Wave illustration simple

This surf art tutorial is brought to you by Bob Penuelas, an illustrator famous for his surfing comic strip, Wilbur Kookmeyer. Created by Bob Penuelas in 1986, Wilbur Kookmeyer was a regular two-page feature in Surfer Magazine, gaining a cult following in the surfing community.

You probably spent a lot of time in high school, or at work, daydreaming and doodling a thousand perfect cartoon waves in your notebook. This tutorial will help you change your throw-away wave doodles into works of art you’ll want to keep forever.

Remember, there are many ways to draw a wave, this tutorial only covers a few techniques, but hopefully, with these simple pointers, you’ll discover many more ways to draw a wave. Have fun!

P.S. If you’re looking for inspiration, check out these surfing illustrations.

Drawing a basic wave

The following illustrations and captions by Bob Penuelas take you through the basic steps of drawing a wave.

Step 1

Sketch in the basic shape of the curl, spray, foam and base of the wave.

Step 2

Add an extra line running parallel and below the curl line to define the thickness of the lip.

Step 3

Add a flow line starting at the lip and curve it around to suggest roundness of the liquid lip. Continue that same flow line around with a half oval down to the base of the wave to show the concave curve of the wave face.

Step 4

Add the rest of the flow lines. Gradually make each flow line less steep as you move away from the curl, to show the tapered shoulder. Continue the flow lines into the tube to show hollowness.

Step 5

Add simplified spray with thin wispy lines. Add the foam explosion with a series of explosion lines getting bigger as they moving away. Maybe add a foam ball in the tube. Round off the foam at the base of the wave so it won’t look flat.

Step 6

Add shading on the wave face with smaller contour lines. Gradually make the lines darker as you get further into the tube. Use crosshatching to add more depth. Lightly shade foam and base of the wave. Maybe shade the sky a little, too.

Tips

• Don’t get caught up trying to draw every foam bubble, you’ll go nuts.
• Using a sharp eraser, keep a defined white line under the lip so it looks separate from the wave face.
• Add white highlights on the lip with your eraser to give it sparkle.

The importance of perspective

Drawing a basic wave can be fun, but after a while it can get boring if you are merely following the same formula over and over again. The key to breaking out of this potential rut is achieved by drawing waves from different angles. There is only one way to successfully create a variety of angles and that is by using the basic principles of perspective. The two basic ingredients in perspective are the horizon line (your eye level) and the imaginary vanishing points. By merely changing the position of these ingredients in your image you’ll be amazed at the variety of waves you can create. See the two sketches below:

A paddler’s view

Low horizon. Vanishing point off left:

A pier view

High horizon. Vanishing point left:

A view into the tube

Additional variations can be achieved by moving the horizon line high or low and by moving the vanishing point right or left. Give it a try:

A view out of the tube

A high horizon line and one vanishing point on the left makes it look as if your face is against the face of the wave and you’re racing for daylight (see first two images below). And if you move the vanishing point to the right then more of the face becomes visible (see last two images below):

A view from a pier

A high horizon line with two vanishing points off to the right and left makes it appears as though you’re viewing the wave from a pier, looking down on the wave:

A paddler’s eye view

A paddler’s eye view can be accomplished by placing the horizon line extremely low. Both vanishing points are located outside of the image border, one to the left and one to the right:

A bird’s eye view

A bird’s eye view can be accomplished by moving the horizon line up and completely off the image. The two vanishing points are positioned way out to the right and left:

A down the point view

A view looking down the point can also be achieved by moving these ingredients around:

Various scenes

With perspective, you can now create line-up scenes, with multiple waves. It could be a reef pass, a beach break or a point break Add land in the background or in the foreground to give the scene some depth. See the four sketches below:

Different types of waves

Don’t forget about hollow waves, freight-trains, slow-churning or paper-thin waves. The possibilities are endless:

Peaks

Avoid drawing a peak by merely attaching two mirror image waves together. The right and the left are the same yet they are drawn differently.

Add surfers

Don’t forget to add surfers to your waves, whether you draw them regular or goofy foot, backside or frontside, you soon realize that there are endless combinations. See the three sketches below:

A surfer doing a cutback on a wave:

A surfer riding a big wave:

A side profile drawing of a surfer riding a barrelling wave:

If you enjoyed this tutorial, please share it with your friends and followers. And share your drawings with us on Instagram or Twitter.

Curated by Bob Penuelas on Jun 24, 2008

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Drawing water is not always simple. Drawing a vector wave can also be complicated if you are not 100% sure on how to achieve that. In this drawing lesson, I will show you how to draw a simple cartoon wave using mostly transparency and a gradient fill effect.

There are many ways to draw water using a vector software and in my case, I love to create simple effects using only the most basic tools.

Some will prefer to add more tones of blue, others will choose to add more transparency and more layers. Once again, feel free to experiment and hopefully, you will find a style that you will apply on all your future creations.

Besides the first step, you will find two images for each step of this tutorial. The first image displays only the changes or addition that you must perform on the illustration while the second image is the result of this addition. This way, it will be easier for you to notice all the changes that are made from one step to another.

Step 1

In this first step, create two shapes using two different tones of blue. The wave should be drawn on the shape that is in front on your artwork. Make sure that the shape on the back is the one that is drawn with a darker tone of blue.

Step 2

In the second step, it's time to add some gradient effect using two additional shapes. As you can see on both images above, you must place one shape on each of the two shapes that you have already created in the previous step.

These two new shapes have both a gradient fill effect and transparency apply to them. Notice that for the transparency effect, the lighter side is on top of the shape.

Step 3

Next, it's now time to give a little volume to our vector wave. I have added four additional shapes which have both a gradient and transparency effect.

Only the shape inside the wave is filled with a transparency effect that gives a lighter color to the top of the shape. For the three other shapes, it is important to fade the bottom part in the previous shapes for a better effect.

Step 4

If you want to make your vector wave more visible, you can add a few outlines on the most important areas of your drawing. You don't need to add a line on each wave. Only a few lines are sufficient to enhance your illustration and make it more readable.

Step 5

Finally, for this last step, you can also add a few thick lines to create some reflections. Once again, don't draw too many lines similar to these ones.

A drawing that is too loaded is not necessarily more enjoyable. Finding the right balance between something too simple or too complicated is very hard sometimes. You need to try a few things before getting it right.

So there you have it! Drawing a nice vector wave is not too hard if you follow these steps carefully. Just play around with your gradient and transparency tool until you are comfortable with them. Drawing water with a vector software is pretty cool once you know how to do so!

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