Summer Watercolor Painting Ideas for Beginners

Hey guys. In today's video, I'm going to show you how to paint these summer-inspired watercolor paintings in the shape of cute Polaroid pictures that you can use as decor or a small gift. Don't forget to make sure notifications are turned on by clicking on the bell and by adjusting the settings because YouTube likes to change stuff and make it more difficult to stay up to date. And for a chance to get a shout out and to win arts and crafts supplies in my ongoing giveaway, comment down below, hashtag MocificationSquad in the first 24 hours. Okay, so the first thing I did, I divided the paper into three Polaroid shapes using these measurements that you can see on the screen. But you can, of course, make them in any size you like. To protect any areas around each painting, I'm using washi tape, but you can also use artist tape or just carefully paint inside the squares. Now we can go ahead and prepare everything for our paintings. Let's start with sketching out a few guidelines first. The first painting is going to be an ocean with a little bit of beach in front of it. To make the composition look nice while fitting everything in, I roughly divided the space into three horizontal sections. This way we will have space for the sky, the ocean, and the beach. All right, next I'm going to use this drawing gum pen that one of my lovely subscribers recommended to me. It has a thin tip so you can cover tiny areas on your paper to create awesome results. And since we are working with just a little space, this pen is perfect for that. With this pen we can now go ahead and add the masking fluid all around the water to create the foamy part. Here you want to focus on adding a thick line in a wavy motion all around the edge. From here you can add more and more lines in a wavy and scribbly motion, just randomly moving upwards while still avoiding some parts of the paper. The masking fluid will work like magic here. Right now it might look weird, but once you're done with the painting, you will be surprised. Now we can add the masking fluid to the water just below the horizon to create small light reflections. Here you just want to add short lines here and there. Don't blend it out too much. We want to make it look natural. Okay, while the masking fluid is drying, we can prepare the second painting. First, let's sketch out the drawing. Here I also roughly divided the space into three vertical and horizontal sections to create a nice composition following the rule of third. For this painting, I wanted to create a girl sitting around the pool having a watermelon in her hand. Now, I'm not an expert in drawing human bodies, that's why I used a reference picture that I found on Pinterest. Erase and clean out any lines to make the sketch look less messy because later it will be difficult to erase the pencil lines once we added watercolor on top. Once you have the general sketch, outline the legs and the edge of the pool with the masking fluid so we don't paint in too much later. To create the light reflections in the water, add loose lines around the sitting person to create the waves around it. Here you want to create thick and thin lines in a circle. From here, you can add more lines randomly here and there to create the light reflections. Again, don't think and don't plan too much. Just trust the magic of the masking fluid. For the third painting, we are going to paint a cute van in front of the beach. Here again, sketch out the van and the lines where you want to place the sky, the ocean, and the beach. Cover up the van with masking fluid and let everything dry. If you feel safer, you can also cover up the whole van and the legs of the person just so you don't have to worry about painting over them. And now it's finally time to paint the ocean. Here I'm going to mix a little bit of blue and green together to create a more turquoise color similar to the ocean. Start at the horizon and then blend out the paint while moving downwards and creating a gradient effect. We want to keep the foam part almost free of any paint at this point. Do the same with the sky. Here we want the blue colored paint to be a little bit darker. Next, twist a small piece of tissue paper between your fingers and carefully dab it over the blue sky to create the clouds. This is how it looks now. Since everything is pretty light at this point, I went ahead and intensified the colors of the ocean and the sky. This time I used more paint and then distributed it in the same way, but I kept a few small areas slightly lighter. To intensify the sky, I used a darker shade of blue and simply filled out the areas in between the clouds. Now to create the sand, I simply mixed a few different shades of yellow, ochre, and brown and evenly distributed it. Once you cover the lower part of the beach, carefully blend out the edges towards the foamy part right until the water. Here we want to make it look like the sand is looking through the water above it as here the water isn't that deep. All right, let's move on to the second painting. Here I'm going to use the same colors. Mix green and blue colored paint to create a nice bright turquoise color and then distribute it right underneath the legs of the girl. Now add more blue and green colored paint to the mixture to make the colors darker and then apply them in between the thick lines that we created with masking fluid following the curve. Also add a few lines to a few random areas to make it look more natural. Since the legs also create shadows in the water, you can add the same dark color right next to them like I did here. Now for the third painting, all you need to do is apply blue colored paint to the sky the same way as we did for the ocean in the first painting and paint the sand in the same way as well. But since we'll also add a few palm trees later, this will cast a shadow. Add thin lines of dark brown or gray colored paint to the sand and don't forget about the shadows of the wind as well. Let everything dry and then let's go ahead and start slowly finishing our paintings. In the first painting, all I did was I intensified the color of the ocean and created a few darker and lighter areas in the water. I also intensified the color of the sky a little bit more with a darker shade of blue. And to add more depth, I used a darker brown color and added a few dots to a few areas in the foamy part. These are going to be the shadows of the foam. And this is how it looks so far. When everything is dry, we can go ahead and add palm trees and intensify the shadows a little bit more. And for the palm trees, I used a dark brown color to create the stems. Paint thin lines for the stems and then you can blend them out to the side a little bit to create a lighter shade to make it look like the sun is shining onto the tree. Now for the leaves, I started with a light shade of green color paint and then added depth by adding another layer on top that is a little bit darker. All right, let's remove the masking fluid and finalize our paintings. As you can see, the masking fluid created this nice foam and what we can do now is add a little bit of depth to it by adding a few more shadows. Take a thin brush and load it up with a dark brown color and then carefully add a thin line below the edge of the foam. Here you want to focus on which side you want to add the shadows depending where the sun is in your painting. You can also add more shadows in between the foam here and there to give everything even more depth. Next, you wanna glaze the ocean with the same blue color and cover a few of the white lines. You don't want everything to be super white. Some lines can be slightly blue as well. This way we get different shades for the light reflections. Now for the second painting, I used a few different shades of yellow, ochre, and blue to create the skin tone. Since I accidentally overworked the paper with the masking fluid a little bit, it was a little bit difficult to distribute the paint evenly, but I somehow made it work. I kept a few areas light and added shadows to the left part by using a darker shade of brown. To make the watermelon look a little bit more realistic, I applied a light and a dark shade of red and then lifted some of the paint with a tissue paper. This way you get a nice texture that's similar to a watermelon. For the light reflections in the water, I did the same thing as for the first painting. I used the same light blue shade and painted over a few white lines to make them slightly blue. And for the van, I used a lime green color to paint it, but you can also use any other color you like. All right, let's remove the tape, cut out the paintings, and see what else we can adjust. So one of the things I did in the ocean scene painting, I added a little bit more blue paint and distributed it downwards because I didn't like the harsh blue line at the horizon. And then I used my white ink pen to slightly add a few white lines to the water and the sky, but this is optional. I just wanted to play around with it a little bit. For the second painting, I now used watercolor pencils to add more shadows and depth to it. I added more shadows to the legs, outlined the hands and the watermelon, and just made it look more realistic. I'm not a pro at painting bodies and skin tones, but I think it still turned out pretty good. Lastly, I added more details to the third painting by using watercolor pencils again. I outlined the van, added a few more shadows to the sand, and used my white ink pen to add lighter fractions in the water. And this is the final result. I really hope you like it. And it's time to announce the winners of the July giveaway. And the winners are Zania Monfiston, MechBeastGalaxy, and Khaleesi Laurie. Congratulations. Please be on the lookout for my message in your YouTube inbox. I really hope you enjoyed this video and found it helpful. If you did, be sure to give the studio a thumbs up to support this channel. And if you're new here, don't forget to subscribe and to click on the bell to get notified when I upload a new video every week. Thank you so much for watching, guys. Have a wonderful day, and I will see you soon. Bye.