How to paint cloudy seascapes
Wet into wet, blending, dry brush, splatters, paper soaking
Aim of the session
To explore loose, expressive watercolour techniques and create simple cloudy seascapes. This session looks at two different techniques for cloud painting. It also uses both student grade and 100% cotton paper to illustrate the benefits.
Materials
-
Watercolour paper, 300gsm cold pressed - one student grade the other 100% cotton
-
Tube watercolours
-
Brushes (large flat or round wash, medium round + small detail brush)
-
White gouache (optional)
-
Tissue / kitchen roll
-
Water pot
-
Pencil
Handy Hints
Do a few of these and treat them as cloud experiments. We're painting in a loose style so you won't be in 100% control of the outcome. Look up, no two cloudy skies are ever the same in real life.
Colours:
Here are my colour combos from my examples below - feel free to experiment with your own. A good idea is to choose two or three colours at first, until you get the hang of the technique.
Basic - Cerulean blue, yellow ochre, ultramarine blue, burnt umber
Feeling more confident - turquoise, pthalo green, crimson or pink, burnt sienna, white
We're going to paint two seascapes.
The first on student grade cellulose paper, with just white clouds.
The second on 100% cotton paper, with grey clouds
Painting 1 - white clouds
Good to know -
Clouds are bigger and fatter overhead, they become smaller, flatter and closer together the further away they are.
It's good to have a mix of soft and hard edges in the clouds
Clouds are a one and done technique. Going back to alter clouds that have started to dry will not work out well
Draw a very light horizontal line for where the sky meets the sea. This should be either 1/3 from top or bottom edge of paper - never directly in the middle.
Wet the sky area
With cerulean blue, paint the clouds using the negative painting technique, i.e. paint the blue sky and leave the clouds unpainted.
You can shape the clouds in two ways:
-
the blue paint can be lifted out using a thirsty brush
-
the tops of some cloud edges can be sharpened by pressing down with tissue
Don't spend too long on this - let it completely dry
Move onto the beach
We're going to keep it simple
With yellow ochre, sparingly use a dry brush technique (lightly skip diagonally across the texture of the paper). Optionally add in some burnt sienna too
Use a clean, damp brush to water out some of the dry brush.
The Sea
Good to keep in mind.
The sea is horizontal
The sky colours are reflected in the sea
The sea is on top of the sand. Near the shore you will be able to see the sand colour under the water - sand is yellow and sea is blue - mixed we get a green/turquoise
The sea's horizon is usually a dark blue
Start with diluted cerulean blue and spread this colour over the sea area and the edges of the sand. Leave some white space in the sea
Add in streaks of ultramarine blue in the top half and possibly turquoise nearer the sand.
Look to have light and dark in the sea.
Draw a thin line of dark blue at the horizon. Use ultra marine blue (with a little burnt umber or a darker blue like pthalo blue or indigo)
Let it dry
Details
Add some more dry brush marks in the foreground if needed
Add a few burnt sienna/ burnt under splashes
White splatters too if you like
For extra interest - some distant birds or a boat!
For the grey cloudy painting, the process is pretty much the same. The key differences are :
We use 100% cotton paper that has been soaked in a tub of cold water for 5 minutes. This combination will give you better blends for grey clouds and a slightly longer working time.
We need a warm grey mixed up and ready to go. I suggest mixing ultra marine blue with burnt sienna
When you remove the paper from the water, lay it down on something waterproof. I used a plastic board
Use a clean, dry brush to remove any excess puddles of water.
Start with the sky again and negatively paint in the clouds using cerulean blue. Now drop some light grey into the bottom of each cloud - let that spread. Now add in slightly darker grey at the bottom of each grey cloud. They greys should softly blend into each other.
Keep an eye on your clouds, do you need to use the dry brush technique or tissue. Once the shine starts to disappear you need to stop working.
The sand and the sea are painted as in the previous painting.
