Learning how to draw water

On my holiday I hope to be doing some sketches on a rocky coastline and perhaps calm water up muddy creaks, I want to be able to indicate moving and still water.

It was over a year ago now that I last made sketches with sea and rocks as a key feature, so I need to get in some practice.

I reckon if you want to be able to easily suggest water whilst sketching plein-air, you need to have a selection of patterns up your sleeve. So that is what I aim to work out, patterns to me help suggest water.

Seawater has various motions, calm, choppy, rough and very rough. So to put things down on paper in situ fast, I will need to learn to use a set of random patterns to help give the effect of water as I see it. With inlets or creaks, water is often generally calm. When vegetation is close to the waters edge it creates reflections of light and dark. So use of white space can be key to achieving a suitable result. White space sounds easy. But to some, use of white space doesn’t seem to come naturally, and I am in that category. So like anything in life, it will take some practice to get better at it.

So far, I have had a few stabs at water and although only from Photo’s I feel I am getting somewhere. The sample here (Le Goyen à Pont-Croix) is far too tight and overworked, which is not really what I am good at. I prefer to keep my sketches as free and energetic as possible and I am sure the immediacy of sketching plein-air will help.

How do I draw waves crashing onto rocks? Use white paper to suggest the foaming sea. I am not going to worry too much about this, just aim to keep the line free like water.

So, to sum up, something to think about when drawing. One: I must let my line run free and flow just like water. Two: Work out some patterns to suggest water in different situations. Three: For rough sea I can make my lines stronger with stabbing, expressive marks, using the white of the paper to suggest a foaming sea crashing onto the rocks. It all sounds so easy!