Atmospheric Beach Landscapes for Beginners - Watercolour Basics

1. Introduction: Welcome to atmospheric beach landscapes for beginners, watercolor basics. In this class, we'll be paying a beach landscape from Victoria, Melbourne. Beach landscapes as simple and beautiful, providing the perfect subject for a beginner watercolor artist. Capturing an impression of a beach landscape in a quick, fun and loose manner is an essential skill that every artist should learn to master. Watercolour is the perfect medium that allows you to produce spontaneous and expressive paintings on the goal. Planning is crucial. I'll show you how to simplify shapes and sketch in large areas such as sky, water, and land. Getting those large components inaccurately beforehand is essential for your painting to make sense. So join me in this class. You'll see just how easy it is to create a beautiful beach landscape painting in no time at all. 2. Materials Required: Before we get started with this class, I want to just go through some of the basic materials that you need. We start firstly with colors. The colors that I've used here, mainly yellows and blues with some earthy tones, hues in the background as well as little bit of green. Now, for the sand, I've actually used a combination of this color here, which is buff titanium. It's a kind of creamy white color and it works very well for sand, especially sunlit sand. I've also got a bit of this color here, which is called yellow ocher. It's a slightly granulating yellowy color and more subdued than say, a Hansa Yellow. Hansa yellow is locked to basically to saturated color for sand. So these two work very well, especially in combination with each other. You can mix them and find that perfect blend for you. Just make sure when you're using them, using them very thinly. So at least 90% water to ten per cent paint. Now, in terms of the other colors, the water I've got here is essentially a mix of cerulean blue with a little bit of ultramarine blue. So that creates and almost slightly greenish blue color, but mainly on the blue side of things. And the little area where the water connects with the yellow is very nice. You get that slightly green gradation or dark area where the water sort of overlaps with the sand. So you really want that to happen. The background, I've used a lot of yellow ocher in terms of these, a headland and also bits and pieces of green. So I've got a dark green here. And that's basically a mixture you can use of ultramarine blue and a little bit of yellow. So if you've got something like that, you can use more blue to yellow mix and you can create a darker green, works very well. So another thing I do recommend is a little tube of gouache. So this is a tube of white gouache. I use this right at the end to bring out some reflections in the water, some extra waves. I also use it on top of the figures and on the shoulders of the figures to get in elements of highlights and the backgrounds. You can even use it for little waves and splashes that hit the rock. And also birds flying through the headland and areas in the back. So it's very useful right at the very end. Let's talk a bit about brushes. Now. I've got a bunch of brushes here. And notice there's not really too much of them. But I'll explain what they are over here. We've got some watercolor mop brushes. They have a larger belly. These are mainly ones that I'm gonna be using for the sky, the ground, so basically the sand and the water. So it allows you to pick up a lot of paint because of the larger belly as you can see, and still be able to get in detail because you've got that sharp point at the end. So really important to use those brushes for larger areas. Now for the details when we're looking at the figures were looking at little bit of the headlands and the background, some of the foliage and the birds, and even the splatters area in the front here. You're using smaller brushes. So I've got a little round brush, number eight round brush and also a one quarter flat brush with the angled edge. And you can use a normal flat brush as well. I'm just using this one because of the angled edge just gives me a little point in that corner. And I find that's really useful. I can almost use it as a round brush on the edge. So that's really about it for the materials may materials, nothing I'd like to mention is the paper that I'm using over here. I've got an A4 sheet of cold press or medium textured cotton watercolor paper. Do recommend that because it really, really helps when you're using some of these wet and wet techniques to have paper that can withstand that amount of water on it gives you extra time as well. I find the paper takes a long time to dry compared to cellulose or unlabeled watercolor paper. If you're not able to get hundred percent cotton paper, just make sure you get yourself some water color paper with texture on it. 3. Drawing: Today we're gonna be doing a beach scene and this is a scene straight off the Great Ocean Road drive. There's a whole bunch of beaches down there. And as you can see, there's a nice sort of a warm headland at the back. And that contrasts very nicely with this water and the sky. I also like the way that the sand, wet sand interacts as well. But of those reflections from the trees that are growing on top of the headland, got a few figures in here. And that's something I want to play around with as well, perhaps adding a few extra figures. Now, the vantage point that we're taking in this particular scene, we're actually looking downwards. It's a bit of a overhead vantage point. So what you'll notice is that a lot of the subjects that are closer to us, a lot of the figures, the heads will actually be a little bit further down, whereas the figures in the back will appear. But basically a little bit further up, because we're imagining at eye level, that area at the back is a little bit higher. So let's go ahead and start with the drawing. So I wanted to firstly split this scene into half because if we look at where the rocks and the headland, all that stuff finishes, it's really right at the back and right and center. So if I just mark out generally a center point that you don't have to be exactly on center as well. But I'm want to stay relatively faithful to the reference. So I'm going to draw a line straight down the center. We'll draw this a bit darker for you as well. Can be tricky to see these lines underneath. On the camera, especially in pencil. We'll make it a little bit darker, a bit more obvious there. The great thing about beach scenes is you just have the utmost simplicity and beauty. We've got sky, I'm land, and we see some water. And we've got to be Hitler and at the back. So those elements are relatively those elements and relatively easy to draw in. But in terms of the little details of the rocks and of the figures, that's where we can play around heavy to fun. So I'm gonna go in and let's figure out where some of these rocks lies, like about here. So we can just go ahead and draw in some of these rocks and I'll try to make them look a bit more detailed or very, this is probably the better word, just varied in appearance. We know it goes up like this. I'm getting a basic indication of it. We know it goes up a little bit more near the back region and then curves down again. Sort of like this. Pretty basic. Okay. So go ahead and just getting more more detailed. And again, i'm, I'm spending a bit more time on the drawing here as well. And at the same time I'm considering this is part of the planning stage or I'm thinking to myself, what am I going to focus on? I'm not going to put in much of these rocks, e.g. here, this is quite interesting. It's difficult to see, but there's almost like a 3D section here, the rock where it sort of cuts around. And then there's like a little almost like a little mini beach here as well. Another bit that sticks out more like this, cracks in the rocks as well. It can be a bit of dry brush that we can put on there. Of course, we've got a bit of this tree, shrubs and stuff like that as well up here. So we can getting a bit of this detailing, marking out whereabouts these shrubs and things grow down roughly about here. The rest of it, I can just get that in some green later on. Okay. About that line. Okay, so that's looking good for the back section. Now, let's again have a little mark with the water comes in. Now there's a section where we look here. Water comes all the way out like here. Then it retracts back in. Like this incident, ends up around about here. We're talking about the wet part of the sand. Where you see the wet sand sort of finish and start to look a bit drier. That's what I want you to mark in. Focus on that. And I think I've gone a little bit too far down, so I'm going to redo this a bit. I want there to be some more sand in here. More sand in here. There you go. That's a bit more accurate. I don't like this and it does go further back, like here. Okay. This water goes out to that side and I want to make it pretty light as well. And the reason being is so when we actually get in the water and the sand, There's not a visible line there that separates them. So it's more just a guide for us. Okay? Another thing to try to put in is indication of some waves. Now we can see there's some little bits of these white sections of waves. Very important to indicate some of this stuff coming in. I usually indicate that actually by using a bit of white quash at the end or trying to cut around these little waves. Just put a dry brush to skip over some. This helps to indicate the direction of the waves coming in and going to the beach, like this. Big ones off in the back. So we can skip over this with some, just leave the white of the paper there. Something like that. Simple. Okay, Good. Three General little waves coming in. And of course over here there's a section of wet sand. And you can see better the reflections of the trees and stuffing here, which is gonna be interesting. We're going to get some of that in later as well. But before we do that, I also want to play around with some of these figures. They are so tiny, they are really, really tiny compared to the rest of the scene. We've got a little kinda figure here. This helps to show the scale of what's going on. But we might have a figure here. Let's just walking. Just have a little, small little figure there. I've made this one a bit larger. Mind you, I don't think I can actually paint one that small half. Could it be careful here? Let's put in a couple more here. Maybe another one here as well. Off in the distance. These these ones just sort of standing up and out and the back like that bit of life. And of course, as we move closer to the front of the scene, you can start to make them touch larger if you'd like as well. Look at that. Just someone walking into the scene, heads become a little bit more closer. Further down. It could be someone just running into the water or something like that. Here as well. Another one here perhaps. This is just a quiet, basic and loose drawing for now, I'm not really sets dead set on keeping the figures where they are exactly. But I do want to have a sense of decreasing size as we move out towards the back. So I find this can be a really good way to imply just that sense of perspective. This could be a person with a dog or something like that here. They're throwing something to the dog, Frisbee or something. You could have even a person sitting underneath that umbrella. So you want to just have a play around and in some objects and things that you think might help to enhance the scene, make it look a bit more interesting. Now you can have a person just sitting here with their back turned or may not even be a person could just be a bit of something there. I also have to think about the the light source as well. Where do we want to get the light source? And I think we will just have a shadowed underneath. The figure is not too obvious a little bit underneath the bottom of them and the distance where we've got some water maybe underneath little reflections of those figures in the water as well. Would be nice. Maybe got a bit of an umbrella there. You can even put another one here if you'd like, just changing things up, making it look a bit more detailed. And telling, telling a story. I think that's the most important thing. Telling a story of what kind of day on the beach they seize and I want it to look a bit more crowded, a bit more lively. So that's why I've chosen to put in some of these little umbrellas. Sometimes you have people that just sort of sit under them and face the face the water as well. Maybe someone here just sitting down having a bit of a chill out session. There. We've obviously got a few more figures here in there as well. This could be a group of a few friends walking together or something like that. Might have another one here. Just just work on this touch. Okay. As long as the figures in the back, their heads go a little bit further up, you're gonna be fine. And keep some of them just almost quite inconspicuous out. They're not really too much detail at all, but something out the back. There are people here in the water as well. I don't know if I'm going to get much of that in much of those people in we do have a person standing here. There could be another one maybe just here. The smaller figure, like that. Okay, So I think we've got enough in here to get us started. Of course, we can put in more figures later if we choose to, but this gives us a good start. 4. Painting: The first thing I'm gonna do is we're going to get in a nice wash in the sky. I'm going to be using a large mop brush in a medium-sized mop brush. So these two here, I'm using this one because I've got quite a large sheet of paper that we're painting on. And firstly, I'm just going to go over the top with a bit of clean water. As you can see, bit of clean water. This is just going to allow me to get in some softer cloud shapes. We can just work in the clouds. Later I'll get the water in. But let's start off with a bit of cerulean blue. Okay, let's drop some of that in, see how that looks nice. Of course, I can just feel peptides picking up too much paint, so I'll use a smaller mop brush here. Swap back. Let's see what that feels like. Now, remember we're leaving out some bits of whites on the paper, okay? To indicate clouds. And they're not, the clouds are not really 100% white. They're just some of them are kind of a grayish white color. Same thing goes as you move further down the page, I just tend to be more bit more grayish, but that scar shouldn't take you long. Just a little bit. A color in there like that. Cutting around some of the white, letting it do what it needs to. I always try to make the top of the scene little bit darker as well. So adding extra cerulean blue in here. Just spread this out more. Yeah, more here. Try not to overdo it as well because, believe it or not, you can put too much cerulean blue in there, and it just starts looking kind of opaque if you're not careful. So let that melt in and do its thing. Okay, good. We've got some clouds in there as well. As we move further down. I'm just going to lift this off that off. I really want this area at the bottom here dry a bit where the water is. So I'm just lifting off a bit of paint here at the base to encourage that to dry a touch because I want a sharper edge for the for the water. And I'm going to move my way down here into some of these like headland area, little pool of water here. See if I can just lift that off. That off. You just lift a bit of that water off. Dries more consistently that way. So again, I'm going to pick up my little flat brush, kind of angled flat brush, this one here. And work my way through these headland at the back bit of yellow ochre. Fairly strong. I mean, I'm using maybe 50% yellow ocher and 50 per cent water. Because I do want this to come out a little bit and something like that. This is just the backing color mind you, so I'm not so worried if if it goes into the sky touched, but I don't want it I don't really want too much of it to bleed into the sky. So just be careful. Tend to leave a little edge here so that it separates from the sky bit, but not a huge deal with a little bit of it goes into the sky. We're doing, we're just putting in a bit of this yellow, shifting it around. What's going on here? I've got a bit of dried yellow ocher. I'm going to have to move that around there. If you do see it go into the scarlet this you can actually pick up the tissue. Pick up a tissue and just dab it off. Very slightly like that. Again, you've got a lot of water here in the skies. So it's no surprise that some of it is going into the sky. That the down some of these rocks to the left as well. Just a bit of this. These rocks here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All just a bit of this yellow ocher, maybe some burnt sienna chucked in there as well, just a little bit to create some darker spots in some areas. But I primarily want to just do with the yellow yellow ocher first. That might dry off this section. Just speeds up the process a little bit. So we can in some trees and stuff on top of it. But I still have the ability to work into these sections. Just getting a touch of that yellow in here. The rocks mark out the boundaries of those rocks nicely. Spreading again, let's just give it a quick dry just re-wetting some of these at the bottom. So just yellow ocher, just warm colored paint like that. And as you get near to the top, That's where you want to add in a bit of green. I'm going to pick up some of these undersea green that I've got here. Nice granulating green. And I'm going to just fit this, some of these into the area of the rocks and I'm sure some of it melts, but some of it not as well. But the point of it is just to create some darker contrast because we're going to need that showing that more water. Okay. Good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just a bit of more color in there. Notice how it just overlaps with the yellows mixes in there nicely. I can also go a bit to the left hand side because we've noticed there are some shrubs and things on top of there as well. Just feathering a touch of this color to again indicate that there are some shrubs and things. One that up the right-hand side. Yeah. Soft and often some of the areas if you feel like it's too harsh or that kind of thing. Okay. Great. Okay. So I'm going to work a little bit more down the page. You can start putting in things like the shadows at the bottom of the rocks such as tiny little indications like that. At the base of the rock. Touches of shadow and crevices. Worry too much about looking at that the exact formations on the rocks as per the reference, but try to more indicate indicates there's some darker spots in there. Look at the actual darkness in there rather than the shapes. I think the rock, I think it's easier to focus on just paint this bit a little bit darker this, or adding a bit of darkness there kind of thing makes it easier for you. Bring some more over here. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Bit underneath here. We can go back into it afterwards as well. Just wanted to make a start on that. I'm fantastic. Now I'm going to start working on a bit of the water. And we'll be using ultramarine mixed with a little bit of yellow. Just to turn it slightly greenish. Mostly blue. Really just a dark almost like a darker version of the sky. I'm going, I'm going to need a fair bit of this stuff, just trying to mix a good amount of it up. Ultramarine blue with a bit of cerulean blue works well too. So I'm going to start off at the back. Fairly dark. Okay. This actually goes the water goes beyond the rocks. You can see roughly about here. And it goes behind the rocks as well. That interestingly, there we go, You can see it just blends in nicely into the water. That so important to keep that yellow in there that it doesn't disappear off. A little bit of melting in this fine as well. Okay, So we're coming down some more paint, moving further down into the foreground. And this is where I was talking about using a bit of this dry brushing techniques. I'm lifting off. Just leaving a bit of the white on the page as you can see here, to indicate some of these these waves coming through. Okay, that's one, that's, this could be another wave here like that. Now the one, It's coming forward and then some more here. Little one here. Some more paint. It's what she leave out that makes a difference. Even below that white showing through the page like that. Darkness. Little spot, spotty sort of bits in here would be nice as well. Just some darker bits. More. Mixing some cerulean blue with some of that ultramarine. For we start with the next section. I want to get in this yellowy area. I'm going to be using just a touch of yellow ocher mixed with buff titanium. And this is to get in the sand using a large brush to just getting the big bits. First. I'll swap myself over to a smaller brush to cut around the figures because I think the figures are gonna be important to indicate details and colors in here. So I want to make sure I leave something there. Even the umbrellas, a bit of color in the umbrellas would be nice. So I find cutting around some of them. He's a good idea. Okay, Look at that, just cutting around these figures because we were there a little contrast in there. We can imply. Yeah, just bringing this down. Looking at the water level as well, the area of the water and thinking, well, we didn't really stop. Okay. Go pretty close. Here. Around these figures. Such lighten mix, It's mainly just water in this entire mix of paint. More yellow here. Here. Yeah. Foreground. Cutting around the shirts and clothing of the figures. Just wet. This section, more, especially near this area of the water because that's where I want it to kind of mixing. And this is where I'm going to just pick up again that other brush. Pick up some of that blue, and start feathering it in here. That this nice little joining section of the blue and the sand, this is going to just melt into it like that and I'll leave that to do its thing. We're going to move this along the way, all the way towards the back area. Little bit towards the back there. Nice sort of melting into the water. So you can see more round this side. Having it come through more darker bits of water. That really just coolness mixing in a bit of coolness in here. Okay. Let it do its thing. Also. Good opportunity now to pick off a bit of paint, some darker paint and just flick some of it into the page. So something like this helps bit of brown, whatever color you want, just darker color. And do this sort of thing. It helps to just get some textures running through here. Textures can be seaweed, it could be rocks. Anything really good? Give this a quick dry little details. I'll be using small round brush for some of these figures. But also we using which you may call it angled brush. I had before. To put in some of the background details of the mountains of snot, finished with them yet got a little extra contrast would be good there. But let's work on the fingers and I want to put in maybe a little bit of red over the skin. You can use a bit of brown as well. It's up to you. There's a warmer color in there or whatever just to indicate maybe a few people they could just be with shirts or something like that. Then this person here maybe walking that some of them just you can leave whatever color really you can just put in a bit of blue, even tiny bit of cerulean blue. Let's even too dark, something like this. Nice light color. This one here which is like, really like yellowish as well. Same with this one. Adding a bit of color. There. You can just put in the legs, you can pick up a bit of darker paint and do something like this. Just e.g. this figure here. Here. Let's try this one. There is an extra bit of darkness beneath this Umbrella. Umbrella. Testing a bit of a shadow underneath the umbrella. Legs. There's one leg, they're dry dry brush this on touch as well. I don't want to make it too obvious, just a little bit of dry brush like that. Here we can put in a couple of legs, that one as well. Little shadow underneath the legs to connect them up. Here's one, a couple of legs as well and just a bit of a shadow joining them up. Like that. This person could be walking, right? Or something. Again, bit of a shadow connecting up the legs. Let's work on these ones. Okay. Couple of legs here. This, these group of three figures walking together like that. Just a bit of that darkness underneath them. That as well. Little indications they make such a huge difference really. Let's put these ones in here. Little couple of legs. They, they're connected up again. Like that, the Slack some kind of dog or whatever here. Indication dog or something. A bit like a dog. We put here, this was also an umbrella or of some sort, and there may be a bit of darkness underneath there like that. Getting the rest of the colors in just a moment. Here in the back, it just becomes quite tricky to put too much detail in there. It's hard to see what exactly is going on. And in fact, some of them just have just appear as white silhouettes in the distance. Bit of white gouache can be helpful here. I'm going to put in some color for this umbrella. It's putting in a bit of yellow. Yellow through this one. Some vibrance or a yellow little washer that they're okay. So that this one here, really innovative bit of pink or something here, the warmer color like that. Okay. Persons under there perhaps didn't really emphasize them too much. Good. Colorful the arms like that put on there for me, for the for the shorts or fluids. The colorful their heads like that. Get their heads touch a red color. The shadows are just directly underneath the figures and everything. But there are some lead to shadows off in the distance underneath the mountains and stuff that in the back. So a little bit of brown mixed with black. I will just go in there and see if I can indicate any bit of little details and things that will help. Just to bring it together with some final details. Okay. Just a little dry brushing strokes to imply detail back there. I don't actually want to draw in all the little shrubs and things because that's just going to be in a bit of a nightmare. Little bits and pieces like this. As you can see, they do start to combine pile up. And suddenly before you know, it, it looks like a bunch of bushes in there or something. It's only with combining the different layers that you end up getting this effect. Feathering more of a downwards and just try my best to I'm emphasize a little texture on the rock still. Here as well. Looking at you've got extra shadows underneath the rock, you will notice extra shadows in spots. And be afraid to put them in a couple of sky. Some neutral tint or just a dark color. I've actually got some little spots of paint that I missed out splattered on top of the page before just in these sections. And I can turn them into birds. Like these little v shapes in the sky. Darkness for the heads of some of them here or something like that. Maybe as a finishing touch, some white gouache to bring out the extra waves. Look something like this come in. You have to be very, very gentle with this when using gouache so that it doesn't overpower everything. But I think I just needed a bit more of an angle coming in here with the water. Like this. Make those waves make more sense. Little bit more of this coming out here. Little white aged, just to be to that firm where they're very subtle. But as you can see, it really helps. Sometimes you can even get a bit on the rocks. Indicates some spray or whatever. See if I can work on this little reflection here. Little kind of a slight reflection for the mountains. So I'm going to work just putting in a bit of this yellow over the top. With my way down to is this section here. The bit of green reflection in the water. Yeah. Reflection for these, these figures walking along the beach as well. Like in the background, like maybe the abbot of a reflection on the water like this. Wash back there. The umbrella figures and the heads and the shoulders of these figures. Bit of white gouache. Okay, and I'll call that finished. 5. Class Project: Your class project is to draw and paint your own beach landscape. This can be seen featured in the class or based on one of your own photographs or scenes you've observed outside. You can also refer to the skin drawing and painting templates attached below to allow you to trace the drawing if you choose to do so. I recommend drawing each scene. Freehand. Drawing is an important step in improving your painting skills. It provides you with an opportunity to compose and plan your painting. Once you've finished the drawing, use the watercolor steps and processes, including the class demonstrations to complete your painting.