Focus: should you make a sketch?
Outdoors, sketching is perhaps more spontaneous. A pencil and a few markers can help you set some landmarks. For a subject in the studio, whether from a photo or from life, sketching will be advantageous for making the difficult choice of colors or techniques.
For the final watercolor, it is better to draw with a very fine mechanical pencil (HB), and erase as little as possible. If you are not comfortable with drawing, prepare it first on tracing paper which you will transfer over.
For the green at the bottom, tap a piece of sponge to create imprints and finish softly. It is useless to draw the trees. You will simply represent them with a free and nuanced brushstroke.
Focus: drawing boats
This kind of spread will look great in a travel sketchbook! To draw boats, I advise you to get small models so you can observe them from all angles. A trawler in profile is the easiest to draw. You will pay attention to the axes that cross the boat lengthwise and crosswise, as well as the spaces separating the two benches. To draw the curve of a boat as accurately as possible, compare the height of the curve's starting point with the height of its ending point.
Greek boat
After carefully drawing the mountain in the background, the fort, and the small trawler, moisten the entire sheet. Deposit a first wash of diluted yellow with the medium brush, then a light magenta, and finally a cobalt blue.
While still wet, go over the sky with a denser blue to give a stormy effect. Nuance the seawater a little more if it is still wet. Let it dry.
Darken the mountain with a Winsor blue mixed with a cobalt blue. Paint the fort in ochre with a touch of Schmincke orange, then the dark colors of the trawler. Add the red last.
Take the colors used in the sky again (without ochre) and perform rubbings on dry paper. Finish with a zigzag glaze of highly diluted magenta to create the reflections of the shadows in the water.
Garonne
Prepare your colors in advance and moisten your paper in all directions. Spare areas in the sky that you do not wish to cover and that will remain white paper.
With the large wash brush, let the cobalt blue diffuse into the sky and at the bottom, to represent the water dying on the bank. Then, without waiting for the paper to dry, deposit light cream silhouettes of trees (yellow and cobalt blue) in the background, as well as the green areas in the middle.
Still in the wet, deposit green creams for the darker areas with the medium wash brush or the beveled one.
If the paper has dried in some places, dry the whole thing then rewet with a very damp large wash brush; empty the excess water by tilting the paper and continue.
Depigment the light line right next to the trees with the barely damp beveled brush. Then, on the beach, deposit a few small spots of burnt sienna wash with the medium wash brush.
With the beveled brush slightly loaded with medium green, pull or deposit paint to represent the grass on the embankments (triangles on the left below the two trees). Let it dry.
Between the beach and the grass, apply a very light glaze of light green then light gray (ultramarine and a touch of burnt sienna) in the foreground. This creates interesting light/shadow rhythms leading towards the background.
Outline some light areas to draw stones on the ground, with a light ultramarine and burnt sienna wash.
