I've been feeling quite homesick lately, especially for this island that was down the street from my primary, elementary, and high school. I grew up visiting this island every single day and now that I live in a different city I feel like it's something I took for granted.
The island is accessed from a suspension bridge which connects it to the mainland. It's usually a pretty deserted island and most times I'd be completely alone there seeing as my town is so small the island doesn't get a ton of visitors.
There is a lot of history associated with this area, and I'm familiar with every aspect of it. One story that is most personal to me is that of the man and his wife who lived on this island years ago. A Russian school teacher by the name of Alexander built his home on the island and would row across to the mainland every day to pick up students and bring them to the island for class. One of his students was my kindergarden teacher. Traces of the island being their home is visible everywhere; from the house itself which still stands as a museum of sorts (which is closed 99.9% of the time), fruit trees, wood carvings, and the burial site of the couple.
Seeing as I'm Russian, this particular history is fascinating to me to be able to literally walk and view the island just as they had. I have always found the house itself rather daunting, but it is the thing which best symbolizes the entire island for me, so I chose to do a watercolor and ink drawing of it to help me relieve my feelings of homesickness.
Aesthetically, I tried to give the piece a story-book quality much like the artwork I submitted last week. I chose to represent it in the autumn since I find the island is at its finest when all the leaves are changing color. This image was also drawn from memory and when I look at a photograph of the house its surprisingly exact. This was my first attempt at working with watercolor and ink (I created this prior to last week's piece) so there's some lines that I find too thick but was unable to change. But all in all I was quite satisfied with the outcome and feel like I could just step right into the picture and be transported home.
-ocean10kv
