Sketching in Lanzarote: Day 11. Sand EVERYWHERE!

[by Lynne Chapman, from England, in Lanzarote] This was a day of two halves again. In the morning, we visited another of Manrique’s projects: his house on the lava field at Tahiche. Then, after lunch, we went for a walk along the beach beneath the Famara Cliffs (which I painted earlier in the trip). It was VERY windy, so apart from a few kite-surfers, we had this spectacular spot more or less to ourselves.

When we had walked up and back, I really wanted to paint, but the only shelter from the wind came from some sand dunes. We tucked ourselves in behind one, which did help a lot. It was only after I had been painting for about 10 minutes, that I realised how much sand was whipping round behind the dune and sticking to my watercolour:

A few more minutes, and there was more sand than paint on my palette! I soldiered on, but very soon it was ridiculous. We realised that we too were covered in sand – it was all in our clothes and encrusted into our hair. 

So we beat a retreat. At least I got more or less finished and the majority of the sand brushed off once it was dry.

If you missed the earlier posts, you can see the rest of my sketches from the trip here.