Help with realistic water

[kbArt]

Hi everyone! I'm quite new here, so I hope you guys can help me with a problem I have.

I've used a photograph as basis to practice painting water. The goal is to make it look as if he's controlling it (yes, waterbending ). I've been working and tweaking on it for a couple of hours but I can't seem to make it look realistic, especially in the shadowy areas.

Any ideas?

(hope the file isn't too big...)

[Vigil]

Try to match the colours in the dark areas with the waves in shadow down in the left corner. And the colours on the top of the wave breaking behind him on the areas in light.

[kbArt]

thank you! really appreciate the help, i'll try that. guess i'm worried it might practically become invisible that way...
i think the color is the main problem, but i feel like the texture is off as well? any insights on that?

[Amit Dutta]

What Vigil said, but also think about the structure of the water. At the moment it looks like hair, long and fibrous strands. Water rarely does this. I'm going to guess that you didn't gather ref of water doing various things and try and apply what might actually work in this situation. So get looking at ref.
Also, water reflects and refracts as well as casts shadows and I don't think you really addressed any of these in the water form itself and of the body on the water.

The image is very monotone, so if you deviate from the colours too much, it will look odd. You are aiming at integration, so stick with what is there.

[kbArt]

thank you! that's exactly the issue i'm having, it looks off. the thing is, though, i actually did work with various references. but i'm having trouble because i couldn't find anything where the water would be acting this way, probably because it's simply unnatural. so it would either look to foamy or too transparent and flat. whenever i tried to fix it and make it look more dynamic and "spiralling" this is what would happen. it always ends up looking fibrous...

and yes, i absolutely neglected the water's effects on its environment, thanks for pointing that out! i'm guessing this will be pretty hard to figure out too but i'll definitely work on it.

[Amit Dutta]

Hey man, was at a loose end, so I did this as an exercise to see what the components were and whether it was trickier than it looked
I went against my own advice and didn't use reference, but I think with some careful colour picking, picking the right brush for the job and using lighting effect layers well, you can come up with something that passes fairly quickly. This was about 15 minutes.

I flatpainted the major structure forms on one layer. Did the foamy splashy bits on another layer going hell for leather, erased out as needed. Dodge and burn on one layer to get subtle value shifts, and overlay layer to get the right colours. I paid particular attention to the highlight, midtone and dark tones of the waves to match. You could tone down the foaminess to get a more controlled kind of effect (which would effect the type of rendering on it...more reflection and refraction, transparency and form to the water) but the key thing to remember is that for it to read like water, it helps that it also acts as water even if it is in a clearly unnatural way.
Hope it helps

[kbArt]

wow, thanks! i like the way the foam turns out with this brush, i guess i should experiment with different brushes too. but mostly i like the colors, they work great together with the environment! comparing this to my version helps a lot, i can see where my problems lie... i will work on it some more as soon as i can!