I am in need of some help please. I have a couple of projects that I am going to be working on where I will need to depict water. What are good colors to use for painting the water to make it look realistic?

Most of my projects are painted OD green, German Dark Grey or Africa Mustard and I never have them in the water so that is why I am asking the experts here. The ocean is new territory for me.

Thank you,

HARV

just use a few varrying shades of blue, another good color is kind of a muddy green A lot of this depends on what kind of medium you are using too. I've seen plaster, the liquid resin / gel stuff and even tinfoil. A lot depends on if you are doing shorline or the deep blue sea too.

...or Pacific of Atlantic oceans

Thanks for the replies.

One of my projects is going to be the ironclads Monitor and Merrimac facing each other.

The other is going to be a Russian flying boat that was produced between WWI and WWII. So I am not sure where to have it placed.

Thanks again for the help.

HARV

Speaking as an oil painter who's spent some time observing such things the color of the sea depends a great deal on the color of the sky, so while you'd probably have some explaining to do if you painted your sea bright orange it wouldn't necessarily be inaccurate.

However you're probably better off taking the advice above and going with blues, greens, and grays... which specific ones isn't terribly important.. The key, I think, is to vary it a bit. Paint a board one shade of blue and it's going to look like a blue shingle, but toss in a slightly different shade each time you empty your brush and you'll have something more convincing.

Well,Ive only done water once, but it turned out pretty good i think ..
I started with white Das Pronto, and painted it, using craft paints , splotchy green and blue ...it looked like dogvomit..lol
then I made a black/blue wash and painted the whole base about 3 or four times ,watching as it got darker and darker.
Once I got it where I wanted I drybrushed the wavecrests with white and the black/blue..
I then painted a few coats of straight FUTURE floor polish on ..then painted in the foamcrest again a bit ....then cleaned up with more future..
you can see pics of it in the Pre-Drednaught campaign thread..

Thank you everyone for your replies and help. I really appreciate your assistance. Now I can proceed with my projects with more confidence.

Thanks again,

HARV