Fishing boats in the harbour, Staithes, North Yorkshire

"All lined up", Staithes, North Yorkshire.
Oil. Alistair Butt © 2009.

A wonderful afternoon sunlight with a slight haziness helped add to the impact of this view from the harbour wall, looking past the line up of fishing boats to a small section of the North Yorkshire village of Staithes, seen surrounded by some of the steep cliffs which dominate this section of the Yorkshire coastline.

This really was one of those days when subjects to sketch and therefore paint just kept coming. Just walking up and down the length of the harbour wall presented 6 or 7 very good subjects. In the end it's a choice of A: gather as much as you can from all or B: concentrate on one or two. In the end I managed to do justice to three before the suns position plunged this section of the village into shadows, and thereby creating a different feel.

Thankfully on the day it was a relatively calm sea, it's not always that placid, along with that it was also almost high tide so there wouldn't be much movement when gathering the reference material (notes, combined with detailed sketches and some pictures).

The objective for this painting was to capture the light and atmosphere seen on the day and hopefully I'll find time to paint the other two...