A stroll along the river bank, late summer sun. At the ford I stop and sketch the footbridge. In the pencil drawing below, the lane winds up the slope and disappears round to the right, framed by the tree in shadow and is the real point of interest, but I can’t resist a little mechanical structure with dynamic shadows, too.
As I watch the wave pattern thrown by the car that drives carefully through the shallow water, the fishes scatter and then quickly regroup. Just immediately downstream, within half a metre or so, a group of large chubb come out from the shadows of the shrubbery to mix with the smaller ones, all presumably waiting for any easy pickings to float their way from the disturbance.
A short distance further on, the river narrows to a stream almost choked with vegetation, then widens and deepens at the next bend. Under the shade of large willows, this pool
contains more chubb of varying sizes, just hanging casually in the deeper water. After a few minutes I notice two large perch, sitting below them about half a metre deeper, almost on the bottom. I made a drawing of three of them back in the studio, using conte crayon on medium surface cartridge paper.
