On The Beach by SOAL Studio: A Shape Inside a Shape

On The Beach by SOAL Studio is an abstract art print of a coastline, drawn as though you were standing over it and looking down. There is no horizon in it and no sky. What fills the sheet instead is a ground with the grain of sand, and scattered across it are rounded forms: pools, stones, a channel of water, a spill of foam. Rest on any one of them for a moment and it opens. Almost every shape in this picture has another shape inside it.

On The Beach is an abstract art print by SOAL Studio, hand drawn and crafted by Alan Pedersen and inspired by the coastline, ocean and sea. NOKUKO sells it in two colour editions, Sunday and Moonlight, and in three sizes. It is printed on Fine Art Freja paper (265 g) and marked with the SOAL Studio signature.

Almost every shape holds another one

The picture is built from nested forms, one shape sitting inside another, and the pattern is always at the core. On the right of the sheet a flat pink band curves round a green field ruled with fine wavy white lines, and inside that sits a deep maroon disc filled with horizontal stripes. Three layers, and only the innermost one carries a fine pattern. At the lower right there are four: a maroon rim, a white line, a broad band of soft teal, then a mauve centre scattered with pale dots.

The outsides are plain and the insides are worked. Flat colour and soft gradients sit on the outer layers; the stripes, the zigzags and the dot fields are held at the middle of things, where you have to go looking for them. It is the ordinary experience of a beach, drawn as structure: the shell is a shell until you turn it over, the stone is a stone until it is wet. The product description asks you to look, listen and sense carefully, and promises that you might find a tale or two right in front of you. The drawing is built to reward exactly that.

The four lines that do not close

In the middle of the sheet, four hand-drawn lines curve around a pale form and stop without meeting. They run over the top of it and down the right side, each one shorter than the last, and end in loose tails near the bottom. They wobble, where every other edge in the picture is clean and evenly weighted. Inside them lies an ochre disc filled with vertical stripes.

Those four lines are the mark a tide leaves when it goes back out: a series of scalloped lines in the sand, one inside the next, each holding the place where the water reached and stopped. It is the only part of the picture that shows time passing. Everything else in the sheet is a state of things. This one form is a record of something that has already happened, and it explains the rims elsewhere. A white line runs between the foam at the top left and the ochre shape beneath it. Another separates the maroon rim from the teal band at the lower right. The loose stone above the centre is outlined in white the whole way round, the way a stone is ringed by water that has not yet drained away.

Sunday and Moonlight, and where each size belongs

On The Beach comes in two colour editions, Sunday and Moonlight, and they are the same drawing on two different grounds. Sunday sets it on a warm pale sand, a soft grain measuring around (210, 201, 170). Moonlight keeps that same grain and takes it to a deep blue, around (45, 54, 87). Every shape holds its position exactly between the two, down to the tails on those four lines.

What does change hand is the drawing itself. The lines are white in Sunday and black in Moonlight, so the tide marks and the rims read as light left on sand in one edition and as dark seen through water in the other. The nesting survives the swap intact, which is what makes it the structure of the piece rather than a colour effect. In practice Sunday sits easily on a warm white, a pale plaster or a sage wall, and Moonlight holds its own against grey, deep green or an unpainted surface.

The three sizes are 30x40 cm, 50x70 cm and 70x100 cm. The smallest works where you pass close to it, in a hallway or above a desk, because the nested shapes are a near view to begin with. At 70x100 cm the print becomes the one thing on the wall, and the sheet reads as ground rather than as an object. Every print is on Fine Art Freja paper (265 g), marked with the SOAL Studio signature, and a tree is planted for each one sold.

On The Beach arrived at NOKUKO alongside Bird and Cat by SOAL Studio, and the two were introduced together in January 2025. The pairing is a fair one. Bird and Cat asks you to look twice at something you think you have already read. This one asks you to look further in.

A beach is a surface that keeps a record. The water arrives, takes something away, leaves a line behind, and comes back a few hours later to draw it again. Nothing on it is finished and nothing on it is only one thing.

Hung on a wall, the print does the quiet version of that. It reads as colour and shape from across a room, and it holds a second picture for anyone who walks up to it.

About On The Beach

What kind of print is On The Beach?
It is an art print of an abstract piece hand drawn and crafted by Alan Pedersen under SOAL Studio, inspired by the coastline, ocean and sea. It is printed on Fine Art Freja paper (265 g) and marked with the SOAL Studio signature, and a tree is planted for every print sold. The frame shown in the product images is for illustration only and is not included.

What sizes does On The Beach come in?
Three portrait sizes: 30x40 cm, 50x70 cm and 70x100 cm. All three carry the whole drawing. The smallest suits a desk, a hallway or a shelf ledge, while 70x100 cm is the size to hang on its own.

What is the difference between the Sunday and Moonlight editions?
They are the same drawing on two different grounds. Sunday sets it on a warm pale sand, with the drawn lines in white. Moonlight sets it on a deep blue with the same grain, with the drawn lines in black. Every shape holds exactly the same position in both, so the choice is a choice of light rather than of picture.

Is On The Beach a limited edition, and does it come with a certificate?
No on both counts. It is an open edition art print, not one of NOKUKO's limited editions, and NOKUKO issues certificates of authenticity for original paintings rather than for prints. What the print carries instead is the SOAL Studio signature.

Written by NOKUKO.