Since I read Moira Huntly’s Painting & Drawing Boats
– well, I was up to page 11 when I did this drawing – I wanted to go back to Iron Cove to draw some more boats. The part I’d read was the part about small boats – dinghies. It’s interesting because boats like this are very simple, so you just tend to draw. But boats can have quite complex perspective, and even with simple ones you need to be thinking about perspective. I’m happier with my two front dinghies because I put this into practice.
Huntly draws many boats in British or European harbours which have a tidal fall of about 20 feet or more sometimes, so she gets the opportunity to draw boats that are not on the water. The boats in the background of my drawing are all bobbing about and turning turning turning, so I did the best I could and just took a stab at them.
I’ve now read more of the book and understand a bit more about what perspective problems there are, so I plan to find some larger boats that are not on the water so that I can become more familiar with their structure so that I can be a bit more accurate when I have to take a stab at a moving boat.
Another great book I read over the summer is Past Imperfect 
by Julian Fellowes. You may remember his name from the screenplay of “Young Victoria”. This book is set in England and is about two men in their sixties who were deb’s delights back in the 1960s. It is screamingly funny – one man looks up quite a number of ex-debs to find out which of them may have borne a child to the other man. I went to live in England for a number of years in 1969 and what I found fascinating was the protagonist’s comparison between the England of that time and the England of the present day. I worked for a while at Penshurst Place which gave me an inside view of that world. My very favourite book of all time is
The Pursuit of Love & Love in a Cold Climate: Two Novels
which is set at least thirty years earlier but deals with people of the same class. I even have procured from Canada the wonderful tv series of 1980. Very well worth the money.
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Filed under boats, books, Copic Multiliner, drawing, journal, sketching, watercolour
Tagged as boats, books, Copic Multiliner, drawing, journal, sketching, watercolour
Since I read Moira Huntly’s Painting & Drawing Boats
My gosh…there just aren’t enough hours in the day anymore! I love reading and these books you speak of make me want to read them myself. I think I now have 4 or 5 that I hope to find and get to. Then there is the art…
Love your journal pages (and that “iron cove” writing is gorgeous), Wendy! I know what you mean about boat perspectives. I remember one of the Different Strokes challenges having a woman rowing a boat on a lake and getting that perspective right was difficult, especially with the curved lines of the boat.
Yu did a great job on the boats! You would think sketching a boat would be easy, but they definitely aren’t. Between their odd shapes and perspectives, and being constantly in motion they are not good models. Keep up the good work!
You did an excellent job – and only up to page 11!