Blog

In this blog post I am going to show you how to paint a seascape, based on the coast of Wellington, New Zealand. Whilst this art work is a small painting it a long landscape view as I wanted to capture more of the landforms of this area. The painting measures 12cm x 36cm. 

In this blog post I will show you my design process I use for creating a painting. I have a 12″ x 36″ blank canvas ready and waiting and I want to paint a seascape of the coast of Wellington in New Zealand. But before I get into the painting I need to plan it.

I love painting seascapes and in this art tutorial I will show you how to paint this coastal scene of Norah Head on the Central Coast in Australia.

The location for this painting is Soldiers Beach with the headland of Norah Head that features the Norah Head lighthouse. This is one of my favourite beaches in the world, I love the unique colours of the cliffs and foliage and the turquoise bottle green of the sea.

The inspiration for this painting came from a location just a five minute drive from my art studio in Queenstown, New Zealand where I live. I happened to be driving through the valley one evening when I noticed the evening sun shining through the willow trees. Given it was spring and there was fresh foliage on the trees, the different hues of greens where really vibrant. I pulled over at the side of the road and took some photos. The idea for a painting was born!

In 2018 I went to Phuket, Thailand at the moment and I brought my paints with me. I wanted to paint a tropical beach and some palm trees I went to Kata Beach and I decided to paint the beach outdoors, known as painting ‘en plein air’.

It was a hot, sunny and hazy day what with Thailand being in the tropics, it’s very humid.

I painted this tropical beach scene at Kata Beach, I’ll show you how I painted it.

One of the subjects I love to paint most are coastal scenes and for years I have wanted to paint this iconic view of Icart Point on the island of Guernsey, located in the English Channel.

Last year I visited Guernsey as I have a lot of family that lives there, I visited Icart Point and took lots of photos.

I painted Icart Point and in this blog post, I will show you how I created this painting.

Have you ever tried painting outdoors? Painting outdoors is challenging but really good fun, if you are a landscape painter that is wanting to quickly improve your painting skills then painting outdoors could really help you.

Painting outdoors teaches you to paint quickly as the light and weather conditions are always changing and it really helps you with colour mixing and understanding of tone as it really make you look at the landscape.

In this painting tutorial I will show you the step by step process of how I painted this mountain landscape, outdoors on location. The whole painting was done in one session and took about two hours to paint.

Continuing the theme of painting seascapes from the last blog and YouTube video I thought I’d show you how you can paint a breaking wave that looks dramatic and is full of light and atmosphere. 

Painting seascapes is fun especially when you create stormy scenes so in the blog post I’ll show you some tips and tricks to create light and drama in your seascape. Don’t forget the accompanying YouTube video on how to paint this art work, you can view the video which is at the bottom of this page.

I love to paint the sea, in fact, it’s one of my favourite things to paint! In this blog post, I will show you how to paint this dramatic seascape in five easy stages.