A Concertina Sketchbook, Some Ink, and a Bit of Rain

I was enticed to the beach by the forecast of an extra-low tide of 0.5m, which reveals seldom-seen rocks and changes my mental images of what the beach looks like.

I found a comfy rock to sit on, put out my concertina sketchbook by my feet and began drawing in it with ink. No sooner had I started than it began to spit with rain. Looking around there wasn’t an obvious raincloud, so I hoped it would soon stop. Spoiler: that didn’t happen.

I kept going until I got across the length of the concertina sketchbook, then turned it over to prevent the rain from washing away all my ink. Waited for a bit, and it did indeed stop raining, but by then the watercolour paper was well damp. I turned it right side up, pushed some of the ink around with a brush, and dabbed some off with paper towel. The result: more of an abstract tonal chaos than the line drawing I had envisaged. My solution: to add Inktense pencil and some watercolour. This is where it ended up:

At this point I wished I had brought my oil pastels with me, to add colour that would sit on top of what was here. Instead I watched the seagulls and heron while waiting for the paint to dry enough to fold up the sketchbook.

Back in my studio I added oil pastel, plus some acrylic and watercolour, stopping here:

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With a Seawhite concertina sketchbook that contains cartridge paper, I have occasionally gotten it too wet and the paper has torn on a fold with rough treatment (such as holding the cover to pull it along to get a bit closer to myself). I’d wondered if the ones with 350gsm watercolour paper would too and the answer is yes (but it was very wet and I wasn’t being gentle). I’ll fix it with strips of wet-strength tissue paper and glue.