How to paint a Crashing Wave! | SEASCAPE OIL PAINTING TUTORIAL

in this short video we're going to be painting this seascape in oils roll that intro [Music] how's it going Andrew here coming to you from the home studio I hope this video finds you well in this video I want to talk to you about some of my painting techniques when it comes to painting a seascape featuring a crashing wave this is one of my favorite subjects and I've been really inspired by my time in Australia I lived in a place called Perth for over 20 years and there's areas south of Perth that just have some water that really needs to be seen to be believed in fact when I posted this painting online I got several comments from people saying no way those colors are just too unrealistic but if you have a look at the water color in Albany for instance it is electric blue so I really wanted to paint this piece featuring that blue wave now often when I'm painting I love to work directly from life but sometimes that's just not possible so I do use a bunch of photographic reference as well now here with this painting I've made it quite simple I've only used two references mainly ordinarily I'd have hundreds of images in a file for any given painting but here I just really loved these two images one with these rocks and this one with this wave and what I'm gonna do is take these two pictures put them together and create something unique let's get stuck into it with a synthetic filbert brush this one in Evergreen I made by Rosemarie & Co I sketch in the major lines of the composition and I feel pretty confident going into this because I've already painted it before so I'm just knocking out where the big masses are going as well as some of those vectors formed by the foreground water and the wave once my composition is all sketched up I start introducing some color now here's what I'm working with on the palette starting from the top here I've got burnt umber burnt sienna criminal's white cadmium lemon cadmium red light quinacridone magenta ultramarine blue cobalt teal and turquoise styler across the top here I've got transparent yellow oxide and transparent red oxide as well as a little bit of pure titanium white that I had left over all of these colors are available from Blue Ridge oil painting calm and there's also a link to that in the description down below we're going to start very simple here with tight white burnt umber and a touch of ultramarine blue I'm going for some of this muted bluey color for the sky in the background again always starting with whatever's farthest away and working my way towards the viewer this way I can control my tones and colors and gradually introduce more intensity to the mixes as the painting progresses I find that this is really handy when it comes to creating a sense of atmospheric perspective and also keeping control of all of our colors now for this water but our next tier of depth coming forward I'm going to increase the saturation I use more ultramarine blue a touch of thaler turquoise this time and some cobalt teal with some of those intense blues and greens coming through I like to knock those colors back down again especially for the distance and that depth with a complimentary opposite like burnt sienna which is an earthy orange remember blue and orange sit opposite each other on that color wheel to continue with the Block in here I'm using that trusty Tish dagger brush you'll find a link to that in the description down below this is helping me cover a lot of ground incredibly fast it's great for knocking in some of those shapes of the shadow color of that white water and then start to blend between the zones and the wave itself I always keep the colors pretty deep in the trough of the wave and then blend these into lighter tones and bring that intensity with the cobalt teal and that criminis white towards the top of the wave and that creates that glowing effect of light shining through as you can see from my pallet I don't have any bright white out there's no pure white there at all whenever I mix a pure white or something that looks close to it I always knock this back down again with burnt umber bit of that burnt sienna sometimes that ultramarine blue what I'm doing is I'm saving that tonal best for last we want this white water here than the foreground to sparkle and shimmer as it moves around these rocks so in order to do that I need to preserve my most bright highlights for the very end of the process so I'm continually knocking that tone back down again even though it looks like pure white on the palate it's far from it now there's a general rule in painting you might have heard of this one keeping your lighter areas thicker and some of your shadow areas or darker tonal areas thinner so I changed the type of bristle and shape of brush depending on the area of the painting that I'm working on a synthetic evergreen filbert is perfect for this now the reason we want to keep those areas in the darker zones nice and thin is because if anything here had texture and was reflecting more light back towards the viewer it might create something that goes against the form which we're trying to communicate nothing reflects light quite like thick paint that is lighter in tone so if we know this we can use the material of the paint itself to our advantage areas that are deep shadow we don't want to reflect any light back to the viewer at all so we need to keep these zones nice and thin and for some of these shadow areas the depth of tone that I'm achieving comes about from mixing just pure burnt umber and ultramarine blue those two can make a really dark color almost black when I'm blocking in a painting I'm concentrating on the form one of the things that I love about seascapes in particular are these rocks that are underneath the surface of the water and the way that water swirls and curls around those forms to communicate a bit of that quality I'm using that turquoise phthalo which is a blend of phthalo green and phthalo blue it's perfect for painting seascapes now the panel that I'm working on here is 11 by 14 inches so I'm going to be able to knock this painting out relatively quickly and I also am often asked about how long it takes to create a painting again it all depends on the size so for something this size I'll probably be in the process for about 3 to 4 days now the process is split up into three parts this first part that you're watching now is the blockin this is where I cover over the top of that tonal washed linen that tonal wash was achieved with burnt sienna and that was just simply rubbed back with a rag so the process is split into three major parts we have walking in modeling and then detailed I like to let the painting dry between each of those phases of the process this way I can continually add to the richness of the surface without picking up whatever brushwork I had laid down in the previous session to aid the drawing time and speed things along I'm mixing liquid original into my pan I'm never mixing more than 25% liquid to pint or at a ratio of 1 to 3 so we need to have much more paint than we do have liquid often when beginners start painting the tendency is always to create a wash of color and so we want to use copious amounts of medium but this can be disastrous for our paintings in terms of their longevity when we use a lot of medium we can run into all sorts of issues like crawling cracking or dissipation actually made a really detailed video about painting mediums in recent months and you can find that in the description box down below when I'm composing a painting I'm continually thinking about balance one area of the painting has got to be balanced out by something else now that doesn't mean it has to be equal in mass and value and shape and you know every characteristic but sometimes we can have heavier elements that are crammed up in a corner like here the left-hand corner with all of these rocks this can be balanced out by one single rock floating out there in space towards the right of the composition again I'm taking my cues from that reference that we talked about earlier and you'll notice here that I'm not following any one of those photographs exactly but I'm taking those major parts of those photographs that I really enjoy and making sure that I incorporate those into this painting but I'm continually thinking about composition and I'm always checking from a distance to see have I got the right arrangement if I need to add elements or anything I simply just refer to that photographic reference take my cues from there and try to place them in such a way that it creates a nice harmonious balance thin filbert brush is like an evergreen or an Eclipse filbert which have got really long bristles are perfect for some precision mark making eyes are creating some of the swirling whitewater that curls up into the trough of a wave and defines that cylindrical form of the wave itself or for some of the areas in the immediate foreground forming some of these shadows between the tendrils of white water I love these brushes because again they hold their shape so well and they continually produce a really nice fine line without going too but they also hold quite a lot of paint too so I can continually go across the surface without having to reload my brush so often painting like this is all about starting general and working your way towards specifics everything starts out really loose and undefined but as the process progresses we get finer and finer and finer with that mark making and everything becomes more detailed it's at this point that I start thinking about individual forms and I go about shaping little areas within the Whitewater itself and start to lift out tone as you can see here because I'd been holding back with my time previously any marks that I make on top of this surface that are lighter and tone are gonna stand out by contrast again it really pays to hold back with your tones especially in the beginning stages you can see here that I'm already into the modeling phase of the process we haven't quite gotten to detail this is the middle part of the painting process where things get more refined and I start to think about individual elements like some splashes and some droplets for instance to create more texture I'm using these old ugly brushes that have their bristles splayed apart and this is perfect for creating some really nice random marks it's difficult to achieve that randomness when you're going around with just one single pointed round whilst I do use some really nice fine and detail brushes sometimes for this part of the process painting something that has a real broken nature like the top crest of a wave here this old brush is perfect for that so never throw your brushes away more and more in the studio have been using synthetic brushes I'm really enjoying this short handled flat synthetic brush made by Rosemarie & Co this is great for some precision and some control in the mark making again because it's synthetic it helps keeping these marks nice and thin but also the precision due to the shape is great if I have to sneak that brush and re-establish my horizon line or cut around cloud shapes in the very distance so as you can see there's quite a variety to the shapes and sizes of the brush now let's go ahead and detail this rock I get some of that darker tone in there again with an eclipse long filbert this is it great for creating some of those precision marks that I need to just define the cracks in the rock now I've got those deeper shadows knocked in there it's time to create some highlight so I'm going for that Kremlin's white and a touch of warmth given by that cadmium lemon cadmium red and a bit of burnt sienna to create more thickness I'm using liquid impasto medium and I'm knocking some of these lines in here with that short-handled flat synthetic brush now I just want to take a quick minute to give a shout out to my buddy in Switzerland Marcel who's turning 90 on the 29th of May 2020 happy birthday Marcel I'm so glad you're enjoying these videos and I've got plenty more videos on the way now often I can go too far when it comes to painting highlights they just become too garish they stand out too much and they're too light tonally speaking so I need to go back rhe address some of these areas and sculpt around these marks I never leave an area alone until it has achieved exactly what I want it to say so I'd go back and I knock some of that tone back down again with some transparent yellow oxide and a trimmed is synthetic ground to create that wet look with the rocks I add some reflected blue color this might be a reflection of some of that ambient sky light or maybe some of the surrounding sea so this is achieved with some ultramarine blue a touch of cobalt teal and quinacridone magenta and again I make it just a touch lighter totally speaking I go back in with a synthetic round and reestablish some of the cracks in the rock for more definition now let's amplify the electric blue of this curling wave and a perfect color for this is that cobalt teal mixing them with titanium white or creme nuts white this is perfect to get that glow coming through the top of the wave I'm using just a touch of that turquoise stay low again I'm keeping everything towards the top of the wave tonally lighter and I blend this downwards into the deep trough of the wave by adding more and more of that turquoise phthalo ultramarine blue and desaturate with burnt umber once I'm happy with the shape of the wave I go back and re-establish with a pointed round some of the crispy highlights in the Whitewater itself the point at which I start adding these final details I need to make sure that the painting is totally drawing again I don't want to pick up any of that underlying color these tiny little white reflections are just pure titanium white mixed in with a touch of impasto medium because the titanium white is the lightest tone that I have to work with I save it right for the very end I've been holding back from this point for the entire process up until now and because this is pure white and everything else is muted by comparison it means that some of these marks will leap off that surface and create that sparkle and shimmer that I've been waiting for now I'm finally finished with this little painting but there's one last step when we're working with oils there's always so much further that we can push that image and it's all those little tiny differences that make all the difference in the world this is when glazing really comes in handy and can just push that painting to a whole nother level so here with this image what I decided I would do is add some more atmosphere and some more separation between the elements and revisit some of my highlights to just take this painting up a notch now when glazing it helps using a medium like liquid fine detail this is specifically designed for this part of the process and liquid fine detail is actually pretty resistant to yellowing it does have a stand oil base but when we're glazing with it it's also important that we adhere to a couple of ground rules now we might assume in the beginning that if we're gonna glaze something that means that our glazes are going to be fluid because the word glaze suggests some fluidity however with glazing this is a bit of a misnomer glazes don't have to be fluid at all so there's a little rule here that I have and this is something that I've learnt from some of the best in the business and a lot of art restores as well when it comes to applying a lighter glaze we keep those glazes nice and thin and rely on using the paint in particular transparent colors like a lead white or transparent yellow oxide or transparent red oxide for instance and keep that medium to a minimum what this will do is it will allow us to avoid any yellowing down the track because there's not a lot of medium suspended within a light color however with our darker colors we can afford to use more medium because any extra yellowing won't be detectable within that glaze so I keep my dark shadows if I'm glazing their fluid and darker in nature and that way if it yellows you can't even tell but then with lighter colors I dry brush over the surface and I keep that medium to a minimum and I rely on the transparency of the paint itself now this is where lead white is really handy and if you're gonna try and do this with titanium white good luck to you titanium white is just too pay for this process in my opinion so get your hands on some lead white now again if you want to know about the paint's that I use you can find those links in the description down below Eric silver at Blue Ridge oil paint makes some fantastic colors so check those out now at the glaze portion of this process I can also go back and revisit my highlights and this is where I begin to add more light and a little bit more thickness and texture within that paint now for a highlight this I've added on to the glazing part of the process but here this isn't a glaze as such so I can use a little bit of titanium white this is just for those fine little pinpoints of light to add that last bit of sparkle [Music] well I really love the way this painting came out and I think it looks pretty good and it's handmade frame the Tischler is special if you will now if you want to know how I made this frame then check out my recent video on framing in fact I took this from several different pieces of stock framing material put it all together Chuck some gold leaf over the top and antiqued it I think it came up pretty good so if you want to find out more about my framing techniques and then find that link in the description down below I did film this entire process of painting this picture and I'm gonna be creating a full length tutorial for this painting as well so if you'd like more information on that then find the link in the description down below to subscribe to my website my subscribers are gonna be first to know when this tutorial gets released and in fact it's a double feature not only will I be showing how I painted this painting of Albin E blue but also a painting that I recently finished called the West Coast so these are two different approaches to the seascape this tutorial be jam-packed full of techniques my subscribers through my website will be first in line with an extra special discount and it cost you nothing to subscribe so I hope to see you there now I really hope that you've enjoyed this video and if you did then please click that like button for me make sure you subscribe to this channel and hit the notification belt so you're notified when I upload another video as always you can find me on social media those links are down below as well but again most important make sure you're subscribed through my website at Andrew Tischler comm slash subscribe and it's absolutely free to subscribe and I always take care of my subscribers there thanks so much for stopping by I look forward to seeing you again soon

Channel: Andrew Tischler

Views: 171,633

Rating: 4.9707503 out of 5

Keywords: wave painting, how to paint a wave, how to paint a seascape, seascape, ocean painting, ocean scene, how to paint ocean scenes, crashing wave, oil painting tutorial, full painting tutorial, oil painting demonstration, painting demo, oil painting, painting tutorial, landscape painting, how to paint a landscape, painting techniques, colour theory, oil painting mediums, how to glaze an oil painting, oil glazing, glazing painting

Id: KN-s05FWEoc

Length: 19min 55sec (1195 seconds)

Published: Wed May 20 2020