Sarah Jane



Sarah Jane
Watercolour on Paper
35.5cm x 26.5cm (14" x 10.5")


I saw this little boat at Wells-Next-The-Sea.

I painted it a workshop hosted by Tony Slater (http://www.tonyslater.co.uk/).

This is the second of Tony’s painting days that I have attended. The subject for the day was painting with a limited pallet. Once again, Tony offered a lot of useful advice and suggested the technique I used to paint the surface of the water.

Apart from the red stripe, the rest of the painting is different mixtures of two colours. This tight colour harmony and the horizontal lines on the water help to give the painting a feeling of stillness and calm.

This isn’t an ideal boat to paint. There is no visible internal ribbing or seats. This sort of detail makes it easier for the viewer to interpret and believe in the image. All I could see in the bottom of this boat was random clutter that would have been difficult to draw and wouldn’t have added to the picture.

The paintings of boats at the bottom of this blog are some of my first paintings – back from 2008. I dug them out to illustrate the point about internal details making the boats more believable. I was also hoping they would demonstrate my progress over the last 3 years.  The trouble is I was pleased with them at the time and I still like them.


Little Boats
Watercolour on Watercolour Postcards