under my feet

The sea-sculpted sand was striking in this morning's light.

Only by walking over the ridges do you really understand their solidity.

Under my feet: 

crunch of pebbles

swoosh of sand

flick of marram grass

change

 

I never tire of the coastline because it's never the same twice.  

The tides change its physical shape, and they bring different things to look at. 

 There's always something new.

Jean Sprackland, Strands

The views from the top of the lighthhouse yesterday were amazing - not as clear as sometimes but the air was still so it didn't feel as precarious as sometimes up there, especially on the balcony.

When the tide is down things are particularly interesting and yesterday I was very aware of changes since I last looked at this view.

The distribution of pebbles on the beach has markedly changed.  Of course things are always different here and the detail in particular changes with every tide. From so high up I can see patterns that wouldn't be so obvious down on the beach itself.

step back

I've been away to other shores than Spurn's.  The school holidays always disrupt the normal work pattern and things have to be fitted in differently or put aside for a while.  Since my week at Farfield I've put Spurn things aside and I realise I haven't posted anything here.  It doesn't mean that I'm not thinking about it all though: I carry it with me wherever I go.

I want to take a step back and show a little of what happened to Cloth #2 before I started constructing it at Farfield.

Back in June when I was unwrapping rust bundles and discovering the marks that had been made on cloth by the rusty groynes, the base cloth for cloth #2 had its first experience of Spurn.

This long piece of linen (actually several pieces joined together) is long enough to hang in the tall lighthouse room half way up the building: approximately an 8 or 10 metre drop.  Although this piece of cloth forms the base to bring together the marked and dyed fabrics I wanted it to take on something of the place itself.  I wanted it to get salty and sandy and to experience the place in the way that the fabric that had spent time wrapped and submerged by the tides had.  

I laid it out on the beach and allowed it to get wet in the waves.  The water pushed it about and slowly it took on the shape of the leading edge of the waves in the way that the sand and debris is moved around and left wet in a curved line.

This long and seemingly large piece of fabric was suddenly dwarfed by the scale of the beach but its length and width seemed right in proportion to each other: a long thin strip being quite appropriate to this drawn out fragment of land with its strips of land/sea interface.

sun and wind

The sun is shining on Spurn today and the air feels warm.  There is also a strong wind from the south, blowing up from the point.  A walk on the beach in sandals means windswept hair and glowing skin but this is the first time I've been here and dared to walk without a waterproof jacket or socks!  Bright sunshine and a keen wind make for animated clouds, rushing over, rapidly changing colours and tones of the water as they pass. 

The air is incredibly clear and views across the Humber to the south bank provide detail I've net seen before. The sunlight reflecting off the water is stunning; both over the sea/estuary and on wet sand:

As ever, it is the detail of the bands of texture on the beach that fascinate me; the way material is sorted and arranged by the water and, in places, separated out in a very marked way.

I'm looking forward to inspecting some of the fabrics I left here last time and finding out what marks have been left on them by their time here.  That comes tomorrow...

sand stitches

 

Ripples in the sand in stitches

On the back: foot prints made by a wading bird.

 

I walk out onto the sand making a beeline for the water.  Bait diggers’ sand piles litter the beach.  I spot the marks of another bait hunter: a wading bird.

Lines of footprints wander around.  Then the trail changes to a swathe of distinctive marks made by a long beak systematically thrust into the sand whilst slowly moving forward.  The trail loops and curls then goes off in another direction.  At one point it comes to a full stop: a different mark revealing where treasure has been dug up by the hunter.  
(from Spurn diary 18.5.12) 

ripples

The patterns in the sand left by water as well as the patterns of the water itself have really grabbed me and given a focus to my sketchbook work.  These both present their own challenges for drawing: the water is constantly moving and, although the sand is static when I can see it, the ripples are part of such expansive areas.

On my last visit I experimented with a borrowed camera and took some little movie sequences of both.  There was a keen wind that kept the surface of the water lying on the beach moving.

I've never tried adding movies to a blog post before and I suspect they might be too large so the other ones are here, here and here. The last and longest one was taken walking across the beach looking at the ripple marks in the sand as I walked, approaching the sea.  It wobbles a bit in places but I think it shows the scale of things well, from the detail of small ripples to the expanse of water and sand stretching away.

I started to experiment with how I can create textures based on the ripples for print.  I'm developing drawings with pen into ones using stitch: