Sketchy line portrait of a woman on forearm

Mrs Gwen Hocking came down to the slipway this morning with her hand at her chin, the way she holds it when the boats are late. I had my sketchbook open on my knee before she sat, which was a mistake, because she knows I draw her and she will never keep still for it. Every time I found the line of her cheek she shifted towards the sea, so I drew the cheek again a finger's width over, and then again. By noon the page looked like a family photograph taken by a nervous child.

Father always said a line should be made once and believed. I have never managed it. The harbour wall is in the drawing too, though I did not mean it to be. I left the lower part of the sheet bare where the gulls came down on the rope, and the figure simply thins out there, as if the tide had come in over her shoulders.

She came back at four with the boats in and asked to see it. She didn't say much. She put one finger on the doubled line along her jaw and said that was the bit where she had been most herself, that she had moved the whole morning to get it right.

I have pinned it above the stove. Tomorrow I will try to draw her from the front, but I suspect she will turn away, and I suspect I will be glad of it.