Finally after all the rainfall in spring, the last week of June we had the warm and sunny days we were waiting for. We went a few days to Ouddorp in the Netherlands and visited some of our favorite beaches.

I have always lived relatively close to the sea and I grew up spending lots of time on the beach on hot summer days. Thinking of my childhood, I remember all those happy moments I spend watching the sea move on to the shore, bringing new shells to the beach and taking grains of sand back to sea as the water pulled away. Now I know that I was 'Zen seeing' in those moments, completely focused on what I saw and heard, feeling one with the water and the sand, forgetting space, time and even my parents. Sometimes I found myself far away from my parents, unaware that the tide had secretly encouraged me to follow the flow of the water and stray away.

I still love to stare at the sea coming on to shore, find shells, watch small crabs and feel my feet in the water. My inner child awakens and feels as happy as it can be. Nowadays I bring my sketchbook and if I feel like it, I will draw. If I don't feel like it I bring the shells or other things I will find home and draw them at a later moment.

This time I left the beach a bit puzzled, because I had no idea what this black seaweed in the photo's below is. It looks like a plant or an animal egg. I found them in kind of strings and sometimes the strings were curled up like a nest. Since there were many of these strings lying around on the beach, I brought a bunch of them home for further exploration. They look a bit like a ray fish-egg, but that's more rectangle shaped. I tried to cut one of them, assuming that if it's an egg, it either hatched or dried out on the beach. To my surprise even my sharpest knife couldn't open it, leaving me with the feeling that it must be something that nature is desperately trying to protect. I hope I haven't killed anything by taking it home or that some unknown sea monster species will hatch in my cupboard, because that's were I am keeping it for the moment. If you can tell me what this is I would really appreciate it if you could let me know!

Drawing at the harbour

Close to Ouddorp you find the small town of Middelharnis which has a lovely harbor where boats are moored while there owners spend time on one of the restaurant terraces that surround the harbor. As we do not own a boat we drove there and visited the town's center. We too ended up at one of the terraces on the harbor front and while I was enjoying an apple pie and fresh mint tea,  I took my out sketchbook to draw one of those sailboats.

When I started to draw, I noticed that my mind was convinced that the straight lines of the boat's rig couldn't be drawn without looking at my paper. It was really funny to experience that my mind kept wanting to interfere every time I was drawing some of the rig, however, as usual, it went much better when I started by drawing blind! Despite my interfering mind I really enjoyed this drawing experience, with the apple pie and mint tea giving it an extra dimension. I was also quite happy with the drawing result and it would be nice to turn something similar into a watercolor painting one day.