Painting in watercolour, with bubbles in palladium and aluminium leaf. Another painting from a photo in the incomparable waters of Vobster Quay.
Lisa – swimmer painting in watercolour by Nancy Farmer
This painting is for sale at the time of posting this, and there will be prints available shortly.
I’ve been looking at some of my photos taken at Vobster Quay, of swimmers underwater. I take these as an aid to creating paintings and not as an end to themselves, but I thought I would share this with you. The movements of swimmers are always lovely, it’s the weightlessness, but I particularly liked this sweep down, a dive with two leg kicks.
The camera is an Olympus Tough (orange, now obsolete, but there are newer versions), It’s very wide angle which makes the swimmers look quite far away and quite deep down, even if you see just one photo close-up. Click on the sequence and you should be able to see it in reasonable detail.
Sara, diving at Vobster Quay
Sara
‘Why do you do it?’ said the diver, struggling into her drysuit and eyeing my swimming costume with a tinge of horror. Because this is what it looked like; because being in a wetsuit is not the same as being in the water; because I can.
I do admit to wearing gloves yesterday, I had forgotten that, when I drew this. Particularly good for chilly swims when you can’t help but stop and take photos. I had a slight dilemma about adding people to this picture, so I finished two versions.
Last Swim of 2016
Last Swim of 2016 ii
September 15th: Vobster Quay’s annual ‘Glow Swim’ and the swimmers are ready to go. Once, twice… four times round the lake for the super-keen, in the dark. The sploosh of swimming loud in the ears, the flash of 80 glow-sticked heads, and the occasional swerve and bump and ‘oops, sorry’ on this surreal nocturnal journey.
Vobster Quay’s Glow Swim 2016
Tuesday was our last swim of the year (I am not counting a visit to the swimming pool yesterday, which was warm and chemical). At Vobster, we ended on a high note of December sunlight, an exceptionally mild 10 degrees, and Fiona’s chocolate caramel shortbread. The two figures in the foreground are Ruth and me though, because I rather thought our swimming attire looked jolly together, and I have amusing writing across my new swimming costume bottom, especially designed and ordered by Plum for a relay race next month. On the front of it there are appropriate snowflakes, but it’s barely even cold yet!
I have no drawing for it but today I also did my first swim of 2016: It was Clevedon New Year’s Day swim, a quite different setting and a mass affair accompanied by much shrieking from those foolhardy enough to think that leaping into 8 degrees does not require a little practice…
Last swim of 2015
The leaves are just beginning to turn, but they aren’t in the lake yet. What was in the lake was suddenly an impressive amount of rain, the mist that seemed to lie on the surface of the lake was not actual mist, but the view across the surface of the water through a million splashing raindrops – my eyes being mere inches above the water. This was Vobster on Tuesday; it’s still warmish – above 15 – but it’s cooling down now. Winter is coming!
Raindrops on water, at Vobster Quay
I have just listed a lot of swimming drawings as greetings cards in my Etsy shop, click here to view them.
It’s pretty hard to draw from memory, even on a last lap round the lake, breaststroke, with nothing much else to think about than to pay attention to what it looks like. But it might have looked a little like this, more or less.
There had been other swimmers yesterday evening, though fewer lately, but the last time round there was just two of us. All too soon Autumn will come in and it will be a mere handful of hardy souls left. And then after that just three of us, catching the sunrise again not the sunset, on our Tuesday mornings.
But please join us if you feel inclined, we’d love some more company.
(sketches of swimming and sunrises at Vobster can also be seen in my calendar for next year)
Vobster, beneath a gibbous moon
