Paint a Rocky Beach Landscape with Me

Hi, I'm Valerie Englehart.

I'm a watercolor artist and today I'm going to be painting a beach scene that I took in La Jolla near San Diego.I put this out to my email subscribers, Beach or Mountains, and they picked beach.

So with my reference photo I took the values down to three values, just my light, mid tone, and dark tones.
That way I don't get distracted by color or by too many details, and I put a grid on it since I don't sketch before I paint so I can kind of see where I want things to go on my paper.

So I like to start really wet and loose.

So I've got a size 3 mop brush, holds a lot of water, and I'm going to start with a color called Palaiba Diamond Blue.

It's by Rockwell Canada, and what I'm going to do is I'm going to tilt it to the side and I'm going to start painting my sky.

And the reason I'm doing this at an angle is because the horizon is going to be horizontal on my page, but water will only travel where I put it, and so if I drip it downwards it's just going to go down and it won't go this way unless I wet it.

So let's just get it wet.

Lots of water.

That way when it drips down it drips across my sky.

I don't want to go in too dark, especially too quickly, but watercolor, it dries pale so I can afford to go a little bit darker and just let it run.

I'm going to grab a drop, lift my board, I'm just going to squeeze some of that water down hoping to make a nice straight line.

All right, I like that.

Looks like a nice summery sky even though I took this picture in February, but it was so beautiful.

Nice and warm, lots of birds, and a lot of sea lions.

All right, well the ocean is going to be the same color as the sky since the water reflects the sky, but it's going to be a darker value
So here we go.

I'm taking my Palaiba Diamond Blue, I loaded up my brush with more pigment, I'm just gonna drag that across, and I'm gonna go ahead and let my brush skip a little so it can create little ripples of light on the water.

Now over here is going to be a landmass.

I don't want to create a lot of color over here, but having a little bit poking underneath is perfectly fine and honestly I want that.

Now I remember the sea kind of looked green, so I'm going to grab this color also by Rockwell Canada called Poseidon.

It is a greener blue, or bluer green.

It's this color.

I'm just gonna bring that across, maybe add a little more pigment like that.

Let's bring it all the way down.

Now there were a lot of waves that day, so there was a lot of white sea foam.

Now I've never done this before, so we're gonna find out together.

I've got this Liquitex Titanium White acrylic ink.

Now because my board is tilted, everything's gonna flow downwards.

I've not done this before.

Let's see what happens.

Oh it's a little chunky and bubbly and frothy because I had to shake it.

That might actually help.

So I see in my reference photo there's this white bit here that was the sea foam which falls about halfway down and about right here.

Let's just squeeze some of it.

It's not bad

The bubbles might create some nice texture too and I'll just bring it over.

Not too much though.

I might want more of that in a second because I do have a beach here and that beach I'll make it more of a yellow ochre.

I'll start it up here just because we're gonna paint over that with a landmass, but this gives some base color.

Just lets everything kind of merge together.

Now in my reference photo I see that there's a light part of the beach and this mid-tone area is where the water has made the sand wet so it's going to be a darker color.

And so what I'll probably do also is merge it together.

So there's the nice yellow ochre.

Let's grab more Poseidon, that lovely green blue.

I'll just bring my beach over.

I'm gonna use some curved brush strokes because that's how the sea was coming in.

I'm gonna bring that into my yellow ochre so that fuses.

That looks nice.

And then there's another line of sea foam.

Now I don't know how well this white's gonna show up since this is already such a light value but let's try it.

I don't want it, it does give it a little bit of a sparkle though.

Not too thrilled with how that's looking.

So let's see if I add some water.

Can I lift it?

It doesn't really look like it.

That's okay.

There's going to be rocks and things over it later so I'm not too concerned.

Plus if anything else this is a nice learning experiment.

All right I'm gonna take off some of the water that's down here.

I'm okay with back runs but I don't know that I want it there.

It's gonna start calling attention to this area and that's not my focal point.

So I have the startings of a beach.

We can see the sky is starting to merge into the ocean in some of the areas where the wet part connected to the other wet part and that's great.

That creates a nice loose atmosphere.

I don't want a hard line to a hard line and honestly no because my landmass is gonna go about right here so it just helps with some of that depth.

I like my paintings to dry naturally so I'm just gonna hit pause for a while and see how this dries.

All right the painting is completely dry so I mean you really shouldn't touch it but it's definitely bone dry at this point because I waited a day.

So I've squeezed some fresh pigment on a piece of paper, some Rockwell Landmark.

It's kind of a brown with red tones underneath.

So I'm gonna take the silicone spatula and pick up some fresh pigment and take a look at my reference image and I see it's roughly a third of the way down the page but I do want to pay attention to where my horizon line is.

So if I painted my horizon line a little too far down then I want to adjust all of my landmarks appropriately so I do see that it comes a little bit below the horizon.

All right let's make a mark there.

Like Bob Ross would say, you gotta practice your bravery.

It's your bravery test except I don't have happy trees.

I've got rocks because at La Jolla Cove there is a beach but it also has these beautiful rock cliffs with pelicans and sea lions and ground squirrels.

I had never seen ground squirrels before.

Let's see and there are some masses out in the sea.

It doesn't need to be super accurate I just need to give the impression of rocks.

Honestly I might want even more pigment because what I'm gonna do is scrape some of it off in a minute to try and make the rocks.

I'm just scraping my paddle along.

Ooh I might not have squeezed out enough paint.

Hmm.

Okay I'm gonna go ahead and put some more paint on my paper.

I want to add some more rocks.

Let's see a little more dimension up here.

In my reference photo I see that there are some over here.

I don't need to put those in but I kind of like the idea of how this line curves in to the cliff and this is just going to be an extra detail to help draw the eye so I'll just pop some there.

More water and rocks.

Maybe more here.

Alright next step.

I've got just a little cut out card.

Just this was an old library card for somewhere I don't live anymore so I don't really need it and I'm gonna start just scraping.

So I'll start over here just to show you in.

Get a paper towel to wipe off the excess.

Almost gotta like scoop.

See that one gave a nice little scoop and you see the red underneath.

Unfortunately that one has gotten too dry so let's see.

Oh no did I let it get too dry?

Well that one's fine.

So let's see.

So what I'm doing right now is just using this card to carve out some rock looking shapes and that way I've got shadows and highlights without having to do very much except scrape a card.

Alright, that looks pretty nice.

Let's see what else is in this piece that I want.

So I could create more of a line because as we see the sand's wet here.

Now no one needs to know that.

This looks like a beach scene already, but let's go ahead and do that.

So I'm going to grab, let's go ahead and grab this one.

Just a round silver black velvet size 12.

Get nice and wet, and I'm just going to drag some of this pigment down.

And if it's too dry, which some of it seems to be, I'll just go to my card, grab some of it, because I don't want a lot, just enough to tint the surface.

There's a second band that comes on the other side of those little rocks I painted.

So we'll just put that in and drag it down.

Now we have some extra lines leading up into my painting, but it's subtle.

Alright, what else do we have?

Well, in my reference photo we have some trees and it's great because they will add a vertical line.

I've got a lot of horizontal going on, not a lot of vertical, so it'll be much more interesting if we add some vertical lines.

The other thing, because this photo is black and white, there was lots of green, like mosses and ground foliage.

Now I'm going to put that in, so I'm going to grab a little green.

And this green is called "Fall Story," also by Rockwell Canada, and I'm just going to set it on top of some of these rocks, because that's how it was, it was on top of the rocks.

And now for the palm trees.

So to keep a cohesive look, I'm going to use that same brown that I was using before.

I'm going to scrape a little more out of here and just start putting in some trees.

Let's put one there.

And where would we like another tree?

We have that one right here.

And put it really close.

And I used a light value because I don't want the painting to be about the palm trees, I want it to be about the scene.

So I'm going to grab to get the fronds.

I think that's what those leaves are called, fronds.

I'm going to pick up that green that I used earlier, put it in my palette, and then I'm using a cheap brush that I got from like Michaels.

This one is a size six, Princeton Elite.

And I'm going to smash it in my palette and splay the bristles as you can see.

So I really want them to fan out.

And I'm going to, well, didn't fan as much as I wanted.

Maybe it needs to be drier.

Yeah, sometimes things don't work out the way you want.

What's important is you keep going, especially in watercolor.

Oh, now I'm getting the nice dry marks I want.

And they're gone again.

All right, pretty cool.

For a little one note though, so I'm going to rinse my brush, tap off the excess moisture, and I'm just going to lift a little bit of the pigment off.

And what that's going to do is it can soften the fronds, give it a little more atmospheric effect.

And I'm going to drag it into the sky.

And then I grab my softer brush just to bleed that water out.

A lovely thing about this particular paint is it will separate a bit.

So as it dries, you'll start to see some like orangey yellows in there, which I thought was perfect for this scene.

Pop a little more green in.

I like that.

All right, I don't really see that it needs anything else.

Now, a few things to do if you're unsure if your painting is done.

Paintings look different somehow in a photograph than they do in person.

So one thing you can do is take a picture of it and look it on your phone, or you can also make it black and white.

And what that will do is show you your value range.

So I think I'm just going to leave it at that.

Some things I could do if I wanted is come in with some gouache and strengthen this white line, which I might go and do later.

Or you know what?

We do have that white ink.

I wasn't too impressed with how it worked out though.

I mean, it looks nice here, but I think if I'm going to add it here, I'm going to go with gouache.

The surface is still damp, but I think we can make it work.

So I'm going to grab some gouache.

And I just have Da Vinci Titanium White and a size 4 round brush.

And I'm going to pop this on my paper.

And let's see.

Because this surface is already pretty light, white on light doesn't show up a lot, but it might give a nice little sparkle that the painting needs.

Let's see.

Well, it's better than nothing, I think.

I'll add a little more white.

And I'm going to add some to the edge of the water too.

And just let my brush kind of dance and skip around because it's subtle.

Alright, that looks pretty good.

Now, another thing we could do if you wanted to add a little more texture to the scene is you could splatter some gouache, kind of make it look like a salty sea spray.

You could grab a toothbrush and add some texture.

I'll show on a brush by flicking it with paint on the brush.

Though the toothbrush is really nice for a fine spray.

Well, I think I'm going to call it done, but it needs one more thing.

And that is a signature.

Let's put it just down on the bottom.

Alright.

And that is a beach scene.

So let me know in the comments if there are any other sceneries or any kind of painting that you want me to do.

Go ahead, like, subscribe, ring that bell for notifications.

And if you want to know the materials I used, just check the description.

Have any questions?

Let me know.

I'm happy to answer.

Anyway, happy painting.

Bye.