I know I’m not the only artist who looks at their sketches, and pulls them apart. Focusing on the faults and having regrets about the things I wish I’d sketched or painted differently.

Part of the reason for doing this boatober challenge is to use my critical assessment of each sketch to help me develop a style I’m confident and happy with. I blog about what I like and what bugs me about each sketch. Both scenarios are learning opportunities to do more of what I like, and do less of what I don’t!

What is Boatober?

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 16

Enjoyment Level: *****

I’m not a pro at perspectives and vanishing points etc. My technique of sketching is to look at the relationship between lines, i.e. where do they meet, intersect, and disappear. It’s not always a perfect representation of reality, but I try to sketch what I see and how it see it. At the end of the day, my sketches are my versions of reality, and I try not to obsess about perfection (but it’s tough)!

I’ve been starting each boatober sketch with a very loose pencil line to capture the main shapes. I forgot to take a photo of my pencil line sketch before I started inking, but this image gives you an idea of how loose my pencil lines are.

Step One: Rough Pencil Sketch

On a scene this complex I’ll add another layer to pencil lines to make sure I’m happy with the composition, but often I just go straight in with pen and wing the composition! Not ideal, but I love the “danger” of inking.

I don’t want to ink lines by going over pencil lines. I like to have the pencil lines are rough guides, and see where how my ink lines develop. This is part of my technique to make me not obsess about perfection.

Step Two: Ink Lines Sketch

I really liked this ink sketch and was tempted to just leave it at this, but the perspective of the left hand side of the front of that big boat (the focal point) was really off, and bugged me, so I wanted to try and use shade or colour to camouflage it a little.

Step Three: Tonal Sketch

I used a water brush filled with diluted grey waterproof ink to do a tonal study. I started using this technique recently, after I watched an art tutorial that said “as long as you get the tonal values correct, it won’t matter what colour you paint your sketch, it’ll still make sense and have a connection to reality”.

I feel I was a little heavy handed with the shading, but I was thinking of just leaving the sketch as a tonal study, so I just kept going, and going with additional layers of diluted grey. But I felt the call-of-colour, and couldn’t resist grabbing for my brushes.

Step Four: Watercolour added to Sketch

I painted the boats with a light wash of colour, and used slightly more saturated colours for the main boat I wanted as the focal point. All the other boats had blue elements, and I wish I’d painted that little red boat, blue as well, and then the only red in the scene would have been the main boat. Instead I just added a layer of diluted ink to tone the red down, to get it to recede into the background a little more. Not perfect, but the only solution that made sense.

And finally I added a gentle application of water around the jetty. Making the area around the main boat a little more saturated.