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The most common things that are usually depicted by artists are nature details and their behavior. Unfortunately, almost all the newly minted artists always face a problem with how to draw these and what to start with. Luckily, this process is not as difficult as drawing someone’s portrait or even a group of people.
This time, we’re going to discover all the secrets of how to draw water. In fact, there are lots of types of water and its surfaces, but now, we suggest you try to depict sea water and waves on the surface. It is safe to say that this step-by-step tutorial is a complete guide that will definitely help you to achieve a realistic effect on paper by yourself without any additional instructions. The only thing you need to do is to follow all the steps carefully.
Needed Tools
As always, the beginning process is preparing a working space and tools that will be used for your art. As for working space, you need to have a comfortable seat and a surface where you will work with proper light. Speaking about the tools – they are quite simple: we’ll need just pencils (mechanical are also possible), an eraser, and a shading tool.
Let’s see the best mechanical pencils before you start drawing your picture. Certainly, these brands are the coolest and known all over the world!
However, pay more attention to pencils, since they have to be of particular grades of graphite, specifically HB, 3B and 3H. A HB pencil is the same as a №2, where 3B has a blacker or softer core and 3H has harder or lighter core. In addition, don’t forget about the paper sheets or a pad, where you’ll draw your art.
Step 1: Draw Horizon Line
Once you are ready to start working, just place a sheet of paper or a paper pad in front of you, and align it vertically. After that, don’t rush to take a pencil, rather just take a look at the paper and imagine its body divided into three horizontally equal segments. We’ll need just the upper line, which will serve as a border of the sky from one side, and for the ocean from the other.
Thus, contour the upper horizontal line, but don’t push on it too much, since the strokes should be light. This will help you avoid unpleasant marks on your paper.
Step 2: Outline Water Surface
Now, we’ve come up to the super important step in this drawing. You need to outline the contours of the water surface, which are in the foreground.
All we need to do is to hold the pencil firmly and make solid wavy lines without any breaks. They will depict water movement texture. Consequently, it will look more realistic.
Step 3: Add Splash
Let’s make a splash on the water, close to the horizontal border. Let’s draw a small pike-shaped wave.
And then, draw some short lines around the splash – these are contours of a wave that make the upper wave rise. Don’t overdo it and don’t apply too many strokes around.
Step 4: Drawing of Distant View
The next step will be adding details to the background. Just repeat the same actions as we did for the foreground: apply light strokes with a pencil to the water surface that is far from the closer view.
Again, don’t push on the pencil and make the strokes wavy and short; these marks should look much lighter and softer, thus use a 3H pencil with a harder core.
Step 5: Tone Picture
This stage involves adding some volume to the waves. Thus, take a pencil with a softer core, 3B, and produce some light hatching. You should shade the wave contours and lines on the foreground first, giving them a much softer tone.
After that, complete the background water surface with a lighter tone with light hatching as well. When you finish, you’ll get more a voluminous look of seawater.
Step 6: Finishing
The final step involves blurring the tones and adding more realistic effect to this drawing. For this purpose, it’s better to use additional hatching and an eraser for making some patches of light and canceling excess marks of shading.
In addition, apply some short strokes for providing an effect of sparkling water exposed to the sun.
Find out the top erasers that will facilitate your work on the drawing. The list contains only the coolest brands!
Conclusions
Hopefully, this guide was quite easy to follow, even for beginners, in order to draw ocean or seawater with waves. However, it’s not necessary that you’ll get a desirable effect after the first attempt – no worries! All you need to do is to practice once you have some time to do it.
Also, pay attention to details and techniques of hatching and tinting, in order to get a particular drawing. In addition, you should take into account the quality of tools that you work with, and if you want to try other options visit WoWPencils to discover reviews of plenty devices that can be the best option for you.