When choosing to paint this lovely sea turtle, I was inspired both by the warmth of its coloring against the turquoise water, and the serene expression on its face. I also wanted to be able to capture some of the light hitting it from the top as well as the shadows from underneath.
To begin, I traced the general outline of the turtle onto watercolor paper, so that I would have the shape and proportions correct. Then I painted a watery background using ultramarine turquoise and ultramarine blue. I added salt and water droplets to the damp paint as it was drying, to suggest some texture at the bottom of the ocean floor. When this was dry, I used a pale wash of ultramarine blue mixed with a touch of burnt sienna, to paint in the form shadows on the turtle's body. This creates the sense of roundness in its form, which will be underneath all of the surface details that I paint later.
Next, I painted a thin wash of Buff Titanium over the main shell sections of the turtle, to allow it to have a more off-white background, rather than the raw white of the paper. Having already sketched in the placement of the scales and skin texture, I was then able to paint in the body and shell of the turtle section by section. I used various shades of yellow ochre, burnt sienna, burnt umber and sepia to do this, looking carefully back and forth at the reference photo to get the markings correct.
Here you can see the wash of Buff Titanium that I placed on each shell section, as well as the white of the paper showing between them.
I tried to indicate roundness and the way the body dipped into shadow, by using darker and cooler colors in the shadow areas, blending the darker areas gradually into the lighter areas.
This painting was great fun to do, and I hope you have enjoyed reading a bit about my process here. Please do feel free to comment or ask questions; I am always happy to answer!
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