Shetland – Page 2 – Jane Sketching

Shetland 2021 – Coastal rocks

The rocks on the Shetland west side cleave at a very specific angle.

Skerries of Easter Paill, 15th July 2021 on Amatruda paper.

I picked up a pebble on the beach. Many of the pebbles show this pointed regular shape. It gave me great pleasure to find that the angle matched my drawing. It is approximately 70 degrees.

The angle is visible even in the large cliffs.

Rocks at the entrance to the Seal Lagoon, 15th July 2021

Here is this sketch in progress:

Sketching at the entrance to the Seal Lagoon, on Arches Aquarelle 300gsm CP, in PrintUrchin Sketchbook 1

The strange object in the top right of the drawing is not a drone, a cormorant, a flying fish or a small airship. It is a mistake. When I closed the sketchbook to continue my walk, some wet paint transferred itself from the left hand page to the right.

Shetland 2021: Birds

Here is a herring gull. These are numerous and float on the sea as well as fly in the air. They also stand on cars and on chimneys. This one stands on a wall, waiting for someone to come out of the kitchen, ideally with a slice of bread.

Then there are the oystercatchers. They fly but don’t swim. They poke around in the seaweed, and, amazingly, also use those long beaks on the lawn, to dig up worms.

I started drawing the birds when I saw a wonderful picture in The Shetland Times. It showed a “Long tailed Skua”, described as a “rare passage migrant”. Here is my version, inspired by the photo in The Shetland Times by Jim Nicholson.

All drawn in watercolour on Amatruda paper, size A5, using Daniel Smith watercolours.

Shetland 2021 – roads

Shetland roads sweep across the landscape. I enjoy the calligraphic sweep of their curves and the simplicity of the lines they make.

These pictures are sketched on A5 sheets of F Amatruda Amalfi paper from The Vintage Paper Company in Orkney. These are lovely soft sheets with 4 deckle edge. They take the watercolour well.

Watercolours are Daniel Smith. Some of the white lines are achieved using a rubber resist, called “frisket”, panted on before the watercolour, and rubbed off afterwards.

Sketching on the journey South

On the ferry from Lerwick to Aberdeen I had an “outside” cabin with a window. From there, I had a view of LK62, named “Research”.

Despite the name, this is not a research vessel, but a trawler. It was launched in November 2018, according to a very informative article in Fishing News.

Aboard a quite different vessel, the Northlink Ferry, I arrived in Aberdeen the next morning. Aberdeen was in lockdown, and I planned to spend as little time there as possible, just two hours, before my train left for the South. My idea was to sit in the sun outside the ferry terminal, eating my packed breakfast, before a gentle stroll to the railway station. Ha! I arrived in Aberdeen in the middle of a rainstorm. Roads had become rivers. On the periphery of my vision, a drain cover had lifted, and the water rose from it in a translucent pillar. I struggled towards the station through floods and wind.

…the floor was covered in a thin layer of water….

Aberdeen station was a huge glass tent, with the rain battering, and lightning visible, dimly, through the roof covering. It also resembled all the tents I have ever known in that the floor was covered in a thin layer of water. I sat down damply on a damp metal bench. All the trains were cancelled. Fortunately, I had some banana cake. I drew a picture. Then I found a helpful official and a bus.

The bus was going to Edinburgh. I drew a picture on the bus. After having been in Shetland for three weeks, I noticed that there were huge trees, everywhere. The sun came out.

On the bus: wind turbines, fields, barns, and TREES.

Shetland: Lera Voe phone box

This is the Lera Voe phone box, which is on the road between Burrastow and Walls.

The phone box is a landmark. This year it was renovated, and fitted out as a sanctuary and small room. There is no phone in there any more, unless you bring your mobile phone with you.

Henry Anderton did the renovation. His project was partly financed by a reward he obtained for having found a message in a bottle on one of his beach-cleaning outings. You can read about it in this article from the BBC, published in February 2020.

The article says of Mr Anderton: “He has bought the phonebox, near Walls, for £1 and been supplied with the regulation red paint from BT. He said: “We’ve now launched a crowd funding operation to help out the renovations – we’ve got to find a door first.”“

Evidently he found a door, because when I visited in July the phone box was complete, bright red and in great shape. There are shelves and a seat inside.

I wanted to draw the phone box with Lera Voe in the background. This is the view from the field behind the phone box. You can see the voe, and the hills beyond. The road is just behind the phone box in my drawing. “Voe” is a Shetland word meaning “sea inlet”.

Here is work in progress on the drawing.

Here is the article from the BBC mentioned above, as a PDF file.

BBC article about Lera Voe phone box Download

I have drawn phone boxes before.

Here is a group of phone boxes in Smithfield, London:

Phone boxes in Smithfield, EC1, London. See this blog post.

Here is one in Austin Friars, EC2, London: see this blog post.

These phone boxes , which were called Telephone Kiosks, were designed by Giles Gilbert-Scott in the 1920s and 30s. Giles Gilbert-Scott was a prolific architect, who also designed Cambridge University Library, the North Wing of the Guildhall in the City of London, and Bankside Power Station which is now Tate Modern.

The phone box at Lera Voe is a “K6” phone box, designed by Gilbert-Scott for the jubilee of George V in 1935, following his successful design of the K2 phone box in 1924. The K6 is distinguished from the K2 by the embossed crown, and the fact that it has 8 rows of windows, rather than the 6 rows of the K2.

It would be possible to date the phone box had I been more careful in drawing the crown. The crown is painted red on the Lera Voe phone box, as it was on the original phones boxes. Only in the 1990s did BT start painting the crowns gold.

There is a whole history of crowns on phone boxes. Here’s a summary [data from Wikipedia and “The K6 project” ]:

From 1926 to 1953: the Tudor Crown was used, first on the K2 then on the later editions including the K6.
From 1953 onwards: the St Edwards Crown was used, except in Kingston upon Hull
Then in 1955 the Scottish Crown started to be used, in Scotland also in certain other places.

So if anyone happens to be passing the Lera Voe phone box, I’d be very grateful for a photograph of the crown, to see which one is on there.

Update:

Thank you to a kind friend for sending the photo below:

Crown on the Lera Voe phone box: clearly a Tudor Crown

This is a Tudor Crown. This phone box therefore was installed some time between 1935 and 1953.

Shetland: Burrastow beach and pier

This is the pier at Burrastow.

On the other side, there is a pebbly beach.

This is the North Atlantic, latitude 60 degrees N. The temperature of the water is 11 degrees C. Very refreshing! There is a lot of sun between the rain.

Here is another sketch of the pier, this time watercolour only, no pen. It is evening.

Latitudes: Burrastow is 60 degrees North. The Arctic Circle is 66 degrees North. London is 51 degrees North. The Equator is zero degrees, and the North Pole is 90 degrees.

Shetland: Burrastow House

“On the remote west side of Shetland you can find spectacular scenery, peace and the ideal refuge for the escapist. The guest house welcomes you with peat fires, a cosy library and all the marvellous food you could want after a day of exploring….” This is Burrastow House , near Walls.

The house is right next to the sea. Here’s a view across the bay.

Around the back is a vegetable garden and polytunnel with herbs in. Here’s the view from the back. See all the chimneys!

Burrastow House from the vegetable garden

And here’s another view from the front garden.

Burrastow House from the garden, near the wall.

Here is work in progress on these pictures.

All pictures drawn and coloured on location, using a paper block by Saunders Waterford “St Cuthberts Mill” 300gsm Hot Press and Daniel Smith Watercolours over De Atramentis waterproof ink.

Thank you to my hosts, Pierre and Han.

Shetland: vehicles in space

There’s a lot of empty space in Shetland. As I walked around, sometimes I encountered abandoned vehicles. Here is one.

This was the last of a sequence of such car wrecks on a track. Having passed two, towards the end of a long walk, I encountered this one, the third, and thought I would take a rest and draw it. The car number was even on there.

Here’s “Chieftain”: a huge and solid vehicle. He is out in the wild, perhaps not “abandoned”, but he is evidently not in daily use, which is a pity, since he looks very useful.

I tried very hard to describe the heaviness and strength of Chieftain. He is also very large. I should have put a few birds in too, for scale.

Shetland: sea and hills

Here is the view from the Historic Site near Pinhoulland.

The lines on the right are a mussel farm. Here is another sketch from the same place. Here you can see the cottages in the distance, near the Bridge of Walls.

Further towards the sea, the view widens out. Here is the view from another walk, looking towards the island of Vaila.

Looking to Vaila, from the Nettle Beach.

I drew this having scrambled up the hill. Four hikers had arrived, and were on the beach. Four people seemed like a huge number, a crowd, more people together than I had seen in a week.

Shetland: walk to the lighthouse

I walked over to the distant headland, called Whites Ness. It was a long walk.

The walk round the peninsula of Whites Ness is way-marked.

When I reached the end of the peninsula, I saw that there was a lighthouse marked on the map.

I wondered if it were really there. Would it be a real lighthouse, or maybe simply a buoy off the rocks?

The path was not very well marked, and seemed to be mainly uphill. I was a good way through what was already quite a long walk. And I had to walk back. But I kept on going. It seemed an unlikely location for a lighthouse. Of course I had in my mind those lighthouses I have seen, built by the Stevenson family in the 18th Century, red and white striped, towering over cliffs.

Here there were relatively mild rocks, smooth grass and a few sheep.

But then, against all expectation, there was the lighthouse. I was delighted. There was no-one around to whom I could exclaim: Look! Look! There really is a lighthouse.

It was not a lighthouse like the one in your head. It looked a bit like a prop from a Dr Who episode of the 1960s, or perhaps some construction which had been assembled from assorted parts of IKEA flat-packs. But it was a lighthouse, beyond all doubt. I sat down and drew it.

It was hard to find somewhere to sit down so that I could be sure that my art supplies were not going to take an impromptu roll down the slope and into the sea. There were a selection of rocks, none at quite the right angle. I chose the safest, and drew my picture.

Then I packed up my things and started on the long trek back.

That evening a friend produced a useful coastal navigation guide, which informed me that this lighthouse was: “Fl.WRG8s16m9-6M”. We decoded this as: Flashing, White Red and Green, with an 8 second repeat, 16 metres above sea level, visible 6-9 nautical miles out at sea, on a good day. Anyone who is more familiar with the notation, please correct me if I have this wrong. I also found a map online.