Learn to Paint a Classic Seascape

Steve Curl begins this demonstration by first penciling a basic value sketch to serve as a quick visual guide to divide the whites, the grays, and the shadows in his seascape picture. This is used later to help with the painting process.

After transferring the outlines of his sketch over to his cold press watercolor paper, Steve begins by wetting the entire sky area with clean water, then drops in Cerulean Blue mixed with Ultramarine and a touch of Alizarin Crimson for a "wet-on-wet" effect. This helps create the soft blends needed for the sky. He paints around the clouds, leaving them as negative space since the whitest color is the color of the paper.

After finishing the sky, Steve works his way towards the lighthouse and town. He introduces the importance of value, emphasizing on the differences between painting shadows on a curved object (i.e. lighthouse) versus a planed object (i.e. a house), and shows how to paint both in an efficient way.

Letting the lighthouse and village dry, Steve moves to the ocean, working with much darker tones of blue. Keep in mind the colors of both the sky and the land will be mirrored in the ocean, which means blending the same greens and purples into the reflected areas in the water. Small white waves are left behind as well to suggest the surf and shimmery quality of moving water.

As he finishes up the ocean, Steve goes back to working on the village, adding a mixture of Yellow Ochre and Cadmium Yellow Orange to the roofs of the buildings to add a contrasting color to the painting. Using the "wet-on-dry" technique, he also adds shadows for more depth, and to suggest a cooler day by making the shadow layer a purple-blue.

Steve recaps the previous steps, expanding further on key points such as not using white paint, what the "wet-in-wet" technique is, and others. Then, he blocks in the base color layer for the boulders and the seaside cliff area below the town.

As Steve lets the completed village dry, he begins diving into further detail surrounding the rocks and boulders in the water. He mixes a slightly darker brown as a mid-value for shadows in the dry areas of the rocks, and goes even darker by adding more of the ocean's Ultramarine Blue for damp or wet areas. Burnt Sienna, Permanent Violet, and Payne's Gray are also used to get extra contrast in the details. 

Continuing on, Steve lifts out the paint in certain areas where waves are crashing into the rocks so it looks like a white spray of water. After he finishes, he mixes a light green, and paints the grass surrounding the town on the cliff. His continuous effort at bringing shadow tones to different sections of the ascending cliffside adds dimension and perspective to the painting as well. 

Steve finalizes his drawing with important touches of shadows to the bottom region of boulders, then proceeds to clean up his entire canvas with a kneaded eraser, finalizing this painting of a classic seascape.