Sand Castle Drawing with a Loose Watercolor Background

Begin your sand castle drawing with a loose, sandy watercolor background. Then follow the steps to drawing the castle with a calligraphy pen.

Okay, I admit. I’m missing the beach. 

Don’t get me wrong, I love the rolling hills and low mountains that I call home, but it’s been several years since we were able to take a beach vacation.  And I’m longing to go again.

When I go to the beach, I can relax and enjoy the salty smell, the tickling breeze, the warm sun, digging my toes in the sand while I read a book, the rhythmic sound of the crashing waves, the cool water lapping at my toes as I walk and look for shells, sand dollars or shark teeth (depending on the beach) … sigh … 

I guess I’ll just have to bring the beach here this year. 

In the last tutorial, we visited the beach with a funny Happy Birthday Beach Drawing, so today we’ll continue drawing the beach with a sand castle drawing. (I’ll walk you through the tutorial first and finish with a video to show you what my process looked like in motion.)

What you need:

• Water, masking tape, and a paper towel
• Here’s a post about basic Watercolor Supplies for Beginners.
• In this tutorial, I used
  • Yellow Ochre mixed with
  • Burnt Umber from Winsor & Newton Cotman Sketcher’s Pocket Box and
  • a little Coliro Gold Pearl for sandy glitter
• Ziller Soot Black Calligraphy Ink
• Calligraphy pen and nib

Loose Watercolor Background

When working with a lot of water, I always tape my paper to a hard surface first. It helps prevent buckling as it dries (it will still buckle when it’s wet).

Before you start painting, think about the basic shape that you want your sand castle drawing to have. We’re not looking for a perfect background, so don’t worry about sizing or trying to match anything.

You can start with plain water before tapping paint into it or you can use a well watered down mixture of paint and water like I did.

I mixed Yellow Ochre, Burnt Umber and a little glittery Gold Pearl until I “saw” sand in the color. Mix and test it on scrap paper until you find your color.

Paint a loose sand castle on your paper. You can make peaks or leave white areas to your heart’s content.

Let it dry completely, then add some splattered sand by loading your brush and tapping it on your finger. I also made some of the splatters a little bigger with my paint brush.

Mine looked like this when it dried.

Let it dry completely. Then you can carefully remove the tape.

Sand Castle Drawing

A sand castle can look any way you dream it up. But for this sand castle, we’ll use a series of repeated similar shapes and try to make it look symmetrical. Feel free to organize them in a way that feels pleasing to you. Below, you can see the shapes used in this sand castle drawing.

To put the pieces together, let’s work in layers, starting with the bottom of the sand castle. 

Layer 1 is the main part of the castle between two towers. This layer has slits for windows to protect the outer wall of the castle in the case of an enemy invasion. 

Layer 2 is the second level. I imagine dinner or dancing happening in this part of the castle. It’s a great place to add some decoration because it’s more protected from attack, being set back from the outer walls. Add some tall windows or arched doorways.

Layer 3 makes the castle even more interesting. Here we draw turrets with tall, pointy roofs. These might be private bedrooms or cells for isolated prisoners. Start the tallest tower here too. 

Layer 4 Add one last turret to complete the castle. 

Here are the steps:

When you have it sketched onto your watercolor background, go over it with Ziller ink and your calligraphy pen. I like to keep thicker strokes to one side and lighter strokes to the other side to give it a little shadow. 

And it’s finished!

Look how that sand sparkles!

From beginning to end.

Sometimes watching the process helps make things clearer, so here is a video of the tutorial.

I hope you enjoyed another trip to the beach and find yourself building … er … drawing many sand castles.

Do you want printable worksheets with steps, background only, and a finished castle drawing to use while you paint your own? How to draw printable worksheets to Draw a Sand Castle are found in the Products Section.