Tiny tips: Water: Reflections

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Second tutorial about painting water, after waves - see link below.
Reflections are not so hard to do as long as you don't want them extra-fancy, close up, and on difficult water. It seems to me that reflections have odd contrasts because parts lighter than the water reflect much, much better than the ones darker than the water, those seem more like shadows. As always, looking at lots of references will help in painting perfect reflections. It may seem like so much work, but painting the reflection separately instead of flipping really pays off, and makes the picture seem much less flat.

Mirrors works pretty much the same of course, except they perfectly reflect without colour change and in greater detail and depth.

First part about painting water: Tiny tips #14: Water: Waves
In the next part, I'll be talking about the colour of water. It's not just blue, you know

"Ranarh's tiny tips" is a collection of iddy-biddy tutorials, each containing small bites of advice anyone can chew, aimed at beginner's level artists. They are not software-dependent. If there's a problem you have, something you feel someone should finally explain, or are just curious what I have to say on a particular artistic issue, feel free to tell me.


You'll find the whole Tiny Tips Collection, plus some full-grown walkthroughs in my tutorial section.