Back at my mooring buoy in Poros, Greece I have spent days working on a new watercolour.
I wanted to do something different this time and walked around the shoreline looking for subject matter. Just as I was about to give up I stumbled upon this scene. A guy in a camper van had hung out his washing between the trees at the waters edge. In the background was an old boat moored to a tiny jetty. The wind played with the washing giving it life and the sun enhanced the bright colours of the clothes and foliage.
I made a sketch and decided to mask all the washing in order to work freely with the background. The sketch was in fact quite detailed as I didn’t want to forget anything. This was done en plein air (on location) but I took photographs to continue with it back at my boat. It turned out I used the wrong masking fluid ( it was written in Russian) So I ripped the whole sketch up in anger and started right from the beginning!
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The sketch with masked and taped
the outlines of the washing |
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| The first colours of the foliage were added |
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ultramarine and cobalt blue were used for the sea
and shadows between the leaves give the scene some depth |
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| I added burnt sienna to the tree trunk and foreground |
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| Now it was time to remove the mask |
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As a base colour for the boat and
some of the washing I used magenta red |
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| Finally the last details of the washing were painted and the grass in the foreground was added. |
