Coast, a collection of paintings by Catherine Forshall at the Flying Colours Gallery, London

Posted on November 15, 2015 by catherineforshall under Art, Fish painting, Marine Life, Marine Painting, Paintings of Fish

Wednesday 18th November – 11th December

Monday to Friday 10.30 a.m – 5.30 p.m.

at The Flying Colours Gallery

The Courtyard, 6 Burnsall Street, London SW3 3ST

Telephone +44 (0) 207 351 5558

The Red Cliffs of Budleigh Salterton: sketching seaweed

Posted on February 2, 2014 by catherineforshall under Marine Life, Photography, sketching, Uncategorized

On Saturday we went to the Beach at Budleigh Salterton.

The sea was a pinky mauve from the earth washed down by the river Otter. I wanted to find seaweed to sketch for a large canvas that I am about to start. I thought that with the recent storms there might be much washed up, but I only found a little Oar weed and Egg wrack on the upper shore, the Oar weed, a burnt sienna/sepia colour. William Harvey , an Irish naturalist, an inspiring draughtsman, produced 3 beautifully illustrated volumes of seaweed illustrations, in which these two are shown. Curiously he died not far away in Torquay in 1866.

I’ve always been attracted to the red earth of the cliffs above the beach at Budleigh. I found a clump of red earth that had fallen and took it home to use as a pigment for the background of the sea weed sketches. I used to do this when we first moved to France, nearly 30 years ago. There I did a series of landscapes using the pigment from the rusty orange earth above the Lot Valley, near Lherm, the same pigment that was used in parts of the cave paintings at Cougnac 25,000 years ago. The medium was spit and animal fat. I use something out of a tube.