Guildford Pill - Llangwm
150 yards from my house
by Graham Brace

The finished picture shows the top end of Guildford Pill (a 'pill' is a tidal inlet in these parts) with the tide out, and with the stream meandering down through the mudflats to the river (the Daugleddau) 500 yards away.  I particularly like the way the stream leads the eye through a relatively bland foreground of grass and mud to a fairly busy middle distance with houses and boats on the shoreline.  Although a bright day - a late afternoon in early July, the sky had a featureless layer of thin hazy cloud.  To make the picture more interesting I decided to use a little artistic license and borrow a sky with soft clouds from another photograph of a different scene.

I scale up the image on to my support - in this case, white smooth mounting board taped to a drawing board on the kitchen table.  Before I start applying any colour I completely erase the grid lines with a pencil rubber or Blutak, and knock back the pencil outline so that I can still see it faintly.  This is to prevent the graphite tainting the colours, particularly when I'm burnishing or blending.  I work with a mixture of pencils: Faber Castell Albrecht Durer, Caran d'Ache Classicolor and Prismalo, Schwan Stabilo Softcolor and Aquatico, and Karisma.

Starting from the top and working down to prevent smudging, I work in light blue to delineate the basic shape of the clouds.  I give the clouds form with a cold grey 2, worked in small circular strokes and burnished with a tortillon to soften the strokes and spread the colour evenly.  Where a heavy build-up of pigment occurs in small areas I scratch away with a scalpel. Finally I burnish over the blue areas with a white Caran d'Ache pencil. The sky involved some two hours' work.

Next, with some Softcolor pencils, I give the trees in the distance and the grass and bushes in the middle distance a foundation of light green and yellow blended and burnished with a "knot" of tissues.  It is these bright underlying colours that often give my drawings an intense "glow".  I work in the foliage and the trees with Hookers Green worked in tiny, tight, circular strokes to create a textured, mottled effect. I then work in the shadows in black.  This contrast sharpens the trees up and gives them shape and depth. Highlights are added by scratching out with the point of a scalpel. I then draw in the detail in the houses, boats and surrounding grass.

Having spent the last four to five hours drawing in wrist-aching detail, I now have a welcome and therapeutic change where I very loosely and quickly shade in foundation colours for the foreground... Pale blue for the stream, russets, ochres and browns for the mud and light greens and yellow for the grass.  With a ball of tissues I blend and burnish these areas to subdue the pencil strokes, spread the colour and work it into the surface of the board.  With a mixture of Dark Sepia, Black, Burnt Umber and Juniper Green from my Albrecht Durer range, I work in the detail of the seaweed patches, stones and general detritus on the mud and shape up the edges of the stream. This is more an exercise in texture and tone rather than precise detail.

I use Albrecht Durer Night Green (it's more of a blue actually!) to create the flow and ripples in the stream.  I love drawing water, and trying to instill some movement into the flow required some experimentation on a separate piece of board.

With waxy Karisma pencils I build up stronger, darker greens on the foundation using strokes to create grasslike texture.  I enhance this texture by scratching away with a modelling knife, which removes the darker waxy pigment to reveal the lighter greens underneath. I then add some depth and detail by working in small areas with a sharp black pencil.

Finally I succumb to the use of white gouache and a fine sable brush to sharpen the edges of the boats, paint in the gulls and print in my name in the bottom left hand corner.

If anyone else derives some pleasure from looking at it... well, what more can you ask for?