Improving My Watercolour Skills With a New Painting of Battery Point Lighthouse

Watercolour painting offers endless opportunities to express light, texture, and atmosphere. As I start thinking about my annual spring trip to the West Coast, I am purposely practicing watercolour landscapes - a genre that doesn't come easily to me but one I want to spend more time exploring. Painted from my reference photo of the Battery Point Lighthouse off the California coast, this little watercolour builds excitement for my spring trip to come. I love the coast in the spring and can't wait to return!

Battery Point Lighthouse - 8x8

There’s something about lighthouses that feels both steady and fragile, like they’ve learned how to stand in the wind without hardening against it. This little watercolour carries more than pigment and paper for me. It holds salt air, quiet footsteps across damp sand, and memories of a great trip with a dear friend. It was a small painting to create, but not a small moment to live.

I’m struck by how watercolour mirrors the ocean itself. You guide it, but you don’t control it. You leave space for bloom, for softness, for edges that blur the way memory does. This piece is less about architectural detail and more about feeling.

Some places stay with you long after you’ve left and this one found its way back through my paintbrush.