Falmouth, Cornwall.

I’ve had a thoroughly wonderful week in Falmouth with my family, house-sitting for a friend and her 2 cats. It can be hard to fill the 2 week Easter break when you have kids, so this opportunity was jumped upon.

Coming down here was also a perfect opportunity to do some painting, especially since I have multiple 4-day plein air painting workshops coming up at the Newlyn School of Art. I needed to recce the area and re-familiarize myself with the best painting spots.

The first session was on the Falmouth peninsula at Pendennis point, looking across the water to St Anthony Head and the Lighthouse from the awesome 80’s TV show Fraggle Rock. The rain came down just as I finished and quickly turned to hail.

The next day I headed down early to Gyllyngvase Beach and started painting at 8am while recording an episode of Thoughts on Painting on my GoPro for my YouTube channel. I hadn’t done an episode in 19 months so it was good to get into that frame of mind again and waffle on to camera whilke I painted. I was really pleased with the painting and felt I really got the light of the morning.

The third session was overlooking Watergate Bay from the clifftop while my son had his first ever surfing lesson down below. I could just see his bright red board in the surf. The wind was quite strong up there, but my new tripod can spread its legs super wide so I was stable!

The final painting day was back at Watergate Bay, but this time down on the beach while Louis had another surfing lesson. The weather was a really mixed bag, with scattered showers, some intense wind and sun bursts. It ended again with rain and me trying to shield the painting from getting wet and stop the wind whipping sand onto the wet surface. I got it done though and the painting survived. I was pleased witht eh atmosphere in this piece, the lifeguards put out the flags 10 mins before i finished and they had to go in!

I tried one more painting looking back up the beach into the sun, contré jour, but the tide was coming in fast, causing me to grab my easel and run up the beach three times, leaving my paint box to get swamped, the the wind really picked up and blew my easel over when I was rescuing the paint box and everything slammed into the beach, brushes everywhere, sand in everything and my wet painting face-down on the beach. Arrrrgh! I deemed in unrecoverable and binned it in the cark park on the way out. You win some, you lose some.

The final day of the trip was spent driving West to Penzance and St Michael’s Mount, then Mousehole, Porthcurno (stunning), Sennen and finally the very dramatic Land’s End. How have I got to 46 without ever seeing Land’s End?!

All in all, a hugely enjoyable and rewarding week, with good company, good food and spectacular views. I love Cornwall and will be back many more times this year if all goes to plan.