How To Paint A Beach Wave - Acrylics

Okay, now the first thing I'm gonna wanna do is get my picture laid out. So I'll just do a quick sketch and I'll use paint to do that sketch, not a pencil. I'll just water this down a lot. So I'm taking my phthalo blue, I'll just put a little dot right here and add water to my brush. I'll be constantly, you know, this towel is down here on the table and I'll be constantly putting my brush in the water and then just dragging it across my towel to keep it wet but not dripping. I'll put the left side of my wave taller than the right side and of course, what that means is that the right side is further away. So I've got a wave that's gonna be drifting in a little bit to the right. So, you know, it kinda goes up, down. This'll be breaking more in some spots, less than others. Every time you cut a triangle in half, so let's say there's an object here. Well, if I cut this triangle in half, every time you go halfway to the horizon, you are at double the distance that you were here. And that rule of halves and doubles is just that when you go twice the distance, you're at half the size. When you go half the distance, you're at twice the size. If I have kind of a zigzag line like this because I don't wanna make just a geometric perfect wave. As an artist, you kinda like to make things look organic and flowing, so you might choose to not make a perfectly level surface. But I think one thing that is overlooked is just how much distance that change in height represents. See this curve I made? Crosses all the way from the 80 to the 160, and that's suggesting that this point is an entire 80 feet closer than the high point. And so, naturally, that's gonna make the perspective look weird in this picture. That wave is not gonna look like it's rising out of that level-ish surface of water. The curves can be good, but very subtle. So for the most part, I'm just using level lines because this far out, a tiny bit of change represents a lot of distance. So ever so slightly, I raise the right side higher than the left side, but for the most part, this is a level line at the base of the wave. Now I'll come down here, and my stroke is like a smile shape. My pressure increases at the middle of the stroke. Here's one stroke, just like this. That's the shape that you wanna be able to reproduce with every single stroke. That takes a lot of practice, but don't be discouraged. Just be diligent, and know that with time, your hand gets very familiar with that motion. My next stroke, I'm gonna try to rest right on top of one of the ends of this stroke. So right here, you can see it cutting right across the end of that. I don't wanna make an X and crisscross it. The next one I'll put over here, and you can see that that one comes right across this point. It's kinda 80% dry, but there's a little bit of tacky paint on there. Sometimes you can just drag the somewhat dry brush across that, and it'll make the whole picture look softer by blending that little bit of wet surface that's still on there. Anytime I feel like the paint is drying and pulling and leaving texture that I don't want, I just gotta stop, wet my brush, and start again. It's just kind of an instinctive reaction as the artist to fight it. When the brush stops doing what you wanna do, you kinda manipulate the brush and turn it around. You gotta stop. Stop, rinse the brush, start again. White, black, and blue mix at the base of this wave, just like I've been doing. It just has a lot more blue. Now, I wanna be careful to keep my line. It's okay right now if I don't have a nice, smooth blend into all those little waves I've painted. I just wanna keep my line so that I don't lose track of where my wave is. I'll keep doing this. See, this brush stroke is down and over. That's what I'm doing primarily. Here, I'm just cleaning it out. I'm just wiping all that down. Down and over, because that's the direction that my curves were. So, in order to just keep the look of the wave curling to the right, I'm just putting my brush strokes in the same direction. So, I'll take a little bit of this green and start mixing that with the white. Up at the top of this wave. So, I have this nice turquoise color, and this is where I think it really helps to keep the brush strokes in that direction that the wave is curling. I'm keeping the angle of the brush square, you know, down and over, without, I'm not swooping my wrist like this. So, the line kinda changes width. It gets skinnier as I slide over to the right because the brush is turned more sideways. I'm gonna do skinny strokes. I'm not doing that smile shape anymore. It really helps this seafoam to not look like the reflection because the strokes are a different shape. If I do the same shape, it's just gonna disappear into the reflection. So, I'm just doing these horizontal little strokes, but being careful not to make the little smile shapes because then it's just gonna disappear into the reflection and I won't have that feel of the foam breaking apart on top of the water, being a separate layer. Now, when foam breaks apart, it's similar to the water where it pulls apart and leaves strands, skinnier strands in between, and the bubbles come up from the water, leaving kind of oval-ish patches of water in between the foam. So, you have these shapes where the negative space leaves these ovals. And they're not just perfect ovals. They just are these blobby shapes with skinny strands of foam separating them. But in perspective, it's all gonna be flattened way out. And I can come back with that watercolor and add it in between. So, right now, I'm really just making skinny horizontal lines. So, I'll start with this left side of this wave curling over. And so, I'm thinking I'm just gonna put my white water, I'm gonna move my brush in the way that I want it to look like the white water is coming over because that might help me to just establish, maybe accidentally make shapes that actually look like water tumbling over. So, that's a higher part. I'll keep it higher and maybe make it just curling over a little bit in here. I don't wanna make it real level. I want higher and lower spots on this wave. So, I'll put this paint right in here. And this is just real thin. It'll probably dry on me before I can work it. But I'm just getting it in place at the moment. There's a cool thing that happens with waves. When it curls, when it breaks enough, you'll see the inside of the top of the wave. So, I'm gonna paint that. I'm getting my blue and my green. I'm just gonna put a stripe right across here. Just, shoo. And then I'm gonna take that color and just barely grab it and pull it down right here. And then, I'll get another little bit of white and make the reflection on the top of that. I wanna make it so that you still see it. So, let's see if I can actually manage that. I wanna still see that dark area. There. You see, so I have the reflection bending across the top. And then, the dark area. And then, it goes to the white water in here that's shining from underneath that big curl. So, now I put the base of the wave tumbling over. And then, I'm gonna put reflection of that souping out. I just wet my brush again. And I'm just gonna put little lines going in the direction that the wave's moving. Just like that. And you can see that I leave a little strip of that green in there. Let's get a little bit more of that color. Now, that is kinda purpley looking, to be honest. That magenta might have been more extreme than I wanted. So, you could go the other way and just use the black. A little kind of a zigzag shape like this. And where it's going along the face of the wave, I'll widen it out. It's getting stretched this way. So, I'll make that part fatter. But notice that I left the vertical areas skinnier. Now, if I make another little spot that's pointing to this, then it looks like it got pulled apart. And you can just memorize these shapes and reuse them over and over. Now, instead of painting the skinny little strands, I'll paint the space in between, just like I did with the foreground. So, I need that turquoise color. Let me get my phthalo green out. Okay, so we got green and blue. And then I'll put some white in it. Okay, now I'm just making little oval shapes. And I'm gonna make those little shapes touch each other. Connect, you know. And then I can control the angle I'm making those shapes. Make them go with the wave. All right, and then back to my darker colors as I get further down. So, now I've mixed a darker turquoise that I'll put in here. I'm hoping that that color looks a little bit bolder as it dries in. All right, I'm really liking the way that looks. All right, now I gotta fix that wave. And I'm gonna redo a little bit of the bright white splatters or just add bright white splatters. Better get that dark turquoise color that I had on there. I'm gonna do this wave too. Same technique as before, just putting more of that light color on here. Just add a little bit of bright color in the middle there. Just kind of a final highlight. I keep saying this is the last part, it's fine. It's never finished, is it? I wanna make this more exciting in here. Like, it's really splashing. It just kind of looks like a piece of jelly that's just flopping over to me right now. And so I'm gonna put a lot more white just with a dabbing motion, just trying to get something that feels not like a brush stroke, but just feels like, well, you know, like all that splashing white water. You know, I find that I usually see it kind of fingering out. There'll be areas to see how I've got these shapes kind of coming out almost like, you know, tree branches or something like that. I'll put a little bit of that shadow color in here, put that on the underside, and then I'll take the white over the top of it. I just want it all to look more splashy. Here we go, here's a brighter white color that I'll just put under this white water. Get a little water on my brush so I can make these tiny lines. Just do those same strokes and make them a little more white. This wave kind of looks like it's curling, kind of looks like it's arching this way, looks high in the middle, so I'm just raising up the reflection a little bit on this end. I'll just kind of do this circular motion to do this angled reflection. My brush, just let it touch on that side of the circle. Then I'll just use that dabbing technique to lighten it as it gets up higher on the wave. Doing a thin layer of real wet paint, real watered down paint.