Zeilboot op het water c. 1909s

Alexander Shilling made these sketches of a sailboat in a small notebook with a pencil. I wonder, was he on a boat himself, bobbing gently, as he drew this? It’s like he's trying to capture the essence of the boat, the bare minimum you need to convey the idea of a sailboat cutting through water. The lines are so reduced, they almost feel accidental, tentative. What I really like is that on the right-hand side, he’s gone in with a darker pencil, reinforcing the lines. It’s a very physical process. You can sense him building up the image, adding weight and volume. It reminds me a little of Cy Twombly’s scribbled drawings, a kind of organized chaos where the act of mark-making becomes as important as the subject itself. Drawing like this shows that you can create something powerful from simple tools. Artists have been inspired by artists for centuries; we are all in dialogue with one another, responding to ideas across time.