Sea Turtle Painting

Daniela Roule Plocková has a fondness for creating illustrations, and we took a liking to her creation! We're excited to be able to provide you with a tutorial on one of her beautiful paintings. Have a pleasant afternoon, and let's start painting sea turtles with us.

You'll need high gsm cardstock paper, which doesn't get soaked easily and remains flat after drying. Then prepare round brushes of various sizes, aniline colors from Koh-i-noor Hardtmuth, and white watercolor. Another necessity is clear water and a piece of cloth for drying brushes.

As a reference, you can use a photo of a sea turtle. It's better not to sketch a picture beforehand when working with aniline colors, as a potential erasing would disrupt the structure of cardstock paper, and the painting might blur. Therefore, do only a rough sketch with the lightest color of your aniline colors palette, which can always be easily repainted or carefully erased with a wet brush.

Then it's all up to your imagination. As we make a painting in a naive style, there's no need to be afraid of playing with colors and the picture as such.

First, use a larger brush to capture more extensive areas in which you then complete any shapes with a thinner brush. Color these shapes in different shades, dots, lines, or simply anything that crosses your mind. Everything also depends on the amount of water on the brush. It's better to dry the brush sufficiently as it's always possible to lessen intensity well afterward with a slightly wet brush or make it more intense with a darker shade of the given color.

After drying, you can make outlines with colors of your choice over already painted areas. Here as well applies the rule of more paint, less water, and just a damp brush.

The same applies to shading. With gentle brush strokes, darken with different shades of colors the places that are supposed to be darker and also give the painting a spatial dimension. After drying, make an outline with, e.g., black paint.

For points and outlines, where you need white color to be very distinctive and visible, use watercolor paint instead. It has a thick consistency, therefore covers well, and stands out beautifully on the anilines base.

Aniline colors have one great advantage. If we need to lighten something, we just need to use a damp brush and gently move the color to the edge or carefully erase it. Here we replace traditional erasing with clear water and patience.

After several hours we have a varied underwater world. Blank cardstock paper becomes a beautiful painting thanks to an infinite number of shades and rich, distinctive colors of aniline colors.

Will you launch into it as well? Then, on Koh-i-noor Hardtmuth online store, don't forget to add to cart:

Pop Aquarell paper pad designed just for wet techniques, such as aniline colors or watercolor paints. Sheets of 250 gsm and fine texture turn even an ordinary sketch into a beautiful picture.

Especially for capturing fine details, you'd appreciate aquarelle colored pencils or luxurious Wax Aquarell oil pastels, one of our premium products loved by artists worldwide!

When painting with watercolors, you should also pay attention to the right brush. On our online store, you can purchase high-quality Squirrel brushes with soft hair suitable for this type of painting.