Create a Dynamic Monochromatic Ocean with Sailboat using Watercolor, Acrylic Ink, and Gravity
Hi, I'm Valerie Englehart, and it's mini painting season again. I'm working on a four by six cold press pad of watercolor paper for this one.
Why Paint the Same Subject Twice
I recently painted a boat that went to the gallery and sold. When something sells, you do it again. That's just good business. But I get bored easily, so I never do it exactly the same way twice. This time I'm using a different blue combination and a new ink technique to keep things interesting for myself.
Laying Down the Water
I wetted the entire surface of the paper and squeezed out two paints, both by Rockwell Art. The light blue is Angel Eyes, which I love for its lovely shimmer; it adds a bit of sparkly magic. The darker blue is Blue Enchantress, probably the closest thing I have to a French ultramarine.
I went in thick with the Blue Enchantress first. It's a granulating pigment, so I held the paper up at an angle and let the water do the work of moving it around. One small annoyance with this particular block is that I only had two pages left, and there's a lip of glue along the edges that traps pigment and keeps it from flowing off the page the way I want. That's just something to work around.
After the darker blue, I went in with the lighter Angel Eyes, first placing it with my brush, then tap, tap, tapping it in when I didn't like how stiff it looked, letting the colors merge more organically. I painted all of this with a size eight Silver Black Velvet round brush, and I kept a spritzer bottle on hand so I could move pigment with extra water and gravity instead of the brush.
Letting the Water Do the Work
The key for a piece like this is to not fiddle with it, and that's genuinely hard. I think we all carry this notion that something has to take a lot of time or feel labor-intensive to be beautiful or worthy, when really this kind of painting does best the less I interfere. Letting the watercolor do its thing, understanding its properties and its natural motion, is what makes a piece like this work.
Honestly, it breaks my heart a little when I see paintings online where the artist clearly had a great idea but felt unsure and overworked it, losing that luminous, transparent quality watercolor can give you. So even though I'm a watercolor artist, I'm not a purist about it.
An Experiment With White Acrylic Ink
This piece probably counts as more of a mixed media work, since I went in with a few drops of white acrylic ink, something I'd never tried before. I just wanted to see what would happen. When I plopped it on, it didn't move much at first, so I grabbed some granulating medium (making sure my brush was clean first) and tapped it into the ink using that same size eight brush.
Over time, the granulating medium really began to break down the acrylic ink, and I loved how it looked. It's a technique I'll definitely try again. Watching those little rivulets and dots slowly form as it dried was genuinely enjoyable, one of the few times watching paint dry is actually fun.
Keeping the Palette Small on Purpose
If this piece sells too, I'll probably paint even more boats, changing up the color each time. Will the water usually be blue? Probably; I have a lot of blue paint and could make dozens of boats without repeating a color, especially once I start pulling out greens and purples.
But when I'm working this small, I don't want to bring in a bunch of colors. I like to focus on values and shapes, and on these tiny pieces, it's essential that I stay in control of the narrative. I might not control the watercolor itself, but I still need to control the story. If I introduced too many colors, I think I'd lose the impact of this drippy, loosey-goosey style.
Because of the techniques I used, the piece needed to dry naturally; when you want a lot of texture, you don't want to pull out a blow dryer. So I made myself a cup of tea and let it be.
Finding a Reference Photo
Once it dried, I found a reference photo from a copyright-free site, probably Pexels, since I definitely don't want to violate any copyrights, especially on a piece meant for sale. There are legal rules around this, but galleries have their own rules too; some shows require that you took the reference photograph yourself. For this particular show, using a copyright-free image was fine.
Painting the Boat With Gouache
I keep a jam jar lid of gouache separate from my watercolors. Normally I squeeze gouache fresh from the tube, but this time I reconstituted some instead, and I was pleasantly surprised with the result; usually reconstituted gouache doesn't behave the way I want, but this time it did.
Part of making the boat feel cohesive with the background was letting some of that gouache stay a little transparent, so the sea behind it could shine through. That creates depth and shadow without me adding more paint; I'm just letting what's already there do the work.
Stamping a Mast
Instead of trying to paint a perfectly straight line for the mast, I squeezed out some more pigment, grabbed a palette knife, coated it evenly, and stamped it onto the page. I moved my reference photo around so I could match the mast's angle to the one in the image, then stamped it down.
I like that the resulting line isn't perfectly crisp; it has a wonkiness with real charm. I don't love things too neat, though there's a difference between a charming mess and a hot mess, and I think this stamped mast lands on the charming side. If something can be done with less effort, I'm going to do it that way.
Adding the Sails
I don't sketch before I paint, so I was winging the sails too, using more white gouache. I've painted this way for a long time, and the more you paint without sketching, the better you get at it. If you're finding it hard, that's just because you're new to it; keep practicing and your eye for proportion and placement will improve. It's not the answer anyone wants, but it really does just take repetition.
I filled in the sails but didn't want them to read as a solid block, so I wiggled a bit of pigment into them to marry the shapes together; I don't like disconnected shapes. They still felt a little too blocky, so I lifted some paint out for transparency and variation.
A white sail against a light sky background is genuinely hard to see, so I added a line at the bottom of one sail to help frame it, without outlining everything (that would kill the looseness and atmosphere I want). A couple of short strokes added a bit more visual interest; on a canvas this small, a few tiny flicks is all you need.
Tying the Colors Together
I picked up some of the Angel Eyes color again and added it to one of the sails, both to bring that sail forward from the background and to echo that color elsewhere in the piece. The gouache underneath had already dried, so I could paint on top of it without disturbing it, using a size two Mimick round brush; it's synthetic but soft enough to lightly glaze watercolor over gouache without lifting it.
One caution here: gouache lifts pretty easily and can dirty your watercolor if you're not careful, so I mixed this glaze on a scrap piece of paper instead of in my palette.
Messing It Up on Purpose
Lastly, I wanted to rough up the boat a little; it's sailing, after all, and there should be movement. I lifted some paint off the side of the boat using a swooping upward motion with my brush, as if water were hitting its hull. That also broke up the hard line at the bottom and gave it a nice misty effect. Basically, when things get too neat, I have to mess them up a little. It's practically a personal rule.
Final Thoughts
Repainting a sold piece doesn't mean repeating it; a new palette or technique keeps the same subject feeling fresh
Granulating medium can break down other media, like acrylic ink, in ways worth experimenting with
On small, loose pieces, a limited palette keeps the narrative under control even when the water itself isn't
Gouache lifts easily under watercolor, so keep it on a scrap sheet, not in your palette
Painting without a sketch gets easier with repetition, not with waiting until it feels natural
A little imperfection (a stamped line, a lifted edge) often reads as more charming than a perfectly clean one