The Colours of the Firth of Forth: A Field Guide
By Elspeth J Mackenzie | Coastal Artist & Rower, Edinburgh
People who haven't spent time on the water tend to think of the sea as blue. Maybe grey on a bad day. Perhaps a sort of green if you're being generous.
People who have spent time on the water know better.
I've been rowing the Firth of Forth for over twelve years. I only started painting it recently. And in that time I've come to understand that the Firth doesn't have a colour so much as it has a vocabulary - a shifting, restless set of tones that changes with the season, the hour, the weather and the particular quality of the Scottish light on any given day.
I've tried to name them. Not the official names - there are no official names for what the Firth does at 7am in February or on an August evening when the light comes in sideways off the stone breakwater. These are my names. The ones I reach for when I'm standing at the easel trying to hold onto something that's already gone.
Here is my field guide.
Haar Morning
The grey that isn't really grey.
When the sea fog rolls in off the North Sea and settles over the Firth, everything goes soft. The light becomes directionless - you can't tell where it's coming from because it's coming from everywhere at once, diffused through the haar into something flat and luminous and utterly unlike ordinary daylight.
The colour of the water in these conditions is impossible to describe precisely, which is of course why I keep trying. It's a warm grey, if that makes sense. A grey with something living inside it. Not the grey of concrete or cloud, but the grey of something that knows the sun is coming.
I have mixed this colour many times. I have never got it exactly right. I keep trying.
Low Sun on Stone
This one only happens in the evening, and only when the conditions are exactly right.
The old stone along the Forth - the harbour walls, the old buildings, the geology of the place - catches the late sun and turns amber. And that amber light bounces off the stone and onto the water and for ten or fifteen minutes the Firth goes briefly, improbably warm. Golden, almost. Like a river in a warmer country.
It never lasts. The light shifts, the warmth goes and the Firth returns to its usual cool self as if nothing happened. But while it's happening it's extraordinary - this sudden generosity from a stretch of water that spends most of its time being beautiful in a much more austere way.
Hazy Morning
A sort of out of focus colour - nothing loud or cold - just soft blues and greys with subtle nuances.
There are no harsh shadows or wild waters, rather a gentle all over colour washing of the Firth and sky. It will be quite warm - never cold. Rowing will be easy and smooth.
It could be autumn, spring or summer - you’ll know it when you see it. Walk by the , relax, breath and enjoy.
Before the Rain
There is a specific green that the Firth goes approximately twenty minutes before the weather changes.
I don't know the meteorology of it. Something to do with the light changing as cloud builds, something to do with what's happening in the water below the surface. What I know is that every experienced rower on the Firth recognises this colour and what it means. When the water goes this particular warning green, you start thinking about heading in.
It is not a pleasant green. It has nothing of the cheerful, bright green of summer shallows. It's a green with an edge to it - charged, slightly ominous, the colour of something that's about to happen.
I find it one of the most beautiful colours the Firth produces. There's something compelling about beauty with a warning built into it.
After the Rain
And then the rain comes, and everything changes.
The Firth after a downpour has a quality that I have never quite managed to paint satisfactorily, which means I keep being forced to try. It's brighter than it has any right to be. Washed clean of everything that was making it look grey and threatening, the water opens up - vivid, clear, high-contrast against whatever sky is left behind.
There's a before and after quality to it that's very satisfying to experience from the water. You are wet. You are probably cold. But the Firth looks extraordinary, and you are on it, which feels like a reasonable trade.
Morning Glory
There is something so glorious and uplifting about an early morning summer row. The slow rising of the sun bathes the world in gold. The shadows are a warm purple - colours of joy.
As the sun rises higher, the water turns to amber silk lazily lapping at the slipway. The yachts in the harbour silhouetted against the yellow orange of the sky.
This has to be my most favourite colour, not only because it brings with it the promise of a warm sunny day but because there seems to be nothing else in the world but you, your crew, the boat and the river.
Midsummer
The one everyone thinks of when they picture the sea.
On a clear July morning, with the sun high and the sky that particular deep Scottish blue that you get when the haar has burned off and the air is actually warm, the Firth does something almost Mediterranean. The water goes bright. Genuinely, straightforwardly, happily blue. The kind of blue you'd paint without hesitation if someone asked you to paint the sea.
I paint this colour least often, because it feels almost too obvious - like the answer to a question that deserved a more complicated response. But I've come to think that's a kind of artistic snobbery and I'm working on it. On a clear July morning, the Firth earns its blue. It doesn't need to be more complicated than it is.
November Afternoon
This one is the hardest to describe, which is perhaps why it's the one I come back to most.
It happens in the late autumn, as the light fails in the early afternoon in that way that always catches you off guard even though it happens every year. The water is a colour that is part purple, part green, part the feeling of something ending. At this time of year it’s usually churned up and lumpy which adds more nuances to the colours.
I have a painting that captures this moment - or comes close to it. People who see it always ask what colour that is, how I mixed it. I never give the same answer twice, because I don't think there is one answer. It's the colour of November at 3pm. It's the colour of a year getting tired. It's the colour of a stretch of water that has been doing this for a very long time and will keep doing it long after you've gone in for the evening.
A Note on Painting What You Know From the Inside
I started painting the coast by looking at it from a distance - from clifftops and harbour walls and the windows of cars. Those paintings were fine. Competent. They looked like the sea from the outside, which is what they were.
Everything changed when I started rowing.
From inside the water - from low on the surface, moving through it, feeling the current and the wind and the particular resistance of the Firth against the oars - the colours I'd been trying to paint from the shore looked completely different. More complex. More alive. Full of subtleties I hadn't been able to see from a safe distance.
This is, I think, true of most things worth painting. You have to be inside them to understand them. The view from the shore is beautiful, but it's the view from the boat that gets into the work.
If there's a colour of your coastline you've never quite been able to name - I might be able to paint it.
Originals and prints are available via the link below. Commissions are open - if there's a stretch of water that means something to you, get in touch.
I'd love to hear about it.
Elspeth J Mackenzie is a coastal artist and rower based in Edinburgh. She paints the Firth of Forth and the Scottish coast from the water up.