Chapter 13. The Basic Techniques of Oils, Chapter 13 WATER TECHNIQUES. Waterfalls Oceans Lakes Rivers Streams Ice More.

Transcription

1 Chapter 13 The Basic Techniques of Oils WATER TECHNIQUES Waterfalls Oceans Lakes Rivers Streams Ice More. 13-1

2 The Basic Techniques of Oils TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter 13: Art Supplies For Painting Water Water Strokes Lakes Smooth Traditional Lake... Reflections.... The Waterline.. Foliage Reflections.. Shorelines & Under bank Rivers Rivers Rocky River Cascading River Frozen River Mud Puddles Waterfalls Waterfalls..... Painting Waterfalls..... Painting Boulders In Waterfalls..... Painting A Lake On A Dark Canvas Ocean Oceans.... Ocean Waters.. Painting Ocean Waves.. The Crashing Wave.. Beach Foam

3 Art Supplies: Painting Water Any painting tool can be used to paint water. By concentrating on the type of water stroke desired, this will define the brush you use. I use any of the brushes you see on the left. For my traditional oils I use either a few brushes or a palette knife to achieve the effect I desire for mountains. My chief work horse is the #10 palette knife. I use the 2 1/2 or 1 brush for initial shaping of the mountain or creating mist when finished. I ll also use the fan or hake brush. I ll sometime decide to use the #4 or #6 flat bristle brush to shape and highlight mountains depending on effect. 1. Large brushes for blending and laying in the basic for all sorts of ocean and fresh water scenes, 2. I use the fan brush, flats and filberts for detail. 3. I use the large brushes, mops and hake brushes for blending spray, whether from waterfalls or crashing waves. 4. I use the liner brush for foam patterns. 5. I use the palette knife to mix paint and lay in waterlines.. Water has no color. It simply reflects color from its neighboring elements.. Therefore there s no formulae for mixing water color. All of the paints in your paint box can be used. This also means as you paint water you need to understand a few things about your painting to choose the correct water color. Sky Color. This forms the base water color in most instances. Weather: Is a warm still day with no movement, or is there plenty of wind and the water choppy? This affects reflections of surrounding elements and how much sky color is reflected from the water. Light: Strong, dim, direction, etc. We can easily add a shimmer of light across the surface of the water, however does it make sense? The level of light let s us make many decisions regarding the color of paint used or added to the water body. Time of day: morning, mid-day, evening, night. I love this particular brand of water mixable oils. I can get all of the colors I need. They re green and quite earth-friendly. They re quite effective in painting beautiful clouds. I m gradually using more and more water miscible paints in my daily work. Spend some time before beginning to compose your painting answering these questions. As a beginning student I want you to focus initially on techniques. 13-3

4 Water Strokes Smiley stroke: This stroke is used to paint splashes of water or spray at the bottom of waterfalls, cascades, rocks sticking out of water and parts of the ocean. Place the #3 fan brush, loaded with paint at a 90 degree angle so that the brush is at a perfect right angle to the canvas. Press the handle of the fan brush forward so that the bristles begin to bend UPWARDS. This paints a smile onto the canvas. Repeat the process until you have enough smiles. This is essentially a glossary of strokes I use in explaining how to paint water. Water is fascinating to paint because there s so much we can do with it in our paintings. It ca be seen as a liquid, gas or solid like ice. Base stroke: Using a large brush, flat, filbert or fan, this stroke lays down the water s basic paint color. It is a level, horizontal stroke. Generally moving from one side of the canvas to the other. Waterfall stroke: I generally use the #3 fan brush for this stroke, but you can use any brush or the palette knife. Load the edge of the brush with paint and while holding the brush at a 90 degree angle to the canvas, draw a straight line from right to left using the very tips of the bristles. This line represents the water above the falls or source of water for the falls. Then pull the brush straight down using the full width of the brush to form the falling water. Use medium speed. Do not speed through painting the fall. Circular Blending stroke: I blend the waterfall splash exactly as though it was a cloud. Hold a large brush at a right angle to the canvas, angle the canvas so that the brush allows only a few brush bristles to touch the canvas. Using a circular blending motion, start at the bottom of the smiles and blend upward without touching the top edges of the smiles. You can also fluff the very top edges of the splash using half arching swings just like we do when painting clouds. Horizontal Blending stroke: Use a clean, dry large brush and lightly, stroke horizontally across the item you want to blend. With each stroke, remove excess paint from the brush with a paper towel. Z stroke: Using a flat, filbert or fan brush, this stroke is essentially three strokes that form the letter Z. Each of the three strokes will look like the bottom rung of a rocking chair. The shallower the stroke, the calmer the water. By shallow I mean the distance between the top line of the Z and the bottom line of the Z. AND I mean the sharpness of the curve of the rocking chair rung. AND the width of the Z. So three things to think when making the Z stroke. Height, width and length. If the width of your Z is half the width of the canvas, its calmer water than if the width of the Z is 1/2. This is one of the basic strokes to move water. Especially in fast moving streams and oceans. Horizontal dash stroke: Using a flat, filbert or fan, this stroke lays is short, level, horizontal dash. It can be as short or as long as desired. Its purpose is to show the level of water. Reflection stroke: Load a large brush with the paint color to be used for reflection and pull straight down from the shoreline. Once you ve pulled down the length of shoreline desired, than complete using the horizontal blending stroke. Shimmer stroke: To create a shimmer in the center of a lake, stop short of the center of the canvas with a flick that gradually lifts the brush off the canvas. Stroke horizontally from the opposite side of the canvas and again flick the brush up off the canvas before reaching center of the canvas. This leaves the center of the canvas unpainted. When blending, lightly go over the unpainted canvas as well and this will produce a shimmer of light skipping across the lake. 13-4

5 Painting Lakes. 13-5

6 Smooth Traditional Lakes Its impossible to conceive of painting many landscapes without learning to master lakes, streams and waterfalls. I d like to start out our study of lakes with the most basic lake. Then we ll cover all of the components including sunlight shimmering across the lake, reflections, waterlines, small falls, bigger falls, cascading falls, etc.. Water is important in our world. Equally important in the landscapes we paint of our world. Water can be any color. It simply reflects the colors of all of the elements around it. And when it does a really good job of reflecting the colors we have a mirrored image of the world around us, excepts its upside down. For this section, we re going to be reflecting the sky color. This is my painting of the Denver-Cheyenne Trail. Notice how light the water is as it reflects the blue sky color. This dramatically adds to the composition of the entire painting. We can alter the color of the water to state the time of year. However, Time of Year is only one aspect of considering what color to paint our bodies of water. Thankfully we have mother nature to guide us. Simply look outside and see for yourself the color of the sky and water. Learn to paint what you see and paint what you see. Take lots of photos and always refer to them as you paint. In one of my earliest paintings, The Mallard, I painted a blue sky that turned yellow closer to the horizon. In fact even though this is a hazy morning, one cannot tell where the sky ends and the horizon begins. When I first took this photo, the sunlight was blinding me so I chose to reflect a less powerful light, but one that indicate brightness and haze. Did you note that the back trees had reflections, but the left foreground shoreline is devoid of reflections? Even the mallard has a reflection, but I didn t do the reflection on the left shoreline. I ve kept this painting for almost 20 years as a sober reminder to always check my work. 13-6

7 For our explanation of how to paint a lake, were going to use PB as our water color with just a touch of SG. Often I paint the lake right after the sky because I like using the sky color for the lake. In any event, your canvas lake area should be prepared with an even thin coat of medium white. Load up a large brush with PB/touch of SG. Tap the bristles straight down on the palette to evenly distribute the paint throughout the brush s bristle edges. You re now ready to begin painting the lake area. Starting at the right or left edge of the canvas place your loaded brush. You re going to stroke horizontally right to left. The stroke MUST BE parallel to the bottom of the canvas. You want a firm even stroke. And just before you reach the center of the canvas you ll want to lift the brush up off the canvas. Do not stop and then lift the brush up. That will create a hard line right where you stopped. What you want instead is to gradually lift the brush off of the canvas as you re pulling right to left. Look at the photo below. See how uneven the line is where the brush lifted up off of the canvas? That s exactly what you want. If you were to stop stroking on the right photo you d leave a thick hard line of blue. This would look unnatural and you d work like a devil trying to get that hard line off your canvas. So lift up gradually and never just flat out stop, then lift. Now go to the opposite canvas edge and stroke toward the center. Again, gradually lift the brush off of the canvas as you re the brush left to right so that the brush is completely off of the canvas by the time you re at the center of the canvas. Both the left and the right strokes should be uneven as they face each other as shown in the photo to the right. 13-7

8 So long as you maintain a separation between the left strokes and the right strokes, we can use the separation to show the sun shimmering across the lake. Now reload the brush and again go the right side of the canvas and stroke right to left. Keep adding strokes one after the other until strokes are touching the bottom of the foothills as shown in the left most photo. Do not reload the brush when painting this side. Let the paint get lighter and lighter and lighter as the lake reaches the distant shore line. Reload the brush with PB and SG. Going to the bottom left of the canvas paint level, horizontal strokes one right after the other from the bottom of the canvas up to the distant shore line. Be careful to lift the brush before you reach the center. Clean your big brush. Wipe it dry. We need to blend the lake. With a clean, dry big brush stroke the right side of the lake. Starting at the bottom right, stroke right to left. By using no paint your brush bristles will soften and blend the strokes already on the canvas. Blend each line on the right, one right after the other, until you reach the distant shore. Be sure to leave the center light strip unpainted. After painting the left side, take a clean paper towel and dry clean the big brush thoroughly. Once the paint has been removed, blend the left side of the lake with the big brush by using no paint on the bristle. Blend each line on the left, one right after the other, until you reach the distant shore. Dry clean the big brush with a clean paper towel. Make sure the big brush is thoroughly dry and all excess paint removed. 13-8

9 At this moment, stand back about 5-6 feet to check your work. Look for Are the strokes darker at the forward point? Does the lake get lighter as you look forward from the foreground to the horizon or shoreline? Are the strokes level? In other words, does the lake look natural? Is the shimmer visible. Be sure to make any corrections at this point in time that you deem necessary. Once you re satisfied with your lake, we need to blend across the entire width of the lake top to bottom to set in the shimmer of light with a clean, dry, large brush. If your brush isn t clean, dry clean the big brush right now with a paper towel. Right now, the lake looks like it s the Red Sea parting. Starting at the farthest shoreline with the large brush at the rightmost edge, stroke level and horizontal (parallel to the bottom of the canvas) all the way from the right edge to the leftmost edge of the lake. Keep the stroke light. You want to drag a very small amount of the water color over the shimmer area. By keeping the strokes light, you set the shimmer into the lake and the sun will now appear like its bouncing across the lake surface. Your lake should look like the left photo. We have just two more steps before our basic lake will be completed Adding reflections of the surrounding land into the water. Water lines to separate land from lake.

10 Reflections Load up your big brush with the light green color you used for the foothills. Reflection Colors. Always use the color of the surrounding riverbanks, hills, trees and shrubbery for your reflections. Color matters more than shape. So keep a sharp eye out to match colors in replace the big brush right under the farthest shoreline and pull straight down dragging your reflection color with the downward stroke. Move to the next portion of the shoreline and again drag the reflection color down. Notice how much pressure I m using on the brush in the left photo. As you move from one portion of the shoreline to the next, make your strokes longer. This adds perspective to your painting. The shoreline will move closer to you. In the example we re showing, the strokes are increasingly longer right to left. This gives the impression that the left side of the canvas is closer to the viewer than the right. Once the reflections have been totally pulled down across the entire lake, clean the big brush. It s time to blend and we ll want to use a clean, dry, big brush to prevent smearing of reflection color. We used a firm pressure on the brush to pull down the reflections. Now we ll user very l-i-t-t-l-e pressure. And we ll be changing the position of the brush. Hold the brush sideways and blend horizontally across the canvas using a light touch. Again, use very little pressure. Start at the bottom of the reflection, brush horizontally across the canvas (parallel to the bottom of the canvas) and then moving up the canvas with additional, canvas wide strokes until the entire lake reflections have been blent. This really sets the reflections into the lake for a natural, seamless appearance. Now we re ready to had waterlines at the shore

11 Waterlines Mix a touch of the reflection color with medium white. We want a very liquid consistency, about like a thick sauce. Load the long edge of the knife with the paint on one side only. You want just a small bead of paint which means you ll need to reload constantly. Hold the knife at a 90 degree right angle to the canvas with the paint on the bottom of the knife. Place the knife right at the junction between land and reflection. Use a sawing motion to cut a thin line of paint between land and water. Continue across the canvas, following the land shape using the cutting stroke until you ve separated the lake s shoreline from the water. Reload each time you run out of paint. And you will, frequently. Leave only a thin line. You can thin a line that s two thick by placing the knife (without any paint) underneath the thick line and sawing upwards

12 Foliage Reflections How many times have you admired paintings which have that mirrored reflections of all the trees and shrubbery reflected perfectly in the lake? It s so easy to take a few extra minutes and add detailed reflections to your mirror perfect lakes. You can add these reflections for any season of the year, summer, spring, fall or the dead of winter. The best time to do the next few steps is at the same time you re painting the trees and shrubbery on the land, to also paint the reflection in the lake. I m going to add a reflection to the right side of the canvas above. So I m preparing a dark foliage color mix of PG and SG. The same darks I used for the base shrubbery. In a later chapter I go into considerable detail on how to paint shrubs. I m just concentrating right now on how to paint reflections. Skip ahead to the chapter on bushes if you need. Load your big brush with the foliage base paint color. After the brush is loaded, gently paint underneath the shorelines bushes that are roughly the same shape and size as the bushes above ground. Don t fret about being accurate. All you want are bushes that are close to the original size and color

13 Cover the entire area with the dark foliage color. Don t worry if you leave gaps. For trees, just tap in branches in the general area where you see branches on the real tree. Don t worry if you re not even close to being accurate. Take a clean dry big brush and hold the brush such that the bristle tips touch right at the shore line. We re going to blend the reflection into the ware right now. Pull down the brush vertically. This is a very light, light touch. We want only a few of the brush hairs actually making contact with the canvas. Pull the color lightly down one stroke after another until all of the foliage reflections have been pulled down ONCE. Wipe your brush clean with a paper towel and now blend horizontally across the reflections. Start at the edge of the canvas, pull across the canvas while slightly lifting up. Time it such that by the time the brush is totally off of the canvas, you ve reached the end of the reflection area. Load up your bush brush with medium and the foliage highlight color. Highlight the bushes, shrubs and trees. Again, we re not trying to be exact, or close to it. Just highlight the general area in the reflecting water wherever you see this bright highlight on the shrubbery above the shoreline. Complete the highlighting of all shrubbery and trees

14 Once the reflection has been highlighted use a dry clean, large brush to complete the reflections. Place the brush right on the water at the shoreline and using an even lighter touch, pull down vertically. Pull all of the reflections down across the shoreline. Lift your brush up off the canvas as you near the end of the reflection. Do not pull the paint down into open waters. Clean the brush each time you sense its necessary. After vertically blending, thoroughly clean the brush with a dry paper towel. Now stroke the reflected area from the edge of the canvas to the end of the reflected area, lifting your brush by the time you reach the end of the reflected area. Load your #10 knife with a small amount of SG/TW with medium clear. cut a small bead of paint onto your knife. With the knife cut a waterline onto the canvas right where the shoreline is meeting the lake

15 Shorelines & Under banks To add shorelines to your paintings use the #10 palette knife. Load a medium to large bead of BU on the long edge of the knife. You have to pay attention to the lay of the land at the shore. Is if fairly flat or steep? If flat, than you must stroke your knife across the land surface in a fairly long line, nearly level, left to right. For cliffs, sharpen the angle appropriately. After laying in the first stroke, finish painting the shoreline with additional parallel lines of BU. Hold the knife by the metal ferrule between the thumb and forefinger. Inspect your work when completed. You re just checking to make sure the angle of the shoreline is slight. I like to stand back 5 or 6 feet when I m reviewing my work. Sometimes I feel like I have to stand back 5 or 6 miles before the work looks good. : ) Fix any problems you notice. Load a #3 fan brush with the foliage highlight brush. The BU strip has formed a harsh, hard line on the back side that is not only ugly, but unnatural. We ll bring grass up on the back line to sit the shoreline naturally into the painting. I like using smiley strokes with the fan brush in order to bring the grass up onto the back border of the BU shoreline strip. If you find the grass highlight painting is not sticking to the BU, than add a couple touches of medium to the grass paint and try it again. Add the medium, a couple drops at a time until the paint sticks. Generally a couple of drops will be sufficient

16 With the grass naturally covering the back of the shoreline, than the shoreline looks so natural as it comes out of the woods and dips into the lake. Highlight the shoreline by mixing up a marbled mixture of BS, YO, BR, TW and etc I always suggest the artist duplicate the highlight they see from their reference photo. Holding the palette knife by the metal ferrule with the forefinger and thumb (no fingers on the blade whatsoever) lightly stroke the dark shoreline with the highlight color. Stroke at the same angle as the under painting and use absolutely no pressure. This allows the paint to break as one paints. Inspect your work when done. It s possible that you might have painted over your border grass. If so, just reload the #3 fan brush and again add the highlighted grass. If this is a consistent problem, you might want to consider highlighting the shoreline prior to adding the border grass. Now grab a clean, dry big brush. In this example, I m using a 1 brush. Starting at the edge facing the center of the canvas, pull the paint from the shoreline down vertically. Continue pulling this paint down across the entire width of the shoreline. Dry clean the big brush with a paper towel. Turn the brush sideways and use horizontal strokes to blend the shoreline reflection into the water. When pulling down vertically use a firm, medium pressure as you pull down. If you need, add a bit of BU to the edge of the brush. Make sure you clean your brush and starting at the edge of the canvas stroke horizontally until you reach the end of the shoreline. Time your stroke such that you pull the brush up and off the canvas at the time you reach the end of the shoreline. This allows for a gradually lightening of pressure that yields a perfect end to the reflection

17 One of the interesting things I ve noted about lakes, rivers and even ocean is that their levels will frequently change depending upon time of day, season and weather. Oceans deal with tides as well. In a lake or river, Spring is generally the fullest time as there is snow run-off and plenty of Spring showers. To illustrate a summer scene you may want to consider an under bank to show that the water level is dropping slowly. Load a #10 palette knife with a medium strip of BU. Start at the shoreline closest to the center of the canvas. Using a straight vertical stroke, place the knife right underneath the edge of the freshly painted shoreline. Pull straight down about 1/4 to 1/2 depending upon your desires. Place one vertical stroke after another until you ve completed painting the under bank underneath the full length of the shoreline. The only thing remaining is the shoreline. Mix TW and a touch of BU with medium clear for a light brown color. Load a small bead of this paint onto the long edge of the palette knife. Place the knife with the bead of paint down onto the canvas right at the juncture of the under bank and the water. Cut a thin line of paint onto the canvas across the full length of the under bank. Stand back and admire your work

18 Rivers, Streams & Mud puddles

19 Rivers Within 20 minutes of driving time from my house, there s over 30 bodies of water from which I can launch my small boat. And I ve read that over 70% of our world population lives in very close proximity to major rivers and the coast. So water has been and continues to be important to us, and has earned proper recognition in art. In general, there s not much in painting rivers. We re going to show you how to paint the basic river, a rocky river bottom, a cascading river and a frozen river. From these examples you ll be able to paint just about any river you come across. Rocky River below shows the most basic of all rivers. The far distant river is narrow and gradually widens as it turns its way toward the painting foregrounds. The river is painted by simply laying in a base light blue color with a #3 bristle fan brush. Then I go back with the fan brush loaded with an even lighter blue color and paint along the shoreline to show waterlines. That s pretty much it until the foreground. Here we add a small falls and a see through river bottom. Forest Walk above adds cascades, a small fall and some rocks to the basic stream

20 In Magic Mountain above left we ve painted the river from the falls in the base light blue (PB) color and again, with a lighter blue on the fan brush we ve set the water in motion using Z-strokes. Water lines along the shore. On the right, Northern Lights river was painted simply by reflecting a light blue into the river of the distant shore. Below, My World (left) and Serenity s (right) rivers were painted simply by painting them exactly like we would the basic lake. There s even a shimmer of sun being reflected right down the center of Serenity s river. The basic river is therefore no different than the basic lake. With this in mind, there are a couple of things we can do to our rivers to add some major interest and they re covered in the next three sections, cascades, rocks (swift moving waters) and frozen

21 Rocky Rivers I ve spent a lot of time hiking throughout the Sierra Nevada mountains and what s always a welcome is finding a small brook descending from the highlands to the valley. A particular painting I like, I ll ask questions. For example, last night my wife and I had dinner at a neighbor s home. I asked about a painting they had in the dining room. Wow, that s a nice painting, where did you find it? Many of these brooks are so clear you can see the river bottom, the fish and it looks as though man has never set foot on this particular spot. I m the first. That s all it takes. Charlie launched into the story of how he d done some work for an artist client and he offered him one of his paintings as payment. Charlie chose this painting of the Concord Bridge since he d been by the bridge numerous times. In the example above I ve painted such a small stream and as you look at the painting you ll see the river bottom is loaded with rocks. There s a really neat technique for quickly painting this complex scene. And I used it in my painting, Rocky River, which we just showed you on page 19. I liked the painting a lot and I made a mental note to grab my camera next weekend and head on over to Concord and photograph that bridge. I m constantly on the search for good reference materials and I ve always got my digital SLR camera with me or in the car. It s a painting with a basic that has a beautiful walk over bridge. Whenever I m visiting someone s home I ll spend a few minutes taking the tour of their home and if I see Be on the watch. Inspiration and reference is everywhere

22 In painting a rocky stream, I must first paint the river bottom before painting anything else. You ll be starting with a blank canvas. For this particular exercise I m choosing to use a #6 or #8 bristle filbert brush. I m partial to the #6 as it ll help me make smaller rocks. The paints I m using are gesso, but you could use acrylics if you d like. To the left you ll see I ve laid out some white, black and gray gesso. I m going to paint a bunch of rocks that are black and highlighted with either white or gray. Remember, these colors will never be seen as we paint them since they ll be underwater when we re done. Load one side of the filbert brush with black and the other side with white. Hold the brush such that the lighter color is facing up. Touch the canvas with a small arching stroke for large rocks and a short dash for small rocks. Constantly vary the size of rocks. As you stroke, you ll find that the black will come off on the bottom of the rock AND the lighter color will highlight the rock on top. This is called double-loading your brush. Whenever you see the highlight color fading, wipe your brush with a paper towel and reload. Within your river area, crowd in as many rocks as you can. Paint lots of black/white rocks and lots of black/ gray rocks. Just really crowd the river bottom. As you switch from white to gray, be sure to thoroughly clean your brush

23 In an ideal situation I ll paint all of the black/white rocks I want in the painting, clean my brush, then paint in all of the black/gray rocks. I find this to be a simple approach that keeps the frequency of cleaning the brush to a minimum. Paint the river bottom wider than you want. This will help as you add the shoreline. The purpose of the two colors of rocks is to show color variation when we apply the water color over the rocks. The black/white rocks combined with the black/gray rocks will give your river bottom considerable depth. Once you re satisfied with the number of rocks, let the painting dry thoroughly. This will take minutes. Or if you d like, dry with a hair dryer. Once the painting is dry, load a SMALL amount of medium clear to one of your big brushes and cover the canvas with a thin even coat of paint. Clean your big brush to get all of the medium out. Load a small amount of PTB onto the tips of your big brush. Tap the bristles down to evenly distribute this paint across evenly across the brush bristle s entire length. Paint over the river rocks and bank area. When you make your first stroke you ll find the paint stroke is thick and you ll not be able to see the bottom clearly. Do not reload your brush. Stretch the paint until the entire river is painted and you can clearly see all rocks. Only add a touch of color is necessary

24 Just before you begin painting your river bank inspect your work. Take the big brush that has the PTB color and stroke horizontally (parallel to the bottom of the canvas) across your river from top to bottom. Now step back about 5 or 6 feet and inspect the river. Does it look level? Yes? You re ready to paint the river bank. No? Repeat this step until satisfied that your river is level. Nothing quite destroys a painting quite like unlevel water. Load the 1 brush with a mixture of PG & SG. Load the brush and tap along the river bank area row after row of dark green (foliage base we ll cover this in the chapter on Trees) color to form the river bank. Tap the color up to the river. Reload your brush whenever you see the color getting lighter. We want a solid dark coverage of paint in the river bank area. Complete the right side of the river bank. Reload your brush and paint the left side of the river bank in the same manner. After painting the entire river bank with the under color, load your brush up with a couple drops of medium and yellow for highlight green color. Using the instructions you ll find in the Grass chapter, load up your brush and lightly tap the riverbank. The thinner highlight color will stick to the base. As you highlight, pay particular attention to the lay of land. I like to have variation in my riverbanks so experiment a bit and see how different angles of applying the highlights will alter the lay of land for you. Review my Rocky River painting and see how I formed the river bank. Practice, practice, practice, and always stand back and inspect your work. Make adjustments as necessary. At this point in time, there is no such thing as a mistake, only learning experiences. Have many experiences

25 Cascading Rivers Cascading streams, brooks and rivers are so exciting to paint. There s a lot of action in these scenes and viewers become so excited just studying all of the little action caused by cascades. I go quite a bit into how to make cascades in the Waterfall section of this chapter, but let s just take a tiny peek right now. The first question to ask is how many cascades and where should they reside. If you re following a lesson or reference drawing or a reference photo, these questions are probably answered for you. If you re creating your own design, than its your choice. And remember, there s no such thing as a mistake, just a learning experience. Once you ve decide where, than the question is what s causing the water to fall or cascade at that point. It s generally a slight drop in elevation and the water is cascading over a rock or shelf. Load your small edge of your #10 palette knife with BU and place rocks along the river bank where you d like to have your cascades. With a mix of BS, TW, YO, load the small edge of the palette knife and highlight your rocks with small dashes facing the source of light. Go down the entire length of your stream and in every area where the elevation is dropping slightly, that s where you should be painting rocks. Look at this section of my painting, Forrest Walk, and see how I utilized rocks along the river bank to mark changes In the left photo at each point that there s a cascade the adjacent rock extends down to the base of the cascade. Therefore, irrespective of where you start the cascade, it must end at the base of the rock. That s the first rule of cascading. The second rule is the stroke you use. Use a dark color first to paint the cascade, than repaint the cascade with a highlight color. For highlighting use only a bit of paint and very little pressure. It s more of a caress than a heavy handed stroke. You can use a flat, bristle or fan brush. I prefer a #3 fan brush. Make absolutely sure you clean the brush before highlighting

26 This is the fun part of painting cascades. I sincerely wish painting cascades was a long, arduous task so I could spend loads of time enjoying the process. But it isn t. It seems its over before you ve started. So take special note. Don t linger when painting cascades. Paint, move on, paint, move on and walla you re done. Mix together your highlight color. We ve already painted the dark under painting in our example. Now add a touch of clear medium. Load the color onto your fan brush tips by slightly scooping the brush forward in the paint by about 1/8. Starting at the top or above the tops of your rock (in the river, not over the physical rock you painted) begin your cascade stroke. Again, use little, little pressure. Just enough to graze the canvas. Let me review the stroke. Load the edge of the fan brush with the highlight paint by slightly scooping the brush forward in the paint by about 1/8. While holding the brush at a 90 degree angle to the canvas, draw a straight line from left to right (or vice versa) using just the very tips of the bristles. This line represents the water above the source of the cascade. Then pull the brush straight down using the full width of the brush to form the falling water. Use medium speed and stop by the time you reach the bottom of your reference rock. It s a very short, short stroke. If its really a long stroke, it s a waterfall. Look at the photo on the left and see how my strokes end at the bottom of the reference rock. Add a little splash at the bottom of the cascade with a few smiley strokes (See page 4) and blend out the bottoms. In the above photo see how I m making a smiley right in the middle of the stream and not at the bottom of the cascade? This tells the viewer there s a rock just under the surface and as the water rushes over the rock, the water is hitting the water and splashing up. You can see the effect in the right photo. Add as many cascades and upward splashes as you d like. Remember, we re learning

27 I ve decided to come back and paint another set of cascades between the two existing cascades. Each time you add an element to your stream, stand back about 5 or 6 feet and ask yourself two big questions. 1. What s not believable in my painting? 2. What can I do to enhance the believability of my painting? In this case I felt I really needed to shown even more altitude descent. So adding another cascade would reinforce the believability of this painting. So with a series of waterfall strokes and smiley splashes, I can quickly add rows of cascades. However, size of the cascade becomes a big question as well. Should I add one big cascade or a couple of smaller cascades? I felt a couple was the answer and not one large cascade since the descent needed to be gradual. If I painted one large cascade, I felt its size would cause considerable adjustment on surrounding rocks and lay of land to support the size and larger drop in altitude. Consider the believability of your overall painting when adding new elements. I encourage you to constantly review your paintings to add new elements to enhance your painting s appeal, but do check the additions for believability. My little rock stream starts off by gradually descending. The water doesn t appear to be moving much, we can see through the water to the riverbed rocks. Then through a succession of four cascades the stream picks up speed and starts to rapidly bump into rocks just underneath the surface, spraying even more water into the air. The action is brisk and this little stream would complement any landscape painting. Practice this painting and then tackle one of our assignments. Send me a photo and show me how you re doing

28 Frozen Rivers Frozen Rivers are easy to paint and actually easier than other river type. In the example above, I first underpainted the entire land and river area with a light blue color using a big brush. I mixed TW & medium clear together and with a #6 fan brush laid in the shore line and land. I left some areas with more blue than others to show shadows in the snow and to form the lay of the land. Then I reloaded the fan brush with a small amount of TW and painted waterlines along the shore and at various points across the river. That s all there is to painting a frozen river. This is especially illustrated in my painting, Grandpa s Cabin to the left

29 Mud Puddles Mud puddles are so much fun to paint. First load up a #2 flat bristle brush with BU and draw the outline of the mud puddle where you d like yours. Fill in the area surrounding your drawing with BU. The tool on the right is a paint eraser or Wipe Out Tool, depending upon the brand. Use it to remove all of the paint inside the mud puddle. Load the #2 flat bristle brush with a light to medium blue color and fill in the mud puddle. Clean and dry the flat brush thoroughly. With the clean brush pull down paint on the back side of the mud puddle. Clean the brush again with a paper towel and blend your mud puddle with horizontal strokes to set in the mud puddle s reflection. Mix a little medium and TW into the mud puddle color and load this mixture onto the short edge of the #5 palette knife. Cut in a waterline just above the reflection on the back end of the puddle. Repeat these steps for each mud puddle you re creating

30 Painting Waterfalls

31 Waterfalls Waterfalls are so beautiful and whenever I visit one I know I m spending a fantastic moment with our creator enjoying His creation. I love incorporating waterfalls into my paintings. My most popular paintings have waterfalls. Horseridge Mountain on the right and Falls of Thunder, below left are clearly the two most popular falls paintings I ve introduced. Brown Mountain, above, left caught everyone s imagination as the waterfall empties out outside of the oval border. Paradise Falls is the result of a practice set of paintings I had most beginning students practice in the 90s. I wanted a painting where students spent most of their time learning to paint the waterfalls and cascades. Autumn Colors and Sierra Waterfall below are two additional paintings gaining a lot of attention recently. All of these paintings were painted using the basic techniques I outline over the next few pages. So pay particular to this lesson. I receive more money for seascapes and waterfall paintings than any other type of landscape scene I paint

32 Painting Waterfalls One of the most beautiful elements we can add in any landscape painting is a cascading waterfall. This captivates our viewers and they spend hours just studying and inserting themselves into the painting. They can hear the roar, feel the spray and they re in a whole different world while viewing these magnificent works of nature. I like painting them and they re Easy to paint. Even if you ve never painted before. The secret is simply breaking the process down into small, simple steps. This waterfall which I painted in my Paradise Falls painting is accomplished with only four colors: PB PTB TW IB Let me break the steps down for you. Prepare your canvas by first applying an even coat of black gesso over the entire canvas and then let it dry. This takes about 20 to 30 minutes. You can dry it with a hair dryer on high heat if you like. I had a student who was also a beautician. She had all sorts of hair dryers and I find out that beauticians could only use the hair dryers on low to medium heat. High speed was ever used. After time, those two speeds would quit working (as all hair dryer eventually give up the ghost). And she d throw the blow dryers away even though high heat worked. Since I could use these hair dryers in class, she readily gave me a couple. So if you know a beautician, you might have a ready source of hair dryers that work only on high heat. I like using black gesso canvas as it really brings out vibrant colors especially for this type of waterfall landscape. When the canvas is completely dry, add a second coat and let dry. Cover the entire canvas with a thin coat of clear medium and immediately follow with a coat of PB. Now you re ready to paint the falls

33 Begin the waterfall by mixing a small amount of PTB with TW to the color shown left. I m brush mixing with a #3 fan brush. Add just a drop or two of medium. The paint that s on the canvas is quite thick, so I like to use a thinner color for the waterfall. The rule is thin paints stick to thick paints and vice versa. When layering wet paints on top of each other, be sure to remember this Rule. Load the edge of the brush with the paint and hold your brush straight at a 90 degree angle to the canvas. Draw a straight line from right to left using the very tips of the bristles. Then pull the brush straight down using the full width of the brush. Use medium speed. Do not speed through the fall. The right most photo shows what happens when you speed through the process. The paint skips, fades and looks rather weak and incomplete. But by using a consistent medium speed this gives the fan bristles enough time to allow paint to transfer onto the canvas and portray a realistic, believable waterfall. The leftmost photo is what you re striving to achieve. Waterfalls always create a big splash when the falling water hits the pool of water below. We can easily paint this by reloading our fan brush with paint and pressing the fan brush to form a smile at the bottom of the waterfall. Place many smiles, one on top of the other as shown right. To make a smile place the #3 fan brush, loaded with paint at a 90 degree angle so that the brush is at a perfect right angle to the canvas. Press the handle of the fan brush forward so that the bristles begin to bend UPWARDS. This paints a smile onto the canvas. Repeat the process until you have enough smiles. Blend the smiles. With a large brush you ll blend the waterfall splash exactly as though it was a cloud. Hold the large brush at a right angle to the canvas, angle the canvas so that the brush allows only a few brush bristles to be touching the canvas as shown in rightmost photo. Using circular blending stroke and starting at the bottom of the smiles blend upward without touching the top edges of the smiles

34 You can add more paint to the fan brush and apply a second row of smiles to intensify the waterfall splash. Re-blend. Reload the #3 fan brush with paint and starting somewhere within the splash paint short horizontal dashes. The dashes should be a longer with each stroke as you bring pool of water forward. This gives the appearance of moving water out of the turbulent falls into the pool of water. We can extend the surface of the pool of water as we d like and could even add cascades or another waterfall. Use a special Z stroke to show a rapidly moving pool of water coming out of the fall s splash. If you want a still pool, than use perfectly straight strokes. I like rapidly moving water so I paint quite a few Z strokes from the splash to the next fall or cascade. In this particular example, let me show you how to paint cascades. Think of a cascade as nothing more than a tiny waterfall. Its just a whole lot shorter. Check Your Work Frequently Stand back about six feet and study your waterfall frequently. Look for the following 1. Do I like the color? Do I need to add a brighter highlight where the falls or cascade begin to reflect light? 2. Is the water falling straight down? Is it believable? 3. Does my splash look natural? 4. Do I need to highlight any portion of my splash to reflect light? Think of the splash as a low-level cloud. 5. Is the surface of my pool level? 6. If I m using rough, moving water for the pool, is it level and is it moving naturally, or do I feel there s a Tsunami swell coming forward? 7. Have I shown depth and contours with the cascade? Cascades can be any shape. You can form an endless variety of contours by changing the length of the falling water and the direction of your strokes. To show depth, paint longer strokes as you move forward in the cascade, smaller as you head back into the painting. To show a rounded edge stroke the cascade toward the right on the cascade, to the left on the cascade left and one light stroke down the center. This rounds a corner. Don t forget the splashes

35 We have lots of choicest at this point. We have the large waterfall, the huge splash as the falling water beats upon the boulders, the water cascading out of the splash and into the stream which has its own cascade. In my observation of the base of many waterfalls, there s just not one or two cascades, but many. So let s add another cascade. This is what excites viewers. They just love to see all of the action. They ll hear the thunder, feel the spray and perhaps go home with a freshly purchased painting. Load up the #3 fan brush with more paint and stretch out the stream with shallow Z strokes from the splash of the previous cascade to where the next set of cascades will soon appear. Paint your cascades any shape) you want using the short waterfall stroke. Add the smiles and blend out the smiles slightly. In this cascade set, I ve added two sets of cascade forming an n. When blending the cascade splash, there s no need to use a large brush to blend the smile strokes. I just use the tip of the fan brush bristles and pull out straight left or right away from the cascade. I m only pulling out the bottoms of the smile stroke. This sets the stroke into the painting and does two things for you. (1) a natural look to the splash, and (2) moves the water beyond the cascade onto the next element in the painting. This forces the viewers eye forward in the painting. The last thing I d like to add in this painting right now is another big waterfall. There are many single fall waterfalls, and just as many multiple fall waterfalls. The most I ve seen is Seven Falls just outside of Colorado Springs. Load up the #3 fan brush with paint and move the stream forward using the long water Z stroke until you reach the point for the second waterfall. Reload the brush and draw a line with the edge of the fan brush to the point of the fall and pull the brush straight down the canvas at medium speed. Reload the brush and repeat this process until you re satisfied with the falls as you see in the leftmost 2 photos immediately above. The third leftmost photo shows the point in which I backed away to review my painting. My conclusion was the forward waterfall was too narrow. So reloaded the fan brush with paint and widen the falls considerable as shown in the right photo. Stand back and again review your painting making any modifications you deem necessary

36 So far you should be quite pleased with your work. But we re not done. Load up the #3 fan brush with paint and add a touch of TW to lighten the paint HIGHLIGHTING I generally do not highlight my waterfalls. As you can see in the left photo, the waterfall strokes I ve been doing has given me beautiful light glows on the falls, the pool and the cascades. But there are those days (I must admit) when my strokes yield nothing but dull, single blue strokes throughout. This is when I highlight by simply adding more TW to the water color mix and just restroking the falls and cascade really lightly where I d like to have just a touch of light. Be careful. Use very little pressure when doing this. Make lots of smiley strokes at the bottom of the waterfall. And be sure to extend the smiles past the right and left sides of the waterfall so you ll have some color to stretch up with the large brush. Once you re satisfied that you have sufficient smiles around your waterfall, grab a clean, dry, large brush. Blend the smiles. With a large brush you ll blend the waterfall splash exactly as though it was a cloud. Hold the large brush at a right angle to the canvas, angle the canvas so that the brush allows only a few brush bristles to be touching the canvas. Using a circular blending stroke and starting at the bottom of the smiles blend upward without touching the top edges of the smiles. Go across the entire bottom of the base of the waterfall to blend the smiley strokes. Without stopping, blend the color upward to the right and left of the waterfall as shown below. Just stretch that paint as far as you can. We ll be adding rocks, trees, bushes and other items in which the waterfall splash will be spraying over. Therefore adding this high blending now will assist us in showing the effects of all of these elements being sprayed upon by the fall s splash. Congratulations. You ve finished your first waterfall. Stand back and one more time, check your work against the checklist shown on page

37 Painting Boulders in Waterfalls Mix together a dark boulder color of PB and IB with the palette knife. Load up a #2 bristle flat brush with the boulder color. To paint boulders disappearing into the waterfall spray first make a single line with the loaded flat brush. Wipe your brush off with a clean paper towel. Then blend the bottom of the line you just stroked until the color disappears into the spray. Examine your work closely. You ll see two boulders being engulfed in the splash from the waterfall. Add as many boulders as you d like by repeating the line-blend process. Load the #3 bristle fan brush with you water color and show a small amount of water cascading out of the splash over the last boulder. Cascade the splash over another boulder and totally out of the splash area into the still water pool in the painting s foreground. Reload the fan brush with water color. Add happy smiley faces at the bottom of the last cascade with the fan brush. Using the fan brush, blend the bottoms of the smiley face strokes from the smile away from the boulders using a level, horizontal stroke

38 Painting A Lake On A Dark Canvas It s easy to add a lake underneath a waterfall on a dark canvas. Simply load up your large brush with the water paint you ve mixed. Place the brush in the center of the farthest shoreline and flick the brush down for a couple of inches. Move along the shore line to the left flicking the brush down a little longer and a little lighter as you move left.. Reload the big brush and move the shore line to the right flicking the brush down a little longer and a little lighter as you move right. Then take a clean, dry big brush and lightly blend the reflective strokes you ve just flicked along the shoreline with long, horizontal strokes. Continue this process until your lake s reflection looks like the right most photo above. Once your waterfall is completed and you re satisfied, stand back 5 or 6 feet and inspect your work. Make any alterations you see that are required. Now here s the hardest part. Repeat making this waterfall over and over and over until its second nature. Just about 75% of anything you re ever going to encounter when painting waterfalls is in this lesson. Once the techniques shown here are second nature, you ll find yourself solely concentrating on the creation of your composition. And that s where every artist wants to be. Composing and rendering what they from photos, drawings and real life. Study waterfalls, they re on of the most exciting elements you ll ever add to a landscape painting

39 Painting Oceans

40 Oceans In 1992 I was wondering down the aisles of the Taunton Flea Market when I came across a man teaching painting in a booth. After nearly an hour of discussion he convinced me to sit down and try my hand at oil painting. I knew I couldn t do it, but Jesse Martin convinced me to at least try that day. He would teach me. I sat down and tried to paint. Night Light on the left is my first ever painting. Jesse painted the two houses and must have repainted the two waves a half dozen times. But my desire to paint was unleashed. I became the madman. Midnight Surf below is one of my more recent painting. Amazing isn t it what a little bit of practice will do. The same techniques used in the above painting were used in Midnight Surf. The difference?... Practice, practice, practice. When I was initially learning, I painted about paintings weekly. I always scrapped off my canvas, cleaned it and repainted a new painting on it. The fever has died a bit, but I still paint about 5 paintings weekly

41 I m constantly experimenting with seascapes. Dramatic colors, sepia tones, different angles, always trying new ideas. Day is Done to the left is a result of one of my Florida trips. I d been invited down to Orlando to teach a group of 15 ladies how to paint seascapes and flowers in acrylics. In the late afternoons and early evenings I d go out on one of the local tours and this particular scene is one that came to me shucking oysters and martinis for dinner one evening. It s easy for students to learn and it teaches a lot about color and how to simplify, simplify, simplify. My most popular paintings, Point Serene, Day is Done, Day At Cape Cod, Blue Romance, and A New England Midsummer Dream are extremely simple seascapes. But it is this simplicity and color that builds the attractions for this type of painting. Try them and see the results you achieve. Beautiful Hawaii (right) is a painting I ve completely redesigned a half dozen times. It has lush emerald mountains, a lavender sky, and dark clouds. I used PTB and PTG to create the turquoise ocean color. Twenty Two minutes after painting Beautiful Hawaii, it sold for $150. I was in Newport, RI teaching a class. A delivery man delivered something to the store where I was teaching. With one look he asks, How Much? $ Sold. Day At Cape Cod on the left is the first painting I ever sold. It sold for $105 and currently hangs in the home of Charlie Samia. He bought the painting in 1994 at our church auction. I visited him and his lovely wife this past week and there displayed proudly in his living room is my Day At Cape Cod. A few years ago my wife and I met a young lady and her husband in a neighboring town. We were invited over to her house for lunch later. As we toured her home I nearly fell over. She had one of my paintings hanging in her home with my signature. What a surprise when she realized I was the artist who had painted her painting

42 Ocean Waters Learning to paint a realistic ocean is a matter of mastering a single stroke I call the Z stroke. In the three photos immediately below you see the three strokes. It s like I ve taken the bottom rungs of a couple of rocking chairs and formed a Z. Zorro was misunderstood. He really was a frustrated seascape art students looking for a place to practice his Z-strokes. The taller and higher the Z, the more turbulent the sea. The narrower and longer the Z, the calmer the sea. Never forget this golden rule. On the fourth photo below, I ve produced longer and narrower strokes to illustrate how to paint a calm ocean scene. You ll have plenty of waves and movement, but no Tsunami. Each of the Z-strokes in the left photo stretch from one end of the canvas and they re extremely narrow. Leas than the width of my fan brush. You can paint the Z stroke with a fan brush, flat or even a filbert so long as you re using the Z stroke. So many of my students have expressed shock about how easy it is to paint the ocean and have it quickly showing life and movement. Should you have any portion of your sea with too big of a Z-stroke, ignore it and just right over with the narrow, long Z strokes as you see in the top two photos immediately below. There s another rule. Paint the line, break it, paint it again. This yields fantastic results with oceans. Fill your ocean with the Z-strokes and repaint it again a couple of times. Don t try to follow the previous strokes, just get loose and paint each set of strokes as those this is your first application onto the canvas. And let the dark gaps show. They re worth their weight in gold. They simulate waves and depth in the painting. I frequently will paint several layers of different colors all using the Z-stroke This really brings the painting to life and your sea becomes quite realistic and beautiful to look at

43 In the left example I painted one layer of Z strokes on the left, the other on the right. Than for the second layer, I painted down the center of the canvas to interlock the sides together thereby forming a seamless ocean that appears to be floating up and down toward the viewer. Now compare the water from the reference photo I took below in Newport, RI to the water movement to the immediate left and in my painting, Northwest Passage. You can see the Zs in the reference photo. When using light canvas to paint ocean waters be careful of the colors used for the ocean base color. Divide the ocean area into roughly thirds. The back third is painted with the lightest tone, the middle section with a darker color and the foreground ocean area painted with the darkest ocean base color. Then take a #4 flat bristle brush and using the Z stroked, stretch the horizon color into the middle ground and vice versa. When satisfied, Z stroke the ocean middle third and foreground together. This eliminates any hard line between the varying base colors producing a gradually lightning ocean color as we move from the viewer to the horizon

44 Painting Ocean Waves The ocean is constantly moving. Energy travels under the surface of the water and finally emerges as waves when the water meets land. Energy also travels across the surface of the water causing ripples and swells and a rolling sensation on the entire ocean surface. When painting the open ocean seas, we need to be aware of the movement of currents so we can accurately reflect it in our paintings. In the next section we ll get theoretical and explain all about water energy, the forces that create energy, but for right now, let s just realize, oceans have swells. Load up a #3 bristle fan brush with the darkest ocean base color you re using. We re using PB and IB in this example. Examine what we ve painted already. There s plenty of Z strokes and unpainted (dark) lines throughout. This is exactly what we want. This creates the many tiny waves and swells we see in a rolling ocean. Now let s add a large swell. We re going to draw a solid line across the canvas using the #3 bristle fan brush we ve just loaded. Reload with paint anytime you run out. A natural place to start is to select an already dark line in your ocean and continue that dark line all the way across the ocean width. Once satisfied with the line we need to set the dark paint into the ocean so that this swell will look likes its naturally rising out of the ocean. With a dry cleaned fan brush. Zstroke the bottom of the dark line into the ocean in front of the dark line. This is critical. A rule of thumb for where to add swells and waves is as follows First swell midway between beach and horizon. Second swell midway between first swell and horizon Etc. Violate this rule if you re using a composition technique that requires swells somewhere else.

45 After painting the single dark line across the ocean sea, thicken it to the desire height by adding additional, parallel lines on top of the initial line. Swells are not straight, so curve some portion of the line up and down so that you have a couple of peaks and valleys in your swell as shown in the top right photo. Using a Z stroke, blend the bottom of the line into the ocean again to ensure the wave is sitting in the ocean. I like to paint a sideways Z starting at the top of the swell and really flatten out the Z-stroke at the base of the swell. This technique really sets the wave in the ocean and adds to the credibility that the swell is rising up from the ocean you ve painted. Think about how the wind might be blowing in your painting and make your swells support the wind by moving either with or against the wind. Clean the fan brush and load with a lighter color. In this demonstration, I m using a medium blue color. Set the base of the swell into the ocean yet again, but with the lighter color. This is your first highlight color. Use an arching stroke that essentially starts midway in the height of the swell, continues to the base of the swell at an angle consistent with the movement of the wave and then flattens out into a Z stroke in the ocean body. Let me go over that again as I m combining two types of strokes in a single stroke. This is an arching stroke and a Z stroke. 1. Beginning at half swell height arch your stroke (looks like a fish hook) right or left down to the base of the swell. 2. Without stopping flatten your stroke at a right angle and finish with a long narrow Z stroke. This does an excellent job of setting the swell into the ocean and showing the rising swells as the ocean rolls forward

46 Lighten up the highlight color when you ve set all of your swells into the ocean with TW. Add a touch of medium to soften the paint and reload the fan brush. Scoop a small amount of paint onto the very edge of the brush by sliding the brush forward 1/4. Lightly tap once or twice the tops of each swell with the highlight color. Reload when you ve run out of paint. Clean your brush and dry it thoroughly. Place just the tip of your brush halfway in the width of the highlight pint. Arch the stroke down right or left, lifting the brush off the canvas about halfway down the length of the swell. After each stroke, wipe your brush dry with a paper towel. After arch-stroking the swell, take a dry fan brush and lightly tap out the left end of the top swell to the left, and the right end of the top swell to the right. This allows the wave a natural appearance. Your swell should look like the bottom photo

47 The Crashing Wave A crashing wave adds a lot of beauty to a seascape painting and is one of the top reasons people purchase seascapes (along with color.) You can build a perfect crashing wave by just following these simple guidelines Midway between beach and horizon draw a line with a fan brush or flat brush loaded with a small amount of light paint at an ever so slight angle across the ocean, left to right. Draw a second parallel line above the first representing the width of your crashing wave. Pick the spot where you d like to paint your crashing wave. Draw a small arch from the top line up and arching over to the bottom line as shown in the leftmost photo below. Reload the brush and scrub using a circular motion inside of the arch you ve just created. This is the eye of the wave. Scrub the color in while shaping the eye like a football. Wider in the center, pointed at ends. With a large brush or mop blend the center of the eye. 6. Now its time to paint the water curling over the eye and crashing onto the ocean. The water is curling because as the wave rose, and rose, and rose, the water got so thin, it couldn t rise any further. Gravity took over and the water thunderously collapsed onto itself. 7. Load the fan brush with the highlight color. 8. Starting at the top of the eye, stroke left and then down in an arching motion, lifting the brush off of the canvas about halfway down the width of the crashing wave. This portion of the wave is affectionately know as the dump. As you arch down over the dump, its best to think of the dump as one of those big old pickle barrels. So arch your stroke as though you re painting the outside of a pickle barrel. 9. Continue down the length of the dump with the arching stroke. 10. Angle the top of the dump slightly down until you reach halfway through the length of the dump then start to raise the top of the dump sharply until you reach the end of the length of the dump. This helps set the stage for the crash

48 We have the eye painted, the dump painted and now its time to paint the splash from the water dumping down. Reload your brush and starting to the right of the eye about an inch or two, scrub (small, tiny circles) a small amount of the light color on the top of the wave, up over the arch and down the length of the arch, past the dump to the bottom of the wave as shown in the left most photo above. Without stopping, make the circles wider and paint the along the entire length of the crashing wave. When reaching the end of the wave, then scrub the highlight up above the height of the crashing wave. This creates the mighty splash we see in so many different seascapes as shown in the photo below. Reload the brush with the highlight color and study the center photo above. What we ll be doing is showing the water going up the sides of the wave before the eye and before the water begins to crash over. This is known affectionately as the curl. The trick is go to from the flat, rolling ocean and shown the foam patterns coming down from the curl and flattening out. I use the combination of a slanting left arching (fish hook) stroke and in one fluid motion as I reach the bottom of the wave change to a Z stroke to flatten out the bottom of the curl. I ll continue this stroking along the entire length of the curl. Stand back and inspect your painting

49 Beach Foam I just love painting the foam on a beach as wave after wave washes ashore and then retracting. Load up the #10 palette knife s long edge with a lighten highlight color. Use a fairly large bead of paint at least 1/4 thick. Hold the knife around the metal ferrule with your thumb and forefinger and ensure the paint is facing the canvas. Stroke a thick line across the front of the ocean onto the beach where the foam is washing ashore. Reload the knife with paint as necessary. The back of the foam (top of the line) will be referred to as the top and the bottom of the line as the bottom. With a clean dry fan brush, pull the paint from the inside of the foam, just above the line s bottom. Do not touch the bottom of the line. Pull the paint straight back with a stroke that is absolutely parallel to the bottom of the canvas. Water is level, therefore we must keep our ocean level by stroking parallel to the canvas bottom. Continue pulling the foam paint the entire width of the foam pattern until completed. Step back and see the magic. Walla you ve got foam running up your beach. I just love this step