Ship to shore watercolor painting process

It's been a good while in the making and it's finally here! I'm excited to be able to share a little bit more behind the scenes of this painting and it's definitely one of the more complicated undertakings I've done in the last while. Really happy with how this came out so let's dig in!

After figuring out where I wanted to go with this in the digital study from a week ago I've laid in a fairly light sketch and I'm starting from the background first with a very wet wash of the lighter blue-ish green-ish color.

While the paint is still very wet I took my rag and dabbed out some cloudy fog shapes to soak up some of the color and leave the white of the page.

Happy with that I moved a bit forward and placed in the sea horizon and did some more dabbing while the paint was wet to keep up with the foggy look.

The trees came next and because I still wanted there to be a fog layer in between this and the building in front I again use the wet wet paint and dab dry to take away cloud shape technique.

Starting to place the building shapes.

Added some back ground elements, more roof and the background boat.

At this point I've laid in the majority of the building and all that is left is to paint in my big red lobster boat and finish off the water. One of the notes I had taken while designing this image was that I really wanted it to be all about the boat. In order to get the eye to move away from the building, which takes up the most space on the page, I made an effort to cool off the left side of the building by adding some bluer tones and the shadow. I gradually warmed up the building toward the right side to guide the eye and also left the more brightly colored buoys for the area closest to the boat.

At long last, I've come across the finish line! This piece took me way longer but was a very good teacher for me. I find that when there are architectural elements and busy lines in a scene they can easily become kind of overwhelming to look at. I hope that in this painting I've been able to keep the calm and serene beauty of the place and also tell a story.

If you've enjoyed this kind of post, let me know! If you have questions about watercolor painting that I didn't explain enough here I'm happy to go into more detail in a future post. I'd like for this to be a place to share beautiful works and learn about painting together.

Take care out there!