Motif #1 and #2

Go ahead and type “Motif #1 painting” in your search engine. You’ll find hundreds of paintings and sketches of this iconic red Rockport fishing shack. I’ve painted it many times myself, from different viewpoints. Last week, during my warm-up sketching days before my workshops at Slow River Studio in Topsfield, I sketched it from the left side — an angle that was new to me. I drew first with my Lamy pen that’s filled with water-soluble copper ink and then added some light washes on top. This ink dissolves almost completely into the watercolour but if you’re painting a red building, it sort of works in your favour by melting into the red/brown washes.

Later in the week, it was also the subject of one of my workshop demos, although this time we sketched it from the front. If you are sitting on the end of the town wharf, the morning light on the building is ideal. As for what red to choose for this, I used a combination of Alizarin Crimson and Burnt Sienna, adding a little Violet to the mix for the shadows. The actual paint on the building is a flat reddish brown, more like Indian Red, but I don’t have that on my palette (too opaque!) so this was my solution.