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.