Beach Quote, Beach Words, Beach Background

Beach quote, beach words, beach background … bringing the beach to you who long for the beach but cannot go and you who went but wish you were still there.

Oh … that beach still calls … those waves still beckon … so let’s continue with our beach theme a little longer. How about some lettering styles for a beach quote or a few beach words. Then we’ll bring in some beach color with a watercolor background. Calligraphy and watercolor, my favorite mix.

I have really been missing the beach this year. These summery projects help me feel a few moments of that relaxing beach feeling, the glint of a beach memory. I hope they bring some vacation reminders and cheerful thoughts to your day too.

I’ll walk you through the background and quote I chose and include a video at the end of the post so you can see the whole process in motion.

Gather your supplies.

Watercolor and Calligraphy Supplies — Gather your watercolor and calligraphy supplies.

Beach Background

This background is meant to be fun and free. Be as loose as you want with the edges, it only adds to the feel of the sky and water on the finished piece.

Start with turquoise ink. This ink is intense, so I always water it down when I paint with it. It is my favorite turquoise to use when working with sea colors. Sometimes, I add a touch of Winsor & Newton’s Intense Blue for a darker sea look.

Here I used it for the sky. Remember to keep the bottom edge wet as you move to the next part.

(Hint: Ink is not always as lightfast as watercolor but sometimes has a much more intense color. When something is lightfast, you can display it in a room without as much color loss over time. So this turquoise ink might lose some of it’s brilliant color over time.)

watercolor beach background sky — Keep the bottom edge of the sky wet so it blends with the ocean in the next step.

Continue with the loose feel as you paint the sea part of the beach background with Winsor & Newton Intense Blue. Leave a line of plain paper as you paint the ocean. Then, go back while both colors are still wet and lightly touch the sea color to the sky color. This will allow both colors to lightly bleed into each other.

watercolor beach background sea — After painting the ocean, lightly touch it to the sky to allow them to bleed into each other and blend.

When it dries, add a little bit of paint splatter with the darker blue color. You don’t have to, but I think it adds to the splashy wave feel when the piece is finished. For splatter, load a brush with some color and gently tap it on your finger or another brush, allowing the spray to fall onto your background.

Beach Background with Splatter — A little splatter adds a splash to the background.

Let it dry completely.

Beach Quote or Beach Words

Choose a beach quote or a collage of beach words.

Here are a few examples if you need ideas.

Beach quotes and beach words — Use one of these or experiment with your own.

I’ll go with “Beach air not a care.” It has a vacation feel.

I like to mix a couple of letter styles when I work with quotes. Two seems like a good balance for this quote without being too distracting. I’ll mix block letters with a loose calligraphy script.

When you have a design you like, sketch the letters in pencil. This helps me eliminate mistakes as I go over it in ink. Use Ziller ink to draw over your sketched quote.

I used block letters for part of the quote and a loose script for part of the quote because I wanted to overlap the sections and still set them apart.

Let the ink dry completely.

At this point, I can see that the two parts of the quote blend together a little too much and make it hard to read them separately. I want to make the block letters stand out so we know to read them first.

Mix just enough water with some Bleed Proof White so you can paint with it. Starting at the top of the letter S, paint wave caps on each letter using the lazy stippling watercolor technique (learn more about this technique in How to Use Stippling for Watercolor Texture.)