Beauty or beast? Painting the sound mirrors on Romney Marsh with Ian Sidaway

Beauty or beast?

Content continues after advertisements

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and, as Ian Sidaway points out, landscape artists no longer feel they have to search out the ‘picturesque’. When he came across the Sound Mirrors on Romney Marsh he was immediately inspired to capture these majestic structures in watercolour.

The concept of the picturesque was introduced by William Gilpin in his Essay on Prints, which was published in 1768. In the 18th century, landscape artists followed a fairly strict formula to find the picturesque; it was based on perceptions of beauty in the classical manner – a search that became something of a quest. It concentrated in general terms on three main precepts: beauty, the sublime and the rustic, which if used in the right combination, would result in a work possessed of the picturesque.

The result was throngs of artists flocking to those areas where the ‘picturesque’ could be found in abundance, such as the Wye Valley, the Lake District and Scotland – all places close to home that it was thought could compete with the very best picturesque areas to be found on the grand tour of Europe.

But whilst these places still attract artists’ attention, including my own, we have moved on. Artists still search for subjects that excite but that excitement is often found in the ugly, the banal and sometimes the ridiculous. Subjects that once would have been dismissed are now often sought after and recognised as legitimate and desirable subject matter. Beauty is truly in the eye of the beholder and surely as artists who paint and document the landscape, it is our duty to seek out and record those places that for many, at least on the face of it, are not immediately thought to have any aesthetic potential.

Dungeness Power Station, watercolour, 14¼ x 14¼in (36 x 36cm). I seem to remember reading that Sargent once said that he chose landscapes to paint by choosing a suitable place then turning round and painting what was behind him. True or not it does pay to look behind: this view of the Dungeness power station was behind me all the way on the walk to the Sound Mirrors.

The Sound Mirrors

I came across the Sound Mirrors on Denge Marsh by accident, whilst looking for subjects on and around the Dungeness shingle bank. They sit on an island in the middle of a flooded gravel pit that is now part of the RSPB reserve. Surrounded by rushes, alders and wildfowl this not-such-an-ugly-duckling resembles a set from a 1950s science fiction movie.

Watercolour sketch in Moleskine sketchbook, 8¼ x 23¾in (21 x 60cm). The first view of the mirrors is from across one of the flooded gravel pits. I moved the three mirrors closer together and added the post and barbed wire, which although off to one side, added an extra element to the scene.

The ‘mirrors’ were developed by Dr William Sansome Tucker and built in the late 1920s and 1930s as an experimental way to concentrate and collect the sound of approaching enemy aircraft. The invention of radar in 1932 meant that the project was abandoned and the structures were left to decay. They are now listed and protected as monuments.

Although visible from the mainland access to the mirrors is difficult. In order to minimise the risk of vandalism a swing bridge was installed which only allows access on RSPB open days. The walk across the gravel bank towards the mirrors gives an overall impression of the site and my initial idea was to incorporate the decaying concrete posts and rusting barbed wire that line the path. In order to do this I needed to move or re-orientate the fencing so that it could be seen in front of those mirrors that can be seen on the horizon. The other problem with this idea is that the two circular mirrors are a good distance away from the oblong curved mirror, which meant that in order to create the composition without making it too wide or panoramic I had to reduce the distance between them, effectively squeezing them together on the horizon.

Watercolour sketch in Moleskine sketchbook, 8¼ x 23¾in (21 x 60cm). I wondered if the addition of people visiting the sight would also give a sense of scale. But I thought later a greater feeling of silence would be achieved by leaving the figures out.

Composition ideas

Up close the mirrors are staggeringly large. The curved mirror is 200ft (60m) long and the two other structures are 30ft (9m) and 20ft (6m) across. The rear of each mirror is in many ways more interesting than the front as a network of buttresses keep them upright and at a right angle. However, up close the surrounding shrubbery makes it difficult to gain a decent viewpoint. In order to group the three mirrors together in a satisfactory way you have to stand almost at the exact point where the swing bridge touches land.

I tried a couple of sketches from this angle with one cropping the largest circular mirror by almost a third – I thought that this helped to give an impression of size (below), but when it came to making the large studio painting I decided to paint the whole mirror and crop it later if I thought necessary. When I was drawing at the site the one overriding impression was how silent the site was; on reflection this was of course necessary in order for the mirrors to work in the way required. The only sounds were the odd quacking of ducks and the slight soothing rustle of the rushes moving in the breeze. I decided to try to incorporate the sense of silence into the painting.

Watercolour sketch in Moleskine sketchbook, 8¼ x 23¾in (21 x 60cm). I thought that cropping the largest disc mirror might give an added sense of size.

Studio painting

I worked on a full sheet of Saunders Waterford Not paper, 200lb. I first sketched in the composition using a soft pencil and paid particular attention to the ellipses of the two round mirrors. The foreground was a mixture of low cut foliage and gravel, which I thought needed to be developed further, so I introduced an area of rushes to run across the lower left-hand side of the image. A pale wash made from cerulean blue and Payne’s grey was used to block in the sky using a large wash brush. Once dry the same wash was used again to indicate the paler clouds, then the wash was darkened further by adding Payne’s grey and a little ultramarine and the darker cloud bank painted in. On the day the cloud covering was much lighter, but I thought this mass of cloud was needed to fill the empty sky on the upper left.

I next used masking fluid to paint in the shapes of the rush flower heads using an old bristle fan brush. A mix of sepia and dioxazine purple with a little yellow ochre added gave a base colour for the three structures; this colour also formed the base for further applications and was darkened accordingly, using more of the same three colours. Cobalt blue was added to the darker mix to create the shadow across the disc and on the curved wall of the long sound mirror.

A green was mixed using permanent green pigment with Sennelier watercolour binding medium. I really like this green and often use it as a base green for mixing a range of greens. I added a little cobalt blue for the more distant trees and lemon yellow and sepia for the lighter tree shapes. Variations of this green intensified with the cobalt blue sepia and Payne’s grey were used to paint in the area of rushes in the lower left. Once a mid-tone base layer had been painted over the entire areas and allowed to dry, I cut the darker shapes using a fine rigger brush. Rigger brushes tend to be my small brush of choice as they hold more paint than a conventional small brush. Finally the area of gravel in the lower right was painted again using the rigger and mixes made from sepia, burnt umber, dioxazine purple and yellow ochre.

Once the whole image was dry I laid scrap paper over the sky areas and the foreground to isolate the two round mirrors and, to add a degree of texture, I spattered the area with clean water and some of the base colour that I had put to one side earlier. The spattering was carried out in several layers, allowing each layer to dry before applying the next.