Ship Tile Watercolour - 16 Jul 2023

Ship Tiles?

Actually, from a pub. I don’t think it’s called The Ship, either. In any case, this is a reproduction of a tiled floor from a pub. Here is the tracing (from a photo):

Drawing of the tile pattern

One important point here is that my unit cell (as it were) is the smallest unit based on the four-fold symmetry. This ensures that the curves are the same across the rotation/reflections. It is less important that they are exact to the original so much as they are internally consistent. Maybe obvious.

Painting

To paint it, I used just two colours (501/411 in Royal Talens codes) - blue and brown. These mix to get greys and various shades of blue.

Painting of the tile pattern

Quite nice. Also making it deliberately ‘faded’ or lightly painted - while tricky to get even enough - gives a nice feel to it I think. I did make a mistake on the blobby middle parts I think (the original design had radial oblongs) but it’s fine. Also the tiny four-fold flowers are a bit fiddly to get even.

Final product

The final item is here