Chapter 3 | WAVES
There are of course several ways to draw waves. A well-known stylized/simplified way is the rolling waves as above. Waves can rise like mighty mountains but let’s start with a calm sea:
Exercise 1: With a calm lake of sea, make the lines for the waves further away smaller and smaller. The horizon line between the water and the sky should not be too tight.
Exercise 2: The next step is smooth waves. Start at the bottom. In each valley between two waves you draw a new wave. If you keep making the back waves a little smaller, they seem further away. They could also be sand hills in a desert.
Exercise 3: During a storm, the seawater is pushed up and waves take on countless shapes. The difference with mountains is that waves have more round, winding and meandering lines. They are liquid mountains. I’ll show you some loose examples to draw.
Try drawing waves in different wind directions.
Exercise 4: Wild waves combine to form a mountain landscape, just like in Chapter 1 of this lesson. It is nice to try it out very lightly first, as in the following example. I always start at the bottom. Behind every wave a new wave arises, always with different shapes. Feel free to try out your own waves.
Exercise 5: Add shadow, for example with the flat side of a 2B pencil tip to avoid stripes (see also the lesson ‘Faster than your own shadow’ chapter 1). It doesn’t have to be tight, nor are waves at sea.
EXTRA 1: Check out the following examples of seascapes. You may also want to try drawing a seascape.
In this wild seascape, the waves meander in all directions. Mountains have been added in the background on the right. In front we see a boat with two people holding on to the mast and the railing. A boat like this and a seagull here and there makes the sea even more impressive.
Of course you can also add cumulus clouds to your sea piece. If you draw the clouds and the mountains a little lighter, they seem further away. The lines of the waves have been traced with a fine liner in this drawing. The waves in this drawing roll to the right where they crash with hurricane force on a high rocky coast.
Als je na deze les het tekenen van golven een beetje in je vingers hebt kun je ze ook eens proberen te schilderen. Dat kan precies vanuit een tekening maar ook losjes met bijvoorbeeld acrylverf. In het voorbeeld heeft een leerling met acrylverf een ‘sequentie’ (een soort stripje) geschilderd van een schip op zee: eerst een kalme zee met mooi weer en daarna steeds stormachtiger en donkerder tot het schip nauwelijks nog zichtbaar is en misschien wel schipbreuk leidt.
