Sketching Boats
31st May 2026
I don’t sketch enough and when I do it’s usually for painting preparation. I definitely don’t have an outdoor sketching habit despite having many sketchbooks!
To address this I decided to draw some boats, a subject I find challenging. Having recently moved closer to the sea they’re everywhere and often feature in my paintings. A poorly drawn boat sticks out like a sore thumb.
Boats are difficult because their shapes are awkward. There are a few straight lines and the eye line tends to be above the shape making perspective tricky. For example a stern might be simple but a bow that’s higher and connected with curved lines complicates things. Guidance suggests using a figure of eight as a base but I find deciding how to draw the eight just as difficult as drawing the boat itself.
Working outdoors adds another complication: boats bob about. They’re constantly moving and even slight left or right movements can make a huge difference to the drawing. This emphasises the importance of big shape drawing over detail. Big shapes are the outline and they set the boat’s position in the water. As I discovered this takes practice!
For this session I abandoned my preference for sketching scenes and focused on three individual boats. I drew the big shapes in pencil followed by ink and a wash of watercolour. Drawing one boat at a time was a useful exercise where I could gauge my comfort and competence with the subject and came to the conclusion that I don’t do enough sketching!
To address this I decided to draw some boats, a subject I find challenging. Having recently moved closer to the sea they’re everywhere and often feature in my paintings. A poorly drawn boat sticks out like a sore thumb.
Boats are difficult because their shapes are awkward. There are a few straight lines and the eye line tends to be above the shape making perspective tricky. For example a stern might be simple but a bow that’s higher and connected with curved lines complicates things. Guidance suggests using a figure of eight as a base but I find deciding how to draw the eight just as difficult as drawing the boat itself.
Working outdoors adds another complication: boats bob about. They’re constantly moving and even slight left or right movements can make a huge difference to the drawing. This emphasises the importance of big shape drawing over detail. Big shapes are the outline and they set the boat’s position in the water. As I discovered this takes practice!
For this session I abandoned my preference for sketching scenes and focused on three individual boats. I drew the big shapes in pencil followed by ink and a wash of watercolour. Drawing one boat at a time was a useful exercise where I could gauge my comfort and competence with the subject and came to the conclusion that I don’t do enough sketching!