Greenland Sketchbook

“The view is constantly changing, so the drawings are quick, but the associated memories are more dynamic because of it. ”

I managed to fill this sketchbook during my breaks working as ORCA Wildlife Officer on MS Spirit of Discovery this summer sailing between Iceland and the coast of Greenland as far north as Nuuk. Each sketch is made on deck from a glimpse of a landscape, the sea or passing wildlife. The view is constantly changing so the drawings are quick, but this makes the memories associated with them more dynamic, providing exciting material to work from once I’m back in the studio this winter.

Icebergs, growlers and bergy bits were a constant source of fascination and with the warmer than average conditions, there were plenty of them to draw. We navigated the ice ladened Prins Christian Sund that transects the Greenland peninsula east to west just above Cape Farewell. It was a blue sky day, almost unheard of in this part of the world, making it clear enough to see the tops of the rust stained mountain peaks whose sheer height mirrored the extreme plummeting depth of the ice studded channel below. To avoid the dense belt of icebergs spewing out the fjords and encircling the Greenland coast, we would head 40 nautical miles offshore most nights to navigate between ports. On this course heading parralel to the coast, we were also traversing the continental shelf where water depths drop steeply from 500m to 3000m and deeper. Here nutrient rich upwellings provide the perfect conditions for marine life to feed, including the whales, dolphins and porpoises we were surveying and spotting for guests onboard. Dense sea fog was another constant feature along the Greenland coast; often the animals and landscape shown in some of these pages, were only glimpsed during short lived patches of increased visibility. Early morning surveys were carried out scanning horizons glowing pink from the slowly rising Arctic sun, whilst evening skies burnt a much hotter scarlet or orange. We recorded 636 marine mammals in total including 117 whales on this survey sailing from Dover to Nuuk, with the majority of species recorded in the North Atlantic between Iceland and Greenland.

For a more detailed account of this trip and animals recorded see my ORCA Wildlife Officer Daily Reports.