After a beautiful sunny warm day I headed straight down to the river after work, looking for a new angle and trying a new approach, I set up and after a long hard think, dived straight into this one with no under drawing...something that is quite exhilarating and nerve wracking at the same time!
I knew that I had to keep all the background as smile as possible, also knew I had to try and "mass" all the boats together into a manageable shape. I'm not sure I was entirely successful in doing this but it was a really good learning exercise. I was most happy with the figures I added on top of the wall on the far left, not so much the figures themselves, they're just little blobs, but I am pleased with my restraint in not adding the wall in and overworking it, to me, they feel like they are sitting on and standing behind a wall. A bit of scalpel scraping was employed on the foreground mud and to add a few highlights to the water. The super heavyweight 300lb /640gsm Arches paper is so beautiful to use and can easily handle this scraping technique. If you try it on thinner paper it can very easily just tear up the surface.
So after a couple of weeks now, I am fairly happy with the "feel" of this piece, lots of mistakes in my mind, but that's all part of the watercolour journey!
Original watercolour for sale £295 framed. 31x41cm painting size.
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