Go Sailing Isle Of Wight Magnets

Go Sailing Isle Of Wight vintage style travel poster.

A sailing barge heading into Portsmouth Harbour. The image was captured from the Southsea end of Portsmouth, looking out on to Spithead. In the background are the hills of the Isle of Wight with yachts and a car ferry. These barges are more commonly seen in the Thames estuary and East Anglia area where they were once the local freight carriers.

The mouth of the River Medina (Cowes, Isle of Wight) is surprisingly industrialised - but in a nice small business kind of way. If you take the slow car ferry from Southampton, this is the view you get as it comes into dock at Cowes. It caught my eye because of the jumble of interesting details such as the seaweed covered rails, the refuelling kiosk with its old pumps, the draped material for the doors, and the reflections on the windows - which are clearly not flat glass panels. I've painted this on a 16x12 inch board using oils and a lot of fiddling around with the detail.