Recording and Drawing at Isleworth

It became clear during discussions with other West London FROG volunteers that many of us felt a need for refresher training on recording and drawing techniques. Whilst we had all benefited from the excellent theoretical training modules provided by the Thames Discovery Programme, it was agreed that a practical session would be very useful indeed.

So bright and early last Sunday morning, about a dozen West London FROG members assembled on the quayside just downstream of the London Apprentice at Isleworth – just about as far west as the scope of our project covers. The forecast was good, so we pulled on our boots and suitable layers of clothing, gathered our kit and made our way down the ramp to the foreshore to join the professionals. Despite the relatively early hour, Elliot and Ashley were ready and waiting with all necessary tools to hand.

After the customary briefing we were organised into teams of two and allocated a section of cobbled slipway to record and draw. This had already been marked out with a baseline from which to make our offset measurements, so all that remained now was to actually commit our 6H pencils to Permatrace and get cracking. Thank heaven for rubbers!

After a faltering start, at least in my case, we soon took pride as the reference points were plotted and then joined up – as they say “its nice when a plan comes together”. I’ll be honest though…mistakes were made and adjustments made. We were working on a 1:20 scale and rounding up or down by up to 1cm and so an inbuilt degree of error had to be come to terms with and resolved. But by working together and occasionally challenging each other’s work we finally achieved our aim of plotting our own stretch of cobbles.

Speaking for myself I greatly increased my confidence in recording and drawing and now look forward to our next practical training session and fieldwork to consolidate these skills.

Before this session I genuinely felt that a photograph would adequately record the object under consideration but I now realise that drawing the plan literally forced me to see in detail what I certainly would have missed if I’d relied on a digital image alone. Many thanks to the more experienced members and the professionals on site for their patience and guidance on what was 4 hours very well spent.