A quick watercolour boat

With the onset of April has come the mildly terrifying realisation that my Artists Open Houses exhibition is only a few weeks away! If my next posts seem curt, I hope you’ll forgive me, it’s just that I’ve got so much to do!

I should however caveat that my ‘so much to do!’ also includes a trip to Porto at Easter, so some things are most definitely nice problems to have!

One step in the right direction has been creating a new page on the website that’s dedicated to my forthcoming participation in Art at Zerbs. I’ve put this page together in the unlikely event that I find the time to do any advertising so that I have a suitable page to direct people to. If you have any time to look at this page, I’d really welcome any thoughts or comments on it before I start sending people through to it.

After last week’s rather drawn out affair of a painting, I was hopeful of something more straightforward for my next adventure. Staying with my ‘boats of Hastings’ theme, the subject was another boat at rest from an another unusual perspective. It might also be worth mentioning that my recent boat paintings have all been painted on half imperial sheets. For this painting, I wanted to downsize to a quarter sheet, mainly because I thought it would suit the subject best, but also because I think I could do with a few more quarter sheet sized paintings for the exhibition.

I was so eager to get cracking on this that I totally forgot to take a photo until after I’d put down my first wash. Here’s how it looked at that point:

So far so good. Next up was to add in the background as simply as possible and to start work on the boat and strengthening the foreground:

I particularly enjoyed this part as there was lots of bold wet into wet painting. Once it had dried, I took off the masking liquid which I’d applied to the rear of the boat and over letters and numbers on the side of the boat.

Next up was more strengthening of the hull, and adding in some detailing such as the flags and rails etc.

From a distance, I quite liked this but I wasn’t convinced by the hull and thought I’d strengthen it even further and knock back the lettering a little bit. Here’s how I decided to leave it, before my temptation to overwork it took over:

This is another painting that I like more from a distance than I do close up. I’m not sure whether I’ll include this painting, but at least I had fun painting it!

By the time of next week’s post, I’ll have had the opportunity to visit the house I’m exhibiting in and will have met most of my co-exhibitors. While I take little comfort in any one else’s lack of preparation, I really hope that I’m not the least well prepared!