Painting was seen as a craft; you had an apprenticeship or trained in an Atelier workshop.
Painting Waves with Pastels
This is a Soft Pastels Self-Study Course with sections released weekly.
The Color Concepts section will give you an opportunity to review the basics, if needed, to better prepare you for painting seascapes with pastels.
The six main modules are:
Making Marks – Expressing Movement and Texture in Seascape
Wave Anatomy and Seascape Color Palette
Painting Translucency using Wet Underpainting Technique
Painting Sea Foam
Dynamic Seascape Composition
Capturing Light, Mood and Atmosphere
Full access to the course for 2 years! That’s plenty of time to master these techniques.
*This is a SOFT PASTELS Self-Study course!
Each Chapter includes a presentation on that particular topic, exercise/s (where needed) and a full demo with commentary. Full Demos are about 50 min to 1.5 hours (with the exception of the Color Concepts Quick Start demo).
What You Will Learn:
Translucent Waves
Translucency is one of the most beautiful things in a wave! Once you master it, you’ll get a lot of compliments on your waves!
Crashing Waves
Learn how to make the foam look light and airy! Your viewers will feel like they will be splashed!
Space, Energy & Movement
Learn how to create the illusion of space and bring movement into your work! Waves are never standing still, learn how to paint a dynamic seascape.
Color in Shadows
Wave shadows are special – learn to make them come to life with color!
Sparkling Water
Make your waves sparkle! Learn how to create the illusion of brilliant light in your seascapes.
Seascape Palette
Learn how changing light affects the seascape palette during the day.
Working with Color in Soft Pastels
While you are learning to paint waves, you will get deeper understanding of color and how it works in pastel medium (soft pastels):
- Get confidence when mixing colors in pastels
- Learn how to create richly nuanced color while keeping it luminous
- Bring the warmth of sunlight in your work
- In the subject with dominant cool colors – blues and greens, learn to create color that’s alive and exciting
- Master Wet Underpainting technique to add more dimension to your colors
Testimonials
What my students are saying about this course and my classes and workshops:
“I’ve signed up for this course, and I’m absolutely blown away by the professionalism, quality, tons of useful information, and priceless tips that Lana is delivering at each session. She is a great educator!
Highly recommended to everybody who wants to improve his painting skills!”
“Thank you for another inspiring and educational workshop in Waves. Your instructing Is excellent in the way you have designed your course. It all flows and reads very well.
It’s builds intuitively. Easy to follow with your demos and the videos with homework help to cement the new information, as well as building confidence, and the ability to become a better painter, and to seek out more classes with you.”
“In a word, the workshop was “masterful.” But, I will go beyond just one word to express my deepest appreciation of your dedication to your craft. Whether the way you taught, emailed preparatory materials, painted, or critiqued, you exemplified the traits of a master. Thank you.
I learned a lot and plan to take future workshops with you.”
“I have always admired your work, so I was thrilled to be able to take this class from you. Being a teacher, I can spot a good teacher a mile away, and you have what it takes to do that. you know how to break down the steps needed to get the lesson across to students and help them paint a successful painting. Thank you so much for offering this workshop!
Painting waves. Find the information you need!
Painting waves, and doing it well, can be incredibly difficult, particularly in the early stages of your painting journey. Once some fundamental principles are understood however, the process becomes much easier.
Understanding the elements that make up the appearance of water is the first (and most important) step.
Now that you have read or re-read the painting water page you will be prepared. It has to be said, “lets dive in”. (I know, I know, sorry. It was there.).
To my mind, creating a painting comes down to two skills:
√ Your conceptual and perception skills; and
√ Your physical skills
Your conceptual skills relate to your ability to find the information you need, and to interpret it in a way that makes your paintings powerful. On this page we are going to deal with your conceptual and perception skills.
Your physical skills are your ability to manipulate your paintbrush and paint, to create the painting.
One of the most beautiful things about painting waves is also one of the most challenging. Change the light, or the wind for example, only a tiny amount, and it changes its personality completely. The point I’m trying to make (probably very clumsily) is that when painting waves, all the elements have an effect on one another.
Some general rules:
In most cases , the face of a wave is a window to what is under (or in) the water. On a clear day with clear water you will see the bottom (sand rocks etc). If the water is murky you will see the “colour” of the water. The steeper the wave, the greater the view you have of what is beneath the surface.
The back of the wave reflects whatever is roughly behind it. The colours of a sunset or low clouds will show up there.
Waves are made up of . waves. Some of you have noticed that a wave is rarely ever perfectly smooth. Close observation will show that those “bumps” are in fact smaller waves and as such are subject to the rules 1 and 2. A stormy, windy day will emphasise those smaller waves, often to the point where the underlying swell is almost lost amongst the chaos of movement.
Despite the fact that waves take on many different shapes and moods, the above rules apply when painting waves, no matter the circumstances.
Your job as a painter, is to discover (and exaggerate, or de-emphasise where necessary) how these rules apply to one another. In other words, if the water is murky, you can’t see the bottom. If the sea is turbulent and dirty, you will see a lot of the dirty colour, but none of the bottom. If the sea is calm and clear, each wave will be a window into what is underneath, and waves are made up of waves.
These are probably the three most important things to consider when painting waves. Let’s file that information, and look at a couple of photographs to see whether that holds true.
Your Homework:
Go out into the world, on a beautiful day. Look for these rules. Now, go out into the world on a crappy day. Lots of wind and murky water. How far into the face of the wave can you see? What light is reflected on the back of the waves? How is the wave affected by all of the smaller waves?
Go and enjoy a sunset. Again, see how the light affects the wave. Does the face of the wave reflect the light? You will start noticing things you haven’t seen before. Now – off you go into a painting waves frenzy!
So far, we’re discussing the aspects of an unbroken wave.
The rules for a broken wave are entirely different. A broken wave is fundamentally aerated water.
To varying degrees, it is pretty much opaque. This means that it casts shadows. Sometimes these shadows are cast on the whitewash itself. Sometimes if the water is clear enough, and in the right light, the shadow will be cast on the bottom.
Start looking at whitewash in detail.
It’s not a bad idea to take some photographs and see if you can find the “structure” and shapes that whitewash makes.
Lucky for us that when you find it, a loose pattern becomes obvious. Look for the shadows? Where are they darker? This discovery will take much of the discomfort out of painting it.
The thing that will make the most difference about painting whitewash is the light. For all intents and purposes because whitewash is “white”, it will reflect lots of the colours around it. Remember the homework? You watched waves with that spectacular sunset, remember the colour the whitewash was tainted. This can be one of the most magnificent experiences. Absorbing that subtle “peach” shade can be intoxicating as it dances toward you. Life is good.
Oops – back to the story. We’ve spoken about waves, we’ve spoken about whitewash. Let’s put the two together.
Whitewash. Another rule:
The steeper and more powerful a wave, the higher the whitewash will bounce. If a wave travels into shallow water very quickly, it will rear up steeply, turn over itself projecting its tip forward. This will hit the water in front and will bounce, up and forward, trapping lots of air. A very powerful wave will “bounce” its whitewash higher than the face of the wave.
Sometimes the wave will have so much force that the air trapped inside it will explode out the back. This can drag up sand and weed. A steeply breaking wave will form a wonderful tube. This is, for me, one of the most compelling things about painting waves. As someone who surfs, ’tis a magical thing.
A wave with less energy, will crumble over itself and the whitewash will not be higher than the face of the wave.
So. steep powerful waves will have a high whitewash “wall”, gentler ones a smaller “wall” of white water.
Ok, this is the basic information you need to consider whilst painting waves. Hopefully this will help.
For a bit more help click here for a special “recipe” for a beautiful, luminous wave. I use Artists quality acrylic paints by Chroma Australia, Atelier Interactive and Atelier Free Flow.
Then….go to the beach, suck up those moments. and paint’ em!
For more information on painting waves check out my brand new tutorial Wave Fundamentals. Only AUD$34 for the downloadable version.
Learn the basics of anatomy and behaviour of waves, and learn how to create two styles of waves with this step by step guide, including colour mixes and heaps of real world examples to help cement your knowledge.
3 simple steps to begin:
This will help give you a unified tone to work on and give you a nice under glow of colour for this particular painting. See: How to apply a yellow ochre-coloured ground.
Using a 3B pencil, sketch out the image to work from. Don’t worry if it isn’t completely accurate. It is just a guide to get you started.
Step 3. Establish the darkest darks and lightest lights.
Using Burnt Umber & Titanium White, establish the darkest area of the picture. You can squint your eyes at the image to distinguish each area rather than getting hung up on the details. See: The importance of contrast in painting.
Acrylic landscape painting- Free video Course |Part 1
The video below shows the first steps I take to start the acrylic landscape painting. Make sure to subscribe to my YouTube Art school Channel to keep updated.
Morning class, I’m Will Kemp from Will Kemp Art School, and this is part one in a free series showing you how to get started in acrylic landscape painting. We’re going to start with this image, you can download it straight from my website, and I’m going to show you how to make this.
How to get this painting from the photograph so you can do it yourself at home. On the website, I’ve got a list of all the colours you need, the brushes that I use, but this video is just how to get started, get your drawing laid out so you can create a lovely landscape like this to have on your wall at home.
Step 1
So step one in starting this landscape painting is to block out your canvas to put a coloured ground onto it to work your paintings on top. I’ve already done that here, and you can watch a how to do it video on how to apply a coloured ground for acrylic painting video.
Step 2
Okay, the second step is to draw out the basic shapes that we’ve got here. We’re just after the line drawing. I’m using a 3B pencil here, which can be easily erased; it won’t smudge too much, yet it’s dark enough to make a mark.
See how it fairly easily makes a mark on the canvas without feeling that you have to really press into it and dent the canvas.
A quick tip to make sure you get a nice horizontal line is to use a piece of scrap paper, and you line up this edge to the edge of your canvas, so it’s like a set square, really. So there, line that up.
Step 3
Step three is to assess the tones in the picture to see where to start and the lightest and dark areas.
So the first thing to do is to squint your eyes at this picture.
Are they squinted?
Half close them just so everything slightly blurs a bit.
What you’ll find this does is it makes the dark look darker, the lights look lighter, and all these what are called halftones kind of disappear and what you really get to is the basic structure of the picture, and that’s what we are interested in.
For this, the darkest area is this area here of the land, so that’s what I’m going to paint to start with the burnt umber. All the information on the brushes that I use and how to choose a brush for acrylic painting is on my other video, or a list of other materials is on my website.
So if you notice how when I’m painting, I’m resting onto the canvas, which helps you give leverage and support so you can, with the finer lines, erm, it’s a lot easier to get a straighter line than if you’re hovering your hand in the air trying to balance it.
So once I’ve got that in, I’m now going to swap to this brush to block in that area.
The paint that I’ve got on here because acrylics dry so quickly, you want to make sure you get that off; otherwise, it will go solid on your brush, and you won’t be able to use it.
So I’ll dip it into some water and then, you know, rub it into the kitchen roll.
You get through loads of kitchen roll with acrylic and then squeeze it at the end, and you see how if I put that on there, nothing comes out. You know it’s completely clear, that’s just with plain water.
It’s always better to have more water and change it regularly than use the same pot; it will get mucky, and then what will happen that all that dirt in your water pot will come into your colours when your mixing and you won’t get a nice clean colour.
Even though we’re using brown, it’s still worth keeping it clean; it’s good professional working habits.
Okay, so now with the filbert brush. Okay, as simple as that. I often paint around the edge for my paintings, so I’ll paint around here.
You’ll notice how I haven’t been too heavy-handed, you can still see some of this underground glowing through, and that’s really nice, and I’ve left little bits where I’ve not been completely solid because I want a bit of texture, a bit of movement in this area.
So that’s all I do for this particular painting with the burnt umber. Now I’ll put in some of the highest highlights in the brightest area, which will be when we look at the picture. It’s going to be this area here where the sun is shining through.
For this, I’m just going to use titanium white.
So now, with the Titanium White, I’m just going to block in the very brightest areas.
You see how I’m keeping it quite loose and quite watery. You’ll notice if you’re not using an artist quality titanium white, it won’t be as thick as this. It will be a lot more translucent. You might have to use a couple of layers.
When you’re first starting with acrylics, I always recommend buying the best quality paints you can afford.
If you can’t afford to go artist quality for everything, try and invest in an artist quality white because it’ll have so much more opacity it’ll be able to see how it covered over the colour underneath really easily; this will be really beneficial in your future paintings.
There’s a slight bit of lightness down here but not as strong as the others, so I’ll dilute it with a bit of water and scrub it in with my finger.
Now we’ve got the lights and the darks; now we can back to the colours that we were mixing before to start blocking in some of the areas of colour.
