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SEASCAPES 5 SKETCHING & PAINTINGGUIDE APRIL 2020 www.painters-online.co.uk Capture the whites in seascapes by David Bellamy Taken from David Bellamy’s Seas & Shorelines in Watercolour (Search Press, 2019). See page 2 for details. W here rocks and sea meet there is generally a lot of white surf, spray and splashes, and these can be tackled in numerous ways. In some of these examples I have included a variety of techniques to achieve these whites, as they can add so much life and movement to a scene. Try them all and see which ones suit you best: masking fluid, scratching with a scalpel, white gouache or acrylic, negatively painting round a white object and leaving the paper white, or even rubbing a candle across the water to act as a resist. This latter method is more of a hit-and-miss affair, but can be effective. ▲ Wave-lashed Cliffs , watercolour on 300gsm (140lb) Rough paper, 9 x 11in. (23 x 28cm). The darker tones of the lower part of the cliffs help to accentuate the white foaming surf as it crashes against the rocks, and the final stage of this painting was to scratch out splashes at the top of the surf with a scalpel, mainly using a diagonal stroke to suggest movement towards the cliffs. Some of these strokes half-obliterate rock detail effectively. The textures were enhanced by using a Saunders Waterford Rough watercolour paper surface. ▲ Stormy Coastline , watercolour on 300gsm (140lb) Rough paper, 12 x 16in. (30.5 x 40.5cm). Creating whites in turbulent seas can be a challenge, but there are several ways of achieving this, as shown in this watercolour carried out on Saunders Waterford Rough paper. On the left I produced a splash by dabbing a sponge in white gouache and applying it to a dark background. Here and there I have stabbed and scratched with a scalpel to suggest white foam – this is most evident below the right-hand rocks to the right of the gull. The white areas were left as the white paper by working around them with colour.