This tutorial is all about drawing water in landscape form. I will be discussing how to colour and plan deep water, calm water, crystal clear water and a rough ocean.

 

Water Colours

Water has so many different shades of blue and green. It all depends on the weather, what soil lies at the bottom, if its still water or moving water and even how the sun hits it at different angles.

There is no wrong shade to use.

 

So your first question should be what TYPE of water am I drawing?

 

For example, on a cloudy day the ocean looks green. On a clear day - its many different shades of blue. Or if you are drawing a deep ocean you wont use bright colours because at the bottom of the ocean its dark.

Just by looking at this simple colour palette - can you see how different depths are created by using lighter and darker tones of each shade?

The Deep Ocean

Start out be deciding your basic colour palette you wish to use. I chose 6 different shades.

For my base colour I used the 4th colour: this is a deep ocean therefore I will start with a dark colour.

 

I want to emphasize the darkness more than the light on the surface - the surface is there to SHOW how deep the ocean is in my drawing.

Starting from your base colour (my 4th), start using the colours to the right to make it darker and to the left to make it lighter.

 

As I want to emphasize the depth, majority of my canvas is dark and only a small portion is light.

I personally did it at an angle, but you can do it any way you want!

 

The next step was adding the surface of the water. For this I use the friction brush under "decoration" to get a rough texture.

 

The further away from the viewpoint, the lighter I pressed down to give depth to it. I used white first and then lightly went over with a turquoise-like colour. As long as its bright and light any shade can be used!

Now that we have our base background and our surface done, we can start showing light rays and how it hits the water to create a reflection.

 

I use the "for effect line" under the Pen to create random thicknesses of lines along the canvas. Make them different lengths and different sizes.

 

I then Gaussian blur them and change the layer into an "overlay" layer. You can do this step in any order - I just prefer doing it this way.

 

Then I duplicate the layer and either lower it down or raise it a bit up and change its transparency to at least half; this (again) starts to show depth.

 

Once this is done you can play around with your contrast, brightness, hue, saturation and luminosity as a final touch!

Calm Water

I like to think of calm water as the super reflective water that almost mirrors whatever borders that current water source.

But you cant always copy, paste and flip as it can sometimes look unreal.

 

So this is what I usually do to fix that:

1. Create the light source/ source of reflection.

2. Copy, paste and flip.

 

REMEMBER: the source of the reflection and the actual reflection are usually at different angles. Try transform the copied image to make it fit onto the flat surface of the water.

3. This is optional, but I take down my transparency to around 90% and use a soft eraser to erase some sections of the reflection.

 

Even though this is clam water, we need to PORTRAY that the reflection is still on water.

4. I use a dark shade of blue (usually the one found in the dark-ish areas of my painting), and with the airbrush I make small ripples in and around the reflection.

 

If your ripples are too dark, lower the transparency. Do not use a lighter colour.

Crystal Clear Water

For this section, I will be showing you two ways to do this.

 

The first way is the usual way I draw crystal clear water, and the second one I use when the water source is not prominent in my drawing and therefore didn't need as much time and detail.

 

So: The time consuming method of drawing crystal clear water.

Firstly, pick your colours. As crystal clear water is typically found on a cloudless day we can expect the water to be bright blue and sparkly. Therefore we chose light and bright blues.

1. Add the base colour to the background.

 

2. Think of lava lamps and how the lava rises to the surface and doesn't combine, but rather creates these interesting natural, obscure, bean-shaped shapes. Draw those to your hearts content in (preferably) white.

 

3. Now we need to make some corners thicker than others. I do this by creatinga selec tion of the white lines, increasing the selection by using the "expand selected area" option by 2 or 3 px, and then colouring over certain areas of the lines (as you can see below).

The next step is to select this layer of bean-shaped shapes and fill it with a slightly darker colour.

This layer should go underneath the white layer, and moved slightly down.

Now that you have the base down, you can either leave it as is and add shades, or transform it and add backgrounds.

Now for the quick way:

 

Clip Studio Paint has gifted us an amazing decoration called "natural cracks", which can be used instead of sitting and drawing weird bubble-shaped beans.

Similar to the previous process:

1. Add the base colour.

 

2. Add white cracks.

 

3. Make the shadows.

 

4. Add highlights and shades.

 

I typically use this method if the water source in my drawing is far away and doesn't need much attention. I find its a good way to quickly get the water effect needed.

Rough Oceans

The first thing to note about rough oceans is the shape of the waves. They are sharp, high and spray water everywhere. There is also usually a shade of green found in rough storms.

 

A tip for this process: Try and keep this drawing of the ocean in a single folder. You will see later as to why this is.

 

So, here we go:

1. We are working in stormy weather, so your background should reciprocate that.

 

2. Now we need to make sharp waves. Sometimes they can be a little odd to get, so I use the "cracking" as a general outline to create my sharp edges.

I enlarge the size of the decorative pen and draw a fast line across the screen, I then lower its 

opacity and draw sharp shapes along the top.

 

3. Colour it in.

 

4. Add a light source from the top, and a dark shadow from the bottom.

 

Note: The blue initially picked I wasn't happy with - that is why the colour changed. But thankfully, all I had to do was select the colour and use the fill tool.

 

 

Now for the shaping of the waves:

 

1. With a white pencil (I personally use the colour pencil), outline the top of the waves. Make some edges thicker and more vibrant that others.

 

2. When there are rough seas and the waves are crashing down, they always create this foam-looking stuff on the surface. Remembering that our surface is not flat, by using curved lines I create the foam-like stuff on the surface of the water to show this.

On the side of some waves, and on the outside of others, I use simple straight lines that go 

down in a curve. 

 

3. Doing the same process as I did in step 2, however now I am using a super thing brush to get the smaller lines adding more detail. For example, in step 2 my brush was a number 8, in step 3 it is a number 5.

Now for shading.

 

I use more than one dark shade as I prefer the end effect. I sometimes find the jump from base colour to a dark colour doesn't always look natural. So I use the base colour, the dark colour, and an in-between colour so that they blend into each other nicely.

As mentioned earlier, rough oceans tend to spray water.

 

Using either the same colour pencil or an airbrush, go over the tip of the waves roughly and colour them in as much as you want. Make the lines jagged, make them rough, make them as uncontrollable as the ocean.

 

Then add dots around the edges of them. I use a stippling technique (just tapping my pen around the area), and extend it further than the wave to show that there is wind, and that this wind is blowing droplets everywhere.

 

I also added highlights in the waves showing there is some sort of light source coming from the sky.

Now, remember how I said keep it in a single folder? Here is why:

 

You can now replicate the folder, collapse all the layers in this copied folder into a single image, and start transforming it to create more waves behind your foreground instead of you having to draw it all.

You can now mirror it, make it smaller, make it bigger or only use one section of it to start creating depth in your rough ocean, because its never just one wave right? Its many.

 

Just remember the further back you go, the darker the waves should get.

 

Finish by creating your cloudy sky and you are done!