A sand artist has celebrated the New Year by creating a unique display on a beach in Northumberland.
Sunderland-based Claire Eason created the stunning piece of work alongside a friend at Beadnell Bay in the space of just twenty minutes on two separate occasions and took pictures of the artwork from above using drones.
Claire, who worked in the NHS for 30 years, founded Soul 2 Sand following her retirement to explore the wellbeing benefits of sand art, capturing pictures of her projects from above using aerial drone technology.
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The design, which boldly displays the year '2023' in celebration of the New Year, represented a unique design for the retiree who has previously produced stunning displays for Remembrance Day as well as the late Queen's Platinum Jubilee last year.
The artwork featured a 'Catherine Wheel' style effect using burning wire wool to symbolise the fireworks that are associated with New Year celebrations and measured between 90 and 100 feet in all.
Claire explained that she felt New Year was the perfect time to experiment with a new, innovative design with the themes of new beginnings so in keeping with the ethos of her work.
She said: "For me, New Year is all about a blank canvas, a little bit of blank canvas every day. It kind of echoes my [artwork's] sense of possibilities, every time the tide goes out. So I thought it would be a really nice message to tie in with New Year.
"We've got a whole new year stretching ahead, full of possibilities and it's a great time to try something new. For this particular design, what I wanted to do was to keep the design simple but try and create the firework effect within the '0' to give 2023 a sense of energy, fun and newness basically.
"So that was why the design was kept simple, to keep the focal point the '0' with the Catherine Wheel burning wool in it when dusk came."
She added: "I roped in a friend who had never done it before so, again, it was a new thing for her and it was a new thing for me too in the sense that I had never combined sand art and fire light art together before.
"I'd experimented with wire wool burning [before] but I thought it would be amazing to see if you could combine these two things together."
Claire says she chose Beadnell Bay to ensure that the lighting would be such that it would provide the perfect contrast to ensure the resulting pictures did the designs justice.
She added that precision is needed in the planning process, so much so that the window of time for optimal results is around the 20 minute mark.
She said: "The reason I chose that location was I spend a lot of time there, I know the beach really well- the sand is perfect and I knew that at that time of the day, the sun would be behind it. That would give a strong contrast.
"It did take quite a bit of planning as you need it to be dusk, it can't be pitch black, otherwise you can't see the sand. You also need it dark enough to pick up the burning wire wool so you've probably only got about twenty minutes, thirty at the most to set everything up.
"So that was the key thing to see if that was possible. The other key thing was you need a degree of long exposure with your drone. Not all drones can do this but one of mine does have a degree of long exposure so I needed that above to capture it."
The process is also environmentally friendly as the wire wool used to create the Catherine Wheel effect simply turns to rust and then can be picked up.
Claire explained: "It's all environmentally friendly as when you burn wire wool it simply turns to rust. Nothing about it is poisonous. We simply pick it up, put it in a in box and take it away.
"It's eco-friendly, it does no harm and it can be great fun to share with other people. That's my favourite thing to share it with people and get a group effect."
The design was between 90 and 100 feet across in order to ensure that the numbers were to ensure that the Catherine Wheel effect could be achieved to add the unique New Year twist.
"The design itself was a whopper, it was between 90 and 100 feet across. The reason for that was a technical one as the first time I did the practice with the burning wire wool, I wanted to see how far it would create the circle and it turned out to be about 4 metres across.
"So I knew then that the '0' would have to be 4 metres. So everything was measured out from the diameter of the zero because it was about 100 feet across- huge."
Claire said her artwork did draw the interest of some onlookers and that she did have people coming over to ask what she was doing, with some even initially thinking she was metal detecting.
In the end, those who did show interest proved crucial to the quality of the drone pictures that were produced, providing a sense of scale on the aerial snaps.
Claire said: "A few people who were around at the time came over to see what I was doing because they thought I was metal detecting or something like that and when I was nearly finished I got photos of people I captured to show the scale from above.
"Otherwise, if you don't have a person or an animal in the drawing it's impossible to get a sense of the scale- so it's really important to try and have someone, even if it's just me!"
Sadly, Claire's designs do, of course, only last until the next tide. However, starting the year as she means to go on, she did confirm that she has more ideas up her sleeve for the rest of 2023.
She added: "I have many designs planned. I have a really fun one secret birthday design commission coming up next week and I can't say too much but it connects a lady who is a folklore character and I'm hoping to share that within the next two weeks.
"I'm also hoping to do some work with Alnmouth Arts Festival in the summer which is a big collaboration and I'm also doing some memorials so it's a mixture of some fun things and some serious things.
"It embraces and includes all of the human experience really, you can create an image for anything within the sand which means something to that individual."
You can see more of Claire's work on Instagram at @soul2sand.
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