Water Colour Play

In the spirit of nature art improvisation, I truly love to paint with surf and sand. You may be wondering what I mean by this.

Basically I love to set myself up on a beach with my paint kit and begin an image or two in non toxic watercolour paints and pencils. I add oil stick because it is stable when water rolls on its surface and because I love when sand sticks to it. I also love using gouache for the way it gets sticky and how it washes milky colour over a surface so beautifully.

Last week my sister Cara Lipsett and I set ourselves up on Chesterman Beach in Tofino BC. She is a wonderful landscape painter who works in acrylic. Her current pre-occupation is clouds.

Cara Lipsett painting the Tofino sky.

Cara painting beautiful clouds in acrylic.

We painted and talked for most of the day. What brought the most excitement for me was the impulse to get out of my chair and let the waves work their magic on my painted panels.

This is what I did:

Step one- Laying in shapes with graphite and white pastel

Step two- Adding blue pastel

Step three- More pastel colour and white gouache

Step three- More pastel, graphite and coral gouache.

Painting with the waves of Chesterman Beach Fofino

Step 4: Placing the paintings in the surf.

My 80 year old year old mom Mary (who was getting used to Day 2 of modern ipod technology) filmed the following video of what happened next. I think she did a pretty good job! Thanks Mom.