Beach Sunset Watercolor Painting Process ｜ ＂Beach at Dawn＂

Hello everyone and welcome. My name is Noelle and for this video I'll be painting a relatively simple beach sunset. If you want to know what materials I'm using, all of my art supplies are listed in the description. So after I drew a light pencil sketch of the landscape, I began taping it onto my desk. I really wanted to take the time to demonstrate this painting technique. This trick is handy when you want to paint all the way to the edge of the paper, but you also want to tape it down onto a flat surface. I understand that this can be a waste of tape, but do not worry, I reused the tape for another project after I finished this one. Here I'm showing a quick demonstration of my color mixes. It is important to have your colors ready because if you wait, you risk your paper drying in the middle of a wash. For the sky gradient, I wet the paper down with clean water and then added paint after for a nice and lovely wet on wet technique. I am using a round brush to swipe paint onto my paper in a horizontal motion. You might find that using a flat brush would be easier. The trickiest part of this whole process is to create a gradient from yellow orange to blue without mixing green in the middle. A little green is okay, but in general sunsets don't have very much green, just practice. My advice is to leave the bottom half of your gradient clear until you add in warm colors, otherwise it can mix with blue and become kind of muddy. I used a similar technique for the first layer of paint on the beach, which will represent the sky's reflection on the water. Realistically, this reflection is going to appear muddier than the sky. The water along the horizon was painted in a similar way. For my second layer on the beach, I went in with a muddy bluish purple, basically a cool black, for the sand. Sand is not very reflective, so at the time of day the sand will appear dark. Aim for horizontal motions because if you paint some areas too vertical, that can mess with the overall look. I used dry brushing to paint the darker areas in the distant water. I tend to use dry brushing for small details and it works best with textured paper like cold pressed or rough. I'm making sure my brush is mostly dry and playing with the pressure of my brush on the paper. Details are added to create small thin waves in the water and small rocks on the beach. The farther away the rocks are from the viewer, the smaller they should be. If you accidentally make some of the rocks too large, it might help to make some rocks in the foreground a teeny bit bigger. The trick to painting the island in the distance is to keep the strokes as tiny as you can. Trees are detailed and inconsistent. Keep it small, use your tiniest brush if you need to, and be patient. Here's the satisfying tape peel. If you enjoyed watching this video, consider giving me a thumbs up or maybe subscribing to my channel. If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, feel free to let me know. You can find me on my social media linked below. I am most active on Instagram. To find out what art supplies I use and or recommend, you can visit my Amazon storefront linked below. I'll receive a small commission from items purchased following those links. Thanks so much for watching and make it a great day!