Reliance

(Personal Collection)

My third watercolor, first signed. I hated so much about it. I used a light pencil grid to correctly proportion the boat, but didn’t realize that I needed to remove the grid before I started painting, duh! The sails should be white not yellow and aged looking, because, while they might be old today, they were new then. A major blunder on my part. The lower version is the yellowed original, the upper version has been updated by painstakingly removing the yellow from the sails adding a white wash, and then adding some details like the upper foresail. I tried to add the shadow in the lower foresail twice and those it was confusing to a non sailor.

The sailboat Reliance, considered by many to be the greatest sailboat ever built, was built in Bristol, RI for the 1903 Americas Cup by Herreshoff. A museum exists today in Bristol, RI. It is must visit for any sailboat enthusiast.