The Early Bird Captures the Sunrise!

As an artist I also adore light - especially sunrises and sunsets and the long cast shadows so whenever possible I like to rise early and head out to do some sketching and capture some images of a beautiful sunrise. Living on the East Coast of the UK gives me the advantage of seeing beautiful sunrises over the North Sea.

I am fairly meticulous at scanning in my sketches and keeping them with my photos in a a large image databank for reference purposes and for potential paintings. I have categories such as weather, skies (including sunrises and sunsets), textures (such as old wood, rusty machines, rope etc), boats, animals & birds, people and places (including my local town of Woodbridge).

So when my local art club announced a competition to design a postcard for our local town of Woodbridge I naturally turned to my databank. I was looking for images that would in someway capture the essence of the town and that could be cropped into a 6" x 4" format. It seemed to me that the barges on waterfront and the iconic building called The Tide Mill formed an image that would be instantly recognisable by both residents and visitors to Woodbridge.

One image included the sunrising behind the Tide Mill with barges resting on the calm reflective water and with a little adjustment of angles I realised I could create a lovely view looking through the rigging of a barge.

I toned down the colours to create a low key painting in a deliberate attempt to move away from the garish and bright blue skies adopted by most other postcards.

To my delight I won the competition and the image is now for sale in the town!