Painting Humpback Whales (Alphabet Superset Part 8)

Part 8: H - Humpback Whale

Hello! Here is the 8th instalment of the Alphabet Superset project. I am still behind in the project, but, I have caught up a bit, so here is part 8! If this is your first time here and you have no idea what the Alphabet Superset Project is or why this is part 8, the first post in the series might help. But also, here is a quick recap:

Since the first week of September, every week or so, I have been painting an Australian animal or (an animal that visits Australia) and preferably one I have my own photos of (or Scott has photos of). I am a few weeks behind (this should be K week, but I’m still working on I). I will continue doing this until April 2024 or when I finish as part of a project/challenge called the Alphabet Superset, the brainchild of Youtuber (among other things) Campbell Walker aka Struthless.

The idea is that every week I’ll paint a different animal in alphabetical order i.e. week 1= A, week 2= B, week 3= C etc. I’m not too bothered about keeping it to every week at the moment. Some weeks I’m able to get more in, and in other weeks, life takes over.

My main reasons are to have a consistent means of slowly painting all the wonderful animals I’ve been lucky to see while we’d been camping around Australia in 2021 and 2022 (with a short stint in Darwin) and on other little walks and nature excursions.

To find out more about the project, the best source is the Alphabet Superset page itself or Campbell Walker’s video about it. To see more of my paintings as part of this challenge and my progress, you can search for Alphabet Superset on this site or click on the Alphabet Superset category here or above.

Now, here’s part 8: Humpback Whales

What are Humpback Whales?

Humpback Whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) are gorgeous creatures that are seen around the world. In Australia, each year, they migrate to warmer waters along both the west and east coasts to breed.

Growing up to 18 metres long, with an average length of about 13.5 metres, they are huge! They have a characteristic broad rounded head with knobbly bits protruding from their heads. They very long flippers - up to 5 metres, and about 25-33% of their total length!

Their upperparts tend to be dark grey to a blueish black, and the underside of their flippers are always white but their throats and the underside of their body can be a mixture of black and in often patterns that are attributable to individual whales.

They often breach and they’re breaching displays and movements are magnificent to watch! For such large creatures, they’re impressively graceful.

References and for a bit more information about the Humpback Whale:

Where had we seen them?

This one deviates from all the others in this series, where Scott and I had seen the animals in the last few years together. I’d first seen Humpbacks off the coast here in Perth way back in 2013. Scott and I saw them up close in Tonga in 2018 when we were able to swim with them. It was a truly magical experience! The photos from our Tonga trip are the ones I used for this week’s painting. I think it still counts :D

All my references photos in this case were based off Scott’s photos this time as I did not have a camera capable of taking underwater photos and videos at the time.

Why Paint them?

This was one of the easiest decisions in this series. The first thing that came to mind for H was the Humpback whale, and I’ve not painted many ocean creatures, so here was a wonderful opportunity to paint these gorgeous creatures we were lucky to swim with a few years ago.

It was a literal life-highlight, and a wonderful excuse to finally paint these stunning creatures!

Process - Part 1: Find Photo References, Sketch

As mentioned, all my reference photos here were thanks to Scott.

Deciding on the background was easy once I knew what I wanted to paint. The background would just the ocean behind and to get a sense of texture and movement, I would mix white with the blue to make the background a litte more dynamic.

Going through the photos, I knew I wanted to paint the young whale being playful and breaching/doing flips so when I saw a great photo of that, that part of the composition was decided.

The other whale was harder as we had so many great shots and photos and experiences. I tried a few different configurations and sizes of whales before settling on focusing on the eye of mum looking at the camera, which also gave me the opportunity to show the odd head shape of these creatures.

I used Procreate on the iPad to sketch and test various layouts.

Process - Part 2: Work out Colours, Paint the Background, Start Painting

This painting had far fewer colours than most of my previous paintings in this series. It gave me an excuse to use two colours I hadn’t used yet: Kujakuao/Hummingbird Blue and Seiboku/Blue Black from the Holbein Irodori Winter set.

*I keep forgetting to take more process photos. Here is the first one I took, with the whales already sketched in.*

For the Background Water:

Kujakuao/Hummingbird Blue (Holbein Irodori Artists' Gouache)
Primary White (Holbein Artists’ Gouache)

Whales:

Seiboku/Blue Black (Holbein Irodori Artists’ Gouache)

Rikyuunezu/Rikyu Grey (Holbein Irodori Artist’s Gouache)
Primary White (Holbein Artists’ Gouache)

Once I’d painted the background, I roughly outlined the whales in gouache.

Process - Part 3: Painting the Whales, Adjusting as I go

Compared to some of the other pieces, detail wasn’t the challenge with this one, but rather getting the shape and proportions of the whales right. I did still need my trusty 20/0 Princeton Velvetouch Liner for the lines on the whales’ bodies and the 5/0 Princeton Velvetouch Spotter for the details on the larger whale, but they’re becoming pretty standard in my paintings now.

Process - Part 4: Refine, Refine, Refine

This part didn’t take long this time. Once the whales were done, it was just a matter of getting some additional detail and then adding the final touches of the white dots to show the reflective particle in the ocean.

And here it is, finished!

Lessons Learnt & Thing I Might Try Going Forward

I haven’t painted marine animals much before, but I really had a lot of fun with this one so hopefully there’ll be more down the track. There is at least one more underwater painting in this series. It was a lot of fun and surprisingly easier than I thought it woudl be.
I’m absolutely loving the style this series is slowly bringing out for me now.

Next: I - Intermediate Egret

I was a hard one to decide on not because there were a ton of choices, but because there wasn’t one that obviously stood out. I’d painted Christmas Island Imperial Pigeons a bunch of ways in the past, and while I’d definitely love to paint them again in gouache, I wasn’t that enthused about revisiting them for this series. In the end I went with the Intermediate Egret. Just because something is common and we’ve seen it a lot doesn’t make it any less cool, so next week, Intermediate Egret!