When selecting subjects to draw I try to pick images with a feeling of melancholy and stillness, much in the style of my favourite artist, the iconic American realist painter Edward Hopper. I can’t really describe what that is in physical terms, but I know it when I see it, and it usually involves bright sun and dark shadows. Lighthouses were a favourite subject of Hopper’s, and have become one of mine too. A few years ago I went on a pilgrimage to visit some of the lighthouses that Hopper had painted in Maine and Massachusetts on the New England coast. The North Foreland lighthouse in Broadstairs, Kent on the south-east coast of England is, however, my most drawn lighthouse. This is for two reasons: one, because I used to live about a mile away, and two, because the resulting pictures proved very popular!
Reference material
Many of my drawings contain a lot of detail and can take weeks to produce. Working is not really an option, so I do use photos (always my own) as reference material, but almost never a single photo. I take lots of pictures of a scene, and will do thumbnail sketches while I’m there too, if possible. I
