Painting Margate Beachfront in Watercolors

I recently was privileged enough to spend some time at the South Coast of Kwa-Zulu Natal. I walked the Golden Mile every morning and evening for a week, accompanied by a dear friend of mine. In the process I managed to snap a number of fabulous photos of the Margate Beach Front and promptly decided to paint one of these in watercolors, using the watercolor pencils I brought along on holiday. As has become my habit, I snapped photos of the process and share these with you in today's blog.

I used this photo as my reference photo.

I started with a very quick pencil sketch on watercolour paper.

I did not aim to include a lot of detail, but rather to simply get shaped in place, altering the picture as it suited me. This is called artistic freedom and is exercised widely, even in extreme realism.

I added warm shadows in Burnt Carmine, using my Derwent Waterclour pencils.

Colder shadows were added using Indigo.

I then added Blue Violet Lake for a softer shade.

This was followed by Copper Beach to add an earth tone.

Highlights were added using Scarlet Lake.

Spectrum Blue was added.

Before adding any more colour, I blended the colours I already had by painting them with water, using my Pentel Aquash Brush.

I added a little more colour to the beach with Burnt Yellow Ochre.

I added a darker shade to the shadows with Burnt Umber.

I went back to the shadows with more Indigo.

I then returned to the beach with Golden Brown.

At this stage I gave the newly added colours a water wash with my Aquash brush.

I then added a little colour to the figures with Orange Chrome.

I also added Mineral Green to the figures.

Ivory Black was added to the figures.

Lastly highlights were added to the surf, the figures and the buildings with Chinese White.

These last additions were also painted with water, aside from the white.

I then turned my attention to the sky and laid down the first colour in Sky Blue.

This was followed by Cobalt Blue.

The last addition to the sky was Delft Blue.

All that was left to do was to paint the sky with water.

Finally I was happy with my interpretive impression of the photo.

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