How to paint water with watercolor

 Painting water with watercolor sounds like a very natural thing, but it can be such a headache. And that’s frustrating because we all have this romantic thought about it being the natural medium to paint water. So today, let’s take a look at how to paint believable water with watercolor.

  First of all, let’s talk about why water is tricky to paint especially with watercolor. Compare to other things in nature, water is more abstract. And when you try to paint a more abstract shape with an elusive medium like watercolor, your mind is going to work twice as hard to make sense of all this. So if you don’t know how to analyze what you see into a readable visual language, you will end up trying to blindly copy what you see. Sort of an oxymoron. As always, let’s go over a few key points before we start painting:

  1. Water is a surface - This is something that people tend to forget. Yes, water flows around and changes shapes. But it is still a surface. It receives light and shadow just like any other surface. So it obeys the laws of physics and perspective just the same. Its color will change depending on the light it’s under. So my suggestion is to look at it as a solid surface first, then we look at the material properties and the deformation of it.

  2. What type of water are you painting - Is it a calm lake with almost no disturbance? A running river? Or a raging sea? It is important to know the type of water you are painting. Because that’s going to affect the type and the shape of reflection greatly. And what scale it is. A body of water in the far distance can look very different from a pond that’s right in front of you.

  3. Make your own decision for your painting- After you analyzed what you see, you can start looking at the tools you have. What can you use to interpret what you see? Do you want to paint sharp reflections? Or soft blurry reflections. Also, think of how it will fit in your whole picture. WIll it helps the composition? Don’t forget the major shape of your picture. Again, don’t get caught up by the reference you are looking at. Make your own decision on your picture.

Just because water is abstract, doesn’t mean we can’t have a solid idea of how to paint it. I’m always trying to analyze all the visual information to make it easier to interpret what we see into a believable painting. Be sure to watch the video above to see me analyze some photos and demos.