My name is Willie Watt and I am an architect. I love to draw and have drawn since I was at primary school and throughout my career, both in terms of my work and for simple pleasure in my free time. I fundamentally believe that the act of drawing catalyses architectural thought allowing an architect to analyse a landscape, a site or a building so that they can respond creatively to it in order to create a solution which is appropriate and fits the locale. Drawing also makes the creative process for all involved fun. That is a process and approach which underpins the work of my practice Nicoll Russell Studios where the pen is every bit as important as the computer.
Drawing, sketching and painting though is much more to me than simply my work it is something which I am always doing and often it compliments a bike ride along the coast, around a town, into the country or into the wilds of the highlands. My work is underpinned by drawing, but I use a variety of techniques, historically using watercolour, watercolour pencils/crayons and more and more often mixed media. That has been an interesting evolution where my sketching has reacted to the potential of the digital world, utilising devices like the Moleskine Smartpen where I draw digitally on real paper or my use of a Graphic Display Tablet to digitally render my drawings or to digitally paint entirely in the digital world. I always draw or paint what I enjoy, what catches my eye with a particular emphasis on architecture, vernacular buildings and boats.
My work has been exhibited in a number of galleries including The House of an Art Lover, The Royal Scottish Academy and the Galerie d'Architecture de Paris and my sketchbooks won the Sir Robert Lorimer Award for drawing. That said, over recent years I have not shared my work, it had become a rather private pursuit so the chance posting of some of my art on LinkedIn and a huge, truly local and international reaction to it blew me away. Many people and The Big Draw in particular have encouraged me to share my work more and more often, which I have done via social media and many have enquired whether they can buy originals or prints of my work, which was a real surprise. Given the hugely positive reaction to my work this website is the next logical step.
All of that though is hard work and hard work that I don’t have time for as my focus is always my architectural practice and when time permits drawing and creating artworks in my spare time. I don’t want this to get in the way of any of that and that is where my son Fraser comes in. He is a qualified photographer, is in a gap year before university and has built this website. He is gradually documenting my historic work which can be seen in the gallery and will develop and manage the website going forwards, create any artwork for sale and will manage the whole process. So its a perfect match, I continue to do my day job and what I enjoy for pleasure and he has and will be doing all of the hard work which depending upon good fortune may help him finance his studies.
If my story interests you please browse my gallery which contains art captured in my home area around Broughty Ferry, Arbroath, Fife and Aberdeenshire, or work drawn during Mountainbike trips in the Scottish Highlands or architectural study tours of Europe and Canada. I hope you enjoy it.