Written by Sharon Goble, Coast Magazine
There’s nothing quite like crouching on a beach observing the waves of an incoming tide to make you paint with fast and fluid brushstrokes. This was the challenge landscape artist Imogen Bone set me and my fellow painters during her four-day course, appropriately called Coast.
Having prepared long sheets of paper with a watery acrylic wash before leaving the studio, Imogen gives us eight minutes on the beach at Marazion to capture a loose impression of the seascape in thin paint and broad brushmarks. Then, a further eight minutes to add definition with denser paint and water soluble crayon, if we wish. We do this exercise twice – the second time with just a five-minute time allocation – before retreating from the rapidly-disappearing shore. The results, I have to say, are more pleasing than expected!
Image Credit: Artist, Imogen Bone
I’m an amateur painter, who dabbles with acrylics and watercolours once in a blue moon. Most of my ‘course colleagues’ paint regularly and several sell their work. What we all have in common is a desire to progress and paint in a more fluid style.
Imogen is the perfect artist to teach this. Her fabulously ‘fast and loose’ paintings made in the open air, often overlaid with energetic crayon marks, effortlessly capture the colours, movement and ‘sensations’ of the Cornish landscape.
She reveals: “Someone who once watched me work, said I painted in Morse Code, dot-dot-dash, which is a good way of describing how I like to vary my marks.” It’s as good a description of her unique style as any I could come up with.
We begin and end each day in one of the large, airy studios at The Newlyn School of Art, perched high above the town. I’m wholeheartedly embracing the coastal theme by walking to and fro along the seafront from my amazing B&B at Chapel House in neighbouring Penzance.
On Day One, six of us troop in with a sense of excitement and anticipation. Pre-course emails instructed us to bring old clothes to paint in, something padded to sit on, a packed lunch and suitable attire for short walks along the clifftop, whatever the weather. We arrive to find all manner of painting paraphernalia laid out for us in the studio to take with us to the coast.
The large table we gather around is covered in Imogen’s distinctive artwork – small sketches and paintings on paper and board. After introductions over a cuppa, Imogen outlines her plans for the next few days, depending on the vagaries of the Cornish climate. We bundle up in warm clothing, gather up our gear and hop on a mini bus bound for Cape Cornwall.
It’s a grey and blustery day but it’s a short walk to the coast path and the rocky outcrop above, where Cape Cornwall’s distinctive manmade feature – a brick stack from the former tin mine – stands tall on a headland. No paint is needed for our first exercise: capturing simple outlines of the sweeping ocean views with minimal pencil lines.
Back in the studio, we immerse ourselves in the absorbing exercise of colour mixing. There’s a certain alchemy to seeing colours subtly transform by adding the smallest amount of a different colour or a smidge of white. We also experiment with mixing paint to varying degrees of opacity, from thick to almost translucent. These experiments stand us in good stead over the days to come, and reveal my tendency towards shades of blue and grey. To round off our first day, we apply paint and crayon to some of the composition sketches we made that morning. Suddenly, they come to life.
Image Credit: Artist, Imogen Bone
On Day Two, the sun (mostly) shines on us. We head to Sennen Cove on Cornwall’s north coast and hunker down at the quiet end of the beach away from the hordes of surfers and body boarders. Imogen demonstrates how to observe the natural elements of sea, sky and shoreline without getting bogged down in detail. She makes it sound simple and playful when she advises: “Use confident broad strokes and let your brush dance across the page.” I’m not sure which dance my brush is doing but its tempo doesn’t match Imogen’s!
A full day painting in the fresh air is both exhilarating and exhausting. A brief shower interrupts our work and we hurry to cover up our still-wet paintings. One of mine gathers a fine sprinkling of sand, adding a touch of unplanned texture. That’s ‘en plein air’ for you.
The following day, we head to a stretch of coastline behind the village of Marazion. This is where Imogen sets us our timed challenges on long sheets of paper to achieve a panoramic effect. My take-away: having less time isn’t always detrimental to what you achieve.
On the final morning, under Imogen’s gentle guidance, we work in the studio on aspects of our paintings we are not happy with, or just fancy tinkering with. The plan for the afternoon is a clifftop hike, stopping along the way for short bursts of creativity. The weather has other plans. When the downpour finally peters out, we head to Carn Gloose to paint outdoors one last time – under blue sky.
Each armed with a large wooden board with multiple small sheets of paper taped to it, Imogen encourages us to embark on a series of quick sketches or paintings. One small painting I dash out is among my personal favourites of the week. In blues and greys, of course.
Back home, I prop it up on display on our kitchen dresser. A lovely reminder of my week of creativity with kindred spirits on the Cornish coast, and a prompt to get back out sketching and painting.
Click here to find out more about our COAST Course with Imogen bone: https://www.newlynartschool.co.uk/courses/coast