Cullen is one of Rudy’s favourite places. He loves digging holes in the sand, swimming in the sea and meeting other four-legged friends, so it’s somewhere we go fairly often.
That, and the great choice of places to eat.
It was a gorgeous day with a fresh sea breeze, and we’d walked along to the rocky end of the beach near the caves. There’s always something interesting growing amongst the rocks. You can normally find me crouched down photographing the sea pinks, but this time it was tiny blue harebells that caught my eye.
It was the colour I noticed first, then just how delicate they were. Their flowers were blowing about on incredibly fine stems. They looked far too fragile for such an exposed spot.
From Coast to Deeside
A couple of weeks later, John and I cycled from Aboyne to Ballater and back along part of the Deeside Way. It was a gorgeous day for being on the bikes, with plans for a tasty lunch in Ballater before turning around and heading back.
And there were the harebells again.
This time there wasn’t just the odd flower tucked amongst the rocks. They lined the cycle path, little blue bells appearing again and again along the route. It was a great excuse to stop.
We made it back to Aboyne just before the torrential rain arrived, which was much better timing than usual. By then, the harebells had really caught my attention. I wanted to look at them more closely and capture some of that delicacy and movement in a painting.
Looking a Little Close
Once I’d properly noticed harebells, they seemed to start turning up everywhere. And, as it turns out, that isn’t particularly surprising. Harebells grow in all sorts of places, from coastal dunes and rocky ground to grassland, heath and the hills.
I even started spotting them in my local woods, including this lovely clump growing from a mossy crevice where the tree trunk divides. It seemed such an unlikely place for something so delicate to be growing. Luckily for me, having them so close to home meant I could collect a few specimens to study more closely.
That’s one of the things I love about botanical art. Painting a plant makes you look at it so much more closely. With the harebells, it’s those impossibly fine stems, the way the flowers hang and, most of all, the movement that I’m trying to capture.
I keep thinking back to the ones at Cullen, those tiny blue flowers being blown about in the sea breeze. Hopefully, I can keep a little of that wildness in the finished painting.