13 Top Tips For Painting Reflections

Whether you’re trying to depict shiny objects or watery mirror images, we’ve got a host of expert tips and lessons from the masters to help you out

1 CHOOSE SUPPORTS CAREFULLY

Consider your support carefully before beginning. If you’re painting with oils or acrylics and want a smoother finish, try using a prepared wooden panel or a fine cotton or even linen canvas.

With watercolour, the texture of your paper can have a huge bearing on how the paint behaves too. A rough paper can be useful for showing the sparkling highlights of light on water as the paint fails to settle in some of the dinks in the surface, while the hotpressed paper is very smooth, allowing for wet-in-wet washes that could suggest softer reflections. A coldpressed (or NOT) paper is a good mid-point between the two.

2 STUDY THE OPACITY EXPERT TIP

– Kate Brinkworth: “Whatever the subject matter, choosing the right paint can really help, especially with reflections. I try to think quite literally with paint: transparent paints for transparent objects and opaque paints for more solid areas. (Most paints contain information about opacity on the tube or packaging.)

“A transparent colour can be thinned down with oil to allow a white background to show through or to glaze over the top. I avoid pure white, instead using this technique to achieve paler tones. This can really help to show the qualities that a reflection possesses.”

3 WORK DOWNWARDS

Reflections in moving water tend to become more abstracted the further they and the subject gets from the surface of the water. They also appear to come “towards” the viewer.