Category: Coastal and maritime

Outer Hebrides 2017

I took my sketching things on a swimming expedition to the Outer Hebrides with Swimtrek. We were on the wonderful Lady of Avenel 102ft square rigged brigantine.

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We started in Oban.IMG_1166

It was raining when I drew this picture, as you can see from the way the pen has drifted a bit, round the chimneys. I coloured it inside the café called “Kranks”.

There was a lot of weather.

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I drew pictures while balancing on the quarterdeck. The picture below was painted with sea water.

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Here is a drawing of the beach at Vatersay. We swam to this beach, and surfed in the waves on the other side. The small dots on the beach are cows.

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Here is an attempt to draw the sails.

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For more drawings of this expedition please see the “Outer Hebrides 2017” gallery.

For drawings from last year’s trip please see the “Outer Hebrides 2016” gallery.

From Provlita, waiting for the bill

We finished our meal and looked for the waiter. He was otherwise occupied in a series of activities which didn’t involve us. I started doing a drawing. IMG_0083

15 minutes later we had paid, and the drawing was done.

It was a good meal though. In Crete, one must slow down and enjoy the view.

 

From Fisherman’s, Kalami, Crete

The view from next to the washing line.
Shadows moved whilst I was drawing.
About 1hr30.

Postcard – Fuengirola

This is a postcard I sent to my friends in Switzerland, inspired by the work of Martin Hicklin.

It celebrates our visit to Fuengirola and includes items found on the beach, and some confetti from a carnival we happened across in Ronda.

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Andalucian Sketchbook

Here are my sketches from our visit to Fuengirola, Costa del Sol, Spain, 2nd-9th March 2017.

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Drawn fom outside the Castle. It rained a little. Fuengirola is ahead, and you see its new bridge. There was a lot of construction work near the bridge.
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From the flat, the view towards the sea. When the building we were staying in was built, it had a view to the sea. Then those tall flats went up.
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Drawn in the amazing and unexpected Alcazaba in Malaga.
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Very windy and cold in the high fort above the Alcazaba, but I did a picture. You see the shipping port of Malaga, its dry dock and shelters for vessels. There were tall chimneys, like those of tin mines. We did not discover what they were.
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We drove to Ronda, an hour and 45 minutes. We had a meal in a restaurant near this bridge. After we walked around, we encountered a carnival, with children dressed up as superheroes.
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From the terrace restaurant on Paseo de los Tristas. The view of the Alhambra was magnificent. The food was mediocre. We stayed at the Casa Morisca.
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A quick sketch during the 15 minute pause in the tour of the Alhambra. The guide said 15 “English” minutes, not Spanish ones. And when he gave the french version he said the minutes were ” Swiss”.
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A longer sketch from a similiar position, but looking the other way. I did this when we were on our own, after the tour.
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Note the time. The castle closed at “14:30” according to the leaflet. But as I drew this, John went for a walk around, and found we had been locked in.
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I drew this by the castle gate, while we waited for them to come and let us out. This was after John has explained in approximate but emphatic Spanish and English, on the mobile phone,  that we were inside the castle, yes, inside. Good thing we had a mobile phone.
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Lounging on the beach, after release from the castle.

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Various sketches IMG_9891in Malaga airport. There was a strike of French air traffic controllers. So there were long queues.John thought he recognised someone in the queue. He mentally blackened the white hair, flattened the large stomach, and smoothed out the wrinkles, and saw an old school friend. But he couldn’t be sure. The airport was full of English types.

Trinity Buoy Wharf

The headlines in the Evening Standard had described the pollution levels in central London at “Red Alert” levels. So I headed East to the clearer air and big skies of the maritime Thames.

Trinity Buoy Wharf is here:

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I drew a picture of the lighthouse.

Trinity Buoy Wharf

Above me, four stories of shipping containers contain offices. Words floated down.

“That was his first investment. He hasn’t really been improving. … To be fair, he does wear a luminescent hat. If that isn’t a warning sticker I don’t know what is.”

I continued drawing. The shed on the left of the lighthouse contains a small display called “The Faraday Effect”. Inside the shed I learned that

“there used to be two lighthouses here. The original one was built in 1854 and demolished in the late 1920s. This was the building used by Micheal Faraday in his scientific work for Trinity House.  The roof space adjoining the surviving lighthouse, which was built in 1864, housed Faraday’s workshop for examining lenses and other apparatus”

I was glad I’d drawn the roof adjoining the lighthouse. The building below it, on the right of the picture, is “Fat Boys Diner” with a Pepsi sign on top. I’ve not been in there yet.

The Faraday Effect is the phenomenon whereby when polarised light passes through a magnetic field, the polarisation rotates. Faraday also showed that light is affected by magnet force. He discovered electromagnetic induction: that electricity can be made by rotating a coil of wire in a magnetic field. Hence power stations, and much else.

Before I drew the lighthouse, I had a coffee in the marvellous “Bow Creek Café”. From there I drew this picture:

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There was a lot of light. The things in the foreground were dark, and the boat shone.

The light-bulb shaped object on the left is a construction on top of a number of blue containers labelled “ENO” in the English National Opera logo.

On the left is the lightship, which is red, called “Lightship95 Audio Recording Studio”.

Stormy Seas, Raft

“Found image”, after wiping an etching plate.
I’m pleased at how the shape of this plate is articulate of a horizontal rectangle, even with no other clues. The black ink round the plate looks to me like the sea. But perhaps that’s just wishful thinking.