How To Paint A Tropical Island / ACRYLIC / STEP BY STEP TUTORIAL

welcome back to my channel I'm acrylic artist Joe Nia and today I'm going to show you exactly how to paint your very own tropical island so stay tuned I'm gonna list all the colors and brushes below in the description box and I'm gonna show you step by step walk you through exactly how to paint this from start to finish so let's go ahead and get started we're painting on an 18 by 24 stretched canvas I've primed it with acrylic gesso first once it dries we're gonna take phthalo blue a little bit of water on our large blending brush and start pulling it across the canvas at the top for the sky we'll begin to add a little bit of white every time we go back for more paint and we're gonna start making the sky lighter and lighter as it goes down okay now that our sky is finished we can start coming in with our clouds I'm using the same large blending brush I'm going to tap in lightly with titanium white the clouds are gonna be larger at the top of the canvas and they're gonna gradually get smaller and smaller as they go down so I'm tapping really lately and then I'm brushing really really softly and then I'll just keep on adding white to build it up I'm painting wet on wet so I'm getting those nice light light blue shades first to make our clouds look really soft and kind of hazy like and I'll just kind of turn and wiggle my brush around using the corner of it sometimes and we'll go ahead and put one right up at the top there to add some more white to our brush now we are only using white right now but as the sky dries as these clouds begin to dry I'm gonna start taking a little bit of just a little bit of the neon orange and mixing it with white we just want to tint our clouds a little bit it'll just make everything look prettier you now I've made the sky just a little bit too light at the bottom so I'm gonna add some more phthalo blue and softly blend that around pulling some right underneath those clouds giving them a little bit more depth in the sky remember you want to be working wet on wet so I don't have any water on my brush the paint is just wet enough that I can pull it and blend it now I can add some more clouds and they'll really stand out so just little ones we're down here at the bottom like I said it helps to make it look like they're farther away and it gives you that perspective it also gives me that feeling that you're being pulled into the painting and that's kind of nice you really want to be drawn into a painting especially a beautiful tranquil scene like this one so I'm tapping where I want it to be the brightest and then I kind of just pick a little bit of that paint off the edge and blend it more phthalo I'm gonna add some more depth up here at the top that's quite a bit of paint on there I'm gonna be just dabbing some of that off and a little bit and blending it so tapping first and then I've got my little blending brush my mop brush it's dry and I'm just gonna dust do small little circles to help blend that in and soften all of that dark blue okay back to our phthalo I'm gonna pull into it creating a line on the end of my brush and I'm carefully gonna begin horizon pulling try to do this in one stroke and it doesn't have to be perfectly straight that's okay there could be little islands or land back there the clean brush I'm gonna take some my turquoise now and I'm going to cut right underneath pulling in just a little bit into that blue and we're gonna start painting our Caribbean Sea now you okay let's pick up a little bit of the white now we're going to start building up our Beach a little island here white sandy island again we're still working wet on wet so we get a nice soft blending of that sand that goes right into that shallow water and we'll add some more turquoise down here you you okay so now I want to pick up some of my neon yellow and a little bit of titanium white I've still got a little bit of that turquoise on my brush we just want to add a light yellow a green color right here by the shore so just pull and blend softly until you get the look you desire and then we'll build up the island or that beach a little bit more but first we're gonna take a long skinny liner brush get it really wet roll it twist it around and your white paint that might have a little bit turquoise in there that's okay as long as there's more white and we want to start adding our little reflections and ripples in the water so it's a really calm setting no waves really so we just want to pull in little lines and keep it looking nice and calm and serene it's all about tranquility so you're gonna need to be really patient when using a liner brush but this is your first time using one you'll have to go back quite often to get water equal parts water and paint we're gonna add all those little lines and reflections right up to the sand and then a little bit right back there there's a little sandbar that juts out okay we're gonna take some of our neon orange and white so you only need a little bit of that orange it's very very strong you just want to tint your white and start tapping it carefully right where you want your clouds to be the brightest now rarely do I ever paint clouds just white and I've mentioned this before in my tutorials it's a good idea to tint your clouds you can use a little bit of turquoise a little bit of red a little bit of yellow or orange like I'm doing here I love that really soft warm fuzzy peach color it just says I really nice almost a pinkie glow but not quite and it's kind of like a coral color which is really really pretty with this turquoise water I'm gonna dust a little bit over on the sand too even though we're painting white sand I want it to have a little bit of a glow to it like the clouds do you okay and now I want to pick up more turquoise and add a little bit more depth right here the waters not going to be really deep but we just need that Beach to stand out a little bit more so I'm going to add a few little dabs pull softly and blend you so now that this beach has had time to dry I'm gonna start coming in with a thicker amount of white and a little bit of that peachy color again so I'm not blending too much I'm kind of just gonna slap that paint on there and pull lightly and then I'll start to add some more highlights to these clouds remember that acrylic paint always drives a bit darker and even though I've got a primed canvas with gesso the paint will still soak into the canvas somewhat so it is important to check your highlights and go back after they dry and add another layer so I'll do this carefully on each cloud using my smallest mop brush and I really like using these brushes to finish off clouds because they give them that soft fuzzy look I make a light turquoisey color right here create some more perspective I'm just applying this right above the horizon and I've taken turquoise white and just a little bit of phthalo blue time for some more little clouds that go way back there using my filbert brush it's got a smaller end on it and I can create those sweepy looking clouds with that okay I'm taking SAP green right now and I'm gonna start coming in with some foliage some shadow down here there's a bunch of tropical lush tropical vegetation down here and then we're gonna paint our palm trees but first we need to do this have a nice dark contrast to work with helps to make everything to stand out even more a little scoop right there this is where our group of palm trees are going to be growing out of you now I think I want to add even a little bit more turquoise here need it to be just a little bit darker so we'll quickly get this done just a little bit down here in the foreground and I'm just using my fill birds okay switching over to a mini fan brush I'm gonna scoop up quite a bit of neon yellow and titanium white get a good amount on the end of your brush and then we're gonna tap just above the green and over part of it you now with just a little bit that's left over in my brush I want to pull and blend out a soft glowing yellow right back here that's some more turquoise in here you you okay I'm not washing my brush I'm gonna pull in and load both sides with phthalo blue and I'm just gonna start to blend in into that turquoise back there making it look like it's a bit deeper back there and it's farther away then I'm gonna pick up that nice light color again for my clouds and add some more highlights I'm gonna build onto these clouds just a little bit I want to be just slightly bigger up here at the top so it's just lots of dabs and wiggling okay that's speaking our palm trees taking a long skinny liner brush we've got black a little bit of SAP green if you want and we're gonna do three maybe three to five palm trees you don't have to paint as many as me you can do as many or as few as you like they're gonna get slightly whiter down at the base and I want you to make them all different links you don't want them to all look the same it's nice to have them kind of leaning out towards the water some of them can be straight up and down all this helps to add more interest to your painting then I'll just do a few little flicks here for some some leaves or grass or plants down there so let's get the tree trunks the size that we want we're going to switch over to an angular brush for our palm leaves now I'm just laying out the shape these palm leaves first I'm not worried too much about detail at this point and I'm using black you can mix a little bit of with the SAP green in there too if you like my SAP green and black on my palette or are really close so I'm probably blending the two without even trying yeah we're just gonna do a few these please you want to overlap them they can all go in different directions they're going to be thicker and darker in the center of the palm tree at the top now I'm going to switch to a fan brush and just demonstrate how you can use a fan brush as well for creating palm leaves so you have a few options when it comes to brushes you you okay so now that I've got a good base color down for those palms I'm gonna begin working on the left side I'm just adding a few leaves down here there's just a little baby palm tree growing right down here and I'm gonna come in and start highlighting right away using a neon yellow a little bit of sack and a little bit of white now we'll start working on this one that's much taller as you can see this mini fan brush is working quite well you may need to pick up a little bit of water sometimes just to help make that paint flow nice nicely and make your palm leaves look kind of wispy and have all those little spaces in between and then we'll come in and add some neon yellow put a nice braid highlight on those and we'll start building up the color and the highlights on these ones now so what you don't want to do is add color to every single leaf you want to leave a few of them just black so you have a nice contrast in shadow and it looks like yeah it's 3d okay now I'm going to mix up some of the yellow a little bit of green a little bit of orange and a little bit of white we're just going to apply a little bit of this color I'll put a little bit of it down there at the base I'm just gonna go back and add some extra shadows and leaves in here we're using black and another tree I did another tree trunk in there I just decided I wanted to have one more palm tree right here and it's easy to just overlap and layer in some more leaves I'm now switching over to my long liner brush it's just so I can pull in some nice fine lines and highlights using those same colors for the highlights the yellow white maybe a little bit of peach and a little bit of sap green okay I'm switching over to my mini fan brush making more of that fuzzy peachy color using the UH Norwich titanium white just gonna add a really small amount right on this foliage and just underneath those trees a little bit add a few more highlights to these trees and this painting will be all done I want to thank you guys so much again for joining me today in my studio I hope you guys really like this one as much as I enjoy painting it have a wonderful day everybody I'll see you next time don't forget to like this video and subscribe to my channel if you haven't yet already

Channel: Joni Young Art

Views: 536,308

Keywords: acrylic painting tutorial, how to paint palmtrees, step by step painting, how to paint a tropical seascape, easy painting, learn to paint, painting tutorial, seascape painting, fun painting, joni young art, turqouise water painting

Id: wB-LCDBiwRQ

Length: 26min 29sec (1589 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 24 2019