hullo! I hope you're having a good week! I really like your art, and I was wondering how you paint water! If it's Ok, can you tell us how you paint water (especially when it's reflecting something), please?
Thank you so much for the lovely compliment! I hope your week's been wonderful too! 👋🌸 Haha, water is a tough one isn't it? My process for drawing water is ever-evolving, but I'm happy to share some solid insights I've learned along the way:
There are two main ways I approach water reflections in my nature scenes. The first is the more open brushy method you see in the painting below. I simply take one of my textured ink brushes and 'boop' it in my scene with a quick dabbing or stamping motion.
While this approach doesn't create an exact reflection, it's a much more impressionistic one I like to use for large bodies of water or for water that's actively moving. The water in this scene is a river with lazy eddies and shimmering light qualities. So by booping my textured ink brushes here and there, I can easily and quickly capture the feeling of flowing reflective water. Below are the two major ink brushes I used for the autumn tree reflection. They already have a lot of built-in ripply texture to them, right? So a few aptly placed boops underneath the autumn tree not only gives me a nearly instant reflection of the tree's red leaves, but it simultaneously makes it feel like the water itself is gurgling away with slow moving ripples - just like a river should! 💙
The second approach I use for drawing water is the old "draw it once and flip it vertically" tactic, haha. I use this approach when I'm drawing water that's very calm and undisturbed with a near perfect reflection. But even then, I won't flip every single rock and tree in the scene. I'll only flip key elements at the center of attention in the artwork, like this snowy rock you see here:
With the 'draw and flip' method, I always make sure to take little eraser bites out of the reflection itself or add a few streaks of water across it to help the flipped shape blend in with the rest of the scene. Most of the time I will actually use a combination of both approaches to make my nature scenes:
Here you can see the booped ink brush approach being used along the river bank, while the smaller rocks off to the right-hand side use the 'draw and flip' method with some ink brushing atop it to smooth out the effect. By using both methods here, I've created the rough impression of rippling water moving closer to the shoreline and calmer currents that lazily slow down towards the center of the river stream.
🏞️ 🌊 Pay attention to what kind of water you're drawing. In a river or a big lake, you'll have a fun interplay of fast and slow moving currents that can be represented with an equally fun interplay of short and long brushstrokes in your art. I always observe the way water works in nature first before I draw (either by looking at photographs or going outside on a walk and studying all the little details I see) and then with those details in mind I find a brush or combination of brushes that'll help capture the texture or feeling of that type of water in my nature scenes.
🏞️ 🌊 When drawing water, I always use a solid or nearly solid brush opacity to capture a very crisp wet feeling (usually somewhere between 75% - 100% opacity). If you're finding your water's looking a bit dull and lackluster, check to see what brush opacity you're using as you paint. It's very natural to want to lower your opacity to softly blend all your colors together for that smooth water effect. I did that too, haha. But over time I found that choosing higher brush opacities while using a wider range of color values works far better for a crisp refreshing water feeling.
🏞️ 🌊 For that crystal clear drinkable mountain spring water look, use streaks of light color values snuggled right next to really dark color values. Don't be afraid to go bold, as the higher the contrast between two colors, the more shimmery your water's going to look. But make sure to balance it all out by using some medium color values in key places. Water that's nothing but really high contrasted values is going to look overly glaring with light. Similarly, if you use colors that are closer in value to one another without much contrast, your water's going to look murkier. Which in itself can be a desired look if you're drawing something like a lotus pond that's rich with mud sediment. So finding a balance is key, and the direction and angle of your sunlight will play a huge role in determining where the intense high contrast sparkles are and where the calmer softer sections will be on your water.
🏞️ 🌊 I will only ever use pure white for the brightest most shimmery highlights on water. It's tempting to use specks of white everywhere for those sparkling highlights, but you'll find that if you use a wider range of color values and a mixture of hot and cool colors throughout your water, it'll look much more vivid and fluid without the need to rely on white so heavily for the effect. It'll look much more natural too!
🏞️ 🌊 One thing I love about painting rivers and lake shorelines is that sometimes you can see both a reflection *and* see all the way down to the bottom of the water at the same time. It's a really cool effect to try and capture if your river or shoreline lends itself to it. You can see that effect in the making here:
🍂🍁⛰️🎨🖌️ There's really no right or wrong brush to achieve an amazing water look as long as you pay attention to how you're using it to capture the texture or feeling of water. That being said, I get the feeling some of you are probably eyeing those ink brushes you saw me using above for making instant rippling water reflections. You're in luck! Those handmade brushes of mine are indeed available on my Patreon if you want to use them in your art.
My Patreon right now is merely donations only so I can focus on watercolors and RWBY nature scenes, but there are a lot of tutorial/brush bundles and painting insights there if you're interested in learning more about how I paint. Be sure to select the tiers with the starter packs and tutorial sets for all the goodies!
🌷🌿🎨🖌️ https://www.patreon.com/saemidori
I hope this gives you a little more insight into how I paint water. It's a difficult subject to say the least, but painting water can be a lot of fun once you get past the tricky part of understanding how it works. Have fun splashing with colors!
