Sea & Sky in Acrylics: Techniques & Inspiration

By Dave White

A pro shares his techniques for painting stunning seascapes, with three step-by-step projects included.

Painting teacher Dave White introduces the simple but effective techniques that he uses to paint stunning, dramatic seascapes with beautiful and realistic skies. He demonstrates spattering, blending backgrounds, painting horizons, finger painting clouds and foam. There is expert advice on the anatomy of waves and how they rise and collapse, creating ripples, surf, foam, and spray.

In addition, clear instructions show how to paint effective reflections and beaches to improve your seascapes. The sky section shows effective techniques for painting all types of cloud, with some innovative methods such as tipping up the surface to let dilute paint run, to create cirrus clouds. Dave’s method of creating depth in sea, beach, and sky using lines projected from the vanishing point can radically improve your seascapes.

You’ll also find a section on moods and sunsets, full of beautiful, dramatic examples. Finally, three step-by-step projects show how to paint a beach panorama with a rolling wave, a spectacular sunset over a calm sea, and waves crashing on rocks.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Sep 10, 2015
• ISBN: 9781781264232

Dave White

Dave White is the Shamus Award Nominated author of the Jackson Donne series and thriller WITNESS TO DEATH, available from Polis Books. He has been nominated for multiple awards for both his novels and short stories. In his spare time, he's a middle school teacher.

Book preview

Introduction

If I want to relax in my painting, this is the subject I enjoy the most. The sea and sky create a language common to us all, wherever we are in the world. These are the things in life which make us feel infinitesimally small, while at the same time reminding us of being on holiday! The sea and sky are always moving and changing and they generate a fascination that you could take a lifetime trying to capture in painting and probably only get a step along the way.

This book shares with you what I have found on my short artistic journey so far; some of the essential elements of capturing a seascape. It seeks to provide an understanding that will allow you to create an image that is instantly recognisable as a depiction of the sea and sky. It then shows you how to get a sense of movement into these paintings.

The places I have used in the illustrations and demonstrations are those that I know, so they are local to me, and yet are potentially universal. I happen to live just up the road from where British maritime artist, Montague Dawson, created his wondrous seascapes, so we are in good company. My hope is that you will apply the learning in this book to create your own images of the locations that you know and love.

Acrylics are my medium of choice; they are versatile, healthy and quick and there is very little waste. I have used two major acrylic ranges in creating all the images: one by Dayler Rowney and one by Winsor & Newton. They illustrate the subtly different properties in various ranges of acrylics, but both are favourites of mine. I discuss the main differences so that when purchasing your acrylics, you can look for the properties you prefer.

Finally, thank you for buying this book! I hope you will enjoy and be inspired by this journey and that it will lead you to an even longer expedition into the fascinating subject of sea and sky painting. I will finish with a quote from my favourite film The Hunt for Red October, spoken by Sean Connery as the submarine captain: ‘And the sea will grant each man new hope, as sleep brings dreams of home.’ May your painting hopes be fulfilled and your artistic dreams come true!

The Sky Will Be Darkened

51 x 40.7 cm (20 x 16in)

This was a quick paint sketch of a squall approaching during what had been quite

a nice day. See pages 70–71 for the final version.

Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad, let the sea resound and all that is in it.’ Psalm 96

Materials

If you are an experienced acrylic painter, you will probably already have many materials, but if you are just starting out, the objective of the following descriptions is to save you money, so please read carefully!

Paints

Acrylic paints are available in student quality and artist quality and some are more expensive than others. My advice is to find and stick to a brand that is well supported by its manufacturer, with sufficient information about what’s in the tube or pot, so that the artist is in no doubt about the property of the paint. By ‘property’ I mean in particular whether the paint is opaque, semi-transparent or transparent, which will tell you whether it is useful for underpainting or glazing; whether the finish is matt or gloss, satin or silk; and also how much the colour changes from wet to dry.

You do not need a huge selection of colours but I would suggest, as a minimum:

• A warm and cold blue, e.g. ultramarine and phthalo or Prussian blue.

• A warm and cold red, e.g. cadmium scarlet and alizarin crimson or cadmium red deep.

• A warm and cold yellow, e.g. cadmium yellow and lemon yellow.

• Add Mars black, a large tube of titanium white, Hooker’s or phthalo green, yellow ochre and burnt sienna, and from this selection you can mix a huge number of colours with many tints and shades.

For the demonstrations in this book I used a Daler Rowney range and a box set of twelve Winsor & Newton tubes, which include most of the colours mentioned above. You will always find that you need more titanium white and hence the recommendation for a large tube. Unfortunately there is no perfect, complete set of paints (the manufacturers always leave a crucial one out) so check carefully against the list above when buying a set.

Bear in mind that paint manufacturers update their paints over time, so I have not referred to specific ranges by name, to avoid the information becoming out of date.

Brushes

I am a Professional Associate member of the Society for All Artists (SAA) in the UK and I use their Silver synthetic watercolour brushes to do most of my acrylic work. If you wash synthetic watercolour brushes under running water and squeeze the acrylic paint from the ferrule until no colour is seen, they will last a long time (my current set lasted seven years, having been used daily). I do not generally like acrylic brushes because their bristles tend to carve into the paint, but I do use them for more textural paintings. I also use the stiffer ones for spattering. For the paintings in this book, I used synthetic watercolour brushes as follows: 5cm (2in), 2.5cm (1in), 13mm (½in) and 6mm (¼in) fl ats; 13mm (½in) and 6mm (¼in) rounds and a rigger. I also used acrylic bristle brushes: 13mm (½in) fl at and no. 10 round for spattering; and painting knives for painting rocks.

Plastic pots

The main complaint that some artists have about acrylics is that they say it dries too quickly. The reason