Drawing The Ocean
- 1). Draw a straight line across your paper with a blue pencil to mark the horizon. The placement of the horizon line will determine how much of the sea is visible compared to how much of the sky. The space below the horizon line will be the ocean, and the space above it will be the sky.
- 2). Lightly shade in the ocean with a mixture of blues and purples. Add a strip of yellows and oranges moving from the horizon line to the bottom of the page to show the reflection of the sun on the surface of the water.
- 3). Draw lines that represent the motion taking place on the ocean. Use a darker shade of blue for the wave lines than for the initial shading. Shade in the rest of the water using varying shades of blue to help break up the surface and create a sense of the rippling effect on the ocean surface. If drawing a particularly rough day, depict white crests on the waves by shading in the top and outer edges of your waves. Make this shading much lighter than the rest of the water.
- 4). Use a white colored pencil to trace over any points that should be lighter than the rest of the ocean, such as the caps of waves, the reflection of the sun on the water and the water just below the horizon line. Push down harder on the white pencil when drawing to create stronger highlights; use a lighter touch for weaker highlights.
- 5). Draw the sky in the paper above the horizon line. If you are including clouds, outline their edges and then fill in the surrounding sky with the appropriate colors for the time of day. Use dramatic reds and oranges for sunsets and sunrises or blue shading and soft cloud patterns for mid-day. Draw the sun with a mix of yellow and orange, placing it above the orange highlights made on the surface of the water.
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