Holy Island Northumberland

Hi there everybody.  My DH has just had his birthday and we have just returned from  a wonderful holiday in Northumberland which is a magical place, especially Holy Island which I think is my favourite place up there, so much so that I felt inspired to create a little watercolour scene of it.

I used a little set of Windsor and Newton watercolours which I bought to use for outdoors painting and intended to use whilst away, but although the weather was not too bad and we did have some lovely sunshine, the weather tended to be rather windy and not conducive to sitting for very long so I painted this on my return using one of the photos that DH took whilst we were away.  I think lots more practice is required with watercolour and I could have been bolder with the light and shade but he did say that he liked the card so I think there may be hope for me yet.

Before finishing here is a little selection of photos which my DH took of Holy Island just to give you a flavour of the place.

               The castle itself was closed the day we visited so we had to view it from a distance.

                                                 

                                      This is a slightly different view than the one I painted.

          Tide coming in and when it reaches the causeway it covers it very quickly.  There are lots
          of signs warning you not to try to cross once the tide reaches the causeway and I can
          understand why.  There is a refuge which you can climb up into if you should get
          caught by the tide ....  no room for the car though!

         There were a huge number of seals hauled out on the sand bank which were a long way off
          but the zoom has caught them better.

           Whilst parked on the causeway these swans flying in caught my eye.  DH was busy taking
            photos in the other direction so I quickly shouted to him and he turned just in time to
            catch them.  They fly a lot faster than I realised they could.

         This picture was taken further round the coast and shows Bamburgh castle on the left and
          Holy Island more distant towards the right of the picture.

        This is Budle Bay which is an inlet just round the coast which is very popular with birds at
         low tide.  I can't get the photo any larger here, but at normal size you can just make
         out Holy Island which is on the horizon half way along that lower cloud.


I hope I haven't bored you too much with our holiday pics.  I won't tell you how many DH took, suffice it to say rather a lot!  It's 400 miles away from where we live but I do hope we manage to get there again some day as Northumberland is beautiful!

Thank you for dropping by today.

Pat  x

I am entering the following challenges:

Simon Says Wednesday Challenge - Create a Scene.
Everybody Art Challenge - Summer/Holiday.
30 Day Colouring Challenge