Whale, bubbles and light

PETER: I’ve never drawn the surface of water from underneath. Finding it really difficult. Anyway this is an early draft, this is needing a lot of thinking ahead and drafts. Hoping the actual whale will be relatively simple to draw, the main thing is creating the sense of water through the bubbles and surface.

KATHY: Beautiful Peter – I definitely get that feeling of swirling motion

MARIA: That’s a great start Peter.

PETER: Thanks. Got quite a few more drafts to go but I’m glad to have started to tackle this beast. It’s every bit as difficult as I’d imagined.

JOHN: You’re right, there’s few viewpoints so difficult as the surface of water from underneath. See how unworldly it always looks in television documentary footage. It’s a real challenge, as there’s no distinctive boundary between above and under water. Here’s one Moby Dick illustration that attempts it, but actually not from below…

I’m sure you are right to have that blaze of light up at the surface. Dramatic downlighting does seem to be a key feature of this viewpoint. It helps a lot in the engraving below.

But it probably needs a more tonal approach than you might be intending.

Here’s an interesting painting (below): again the dramatic downlighting is key (note the strong shadow of the flipper) and the steady gradation from white at the surface to darkness below seems crucial to the effect.

Don’t know who painted this picture but it is full of movement, and it might be worth looking at how that is achieved – that sinuous twist in the whale, the flow of the swirling bubbles. These things are all organised to create rhythms that help the composition.

In your picture the s-shaped swirl of bubbles sets up strong rhythm, but you might have overdone it with the extra bubbles around it. In the painting, the swirling bubbling lines seem to emanate from the whale and its movement, which in turn gives the impression of being in water.