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Disclaimer : I am not a professional painter, i have been learning to paint using online resources.

I have been wanting to paint a beach scene for sometime , the lockdown might be a reason too as all traveling has stopped. 😔. We had planned to celebrate our 15th anniversary at Maldives this year, but this did not work out due to the Covid situation. In any case, I’m grateful that we are all safe and healthy and count my blessings every day. When everything comes back to normal I’m sure we can make travel plans again.

I used a reference photo from Unsplash by jcob nasyr as my inspiration but changed it some bit. I moved the palm tree to corner of the painting and removed the slide as well. Just wanted to get a feel of painting the basic elements first before attempting anything else – sky, sea, beach

Materials used :-

10”x12” canvas pad

Washi/masking tape

• Ultramarine Blue
• Alizarin crimson
• Phtalo Blue
• Phtalo green
• titanium white
• nars black
• cadmium yellow medium
• burnt sienna
• burnt umber
• sap green
• raw sienna
• glazing liquid

Brushes used

I started by drawing a margin on my canvas page and taping the edges to prevent the paint getting into the borders. Used washi tape for this as it peels off easily. Some paint did seep through, so i will have to be more careful next time. I marked out the horizon line with a watercolor pencil and also the line where the beach starts.

Step1 : The sky

I mixed ultramarine blue & phtalo blue in 2:1 ratio and added some titanium white to lighten it, along with a touch of glazing liquid.
Ultramarine blue is a warm blue while Phtalo blue is a cool blue and they end up cancelling some of their bright hues out to give you a nice blue. I started by applying the darkest mix to the top right corner of the canvas and working to the left and down in horizontal strokes with my big flat brush. I then added more white to the sky blue mix and work it in the central portion of the sky. The part where the sky meets the sea is the lightest, so adding much more white & glazing liquid to the sky blue mix, i painted over the horizon carefully. The glazing liquid helped to blend the three shades of blue evenly without a distinct separation.
The left side of the sky is lighter, so i mixed some alizarin crimson to the sky blue mix to get a tinge of purple and blended it from the left side of the canvas all the way to the horizon line. I kept increasing the width of this purple mix all the way down.

Step2 : The sea

The horizon line for the sea is the darkest so i mixed phtalo blue and phtalo green (2:1) with a little titanium white to get a nice turquoise color. By adding more and more white i worked my way down to the beach. I then blended this color with some phtalo blue & white and painting the bottom left and middle of the sea. Using a dry flat brush, i applied some white paint in small strokes to the sea. I made sure that i wiped out any excess paint on a paper towel before applying or else the paint would fall thick. I used the purple in the sky to do some more dry brushing on the sea.
* i took this pic under yellow light and at night, which is why the colors look different . Sorry

Step 3 : The beach

This was the hardest part for me as I could not get the sand effect correctly. I first attempted to underpaint the beach with raw sienna thinking it would help me improve the color. But I don’t think it was needed at all.
Next using a mix of burnt umber, yellow ochre and white i tried to paint the sand. As you can see below it looked more like rocks on the beach than sand. I had to paint over this again the next day to make it right. Thankfully this was a small section and did not take too long

Art sherpa has a wonderful tutorial on painting the beach and a palm tree, which i followed to get the beach effect. I mixed 3 shades of the beach color from dark to light to get this effect. I did not have a deerfoot stippler as she uses, so used a small filbert brush and glazing liquid to blend out the colors. I believe the glazing liquid really helped to blend the colours along with a light horizontal strokeS. Using the dark sand colour, I painted the edge of the sea and beach to appear as wet sand. Also i kept one part of the beach darker than the other half. Did this by making a very light mix of the sand colour and adding it to the lighter section of the beach as highlights on top of the shadows.

Step 4: The Palm Tree

Next the palm tree. For some reason, unknown to me, this was the easiest bit. I drew out the coconut tree using burnt umber and burnt sienna.

Then with a mix of sap green and yellow ochre, i started painting the leaves. I started with the furthest branches and worked my way to the closest one. I used the dagger brush as it gave me really thin lines and a sharp edge. Follow ArtSherpa’s tutorial as she shows how to make these strokes. Make sure that the paint is flown than thick. I mixed up several shades of green using some more phthalo green and cad yellow medium and painted over parts of the branches to get varying shades of green, yellow and brown on each one. One of the branches, i painted completely brown with a mix of burnt sienna, burnt umber and black to appear as a dried up branch.

For the trunk, I used my smallest round brush and the sand Color to make a vertical line of the light sand Color to make it look like the light was hitting on it. Left the topmost part as is to appear as shadows. I added thin horizontal strokes around the right side of the trunk to give more texture to it and make it appear round. With a mix of black and burnt umber I then added a few dark patches where the branches met and on some of the trunk to make it appear as rough texture..

So what did i learn from this painting…

1. How to use the glazing liquid, this is the first time i used it
2. How to paint sand
3. How to really pay attention to values. I believe i could have tried painting the sky better, next time.
4. My Princeton brushes ( i have only a few of them) definitely make a difference than the normal brushes i have.
5. I am good at painting a coconut tree 😀 😀 , may be it’s the malayalee in me