How To Draw a Seascape, Lighthouse, Waves, Rocks, Skies, Graphite Pencil Tutorial

Hi everyone and welcome back to another drawing demonstration. This is just going to be a quick overview of the drawing. It's of Peggy's Point lighthouse and you can see the reference photo there in the top corner. Like I say it's only going to be a quick sort of introduction to the drawing. There'll be a full-time lesson of this over on my Patreon channel where there'll be eight videos to accompany this one, all in real time and with real-time voice, no voiceovers or anything like that. So I'll leave links to my Patreon channel in the description below and the end screen cards as well. We've got a really fast growing community of people over there all posting their work on the community section. So if you want to be part of that, like I say you can post your paintings and drawings there and get to know everybody. A real friendly bunch, really supportive group of people over there. I'm sure you'll really enjoy it there. So yeah, just pop along there and have a look and see if it's for you. The actual drawing itself, it's not really that difficult. It'll be a good learning curve for a beginner to do and the intermediates shouldn't have too much trouble with this one. Most of the work, you know, involved in this drawing is mainly the rocks. The lighthouse itself is quite simple, it's quite easy to draw and shade. There's not much to it, but although the rocks, you know, look very complicated they're a lot easier than what you think. You know, if you're just thinking basic shapes and tones and don't think about drawing rocks, you know, just think of shapes and tones everything starts to get a little bit easier. The rocks themselves are quite time consuming really. There's quite a lot of them there, you know, and it's quite involved with the various tones and everything. But the lighthouse and the ocean and the sky and everything else is pretty easy to draw actually, so you shouldn't have too much trouble with this one. Now the materials I'm using are, for the paper, it's Daler Rowney smooth heavyweight paper in A4 size. I used a range of pencils ranging from 4H, HB, 2B, 4B and a 6B. You know, some woodcase pencils, some mechanical pencils. I'll leave a link, I'll leave quite a few links actually in the description below to the art materials that I generally use. So if you're interested in that have a look in the description below and there'll be lots of links there for you, not only for art materials but I'll leave some there for art material reviews and other interesting videos that I think you might enjoy over on my channel. Now the scene itself, like I mentioned at the start, it's called either Peggy's Point or Peggy's Cove. The place is actually in Nova Scotia and apparently it's quite a tourist spot there and I can see why, you know, with fantastic beautiful scenery like this I can see what the attraction is. In fact it's a really nice composition and a really nice scene to draw. As soon as I saw the reference photo I was attracted to it and I thought yes I've got to do that one. In fact this is the second picture I've done of Peggy's Cove lighthouse. The first one was done in watercolour and mixed media with pastel pencils and there's a lesson of that also over on my Patreon channel as well. I've actually had quite a few requests actually to do more seascapes and rocks and that kind of thing so hopefully this one ticks all the boxes for you. It certainly did for me. It was a really nice picture to draw actually. I really enjoyed doing this one. You can kind of get quite involved and carried away you know drawing all those rocks and all those tomes and everything. I'm actually starting on the rocks now as you can see and this is by far the most involved and longest part of the drawing. I mean literally almost the bottom third. The drawing is all rocks apart from that little segment of ocean and the breaking wave there that we've got. So you know if you can have a go at this one you're going to have to be prepared for the long haul because it does take quite a while to complete this bottom third section. It's not difficult or anything like that and it doesn't matter if you get some of the shapes of the rocks wrong. You know they still look like rocks because they come in all shapes and sizes so it doesn't really matter. I mean the most accurate part of the drawing really is the lighthouse itself and again that's fairly easy. There's not much to it so really you shouldn't have too much difficulty with this one. It's quite a quite a nice easy one to do actually and you can also use a fair bit of artistic license with this one. You know we've got that vast area of sky there on the right hand side. I did actually add a few little seagulls in there just kind of flying off in the distance towards the end and also you could add a few sort of white sailboats on the ocean there just to add a little bit more interest to that area if you want. So really you know it's a good picture to do you know if you want to change things a little bit or you know add a few things in. You'll probably notice as well that the reference photo there in the top right hand corner the lighthouse looks very white compared to what I'm actually drawing. That's to do with kind of the backlighting effect on the reference photo and also it kind of looks like I'm drawing on toned grey paper doesn't it? I'm not actually it's you know pure white paper it's just a different effect in lighting there which makes the lighthouse look whiter in the reference and greyer in the actual drawing. But I'll try and put up a fairly accurate true to life finished drawing at the end of the video you know where the tones kind of match and what it really looks like in real life. Okay so we've got quite a few rocks drawn in now and at this part of the drawing I was beginning to realise that this isn't a how to draw rocks lesson at all. This is a lesson in abstracting shapes and matching tones. You know when you think about it that's all it is. You know these are just kind of abstract shapes with tones that have to be balanced and in harmony with each other and obviously matching the reference photo. You know we've got to try and get the light hitting them the shaded parts of really dark areas in there. So after a while your mind stops thinking about actually drawing rocks you know and all you're doing is drawing abstract shapes and matching tones. That's the way I thought about it anyway. I mean it might make it easy for you to think about it that way. I don't know that's for you to decide but that's kind of what helped me draw these rocks. So I'm making a start on the ocean now and I'm just using a 2B pencil for that and just using horizontal pencil strokes and kind of a fairly patchy shading technique. So I'm leaving light areas and dark areas and varying the pressure on the pencil you know just to suggest distant waves and movement in the water and softening back with a brush and then going back in again and just emphasising a few shapes there in the ocean. Okay so we're on to the foreground wave and the shade was put in just with a blender just using the graphite that was already on the blender. Keep it nice and light and the highlights you know we pulled out with the pencil eraser and also a kneadable eraser as well. I do actually have another seascape drawing demonstration on my YouTube channel which shows you know a lot more of the water. In fact it's all pretty much water with a little bit of beach in the foreground and distant land and everything. So if you're more interested in drawing you know the water and the waves maybe that video might be worth watching for you. I'll try and include it in the end screen and leave a description sorry and leave a link in the description below for it so it might be helpful to you. If you watch both these videos the other one will show you a lot more on how to draw the water. But you can see I'm using various combinations of pencils and erasers and blenders to get the effect of this crushing wave and obviously there's much more detailed lessons over on Patreon about this kind of thing. And like I say it's all in real time and with no voiceovers or anything like that. You know there's a full lesson over there for you if you're interested. Okay so we're not too far off the end of the drawing now. Just a few more final touches here and there. Just a few little extra highlights and foam patterns and things like that. All done with the eraser and then once I'd pretty much finished this wave and I was happy with it I kind of sat back in the chair had a good look at the picture and just thought you know what else does it need is there anything I can do to improve this. I mean you can spend hours on these drawings obviously you know just improving them and things like that but I just decided just to add a few little seagulls kind of one third down one third across they're not they're not showing up too well actually and there's a bit of a glare on the paper there but I just decided to add a few very small seagulls just kind of flying off into the distance just want a little bit of interest to that area. Okay so there's the finished drawing hope you like that thanks very much for watching and it'd be great to see you over on my Patreon page as well look forward to seeing you there. Okay so take care everybody and I'll see you in the next one bye for now.