How to paint clouds and water - realistic water and cloud painting tutorial).mp4

Hey my friends, welcome back. Yeah, in today's video we're gonna paint some of your favorite topics, clouds and water. So I'm starting by oiling out the painting surface here. It's a 50 by 60 malplatte, HDF plate, more or less. Yeah, we then start to apply color for the sky, as you can see here. We have a lighter color on the left side, a darker one on the right side and a mid-tone value here on the mid-part of the painting, of course. I'm cleaning the brush between the application process. Sometimes when I realize there's too much color on the brush, I kind of get rid of it. Yeah, really make sure that the color is very thick. Just add a hint of linseed oil to it to make it flow better. But it needs to really cover the white of the canvas completely, as you can see here. There's no further underpainting. And in some parts of the painting we're not gonna use another layer of color, never really. People very often tell me, colors not covering the white of the canvas very well. Really make sure you just put in a hint of oil into the color here to really make sure it covers the white of the canvas perfect. And then we basically start to put in the cloud body itself in a very rough manner. No details at all, just the rough color putting in. Yeah, lots of blending, as you can see here. To really make it nice and already kind of bubbly, clouds need to be treated like an apple. That sounds stupid, I know, but the problem that people really have a lot of times when I try to teach them how to paint a cloud or any other object, they treat it like two-dimensional objects. Especially when it comes to painting clouds, they need to be 3D looking and therefore keep in mind that a cloud is kind of an object like an apple. It has three dimensions and this is something you need to put in. Here now the underpainting for the water part. And again the same application process, color is very thick, just enough flow in it so that we can level it out more or less. Another important aspect here when it comes to painting in a realistic way, really make sure that you don't, at least that's what I do, that I don't have those color blobs, those brush marks on the painting surface. Really important, at least for my way of painting. I really think this enhances the illusion of death, the illusion of the scene that we have here. I let the whole thing dry for a couple of days, then I kind of remix the same colors that we mixed before, some more gradients in between. Then I just kind of use the drybrush technique to add more details to the cloud body that we put in before. Again, the underpainting is completely dry, don't make the mistake to get in too early, it needs to be bone dry so that it won't lift off. And the next, I think, important thing here is to really understand that I use just a hint of color in some areas, as you can see here. I'm using the background color to kind of build up the 3D effect of the clouds. See it here, pretty perfect, blue of the sky shining through in some areas. And I'm only adding some more color, some lighter color to parts where I want to have the cloud a bit more dominant, as you can see here. Same goes for this part here, adding some darker parts, some darker colors, to really kind of flesh it out, you know, the work on the main body. Adding the lighter areas first, and then I basically go back and kind of make it bubbly. I'm adding darker tones, lighter tones, some a bit more reddish looking tones, trying to be very random with the edge of the cloud, as you can see here. It's not following any pattern, it has lots of extensions all over the place, and when you follow this principle, you can really very easily build up a very convincing looking 3D looking cloud. Perhaps you might like to see this video here in a full-time version on my Patreon, link is somewhere down below here, where we have this video with over, I think, 6 hours of pure painting, in detail information about how to mix the colors and so on. Make sure you check it out. The water part, as you can see here, I'm again mixing and reusing the colors of the sky, more or less, to build up the reflections that we have on the water. The background color, this greenish color, is again very dry. It's completely dry. And I'm just adding on top, repeating the color of the sky, more or less. See I'm playing the color, and then I go back with a fresh brush, that has no color on it, and start to dry brush blend, kind of. I'm blending out, fading out, letting fade out the color. To get a really soft transition between those waves here. Then I go back and add some darker tones, where we have some bigger wave parts, tumbling over, basically the dark areas that we have beneath those water parts, or the shadow areas of those water parts. And then I'm starting to add those, I think they are very important parts, when it comes to painting, waves. Those reflections, those little waves in the background that reflect the sunlight, more or less. I'm trying to do this in a very random pattern, a bit more rounder shapes, a bit more thinner ones, longer ones, and so on, to really get it as random as possible. And here now I'm building up one of the waves in the foreground, and you see I'm having this kind of yellowish, greenish color, that I put over it, on the upper part. This is kind of the trick, when it comes to painting water or waves, that the thinner the water gets, the more the color of the water is shining through, and we have kind of a greenish looking water, that we repeat in the front again, and this really is a very simple way of starting to build up realism and details in your waves, and they really start to look more realistic. And then I'm grabbing a flat brush, a bigger one, and start to kind of build up the reflections of the sun, of the sky, especially in this case here, in the front area, really again treat it as a 3D object. We have the light coming in, and those waves are concave objects. They basically catch the light of the sky, and when you keep this in mind, it becomes easier to build up those waves, those concave and convex areas. And then grab some lighter color and start to build up the foam part, the white water part, the very important part, where we start to add more details, and I mean, where the beach is, that we always have, most of the time we have these foam parts, the white water parts, and they need to be put in, and you also see that I'm toying around with the thickness of the color a lot, because the thicker I get, the lighter the color is, and you see I'm letting fade out the brush a lot, I'm just grabbing fresh color when I try to build up a new wave borderline, more or less, and yeah, get very thin when I put in the white water part, where it kind of fades out, or is more in the darker areas of the wave. We also need to add some reflections from the rocks that we have here, and again, treat it like a 3D object, like a concave object. You want those shadow areas not in a landscape painting, like pulling it down, you need to repeat the body, the shape of the body of the waves, very important. And also, I'm adding some white water around the rocks, some foam parts here and there, to really make it look more realistic, and yeah, again a very small, fine round brush, this drybrush technique, I'm just kind of, yeah, scratching it on, rubbing it on, more or less. Again, I'm fleshing out some upper parts of the wave here, some tumbling over waves that we have here, and finally adding some reflections here and there on those wave bodies, with really pure titanium white as kind of a final highlight on those areas here. Yeah, then we step to the front and start to, yeah, kind of build up the front water part here, and you see, by adding these lighter, bluer colors and those reflections here, those pointy, very small ones, we already have a body of water that looks realistic. And we also, of course, need to add in those white water parts, those foam parts in the front area here. And believe me, I mean, it's obvious in this case here, it's not white, but people very often get it wrong and put in some white color, and this is, use white only as the final touch up for those extreme highlights, more or less, that you want to put in. It looks whitish, but it is far off. Some detail shot of foam parts, foam details in the front area. I'm getting in with a larger brush first, and then I start to use a very thin, small round brush to add even more details to it. Another important thing here is the shadow beneath those foam parts in the front area. They also need to be there to make the illusion of this 3D object perfect. And also, the more you zoom in, the more details you also need to put into the foam area. Very important. Reshaping some of the beach part. Yeah. And that's the final painting. Finished painting, sorry. Yeah, that's about it for today. Make sure you hit that subscribe button, that like button, and see you next time. Bye!