Seagulls, Online Painting Lessons

$15.00USD

Adding seagulls to your coastal paintings adds a charming spark of life and interest.

We’ll paint a quick beach background and learn about adding seagulls in the distant sky, and flying and standing in the midground and foreground.

Discover how to place seagulls in natural groupings, how to use atmospheric perspective, how to draw their beautiful shapes more accurately, how to trial them on a painting with no risk, and how to allow for different lighting conditions.

Follow me step by step or use the resource photos to paint something more your own. Enjoy!

Learn About

How to paint a quick beach scene

Painting flying

standing and distant seagulls

Tips for painting more accurately

Creating natural groupings

and LOTS more!

When does the lesson start?

Whenever you’re ready! The lesson is available online any time, and your access to the lesson never expires.

How long is this lesson available to me?

As long as you need! Your access never expires, so you can come back again and again.

Can I download this video?

Sorry, no you can’t download the video. This is to avoid piracy. You’ll always be able to view the video on this site though.

Teacher

Richard is a talented full time artist, who loves painting and teaching.

Student Painting

"A Day at Sea" Oil on Canvas by Cheryl Gober

Some great work in here Cheryl, especially your buddy on the rail who's really outstanding (punny) compared to his fellows. Beautifully subtle modelling of form there. The other seagulls are a step down in terms of drawing which is a shame because I can see you've slaved over them. You are right - 'who knew they were so tricky!'. It'll only take a few more of these and you'll have it nailed. It'd be worth your while to do lots of little pencil sketches of them to really get your head around their complex forms. You struck a home run with your buddy already so you know you can do it again. If it were me painting this I'd want to zoom in on him and have hime standing on the life preserver. Great subject!

Student Painting

"Gulls at East Freemantle, WA" Oil on Canvas by Mark Price

Nice composition Mark and strong colour use. Would like to see a little more colour variation in the water (some green shifts?) and particularly an overall slight colour change from top to bottom, which would give it more depth. Good seagulls but it shows you the importance of getting a photo without frontal light because it gives them no interesting shadows to work with and flattens the form. I would be looking for a way to separate the birds, like with shadow on the bird behind or colour change on the back of the front bird. Their feet need looking at too - they're too small at the moment. A few tweaks and you're there.

Student Painting

"Sailing the Skies" 8x11" Oil on Paper by Mairo Piroue

Great feeling to this one Mairo with beautiful bird shapes. Did you crop the photo a little hard or is that gull on the ground just living on the edge? Beware the slanted horizon, although I have seen a slanted aspect used well in other aerial flying images giving a sense of movement and freedom from the ground. I would suggest that if that's your intention, to make it even more slanted so that it becomes a feature, and to not have anyone standing on the ground because they'd look like they were about to fall over. Anyway that's an aside. You've done a great job!