Spume (Original)

I started this lying on a picnic rug on Holkham beach. We were camping at Stiffkey with friends, the kids were happy in the sand, and I had a rare stretch of time with nothing to do but look at the sea.

I often don't know how to start a thing, so I draw a framework first — a grid, a squiggle, some circles that overlap. Anything that narrows the options down and gives me something to work with. That's what the big circles are. Then the squiggles became waves, because that's what I was looking at, and I began filling the gaps between the waves and the circles with tiny bubbles. It was only later that I looked at it and saw sea foam.

It wasn't finished on the beach. All those little circles took a very long time, and it came home with me.

White gel pen on 300gsm black watercolour paper. A4 (21 × 29.7 cm). Signed by me.