting sands. I often wonder what purpose they served as they pop up in all sorts of strange places.

Other beach scenes are available for sale on my website: grahammcquadefineart.com

BACK TO THE BEACH – PASTEL PAINTING

This morning I am taking some paintings into the pop-up gallery for my first collaborative exhibition in the run up to Christmas. This one will run for a month and I will have to do one day a week manning the shop and hoping for some healthy sales.

So now on to the second exhibition, in November. I have already sent in my list for the catalogue, but not all the paintings had been completed. This one above is the last of the eight I will be submitting. I felt I needed a local beach scene: similar to the one I am putting in today. I must admit I prefer that one, but what one person likes, another doesnt. Again it is of Formby beach, a popular destination in this area.

Other beach scenes are available for sale on my website: grahammcquadefineart.com

LAST MEN STANDING – ACRYLIC PAINTING

I did this painting just before I departed for Portugal at the end of September. It came from my visit to Formby Beach when I was collecting material for a commission and seeing what else was about.

I loved the wind-sculpted shapes of the trees, though they are in peril. The sea is encroaching and pushing the coast back and this small cluster of trees will soon be no longer. You can see the next line of the pine forest in the background.

I think there is mileage in making the trees starker and I was going to introduce some reds and other colours into the trunks and foliage, but for now exploring the shapes of the trees and their relationship to the landscape is enough.

Other landscapes and seascapes are available on my website: grahammcquadefineart.com