Charlestown is the most charming little village, a mile outside St. Austell in Cornwall. We spent a couple of days there this summer, and it's such a great place for different kinds of painting subjects, from long sea views, lots of greenery, harbour walls, old buildings, ships, boats, pubs, and they even have an old harbour lock and a shipwreck museum! I picked a view of the harbour wall for this one, and it's the biggest painting surface I've ever had a go at - an Arches A3 rough sheet from a pad.

Had a couple of issues with the paper, which I've also posted below, for anyone interested. One issue was some marks where the paint seemed to behave differently, maybe due to an unknown damage beforehand. The other issue was after very carefully erasing some soft pencil lines I used to help to upscale my first sketch of the scene. It seems like my standard, white Staedtler rubber removed some of the sizing, so after the sky wash was applied, you can still see where I erased the lines. A bit annoying, because I was quite fond of the sky in this one. Nevermind! I'm still just practising - this was never going to hang on anyone's wall anyway! 😄

As far as the painting is concerned, it was quite fun to go as large as this, but contrary to what I thought beforehand, I fiddled even more than usual in this one. What seems a quite simple scene, turned out to be more than tricky enough in the end. As usual,happy with many of the elements, as the sky, some parts of the water, but also not happy about other elements, eg. the figure, the foreground steps, some of the ripples etc. And I was VERY tempted to turn this into a Where's Waldo scene..

All comments, tips for improvement etc are very welcome!

(Arches, A3, rough. W&N tubes, both prof. and Cotmans)

Paper issues:

Reference photo: