The sea is made of water, obviously. The sky is made of water also, but much less of it. Think about it, if there was no water in the sky, there would be no clouds, no mist or fog, no rainbows. Nothing of interest! Ok we all like a blue sky, but we rarely see one, not here anyway.
Painting the sea (lake/river) and sky in watercolour is a joy. The two are part of the one. The sky is reflected in the water. For me, the best results are when they are painted together – wet in wet.
This painting (Eventide, Portland) was executed in this way. First the drawing (it took a while to get the boats looking right) then I painted the reflection of the hulls with masking fluid, I also painted a few ripples in the water. I then outlined the boats lightly with waterproof ink, so that what would come next, would not smudge them.
For wet in wet to work the paper itself must be fairly wet to start with. This paper was Saunders Waterford 300gsm, and was stretched (I’ll describe this another time) and taped down, so that it would withstand a good deal of wetting. I did not wet the boats.
Then I started to apply the paint. The trick here is to keep the paper damp throughout this stage of the process. The lower part of the evening sky was still fairly bright, I painted this with raw sienna and also its reflection in the water as one, using a large round brush. I used a little crimson towards the upper part of this, and then some blue (cobalt I think) above and below this. All of this was wet and spilling across the page, which I encouraged by lifting the board (and paper) to different angles to get the colours to blend in a natural looking way. I think it is important to keep the paint moving until it dries.
The clouds were a mixture of crimson and blue mixed on the damp paper. I added more of the different colours, and more water where needed, and continued to move the paint around, as described, until I felt I had captured it. I then let it dry completely. (Image 1)
With the sky and water finished, I next turned to the detail. I painted the trees lightly, being careful to leave sky holes (where the light shines through the trees) and again their reflection in the water. I worked darker shades into the trees and some variation in colour (using the same blues and yellows as previously) as the trees got darker the boats got brighter (counterpoint). I removed the masking fluid covering the reflection of the boats themselves. I then worked to get these reflection looking right and added the detail to the boats (canopies etc)
Almost there, but I felt it was all a bit pale, so I mixed a light glaze of cadmium orange and laid it on and I felt it finally all came together. (Image 2).
The painting (A4) was done over two days. I actually continued to tidy up bits and pieces (sky mostly) over the next week or so.
I write this blog every month as a reflection for myself, I hope it was of interest to you. Thanks for reading. Micheal.
