Transcripts
1. Waves in Watercolour intro: Hi, I'm Patrick. In
this short lesson, I'm going to show you
three ways of how to paint waves rolling
onto the shore, crashing onto a rock, and
big waves out in the open. I'll share some tips
and tricks on how to achieve a bit of realism
into your paintings, while brushes are used
specifically to create the broken edges that make waves look like they're
actually in motion. And then I'll talk a bit about
the colors that I used to create the different
shades of ocean water. Pretty easy tutorials,
and I think anyone can follow along and get
better at painting waves. I'm Patrick, a watercolor
artist in Sydney, Australia, and I am
mostly self directed. I've learned
everything I know in watercolors from online
tutorials, videos. And I actually started my watercolor journey
right here on Skillshare. So if I can learn
it, so can you, and now it's my turn to
share my knowledge with other artists and help them improve their
watercolor skills. Please keep watching,
and I can almost certainly guarantee you
that in 15 minutes, you will have
picked up some tips and tricks to help you
paint better waves.
2. Waves D: For the first wave,
I'm going to start with the ocean in
the background, and I'm going to
make it a fair bit darker than what you
can see on the photo, just that we have a
stronger contrast between the actual wave and the
ocean in the background. Now, I'm using
calligraphy brushes, natural hair brushes for boys paintings because
the key to creating those broken edges at the top of the waves is to dry brush it, and those calligraphy
brushes are just much better suited for dry brushing than
any other brush that I have. I'm smudging some of the edges there just so that we have
different types of edges, hard edges, soft edges, and dry brush edges. I left a bit of sparkle behind the wave there on
the left side as well, and I'm going to go and paint the rocks
now, as you can see. And for that, I'm just
using a mix of Bon sienna, a little bit of raw sienna. And then I'm just going to block out the major shapes
of the rocks. And going to drop in
some van **** brown and ultra in blue into that mix just to get the
shadows in there as well. I'm going to define
those rocks in the next layer once
these have dried, but I'm still like to always
add different values into my first wash. And those calligraphy brushes also
make a really nice point, so I can use Bon brush to do
dry brush and detailed work. But don't ask me
where they're from because they were
present from Japan, and I have no idea. Scratching out some
highlights with a chopped up credit card creates nice angular
shapes, perfect for rocks. And now I mixed a bit of cobalt teal with a
bit of lavender, and I'm starting off
with the shadows of my breaking wave. And I'm using a smaller
calligraphy brush now, but same technique as
with the top of the wave. And what I'm actually
doing is pushing the brush rather than
dragging it across the paper. This is a cold press paper, so it's got quite
a bit of tooth, which is what you need when you want to use the dry
brush technique. Won't work on hot press. So choose a cold press for
these type of paintings. Drop in a bit darker color for my ocean color just under
the crest of the wave. To hint at some shadows and now some of those random lines of waves breaking and white
foam creating bitter texture. Lucy looking at my
reference photo and then there's a bit of
a lighter patch there. And I'm just filling that
in and then adding some of my ocean color coming
into the front around the rocks because
where the wave breaks, there's obviously
a lot more foam, and the water is a bit lighter. And then as we progress
closer to the rocks, the water gets a
bit darker again. The ocean is obviously
bone dry by now, so I can add in my headland
there in the distance. And then I've also
put in a very, very pale sky just with
a bit of a gray, really. Just I didn't like the
white of the paper. I wanted the white
of the waves to be the only white on the page. And now my rocks have dried. So now I'm just going to follow my own textures
that I've created. So now I'm not looking really too close at the reference photo for those rocks because I scraped in some
highlights there, and I'm just going
to pop some shadows underneath what I perceive
as the top of the rocks. Making sure that it's
a big solid shape. I don't have too many
individual rocks floating around in
the foreground. And that one really stands out, that rock in the
middle of the wave. The sun's coming
from the right side, so I'm popping in a
bit of shadow there. Some of the water
is a bit darker, and inevitably, you'll
lose some highlights. That middle bit
there is a bit flat. So I'm just adding
some titanium white, which is relatively opaque. And then I'm going
to just stipple in a few white highlights
down on top of the waves where the
ocean spray flies away. A few splatters. And then I'm also scratching in a
little bit of texture into my shadows that are
still a little bit wet. Just create a bit
more rock texture. There we go. Wave number
one is done almost. Just added a bit more cobalt into that middle section
that looked a bit flat. But here we go, pretty
happy with that one. Move on to wave number two, and here we're going to
take the opposite approach, where I paint the shadows
of the wave first. The hero of the painting is obviously the waves
breaking against the rocks, and there are some
shadows created, and that's where I start. Same technique as before. It's relatively dry my paint. I don't have a lot
of water on them, and I'm just dragging
it and pushing it against the paper to create this wonderful dry
brush effect here, which is just ideal to
create wave textures. And then I'm going
to paint the ocean as the contrasting background. Again, very dark so that
I have maximum contrast between the white of the waves and the ocean
in the background. I'm putting my paper a
little bit on an angle, which helps me paint a
straighter horizon line, which I'll end up having to fix anyway because it's
not quite straight. And then I'm doing
the same as before. I'm carefully painting
around the waves. With little marks, a
bit of dry brushing, just to create a
very rough texture of the top of the waves. Just needs to have a
lot of motion in it. It needs to really feel
like the waves are exploding, darkening
the horizon. And that's coming along nicely. So again, with my splayed
out bristles of my brush, I can create random marks, similar to what I
would do for trees, any other natural
organic texture. To serve on top of
that rock shelf there, random lines, swiftly painted and then I'll start
with the rocks. Similar mix, Bnciena
ultrainblue, maybe a bit of van
**** brown or sepia, just to create a
dark, cool brown. And then I'm painting
in the rock shape, loosely following
the reference photo. Again, don't want to get
the rocks too bitsy, needs to be just a
big solid shape. We don't want to distract from the waves with
too much detail. But important having some of
the rocks against the waves. That's why the
waves are breaking. They need to be sort
of half covered by the wave, carefully
painting them in. Then again, I love these
calligraphy brushes because even though
they're quite big and fat, I can get a lot of detail by making them
into a nice point, I can make them into a flat
brush and I can separate the bristles and then get these lovely textures that
I'm using for the waves, dropping in some
different colors and mixes just to
get some variations. They are rocks. Rocks are fantastic to paint lots
of textures and colors in dropping in some of
my shadows as well. And then same as before, scratching out some highlights
with a credit card. I've chopped out
corners and bits out of the credit card so that I
have different size surfaces. And you can see that my
horizon line is monkey. So I got to have to
straighten that out a bit, which in itself was
quite challenging. Maybe I should have used
masking tape for that. I was about the wave,
not the background, so it doesn't matter too much. That's
straight enough for me. And now I'm painting the
headline in the back. Interrupted, covered
by the breaking wave, which adds to dynamics
of this painting. And then I'm going to
strengthen some of the shadows inside the waves,
strengthening that contrast. And again, a bit of
a gray sky there just to make sure that
the white of the waves is the lightest part
of my painting and also allows me to extend that wave a little bit
further over the horizon. My rocks have dried, so I'm
going to put in my shadows. And just like in the first one, I'm not too closely following the reference
photo anymore. Now, I'm just following
my own painting, making sure that what
I see makes sense. So wherever I scratched
out a surface highlight, I'll put a shadow
underneath it and then work my way towards a
believable cluster of rocks. And then also with
the credit card, just going to scratch out a little bit more texture
into those rocks. Some white splatters with white titanium for a
bit more movement. And here, they are side by side, the two kinds of waves
for the bonus wave, I don't have a reference
photo that was just out of my imagination and also
recorded that vertically, as you can see, so
apologies for that, but you can still see
what I'm doing here. This is a stormy sea with big waves in the
middle of the ocean, so the horizon line shows
the big waves already. It's not a flat horizon. And I've slightly
pre web my paper. Let the water settle. You can see how it fuzzes
out a little bit. And I'm coming in you the
pretty strong mix of, well, this is a lot of Dyer blue
in here with ultramarine. And I've got a zigzag line there that I'm painting around, which is the crest of
those massive waves, and that's coming
closer towards us, so the waves get bigger towards the bottom
of the painting. And you can see there
that white zigzag line that I'm painting around. And while this is
wet, I'm going in with a lot darker blue. It is this indigo, and you can see how
dry that mix is. I don't want it to
spread too far, and then I'm just
going to flick in the shadows of either side of those big waves that will create the illusion of a massive swell in the middle of the ocean. Big brush marks closer
to the bottom and smaller ones as we recede
into the distance. And then I'm going to use a clean and thirsty brush to lift out a few
more highlights. And you can see how it's
starting to take shape, a few more in the foreground. And that looks like a
lovely storm you sea there. And then I'm going to create a stormy sky on top
of it. Not too dark. I don't want to distract too
much from the ocean itself, but just hinting at
some clouds there. This is a relatively
small painting, so it's just a demonstration, dropping in some
grays, there we go. And just to get some
scale into those waves, I'm going to paint a tiny
fishing boat on the horizon. Adds a bit of drama and a
bit of a narrative to it, trying to get home before
the storm sets in. And that doesn't need
any detail at all. It's just a little shape
there on the horizon, a few dots for birds,
following the boat. And with a bit of wet and wet, you can achieve a
wonderful stormy ocean. Here they are again, three
ways to paint waves. Hope you enjoyed that video. Give me a like, and
thanks watching.
Patrick Visser, Designer and Artist
