How to Draw Realistic Waves in the Sea

Hey everybody, let's take your wave and water drawings from this... ...to this. If you can scribble, you can do this. Alright, let's draw some waves and water. First thing, we're going to establish our horizon... ...and draw in the sun to mark the direction of our light. Next, I'm just going to loosely mark in some waves and water lines. Keep these very loose. Now, as my lines get closer to the horizon here... ...they are going to get closer together... ...and also are going to be flatter and less defined... ...to give us that perspective of water in the distance. Okay, now with my 5B pencil... ...I'm going to begin to shade in my darker areas on the waves. Now, while you're doing this, always make your marks... ...in the general direction of the flow of the water. Again, keep this very loose. I like to start off with a darker value pencil here... ...because I can then pull the graphite around... ...when I blend on my next step. I recommend having a reference image or two... ...especially when you are first starting out drawing water and waves. Not necessarily to copy them directly... ...but more so for inspiration. That will really help you determine... ...where your darker shadows and values lie. But if you don't have a reference image... ...you'll need to visualize how your sun is interacting with your water. So in this case here, wherever the waves are rising up... ...they are blocking the sun in the distance from our perspective. Additionally, remember, water can be transparent... ...so at the top of these waves, where the water is thinner... ...some of that light is going to shine through... ...and lessen our shadows. So I'm not shading in with my 5B pencil... ...to the top of our wave outlines. Okay, so now this looks super rough... ...and you might say it looks terrible... ...but don't be worried. We're going to make some waves out of this. This is how loose I want your water to look like at this stage. Now, with your blending tool... ...pull that 5B graphite around to smooth it out. Again, move your blending tool in the direction of the flow of your water... ...and still be really loose here. Our process on the water here is to start out super rough... ...and to give it kind of that wild feeling. And we're just starting to build the depth and texture. Think of it as we want these initial marks to match the energy of the water... ...and not feel drawn on or contained. Then as we move forward in our process... ...we're going to incrementally add details... ...to sort of tame that super rough water. But we'll have the depth and the values and texture... ...that shows that wildness that we started off with. Whoopsie, somehow I missed this middle wave here. I'm just going to fill this in real quick. We have some large areas that don't have big waves... ...and some waves that are too white here. I'm going to put down some marks with my 2B pencil and blend those in. Again, I'm just always going in the direction of the water flow. I just want a base layer of lighter values on these flat water areas. Even though the sunlight will be hitting some of these areas... ...I still want to be able to add highlight details here in the next steps. With my 2B pencil, I'm adding some sharper directional lines throughout my drawing. I'm starting to get more exact with the lines here... ...especially on the shape of my waves... ...and adding a more dramatic curl to the line where necessary. Okay, now let's blend those lines in. Again, we're building depth here step by step. Now with my 2B mechanical pencil... ...I'm going to add even thinner, finer lines throughout... ...showing the flow of our water. I'm putting some more pressure on the pencil here to get my values pretty dark. You can see there's some really good energy starting to develop here... ...with all of our different values in our waves and water... ...as we're about to get into our refining stage. Next, I'm going to do one of my favorite techniques... ...which is to use my erasers as drawing tools... ...and erase back in highlights to our waves and water. And also the white water on top of our waves... Thinking in using your erasers as tools for drawing... ...and not just erasing mistakes... ...is a game changer for bettering your drawing skills. I probably use this technique at some point in every one of my tutorials. Down in the description are links to the two erasers I'm using here. On this white water on top of the wave... ...I'm working in a pretty small area with my electric eraser... ...but I'm still pretty loose here. You don't want all of the splashing water to feel too controlled. Now with this other eraser, I'm using an X-Acto blade... ...to cut the point to a sharp tip... ...so I can really slice in thin highlights in my water. Be sure to keep sharpening your eraser if needed as it dulls. And so with this eraser, I'm really just adding directional highlights back into our water... ...and this is why we put down that base layer earlier in the white areas. With my 2B pencil, I'm going to add some deeper values... ...where this wave is curling up here for added contrast. Contrast is super important for making your drawings pop. I'm making sure not to fill in those white highlights that we erased on. Now where the wave rolls over the top... ...I'm going to add lots of little curls and random lines to our white water here. On these marks, still be sure to have the majority of them... ...on our wave rolling over the top. We want the water throughout our entire drawing to feel interconnected. I'm going to fill in just a few little spots down here to add variety to our water... ...and I'm being sure to avoid our highlighted lines here. Now we're just going to repeat these steps on the rest of our waves. Erase in some highlights... ...we're erasing in our water rolling over the top... ...filling in more directional lines for added contrast or highlight... ...and random marks on our water rolling over the top... ...and so on throughout all of our waves. Now on this wave, note that I have a little bit of the opposite side of the wave... ...rolling down the back towards the sun in full highlight. And the directional lines of this wave flows into the wave behind it. Again, you want all of the flow of your water to feel connected like this. In the background here, I'm going to keep things pretty blurred and undefined... ...keeping our lines much more straight. Now with my eraser, I'm going to erase in our highlights from the sun here... ...and doing it a bit irregularly... ...so it feels like the waves back here are influencing our sunlight. Our water is really coming together now... ...and I'm really just in the finessing stage at this point... ...adding in contrast with some darker values throughout... ...as well as fine-tuning highlights with my erasers. Really work hard to build that contrast between the different layers of waves. You really want those spots to pop. Also notice on the left and right sides of our drawings... ...I'm allowing for more shadows to come in. But in direct line with the sun, I have a lot more of our highlights... ...because that is where the sunlight is directly hitting from our perspective. So keep working your water and waves by adding contrast, erasing, directional lines... ...always keeping in mind the sun. Okay, let's add a quick background here to finish our scene... Giving water context will always help inform the viewer of what they're looking at. And with that, what started off as super rough, random scribbles... ...is now a seascape full of waves. Let me know down in the comments how your waves turned out... ...and thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.