Working on painting waves in digital watercolour

 

 

I love painting rocks and water (in case you hadn't noticed, I thought I'd point that out to you! lol!) This prediliction probably reflects the environment of my childhood. High points in my life were times spent at, on, near, and in a lake!

 

Painting water is very difficult and it is something that I've had to research and spend considerable time mastering to any degree. I can't believe how much badly painted water paintings there are on the Internet! Sorry, that's kind of rude and snotty sounding, but it's the truth! I'm still learning to paint it and my water isn't nearly the best it's going to be in the fullness of time, but I have found that are some basic techniques that have to mastered, in general, about painting water. 

 

The biggest mistake I seemed to see was that the perspective of the water and the land isn't right. No matter how beatifully you paint the water, if this is off, people will notice and feel at the very least that something is awkward about it!

It helps if you have a sketch with the horizon in it, and rocks, and some other feature of land to help you figure out the perspective of the water. The next problem is learning how to space the waves, even more important than learning how to paint waves!

 

I quickly sketched some land and rocks in this illustration and it made me realize the wave spacing is not right!

 

 It's still not right in this one, although I hadn't finished with the waves yet by any means! This is kind of like building a puzzle! Not easy, but nobody said learning something worth learning would be easy! It's going to take practice and more practice, painting wave after wave...! 

 

 

I kind of like this without the horizon and the land too! What do you think?

Please feel free to use the Contact section to make a comment!

 

Next day....waves Cont'd!

 

 

Added a couple more rocks on the right and left edges to keep the viewer's eye in the painting...hopefully! Painting this reminds me of painting the Oranges and Blue Paisley Scarf Still Life. Lots of little spaces to paint in a detailed manner. I am often using the Flat Grainy Blender brush which is pulling the paint around. I have dropped all the layers several times to do this because it is not a wet watercolour or digital watercolour brush. Have done a few wet glazes to intensify the colour in places.

 

Having trouble with the spray around the rocks in the middle!! I didn't want to do another wave and roll over right there, but I think logically one should be there! This is not the ocean folks, only a big lake! Lake Nipissing likely because it was so close to us as I was growing up. The high school I went to was right on the lake too, and I spent lots of lunch hours out on the rocks. Lake Nipissing typically has pretty big waves for a lake! I could watch waves for hours if I had the opportunity!

 

I find painting rocks and waves kind of relaxing, which is good because I have had the fiercest toothache and headache the past couple of days! Am on antibiotics for an abcess and root canal comes next! Aaaargh! Back to my little ripples...and have to decide if I want an horizon and some land in this???