One of the main challenges of painting water is that some light will be reflected. Sometimes, the reflection will appear almost as a mirror image of the real thing, like on a glassy lake. Other times it will not be as clear.
How to Paint Realistic Water
Water is a challenging subject to paint. There are just so many variables you need to deal with such as reflections, transparency and movement.
In this post, I will provide some simple tips for how to paint water with quality of realism. I cover:
- Observing the Water and Understanding How It Works
- Painting the Flow of the Water
- Painting Accurate Reflections
- What Is the Color of Water?
- Creating Form Using Varied Brushwork
- Shallow Versus Deep Water
- Summary
- Want to Learn More?
- Thanks for Reading!
“How to paint water” is admittedly a bit vague. Water comes in many different forms – the crashing waves at the surf beach; the glassy water of a lake which reflects the surroundings; the turquoise water at the beach.
Because of this, it is difficult to give you any standard formula for painting water. But what I can give you are some general tips which you can apply to all forms of water, rather than to just one special circumstance. If you can understand how water works, moves and interacts with the environment, then you will be able to paint all forms of water.
(Before diving into this post, make sure to pick up a copy of my free Landscape Painting Starter Kit.)
Observing the Water and Understanding How It Works
The first step to painting realistic water is to observe the water and understand how it works. The better you understand a subject, the easier you will find it to paint.
Why do you think portrait artists spend so much time learning about anatomy? Could they not just paint exactly what they see? Well, they could, but they would be required to copy everything from observation. With an understanding of the anatomy, they would understand why the body looks the way it does, how it moves and where things should be. So instead of needing to rely on observation to paint the portrait, you could employ a combination of observation and knowledge of anatomy to create the portrait.
If you are a landscape painter, then you need to do the same thing with the environment as portrait painters do with the anatomy.
You need to learn and understand how water, sky, land and trees work. By doing this, painting the landscape will come so much easier.
Painting the Flow of the Water
One of the most important aspects of painting realistic water is to capture the flow and movement of the water. This is easy when you are painting a glassy lake and the water is stagnant. But it becomes much more challenging when the waves of the ocean are crashing on the rocks.
In rough conditions, the surface of the water will be chopping and changing. But it is all mostly connected. The water will rise in some areas, and fall in other areas.
A great way to paint the flow of water in rough conditions is to illustrate some of the major contours in the water. At the top of these contours will usually be foam and reflected light. In the deep of the contours, you will usually have your darker colors. Just remember that it is all connected so when there is a high, there must be a low.
You also want to make sure all the contours appear natural. Try not to get repetitive with the contours.
In practice when painting these rough seascapes, I will often lay down a layer of very broken color, then paint the darks of the major contours, and finally, I will paint the lights at the top of the contours.
Always Wanted To Learn How To Paint Water Realistically?
I wrestled with creating the illusion of fluidity, clarity and some semblance of realism for a long time.
Eventually I discovered a way of looking at water that allows us to recreate it in almost any circumstance.
The trick is to break it down into manageable pieces, rather than try and paint it in its entirety. When you understand how these pieces affect each other, learning how to paint water becomes much easier. You will find that you may look at water in an entirely different way.
Before we start, however, there are a couple of things I need to say. When painting something realistically there are two overriding skills needed, and particularly when learning to paint water:
- Firstly, your technical ability, or your ability to use a brush, mix colour etc.
- Secondly, your ability to observe, and find the detail necessary to create something that is convincing.
This tutorial is primarily about the “details” I use when painting water.
The next point is that this strategy is not the only way, nor possibly the best way. But it works brilliantly for me, and hopefully will for you, as you learn how to represent water in your paintings.
Now that’s out of the way, let’s get into it!
When learning to paint water realistically, it is important to consider that the appearance of water is made up of four elements:
- The substrate (or bottom. No, not bottoms. This is how to paint water – not how to paint figures).
- The colour of the water (determined by what is suspended in it)
- The surface of the water
- The light
Secrets to Painting Convincing Water Reflections
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Water is one of the most sought-out subjects in paintings. In this mini-tutorial, you’ll learn valuable pointers on painting water reflections.
Water Type
You can find several conditions of water in nature, which are important to consider when planning a landscape painting:
- Still water (common in ponds and small lakes when no wind is present)
- Water moving lazily (the most suitable in paintings when water reflections are desired)
- Water ripples with more motion (common in river and streams)
- Water so disturbed you can’t see reflections (large bodies of water such as lakes and seascapes on a windy day)
Unless water is running over a down slope, the wind is what disturbs it, creating the diverse reflections and variances listed above.
Many professional artists depict water moving lazily (above, right). You will often see this in paintings with lakes. Artists tend to avoid the mirrored effect of still water because it competes too much with other areas of the artwork. Notice the forms are not broken until after about two-thirds of the way down. That breaking-up effect is very pleasing when it is not overdone.
The photo reference above would end up being a little dull in a painting because many square inches repeat the same visual information. Painting water in this setting won’t well in most paintings unless special effects are used, such as glistening sunlight hitting a portion of the water surface or the addition of visual interest, like boats.
Rules of Thumb for Painting Water Reflections
- Whatever is dark on dry land will be lighter in the water.
- Whatever is light on dry land will be darker in the water.
- Colors become less saturated in water reflections. Even white will need to be grayed down in the water.
- Details are left out. Only the basic smudges of color are needed.
- Avoid all hard edges in water reflections.
- Because water is denser than air, it will absorb light. Therefore do not repeat the same value of the sky in the water reflections. Water will almost always be darker than the sky it is mirroring.
Want more water painting tips? Check out my video workshop, The Complete Essentials of Painting Water.
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Just trying to get back into my painting after a long break. Realising a lot of errors both in my past work and new attempts.
Your advice on painting reflections in Water is invaluable.
