Curious about the techniques used here? You can learn more next month if you’ve signed up for email updates! 

ANSWER TO MYSTERY TECHNIQUE #153:

Painting water is much easier if you have the right kind of fan brush! The stiffer bristles of oil and acrylic ones work better than those for watercolor, and you can get more varied marks if you give your brush a haircut.

I started this painting with the sky and its reflection in the water, using a wet-in-wet mixture of yellow and rose for the first layer. After this dried, I added a glaze of blue in places. Next I painted the distant island with a thin glaze and let the sky color show through for more depth and luminosity. I added the first layer of the other 2 islands before building up light strokes with this modified fan brush to hint at the water‘s motion and to suggest the islands‘ reflections. I finished by using a damp sponge to apply slightly darker greens on the islands to create the texture of foliage.