"Hello Wave"

This work was inspired by a coral reef. I used some photos taken while on holiday with an underwater camera as a reference. I enjoy looking at the reef in shallow water and how the diffracted light appears through the water.

I applied watercolour paint for the base layer, accentuating the blue where the reef meets deeper water. I focused on the variations in the watercolour paint. I used some pencil to further emphasise the broad shapes of the composition. They were used as the guide for filling out the shapes of colour with small loops repeated and stacked with an acrylic paint pen.

I briefly studied the form of a barrel wave using reference photos. I applied a combination of three colours for the foam, deep water and shadows of the wave. The finer contours were represented in the alignment of the stacked loops.