Learn how to paint a colorful seahorse under water with seaweed and bubbles!
How To Paint a Seahorse: An Easy Tutorial For Beginners
In this beginners tutorial, we will be showing you how to paint a lovely seahorse under the sea!
This painting showcases vibrant colours that you and the kids would enjoy painting! So if you love seahorses, stay tuned as we show you an easy step-by-step guide on how to paint a seahorse.
Step 1: Prepare your materials!
Before you start you should always make sure that you’ve prepared all the things you need
- Canvas size of your choice
- Acrylic Paint in the Colours; Titanium White, Mars Black, Turquoise, Yellow Green, Phthalo Blue, Magenta, Yellow Pale
- Paint Brushes of Various sizes
- Palette or Paper Plate
- Optional Glitter
- Adhesive For Glitter (ModPodge or Elmer’s Glue)
- Chalk
- Cup with Water
- Paper Towel or Rag
Step 2: Paint your background!
On your palette, add some white, turquoise, and phthalo blue. With a flat brush, dip it in your water, make sure it isn’t too wet by tapping it on a paper towel or rag, dip it into your phthalo blue and paint on the bottom of your canvas with curved ‘U’ strokes, imagine painting a bowl shape with your paint.
The whole background will be painted this way so maintain the strokes when you go lighter! The phthalo blue should reach about 5-6 inches of your canvas, then use your turquoise for the middle part by using the same technique! Make sure you also blend the turquoise with the phthalo blue to make it look seamless!
Lastly, add white to the top part and use the same exact technique as you did with the other parts, you don’t have to worry if the blues mix with the white because that’s the effect we’re aiming for! Wash your brush and dry it really well so that you can create an illusion of light peeking through the top of your canvas, do this by dry brushing some white paint and creating downward strokes coming from the top! Once you’re done, make sure to dry your canvas really well because it’s time to create your seahorse!
Step 3: Create your Seahorse
With your white chalk, start creating an outline of your seahorse. To do this, you need to start by drawing the head by drawing a circle about 4 inches down the top of the canvas, the circle should be around 3 inches in diameter. After drawing your circle, draw a large and stretched ‘S’ shape starting from the head and down to the bottom. Then draw a spiral for the tail. Draw an inward curve that is on the other side of the S shape to create the back and the body should be complete. Then go back to the head and draw the snout, and add the back of the seahorse by creating spikes that curve inward and are connected, and the dorsal fin.
Create a lighter yellow shade by mixing titanium white and yellow pale on your palette, use this colour to paint the whole seahorse. Then for the spikes on the back use the plain yellow pale to make it look darker. Do this for the fin as well but use the mixed paint first for the base of the fin.
Videos » SEAHORSE Beginners Learn to paint Acrylic Tutorial Step by Step Day 27 #AcrylicApril2021
HOW TO PAINT A SEAHORSE AND UNDERWATER LIGHT Easy social paint night in you can enjoy from the comfort of your own home keeping it fun. This is the first Daily Painting course for Beginners who want a real acrylic painting step by step tutorial about how to paint better water in landscapes . Everything is 100% real time, multi Camera angles and fully explained so its easy to understand. YOU CAN PAINT THIS !! All Art lessons are brought to you by The Art Sherpa You can join our Live stream chats daily to connect with other painters just like you.
Difficulty meter level in Hoots :
02:45 Step 1 Colored Ground.
05:40 Step 2 Transfer Image
11:05 Step 3 Refining Layer of Water
14:41 Step 4 Underwater Lacing of Light
22:15 Step 5 Detail Underwater Lacing
28:25 Step 6 Gazing, Refining Water
30:50 Step 7 Block in Seahorse
36:10 Step 8 Value, Hue and Fiddly Bits
45:10 Step 9 More Shadows and Highlights
57:30 Step10 Refine Seahorse Details
1:04:05 Step11 FInal White Details and Dots
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11/12/21 10:39:18PM @cquinn :
I was going to rate this 3 hoots- all the little dots and the little tiny lines- but you get into a groove or the goldilocks moment and it isn’t too bad- I had to put 2 in for double the practice- maybe that’s why I thought it was a long painting! Silly!
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Paint Bubbles
This bubble painting technique is very similar to my “how to paint bubbles” tutorial! You can look at that for reference (only it is a very small condensed version of this).
Use your #4 round brush to paint white circles. These circles can be “lumpy” and not exactly round.
I did a column of bubbles above the seahorse’s snout. Then a few “here and there” all over. You can also paint small dots with the white.
Next rinse your brush and dry. Load it into medium magenta. Paint curves on the inside left and right sides (or top and bottom sides) of each of the bubbles.
Do this in one or two strokes.
Then rinse your brush and dry. Load it into the yellow. Paint yellow strokes on the opposite inside sides. Make sure to leave the outer edge of your bubbles white.
Then let your bubbles dry a bit Use titanium white to paint a “highlight” on each of the bubbles. Do this in one small curved stroke. It’s okay if you paint your highlight over the colors that you painted. Remember that bubbles are supposed to be “translucent” so don’t add too much color on them. Leave a lot of the blue from the ocean background showing through.
Next, paint a small “sparkle” on some of the bubbles. Paint little diagonal lines on the top edge.
Paint Seaweed
Load your palette with hooker’s green hue permanent, phthalo blue and titanium white. Use your #4 round brush to paint various heights of wavy lines. Try to make the line a little thicker on the bottom and rounded/ smaller on the tip. Add small amounts of water to the color to allow it to flow nicely.
I painted dark seaweed strands first by mixing a small amount the blue with the green.
Then mix white into your greens/blues to make lighter seaweed strands. Paint strands that overlap each other and some strands that overlap the seahorse’s tail.
Some strands go up very high! Simply make a variety of heights and colors by varying your greens, blues and whites.
Add Glitter (Optional)
This is an optional step that adds extra sparkle to your underwater painting! You can use any adhesive for this as long as it dries clear. Elmer’s glue would work and so would modpodge!
I used liquitex glazing medium.
Use your round brush to apply the medium wherever you want the glitter to stick.
Then sprinkle the glitter on and tap the excess off.
I did glitter mostly on the right side along the back of the seahorse. You can get creative and add in other places!
You can even paint a starfish and add glitter to that too! For the painting below, I used “medium magenta” for the starfish and added white glitter on it. Note: in this painting I also decided to loosely outline some of the ridges on the seahorse with black. That one is a different painting from the one demonstrated the other pictures of this tutorial.
