Cornish Cycling Sketcher Series — Post 1
I have a Potensic Atom SE drone. Under 249 grams. 31 minutes flight
time. Folds down small enough to fit in a cycling pack.
It has been in its box for over a year.
📦 The Depreciation You
Don’t Think About
There’s the obvious depreciation — the resale value dropping while it
sits there. That’s real but it’s not the main problem.
The main problem is the depreciation of relevance.
When I bought it, I had a clear vision. Hero shots from clifftops.
Video footage that shows the full sweep of a Cornish location before
settling on me setting up the easel. A visual record of what plein air
painting in this part of the world actually looks, sounds and feels
like.
That vision is still completely valid. It hasn’t depreciated. If
anything it’s more relevant now, because the content we’re building
around Creative Path 52 and damiansemonin.art needs exactly that kind of
footage.
But I’ve had 14 months during which I could have been building a
library of it, and instead I have an intact box and a growing sense of
irony.
🎨 What It’s Actually For
Cornwall is extraordinary to paint. Two coasts within 30-45 minutes.
Locations like Wheal Coates — a ten-minute drive from me, a
fifteen-minute cycle — that featured in Poldark. Ancient engine houses
on clifftops above turquoise water. The kind of landscape that makes
American viewers stop scrolling because they recognise it as
beautiful before they understand why.
The research I’ve done on American audiences bears this out. The
appetite for Cornwall — fired in no small part by Downton Abbey and
Poldark — is real. The combination of stunning landscapes, an artist
recording them in real time, drone footage that gives the full sense of
place, and a narrative about what it means to work and live creatively
in a location like this?
That’s a rich vein. And the drone is what unlocks the visual scale of
it.
The GoPro is part of this too. Older model, but I have the
subscription for cloud storage. It goes on the helmet or the bars during
the cycling sections. The drone handles the wide context shots. Together
they cover everything from intimate to cinematic.
⚠️ The Rule I’m Making Myself
Follow
Don’t buy it until you’re ready to use it.
That’s the rule I should have had in place. Not because the purchase
was wrong — the drone is still the right tool — but because buying
something is not the same as using it, and the gap between the two is
where the value drains away.
This applies to every workshop course you’ve purchased and not
completed. Every art book you’ve bought and not opened past the
introduction. Every subscription running in the background for tools you
haven’t touched in three months.
The drone in the box is just the most visible version of a pattern
that shows up everywhere.
The solution isn’t to buy less. It’s to create a commitment at the
point of purchase: what is the first specific thing I will do with this?
When will I do it? What do I need in place to make that happen?
For the drone: the first session is the Wheal Coates clifftop.
Morning light. One coastal painting documented from setup to finished
piece with drone overhead shots at key stages. That’s the brief. That’s
how it moves from “expensive equipment I own” to “content asset that
generates value.”
🌊 The Plein Air Planning
System
Here’s what I want to build — and what the Creative CoPilot is being
designed to support.
A plein air session should be planned. Not rigidly, but specifically.
That means:
Location brief — where, why, what I’m hoping to
capture. What’s historically or visually significant about it.
Route — the cycle ride in, the ride home. Strava or
GPX integration so the journey itself is documented, not just the
painting.
Weather window — checked 5-7 days out and monitored
closer in. The co-pilot flags when a window that looked borderline
starts to improve. Two or three location options, ranked by which one
works best in the forecast conditions. (An exposed clifftop in 25mph
wind is a miserable place to hold a canvas.)
Kit checklist — lightweight, nothing forgotten.
Drone batteries charged. GoPro card formatted. This shouldn’t require
thinking on the morning.
The result isn’t just a painting. It’s a documented creative session
with footage, a cycle route, weather context, and a finished piece.
Every one of those is content. Every one feeds something on the
sites.
🎬 The Audience That’s Waiting
There are people — many of them in the States — who would follow this
exact journey.
Not because they want to paint. Because they want to see this place
through the eyes of someone who lives in it, loves it, and has the craft
to show why it matters. The drone footage is what makes it feel
real rather than just Instagram.
The box needs to be opened.
I’m opening it this week.
The Cornish Cycling Sketcher blog lives at damiansemonin.art —
cycling, plein air, and painting the places Poldark made
famous.
