When I woke up this morning, there was what my old friend Snow would call a mackerel sky. He reckons when you see a sky like this, rain is coming. At 2pm we had a thunder storm with hail rattling on the roof.

There was a northerly wind today with an ear-biting snap. It was exactly low tide when I arrived at Sponge Bay at 8.25am. 

 I carefully navigated the many wooden steps down to the beach. Young Nick's Head was beaming in the background, the water pooled on the sand flashing back the sky, and Tuamotu Island sat on the mid-point of the tonal range. There was purple everywhere - in the clouds, the sea, the land and the sand. 

What caught my eye was the triangle formed by the three logs  embedded in the sand in the foreground:
  

With so much purple, I decided to use pastel paper with a  pale mauve tint. But first, the thumbnails. Three this time – the first to sketch the possible composition, the second exploring the tonal range, and the third to look at the repeating shapes – so many triangles! 

The sketch didn't go well! I was captured by the complexity of the cliffs and this hijacked my intention to foreground the foreground. I didn't care though, because it is all learning. And the sheer pleasure of being there, my usual focus on academic or practice matters replaced by, what Joseph Campbell called, being in my bliss.

Sitting back up in my car in the car park, I drank red date tea, and my friend drank her coffee. We watched the sun blow in from behind the clouds to polish the jags of the far headland and flicker in the water.

As I turned into the road that leads down to Sponge Bay this morning I saw a pair of paradise ducks sitting on top of a blue shipping container. The dark orange of the female’s body popped against the periwinkle blue of the container. Down at the bay my attention was immediately caught by the clouds on the horizon, and my hands itched to flick over the page with my juicy, soft Windsor white pastel to trace the lines of their contours. The more I looked at them, the more colours I could see – different blues, pink, yellow, white. I can’t remember the last time I saw blue shadows on clouds – they’re usually more grey. I was so keen to get going I didn't bother with thumbnails. While I sat there and sketched, I saw a large white bird coming towards the bay from a great distance. It was bright white against the dark teal sea. Finally it came to rest on the waves in the bay. I thought it might be a gannet, but as it came closer I saw it was a large adult black-backed gull. Today the sketch seemed to draw itself. When I had almost finished I put a single white line just above the horizon, and used a blue pastel pencil to provide a little more definition to the shadow side of the clouds. Then I sat with my friend, with my feet up on the railing drinking a cup of red date tea. My friend JieYu says the tea is good for my circulation.

Today I was sketching the distant hills around the big bay that Gisborne sits beside - visible from the western end of Sponge Bay. As usual, I started with a couple of thumbnails:

I had trouble with the hills for some reason. I thought I would just get on with the sketch, see if I could find a way forward. I was using pastel chalks, as usual, and sketching on Canson Mi Tientes paper. It was still difficult to get the hills in the right proportion. I had a bit of headland in the foreground - it was low tide and there was a causeway of rocks visible going out to Tuamotu Island which sits in the bay. I started by making the headland too big and then didn't have room for the mountains. Then I made the mountains too long, then too short! I rubbed them out four times before finally getting something I was reasonably happy with. I felt very relaxed about this though, because I think it's good for my brain to be thinking about objects in relation to other objects, and the discipline of trying to represent them in some way. Overhead there were skylarks singing their hearts out, and the occasional paradise ducks shooting across the airspace.

Back to the western side of the bay today. The first thing I did was take a couple of photos because I couldn't decide what to sketch. The rectangle of the camera's screen gives instant framing options. Clear skies, and a bit of a surf break at the tip of Tuamotu Island. I did a couple of quick thumbnails to explore composition and tone:

 I used the drawing pen to outline the hills and the toe of Tuamotu Island: