Rusty boat, Connemara

Here is the watercolour painting of a rusty boat in Connemara, well, a small patch of the hull actually.


I had great fun with this one. First of all, I covered my watercolour paper with a nice layer of gesso, so that the paper wouldn't absorb the paint too fast. Then, I painted the red patches, using winsor red (a lovely pure red, not too pink, not too orange), dragging the paint with a tissue to create the effect of running paint. After that, I covered these patches with low-tack masking film so that it wouldn't get splattered with the other colours. And then, I used Winsor violet, quinacridone gold, yellow ochre and burnt sienna for the rusty bits. That's where the fun started: I splattered, dragged, covered with cling film, stenciled with a sponge, each time waiting for the paint to dry before applying the next colour.

And finally, I used a tiny bit of white gouache with a touch of red to do the highlights where the red paint is peeling.

Great fun altogether. Check out how I experimented with the techniques here. And here is a picture of the boat itself. Click on the picture and try to find the bit of the boat that I used for this painting. It's not exactly the same (I didn't trace!), but the overall shapes are there.