Having been raised at Bonza Bay, down the decades I have been drawn to beaches, and have always enjoyed sketching people relaxing on the sand, beside the waves. For an artist, these are people acting as unintended models, and the fact that they are unaware they are being drawn adds to the charm. Of course it helps that most are clad only in swimming costumes.
I found a section of an A5 jotting pad - very poor paper quality, but with a lovely soft texture - and it included about half a dozen drawings I must have done around 1980. I looked for signs as to where the drawings were done, and one picture places them on the Bonzies beach. This first one shows three people clearly more intent on chatting over a drink than getting wet in the sea.
Ah the joys of the sunbathing babe. I like the fact that a beach basket, right, obscures the heads of this man and woman soaking up the sun.
You literally only have a few minutes to draw something like this. Watch any person, or couple, and soon enough their poses will change. People, unless they are lying down, are pretty fidgety, so that means you have to draw with great purpose.
This is the drawing that put these sketches at Bonza Bay beach, because in the distance the row of milkwood forest-covered sand dunes which culminate in Nahoon point, can be seen. While I like this study of a seated man, it is of course the two dogs that really make it.
This would be a fairly ordinary sketch, but for the flow of water towards the viewer seen around the oke's ankles.
A classic, even if I say so myself. There is something about large women that really lends itself to being drawn. They have a sculptural quality - and of course are unlikely to move as much as those with quicker metabolism.
When I drew this I had no intention of ever becoming a father. Yet, some 15 years later, I too would be "jumping" my two sons through the waves.
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