Giant's Causeway
Watercolour and crayon
©2017 Charlene Brown
If you’re familiar with the Giant's Causeway, which heads out from
the coast of Northern Ireland towards Scotland, you’ll know you can’t actually
see all these aspects of the formation from just one spot. So I’ve painted it
from several spots, as is my custom.
I’ve included as many of the 40,000 interlocking basalt columns as
seemed appropriate, and added the little puddles from the latest rainfall in
the concave tops of many of them. Most of the columns are hexagonal, although
there are also some with four, five, seven or eight sides. The tallest are
about 12 metres high and the solidified lava in the cliffs is 28 metres thick
in places. They are result of an ancient volcanic eruption, or the remains of an
unsuccessful road-building project started by Irish giant Fionn mac Cumhaill (Finn
MacCool) – depending on who is telling you the story.
