I feel the best of Scotland, is the raw nature on the western isles, none of the clichés of pipers and haggis, it is a raw and beautiful land with definite norse influences.

I hope to get about a week off to do some hiking over there and sketch natural forms. These islands are wild and expansive with beautiful colours of aqua marine seas, In a way similar to my eye colour, I always feel drawn back to them. As a fan of the big landscapes in North America, I often think this is the closest we in the U.K. get to this feeling.  The soundtrack to the original 1973 Wicker Man film really evokes the feeling of these islands. I have no idea if the musician Paul Giovanni actually visited the outer Hebrides, but his music especially for the track ‘Willow’s Song’ really evokes the mystical nature of these nordic archipelagos .

Today I sketched some clouds looking west towards these islands. This time, I will not go west to the U.S.A. or Canada, but a closer west but in some ways further out there, on the edges of a beautiful oblivion…

fort william sky sketch

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