How to Paint Under the Sea | Acrylic Tutorial

Okay everyone for this painting today I'm working on a 10 by 20 canvas and I'll be using my set of five brushes here. I've got a one inch flat, one inch filbert, a number three round, a two liner rigger, and a one inch mop brush. I'll have a link for these brushes below if you're interested. And I'll also be using a large filbert brush. This is a number 50 but roughly two and a half inches wide. And the colors I'm using today are titanium white, neon lemon yellow, neon pink, mars black, and phthalo blue. With all these colors I'll be making multiple shades and a few other colors so we can do a lot with just what we've got here. I can't wait to show you all these color recipes. Let's jump in and get started. I'm going to begin by adding some water to the canvas. This is going to help the canvas take the paint better and we'll be to blend our acrylics out much much better. Just have a little bit of water on there, not a lot, you don't want it dripping. And then let's evenly coat and spread that over the canvas. Now for this dreamy underwater scene I'm going to be having some light coming from this right corner and then we're going to have a mermaid over here kind of looking up towards her castle, her under the sea castle. So let's start with adding a little bit of blue and yellow and we're going to make turquoise. So I'm going to take some yellow first and then a little bit of blue and then white. Okay so we're going to just add this over the whole canvas. Look at all those beautiful shades we get by taking a scoop of each color and mixing it directly on the canvas. We're going to leave it a little bit lighter down here so let's take a little bit of white and turn our brush this way and just kind of create these little wiggles like so and then a gentle little sweep across. That will kind of start to make it look like the kind of dappled on the sand. Okay let's take some white and a little bit of yellow now and we're going to start pulling and sweeping for some light here. We'll be able to add a little bit more once it dries a little bit of black and blue with my mop brush and I'm just going to start tapping in some little rocks and mounds under here that we're going to have some plant life growing out of and then I'm going to add a little bit on this side as well. Okay now what I'm going to do is take a little bit of, do I want to start with, we could start with dark first and then work up to our light or we can start with light and then go into our dark for shadows. I think I'm just going to go right into the white and I'm going to take some pink and some yellow. We'll start with a pretty peachy shell color and we're going to add little lines. We're just going to start with little lines like this and then we're going to go up and bring that back down. So I just find it easier to turn my brush sideways like this, push in and load the end of the brush. One, two, three, four, five. One, two, three, four, five. Okay and then I'm going to go across like this. I'm just going to tap it like that and make it look kind of like textured on the top. I'm going to push and tap and I'm going to add a few more pillars. One, two, three. Let's make those a little taller and then add another line on top of there. So I'm just going to add some of the tabs in here. And I'm going to take some pink, white, a little bit of yellow can be in there too. Okay, I'm just going to start tapping in a little kind of branch here. Okay, a little bit like that here and there. You can tell a little bit of pink accents around our castle. I'm just rolling out the paint that's getting in the barrel there and using it. Push a little harder, you'll get some thicker, fuzzier looking ones. Okay, I'm going to take some white and yellow. I haven't rinsed my brush out. And you can also make a deeper shade of purple, a little bit darker. And then I'm going to add quite a bit more white to make a really light shade of purple here. Kind of look like little seahorses. That's so cool. I don't know about you guys, but these were going to be little fish, but you know what they look like to me? They look like turtles. See how my mind works? I see way more than what's there. So I'm just going to go over that with, hmm, let's just stay with that light soft purple. And I'm going to add a little head here and just a little arch over top of those. Here, and I'm just going to add a little triangle for their tails. And then just a little push and dab with the round brush. That's all you need. adding a brighter highlight of some yellow and white on the tops of them. And you don't even, you can have like lots of little ones here. So it looks like a school of fish and you just can just add these little taps. Okay. So I'm going to take some yellow, some pink, a little bit of black, a little bit more yellow, and a little bit of white. Depending on how light you want, whatever your skin color, your painting, you can use less or more, lighter or darker. I'm going to start with this shade and I want to have her face right here. So I'm just going to add her head kind of on an angle here. We're not really going to see any features on her face. I want to have just like she's looking up towards here, but we're going to have flowing hair and I'm going to have her shoulder here. So just add a little line like this and her arm coming down. Her elbow would be right there. And then her hands are right about there. And then we're going to go from this side and sweep down and then we're going to push a little harder for her bottom legs and then tail that will be somewhere over there. So see the size of her in comparison? It just makes it feel so much more grand, this underwater world that she's in. It's so big compared to her and that's what I want it to feel like. Mix it up with the yucky color in my brush, a mixture of her hair color and the blue. I'm going to pull it out for her tail. You cannot see her whole tail but it's going to be there. Take a little bit of blue, pink and white. I mixed up quite a bit, taking a little bit more white to make it a little lighter. And I'm just going to come right in here and you know just the texture of the canvas itself when you kind of lightly go over with your brush makes it look a little scaly. A few more little fish here. Back over to my bigger brush a little bit of water and that purpley shade. Just a really thin thin amount of white paint there. I don't want to make it stand out again. I want it to look out of focus and blurry. Our turtles back there, they look like turtles to me. What do you guys think? I don't know if you see the way I see it but I think call this painting all done. I really really like this one. Let me know what you guys think. I haven't painted an underwater scene in I don't know how long. So about time I did. Thank you for your requests. I read your comments and I take into consideration all your requests. So thank you to my Patreon members. Without you all this would not be possible.