Painting the island and sail boats

The next stage was painting the island and sail boats. I started by mixing a couple of greens using the mixed watercolors (watercolours) already in my palette as a base. To a couple of these I added some Raw Umber and some more French Ultramarine to create two different dull bluish greens. I used the lighter color for the higher portions of the island and the cooler (more blue) and stronger in tone one for lower down.

The tree foliage line silhouette on the right of the hill I did using the side of my number 8 round brush to create the texture of tree foliage and then I continued painting the rest of the island.

I left gaps in the paintwork here and there to act as little highlights, some even read as roof lines so I kept them for that use. Under some of the highlights I dropped a darker mixture of paint in which I added more French Ultramarine and a little Burnt Sienna.

Having worked my way down the hillside then at the water’s edge I used this same mix to paint the very distant boats, just impressions of them nothing detailed. Notice how the boat shapes are all connected. Continuing in this fashion, but adding a little more French Ultramarine and Burnt Sienna into the mix I painted the closest sail boats. For these I made sure their hulls looked more like that of boats than I did for the distant ones.

Under some of the hulls I painted some slight reflections.

Once the background hill was totally dry I painted the masts along with the reflections of some of the bigger ones. The important thing here is to make sure the masts all vary in height and distance apart. With a few of the masts I also painted their reflection.

The island and sail boat part of our watercolor painting is now complete and we can move to the foreground row boats and finish off this little watercolor.

Continue to: Painting the foreground row boats