Can’t believe I’ve been able to maintain momentum on this Boatober 2025 challenge!

My Boatober Sketches

Boatober is an annual art challenge hosted by Doug Jackson. He posts a different inspiration photo each day, and artists around the globe, sketch the scene in their own style. This is the first year I’ve participated, and I’m using it as an opportunity to experiment with different ink and watercolour techniques.

Boatober 2025 Day 15

Enjoyment Level: *****

I loved the composition of this scene. I really liked painting this scene with the foliage in opposite corners, and the same green, albeit diluted, being used for the island in the distance. I took the premixed sap and undersea greens out of my palette, so now have to mix any greens I need to use. I did this in order to make my greens more multi-dimensional and less flat.

I think the sea could be improved by having more white spaces left leading up to the hull of the boat, this would have helped to lead your eye from the foreground to the hull. I reference photo has that nice reflection on the water, and I should have looked at this more closely! In the photo there’s a really interesting combination of light and dark in the water, which I failed to capture.

The inclusion of the small boat was useful for showing a sense of scale of the bigger boat. And I like the pale sky, it’s present, but not distracting.

I’m learning so much through my successes and failures of each boatober sketch. It’s so helpful to look at each one and identify what I liked and what I could have improved.

I’m pretty confident that I can create the type of skies I need to compliment a scene, but rendering water effectively still continues to be a challenge.

I don’t want to master realistic water. I’d rather find a way of creating loose and gestural water that adds context to a scene, but doesn’t become too distracting. I’m aiming for impressionistic with a hint of abstract.