How I paint Water my best Tips techniques and favorite Tools in landscape painting | TheArtSherpa

how i paint water i'm going to tell you about the tools that i use the materials that i think are absolutely necessary to be successful in painting water i'm going to explain for the beginner the concepts of breaststroke and technique to help us create the illusion of water and i'm going to cover some of my very best little processes that i use to create the paintings that you see behind me are lessons and tutorials that we have but there's some very simple concepts behind how they're created so going in to this year's story of water i wanted to make sure that you had a beginning conversation an art conversation skill conversation technique conversation to help me do that conversation is my husband john hello he has been uh filming endless videos about water and landscape which as you know is of great interest to beginning artists beginning artists um love landscapes they want to paint everything that they see they're excited about everything but it takes a minute to get the visual vocabulary that you need to be able to accomplish that and there's some very simple things that beginners do that mess them up so this is going to be a little bit of don't and do this is going to be a little bit of just concepts that if it hasn't been explained to you this way um it may really help you get a better result in your water and we're going to talk about some con basic constructs we're going to go over tools techniques we're gonna talk a little bit about light and reflection waves and then a waterfall and that's just sort of an introduction is this the last conversation that we're gonna have about this no water is a deep subject but it is it's a deep subject and so after we get through um this year's acrylic april so this video is being done in 2021 after we get through this year's acrylic april there will be a series of follow-up videos that really drill down into techniques so take these skills and that event and go to the next level so has planned the next level i wrote up the year ahead of time a warning today if you have a canvas or acrylic paper to spare you can paint along with me um we are going to be capturing this lesson and putting this into the mini books and extra resources and today is just black and white paint is it so it's a great it's a great day to work on skills so if you've got scratch paper scratch canvas you can pull those out get your white and black paint and paint along with me and see how you're doing in these basic basic concepts um so how is everybody today really good i was just over here just peeking around to see what we have going on let's sip our coffee so we're energetic for the moment yeah because this is live this is live right now later if you watch it it's not live sorry but you can see the who has joined us here i know i saw early on we had some new members of emoji club and new members of emoji club enjoy your new emojis how do you use them there's new emojis in your emoji tab and you can through they're special just for us you can use them i think in the community tab and during live i don't know if you can use them in comments there's a reason why it's only two dollars but i do custom make new emojis every time youtube allows us unlocks a new one for us yeah it's like a badge i guess all right you want to put up the technique so we're going to timestamp this video so you can find a section again easier later all right cool so there's some tools you need to have if you're going to paint water um i feel so the first one is i think it is essential to have a t-square in your tool kit this is a little plastic one it is just a ruler that allows you to create a very straight line because in watercolor and water landscapes being able to get a level horizon line is really key when you need level you need it and so this is a great tool the other tool that i think is essential to have in there is a low tack tape this is artist tape stay with me artistic it's just artist tip darling and it really helps us when we're trying to create the illusion of a shop crisp line but um if you don't want to spend eight dollars on a tube of tape you can also try washi tape which is low tack as well and if you really really really need to um get the budget going if you have masking tape and a corduroy sofa or kind of a fuzzy pair of jeans or sweater you can take out a little bit of masking tape and go to the fuzzy object and just tap up and down until it gets very linty oh it works i've had to do that on like where i you know was going to go paint on location or do something with friends and got there and was missing my low tack tape needed it but had other tape i had access to other people like somebody said well i've got masking tape and then on my little fuzzy sweater making low tech tape i'm that friend everybody invites for the weird tricks you know what i'm saying yes okay so t-square low-tack tape all right you need uh brushes for blending and being able to create very irregular marks these are two that i like this is a one-inch synthetic oval mop many of you will say can i use a makeup brush and many of you will say you can i have not done a deep dive into the makeup brush industry to see what makeup brushes make alternatives to this but basically what you're looking for is a synthetic fiber oval mop that's one inch in size the other one i have here is this number 12 round blender now this isn't synthetic this is a mix of hair i believe this is camel which means it's not actually camel hair because in in brushes when we do the brush video you'll learn that camo means a bunch of mixed animal hair just i guess whatever they have around but what's great about the chemical in this in this instance in this dome is the different diameters of the hair really gets you not only a good blend but also a good kind of splashy effect in technique so i think that that's key i think that having a splatter tool is fantastic now i have a galaxy set that does splattering um but you can just use any good stiff brush that will give you a good flick away i think it's also a great idea to have if you're painting water at all fan brushes right so i have here the art sherpa fan and i have here a hog a chunking hog fan um so this is synthetic this is hog either is fine you just will want to have this this also does a really good frothy splashy water i think it is important to have a dotting tool um and this is again this goes with the galaxy set but i will tell you right now on the dotting tool issue you could also use a toothpick or the back of your brush or just anything that will give you a consistent small dot all right um i like to keep around scruffy hog brushes so when you're looking for a hog brush i like to have some brights right and i like to have a hog brush that is interlocked right where the bristles go in and chunking right so best dressed all of that is what you're looking for and the spelling is c-h-u-n-k-i-n-g and it just means the back of the pig i know it's a little sad isn't it but you know it's good i think it's important to have a chalk tool to draw so you can level horizon lines so you can do things it is helpful to have a nice palette knife around you will want um assorted brushes for acrylic but i do think you have to have a round of some kind um in there and you need to have something big that and flat that will let you blend all right so these are big cut cutters i've got a two inch you could do a one inch but you want something oh here's a good one this is another one this is a uh it's a little soft this is a one and a half inch so something that will let you do big back and forth marks and motions and then i think it's very important to have acrylic glazing liquid gloss this brand this company nobody else makes one that's like it so that's this is the one that i recommend and then on this i like this company's which is the golden fluid acrylic in titanium white and this is for making splatter but the truth is you could probably do craft paint but i do think a bottle of the titanium white around is super essential so that are those are the tools that i think you just kind of should be collecting and putting into your brush bucket for your water painting interesting so there's a lot of a lot of questions about the blenders okay let's get into that before we move on to techniques if you if you can't find these blenders i'm not able to find this blender brush there's a lot of concern about being able to this specific blender okay so so guys in the brushes right don't worry i mean i have brands that i like and i will tell you what those brands are like this is a princeton right princeton select but what this is is a mix of hair right and it's cut into a dome so even if you can't get this specifically you need to ask for that in your brush yeah that's what you're going to be looking for this is an oval mop and it's easy to mix up like a goat mop because they'll they'll have the same names on them right um now this particular one is called an ultimate varnish brush but it's really just enough i like the way that this is shaped into its little dome here and the way that it's carved here also goat holds too much water and goat breaks when it's used with acrylic it gets brittle and it breaks and so not only does it hold too much water but it really wears out very very quickly um i have another brand another couple of brands this is the princeton you can see it's pretty close in shape so you're just looking for this shape in a synthetic taklon or polytip is the princeton a natural hair brush yes it should be listed i believe it would be listed as camel but it is not they don't mean camel the animal when you see the word camel on brushes it means a mix of pony and squirrel and other animals and what's nice about that is the variance and you can see the different and i don't know if the camera can get really in on it but you can see how the hair on this is um different diameters and different focus on that there we go you guys see how how that is that's not all one hair right now this is not flagged like in your in your goat brushes and your hog brushes you want the brushes to be flagged which is a fancy way of saying split ends so the next time someone's like you have split ends you'll be like no my hair is flat um this is cut this way this is cut in this shape and it's a similar shape to my cloud brush but my cloud brush is a scumbler it kind of removes paint it's for dry brushing or thick application this is for blending so that's what you're looking for and you know a lot of times these tools are everywhere but maybe they're repackaged i have a resin artist that i'm obsessed with watching right now and you know i see so many of my brands but the packaging is completely different and i have to guess what the product is like that's a game i play i'm like do i know the product before i see it pulled out on a pallet or displayed or you know what it is what is the product's name here so sometimes when you're watching youtubers from a different area like if you're in a different country and you're watching a youtuber in another country like just down the same country because labeling practices companies have to sometimes package differently in different areas the whole branding of a company can look significantly different so understanding what it is makes them very brittle and it breaks them and so um you know as you paint with your brush your brush will change shape and kind of wear into your brush stroke it's kind of a cool thing kind of cool it is cool kind of awesome all right so are you ready i think i think you covered a lot uh rebecca says what type of split end brush it is flagged f-l-a-g-g-e-d i am working on a brush video which will tell you all the facts you need to know about brushes will be like you went to germany and got a brush education because that's actually where the school is the vocational school for making brushes is in germany it's like the only one left other than that you have to apprentice in um but it really has like everything you need to know for what we do about brushes and i'm being i'm working on it now so chunking uh interlocked and flagged there we go all right uh what is a deer foot brush work for so deerfoot is a really cool brush it's a bit it's very similar it's usually camel like this brush here but it's cut at an angle and it kind of allows you to do like notice when i put this brush in a stroke it kind of shapes like a deer foot the brush actually is shaped for that and so you can do bushes you can do different blending effects um sometimes artists prefer them over i really prefer the round strongly but it's a it's also a fantastic brush so uh it's it's a good second blender and if you can't find it like if i went into an art store and i couldn't find anything else i'd grab the deerfoot if i could find nothing else if i had other choices i might grab a dome a round dome for my blending but they're pretty terrific brush if they're made well right if they're made well and you can really kind of do a cool push stroke with them as well gotcha all right pretty nice okay so this is what these are and remember guys this will have its mini book accompanying it and that will also help you find those words um in an effort to make sure that we are as accessible for everybody as possible we have that going on so that's really going to help you in your learning process okay now tammy's like chase the cat around with tape don't tape your cat cucumber your cat i don't know don't anything to your cat let it let us go on to our next segment which is techniques okay all right just making sure i've got a little note here i want to make sure that i've got i've got yours here's the technique part but i want to make sure that i caught all the questions here because i just give me two seconds to scroll up let's make sure that we've got it because you got the dude this is for you guys so you can go into acrylic april like ready for anything right ready for all of these got some supply lists up you got that covered uh i do i do the princeton is a natural hair you cover that not the mop but the the round blender is around us for sure for sure all right so we got the dick flick list everything okay i think we're okay sorry i just want to make sure just because we got a lot of those a lot of questions so by the way this ever happens to you don't like this is a particular problem in this particular line row row another reason why i'm moving away from and you know that but these will as they a lot of the glues won't stay in some companies you can re-glue these i just haven't gotten into them the staples are what those are anyway no these don't staple in that's actually not the staples go into the wood here and this is neither attached by the crimp no i've all of them do this um it's neither attached by the crimp or the staples it's glued in i would just use a like a i think crazy glue's a little thin i like the thicker thicker ca glue but you can glue these back in so don't think about it before we move on where's the mini book or what's a mini book so 2021 we have been writing out step-by-step instructions for all of our videos and also for these extra instructional lessons with matching pictures this the only one that's come out real slow is the color mixing one and there's some reasons for that but it's going to be released before acrylic april um and any when we do any of these tip videos those will be accompanying those are free we're doing those free because we understand that everybody got hit real hard with coved they will become part of books and things in the future that we do but this way if you just need that information that resource you can print it out on your printer at home gotcha and it will really help you and we're time stamping this so you can find your spot again isn't that nice right and later on if you want to buy a set that are printed we may have those available in the store that'll be a little bit yes next totally techniques so in water you can get very specific and get very tight and regimented with this but there's some basic concepts or techniques that we've got to do and the first one i'm going to show you is that brush strokes when we're painting water need to be level so i'm going to get some white onto here and i will do two areas so i'm white in the middle i'm brushing back and forth and i'm going to add black going to go back and forth and i'm going to keep this brush stroke very very very level and then i'm going to show you even within this concept how that super important in water even as i go back and forth and give you guys some coverage here i want to make sure that this brush stroke is level i don't have to have it be level in the sky but where i have the water if i don't have water in a waterfall i need to keep and i don't have water like actively running or being obstructed by some object shedding just pulled it out so it's got some shedding then you're definitely definitely going to have all your water on the street everything be level like even your water on the street what i feel like would you say this breast has some shedding it's like a bald man saying i'm losing some hair it's just a whole journey i'm working it's all fallen out already now you'll notice that i'm going to just keep this as level as i can all right so there we go we have everything has to be level and it runs this out to the side now it it really is one of those things where level is so important for water it just is even if i come in with say something else right like say i'm going to use a fan brush here and i want to come into say the horizon and come across even as i let the streak and everything i have to make it level if i come in a diagonal it doesn't look like anything well let me go overhead because when you see it yeah see there you go doesn't look like anything but if i blend this back in it will start to look like something if i want to add reflections i'm going to add some white to my brush i have to think about them also being level even as they zigzag back and forth i'm tapping a fan brush up and down fan brushes can make some great water reflections even if i'm trying to say oh this is kind of choppy water if i have a sharp reflection the water will seem a little thinner so now i'm telling people a little bit about where the water where the light is on my water but if my horizon isn't level none of this will read is water and the reason that i'm doing this in black and white is to demonstrate i'm not even using blue as a clue that something is water so susan's not quite understanding what do you mean by level when you're referring to this okay so if i went diagonal right that's not water anymore so level you know like when you want to go as horizontal and level as you can you don't want to tip your brushstroke um i'll blend these through here and also let me blend this through and i'll do this again i will uh dry it and do it again so i'm going to come through and add some black and white right and i'm going to try to make this as level as i can or as even with the ground so that it's it's parallel with straight straight's another way of saying it not vertical not horizontal not yeah you want it as horizontal as you can have it so i'll dry this real quick so you can see them go out again okay so yeah she's when she means level she means that gravity is pulling it down if it if you tilt it at all make any angles then it'll make it look like the water's running off the surface or flowing at you know like gravity pulling it down so it's very so the eye you're keeping things like you'd have a level painting on the wall you'd want level water on your painting so let me just do something real quick i'm going to give you some context and by context i'm going to just give you some objects that you might think of so let's say here there is a distant little hill okay right give it some grass get some grass some personality or distant little hill that comes along our water embankment right and let's say along this little hill right we have a sun kind of in a low sunset right so if we saw the sun like this we'd kind of probably expect some red and yellow colors this could be a moon whatever this little light source is in your mind okay then and i will grab i'll do it with my round brush if i want to talk about this being water i have to put little level brush strokes out that reflect light because water is a mirror it isn't just transparent and it isn't just affected by the algae that you think you see in it it's not just affected by um the colors that you believe it is right because we think of water as green or yellow you know blue or those kind of ocean colors water is a mirror and it's a mirror in motion so it can end up with some different broken reflections because you might not see every ripple right but if i were to do these brush strokes like this it doesn't look very much like a light reflecting down does it no no all of a sudden it looks something weird it goes off but maybe let me show them the straight overhead view yeah i'll show them the straight overhead see how these will look like water is reflected whereas these don't look like water is reflected anymore when you're painting when you're new to painting i'm gonna paint these out make them go away and it will help our water come back and even this brushstroke where i'm blending it out what do i not want to do i don't want to get at an angle i don't want to take this into an ankle angle i'm going to come here and these are little short marks right so what do the short marks say they say that the ripples are small they don't have a lot of height to them the distance between the sunlight definitely tells us that there is a little ripple to the water which it's very rare that water goes complete glass when water is complete glass it is a perfect mirror to the world above it this is that first sense of what we have to be able to do with water we paint the light coming down the water we make sure that the area that's our water has level horizontal straight uh strokes that don't vary we only vary the stroke when we're trying to talk about a different motion of the water like a wave that's when i change my brush strokes when i'm trying to paint a wave so here we go we're just little dots of light doesn't take much does it when they come closer i might get longer with my brush strokes but there we go the next thing is is that our water will tend to be a little dark darker so in some way than our sky and it reflects what's above it depending on the smoothness of the water is the smoothness of that reflection so if i were to say hopefully this brush isn't too big do like a little oh my goodness little fan tree with the overly big brush okay let me go there i i've been keeping on the side view because uh for some of the beginners it's easier for them to understand the level out there so see we have a tree there there little tree you made a tree i made a tree that's a fast tree it's a fast tree the issue with this tree though is is that if the tree is there and there's nothing in the water it looks a little off doesn't it there's no shadow tree so one of the first things that you'll do and you'll see this in like you know different little painting things is is even if you bring a vertical reflection down it's not a glass day it's not reflecting the tree perfectly but the tree should still be present in the water see how we're doing now this i've suddenly had to get control of my brushstroke the other way i'm going vertical and i'm going to show you we're going to do some different things here as we go wow okay so these are definitely not level lines now there are no they're vertical lines they're straight up and down line and the straight up and down line says what it says that the water isn't that much in motion however if i were to say wiggle this right if we were to wiggle these lines that says that the water has a little bit of motion in it it's a weird simple concept so let's talk about this just real quick and i'll pull out a painting where we did this sort of thinking we're on a street we're not even at a lake right this is a lesson that we did how we made this street look wet is that by reflecting what was around the street on the street and by creating both the little wiggle verticals and the horizontals against each other we were able to create a diffused street reflective lighting that's how we created that illusion we took these concepts and went there coming up on the first day of acrylic april right we actually played with horizontal line or level line against the diagonal line to start talking about wave remember that's when i said we might change the directionality but we didn't change it with the light did we so if when you're painting water even if you're painting a fantasy water scene you can remember that you're light there's going to be a corridor of light coming down from the light source and that's going to kind of little zigzag reflect you can do it with a palette knife you can do it with all kinds of things some of the other things to think about and i'll get a bright out to do this let's say let's have another little scene over here i'll give some grass right it's not a bear hill but the bear could be on the hill the bear could be on the hill all right let's be goofy let's be playful let's uh because we're just in a weird mood today while you're sketching that is we have so many new emoji club members hello louie thank you guys so much for the support what are the what are the different colored unicorns mean uh the unicorns are how long you've been in emoji club you get different i think we have zebras we've got all kinds i am drawing a little uh in paint a little kitty cat as you know why wouldn't you it just gives us something to talk about in um our reflection and you're just working with black and white paint today yeah we're just working with black and white paint today yeah say we're asking why wouldn't why wouldn't you do that with blue well because right now if i show you in blue you're gonna you're gonna be so focused in the color that you're not really focused in it doesn't really matter what color you use these techniques are gonna give you that sense of of having that's such a sherpa answer well i didn't even know what you were going to say and i was just like i'll ask the question because i don't know why didn't she use blue and so man i don't want you guys to be caught up in the color all right let's give some flowers here now i understand guys i'm just doodling this is doodling we're doodling all right whatever we're doodling needs to be here give some little grasses and things there's a reason we're giving context to this right so this is the world that we have above our water today and let's have let's have a lot going on let's have sun let's have a sun like maybe perhaps right here so we do have a clear day and a nice light source i'm going to mess with my catabic give me a second now it's bothering me you didn't have anywhere else to be did you guys just want to give him a better body and i'll give him some little whiskers i feel like we're in the arctic circle and this is the midnight sun okay so there we go we've got a little cat we've got some plants we've got things so let's say this is a this is still water here with a little bit of perhaps a a ripple here right so if i'm trying to paint some little ripple reflections i'm going to come over here from the side i'm not going to go level and now you're like wait wait hold on wait wait i just you were down below and i didn't see what you were doing there okay definitely so i'm talking about the little ripples that happen in water because wind can change the directionality of our line right wind can affect the surface of our mirror think of it as a fluid liquid mirror so say there's just a bit of a breeze coming here we can you know make this a little thicker and then it's going horizontal there but now we have those ripples i've got my shadow because water casts a shadow and then also water has highlights so where can we guess that water would have highlights we know that water would have highlight from there so we could absolutely guess that we need a little corridor of light here okay and i'm gonna uh break out the different little brush strokes like the little the way we do the chop and everything oh yes please microwave my coffee okay so we're gonna make this little dash of light okay and instantly when we put the dash of light it starts to become water doesn't it now we don't want to everything in nature gets very random i'm going to show you where you might get stuck as a beginner but what do you do when you come to the ripple here well the first thing is is that you've got to create the highlight on the wave it won't be as bright as your corridor of light a little bit it'll be lighter than your shadow but it won't be as bright brighter than the base watercolor this is the other reason we're using a grayscale because we're not going to get caught in the color mixing we're just going to look at the value so not as white as that not as dark as this it has to be lighter than that and it definitely has to be lighter than the shadow now these little ripples are happening right what ripples came out of there we've got ripples on the water so now we feel the wind going water is fluid it's affected by light and environment and gravity so whenever we're painting our water we're going to want to paint those things notice that the level rule that i had keeping it horizontal or level is applying to the light even though the wind has created a diagonal thank you see how the light needed that come in and can put some little highlights here [Music] that a lot happened when i was gone what happens when we're painting you have a now i have okay there's some elements though because you guys will often send me a painting go like it looks weird but i don't know why so we're going to really break down what's happening and we're going to do it without color and we're going to do it really looking at that so we have any questions for where we're at so far because i'm going to show you we're going to put a little frog or somebody popped up and i'm going to show you what happens in this glossier area so this is interesting so i was just reading up here on some of the questions this implies that there's a little shore here in the foreground that we don't see doesn't it it does it implies that the water has become shallow and implies that a breeze has come in from this direction it isn't is it is the shores protected from in some kind of way virginia says you make black and white look so beautiful after this class would you please do an out of focus or blurry looks in painting oh how to do the bokeh effect that's something you could probably check in the water or in painting in general i think it was just in general question but we'll i'll wait for her absolutely yeah we are going to start having technique classes regularly after acrylic april that cover techniques probably pre-recorded a little faster than this but i just wanted to give you guys a chance to do a live q a hina says this is so perfect and i'm going to add a little little comment for you guys we've been watching the stream if you're buffering it probably is local you can rewind a little bit and it'll probably pick it back up up but we're showing real strong signal here and we and our mods are showing that it's pretty good across the country so we if you're buffering it may be a youtube issue so check that out and it won't on the replay right yeah so far so we're gonna put a little frog face up closer to us like you do that's a frog peeking up it will be can you see i'll have to give my cat some eyes it's going to be a little bit creepy in a second but it's okay he's got little cat eyes and a little frog i have a little frog eye so now we have some objects in our water but the thing about it is is that the water isn't it isn't affected by them and it just absolutely would be right so the first thing that we can do is we can start to create a sense of reflection and let's get that glazing medium out you can do this with just water if you can't get glazing medium you can thin your paint with just water but if you can't get glazing medium it's a good idea so the first thing we're going to do is we're going to get a glaze of our black that cat has planning eyes it's thinking about that frog i think it is thinking about that frog it has aspirations now i'm going to show you the reflection that goes vertical and horizontal all right let me go over the overhead i just have to get enough color on here because this should be darker than what is showing i'm doing two tones of reflection and some of it is dark some of it's a little lighter that looks pretty good all right but then if i come across oh you added some dimensionality to that we did and we also you put some distance between the frog we put some distance between the frog and the shoreline and we spoke a little bit about how the wind might be impacting back here because even though it's pretty glassy back there it's pretty protected it still would probably have some impact so that is the second reflection where you come down and you go across vertical and then horizontal right well keep losing my towels as i go so i'm gonna try this real quick and then i'm gonna show you the way the next things reflect yeah guys and if you'd like to get uh more information about what it is we do you can check in the link in the description down below and if you'd like to get notified when we go live on these types of things uh don't forget to hit the smash the subscribe button hit the belly thing and then if you still want text notifications send a message to the phone number 33222 and the message all one word the art sherpa you don't have to capitalize it i just do that so it's easier to see but that's how you get a hold of us and we'll text you when we do this like this and i do that so that i have a good way to kind of see what's happening um and it's and i'm working to my strength there's a rolling vote here that froggy needs to be a crocodile so he's safer they're worried about that okay i mean i think that that generally would just be um a couple more dots on the head well no no no because then then it's a maybe a little bit of oh you get my little snout a little bit kind of and then there's a little more of a crocodile it's gotta imply that there's more of him that's sticking out okay so now we have a crocodile does he feel better give him a little highlight on his little oh the hidden drop oh no so with round brushes when you rinse out a lot of times they get a hidden drop up the shaft that comes down and surprises you on your canvas you give him just enough highlight himself to seem like he might be there oh nice you know those highlights that's one of the things the dimensionality that those little highlights take something from being like oh that's kind of a sketchy shadowy thing in the dark to oh that's crocodile or so agora if we were talking about the objects that were up top and we have this grass right if we were to come out to here and we were to talk about that grass the grass would so if the top and you might have to go overhead to my hands babe okay if the top of the bend is this way then the bottom of the bend it needs to be that way it needs to make the open mouth remember greater than and less than so you will always be running a greater than or less than kind of little reflection even if i wiggle this out to say oh it had a thing if i'm trying to speak to so if it's open like this i still have to do the opposite of what i've got going on there now he's not too bad and i can wiggle me a cat but if i were to wiggle the tail i would have to go the opposite of what i see on the tail can you guys see that i may need to do a different here's what i'll put some reeds in the water let's put some reeds in the water because i think the uh the upper upper grass isn't going enough so let's come along the bank make sure that the bank is darker you've got some little reflections with that let's talk about him right he can't just be there in the water he has to have impact so i'm going to take a glaze he has to have an impact in the water oh yeah all right so when we get that going we are we have to show the impact but he probably also impacted the surface of the water so i may want to show him pushing a bit of ripple in front of him he's got a little ripple let him go so now he's got little ripples in front and back but wait those ripples don't have shadows they'd look so much better if they did so say that there was a grass or something here in the water let's put it right here right the water version of that has to be a mirrored reflection and even if i want to show a little bit of a ripple around it to help it show i still want to make sure that that reflection is a mirror i'm going to get back in there so they can see that because i didn't there ah that makes such a difference oh here like if i wanted to talk about my cat's eyes oh in that water i would have to go the opposite direction those little reflections are there so see we have stuff happening in the constructs of you have what kind of brush strokes you have to have i'm going to use a kind of messy canvas just because oh what's this i don't know what this is i feel like that was like i don't know what this is but i'm just choosing i feel like you just covered light and reflection and waves yes just you're going to want your water brush strokes even when you're making them random this is that horizontal that we're talking about see how that is yeah and then sometimes you'll want to pull down into a little vertical horizontal let's see how that makes that work so that's what you're trying to do if you've got like a like a reed here no matter what it is and it's in the water and it's going to have to come up straight curves back this goes forward like that then the reflection needs to go forward like that all right if this comes up it has to be the opposite of what's above it you're just making a mirror of it we're going to be doing that um a lot a lot a lot a lot do i have one of those i have one [Music] two to show you and you guys can see these so we're now covering how you get here why you have what you have here you see it let me cross over there yeah what i have here is i have to have down here i'll put it up right so you can see it like in this this is the diffused reflection that just went up this is it this is an upcoming acrylic april lesson this is the horizontal and across brushstrokes with a corridor of light where the mirror casts stuff down so we have in detail slight ripple does that make a little bit of sense it does all right so i need a different canvas i think but i'll try to do it here try to do it here so i'm going to divide up another set and we're going to talk a little bit about uh wave and water and then the last one we'll do is waterfall does that seem good to everybody yeah all right so i'm gonna measure this in half you want this to be waterfalls uh no this this is going to be uh waves waves okay would you like to say waves waves okay basically stuff at the ocean right so now you're like but wait waves clearly don't have horizontal lines and there's some stuff you need to know to do about waves so i'm going to take my t-square and i'm going to set a horizon line over here and then let's talk about so a wave is essentially a little tube we're going to say our wave is going to exist in this space and this part of it will be kind of up and then it's going to be crashing down the curve over the tube and then we're going to have a little foam here so you notice how these are going down like this on this sort of overhead curve that means this part of the wave is going to go up like this so anytime you're doing an ocean doesn't matter what the ocean you're doing you're going to need to have a level distant horizon line if you can see the horizon line if you're seeing the curl of the wave which is a tube going forward you're going to want to know that those lines go uh up in the opposite direction and let's just put in a um like a distant sky i'm just painting a distance guy and while i'm painting in this distance guy in this basic construct you guys can ask john any questions that you have i'm over here they were asking uh what that t-square thing was and lots of people are telling them yeah the t-square i wouldn't want to do water without it because unless you have one of those very natural level hands right it's not going to be that much fun let's put some little clouds out there and give it a reason for it to be kind of a windy blustery day huh little clouds and our distant horizon i'm gonna end up playing with that all right so we kind of know what that is yes the far away water will be a darker gray right the far away water will be darker if i don't have a sun oh wait i should let's put in the sun so you can see the light in the wave and again guys i'm gonna get into this in color in detail each of these techniques right after april like a whole video of in detail in color but honestly sometimes you have to take the color out of the conversation so that you can see the concept and once you have once you understand the concept you can almost replace it with any color any colors to indicate different waves around the world yes you really can and it's a good idea let's put a little sunlight right here that'll be nice with our upward wave so our sun will be here and we'll say there's just a little bit of clouds kind of kind of happening here the sun is right there it's very important your clouds don't go behind the sun no clouds don't go behind the sun clouds always go in front of the sun that's one of those weird things when you see a photo where the sun is shining through a cloud but it doesn't quite translate that way to a painting yeah you gotta be careful with that lighting now i'm gonna take a little white and i'm going to kind of create some dimensionality in my water it really did quick it really did quick so there's some little dimensionality in our water too much dimensionality in our water but we just smooth that out now coming down here we're going to add a corridor of light the beginnings of it so there'll be two in the water out here there'll be two corridors of light from that object and get a darker valley here because i need to darken that out okay so then in front of the wave i'm going to take a little my black and grain we're going to make kind of some chop because generally in front of a wave everything is very energetic i'm going to create some energetic little brush strokes through here and we'll talk about sea foam put on some more black if you have acrylic paper it is a good idea everyone's well to get out and practice your skills in black and white because they you can't cover for anything with color right if you have color you can cover uh to say it's water because people will immediately associate blue with water oh true very energetic brush stroke there right we have this distant stuff a foot here now what else would be going on in the distance well in the distance we would probably have maybe some little waves coming out here guys and i'm not using reference i'm just using the principles of what we would expect and that's an important thing to know is that once you have an understanding of the principles then you can kind of paint you guys remember how bob would just sort of like paint out a painting it's because bob worked in these concepts right people that just paint uh those awesome really cool um spray paint art and they play with these concepts because they understand what your mind will do if it sees a bright light and then there's a one of this light down there kind of flick up some energy by putting little highlights out there it creates little distant waves so now we've got some and stuff that kind of makes some sense but what how do we make this be a wave well the first thing that we've got to do is we've got to get a lighter color and we're going to come up over and we're going to go down this is the tube of the wave it's curling down see that i do at the base i'm going to bring up a slightly darker value in that curl more white paint this and splattering you're gonna be like when you see the sea foam you're gonna be like wait that's an ocean yeah always always always always always always all right so we're gonna come here i'm gonna tap up and down a little foam just remind myself that's what it is come over the top highlight okay that's pretty easy on the come the the wave coming over right but what happens the other direction this part of your wave is always darkest the base of your wave always darkest it's always darkest before the curl i don't know i just felt like that had to be said depending on the depth as i come out here i need to kind of blend this out underneath the foam i want it to be fairly dark and again we're going to get some seafoam to help pull that in to explain how that does because the water is being pulled by a force isn't it upward that's why we're changing the direction of the brush stroke now where the sunlight and the sky is shining through the wave it is going to be its lightest that's where we get into that sea foam green those light little colors so up here at the top of that wave and in that curl going to be pretty light i'm going to curl these brush strokes down the face of the wave looks like a wave doesn't it it's so weird but it does that's where it does the lightest spot is where this sunlight is coming through this wave always yep so the top of this wave i want to put some energy out there and the salt water tends to kind of and i can even push this little brush out and make some sea spray so now we have that wave you guys see how it's happening i think so what's what's really crazy is it's happening here in black and white and i can see yes and you can see what it is even in black and white where do i need to lighten well i definitely need to lighten at the top of this wave where the sunlight would be coming through right here this would be my very green blue light lightest color of the wave right there and i want to take some detailed lines and kind of come over the top about that energy of that wave there's that curl i can always you know come in with a detail brush and make a lot of little little moments i'm going to show you this very important technique though i'm going to take out fluid paint and that splatter tool load it up fairly well hopefully come over to this side so i can see that now my wave is splashing it really is it really is but i mean if it was splashing this much it should have some sea foam i would think so i'm going to come in here and i'll load up a round hog just to have a nice rough thing and what's going to happen is that there will be bits of this sort of white energy in this little ocean space here and it's going to come up i think i might need to detail down into my detail brush but your phone comes up the wave i'm gonna get into my detail sometimes you'll be painting like i need a detail brush your phone's gonna come up the wave and as you know here it it might be down and it just in motion right because this is where the chop is but as it gets pulled up into the wave it'll get pulled into sort of very elongated little circles and shapes because it will definitely get pulled into the energy of what's happening get back into what i've got here and i might turn this for myself a little bit and it it isn't necessarily the whitest white always but it is lighter and what you have around it you get seafoam going up the wave you can always kind of add some highlights to some of it because some of it will be brighter than others some of it will be frothier than others you know and then here on the curl of the wave i'm going to want to do something it would be light there but you would have a darker kind of like base coming here because the water gets thicker right there wow and so therefore is a little bit darker you guys see your little black and white wave now that's really crazy so understanding what way the value and the brush strokes and how the light and the environment is impacting your water is how you create water so i'm going to do one last one which is the waterfall you can put up do we have any questions on waves and i guess heat my coffee because i didn't even sip it i'm so like i'm gonna teach this to you today you're on you're gonna come on spree okay so and every painting you saw on the thumbnail is a lesson painting that we have there are a couple questions okay all right so kim commented that uh if you try using a soft toothbrush like she did it does not work no it the reason i developed a um brush that looks like a toothbrush but it's actually an art brush but it uses the sherpa white filament as i needed a stiffer tackle on than you would ever put in your mouth right like i don't know you could what used to happen to me is everyone so i would find like maybe a toothbrush or a tool a cleaning tool like at the hardwood store that was perfect but then i would never find it again so i wanted to create something i could consistently find and uh so i put that splattering kit together i have a video on different ways to splatter like there's a way to do it with two brushes going on a wacky wack there's a way through the screen there's some different you can flick with your fingers there's different ways to do it that's the next question and uh shelley says do you have any suggestions if you only have one good painting hand so what i would say is if you have one good painting hand is uh find inspiration in artists that are in similar circumstances because you will find there are a lot of artists that have limited mobility for a variety of reasons who are able to create the artwork that they want be creative in making strategies to help you if a bridge which is a structure that sits over your painting and lets you rest your hand helps use that if a maul stick helps which is another support um recognize that you know you can paint very loose and get very good results as long as you are you know getting your values and practice practice practice because you may have to create a series of techniques and processes that are unique to you but sometimes that's where the best artists happen right there's there's an artist uh chuck close and he was just a fantastic portrait artist he created the whole hyper realism movement he was amazing and he was a catastrophic accident and he ended up quadriplegic and in relationship to that a friend of him helped create an easel and a painting system for him so he could keep being creative and the work that he created after was astounding but it was he created a bunch of series of techniques and processes that were unique to him and important for him to do so that's just something to think about is that it's okay for you to develop things that work for you and look for adaptive tools that may help you make find that you you know need a grip or you need arm supports or any of those things and always use those always always always i know it's out there because whatever you have going on you are not alone somebody else does too i'm going to paint this all black and you can put up waterfall i can put up waterfalls and then you can paint that in and i'll get you coffee in a second yeah i'm going to just paint this all black because the easiest way to demonstrate waterfall is just to paint it black and again i'm going to go into techniques and concepts in detail in acrylic right out we're going to learn it all over april you're going to learn so much about painting water you're going to be just like i'm water ready you know these are the kinds of concepts and techniques that we're going to be focusing on we do it very slowly very incrementally and we only do one at a time like this has a multitude of techniques in it but going through in acrylic april you'll learn a technique and then you learn another technique and you'll learn another technique and the concept of the painting and those will start to come together to build a visual language of painting water and then afterwards we will start to refine those concepts and those techniques into skills that are quite serious i'm going to just paint this back because the easiest way sometimes to see a waterfall is uh is on a dark background when john comes back i will catch that so hopefully you guys are enjoying this a weird class but i'm kind of hoping to introduce you guys to these concepts so that um in acrylic april you really find um confidence in space oh irene says i'm left-handed and have a hard time doing waves in that direction and i always have to do the opposite so here's an interesting thing i ran um and i'm starting to feel this more and more as i'm a teacher uh waves come from either direction and so as a right-handed painter i can paint either direction even though i do have a direction of what you're trying to vocalize is that you have a direction of strength with your brush stroke also you mean you may be dragging your hand through paint and that can happen to you either way one of the reasons i love that rotating table or rotating easel is that whether you are left handed or whether you are right-handed you can always position the table if you guys have not seen this i use this rotating table for some of my classes you can position it to the direction of the strength of your best strokes we all have a best stroke i have like i make straight lines better from one direction it's very hard for me sometimes to do them like this but i can do them really well like this we all have a strong um stroke direction so finding that for yourself and and it's not that there isn't great left hand right hand strategies because like i'm teaching from my right hand and so i may be stroking up when you need to stroke down or i may be doing those things and i've certainly heard great tips from viewers like watching in a mirror revert you know flipping the screen and those things can help but also just realizing like whatever direction the wave is coming from because they'll come from either direction it's making sure that your strengths are played too because we all have strengths in our painting practice and just making sure your strengths are played too uh oh virginia's like yes we're having fun beth is like this is just like art school hopefully with a little bit of sass a little less thanks i remember my my sculpture teacher was sassy oh he was he made he gave us all sorts we had the same sculpture teacher did we yes i didn't know that michael yeah the exact same mark schatz yes no i did not he's still doing stuff i saw him so good mark schatz you're amazing you're a good teacher a very good teacher teacher if you're in houston and you get to go to the school of glaselle go so worth the money fantastic fantastic educational resource yeah take mark chat's class it'll it'll blow your mind he has some really interesting processes in yeah we went at different times so we did we went at different times very different times because i was going there for jewelry making when everybody in your family goes to art school some put out a little more white paint i got black all right we rock uh yeah you guys do rock if i had a rock there i would do spray and that rock we're gonna cover rocks and water in acrylic april too and again i'm gonna i'm gonna come in and we're gonna go deep after april we're going to be like this is sea foam on the sand it's the sea foam in the wave and and kind of get those more even more realistic techniques out right we're just kind of covering some big broad concepts so why are the time and water is horizontal we've talked about the time when we want to use horizontal and vertical brush strokes we've talked about when you start to change those brush strokes to describe form and the other time that we really change how we express water is when it's falling so i'm going to take a fan brush which is my favorite way to demonstrate the fall of water all right because we love to demonstrate the fall of water so we're going to do two falls we're going to have it stop and then fall again so i'm going to at first make a light gray because when i paint a waterfall i i can do it in one stroke i love doing it with newscasters when you come in they're like can you teach me to paint in 30 seconds and show them how to do waterfall now i was like [Music] and it's let's do it to two values since we're not trying to fit a 60 second segment into the world so i have a fan brush here it's a hog brush doesn't have to be a hog just any old brush and i'm going to come down straight about there and then i'm going to come out and fall down here and then i'm going to say land here at the pond and create a little ripple in the water because the water would be disturbed by the waterfall so already you can see waterfall pretty i see other youtubers use this all the time now glad to have introduced it to the platform so uh i'm going to come back with pure white and we're going to at the top we're going to keep it focused at the top now things to understand about waterfalls around this would generally be moss and stones and plant life and all kinds of things but it will tend to be darker near the water because the water will stay in the stone it will be wet it's often in shadow and the mosses get dark so those are things to think also right here about this space in the waterfall or if there's a rock that breaks it it will get darker again so i'm going to start at the top with my lightest paint and even lighter coming down there we go now it got more serious but of course if it landed somewhere something would happen so let's get into our gray again into our gray i have this this brush because what happened water got stopped and splashed oh what happens here water gets stopped and splashed but of course it doesn't do that in one tone right it's not in one value right so we want to have that in two values because water is very dimensional it definitely has light in it um so you've got to give it a highlight you always have to highlight and shade your water all right so we're going to take our white paint i'm just going to demonstrate that concept which is that at the top here and i didn't even use my splattering tool i like my splattering tool it makes me happy i don't have to use my spotter and then i can come through the water here i'm going to turn this so that again i'm working to my best brush stroke and so if you're left-handed you might want to do this opposite yeah and that's okay and that's okay because there have to be some left-handed waterfalls in the world well no no you don't have to change the direction of the waterfall you just may change the way you paint it there's a strong stroke in your left hand that can do anything any direction but if you're trying to live in a right-handed world and you're trying to do the brush strokes where my strongest stroke is you're fighting yourself and what i'm saying is you've got to get into who you are as an artist and really pay attention to this is when i have my straightest line this is when i have the most control over my brush and then move your canvas so it fits your needs huh that's what i'm saying that makes sense what if there was an object like a rock or a log in the water would it float or would it sink i guess in a waterfall it breaks the fall it breaks the fall it breaks the directionality of the water so you would have a split in the water so we're putting in the right so we're putting this in do this right here i'm going to show you a couple different ones so now we have this the break in the water to talk about a rock so for sure there might be a little bit of splash wow that's really coming in yeah we just say where where is the water blocked it gets blocked by a rock and that would just be brown and then you would you know use highlights and things to say oh i'm a rock something is here you know also um could i tell you how to what says i was waiting for that there was like it left me on a cliffhanger because she was like can john can you ask the art sherpa right to ask me another thing to remember is that this has a bank what do they keep in the bank if the water is this much emotion it will definitely be impacted by the bank this so do you like the uh rotating surface more than the easel different thing and actually i bought a rotating needle that i'm gonna start testing i like being able to rotate and move my canvas because whether we're right-handed or left-handed or whether we have strong mobility or not a strong mobility um we have areas which which we're very confident and we have a lot of control and being able to move my canvas to get into those zones i love i would highly encourage you to do that as well so i wouldn't say lazy susan is better than an easel what i would say is if you're painting at a table and you'd like to paint flat i would definitely get a lazy susan that's a working susan well work in susan because it allows me to you know always move to where things are strongest for me and see my uh my canvas from many many angles which really helps me i like to see things you know kind of vertically to my face and sometimes i do have to tip up and kind of evaluate but or have some sort of overhead letting me see it oh you know or you could take a picture with your cell phone right where you get a kind of a distance view of it but it really is about what you need i wouldn't just paint flat to a surface though does that make sense i would want to have some ability to change my view my perspective um do this for you guys because i know how y'all love the tape peel tape peel all right that happened like i just made it we all like to paint um i'm going to try this a ruler aussie arula rc uh my am i doing this right laura ossie man there's a lot of continents in there and i have a name like cinnamon so i should be able to do that beautiful name first beautiful name that's good um share my air balloon experience that you went on your 16th birthday ginger mention in tutorial that is the first birthday i ever got to celebrate because my parents were jehovah's witnesses and so i had never celebrated a birthday and when my parents got divorced and my mom got with her second husband uh we got birthdays so that was the bonus there and uh they decided to take me uh hot air ballooning which at first i thought was the craziest thing to do with me because i am terrified of heights john you've been married to me for decades how terrified of heights in mind i think that putting you in a basket under a balloon is paramount to putting a cat in a bathtub it felt like it and i was just like how is it we're coming into my first birthday that i get to celebrate in my life and it's my 16th and you decided to dangle me from something high from from a balloon in a basket with a fire i can only imagine that you would have been in the bottom of that basket i expect it to be because i have been in every other thing but get this no it did not trigger my acrophobia it was the most insane i was so dissociative it was so strange it was like out of body there's something the way the basket hung and the way it was quiet and the way that our balloon um driver took us kind of close to the tree pilot pilot pilot i would call him captain if i was on board i'd call him whatever he wanted we have snacks and stuff like that but i really expect it to get about six feet off the ground and have a complete freak out but everything about it was so tremendously gentle and calm and peaceful and it is the only time in my life i have been up high and not been terrified out of my mind i have we have a question okay this is a good one so an actual question an actual question about foam i should say so the foam is seafoam dimensionality cinnamon christie would like to know how to make it fluffy and give it that dimension that you the the genesis get on in there what is that thing so one way a lot of artists do it is they use an impasto painting technique where they take a heavy bodied paint and they put it out very thickly you can do it with your brush too and you can create sea foam that way as well can you see the dimensionality it's it's super in on it sure so now if you're talking about near near the uh shore it's about making sure that you have at least two to three values that you shade the foam right because your sea foam is is generally very shaded so like you'll have like a shadow a mid tone and a highlight and often bubbles in it so you can capture that if it's in clear water you want to cast a shadow under it to the sand below so if that's what you're asking that is that answer and if you were asking about the top of the sea foam then i would say do the little splashes i'm going to splash the splash in my waterfall though because i have this paint on here so um rl uh that's a it has an x at the end look at that more splashes one of our community said that her husband did the same thing and she had the same experience and then was like okay that was that was okay right how weird is that because like seriously step ladders are questionable for me sometimes i get up on a step ladder and get something on like the high cupboard and i'm like i have to really kind of work myself down off this like i got my kids will come in and i'll be like holy gripping cabinets they're like mom what are you doing and i'm like stuck so she's like i don't know if i'd do it again maybe i would maybe i don't like she was saying that like she's like in that torn place like doesn't there was there used to be this tour in france i thought would be really fun which is but i would want to add art to it where i would paint in each location but you would go from castle to castle be a hot air balloon and they would bring your luggage and all your stuff and then you would just kind of fly and eat and see france from hot air that sounded super good that would be fun i would do that right i wonder if that exists anymore i hear all my mom is apparently taking virtual tours so i guess you can go online now in the new covid reality so and book a virtual tour where somebody is in italy and you say these are all the places i want to go and you pay them and then they take you there live virtually now there's got to be somebody in italy that will pay to see pennsylvania [Laughter] maybe we could be virtual tour guides and we could you know i don't think so if you're feeling a little trapped and you're not in a place that the lockdown is lifting yet that might be something to consider to do uh catbread says uh they get dizzy too all right ah so we just covered some basic water stuff guys so we covered the fundamentals of these reflections journey on these two and then we got into water in motion so those are as we go through acrylic april that's the basic stuff we're going to get into we're going to do 30 paintings we're going to meet every day now class 1 we teach you know we get you in with kind of like this is i think the class one is that do i have it over here i don't know yes i do so class one and you can go follow is is this is class one right and then you can kind of see how it goes this is class two class three four you guys got a peek peeking peeking peeking these are all gonna come with mini books and each of those will be written out so that the steps have the materials and the brushes used in the tools that you can follow along better i mean that way it gives you different aspects of how you can learn i think it's important for students to have access to different learning methodologies because our we don't all learn the same it's just the truth like i have people who really like me but they struggle sometimes with the live lessons because i'm very chatty and they need a different type of construct of learning and that is always okay it is okay to need that and so as a teacher i'm trying to make sure that you guys have the most stuff available to you in your learning process that you can possibly have and that's going to start april 1st however this year has a very special treat on facebook 4 p.m live the day before a class we do a pre-show the pre-show i'm going to walk you through the mini book step by step and talk about the concepts and i'm going i have a worksheet that we can do to practice some color mixing for it and answer questions so we're going to have pre-shows and the only day we want is the third i'm just going to double up the second and thirds pre-show together because that's my daughter's birthday so i'm gonna spend that with her not that i don't love you guys but she wins because she's my favorite so you know um come by those if you have extra questions for acrylic april if you're like a beginner and you're feeling anxious about doing it and you're not sure if you can come by those because that's going to be that extra walk through or if your person who like needs to know everything early early early to have your stuff ready that would be another good reason to come by and those are going to be on facebook and i'll wire them into each page so you can watch them from the website if you need to because you don't have to have facebook to watch for a facebook video right i don't know from from our website i don't know that i don't know from our website no right yeah no because we load them up and we don't we host all of our own videos so even if our content uh was aired on a platform if it go we often times re-host it ourselves so yeah at least link it in so you can find it so here we are at the end of this lesson this was great cinnamon we learned some things we did so hopefully you're feeling a little encouraged this is the kind of stuff we're going to cover be good to yourselves remember to make your painting experience work for you it's yours you can absolutely do that no apologies if you have an area that's more comfortable a direction if your teacher likes to do a brush stroke down and you feel better going brush stroke up do that right be good to each other there's no one way to do anything we've got to make room for each other in the world and i want to see you at an easel really soon bye

Channel: theartsherpa

Views: 24,657

Keywords: The art sherpa, step by step painting, Art sherpa, the art sherpa, acrylic painting for beginners, how to paint a river, how to paint water, painting water, landscape painting tutorial, how to paint water with acrylic, how to paint realistic water with acrylics, The Art sherpa Water, water painting, water painting techniques, water painting for beginners step by step, water painting on canvas, water painting tutorial for beginners, water painting for beginners

Id: GfLmkWC8Vt8

Length: 94min 26sec (5666 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 25 2021