Mussels

We went away for a couple of days and stayed in a very nice rental house right on the foreshore of Sultana Point (just outside Edithburgh) on the Yorke Peninsula. Kind of an experiment to see how we managed with the kids and to look at the house (which was fantastic, definitely travelling like this again). I took my Inktense pencils because I’m art crazy at the moment and I knew that there would be a moment to do something. Unfortunately I forgot to bring a stock shot to work from for any of my current projects. So I found myself wandering across the beach on a 39C day looking for shells to draw.

The majority of the shells on this particular beach were very small. Interesting though. I fell in love with the colours on the many mussel shells about the place. Most of them were only around 1 – 2cm in length, so when I set up to draw them, there was a lot of squinting and peering closely.

I don’t do much drawing straight from life, so this was good practise and proof that I need quite a bit more. I didn’t finish it and it needs some repairs, but here is my WIP submission for this week’s Sunday Sketches.

Mussels, work in progress, Derwent Inktense pencils and blocks on illustration board, approx. 200 x 200 mm.

As you can see, I have completely stuffed up the shell at the back and will need to go in for repairs with my acrylics. I’m not that good with watercolour technique yet. Not good at leaving space white. I also need to fix quite a lot of other things.

I was very taken by the colours in the shells and have kept them with the intention of following up this drawing with a few more exploiting the wonderful colours in the shells. I might go a little abstract or maybe practise some more still life.

Don’t forget to go and visit all the other wonderful sketchers over at Sunday Sketches!

Hope you all had a great weekend. I know I did 😀

Best wishes,
Liz
(who didn’t really want to come home)