Recently I was staying on the Costa Brava, a coastal region of Catalonia, in northeastern Spain, extending for about 120 km along the Mediterranean Sea from the French border at Port-Bou to the resort of Blanes, which is north of Barcelona.
I had never intended to draw the view you see above but after I saw it I couldn’t stop myself. I have been past here many times before, probably a hundred and I have never noticed this incredible arrangement of three or four rows of trees stretching out parallel alongside the road with enticing glimpses of the sea and beach and distant rocks.
I do have a thing for verticality in my picture-making and a thing for trees so I suppose it was inevitable. I would have found it difficult to leave the area knowing I hadn’t drawn it. To appease myself I agreed I’d do just one A3 drawing in pen of a small section of the whole spread. The first drawing I did was the second one in from the right side in the photo above. It took about 2 hours.
I thought that might be it but I found myself back there the next day at the same time (5.30 pm), and then the next day and the next until I had a good wide view of 58 trees in total. It was a bit tricky doing the drawings. I had to stand the whole time and balance my sketchbook on the very thin edge of the wall in front of me with the traffic careering down the hill right behind me. Sometimes a car would slow down to see what I might be fussing over. The driver would be sitting up in the seat craning their neck trying to see what I could whilst keeping an eye on the road. Difficult.
With such a complex view it’s a delicate balancing act working out the composition. I find it’s better to approximate what might go into the drawing, get started, and conduct it as it goes. For me too much thinking and planning erodes the momentum. It’s risky as it means if the scaling is wrong to begin with then either you’ll miss some things out as they don’t make it into the sheet of paper or everything is too small and so there’s too much to draw to fill the sheet. Because it’s a pen drawing I couldn’t erase anything. All mistakes have to be amalgamated.
I met all the local neighbours as they passed. They liked it.
