Seascape Painting - How to Paint Breaking Waves and Sea Spray Tutorial - Soft Pastels

Welcome everyone to this seascape painting using pastels. I am going to show you how I paint sea spray and foam on the ocean waves. I've already begun the seascape by placing the rocks along the coastline. And then I will complete the sky and background sea water before I can begin working on the sea spray. I am using an underpainting technique to dissolve the pastel pigment into my paper. It's very similar to a watercolor wash, but I'm only using my pastel pigment. I am also using Uart sanded paper for this demonstration. Once the underpainting has dried, I'm applying more color over the solid base to create the sky and water texture. I am placing a straight horizon line between my sky and water. Before I can begin working on the sea spray, I'm going to place some small waves in the distant water. The small distant waves will create some depth to the painting. I am working around the spray and wave area until I have completed the small waves in the distant ocean. You can see here that I am using a darker shade of blue to create the trough area of a small wave, and I will use a lighter shade of blue and white to create the top curling section of the wave. I am also adding some light turquoise green to the water. I'm going to zoom up a little bit so you can follow along a little easier as I complete these small waves in the background. I am using dark blue to define the top of the wave, and this actually represents the shadows that are created in the wave. I will add a lighter shade of light blue and some white to the very crest of the wave. The darker shade really represents a shadowed area created as the wave begins to crest over. I am also keeping the strokes of color in the same direction in my wave to give it a more realistic feel. I am using shades of light blue and turquoise to represent light reflecting on the surface water. Once I have these small details done in the background, I will be able to start the spray area and the large wave in the painting. I think I have captured the wave movements in the water, and I'm going to begin focusing on the spray. There are some rocks peeking through the ocean spray that I am applying some light violet to create the rock texture. I am applying a little bit of some alcohol wash to these violet areas so that as I begin applying the ocean spray, it doesn't dissolve into the white color of my spray. I want these rocks to continue to peek through, so that is why I wanted it to be a solid color to the base of these rocks. I will not be using an alcohol wash in the surf area. I just want to add some of the darker shades at the base of my surf before I add lighter shades of color. The sponge applicator works very nicely to blend the shades of pastel in the spray. I will continue to use the darker shade of gray to create the darker undertones in the wave and the spray area. There is also an area behind this wave where the water has been churned up with white water and foam behind the wave. I also want to apply some blue shades to the wave to create some movement and color to the cresting wave. I did decide to add some alcohol wash to the blue in my wave. The reason for this is so that it didn't smudge or blend into the white pastel as I add color over this base color. You can see that as I add white over the blue, it doesn't smudge and it keeps a cleaner, crisper value to the paper. So please continue to follow along as I add lighter shades of color to contour the wave and I will also add my whitest whites to begin creating a very thick, realistic looking spray to the water. I'm going to begin adding some white foam texture to the background behind this large wave. A lot of backwash is created from the churning of the water and the waves, so I will use my brighter white to complete this area. Then I can begin adding some more spray over this area I've completed and continue developing the spray texture. I would like to continue building my spray by applying small particles of white pastel onto the paper by using my X-Acto knife to scrape it off and once I have sufficiently added enough spray and highlights, I will use my glassine paper and the backside of a pastel stick to push the particles into the grain of the UART paper. This technique works very well and if you blow on the surface or shake it, the particles remain steadfast on the paper. I'm going to add some more violet and blue shading to the wave and continue to blend and shape the wave surface before I add any more highlights or spray to the wave. This large wave is also creating a lot of surf action, so I'm going to begin developing the water beneath the wave with some dark blue and some rock formations in the water. I will use the alcohol wash again to blend this color to create a solid base. I'm going to begin adding some white trails of white foam that create patterns in the churning water. So you now can see how this movement of the water is taking shape and creating a dynamic surf. I will add a little bit heavier layer of white along the edge of the rocks as the water and foam tends to splash against the sides of the rocks. You may also notice that the blue underwash that I had applied is sufficient to create a realistic surf. You can see here that I've already added another wave created by the surging surf and I am creating some spray and foam to the wave and applying the same techniques of scraping some of the particles off my pastel to create a realistic splashing wave. I will add a little more water curling over the top of the wave and apply a few more small details and this painting is nearly complete. If you enjoy seascape paintings, you may like my playlist on seascapes. Feel free to join me on other lessons and demonstrations of all my ocean videos. I hope you have enjoyed this demonstration on how to paint sea spray and foam on the ocean waves. I feature many demonstrations and tutorials on my channel so if you haven't already subscribed please do and don't forget to press the bell icon to receive notifications whenever I post new videos and lessons. I look forward to sharing new content with you very soon and if you have any comments feel free to leave them below. Thank you for watching and I'll see you next time.