Lemon a day

http://www.etsy.com/listing/47765960/fishing-boats-worthing-beach-size

Size 9inx12in 22cmx30cm watercolour on heavyweight rag paper

Today I took no2 son to a go-karting party. They went to a track down by the beach in Worthing so I watched them all get very competitive for a while and then took myself off and sat on the beach sketching for this blog. I carried on until my backside was numb and the wind was beginning to bug me. As you can see the sky was not a pretty blue but one of the boats was. I used charcoal under the paint to get a quick and lively sketch. Actually I made two sketches the first has the houses across the road in the background this one just has a passerby and the street lamp.

The beach is a great bank of flint pebbles and then there is a narrow cycle track, a pavement ,a road, a pavement and at that point it becomes suburbia, but suburbia on the beach. Some towns seem to show an awareness of their role as the backdrop to a pleasure trip to see the sea…Worthing is the seaside but seems to be pretending that the sea came after the interwar semi-detached houses and that the area really belongs to the concrete crazy paving era. The park is an advert for the 1920’s pleasure industry, it has three levels of golf course, a boating lake, and a mini train in bright colours .

The beach in contrast is not natural but wilder with messy piles of drift wood, bits of dried fish skeleton , mermaids purses and heaps of net next to lockers made from scrap wood.

Alison

#37 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog