A visit to Horncastle

It’s been a couple of years or more since I last visited Horncastle Art Group, but I had the pleasure of returning there on Friday 7th July. When I last visited the group I demonstrated a couple of paintings in the style of Edward Seago, but this time my brief was pen and wash.

Pen and wash is a medium that is always a pleasure to work in and is particularly suited to scenes that have buildings, boats and generally things going on. I chose for my demonstration a view of Burnham Overy Staithe, up on the North Norfolk coast.

Pen and wash painting of Burnham Overy Staithe
Burnham Overy Staithe – pen and wash. Approximately 19ins x 12ins on Waterford 140lb NOT paper.

At Burnham Overy there is a large building right down by the water, which was obviously a store of some sort in the days when Burnham Overy was a working port. Nowadays it’s mainly used for recreational sailing and the building houses one or two small shops, although their occupancy seems to be rather erratic. Still, it’s a splendid looking structure, particularly with the other buildings of the village in the background and some boats drawn up on the foreshore.

I drew the scene out using one of my permanent ink pens, such as Edding or Faber-Castell. I like to use one with a fairly large nib, about 0.7 but this is purely personal preference. Even an 0.7 fibre nib is actually quite small, so the drawing took about 45 minutes, because in the early stages it’s important to get the size and proportions looking right. When doing the drawing I go straight in with the pen with no preliminary pencil work at all, but that does take a bit of practice before you gain the confidence to do that.

Once I’d done as much pen work as I felt necessary, and had a refreshing cup of coffee, I applied some simple watercolour washes, trying to keep things nice and free to contrast with the fairly tight drawing of the main building. The colours I used were all MaimeriBlu watercolours, and I selected one blue, Ultramarine Light, two reds, Burnt Sienna and Venetian Red, and two yellows, Raw Sienna and Primary Yellow. It didn’t take long to apply the washes, using a number 8 round sable-synthetic brush for the buildings and boats and a couple of fairly large squirrel hair wash brushes for the foreground and sky. When working in pen and wash I often leave the sky until the end of the painting, particularly if I’m working outside on location. Why, because if you paint the sky in first you will have a large area of the painting wet, which can make working awkward. No hairdryers out in the field, although I suppose you could have a gas powered one!

The group asked plenty of interesting questions and it was a real pleasure to visit them again, with Margaret and me feeling very welcomed. Thank you Horncastle, see you again in the future I hope.