Practicing Ocean Waves #Strathmore #Imperial #Watercolor

Last Tuesday's watercolor class was centered on learning how to paint ocean waves.  I've done those in the past using oil colors, but watercolor is handled so much differently.  A few techniques I could transfer, but most of the them I couldn't.

In this practice painting I lost much of my whites and the proper direction of the waves because I was concentrating too much on the technique.  Great practice though.  I figured out how to get a similar effect of light coming through a cresting wave that I used to get with oils.


The two main tricks I learned could be used for any body of water with active waves.  One is just kind of using strokes in an open-ended figure eight.


The second trick is to twist several lengths of paper towel.  Then you wet the paper and lay down a wash of the base color you want--in this case, Cobalt Blue.  Then before the paint dries, you place the paper twists where you want to have cresting white waves.  The twist lifts some of the color, leaving a nice foamy wave.  After the paint dries a little, but not totally, you paint darker color underneath the white to get the shadows.

At this point, I dropped in a little Phthalocyanine Green and Blue and pulled a twist down the wave to blend all three colors.  Once the paint dried totally, I lifted a little color in the same areas and then added some Aureolin Yellow to get the effect of light.  A bit of a clumsy technique at the moment, but with practice, I think I can do some cool effects with it.



Comments

  1. Beautiful seascape. It reminds me of Durdle Door in Dorset near to where I live.

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    1. Here is a picture - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durdle_Door

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    2. It amazes me sometimes how similar landscapes can be all around the world. This painting was done using a reference photo my teacher took at the Oregon Coast in Rockaway. https://www.ecosia.org/images?q=rockaway+oregon+phoots (this isn't the teacher's photo, but is of the same rock formation). I guess the wave action is the same everywhere and creates similar rocks. Lucky for us!

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  2. Oh my, it's not connected to the shore, I guess it was once upon a time. It's beautiful. We are indeed lucky with the beautiful scenery we have all around the world and the waves, we share those with the tides. :D

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