Inspired Watercolor for Beginners

1. 01 Introduction: Hi, everyone. Welcome to inspired watercolor for beginners. My name is Diane, and I've been teaching art for 12 years and making art most of my life. And I love it. I hope to inspire you to love it as well. We're going to be making a painting of seashells today in water color. This is meant for beginners. So if you've never painted with watercolor before, you're in the right place. Please take my watercolor mixing class as a great foundation for the seashell painting class, especially if you've never painted with watercolor before or just done it very little. It's just a really good way to get comfortable with how to mix colors and how to achieve the colors you want to make. So this class is designed for people who have never or very rarely painted with watercolor before, especially if you've ever experienced frustration with watercolor. This is a great class for you, because I'm gonna walk you through very slowly and carefully all the steps you need to achieve success. This class is not designed for artists who have worked with watercolor before and would like a challenge, So the skills you're going to gain in today's class are how to mix water colors, how to control the intensity of your watercolors and a judge. How much color to mix, how to create textures and watercolor such as the line work in this top show, the soft shadows on the sides or even the softening of lines in the bottom show. We're going to be working with a lot of blending techniques and your most importantly gonna learn how to control watercolor and also how to let go of control of watercolor. I can think of no greater medium toe. Learn the dichotomy of those two things, all at once, wrapped up into a neat little package. Go ahead and get your company slippers on and your cup of tea and let's get started. 2. 02 Mindset: so to get you in the right mindset. I just have a few things I want to talk about. Watercolor is unpredictable, and I just want to encourage you to embrace that and let it be what it is. I'm going to show you have ways to control it. But even though you know how to control it, there's certain things you just can't control. And it's kind of a great metaphor for the human condition, actually. But be kind to yourself. Give yourself hugs. It's a wonderful experience and, um, just enjoy it. See it as an experience. You'll thing. If you happen to be a more product oriented person, do the best you can to put that aside and make this a process oriented experience. My just think you'll have a lot more fun if you do it with that mindset. Also, I'd like to encourage you to watch each short section of the seashells class first and then just go back and actually paint along with me just to give you a little bit of orientation before you actually attempt each section by yourself. And you can take this class over and over again. You can make multiple copies of the same image, or you can stop halfway through and start over. If you want it to your class, you can do whatever you'd like. I'm going to be making some mistakes in this course, as you probably will, too. And as I make them, I'm gonna walk you through how you can fix them or adapt to them or adjust them. But because you and I are doing the same painting at different paces in times you're not gonna make the same mistakes. I am at the same time. So if I'm fixing a mistake, don't feel like you have to fix it, too, if you didn't make the same mistake. But you can have that tool in your tool belt for later if you do happen to make the same mistake, if you happen to try this painting several times, I expect a different result every time. I've made this painting three or four times and each one looks really different, and that's part of the beauty of art, part of the beauty of watercolor. Also, make sure you download the sample of the painting so that you have it to color match with and remember that anyone can paint watercolor like anything baking bread tying shoes. Wearing wigs is a skill, and it's something you acquire. And some things are easy to do, and other things are more difficult or take more time. Watercolor does tend to take a little more time, so just be patient. But remember that you can paint anybody can pain. It's just takes practice and Leslie have fun. That's what this is all about, so let's get to it. 3. 03 Good To Know: so some things that are good to know before we even picked up the brush are that your water will probably get muddy several times during this class. So go ahead and change it whenever it feels like to dirty. I'm gonna talk about when it's OK to have dirty water or dirty ish water, and it's usually when you're mixing early dark color and it's not gonna show. But it's better to err on the side of having clean water than muddy water. And the same goes for your towel. Your sponge. If your towel your sponge feels like it's getting kind of muddy or dirty, flip the towel over. Get a new towel. You can rinse and squeeze your sponge out in the sink, whatever it takes to just feel like you have a clean surface to soak up your extra water from your brush. And then, lastly, if you feel like you want to stop in the middle of the class, you can do that. Your paints can dry out over a period of days or weeks or months or years, even whatever you'd like to do, and you can reinvigorate them by just adding water and starting them up again. If they do dry up completely, you may end up having to mix a little bit more if the evaporation process took too much of your color away. But it's just nice to know that you have that leisure of putting it away and coming back at another time if you feel so inspired, so let's get to it. 4. 04 Materials: So we're now going to talk about what materials you need for this class. You need your water color mixing tray with several small positive. It's best to have one with large pots to just in case we end up needing more area to squeeze out color or if we decide to mix a lot of color. But if you just have one with small ones, that's perfectly fine. You need a jar of water you need your watercolor paints. A set of tubes with 10 to 12 different options is a great choice. I don't like to have too many because it's nice to be able to mix your own colors, and you need a couple of brushes that your main one you're gonna be using for all your mixing and most of your painting is this one. It's a round watercolor brush. It's about a size eight, and most brushes have a little number right here that will tell you it's it's an aide or whatever size it is. This one doesn't happen to have it. But if you're buying a brush, get a size eight. If you happen to have watercolor brushes, something close to a size eight is fine around Rush just means that shape on the tip is like that, and it's got a little bit of a point at the tip. And then you also need a detail brush. Just a very pointy, tiny little brush size zero size 10 are 10 slash zero or five slash zero. Are all good options A. Zilong Is it just a teeny little lining brush? We're gonna be doing lots of fine details with it, such as thes lines on the shells. You need a piece of watercolor paper £140 is a good standard weight. You can also dio heavier than that if you prefer. Do get cold press watercolor paper because it has this nice kind of smooth texture on it, which is great for this project. We're about to do it. The watercolor really clings to it and absorbs into it very well. You need a piece of cardboard or drawing board to tape it to so that you can pick it up in maneuvering. If you need to a few pieces of tape to tape tape it down. Some test strips, which are just cut up pieces of this watercolor paper or if you just have some scrap paper , that's fine. It's just the strip format is a little easier to test and hold up your color to check it against things you need an old towel or a sponge to soak up extra water. You can have a small picture of water. It's optional if you want. Teoh, you probably remember this from the mixing video. We just use it to pour water into the cups rather than using the brush to dip and scrape. Dipping and scraping is my preferred method, because you could be more controlled with how much water you put in. But if you want the picture, that's fine. Ah, hair dryer is a great thing to have for this class. You don't need it. But if you don't have it, you're going to be doing some amount of pausing the video, waiting for your painting to dry and then proceeding. Once it's completely dry, the hair dryer will obviously expedite that, and then you need a pencil to draw your frame and your shells. I have a very dark drawing pencil for the purpose of you being able to see what I'm doing on the video, but you go ahead and use nothing darker than just a regular standard Number two pencil. If you have a lighter growing pencil, that's even better because we really want your lines to be very light and delicate on the paper. You also, lastly, need a ruler or a T square to draw your frame with. If your paper is cut really square. The T square is very convenient to make sure that your frame is also really square. But if you just have a ruler, that's fine, too. 5. 05 Techniques Intro: Hi there. Welcome to the prep course for inspired watercolor for beginners. And today we're going to explore some techniques that are going to be necessary to make this beautiful painting in the inspired watercolor for beginners. Course what we're gonna do in this short course, the prep course is gonna look something like this. It's just a series of practice techniques that we're going to use to make the seashells the techniques. We're gonna practice our wet into wet, and that is a technique that looks something like one of these where you have water first and then paint. We use that for these shadows on the shells as well as some of the softer colors in the shells. We're going to do some fine lines like these, the texture on the top show and the very thin lines on the middle show. We're just gonna practice that with a very tiny brush. We're also going to do thicker blended lines like on the bottom shell. Here, you'll see that on the the techniques card. And finally we learned how to blend edges to make very soft edges, and we're going to use that several times in the sea shells painting. I hope you enjoy it. 6. 06 Techniques Mixing: So now we're going to just makes a really bright color. So to do that, you can do the depend scrape that we did in the mixing class. You want to fill this up about 3/4 of the way so that we have plenty of color, and then we're gonna use this color to make a lighter version of the same color, so we'll end up with just two colors. Just do a simple color. One color squeeze out of the tube is perfectly fine. This coat this class is not about matching colors. It's about painting techniques. So I'm going to use Dark Red since it's gonna show up really nicely on film. And I really like Ridge. Then I squeeze quite a bit of it into their because I really want to have a nice break color. So I'm gonna mix it all around, get rid of any lumps, lots of lumps, air stuck on the brush. I'm gonna really get rid of those. There's a lot stuck on the bridge. Well, I'm going to scrape it to get them all off and then go back and make some more and I'm going to test it. I just want to make sure you have a nice dark color that is nice and dark. Soak it up. Now, I'm just gonna take one brush full of that and scrape it into another cup and add a bunch of water. So I have a nice light version of the same thing. Mix that up, scrape test, and that's probably a little too light. We do want to be able to see it, so I'm gonna add some more darker red parents touch, get more color. So I rinse in touch, remember, because I don't want to add water to my dark color that will make my dark color lighter. That's getting better. I'm gonna add a little bit more. We just want to make sure the two colors are very far apart. We don't want them toe look alike, but we do want to be able to really see that light color, too. Then that looks pretty good 7. 07 Wet into Wet: So now we're just going to explore the techniques that are gonna be necessary for us to make this painting in the watercolor seashells class. The first technique we're gonna do is called wet into wet, and we're gonna pull some color off after putting the color in. So this if you can see on each of these shelves there, the base color is a very, very light yellow. So that's where we're going to use. This technique is just the first coat of light yellow. So for this, we're gonna use our light color that we just mixed. Get a nice big brush full of paint and paint in just an area. Doesn't have to be a circle. It could be a square. Whatever shape you want, rinse touch, and then you can you can either pick up your border, leave it flat whatever you want, but you're gonna take your clean, dry brush or the brush that you just touched on the towel and just wipe right through that color, and you can do it again if you need to. What we're trying to achieve is kind of ah, lighter area on the right side of the shape we just painted in. Another way to do this is where you paint an area of water. First touch your sponge. If there's excess water, just tell your board and look at it in the lights. You can see the shiny water and touch the drip. Then grab Cem color and drop it in, and you can see that you can use that as a vehicle to believe the color around. I let the same thing. We're gonna just tilt the board touch any big drips, rinse touch again. I am wiped through a section on the right. The reason we're doing that is because there's a highlight on each one of these See shows. So what the wiping is so that we can achieve that highlight, and you can just do it as much as you need to What you don't want to do with wiping or brushing and any time and watercolor is over and over and over and over again, because it will weaken your paper eventually, and it might start to rip. So do it as little as you can to achieve the effect you want 8. 08 Blending Edge: next, We're going to do what into it with blending and edge. And this is what we're going to do to get these shadows in there, which will actually be one of the last steps in the painting. But I want to show it to you now, since we just did a wet into what technique? So for this you were gonna paint your shadow first, and I'm just gonna pretend there's a seashell right here, and I'm doing this upside down. So this is my lighter color of the two. I'm gonna rinse, touch my sponge, and then grab my darker color and drop it in right at the beginning in the end and then rinse again. And I've got quite a bit of water pooling up here, So I'm gonna just go around and very gently touch it and kind of push this dark color back because it's bleeding more than I wanted to into the light color. I wanted to kind of stay at the tips. And then, lastly, once you've got those controlled, you would rinse, touch your towel and wipe the edge, making sure the tip of the brush is really touching that edge. But that's really the only part touching the edge. So you want the body of the brush outside of the shape. You're just going around the edge to soften it on the outside. Sometimes when you blend, there's an extra edge that forms see is it's a drying. There's a little hard edge it it's forming there. You'll probably see that happen to you a lot during this class. And if it does, just rinse your brush touch again and go at that new edge and very gently wipe. And the more you do this, the more it will stop forming. So I'm just kind of massaging that one edge that was forming a hard line again. So just with the greatest of patients, kind of go around and suddenly wipe ending any new edges that are forming also, once you're happy with it, if you choose to blow dry, you can angle the blow dryer pointing towards that edge, and it will force the color back towards the sea show. And that will also create a really nice effect If you point at the opposite direction. What will happen is the color will blow out towards this edge and create a new hearted, so you definitely always want to be blowing towards the soft part of the edge. 9. 09 Shadow Blending: Another technique I'm going to show you is putting in the gray er shadows on these shells and blending around them. So for that we can use a little bit of the darker color and just paint a strip of color, not very much pain, and then rinse your brush, touch your towel and go back and very much like we just wiped that edge on the cast shadow just kind of wiped the edge here. Now, here, you're gonna be painting over a color that's already painted on. We're going to painting over the yellow, so that's where you don't want to blend too much because you may start to pull the color off. So I only did it twice on that edge, and I'm gonna turn the board around and do it this way to brush, always pointing towards the edge you want softer, just gently back and forth, wiping as little as you have to to get the desired effect 10. 10 Textures: so we're gonna be doing some textures. Now, Um, we'll start with these thicker lines on the bottom shell, get some of the darker paint and start with a little thin edge here and then press a little harder as you go. Just so the bristles splay out and get thicker. And then as you come up, you're gonna pull up on the brush so it gets thinner at the tip, then rinse touch. If you have a giant amount of pain, go ahead and soak up the drip. I don't have too much, so I'm not going to soak it up. Then you just go back and kind of wiped the edge. And this has to be less precise than this because you actually do want it to look a little bit line e like you've kind of brushed through it a few times. It creates a really nice effect. So I'm not even gonna bother turning my board because I don't want it to be very perfect. I wanted to be a little bit mussed up. I'm just gonna rinse and wipe a few times. What? I don't want his super hard lines like that, so I'm gonna make sure and get rid of anything like that. But otherwise that's fine. And then, if you have frayed tips like I have, you can go back and just agitate them a little bit, and this should be very pointy. So I'm gonna go back with this the tip of my brush, and form that into a nice point. 11. 11 Thin Lines: So then we're gonna explore the texture on this top show, which we're gonna use the tiny brush for, um, for this will use a combination of the light and dark. So start with the light and, um, go ahead and just imitate the bottom edge of a show. Just some little scallops like that. And then you'll pull up some lines from each point. And when you pull up, you're gonna press a little bit at the tip and then kind of just let the brush float off the paper, so that's really barely even noticeable. But that's when we go back with the dark color and go over a lines and dark in them a little bit. So this is gonna look very outlined for right now, which is fine. Then, once you've done that, you'll have a little bit of paint left on your brush. You can just kind of go between the lines and, um, kind of randomly brush. Just put a few extra lines in the middle, a little more haphazardly, something like that. To create the texture. You can also rinse. Touch your sponge barely with the teeny brush you don't want to touch your sponge your tell too much, because then you'll end up with a completely dry brush. It just doesn't hold water. So just touch the towel very briefly so that you get most of the water out. And then you can go back and brush through that texture just to loosen it up, break it up a little bit, but also to create more of a lining texture. And then the last thing we're gonna do is practice these very thin lines for this. The middle shell here so you can see there is lighter and darker and for the lighter when we're just going to use the light paint. So get a little bit of paint on your brush and just as steadily as you can paint a little smile. And that's all you have to dio for the darker one. You're going to use the same technique, but press a little bit harder with the brush, have a little bit more pain, even go back over it a couple times to try to make it sin thicker, and then grab some of the dark color and have a lot of it on the brush and just drop it into the darker area and let it bleed into the lighter color you can further if you need to . You can wipe your brush, go back and kind of force the dark to bleed into the light. And you can also make the tips a little bit finer, just like I did over here with a large brush. 12. 12 Frame: So now we're going to draw the frame onto the paper before we start. I just want to tell you I'm gonna be drilling very, very dark because I want you to be able to see the lines, but you draw very lightly on your paper. You don't want these lines to be that obvious on. And that's true. Especially when we get to drawing the C shows for right now, we're gonna put a five by seven frame on, so just make a dot in the top corner wherever you want the top to be My paper is only six by 96 by eight. So it's the frame is gonna fill it up pretty well. So I'm making my corner very close to the top. Once you have that, as long as your paper is cut really square, you can use the top edge of the T square and line it up against your paper and then line that up with your dot your initial dot and drill. Actually, you know what? My paper is not perfectly square, so I'm not gonna rely on this top edge. Um and this is where you can just use a ruler to Because the T Square operates as a ruler. If you're not using the T Square part so you can just dropped right off the edge of the page, that's fine. And then, from there I'm going to measure seven inches down and make a dot down here and draw to my to my original starting point. And then I'm gonna do the same thing here. And because you're drawing lightly you. If if this doesn't measure up exactly, you can go back in a race and just read, You know, redraw. Because if you're just doing or using a ruler, not a T square, your frame may end up being a little bit out of square, so you can just adjust it if you need to. So that's five inches, and that's a little bit less than seven. So that's exactly what I'm talking about. So I'm gonna make it seven inches exactly. Make it go down a little bit further, make a dot in a recent at, and then before I drawing, just gonna go back here and make sure this is still five, and it is. So now I know that it's a really, really square frame What about in? Oops. And I forgot to measure and want to do seven inches across the top two. Excuse me. Five inches across the top, so that marks five inches on that line. So not just connecting my dots. There's your frame. 13. 13 Draw: So now we're going to get onto the drawing part of the sea share, drawing the seashells rather so we can start by just finding out how far away from the side of the page the show is to do that. Use the tip of your pencil and your thumbnail and just measure that space. So make sure you're holding your pencil in a way that you can easily pick it up without losing that measurement. So in other words, you wouldn't want to do like that because I can't pick. I'm pressing the pencil against the table so I can't pick it up well, easily anyway. So, um, I like to measure it, just holding it on the side like that. So measure that space and then when you got that space, pick it up, move it over to your frame and just guess where the middle of that shell is. It looks like it's right in the middle of the page, so I'm just making a mark right in the center and then to verify that you got that right. You can do the same measuring technique from one side of the page or the other to see how far across it is and yeah, that works out just fine. So once you have that mark, you can use that mark to find out other marks. So I'm going to see how far from the top of the show the bottom is and make a mark down there, and then I'm going to see using the very widest part of the shell. So the part that's closest to the side of the frame see how far away from that the frame the shell is And I'm guessing good, It's right here. But again, I'm not. You know, I guess I'm not measuring from the top. So now I'm gonna measure from the top to see how far down it is. Yeah, we're were Those to touch is where the side of the show is. And then from there, I'm gonna measure across and see how wide it is. And now that I've got four bounding marks for the shape now I can draw. Don't try to draw these little scallops. They'll end up probably showing up on your painting and making it look a little bit to kind of cartoony or boxed in. So just draw a basic round curve and we'll put the scallops in later. Freehand. No look much freer as a result and then just kind of eyeball the shape does not have to be perfect. Remember, this is an interpretation to drawing. No matter how hard you try. No matter how hard I try, neither one of us will ever replicate this exactly. Even though I made this painting, I could never make exactly the same one again, cause that's just the nature of art. So now I'm going to see how far from the top show the middle one is and make a mark there for the top same procedure. So we're gonna find out where the bottom edges make a mark for the bottom and same thing for the side on the other side. Make it mark. Draw the approximate shape. Remember to drop very, very lightly, not only so you can erase easily any mistakes, but so your pencil lines won't show through the final painting. So this one's very round. I'm gonna dip down and go over and around down into the original dot and then move on to the last show, which is just a little ways from the middle one in the bottom edges that far from the top. And then how far is the side right there. And the other side is a little kind of lower than this one. So I'm gonna make it closer to the bottom of the page than this one Waas. And I think that looks pretty good. So I'm going to draw very around on the bottom, comes up to around eight point here, and then there's a little dip and up to surrounded top edge and over. So now you can just go back, erase any obvious, the marks that you don't want to show any mistakes. Um, and just so you know, typically with watercolor at the very end of the painting, you could go back in a race if there's any pencil lines that are still showing, so don't worry too much about it. But do you get your lines nice and light at this point in the race? Any mistakes 14. 14 Mix Yellow: So now we're going to start mixing colors. So we're gonna start with the very lightest yellow. You can see it best in this middle C show and you know, kind of to the the naked eye it looks white, but if you compare it to the paper, you can see it's actually a little bit off white, kind of an ivory color. So we're going to start by mixing that up, I'm going to use yellow Oakar as my first color may be my only color. We'll just see how it comes out. If you don't happen to have yellow color yellow with, like a light yellow with a little bit of brown or good choices because we're mixing such a light color, I'm going to squeeze this out onto a separate part of the tray and add it to my water. So I'm gonna make a lot of this because we're gonna be painting all three c shows completely with it. So I'm gonna fill up my cup about 3/4 of the way. Depend scrape. If you haven't watched the mixing video, now is a good time to do that because you will catch up to all this what I'm doing right now? Why we're doing it. So getting this full of water and then touch my sponge or my breath, touch my towel and grab just a little bit of the color Because we really want such a faint color. Such a light color. Just barely noticeable. Very delicate. So I'm gonna mix that up and just see what happens. No, I can't even see that. So I'm gonna add a little bit more, mix it up really good, get rid of any lumps. Scripps grape test, and I can see it. But there's a drip. So I'm gonna touch the drip and hold it up here. I'm gonna add a little bit more. So for the purposes of this video, um, it's It may not even be noticeable on on screen. You can probably see that drip, but if I soak up the drip, you may not be able to see it all. But when you're at home mixing just as long as you have the world's lightest yellow and you hold it up to your seashell and it looks about the same, then you should be just fine. We want it very, um, very plain, very pale. So we've got that color. Now we're gonna mix very saturated, orangey red. Excuse me, orangy yellow for this color, which we're going to start with okra again and I'm gonna mix another one right next to it, right next to the light. This one, we don't have to have a much because we don't need as much and it's gonna be very saturated colors, so we don't want a ton of water. It'll just make it harder to mix. So I know I want this very saturated, So I'm just gonna use that whole lump of Oakar and mix it in. And I'm just going to start by seeing where I ended up here before I do anything else. So, Mr There's a big lump of it stuck to my brush. I'm just twisting it around, trying to get the lump all mixed into the water. You want it really evenly distributed, no lumps and then scrape, test, rinse, touch and soak up that drip so that definitely needs more. It's good. It's much closer than the original one, of course. But now that we're mixing a very saturated color, I'm just gonna unabashedly squeeze it directly into the pot. More Oakar really mixed that. And, well, scrape, test, rinse, touch, soak up my drip. And I feel like that's saturated enough. But it's just not quite the right color. So we need a little bit of red and a little bit of brown. I'm gonna squeeze out the red and the brown into separate areas of the trade. I mean, squeeze out kind of a lot of red because we're going to need it later anyway, for mixing burgundies and pinks and the brown, and we're gonna add just a little bit of red. We don't want to be too aggressive with that. See what it does first, and that did almost nothing. So I guess I went a little too late. But it's always better to mix too little than too much, because then you have to go back and re adjust your color. If you had too much of something. So no, I came a little more confidently at more because I can see how strong it waas that made a little bit of difference. So I'm going to see what this looks like, whence touch. Hold it up and it looks like that's got a nice amount of red in it. Now it's just a little bit pinker than that yellow was before. And I'm gonna add a little bit of brown to make it just the tiny. But Browner, that's what we're doing. Trying to make it a little browner scrapes. Great. That looks exactly the same or very, very close on the test strips. I'm gonna get a little bit more Stir it up Just like Bob Marley staring up. There we go. I think I might have gotten it, so I'm gonna touch the drip. And I'm just looking at all three cause they all three look a little bit different and I think that's good. So we're gonna stick with that now. Let's move on to the light Pinkish gray 15. 15 pinkish grey: So now we're going to mix the light pinkish gray that you see kind of in these blushing areas on the top and bottom shells. And I got some fresh water cause it was a little bit yellowy doesn't make that much difference, but it is nice to have really clean water, so feel free to clean it out any time you feel like it might be too muddy to work with. So we're going to start by filling up the another cup about 3/4 of the way that looks about right and grabbing a little bit of red. It's gonna be a very light color, so I'm not gonna grab a whole lot. And I can tell just by looking at the edges is very, very watery that that's not even going to show up on a test strip. It's so light, So I'm gonna grab a little bit more red. No, it's looking a little more solid, so we'll scrape and test prints touch, tilt the strip and soak up the drip so we can see the pink and it still looks a little bit late. So I'm mostly out of red here and actually a little bit of the yellow got into it. So I'm gonna squeeze out some more in a different place. And I'm using the crimson red, the darker purple e one. Because the color we're going for is more of a purple Lee read not an orangey one. And I grab a little bit more Mix it in scrape test that looks just about the same as my 1st 1 Yeah, so I need a little bit more. Keep going. So my first goal is to get the pink kind of the darkness that I want And then it'll be too bright because we're just using plain red. So I'm gonna dial it down a little bit with green. If you remember from the mixing class green, being the opposite of red is a good way to dole it down. Make it krayer. I'm gonna go a little bit more scrape test. There we go. I think I'm going to be happy with that. So if I hold it up, it's too bright of a pink. But it's a nice darkness, so we're going to stick with that and then I can add a little bit of green and I have to greens of a yellow green called sap and a blue or green call Veridian and used the bluer one. Because again, we're going for a purple lee color. So just an extra bit of blue is always good to have on your side and just a little bit to begin with, because it's pretty strong and it's gonna have an effect right away. As you can see, that really darkened it. Scrape test. I think we got it just a little bit of a gray or pink than what we had before. Yeah, that should work just fine. 16. 16 Grey: So now let's do the gray in the shadow here in the middle or slightly off to the left side of its shell that anatomically is called the core shadow. It's the darkest shadow on an object, and it's usually accompanied by some reflection. On one side you can see on all three of these shells. There's this lighter reflection on the left that's called reflected light, and the core shadow is usually right next to that. It just makes the whole thing really appear around. So we're gonna mix up that gray next so we'll start with water. Depend scrape. I've got a little red left in my brush, but we are mixing are really kind of a darker color, so that won't matter. And I mean, uh, do about the same amount about 3/4. And since we have a Redd's going on in this picture, I'm going to use red and green as my a pair of compliments. To make that great. You can also use orange and blue or yellow and purple, yellow and purple as we remember for the mixing class tends to make a brown or color, though, so if you chose that, you'd have to probably add a little bit of blue to make it a true gray. Anyway, I'm going to start with kind of a lot of red because I know I'm going for a darker color this time. So another note on mixing graze um, you can start with hair complements red and green. I'm starting with two compliments that happen to be both on the bluer side. This is a slightly purple or red, and that's a slightly bluer green. So that's gonna work in my favor. Because if you mix yellow er versions like if I used the orangey red and the yellow green, for example, I need to add some blue to it. When I was done mixing those two together, I may still have to add blue to these two. But at least I'm kind of starting a little bit closer to what I'm gonna need as an end product, because any time you end up with a browner color when trying to mix gray, that just means you're blue is a little bit light, so you need more in blue. Brown is usually are always a manifestation of too much red and yellow. It's kind of It's a warmer color, so that's a nice pink, but definitely not dark enough. So I'm gonna add some more red. And because we're going for a darker color, I feel confident squeezing it directly into their rather than putting it on the train, adding it manually. So I'm really mixing that up, getting all the lumps to go away, checking my brush. There's lots of lumps on my brush, so I'm gonna scrape them off and continue mixing, just pressing them into the bottom. And let's test see how dark that God, that looks better. I'm still going to go a little bit more, though. And then, because of adding so much red, I'll have to probably squeeze out more green, too. But we'll see. Maybe not. And actually, I probably have a little too much color here, so I could afford to get rid of some. But what I'm going to dio. And if this happens to you, if you're mixing and you notice while I have a lot of color, I'm not gonna need, um, you can probably you may be able to use it for another color in the composition. For example, we have these greys in the cast shadow which I can thes graze in the cast shadow here, which I once I get this great enough. I can probably use some of that for those other shadows as well. Okay, now we're cooking with gas. That looks dark enough. And even though this is nowhere near the color, I'm just looking at the value how dark the color is and that looks about dark enough to be make a good gray. And I know it's gonna get darker because I'm about to add green. Yeah, I'm gonna need a lot more green. Oh, there's quite a bit on my brush, though. That surprised me. Okay, I got it all off my brush. Still need more green? Yes. I'm gonna just take what's left here. Mix that in and then we'll squeeze out some more and just like the red because we're going for a dark color. I can squeeze it directly. And with confidence. I squeezed about half an inch into their go ahead and use your judgment for how you should add yours. If you're feeling pretty close, you don't want to squeeze it directly, and you can just squeeze it onto the tray and scoop it in. Or if you're feeling farther away like I was, you can squeeze it directly. And now it's looking very, very dark. So let's check that out dark and a little too green. So let me soak that up and we'll compare it just for the heck of it. Yeah, definitely to green. So I'm gonna go back and add a little bit more red, and this time I'm not gonna add a ton because, um, I'm pretty close, so I don't want to squeeze it directly, and my color is also getting too dark. So what I'll do once I achieve the color is I'll take some out of this pot and put it into another one and add a little water to make a lighter version of the same color. It's a beautiful thing about watercolor. If you have a color that's too dark, you can usually use it to, um, mix other colors kind of as a base. So that's definitely grayer. That's pretty good, but it's still a little bit on the greenish side. Compared to this one. I need more red, and this time I'm actually going to use the orangey red because it's it's kind of a green blue gray, and what I'm going for is more of a middle gray. So if you think of the opposites of both green and blue, it's red and orange. So rather than use the bluish red, I'm going to use the orangey red, which is kind of killing both of those birds with one stone. So, you know, things like this are happening in my palette, and I'm sure probably not happening in years. You may be experiencing other challenges or no challenges at all. Um, if you're mixing a gray, what you want to do is look, examine your gray, and if it seems to read, you would add green. If it seems to purple, you would have yellow so kind of identify what type of gray you have and then add its opposite if you're trying to get to the middle. So I did it. I got to the middle, and now you can see my grades just too dark. So I'm gonna do what I talked about earlier. Scrape some into another cup and out of water to lighten it up. Let's see what that and now I have this nice dark grey can use later that probably whips. I broke my own rule there and tested twice in the same spot. Maybe went a little too. Let's see. No, actually, I think that's good. That's where we want it. Okay, so we've got the gray. 17. 17 Burgundy: So the last color we're gonna mix for right now is the dark burgundy that you see most clearly in this stripe right here. So it's gonna be read with a little bit of green in it, and we're not gonna mix very much. It's a very dark color, so you can see this water is dirty. But it really doesn't matter because the color so dark it will overtake that easily. So I'm going to start with the rest of my lump of purple Lee read, Mix that in, and I know I need more, and then I'm gonna need some more green this time. We're going much lighter on the green cause we're trying to actually make a dark red, not a gray color. Um, again, I'm gonna squeeze the color directly in because I know I need a lot and I'm going to squeeze a little bit of green. And at this point, too, but not nearly as much. So just stirring that up really well, getting all the lumps taking care of. And let's test that out. Yeah, I think I may have accidentally gotten it on the first try. Ah, it's a little bit late we can go a little bit darker with that. So you had more red and green in the same proportions that I did before. So kind of a lot of red, Not as much as I added before And a daughter of green. So what I'm trying to do know is achieved the same color, but a deeper value of the same color. Less water, more color. So I don't actually really want the color itself to change. 18. 18 First Layer: So now we can get into painting the really fun part now that you've done all the color mixing. So first, get some fresh water for sure, and just give your brush a good rents. Rub it on the bottom of the cup or the side of the cup just to make sure there's no residual paint in there from when we were mixing touch your towel. Um, one thing I'm doing here that I recommend you not do is have my water and my towel on either side of the painting because you're just running the risk of dripping on your painting. If you do it like that, I just haven't set up like this so that you can see it easily. But go ahead. If you're right handed, have all your supplies on the right and you're painting on the left if you're left handed other way around so that you're not carrying anything over your painting. So you probably remember this from the techniques course. We're going to start with a wet into wet on the top show. We're gonna put water in first, and then we're gonna put the very lightest okra and and trying to leave a strip showing on the right side, and then we're gonna brush it to get get it just a little bit lighter on the right side. So again, if you haven't taken the techniques course, please do take it before you try this. So we're gonna dip in the water and just rub water all over that top show. Make sure it goes right up to the edges, but not beyond. Be very careful to keep it just very carefully contained inside the show. And then touch your your towel, your sponge, and look at it in the light. And if you see a drip just tilted to one side, soak up the drip so that you have a nice even layer of water. Then grab a brush full. Just dip your brush up. My have to stir mine up. It wasn't the kind of settled grab dip your brush in pretty good way so that you have a nice amount of pain on the brush. You don't want it stopping dripping wet like this. So if that's the case, just touched the side a little bit to get the drips off. But then you're just gonna drop the color in and kind of dab it around and let it bleed, trying to leave a big kind of white ish area over here on the side. Then rinse your brush, touch your sponge. And if you have any large drips, don't tell your board if you can avoid it because you don't want the color to drip or, like run. Just kind of go around in touch areas that look really dripping and you can tell by just looking sideways in the light and seeing if there's any big areas. Mine kind of naturally stayed really light if yours. If yours. Your yellow took over the entire shell. Just take your Russian wipe through the right side to make it a little bit whiter right there. So now we're gonna do the same thing on the other two shells. Put the water in being really careful to get it right up to the edge. Touch the sponge or towel. What? Actually, this is one time when you can wipe the drips when it's just plain water because you're not running the risk of pulling any color off, since there's no color on there yet and the put in your yellow. Just drop it in. Let it bleed into the water a little bit on the right side, but leaving a big gap over here close to the right. And if it doesn't go all the way to the edges by itself, just brush it along, force it to go all the way to the edges, Then rinse, touch, and you can wipe through that large white area if it didn't blend all the way, or if the color overtook that area and then same thing on the last show. So this is the only step that all three shells are gonna be identical? Actually, no, that's not true. The shadows that the shells air casting off to the side are gonna be identical to. But this is the only coat on the show that's going to be the same for all three. So I'm gonna go back and wipe up the extra water crab, the light yellow, and drop it in. Parents touch. Got a lot kind of pulling up along the bottom. So I'm gonna get rid of that and then wipe through my highlight on the right side. So now we're gonna blow dry if you don't have the blow dryer. You can just walk away for a while, Allow it to air dry. Um, but when you do come back to what you want, make sure it's absolutely, totally, completely dry, so it's a blow dry. You want to hold your dryer about 6 to 10 inches above your surface and just kind of sweet back and force if you notice if you have any drips, what's gonna happen when you turn the blow dryer on is the drips are going to be pushed in the direction the air is going so you can use this to your advantage. And first that, well, you can soak up the drips. Now if you don't want to deal with that or if you actually like the drips because they add a little bit of darkness, which I do I want to keep. I kind of have a little bit of dripping on the edge, isn't it? But I like that. I'm gonna keep it there. But when I blow dry, I'm gonna be angling this way because I don't want to blow those drips into the center and take over my highlight there so you can go ahead and do that now. And once you're done to make sure it's dry, pick it up until today. If it still looks wet anywhere, mind still looks wet here. In here, you can keep going, and once it looks dry, then test it always with the back of your hand. If you use the front, you might leave fingerprints, especially if you have a little extra water color on them or something. So always use the back your hand and just dab. Don't have a rub because if it is what you don't want to smear it and make sure it's completely warm and dry. If it feels even a little bit damp, it's best to continue blow drying until it's totally there. 19. 19 Shell 1: So now we're going to do, um, the core shadow, which is this darker grey part that we talked about earlier, which makes the show look lovely and round along with the light pink that we mixed earlier on these two shows. So this is where the three shells they're going to start to become a little bit different. We'll start with the top one. And the technique we're going to use is the one we did with the techniques class where you paint in color first and then go back and blend on both sides. So you're gonna be flipping your board upside down once, or maybe a few times, depending on how many times you want a blood. Um, so my light gray, we're gonna start with a light grey. Don't be alarmed. It's gonna look too dark when you put it in at first, don't be afraid. It's supposed to. And when you blend, it's gonna lighten up a little bit. So in this top show, we have the gray kind of in a spot here and then pink on the bottom. So I mean, it's just put the grave pretty much where I see it in a thick stroke. So I'm using kind of the side of my brush to paint that in. And then I'm ignorance, touch my towel and get some of my light pink and filling around the bottom. So I have kind of a big brush full of light pinks. I wanted to be very watery, and I'm going to smear that over to the side, and I'm just gonna bring it all the way up the side so that it blends into the gray. Then I'm gonna rinse touch, and the first thing I'm gonna do is soak up the drips any big drips and then very quickly after that, I'm going to go in and wipe. This adds, laying my brush down so that the tip definitely goes into the grey and pink area. But the body of the brushes outside here, you want the brush to straddle that line, and then you can go back and just gently wipe it as many times as you feel. You need to to get rid of any hard edge. And on the right side here, you can see there's a little bit of a lighter area. That's the reflected light, So I'm gonna take this opportunity to wipe some of the pink off in sort of line like strokes to get the beginnings of that reflection. And I'm just laying a foundation. And while I was doing that, I did get a little bit of a harder edge here. So I'm going to go back and take care of that. Doesn't really matter if this is absolutely perfect, because you are going to be putting all these lines over the top later, which will to really take care of any imperfections. Plus with watercolor, there's no such thing as perfection, So don't don't attach yourself to that word anyway. That's that's it for the talk show. 20. 20 Shell 2: so you don't need to worry about blow drying this one right now because we're going to do the other to weaken, just blow dry the whole thing. When we're done, we're gonna move on to the middle shell here, and this one doesn't have any of the light pink. It's just gray. So we're gonna put the gray in and then blend on either side. So same thing. Grab a nice big brush full of the light gray. And this time we're going to go all the way from the bottom up so you can just sort of dab that. And so it goes all along the bottom edge and then pull it up closer to the left and the right. Not all the way to the top, though. Then rinse your brush, touch your sponge, soak up any major drips, rinse again, touch again and blend pointing the brush well into the gray and the body of the brush Well outside of it. And I'm gonna do that again in the opposite direction. Kind of pull some of the great down from the top, and I like the way that looks. I'm gonna flip it upside down now. because I still want to be pointing towards that edge, and I get a little more water touch mice, but my my towel again and pointing my brush into that edge sort of wipe. If it feels like it's not blending well enough, you probably touched your towel a little too long. It might. Your brush might be a little bit dry so you can get more water. Touch your tell just briefly and try again. If it feels like you have the opposite problem, like your blending and the colors going everywhere, then you have a little too much water in your brush so you can touch your towel a little bit more thoroughly. So what I'm doing now? I have my edges blended, but I wanted to actually spread a little bit more, so I'm kind of going into the gray shadow, so I get a little bit more color on my brush, and then I'm brushing out away from the center just to defuse that edge, specifically on the right. Because this is the edge where the from the core shadow to the reflected light should be a more gradual transition than from the core shadow to this part, which is called the Highlight. So I'm happy with that. And as you can see, some of my color accidentally got outside the show. That's perfectly fine, especially since we're gonna be covering that up anyway with the core shadow. But if even if it happened on this side, it would be fine. I can I can pull the color off. So let's move on to the last show. That one is going to be great again with lots of pink, just like the top. So get a nice big brush full of gray. Put it not all the way to the bottom, just in towards the left center Prince touch, grab some light pink And that's gonna go all along the bottom edge here and that one The pink on this show spreads a little further to the right than on the other one and definitely goes all the way over to the edge here and up the side. So I'm in a rents touch and then white. I'm gonna peel that off really carefully because I really want that to come to a fine point and I'm gonna go back and blend a little more on this edge, and this is really staying kind of in a tight area, which I don't want to happen. So I'm just gonna barely brush the edges of it to encourage it to blend more with the pink and then up at the top. Here, I'm going to do the same thing. So I'm really barely touching the paper. I don't want to pull the color off. If you press too hard, it tends to pull the color off. While I was doing that, I noticed that another hard edge formed here on my middle show. So I'm going to turn it back upside down, go back, rents, touch and blend. And this is another situation where this probably isn't happening to you right this second . But if it does happen to you throughout the process of the painting, you can address it by just going back with a damp brush and very gently wiping over it until it softens. And what just happened? There was I created another hard edge right next to it. So to get rid of that, I'm just going to go back and very gently dab at it to encourage it to go away 21. 21 Ochre: So now we're gonna blow dry. Um, I I when I was blow during before I noticed I was blow drying at my colors. You don't want to do that cause you're encouraging them to dry up in their pots. So I'm just gonna cover it with my picture. You can move yours out of the wave. If that happened. Happened to you as well. Okay, make the blow. Dryer is making my teeth curl, so let's make sure that's really dry. Yes, it is. Another thing is, your paper may start to warp a little bit. Don't be concerned about that either. Eventually, you'll hopefully be so pleased with this picture that you're gonna frame it, which will take care of any warping. Or if you don't, it'll just kind of naturally relax anyway, once you're done, eso I promised I was gonna show you how to get rid of a blemish if you accidentally get some outside. So first, make sure your water is reasonably fresh and rinse your brush so it's very clean. Touch your towel, and then if if you're doing a thing where you want to keep the edge hard, point your brush towards the edge you want hard and just wipe over the color. You often won't be able to get it all off, so don't feel discouraged. If that's the case, the darker the color, the harder it is to get off. But you can at least camouflage a and make it look less offensive. Like I said before, this is an area where we're gonna cover it with the core shadow anyway. But you wanna have this tool in your toolbox? Should you ever need to get color off of an area that's about as good as it's gonna get? You don't wanna over rush it because you'll start to weaken the paper and especially if you want to later go back and put color in that area. If the papers week and crumbly the color will just suck right into it and make a dark spot so you want to be is gentle and unobtrusive as possible. So now we're gonna move on to the dark yellowy orange color, the Oakar, and we're gonna put that on the three shells at the top of these two. And in this one, it's kind of swirled throughout, So I'm gonna show you a couple different ways to do that. The technique we're using here is the same one we used when we blended the right side of the core shadow. We're gonna put the color in and then just blend along the bottom edge so we'll start with the top one. My Oakar, I can see, has kind of a dark ring forming around it, which is telling me that the color is starting to dry out. No big deal. I'm just going to stir it before I get any color, because I want to make sure it's not separating. And it's uniform so that I'm going to scrape really well cause I don't want a whole lot of paint here. It's a very strong color, and we don't want it to spread very far. So I'm just gonna paint it in along the top edge here, dab it in and the annoyance. It's a little better than that. Touch my towel and go back and blend. So to blend. I'm pointing my brush towards the bottom edge in and just sort of wiping across same way I did down here. But this one has. It could have a little bit of texture because it's so lining. So, um, I'm gonna go back and just kind of jab at it from the bottom. May not make any difference. Yeah, that really didn't do anything, but it was a nice try. Eso Now we'll move on to the 2nd 1 That one has more concentrated over at the very top. Not that I'm gonna be able to replicate that exactly, but I do want to try. So I'm gonna put a pretty big drip of okra at the top there and not much further down. And then I'm gonna rinse touch my sponge or my towel and white really laying the brush on its side Because I want the darkness of that Oakar to defuse into a lighter color as it goes down. I'm going to do that one more time. Just sort of dabbing addicts. I want to encourage it to come down a little further, but really laying my brush down at a very severe angle there and over to the side. I want that edge nice and Chris and I'm happy with that. So for the last one, we're gonna put in some ah, concentrated color where you see this dab here, here and even a little bit along the bottom edge. And over here, this one's a little more disjointed is don't feel like you have to copy exactly every stroke I make. You can kind of put the okra where you want it to be. You definitely use this picture is a guy, though it's just helpful to know approximately where things should go. So once we put the color and we're gonna blend, but we're also going to kind of brush through it. If you remember the thick stripe technique we did in the techniques video, that's what we're gonna work on now. So I'm going to start by putting the Oakar where I want it. And it's gonna look really funny for a bit because we just have these big patches of random Oakar A little scary, But don't be too afraid. We can We're gonna go back and make it into something very interesting. So I'm going to do that and I'm gonna put a little bit down here. Won't show up very well cause I'm putting it over the pink But then I'm gonna go back, rinse, touch my sponge And I'm just going to manipulate them by blending edges. So this is the the thick stripe blending technique we learned yesterday where you just blending both sides of each stripe. You know, wiping across this one so close to this patron just gonna run right into it and rinse every once in a while. Touch your towel. If it feels like the colors spreading more than you want, rinse, touch and mostly take your time. You don't wanna go get a cup of coffee or something because the color will dry on you, and then it's hard to blend the edges. But don't you don't have to worry about going to too fast because even though the color does dry quickly, just kind of allow that aspect of the medium to be what it is. An in form, the the texture of your show. It comes out really beautifully if you don't fight it too much. So now I'm just going to take another look at it and see what else I wanted. Teoh think I'd like Teoh encourage this color up a little bit higher into the area above it , and this over cause it just seems like in the reference photo this whole area is a little bit yellow. Er, same thing down here. I'm just gonna brush right next to these and through that area to get it a little more diffused. There we go. Okay. Done with that one. 22. 22 Burgundy Stripes: So now we're gonna put in Burgundy stripes, um, on both the top and the bottom shell. Don't blow dry because you actually it would work to your advantage if they were a little bit damp. If they happen to be dry, that's also fine. But don't don't force it to dry, so we'll start with the top shell, since that was the 1st 1 we did. And we can take advantage of whatever little witness might still be left. Um, so for this you can choose whether you use your large brush or your itty bitty brush. Believe it or not, because you're large brush does have this very fine point. The same type is your itty bitty brush. The advantage using the large brushes. You don't have to dip as much into the paint because it holds more paint than the little brush. The advantage to the little brush is that you can have a little bit more precision a little bit more control. Um, so you can just pick your poison and go with whatever you'd like to dio. I'm gonna do a little bit of each so you can see both. So I'll start with a little brush just gonna dip in that dark burgundy color and we're gonna We're just gonna put strikes where you see stripes and we're gonna start defining the scallops on the bottom of the show. So there's definitely a stripe up the left side, and then you can just sort of start making up these scallops. By the way, if it's more comfortable for you, you can draw these in with pencil first. You will not be able to see the pencil is long, but you don't draw too dark, so the stripes on the left side should curve slightly to the left. Don't worry about blending or anything right now. Just kind of get the stripes in, and then the closer you get to the middle, the straighter it's gonna go right in the middle is gonna be a very straight line, but all these air going to curve more and more to the left. As you go to the left and on the right, they're going to start curving gently to the right. That's what makes the show look around besides the shadows. So we're gonna do that right to the center. When I told you I would surely the other brush. So, um, if you use the big brush, just get a little bit on the tip and just you could just do the same thing, OK? But you get the same effect. That's just depends on what You're more comfortable this. So now I really want these to start curving more to the right, and I'm using slightly less pain. It doesn't really matter if you use, um, darker paint here because you can always pull some off. But since we're into the light area of the show, it's better to use less pain on the brush, so pretty much almost outlined it. Then I'm gonna go back, warrants touch and again, you can use either brush. So I have a little bit of dampness in the brush, but not so much that it's a drippy. And I'm just going to kind of wiped the inside edges of each of these sections to soften them just a little bit. And I'm brushing up towards the tip, which is creating some very, very subtle line texture and because my brushes a little damp, it's loosening up these lines, and the lighter the line is, the more it's going to want to disappear. And if it does, that's totally fine. Some of these lines or more suggestions and actual lines anyway. But I'm just brushing over them to soften everything. And I'm going to go down to these bottom edges and just wipe a little bit next to them to soften them, too, because you don't actually want them to look like outlines. You want them to look like shadows. So if they have, ah, hard edge on the outside and a soft edge on the inside, that's what you're going for. And I'm just gonna keep going back and forth until I'm satisfied with how soft they are and how much how maney pink lines I have at this point, I'm not paying much attention to my original lines at all. I'm just generally brushing up towards the top of the show, too, defused the lines and I think that's pretty good. So I'm going to stop there 23. 23 Shell 3: So now we're gonna move on to the burgundy on the bottom shell, these larger, thick pink stripes, which are easier to see, and we're gonna use it to kind of push the burgundy into the surrounding areas. So for this definitely is your big brush. And again, it's okay if it's a little bit damp and get just a little bit of brush on the A C A little bit of paint on your brush. You don't dip your whole brush in there just about 1/3 of the way down so that a nice amount gets on there without any big drips. And I'm just going to start down here in the biggest section and put a nice, thick stripe. And then as I go off the shell, I'm gonna pull up so that the the tip of the shape gent gradually disappears into a very fine point. And then I'm gonna go back into the middle and do the same thing over here, making sure that my shape follows the same curve is the bottom of the show, approximately that I'm gonna do the same thing for this next one, but it's gonna be smaller. So a thick shape first by pressing a little harder. And then, as I go on pulling, pulling the brush up off until it gets to a fine point. Same thing over here, then immigrants pretty will touch my brush or sponge touch my sponge hotel just a little bit. I want to get most of the water off, but not all of it. And then blend all four edges, tops and bottoms of each straight and CEO actually kind of creating new stripes by doing this, which is beautiful. So I'm not gonna fight that. You can see these little tiny stripes that happened when I blended there. It can just be another part of the shells, uniqueness all the way to the edge and right to the edge. You want to keep that edge really, really sharp. So I'm actually gonna pull that color around to the side a little bit rinse touch again because I feel my brush is getting a little too full of color from all the brushing and then blend along the bottom edge of this one as many times as I feel. I want Teoh, and that really created some cool striped patterns there. But on this side. I feel like I want it lighter because this whole side of the shell should be lighter. So I'm going to rinse, touch my towel again and then go back and just wipe over those parts of the lines to pull some of the color off. And then over here, I've created a little bit of, um, a messy area. So I'm going to turn my board to make sure I keep this edge really sharp and just wipe across it. And again, this probably is not happening to you right now, but use it as a tool. If if and when it does happen, you can just sort of brush it out if you get an area that's blotchy or you don't like. 24. 24 Grey Pink Lines: So now we're going to go back to the top show and just put in some very, very light lines with the light gray both over the burgundy lines we already have and in some other areas. So I'm just need the little brush for this Just because I'm choosing to So you can choose. Use the big one if you want, and I'm gonna go back and just put in some other lines. I'm going over some of the burgundy ones, but I'm actually going between them more than I'm going over them just to add a little bit more texture, particularly on the left side. Since that's the darker side, I'm gonna put a little bit too upset, too much pain. I'm gonna touch my towel and soak some of that up, putting a little bit along the bottom edge in a couple of the scalloped areas. But not the whole thing, because I want it to be one organic looking object. And if I just outlined it with gray, it's going to look kind of outline and I'll go over here and put just a little bit on those two lines and up through the center of a few of these and then I'm gonna rinse, touch and go back and blend those by wiping. Actually, the small brushes really terrible for blending. So I'm going to use the big brush. There we go. Okay, So another thing I'd like to dio just looking at the difference between these two is there's more pink between the thick lines and less burgundy over here. So I'm gonna lighten up those burgundy lines and just add a little bit more pink again. This is something you don't need to do. You can just look at your shell and assess. Do I like it the way it is? Do you want to make any changes? Now is a good time to add and subtract and blend and do anything you want before we move on . So I'm just gonna go back and wipe the's edges off so that the edges of those lines are a little bit lighter. I'm kind of losing my dark in the middle, so I'm gonna just wipe through it to spread it out a little bit more prince touch. And now I've made hard edges again, So I'm gonna go back. And why those a little bit more water, and now I'm pretty happy with those lines. So I'm going to go back and just get some pink, the light pink and especially since I've just kind of wet this area, that should go on really nicely. I'm just gonna drop some pink in. It's a very light color, so it shouldn't make too much of a mess here. I just kind of wanted dark in this side so that this area looks much darker than that one, since it's what this is all in shadow. And now I'm feeling like I'm happy with that, so I'm going to leave it. 25. 25 Mixing Greys: So now we're gonna move on to mixing the last three colors we need for this picture, which are just a lighter version of the dark Burgundy, which we're going to use for these lighter lines on this middle show. And then we need to graze a light gray and a dark grey for these shadows going off to the side. These air called cast shadows. And they're called that because the light comes across an object and casts the shadow onto the ground or whatever is next to it. So if you remember when I was mixing my gray earlier for my core shadow in the show, I accidentally mixed way too much of a really dark gray. So I'm going to use that to mix my cast shadow graze. Chances are that did not happen to you, so you can just go ahead and mix the same gray the same way we did the first time with red and green. And what you're going for is a really dark gray about this color. So I'm just going to start off by checking this and making sure it is that color, and if it's not, I can adjust it rates touch, soak up the drip. Well, it's very thick and soupy, so yeah, that looks nice and dark. Um, by the way, go for a color slightly darker than what you see in the reference, because we're gonna be putting this color into a lighter grey, which is gonna make it naturally appear lighter so you can go a little bit darker than you think you need to once you have that dark grey mixed up. And if you need to mix it from scratch right now, go ahead and pause the film and that mix it up with the dark red and the dark green. But once you haven't mixed up, you can take a brush full of this into another cup. Take a couple. We don't need very much of the dark and then add water to make a lighter version of the same thing. So stir that up scrape. See what we ended up with. That looks like a pretty good gray. Yep, that's light enough. A good likeness. So we're going to stick with those two. And then lastly, we need to make a light burgundy, which you're just gonna take a little bit of your dark burgundy. Put it in a cup and out water. We don't need very much of this because we're only using it for the teeniest little stripe . So just one brush will Burgundy and a couple of the water should be adequate. That is a little bit too Lights. I'm gonna add a little bit more of the burgundy, and that looks the same. But I have a feeling that I just didn't have enough paint on my brush, So I'm going to stir it again. Scrape test. And that time I had more paint. But I do have that big drip. I think that looks pretty good. Let's check it out over here. Yeah, that's a good darkness. So now we've got the last three colors we're going to need for this painting. 26. 26 Details: So now we're going to put the lines on this middle shell. But that's gonna be the very last step for that middle shell. Oh, so before we think about putting the lines on, just really look at your show and without the lines on it, just make sure you're happy with what you have. If you have any edges that have become hard again and you want to blend them, you can rinse, touch your towel and wipe over any edges. If you your colors to dark, you can wipe over in a little bit and re blend the edge. If it's too light, you can add a little bit more color and re attempt the same technique you did before. Anything you want to dio once you're happy with it, you can if it's not already dry Minds drugs. It's been sitting here a while, but if it's not already dry, go ahead and blow dry it. And then I would recommend drawing in lines with a pencil if you don't have a steady hand or you're not confident with making the right shapes. One thing I want to point out is the shape of these curves, really mimic the shape of the bottom. One very common error is to make them a little bit too flat, and that makes the show look a little bit misshapen. So you want them to really deeply smile, and one way to make sure that's happening is on every point on the line. It's approximately the same distance from the bottom of the show. Same with all of these lines. The distance is about the same from the line to the edge of the show, so you can draw those in with pencil if you want. If you're comfortable, freehand and go right ahead, and we're going to start with the light burgundy that we just mixed up and we're gonna paint all of the lines in light burgundy. But when we do this, uh, darker one, or where you see the darker colors, we're gonna put the light Burgundian first and then immediately dark burgundy over it so that the dark burgundy blends with the light so you can start with the light burg. Indiana will sit into the pink there, and we're going to start about halfway up on the left side and just press down a little bit you don't want the line to be too thick and pull it all the way to the right and I'm gonna make that edge a little tighter on the right. Get kind of started out round, and then I'm gonna do the same thing with the next one. This is gonna be a lot closer to the bottom. So I'm going to start up here on the left leaving an equal space all the way around. And this one could be a thicker line. So impressing a little bit harder with my bristles. Need to reload my brush. And I'm going to go back for more paint all the way across. And no, I'm just gonna dip right into that dark burgundy and dark in the whole left side of that line because the line you just painted, it's still probably wet. The dark color should just bleed right into it. If it's not bleeding into it, it just means you're lines drying a little bit. And that's no big deal. You can just use your brush and sort of encourage it to go where you need it to go. I'm gonna leave it mostly light on the right here with a little bit of dark on the very edge. Hoops and I went a little over. So I'm going to create an edge over here to make it look like I did that on purpose. Got a little bit too dark there. So I'm going to rinse, touch, go back and wipe a little bit of that color off. That's the highlight area, so we wanted to be a little bit lighter than the rest of the line. I'm gonna do that again. And then there's two lines on the bottom, so I'm going to start. It doesn't matter which one you start with. Actually, I'm gonna start with the top one. Oops, I skipped a section. Then the bottom one is just absolutely on the bottom of the show. Don't fret about it. If you accidentally get your line touching the bottom of the show in a few places, it's It's a natural objects, so it's and it's a painting, so it's not going to be spot on perfect. Every everywhere I'm gonna go back and add a little more color. I feel like it's too light, and then that's a pretty dark line in some places, so I'm gonna get some dark and put that in mostly in the shadowy area here, on and over on the very edge where it started. I'm gonna encourage that dark to just blend into the light part. And then lastly, you know, get a little more light. I have some dark. Had some dark residual on my brush there. But I'm These last two lines are such a combination of light and dark that I didn't even bother getting the dark off my brush. It's such a tiny line, it just doesn't matter. And I'm gonna go back and get some dark and intensify that bottom edge, which is just an outline of the original shape. One could get a little bit more dark here on the very bottom. Um, so I'm gonna go back over here, rinse and touch and just wipe across this edge because my lines went a little beyond the boundary. Remember, I'm gonna put my cast shadow here, so that really doesn't matter much. But for the sake of being consistent, I'll brush it off, and then this line to me is a little bit too light. So I'm gonna get just the tiniest bit of dark on my brush and put some dark right through the center here in the shadowy. Or even though my light is a dry right now, I'm putting the dark down first cause I don't want it to spread too far. So I put the dark down, and then I get the way, and I'm going to use that to spread the dark rather than the other way around. Okay? And we're done with that. 27. 27 Cast Shadows: So first we're going to blow dry those lines. You just did make sure everything is really warm and dry. Yeah, And now we're gonna do the cast shadows, the part going off to the left so you'll notice there's two parts to the cast shadow. There's the lighter part, which is kind of the blotchy stuff in the middle. And then as the shadow gets closer to the show, it gets darker. And that's that. That's just the anatomy of a shadow. It always gets darkest where the object is closest to the ground and it gradually gets lighter from there. And the further the shadow gets away from the object, the more blended it is. So on the very outside edge here is gonna be the softest blend. And then as they get closer to the show, it's gonna look a little bit harder. So the first thing we're gonna dio is on each shell. They're gonna be the same thing each time we're gonna paint in the light gray, and then we're gonna drop in a little bit of the dark gray and let it bleed into the light and adjust anything that needs to be adjusted if we have too much paint or not, enough paint will fix that. And then we're going to blend the outside edge, starting with the very tip of the brush where its darkest. And then as we move out, we're goingto leave the brush down more on its side to get a really wide blend. And then as we come back, we'll get back to the tip of the brush. So what? I'm gonna do this upside down because I'm right handed you if you want your brush pointed towards the hard edge of the shell for this part. So we'll start with the light grey that we just mixed up. Give it a little stir. Make sure it hasn't settled too much. While we were painting stripes. Get a good amount of pain on the brush. I'm gonna turn this upside down so I can copy it more easily, and I'm going to start pointing the rush towards the show and just brushing the great. Make sure you get right up next to the edge and create just sort of ah, half oval shape going out to the side. You want enough color here so that it's nice and wet but not stopping. What? Try not to have big, big drips here. And if you do just so come up so something like that. Now we quickly rinse, touch, get a little bit of the dark on the tip of the brush. You can always get more and drop it in. And I do need a little bit more so that it gets darkest next to the show. Well, it where the show touches the ground, you can kind of make him a little triangle shapes, and then I'm just dabbing at it to encourage it to blend out into the light gray a little bit more. Then, once I'm happy with the way it's been bleeding. I'm gonna rinse, touch my towel a little bit. Don't want to touch it too much because you do want a little bit of water in the brush, and then we're going to use the very tip of the brush here, start blending the edge, and then, as we move out towards the centre, sort of lay the brush down onto the paper more so that is really laying all the way down when to get out here and you can just sort of manipulate it, jostle it a little bit. See, I'm going back and forth because it's not blending quite as seamlessly as I would like it to. And then as I get back, I'm going back to the tip of the brush and then I'm gonna wait a second and let it settle cause it's it's doing its thing. It's sort of moving out to the edges. I'm just noticing areas. I want to go back and adjust. So rinse, touch the brush, touch the tower, the sponge a little bit. So you have some water, and then you can go back and just kind of mess with the areas that got a little bit unruly . Here we have another hard edge forming, so I'm gonna lay the brush down there and wipe it to soften. And then here I see another little hard edge forming. So I'm just gonna very lightly dab it that I don't want to be very careful there because it's very easy to pull color off. So I just used the very tip of the brush and dabbed out it, and I'm happy with that, So I'm gonna leave it now. We're going to exactly the same thing two more times. So start with the light grade. Just point the brush right where it starts in the reference picture and fill in a big grey blotch as you go along the edge of the show. Make sure your brushes going all the way up to the edge. It'll stop about right there and then come out in a big oval shape and parents touch. Get some of the dark quickly drop it in before the late has too much opportunity to dry, get a little bit more. I don't over here a little bit more over here, so do it to your heart's content, and I'm happy with that. So ignorance touch actually touched too much there. Rinse touch a little bit. So I have about 1/2 brush full of water and use the tip of the brush on the dark edge. And then, as I go out and really laying the brush way down on the paper to encourage that edge to blend very well, got a little dab there, but I'm gonna leave it and see what it chooses to dio me actually like it. And then as I go back I'm going to use the tip of the brush again. Rinse, touch the towel and I can see another hard edge forming on the outside. So I'm gonna go back and dab it. That and that little on really bit didn't end up pleasing these. I'm wiping it off. And now I've got the tip of the brush just inside of the new hard edge. So I'm staying well away from the nicely blended edge there. But I'm just trying to agitate this outer new hard edged to make it a little bit softer. And I'm happy with that. So I'm gonna leave that alone. And now one more start at the very top edge of the show. Go along the inside edge. It's going to stop about right there. The shadow just stops kind of where the show touches the flat surface that it's lowest point. So wherever the lowest part of the shell is is usually where the shadows starts. In this case. So I'm filling in that shape me to get some dark, drop that in, but it who I got a lot that time Let it bleed, Rinse, Tuchman towel, go back and just sort of agitate the edges, particularly over on this one, since I got so much paint there rid of extra paint and I'm happy with that. So I'm getting blood. No rinse, touch the toe, Start with the very tip of the brush over here on the left for the top. And then as I go, really Lay that brush down, getting a nice wide blend on the outside. And now I'm getting back to the beginnings. I'm going to use the tip Prince Touch on. I got a hard edge over years. I'm going to go back and blend that and that one. Actually, I think I'm just gonna leave alone. I don't really need to do much to it, and we're done. 28. 28 Finishing: So now we're mostly done, but we're going to do We're gonna blow dry and then do some finishing touches. I'm gonna show you how to just fix up anything that may have gone a little awry. So go ahead and blow dry. First load. It really does make my paper curl. That's okay, because it relaxes after a while. So there's a few things we're gonna do on mine, and you may or may not have this have happened to you have got little bit of white showing in some areas. Like this line doesn't go all the way to the edge. So I'm gonna fix those. This edge just got a little bit crooked, so I'm gonna make encourage that yellow to go all the way to the edge. Here we have a little bit of pink that went outside the line and hear. My highlight just isn't light enough. And my reflected light just isn't light enough if you look at it compared to this show, this is so nice and light and so is that. And I just want to try to get those effects over here. So I'm gonna show you how to do all of those things, and you can apply them or not. Apply them to your painting as you would like. So first, make sure you have a really clean water and rub your brush around on the bottom of the cup to make sure your brushes really clean. Touch your towel. So to cover up a little bit of white that may be showing. All you need to really do is dab into the color that's already there with the very tip of the brush and just force it into that white area. And you can do that anywhere you see white showing what you don't want to do is overdue this because you'll end up pulling color off. So that's that part. It's actually same thing over here, so I'm gonna just dab it the yellow to re wet it when you put that down and just make it a smoother curve right here. Here we go. And now I've made another hard edge, so I'm gonna turn it upside down so that my brush could be pointed towards that hard edge and forced that out to the side, really laying my brush down so that I hopefully don't create another hard edge below it. I'm gonna, um, on here. I'm gonna try to get the light back, so I'm gonna rinse, touch my towel mostly, but still have a little bit of dampness in here. I'm just gonna wipe through this part and you'll see the colors will start to lighten a little bit. And I created another hard edge right there, which is a books, Okay, because I can get rid of it. To get rid of that, I could do it upside down or it's really just a line. So either way is fine. It's not like I'm trying to push the color one way or the other, and I'm just going to go over and say about it to make it disappear. Now, I've kind of made these two and a little more abruptly than I would like. So I'm gonna dab it Those two ends, also just to make them kind of diffuse more into the highlight, they're now. I'm happy with that. And then on the left side here, I'm going to get a little bit more reflected light by rinsing touching my towel and just wiping through that edge. Now I am attempting to actually pull color off so I can kind of press a little harder with my brush and go over it multiple times to really lighten it. So we're into your brush and touch your towel every few strokes, and that will get any residual color off so that you're not just smearing the color around you're actually removing it. So no, I am officially happy with that show. Remember, we're not touching the middle of shell again unless you're fixing the stripes because we've already done the blending and everything. And that's what you wanted to make sure you were happy with before we put the stripes on. In my case, my strike doesn't quite go all the way to the edge. So I'm just gonna take a little bit of the the light Burgundy excuse me and make my striped go all the way to the edge and soak up the drip. That's the only fix I have there. And then on the top show, I'm gonna try to get rid of some of a pink that accidentally got outside. So I'm gonna rinse, touch, make sure my brushes pointing towards that top edge and just dab it that color to re and re vig reinvigorate it. And then I can kind of white my brush off or rents and wipe it and then go back and wipe a little bit more and you could see I didn't get rid of all of it. But I got rid of most of it. So you can use any of those techniques anywhere in your painting for any mishaps that may have happened or not. Maybe you were happy with. It was out that and for that congratulations. 29. 29 Recap: so to recap, this is the image we made today. I hope you had a great time doing it. I love doing it with you. We learned how to mix colors, specific colors and water colors to match a visual reference. We learned how to control the intensity of our watercolors and how much paint to mix. We learned how to do different textures, like fine lines blending wet into wet. And hopefully you gained a little bit of joy and happiness from the ability to control and let go of control of this incredibly beautiful, expressive medium. I hope you had a great time. If you're interested in any other art courses, I have other ones online, so please check him out and thank you so much for joining me today.