Hello! Welcome to this tutorial where I will teach you some tips that I use when drawing water, remember to stay for the last part of the video as I will be teaching you a little trick that will help you speed up your workflow when drawing water.

 

Here is the video tutorial:

 

Water comes in different forms and the way it is seen is highly influenced by both its depth and its surroundings, which is why it is not the same to draw water from a fountain to the water in an open space like the ocean.

TIP 1 - Direction of the water

The water is generally flowing from point A to point B, and depending on the direction the interaction of the water with the other elements varies. A boat moving against the current or being carried away by it is not the same.

 

Knowing this is very important for drawing water and making it look consistent, painting water without any clear direction can make it look chaotic and pointless.

 

The directions can be separated in turn into: Linear direction and Radial direction.

 

. : Linear Direction : .

 

Linear refers to what I mentioned earlier about going from point A to point B, always in a straight line, you may find elements that deviate it from your path a bit but it continues to flow in the same direction.

On the other hand, it is. : the radial direction : . which is when something in the water is causing ripples and they react in a "spiral" manner. That is to say, they have a point where the movement is generated and the rest act according to this movement towards the surroundings.

 

This example has a mix of linear direction and radial direction.

In the upper part it starts in a linear direction, until the part of the fall to the most open space where the water spreads in a radial direction.

Tip 2 -Sketch everything first

Define the space where the water is (both inside and outside the canvas, how it interacts, to define the transparency parts depth)

Knowing the space that interacts with the water will help you when placing light and shadow.

 

Tip 3- Shade everything! minus the water

If we want to draw the water with parts where there is transparency and parts with reflection, we have to draw its surroundings first to know how the water interacts with it.

 

The first thing I do is place the base color of everything to delimit where things are, including the water, all in layers, and in the water layer with the help of the masks we can erase or soften the area that we want to have transparency . I use a very soft brush, like the spray one, and so that the transition doesn't look abrupt, I hide the water layer, to begin to give detail to the drawing in general and what is under the water, earth, sand, rocks, fish etc...

 

EYE, a clarification that seems important to me is that under the water not everything is going to have the same level of detail, the elements that are deeper in the water begin to be lost from sight, and therefore have less detail and contrast, comparison of those that are closer to the surface that will be more defined.

Then, the transparency area is darkened, to give the "underwater" effect, all on a separate layer so as not to affect the above, I use the multiply mode on the layer a lot for this.

 

From here it is a matter of playing with the elements we already have and focusing on the details.

 

=> Remember not to forget: Define the ripples in the water and the shadows of the elements in the water and elements around it.

TIP 3- Reflection and distortion

We already talked about reflection in the previous point, but in this case I am talking about the reflection of elements within the drawing.

 

1- We draw and shade everything except the water, here I used as a base a 3D piano of the materials available in the materials area of clip studio, as well as the piano, there are many materials that we can use to integrate our drawing.

2- Once the above is ready, we define what we want to be reflected, in this case the sky and the piano, now in two different layers, we combine the sky and the piano, since they are going to have two different interactions with the water they separate the layers,

 

3- We can separate the horizon, the meeting line of the sky and the water with a line that we can then blur a little, we can also darken certain areas so that it begins to differentiate more from the sky.

 

4- Do not forget to put a shadow on the objects that are in the water, as it is in the case of the piano.

 

What we have left to do is distort the reflection in the water, we do this first taking into account the direction of the water, which in this case is radial, and with the help of the FINGER TIP tool, we can start to distort the reflection , in the same direction of the waves, with a simple brush I make the waves with a lighter color and lowering the opacity a little and in a luminosity color mode, I also like to add some shadows to the waves in multiply

Another type of distortion that we find in the water, are the elements that are under it, if we see the water from outside it creates a distortion of the elements that are under it.

 

The more movement the water has, the more it will influence the distortion. To create the effect I used the liquify tool, I really like how the final results turn out, the liquify tool in "

5- How to draw sea water

This is a section where I will teach you some tips on how to draw seawater, we are going to go through levels increasing in difficulty, first we will begin by seeing how the movement of seawater is when it is calm, when it is more agitated, and finally when it forms waves and at the same time how the foam created by the water interacts with movement.

 

Example 1

It should be noted that the color of the water CHANGES depending on the depth in which it is, in this case the color of the water that is shallower is influenced by the color of the sand, and of course with transparency.

 

To draw the foam we draw a line with curves and then we begin to fill it in a circular way and leaving gaps in between.

 

The part that should not have gaps is that part of the limit of the foam, which being where the highest density is concentrated, then we begin to make more small wavy lines that intertwine with each other, these the closer they are to the limit of the foam the closer they will be and the farther away the more distant and loose.

 

 

You can also make the foam as a kind of opacity gradient and make holes in it, not with color, but by erasing the pixels, you can use this mode in a brush that you like or you can use an eraser directly.

 

If, as it happened to me, you are not convinced by the shape of the foam, you can always modify it with the mesh transformation tool

 

Example 2

In this example I will focus on the waves it produces in the sea.

 

As the water becomes more agitated, the lines grow in height and become a kind of triangular shape, I usually draw them very close to each other, since, if they are separated, it gives me the impression that it looks a bit organic.

 

To make the help of light and shadow look better it is important to first define your light source to be consistent when shading.

They can be layered with a blend mode like multiply or a luminosity mode to reinforce highlights and shadows.

 

Remember that the water that is further away loses detail and scale, this will help to give it depth of field.

Example 3

In this example the sea is becoming more agitated, the water continues to have a triangular shape, however it is noted that there is one side longer than the other, because in this case, the wind is pushing harder, the element of wind also arrives foam from agitation of water

 

Once the light source is defined, we draw the triangular shapes overlapping each other, after the base color we start with the foam.

 

 

The foam acts differently depending on the state of the water:

-When it has a lot of movement it is at the top.

-When it is descending it spreads through the whole form.

-When it is passive and only the foam from the previous movement remains.

 

 

To paint the foam we use the same logic as the foam on the shore of the beach, but on a smaller scale

 

Example 4

The waves are the result of everything we saw before, they are so strong that they move a considerable amount of water forward, making a kind of cylinder that flows back into the sea. The first thing is to understand its structure.

 

The easiest way to visualize it is a sheet of paper, which we fold until it looks like this.

To better visualize the structure we will draw a cylinder,

and then we will imagine the sheet of paper, after the sheet is chopped at the ends, now we add the foam, which will be mainly on the edge of the wave and its edges.

The direction of the water of the wave is as follows and we are going to take it into account when shading and putting details.

 

It should be considered that the color of the wave is not the same throughout, there are parts that are lighter due to the light and another that is darker due to the density of the water.

The foam will be due to the movement releasing drops of water that we can do with a default Clip Studio brush and then we give it shape and effect with the mesh transformation tool

 

To shade the wave we take into account everything we learned previously

 

End and thanks

Thanks for making it this far in the tutorial! hope it has been helpful! See you next time.