A beacon in the fog
Hand-drawn memories
I have recently been creating some pencil drawings from travel photos. I find pencil to be a wonderful medium for capturing a sense of memory, a softness around the edges and a richness of atmosphere.
I used it here to accentuate the light and atmosphere that is sometimes hard to capture in a photograph. I worked to remain true to the subject while removing any unnecessary elements. This allowed me to simplify the subject down to the essentials. I used very soft pencils on smooth paper.
This is a drawing of the Chatham lighthouse from a recent family trip to Cape Cod. I took out a cumbersome flagpole and parked cars, and unified the trees and gardens. I kept only the minimum architectural details of both the lighthouse and adjacent buildings. This allowed me to focus on capturing the magical feeling of a beam of light from a lighthouse as it swoops by through a damp coastal fog. This drawing captures the most important aspects of this scene and moment, for me.
A black and white pencil drawing of a lighthouse in the fog, rich dark trees, a beam of light cutting through the sky.
This drawing is not my own memory, but based on the travel photo of a friend (Jen Squires -Photographer). I loved the mystical quality of the light shining through the forest gully and the other-worldliness of the place that she captured in her photo. I tried to play these up and used an eraser to create the soft hazy sense of light spilling through the trees.
A suspension bridge through a dense forest with overhanging moss and soft hazy light.
Here is a path I often walked while in Cape Cod. And, below that, the sight of chimneys and power lines that I remembered from an evening out. In all cases, I kept a soft edge around the drawing to add to the sense of a vignette – a glimpse of a remembered place.
Soft rounds of shrubs and trees. a dark shadowyness ahead on the path.
A minimal drawing with trees and housetops across the bottom, a variety of chimneys, wires in criss-crossing lines across the top whitespace of the sky.
If you have a travel photo that doesn’t quite capture the light or atmosphere that you remember (or even if it does) and you’d like a hand-crafted pencil drawing of it, reach out. I’d love to hear your story.