Transcripts
1. Beach Painting Introduction: Hello, everyone,
and welcome back to my brand new
Skillshare class, where we are doing a Hawaii
Beach plan air painting. My name is Ivan
Florentino Ramirez, and I graduated from California State
University Fullerton, and the mediums that I
use are acrylic painting, oil, watercolor, and also a
variety of gesture drawings, live painting, life drawing, and even digital painting. And one of the reasons
I created this video is to show that you can paint
and draw anywhere you are, and this one was inspired by my vacation to Honolulu, Hawaii. By using a small canvas
board and a drafting pencil, I drew it all out and I did it all right
there on the beach. And one of the reasons
I did this was to kind of challenge myself and use a compact and cheap watercolor set that anyone can find
just about at any store. And the results were
pretty surprising, and it was so easy
and fun to do. And I just wanted to have
fun drawing out in the open and painting and
finalizing everything at home, just like you guys can in
your own studio or workspace. And this entire course
is all under 30 minutes, and I use very few materials, which included a
small canvas board, a few brushes, a watercolor set, a small water bottle so that we can water down our
paint and canvas, a few rags, and a
drafting pencil. And when we're at
home to finalize it, some white acrylic
paint for those waves. And I promise you,
after this class, anytime you go on
your next vacation on a hike or just when
you're outside, you will be creating
plain air paintings really quickly and having
fun while doing so. So are you ready
to start creating? Let's get to it? A
2. Summary + Plein Air painting: And Now, when I initially
started this painting, it was directly on the
sandy beaches of Hawaii. So this was started as a plane air painting in the
Cohio Beach in Honoolulu. And this one was
more of a challenge for myself and just
anyone who wants to paint anywhere they are if they happen to be on vacation or just anywhere where
they feel like they just want to relax
and do a small painting, and this was the perfect
opportunity to do so. So these little twist
off cartridges here, each one with its own
complimentary set. So there on the left,
you see the set of blues with a
little bit of gray, black and brown, some of the primary colors
in the middle, and all of the complimentary
colors of green. Red, blue and yellow. Now, we already went over everything that we needed
for this painting. So we have a selection of small brushes
from rounded tips. With one of my favorites
and most useful is the angled squared one
with the pointed tip. The one that you see
with the blue handle and a variety of some longer
thinner ones for the details. And one of my favorite
things to always carry is a tiny miss spray bottle, and this one will
ensure that you can easily miss the
painting that you need, and you don't really have to
dip things in water as much. This makes it super
simple to just moisten those pigments that
you want to use at the time, and you just start painting. Now, unfortunately, when
I was recording this, I forgot to record myself sketching the initial drawing
directly on the canvas. But that one was very simple and obviously it was free hand
and it was super light. I used the drafting
pencil to make the waves, a bit of the sand
on the bottom left, and the trees to
the top left and in the middle section
fading away into the distance with some of those hotel buildings
on the side. And what I'm doing
is a very light wash of the primary colors that
I want to see on there. So obviously, we're
going to have the water, the sand, a little bit of
yellow and green for the trees. Mm. Now, this one is super light. We just want to know exactly where the colors
are going to lay. So this one, again, very simple to mist some spray in the middle of the cartridges and directly on the pigments and just create a light color where you want
your first layer to go. Now, this is our base paint, and we don't have to
go in dark just yet. We just want to know where
everything's going to lay. So I chose this light blue, and that's going to
be for the water, and I even used it
for the sky as well. So I'm laying it down
very thinly, very fine, and I'm even putting some smaller waves in
there just for detail, just so I can kind of
know how it dries. Again, the less water you put, the more of a richer pigment that you'll get for watercolor. And again, same thing
with the trees. I used a light green. And even with the yellow,
it was very light. And same thing with the
sand on the bottom left. Now we visually know where
everything is going to go. And because we were outside, this dry it within minutes. And you could go back in just like I did with a
little bit more of a darker blue and green
mixture if you feel like it's a little too light in the water areas or in
the entire canvas. And another great
thing about this was that I used my
own photography. And again, this was just a
simple photo that I took with my iPhone and also
with my cannon camera. So those photos will
be provided for you. And here you'll even
see some footage that I captured as I was doing
this plan air painting.
3. Refining Pencil Detail: Now, when I initially
started this painting, it was directly on the
sandy beaches of Hawaii. One of my main things
was to just start this plan air painting at the beach and finish
the rest at home, which you see here now. And one of the main
reasons I created this class was just
to show you how easy it is to either
start and then finish at home or completely finish
it wherever you were at. So I could have easily finished this at the beach in Hawaii, but because I did this in the last day that
we were leaving, I just decided to
finish it here at home and create a
course from it. And again, I used a
small canvas board that measured 17 " in
length and 5 " wide. Now, initially, I was thinking of drawing some of
the people in the ocean, swimming and maybe a beach
chair on the bottom left. But I just felt like the
proportions were too off. I would have had to
draw super tiny, and it just didn't make
sense for me to do so. After I drew a couple
of people in there, it just didn't
look right at all. So instead, I just focused on making more details
in the palm trees, the buildings, the sand, and over closer towards the
horizon in the distance, a few birds or seagulls in the background so that it gives it a lifelike scenic look, and it brings
everything together. Because this was
already a tiny canvas, even though I am used
to drawing small, it just would not
have looked right. So I'm going to show
you the full process of me drawing in a few waves. And again, I'm
zooming in and out of my photo just to
kind of know where those wave crashes are and how those ripples
kind of go into the sand and into the rocks of the man
made art of that beach. Aw. And one of the great
things about this is, even though I drew a lot of details that I
didn't end up using, it was still easy
enough for me to grab any eraser like
my needed eraser, which is one of my
favorite ones and just erase things that I just
didn't need after all. And because we're still
in the initial phases of experimenting and just
seeing where things might go, I can cover things up and I
can even grab a dam towel and even erase some of the watercolor pigment that I laid down because
it's still light. I can easily just remove
that if we need to do so. So just keep that in mind. And when I was initially
doing this plan air painting, you can see that I lightly
sketched the horizon, which was very high up
because I wanted to mainly focus on the water
and the sand below. And towards the left,
the palm trees, and all the way in
the far end and the back, the buildings. So now that I have
the basic idea of where everything is
going to be laid out, start preparing all of
your paint that you have, your paint cartridges, anything that you have for your
watercolor painting, your water bottle,
your small brushes, a few towels, and a few cups of water
to rinse things out. And let's get ready to
go to the next step.
4. Painting Palm Trees: Now, these handy
squeeze bottles, I have come accustomed
to really taking advantage of how I can control the water droplets
that come out of it. And these types of water bottles are super easy to find
because you can even get them at the grocery store in the areas for
refilling condiments, like ketchup or mustard, so you don't have to go to
an art store to buy these. These particular watercolor
sets had this top that had these compartments where
I could easily put a few drops of water in there and I can keep
them separated. And any type of tuberware that you might
not be using at the moment, any type of top from those
types of containers, food containers also work well for color mixing
and also rinsing things out when
you want to switch colors if you're using limited
amount of paint brushes. So keep that in mind
when you want to reuse things that you already have so you don't have to
buy anything new. Now let's take a look and focus on the top left corner
of this painting. We're focusing on
these palm trees. So this cartridge that I have here with my watercolor set are all based around greens and
one yellow and a brown color. I already have the
base layer dried up, which is the faint
water down green color. And now I'm going to layer
it with extra vibrant greens like this dark green that
I use for the leaves. And what's really
easy to do with watercolor is if you
don't like something, if it's a little bit too much, I dabbed it with
my finger to kind of remove some excess because, again, if you have a
little bit too much water, too much paint, it
can start running. So just don't overdo it. And I'm using the
tiny thin brush. This is the detailed brush. It's so thin that
it's easy to make those long strands of leaves
perfect for palm trees. So here is the trick when
it comes to layering. You can easily count
these in numbers. Our first base, you can
call it number one. Second base, it'll be a bit darker than you can
see with the dark green. A third layer can be one
with more of a yellow green, which you can see that
I mixed on the right. And a fourth one would
be one where you can kind of just do sporadic
leaves here and there. And when all of that is dry, you can start going in with a deeper green that represents the shadows
underneath the palm trees. This is going to give it
depth and complexity, and it will give the
illusion that more of the trees are painted
when they are really not. The more and more you layer, you'll notice the
variety coming through. Now, let's start understanding the structure of
these palm trees, and let's break them down
into the most simplest forms. Let's talk about the trunk, which will be painting in brown. So these are tapered,
cylinder, slightly curved. But with the brushes
that we use, all we need to do
is do curved lines. Now for the fronds, those are the long
thin leaf shapes radiating from the
top of the palm tree. So they're going to
work their way down. Now, as for the leaflets, we're going to be
using small strokes along each of the
frond from the stem. And again, we used a background wash when
we first started, and now we're just layering so we're going to
build an atmosphere around these palm trees that are condensed on the
top left of this painting, and we're really going
to be using and focusing on different types of
greens and yellow. So this combination
of using warm tones with the sand area and also
mixing it with the green, it's going to be a
nice contrast with some dark blues and
some cool blues. And we're also going to
let some of these layers dry before we start
putting more on them. So because this painting is small and we're
not going to focus too much on textures and
detail that we can't see, we're still going to give
the illusion in some areas. For example, let's start
painting some of these trunks. The first layer is going
to be a light wash. So you can mix a
little bit of brown, just a tiny bit of water for the wash and let that layer dry. As you can see, I started from
the top and worked my way down with one long
curved brushstroke. And I think I went a
little bit too dark, as you can see me kind of dabbing it and trying
to remove some. If it looks like it's
a little bit too dark, use less pigment and a
little bit more water because it can be a
little too harsh. So you might have to play around with the brown colors
that you have. And if your watercolor
palette happens to have some, you can dilute it with some white or a light orange color. And make sure you
have your white cloth or a paper towel near
you because you can also dab some of the excess paint and water off if you happen to
put in a little too much. Because eventually
we will be creating some horizontal lines to create
that iconic pattern that palm trees do have
because their trunk has these zig zag patterns in the way that it
naturally grows. And one of the most
important things is the tapering of the trunks. So usually palm trees are
thicker at the bottom, and they go thinner as
they go to the top. And we're going to
avoid outlines. This is going to
keep things from looking so flat and unrealistic. And again, with layering, we're going to start
with the trunks. I want to start with the wash, then add a little bit of
darkness with more pigment, and further back, where there is an illusion
of more palm trees, we're going to use thinner
and thinner brush strokes. And one of the
things that I like to use is switch my brushes. As you can see, I have this tapered brush that
goes towards an angle. It's squared, but it
is pointy on one side. This one is perfect for putting pressure
for those trunks. If you start off very light and then start adding pressure
as you're going down, it can easily create a
brush stroke that goes from thin to thick
quickly and easily. So like I said in the beginning, it's important to have different brushes for different needs, and I'm going to be
rotating between that brush and mainly
my thin detail brush. Now, as things dry, pay attention to the leaflets. These long leaves are what give that characteristic
of these palm trees. You can also use
a flicking motion where you can easily create those leaflets and
make them seem natural, sporadic and scattered. We don't want things to be so uniform where it looks
a little too perfect. We want things to
look like they're in nature and just
growing sporadically. Now that you can see things that are a little bit more dry, you can see that we have
added a lot of depth with just a little bit of
different tones of green, that dark green in contrast with that warm
green with yellow, a little bit of brown, the
layers in the background, and even the pencil
marks we did with our light pencil sketch helps bring in this
watercolor painting together. Notice this great flow from
the large trees starting from the upper left as they slowly
disappear into the horizon, against those
buildings, really give the illusion and bring
life into this painting. Of those trees all the way
back by the buildings, the less and less
detail we make, the more realistic
it becomes simply by us creating that abundant
amount of detail of those palm trees that are closer towards the viewer compared to the ones that disappear towards the back where naturally
the detail will disappear. So I'm continuing to add
a bit more greens on top of those trees all the way towards the back
near the buildings, letting things dry, not going too overboard with the
pigments just yet. You still want to rely on the softer wash for
the background, setting those tree trunks so we know where they sit and just a tiny bit for those leaves
because for the next part, we will be focusing on
the waves of the beach. So hopefully this
taught you some things with overlapping
depth and layering, using the foreground and the background and
understanding that the foreground tends to be darker and sharper with detail, while the background
is softer and lighter as we can't see through
a lot of the atmosphere. And when it all comes together, using both loose and
expressive brushstrokes, we'll create a striking
plan air painting.
5. Waves, buildings, Rock wall: M. So in this section, we need to understand that
painting waves in watercolor requires a balance between control and letting
the medium behave naturally. The key is to thinking
layers, starting light, which we already did
in the other step, building depth, and
preserving those highlights. So I'm going to be using a
flat brush for this one, because it's easier to
make waves this way as you're holding your
paintbrush slanted and you can literally just
dab it left and right on top of each other to create those crashing waves right
on top of each other. We'll be using a variety
of ultramarine blue, palo blue, and a
little bit of green. And, of course, we're
going to be watering it down so that we can make
it have some value, a little bit dark, that's a little bit more
on the medium side. Now let's understand what the wave structures are
like before painting. So we need to break the
waves into three parts, the face of the wave,
which is a lot smoother and it reflects the
sky color, the crest. This is where the wave curls and the light passes through. And then foam. It's chaotic, broken shapes with
high contrast. But at the very very end, that's where we're going
to do the magic of adding white acrylic paint to give those crashing waves
and that foam. So now that I have my
paint on my brush, I'm just layering
those strokes in a horizontal pattern
somewhat randomly, but still following
the natural wave of the way that we drew it. It'll be left and right and also curving on those edges
of the beach as well. You can do small dabs, longer strokes here and there, when for the areas that
were closer towards the beach and further away that are going to be a bit smaller. So just make sure to understand
that the further we are, the less detail, the closer
we are, the more detail. And keep playing around with transparency and the pigment. Add a little bit more if it feels like it's not blue enough. And the way that we sketched out those waves will also help us determine how
they're going to look like. And you can go back
and forth to look at the reference photo that I have so that we can study the
waves if we need to, especially the ones that
are closest towards us. But it also helped out was
adding a little bit of gray. This will give us this nice, translucent and
almost muddy look, especially as we're
getting closer towards the sand area where some of the sand will be
translucent and see through. Now we're going to
do a combination of focusing on the sand, the rock wall, and
the background, which includes those buildings
and those high rises. Now, for this beach area
right here with the sand, I went in with a light brown mixed with a little
bit of yellow. I didn't want to go overboard, and when I was placing
those marks at the bottom, I kind of did a little too much, and what I did was lift up some of that
pigment with a rag, and it kind of gave
me the effect that I needed for that first layer. So I will let that dry. And again, after
rinsing and drawing that same brush that we're
using for the waves and sand, I'm going in with the edge
of it at a slanted angle to create that rock wall in the back in the middle
part of the painting. Now, this man made structure
is part that holds a body of water to prevent such waves from
coming in in Hawaii. And this is one reason I chose this picture that
I took was because it looked interesting and it was a nice contrast to
have some sand, palm trees, the water, the buildings, and
that rock wall. Now, this rock wall
is dark black, but we're going to use some translucency to
have some graze in there because this is
made from volcanic rock. And towards the right, we can
go in a little bit dark and dilute it and blend it in with water as I'm doing right
here with the right. So I'm filling that
first layer in, and it should dry the way that we like where
it's not too dark, but perfect enough
for our first layer. Because when it fully dries, we will be adding darker, deeper pigments of blues and blacks to play around with the blues of
the water and sky. And finally, at the end, we will be adding
some white highlights with acrylic white paint. Now, the other focus of this
section are the buildings. Now, this one, we are
using a detailed brush. This super thin one is perfect for horizontal
and vertical lines. And the reason I did it
in this order is that wherever your container that
you have the black pigment, you can use the same one to create those gray buildings
all the way in the back. Now, this one, be careful to
make sure that it's more of a gray tone and not too detailed because
they are far away. We don't want to take the
attention away from the waves. We want it to be subtle. We want this painting to look like it's lived in with people here in Hawaii and to give it
that tropical resort feel. So what I'm doing
here is creating different grays,
letting them dry. And I even created
buildings all the way towards the back where I didn't use pencil to kind of suggest that there are even
more buildings further back. And also, you can use the gray paint from the
watercolor set as well. This will also create
different varieties of grays. Finally, I'm even using small tiny dabs and
strokes to create windows. Again, I don't want
to go overboard, so I want to see how it dries, and I can always remove some of it with the rag or
with the cotton swab. Just playing around with how some shadows would look like, windows and the sides
of the buildings. And as you can see
on the right side, those rocks that we
did tried beautifully. They look like they're layered, even with just one pass
through that we did. And now I'm going in with
that detail brush to create some ground texture
where those buildings are and going in a little bit more detail
for that rock wall. I'm dabbing, creating small
strokes left and right, because we need to
create this variety of randomness to make it
feel like it's in nature. And as I was
painting that black, I felt like it was
a little too dark. I went in with the rag and
lifted some of that up. That's what's super easy about watercolor is that because
things are damp and wet, you can remove the
pigment easily, and I actually like the effect
at the left the middle, I feel like still needs to be not as detailed compared
to the right side. So as I lifted, it gave me a little bit more
control so I can see how far to push it later on. Okay, so now that I
went into those rocks, I want to go back with
a different blue. This one I used in
ultramarine blue, and I wanted to go right
up against that rock wall to suggest that it's
creating a shadow, a reflection underneath
the surface. And what this does, it will have that realism that those rocks are just not floating there, but that they're
pretty deep and that there's waves crashing against
it and near it, as well. And what this will also do is if you put in a tiny bit
of black as well, you will also give the illusion that there's layers because waves
are unpredictable. There's not one single pattern. We want to create that
realism of this liquid, which is our waves at the beach, that it's translucent
because it is a sunny day. And at the same time, I'm adding a little bit of green
into that blue, and now it's reflecting
up against those trees, and it's really looking
like a sunny day. The waves are not flat. And one thing that I did was smooth those waves
out with that rag, and it kind of left a hint of that green before we
go into those details. So I kind of felt like I went a little bit too overboard
with the pigment, so I went in with my
rag, cleaned it up, and it left this nice thin layer of those colors that
I just mentioned, which was the ultimarin blue. The green, and it has a
slight value that I liked. Seem like we're kind of
jumping all over the place, but trust me, it makes sense as we're doing this
in this order. So here is where we're going
to take our ensab or Q tip, and this is where we're going
to just dampen it up and lift some of that
blue in the sky, and we are going
to create clouds. So again, you guys, when
it comes to watercolor, we can also work
around negative space. Meaning if we have paint
around these clouds, it'll have a natural,
realistic look. So as I'm lifting and separating those
pigments from the sky, they look like fluffy clouds without even adding any white. We are using the canvas pure
white to resemble that. So these are the tricks
of using layers, colors, pigments, positive
and negative space. And with that same cotton swab, you can also lift any
mistakes that you did, which I will be
doing later on with those buildings because
I felt like it's a little too dark and smudged. So this is where you
can take your time, how you want to make
things be a little subtle and having that eye
for those mistakes. Ever so slightly in the
horizon line towards the back, we're going to paint in some
mountains but very subtle. I'm using a little bit
of brown and orange, and this is going
to help us with that horizon line to push
things further back. So I used a little bit
of that pigment and removed some of it with
a rag and deca swab. Now, let's divert our
attention back into the water now that everything is dried up towards the
middle and bottom. So now that everything is dry, I went in with my flat
angled brush because this is where I wanted to
use that pointed tip to create those almost
triangle crested waves in different
uniform patterns from medium to large and small. This is also going to
create a variety of waves and make it
look realistic. I'm going in with a little
bit more of a deeper blue, a little bit with that green
and mixing them together. Things are slowly coming
together with those waves. I'm dabbing the paint on top of one another and also
using strokes from left to right to
create those waves and also going back with that cotton swab to remove some excess pigment towards
the surface of the sand. Causes are where
we're going to add those crashing crests
of the foam and waves.
6. Shadows, Detail, Birds: Alright, so our painting
is near complete. We have two more steps
before we complete this amazing tropical
Hawaiian beach painting. As you can see, it
is completely dry. We can work on top
of these layers that we created throughout
the beginning of this course. Now, if you are satisfied with
the way that it looks now, with all those layers
we created from the base layer to the middle ground where
we added layers of blues, greens, browns, the
cloud in the background, this is the part of a lesson where everything is
going to be pushed even more because we are adding
those deep rich shadows, the darker pigments of
greens and oranges. So let's get ready to use our
detailed brush and zoom in. So you're gonna want to start
on the top left like I did. I wanted to work my way left, go to the right, starting
with those palm trees. Those are some long leaves, and with our
detailed thin brush, get some of that green and mix it in with a
tiny bit of black and start making those leaflets in angled patterns following
the direction of the sketch. So you can see I'm creating a variety of strokes of the leaves that
go all the way down, starting thick and making
it thin towards the bottom. W. As long as you keep them
from looking so straight, they will not be flat. Start from the base of
the top of the tree, start thick, and lift at the very end to make
it a tip fine point. That is the characteristic
of these palm trees. As you can see, I
played around with some green with a dark green
and also a medium value. That jungle looking green color really does make
those stand out. And things don't
have to be perfect, and this is one that's going
to create the randomness of all of these trees that
are grouped together. And with this same brush, once it's rinsed and cleaned, I did want to play around with the trunks of the
palm trees as well. I wanted to go in and create a few in between trees just to
see how it would look like. I wanted to add the shadows. The same way we're
doing with the leaves, it'll make the trees
on the left stand out versus the ones that vanish
further into the horizon. I used a little bit of dark brown with a little
bit of black. And once again, I went
back in with some green to create a little bit more
variety into the leaves. And if you need to, I actually lifted some of the pigment
with my finger as well, and you can use your rag
or pan swab, as well. And when you think
you had enough detail with the medium tones, you can also let this dry and we can move on to
the other section. Now, what I did earlier was lift some of those windows that
I painted in the last step because I felt like
it was a little too dark and they just didn't
look natural enough. So I'm using my detailed brush to make some horizontal lines, and then we'll be making
some vertical lines and sporadically
doing that because, again, we don't want
it to be so detailed. I'll be making some
sharp edges for the shadows of the buildings here and there, not all of them. Once I'm satisfied with
the blacks that I added, with a nice contrast and
combination of those grays and even adding dots all the way in some of those
buildings towards the left, it will give a resemblance
of detailed buildings. I'm even adding antennas on
the top ever so slightly. Again, we want to
create the suggestion of details without
going overboard. And I actually liked
how that turned out. When I'm telling
you, less is more. When you have a combination
of detailed sections, some that are varied, some that are vague, it
works well together. And also, notice how
subtle this gray is versus some of that
green in the palm trees. This is one example of
having the illusion of more buildings in the background in the
further distance, where it's blurry
without having to go overboard on detail. Mm. And now we're going back
to our palm tree section. As you can see, it is dry, and those middle palm trees do have this nice
silhouette shaped look, which is what we need. Because now we're going
into those details a little bit more with a
different variety of green. This one I'm using a yellow
green because we do need that translucent look that leaves get when the sun
is going through them, and it creates this beautiful looking tropical
green that we love. And at this point, we have
around five different greens, and this variety really
makes things interesting. And again, you're using the pressure of your brush
from going to thick to thin, starting from the root,
from the top of the tree. Most of the leaves
on the trees will be angled and will be facing
towards the water. And that's created
through gravity and the weight of those
leaves in those clusters. And now I'm going into those tree trunks
with a dark brown and black to create those
iconic zig zags that the pattern that
it creates naturally. I don't want to go overboard, but you'll see me going
right underneath the leaves. That's where those
shadows will be created. And as you can see, I'm
going from the top to the bottom and only using
with the same pigment, and I will be changing it
here and there as well. 'cause we want some of those trees to be
in the background, some on the foreground to
have that nice layering. Because this palm tree section
is so dense and varied, this is the area that you want to take the most time with. Play around again with
the different browns, yellows, and even oranges. There's so much to take into consideration because, again, these trees are right
on top of the sand, and then the leaves are on
top of the tip of the tree. Consider the width, the length, and even the pressure
that you put in onto your detailed
brush because now we're adding shadows under the leaves to the right
side of the tree trunks, and they will work in
tandem when we create a little bit of the
darker waves later on. A. Thanks. So now that we let
that section dry up, let's focus on
this last section, which will be those birds. Now, adding birds as a scenery detail effect will really bring
everything together. This is one part that I really enjoy because I feel like
it makes things lived in. It has a nice focal
point when you want to focus on the painting. You want the viewer to draw into every section
of the painting. And with your smallest
detail brush that you have, all you have to create
are some V shapes and kind of just
spread them out. I'm using one to two strokes using black and
a variety of gray tones. Because again, even with
birds that are so far away, seagulls and things like that, if you make some dark
that are closest to you, which will be bigger versus some middle and even dots all
the way in the background, it'll suggest that there's a group of birds flying
together in a group, some closest towards the
viewer, and some further back. So play around with
that. And again, if you make mistakes
and you think that there may be too much
detail or too many birds, obviously you can grab your
cotton swab and remove them. And also one final
tip for the birds. Instead of using black, use a dark ultramarine blue. This will also keep things
from looking flat as well. If you just use pure black, it will look too flat while using something
as a dark blue will blend in perfectly with the atmosphere of the
sky blue and the water. And once you're satisfied, we will be moving on to
the next final step.
7. Beach Waves with White paint: And again, we want to
emphasize that painting crashing waves with acrylics is very different
from watercolor. You're working with
opacity, layering, controlled texture, rather
than fluid transparency. The goal is to build
structure first and then carve out energy
and foam on top. So not only are we going
to be blocking in water, we're making the
shapes of the waves, foam highlights and creating splatter and texture
with dry brushes. We're using both the
flat and detailed ones. And we are using titanium white. This is our essential one. So the wave face is usually
smooth but directional. We're going to curl the lip. This is where the
wave folds over. The impact zone is
where it crashes down, and the foam and spray is
chaotic and high energy shapes. And we can create this
easily with titanium white. Now, a crashing wave
is not symmetrical. It's heavier on one side and
constantly moving forward. So as long as you
understand how waves work, it'll make it a little
easier to understand when we're applying
those brushstrokes. Now, we could mix
a little bit of blue in the titanium
white, if we like. But for this step, I'm
going just pure white because we're going to let all our work that we did
with watercolor stand out. This is just literally the last detail that we need to bring
everything together. So as we know,
foam is not solid. It's broken and it's airy. Now, let's create that white
foam that's going to work around the watercolor that we just created in
the previous step. So just to summarize
this technique, we left a thin area of white near the sand and where those waves
will be crashing. We are going to be
using a dry brush for texture and this acrylic
pure white paint. This is going on directly on our dried watercolor painting. This canvas has to be bone dry. We're not going to be
blending or mixing. We're going to create a nice almost stucco
pattern right on top. It's going to be somewhat thick, but this is the
only way to achieve these waves and foam that
watercolor cannot do. Mm. Now, you can create this with white quash or like I'm using
white acrylic paint. You can drag this lightly across the paper or use a bit of quick dabs up and down to create those quick
waves that are crashing. So we're going to
focus on foam edges and then splash details, too. This creates broken,
realistic wave textures. I'm using both the angled and vertical
strokes for this one. I'm making sure that these waves look like they're broken. I'm going up and down,
tapping as I go. And the more and more you press, the more it gets pressed
into the canvas, and there's a slight
translucent blend. We want to take
advantage of that. We want some of that white to go a little bit into the canvas, let some of it dry, and then go back in with some fresh
paint and create even more. The reason that this
square brush works so well is that we can even create these thin horizontal lines even in those rock segments of the wall in the middle
and towards the right. I'm going ever so
carefully on top of those waves that we created because we want to work around the
negative space. And because we're
working on top, those waves will really make it seem like it's translucent. Those reflections from the
sun will work in our favor because when you have something as pure white against
something dark, like blue or black, it will emphasize those
layers and the way water works to show that it has depth and that it's not such a
shallow body of water. So in combination with
the squared brush, I'm going back with my
detailed thin pointed one. This is where it's
going to come in handy against the surface of those rock walls
where we want it to look like it's
splashing against it. And also, we can even create
some dots of it foaming up and even create longer strokes to show the
highlights from the sun. This is where we can be a little bit more intentional and get those details from
our reference photo and go a little bit further. We can make some of
that foam splash onto the sand like
I'm doing now, and even doing these
rounded movements to look like the foam is enveloping itself around it with the way
that waves behave. It looks like they're going into one another
and overlapping. And even towards the palm
tree area on the beach, I'm going right on
top of that narrow, shallow body of water. Yeah, this will really sell
that it's getting closer towards that surface
of the water where people usually
walk in slowly, usually take their
time to jump in. The deeper and deeper
they go into the beach. Now, here are some
common mistakes to avoid when creating waves. We do not want to overblend. This will make even white and just colors
in general look muddy, and it will kill the freshness. If you ignore the whites, it'll prevent
highlights early on. So that's why we did that step in the beginning of this lesson. If we make too many flat shapes, things will not have
any motion or curves, especially the way waves behave. We want to show movement. We do not want a
lot of hard edges. Waves should feel
fluid and not rigid. That's why you should want
the foam, the crests, and these white highlights to have this smoothness to it
and looseness, as well. And last, we want to think in layers and motion, not outlines. So obviously, acrylic paint does take some time compared
to watercolor to dry, but this is going to
work in our favor because we can work
on our other section. And then we can build on top
of that once it's fully dry. But what I also did was take
that detailed thin brush, and we want to add highlights to the trees and the trunks, as well, because we
know that the sun is, for the most part, coming
from the right and the top. Adding a few thin highlights
to the leaves will make those stand out and further emphasize that value
that we like from light, medium, and cast
shadows as well. As for the final
depth and contrast, we can reinforce darks under the waves for a lot more drama. We can add thin streaks of lighter blue within
the waves as well. We can even sharpen key edges, not all of them to add variety, which is really,
really important. Again, we simulated a
lot of spray by using the force of our paintbrush
to do splatters facing down, making the bristle spread
out right on the surface, while we created misty
transitions with broken foam textures by
using the dry brush again, by dragging our nearly dry brush with some paint in
diagonal strokes. So we have completed this course. What
did you guys think? It's really cool to see
how we started from a plan air painting using
a cheap watercolor set, just proving that we can paint anywhere and with any materials. I really like how the
vibrant colors turned out and with the added top
coat of acrylic white paint. I feel like it's
lively. It has motion. It feels like it's lived in.
And I just can't wait to see what you guys will upload in the project
section of this course. Thank you so much for
taking this class, and I'll see you
in the next one. Bye bye.
8. Final Thoughts Beach Painting: So here are my
final thoughts for this Hawaiian plan air painting with the challenge of using any everyday cheap
watercolor painting set. Again, you were also able to use any watercolor set you have, but if you happen to
have any basic one, this is just part of the
course to prove that we can paint anything anywhere. And this one I just
happened to be on vacation. So hopefully, you guys
enjoyed this course. I had a lot of fun
creating this one. It had been a long time
since I made a painting. This was such a fun
one to do because not only are we creating a
beautiful beach setting, something tropical,
something lively, we are creating some
detail with the city, the palm trees, the birds. And not only are we
studying the waves, which can be difficult if
you didn't break it down, it's a great way to
challenge yourself and also create a small canvas
painting involving nature. And it's a perfect time
because summer is coming up. So make sure when you guys
do paint this upload it in the project section
of this course and please leave a review
for my course. I really do appreciate
all of you, and I'll see you in
the next one. Bye bye.
IVAN RAMIREZ, Artist, Painter & Youtuber
