Listen to another plein air war story, this one from the English coast, courtesy of Lynne Chapman.
Chapman was finishing up a week of holiday at the shore when she decided to go down to the beach and paint watercolors in a concertina-style (accordion-fold) sketchbook. Her morning session finished with a bit of rain, but the sun came out after lunch and Chapman decided to return for more.
And encountered quite a bit of wind. She finished up one book and decided to paint another sketch in another book. She wedged the finished book between a rock and her backpack to secure it from rogue gusts. That precaution was evidently insufficient.
“I had just made the first paint mark when there was a particularly violent gust of wind,” says Chapman. “I just managed to keep hold of the book in my hand, but the wedged book wasn’t so lucky. The leverage of the wind against the book toppled the rucksack forward. Both book and rucksack landed in the deep rock pool. Panic. The trouble was, my hands were full and anything I put down would be flung down the beach in the crazy wind. I sacrificed the rucksack to the water and just managed to grab one end of the sketchbook as it went in, whisking it out really fast. I was left trying to juggle the crazy-flapping, dripping concertina, a loaded paintbrush and paint-filled pallet, as well as the other sketchbook. The wet sketchbook was trying to rip itself in half. Paint, sea, and sand went everywhere.”
Her husband was nearby, and he helped. Together they saved her pack (which included her phone) and nearly all of the sketches. Chapman did report having wet feet in the cold air and a bit of sand in her mouth (courtesy of the paintbrush she had held in her mouth — the same brush she had poked in the sand earlier).
