Then mix transitional shades between the darkest and the lightest colours. Skies are lighter towards the horizon, so mix a dark shade for the top of the painting and a light shade for the sky horizon. If you need some more practice colour mixing, we have a tutorial on how to mix colours realistically and match them to your reference. The colours in this painting are all shades of blue or green. Special thanks to Diane Griffiths for sharing these tips for painting water! To see more of Diane’s seascapes and coastal paintings, please visit the ocean painting video tutorial! Ocean oil painting: step by step Step 1: Mix the colours Use a ruler if it helps! I also like to turn my painting upside down to spot those issues. Lastly, check your reflections to ensure they’re directly below the reflected object. It’s all too easy to overdo, however, so pick your knife strokes carefully. Water moves constantly, and this will help to create the impression of movement with just a few strokes of the knife. The crisper edges of colour created by a palette knife make for a great water reflection. Try using a palette knife yourself to blend and merge colours together when painting water. For reflections I’ll often swap to juicy thick oils and a palette knife to get the effect created in At the Foot of the Fern Pit. In a painting, reflections in the water can be like a mirror image or it could be just a suggestion of the world above it reflects. (We think of water as blue, but it’s only blue because it’s often reflecting a blue sky). But don’t let that shape your decisions-sometimes I really do want my reflections to be equally colourful it just depends on my composition.Īnd don’t be afraid to use any colour in your reflections-even if it isn’t one traditionally found when looking at water. the darks will be slightly lighter and the lights will be slightly darker. I’ve always read that reflections are more muted than the original i.e. When adding reflections in the water, take some liberties. If I’m doing water highlights on the sea, I’ll use a brush to gently splash some speckles over the water and that works brilliantly to pull out little highlights of the sun. Instead, find ways to let your tools do the work for you. I don’t think it’s worthwhile to try to capture every wave and ripple-it will drive you insane. I then add just a bit of white to give a sense of waves crashing onto the beach. It’s a bit of a gamble doing it this way, but you can get some great, watery effects. I won’t let it drip exactly, but I will allow it to find its way across the canvas. Sometimes I’ll use heavily pigmented acrylic paints mixed with water so it can be use like watercolour and I let the water take over. I do a lot of experimentation as I paint, but I also have some techniques that I keep going back to: 1. You can see this in my paintings Watching Boardmasters, Fistral Beach shown at the beginning of this article, and Crantock Beach below.Įach time I look at them, I’m transported to summer holidays-that’s the type of “special” feeling I’m going for. It also captures a feeling or memory of being on that beach. It’s hard to explain exactly why a photo might feel that way, but you know it when you see it, and it makes painting the scene much more enjoyable and interesting.įor example, recently I’ve started a new collection of beach paintings which verges on the abstract, but it captures the reality of what you see on a busy summer’s day on the beach. I just like to make full use of my artistic license!Īs a general tip, if you paint from photos, try to choose ones that are truly special-my favorite photos are the ones where something extraordinary jumps out at me, or where there’s something ordinary-but-meaningful, and it tugs on the heart strings. I might try to bring out more intense colours, exaggerate the waves, or change the colours to fit my current colour palette. I use what I see in front of me in order to understand what I’m painting and how the light reflects and refracts through water, but. This allows me to have the best of both worlds when painting. but I do create a lot of paintings around the coast, so I need to be able to paint the wet stuff!Īs I paint, I tend to follow the principle that nothing is completely observed and nothing is completely imagined. I don’t consider myself the strongest painter of water. By Diane Griffiths in Art Tutorials > Painting Tutorials
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