Learning to Paint Water

I’ve moved on to the next tutorial by Shari Blaukopf. This one is exciting to me because it’s all about techniques for painting water. Still water, moving water, rapids, reflections, waterfalls – these are all subjects that interest me greatly.

First off was brush techniques frequently used to paint water.

Hm, I think the wet into wet needs a little more practice.

There’s no substitute for learning by doing, so I moved on to the first subject: Still water. Here you see my sketch and the first washes.

While I might have made the blues darker, I was well enough satisfied to move on to the next steps.

In my enthusiasm to paint, I failed to get photographs of each stage. Let’s just say that there were two more layers of wash (mostly on the trees) and then final details. Once everything had dried, I applied some white gouache lines to the still water.

Completed painting:

While I feel that I succeeded in getting the reflections right, I’m not terribly satisfied with the overall painting. I’ll probably try it again.

To see Shari’s work, you can visit her blog here.

About Shari Blaukopf

Friday, Oct 2nd. Today I painted the still water scene again. This rendition is much more pleasing to me.

The colors are cleaner and more transparent. The sky and water are vibrant instead of washed out. And the vegetation in the background is clearly defined.