When you draw a place, you see it deeply and remember it better. I was thinking about Staithes, on the North Yorkshire coast, last week during the summer school (Staithes, Elongated) and so I looked at a news item on the BBC site yesterday about a girl killed by falling rocks. Immediately I recognised the scene in the first photograph – the breakwater across the beach, the ramp, the little building with the blue roof and those brooding cliffs. I chose not to pick out the blue roof in last week’s piece, but you can see it in the watercolour I worked up last year:

and in the original painted sketch:

Been there, seen there and so the story of a life sadly lost sticks in my mind: a sadder reworking of a reflection I wrote about drawing and place a few months ago.