Pencil drawing on recycled paper 295mm x 210mm

This drawing is from a sketch book I kept while I was painting in Mersea Island. I had my easel set up with my oil paints on the quay side in West Mersea Harbour. The sketch book next to me, ready to hand, to note quickly things in passing that caught my eye while I was painting. So it is full of fleeting incidents; sketches of dinghies being launched, washed down, rowed and sailing by. Out of all the pictures in the book, I picked this one to frame because it is so quiet and expresses a stillness and the fullness of the estuary at high tide and does so in just a few strokes marking the reflection of the boat in the water. I like this drawing because it has an oriental feel, economical in a Chinese or Japanese way, although the look of the drawing is European, soft graphite pencil on flecked, antique-looking paper, paper with a thin, pointed crease running vertically, a fault in the manufacture, at its centre. The boat seen in three quarter view from behind, is placed in the top left quarter of the page, which optically creates a distance. The prow curves upwards in a way which, when I was drawing it, made me think of a Turkish, Ottoman slipper turning up at the toe. Between the prow and the stern I was concerned to get the intervals and spaces – the ratio of the height to distance – of the masts and rectangle of the block house. This boat has particularly elegant proportions, even in foreshortening. I painted her a few times. There is a water colour of her side on, in profile, in one of the cabinets at the entrance to this exhibition at the Andromeda, which I shall talk about later. [Read more…]