Water is an interesting subject in painting. It is very difficult to paint water.. water has no shape and colour. We can only paint the behaviour of water and convert a mood that shows it is that object which our brain recognise as water.
While painting a glass of water we can show it by showing how the shapes or object bends around water surface. Will write about it in another day, but today I will highlight about water bodies like lakes ponds and rivers.
In larger water bodies, water reflects light from the sky and it's surrounding. The mood and feel of the environment is conveyed by the state of water.
I live very close to this small river. And we are close to sea.. so depending on the tide somedays the flow of river is very stong and somedays it's still.. somedays the river reverse its direction 😊. I keep observing it almost every day for few minutes and have painted it many times.
A still water shows calmness and relaxed feel. It reflects forming mirror image of the landscape. But there is a small difference if you observe it keenly.
Unlike mirror reflection, the reflection from still water is little smudged. Water reflects the sky and the far bank is lighter tone and the near bank gets richer or darker tone. This is something known as colour perspective. Just like the sky which appears paler towards the horizon water too adds it giving a sense of depth.
When the water flows slowly there will be ripples. This will give a very different feel.
The ripples disturb this reflection in a systematic way. It has a logic.
The ripples break this reflection in a zig zag pattern based on the flow of ripples. Normally towards the bank.. Ripples become large as they approach the bank and this is almost in exponential scale. This means the gap between the ripples are larger as it approaches shore when you see it.
When the water is disturbed by a boat or some bird swimming, the ripples are affected .. more ripples means more chaos. They tend to join forming a higher peak and the dips are shallower nearby. The peaks are lighter and the dips are darker in tone.
The effect of these ripples towards the far bank is such that it just reflects the water in totally blurred midtone without any details
The disturbance is higher when there is wind.. and is very similar when the flow is more. This causes more breaks in ripples that the reflection is almost knocked off. This is when you can see the shimmer in water. Painters use dry brush techniques to show the shimmer.
The waves in sea is very different. It follow the same logic but just that the shapes of waves are little different. Unless it's a serene beach where the water is sleepy.
Some of my paintings are below with different behaviour of water.
I hope you liked this article. I am planning to write some more similar ones soon based on the response to this 🙂
