Kevin Clarkson's Art Blog: The River Medway, after JMW Turner

I have been perusing JMW Turner's Medway sketchbooks which are online at the Tate Gallery website.

A fascinating series of pencil sketches done by Turner at various times between 1805 and 1830, the sketchbooks give an insight into how busy the river was with naval and commercial traffic. They are a series of visual shorthand pencil line drawings, in the main done as reference for future work. This means they need a little persistence to decipher but with a little effort they yield a surprising amount of information. A few were worked up into watercolour paintings but most of the sketches went no further.

I could not resist the notion of interpreting some of the sketches into a painting or two of my own. I did not want to create a pastiche of the great mans work but instead use my own treatment of the basic sketch information.

My first development sketch was to select a subject and work it up using water soluble colour pencils which gave a very quick impression of a watercolour. I used a similar colour palette to Turner and his use of contrasting tonal ranges. The result was rather closer to a Turner than I had intended! Next I chose a second sketch made a few changes to the content to give a composition I preferred. I then selected a view and worked in acrylics using my usual technique. My interpretations are below.

It has been a very interesting journey of discovery and will result in more paintings I think.

You can find the Turner sketchbooks at:

http://www.tate.org.uk/art/sketchbook/medway-sketchbook-65837/23