Nautical – The 52-Week Art Project 2026

It’s week 35 of The 52-Week Art Project! This week’s prompt is Nautical Themed. As usual, I’ll be sharing my creation here today, but you have the rest of the week to work on your creations. I only painted one piece this week, I wasn’t in the mood to paint ships or boats, so I changed my plan last minute and painted a lighthouse scene. Below, I’ll explain the techniques and supplies I used on it. I hope these posts are informative and interesting and that they will inspire you to have a go and get creative too!

The #CH52art Project Overview

• A creative project or those of us who can’t create daily, for whatever reason.
• There is 1 prompt per week to ​interpret in any way & take your time with.
• Use any medium (collage, clay, paint, photography, baking, knitting, lego, fabric, etc)
• You can skip a prompt anytime if needed, your wellbeing comes first. No stress here.
• You don’t need social media to participate, but if you share online, please use #CH52art
• Share your creations to the gallery on my blog (optional) & be inspired by other creatives.

Visit this page for more details.

I aim to post my creations at the start of the week, by Sunday evening or Monday morning. So I’m creating my pieces for each prompt one week in advance. That said, the gallery is always available, so you can browse or, if you’re participating, upload your creations, anytime.

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Wk35 Prompt: Nautical Theme

Initially I was excited about this prompt, but this week I was not feeling too good and was really struggling to envision any sort of nautical themes to paint or draw. I settled on the idea of simply drawing a stylised repeating pattern of boat silhouettes on very wavy waters, but as you will see, that never happened.

I did prepare the initial layer of a background for my drawing with a light wash of blue gouache, but in the end I pivoted and painted a lighthouse scene instead. Only I used the same page I’d prepared for the drawing instead of creating a new one for the painting on appropriate paper. So I now have a painting I love on some really warped and crinkled paper because it was not the right paper for a water-based painting.

Fear Of Wasting Supplies

I’ve been a bit stingy about using my watercolour paper because I have been running low. I think I only have about 10 sheets left – 4 hot pressed and about 6 cold pressed pages.

I have always had this fear of being wasteful of my supplies, knowing how much art supplies cost, I have been careful to make them last as long as possible, but this has been to my detriment.

Over the years I have come to realise: Art supplies sitting on a shelf are already wasted.

Tubes of paint turn solid, markers dry up, and some inks grow weird alien blobs in the bottom of their jars! Art supplies have a limited shelf-life before they’re no longer as bright, juicy or functional as they’re meant to be. So I am trying my best to let go of the fear and scarcity mentality I have and use my art supplies while they still work!

Very gratefully, I now have a new watercolour pad on the way. It’s only 50x A4 sheets, but since I mostly paint on A5, that’s going to be almost 100 pieces of art I can make with that one pad. Amazing! That should last me a few months even if I do one painting a day on watercolour paper, but let’s be honest, I very likely won’t be doing that.

Using New Sets Of Pigments & Brushes

So, this week I finally used my brand new palette of selected gouache pigments as well as my new paintbrushes! They’ve been sitting on my desk for almost 2 weeks now. That fear…

My old set of gouache was student grade, which was fine, and it lasted me almost a decade, but most of the tubes had dried up completely over time and some colours were running super low. Especially the yellow, since I mix my own shades of greens and oranges frequently.

So it was time to get a new set of gouache and I opted for professional grade this time. Since I often use them more like watercolour instead of straight out of the tube, my gouache tubes last super long, making it worth the initial investment, in my opinion, to get the good stuff.

Also, the only tube that was still super juicy after all these years was in fact a professional grade pigment I had bought to supplement my student grade set many years ago. So I knew these tubes would also stay in good condition even if I wasn’t using them up anytime soon.

I also opted to get some professional brushes (the red ones in the photos) as I did not have a single pointed brush in my collection! They had all turned fuzzy years ago. So I got some lovely round brushes with defined points and the pack I chose came with a a couple of other uniquely shaped brushes that I did not have in my collection.

I still use my student grade brushes, even in this painting (the blue ones in the photos), but I was missing some vital brush types due to the deterioration of some of those student grade brushes early on.

I’ll write a separate post later on about the brushes and also the colours I chose for my new custom palette and the reasoning behind my choices. For now, let’s take a look at this week’s painting.

Please excuse any dull lighting on some of the photos below. I work in low light because bright lighting drains my energy (light sensitivity is an ME/CFS symptom). So progress pictures are often taken in low artificial lighting. I’ll try to correct the greyish/yellowish colouring, and get them as close to their actual colouring as I can, prior to posting.

* click on images to zoom in.

Lighthouse And Grassy Hills – Gouache

As mentioned previously, this piece started with a light wash of blue gouache from my old set. So probably a mix of Prussian Blue and Cerulean. Those two pigments are not in my new set, though I love both shades. I then changed my mind about what I was going to do for this week’s prompt, and also decided to start using my new colours.

First, I sketched out roughly, with my blue pencil, where I wanted all the main features to be and then I got painting. I use the aquarelles to sketch as they are water soluble and the lines will disappear into the painting once they get wet.

First, I started painting the hills, but this was not really wise as they are layered in front of the sky and water. It of course would have been better to start with the background, sky and water, before painting the blades of grass that overlap them.

This is where I learn to think about the layers in landscapes. Not something I paint frequently, so it’s not something that comes naturally, yet.

I have no greens in my new set, so I had to mix all the shades myself. There are at least 3 different greens on these hills by the end of this session. I used one of the old brushes for the grass, its bristles are separating, which is great for painting multiple blades of grass in one go. Old brushes can add great texture to paintings, once they lose the ability to do their original job. No waste!

Next, I moved onto the water and sky. I added more layers of blue and turquoise. Using the shades on my new palette – ultramarine, phthalo blue and cobalt turquoise.

For the sky, it’s very watered down, and for the water, it’s more opaque and streaky, to simulate the movement of the water with the light and dark variations in the waves.

For the clouds I tried with a brush first, but I wasn’t getting the effect I was after, so I switched to using an old cut up stocking/tights. (I always save old tights and cut them up to use as hair ties or plant ties).

I didn’t have a sponge available, that would have been the way to go otherwise. But I knotted the tights up and dipped them into some permanent white, then used them as a stamp to create the lovely fluffy clouds. New favourite tool unlocked! I’ll definitely be keeping this in my kit.

Adding The Details

Naturally, the next step is to add details. As usual when using a water-based medium, you have to work in stages on each area of the painting so that each layer or detail has time to dry before you add something else near it and risk colours running into each other. So here I was alternating between the rocks, the waves and the lighthouse.

Throughout the whole process I was returning to the fields too, mixing various shades of green and adding more layers of grass to the hills. By varying the amounts of blue and yellow as well as the particular tones of pigments, I was able to get a range of warm and cool toned grasses.

I mixed some grey to add the details on the lighthouse, including the lines between the stones in the walls and also the railings and shadows. This was a mix of ultramarine, dioxazine violet and cadmium orange. I used the same mix later for shading on the clouds, but with more blue involved and much less orange.

Using a fine tipped round brush, I added the white spray wherever the waves would be smashing into the rocks. As well as adding some waves and foam to the waves throughout the water mass. While I had the white on my brush, I also added a few white flowers to the fields.

Here you can see where I have applied those shadows to the clouds. And I also added more flowers by simply dotting some red, yellow and white among the blades of grass.

I really like how the clouds turned out and will definitely be painting more clouds now that I found a technique I like.

Once all the details were painted, I peeled off the washi tape to reveal the clean white border. Such a satisfying part of the process.

Next Prompt, Wk36: Summer Abstract

I am truly looking forward to this prompt as I have been itching to create another abstract mixed-media piece similar to this one I made earlier this year. I have many background pages ready, which I can choose from, so it’s just a matter of selecting the colour scheme I want to work with.

Would You Like To Participate?

The #CH52art Summer Gallery 2026

Blog Parties & Link-ups where I’m sharing this post. Click here to see my link-up calendar and find new blogs to enjoy!