How to Draw a Breton Boat in Pastel Pencil

Get the main outlines onto the paper, keeping every line as light as you can, because pastel and graphite do not get on and you want the bare minimum mark underneath. Don't use a soft, greasy pencil.

Peter laid white pastel pencil over the back of the trace to mark the positions, then re-drew the picture freehand on the front with an HB and a light touch. You are after a guide, not a finished drawing, and you needn't follow every detail of the trace.

Decide where the light is coming from, then lay a foundation of your lightest pastels over the brightest parts of the sky: white, cream, orange-yellow, light red and pale blue. The sticks let you cover ground quickly.

Work the colour into the paper to bed it down as a base, knowing detail goes on top later. Protect the white of the cottage now by putting a little white on its walls, and pop in a touch of reflected light on the water.

Find your darkest sky areas and lay a darker foundation where the clouds sit, usually greys and purples, and intensify them where you need to.

A little light grey across the top left tones down any over-bright blue. Don't blend yet, and leave the lower half of the picture for now. You are just getting the right band of colour into roughly the right place.

Blend with a small piece of foam pipe insulation, worked in little circles. It picks up and beds down the colour and keeps your hands clean. Blend the light parts of the sky first, then the darks, working light into dark and keeping your highlights clean.

Don't chase cloud detail yet, pastel is opaque and later layers cover earlier ones. Then set the dark line of far land on the right, working black into the paper with a sharp-pointed torchon for a dense black, and add a light line along its base plus a little shadow in the water. That gives you something to judge the sky against.

Now work back into the sky with the pencils for a truer rendering. Add violet and rose madder into the cloud, bring the orange and creams back up, and blend lightly as you go, building and softening until the sky pleases you.

Because pastel is fragile, do as much as you can in the top half before you start lower down, so your hand never rests on finished work.

Add the land on the left with its cottage. Peter laid dark grey here first, planning to take green over the top for a deep green later.

This land is closer, so it wants more colour, and dropping the waterline a little lower on the paper helps it read as nearer to you. Get the colour levels right down to the waterline before moving on.

Lay horizontal strokes of light blue across the water, with white directly below the sunset, then take a little white over the blue so it blends to a lighter shade. Bed it in with a finger or the foam. Now add colour on top, but leave the boats and the spit of rocks for the moment.

Keep the small patch of clean light water between the main hull and its hanging fender, that bright note is the focus of the whole picture, and lift any stray colour with the pastel eraser if you stray into it.

Work the main boat last but one. Preserve the light tones at the stern, lay a light black on the shadowed areas as a foundation (colour can go over the top and the black keeps it dark), and define the boat's edge with stronger black in the water beneath it. Where you want colour but darker, lay the colour then add darks on top and blend, keeping the hue but dropping the tone.

Add a few stones on the shore, brown (bister) into the wet sand, and white on the sand triangle so it lightens as it nears you. Save the marker post and the mooring lines until the very end. Then compare with your reference, add any missing oranges, sharpen your pencils and crisp up the edges that need it.