This painting of a man swimming underwater is a Daily Composition sketch from May 30, 2019. It’s set in the pool in London where I used to swim regularly. He was another regular there who I spoke with often but never caught his name. He was from Liverpool or thereabouts and was a very good swimmer.
Prints and video
I’ve uploaded the Procreate video of me drawing this picture here on YouTube.
Prints are available on my Fine Art America page here and it also looks really cute on things like mugs and phone covers!
25 metres underwater
One day the conversation had got onto swimming the full 25 metre length of the pool underwater on a single breath. I had been able to do this in previous years but hadn’t tried for a long time and maybe not at all since moving to London. I had been building myself up to try it again and we bet each other that we could do it. He went first and preferred to start from the deep end. I held my breath and observed from under the water at the shallow end.
At the moment in the picture he is about a quarter of the way through, just crossing back over the steep drop between the shallower end and the deep diving end.
Clearly this would make a good picture! So I went ‘snap’ in my mind and kept the impression for later.
I was then a little surprised and very relieved when I did the whole 25 metres myself as well. I played it casual and pretended that of course I had expected to be able to do it. The big difference is that I had been practising and building myself up to the attempt. He hadn’t and was able to just do it on the spot!
Just as writers have to write from what they know, artists have to draw what they see. I’ve swum a lot over the years and I had been wanting for ages to depict an underwater scene.
I wasn’t satisfied with many of these attempts because, well, water is hard to draw.
This attempt on the left uses a Procreate brush to capture how the surface of the pool appears when seen from under the water.
However the water colour isn’t right, it’s too warm.
Matching colour like this was always the main problem. Everyone knows water is blue, but which blue is the question? And how do I match it without bringing my paints or my iPad actually into the pool and under the water with me?
This attempt on the left is a little closer but still doesn’t evoke the impression of being there.
I like the way the forced perspective shows the full length of the pool.
Because this painting of a man swimming underwater looks like a proper composition I really wanted to get the colour right. Composing the sketch on the train home was quick and simple, I could see it clearly in my mind.
But as I matched the colour I kept tending towards that warm blue again, see the example on the left. It feels cartoon-like and just doesn’t feel like being there.
So each subsequent time I swam I made the time to pause and observe and over multiple attempts I edged it further in the right direction.
The final version…
This is the same version as up at the top. I’m happy with the final result because it feels like being there.
Swimming pool water is a cold, metallic type of blue, and it seems to tend towards black as it darkens. Or it did here and this may be due in part to the slightly subdued ambient lighting. The pool was in a basement and was without windows so no natural light was available.
If I recall correctly the ceiling was even painted a dark medium blue, all of which adds to the perception of colour in the room.
The glaze on the lighter tiles was a light cool blue, I think, and the darker lane marker tiles were actually a warmer medium dark blue. The water colour then added to both.
I don’t feel a need to correct the drawing any further as the object was to record the energy of the moment.
However
Straight lines underwater seem wavy when observed from above the water if the surface is anything less than completely still. Straight lines underwater when observed from underwater are still straight. So the wavy lines in the drawing are incorrect. They add to the feeling of water however and are congruent with this being a sketch and having a sketchy feel. Adding precise elements to an imprecise sketch often triggers a cascade of having to then correct the next thing, and the next thing, and the next etc. Each new rational correction highlights the non-correctness of all the other elements. So I’ll leave this as it is. For the moment. It’s bothering me now.
I’ve uploaded the Procreate video of me drawing this picture here on YouTube.
Prints are available on my Fine Art America page here and it also looks really cute on things like mugs and phone covers!
