Looking down on a sandy beach at low tide I watched this blackheaded gull feeding on something in the shallows.

I am constantly fascinated by water and in this case I wanted to understand how to depict it when it is so shallow as to be barely visible. I was also intrigued by the triple imagery of the bird: the gull itself, a faint reflected image of it in the water, and its shadow. Because the water is so shallow and it is being viewed from a high vantage point the reflection is weak while the shadow of the bird on the sand beneath the water's surface is strong. I came to understand that these are all vital elements that help to create the illusion of shallow water covering the sand.

I am also attracted to repeating patterns in nature and the gentle ripples in the sand draw your eye towards the gull as the focalpoint of the composition. The seaweed encroaching from the top of the picture gives weight to the piece and adds much-needed tonal contrast to an otherwise fairly uniform palette.

After the gull had left and I had finished sketching, I went down to the sand to see what it had been finding to eat. There were tiny shrimps flitting about in the shallows. The gull had been shrimping - paddling the sand with its feet to disturb the shrimps and then snatching them out of the water.