Watercolour on Bockingford 300gsm

1. Heave the anchor short!
   Raise main-sail and jib, steer forth,
   O little white-hull’d sloop, now speed on really deep waters,
   (I will not call it our concluding voyage,
   But outset and sure entrance to the truest, best, maturest;)
   Depart, depart from solid earth, no more returning to these shores,
   Now on for aye our infinite free venture wending,
   Spurning all yet tried ports, seas, hawsers, densities, gravitation,
   Sail out for good, eidolon yacht of me!
   - Walt Whitman

Inspired by a poem I once read by Walt Whitman, I envisaged this “little white-hull’d sloop, now speed on really deep waters”, so I started my sketch off with the little ‘sloop’ departing from ‘solid earth’, imagining “really deep waters” as I got to do the waves, adding the distant shores it was leaving behind, never to return again…

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