Seascapes Masterclass in Gouache

1. Introduction: In this class, we'll break down the process of painting sea scapes by doing nine small square studies. Each small study will take no longer than 20 minutes. I'll go over the essential things to pay attention to when painting realistic seascapes in Guash. Then we'll apply the principles we learn from this process to paint two largest sea scape paintings. I'll be taking you through the entire process in real time, so you can see exactly how I work and paint along with me at a comfortable pace. Since we'll be working in Gach, I'll also share some helpful tips along the way to help you learn and understand the medium. 2. Materials: Let's take a look at the materials that we'll need for this class. Starting with ache paint. I'm using various brands of artist grade gouache that I've squeezed out into this airtight palette. So it's a plastic palette that comes with 24 wells, and it comes with the silicon lid, so it keeps it quite airtight and I find the gah stays very fresh in here. In terms of the colors that you want for this class, I would recommend having the cool and warm of each primary. So a cool yellow, a warm yellow. A cool red warm red, cool blue warm blue and a burnt umber, black and white. We can mix pretty much every other color from those colors. You don't need as many as I have here. One last thing about using a palette like this with Gach is if you don't use it frequently, you may find that it starts to grow some mold. For that, I would recommend using the imi Mal juice spray. I find that it has worked really well in keeping my gah mold free. I don't use it that often. I just spray it when I close the immi guash. And usually, I have a spray bottle with just regular tap water that I missed the paints with. Feel free to use any gash that you have. You don't need a lot of colors, just the primaries in the cool and warms and a black, white and burnt umber. Then for my palette, I'm just using a porcelain tray For my paper, I am using watercolor paper that I've just cut down to a square. The original paper was eight by ten, and I've just cut a little bit off, so it's about eight by 8 ". Each little square is about the length of a finger. These are going to be very small studies. I've taped it down with masking tape around the edges, and then because I want a thin border between them, I've used a really thin washi tape. For my water, I have a water tank here, and it's got two wells. If I need clean water, I can keep one clean and the other I can use for my dirty colors or I can keep complimentary colors separated or keep my light and dark colors separated. Then I've got a towel here for drying my brushes. You can use a paper towel, tissues, anything that works for you. I prefer something like this because I can use it over and over again and it can just take a lot more water. I find if I use paper towels, they get soak through really quickly. As for my brushes, I have picked three brushes to use. I'm going to use a half inch angle brush. I find angle brushes to be really versatile. And you can do a lot with them. You can use the point for thinner details. You can use the straight flat edge to do thin lines as well, so it's very versatile. Then I've got a size six round brush with a pointed tip and a size one rigger or line of brush for a couple of thin lines, especially since we're doing really small studies, sometimes we may need a couple of thin lines to indicate some of the water and the waves in the painting. These brushes, they're all synthetic. I really enjoy using synthetic brushes for ash, and these one specifically are my collaboration brush set with raft ammo. They come in a set of five and I'm just using three of the five brushes for this class. Then you also want a pencil and a netable eraser to do some quick sketches. So how this class is going to work as we are going to do three by three, nine quick and small sea scape studies. I hope each one takes no more than 15, 20 minutes, ideally even less. The point of them is to just get a understanding of how to approach painting sea scapes in this way, and then we'll do two larger individual seascape paintings afterwards. I'll just go through and paint them one by one, so we'll complete each one before we move on to the next. 3. Study 1: Blue seascape: So Let's start with our first a little sea scape study, and we're just going to do a sketch. These should all be pretty straightforward and simple. For that sketch, you'll want to just place in the horizon line first, and I'm going to keep that quite high up, so maybe about a quarter of the way down, and then just indicate where the water is. And that's all we need to do for this sketch. We can start painting because once you start getting the paint in, you're going to cover these lines really quickly anyway. There's no point putting any effort into this. If the pencil line is very dark, it will show through parts of your gash that are really light. If you don't want that to happen, just make sure you lighten your lines with a eraser, and I like using a netable eraser for this reason because it's good at lightening the lines without completely taking it off. I'm going to start with the half inch angle brush and I will probably start with this brush for all the paintings, and then as I move down to some details, I will use the round brush. To be honest, if you wanted to keep the paintings really loose, you could use a half inch angle brush for the entire painting for all of them. Maybe we will experiment with that a little bit as well. For this first one, let's start with the half inch angle brush and you're just going to want to pick up a little bit of water just to wet the brush a little. For the sky, I'm going to start with some white and just a touch of your cool blue. That could be a primary blue, it's realan blue a cyan. And I'm just going to drop that in. Pick up some more white. And the horizon line, is just a little bit lighter, I pick up some more white and I drop that in there, and then to indicate some clouds, what you can do is just a bit of burnt umber and just drop that in. While the paint is wet. We just gray down a little bit of the blue. You can grab a little bit of ultramarine blue to mix with burnt umber, which produces a nice gray, and just drop that in. While the paint is wet, get some soft bleeds. Then I will clean off my brush and pick up some white. I'm just using the corner of my brush. I really like using the tip. It's very versatile. And just drop a little bit of that it into some of the lighter areas in the cloud. I'm doing this really quickly because I want to get it all in while the paint is wet, so you get really soft transitions and then clean that off. If you need to clean up anything, just using a clean brush, you can soften some things out. The point of these studies is not to be too precious about them. I'm going to try and just let things be natural and loose. Then for the water, what we want to do is ignore all the details and just look for the big colors. I'm seeing a blue transitioning into more of a lighter bluish green, into the sand color. I see hints of a purplesh color. I want to ignore the white sea foam on top and just look for the color behind it or underneath it. And just block that in. Starting at the top, we can see the blue here. It's much darker than the sky, so we can use that as reference. I'm going to start with my cool blue again. I'll just mix a little bit of burnt umberin. I found that if you mix burned umberin with a cool blue, it pushes a little bit towards green, which in this case is what we want because the water is a little bit greenish. I'm going to start with that, just test that out. For the horizon line, I'll just pull a line across with my brush. Straight line across and then I'm going to start mixing in white as I can see. It grows lighter and lighter. I'm also going to add in a touch of yellow as I come down, so I'm going to grab some more white and just a tiniest little bit of a cool yellow, just a bit to slowly push it towards more of a blue green. At this stage, I'm going to clean off my brush. And using a clean brush that I've partly dried off. I also like to use my fingers to feel the moisture in there and just take off any excess moistures needed and blend out that line. You might want to pick up some darker paint to place back in there. Then I'll clean off my brush regularly when I'm blending out things, so I'm not placing too much paint onto the paper as I go. Then I'm going to pick up some more white as I move down. I'm keeping this paint nice and creamy, so you'll see I'm using a lot of paint. And I'll just bring it down a little bit more while also picking up a little bit of the paint that I had previously on the palette, so I can transition this nicely, so that's about as low as that goes. Then I'm going to get in the sand. The sand is a tan color. I'm going to go for burnt umber with a bit of the white and I would do some yellow ochre, but if you don't have yellow cha, we can do a little bit of yellow. And a touch of blue. I'm using ultramarine blue, and maybe a touch of red, but just the tiniest little bit. Then I would just block in that lower corner. Then it's a bluish purple. I'm going to clean off my brush. Maybe go for some ultramarine blue mixed with the white and everything else we have on the palette. It's a bit of a muddy ish color and just mix in a bit of that red that we have and just block in this area. Now my paint is a bit runny, which is good. I want to glaze a little bit, how you glaze is you just use thin down paint. And wash it over the top. That's my block in stage. What I might want to do is just grab a little bit more white and just transition that out a little. There's our base layer. Now we'll switch over to our round brush. Again, I'll start just by picking up a little bit of water, just wet the bristles a little. Then we'll go in and just get in some of the waves in the movement. I'm going to start with a darker line. I'll pick up a little bit more of blue. The color I was using for the sky and mostly for the water. I'll just mix a bit more burnt umber with it, which will just darken the color. And I'll grab a touch of yellow. With this darker color, I'm going to paint in some of the waves and the bumps in the water. I just keep them nice and thin. And then I'll add a little bit of white as I see some areas are a little bit lighter this area closer to us. Then I'm going to clean that of and I'm going to go into a white, just picking up some white and you can pick up a little bit of the blue, so it's a pure white, and we'll just paint on some of the foam that's coming up. A lot of times that shadow, the lines we were placing on before, they sit just underneath. This foam. You can also just do a couple of thin strokes with this white paint as well. Then I also like to just drop in a bit of sea foam at the front. Grab and highlight a couple of areas. I'm just stippling in a little bit of the C foam now and then just shaping it out. So I just tapping that on. Then I think I want to just quickly go back to my dark color before and just emphasize the shadow a little bit under some of the W. We just painted in because when the comes up, it creates a shadow underneath. Then to soften out that color. You can either grab a lighter color and place it underneath, or you can also just use a wet brush and soften it out. If I just clean off my brush and I use a wet brush, I can just go in underneath and soften out that dark color. It's not too dark. Then looking at the reference photo again, I think I want a little bit more Sfoam, maybe running along here. Then I also want to outline this area. You can also run a little bit of a dry brush across here for some effect, and just use your finger to it out a little. Then a couple of finishing touches, I just want maybe a little bit more transition in there. I'll go into a color that's not quite as dark as our dark, but just a bit darker than the water and just drop in a bit more shadow here and there. Again, with a clean brush, I can go ahead and just soften out what I just placed in if it's too harsh. Just to accent some of the really dark areas, I'll go back into my darkest color, the blue and burnt umber and just go right underneath. A couple of the main waves and just accent that darker line. And once again, if needed, just slightly soften it out, so it's not too harsh. That's pretty much our first seascape done, so we're keeping these really lose and quick and simple. Just to get the idea for how to approach it. If you wanted to do a painting of this, you take the same approach and you just blow it up and put a bit more into the details. Let's move on to our second one. 4. Study 2: Just after sunset: The second painting we're doing is actually based off a reference photo that I took myself at the beach. For this, we're going to do basically the same thing as we are for every other painting. We'll start with a very quick sketch where we just place in the horizon line. This one, I'm going to have it a little bit lower, and then maybe just the water line. I know where the sand starts. And we can go ahead with the sketch. One thing you want to be careful of is if you're setting up your painting similar to me. I've used really thin washy tape. If you're not careful, the paint could go over to the other side if you're using a big brush. If you want your paintings to come out nice and clean, just be careful not to paint it over the edges. Once again, starting with the sky, I'm going to go for a transition from blue to yellow to a pink. Starting with blue, I can use what I have on the palette already. Start a bit of white into there. And just sweep that along the top. Keeping the paint nice and creamy is very blendable. Then I'm just going to quickly clean that off because our papers, our working surface is very small, so even the tiniest bit of contaminated paint can can really change up your colors. I've mixed in a little bit of yellow as I'm trying to transition to a yellow wish green. Place that in bring it down a little and then I'm going to clean that off. Go back between the two and just blend that out with a clean brush with not too much moisture in there. If there's not enough paint, just grab some more paint from your palette and just blend it out like this. If you want while it's wet, you can grab some white and just drop in. Hint of some clouds in there. And then moving down. I'm going to grab a b and a bit of my red. Maybe actually a bit of warm yellow. Warm yellow is the yellow that leans a bit more towards orange. I've got a b bit of orange or warm yellow. Drop that into there. And just bring that up, mix it with some of the color I used before, which was a yellowish green. Clean off my brush again and just soften out that blend. Then we can block in the water, so once again, ignore all the details. Just look for the big blocks of color. It's a little bit more of a dark green. I'm going to start once again with my cool blue and some burnt umber. S. And a touch of yellow. This time I'm using a little bit more burnt umber in the mixture to keep the color nice and dark and toned down. I'll add a little bit of ultramarine blue in as well. I've got a bit of primary blue ultramarine blue, and a bit of burned umber and yellow. For the horizon line, once again, I'll just pull it across. A I'll bring it down a little and then I'll start to add some white into the paint as I keep bringing it down. And then a little bit more white. Then I will clean this off. A The good thing about painting water is you actually don't need a smooth transition there because a lot of it gets covered up with details from the waves. We don't actually have to worry about there being a smooth transition. Now we can do the sand which I'm going to use burnt umber. It's a little bit more of a dark brown compared to the other painting, which was a bit more of a yellowish. I'm just going to mix it with some burnt umber and a touch of white. And just a little bit more bent a little bit more ultramarine blue. And a touch more white in there. I'm going to get that in and then a little bit more white once again. As I find the transition point between the two, you can go into the previous color. And then just clean off your brush and soften it out slightly with a clean brush. Then I will switch to my round brush, and we're going to do the same thing. Going into an even darker color than the base layer. I'll use a bit more ultramarine blue, a little bit more burnt umber, a primary blue. Actually, I think what we'll do we'll start with the waves and then we know where to place the dark accents underneath. Let's start that again. Starting with white because this photo was taken around sunset, so it's much darker. The white is not a pure white. Just grab some white and you want to just mix it with some of the blues and the grays that you have on your palette just to tone that down. It's not so bright and start placing on those waves. If you want it to be less transparent, just make sure the paint is a little bit thicker. Otherwise, a light paint like this can dry to be quite dark on top of a dark background. I'm just indicating where the main waves are. Then I'll darken it a little bit just to lower the contrast and just do a couple of lines to indicate some highlights in there without making it too light. Now that we've got those waves in, and then we can go back to our really dark paint, and we can go just underneath the waves and get that shadow in. Then just here and there, you can place in a couple more lines, add a bit of detail to the waves. Just going to clean it off, maybe grab a little bit of lighter paint to do a transition out, or you can use a clean brush and soften that transition like we did in the previous painting, using a clean brush, soften it out. This works best when the paint you first lay down is nice and creamy, you're just touching it slightly and just softening out that color while picking up minimal amount of paint. Then I'm going to go into some white and just highlight a little bit along the top edge. Where the foam would just be receiving a bit more of a highlight. That way, it just looks a bit more three D like it has a bit more form. And then going back into a little bit of the bluish greens on my palette, just to darken and just gray it down a little. I'm going to paint on some of the sea foam. I just do this loosely using the tip of my brush, just doing squiggly motions. Okay. Add a little bit more white as we approach this area, and I'm going to place in the water line. Goes up to about there. My consistency of paint is not too. Maybe a bit more towards the dry side so I can dry brush if needed. I'm just getting these squiggly lines on. Cover all of that. Then I want to grab a little bit of white for a couple of highlights around here. Just start in some highlights. And Then just underneath this line, there's always a bit of a shadow. Grab a dark color and just place in a shadow under here. As that sea foam comes in, has a bit of height to it. It's maybe not so obvious in a small painting like this, but it does create a shadow underneath. The second piece is now finished, let's move on to our third one. 5. Study 3: Orange sunrise: We'll start the third one once again with our sketch. This time, horizon line is a little bit lower once again, more towards the halfway line. Then I'll just place in the line for the sand. And we're good to get started. The sky this time, it's more of a teal color. I won't mix in Any burnt umbis. I want to keep the color a little bit more pure. I'm just cleaning out my brush thoroughly beforehand. Also reminded to mish paints, just to keep them fresh so they don't dry out, especially on hot dry days. This time, I'm going to start with the same blue. Though if you have athalo blue, you could use that instead as that's been more of a saturated blue and would really work nicely for this teal color. Starting with that, I'm going to mix in white. And just a tiny touch of yellow. As I slowly push it towards teal without making it too green. I'm keeping the paint nice and creamy as always. Starting with a darker blue up the top. I'll bring it down a little and then very quickly, I start to mix in white. Then I'll clean this off. And first, using the clean brush and taking off some moisture with the towel in my fingers, I'll just soften out the transition. Then I grab white. Touch of water, and just go into here. Leave a gap for the orange as I don't want that to blend too much with the green. Pick up some paint. Clean off the brush once again, and soften out that transition. Maybe bring a little bit of the blue back in. I think it's a bit too washed out. For the orange down the bottom, I'm going to grab a bit of my warm yellow and a tiny bit of white and my. I only want a little. I've grabbed a bit too much. I'm just taking it off. You want to just sweep that across the horizon line. As you bring it up, add a lot of white, I'm going to clean that off and just pick up some pure white and just soften out the transition. Then for the water, it's a really pale light color light orange, that's reflecting the beautiful orange in the sky. Grabbing some white and some of the orange. I'm going to drop that in gets a bit more intense, a bit closer to us, so I pick up a bit more color. Then I'm just going to drop in a little bit more of the warm yellow closer to us as it's intense or just a bit more intense over here. While it's wet, I drop it in, so it's nice and soft. Then for the sand, it's very similar to the previous painting, so I'm just going to go into the same mixture of burns umber and some ultramarine blue. And just drop that in. Again, this looks like sunset, the sand is a much darker color. That's our base color done. Now we'll go to the round brush. I just want to make sure that this is dried before I start with the round brush. This time, I might start with the dark as there isn't lighter C foam. That dark is similar to the blues we've been using so I'll go into my blue with burnt umber. Starting with that, I'll place in the main waves I see, there's a main patch over here. I'll just block that in to start with. Then there's also one that comes up in the back over here. Then I'll add some white to the mixture as I come down and try to soften out the transition a. I'm just adding more and more white. I will do what I usually do, which is soften out with a clean brush as well. Cleaning all of that off with a clean brush. Just go in. Soften that out. Same with here. If it looks like I'm lifting up too much paint, then I will pick up a bit of paint on the palette to drop that back in. That way, there's no patchy areas on my painting. Then picking up some of this lighter blue. I'm just going to do some strokes to indicate movement of the water in the distance and close up. Hopefully by now by this little study, you're starting to see the pattern in creating these seascapes. It's more or less the set of steps and the things to watch out for. Over here, I notice a little bit of a shadow. I've just picked up some of the burnt umber mixture. I'm just going to lightly drop it in over here. And then maybe just soften it out with a clean brush. And also just drop in a bit more orange. Then for the lighter colors, you want to pick up some lighter blue, same mixtures, what you've got on the palette, just a bit of white and just paint a little bit of that. Foam In the distance, you can add a bit of highlight. The foam is definitely not as light as in the previous paintings, so I keep it nice and dark. So the contrast isn't too strong. Then I do want to push this part down a little. Using some thick paint. I'm just going to bring this down. And you just want to paint a bit of a dark line underneath. But our sand is, so it might be hard to do this, in which case you can just leave it. So I think that one looks pretty good. I might just add a couple of light lines. Here to indicate some movement in the water. And this one is done and we can move on to our fourth one. 6. Study 4: Distant mountains: For our fourth one, this one is quite beautiful. We've got a little bit of mountains in there and a little bit more details in the sky, so that'll be fun. I'm going to keep the horizon line just a little bit above halfway. Then just get in that line where the sand starts. To be honest, we could actually go ahead and do the sketch for the rest of these in one go because they are just so simple. I'll just go ahead and do them more now. The horizon line for the next one. I'm going to keep that about the same, maybe a little bit lower. Got some cliffs along there, some mountains, and then the next one. Again, similar similar height again for the horizon line. This one down here, I'll keep the horizon line a little bit higher. And the water reaches down the bottom. This one, Horizon line is very high. I've got some mountains. And the last one, horizon line is about one third of the way down, and there we go. So we'll just get the sketches done and out of the way with. And let's start our painting. Once again, going in with the flat brush, you can also use a round brush if fat fiel a little bit more comfortable for you. With the flat brush, I was just cleaning it out a little. Now I'm going to start with the sky. I'll start with some white and just go into a bit of this orange mixture we have here. Then maybe mix in a little bit of cool yellow. And drop that in. And then I'm just going to mix in a bit more of the warm yellow as I move down and keeping the paint nice and creamy and wet so I can get really soft transitions in there. I'm going to move it down, add in a little bit of red. I'm going for my co rele bit more yellow. And then there's kind of a hint of a purply gray, so I'm going to go for a bit of ultramarine blue, which will just gray that color down. Then I'm going to clean off my brush, go back into some of the lighter yellow, just soften that out. I'm also just going to go back into the yellow and the white. Mostly the white and just drop in where the sun is. While blending out some of the color again. Picking up a little bit of the cool yellow with the white, and just dropping that. Right in the center. That's the sky and then we've got the mountain. I'm just going to let the background dry. Shouldn't take too long. For the mountain, I'm going to grab a little bit of ultramarine blue and just mix it with a bit of burns. There's two layers to the mountain. The one behind is a little bit lighter and the one in front, is just a little bit. I'm the point tip of my angle brush now to get this in Then I'll just mix in a little bit more blue with the burnt just to get a slightly darker color. Ideally, the previous layer has dried before we do this. I'll just give it a minute to let it dry. In the meantime, we'll talk about the next step. Water is very pale and light, very light, bluish orange color, and then the sand is quite dark. It's very similar to this, so we'll keep it nice and d, similar color to this. So I'm just painting in closer mountains to us. It is still slightly wet, so it's a little bit hard. Trying to get a clean edge. It's just a small study, so it's not a big deal, so we can leave that. Then for the water, I think I'll do a really light layer, grabbing some white and we'll go into this area, which has a little bit of hint of orange in there. And I'll just pick up a bit of blue ultramarine blue. And just drop that in. I'll clean that and for the sand. I'll go for bent umber with ultramarine blue. So that's done. Then now switching over to a round brush. So I want to f in orange colors into into the grabbing some of that from my palette. And make sure that blue is dry before you do this. It's got some warm yellow and some pinks in there and I just drop that in. We get a little bit of warmth feeling of warmth coming from the reflection of the sky. Doing this really lightly so as to avoid mixing with the blue. Because then you'll get a green. I just drop it in lightly and soften out a bit as needed. Then I'll start with the dark. Go into a nice dark blue, I'll do ultramarine blue with a bit of burn t umber, but more blue than burned t umber. And we'll find that main. Just make sure your background is d, so mine's a little bit we still, so I just means that the blue won't be as dark going on as it is going to try to blend with the light color just laid down. Ve and I'm going to lighten it with some white and just do a couple of strokes as we've been doing, so just showing the movement of the water. You can also use a lighter color underneath here to that transition. I'm sort of dry brushing here as I put the strokes on, which just means my paint is very or it's quite on the brush, and I'm just across very lightly. Now I want to get a bit more of that sun effect glow of the sun. Going into some white and yellow, I'm going to tap that down right in the middle where the sun will be reflecting down into the water. Maybe I'll grab a little bit more of my warm yellowish color and a bit more warmth. This way it also contrasts against the light yellow. Then I want to grab a little bit more white mixed with some blue, so it's not too bright and I want to paint on that sea foam layer here. I just runs along the edge and also add a little bit of highlight to these waves. As the water splashes down, it curves over the top. Then grabbing a really dark blue. I'm just going to add that shadow underneath the sea foam. What I'll do is I'll add a bit of a darker blue just before it so that the lighter white color can stand out a bit. Then I'll go back into the dark blue. I just want to accent some of the darks and maybe pull out a couple of strokes. It looks like it's flowing flowing out, grab a little bit more lighter blue and just transition that a bit better. Grabbing a clean brush now, just soften it out. Just as an added touch, maybe I want a bit more along here. I'm just adding some more warm yellow. This next one is done, let's move on to our fifth one. 7. Study 5: Moody sky: The next one, we've got a little bit of a different color palette, got some more purples and pinks in there, and the sand is a little bit more golden yellow. I've cleaned my palette so that I'm starting with some fresh colors this time. Again, I'm going to start with my flat brush, my angle brush. For the sky, I'm just going to drop in some purple to start with. For the purple, I'm going to go ultramarine blue. With some red, I prefer a cool red for some more vibrant purples, and I'll just mix in a little bit of white in there, I might start with a little bit more blue, and I'll start to drop that into the corner. Not too much. Then I'm going to very quickly move more into my reds and my white as I drop that in. For this one, I'm going to mostly use the point of my brush to drop in the colors like this. Keep things soft. Then again, going to go into more white and more red. This is my cool red, which is the pinkish red. I'm just going to quickly clean off the brush and just go into more white. Clean off the brush, whenever I want to soften out the colors, I just clean off my brush. Now I'm just going to go into some cool red and white. It's quite pinkish. I'm working to the lighter areas. I'm trying to save the really light parts of the white yellow e parts for now and not work into it. As purple and yellow complimentary colors. If you mix them together, things can get a little bit gray, which is not necessarily what you want. Now I'm ready to start working into my yellows. For that, I'm going to grab some white and some cool yellow and just drop that right into the center where the sun is. Then grab some more yellow as I make my way outwards, and drop that in, then a bit. Then I'll start mixing in a little bit of warm yellow. I say grabbing some of my warm yellow. Cleaning off the brush and with a clean brush, just soften out a couple of the colors in there. Then maybe just drop in a bit more purple clouds over here. Okay. And once that's dri, we can paint in a little bit of the cliff. For the cliff, I'm going to go for I would use a yellow ocher, but maybe you don't have that, so I'll just mix the color. It'll be some yellow with a bit of blue and red. With some white. So I just dropped that in. Then for the water, it's mostly a reflection of the sky with lots of warm yellowish colors, which is similar to what we've mixed here. Maybe I'll start with the center and work my way outward, so I'll start with white and a yellow yellow. I'll just drop that down the center to get that bright glow in there. Then I'll work my way out. I'll go into a bit of this mixture, which was just the sand mixture from before. I mean the cliff mixture. Then I think we want some purple in there. First, I'll just soften out. Transition a little bit. Then going into some of my purples, I'm going to drop the outer edges. And also some pinks as we move in here. If I just look past all the details, these are the colors that I'm picking out the color of the sky should give a big clue. Then for the color of the sand, we can mix that up if we don't have yellow cha. Yellow. I'm using warm yellow, warm red, and a touch of ultramarine blue. Maybe a bit of cool yellow as well. And a touch of white and just bring that in clean that off again and using that clean brush just soften it slightly ad the edges. Then switching to our round brush. Once the background has dried, we can start getting in some of the It's mostly sea foam. I would grab some white and it's got a pinkish purply hue, so I'll just go into the mixtures on my palette. Grab a bit of everything, and start dropping in. Some of the leaves. I'm doing those quickly lines again to indicate the s foam and they move or converge towards the from the perspective we're looking at it from, I give them a little bit of direction. So I drop that in. Then I'm going to grab a bit more in this time. Maybe not mix it with any and drop in a highlight around some lighter areas. We've got the highlight in and that's looking pretty good. Then we just need a little bit of a shadow underneath here. Just going to that sand color, but this time, I'm going to darken it with a little bit more blue and a little bit of burnt umber. A bit of ultramarine blue, little bit of burnt umber. Go under the sea foam here and do a little shadow line in there. A Then to help add to that sunlight effect, I want to drop a little bit more golden yellow onto the sand, so grabbing some warm yellow and a little bit of cool yellow. I'm just going to drop it down the center here. Lines up with the sun. Maybe grab a little bit more cool yellow. And maybe a little white with yellow and just drop it down the center. I think we just need a little bit of a darker accent along the horizon line there. Go into some of my blue. Let me just accent that line a. Just looks a bit. And there may be a bit of a shadow underneath some of the waves in the distance. And be a little bit of a shadow along here. There we go, the fifth one is done. So we're a little more than halfway through on to the next one. 8. Study 6: Pinks and purples: For this next one, we've got an overall pinkish tone to the whole painting. For the sky, I'm going to start with some of my red and white. We're starting with a pinkish color. There might be a bit of a purple hue in these pinks just because I've got some purple on my palette, so the color is a little bit contaminated, but it's no big deal. Now, I'm just going to clean off the brush. I'm going to grab some more white, mix it with a little bit of cool blue and go in at the bottom. Also going to drop a bit into the sky and mix it with some more white. Then maybe go back to the pink and just soften that out a little. Clean off my brush one more time. I'm going to pick up atle bit more of the red. That's the sky. Then moving down into the water, it's a purplesh pinkish color, sticking with the, mixing it in with. I think I'll go are blue. Getting that horizon line in. Then I'll just bring it down. And I add a bit of water just to keep the paint running. We only see a little bit of sand in this one. I clean up the brush and just picking up some burn and ultramarine blue, and I'll just block in that corner. Then let's do this one without a round brush. We'll just keep using the angle brush, see how far we can push it. So far, I haven't used my liner brush at all. I actually don't think I will need it. My round brush has a pointy enough tip to do all the thin lines that I need. Now I'm just going to pick up some and I'll probably mostly use the tip. Again, the corner of the angle brush to do a lot of the details. With the white, I'm just going to go into some paint I have on the palette just so it's not a pure white. And then I'll start to paint in the waves. There's a couple layers and I'm just marking out where they go. Then we'll go in and paint the shadow underneath them. And then let's get the shadow in. I'm just softening this out a little as I think I painted it too. For the shadow, I'll just go maybe a bit of blue and burnt umber. The bluish, green color. Just go in. Underneath, I'll mix it with a bit of white. I don't want it to be too dark. B open Uber in there. I can also see on the horizon line, there's a bit of a darker line. I'm going to get that in. I just mixture with a little bit of red. Usually, I have noticed that the horizon line is a little bit darker. Now with a clean brush. I'll just soften it out a little. It looks a bit more natural. Then as always, I will soften out this blend a bit just using a clean brush. Then I want to paint in some of the sea foam, so grabbing some white. And I'll just scratch it in with a dry brush. Then taking a look. I think I want to just soften this line here. Maybe a little bit of the pink over the sand and a bit of red into the water. And maybe just drop some more purples and reds in. I just want a little bit more variety in there. There's another simple one. It's a little bit messier because I'm just choosing the angle brush. But you can see it can be done and it's just about getting the idea across. Not trying to paint something perfect. I'll just grab a little bit more white and highlight a couple of areas. The top of the foam. Okay. And that one is pretty much done. Maybe just a tiny bit more accent under some areas. And then we can move on. 9. Study 7: Sunset seascape: For this next one, we've got a really beautiful sunset sky, some beautiful colors. I'm going to start with some bulue up here. I'll probably grab a little bit of ultramarine and mix that with white. Maybe a bit of cool blue in there, so a bit of your primary or cyan blue. Then very quickly, I am going to start mixing in white. Cleaning off my brush. Make up a drop that in and maybe just quickly lend that out. Then I want to work from the bottom up, starting with the yellow. I'll grab a little bit of warm yellow. Then some white and yellow. Then just going to fill in these spaces with some more yellow and some white. And then we'll paint some clouds into it. So that will cover up some of the messiness of the sky. For the clouds, I'm going to grab a little bit of blue and some red. I'll use a red. It's a bit more of a dull color, and I'll mix in ale bit of warm yellow. It's grayish. Drop that in here. Then mix it with lots of white, Trop in a couple of clouds. Then soften these out. Maybe a bit more white. I've got a bit of blue on my brush, and that's just contaminating this a little. You can use a clean brush and just lift that out carefully. For the clouds over there, I'm going to drop a bit of orange a it. A bit of war yellow, and a bit of mixed together. Probably do a better job of the clouds, but I guess since this is just this is more focused on seascapes than clouds. I'll switch to a round brush just for a bit more control in this area. If you're not careful with this, the colors can start to muddy and get dirty and a bit ugly quite quickly. What I'm trying to do is just to create that sun glow effect. I'm going to grab a bit of white with the yellow, and that ad the cloud. Ring in a bit more of the warm yellow. Let's move on to doing the water. Back to my flat brush, let's block in the water with a bluish green. I'll use my co blue. Next twist burnt umber and a bit of yellow. And then I'll add a bit of white and some more blue. It's a bit more colorful in this corner here. An. Then I'll clean off the brush and soften out those colors. Clean it off again. Now I want to drop ale bit of yellow and white into there. Grabbing some white, a little bit of warm yellow. The colors are getting a little bit muddy because I've got blue on my brush and then if I mix that with yellow, it becomes green. It's best to clean your brushes so that this doesn't happen. Then I will grab some yellow and I drop that in. Then I'll mix it with some white just to tone it down. That's the base layer upon which we can then build. For the sand, I'll just go for some of the colors on my palette that's already there, some of the sand colors I already have. Maybe a bit more yellow, a bit of red. There's a shadow on the side. I'll just go into some other blue and just get that in. I may as well paint in the shadow now for the water. Then cleaning off my brush. Just make sure everything is dry before the next step, which is, I'm going to go in with some dark binds. I'll mix up a dark color. I'll just use cool blue and burnt umber. Fine. Maybe a bit of ultramarine blue in there. I can see a bit of a darker line at the horizon, I'll just get that in. Then I can start placing in some darker lines, which is just the ripples in the water. And it flows in a motion. H. Then I think I want to switch to doing some of the waves. Cleaning that off because it's quite dark. The waves and the foam are not very bright. I pick up a bit of white and I'm just going to go into my blue green mixture. I'll add a tiny bit of yellow and a tiny bit of burnt umber. I'll use this for my waves. Oh, right. Then I'll just grab a slightly slightly darker color to get into the waves over here. Just that in. I lost some of the shadow, also that back in. Very ilse and because we're just trying to get a understanding of how we can approach painting seascapes without painting all the details. Then with this lighter color, you can go ahead and add in a few more strikes here and there. Then I want to add a little bit of warm yellow or orange in. When you do this, try not to disturb the paint too much. Glaze it in because I don't want it to mix with the blue or lift up any of that previous paint because it can get. Okay Now I'm just having a look. Maybe I want to get on a bit of that C foam here, so grabbing some white. Just going into some of the colors on my palette. I can just maybe glaze it on a little. First I'll find the motion. Then you can glaze it on like this and use your finger to pick up some of the color. So we're just about done for this one. I'm just going to finish up with a few more finishing touches. I think maybe I want a couple more highlights. So I'm just going to play some highlights. And maybe a couple more waves. Go into my blue color. And just softening out with a clean brush. Okay. And let's move on once again to the next one. 10. Study 8: Complementary colours: This one, I'm just going to stick to using my round brush, I think. I want to paint in the sky, which is a war pinkish orange. I'll grab my warm yellow and my cool red. And mix with some white on the palette. Maybe a little bit more white in there. I'm just going to bring it down slightly. Then I'm going to add in a bit more yellow and red, a little less white. Then work towards the area where the sun is. For the sun, I will grab some yellow. With some white. Put that in there. And just work my way outwards from there. And then the mountains are blue. Grabbing some white and also just remembering to mist your paints. Grabbing some white and blue bite. Keep that first layer light. I can paint this in once the sky has dried. The second layer, less whe, more blue, and a bit of burn umber in there. Just to turn it down. Then for the water, I'll go to my flat brush so I can block it in a bit faster. Overall, it's bluish color. I'll just pick up a little bit more cool blue and mix it with some other blues on my palette. Block that in. The lower half a little bit. I'm going to mix in a bit more blue. And then for the sand. Kind of orangish purple. I think I'll just block it in with a warm yellow, which is a little bit more orange with a bit of in the. And a bit of white. M That's the base color. I didn't let this touch too much because orange and blue is muddy. I'm just going to that be for now, details over the top after. Going back to the bruh, I'm going to mi up a bit more of a darker blue using my blues and my burnt umber. A and just go over that horizon line a little. I'm seeing a third layer of something there. Just going to get that in. Maybe I'll lighten it slightly. And I will use it for the w. And also the thin finer waves going up and down as well as some details in the foreground. And then I can go into a lighter color. Before I do that, with the dark color, I'm just going to go in to do the line here. Then with that same color, I'll take off some of the paint either on the palette or on my towel and I'm going to dry and dry brush in a little bit of color over the sand. Brushing means minimal moisture on the bruh. You get a look. This also works better on rough and cold press paper as the tooth of the paper can pick up some of the paint, but not all of it. And I might grab a bit more white and a bit of blue. I just add a tiny bit of water because it's just a bit too dry. I can see some of the light of foam color coming here. I just try brush that on. Then with a lighter color, grabbing a bit more white. I can get in some of the highlights. I want to highlight just above this. And then a little bit over here. I also want to get the waves in here. So I just do a little rounded motions to show movement in the water. Then maybe go into some darker blue once again, just to get a little bit of shadow in there, so doing rounded motions. Then as for this wave, you just want to soften out that edge. Looks like it's blending in, and then maybe you want to act in the darkest area down here and just make the or the top bit lighter. It looks like the water is c over. You know, I. Then I'm just going to soften some of this out a clean brush. Maybe a couple more highlights over here. And a bit bit of yellow and orange down the center. Okay. And onto our last one now. 11. Study 9: Final seascape: For our last one, we've got a sky transition from blue all the way through to orangead. I'm going to do this with a round brush for a bit more control. For the blue, I'm just going to go for my cool blue and white As I move down, I am just going to keep adding white to the mixture. Then at a certain point, I like to stop and work upwards from the yellow or the orange upwards because I find that the color just stays a little bit cleaner if I do it that way. I'm going to grab a little bit more white, just pure white and just lay that down. Having that strip in between helps me to transition the colors together without it mudding too much. Now I'll clean off my brush and I'll move from the bottom up. I'll start with my warm yellow, and it's a purply orange. But I think I'll just start with a reddish orange. And I'll just bring it all the way across. Then as I move up, I'm going to add more yellow and white. I'm going to add a bit of cool yellow to my mixture and bring it up a little bit. And then ale bit more cool yellow. Bring it up a bit. Then my brush off and go white with cool yellow. T. Clean that off, and I'm just going to smooth out this blend first, clean that off and then smooth out the blend above. Then I'm going to pick up some more yellow, drop it into here where the sun is. Then when this is dry, we can come in with white and just do a little dot to indicate the sun. Now for the For the water, I'll switch back to my flat brush or my angle brush. I'm going to block in the color, which is a light bluey green color. Grabbing some white, going into my blue, which is what I use for the sky, and maybe just mixing a tiny bit of yellow into there. Then as we move down, it grows darker. I'll mix in some ultramarine blue. Also up here, there's a little bit more blue. I'll just block this part in darker color. Then I'll go back into some lighter color to blend that out. Clean off my brush again and I can see my lines a little bit. I'm just going to straighten it out. And then for the sand, it's just a really dark dark color, so going into some burnt umber and ultramarine blue. Our base color is in, now clean off my brush again. I switch to my round brush. I'm going to start with a dark color once again, just blue and burnt and I'm going to get in some of those distant. Then there's some waves pulling in this way. I'll just lightly indicate those as well as adding bit of bumps and shadows along here. I might even just darken this area with a little bit more ultramarine blue. Using a clean brush, I'm just going to soften that color in there. Then grabbing some lighter blue ultramarine blue and white. I'm going to paint on sea foam. Adding some white to make it lighter. Paint on some highlights. Might want to wait a little bit for this to dry first. Then what I also want to do is get some of the sky color into the water, and I also want to paint on the sun. Grabbing some pure white. I'm just going to dt that right in the center. Now we know where the center is, we can grab some of the warm colors from the sky and just glaze it on lightly down the center. Then I'll need a bit more detail. I think I'll grab some more lighter colors, so white and blue. I add a bit more highlight to the foam, and then some more highlights. Then going back to a darker color. I'm going to go underneath what I just painted. Have a d. And just soften out a couple of transitions, so it's not too harsh. A bit more highlight. Little bit of a shadow along here. H. Just dry rushing in a bit of texture to keep it interesting. Maybe a bit of a light yellow highlight, so just some white and cool yellow. A couple of highlights to show a bit of the glow of the sun. I think we're done with our final one. Now for my favorite part of the process, which is taking off the washi tape. This one, I think will look extra good because we've painted this in this grid style with really thin strips of washi tape. I'm really looking forward to taking all of this. If you ever have trouble with your paper ripping, when you're taking off the tape, you can just use some heat, so a hair dryer along the tape and that will help. I'm usually quite lazy, so I don't do that. Another thing to do is to away from your painting, that will also help reduce it or if it does into your painting. And the last one. I hope doing these nine little seascape studies helped you understand my thinking behind how I approach seascapes. These are a little bit rough and that's because they're small and I don't want to work on details. But you can take the concept and the idea behind each of them and turn them into a bigger painting. The next two classes we're going to be doing two separate scapes in a larger size. 12. Sunset Seascape 1 - part 1: For this first scape, you're going to see how we put into practice, all of the things we learned from doing the small studies. The process is basically the same, but we just spend a little bit more time painting the details and since we're working on a bigger piece of paper. The paper I'm painting on, the size is a bit smaller than A five, but bigger than A six. For my brushes, I have picked out four to use. I've got the half inch angle brush four the block in of the sky and the water. I've got both my size eight and size six round brush and then a size one liner brush for a couple of thin lines. As usual, we're going to do a really quick sketch this one. I'm just going to place in the horizon line. I'll keep that at about maybe a quarter of the way down. And then just to kind of get an idea for the placement of everything. I will just lightly sketch in some things, but I don't have to stick to it while I'm painting. This is just to get an idea for how much space I'll have. I'm just lightly penciling in some of the big waves just to see if I can fit everything in. I'll probably reduce the amount of space dedicated to the sand. It's all very dark here, so it's a bit hard to see where the sand starts or ends and where the water starts. Sometimes you have to adjust your sketch because the reference photo is not the same dimensions as the paper you're painting on, you make small adjustments to accommodate for that. But I'm pretty happy with the placement of this. I just lightly erase some of the lines there because the sky is quite light. And we can get started with painting. For the sky, I'm going to use my half inch angle brush and I just wet my brush a little to start with. What I'll do, I'll start with some purples around the edges and work in towards a pinkish orange color, and I'll try and leave this white area, leave it white of the paper, and then I'll go in with white gh to work into there. To start with the sky, It's a muted purple. I'll start with some white and then I'll grab a little bit of ultramarine blue. And a little bit of red. When it comes to red, I have two choices, I have a warm red which leans more towards orange or a cool red, which leans more towards purple. Mixing a cool red with blue will produce a more saturated purple. That's what I'm thinking when I decide which red I want to go for. This purple is actually a little less saturated. It's a little bit more gray. I'm going to go for my warm red. I want to keep the paint nice and creamy. In order to do that, I'm going to just mix up a little bit more. Just white ultramarine blue and a touch of red. We only need a little bit of purple for the sky. We need it more maybe for the water later. Then I'm going to add in more white as I sweep across. I want to add in more red. I'll add in a bit more red, but to make it pink, I'm going to add in more white once again. Then it very quickly transitions to more of an orange color. There is a bit of difficulty trying to transition purple and orange or purple and yellow because they are complimentary. You do want to be careful to avoid making the colors very gray when you mix it together. I've just roughly cleaned off the brush and I'm just going to soften out this area, and then I will pick up some more white and grab some of my warm yellow. And mix it with a little bit of re this time. Maybe I'll just start from the bottom and work my way upwards. A bit of cool red with my warm yellow produces a really nice peachy color I want to start to blend out the colors. I usually find adding a little bit of white can help to just neutralize any mudding that happens. I bring that down a little and then I want to add in more of cool yellow and a little less pink in there. I just clean off my brush again and go into some of the pinky purple just to soften out this area a little. And then go into some white and some warm yellow. And I'm using the tip of my brush here to do some sweeping motion to get some soft blend into the sky because it looks a little bit stiff at the moment. Then I'm just going to clean this off and now just going into some white. I'm going to try and lay in some white right in the center here and then bring that out. I think the sky would look nicer if everything was a little bit creamy and wet so you could work into it. Then I've picked up some cool yellow to mix with the white. T. And I'm just going to still using the corner of the angle brush to just sweep that color in. Then I want to go back to some of my purply pinkish color and just do the same thing. I know the paint has mostly dried on the paper. It's a little bit hard to sweep in things softly, but I'm going to give it a go. I just try to sweep in the paint. Cleaning off my brush and maybe just cleaning up any areas. I'm just saying if there's any other areas, I can soften now add a little bit more color. I'm going to get a little bit of purple into here. Now the paint consistency is more on the thinner side as I'm over some of the colors. I think the top corner need to be just a tad bit darker, so I'm just going to go in. Just a bit of the purple. Maybe it's a bit too purple, so I'm going to mix it with some orange just to bring down that purpleness. Then before I start to over it, I'm just going to smooth out a couple of things and move on. Moving on now to the water, and we're going to do the same thing as what we did for our studies, ignoring all the waves and details. I'm looking for that. So in the center, it's looking a little bit more Of a light pinkish color, and I can actually split it off into this section and then this section because the blocks of color are quite obvious. For this section up here without the big waves, it's more of a pale pinkish color. On the outside, it's a little bit more of a pinkish purple. Then closer to the horizon, it's a little bit more purple. Down here, base color is quite dark. I'll start with more of a purple base color. Let's start with that pinkish base color first. I'm going to mix up a nice big batch of that color. Lots of white because it's quite light and then just a little bit of warm yellow and cool pink. You can compare that base color to the colors in the sky and determine is it very similar to one of the colors you see and is the lightness and darkness about the same? I think the color is quite similar to over here, maybe just a little bit lighter in value. I'll mix up a little bit of re with my warm yellow. I think it just needs to be a little lighter than that. I mix in a bit more white. Maybe I'll mix in a touch of cool yellow as well. Now I want to just go in and block all of that in. The paint is nice and creamy. The outer edges a b, ale bit more pinkish purple, so I'll just go into the mixture on my palette over here and just pick up some of that and then sweep that in. Maybe a bit of I noticed the horizon line is a little bit darker. We can paint that in later with a round brush or line of brush. For now, I'm just blocking in that base color. Once again, it doesn't have to be too smooth in transition because a lot of the waves will cover that. Soften that out and then for the part down here, I'm just going to clean up my brush so we can mix up a much darker color. I will go with a purple, starting with ultramarine blue. Again, going to keep the paint nice and creamy and you can mix up a big batch since we'll be using this for a lot of the painting. Then once again, I'm thinking if I want it to be a vibrant purple or not, and I think it's less vibrant. I'm a re. You can also use a combination of boats. If I put in warm red and I realize it's a bit dull, I can add some cool red just to experiment. Bring up the saturation a bit. I'm going to add a bit of burnt umber into it. Then I'm going to start blocking the base color. Maybe I'll mix with a little bit of the white on my pallet or the base color. Actually it's a little bit pinkish in some areas, so I'll mix in a bit of cool red. It's a bit. It's a bit lighter up the top here and then much darker down the bottom. For the bottom part, I'm going to mix darker color here. I'm going to mix in b m with the ultramarine blue and red. That should get me a color. Then for the sand down the bottom, it's more of a reddish. So a reddish purple. I'm going to mix in my red and ultramarine blue. That maybe a bit more cool red in there and then some burnt. That in. There's a little bit more re in that mixture. Okay. So we've got our base colors blocked in. Now we can start working on the waves on top. 13. Sunset Seascape 1 - part 2: I want to start working on the details starting from top to bottom, I think. I've switched to a size six round brush, which has a fairly pointed tip, should be able to do some thin lines with it, but if not, I'll switch to my line of brush. Starting with the horizon line, I notice it's a little bit darker, a little bit more purple. I'm just going to start with that. I'll just pick up some colors I already have on my palette. And I just try to keep my hand steady while I draw this line across, and it's a little bit darker on the outer edges. So I keep that in mind. I move lighter as I move towards the center. Then starting with this darker purple, we can start to paint in some of the ripples of the water. Just like what we were doing before with the small studies, you want to start with these thin strokes to indicate the movement of the water and the further away in the distance. The water, the smaller, the ripple, so I should actually keep them nice and thin and short. Then as we move towards the waves, they will become bigger, wider, longer. I keep all of that in mind as I'm doing this. If it's easier for you, you can always switch to a line of brush. What I like to do is flatten my brush on the palette so that I use the side that's flat and thin. I can a thin lines even though my round brush that point and not that s. Another thing I keep in mind is down the center. Everything is just a little bit lighter because the sun is shining down and everything further out is just a little bit darker. I know we're not going to be able to paint in every stroke. The idea is to just just paint the gist of things. I might move on to a bit of a darker purple and get in a couple of the bigger waves. I have a better sense of what I'm working with. For these, you just paint a little peak. It looks rough to start with and very harsh, but we will come in and soften it out and make it look soft like a wave. And I'm even coming into this darker section to paint in some of the waves over here to get an idea for this placement of everything. I'm getting some darker waves into here. I'm actually seeing that it's maybe a little bit more darker purple on the outside the base color than I had painted in. I might need to color or I could just a it. If you had to it in, you would use really thin do paint and just wash it over the top like this. And by washing it in like this, you don't have to blend too much with what you blad down underneath. Your paper will start to buckle a little, especially if you're using really thin paper or paper that's at least 300 SM. Because when you glaze a lot of water going onto the paper. I I just glaze that in so I could just darken that base color a bit, now I'm just sweeping back and forth. I'm thinking about how I can create the look of the water without spending too much time and effort, trying to paint every stroke in. If I just do ale bit of this, sweeping back and forth with thin paint on my brush, I can get a little bit of detail in without using much time. Then I'm looking and I'm thinking that maybe I will work on this part a little bit as well. I work on the shapes of all the waves and then I'll come in and start to highlight all of them. I'm going to just pick up some more of the paint I mixed, or if you've run out, it just mix a bit more, ultramarine blue with a warm red and maybe a little bit of burnt umber. I'm going to shape out this main wave which goes up like this. Then you can see the flow of the water flows down this way. I just indicate it for now. Then we've got another wave that falls like this. And then the main or the big was up here which really. So I just block out those shapes to start with. This one goes down here. Then I'm seeing if I can use this dark color to do any more was to maybe just a few strokes. Big waves. Over here in the distance, I see. We'll keep threading the colors through. We'll use some pinks, we'll use some oranges, we'll highlight some colors and just keep threading the strokes to bring this all together. Now might be a good time to maybe just to move on to a different color. I'll start adding a little bit of a highlight. Not a highlight, start to add some light in between the dark so we can get an idea. The light color, it's a litle bit more pinkish, I'll use warm yellow and mixed together with white. What we do is we just place that on top and we indicate the flow of the water with these strokes. For example, this one here, I can see the water flows over the top like this. I just place a bit of that in, then it flows down. I move with the way the water moves. Because what's happening with the wave is as the water comes up and rises. You get the darkest shadow underneath here, and then the brightest light just above it, and then a smooth gradation or transition out. That's what we're trying to mimic when we're painting waves like this. Above all those dark waves, I just paint it in. I'm going to place ale bit of this light line in, and I'll also just thread it throughout the water to. We're going to add a little bit more things in. So I'm going to just start threading it and just adding a little bit of this color all throughout. Then I'll probably realize that I want a little bit more dark waves in this. This process is back and forth. I keep moving between the light and the dark while also transitioning out the color. I'll add a bit to these waves to just to indicate, but they're a little bit different because the water is actually splashing up over the top. The effect is a little bit different. Next, I want to clean off my brush and start to work on the gradations a little. Right now, these peaks all look a little bit harsh and awkward. I'm going to actually, first, I want to paint in a few more darker lines. Now that I've started to fill up everything, I feel like I need a few more waves just to keep this looking busier and more natural. I bring these waves out a little, make them a bit bigger. And just add a little bit more things going on in here. Then how I start to build in the gradation of the waves is I just gradually lighten the color. I'll start with a bit of white mixed into this and I'll just go underneath the w. I just look at the wa it's falling falling off this w. 14. Sunset Seascape 1 - part 3: I think I want a little bit of red in here, mixing in some cool red. Maybe a bit more. Getting some red into here and just tapping it on a get some texture in there. You just want to smooth transition out from the darkest shadow color. Then I can see over here, it's even lighter, so I'm going to paint some strokes in there. I'm mostly just using the colors on my palette. You can see this is my darkest. This is in the middle and this is my lighter highlight color. I just dip my brush in to each pile as I move around. But by doing this, I have a nice color harmony on my palette because the colors are coming from similar set of colors. I'm just adding in some more cool red, make the color a little bit a little bit nicer. Then Just taking those few as an example, I'm going to clean off my brush and you can if the lay down was creamy enough, you can soften out the edge just by using a slightly wet brush. When you do this, you want to regularly just wash off your brush. So there's not too much paint in there. You can use your fingers to take off any excess moisture or just to feel how much moisture in there. You're in control and then just sweep underneath and you should be able to soften out. If you're having difficulty, then next time, lay a gash on the so that when you go to soften it out, there is enough creamy gash there for you to do that. The other option is just to pick up a bit more paint and instead of just softening out, the blend, you can drop in a bit of paint while softening it out. And now this wave looks a lot more soft and natural. You just take that idea and do it across everything else. You don't have to soften out everything. It's more just the main or bigger waves. Then once you've done that, you can go ahead and maybe paint in some more waves, just keep keep adding to this, so it doesn't feel empty. If you see a certain area, maybe it's a little bit darker, you can glaze a color in like we did before. Maybe I'll try glazing in some of this pink. Into here. Maybe I'll paint on another bigger wave there and now I know how to soften it out and how to add a highlight to it. At the same time, I'm working on these waves down here. I want to darken the darkest part a little bit more. I'm going to mix a little bit more burnt umber into the mixture and get in a couple of those dark lines and place them just underneath here at the darkest point of the wave. You'll notice with gas that dark color is dry lighter and the more runny your paint is when you lay it down, the lighter or the greater the value change once the paint has dried. Even though right now it looks really dark when I'm laying it down, I know that it's going to dry much lighter. I'll just let it dry and see what happens or how light it dries to and then I'll work with it from there. Then I'm just seeing how I can fill up a little bit more of this empty space. The has mostly dried and I can see it's quite dark. Now I can start to get a bit of gradation in by going in with a color that's not quite as just to step down and value in that just underneath, so I can transition that out. Then I'll move down and I'll work a little bit on the waves down here. So with this one, I think it needs that really dark area as well. I'm just shaping it out a little. And then What I'll probably do to paint on this effect is stipple on the colors, the water flying up. I'll save that for a bit later. What I will do is maybe paint on some of the lighter foamy colors here. I add a bit of white to the purple mixture and I just tap on some of the famines. Same with here. I love the pinks in the foams, so I'm going to mix in a bit more cool red. Hey, I leave those at this stage for now. Just cleaning off my brush and with a clean brush, I think I'll just try and soften some areas. So the brush with some moisture in it. Now, I'd like to add a bit of a pinkish orange glow or a color throughout. I feel like it's missing a little bit of that warmth. I'm just going to mix a bit more with my warm yellow and white. And just test out that in there. It should be a nice warm peachy color that you can just thread throughout throughout the water. I think it will just warm up the colors a little bit to help convey that setting sun look. I'm just threading that color throughout. I noticed a little bit more in this corners. I'm going to place a bit more here. I'm going to add a little bit of white These thin highlight strokes over the darker waves is a great way to indicate the flow of the water. If you want it to flow a w, just indicate that the movement of your bruh make them. Then I'm just going to clean that off. I feel like I need a couple more main waves. Just a bit more of a dark purple in the distance. I'm doing a slight brushing where I just brush the texture of my brush on there. I notice a little bit more of an orange glow. We can work on that when we work on the center glow. For now, I'm just picking up a bit more of my dark purple and I'm adding a bit more strokes. So you can see how layer by layer, we are starting to build up the details and the body of water. I'm just adding a little bit more over here. It just feels a bit empty. 15. Sunset Seascape 1 part 4: Then if you want, you can just soften out the blends of those darker waves. You just placed it in by placing a slightly lighter color just underneath them. Then I like to maybe do the glow down the center. There's a really bright orange just under here along the horizon. I paint that in first. Then we've got a bright yellow whitish glow. Before I do that, I'm going to do a couple of pinky purple streaks down the center because when I place in the white, it will stand out or will look white if I have some darker contrast against it. Now going into my white and a bit of my cool yellow. I can just do these strokes down the center. I try to keep it a bit thicker so that way. It can be quite light in value and I won't be reactivating any paint underneath. Then you can use this highlight color for a couple of areas just to add that little bit of extra highlight on the waves. I might mix a bit of warm yellow into there. We've got that nice glow effect. I'm going to clean that off, and then I will start to work more on this area down here. For these waves, I really love the beautiful pink colors in there. Maybe I'll start with that. It's a mixture we were using before, which was just, yellow and white. And to paint on the splashy texture, I'm just going to tap with my brush. As the water flies up, I'm just going to tap upwards and just get the idea of the foam flying up. You can also dry brush on a little bit of that flying flying water. Later we'll actually come in with some paint and splatter on, which will be fun. I'm getting on most of this pinkish color, then I'll probably move down to a more purple. I'm just going to mix with the colors on my palette, move in towards the purples. And to paint the gradation of the water. You just have to find the darkest point and gradate outwards. It's a bit hard to see where the water starts and ends. I'll just keep it vague. I'll need a slightly lighter purple for working the gradation. And I'll just grate it down with some bent tumba and just tap tap that in. Now I'm going to get a little bit more of this yellow splatter in there. So grabbing some whe and a bit of and cool yellow. What you can do is you can splatter on the paint. You'll need I'll try it with this round brush, but you'll want to cover any areas of your painting where you don't want it to splatter. I'm being a bit lazy, so I'm just going to go for it. You can see the paint has to be somewhat wet, so it can fly off the brush and you can just tap either with your finger or with another brush. If it's not wet enough, the paint won't fly off. You can see some of the splatters coming off. Ideally, you might want to cover a little bit of this section, so that not too much of it gets in there. And then I'm going to pick up some other pinks and splatter that on. You can use a different brush. That probably works a bit better than using your fingers. And then for the main ones I'll just tap on a bit more. So that sputtering just gives it more natural. I look. Going back to my bright yellow And then my dark purple. I'm just going to cover some of the splatters. Now I'm just working on some final details. I want to add a couple more highlights. Using white and yellow. I'm thinking I'll highlight around here because this is towards the center. It's catching a bit more of the sun rays as it comes down. And then I'm also just taking a look at everything and seeing if there's anything I need to adjust. I might just go back into a darker purple and just we in a couple more lines here and there, to build up the texture in the water once again. So just adding in some finishing touches, just looking at my painting and seeing what it needs? And I've just got some reddish purple on my brush just seem I can add in a final little bit more of color before I finish off the painting. Last bit is this water or the sand down here. I've kept it loose, and I think I'll just let it remain that way. Could maybe add a bit of a lighter highlight down here as the water. As the sand catches a bit of the a bit of the sun rays, but also a lot of it is covered by the w coming up. Hey. One last look at the painting, see if it needs anything else. I think overall, it looks good and I'm happy with how it turned out. I'll leave that one as it is. We'll take off the mask and then I've got one more for this class that we're going to do, and the next one is actually a little bit easier than this one. 16. Seascape 2 - part 1: The second sea scape that we're painting is easier than the first, and it's very similar, I'd say to the small studies that we did. Let's just jump right in and get started with the painting. I'm going to place in the horizon line, I think I'll just keep it in the middle. About halfway down, maybe I'll just dedicate a little bit more space to the water. Above halfway. And then I want to also just sketch in where the water goes up to comes down at an angle and then it comes out in and then we've got a main wave. I just the slightly bigger wave in the foreground here. They're all very small. The water is quite calm. And so that's going to be the extent of my sketch, and I'll just slightly just lighten that. For this one, I'm also going to start with my half inch angle brush, and we're going to paint in a gradation from blue to pretty much almost a white into a pinky purple color. I'll start with the blue at the top and I'm going to start with a lot of white because it's quite light, and I'm going to mix up some nice creamy paint so I can blend the sky nicely, and I'll use a cool blue like a primary blue starting at the top, I'm just going to block that in. As I move down, I just mix in more paint. I add a little bit of water to make the paint flow nice, but I'm also bringing in more paint. It's nice and creamy and then I'll add a bit of a little bit of pink or a cool red. I accidentally picked up too much, so I'm just taking it off and then just adding the tiniest bit of it in as I start to transition down a little bit more. Then I'm just going to clean off my brush, and I'll just pick up some pure white paint. I find that that helps me to transition colors that might otherwise muddy. Then I'm going to start from the bottom and work my way upwards. It's a bit of a pinkish purple. I'll just grab some of that. I'll mix it with the blue. And I'll start at the bottom. Then as I move up, I'm going to add more of the red and more white. Again, I like to use the corner of this angle brush. I bring it up slightly, then I think I'm going to clean off the paint. And go into a b of warm yellow and a of my cool red and just get that pink part in here. Still using the corner of the brush because that works really well for getting a thinner stroke while blending it out and then grabbing some white and a bit more yellow bit more white. Paint is still nice and creamy. I work it up a little bit more and then I'm going to clean off my brush for more time and using a clean brush. Mostly clean brush. I'm just going to soften out over what I just laid down and because the mixture was creamy, so there is a good amount of paint on the paper for me to blend out. Otherwise, you'll find that you'll start lifting the color and become really thin. I didn't leave the center part. I didn't leave the part where the sun is white. I'll come back later with really thick white paint to paint that in. Now I'm just looking and seeing if I need to add in any color. I'm adding a little bit more of pinkish glow into here. And then cleaning off my brush. That was a just nice and soft sky transition. Then once that's dried, I'm going to pick up we, just pure white, and I'm just going to it in where the sun is right in the center. And just make sure your gouache is nice and thick, so you can just layer it on very thick. Then around it, I'm going to just add a tiny bit of cool yellow. Just add a hint of yellow around it. So just a slight yellow glow around the sun. And then we can start to paint in the base color for the water. I'm seeing a bluish color in the center, it's a bit more pinkish and over here, the sand is a dark brown color, and then I know we'll probably need to do a little bit of glazing or something for this area where the water has made the sand wet. I'll start with a blue and it's quite light about the same as the sky. Starting with my cool blue and white I'll get a touch of in there, so it's a bit purply. Maybe a touch of burnt umber just to tone down the blue a little. I'll just go right across the horizon line. Then I'm just looking at the color seeing if I need to change it. Think I'm going to go a bit purplesh. I'll go into this part. It's a bit pinkish purple. And just sweep a bit of that in. It is quite pink in some areas, using white and my re. I just sweep that in and because the paint is a bit wet, it just blends nicely. I'm getting the base color down. It's also pinkish down here. Then it's a bit here. I'm thinking we'll go back to the blue with a bit of burnt and a bit of white. So it's like a grayish blue down here. A little bit more b umber down here. Then I'll just soften out the blend a little. So it's not too harsh. Whenever you're blending two colors that are very different and you don't want it to muddy, you just have to constantly clean off your brush so that you go in with a clean brush when you're sweeping back and forth. Now I'll do the dark sand in the corner. Actually, I'll lay on some of this pink over here. Lay on a bit of that color. There has a bit of that bluey pink color here. Purplely pink. Then for the sand, I'll go with a burnt umber and the blue we've been using. Then for this section, I'll just add a bit of white to the paint. Then if we need to do any glazing, I'll do that once I painted a bit more. For now, I just want to make sure every bit of the paper is covered in some paint. After this, I can switch to my round brush. I'm going to use my size six round brush as I was doing for the previous sea scape. Once again, I'll start from the horizon line, which is a little bit more of a dark blue. Starting with some blue, just mixing it in to the colors I have on the palette. And I'm just going to get that horizon line in. Then with this dark color, you can start laying in the waves. I might just start by getting in the darkest. The biggest one here. I'm using the same mixture of burnt umber and my cool blue. Just by varying the ratio of blue to burnt umber, you can get a different color. The more burnt umber you add, the more gray it becomes and the more blue you add, the more bluey green it becomes. Same steps as what we've been doing for our previous seascapes marking in the dark waves with a dark color and then we'll come in and add the light and also soften out the waves. I do my best to not make the waves very rigid. I try to make them different sizes and shapes and to not have too much repetition of the same wavy shape. 17. Seascape 2 part 2: In the distance, same as before, the lines are thinner and. When you first lay them down on the paper like this, it can look very harsh. But as you build up the details and layers, then it doesn't look so out of place. Oh. I'm just going to keep adding details. Maybe I will dry brush a little bit of the distant waves on. Basically, it's using the shape of my brush hairs. I flatten it out on the palette. The paint is not too wet and I can just do some quick sweeping lines over the paper and that helps me to just cover some of the area without having to painstakingly paint on every bit of detail. By fanning my brush out on the palette as I pick up paint, then I can drag across and create some textures. So I just want to cover a little bit more ground. I want to cover a bit more of the water. That's looking pretty good so far. Then what I'll do is I will just add a little bit of white to my mixture and I'll start transitioning out some of the waves. That just means placing on that lighter color underneath. And then I can come in with a clean brush to soften out the transition. Now that things have dried, I can see it's probably a little bit lighter than what I'd like the darkest part to be. I will come in and with a darker color after. I'm also going to take the slightly lighter blue and just in, scatter that as. Again, looking at how the water flows across these waves and I paint paint my brush strokes in that same direction. Also going to use this color just to out where the foam starts. Just going to add a bit more to it. We've got that line in. Now, I just clean off my brush and using a clean brush. I'll just go in and soften a. But I do feel like I need a little bit more paint on the paper to do this. I add some paint, then I go back to softening. When I start to soften, if I feel like I'm lifting off too much paint, then that's a sign that I either didn't lay down enough paint to start with or it's just a little bit more tricky because the paint has dried since I first laid it down. It just means you need to lay down a bit more paint before you and soften things out. And then Then as I said before, I'm just going to darken the darkest part a bit. Mixing some blue and bent umber without any white in it. You can add a little bit of black to help you darken. That's totally fine. I'm just going to go into the des part of these waves. Mm. By adding in some of the darkest areas in here, it just adds depth and helps the waves to look three dimensional. Again, I like to just paint them with a bit of a flow. M. Then I'll clean that off. Actually, I could use that for the shadow underneath the foam. Using that I'm going to go in underneath the foam we painted before and just get that shadow in there. Comes out over here as well. And then I'm going to clean that off and I'm going to go into a light blue with some white and some of my blue. This is going to be a bit of a high light color. I'm going over the light. Just the top where the light would s over the wave. I'm just adding that highlight on to while spilling it over a little bit. You can also work some lines into this area and just throughout as well, wherever you want to add a bit of a highlight. On top of the dark w, this is where I'm going to add the highlight. Then I will clean off my brush. I want to soften out this dark transition a bit. Just with a clean brush, you can go into some of the dark paint and just work it in and soften out. I think I actually want a little bit of the co here. Then I'm just working in a bit of textures into this area with just a dry brush and I'm going to add a little bit more waves and details into that front area. Still using blue and burnt umber. I'm going to paint on a couple of strokes. You also want to add a highlight and shadow to the foam. So we can do that in a little bit. I'm just dry brushing on a little bit of texture. I can dry brush on some of the reflections. When the sand is wet, it has this gray reflective look and you can use a bit of dry brushing to help with that or a bit of glazing. This corner over here is a bit darker, a little bit more brown, so I just add a bit more bent to the mixture. Then I can just blend it out by my brush and softening that transition. 18. Seascape 2 part 3: For the foam, which bumps up here, you want to add highlight. Maybe we can do the highlight down the center now. I would grab I'll start with some pink using white and my red. I'll mix a little bit of warm yellow into it to give it that peachy color. Then if you just follow the sun down the center, you can see it picks up that nice pinky color here. And then I'll just add a little bit more whe, a little bit more yellow. Actually, I'll mix in a bit of blue. I want a bit of a purply color to just add a little bit more of the sky color into the water. With this purply color, you can do a couple of strokes in the water. There may be some more blue strokes. It just helps with the contrast. Then going into a yellow, I'll use a cool yellow and white, and you just want to tap that down. In the center, Using these colors, you can highlight a bit on the sea foam as well. Then clean that off. For this transition, it's a little bit harsh at the moment. To paint on that reflective quality, I'm going to go into my pinkish color and just glaze a bit on. Then using a clean brush, just soften that out and also just soften out the side too. I'm trying to soften it out without making it. I'm going to glaze a bit of the blue and then bring a little bit of that sand color into there. That's the gist of it, then I'll grab some other colors and just drop that in there. It has some of that reflective quality in there. Then I want to clean up the sea foam, grabbing some white and some of the blue. I'm just going to go around and re outline it because some of it got lost. And then just add the shadow back in underneath as well where it may have got a little bit lost. Then I just want to add actually, first, I want to glaze a little bit more blue over here. And then maybe add a bit of a highlight. Then I just want to work on a bit of details here, and that's it. I want to show a bit of the movement of the water. I'll just do squiggles. Okay. Almost done. I'm just going to go into the highlight again. So the pinky color and just had a bit of highlight to some of the dark lines I ped in. Then grabbing some of this dark bluey gray. I'm just going to stat in a bit more dots and squiggles just to make it look. I might just push this in a bit, push this bit up a by bringing in some of that darker paint, which I'm just in and softening out with my brush. Just very softly pushing that up. So the shape looks a bit more natural to me. Then just if I need anything else. My bit of a shadow here. Dry brush or glaze that in. Hey, I might grab a little bit of a lighter blue and just do a couple more lines. I think this painting is also finished. Now I'll just take off the tape for this so we can see what the finished piece looks like. I hope you can see how we use those small studies to get an understanding of the approach, and then you can see how we can just easily apply the same thing to a bigger painting.