The first day of the residency has arrived and, despite the very cold weather, I was buzzing with the glow of anticipation and excitement. Having been dropped off at the beach car park by my good friend Innes (who also lives in Banchory), I arrived at the estuary at 10:00. Snow lying from during the past week but not deep, well broken cloud with sunny spells and a temp of -5 which may have risen slightly (but still freezing) despite a slight breeze from the southwest.
A stunning morning at the estuary with the rising sun casting long shadows. Several hundred seals at the beach haul-out dotted with around 50 sanderling, cormorant, turnstone and great black-backed, herring and common gulls feeding around them. As well as the gurgling and obvious fracas of the seal sounds, they were joined by the whistles and shouts of instructions by the coach of the local football team as they trained on the beach beside me (their game obviously postponed due to the weather)!
I sat for a while on the north-facing side of a dune, in relative shelter, drinking it all in and thinking about where to start! Those first marks onto a blank sheet of paper are always the most daunting and I am guilty of procrastinating over this for too long even now. Not being tied to a set of rules or framework to work within is great and I can draw and paint what I please – but it is however often difficult to choose what to focus on and get going with! I settled down to sketch the seals after watching them for 10 minutes or so and, as I was hunkered down, decided to try a more detailed study. Always quite daunting with so much activity and many subjects in front of you to choose from. The tide was slowly rising, pushing them further up the beach and creating some lovely reflections as it retreated. The water getting higher was also causing arguments as they were forced closer to one another. Several youngsters were keeping themselves to the shallows off the main haul to indulge in their own bouts of play fighting. I could spend all day of every day of this residency at the seals, such is the subject matter in front of me but it would mean missing out on other things that make this area so special.
Although the southern end of the Forvie National Nature Reserve is off-limits to the public to prevent disturbances to the seals and wading birds (and breeding terns in the summer) and is fenced-off with warning signs – there are still some members of the public who ‘slip through the net’. One such person today was a photographer who proceeded to try getting close to the seals by crawling along on his belly, scattering some of the haul-out into the sea. I tried gesticulating to him and shouting for him to back off but he either couldn’t hear/see me or he chose to ignore me. Selfish behaviour on a nature reserve and especially when you can get closer, with far better views from the south side of the estuary beach (where I was). From there, you can view and photograph the seals from the shore or from the Newburgh and Ythan Community Trust purpose-built, all-ability boardwalk and viewing platform. Thankfully, although more by sheer luck than anything, he didn’t spook all the seals into the water – just a small section of the haul-out nearest to him and he retreated through the dunes rather than continuing along the shore.
As afternoon progressed, it got that bit colder and the briefest of showers left dots of frozen droplets all over my gear. I was never that cold enough to think about packing in, especially when it so beautiful with good light, but I did have to get up and stretch my legs occasionally and the water for my paint was starting to freeze.
I left at around 4pm, as another good friend (and who I will be staying with overnight) Raymond rang and said he’s on his way home and would pick me up from the beach car park – a kind offer I wasn’t going to turn down!
On the way back to the house, Raymond took me to the Waterside car park to check the small woods at the start of the path into the reserve. Here, the ground remained largely snow-free and there were dozens of redwings foraging through the leaf litter. You could tell how many there were just by the naked eye, as the flicking of the leaves while they foraged was obvious. Some are clearly struggling, as they were foraging right by the track and not too bothered by us at all. Hopefully the predicted thaw will come quickly for them and all the other wildlife that has had to cope in the prolonged spell of freezing weather.
INNER THOUGHTS: I still battle constantly with self-confidence and esteem but in this amazing location and environment however, it is easier to relax and forget about everything plus deal with any negative voices in my head that bit better. I’m not the most prolific an artist and a bit too obsessed with accuracy and detail, which results in me producing limited amounts of work. Need to work on quashing the tightness in my work and just paint what I see rather than how I know it should be!
