An afternoon of lighthouses and drawing

Yesterday was our second Lookout Drawing session on Bressay!

We again looked at Bressay lighthouse and memories from local former keepers and lighthouse families. But we also explored ways of drawing from sound and textures, bringing the past to life through stories, field recordings and objects.

Our warm-up exercise was writing down words in response to local people’s stories about lighthouse-life. We learnt about the hardship and resourcefulness involved, but also the fun and community welcome that keepers enjoyed. Next, through recorded sounds from the environment, we thought about what life so close to the sea would have been like - often lonely and harsh, but also surrounded by birds and nature. We also learnt about the Bressay foghorn. Through conversations with local people, it’s been said several times that it used to be foggier here in the past, and the horn was a regular sound on the island. A former keeper describes how it sounded every 1.5 minutes when foggy - and that once it was continuously foggy for 3 and a half days…!

When then had lots of fun collecting textures from a selection of objects using rubbing technique. All objects were items simuilar to things keepers might have had in their homes or carved wooden objects, which we imagined could have been made by a keeper in his time off (many keepers practiced wood work or other craft to keep busy when not on their watch).

We then had fun with collage, using the mark making we experimented with in the first exercises and our rubbings and to add interesting textures to our work.