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 thereshuffle elements from the photos and sketches to put together a composition. While there’s nothing wrong with using photos as reference, if you slavishly copy a single photo, you’ll end up with a slavishly copied image. The camera does odd things to perspective in particular, that the eye doesn’t register from a photo. If drawn exactly right from the photo, it just looks wrong. Work out your own vanishing points and use the photos as a guide only. I draw in two-point perspective, which means that I keep the sides of buildings vertical. Unless you are lying on your back on the ground or looking up at a skyscraper this method seems to work.
