The Island of Echoes, Part 3. Sea

Serialisation of a story created for Folktale Week 2023

This is the third part of story created using the Folktale Week¹ word prompts and inspired by ghost stories, folklore and sea journals. The third prompt is Sea.²

Included in this post are the processes involved in creating the illustration and the materials used.

This post was originally published in November 2023. I’ve made this post free for November 2024. If you enjoyed it, you support me by sharing it with others who might like it, leave a comment or click the 🩶

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The night passed slowly for Beaufort, even though the rain and wind eased, his stone shelter did little to protect him from the freezing, cold mist that descended overnight, covering him in an icy blanket.

By daybreak he’s exhausted and chilled to the bone. If he hopes to survive this desperate situation, he must find shelter, food, water and, God-willing, civilisation. He plans to explore the Island, but first takes a look at what remains of his beloved ship, tattered and tangled amongst the rocks below.

The wind picks up, and Beaufort watches for a moment as it forces scavenging seagulls to scatter like scraps of paper out towards the horizon. A pang of grief and fear clutches at his chest ‘The sea was freedom to me, now it’s my captor’.

If you missed any of the previous posts you can find them here:

Part 1. Lost

Part 2. Ink

Original sketches and process:

Jotting down some important elements I wanted to include in the illustration, and creating rough thumbnails to consider scale, angles and composition.

I wanted to give the sense of hopelessness for Beaufort at that moment, also the feeling of being imprisoned on the island, with the sea as his ‘captor’.

I sketched some very rough thumbnails, to get some ideas down for different viewpoints and see which one gave the right impact and feeling. I decided on the view of the huge, sheer cliff face, with Beaufort looking quite small and helpless on the edge looking down at this small, tattered ship below.

From thumbnail to finished piece

Taking care with the tonal values.

I did Emma Carlisle’s Patreon drawing session on tone and value before I started to complete the illustration which gave me a good chance to warm up and get some practice in.

A sketch from Emma Carlisle’s ‘tone and value’ drawing session for her Patrons.

I knew I had to strike a fine balance with the values, in the same way I did with the illustration for ‘Ink’. I wanted the strongest values to be of Beaufort, silhouetted on top of the cliff, but this needed to be balanced against the values in the rocks below.

The ship takes on a ‘ghostly’ feel in contrast to the visual weight of the rocks, and I was keen to make it look fragile, so watered down the liquid charcoal and used a fine, pointed brush with more careful, delicate strokes for the sails and loose rope lines.

Close-up of the ship on the rocks.

I wanted to leave enough negative space between Beaufort/cliff and the ship to show the gulf between them, highlight the tonal values and also provide space for the eye to move around the image.

Lastly, the storm brewing on the horizon gives a sense that there’s difficult times to come for Beaufort.

Close-up of Beaufort on the cliff top.

Once the illustration was finished and photographed I decided it needed to be flipped horizontally. The original thumbnail had the ship and sea on the left and cliff on the right, but this direction didn’t quite work, the emphasis needed to be left to right, from Beaufort down to the boat. It was a quick and easy change but it made a huge difference to the illustration.

Materials used:

I used Schmincke Liquid Charcoal in Grape Seed Black, with some Conte Pastel Pencil in black to sharpen up the detail. I also used a small amount of white gouache for the choppy water around the rocks.

Created in an A4 Pith Sketchbook.

If you enjoyed this post you can buy me a coffee/pencil to say thank you 😊

The theme this month in The Creative Flock is Folktales, inspired by Folktale Week, an annual art and writing challenge on Instagram (see footnote 1).

If you would like to discover the inspiration and reference material for this story, I have posted about it here.

Thank you for reading! 😊

1. Folktale Week is a 7-day art and story writing challenge which takes place between 13-19th November on Instagram . It’s free to join and anyone can take part. 

Set up by a group of artists and illustrators who love folktales and visual storytelling, the seven different word prompts are released on the Folktale Week Instagram account in October so participants have time to create something in time for the week-long showcase in November. 

Even if you don’t take part, it's worth checking out the #folktaleweek hashtag, the challenge has a world-wide following and so much beautiful, inspiring work is shared

2. The word prompts for 2023 are Lost, Ink, Sea, Sleep, Underground, Illusion, Found.