Illustrating Hemingway: The End Of Something

Some watercolour studies after reading The End of Something, the story features Hemingway's recurring character Nick Adams, who's character is largely based on Hemingway's personal experiences as a young man. Nick Adams is on a fishing trip with his girlfriend Marjorie, and he plans to split up with her. Marjorie daydreams that the abandoned mill is a castle, from my reading of it, it is meant to symbolise her youthful naivety in not knowing what is happening and that Nick plans to end their relationship. I decided to focus on capturing the atmosphere of Hortons Bay, Michigan where they meet, sitting in the moonlight shimmering on the water, and the old ruined mill, which is also a metaphor for their relationship which has run its course.

The abandoned mill was probably the most interesting of the studies, I was imagining a breeze going through the tall marsh grass, making it sway gently, curving around the old structure. I find it interesting how difficult and tense situations can live in the memory through what you were gazing at when it happened, staring off into the horizon whilst listening to someone speak, so a building, a chair, a picture, or a certain colour gets burned in the mind and associated with that feeling and that situation, more than the actual person. This is one of my favourites from the First Forty-Nine Stories and is certainly a relatable one, a contrast to Old Man On The Bridge which was almost directly from the war journalist part of his life.