Tuesday, May 16, 2017

DRAWING, A RECORD OF TIME AND PLACE




On a recent sketch outing with Port Townsend Urban Sketcher group I made a sketch of the maritime environment from the beach in front of Chetzemoka Park . Fort Worden, Point Wilson Light, Admiralty inlet, Whidbey Island and an incoming freighter were the subject of my sketch. It occurred to me as I observed the view and began to make record of it, seeing it from my perspective, time and place have stood still. The light house at Point Wilson, the wharf and buildings at Fort Worden have been there since the beginning of the 20th century. It appears nothing has changed, time and place have stood still. And then on the horizon behind the spit of land the light house sits on an incoming container ship loomed large and surreal against the historic foreground, spoiling the view and awaking me from my idyllic state of imagining this scene some 80 or 90 years ago. To keep my vision alive and historic, I converted the container ship to a more period freighter and finished the sketch. I know this is not in accordance with our urban sketchers manifesto, to be truthful to the scenes we witness but sometimes I just feel I have to make an exception. I've included a similar historic sketch of Point Robinson along with a pure and truthful sketch of ships in Commencement Bay.

For the record the top sketch was done in my Pentalic 5x8 watercolor journal using Derwent watercolor pencils. The sky and water were done wet-in-wet pulling pigment off the French Gray and Blue Gray pencils with my water brush. The middle and bottom sketch are both watercolor and ink in Moleskine water color journals.


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