I was experimenting. With ways to work from travel photos, freehand watercolour and taking inspiration from one of my favourite watercolour illustrators, Dorry Spikes, without well, you know. Wholesale thievery. Which I hope I didn't do completely.
I seem to be quite glued to accurate drawing with perspective and all. Maddening, since I'm not even interested in making that kind of picture. I'd much rather not draw what I'm trained to 'see' but it's hard to lose, that traditional way working. So here, to come up with something looser, I just put in few lines for the beach and the mountain, and then started populating the page with teeny houses, beachgoers and agave plants at random and freehand over a few days. Like a jigsaw puzzle, and equally satisfying.
The painting is based on photos I took of Praia de Sao Juliao, a beach town about an hour's drive from Sintra, Portugal. I have a fantasy about spending a time in simple seaside place like this one summer.
Oh, how I would read on my shaded lounger, take early swims in the tidal pool before anyone was up, sift through the flotsam and jetsom, make friends with the cats outside the beach restaurant. Where I'd have the set lunch every day. Ah. To be in one simple place and learn its rhythms intimately, to watch the families and locals come and go. With the gentle Mediterranean sunshine all the while.
