Create a collage of coastal life

I often start a painting with a random collage; this enables me to move away from pencil outlines, which I find too restrictive. To get the same sort of loosening up, I often encourage beginners to work with decorating rollers or wet-in-wet watercolours to begin with – almost anything, really, to get rid of the stark white of the paper. This can be a way of replacing collage when you are starting out. Another way of working is to do a random collage – just stick down materials as you please – and then find a scene that fits it well, or that you could make work.

For some time, I had a period of painting with watercolour washes, then cutting the paper in half and using the two pieces for two entirely different