Quiet Cove

I painted this picture last week.  The sky and cloud formation add drama to an otherwise quiet seascape.  The posts used for tying up boats go up through the painting to tie it together.  Each plane has a value change giving depth to the ocean.
I am very frustrated trying again to paint on clayboard (Aquaboard).  I have some remaining cradled boards in my studio.  They tempt me to try again painting a watercolor on the board and using the soft gel and varnish to complete a watercolor without glass.  The final watercolor with varnish and without glass is very appealing to me.  The problem has been to paint watercolor as it is supposed to be painted.  Graded washes and plain washes are very difficult on clayboard and not at all like on paper.  Any overlapping stroke usually will lift some of the original wash.  You can forget about mixing colors on the surface. For the past weeks I have experimented with approaches to this problem without success.  I have painted on paper and used really strong adhesive to attach the finished paper to core-foam or clayboard. The edges of the paper lift up with time.  Adhering unpainted paper to the board or core-foam first and then painting on it allowed the proper use of watercolor washes but again the same problem of paper edges coming away from the board.  I have not tried to adhere the painted paper with acrylic gel as recently proposed by some artists.  I will continue my trials as I like the varnished watercolor appearance and I like painting with watercolor.