Feb 23, 2026
Feb 18, 2026
In this video, I take you through my full process for painting a breaking wave using just two brushes, three main colours, and three clear stages. It’s a simple, structured approach that lets you build energy, movement, and atmosphere without overcomplicating things.
I begin by marking in the horizon and establishing the basic block colours, mixing cobalt blue, light red, and a touch of yellow ochre to create a deep, workable grey. Waves are made up of many colours, but what really matters is understanding how they pick up sand, reflect the sky, and roll that colour through the water. From there, I start shaping the wave, indicating where it has already broken, where it’s lifting, and where foam and splash will naturally occur.
Once the foundation is down, I move into shaping and energising the wave, using light blues from the sky, greens to describe the form of the wave, and whites to suggest foam and lift. Most of this is done with a fan brush, which I find to be the most versatile brush I’ve used in over 40 years of painting. By changing the angle and pressure, it can create edges, broad strokes, circles, and soft transitions.
As the painting develops, contrast becomes key. When I really need to get the message across, I don’t hesitate to go very light against very dark. At that point, I introduce the knife, loading it with paint and confidently laying it onto the canvas to create strong highlights and decisive marks. Don’t be afraid of the knife — be bold, lay it on, step back, and see what it does.
In the final stage, I fill in the wet sand and foreground, showing how the sky reflects in the thin film of water on the beach. Small rivulets and runs of water are important here — they explain what’s happening in front of the wave and help the whole scene feel believable. I finish by deepening a few blues, adding subtle effects, and tying the sky back into the painting so everything feels connected.
I finish the entire painting using just a fan brush, a liner brush, three colours, and titanium white. Simple tools, clear stages, and confident marks — that’s all you need.
Three steps.
Two brushes.
Three colours.
Learn to paint ocean waves in three simple steps with Robert Hagan Art. This tutorial uses only two brushes and explores techniques for capturing the movement and color of crashing waves. Observe how a palette knife adds texture and depth.
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That is a pretty good way. Two brushes, three steps. You watch how I did that.
Because after that we go on and do a figure and then we've really got one whip of painting.
So I'll make a start by just marking in the horizon and that's just mixing a little bit of
Cobalt blue and light red, perhaps a dab of yellow ochre in there to give me a sort of a deep grey.
This is really the first step. So I'll mark in where the basic block colours are and
the waves consist of many colours but the main thing is they pick up sand and they roll that
sand up and through the water. So what I've got there is some yellow ochre to sort of
indicate that pickup of the sand by the moving water and I'll put a darker line underneath it
to sort of ground it down. You'll notice that picks up the colour of the clouds as well so
it's important in a painting to repeat and echo other colours. And now we've got a mix of yellow
ochre and cobalt blue and we've got some green which sort of indicates the top part of the wave
and showing its formation, it's rolling down. So I'm going to have an undulating form of
the wave. It'll pick up and drop down as it rolls around and now I'm doing a little bit of
cobalt blue and white and just indicating where there's a bit of a foamy area. In other words the
waves already crashed over here and we're going to have a lot of foam there, a lot of splashing
water. So I'm putting the foundation down for that. So that's really about what we're up to for step
step one. We've got our basic colours in and now we can start forming up and shaping
the waves or many waves. There's waves behind there, slightly to the distance over there
and I'm sort of just capping those, putting a little bit of light blue and that light blue is
from the sky of course. So and now there's some distant waves there so a little bit of that
tinkled around the background there. Again it's just a little bit of cobalt blue and
white and I'm tapping it on with that fan brush of mine and now I'm sort of shaping this foamy
area on the left hand side. Again cobalt blue and a little bit of white and we need to sort of
energise areas in a painting and so by laying a sort of a nice sort of bluey foundation there
I've already got myself a form that I can shape with some light and later I'll come back in with
some deeper blue and give it a little bit more shape and a little bit more meaning and a little
bit more of an important suggestion. One of the things in painting that's important is be able to
use a brush in many different ways. That's why I like the fan brush because it really is a
perhaps the most versatile brush I've ever used in the whole 40 years of painting.
Seems to be able to do anything with that brush. Like I turn it one way and I get an edge,
I'll turn it another way and I'll get a broad brush. I'll flip it around and I can get
sort of circles with it. It's really the most versatile brush I think ever been made. Here we go
now we're starting to shape the top of this lifting wave. Now we can see there that we've got
the foamy part on the left it's already crashed over and then to the right where I am now we're
sort of shaping out that lift in the wave before it rolls over. Heavy highlights now coming in
showing where that water is lifting and picking up the light from above. So we're on pretty much
white paint there. Well painting's about contrast and if we need to get the message out
we go very light and very dark and now we get really serious. Out comes the knife. Now this
is stage two of what we're doing now we're shaping. So the knife's one of the really
powerful instruments and when my fan brush sort of reaches its limit I head for the knife
and I load that up and then I power that paint onto that canvas get it on the edge of the knife
and then just push it on the canvas. Don't be scared about using the knife if you're going to
be if you need to get the message out about what you're painting then and you're not sure how to do
it then get that knife get brave stand back and then lay it on and then quickly retreat and see
what effect that had and now I'm going to fill in the foreground. So I'm in this the last part
of the stage now this is stage three. So stage three is sort of filling in the wet sand and the
little waves that roll up the beach and so we've got some some wet sand there and now we've got
some dry sand with a thin layer of water on top of it so it's not really dry there but as we get
more down towards the bottom of course it gets dry but what we've got there's the sky above being
reflected by that very thin run of water sitting on the sand and of course you've got little
rivulets little runs of water that cross over each other there as that waves crash and they
run up the beach and these are all important in a painting because they detail what happens
in front of a wave because we need to be able to have that in our paintings. Now I'm going back
into that foamy part with some deeper blue spots just to give a little bit more body and to shape
it a bit more bring it into line with the the other crest of the waves in the middle of the painting
so we need to darken some of these areas and just give them a little bit more
power at the front here we need to put some little waves little runs of water
the trip up there and some little spots of splashing water in the top of that foamy area
that's all important all these little details are really important in the painting
wherever you think there might be something happening take the gamble and put it in there
don't be too shy about about effects in a painting the more effects you can put in there
the more it'll in invite the reader or the the viewer to look at what you're doing and to say
oh he knows his stuff he's obviously looked at a wave even just up there they're important
these little caps make those caps make the paint just sit on there so that when they're under light
they really just shine and I'm going to tidy this up a little bit now put a few
highlights back up in that cloud tie it together with the color below and the extent of detail
so I'm going to just touch parts of the cloud and accentuate the highlights here and there
give it a little bit more meaning in the sky because we've got a lot of detail in this in
the waves now so we need to sort of up the detail in the sky a little bit and that's what I'm doing
now and that's just a liner brush I'm using so I basically use two brushes a fan brush and a
liner brush and that's it for me I don't need to use any other brushes there we go three steps
two brushes three colors and of course titanium white
