Draw the Sea

Since the beginning of humanity's pictorial history, we have depicted the grandeur of nature: its majestic mountains, its lakes, and its spectacular canyons.

Today, we're going to focus on the part of our planet that covers 75% of its surface, the place where life originated, and which has inspired some of the most beautiful works ever created: the sea.

Many Ways to Represent the Sea

Legendary artists have painted the sea in a thousand ways. From Hokusai to Turner, from Japan to England, and even including artists from desert countries. All these works testify to what the sea has always been: an immense natural force.

"The Great Wave off Kanagawa" – Katsushika Hokusai

There are a very large number of ways to draw or paint the sea. You can magnify its power through its raging waves, suggest the darkness of its depths, or impress the viewer with the violence of the breakers crashing against the rocks. All these themes can inspire powerful works... but just as the sea can seem overwhelming, simply knowing where to start drawing it can be too.

But today, I suggest we start with a gentler version. Are you ready to draw the sea with me?

Some Examples

To start, let's look at some examples of photos that represent the sea in a more peaceful way, which we can draw inspiration from: 

 

Capturing the movement of the sea and the way light reflects on it can be a real challenge. One of the most complex aspects when drawing the sea is to accurately represent the foam of the waves.

That's why we are going to divide the process into several easy-to-follow steps in order to turn this difficulty into a method that you can reuse in your future marine creations.

Choosing the Right Color Palette

Let's start by choosing a color palette. It's often said that the sea has seven colors, but for our drawing, we'll choose five.

Small anecdote: in some ancient civilizations, green and blue were considered as a single tone. Perhaps because the sea can sometimes take on greenish hues? But I digress…

When drawing water, it is important to select colors that reflect its environment: its depth, temperature, type of sand, time of day... all these elements influence the color of the sea. That's why we should not hesitate to integrate green tones, and even yellow, into our palette.

Here, I will work digitally with Adobe Photoshop. That said, you can completely follow this article with the software of your choice, or even use traditional methods, although some sections might be a bit more technical, but nothing insurmountable.

Drawing the Sea Step by Step

Once our palette is ready, we will create a gradient that includes all these colors as a background. The aim is to simulate sunlight, which reflects more in the upper part of the drawing. Therefore, we will have lighter and warmer tones at the top.

Here's the slightly more fun part: draw several white circles on the canvas. These circles should touch each other. They must not be perfect. Place the larger circles towards the bottom of the drawing and the smaller ones towards the top: this will give an impression of depth.

Then fill in the spaces between the large circles with smaller circles. It’s a creative process, so feel free to experiment with shapes and sizes until you achieve a harmonious result.

Now that we have our circles, let's fill the empty spaces between them to create slightly wider white areas.

Next, connect the circles by filling the empty spaces with white in order to create a kind of organic web. However, leave some areas unfilled to maintain a natural look.

Under this white texture, draw another series of circles using the darkest color in your palette. This time, use much larger circles.

 

Apply the same principle as before to generate a second background texture. By overlaying these two layers of textures (light and dark) on our gradient background, we will achieve a pattern that closely resembles the surface of water.

Adding Details to the Drawing

To bring our sea to life, let's draw a small character in a boat. This element will add perspective and scale to the composition. Thanks to it, we will understand the size of the waves, the viewing angle, and we can immerse ourselves more in the scene. You can replace the boat with a sailboat, a diver, or any other marine element, depending on your inspiration.

The boat is an integral part of the sea and interacts with it. Therefore, elements such as a shadow cast on the water, small waves around the hull, or the wake left by the boat behind it should be added.

For this last one, we can use exactly the same technique of circles as in the beginning, but elongate them a bit.

Do not forget to also draw the shadow of the boat using the darkest tone on your palette.

And there you have it! With some well-placed textures, we have completed our drawing of the sea.

This method can also be used to represent other bodies of water. Between the background layers and the circular patterns, you can add additional shapes to enrich the composition and emphasize depth. For example: fish, corals, a dark shadow suggesting an underwater whale, etc.

Do not limit yourself. Experiment with this technique to explore new artistic horizons.

I hope you enjoyed this article and that you have discovered a new way to represent the sea. See you soon!

Writer and illustrator: Joshua