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.

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Crafting Painted Stories

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Three houses for three sisters