Boats at Le Conner, WA

“Boats at Le Conor, WA in Gouache” is a 6 x 9in. gouache painting on watercolor paper. I painted this from a photo I took last time Beth and I were there. Le Conner, WA sit along the Swinish Channel, which connects Skagit Bay to the south and Padilla Bay to the north. It’s one of only three outlets from Skagit Bay to the greater Puget Sound. It’s a smallest of the three, and because of that it has a pretty substantial current. Beth and I took a long weekend and stayed in Le Conner, and the reference photo was from a nice walk we took at sunset along the waterfront where there are a lot of boats docked.

This is more practice as I learn and get more familiar with using gouache.

This is my painting setup for these 6 x 9 gouache paintings.

For these 6 x 9in. gouache paintings I’m using 7 x 10in. Arches Hot Press Watercolor Paper. I use 1” art tape to cover 1/2” all the way around to give it a nice white boarder. They are then taped to a 9 x 12” hardboard. I’m using a Sienna Plein Air Pochade box which works great as a tabletop easel. My paints are a combination of Daniel Smith Gouache and Winsor & Newton gouache (that I buy at Blick) and I squeeze some of the paint into a 24 well airtight pallet and have porcelain mixing tray. Everything fits really well into the pochade box, which can be attached to a tripod for plain air painting. My iPad Air works really well for reference photos. The brushes I’m using are from Meeden.