If I’m painting soggy seascapes I need to go to the sea, never mind the weather. One of my earliest childhood memories is eating a picnic in the car while it rained so much the road flooded. We could see the sea, before the car steamed up.
For my first trip I went to Blackhall Beach and took my trusty studio assistants with me. We got really lucky with the weather, it rained the whole way there, but when we arrived it stopped. We were the only person there, but that did’t last.
Two soggy doggies.
I planned to take the pictured below sketching things with me, but the freshly squeezed watercolours weren’t dry in time. I took sketching materials as I am still working on turning my studio assistants into dogs trained to wait patiently while I paint for hours.
As the British weather is like that, as soon as I sat down to sketch it started to rain.
That’s as far as I got. You can almost tell it’s the sea because of the boat. The dog were just very glad to be getting back in the car. They were exhausted, they didn’t even pester for their breakfasts when we got home (around 2pm). It wasn’t a wasted trip though. I know where I want to pitch my easel (when the tides out) and I got loads of photos for those days when it’s to wet and windy to go out and sit on a cliff top.
Susanna Heath 