Each project starts with a few basic outlines and progresses into a finished tonal drawing; a final coloured version shows you how to develop your drawing even further.

There are portraits here of families who have generations-long connections to the sea (including a fascinating chapter about a small-scale lobster fisherman who is trying to fish sustainably and utilise only natural materials in making his lobster pots), of modern-day mermaids, and of the next generation of young naturalists who go rock-pooling with their parents.They reach blindly out with their extensive members in the hope of encountering a nearby mate – of either sex, barnacles being hermaphroditic. Most of the book is set around the Cornish coast, with occasional forays further afield to the Isles of Scilly and even Svalbard in Norway.

Surfers sit low in the water on submerged boards and look for that longed-for ‘bump’ on the horizon that signals an incoming set of waves. Wyl Menmuir dives deep into a world of sea-souls - swimmers and surfers and sailors, birders, beachcombers and rowers - and with meditative charm addresses that perennial, unanswerable question: what makes us so oblivious to danger and discomfort and pulls us again and again to the water? From the wreckers who scour secret beaches for modern day ‘plunder’ to the free divers who can hold their breaths for minutes at a time, Wyl’s journey sees him meeting with an eclectic group of people who have one thing in common: they love the sea and its inhabitants as much as he does. It is here that Menmuir and his family holiday and Scilly serves as a kind of dream landscape for him, one in which he is more easily able to immerse himself in the maritime world.Whether we realise it or not, its health is key to all of our lives, whether we live in earshot of the sea or we’re entirely landlocked. In exploring what the sea means to us, and allowing us to hear from those who who work with it, live by it, enjoy it, struggle with it or seek to preserve it, Menmuir presents a wonderful variety of voices and of experiences. The Draw of the Sea is a meaningful and moving investigation into how we interact with the environment around us, how it comes to shape the course of our lives, and what we have to lose – as individuals and as a society – if we don’t acknowledge its significance.