In May I spent a few days on a painting break at the Newlyn School of Art on their ‘Sea and Coast’ course, taken by Kit Johns. I first went to Newlyn in 2019 for a five day ‘Expressive Landscape’ painting course with local artist Jack Davis however due to the 2020 lockdown, this year was the first time I could make it back to Cornwall again. Boarding the train to Penzance I was off and away, incredibly excited, knowing roughly what to expect and was happy the class lived up to expectations from the start.
Day one was divided into two parts. The morning was spent creating painterly textures with a palette of two colours to loosen up and get into the headset of the coastal landscape painting in the afternoon.
The afternoon was spent at Sennen Cove and we were painted our own interpretations of this incredible landscape, producing relatively quick fire sketches. Realising there would be plenty of time for the wider coastal captures, I focussed on a seaweed bloom anchored to the rocks.
Day two was spent at the headland of Cape Cornwall - a place well remembered from the previous trip, the iconic Brisons Rocks and known as “General de Gaulle in his bath” (impossible to unsee when you see it). I was absorbed with the technique of drawing these rocks with Indian ink and a painters spatula as one can achieve a particularly distinctive line with the edge, and textual infill when spreading ink as a knife. When applying acrylic inks you can create a beautifully luminous wash effect - again - as a relatively quick plein air landscape painting but very effective.
The cliff edges around the cape cascade foliage and coastal flowers, so my attention turned to recording the flowing movement of the greenery. Pleased with the results I took the original painting back to the studio and decided to work this up as a more finished landscape painting on a gesso primed board, with acrylic, Indian ink and charcoal.
The final day was spent at Botallack using some of the original mark making pages we had created from day 1 to use as background textures to paint a landscape.
For the final few hours of the course, we returned to the studio to finish our paintings. Kit Johns is successfully known for his wave paintings on stretched maps and we were encouraged to create seascapes on this surface in order to use the maps as a texture.
In the evenings away from the college, I painted a number of plein air landscape paintings of the surrounding countryside and coast; here are a couple looking over Penzance
Being a lover of all things Neolithic (from barrows to quoits) I made a beeline to the wondrous “Merry Maidens” stone circle just outside Lamorna and for the first time found myself alone from walkers or tourists so could truly absorb the energy of the site on a sunny early evening. According to Julian Cope in his tome The Modern Antiquarian; “Legend has it the whole complex of stones was a Saturday night party which went on too long. As the clock struck midnight, the pipers (also stones) left leaving the Merry Maidens to dance on without music… and were turned to stone for their transgression”.
Apart from one evening in the beautiful working fishing village of Mousehole, I spent my time in Newlyn, stopping off at Mackerel Sky seafood bar which serves fresh seafood and local produce. The (specially created) Monkfish gougons and Katsu curry sauce, or salt & pepper squid and a glass of wine at the end of the days painting felt a well earned meal. I can’t wait to see what 2023’s landscape painting courses will offer - any excuse to immerse myself in this beautiful part of the British isles as soon as possible.
See my previous Newlyn blog ‘Expressive Landscape’ painting course here.