Tales from the Humber

February Newsletter Issue Six

What a month it has been, as if it is trying to break weather records like, the biggest storms, the most dreadful wind gusts, flooding, people killed because of falling trees and some lost their house smashed by the wind. Even the trains couldn’t run! Still the days are lengthening and the last few days have had glorious blue skies.

 

I started the month trying to reorganise my studio. It sounds so simple until things get pulled out and my heart sinks at the mess.

My son in law helped me lift the small plan chest to its new home but the castors needed removing to stop it hurling itself off the raised stage back onto the floor again. Now, it gives me room to build more staging for the bigger pictures.

Eventually I couldn’t bear not drawing and began playing on some of the paint washed sheets of paper I prepared in December. The first drawing is based on the view across the Humber to the Lincoln Wolds. I am finding it difficult going back to such small sized work and most of the time, the Humber looks like fudge and not water at all.  I haven’t mastered getting it to be brown and watery! Still I think it will help ease me back into the new subject of sea and river boundaries. I would specially like to make drawings of the industrial parts as it reaches Hull and beyond.

The better weather Friday encouraged me to go and get some frames. I will need to make mounts as these didn’t have any and at first, I thought the frames too heavy for the subject but taking this preliminary photograph against the neutral floor but within the frame I need to have a skinny off-white mount or even better get hold of some Japanese home-made paper and discard any mount to reveal the edges. I know I have some up in the attic somewhere….

 

I could make a series called Walks Along the Humber.