More scenes from a train

When I'm booking my train ticket and I'm asked whether I have any seating preference (in a quiet carriage, forward facing, that sort of thing), it is only the next-to-a-window option that I go for. From the window of a train there is the time and space to project yourself into an endless theme of changing environments. And it is this view that I find much more interesting to draw than fellow passengers and the backs of seats.

It is exactly because the view is so constantly shifting that it is an interesting subject to draw. The narrative unfolds as you look. The sense of place is less focused and yet unmistakable: the landscape between London and Devon, and London and the East Midlands (the routes I draw most) are mainly rural, agricultural, with occasional long views to distant horizons. It's a character or an essence that is there to be drawn, rather than a likeness. Looking at it mathematically, if the train is travelling at 120mph, and I'm taking three or four minutes to draw each image (these are mostly in open A6 sketchbooks), then they can be an amalgam of about six to eight miles of landscape.

The whirring view gives the opportunity to be brief, immediate, stabbing and imaginative rather than be bogged down in the dullness of likeness. Here are a few I've done recently.

London Paddington to Exeter St Davids, May 2017

Rapeseed fields near Kettering, May 2017

(Above and top image) London Paddington to Exeter St Davids, May 2018 

Between Taunton and Exeter, June 2013

Between Taunton and Exeter, June 2013

London Paddington to Exeter St Davids, May 2018

London Paddington to Exeter St Davids, 2017

Outside Luton, February 2018 

Near Tiverton Parkway, the day Mum died, 17 August 2013

I've posted about drawing from trains before: From a train along the River Exe and Scene from a moving train.

From Paddington station to Devon

Scenes from the Paddington to Devon train.

Scene from a moving train

There is something stimulating about drawing from a moving train, as I did on recent trip from London to Devon. It is quiet time, perfect for getting out a sketchbook, but I can get tired of drawing the carriage scenery and fellow passengers. Drawings of the fleeting landscape can only take a few seconds: there is little that is constant or unchanging about the landscape on the Paddington to Exeter route, at least. The focus jumps to and fro, and you just have to sit and wait until an interesting view comes along for a few seconds or so, and make the most of it when it does.
I used a combination of sketchbook drawings to make this one, on a small canvas (about 12x15cm) with acrylic and marker pen, using a process of drawing and painting sections out until something emerged. It is the first time I've tried this. It won't be the last.

From a train along the River Exe

The train west from London through Devon follows the west bank of the River Exe, and then along the coast for several miles, and then along the north bank of the River Teign. It's a kind of constant and yet continually changing view out of the windows on the left hand side of the train. To draw this is to try to portray an amalgam of a specific place. The boat in the middle of this (above) started as a buoy, and then morphed from dinghy to whatever it looks like now. Is it a yacht?
The drawing below, of the view towards Exmouth as the train neared Dawlish Warren, was more about the sky. I was interested in how Rolf Schröter drew clouds from a German train, as the sky is often the least changing element of the scene out of a train window. I like Rolf's work a lot.

Against the tide

A quiet journey home to London on the train from the south coast one evening last week, watching the congested platforms filled with commuters on their way home in the opposite direction, as darkness falls outside.