Bruce Mackay’s portholes: patterned pen and ink windows to the waves

One of the best bits of a ship are the circular windows at or below the height of the waves. Cape Town-based illustrator and typographer Bruce Mackay has drawn a series of these portholes (or at least porthole-shaped scenes) in blue, green and red pen and ink. They show wild, patterned waves and a haul of flotsam and jetsam; there’s a boat bobbing on the head of a whale, Poseidon/Neptune, a skeleton with an arrow in his heart drifting down a bloody stream and twisted sea snakes. Of Starboard Portholes he says he was “trying to capture the churning that would happen if a massive serpent were to uncoil at open sea.”

Bruce says Safe Harbour is a test scene from a book he’s in the early stages of writing and illustrating. These wonderful drawings are surely begging for nautical adventures to accompany them and we can’t wait to see more.