Making Corrections With Gouache

Smeaton’s Pier, St Ives
Watermedia and Oil Pastel on Paper
24cm x 34cm (9.5" x 13.5")

Smeaton’s Pier protects St Ives harbour from the sea. The pier was originally half its current length. The lighthouse was added when the pier was extended in the 1890s.

The picture started as an experiment in mixing oil pastels and acrylic inks with watercolour. I didn’t have any aspiration to produce a finished painting, but as it developed, I began to like it and started to wish I had taken more care painting the figures at the bottom of the wall.

What figures at the bottom of the wall?

Smeaton’s Pier, St Ives
Watermedia and Oil Pastel on Paper
24cm x 34cm (9.5" x 13.5")

I painted over them with gouache.

I started by lifting off as much of the figures as I could. I then painted over where they had been with a relatively thick layer of gouache and feathered this out to blend in with the rest of the wall. I used this as an opportunity to tone down some of the markings on other parts of the wall by glazing them with gouache.

I’ve never used gouache in this way before, but it’s a technique I will practice and refine. It won’t work in all paintings, but the flat matt appearance of gouache work lends itself to some materials, such as, harbour walls.