The Walk to Colton Fishacre

The Walk to Colton Fishacre
Watercolour on Paper
24cm x 34cm (9.5" x 13.5")

This is a view from the coastal path between Dartmouth and Colton Fishacre.

It is my favourite short coastal walk. It’s got a bit of everything:

• Ferry rides to start and finish
• Views like this
• Lots of flora and fauna
• An old coastal defence complex
• A National Trust house and gardens (Colton Fishacre) with toilets (for Elaine) and an excellent tearoom
• A shorter inland route back that makes a nice circuit
• Good pubs at the finish
• Plenty of up and down (so you feel like you’ve earned your tearoom and pub stops)

Unfortunately, I don’t know exactly what we are looking at. My best guess is the bay between the foreground and the rocky headland is Old Mill Bay and the crinkly bit on the headland is Kelly’s Cove, but I might be wrong.

One of my resolutions for this year is to be more conscientious about recording where I sketch and take photographs. Elaine bought me a camera with a GPS for Christmas, which will help, but I’m going to write notes as well.

Creating the grassy edge on the foreground was one of the trickiest bits of this picture because I wanted the edge to be light against the darkest part of the sea. I considered a number of options before deciding to create the grass by scratching away the dry paint with a scalpel (see Scratching and Scraping).