I completed this small, 8-inch square painting in one session yesterday from information I gathered on my recent trip to Cornwall – the first of a series of small paintings I intend making with a nautical theme.

It’s a change of palette for me. I tend to use as few colours in a painting as I can get away with – often a triad of a particular hue of blue, yellow and red, pushing the inter-mixing as far as I can. In this small painting I also use a triad, but a different triad, and with the addition of black. I’ve used Old Holland magenta, blue and yellow and the lovely, velvety Mars Black from Winsor and Newton. I  like the way in which the intensity of the primaries react with a kind of mutual antagonism towards the black of the harbour wall.