Building Investigation 6

Homebush Bay Shipwrecks

micron pens, graphite

5 1/2"x 7"

The Homebush Bay Shipwrecks piece was the sixth sustained investigation of a series of 15 and I chose to "investigate" buildings from my childhood in Sydney that held meaning to me. This shipwreck is one of about a half dozen that the city floated up the Paramatta River and sunk for the growth of Western Sydney's lush mangrove forest. We looked at this specific shipwreck for about 4 months when we originally moved to Syndey and lived in the Homebush Bay, Olympic park apartments. I remember the almost rowdy and unruly tangle of organic growth coming out of the rusty, pre war ship skeleton.

I honestly forgot about these shipwrecks because they were such a long time ago in my life, so when I was retracing our steps in sydney and came across a picture the memories came flooding back. I really wanted to focus on both the growth in the mangroves and also usuing shadows and value in this piece as that was something I really screwed up last time. I wanted the organic mangrove tangle to be the main point in this drawing and contrast it with the clean lines of the city in the background.

This project was rather fun to do and was probably the quickest project yet as far as time goes. It took me a long time to complete it but I barely worked on the piece for four hours. I really liked drawing exclusively with pens and will come back to that at some point. Something I am frustrated with is how the ship itself turned out, I don't like the hatching I did on it and I feel like I could have played with curvature better.