Jerry Yarnell Teaches Ocean Waves & Wet Sand | Seashore Acrylic Painting Tutorial

Hi, welcome to the Inspiration of Painting. I'm glad you could join me again in our lesson today. We're gonna do something a little bit different now than we've done before for the tape of the month club series. We've done a lot of individual items and little subjects to kind of help you just learn basic things. And I know not all of you understand that, but from an instructor's point of view, it's my job to get you to do a lot of variety of things. And sometimes doing a complete painting isn't the best way to teach something, okay? But sometimes throwing all the pieces together into a complete painting is a wonderful thing to help you understand all things we learned from the past. So what we're gonna do today in this session is we're gonna take some of the things we've learned and we're gonna do something like, we're gonna do an ocean scene. And I'm not talking about just a little docile ocean. We're gonna have some waves here, some big rugged rocks, some distant hills with some mist, maybe a semi-sunset. We're gonna have some sand here and the water washing up on the sand and some little pebbles on the beach. It's gonna be a lot of fun. It's gonna be exciting. And even if you don't live by the ocean or don't like the ocean, it's okay because please try, you'll learn something from it, all right? It's impossible to please everyone when we do these programs because everyone is so different. That's what makes art so exciting. But please learn from it and then take these things and create your own things. Now let's get started here. It's really a fairly simple painting in its entirety but because it's a little more complete, it takes a little bit of effort. So let's start with this, the large hake brush. This is my new hake brush that Grumbacher has invented for me and we're gonna do the sky first. Now it's a vertical painting as you can see and I've made a rough sketch. Now if you wanna take your charcoal and just kind of block in where the basic shapes are of the rocks and then of course your horizon line back here. And then we've got the water's edge here with the sand and I'm gonna show you sort of a neat little trick for doing the sand. But let's do a simple sky to start with because it's not really our feature. And let's just take our gesso. Actually, let's wet it first. Let's take a little water and lightly mist the sky there. And let's go like this using big Xs and cover the sky. This is as good as you can here. After you get a good coating of gesso on here, then we're gonna move forward in putting a little more color here. Now, because I'm working under these hot lights and things are drying much faster than they normally do. So I usually have to come back and mist this a little bit to keep it a little bit moist. And you may have to do the same thing, especially if you're in a high humidity area where things dry a little bit slower. Now, I'm gonna take a little teeny touch of orange. I'm gonna put a strip of orange right across the horizon. And see, I'm just gonna smooth it out sort of back and forth like this. Then take your blue, your ultramarine blue. By the way, our palette's the same as it always has been. If you're brand new to the club or brand new to watching what I do, I'll go over this palette maybe here in a little bit, but we're adding a little cerulean blue. That's the only other blue we're adding. And you'll start up here, put this across the top. And then I want you to add a little tiny touch of burnt umber. Now, I very rarely use burnt umber, as most of you know, because it always makes it a little bit muddy. But this time we want a little bit more of a muddy type of sky. And the reason for this is I wanna create the effect that there's maybe a storm brewing or something like that. And this time the umber is an important color for creating that effect. You see, it's a little bit different gray. It's not a true gray. It's a softer gray, it's sort of a warmer gray. Okay, now pull this color right on down so you have a very nice, soft background. I'm gonna pull this forward here. The light's a little bit hard to see. Now, notice I'm using more big, long strokes here. I'm not after anything really specific here. I'm not using the big Xs as much as I used to for this particular painting, okay? Because we want a little bit sort of a windswept look here. Now, while this is still a little wet right back here, using the same color, a little blue, a touch of the cerulean, I mean the ultramarine blue, a touch of the cobalt blue, and a little gesso, maybe a touch of umber. Let's just block in a very distant hill, okay? Now, I got a little too much. Something kind of like this, very gently back here in the background. Okay, now what we wanna do here, soften this in. Now, watch how we do this. You gently fade upward until it fades off into the distance, okay? See how it fades off? It just blends into that sky. This is very much like an oil painting technique because you've got a wet background and you need this. Okay, now see how nice and soft that is? It's almost kind of blurry, and that's what you want, just almost a little blur right across here, okay? Now, while that's drying and while this is drying, let's just block in or underpaint the water, which is, you know, the next step, of course. And using the same brush, this time, again, you're using your gesso. I'm gonna put a little bit of this gesso out here, I think, so that I can have it close to me. I don't wanna get too much out here, but a little bit just to work from. Now, just take a little bit of gesso, a little bit of the ultramarine blue, and a little bit of the brown, and in the background here, start like this, right on the horizon, and all I want you to do is just sort of fill in or underpaint with this color, okay? Now, the water that we're gonna paint here is gonna take on more of an aqua color, but we wanna start first with this grayer underpainting. And see how I'm softening it in there? I'm not leaving any hard edges, okay? Just keep it very soft, like that. Now, I want you to pay particular attention to that. That's a very soft edge. It's undefined, it's there, but it's not there, if you know what I mean. It's just very, very lightly there, okay? Kinda cover the canvas, good paint. Right over where the edge of your rocks are there, okay? Just keep coming forward, using those same colors, a little blue, a little purple. I mean, not purple. You can use both blues and a teeny touch of the brown. Now, that's the umber. Be very careful not to overdo that. Really, what we're doing here is tinting the white canvas. You know, you could do a lot of different things to tint your canvas, but because we're gonna be painting a water scene and an ocean, I like the softer, grayer tones for my underpainting. It just makes the overpainting go on much easier. So, keep that in mind, if you would. Okay, now just a little bit further, right here. And that's close enough. You don't really have to come all the way forward. Just about right there is fine. So, this is the section here, where the middle part of the painting, where the main water's gonna be. Now, rinse your brush out, lay it down. Now, like I said, this is not an extremely difficult painting but because it's gotta be a painting where all the pieces fit, it's gonna take a little bit of effort on your part. So, it's not real time-consuming, especially when you see how we do these rocks. Now, most of us would think, gosh, we're gonna do all these big rocks here in the ocean, the waves splashing, it's gonna take forever. Well, it is for most of you because most of you do exactly what the three Ps to sort of my motto here, don't piddle, play, or putter. Most of you piddle and play and putter way too much, spending a lot of time on things that you don't need to spend time on. Well, now I'm gonna show you how to just block in the rock so that they're just there and then how to highlight them here in a little bit. Now, we're gonna use a variety of colors. We're gonna switch to our number six bristle brush, a little bit of purple, touch of white, maybe a little burnt sienna would be fine. And you're gonna use a variety of these colors. For instance, over here, you can see I put this on and they're kind of purplish, all right? You wanna throw a little more umber in with them? That's fine, I'm part of it. Just don't blend it all together where it's one solid color. That will not work, okay? That just absolutely will not work. So you wanna have a little variety of color here. Now, most of you are scared to death about now just throwing this paint on here, but you've just gotta trust me. I know, where have you heard that before? You've heard that before, just trust me, and every time you hear that, you end up getting hurt. Well, I'm not gonna let you get hurt on this. If you just block the paint in, just these big blobs, and most of you are really good at blobbing, and just get these on there and don't worry about it, okay? Now, then go to the other side. Now, this side over here, I'm gonna have some, they're pretty tall. They're gonna come up here and break the horizon and that background mountain. These rocks are a little bit more of a slab-type rock, sort of angled, which is kinda nice. Okay, see, I'm not being particularly careful, and you don't need to be real careful. You just need to have courage, all right? I know that's a little hard sometimes, but you've gotta have courage. I say I'm putting a couple more on right here. Notice how I'm kinda, as I'm coming out, I'm fading, just little smudges like that, okay? That almost creates the suggestion of a mist, okay, especially when you get ready to finalize these things. And these ones in the foreground here, just a little bit darker. See, I made these a little darker than that. That's a little bit darker. Now, so you actually have two layers here, and then one main clump here. And then when we're all done, we get all this kinda blocked in or finished up, we may end up putting a little sailboat or a sailing ship, or you could even put a distant lighthouse, or just any endless number of things, a little shrimp boat. You know, we just did a series for PBS down on the Gulf Coast and did some shrimp boats. It was a lot of fun, except for the bugs, it was great. Okay, now, after we've blocked this in, let's block in the sand, and that's just simply gonna be an underpainting thing now, and we're gonna switch to our number 10 bristle brush now, number 10, and I'm gonna work right here in the same pile. See, this is the same area right down here, and we're gonna take some gesso. I already got some out here. And you take your umber, a little bit of yellow, and see, you create a nice sandy color, and just work it right in there. Don't be afraid of it. Maybe a touch of purple would be good too. In fact, purple's a great color for underpainting sand. Let's test this out. Yeah, that's kinda nice right there. Let's just go with that. Now, you may have to remix this, and that's okay. Now, I want you to paint up just a little further than you normally would, but I want you to notice something now that I'm doing this, a little unique and a little different than what you're probably used to. As I come across here, notice how I'm creating these little waves that are vertical, or I mean horizontal. This keeps the water flat, also creates the suggestion of sand, and the way the waves wash up against there. So, just kinda do this. It's kinda fun. I wanna mix up a bigger batch of color. I think I'm gonna need quite a bit more here. So, I'm gonna take some gesso, a little bit of umber, a little blue, a little purple. Just mix that all together, a little yellow. Okay, just come around through here. Just keep coming. As you come forward, you might wanna darken that just a tad, okay, just a tad. Throw a little yellow in there. See, the color doesn't have to match, okay? That's what makes painting so much fun. Add a little more umber to it as I come forward, and make it just a teeny, weeny, tad bit darker. I even got some green in there. There's nothing wrong with green. Anytime you're doing earth tones, any kind of an earthy color, you can put just about everything in there if you would like. It's not a big deal at all, okay? Now, that's basically what you want. You've got basically two values, a lighter value and a middle value. You don't have a real dark value. Now, that's the basic underpainting. Now, of course, this little section over here where we didn't put the blue, it's gonna have a lot of reflection in there, so I'm not gonna really try to make a particular shade of color there, but I am gonna go ahead and take some blue with a little bit of the umber, and right underneath now, see, I'm gonna scumble like this, more of a grayish color, all right? A little bit darker. I'm wiggling this edge here, see, like this, and already, you can see just that little bit creates a little bit of a watered-like effect. So you take a little bit of blue, both of the blues, a little umber, a little white maybe, or just any of those grayer tones now, and you just kind of swish this around right here. I think I'll put a little more umber in there with it, and you sort of blend it right on down to the water's edge, okay? You can do a little bit of that right here if you want, although this is not all that big a deal because we've got a lot of waves and foam and all that kind of stuff drifting up here, but that's a good place to start there. Okay, now then, one of the things that we want to do here, need to get a little bit more, gonna get some fresh blue out there because that's getting a little bit dry. Now then, after you block this in, let's go back to our horizon area back here, which is this area just below your mountain here, and by the way, this is something that a lot of people misunderstand. When we talk about the horizon, we're talking about the area where your eye meets the sky. In other words, where the sky and the ground meet, it forms the horizon. Well, a lot of people misunderstand and think that the highest point in your painting is the horizon. That's not always the case. In this case, the horizon is here, and if you just remove the mountain, you would still have the same horizon line, okay? So your horizon line is not the top of a mountain or the top of a tree or the top of a hill, but it's where your eye actually fits where the sky or your background comes together with your foreground. That's where your eye meets. That's why they call it the horizon line. That's what forms that. So don't misunderstand that. So your horizon now is here. We're gonna take our number six bristle brush. A little bit of gesso would be good, and a teeny-weeny touch of blue, just a tad. Starting back here, you want it to be just slightly lighter. Now, notice how I'm holding my brush like this. Now, I want you to come back here in the background, and I want you to dry brush this, just like this. Come right over here, and we're going to create just a little bit of movement in the water, just a tad. See, I'm using the sort of what we call the chisel side of the brush, and just keep moving, leaving some of the background coming through. Okay, see how I'm softening? Now, by doing that, you're automatically creating distance in the painting, okay? It's kind of misty and sort of foggy and hazy. That's a beautiful effect, and as it comes forward, by allowing some of the dark water coming through, you've created a nice effect. Now, let's block in the center part where the waves begin to develop. Now, you take a little bit of your Hooker's Green now, with a teeny touch of your Ultramarine Blue, touch of purple, and, of course, the white. The white is what gives you your value change, and so you want to get that, and start back here like this, and I want you to just put a little darker water, just little smudges of darker water right in through here. This is not a big deal, but you have to get it done to start adding a little more depth to it. I'm sort of dry brushing this in here, and then we're going to take that same color, a little bit of the green and a touch of the blue, and now, the waves, you know, that are crashing, they kind of create this, you know, upward movement, and they kind of crash over. Well, you put some sort of a comma like this, see, like that. That'd be the top of the wave there. There may be some smaller waves, too, so you come in here, a little bit of the Hooker's Green and your blue, and you make this a little darker right through here, just a little bit of a hookup right there where the wave might be, right over to the water's edge, and you're going to see what I mean here. If you don't get stuck playing with this, you'll see what I mean about how simple this painting really is. It's just knowing a few techniques and understanding some brushwork and how to make some things happen. It's really a fun thing. Now, we're going to go ahead and start highlighting the rocks. Now, we're going to have our sunlight coming in from the right-hand side. Seems to be my favorite side to highlight things, and we all have something that makes us want to go from the left or the right. Maybe it's because I'm right-handed. I'm not sure, but at any rate, we're going to go ahead and block in the highlighting now on the rocks while this is drying, and then we're going to come back and begin the splashes and all the fun things that makes this painting come alive. So now take down here on your palette. I want you to take a little bit of your gesso, which we already have here, a little touch of orange, of course, a little bit of white, okay, just like that. See, you get a nice, I don't know, I'm not sure what you call it. It's kind of an amber color, not real amber, but kind of. And then let's just watch these rocks develop. Now, maybe you shouldn't even be painting right now. Maybe you should just kind of just put everything down and concentrate on this, and then rewind your tape and start over again, because painting rocks is everybody's, seems to be anyway, everyone's biggest battle. Now, these rocks are a little different, though, than some of the other rocks that we've done. Okay, now watch how I start building these rocks here. See, I'm being loose and free. That's to say you can't go back, which I'm gonna do, and add little bits and pieces of darkness, little cracks and crevices. Okay, just watch this. I'll kind of be quiet for a minute and just paint, and you can kind of watch how this is falling into place. See, I'm stroking in different directions. I'm not just getting hung up on one stroke. That is what causes most of us to get into the piddle play and putter mode. We just think everything's one stroke, and then you get in trouble, and you fix it, and you fix it, and you fix it. So, just watch for a second. Okay, see, all of a sudden, those rocks begin to look three-dimensional. We've gone from this to the left dark, more highlight, and you know, we've got one here that's not very bright yet, so you come back in here, may add a color, maybe something that's a little different than what you have. Soften the bottom in. Now, you want to keep some fresh paint coming out once in a while, you know, so you have some clean highlight, and your highlight may vary from a, maybe more yellow in your color this time, or maybe just more of a whitish highlight. And you want to change the shape of your rocks, too. See how I'm just kind of making a quick smudge here and there, and we just change the shape of things quite a bit. It's really an exciting thing. This is so much fun. Okay, you see how we crease? By applying pressure, you can make things happen. You can create little cracks. You can create crevices. You know, like I said, you can come back with more darkness if you need to, but don't just use one color. You know, don't just use burnt umber. You can see I've got purple showing through. You're going to see blue occasionally, see brown. So you do want to have a variety. It's very important. A little reflection right there. Okay, so let's leave this pile of rocks for a moment, and let's go over to the other side. Now, remember, our light's coming in from the right, but you have to understand there's something about light and how it reacts on an object. When it hits an object, you're going to create the bright light, okay, which you have here, but you also have what we call reflected light, or light that bounces off of another object onto another object. And so, basically, you're going to have a situation over here where you're going to have some strong light and some more direct, thinly lit areas. For instance, you could still, we don't know if there's rocks blocking the light coming through, but for instance, you're going to have light on top of this rock. Okay, it may not come way down inside there unless the light is filtering through and there's nothing blocking it. But most of what you have here will be what we call the top light, the light that hits the top of these objects, just caps them out. So I'm going to go ahead and put a little light there. I just wanted to test that over there. It looks good. Now, right down in here, so you're going to have some rocks in front. There's a slab. A little light coming through here and there. Sometimes they're just little thin slivers of light. You can see the difference on this side as to this side. Here, you have more of the highlight covering the front of a rock. Here, you have your highlight more on just the top and the rest is in shadow, okay? Be a similar thing up here. You'll have, you know, like maybe this is an area right here where the sun's kind of popping through. Just touch it. You see how that works? Isn't that pretty? It's just so neat. Then we'll build the mist and the waves. It's going to just throw. This is going to have, it's going to be a breathtaking scene, actually. Now, there's a couple of things we're going to do before we move into the water. We're going to go ahead and put some mist up in there. Now, I want you to take a little bit of gesso with a touch of purple or a little blue. I'm sorry, not purple. It's sort of a bluish cast. It's a very light pale blue. You can see that they're very light and you're going to dry brush it like this between this clump and this clump. Now, this will be the mist. That comes up through the rocks as a result of the wind blowing the mist from the waves as they crash. It softens. You might have a little between some of these rock layers or not much, but you're going to have a little bit of mist all along the shore. And see, that's really important. It's an excellent, excellent thing to have. A little here. Good. It sort of separates clumps of rocks and creates a little bit softer. Yeah, just a softer effect. It just looks just like the water that way. Now, see, it doesn't take too much. Just a little. Isn't that pretty? Just doing that creates that beautiful, beautiful contrasting look and already our water's starting to come alive. Now, let's go up here and begin the capping of the water. Now, you're going to take the same brush. This time, you take a little gesso, maybe a touch of water. What you're going to do is just use your brush kind of like we leaf our trees and you're going to dab it sort of like this. See, I'm using the chisel edge, sometimes the corner. This creates an uneven sort of a broken line that looks like the water's kind of crashing over a little bit. Yeah, we're not after a hurricane here. We're just after a simple little. And then there's the second wave there that's coming in. And then take your brush and just begin at the base of this one, putting some little short, choppy strokes that kind of go up into the wave so that you can tell that there's water swishing back and forth. I'm building this light right in here, like the foam and the mist. See, I'm pulling the water right on around. Now, as you come here, notice what I'm doing. I'm getting my brush started in this pattern like the sand and the water will have when it washes up against each other. You can already see it beginning to wash just by putting these little hooked curves like this and leaving a little contrast there. And all of a sudden, it looks like the water's starting to swish up against the background. Now, let's go over here, I mean, against the sand. And wherever the water comes over and hits the rock's edge, I want you to just put a little splash just like this. I'm just splashing. And watch, I just turn my brush just like this. Kind of like painting grass. Now, you're gonna understand here in just a minute why I really ask that you paint a little bit of everything that I throw at you. I don't like everything that I paint, I mean, in terms of caring for the subject, but I know that I'm gonna learn something from it. Just like painting grasses and brush, I learned this technique for doing the splashes and the waves and the mist by learning how to paint grass because this is how you get a soft look. And notice here how it just all falls right into place. Of course, back here, you want a little more of it. And you gotta have a little bit more light back there where it looks like the rocks and the water meet. Add a little bit of highlight right across there. See how pretty that is? Oh, this is already looking good. Now, remember, the fewer the strokes, the better the painting. Same thing, a little whiter there. See, I'm building the light. See, I'm just building little thin washes of light and it creates all these sort of rippled-like effects that you're gonna have against the water's edge and it softens everything. Oh, it's just an incredible thing. Now, over here on this side, you can't really see the right-hand side of the rocks like you see the left-hand side of these, but you're still gonna have some splashes and they're kind of hidden behind. So what you're gonna actually see behind the rock are just the actual end of the splash as it splashes up. So you can go ahead and put the splash in there, but all you're seeing is the tip of it. See, as you know, it's splashing and crashing up and there may be a little coming over these rocks. I mean, you know, there's obviously gonna be some overspray. So don't be afraid to go ahead and put this in there and you know, that just lets you know that there is water crashing up against the rocks here. I like that idea and it works really well because you know then it makes the painting more complete. Then on the inside of the wave here, you know, it's gonna be sort of transparent as you look through. I'm gonna take a little phthalo yellow green with a touch of my cobalt blue. Phthalo yellow green and a little cobalt blue. And of course I still have a little white on my brush so that makes it a little opaque. And dry brush right in underneath like this. Just a little thin. Okay, see how that's pulling up? Makes it look like you can see through it. That's very, very important in this painting. Now you take your brush where you have some of these greens and things on your brush and you come forward now and you start building in some a little bit darker values along the edge here. You gotta be careful not to get it too dark, okay? But you gotta have a little bit in between some of the lighter areas. So I just, here it gets choppy because you know you're getting right up against the water's edge here and we gotta get some of this greenish color back in here. So you need to be adding that now. See how you're pulling the color down in, softening right over your reflections over here and all of a sudden the water's starting to fall into place. Everything's starting to shape up. Now on the edge here, this is really kind of fun, just take plain white, maybe a teeny touch of orange and I mean very, very tiny touch. Take your brush, now this is an important stroke. If you learn nothing else in this session, this is what I want you to learn, how to control this stuff in sort of one stroke. Now watch as we go across. So I turn my brush, create the effect of the sand and the water blending together. See, just build these little ripples. As you come forward, see, you get a little less intense. Sort of let it fade out. Okay, just sort of create the effect. Now see that the water is swishing back and forth like this. Now, soften the edge a little more and when that dries out, you won't be able to see it quite so strong. So you may have to repeat it. Then again, it may just be just about right. Now while that's drying, let's go ahead and add some of the little highlights now to the water and what I do here is I take my number six bristle brush and I dip it straight into the white and you can see right on the end of my brush here, right on the very, very end, okay? I'm gonna dab it straight on. Now this is how you create the little bits of the splash when it turns into more of the mist. See before, just sort of the swish that kind of got the motion of the wave going. Now this is the actual texture of the mist. Now there's a lot of other ways to do this. You can take a toothbrush or just a regular brush. You can splatter some little splatters. I do that real often. That's a great thing to do. It's a lot of fun. But these little white sparkles are very important to this. In fact, without this, your painting is just dead. It's just dead. These little touches, very light, very delicate. They're just little touches like that. You can go all the way through here in different places, especially up here like this. Man, just barely touch it like that. You have a lot more control and it looks a lot more realistic. Maybe they can close in on this for us and you can see the splashes actually how that creates that effect. See how it looks? That is so neat. Over here on this side. Now be careful not to get it too patternized. That's a real easy thing to do. If you get too much of a pattern in there, it won't look very good. Now you can also have it, see, right on the top of your wave here because you're gonna have some splash here. Okay, see how I'm doing that? Very carefully. Whoops. Now see, I hit it too hard there. So you need to take your paper towel and just sort of wipe that off. Just barely touch it. There we go. In fact, it's a good idea to get some up above the rocks so it looks like it's behind and you know there's the water splashing. That's very important there. And you can sort of pick and choose. Your painting will be a little different than mine. You know, you got your own thing going there. So, you know, you gotta add it accordingly. Back here, I'm gonna put a little bit more because I want it to look a little bit more like the waves hitting the rocks in the distance. And it's mostly just little smudges. Yeah, that's great. Now what I'm doing is kind of picking and choosing where I want these splashes to go so that it doesn't overpower but it really accents the painting. Now I think we're getting there. I think that's really sharp. Let's just leave that except for a little bit right in through here. I think we need a little bit of the white right there. There we go. Now let's come back down here to our foreground here. Now, generally speaking, when you're out around and I've been along a lot of beaches and things, you're gonna see little grasses and weeds and some places they have what they call the sea oaks that come way up high. Well, that's a good spot right here for some of those. We'll put some in here. Then I'm gonna show you how to put some of the little debris on the beach. I'm not talking about pollution. I'm talking about rocks and pebbles and seashells, you know, little things that sort of make the water look a little wetter. But first, you gotta repeat the step. You see what I'm talking about? That dried out a little lighter. And right on, especially on the edge here, you want this to be a little bit whiter, a little bit more intense, okay? Just a little bit brighter right on the water's edge. That's a very important thing. You may have to hit that two or three times now, so don't be afraid if it doesn't, you know, dry out right, then go ahead and do it again. In fact, I'm sure I'll have to do that here. You want that real clean and real whitish right on the edge. And as you get in the middle here, I just sort of let it fade out. I like it a little stronger for two reasons. Number one, this kind of pulls my eye in this way and leaves me this sort of knot, so it doesn't carry me out as bad. Now, let's go over here on the left-hand corner. Let's switch to our script brush. But first, we need to mix up a color. Now, I'm gonna keep mixing right here in this pile where we did the rocks and so forth. I want you to take some burnt umber and a little burnt sienna, a little yellow, and it's fairly soupy. Take your script brush as normal. Now, roll it around, get a nice inky mixture. Come up like this, sort of in a circular motion. Now, these are real tall. Now, I got a blue spot there where I stuck my finger in that, but that's okay. I want you to put quite a few, and then I'm gonna lean into the painting like this, okay? See how tall I'm making these? They're very important. See if I can get enough in there to cover up this blue spot. There we go. Like this. Now, don't be afraid to put quite a few. A lot of you, and I've been traveling around the country a lot lately, looking at different things and teaching seminars and researching and so forth. Most of us still have a habit of being very stiff and very, very, very, I guess you might say controlled to the point to where your paintings don't have any character. Notice how these weeds are very tall, they're very flexible, and yet they're still a fairly, they're a fairly stiff weed by nature. But still, you gotta get some bent ones in there and just overlap, different overlaps, and it's really exciting. And just kind of fade them off, see, as you go across here. Just let them sort of fade off. Okay, now, take your same brush and roll it around and get a nice blob, not blob, I'd say a nice brushful, and then you're gonna turn it sideways like this and you're gonna dab on the end of some of these, just like this. See? That's gonna be the end of the sea oats. These are the seed pods that will eventually go to seed and make more. Just put your brush flat like this. See, it makes a thicker body at the base and then it gets a little thinner at the top, very much like a piece of wheat. That's how it got its name. It really looks just like wheat. I'm from Oklahoma, and I used to combine wheat when I was younger, and I liked it. Some people don't like doing that, but I enjoyed it. And this reminds me of the wheat fields, looking at all the wheat. Now, what you can do is take a little white and yellow, add to this, and just roll your brush around, see, like this, and you can come in there and you can go ahead and put some little highlights. See, that just kind of gives it a nice little flavor. All right? Now, let's switch to a little flat sable here, number four, actually. Now, let's take a little bit of umber and a little blue, get sort of a soft grayish color, and you can put the debris or the stuff that washes up on the shoreline just all over here. In fact, again, in fact, let's go ahead and do this. Let's take a stiff bristle brush. Now, you can use a toothbrush. Let's see if I got a toothbrush handy. I think I left it at the studio. Okay, let's take the number 10 bristle brush, and time of this sand color, plenty of water now, work it in good, and just take your finger, let's go ahead and get a few splatters up here of, see, like this? Now, take a good look what this does. It creates sort of a sandy-like effect. Really, really nice. You can use a toothbrush. You can use anything you want to use, and get some nice little speckles, and you should put some white ones in there, some real bright ones. For instance, I may take this little round sable brush down, just take plain white with a touch of yellow. You can put red ones in there. You can put all kinds of colors, and go through and put a few like this, just along the shoreline here. This also adds a little bit of sparkle, a little more depth to the painting, a little glow. It's just a fun thing to do. Just be careful, don't get carried away. Don't want to dot it to death. There's little touches, and just enough that when you look at the painting, you say, oh, hey, there's some, all the sand, and the seashells, and the pebbles. Okay, I think I've got enough of those. Now see what that does? Gives the shoreline a little sparkle. Then you take your number four sable brush, the one we started to use a second ago. We're gonna add some little bigger pebbles, or you can actually, they could be seashells, but because we're at a distance, you can't really see what they are. But here's the way it works. You take a little smudge, like that, and then right below it, you put a dry brush, very vertical stroke right below it, just like that, see? And by doing so, you're gonna create a reflection. Not a shadow, but a reflection. See, just put little smudges, and then right below it, put a little highlight, I mean a little reflection. And this looks like little pebbles and rocks on the shoreline. See, dry brush this down, and take a look up close now what this does. See, when you dry brush this across the canvas, it looks just like a reflection, so you're creating the effect that there's wet stuff on this sand, and it's water. Isn't that neat? Just look, just a little smudge like that. It looks just like something's sitting right on top of some very wet sand. I've always wanted to do this when I was growing up, and I never could figure out how they got their sand and their water to look so wet. Well, reflections are based only on what you reflect into it, so if you don't have anything vertical to reflect it to your water, much of the time it's not gonna look very wet. Unless, of course, you have a lot of really helpers, like the rocks and the waves and things like that. You're gonna get some of that. See how nice that looks? Then you can highlight those with your little round sable brush, and you put a little highlight right on the edge of each one of these. Okay, just like that. And you can make out of it what you want to. If you actually wanna take the time to do a closeup of a seashell or something like that, go right ahead. Isn't that a beautiful little shoreline there? Creates a lot of action, it's very interesting, it's fun to look at, and it was fun to paint. Now, let's put a few birds flying around back in there. These could actually be seagulls. Now, seagulls, of course, we always equate seagulls with the water, and they're white, but they're not really as white as you think. But because we want them to stand up, all I want you to do is just take this and just make these little V shapes, but they gotta have a little bit of character, because if they don't, they won't look like seagulls. Now, don't make them like the big flapping birds, like an eagle or something. These birds are a little more graceful. They kinda look like they're floating. Different angles overlapping each other, different compositions here and there. And so you just create that nice effect. Now, one of the things that I like to do to finish a painting like this, too, just for fun, and I'm gonna take my charcoals, you might wanna have just say, say there's, this is a part of the bay, and it's going back out into the main part of the ocean, and maybe there's a sailboat back here in the distance. I'm not a sailor. I don't know anything about sailboats, and I'm not gonna pretend to fool you and let you know that I think I do. All I know is I'm gonna have a sailboat here, and I'm gonna have a big sail right there. I have painted a few sailboats for commission purposes for some collectors, but they always sent me a photograph. But right here, I'm gonna have just a sailboat, and let's make it a little colorful. Perhaps we'll take, say, a red. Maybe add a touch of white to it, make it more of a pinkish color. Yeah, let's make a red sail or a pink sail. Like I said, I don't know much about sailboats. You may know a lot more about them and paint them a little bit differently. I'm just sort of throwing this in here. There probably are some things you should do to make it maybe a little more realistic. But this is a fun thing to do. It's easy to do. Just anybody can paint in a little boat. And I'm gonna put in my other boat there. Take my script brush, put the mast in. Now, this boat's not really moving too fast, or he'd be angled a little bit more, but there's always lots of rigging and ropes and all kinds of things going on in one of these things. So you put a little bit of this here and there, and just have some fun with it. And this also adds a little bit of a finishing touch to your painting. By the way, this is an insignificant part of the painting in most cases, because it's just sort of coming into the painting, kind of getting you in. Now, if you had it out here and it was a feature, you most definitely would probably want to go ahead and give it a little bit more character. A little highlight on the edge of the sail there. Maybe you could put some stripes on it. Maybe there are some stripes on the sail. You can do a lot of things with these to kind of give it a little character. Put a little thin highlight right on top of this. Now, there's a little cabin right in here where I'm gonna put a little bit. And, you know, all kinds of little gadgets in there. But that's about all I want to do, just enough to suggest a little sailboat coming in off the distance. And it really adds a nice touch to it. Well, this has certainly been a fun painting and I hope you have enjoyed it. Now, I will say a couple of things that you can use on your own to finish it, just so that you'll kind of, you know, maybe use a little of your own creativity. If you want to add some little wispy clouds, like I said, I wasn't interested in the clouds. We've done thousands of clouds, just a soft sky. But you can put some of the soft, whippy little clouds in there, like the wind's gently blowing. You can add a lighthouse, maybe back over here in the distance, or maybe change your rock formation, make it a little more massive and put a lighthouse on top of it with maybe the light shining down here, maybe a sailboat coming in this way. You can make bigger waves. You can try different kinds of foregrounds here. You can try sand that's drifted up into little clumps. There's so many little things that you can do to this from all the other paintings we've studied in the past and some of the things that you've done on your own. Well, I certainly hope you've enjoyed this. It's been a lot of fun bringing this wonderful ocean scene to you. I hope you've enjoyed it. And again, we'll see you soon on another Inspiration to Painting. God bless you. Stay inspired and we'll see you next time.