Painting water can be a pain in the butt but
don't worry i'm going to show you how to paint water and water lines
using a palette knife by teaching you the under
and over technique so that way you can dominate your water in your landscape
paintings every single time and we're getting
started right now
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live for you ah water water everywhere and
not a drop to drink that has nothing to do with the video but i thought it was
clever in this video i'm going to show you two techniques to make water lines
in your painting so that way your painting stands out
more and it's going to give it that natural depth
look that you've been trying to achieve now i already went ahead and threw up a
very very basic landscape here and i did it in two sections on my right hand side
is where i'm going to teach you the over technique
and on the left hand side is where i'm going to teach you the under technique
okay when it comes to doing the over and
under technique both require palette knives now if you're going to
paint anything in the background or mid ground
i recommend using the smaller palette knife so you have more control
anything in the foreground i recommend using a bigger palette knife so that way
you cover more ground and speed up your painting process but
you pick and choose which one would be best for you
alright let's dive into this puppy i've just got some basic titanium white
and my small palette knife and all you want to do is pull it out to be
very very thin you can see how it's already breaking on my palette here
and all i want you to do at a nice 15 to 30 degree angle
go across and make a nice little cut to where you're going to have
a ridge of paint at the very top of your palette
knife and as you come to your painting i want you to approach it at a 15 degree
angle and go parallel with the canvas and
we're going to cut straight across now when you do the over
technique this is for specular highlights because
all you're really going to get is the paint that's grabbing off the top
of the knife giving you a nice strong straight line this is
great for when you want water to look like it's crashing just on
the shoreline in certain areas because it's going to
be nice and bold as you go across your painting just tip
the knife up a little bit more to where it will add a little bit more
of that paint because it's exposing it more to the canvas
if you're just starting out i recommend going really slow by adding
one line after another this way you'll have
more control and as you get more comfortable feel free to scratch
back and forth the lines because this will add a little bit more detail and
add thin and thick parts which make it look
like the water is actually rolling or crashing on the water's edge
also feel free to flip the knife over so that way it's a little
easier for you on certain sides as you can see here
also this will give you a better representation of what i am doing
if you made any mistakes laying in water with the palette knife you can easily
blend them out with a fan brush or if you need to soften your highlights
because perhaps they're in the background
again you can soften them with a fan brush just go back and forth
very lightly let me show you the under technique
all we're going to do is we're going to cut across and come the bottom side of
our palette knife right here so that way we have all the
paint at the bottom and again we're just going to scratch in
approach the same way but as we scratch we want to pull the
paint down slightly and it's going to add a little bit of
water ridge around our scratches
so we're just going to start scratching in it's going to add these
beautiful ridges like white water and white wash are kind of spraying up on
the shoreline and adding a little bit more movement to
our water when using the under technique the nice
thing is you can layer and go on top of your shore break multiple times
to really add that sea foam or water crashing
effect make sure you play around with it because it's one of the best ways to add
a bunch of texture to your painting the under technique is great if you want
to show off a lot of movement or water because it gives a lot more of that
white water rapid kind of look and it looks like there's a lot of
motion whereas the over technique looks a lot more
calm where it only has one or two specular highlights like water crashed a
little bit but both these techniques are great
depending on what you're going for and you can mix and match you could
still add the over technique which would add beautiful specular highlights
right where the water meets on the edge where the rocks are and you can still
have this motion so feel free to pick and choose
whichever one you want to do the nice thing about the under technique
is you can take your fan brush and lightly blend out portions you don't
like or just kind of mellow the roughness of
the water out so it's not as flowy and you could blend in you can pull out
you can do whatever you want this is one of my favorite techniques to
do it also is a great way to cover up any particular type of mistakes that you
did which is always nice because that's the
best thing about wet on oil painting is you can always cover up
your mistakes if you also want to soften the effect a
little bit just again take your fan brush
and lightly just go over and it's just going to fade a lot of those lines into
the background there one final note for everybody out there
that plans on using palette knives to put in
water lines or water accents to their landscape
don't overdo it it's really easy to kind of get away with putting in
a lot of water lines but it's not going to make your landscape look natural
if you feel like you put in too many an easy trick is just take your fan brush
and just scrub in the back edge of that highlight part of that water line
and it's naturally going to blend to the water also if you made too many mistakes
you got too many big blobs or they're kind of
scratched in at weird angles and they're not looking good because you want to
keep your water kind of level you can also blend it out with a fan
brush or one or two inch brush also if things are way way way too harsh
because they should be softer in the background
and a little more detailed in the foreground you can use that same
technique take a one or two inch brush or your fan
brush and naturally slowly blend things in the background
and lighten your touch as you come closer to the foreground now when it
comes to water i personally love a lot of texture in a
painting but to each their own i would probably
try on a spare canvas that you have try putting in
really really thick water lines and try putting in some blended ones hey
most paintings call for both but i really love the natural
texture that pops off a painting makes it stand out a little
bit more and gives you that personal style that's going to look beautiful for
when it hangs on your wall let's just move this out of the way so
my handsome self can be in the outro if you guys like these types of videos
where i show you tips and tricks and some tutorials
let me know in the comments down below and i'll see what i can do to help you
out some future videos i love helping everybody out if
you need any more help from my channel you know what you can do you
can always go over to this video right here which is going to teach you
some more awesome tips and tricks to help you become
bigger and better with your painting adventures and until next time all you
beautiful people stay safe stay creative and of course peace