Back when I used to regularly attend life drawing I always preferred drawing ample figures rather than skinny or toned figures. With curves, there’s more opportunity to play around with light and shade. I can be more challenging, but the results can be more rewarding too. I think this is where my inspiration for the beach bum series came from. It has evolved over time, so here are some galleries to keep you inspired, entertained, and amused!
January 2021
I started my watercolour beach bums during lockdown in Norfolk UK. It was cold and snowy, and I was desperately in need of sunshine and warmth. So to make myself feel in a summertime mood, I started sketching these bums.
I loved the whimsical feel of these, and as well as being excellent practice for drawing figures from the back, it was a chance to experiment with painting clothes (on a small scale).
Keeping these figures simple helped to keep a focus on creating believable skin tones and mastering light and shade to create depth. I wanted to create figures that were more realistic than cartoons, but were more illustrative than photo-realistic.
February 2021
I had to return to Turkey to sell our house, but that meant spending 10 days in quarantine in a government facility. What’s a girl to do? I treated it as a 10 day art retreat and sketched my heart out—including exploring my beach bum series a little more.
Many of my initial beach bums were just lone figures on a blank background, but in quarantine I started placing more figures in the ocean or on the sand.
I realised that creating these scenarios was a great opportunity to delve into colour theory and used You Tube tutorials to explore how to create realistic sand colours.
Another big gap in these studies is how to loosely depict the sky and sea to make it believable. I’m not happy with my attempts so far because these elements aren’t believable enough.
But if I paint them too realistically, they’ll detract from the main focus of these sketches. So it’s finding that balance between too much detail and not enough. I think this painting of sea and sky is going to be an interesting journey!
I see more beach bums in my future!
