Watch Hill Lighthouse
Sketching the view from Taylor Swift’s house
Here’s how our vacation itinerary was determined. My husband looked at his eBird profile and said to me, “How would you like to visit Rhode Island?” Why Rhode Island, you ask? Because he hadn’t been there yet and his goal is to see one hundred species of birds in every state. That’s how I ended up in Watch Hill, Rhode Island, on a lovely September day in 2024.
On the morning that we visited Watch Hill, Douglas had spotted Napatree Point as a great location for birding and dropped me off in town.
It was a perfect fall day, breezy but not chilly. The day before, we’d visited Beavertail and wind was howling. I had crouched down behind a hedge and tried to draw the lighthouse from a rather severe angle. It was not my most successful work and I left there feeling somewhat down in the dumps.
But at Watch Hill, my optimism rose. I walked down to the lighthouse and strolled around it looking for a good composition. That’s when I spotted an enormous white house on the coast, perched on a little hill: Taylor Swift’s house.
After reconnoitering, I decided to give myself a break regarding linear perspective and chose a simple composition looking out to sea. I had prepared the page beforehand using watered down acrylics so that provided a rough frame for the sketch. I used Neocolor II crayons and colored pencils. It was slow going at first but when I started doing the lawn, I could feel the shift.
Suddenly I was surrounded by a flock of migrating Tree Swallows. The air was filled with chattering birds! Their little voices sounded so sweet. They swirled and dived around me for a few minutes and then they were gone.
The funny thing is, I never would have visited Watch Hill if it hadn’t been for my husband’s one-hundred-birds-in-every-state quest. On these trips, I’ve gotten used to allowing the days to evolve according to where the birds are. And then the birds found me, gifting me with their presence in those few precious moments.
I think this is what I love most about sketching on location. The experience becomes so vivid and forges such intense memories. There’s just nothing like it.
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Here’s another piece about on-location sketching from a recent trip to Panama.
