Cornwall – Tim O'Hare

Mevagissey #art

I painted this little watercolour picture of Mevagissey harbour back in June. I was looking to paint a picture to use for a birthday card for the son of one of my wife’s best friends, and brother to one of my elder daughter’s closest friends (by which I mean that the son was also the brother!). As it happened, a couple of months previously, his mum had seen some of my pictures when visiting our home, we got talking about art, and along the way she told us how he had surprised her by saying that when he finally got his own place to live (he’s in his mid/late 20s) he wanted to have pictures of two places that were special to him – Pew Tor on Dartmoor, close to their home in Tavistock, and Mevagissey in Cornwall.

As the date of the birthday approached I started to think of painting one of my ‘special place’ pictures for his card. The trouble was, I was faced with a choice, and anyone who knows me well will know that one thing I am not good at dealing with is choice. It’s tempting to think that choice is a good thing, and I am sure that I would say that I’d prefer to always have a choice than not, but in many ways I’d find life a lot easier if there was a little creature sitting on my shoulder, or tucked into my sleeve, whispering to tell me what to do all of the time.

Should I paint Pew Tor or should I paint Mevagissey?

I’d painted a larger picture of Pew Tor back in early March and knew that I could produce something smaller but similar that would work as a birthday card. I’d also painted various places in Cornwall as part of my Cornwall Landmarks Miniature Watercolours Series. But I’d never tackled Mevagissey… So, one morning I took a small piece of watercolour paper, performed a quick Google search for a suitable photograph, and set to work.

I like the results of my effort – the painting that introduces this post. The picture I chose was a fairly busy scene, with the quayside at Mevagissey backed by all kinds of interestingly shaped and coloured buildings, a host of colourful boats moored at the water’s edge, a pair of rather striking light-blue benches towards the right of the scene, and the bright yellow fishing boat pulling out confidently towards open waters. It was a picture that provided lots of splashes of colour that give the painting a nice sense of aliveness I think.

But, in the end, it was Pew Tor that won the mental tug-of-war that was taking place inside my head. I put my little Mevagissey picture, really just a test piece, to one side, and opted instead for the Dartmoor ‘special place’ rather than the Cornish one. If you are reading this soon after it was originally posted (on 9th September 2025) and want to see the Pew Tor picture that I ended up using, then you’ll just have to visit this site again in a few days time… because if all goes to plan I will post it here soon. For now, you’ll just have to enjoy a quick trip to Mevagissey – a perfect example of the many picturesque little harbour towns that line the southern Cornish coastline.

Cornwall Landmarks #art

I like to try to spend a little time painting on as many days as I can, and for obvious reasons, the key to this is to keep my pictures small. One of my favourite formats seems to be 5cm square pictures painted in a fairly loose style, with not too much detail and a fairly limited colour palette. Each picture starts with a few pencil marks that serve as guide lines for the pen work, mostly outlining key features and providing various forms of shading. Once the ink has dried, which only takes a few seconds, I start to apply the watercolour paint, usually colouring the sky and any large blocks of vegetation first, before moving on to fill in any details. The whole process generally takes less than 30 minutes and my preference is to spend time of this as pretty much the first thing I do in the morning. When I completed my first small picture, I didn’t have any particular plans for further pictures on the same theme, but one picture led to another, and it seems that I end up producing these miniature watercolours as part of a series, first Dartmoor Scenes and then House Plants, Capital City Landmarks, and a series of slightly larger Mysterious Britain pictures. Most recently, returning closer to home, I completed this set of pictures showing various landmarks in our neighbouring county, Cornwall.

The pictures weren’t painted in this order, but the subjects of my Cornwall Landmarks series are (from top-left working across the rows and down the columns in the composite picture above) The Roundhouse Gallery, Sennen Cove, The Eden Project near St Austell, Bedruthan Steps, Men-An-Tol stone ring, St Michael’s Mount near Penzance, a classic coastal tin mine pumping station, the Minac Theatre, Tintagel Castle and Restormel Castle near Lostwithiel. If I had to choose favourites then I think I would go for the pictures of The Roundhouse Gallery, Bedruthan Steps and Restormel Castle, although I might well make different selections the next time I look at them!

As with each of my other miniature watercolour series, I plan to get some copies of the 3 x 3 composite picture printed as greetings cards to sell at some point, and I will probably try out some of them as individual framed versions too.

I guess the obvious question for me now is where I will go next with this kind of miniature watercolour picture. This morning I painted a view from a photograph I took last week while staying in Exmoor, and so I guess that it is likely that I will end up doing some more from that beautiful part of the world. But whether I will end up with enough for a full series, so that I can make another 3 x 3 composite, only time will tell!

Cotehele Quay, Cornwall #art

Back in August 2024, whilst running the second half of the West Devon Way from Peter Tavy to Okehampton, I managed to land heavily on my left leg, jolting the knee inwards. At the time, it was just one of those slightly missed steps that occurs when out running on rough terrain, but in the next couple of days I found myself in a fair amount of pain, with my left knee feeling oddly loose and unstable. The pain subsided, and by the following weekend I was able to test myself out with a short run. Yes, okay, there was some reaction afterwards, but would it stop me completing my plan to run a section of the South West Coast Path from Par Beach to Looe a week later? What do you think?

Sometimes in life one makes mistakes… On Thursday 29th August, after being dropped at Plymouth Railway Station, I caught the 0747 train to Par, and having jogged the mile or so from Par Station to the beach, at 09:28 I began my self-propelled journey west. It was a beautiful sunny day, giving me spectacular coastal views and some great running… but by the time I reached Fowey, almost six miles into the route and having rounded Gribbin Head, my leg was screaming at me that it was sore… very sore. Did I do the sensible thing, and call it a day? You’ve probably gathered by now that the answer to that question is ‘no’. Instead, having cross the River Fowey on the passenger ferry, I climbed out of Polruan to begin the(how shall I put this?) somewhat undulating section of the path that would eventually take me to Looe, ten miles or so further along the coast. It was not a good decision – for undulating read brutally up and down and blisteringly hot… By the time I reached Looe I was hobbling along, and hardly able to run at all. It got worse. My wife had driven over to pick me up and in time it took us to drive home again my leg had decided that it wasn’t really interested in moving anymore – so it didn’t.

What followed was an initial period when my left knee felt like it could collapse on me at any time, and when it wasn’t making that threat it was clunking nauseatingly, as some internal part of it moved in a way that it clearly wasn’t supposed to. So, I rested up, took things carefully, and went to see a Sports Therapist who agreed with my self-diagnosis – that I had damaged my Medial Collateral Ligament (which is located on the inside of the knee joint and acts to prevent, or at least limit, unwanted inward movement). Over the next few months I paid regular visits to the clinic for ultrasound treatment, nerve stimulation and massage, and I completed (not especially diligently) a set of stretches designed to improve the overall strength and mobility of my leg. Things sort of got better…

Just before Christmas, still experiencing pain, especially after I had been sitting down for any length of time (which is essentially how I spend the bulk of my days…), and still unable to run, I switched to seeing a Physiotherapist. She immediately targeted my hamstring and quad to carry out some excruciatingly painful massage and trigger-point needling. Things continued to sort of get better…

In January, I caught a bad cold, had to cancel a physio appointment, and following the resulting unplanned period of rest and inactivity, found that my leg was definitely starting to feel quite a lot better. It made me wonder whether that was what my leg really needed – complete rest, or as close to complete rest as I could get – and so I avoided walking as much as I could (getting a lift into work), and waited for time to do its job (which, as I write this at the end of February, it is still doing…).

All of which is a very long-winded way of explaining why, one Sunday afternoon towards the end of January, with us unable to go out for a walk anywhere, I drove down to The Box (museum) in Plymouth where I subsequently sat with a coffee and some of my drawing and painting gear while my wife walked down to meet me and hour or so later. I didn’t have any kind of plan, but after a quick search for interesting images of local places, I selected a photograph of Cotehele Quay on the Cornish side of the River Tamar about ten miles north of where I sat and set to work.

The picture at the start of this entry is the result. I was a bit limited by the range of watercolour pans that I had with me, but it’s a reasonably satisfying little picture with some nice details, and I think it captures the overall feel of the place fairly well. It was certainly an interesting experience to sit painting in a public place (not that I was aware that any of the people around me really noticed what I was doing) and something that I am sure I will do again. It would be better, of course, to be sitting out in nature actually looking at the view I am painting, but for that to happen it seems that I will need to remain patient a little longer…