ISSUE 7

Hayley Phillips

 

The Art of Drawing Boats

 

I.

 

First, make sure that you have both

a love for, and a fear of, the sea.

This is crucial in defining a line

against it. The bow, decision-

maker, a stance of opposition,

an angle forward, starboard

and port gentle curve of some safe,

dark belly which marks one

water from the next, hull

the cradle, stern the soft arrow

nock. None of this without its

complexity. No smallness

stacked on smallness without

due immensity of detail.

 

 

II.

 

To reconstruct something already

made by human hands is a

search for information.

You must ask it questions

like, Are you a summer or

a winter? Which side do you

favor? Do you think of yourself

as a vertical or a horizontal

creature? Don’t expect your answers

right away. They are not

in the ink or the charcoal,

not in the roll of your joints

pushing them across the paper,

which you will find, also, quiet.

 

 

III.

 

Midway through, you may feel

the need to revise your portrait,

to replace something here, inaccurate

for its model, or there, where

you realized, after all this

time, you can do better. From

the start outward, you’ve

become a better artist. How

little time it takes, you

didn’t know. Shuck off

the broad sail, this one

should be small – it’s the body

in focus. This one knows

the water better than the air.

 

 

IV.

 

The surface, of course, has a way

of slipping out from underneath

your subject. Pin it down

with a horizon; let it drift off

or return, humbled, to your

pining viewer, unreachable

in a kind of distance. The sky

should not draw the gaze

center – we are in little need

of division. Hold it at arms’

length. Choose carefully

which element should pierce

its membrane, which should

spill into a repeated world.

 

 

V.

 

Lastly, you need to know the contents

of your vessel. You’ll find you have been

there before; it is a history and a

drowning. Add creatures of your

choosing – there will be room. Make

sure to draw two of your father

in there, side by side. They may

squint through reinforced window

or stand willfully on the deck.

Know that if you bear down

hard enough on their likeness,

one of them may crumble out of the other.

Ask yourself, deciding completeness,

why they so desperately need to float.

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