Drawing Water?

[JessiicaT]

Hello everyone, I'm working on a current drawing of a ballerina (If you go to my thread you can see my progress) and the background in the reference picture I'm using is water. My question is, can somebody explain or direct me towards a tutorial about drawing water? Like ocean/lake water. I was thinking about not doing the water at all and changing the background to a beautiful sunset or something like that but I want to challenge myself. Thanks for reading and looking forward to your replies!

-Jess

[ester_duraes]

Hi Jessica!
I don't know any specific tutorial on drawing water but I'd personally say: look and draw! Just draw what you see, it works for me! Water is a bit challenging not because it's hard but because you need quite a lot of patience to draw all details and make it look realistic but don't give up and you'll get there!
I recently drew water and I tried to not draw the part with water all at once so I wouldn't get bored, so my tip is: draw a bit of water, a bit of the ballerina, then get back to water... most of all, HAVE FUN!

P.S. - Here's the drawing I'm talking about:


Underwater Cosmic Flames by Ester Durães' portraits, on Flickr

[Vampiryan]

There might be techniques but when people ask how do I draw this id say what Ester already told you, the secret is to look at the reference really patiently, I know its hard cause we miss a lot of things, I personally ask someone what they think is wrong when I feel its not going well, and that's why where here, try what you see Though im sure youtube has some nice tutorials that might give you an idea (sorry I didn't look out for them but im kind of in a hurry)

[Zindy]

Try looking up lakes on google and find a scenery you like and think is managable to recreate into a drawing. I have only done water a couple of times and it wasn't very detailed.
I'm going to need to draw water at some point as I have a big drawing I need to have done (at least before I die) so this is an interesting topic

If you look at this photo:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Kqx9ckoVJR...+blue+lake.jpg
There is sort of a pattern of a base blue, then some darker shadows, soft and a bit curly, almost like a bunch of wavy hair, on top of it highlight.
Maybe try drawing a small part of the photo and see how it turns out before actually drawing it in your drawing?

[mlegs]

My favourite method is to use two layers :
1 in the first layer I draw what is visible through the water
2 in the second layer I draw what is reflecting in the water, overlapping these two should result a good image
This is available for a still water.. If you want to draw a scene where the wind is blowing or if you have to draw a river, then I suggest you to do what someone said before.. Just take a picture and try to represent what you see.
Good day