Painting the ocean with acrylics involves layering blues and greens, transitioning from deep shades at the horizon to lighter turquoise near the shore, using X-shaped strokes and blending techniques for soft transitions, and adding white highlights for foam and texture, focusing on depth through color and perspective. Start by toning your canvas for a better value base, then build up from darker to lighter colors, adding complexity with hints of other colors (like raw umber or purple) for realism, and finally detailing with white for waves and spray.
For this ocean-inspired pour, I kept my color palette very minimal – all variations of phthalo blue, phthalo green, and titanium white, mixed in different proportions to create a soft gradient from deep turquoise to light foam.
How to Paint a Seascape in 7 Steps
Tips For Creating Ocean Color Palettes
Match complementary shades: Pair colors that naturally complement each other, such as deep blues with sandy beiges or turquoise with coral. This ensures a cohesive and pleasing look. Use accent colors sparingly: Highlight key elements with brighter hues like aqua or seafoam green.
For the sky, mix primary blue with ivory black and Veronese green. Add lightly some acrylic modeling paste additive to the mix until it lightens and gives the colour some density. For the sea, mix blue and primary red with Veronese green and ivory black.
Acrylic Paint Instructions and Tips. You don't 'need' to start with a wet brush, but if you want your paint to glide smoothly then it's best to have the bristles wet. I just quickly dip my brush in water, it doesn't have to be soaking wet.
The 80/20 rule (Pareto Principle) in painting suggests that 80% of your results come from 20% of your effort, applicable in areas like focusing on key compositional elements (light, shadow, shapes) during planning (the 20% effort) for 80% of the final impact, or applying a limited color palette for efficiency. It can guide practice by emphasizing core skills (perspective, anatomy) or streamline the process, where the final 20% of detail work transforms the painting from good to great, or conversely, by spending 80% of time on foundational sketching and 20% on refinement.
Alcohol can create interesting effects like cells and lacing in wet acrylic paint (especially in pouring), acting as a solvent to break paint's surface tension, but it can also ruin dried paint by making it brittle, cloudy, or causing it to curdle due to its acidity, potentially dissolving polymers and damaging the acrylic binder if used improperly or excessively.
It does make the paint thicker and it lightens the color somewhat. I'll also mix it with Liquidex Basics and then heavy body acrylics.
Three common watercolor mistakes are impatience (not letting layers dry), leading to muddy colors; using the wrong paper, causing warping and poor blending; and poor water control, resulting in streaky washes or harsh edges instead of smooth gradients. Other frequent errors include prioritizing color over values (light/dark), neglecting to mix enough paint, and not cleaning brushes properly.
Mixing baking soda with acrylic paint thickens it and creates a gritty, matte, textured finish, often used for DIY projects to mimic clay or ceramic, but it disrupts the paint's binder, potentially reducing its durability and archival quality, making it less suitable for fine art. It absorbs moisture, adds opacity, and gives a chalky, fluffy texture, but can be less stable long-term, so it's best for crafts where longevity isn't critical, say artists and blogs.
You don't always need to wait exactly 4 hours, but it's a safe, standard guideline for latex paint; waiting less risks peeling or streaks (blocking), while waiting longer (or checking if it's dry to the touch, not sticky) is often fine, especially with better airflow and lower humidity, but always check the can's instructions for specific recoat times, as oil-based paints need much longer (16-24 hrs).
The golden ratio is a structural device based on the patterns of nature, that has been used by artists and designers for centuries. The golden ratio, also known as the divine proportion, is a mathematical ratio of 1:1.618, or Phi, with a decimal that stretches to infinity, closely linked to the Fibonacci sequence.
The 4-8-8 drawing method is a technique to establish accurate proportions by using straight lines to define a subject's core structure: start with four lines for an initial box, then use eight more lines to carve out the negative space and find the basic gesture, and finally, use eight more straight lines to represent the main shape of the subject before adding detail, focusing on relative comparisons (like a pencil measurement) rather than absolute units to build a solid foundation for likeness.
The biggest reason beginners struggle with mixing is overmixing. Acrylics blend quickly, and if you keep stirring two or three colors until they look completely uniform, you'll often lose the vibrancy. Instead of a fresh, lively color, you end up with mud. Another common issue is using too many paints at once.
Varnishing your acrylic painting will help seal it so that unwanted dust or dirt can't reach the canvas. Avoid using hairspray as a protectant for your acrylic painting because it can actually eat away at your painting and doesn't provide sufficient protection.
Take a big wide brush and start blending the paint from light blue to black with radial brush strokes. Paint with confidence, we are not searching for a perfect and smooth gradient.
The ocean acts like a sunlight filter.
The ocean is blue because water absorbs colors in the red part of the light spectrum. Like a filter, this leaves behind colors in the blue part of the light spectrum for us to see.