Seascape Painting Series: Paint Calm Water, Stormy Waves & a Sunset Ocean

1. Welcome to oil painting seascapes: Hello, and welcome to this course on painting landscapes. In this course, you will explore two different approaches to painting the sea, a dynamic rough sea with movement and a calm scene with a distant sunset. These two studies will help you understand how water behaves, how light interacts with it, and how to create atmosphere in your paintings. We will work step by step, focusing on simplifying the scene, organizing the composition, and building the painting progressively. The goal is to help you feel more comfortable painting natural elements and capturing both movement and light. 2. How to paint a rough sea in oil paint – presentation: In this video, we are going to see how to paint a subject that is a little bit complex with the sea, a rough sea, contrary to the video where I teach you how to paint the calm sea. In this one, there are many more things that we have to take into account with our drawing. We have to paint a sky that is more complex that is freatening with more clouds and different color colors of the water will also be very different from the one that we needed to mix for the Calm sea. We will have to paint the wave, and the wave that crashes on the sand will have to paint the foam and also the sand and see how to be able to paint it. So that's a really fascinating subject with many things to see and many areas to progress. So for these tutorials, I will be using 20 by 30 centimos all painting paper, and then my ordinary materials. And for the drawing, just draw a grid with the main element, just like we always do to get something accurate with the right proportions. So grab your brush, and let's get started on this fascinating subject together. 3. Painting the sky for a rough sea seascape: Let's start looking at the color of the sky before starting mixing these colors. So we can see that in the sky, we have different kind of blues. At the top, we have some blues that tends to turn towards the blue gray, kind of purple, and it's a little bit the same for this part at the bottom of the sky. And in the middle, we have something that is pretty bright and we'll get some sort of different grays to realize these elements. And for the different clouds that we have at the top, we will also have to mix some sort of gray. So let's go. Let's start mixing the colors for the sky. So let's start mixing the blue colors for the sky. And I am going to begin with a solid base of ultramarine blue, since the sky is still quite dark. And I mix that with some white, and then I will just the color based on what I observe on my palette and my reference photo and apply the modifications that need to be done. Now I find the color a bit too light, so I am adding more blue to get closer to the darkest blue we can see in the sky. Lo looking at it, again, I feel the color is a bit too intense, so I am adding a touch of red and also a bit of yellow. Since the orange tone is a complimentary color of the blue, it will help to get a blue that is slightly less intense. And now we are starting to get closer to the tone we want for the upper part of the sky. So I will add also a bit more of ultramarine blue to make it slightly darker than what I currently have on my palette and make it, again, a little bit more intense. So from this base color, I got something that is quite nice and I'm even going to make a slightly darker version by adding a bit more blue and a touch of burnt amber, as you can see. Next, we can see some parts of the sky that are a bit lighter. So by taking some of this color and mixing it with white, I will get a lighter version. And since we are still working with the same range of blues, adding white helps create a useful variation, particularly for the top right of the sky. And finally, I will make an even lighter variation by reducing the amount of blue and increasing the white. And now we end up with four different blues to start painting the sky, which is already a pretty good base. For the clouds, I am going to start by mixing a gray using a base of white, why that I will mix with blue, since clouds are really nothing more than gray, and gray is nothing more than blue that's been made much less intense. So that's what I'm doing. I take some blue and add its opposite color, which is orange. And here, I realized that the amount of yellow in my mix was too high because my color is shifting towards blue green. So I need to adjust it by adding the complimentary color of green, which is red. And I also want it to lean a bit more towards something bluish. So that's what I do. I modify my color. And now I get a first shade that's pretty good for my clouds. I'm going to make it slightly more red because it still look a little bit too green to me. And now we are starting to get a color that's really close to what I want. And from this base, I will be able to create a new one, and we can start painting the sky. So here is my drawing for now done using the projector. At this stage, it is still hard to imagine that this will be a beach scene because it's just a rough sketch where I have marked the main elements and outlines. So let's get started with painting the sky, and I am going to begin with the upper area and work my way down. I start by defining this fairly high and fairly dark area using the darkest blue I had mixed. For now, my main task is to try to apply the right colors in the right places. So I make sure the correct values are applied in the different areas while stretching the paint well with my brush to create smooth blends between the different colors later on. I am applying the different colors with a flat brush because it allows me to paint with precision over larger areas and to stretch well my painting. Here, I feel like my color isn't dark enough and is lacking a little bit of blue, so I don't hesitate to adjust it slightly before continuing my work. Overall, I would say that most of my colors aren't blue enough and need to be slightly darkened. So that's what I am doing, and I don't hesitate to go over areas I have already painted, making sure to get the right value this time. I also create something even more blue for the upper part of the sky and therefore also darker. At this point, I can rework this color as well. Sometimes it is true that the colors we have on the palette seem right, but once they are applied to the paper, we notice some differences that mean we need to make a few adjustments. As we progress with the sky, the areas will gradually become lighter in the lower parts until we reach the sea again, where we will have a slightly darker element once more. So here I am applying this gray blue, this medium blue, and I'm thinking I can also apply it to this lower area where there are also some slightly darker areas, even though I'm thinking I could reduce the darkness a bit by adding some white to my color. It turns out it wasn't that much dark. So I will repeat what I said. It is really important to stretch the paint well. Otherwise, it would be difficult to create good blends between the different blues, especially in areas that are a bit complex like the cloud. There are a lot of colors mixing into each other, so you really need to stretch the paint properly to avoid having overly thick section that don't blend very well together. And here as you can see, I have made a fairly soft transition with something slightly lighter. This one mi gradient develops gradually in that area. And now I'm going to work on the left side now, and you can see that the area, which was a bit of a darker blue is going to become lighter, so I adjust it. And I find this blue gray value in several spots in the central area because it is not going to be completely uniform. So I have chosen to apply it in that spot as well. At the top, there are a few clouds that are quite visible. So I'm defining them with this lighter color. Then, yes, there are lots of small elements here. So I am not adding them all just yet, but later on, I will be able to add a few more details over the top. For now, we are still in the base layer stage. We are mainly marking out the big, clearly visible areas, the one that are broad and well defined. So between those elements, I can go in with a very light color in here. Now still using this flat brush, I'm going to make back and forth movements to blend my colors together and create smooth gradients. Of course, I remove the paint from my brush beforehand, and from time to time, I remove more to make sure there's not too much buildup, which could make blending a bit tricky. I'm doing these back and forth strokes which allow the transitions between the different glues to be almost unnoticeable. So we get a smooth shift from one area to the next, and that's really the whole point. So I go over the areas multiple times until I am satisfied and the colors are nicely blended together. I try to keep each defined zone in its place, but if they are not exactly in the right spot, it's not the end of the world. We will do our best. And if needed, we will adjust later with the brush. Right here, you can see that I removed some of the paint because I realized that the area was too thick with color. Some parts, it was too saturated with color and some parts were a bit too thick. So what I did was remove the excess paint using my brush, pressing down firmly, which allowed me to get a cleaner and less overloaded area. So I will keep working on blending for a few more moments until everything is nicely blended together. Now that we have created a fairly solid base with our colors, we are going to try to define this base a bit more precisely. So basically, we are going to repeat what we did before, applying colors, but this time in a more refined way. That's why I am no longer using the flat brush. Instead, I am switching to a medium sized round brush like this one. And as you can see, I am applying small touches on top of what I have already done. I try not to overload the brush with paint either. Otherwise, it will be harder to blend the colors together again. Here in this lower part of the sky, you can see that there are areas that are slightly lighter than the blue gray I added. So I am painting over these areas. And now, as you can see, with small dabs of the brush, these little strokes I am making, it helps those whitish marks blend gently with the blue that was applied underneath. This way, on this bluish area, it gives the impression of having some light clouds overlapping on top, just like we can see here. And that we'll be able to do the same in other areas later on. For example, in the upper area, we had started by applying something very, very light, but we can notice that it's not going to be that light everywhere. So what I am going to do next is atom slightly darker elements in this upper zone. So and by the way, I am also improving right now the blending between these two areas, which gives me a better transition between the two parts of the sky because in the end, all the elements in the sky are connected to each other. So we need to make sure that there are smooth transitions between all these different parts. And so as I was saying, I can now start working on this part of the middle of the sky, the lighter area where we are going to have a few slightly darker elements on top. You can see that one brushstroke at a time, this area is starting to take shape and already looks more realistic than it did just a few minutes ago. In this middle area where we have a fairly neutral blue, what I am going to do is apply darker blues, like the one we used in the upper part. And, of course, I am not going to leave those elements as they are. I will blend them in with the rest by gently dabbing with the brush using very light stroke. This way, it will have a completely natural look and the elements will blend very well together. So actually, my approach is very simple. I look at what elements seem to be missing compared to my reference photo, and then I add them one by one. I try to focus on one group of colors at a time so I can work more efficiently. For example, right now, I worked with this specific blue and I ask myself, where could this particular blue had something important? And I figure it could be used in these central areas. Then what I also do is blend the medium blue gray with the lighter son below because as you have seen, it helps to create transition that aren't straight line because when you look at the sky, elements are clearly not aligned in straight lines. They blend into one others but not with sharp and straight edges. And here we also notice that just above these dark elements I have added, there are going to be smaller, much lighter ones. This will give the impression of clouds with more volume and help create some depth in the sky. So now I am continuing to work in this area where we do have quite a few lighter elements. Since the base is pretty dark, in order to make the lighter details stand out, you often have to reload your brush with paint, and that's what I do. And I keep working back and forth right to left, adding whatever elements I see are missing or necessary. So with these colors and the small touches we have added, we really start to get a sky that feels a bit dark, a bit turbulent, one that looks fairly fratening and this stormy sky has a remarkable richness in terms of values. There's a wide use of different blues and grays, which I find very interesting to work with. It is an excellent exercise on top of working on the sea. The main goal here is to learn how to paint the sea, but it also gives us a great opportunities to practice skies as well. So I continue working on the upper part by adding some lighter elements. As you can see here, in this dark blue area, we are starting to see several lighter elements appear. They will show up with varying intensities, so it is important to pay close attention to what we had in the painting. And so I blend these elements carefully with one another, and I try to be as precise as possible, respecting each gray zone, each lighter area, so it stays as faithful as possible to the reference photo. But if it's not exactly like the photo, that is okay. With landscape painting, there's a lot less pressure. There's really no need to stress out of a hobby or painting session. It's just about enjoying the moment. So with landscape, we can relax a bit more because it doesn't really matter if the guy isn't 100% identical to what we see in the photo. Unless someone is very attached to that specific sky and wants it reproduced down to the last detail. But most of the time for our landscape, that's not necessary. If we manage to respect the overall color palette and has slightly darker or lighter touches, where we notice them, just doing that is enough to create a sky that feels believable. And it's not a problem if we don't place a particular cloud exactly where it was in the photo. That's what is nice about this kind of painting. The landscape, it gives us a certain amount of freedom, which I found really enjoyable when painting landscapes. So there we go, a few more small touches to ad here and there in the sky, and overall, I would say it's done. We have managed to recreate that slightly freatening atmosphere. So just a few more details you had, and then we can move on to the next step, which will be the mixing of the colors for the rest of the painting. H. 4. How to mix colors for ocean water and sky: Let's now take a closer look at the colors of the sea and the sound and the sand. On the left hand side, I have marked almost all the different colors of the water, and we can see that there are some really interesting shades to mix. First of all, in the film background, the sea, which appears more distant, has a rather dark blue green tone that clearly stands out of the over water colors closer to the shore. In the central area, we indeed find various shades of blue green that we will need to mix, and I would say that they are quite typical of the colors you often see in the sea. Looking at the foam, we can notice starting from the first arrow on the right, coming from the top, not counting the one pointing to the sky, that even though foam is often thought as white, it actually has more of a grayish look as we can see here. Where the waves crash onto the sand, the surf zone, we see a lot of very light grays, almost white, which help to show the splashes and churning turbulent water. Then looking at the wave on the left, near the shore. Again, inside the wave itself where it hasn't yet broken on the shore, we can see a very distinctive green, quite rare and really characteristic of clear sea water. And as for the foam, again, on the wet sand, we see that same gray. Once more, while we tend to associate foam with the color white, we can clearly see that it is mostly gray, we need to mix to get it right. And finally, for the sand, we'll be working with various yellowish browns that we will need to mix together. Again, it is a very specific color, unique to sandy beach. So let's go ahead and start mixing all those colors. Alright, let's start mixing our colors. So I'm going to begin by mixing the colors of the water we see in the distance where we have that very dark and intense blue green. So I start by mixing a good amount of blue to which I had a bit of yellow and also a small touch of white just to avoid ending up with something too dark. At this point, I notice that the color is pretty decent, but I want something darker and I don't really need the large amount of paint. So what I do is I take a bit of a of this color, and I mix it with a bit of burn timber and ultramaran blue. And that gives me a darker shade which seems to match the right value for that distant area of water. Now I'm going to use this color on the right to create the watercolors as we move closer to the shoreline. As we approach the shore, the water becomes lighter and more of a kind of green blue. So that's what I'm going to I'm going for. And this is lighter, but with a slight greenish tint, which is why I added a bit more yellow to my mix. So now I have a first color at the top, which is quite dark and will be useful for the areas farther away, right under this blue green area, this very dark blue that we mix at first. Then below that, I have made a slightly lighter variation that I can use as we get closer. And all the colors I create will gradually get lighter. Since the color we get to the shore, since the closer we get to the shore, the lighter the water appears. And so this is the shade I am currently trying to mix. However, I feel like it is too intense, so I tone it down using its complimentary color, in this case, a touch of red. But I ended up adding a bit too much red for my taste. So I am rebalancing the whole thing. And overall, we are starting to get some really nice tones for our seawater. So that's great. It is encouraging. And now I'm going to lighten this color just a bit more, so it stand out even more from everything we have mixed so far. So now I have a color that is pretty decent, but I found it to be too light. That's why after adding some white, I added more green tones back in. And at each step, I asked myself those same questions. Is my color too green or not green enough, too blue or not glue enough, too light or too dark. And I am going through all the questions we talked about earlier in the section on how to mix color from the basic course. So here, I have created a slightly lighter and slightly greener variation. Now I am thinking it could be a good idea to have a tone that sits right between these two colors, the one between the ultramarine blue and the yellow that you can see these two right here. And so once we have this mid tone between these two, I would say we'll be in a good place with the watercolors. It will give us a nice range and allow us to do a solid job on this part of the sea. So now I have something that works pretty well. It sits nightly between the two colors that I talked about. Now I can start mixing the colors we see in the foam. As we mentioned earlier, it is a kind of gray. To create it, I started with blue and white to which I added the complimentary color of blue orange. But what I noticed is that the result was way too dark right from the start, and it would have taken too long to lighten it or a very big amount of white. So I set that color aside for now. We'll come back to it and I'll lighten it with white. This way, I only use a small amount since I didn't need much of this color, and it saved me from wasting too much white just to lighten the first mix. And from that mix, I can even create an even lighter version by adding more white. And this color will be great for the foam that we can see in the sea, for example. So I think we'll use this one for that. Now we are going to create some other colors, specifically that unique green you can see in the wave on the left. It is a very light green, so it needs a lot of wine, and it tends to lean slightly towards yellow. So I had a good amount of yellow, but also a small touch of red to tone down the intensity of the green. So I would say that this is getting close. It looks pretty good. Now I need to take a little bit of it and lighten it again to create another variation. And so that's what I am doing now. Then I move on to create more colors. This time for the areas where the waves are more turbulent, where the water looks slightly more bluish and crash on the shore. So I am using this color I just mix, but I make it a little bit more blue. Because I wanted to have something more blue. And that gives me a very interesting tone for the area where the waves are crashing on the shore, but it was too dark, so I am adding some white to it. And now I have a nice color that can be very useful for this area where the waves crash on the shore. And from that color, I'm going to create another one that will be even lighter. And so we are starting to build up quite a few useful colors now. At this point, all that is left is to mix the colors for the sound. It's going to be a kind of yellowish brown but not too intense. That's why I'm going to add a little bit of the complimentary color of the yellow, which is purple, along with a touch of red and a touch of blue. And now I can see that my color is leaning a bit too greenish, so I rebalance it with a little bit of red. At this point, I would say we are getting close to our goal. I am going to add a small touch of red again just to make sure the mix doesn't lean too green and to push it a bit more to roll an orange tone by blending it back with some yellow. Now, it's really looking pretty good. From this color, I'm going to mix a few more variations since since since the sand contains several different tones. So I had a generous amount of white compared to what I had earlier. Then I will also create a slightly darker version for the sand. We'll see how it looks once it is applied. And if needed, I can always make some adjustment. So next, I'm going to mix one less color. I may need more I may need more later, but we'll figure that out as we go because at this point, there's already quite a lot on the palette. It is full, and we really can't add much more. 5. How to paint realistic waves in oil paint: So now it is time to start working on the sea, and I'm going to try to build it up from top to bottom. I will begin by applying this blue at the horizon line. This will really help define the separation between the sea and the sky. When painting this area, my goal is to keep it as straight as possible because both the sky and the sea met at the line that's clearly horizontal, both at the bottom and at the top. And that's what I am going to focus on making sure it doesn't blend into the sky or at least that they barely touch without the blue bleeding over into the sky. So I need to keep it straight because as we can see, these two elements, the sky and the sea are not really connected. There's a sharp edge between them. So I'm trying to make that edge very clear. One helpful technique for painting straight line like this is exactly what I am doing here, flattening the brush completely along the surface and dragging it in one single motion without lifting it. That's a method I really like, and it works quite well. If I do go over the line, the good thing about old paint is that you can always adjust it. Either fix it or go back over it with a detailed brush to clean up the edges. So there we go. The line is almost finished. Then we'll move on to working on that dark navy blue seal, blue area. Sorry. It may be a small part of the painting and not take up much space, but it's important to paint it carefully and roughly. And we can also notice that in this navy blue section and not seal, there are a few lighter touches that I will add later. You can see that I am trying to correct these areas right here where I went over the edge slightly to make sure everything stays nice and straight. Using a flat brush could have also been a great idea to paint the edge in a straight manner. So now I can start adding those small details in this area. And to do that, I am using a fairly fine brush. When working with this finer brush, I really try to lay the color down gently, making sure it blends just barely with the underlying colors. This way, I can achieve elements that appear nice and light because we can see the foam quite clearly in the distance. So that's exactly what I am trying to recreate right here. So I just try to touch barely with the tip of my brush so that I can it doesn't blend much with the color underneath. Now we can start painting the slightly greenish water. At first, I felt that my color was a bit too dark after the initial application. So I added some white and thought maybe I could try adding a bit of yellow to get something slightly more greenish. And the combination of yellow and blue gave me something greener, and I'm making a few adjustment to get the right shade. I am still not completely satisfied, so I figure maybe adding more yellow to make it greener might do the trick. We'll see truth is the real test is on the paper, but it's true that this sea color isn't easy to achieve. It's a very distinctive shade, something quite characteristic of seawater. It is a complex blue green, but now I would say it's looking pretty good for that area in the background. So I'm going to keep applying this color, and I am trying to blend it very gently into the blue at the horizon because these are two distinct areas. They barely blend into each other, and it's important that we can clearly identify each separate zone. Then once we have applied our color, more or less across the whole area, we can still start adding a bit more detail. What we notice is that even though this area is far off near the horizon, there are still a few visible details, some slightly lighter elements that help give the impression that in the distance, a few waves are starting to form, suggesting that the sea is a little rough. So that's what I am doing. I am adding a few smaller and lighter touches. I could possibly had some darker ones as well. But since these elements are quite far away, just a few well placed highlights like this are more than enough to give the viewer the feeling of a slightly agitated sea on the horizon. So there we go, just a few more small details, and then we'll be able to move on to the area below. In this next part, we have some right here in the middle, we have some very light elements. So I don't hesitate to make them stand out by applying them with the tip of my brush, as you just saw with that light somewhat central highlight. Working section by section and progressing little by little on this part of the sea, I find it somewhat reassuring. It helps avoid getting lost by trying to paint areas that are too large all at once. Water and especially the sea is generally a somewhat complex subject. You have to create the movement, the waves, and that involves a lot of different colors and values. So starting by working on small areas at a time, I think it brings a certain column that I really appreciate. And even after years of painting, I still work this. It also has the advantage of showing quick progress on the painting. When you work on a small area and complete it fully, you can see the finished result of that section in ten to 15 minutes. If I were to say, I will apply a first layer of color to the whole painting, then do all the blending for the entire piece. Then go back to add to reapply my colors in all the area at once in thinner way, and then go back again and reblend the entire painting and then add details on the entire painting. At the end of the day, it can feel like a never ending process and become discouraging because it takes a lot of time to see one area, to see the whole painting quite all finished. So working this way, one section at a time and completing fully gives that satisfying feeling of seeing something take shape before your eyes. And you get a realistic result quite quickly. It is encouraging, and it really motivates you to keep going and watch the rest of the piece develop in front of you. So I am continuing applying my color and now focusing on this small section below. We are still in that slightly darker area close to the horizon line. And here you can see that I left a small white space. That is because the foam in this area is quite prominent, and I want to paint it with something very light afterwards. Now that my base colors are well applied in this section, I'm going to start hunting for details and shift in value. As soon as I spot areas where the color changes slightly or where you can see small lines or dots that suggest the presence of distant waves, I go ahead and add them. This way, the section really starts to take shape before my eyes. And by saying to myself, as soon as I see something in this or that color, I will add it. It helps me make sure I won't forget it later. And now in this area, we have waves that are really well defined. You can clearly see their foam. And I am applying some paint on top to get something really bright, almost pure white so that it really stands out just like it does here. Just a few more small elements to ad, and then it will be done. We can move on to the lower part. Now we can start working on the area below since the one above is finished. What we can observe is that the elements here are noticeably lighter. So I adjust the color on my brush to match what I see in a reference image. Even though this entire area is generally lighter, the value isn't the same everywhere. You can clearly see that the areas with different values are fairly distinct and somewhat thick. There are no small details. So when I apply my colors in this area, I will try to be fairly precise, making sure that each color, each greenish tone is placed correctly. So, for example, right now, I am working with this kind of dark blue green color, and then I'm going to switch to something lighter with for example, this color right here, I'm going to use it in some of the blank space that are still left. So I try to be precise and avoid overlapping too much with the elements above that are already finished. Then all the elements I have added here, I will work to blend them nicely together to create smooth transitions and a pleasing overall effect. And just like we did before, we'll go back in and work on the different waves and final details found in this area. I am going to speed up the process a little for the next few minutes for this section and the one just below it, since these areas are fairly similar to what we have already done so far. When it comes to the detailed work in this area, I will fast forward a bit, and I will also speed up the color application in the section underneath because, again, it is basically the same thing as we have done so far. However, we'll take a closer look at how to work in detail on the section just below that, as it is a particularly interesting area to paint with a strong presence of foam. So we'll see how to approach that and how to work effectively in this zone. The foam in the section below plays a fairly important role. While I apply my color in that lower zone, I will also begin working on certain parts using the gray that corresponds to the color of the foam we see there. I won't be adding foam on top of green water later on, since the foam occupies a significant space, it needs to be included from the beginning. So again, in this lower area, I try to apply the right colors in the right place, and then I will work on blending them nicely together to get smooth transition before adding the finer details. At this stage, we are getting closer and closer to the shoreline and therefore closer to the viewer's point of view in the reference photo. We are moving away from the horizon line, which means the details will become a bit more visible and our zones will need more careful attention. So take your time when working on this area. Just because the video is sped up doesn't mean you need to rush. Don't hesitate to pause if needed, so you can take your time and apply the colors properly. It is essential to build a solid foundation before moving on to all the details. In this area, I also painted the foam with a very light gray. I blended all the elements together, and now we can start working on the detail phase. For this stage, I am using a fine brush. And on the left side, around the left part of the waves, it's going to be very similar to what we have done so far. Although we are a bit closer now, so there are slightly more details, but the technique remains the same. Drawing some sort of irregular lines, varying thickness and brightness, which helps create some texture and give the impression of waves forming in this larger area. So that's what I am focusing on for the left side. Then we'll take a look at how to work on the right side, the foam area. M. All right, let's start working on this area with the foam. I begin by adding a few small dots like this, some kind of lines using a gray that isn't the lightest I have. You can see that the further we move from the central area where the foam is most concentrated, the fewer light elements stand out. The brightest areas are where the big foam clusters appear almost white. So here I am adding some slightly grayish touches, often curved line, very irregular lines, sometimes just small dots. I observe where I can see them, and then I had them accordingly. To make sure they really stand out on top of the elements I painted earlier, I try to work as much as possible with the tip of my brush, laying the paint down very delicately, so it blends barely with the layers underneath. This way, the color stays nice and bright. Another approach I use sometimes is to start with something very light, so I barely touch the paper. And then as I see the tone fading or getting a bit darker, I press a bit more with the brush so that it blends more into the underlying color, which gives the effect of it being less white. These are some of the different techniques I like to use when painting such things. Then it mainly becomes a matter of observation. You need to be attentive, look at the different areas and ask yourself where the foam is most visible, where certain elements are missing and where you should had more detail, et cetera. By asking these questions, you will be able to move forward and make progress in this area. But one thing is for sure, you really need to take your time because there are lots of small details to here. In the end, it's not all that difficult, but it does require good eye and patience. As with any oil painting subject, if you want to achieve a realistic result, patience is definitely one of the most important qualities you must have. At this point, the upper part of the foam is pretty far along. We are starting to get a result that looks really believable. And now I am going to continue and do the same thing in the slightly lower section of the foam. And finally, once that is done, there will be one last thing to take care of refinement phase. That means lightening certain areas here and there or adding small touches of blue in other spots to make sure we get the best possible result. And this is exactly what I am doing now. For example, here on the foam, I can add some slightly darker details, a few small touches of blue in certain spots. Go over some areas again with white. But overall, I now have a result that I am really happy with. So this is what the painting looks like from a bit farther away when we zoom out a little, then we can really see that the sea has taken shape nicely. It is encouraging, and we are going to continue working in the same way. For the next section, up until we reach the area where the waves crash onto the shore, I'm going to skip ahead in the video since it is exactly the same process we have just done, working on the blue of the water, the foam, and so on. So I will continue off camera and we'll meet again for the next major part where we will work on those waves crashing onto the shore. So take your time. If you have made it this far in the video, it clearly means that you are capable of doing it. So go at your own pace. No rush, and I'm sure that you will do great. 6. Painting sea foam and backwash on the shore: So this is what my area looks like now. We are going to work on that large section of waves crashing onto the shore. I will start with the areas where the water has a light green tone, where the wave hasn't yet broken onto the sand. I began by applying the darkest shade from the palette, but you can see that the transition to lighter tones happens very quickly. The color I add wasn't light enough, and also it like a little bit of yellow, so I am adjusting it a bit before reapplying it. There's a fairly strong shift in value here, and what I had on the palette didn't quite match that. So I adjusted the color to better match what I was aiming for. For now, I am simply applying the color in the right areas along the way front. There are a few sections where this color will be visible. On the left side, it is on the left side, and it is less noticeable, but still present is where I am applying it right here. In the spots where the waves have already broken, there are these small hints of this color visible. So I mark those for now. Later I will had details on top that will make this green part much less prominent. The left side, I blended the colors together to form a more natural transition. I am also remixing some burntm ultramarine blue into my color to create a darker variation which I am applying to the top part of the wave. Then there are also two small spots where I can apply this greenish tone between splashes. And with that, I would say we have a pretty solid base for this set of color. Now, I am going to start working on the areas where the waves are breaking on the shore. This section is quite confusing. It is a bit complex and it is hard to know where to begin. So my strategy here is to focus on the parts that stand out the most in all these visual confusion, specifically the slightly darker elements. They are more noticeable and so they are easier to define. So the first thing I will do is look for the darker areas within the waves. When I say darker areas, I mean those with that bluish gray tone. It's not very dark, but it stands out a bit more than the rest. So I apply that color to the different spots where it appears. This will make it easier to work through the rest of the section afterward. We can find some of these areas on the right side, and there's also a large one on the left. I am trying to mark out these ons now, always making sure to apply the paint carefully, stretching the color well, and avoiding overloading the surface. Once that is done, I will move on to the rest of the area. And the rest of the area, I will paint everything else with a very light gray that is close to white. I will blend those colors together and create soft transitions. Once that is complete, we'll move on to adding details to make this section look more realistic. So I will speed up the video a bit for the application of the colors and blending in this part. It's something we have done many times before, so there's nothing difficult in here. After that, we'll take a look at how to work on the final details of the area. And once again, take your time for the application of the color, and we'll see each other again for the detail phase. Now that my colors have been applied in different areas, I'm going to start working a bit more precisely and begin adding volume to the wave. To do that, I am using a bluish gray that is even darker than the one I used earlier. In the areas that were already a bit darker than the rest of the wave, I am applying small touches here and there. These touches are very irregular, so I quickly glance on my reference photo, then apply the color almost randomly within that darker zone. And with this, we start to build up some volume in the waves. This is just the beginning, though. Later on, I will be adding other small highlights within these same areas. And in the very light parts, the ones that are nearly white, we will also have tiny details to enhance the sense of depth. And step by step with just a few touches here and there, we'll manage to make the waves feel three dimensional. I am adding a bit more here, too in this greenish area we mentioned earlier when applying the colors. But overall, I won't be using too much of this darker tone. I will also take off some of that blue green water color and apply it in certain spots where we can still see the water between the large splashes. Now I have taken an even finer brush to start working on the small details that we have within the very light area. So basically, I have taken a color that looks like very much like the one we applied before for the darker zones when we first applied our colors. And so I am applying some small touches here and there with this color within these white area. And therefore, thanks to this, we start to create some volume. So basically what I am doing is that I look at my reference photo, see how is the density of all these elements? What is their shape and in which direction they tend to go. And then I add them almost randomly on my paper. So I don't overthink it, and I just had some small dots small lines here and there. At the moment, I really try to focus to stay within these white areas, and it's only once we will have created a really great volume that we will work a bit more on these splashes that go over the sea and overlap the different other areas. I am using white to get something very light and blending it very slightly with my blue gray. Then I will add some very light touches, little splashes, that will go, for example, over those bluish water areas. This really helps make the wave look even more realistic. I have already started to give it a bit of volume, and now with these tiny strokes that stick out and overflow, it really gives the impression of splashes going in all directions. So to achieve this, to get these very light splashes to show on this rab dark water, I need a certain thickness on my brush and to apply it well with the tip. And then what I also do is in the slightly darker areas, I also had slightly lighter touches, and it's really this combination of light and dark elements that creates something truly realistic and full of volume within the wave. So I know it's a job that takes a lot of patience, that is a bit long and repetitive. But in the end, it's really interesting and rewarding to do because you get something that looks very realistic and gives the impression of a wave crashing onto your paper. So don't give up. Keep going, adding your little touches here and there, and you will see that it will work, and you will get a great result. I am sure of it. And when you are adding these little details, don't overthink it. Don't try to place it down to the millimeter. Just observe the tendency where most are located, then add a few here and there. Don't overload it with too many details. And in the end, it's true that it can be a bit repetitive, but it doesn't take too long to add these details. It probably took something around three or 4 minutes to add all these small touches here and there. And in the end, we get a pretty good result. So I think it is really worth it. Now, what I am going to do is add some small, slightly lighter elements to this greenish area on the side. Even though the wave is still in motion and hasn't crashed onto the ground yet, we can already see some lighter highlights standing out. So those are the ones I am trying to bring out in turn. They shouldn't take very long to add. Then I am going to work on this whole lower part here where there is a sort of thin layer of foam lying directly on the beach. And actually, we will need to try to give it a bit of volume. So to do that, I will have some small bluish elements all along it. But be careful. This is very important. You need to leave a small white space with the outline with the end of it. You can see here that in these bluish areas, I am adding there's a gap of a few millimeters between the edge of the foam and these elements that I have just added. So make sure to do the same and leave that space too to be able to create volume afterwards. 7. How to paint wet sand and reflections: So this is the state of the painting at this point. Now we are going to paint the sound area. And what we can see in this part is that the whole section is covered by foam. So in this area, I'm going to start by applying the dominant colors in each zone. And here, in this case, in some areas where the foam is clearly covering the sound, the dominant color is this shade of gray. It is a gray that isn't as bluish as the one I used earlier to paint the way, for example. But still, it is a fairly light gray that needs to be applied here to start with. For the application of this gray and sand color, I sped up the video a little bit, since it's a simple application of color, I'm painting the different dominant areas, and for now, I am trying not to go over the edges of each section. Then I am going to gently blend these two colors together. So here, when you have colors that are really opposite to each other, you really need to go slowly and make sure there's no excess paint excess paint on the brush. Of course, it is a bit faster in the video, but it's the same kind of blending we have done many times before. It's just that you need to take a little more time because the colors are quite different. Now that my areas are clearly defined and I have the sound and the foam sections well marked out, I am not going to leave them as they are. What I am going to do is take a bit of the gray I used to define the foam and apply small depths here and there over the sound areas I previously painted. This way, it gives the impression of little patches of foam sitting on top of the sound. So I will do that across the whole area before going back to work a bit on the gray section. We are now getting close to the end of our subject, and with just this one painting, we have been able to work on a lot of different things. That's also why I chose this subject because it allows for a really thorough study of the sea. We had a detailed sky with many elements, just like you would see at the seaside, a slightly freatening sky. We saw how to paint the distant sea and create the effect of small visible ripples and how to do the same thing of clothes and also how to create the that is just about to crash onto the shore. And finally, we are working on the sound, including a bit of foam on it. So there were really a lot of different aspects to explore, and that's why I found it so interesting. So I'm almost done now with this area with this application of gray. Of course, it is true that there are lots of little steps that might seem a bit repetitive, but in the end, each one only takes a few minutes, and in just a short time, you can achieve a result that's very convincing and close to reality. So I think it is really worth taking the time to do it properly. Now it is the grayish areas that I'm going to work on a bit more. And to do that, I am going to add some slightly lighter elements to them. At this stage, it is almost pure white on my brush, and I am looking at the different areas in my reference photo, asking myself whether are slightly lighter elements I could have ones that will help make the foam look even more realistic and more voluminous. So I observe and I had small marks here and there on the foam areas. Now it is in the sound areas that I am going to add elements with different values. I'm going to go back to my sand color and observe where there might be some slightly darker touches. I could have had to make certain areas stand out more. Looking at it, again, I also realized that the light elements in the gray areas don't stand out enough. So I am going to take some more white and add new very light touches to really make those areas pop. What I am going to do now is take some of that slightly darker brown color and apply just a tiny bit right below the area we painted earlier and left white. Remember, I told you to leave a small white space there, and now these little marks I am adding help create that bit of volume in the wave. Of course, I don't leave it like that. I blend it with the surrounding elements, making sure that some areas appear slightly darker, just like we can see in the reference photo. And finally, the last thing I will add to this area before finishing with the sun section are these slightly darker touches on the sun that is covered by foam, because in some spots I feel it doesn't stand out enough. So I am adding those darker elements, and then I make sure they blend well with the underlying color. I do a light gentle blending to make sure both parts really feel like one continuous surface. Now it is time to work on the sound. This part will be relatively quick to do, especially since given the size of my paper, I had to crop the bottom part of the photo a little because it didn't fully fit. I felt it was more appropriate to remove part of the sound rather than part of the sky in terms of composition. So we are left with a small rather narrow beach area. First thing to do is to apply the base color in the area, always trying to make sure that to spread it well, to get a smooth surface to work on. Then one very important step, similar to what we did earlier, is to use a fine brush along the edge of the foam. This will once again give it some volume. So I will apply small touches to slightly raise the foam, and I will gently blend those touches with the rest of the area. So that is my next step. That is what I'm going to do right now. And just like above, there will be areas that are a bit darker than others, so I will take that into account. Finally, as for the sound, of course, we are not going to paint every single grain. What we will do instead is focus on indicating the slightly darker patches that appear here and there. So I will carefully observe my photo and try to figure out where the sound looks a bit darker and where it looks lighter. Then I will a small touches in those spots to create a realistic and coherent result. The beach is finished. Now, before wrapping up this piece, I want to go back over my waves because I feel that some areas don't stand out enough to enhance the contrast and improve the sense of volume, I am going to add some small touches of this slightly dark blue gray. I will apply it across the entire area because I think it is lacking a bit everywhere. And that will bring this tutorial to a close. I hope it was very helpful to you and that you enjoy it. And more than anything, I hope that you have practiced along with it with me or that you will use this tutorial to paint over similar seascapes. So thanks again for watching, and I will see you very soon for another tutorial, and feel free to share with me your artwork. I'm always glad to see what you have done. 8. Painting a sunset - presentation: This video, we are going to create another seascape, but this time, completely different because we are going to paint at sunset. This time, the sea is seen from a distance, so we will have to paint it in a completely different manner. We won't have as many details as what we had before. And so the sea seen from a distance will be very different. The sky also will be completely different due to the sunset colors. And so we'll have to make some very vibrant color or the sky. We'll have to create some volume with the clouds with some colors that will be also completely unusual and completely different. And also the colors of the sea will be different. So this is a very fascinating subject once again with many things to help us make some progress. So for this painting, I will be using my 20 by 30 centimeters paper plus my completely ordinary material, and I will be drawing a grid on my paper beforehand to make sure that I have a good drawing with the right proportion. So grab your brush and let's get started. 9. How to paint a sunset sky in oil paint: As usual, before looking at the mixes, let's first focus on the colors in the image. If we look at the sky, we can already see that there will be a wide variety of oranges, some more or less intense. In the upper part, we notice a fairly balanced and avete orange, and that would be the case for most of this upper sky area. Meanwhile, in the lower part of the sky, the orange becomes darker and needs to be pushed a bit more toward red than yellow. Then there is the central area filled with clouds, and we can see that these clouds, due to the color of the sky, also take on an unusual color. You will notice some yellow highlights in the cloud, more or less intense, along with clouds showing red, orange tones and even a few touches of purply shades, especially on the right side of the sky. Also what stands out in this guy is that the sun is represented as a white spot. It appears extremely bright, and it's precisely because the color around this white ball of light are darker, that will get the impression of a strong glow. Around the sun, we gradually transition from a bright, intense orange to the more reddish orange I mentioned earlier. Now, let's look at the other colors present throughout the landscape. The sea at the horizon has some slightly purplish tones, but depending on the area, we'll need to mix various oranges for the sea. The sea is buffed in the light of the sunset and therefore displays these intense colors. Over the, we see many small touches of purplish tones in places or on the contrary, dark or grayish areas in others. Lastly, I want to point out that not all the rocks have the same color. Some parts are very deep black while others catch some light and appear more grayish, allowing us to create some volume and three dimensionality. So that gives us a lot of colors to work with. And now let's see how to mix them. Let's start mixing the colors of the sky, beginning with the area around the sun. We can see that there are some intense yellow orange tones. So I am mixing a large amount of yellow with just a tiny bit of red like this. Then I'm going to create a similar shades but more yellow. And so as you can see, I take the same color and add more yellow to it. And now I have two fairly intense yellow, orange colors. Next, for the area just below the sun, we can see that the oranges are a bit more balanced but with a stronger red component. So that's the first color I mix right here for the lower part of the sky. As for the sky color itself in the upper part, we notice that it's even lighter. And so I created another orange, but this time adding a little bit of light to it. And now I am adding more yellow to my mix because, well, my color tends to go a little bit too much towards the red color. And now from this color, I can create another one that will be even lighter for some small areas in the upper part of the sky, where you can see a little bit of the clouds. Now we also saw that the clouds can have a slightly purplish tint. To achieve that, I mix a large amount of red with a small amount of blue. And this gives me more of a reddish purple than a rather strong purple color because you can see that these cloud, they tend to go a little bit towards the purple but kind of red color. And then, little by little, I make some adjustment, and I can also create another one that is even lighter with a little bit of white. As we saw earlier, in the area of the water near the horizon, we can notice a bluish, slightly purplish color. So I start with a mix of blue and red, a good amount of white because the color is quite light and also a bit of yellow to keep the purple from being too intense. And from that mix, I can create a slightly lighter variation. That way I will use for other areas. Now, regarding the water, we also saw that due to the sunset, it takes a slightly orangy hue. But it's not as intense as the colors in the sky. It is a bit more pale. So I had a large amount of white since the colors remains light, and the white also helps to make the color less saturated and less intense. And also some blue because blue is the complimentary color of orange, which helps to tone down the intensity of the orange. And then I gradually adjust the mix until I get the color that I am happy with. At first it was too dark, so I added more white. And I also noticed that the orange was leaning too much to all red, so I added yellow to rebalance the orange toe. So there was a little technical issue and you didn't get to see me mix the color on the left hand side. What we have here is an orange that is not too intense. What I did was take an orange similar to the last one we mixed and then added a small touch of blue and quite a bit of white to lighten it. As for the reds, you see on the left as well, they've also lost they have also lost a lot of the intensity. I toned them down by adding some green made from the yellow and blue, and then created a lighter variation as well. And finally, for the rocks, I am mixing a black by using burn timber and ultramarine blue and adding a small amount of white for the lighter areas. And now that we have got all our colors, we can start working on the actual painting, and we'll begin with the sky. To get started, I have drawn the outlines using a grid to make sure everything is nice and precise. Let's begin our painting, and I'm going to start by painting all around the sun where we can see a rather intense orange color. Even though the oranges around the sun aren't exactly the same, we'll have to adapt each time to get the right shade of orange. So I am starting with a brush working quite precisely and trying not to go over the area where the sun will be because later on, we'll paint it with pure white, so it really stands out as bright, surrounded by all the surrounding colors. So I am now laying down the color and trying to blend it gently with the rest of the element. And you will notice that as we move slightly to the left, the color gets a bit darker. So I have added a darker orange like this, and I gently blend it into the first color with small touches. It is important not to overload the brush when doing this. You can also see that on my palette, I have prepared some intermedin so I can get an orange that is a little darker for the side, but not too much darker. One important note, I had forgotten to erase the lines from my grid at first. And when that happens, especially with a very light, a sky that contains a lot of yellow, the lines tend to remain visible underneath, and that can be a bit annoying if you forgot to erase them. And if you realize too late and it's really large area like the whole sky and especially if it is a piece you want to give or sell, it can be a real problem. If it is the entire sky, unfortunately, you might need to start over. Otherwise, it will be hard to hide the lines completely. But if it's just a small area, like in my case, I mostly forgot near the sun, but I remember to erase them for the rest of the landscape. Then in this kind of case, I recommend painting over it with a slightly thicker layer of paint to make sure the lines don't throw through. Just add a bit more paint on top, and if it is still visible, go over it again with a second layer using the same color once the painting is dried. Now, let's continue painting the sky. We can notice that in this area, the oranges are a bit darker, so I'm going to apply the paint using a flat brush since it is quite a large area. This way, I can really spread the color nicely to create a smooth surface, not too thick, where I will be able to do proper blending and get smooth transitions between the different colors. When you apply your color, make sure not to overload the brush as it will make it harder to achieve a good result in your work. Of course, I am avoiding the boat here because otherwise, it will be a bit too tricky to work precisely while painting over the orange. The alternative would be to wait and do a second layer, but that's not really something that I prefer. I really like to work wet on wet. So I am continuing, and you might also notice that I remixed the color on my palette. I tried to get a shade as close as possible to the previous one, but it is true that it is always a bit tricky to estimate exactly how much paint you would need for a given area. Generally, I say it is better to have too much than not enough because, yes, it might lead to a bit of waste, but it is usually harder and more time consuming to match a color 100% once you run out. So here I continue painting this section with orange as well. But now I am noticing that the closer we get to the sun, the lighter the area becomes. So I adjust the mix accordingly, and I don't hesitate to mix colors together on my palette to get more intermediate tones that better match the shades found in these parts of the painting. At this point, I would say that we have a pretty solid base for the orange tones. The color has been nicely spread out. Now, what I'm going to do is had some slightly lighter touches because if you look closely, the sky below and around the sun isn't completely uniform. There are some slightly lighter, more yellowish areas that start to appear. So I am adding those now, dabbing them in with small touches and light brush strokes like this. And by doing that, it helps me create a sky that feels more natural and realistic. Now I am going to move on to the clouds that we can see on the left. This area is quite light, and because of the beautiful sunset, the clouds have yellow orange tones as well. So if I look losy, if I really pay attention to the reference photo, I notice that this part of the sky orravo this cloud has a yellow orange edge. And inside there are slightly darker touches. It might seem a little surprising, but that's just how it is. And when I look at my photo, those are the elements I need to paint. I want my painting to look realistic. So I trust the reference and what I see more than any assumptions I might have about what clouds are supposed to look like. This is why I started by painting the yellow orange edge first. Then inside the cloud, I added the darker red orange area with a few extra touches on top to make it pop even more. What really makes the cloud stand out on the nicely darker elements surrounding it, which I am now adding in. Oh. So we are good with these clouds and we are going to work on the area on the right, and we have some slightly pinkish clouds there. So I'm going to adjust my color a bit because I think it didn't quite match what I wanted. I was aiming for something a little bit lighter, so I am adjusting my color, and in any case, it's really once the color is on the paper that we will see whether it works or not. So here we go. I am applying it, and my first observation is that there is too much of a color contrast in this area between the pink area and the orange sky underneath. So what I'm going to do is lighten the color a bit more, and on top of that, I'm going to steer it more towards orange. So I had some orange into the mix to create a smoother transition between these two areas. Now I can apply it. I like it a bit more, and in any case, we'll try to make sure the elements blend well together later by using small brush strokes. Right now, I am trying to paint the rough shape of this cloud, but it's totally fine to allow for a bit of abstraction. It is a cloud. We are not dealing with something that needs a perfectly defined shape, so I am trying to suggest some irregularity, and I will refine and tweak everything a bit more later with a fino brush as well. To enhance all of this, I can go in and paint with small touches of orange. You can see that it blends nicely with the slightly darker orange, and I am able to create a transition between these two elements. And this allows the slightly pinkish sky to blend seamlessly into the orange sky just below. So I am adding a few small brush strokes here and there with this color. And thanks to my mix and to these little touches I am adding, I managed to create the transition and also make the irregularity of my cloud look more believable. In this area, I notice these small slightly lighter touches, somewhat yellow orange, and I add them in. Now, one could say that these little touches might seem unnecessary, barely visible, even, but they add a bit of realism to our sky. In areas witho clouds, the sky can seem very simple to paint, very uniform. But in the end, it's these subtle extra touches that truly take it to the next level in terms of realism. So these little additions are actually quite important. And since they don't stand out as much, I was able to apply them directly over the orange color without needing to leave any white space. And you can see that despite everything, they still show through quite nicely. I keep going and I add some orange right here above the pink cloud. I make sure to create a smooth transition with those cloud elements. However, as we get closer to the area near the sun, I am going to leave a small white space because in that part, we can see a very intense yellow that really stands out within the cloud. It will help give volume to the clouds near the sun. So I make sure to leave a little bit of room, and I try to observe the shape and placement that these lighter touches will take. This way, with this white space, I will be able to work them in properly later on. So I have slightly modified my color, as you can see, and I made it a little bit lighter. And I apply my color right here in this area in this blank space that I had left, and I really try to be accurate and not to paint over these areas I had already painted. So I make sure I paint in this blank space, and we will work afterwards on the transition. But first, the right steps to make sure that we apply the color properly. So make sure not to overload your brush for this area as it is very thin. I am going to take a bit more of my paint color and repaint underneath those light clouds because I feel it doesn't stand out enough. We are not really seeing that slightly rosy look. So I blended it too much with the orange at first, so I am reworking that area along the line, still trying to be fairly precise with this fine brush. You can notice that in some areas, I am adding some small touches of orange that blends slightly with the pink because I don't want this pink area to be just flat, a uniform pink. So I am reworking a little bit this area. And now I am adding some very light touches almost pure white in this area to get some really bright highlight in this area due to the sun. And I make sure that they blend nicely with the color I applied underneath, as well as with the slightly pinkish elements nearby. And so I apply them just with the tip just using the tip of my brush. And then if needed, I can rework them or add more if I feel that something is missing or if I feel that I don't have enough paint on my brush. And as you have seen, while I am applying my colors, I make sure that they blend nicely with the surrounding areas to create a smooth gradient, and I will come back and rework that a bit more later. Now I can paint this nearby cloud area. It is a bit less defined. We'll have some slightly darker oranges, and over that, a few small sunlit yellow oranges touches. So that's what I am applying now, and I am adding these little elements that really stand out and help create a beautiful sky worthy of a true sunset. Human. What I am going to do now is work on the upper part where we can see that cloud with a really intense yellow. And once that is done, I will be able to refine the blending between all my elements even more and really create a strong connection between all these clouds we see here and the sky. So here we have a cloud that is generally very, very yellowish. So I am applying this base yellow, and over it, I will be able to had some slightly darker touches, as well as some slightly whiter ones later on. I also notice a small and lighter cloud over here on the right slightly pink as well. So I am adding it in without overthinking it, keeping a bit of abstraction, and trying to match the shape, but overall, making sure that I've got the right colors in the right spots. And as I mentioned earlier, in this yellowish cloud, we can observe some rather whitish, very light areas. So I am adding them with small touches like this, blending them very delicately and very gently with the color underneath and making sure they still stand out nicely. You can see, and as I told you, with these clouds, I am also adding slightly darker touches, which help me create even more mass and volume. Now we are going to move on to the color of the sky higher up. I have adjusted the orange I had on my palette by adding a bit of yellow and lightening it with some white. I am applying it using this flat brush, making sure to use broad strokes like this that stretch nicely across the background, and that I will be able to blend well with the other colors later on. I really try not to overload my brush and to be precise, so I don't go over the area where the cloud is. And as you can see, in a few seconds, I am also adjusting the color on my brush a little because as we move downward, the sky gets a bit darker, so I am adding a slow touch accordingly, and I am trying to stay precise and avoid overlapping into the clouds. You can see that I am leaving a small gap because the blending with the clouds the transition. I will do that later using a more precise brush to avoid any risk of bleeding into that area. Now, using a slightly finer brush, I can work on the transition between these cloudy areas in the orange sky. This way, I make sure not to let the orange overflow and to have a smooth transition between my elements. Right here, I realized I had forgotten to paint a small yellowish area to represent a new cloud. So I am doing that now working over the top, over the painting I had lay down before. It might take a little longer and be a bit trickier than if I had left that space white, but it is still totally doable. That's one of the great advantages of oil painting. Even if you forget something or if something doesn't look right, you've got plenty of time to fix it. And even when the painting is dry, you can absolutely go back and rework an area if needed. And once again, with these small touches, I am trying to blend the cloud elements with the sky to create a completely natural transition between these two different parts. Overall, the sky has really taken shape nicely. We have beautiful orange tones, a well defined sun that stands out, and we have managed to give it a great sense of brightness. What is still missing on the few little clouds we see above the ones we have already paint. So for that, I'm going to take some of my yellow, orange color and lighten it even more. I will start by applying a few stricks like this with my brush. Just like this, you're going to see that right now. And then once again, it will be a matter of blending, making sure the edges mix well with the surrounding sky color, so we end up with a completely natural transition between these elements. After wiping the excess paint from my brush, I can go in and create multiple and create a nice blending, a soft blend thanks to this movement, this back and forth movement. And there we go. My sky will be finished, and we can now move on to painting the water area. 10. Painting the sea at sunset: light and reflections: Once the sky is finished, we move on to painting the sea. So I'm starting on the right side where we can see that the sea has a rab dark purple tone. So I am applying it with this fairly fine brush. And as you can see, I am really trying to be very precise as not to go over the sky area. One technique that works quite well for painting a straight line is to load your brush generously, and by flattening it like this on the paper, you can get a fairly straight stroke. Then trying to be precise, I gently tap in some small touches with this purple, keeping them quite control. I'm trying to avoid the boat, which I will paint later. And on the other side of the boat, I am adjusting the color a bit, since we can see that the purple there isn't as intense, it is more of a lighter shade. So I have adapted it. Then I will adapt it. I will adjust it again because as we move further to the left, this fades away a little bit. But before I am adding a bit more of this purple on the left side because it is fairly dark. Now I'm going to change that and use more of this pinkish color that I had mixed, and I'm going to mix it slightly with the purple to get something more intermediate. And so I will apply this new color still focusing on being precise to avoid going over the surrounding areas. And in the central area, we clearly have something much lighter and more pinkish. Some small touches of orange could also be added, which is why the colors seem right to me. So now I have applied my base, and in a way, I protected my sky by carefully painting along the edge, and I can move on to the rest of the area, let's say. At this point, I am going to paint up to about the height of the boat, since we can see that the color changes a lot after that. So I am painting while trying to stretch my color as much as possible and to apply the dominant tones that we can observe in each little section of the sea at this point. Now, the base is really well established in this area, and we are going to focus a bit more and trying to bring out the small elements, the small movements of the water, these little reflections. And here, with water that is so far away and seems really distant from us, we can barely see any detail. So this part is actually going to be quite simplified. All we really need to do is add some small lighter touches or slightly darker ones on top of what we have already painted. You will notice that these reflections, these movements in the water often appear as small lines. So I observe the area, and whenever I see slightly darker lines, slightly darker little lines, I add them in. Then if I notice that there are also lighter elements that need to be placed between those darker lines to make them stand out better, I will add those too. And naturally, in this more central area or base color overall lighter purple, kind of pink. So the darker touches I am adding now are still lighter than the ones I have just added on the right side. Now I am cleaning my brush because I am going to switch color. I'm going to add some lighter touches to this purplish area using these pink tones to really help the two zones blend and merge more smoothly together. And to do that, there's nothing better than adding a few details of this other color, slightly overlapping this purple area. And this variety of colors added through the small lines and details really enhances the sunset effect we are going for in the painting. And just with small lines and subtle touches, that's more than enough to create a realistic looking sea. Sometimes it's true that we imagine painting the sea will be a huge task, but in reality and especially when it is in the distance, a few small touches, a few simple lines like these are all it takes to suggest the movement of the water. And I continue this work in the central area where it will mainly be small touches of orange blending into that slightly pinkish color. So I would go ahead and add a few more light touches in this area, really working for roughly in the same way as we did on the right side, and then we'll move on to painting the boat. So for the boat, it's not going to be very complicated, but there are two things to pay attention to. First, precision and second, the small value changes that are quite subtle. I can start by tinting the outline of the sail, and I try to be precise to avoid going over the surrounding areas because the difference in color and value is significant. It would be a bit problematic if it bled over as it would be difficult to fix, probably better to wait for it to dry, for instance, or use a lot of paint to correct it. So now I can paint the sail, starting with a medium dark gray, as you can see. Then I will add some small details on top. You can see that there's going to be some slightly dark lines and other small darker touches that will stand out in different places on the sail. So I will add those. But overall, there is no need to add too much. The boat is far away, and we don't see many details. Just a few small touches with different values to suggest some slight shading will be more than enough to make it look realistic. Now that the sail is done, I can move on to painting the whole of the boat, which is really dark. So I am using this almost black color which works well. By the way, I hadn't mentioned it before, but it's the same color mix we use for the rocks, and it also works great for the boat. So the boat is painted, and now I can have the little people that we can very faintly see on the boat just hinting at their figure, and that's pretty it. My boat will be finished after that. Oh Now that the boat is finished, we can move on and paint the area of the sea just below it. So I am working with this slightly pale orange, but after the first application, I felt it wasn't light enough. So I lighten it with a touch of yellow and quite a bit of white. For the application of the color in this eddy area, the video is slightly sped up because overall, it's something we have already covered, and the area isn't very complex in terms of applying the paint. That's why the video is set up, but don't rush through it. Take your time whenever you need to in order to get a good result when applying your color, it is very essential to build a solid base. So don't hesitate to post the video if needed. So here, I am applying my color using that pale orange. I observe where there are slight value differences, places with slightly darker orange touches that stand out, and I add them in to make them pop. Each time I make sure to spread out my base color well so that the little touches I am going to add, like the one I am placing right now under the boat, for example, can blend nicely with the rest. So I am adding a few more touches like that with a slightly darker orange area, some a bit larger, and then we'll be able to start working on the details and reflections in the water. Now that I have created a solid base with these oranges, I am going to work a bit on the texture of the water and simply create the illusion of waves in this area using small and slightly darker orange touches that will really stand out. And that will be more than enough to give the impression of moving water of small waves forming. Now, it is true that when you are dealing with an area like this one where there are lots of small colors and little ripples, you might wonder where to start. And the answer is often the same. Start with what seems most obvious to you. In this case, what seemed most obvious to me was that pale orange that really stood out. I thought it might work well as a base color to use that pale orange. Then just certain areas by adding slightly darker elements to the base, where you can see that there's a bit more darkness in the water and then I had a few light details like this, well, light and dark, which are more than enough to achieve a realistic result in that area. Oh h On the rock, as we saw during the color analysis, there are some slightly lighter areas, and those are the ones I start by marking. With my fine brush, I add small touches of a fairly dark gray because the value difference isn't huge compared to the rest of the rock, but it is still enough to give the impression of volume in the rocky area. During the drawing phase, I have already marked the spots where these lighter zones would appear. And now with this brush, I am painting them, as you can see. Once that is done, I will keep using the same brush and a more darker color, and I will begin by painting all around those elements. This way, it creates a sort of protective border so I don't go over them later when I paint the whole area with my flat brush. So I take this opportunity to carefully work around the edges, especially well where we'll have pure black on the border right where it meets the sea. One small note, I have shifted my black slightly toward brown. When I mixed it, I tweaked the black by adding a touch of burnt amber so the balance would lean more toward burnt amber than ultramarine blue. The reason is simple. All around this rock, the water has orange stones, and if I had more burnt and bur, it will blend better with the black than if I use more ultramarine blue. So this is why I made this small adjustment. Then with the flat brush, I will paint the entire area. Nothing too complicated here. You will just need to be careful when you reach the line of rocks at the top that we painted earlier. And so that will be it for this area once I will have painted everything with the flat brush. For the end of this tutorial, the video is very slightly sped up because everything we are going to do now is more or less a repetition of what we have done so far. We have a few small changes, which I will explain to you in due time. For now, we are back to painting the sea, working on this lower area where there is a fairly intense orange, that's my base color. So I am trying to identify the dominant color in the area, and I would say that this one is pretty good to start with, while on the left side, it continues that slightly pale color. So I apply my color with the flat brush, making sure to really stretch it out. And as you can see, I am not getting too close to the black area of the rocks because I don't want to dirty my color, make it look mudier. Ideally, it would have been better to start by painting the entire sea and then tackle the rocks. But the problem is, it would have been tricky to handle the brush well without touching the sea while painting the rocks. So it's a bit of a double dilemma. And I chose to start the painting by painting the rocks. Either way it works, you just have to pick one. Now that I have gotten as close as I can with my flat brush, I am trying to get even closer with a fineer brush. But for now, I am still avoiding the black area, and the reason is simple. If I touch it with my orange color, it's really going to get messy and not beautiful. It won't look good at all, and all my orange will be dirty for painting the rest of the area. Even if I go back to my orange on the palette, it will still get muddied. On the other hand, what I am doing now is using a finer brush to paint the edge of the water over these orange areas with my black color, the color of the rocks. And if it touches the orange, it's not a big deal because black is so strong that if there is a bit of orange mixed in, it will barely show on the rocks. So in a way, this method can be plain ahead of time, and that's why it is important to try and plan your painting before you start to know that you should leave this blank space to paint it with the black color of the rocks, for example. So here we are, the water area is nicely painted thanks to this technique. You can see that there is a slight whitish gap at the bottom, but that's not really a problem because later, when we start working on the details of the water, it will disappear. Now I can start adding those little reflection, those small ripples we can see on the surface of the water in that area. You can notice that in this middle section, it was quite dark. But the higher up you go, the lighter it gets. So be careful not to go in with elements that are too dark. And even within the same area, there are sometimes slightly lighter and slightly darker shades of gray. A common mistake is to go over the whole thing with the same dark gray tone. But no, observation is really one of the key skills of a painter, and you need to be able to pick up on those little subtleties, those small shifts in value that make a zone look realistic. Here, I am also not hesitating to go back in with some orange because I feel like it is missing a bit of a darker orange and more details in that color in the area. So I am adding a few little touches here and there just to make the area look much better, much more realistic. I have added some orange back onto my palette. I simply remix that slightly darker orange. And now I am adding small touches of this color to create the movement of the water to form little ripples. I am making it a bit darker so it stands out even more. The idea is to have a slight value difference compared to the orange we applied earlier as a base color in this area in order to create that sense of movement in the water. So here is the reason I am starting with the orange, and with the lighter orange, the touches that you will see me had a bit later as well. If I started by adding all the black strokes in this area, I would have a real problem afterwards trying to paint the oranges on top. As I mentioned earlier, when we apply color colors, the risk is that the orange will get really dirty, dulled by the black and take on a grayish tone, which is something I definitely want to avoid. That's why it makes much more sense here to begin with the orange and those lightotches. Adding lightotuches on top of the orange isn't a problem at all, because they belong to the same color family. There's enough similarity, so it's not an issue. But black mixing into the orange will be problematic. It would really muddy the orange. That's why I chose to start this way. So now I am recreating some black, but I added more burn timber, sew it to it so that when I apply the color, it keeps a slightly less grayish look on the water and stays more coherent, consistent when blending softly with the orange. Still, I try to apply the color with the tip of the brush, my sword brush, where I want darker spots, and in other areas where I want it a little lighter, I try to blend it gently. So here I am also working carefully on the edge around the rocks because I don't want to border that is too clean or too straight. You can see that the edge of the rocks or by the water is quite irregular, and that irregularity can be suggested by the small touches I am adding now. Now that I have created a nice irregular edge with those small touches, as you can see, I am going to start adding a few strokes along the back along the water area. So I observe where I can see darker elements like the ones I am adding, and then I don't hesitate to use this brush, the sword brush, which allows me to work on this detail with the tip very precisely. So I go ahead and add them. I am starting by focusing on the really dark ones. So I roughly observe where they are and I add them. I try to get a sense of their thickness and shape, and I place them, but you don't need millimeter level precision. I will say it again because it is important. Don't stress too much about adding these little details. Just observe roughly where they are located, how thick and long they are, and then just add. So right now I am mostly adding the darker ones, but at the same time, at the same time, I sometimes add a few that are a bit lighter. For that, I make sure that my brush barely touches the paper, so I go a bit more lightly, which means I deposit less paint. This way, I get elements that appear slightly lighter. Because if you look closely again, in these little ripples on the water, you will notice a lot of variation. Not all the elements are the same value. So are a little lighter, and that's really what I am trying to emphasize here. And you probably notice that I added a bit of white to the color. So now I am getting some elements that are overall lighter in that area, even lighter than when I was light with my brush. So I will finish up with that, adding all those final touches, and that will wrap up or painting subject. And this is the end of this tutorial. Congratulations on making it all the way through. We have colored a lot, painting a sunset sky with its warm tones and unusual clouds, then working on the sea and its reflections, the color variations, and even the sense of movement in the water. It was a beautiful and rich subject, and I'm sure that you can be proud of what you have accomplished if you've made it this far. So thank you very much for following along and see you very soon for another painting session. 11. Painting a calm sea - presentation: Painting the sea is actually quite a fascinating and iconic subject for landscape painting. But it's also challenging to be able to paint the movement of the water, the reflection, all the flow, and the fact that the water can be transparent and to be able to create all of this can really see can really become a big challenge. Also adding the right amount of details without getting lost in all the things that you have to paint with the so it's quite a bit of a challenge, but I'm going to show you how to simplify this. And for this subject, I will be using my old painting paper. The size will be 14 by 21 centimeters. We don't need something to be to begin and work on the sea. And with just this small format, we'll be able to understand the logic and how to apply it to painting the sea. So for the drawing, I will be using a grid, of course, to make sure that I have something very accurate. And with my drawing, I will be trying to draw only what is really important and what is really important, how the main waves, the main big movement that we can see on the sea. And you will see that on my paper, the main things that I have drawn, you will see them, so you can draw them as well. So for painting the C, we are starting with a subject that is more easy with Column C. And then in the future, you will be able to paint another subject, a rough C. That will be even more challenging. But at first, let's start with this C C right now. 12. Mixing the colors and painting the sky: So here is our subject, this beautiful and column C, and let's start by observing its colors before we mix them on the palette. What we notice in the sky is that it is very clear. We have especially light tones at the top and even more so in the center. It's only as we get closer to the horizon and the sea that we start to see a slight grayish tint in the sky. Then we have our blues for the sea water. And here we can see there isn't a huge variety of blues. Just using four base blues and possibly mixing them to get intermediate tones would be enough to create all the colors we need to represent the water. There aren't a lot of color changes, unlike in the O tutorial for painting the sea, where a wide variety of tones was necessary. Here between the waves, we find some intermediate shades in the central area. And in the central area, we get a fairly light blue between the waves. And inside the waves, this is where we find the darkest blue, and it tends to lean slightly toward green. The secret to mixing a color like this is to add just a tiny bit of yellow to the blue. It might seem a bit counterintuitive, sorry. But when you mix these colors and really look at them closely, zooming in a lot, you will notice a subtle greenish tint. So we'll probably need to add a small touch of yellow. And we'll go over how to mix these colors, but we are also dealing with some very intense blues here. So a five color palette might not be enough. So once again, we'll be using several blue to create those bright and saturated blues. Let's start mixing with the very dark blue we can see in the deepest parts of the wave. So I'm going to begin by mixing a good amount of ultramirn blue with some several blue. And as I mentioned earlier, I will add a little touch of yellow. Now I can see the color isn't too bad, but it's not quite the one we are aiming for yet. So I'm going to make some adjustments. First, I will add a bit of white because I find the mix is a little too dark. Then I will add some more several blue to make it more intense and also a bit more yellow to push the tone slightly toward that greenish tint I mentioned earlier. And at this point, I would say that we are getting closer, but I still feel it needs some fine tuning. So I'm going to add even more yellow to get closer to that greenish touch to that greenish touch. And step by step, we are getting there. And now I would say that this color works pretty well for the darker areas of the water. And from here, I will start creating overtones gradually moving towards lighter shades. So to do that, what I'm going to do is reduce the amount of ultramarine blue and focus more on the several blue. But in this attempt, right now, you will see that I reduced the amount of ultramarine blue too much and the color turn way too light and way too green blue intent. On the other hand, my next stride wasn't light enough. The value difference between the two blues isn't strong enough. They really look like too much like each other. So I'm mixing again and this time, I'm pushing more toward even lighter tones by increasing the amount of mix in white, increasing the amount of white in the mix sorry, and also using more seal blue compared to ultramarine blue. And step by step, I am getting lighter and lighter blue for the different parts of the sea. So we have a good color, and from this one, I'm going to create an even lighter variation, much lighter by adding a large amount of white like this. And this gives me a color that looks pretty good for those very light areas between the waves. So now let's move on to the sky color. And what we notice is that in the upper part, the sky is extremely light, but not a very intense blue. Here I am using some several blue with my white, but I could have used ultramarine blue, too. What's important is adding a small touch of orange, which helps to reduce the intensity of the blue and just like this, by some red and some yellow. And this will give us something softer and more pale. And now the color is starting to look good but still way too intense. So I am adding more and more orange to it to really diminish to really lower the intensity of this blue color. So I am adding some ultramarine blue to my color because I felt that this blue was too intense and ultramarine blue was better than several blue. So I am balancing my color with this ultramarine blue. And then what I will do later on is that I will take some of this color and add some white to it because you can see that in the top part, there is a little bit of this color that is a little bit darker, but most of the sky in the upper part is lighter than that. So I will need to add some white to it. And this is the color that I will use for the middle area that is very light. And for the lowest part, in the end, after a second thought, I thought that the area is much closer to this kind of purple color. So this is the color that I am adding. I am adding a little bit of red to my mix, and this way, I will have a sky that will be with a kind of purple touch in the lower part. And from this color, I will create some lighter one by adding some white to it. And I will also add some white to this first color for the sky that we mix, and now we are going to be ready to start the painting of this beautiful sea. Here is my drawing. I made a quick sketch where I simply mark the main waves and the overall movement of the water. We'll start by painting the sky. To do this, I am using a large flat brush and working from top to bottom. That is a method I really like because it helps avoid accidentally resting my hand in the paint. It keeps the area cleaner and reduces the chance of smudge. So I am using a flat brush and really stretching out the color to make sure everything blends well later on. Even so, I am using fairly generous amounts of paint because the sky covers a large area. And if I notice that I have taken too much paint, I can always wipe it off with the flat brush and put it back on the padded. So like right now, I had too much painting, so I remove it with my brush and put it back on the padded. And so I have applying my colors in the area, and I'm making now back and forth movements, back and forth strokes to stretch the paint evenly and to create the blending between the two zones of color because I didn't use exactly the same color, and with enough back and forth motion, the two slightly different blues merge smoothly together. And before that, of course, I made sure not to overload my brush so I could blend the transition nicely. And now I am working on the rest of the sky, the part with the purplish tone. So I started by painting the darker strips first, and now that I have lightened the mix with a good amount of white, I am painting the areas in between and making sure the colors blend smoothly with the rest. This isn't a particularly complex sky that we are working with. And the temptation in cases like this is to rush through it so we can get to the main part of the painting and start working on the other elements. I totally understand that feeling. I've had it myself in the past, but it is important to take your time, enjoy the process, and do your best because a rush sky can really affect the overall result. So take the time to work carefully with your brush, create smooth blendings, and apply the right colors in the right place. And once that is done, we'll be ready to move on to the next step. 13. Painting the sea far away: Now, let's move on to painting the sea, and we are going to work our way down from the top, just like we did more or less for the sky. So I'm starting with this area along the horizon line where it meets the sky. You can see that the upper part is a little bit darker, so I would say that this blue works quite well for this zone. It's not my darkest blue, but I think it is the right value for this part. So here we are going to have the whole line along the horizon, which might be a bit darker with more or less thickness. You will notice that it's not even dark across the same width everywhere, but there you go along the horizon line, we have this pretty dark blue. So I'm using this flat brush, and I try to be quite precise. As you can see, I am painting with the edge of my brush. This way, I can stay accurate and avoid going over into the sky area. I go in with small strokes, taking my time because it would be a shame to mess up that beautiful scaling and have bits of blue spilling over it. I added a small touch of blue for this wave because I figured it was roughly the same shade of blue. Then moving down from the horizon line, we can see that the color becomes a bit lighter. So you adjust accordingly and pick up this intermediate blue, a shade that is slightly lighter than the previous one. The difference in value isn't huge, but it is still quite noticeable. I can see that in this area, there are a few touches I can apply with this blue, but overall, we are transitioning to something lighter. So I figured I could easily mix these two colors together and get them in an intermediate color or even go ahead and use this very light color and start applying paint in that zone. We've got sunlight really heating the water here, and to create a sense of depth with the forming waves, we are going to have these slide areas that really stand out in certain spots. So I am trying to build a base layer for the water. Now, if I am not 100% precise with where the light and dark areas fall, this is okay. I can always adjust things later. At this stage, I am not trying to define every single ripple or movement in the water, but rather build base by placing the most dominant and visible colors in the area. Now that my colors are applied, I can start blending them to create a nice transition between the lighter blue and the medium blue. As you saw, I use some brush strokes to quickly blend the colors together. You don't necessarily need to spend a lot of time on this, like the sky, we don't need a perfectly smooth surface here since we'll be adding a lot of small detail touches that will help suggest the waves. Here, you can see that I have taken a fairly fine brush, and over the areas are already painted over that base layer, I'm going to apply small strokes to define the waves. I am basically imagining what I would see in the distance. They look like irregular, slightly rounded lines with little bumps. All these extra details help represent the waves. The darker strokes stand out nicely against the light blue I laid down earlier. Then I will add even lighter touches almost pure white because you can notice in that area that some highlight really pop. Those are the ones I will be careful to add. So here I am carefully placing the color with just the tip of my brush, especially in the darker areas where I don't want it to blend too much with the rest. In another spot, if I want a lighter effect, I make sure it blends a little with the surrounding colors. I am doing this with a fine round brush, but I could also have used the sword brush, which would have worked quite well to have those little detail strokes on top of the other elements and draw irregular lines. Evil one gives a pretty good result overall. So now for the darker elements in the area, it is almost done. Just a few more touches to add. And so I am going to add some very highlight. And for that, what I will do is mix even more white into my paint to get a blue that is almost white. These little touches that will really help through contrast to create volume in the area and make this part of the water look very realistic. So this is what I'm going to do right now. So those little touches I added are more than enough to create the illusion of distant waves and therefore of column C. When painting landscapes, most of the time, you really don't need to overthink things and try to place every single element with milimetric precision. You've probably heard me say this often in these videos of this course, and it's true. A lot of people want to place every little wave or detail down to the exact millimeter. Now, of course, precision is important, but when painting a landscape, you also need to let go a little. It's not the end of the world if each element is in place exactly where it should be. As long as your values are working well and you add just a few thoughtful touches, that's usually more than enough to create a realistic scene. So now we are moving on to the area below. I would say that we are done with the upper part, though we may come back and see later once everything is in place if there's anything that needs adjusting. What I am doing in this new section is trying to place the right values in the right spot. I start by marking some reference points. For example, there were some waves here that I find pretty easy to identify. They were fairly dark and really stood out. So I figured I would begin by marking those and painting between them. Now that I have placed those reference points, I can go ahead and paint the rest of the water in between. You can notice that this is an area with a lot of brightness. Some elements are really light. So I don't hesitate to adjust my color to find the right value. I would say that what I have now works pretty well. And so I'm going to apply that color to a large part of the area and then we'll work through the rest of it just like we did earlier. The color application is now finished. I sped things up a little here since it was fairly straightforward, so feel free to pause the video if you need to so you can practice at your own pace and really take your time. Before we move on and start working in more detail, I'm going to begin by defining the wave areas a bit more. For instance, on this wave here, I have already added some darker elements that form the crest, and now I can come in with some lighter touches just below that. I am using a slightly lighter blue again to store creating a nice transition and a soft blend with the water. When painting the sea, I tried to break it down into zones. For example, you saw that the first zone, the one at the top, didn't really show distinct waves. It was more of a suggestion through small lines and the elements felt very distant right on the horizon. Then there is the second zone that we are currently working on. Here, I notice smaller ripples, and this area is especially defined by very light highlights, so I chose to treat it as a full separate section. And finally, we will end with the bottom area where there is a large wave and a lot of darker elements. Progressing zone by zone like this help make things clearer and clearer because painting you see can sometimes feel overwhelming. There are so many waves, so many details, and countless motuches of different colors which can make it quite complex. And within each zone, I look for reference points like here, and I notice like here, I notice waves that stood out clearly, and they became useful markers. This way, I can gradually build up the entire area. And so now I am going to continue by applying small touches of blue over all the white areas I had reserved. Those are the places where the blue of the waves is a bit more pronounced. So I lay them in, and I will make sure everything blends together nicely. Once that is done, we can move on to adding the small touches and finer details that will really help bring the scene to life and make it truly look truly realistic. I am going to refine the blending across all the waves in the same manner in the same way I did for the first one, and I will see you once that is done so we can move on to working on the details. I would say that we are good now. We have achieved some nice blending, and we can move on to working on the details in this area. I'm going to focus on one section at a time and try to refine it as much as possible before moving on to the next. So here between the dark waves we added earlier, I noticed a small bluish area that stands out clearly and is quite well defined. So I am adding it I am adding it in now using slightly irregular lines. It's not a perfectly straight or evenly painted section. So I have marked those irregular lines, and on top of that, I can add a bit of more detail. And since we can see that within the small area, there are some darker bluish lines that really pop. So I am adding them to give a more realistic and detailed look. I am paying close attention to the shape of these elements. I see that they are a bit uneven, so I replicate that. Then I move on to working on a larger wave we saw in the distance. You will notice it too has some dark lines that stand out some kind of curved line so I'm adding those as well. And the same thing goes in here. I can see that this large wave extends slightly downward and on the right. So there is a section with a slightly lighter blue. So I observe the shape and the value and I add it in. I also notice that over this area, there are other darker elements. So I apply those lightly with my brush to keep the blue nice and deep. And within the raised part of this wave, there are even more darker touches, so I go ahead and add those two. At this stage, I am doing a lot of observation, carefully studying the different elements and zones and asking myself, Okay, compared to what I have already painted, what is missing here? What could I had to improve this section even more? And once I have answered that question through observation, I had in those little elements accordingly. So right now, we are in a phase that might feel a bit slow, a bit repetitive, and that's exactly when I want you I want to encourage you to keep going because painting isn't always flashy. Sometimes it is slow, sometimes it is uncertain, and sometimes you doubt when what you are doing, and that's totally normal. If you feel like you are not getting anywhere or just going in circles, trust me, you are right where you should be in the learning process. This is where you develop your eye, your patience, and your ability to observe without needing to control everything. When we are just starting out or even with experience, we often want everything to look good right away. But in painting, the magic rarely happens on the first birth strokes. It happens when you keep going, when you observe, when you adjust. And even if it takes time, that time is never wasted. Even the strokes you are not happy with are part of the journey. So don't chase perfection in every moment. Focus on consistency on understanding and above all, enjoying the process. You are allowed to make mistakes. You are allowed to change things. That's not failure. It is progress. And I promise you, when you step back and look at what you have built, you'd be proud of how far you have come and all the progresses that you have made within weeks, months, or even years. When you look at what you did several weeks ago or several months or years ago, you will see that you have made some progress. Painting the sea is about understanding a living, constantly moving surface. It isn't just about filling a space with blue. And the thing is, you can't show everything. You have to choose what to reveal and what to suggest. That's the challenge. It's not about painting every wave and every reflection down to the millimeter. It's about creating an overall impression that feels right, that flows, that captures the column and the energy depending on the sea you are painting. Here we have got a fairly calm sea, so we are going for soft and smooth transition, subtle contrast. This isn't where you go into extreme detail, but where you work carefully with values and blending with small touches added on top of your good base, you will notice that a successful seascape Isabel is often about light where it hits, where it fades, where it skims across little ripples. And the more you observe the sea in real life or in photo, the more you will see, it's never just flat and even. It's always moving even when it looks calm. So don't try to control every part. Give your brush some freedom and work in sections, follow the feel of the scene and build your see the way a musician builds a melody. It might sound abstract, but once you get into it, painting the s becomes generally satisfying. All right, we have already come a long way, and if you are still here, that means you are sticking with A with it. So hats off to you. I know a subject like this can feel a bit technical, a bit repetitive, and sometimes you wonder if it's really worth spending so much time painting water blue waves. But honestly, this is where you learn the most, not in the flashy parts, but in the quiet moments when we sharpen our eye, practice subtlety, and learn to feel what we paint. Right now, you are learning to make the medium speak to suggest rather than explain. And that's real painting. It's not just applying a formula. It's learning how to adapt to what you see. And take a second to look at your work. Even if it's not perfect, you are building something believable and alive. This kind of scene also teaches you to let go a bit because you can't control every detail, and that's a good thing. So if your energy is dipping a bit, take a deep breath, step back from your canvas or sketch, and look at the whole piece. Remind yourself that you are learning something valuable. And most importantly, we are not done yet. There are still details to a light to place, little effects to create, and that's what's going to bring the whole scene to life. Hang in there, and let's keep going. We are almost finished with this area. Just a few more small strokes to add here and there between all these elements, and then we'll be ready to move on to the final part, the lower section of the water. So hang in there, stay focused, and we'll finish strong with a beautiful wave to wrap up the seascape. M Oh 14. Painting the big wave: We are moving on to the lower section. In this area, we are dealing with a lot of detail, especially with this wave that's really starting to form. Since this wave is closer to us than what's near the horizon, it makes sense that everything here looks more detail, and that's often how perspective works in painting. The closer something is, the more contrast texture and information it carries. Now, when you are faced with something like this, it is easy to feel a bit overwhelmed. You might ask yourself, where do I even start? How do I paint this? And as always, my answer is simple. Start with the clearest elements, the ones that stand out the most. Most of the time, these are either the darkest shapes in the light scene or the lightest ones in a dark scene. Here, I would say that the darkest parts of the wave are the most obvious. So this is where I begin. Adding them will help establish the structure. And once these elements are in place, it becomes much easier to position everything else around them. So I am using a medium sized round brush, and I look at my reference and ask myself, where can I add these dark shaves? What stands out clearly? And based on what I see, I start adding them in. As you can tell, I am not overthinking every single burst strokes. I am mostly focused on getting the color right and placing the shapes in roughly the right spots. Then I gently stretch the paint with quick and fluid strokes. In the upper part of this section, I notice that there are dark elements, but they are not quite as deep as the ones I have just placed. So I adjusted my color slightly before applying those. And once I have placed all the main elements and I am happy with their position, I will go back and start blending in between them to tie everything together smoothly. One important thing to keep in mind, especially when painting the sea on a small surface like this, unlike a bit canvas late, like, for example, 1 meter height and 50 centimeters wide, is that your values have to be really precise. There is less room for subtle shifts, so every little contrast matters. And this is how you make the scene feel convincing, even in a compact space. So here we have to be really precise with our values and color because on a small format like this, we don't need as many details. What's really going to stand out and help create a sense of depth in this area is the way we use color. As for the details, you have seen that they are made up of very small touches, just like just little strokes placed here and there, sometimes slightly random lines. Whereas, when you are working on a large canvas, all the elements naturally appear bigger and they become more visible. If I want a realistic result, on a big format, I will have to add a lot more details. Otherwise, the area between the small wave lines will look unfinished or flat. But on a smaller piece like this one, we don't need to go that far into detail to make it look realistic. What that means, though, is that we must be precise with our blues, both in terms of color and value to create volume and give the impression of depth. So now I have placed my reference points with those dark line, and I can start painting in between them. So I take a moment to observe and ask myself, between these two lines, what blue do I see? Is it a dark blue, a lighter one, something in between, and I go ahead and apply it. That's the process I will be following across the entire area, observing each face and placing the right shade of blue in the right spot. So the whole area starts to take on volume. And so this is what I am going to do now, carefully apply all my blues where they belong, and now we do this off camera. And once that is done, we'll come back and work on blending the colors together. For now, it's just about laying down those different blues as accurately as possible. Now that I have a solid base applied in this area, I am going to start blending all these elements together to create a smooth transition. I'll be working back and forth between the different colors. Of course, I have whipped the excess paint of my brush before starting, and whenever I notice too much paint building up, I remove it again. That is important for keeping the blend soft and clean. Now, it is true that some of the darker tones might lose a bit of intensity after the blending, but that's part of the process. I will go back in later to bring them out more strongly if needed. For now, I am just applying gentle strokes to blend everything together. I will also work on blending the lighter zones above to smooth out the transitions between those areas as well. Of course, we'll still enhance all of this later with more detail. That's the plan. But even at this stage, creating the soft transition already helps make the shifts from one zone to the next feel more natural and consistent. I am now remixing my dark color to make it even darker. I am adding a bit more burn timber to deepen the tone, and now I am going back over my dark elements, this time trying to be a bit more precise than before and making sure those areas are really dark and stand out clearly. So I don't hesitate to reload my brush frequently, and I am adding these small touches that will really pop against the other blues. Then we'll build on this by adding small details here and there, which will help to create even more depth thanks to the contrast between the lighter and darker values that we are placing now. I have added most of the dark elements, and I sped things up a little since it was quite repetitive. But of course, take your time to do it for roughly. Now we are moving on to the detail phase of these waves. And once again, what's really going to matter here is observation. Observe where those details are located. Observe their direction of the lines that you are going to paint, their thickness and their length, and also their color and value. It sounds like a lot to observe, and it is. But once you get used to it, it becomes a natural part of your process. You will do it automatically as you paint. In this area I previously shaded, I can see lots of lines that are slightly curved, forming some interesting patterns. So I try to replicate that and add them in. There are quite a few darker shapes like these that work well. So I have added them first. Then between all those darker shapes, I will also start adding some lighter touches. For example, in this area, I am starting with a fairly light blue. But I think I will go even lighter to really make everything pop. And it's this combination of light and dark values that will create the illusion of death and give us the sense that a large wave is forming right in front of us. So, yes, we are in a technical phase again, but it is important to take your time here, not to rush and to remember that every small stroke brings you closer to the goal, creating this beautiful, soft column C with a well defined wave coming forward. So I am also not hesitating to add a few touches over the middle section we painted earlier. This will help to create an even better transition between the two parts and tie the whole scene together. So this is what I am going to do right now. We are now in the final stretch, and this is often where everything comes together. We are working on a large detail area with a big, impressive wave. It's really the star of the scene. So this is the time to slow down a bit, to observe even more carefully and to enjoy what you are creating. At this point, it is normal to feel a little tired, maybe tempted to rush to the finish, but this is exactly when you need to remember why you are painting. We don't paint just to finish something. We paint to feel, to understand, and to enjoy each part of the process. And this wave is a great opportunity to do that. It asks you to be precise, to balance values and details to shift between soft blends and sharper contrast. What you are adding now are the final touches that will bring the whole scene to life. It's like the last notes of a song. They need to be right, but they also need to carry intention. It doesn't matter if everything isn't perfect. What matters is that you are present, focused and finishing with purples. So take a moment to breathe and look at everything you have already accomplished. You have laid down the foundation, build up the forms, develop the contrast, and now it is time to bring it all together and give life to this wave. And let me tell you, if you have made it this far, you have already done 90% of the work. What is left is just the final touch, the cherry on top. So stick with it, stay in the floor and go for that little extra spark that makes all the difference in your painting. I am continuing with this central area of lounge wave, and you can see here that the contrasts are really strong. We've got some very bright areas, so I am not hesitating to load my fine brush with very light blue like this and apply the color white making sure that some of these areas aribly blend with the rest. And this way, I can really make certain waves stand out more and add even more volume to this part of the painting. I am continuing to add these small light touches. And in the end, even though this area is closer and we can see more visible details, we realize that the details we need to add in this closer section are once again, really just a cluster of fairly messy lines overlapping and blending with one another. But when we take a step back, we can see that these lines, which might look confusing or noisy when viewed up close, actually come together to form something coherent and realistic. The elements flow into each other, and it all helps create the impression of a column C and a beautiful wave that has just taken shape. So at first, I was about to say that with just a few more brushstrokes, the painting was done. But then after taking a step back, I realized that this upper area wasn't standing out enough. The transition with the other section wasn't quite strong or smooth enough, and because of that, it didn't really help suggest the wave clearly in that spot. So I am going back in and working it a bit more, adding a few lighter touches to bring it out. And once that is done, the work on the sea will be finished. And this is it. The tutorial is almost complete. I hope you enjoy the process and learn a lot along the way. If you have made it this far, I sincerely congratulate you. This wasn't an easy subject, and you stuck with it all the way through, well done for your hard work, your patience, and your focus, keep practicing, keep observing, and most of all, keep enjoying the process. So thank you for following this course and see you very soon with a new project.