By popular demand: AN OCEAN! I know it was asked for with the Staedtler pigment pens, likely to see all those blues. But a full background, dense drawing takes up tons of ink, and I’m trying not to use up the marker just for the sake of seeing how much ink can go on the page. After using them for months on a ton of projects some of them are starting to run out a little bit 🙂
Instead – watercolor! Hopefully to help us get excited about World Watercolor Month, which starts in July!
Tutorial: How to watercolor oceans (easy and hard)
Watch the video below and scroll to the end to leave comments or questions — or click HERE to watch it on YouTube and leave comments over there. I read both dutifully!
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Paper
Daniel Smith watercolors:
- Yellow Ochre BLICK AMZ JACKSONS
- Transparent Red Oxide BLICK JACKSONS
- French Ultramarine BLICK AMZ JACKSONS
- Ultramarine Turquoise BLICK AMZ JACKSONS
- Prussian Blue BLICK AMZ JACKSONS
- Paynes Blue Gray BLICK AMZ JACKSONS
Misc
- ProConsole Artist tape 1/2” https://amzn.to/4e2153Y
- Bookmark sleeves
Brushes
Earliest layers
If you want to be able to lighten a layer to near-white – use lots and lots of water. Whether you lift some off while it’s wet, or after it’s dry, this keeps too much pigment from getting stuck to the paper.
Middle layers
Mix the paint with a little more pigment each time, and if you want blends, paint water first and let the color bleed out into the area.
My Joe Z brush does a fair job at small detail, though not quite as fine as I’d like, but aside from doing some repair on the water’s edge, it’s all this big brush.
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Deepest ocean
The deeper the ocean the more darks-in-darks you’ll add; with thin paint they’ll barely show when dry, which is a lovely look for water, but you can also drop in thicker pigment for darker results.
The finished large painting
I want to try this again sometime after all I learned!
2 Comments
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I’ve subscribed, now to do some binge watching! I have horse at oceanside that I’m proud of, except, water is flat.trying to decide to start with DN ground to cover and repaint with water color, or turn it into multi-media and use acrylic or gouch to try to fix the ocean/shore area. Now to binging!
Ooooh good luck!