watercolor of sailboats

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Watercolor Sailboat

Jenna .

This week, I'm teaching you how to paint a quick and easy watercolor sailboat landscape!

When I don't have a lot of time or I just want to play with colors and basic shapes, I paint loose-style. It's just whimsical and fun!

This watercolor sailboat takes less than 10 minutes to paint but includes simple techniques to inspire and spark creativity. This is a great tutorial for beginners, too!

Watercolor Sailboat Step by Step

00:00 – Intro. 00:32 – Color mixing. 01:06 – Painting the sail boat. 02:16 – Painting waves. 03:01 – Painting trees and background. 04:53 – Painting the sky. 06:14 – My thoughts on the painting. 06:51 – YOUR thoughts?

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Michele Clamp Art

Watercolor paintings, tutorials, and videos

Watercolor Boat Painting Tutorial

Want to paint this watercolor boat painting? Follow the step by step instructions (including video at the end) and see how easy this can be!

I just can’t resist painting boats in watercolor. The colors, the details, the sun and shadow – all come together to make painting these watercolor boats so much fun. In this watercolor boat tutorial I break down all the steps and show you how you can paint this scene. Boat watercolor paintings can seem daunting but if you take things slowly it’s amazing how they come together.

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Watercolor materials needed.

• Mechanical pencil
• Watercolor paper (I like Fabriano Artistco 140lb cold press)
• Permanent rose
• Vermillion/pyrrole red/naphthol red
• Ultramarine blue
• Cobalt blue/cerulean blue
• Yellow ochre
• Lemon yellow
• Burnt Sienna
• Value Scale
• Color isolator
• Palette/paper towels/water pot
• Small spray bottle of water

Watercolor Boat Drawing

The drawing for this painting is pretty important. Sometimes I won’t put much detail into a drawing and just indicate the main shapes. For instance a landscape with trees can be pretty sparse in the drawing. All the detail and texture goes in by eye with just paint. But for this scene there is a lot going on and we want to indicate the position of a lot of different things.

Using a Grid Helps With Drawing Accuracy

I did this drawing by eye but, if you’re not confident with your drawing, you can grid up your paper lightly with pencil and draw it square by square. That way you can be sure you’re getting everything in the right place. It’s not a foolproof method but it gives you far less room for error. I’ve included a gridded up version of the reference below.

The aspect ratio of the photo is the same as for a 10″x14″ piece of watercolor paper. If you mark your paper into quarters on each side and join them up to make a 4×4 grid you can transfer the drawing more easily onto your paper.

Take Some Time to Make a Plan for Your Painting

Before we dive into the painting it always helps to take a few minutes and plan out what you’re going to do. It can be hard to do this – we want to jump straight in and get those brushes moving and paint splashing around. But a few minutes thought at the start always makes for a better painting. We can spot possible problem areas and make sure we know roughly how we’re going to proceed.

Which Direction is the Light Coming From?

I first make note of where the light is coming from and where the shadows fall. In this case the sun is on our right and the shadows are falling on the left. This is always good to keep in the back of your mind. If the reference is unclear in some areas you can work out how the lights and darks should fall even if you can’t make it out from the photo.

Where are the Lights and Darks?

The next thing I do is note where my lightest lights are and my darkest darks. Once we’ve located these then we know that everything else has to fall somewhere between those areas. In this case our lightest light is the white hull on the left boat. The darkest darks are in the shadow underneath the boats and possibly inside the cabins. I keep this in mind. Nothing else can be darker or lighter than these areas.

Where are the Main Shapes and Values?

This one is trickier but it pays off giving it some thought. Even though there’s a lot of detail going on in this photo I like to break it down into 4 or 5 main value shapes. In this case I would estimate (or measure using our value scale) the value of the following areas

• The hulls of the boats (in light and shadow)
• The cabins of the boats (in light and shadow)

This may seem like a lot to work out ahead of time but getting those big value shapes right is an enormous help getting a scene to hang together and getting it to be convincing.

Identify a Few of the Colors

Doing some test mixes of a few of the main colors can also be a good idea. It’s much easier to do this before the painting. When you’re in the middle of the painting there’s so much going on it’s hard to stop and think about this. It’s a bit like prepping for a recipe. Getting all the ingredients measured out ready ahead of time makes putting a meal together much easier. (Not that I ever really do that – but I should!) In this painting I mixed as I went along but it’s a better idea to try out your color mixes at the start. If you think you can’t remember how you mixed your colors then putting a pencil note next to the swatch is a good idea. It’s doesn’t have to be anything complicated – just a list of the colors is enough.

Watercolor Boat Painting – Finally we Paint!

So let’s start painting. We’re going to paint this in layers and build up the painting from light to dark. We’re first going to block in all the shapes with their lightest colors. Once those are dry we can go back in and add in the darks. This way of working takes a bit of getting used to. As we’re starting with the light colors of all the shapes things won’t start to look three dimensional until quite late on in the painting.

I have many more step-by-step tutorials and videos!

We want things to look flat to start with..

If we put in too much value variation in the early stages then the darks won’t make as much impact when we put those in. In these early stages try and match the color and value as best you can to the reference. And, most importantly, keep these early washes even. Don’t be tempted to try and make things look right at this stage. It takes a bit of faith but once you get used to it it will all make sense.

Keep Going With the Light Values

Keep going across all of the main shapes of the boats. One thing to remember is that we’re putting in the light value of each different shape but these values may vary from shape to shape. For instance, the hull of the red boat is a bright orange-red in the light. The actual value of this is around a 5 i.e. mid-way down the value scale. If we compare this to the beige area above we can see that it’s a little darker. The beige area in the light is around a 7 but it’s still in the light.

Similarly the red stripe on the left hand boat is around a 4 (i.e. darker than a mid-value) in the light. If you have a value scale and a printout of the reference you can measure the values directly. If the color is distracting (and it can be with bright colors like these) squint your eyes and it becomes easier to judge value.

Use the ChromaMagic Tool to Measure Color

Alternatively you can load up the reference in ChromaMagic and click on different areas. It will show you the three components of the color – hue, value and chroma. The color notation is part of the Munsell way of measuring color. It is incredibly useful in painting and makes color very straightforward to analyze.

Paint in the Sea in the Background

The sea in the background goes in next. This is a fairly dark blue and helps to tie the boats in the scene and give us some depth.

As you can see at this point the painting isn’t looking three-dimensional. Don’t panic! This is exactly how it should be looking at this point.

Paint in the Sand Around Your Watercolor Boats

Next we’re going to put in the sand. I really like this bit as we get to put in some texture with our spray bottle. One thing to be careful of – sand isn’t yellow. Or rather it is yellow but a very grayed out low chroma yellow. In this scene it’s a kind of beige so make sure you add in some black to your mix to take out some of the brightness. I’ve made the mistake of painting sand far too bright in color many times. Again mixing a swatch of color beforehand helps a lot as does using ChromaMagic for checking the chroma.

Use a Spray Bottle to Add Texture

While your sand wash is still wet take a spray bottle of water and lightly spritz the surface. If the paper is the right level of dampness the water will add small sparkles and splodges in the paint. It adds some interest and texture to the foreground. This can take a bit of practice to get right. If the paper is too wet the water will just disperse and disappear. If the paper is too dry the water won’t do anything at all.

Watercolor Boat Painting – Add the Sky

Note: I’ve got the order slightly wrong here. I’ve already put in some of the darks on the boats before doing the sky. The order doesn’t really matter. You can put in the sky before the shadows and everything should work out fine.

Let’s put in some sky now. The reference photo doesn’t really have much in the way of clouds and I didn’t really want a big expanse of blue up there. So I’ve invented some cloud shapes. You have a lot of freedom here. Put in some blue around wherever you fancy the clouds to be. While the paint is wet take a clean (very clean) damp brush and soften the edges of the clouds. The blue pigment will diffuse out into the damp areas of paper making lovely soft and convinving clouds.

Watercolor Boat Painting – Second Layer Darks

Now this bit is where the painting starts to come to life. We’re going to put in the shadow sides of the objects and make them look three-dimensional. Adding in these contrasting areas also helps the visual impact of the scene and it will make the image more interesting as well as more realistic.

Don’t Add Color in the Light!

We’ve already painted in the light sides of our objects so we won’t be putting any color in there at all. We’re just going to paint in the shadow colors on mostly the left sides. Make sure your colors are at least a couple of shades darker than your light sides and things will start to take shape. When you get to the insides of the cabins we’re even darker as very little light is getting in there – you don’t need to paint things – just a few dark shapes at different angles will suggest a lot of detail.

Be careful with the shadow on the white hull. We don’t want to go too dark here and keeping that shadow light will really suggest strong sun.

Add a Cast Shadow to Anchor the Boats to the Ground

Finally add some cast shadows on the sand and right at the bottom of the boats. This will make the boats convincingly anchored to the ground.

The Magic Bit – Details on Your Watercolor Boat Painting

By this point you should have something that’s looking pretty three-dimensional. This next bit really adds sparkle and interest to your watercolor boat painting! We’re going to put in some lovely details. Put in the masts and rigging with a small synthetic brush. Make sure they’re not too dark – a mid value gray is plenty dark enough here. The other thing to take care with is not to make your lines too continuous. Leave a few gaps here and there as it will make the masts more convincing than if you carefully paint them in one continuous line.

Continue with the masts and smaller details. Add in a few lines for the railings and the ropes holding the buoys. A few light lines on the white hull will also suggest their structure. I hope everything is looking really good by now!

Flags and Signs

We’re right at the end now. A few red marks for the flags will add a pop of color. The signs on the boat go in with an almost black background. The lettering is suggested with a little opaque white.

Final Thoughts on This Watercolor Boat Painting

If you tried this painting I hope it turned out well. I would love to see your results – please feel free to send them to me. I have also videoed the whole process and you can paint along with the full painting.

2 thoughts on “ Watercolor Boat Painting Tutorial ”

Hi Michele, Kathy Martinez here. I am working with the ColorMagic tool. Love it except for one problem I am having. My monitor is a Cintiq 32 inch display that I have supposedly color corrected with an i1 display gizmo. The colors for the Munsell chips from

Kathy your program don’t come through to match my big book Munsell chips. It is way off. My cintiq screen pretty matches my Ipad. Do you have any suggestions? I have just been finding the chip I have that matches the color swatches from ColorMagic, even though they aren’t the same as described in the program.

Hi Kathy – I replied by email. I was thinking that it may well be hard to match chips directly to the screen. I’m going to try with a setup that I know the colors off and see how it goes. ColorMagic will report the colors in the photo accurately but whether you can match to the display directly may not be possible. Screens give out light and chips only reflect the light so comparing them side by side is going to make the chips always look dark. But maybe there’s something else going on! We’ll see. If it’s fixable we’ll fix it.

Comments are closed.

How to Paint a Tall Ship Sailboat in Watercolour

Skill Level : 2 Intermediate

Medium : Watercolour Painting

Subject : Seascapes

Tutor : Dennis Clark

Class Length : 2 hours 20 minutes

Avg Rating : No Ratings Yet

Silver Level or Higher Class

Class Description

• Read Class Reviews

Gone are the days when the ocean was filled with all types of sailing ships. Fortunately there are still some sailboats sailing the high seas. It is certainly a grand sight when a tall ship sails into a modern harbour. The sight conjours up the imagination of pirates and gun ships in battle.

In this lesson you will learn:

1.  How to paint a stormy sky to offset the light coloured sails 2.  How to paint the seas to give the impression of waves in motion 3.  How to add colour to the sails 4.  How to simplify the deck detail and shrouding and more ...

Latest Reviews

Dennis: I really enjoyed this class. Thank you for an informative lesson. Kathy KathyKuz

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Short class video.

Class Tutorial

Tall sailing ships have always captured the imagination of the adventurous. Pirates with eye patches and a hook hand and all that. What we are going to do is paint one in watercolour.

This is the photo we will be working from:

We will unfurl the last sail so that we have a better looking ship.

Masking the Sails

There is a lot of white areas to be protected so use masking fluid to do this. About ½ inch or 15mm around the edge of the sails should be enough protection.

When you have protected all areas that need to be, gently blow dry before proceeding.

Painting the Sky

With a large flat brush wet all the sky area and then float in some Cobalt Blue.

Be careful to keep the horizon straight.

Add more blue pigment to the sky mix and bring a touch of Burnt Sienna to warm it up a bit. Drop this colour into the wet sky and move it around to suit. We are looking for a darkish sky in order to contrast with the light sails. This will ensure a lovely dramatic painting.

With a bundled up tissue dab some areas to give the impression of cloud billows.

Painting the Sea

Make up a light mix of Blue and Viridian and paint the sea with horizontal strokes. Don't paint it too evenly. To be able to indicate some nice windswept waves use the two colours in horizontal lines and intermingled.

Keep the foreground darker at the lower end of the painting and lighter towards the horizon.

Now we can begin to add in the curved lines for the swells and waves. Don't overdo it and make the waves too wild. The waves will get smaller into the distance.

Because clouds show reflections from the sea surface, very carefully glaze in a few light sea colour on sections of the clouds. This creates a colour harmony between sea and sky.

Use a small round brush to paint in the shadow areas of the waves. Note that each swell will have a light refection on the top edge.

A word of warning: Don't make the swells too large in relation to the size of the ship.

Paint the dark reflection of the ship.

Dry the sea area before continuing.

Enjoying This Tutorial?

Painting the sails.

Remove the masking fluid off the ship.

With an Orange/Brown colour begin painting in all the spars and the masts. To keep them straight and even it is best to do so with a series of short strokes.

The sails are made out of a very strong cotton cloth or canvas and unless they are new sails, they will be slightly discoloured and yellow from being exposed to the harsh elements.

To achieve the aged look, start painting, or rather glazing, some Yellow Ochre over the sails.

When that has been completed, mix up a light Blue/Gray for adding the shadows on the sails. Remember to show any folds in the sails themselves.

Continue working on the shadows and eventually adding the darkest shadows under the spars. Touch up, with a light Gray for the seams at the edge of the sails.

Carefully add the other details in the sails and the shadows on the masts.

Touch up all the other smaller details in the sail areas, including the flag.

Painting the Ship

With a very dark mix of Brown made up from Ultramarine Blue and Burnt Sienna, paint the hull of the sailing ship and the lighter strip on the side.

Now comes the interesting part of this painting, and it is all the small details on the deck. In the reference photograph there is a ton of detail. Now, we are NOT going to paint all the detail as shown in the photograph.

We are going to simplify the lot by blocking in the main shapes only. Slowly build up the various tones and colours. Be careful to keep the general shapes of the sailors.

As you can see there is simply a suggestion of all the items on the deck and no details whatsoever.

Once the shapes have been painted we can now, with a small round brush add the railings.

Add Finishing Details

Paint in a gull or two for some extra movement and interest. This close-up shows just how simplified all the details are.

With some Chinese White, straight out the tube, touch up all the small areas that need White, such as the tips of the spars.

For this size of sailing ship we would not be able to paint in the thin ropes with a small brush. They would just be too thick. We will add them in with a very sharp-pointed pencil. A 0.5mm Mechanical pencil works very well here.

Notice that I am only adding in the main rigging and leaving out all the lesser ropes. It is not necessary to add them all in. The brain is well able to add them in for you.

Again, with Chinese White, add the bow wave of the ship as well as the highlights in the deck area and some of the wave tops.

To finish off I want you to notice that each sail has a slightly different brightness than the others. Don't try to keep them all the same colour.

This is what the final painting looks like:

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Paintings of Boats and the Sea

Watercolor paintings of boats and the sea.

These are my watercolor paintings of boats and the sea. I am not much of a sailor but I love painting seascapes, boats and anything to do with the sea. It is an interest I have had since I was a child. The transparency of watercolor (watercolour) painting is a perfect medium for this subject.

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Seascapes and Sailboats

Opening Day

22″ x 30″ Watercolor

Sounds of Silence

Some PLace Far Away

Any Dream Will Do

A Very Special Place

And God Created Fog

Wishing You Were Here Again

Seagulls on Beach

Sailing with My Baby Down the San Francisco Bay

Nothing Is All

Down by the Sea

Grandmother Ocean

Rhythm of Life

A Place in the World

Time After Time

15″ x 11″ Watercolor

Seascapes by Catherine Anderson

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Meet Marika Stacey of Art Tremont: More than just an art store

• Updated: Aug. 22, 2024, 3:11 p.m.
• | Published: Aug. 22, 2024, 10:00 a.m.

• Yadi Rodriguez, cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Oh --- Just nine months after Art Tremont opened its doors, it has already become a fixture in the historic Tremont neighborhood.

This small, eye-catching space, with its vibrant orange door, opened on Friday the 13th last October. It is more than just a place to purchase unique and hard to find art supplies.

Whether you are an artist by trade, have always loved it but are a novice, or are interested in trying something new, Art Tremont might be just what you are looking for.

It is an art supply store but also a place that showcases local artists. They come and help teach classes as well as have some of their art displayed.

Owner Marika Stacey, is full of life, colorful and enthusiastic about this new venture. Having had a life-long love of art, this new shop was right up her alley. When she was a baby, her mother would put her in her stroller and take her to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Family vacations also, included museum visits wherever they went.

Says Stacey, “I love art and I am passionate about art, and I am a hobby artist and I take art classes all the time. I like going to art fairs and art museums, yea I just love art and I love the art community”

After relocating to the Cleveland area from Seattle, Stacey knew that she wanted to do something different. She had gotten her degree in design and spent most of her career in corporate marketing.

Just before COVID struck, she had started buying rental properties, which she fixed up and turned into Airbnb’s and corporate rentals. While working with an investor she came across an 1800’s building in the heart of Tremont.

She immediately had a vision for a community art center that blended education, retail and gallery space.

“It could have been a couple of different shops,” she says. “This is just what I felt the community wanted the most.”

When first meeting Stacey, you get a sense of her vibrant and fun energy. She loves the color orange, and you can tell. You can find the color throughout the store, from the front door to the walls. She also tries to incorporate the color in her attire, right down to her colorful orange nails. “It’s such an underused color,” she says. “I just love it, it’s so vibrant, full of energy. I just love it, I was never a pink person, just always loved orange. I never understood why people didn’t like it so much. It’s such a great color.”

Maybe it’s a coincidence but the original color of the building’s door was orange. Was it a sign??

The building has been many things over the years, from apartments to a a bakery to a beauty salon.

Renovating the building was a labor of love and Stacey worked hard to keep its integrity. The interior trim all original as well as the floors. “Anything that I could figure out to do, I did it. I watched YouTube, I talked to people who told me how to get things done. How to patch a ceiling etc.

“I kept exposing some of this beautiful stuff. It was like a treasure hunt. I found all of these really cool things. I found these little shoes as I was renovating, and my sister looked it up because there is just one of each and look, they still had dirt on them, but they were trapped in the walls. My sister said, ‘When people would leave their home, they would leave a little shoe for good luck.’ I found a little boat passage thing, I found little games from the 1800’s, milk containers, it was just like a treasure hunt it was so fun. There are even little nails in the bottom of the shoes. Good luck.”

Stacey said the Tremont area and neighboring businesses have been extremely welcoming and helpful. Stacey has big goals for herself and the studio. She also has an additional 2,000 square feet of space upstairs for possible expansion.

Beyond the art, Stacey is determined to help and work with displaced women. “When I turned 50, I decided that the first part of my life was about learning and the second part of my life was going to be about helping,” she says.

She has a particular passion to help Ukrainian refugee women with children and occasionally hires the refugee women to work in the store and help teach classes. She has also help some find affordable housing in her rental properities.

“I think that they are overlooked, they don’t have opportunities,” she says. “I think that people think the answer is to give them food or money but really what they want is a job. They just want to be able to work, feed their families, live in a good neighborhood.”

Stacey’s long-term goal is to expand the store to offer more job opportunities. “It’s just incredibly difficult for these women to get ahead,” she said. “They need opportunities and I just don’t feel that they are there, so what I am trying to do is to make this (store) bigger.”

She says she would love to be able to start a program where women are taught how to start a business, or a skill like jewelry making. She envisions the women selling their creative work at Art Tremont.

Stacey is also interested in helping the refugees develop a support system in the community. “If you don’t have a support system, if you look at women who are in terrible neighborhoods, there is no way, they can get out,” she says, adding that she is exploring applying for public and private grants to develop a business-based education and resettlement system. “I have different segments of my business that can help and if I could just get some grants,” she says.

“These women are beautiful, they come and learn English in just a couple of months, they just want to work and there are just no opportunities for them that will pay them enough to actually have a decent life.”

Art Tremont

1009 Kenilworth Ave., Cleveland (nestled in the heart of historic Tremont)

Some offered classes: Spoon ring, stained glass, beginning watercolor and calligraphy just to name a few. Classes start as low as $25

You can also purchase art gift baskets that range in price starting at $44

Interested in booking private events? They can accommodate that as well. [email protected] 216-273-7255

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