Monday 24 February 2020

Bridlington Lifeboat

Five years ago I attempted a drawing of the Flamborough Lifeboat based on a photograph by photographer Paul Berriff, with his kind permission. Paul also gave me permission to use two other photographs, one of the mfv Galatea in a Force Ten gale and a third one which is the subject of this blog post.

It's been quite a while since I last had time for any serious art and when an opportunity presented itself recently I felt I needed something dramatic and challenging to get my teeth into. To add to the 'challenge' I decided to post frequent work-in-progress posts both in my art forum and on Facebook. Confidence in my art has always been a big issue for me and there's no better way to challenge self-belief than show off your work before it's finished.

The subject is of the Bridlington Lifeboat heading out in gale force winds to the aid of a fishing boat. The entire picture has been drawn with a 2B pencil. I used my favourite Rotring Rapid Pro mechanical pencils, one with 0.5mm lead and the other with 0.7mm. I also used a regular 2B pencil for the sea so I could use the flat edge of the lead rather than the point. The paper is Daler Rowney Heavyweight 135lbs A3 size. For anyone interested, the various stages of the drawing can be seen in the Work-In-Progress section of my web site.