A Watercolor Sketchbook Project: Unlock Color Confidence with the 3 Primary Colors

1. Introduction To The Course: Hello. My name is Fiona Di Pinto and I am a Scottish Italian watercolor artist, also known as drawings in a drawer on Instagram, and on my YouTube channel, drawings in a drawer by Fiona Di Pinto. I absolutely love working in my watercolor sketchbooks. And in this set of lessons, we are going to be doing exactly that. Creating a beautiful expressive spread, using just three primary colors. Don't let the limited palette put you off. It will teach you so much about color theory, and you will be impressed by all the colors you can mix using just these three. By the end of the course, you will have painted several subjects from animals to a portrait to fruit, using primary colors alone. You will have gained confidence in your use of this particularly unforgiving medium because I will be walking you through all the tips and tricks I have picked up over my many years as a watercolor artist. So that it won't feel intimidating anymore, and you will truly discover the joy of this beautiful medium. I'm very excited to be teaching this watercolor lesson because I think it brings us back to the basics while moving us forward in our artistic journey at the same time and helping us to hone our skills. So let's dive right into it. 2. Materials We Will Use: Now let's take a look at the materials. In this course, I will be using primary colors, a blue, a red, and a yellow. The colors I will be using are Prussian blue. Chinese red and lemon yellow. However, you don't have to use the same exact colors. I am using. You can use any blue, red or yellow. For example, you could use an ultramarine blue or a palo blue. You could use cadmium yellow or for example, a vermilion or a cadmium red. So you can switch it up in many ways. Or you could even choose not to paint with primary colors at all. That's totally up to you. You will still be able to follow along with this class. Will be painting in this sketchbook by Kaval. It is 300 GSM, cold pressed paper, and it's a natural shade. This is what it looks like. So it has quite a bit of a texture to it, as you can see. You can use any paper, but I would suggest trying to use paper that's 100% cotton and is at least 200 GSM. The brand of your brushes is really not important, but I do suggest you have a smaller brush for details and a larger brush for larger areas. And also round brushes are good idea, especially brushes that come to a nice, fine tip. I like having a small heat tool, but a hair dryer will work fine because I don't like to have to wait for the paint to dry. So maybe you would like to keep that handy as well. For my highlights, I really love this bleed proof white by doctor PH Martin. But if you don't have this no worries, you can use white gouache, white acrylic. A white gelpenO you can leave out the white of the paper like a proper watercolor purist. Good mixing trays are usually white. They allow you to see the colors properly. But if you don't have a por serine mixing tray, you can just pick up a plate, a regular ceramic plate and use that. Just be sure to not use it for eating in afterwards as some watercolors can be toxic. Kitchen paper or paper towels are the eraser of watercolor. They allow you to lift out mistakes or sop up extra water. You can reuse them quite a few times. You can see this has already been used, or you can use a rag or a cloth. So make sure to have one at your working space. And, of course, a large jar of water. I think you know what that looks like, and be prepared to refresh that water throughout the course. There. You're all set to go. 3. The Colour Wheel - A Simple and Fun Exercise: So here we are starting with a color wheel, just to get an idea of how many colors we can mix just by using the primary colors. In this case, you will see me use Chinese red, lemon yellow, and Prussian blue. But you don't have to use the same exact colors I'm using, so don't worry if you don't have them. It's enough to understand what you can achieve by mixing the primary colors. Creating a color wheel or color square, as I do here is easy enough. You simply put down your three primary colors so that they are sitting opposite to each other on the wheel and you start mixing a bit of one into the other. The color wheel I drew is a little bit wonky, but I'm more for play than for precision in this case. Let's put it that way. So I mix a pinprick of Prussian blue in my Chinese red, and then I keep adding more of that Prussian blue to each slice I paint. And you can see how that Chinese red is getting more desaturated, more dusky sultry as we add that Prussian blue. And let's kind of make a mental note of these mixes because these are going to serve as our darkest value or darkest tone in several of our pieces, probably in all of them. We can also achieve some very pretty purples with this kind of mix. Admittedly, I'm not the best at color wheels. I made that last blue, a little bit too pigment heavy, a little bit too thick, so it's darker than the original blue. But anyway, you get my point. This is what the color wheel teaches us. And yeah, let's move on. Once I've worked my way up to the Prussian blue, I will start adding a little bit of lemon yellow to the mix and increase it as I move on in the sections. And you will see that the blue will gradually start turning warmer until we get a sap green, which is that light green that is very useful for so many things. And when I get to lemon yellow, I will start adding some of the red to the lemon yellow, some of that Chinese red to the mix, and I will inch my way towards those beautiful orange and warm pinks that we get working our way up back towards that Chinese red. So that gives us an idea of what the color wheel can look like and see how many different colors we can just get by using those three primary colors. Just think the more sections you have in your wheel, the more shades you'll be able to achieve and create. This is a spread in one of my sketchbooks that I did by using the three colors I mentioned above, and you can see again here how you can get a perfectly beautiful and completed painting just by using these three colors, and that is what we are going to do today. I'm so excited for it. So let's step into the next part of the lesson. 4. Painting 1 The Ram: I have mixed some of that Chinese red with the lemon yellow, and I am just bringing it into the horns. I hope I'm saying that right. And they're not antlers, but I mean, that's not important here. And I'm just bringing some of that yellow tinted with some of that red. So we're getting this kind of rich kind of orange color. And I clean my brush in between every step. And maybe I want to pick up a little bit more a little bit more red that I can place in my bowl here, and then I can start, you know, kind of placing it somewhere else on the horn. I like working in separate areas of a drawing and just that will give time for the other areas to start drying in the meanwhile, and it will give us a little bit more control. So I want a little bit more of pink up here towards the root or the base of the horns, and, um, I want to kind of have a variety of colors going on here, just like we experimented with the colors over to this side. We can kind of look at them and see what we'd like to see in our drawing. I really love some of the range of pinks that we have up here. I love some of these sultry blues. So that's definitely something we'll know how to recreate because we know that our blue is here, and then going from here downwards, we just added a little bit of yellow. So that's how we get the blues, and so that is what I am going to do. I'm just picking up some blue from a little mixing tray that I have over here, and I'm going to start dropping that into the other side of my into the other antler or horn. Again, I should look that up. And also, on the other side as well. So that is just some blue, and it has a little bit possibly a little bit of contamination with yellow or with red, but something literally minimal. So I want you to always be very aware of the amount of water you are using and the amount of paint. That is crucial in watercolor. It's the never ending dance that lasts until your watercolor. But you cannot get frustrated with it because if you get frustrated with it, you're just giving up on something that is not a battle, but it's a beautiful interaction and something that really can give you pure joy. So always be aware of how wet your bristles are, how wet the paint in your palette is. And you can easily do that by tilting your palette slightly and seeing how fast your paint drips down. You can see it's slowly dripping because it's created a slight pool of color here, but at the same time, it's not dripping all the way down, so it's not as watery as it could be, and that is good because the more water we have, the less control we have, even though we can get some beautiful effects with that. And the less water we have, the more pigment we have, the more control we have. And I can also start pushing this out with my clean damp brush. So my bristles are clean, and I can start pushing this color out. You know, that watercolor will reactivate once we dry wet it with water, even once it's dried on the paper, it will always reactivate. So it's not permanent. That is why we have to preserve it behind glass, for example. Which is something that we don't have to do with acrylics and that we don't have to do with oils, for example. And over here, I might take a little bit more of a little bit more pink and start positioning it in the base of the horn over to this side. And when you want a little bit more of a cool pink, like a cool red, which I call pinks, you just add a pinprick of blue into that red. So, for example, I have some of that Chinese red here. And by adding just a little pinprick of blue to it, I am going to obtain something. I always advise you to try your colors first on a scrap piece of watercolor paper. So we've definitely got something that looks a little bit like potter pinks to me. I don't know if you know this color. So I'm going to rinse my brush, pick up a bit more of that Chinese red, which I am going to mix right here for you to see. Add a little pinprick of that blue. That helps us to desaturate the colors. So anything that's on the opposite side of the color wheel is going to desaturate the color, which means it's going to make it less vibrant, more sultry, more misty, which is something that I love. And let's see what we have now. So it's definitely more pink, more on the pink side. And then if we add water, it's going to become even lighter. Of course, like this, as we pull it out and it gets diluted with water, it becomes lighter. I'm going to use this mixture at the base of the horn over here and maybe some here at the front in the nose. I can drop some of that pink into the red just to create a variation of color, and that is just a tap, tap, tap emotion. I very often notice a lot of my students hold their brush and press on it really hard. We have to be aware of the pressure we put on our bristles because it's quite fundamental. And very often to get, for example, a precise line, one that's not too squiggly, we really have to pay attention to not put too much pressure on our brushes. I'm also bringing this pink in to that end part. Of the horn. And I'm just being kind of I'm not picking it up anymore water. So again, it's all a matter of learning to control the amount of water you have against the amount of pigment. That's all watercolor is, and it is hard, but it's also extremely satisfying. I've mixed some blue with some red, and I'm just positioning it between these two colors to create again, kind of interesting variation of colors. And then we can also get some granulation here, which also always adds interest. And if you don't know what granulation is, it's just when the pigment starts to divide to separate, and it creates these interesting patterns. You can kind of get a bit of a sneak peek of them here, and some of them will stay till the end of the painting, and some of them will disappear. That is a part of the unpredictability of watercolor. I'm gently outlining the horn with what I have on my brush. And I really like to play about when it comes to the horns, because I just think it's, you know, it's just something that you can have so much fun with and, you know, explore with, use unusual colors. I always encourage my students to use unusual colors because it's really something that cracks open our imagination, our creativity, and numerous possibilities. So it's something that I really like to do. For example, now, I am going to mix some of my Prussian blue with a little bit of red. In the hopes of obtaining a kind of violet that's not too dark, maybe it leaves a little bit more blue in it. So playing back and forward with colors is crucial. I mean, you will make mistakes. You will make some colors that look like there's nothing to them to you, but at the same time, they might actually end up being interesting to work as dark values. So here we have a darker kind of more purple color, and I'm going to place that there. So we all know that in every painting, we need a mid tone, a light tone, and a dark value. We can also call them values. That is nothing complicated to understand. It's just how dark or how light a value needs to be or a tone needs to be. So if we have three, then of course, our image is going to look three dimensional. If we only have two, it's going to flat. So that is something that you always look out for, whether you're drawing in pencil, whether you're using watercolors or any other medium, you should always look to have three values. I highlight, a mid tone and a dark value. And then you can have more in between. Of course, that's completely up to you. But it's a value that matters in paintings and drawings. So the three dimensionality we obtain rather than the colors we use. I've added a little bit of blue to that mixture that I had of blue and red, and I'm just bringing it up to that area where we have that black patch. And when you're working with primary colors, which as I said, I hope I've said already is not obligatory. You don't have to work with primary colors if that is something that doesn't make you feel comfortable. But when you're working with primary colors, sometimes you get a softer effect because, um, you can go pretty dark with your values by mixing the blue and the red, admittedly, and sometimes also adding some yellow into that mixture can really bring you this dark hue, if you see here at the end by adding the red, to the yellow, to the blue. In the end, at the end of the day, you will get a pretty dark value as you see me getting here. But, yeah, um, You have to kind of play around with it a little bit, and it's actually so much fun for you to do, and it makes you understand so much about color theory in general. So this is what I'm using. It's a little bit brown. So I'm going to add a little bit of blue to it just to give it that pop of intensity. As you can see, it's quite thick. It's a consistency of cream. Uh, yeah, I would say it's exactly the consistency of cream because it's a little bit thicker than milk. I like to roll my brush in it in all directions so I get what I call the fully loaded brush, which means that if I put it down on one side, I'm going to get the same amount of mixture on my paper than if I accidentally put it down on the other side. So I'm going to go in and dab it onto that paint. That I already placed down, which means that I am at the moment working wet and wet because I am positioning wet paint on an already wet surface, which is made by the paint that I put down, which is still damp. And then I'm bringing it up to the horn or antler, and I'm making sure if my horns still wet, to not touch the dark color with it completely otherwise, it will start seeping through, and you will see that happening here, you kind of get this snowflake effect, which can be really interesting and you might want to keep something like that in your painting. But at the same time, it might not be your cup of tea. It might be distracting, which means you can feel free to remove it by just using some kitchen paper, tapping it down and lifting. And, of course, always be sure to clean your brushes, while you were painting, so I've just cleaned mine because I didn't want to be dragging that same color all around my piece, as you can see. And here, every time I go in, I give my brush a good swirl and sometimes I just tap it on the edge of my jar or on some rag or kitchen paper. Again, I don't want to be dragging the swim value around my drawing, so I am just kind of pulling it around like that, trying to break things down into shapes, you know, we can think of geometric shapes when we paint, and I can kind of imagine seeing like a square at the top of that head in that in that patch that he has it has on the top of the head. And then I'm going in with some blue, and it's like, completely undiluted. I just picked it up from the pan like this with a brush that's just barely barely damp, hardly at all. And I'm just positioning into the top of the head and it being on a surface that's already slightly wet, it will automatically bleed out on its own, but at the same time, it will create that pop of color, that variation of color in the head. Then with some red with a little bit of that blue in and again, just the pinprick of it, and I'm using it very watered down. And yet, if I haven't yet, I would like to remind you that with watercolor, we start usually with more watery layers where we have a little bit less control. So we have to be accepting of the fact that things are going to kind of go where they want to, and anyway, they will dry lighter, much lighter because that's just the way of watercolor, and you just have to be very accepting and very open, very free, and very forgiving with yourself in ways, because that's just the way it is with watercolor and what I love about it because it reflects so many things about human life. And then we build up to less water in our mixtures. So as we build up to the details, we decrease the amount of water in our mixtures and we increase the amount of the amount of pigment. I'm also going to go in to the other horn. On the other side, I might decide to go in and add a little bit of yellow later just to give it. Variety, again, I really like having variety, even though I am using a limited palette. I still think that you can obtain a lot of variety through that because there are really literally immense possibilities with the colors you can get just by mixing these. So now I'm adding a little bit of yellow. And a little bit of blue just to kind of veer more towards a little bit of red back again, back and forth with these, just playing with these, you will kind of eventually end up getting a brown, which is what I wanted. And then I'm just going behind this part of the horn and just kind of it's playing around with colors, positioning one color next to the other and seeing how it bleeds into the next one if that one's still wet, seeing how they work together. Usually, when colors are from a limited palette, so in this case, from the three primary colors, it is very hard that anything you will mix from these will not look nice. That is a sure to go trick if you want to look cohesive and harmonious in your painting, yeah. I'm also going to bring in some of that brown up here into the top of the horn. And maybe down here just to suggest, at the wool on the fur. Yellowish kind of ocherish color should work well. And again, here I'm using the tip of my brush because another important thing is learn what part of your brush you're using familiarize yourself with your brush. Are you using the side of your bristles? Are you using the tip of your bristles? These are all things you should know when you're working towards the center of your sketch, then you're free to use a side. It gives you the chance to spread your color in a more uniform mather manner. But if you're working close to the edge of your sketch, be sure to use the tip of your brush because that will help you have more control. And then want to define the sides of the face, I go in with a darker value that I can see in my palette, and with a small number two brush, I just gently using the tip of my bristles outline that area, even when I go into the side of the eye, making sure I don't go over the horn and, um, just outlining the eye a little bit just to bring the focus where we want it to be, of course, which actually, for me, is not even the eyes. It's these beautiful horns or anthers again. I will make sure to look it up. Now, now and then, you will have to sure that your piece is completely dry. Why do you have to dry your piece in watercolor now and then? Well, because you need to freeze it, so to speak. Once you reach a level where you're happy with what you've done and you don't want the paint to move around on your paper anymore, all you need is a heat tool like this. But if you don't have anything like this, a regular hair dryer is fine. This is just more portable, and you will dry your piece just by turning on that switch, and that will give you kind of like a clean canvas concept to start on again because at this stage, we're done with the wet and yet, at least for now, and we're moving on to working wet and dry, which means using wet paint on a dry surface, and that offers more control. So let's look at what we'll be diving into next. Just by looking at the reference photo, I noticed that he has the Ram has certain little, um, Strands of fur that kind of protrude out of the edges where the patch or the darker patch ends. So using a very small brush and putting hardly any pressure at all on my brush, of course, I am just trying to get a few of those strands in just to add that little touch of realism that will make everything look. I don't know, just give everything a little bit more crispness and interest, I think, because it's beautiful when we have these delicate balances between lost and found edges. So, for example, sharp and soft edges and kind of more imagination and realism. At the same time, it almost confuses the mind, but I think the integration of these two elements, so to speak, is extremely interesting. And I'm also going in to all the areas, using the starker value and my small number two brush to kind of enhance certain areas that I feel need to be sharper and more in focused. And, of course, some of them are in the antlers. By the way, apparently, you can call them both antlers and horns, but apparently antlers seems to be the most correct. So we will proceed with antlers and maybe darkening up the nostrils if they need to be darkened up, always delicate, always making sure not to put too much pressure on your brush, always making sure you don't have too much water or too little water. On your brush. And then, again, I'm using my little brush to go in and add just a little bit of a tiny lash just kind of protruding over to the side there, which I think looks really nice. And then, of course, we will have to go inside the iris and color that, and it's kind of ambery color. So let's see. Okay, I've got this color for mixing all of the primary colors. It's not very ambery, but I think I will do some lifting. And this will give me the opportunity to show you what lifting is all about. So I am putting my color down in the iris, again, very small brush and a lot of control. So I'm just filling up the whole iris. Usually in animals, you cannot see the white of the ball, so it's a safe bet to save the whole of just, you know, cover it completely. And then what I will do is I will rinse my brush in water completely, and if you give it a double rinse, even better, and I will tap it on my kitchen paper, And then when it's, like, almost dry, you can test it against your fingers. It's almost dry. You just go in, press those bristles down delicately within the iris and lift. And you will see that the color indeed looks so much lighter. And that is one of the two ways to correct in watercolor. We can either use a dry and clean, of course, piece of kitchen paper or rag. Or we can use our paint brushes, just by rinsing them, and making them perfectly clean, and then by drying them so that they're almost dry, just a tiny trace of damp, but almost dry, then we can use them to press down and lift whatever we've put down. So I'm just going to do the same on the other side. I'm going to repeat this so you will be able to see what I'm doing. Well, I am just filling in the iris with that color I mixed, which is basically a brown, rinsing my brush and drying it. And then pressing it down, just giving it a little bit of those kind of little circular motions, very small, very tiny, very little pressure, and there you have it. It's much lighter. And then you can play around with that. You can drop in some darker, less diluted colors, which means they will spread out on their own. You can wait for it to dry or use your heat tool to dry it and then add more details once you have more control, because at that point, you will be working wet on dry, which, as I said, offers more control. And then I'm going to use any brown or any reddish brown that I've mixed from those three primary colors that I've showed you. And again, using a small brush, making sure that everything's dry, just go into the antlers and start adding those beautiful ridges that rams have in their antlers. You will have to keep up. Keep picking up mixture with your brush because you will soon run out of it when you're working with a very small brush. So that is to be expected, and though it can be a little bit of a nuisance, I mean, I don't think it's too much to complain about, let's put it that way and be sure that the ridges in your antlers are always kind of angled inside, inside and under, kind of like they're going under. So don't have them going straight down. Of course, make sure you're observing the photograph and you're not painting or drawing what you think you know, but what you are actually seeing. So these ridges are definitely rounded, and you should, again, not be putting a lot of pressure at all on your brush. And I think they're more evident and more outlined up here at the top. And maybe down here, I could just go in and with my brush with these vertical strokes just give kind of like a little bit of shadow, even though it's not exactly a shadow color, but I can see that in there. And then as we go further down, I would see the ridges get a little bit further apart, further down in the antler, and we just need to kind of get the idea of them in there. And now that the ram is dry, we can go into the background with colors that we used in the am as well. So again, we're going in with primary colors, and this is just to create a kind of soft background. As you can see, I've picked up a larger brush. This is just a no brand brush, but it holds a lot of water. You can tell just by looking at the belly of this brush. There, it's extremely thirsty. That's what they call a thirsty brush. And then I'm just going to pick up colors like blues that will go well. You know, they will all go well with each other when you're working with primary colors. And even if you do create mud, I would say that very often it ends up looking like transparent mud. So I just think that it still looks beautiful and bringing in some of that red, which water down turns into a beautiful cool pink. So this is a Chinese red I mentioned. And basically, we just create a background for our ram. Maybe we can pick up some of the darker values we created with the mixtures which usually, I repeat, are created by mixing at least in my case, I don't claim to be an expert, but are mixed in my experience by mixing all three of the primary colors together in different ratios, let's say, at the end of the day, you will end up with what you're looking for, you will end up with a reasonably dark color. And yeah, you can see that even though, you know, within there was no rhyme or reason to this, we're still obtaining a cohesive background that works well with our main piece. And I think this is a huge thing to take away from watercolor, from art in general. I just think that it's the number one thing people should learn about art, and I'm happy to be here today. To talk about this and tackle this subject with you. So here's a ram, and let's move on to the rest of our spread in primary colors, and let's see where this adventure will take us. Oh, and, of course, as is my whim, I am adding a little bit of bleed proof white by doctor PH Martin, so doctor PH Martin. But you can use white gouache, white acrylic, quite Galpin, and I just add these little drops of light into the eyes but sometimes not only into the eyes, I just think they add that little bit of extra I don't know what. Just by adding one tendril of curly fur here, it will help you to make the viewer read the whole fur as white or white maybe just, you know, a couple of them. And then maybe going into the horns and add a little bit of dots, even though why? I don't know. I don't care why. It could be snowing. It could be that. You know, I am just thinking of something magical, and I want those white starlight little fire light things, insects. Fireflies are not fire lights. Fireflies in here. So there doesn't have to be a reason, okay, why you do something. If you like it and if you like the way it looks, then it's 100% up to you. I mean, don't make anyone stop you or don't make anyone as in don't make yourself stop you because very often it is ourselves telling ourselves that we shouldn't do that, that looks stupid, that looks odd, that it won't look good, that it looks not nice. That is the first negative self talk we have to eliminate when we are making art because we're just getting in the way of a beautiful process. And so I'm just finishing adding these little bits of dots of white in there, which I just think add a little bit of extra life and roundness to my piece. And then I would say that we are definitely, most definitely onto our Nexton. 5. Painting 2 Portrait of Girl: Now have my sketchbook up on an easel. As you can see, this is a tabletop easel, and we are moving onto our portrait. We are still going to be working, of course, with our three primary colors. At one point, we will be adding something more, but we're going to be starting off with this very cohesive foundation for the whole spread. And what I'm going to do here is I have just mixed all three colors together. So I have obtained this very unpleasant looking mud that you can see here over to this side. So it's literally just mud. So for some watercolor artists, this is a big, no, no, you don't use mud. Mud is opaque. Mud makes you lose the transparency of watercolor. In my case, sometimes mud is absolutely the best possible thing you can break in a painting with, especially if you're using single pigment colors like I am, which makes them more transparent, so they mix well with one another. And what I do is I just go into the shadow area, so going into the area under the eyes, and I am using number four round brush, so you don't need anything special for this. And then I'm going above the eye. The consistency of the mixture I am using is, again, quite watery. So we have more water than pigment. And this is something that you're going to have to get used to when painting with watercolor. You're constantly going to have to adapt the amount of water and pigment that you have in your mixtures till it becomes second nature. And that will take a while, so they'll get frustrated if that is not happening. Just as you start your watercolor journey, or even if it's not happening after a year or two, that's still completely normal. I'm going into the lips still using this number four brush, and I'm going into the corners of the lips. I just kind of like to break the ice with the painting this way, just getting all the shadow areas in and this is a technique I have been using for years. So it's definitely something that I feel very comfortable with. So when you find a technique that you like that has effective results, I would advise you to stick with it as long as possible without ever forgetting to experiment, of course, which is fundamental. And I'm going into the chin area and I'm adding some shadow into the chin. I want you to have some control as well. So the mixture is not tea consistency. So we're not talking about a mixture that is like a puddle that is, like, tinted water. It has a little bit more pigment in it than that, so it's not just pure water. But again, be careful not to go completely in the other direction and reduce the amount of water too much. That is something else that you don't want, okay? So I've gone in and I've filled those shadow areas, and I think at this point, it would be a really good idea to also get the hands in at the same time. Otherwise, you will have to go in and do them later, and you will have lost the same mixture you were using in the face, so they might look a little bit different. And also, maybe the null might be the most interesting part of the painting to tackle. So the sooner we get rid of them, the better. Not to say that hands are not an interesting thing to paint, but might not be the most appealing part of this painting. And I'm going into the knuckle over to this hand here on the right side and always going around the edges of the sketch within the limits of the pencil lines because that's often where the subject we're painting, whether it's a face or it's the hands are turning back away from the viewer. So there will definitely be a shadow there. So let's also bring that shadow into the sides of the face. Just using delicate touches with my brush. That's another thing. Don't put too much pressure on your brush, and I'm sorry if I repeat myself during this course, but it really takes a lot to get certain concepts to stick when you're working with not watercolor. So the more you repeat them in certain cases, the better. So I'm just with my clean damp brush, smoothing out that paint, I lay down around the eyes, and as you can see, that will kind of pull it out and just create this mid value, this mid tone, which, again, is something that we always need a mid tone, high tone or high value, like a high white or a highlight and a dark value, which will surely be in a shadow area. And, of course, so many other different values and tones in between the highlight and the darkest tone. So again, I'm just smoothing out that paint just by picking up more water with my brush so my brush is clean. There is absolutely nothing on it. I'm just reactivating the paint that I put down. And I'm pulling it around the face just so that I kind of feel it all in almost as if I were working in a coloring book. I'm bringing some warmth and bringing some redness into a complexion by adding some Chinese red. And again, I'm going towards the edge and the corner of those lips, and I'm kind of working my way in following the opening of the mouth, which is rarely a straight line. In this case, it's kind of slightly turned downwards on either side. And one thing that I wanted to say about working on an easel or on a tabletop easel when working with watercolor, it is really useful because one, you are seeing, and I think this applies to other mediums as well. But one, you are actually seeing the image in the right perspective, so it's not flattened down and you don't have this elongating of the face that happens when you're holding something like this. And you're looking at it, it puts less strain on your back because you're painting with a straight back, and also the paint and water will drip downwards and will pull over at the bottom, and you can easily soak them up with a clean brush, and that will help you have a more even wash, as all the paint and pigment will be flowing downwards evenly, then you can lift it out. So going back to the warmth we're slightly adding here, gradually, we're adding some of that warmth to the lips, and then we can definitely bring some around the nostrils, just dabbing very delicately, just really not putting much pressure at all on your brush, cleaning it, remembering to clean it to tap it off your kitchen paper, and then to go in and start moving that paint around the lip, so again, we get that mid value. You will need those three values within the lip, as well. So we've already created a darker value in the corners, and a kind of mid tone in the center of the lips. And then I'm also smoothing out the paint that I positioned on the sides of the nostrils. And again, I'm still using that number four brush. I'm still treading very carefully, moving the brush just moving the paint around with my bristles. And you can sometimes connect the redness on the nose to the cupid's bow. Just by doing vertical motions with your paintbrush and bringing it down. And that always somehow tends to look right. I don't know exactly why. Still picking up mixture that is dominated by Chinese red. Allow me to go into the eyelids here and allow yourself to go into the eyelids here. I'm just again just filling them in with that Chinese red, which obviously has come into contact with the blue and the yellow, so it's a bit murkier. It's not a pure red. It's a little bit more brown, let's see. And then into the bottom lid, as well, just in the center under the irises. I think that just really adds this beautiful touch. It just makes the whole gaze more intense. So when you're working on the eyes, and I believe there's a class here on Skillshare that I've done. In fact, I'm sure of it about the expressive watercolor eye. So if you haven't taken that, one, be sure to go and take that one, too, after this one. I can also use this color. I have my brush to create some shadows, and I'm bringing it out into the let's say into the cheek bone and into the temple, kind of creating this triangular shape that is something that you can do with shadows. You can create the outline of the shadow very often by breaking it down into simple geometric shapes. And in this case, for me, it's a triangle, and then you can fill it in with your watercolor. And that just simplifies things. And you can do the same thing over here. Look at that shadow at the top of the bridge of the nose going towards the eye. Again, very often they resemble the shapes of triangles or commas. So look at them that way, trace the outline of them, and then fill them in. And that is definitely an easy way to get the shadow work in without having to, uh, fuss around too much. And again, I'm still picking up this mixture, bringing it over to the other side and doing the same exact thing with that shadow, checking around the painting for more shadows, and there's definitely one under the chin here, so I'm just going to go in there and position that one there. There's definitely one under the lip here and just try to step away from what you think, you know, and just try and see what you're actually looking at. Again, this is so important in any form of art. Just try and see with your eyes what you are looking at. And even if it's an unusual color, like something you wouldn't usually use in the face, like a blue or a green or a purple, by all means, feel free to use it. In fact, do because using unusual colors and exploring will definitely help you find your style much faster. And now I am going to I would like to obtain a green color. I definitely see some green, and that is easily done because you have to mix the yellow and the blue. We are mixing the yellow and the Prussian blue and we're obtaining this green, which is a bit too dark for what I was looking for. So going to clean my brush and just pick up a little bit more yellow. So when you're working with primary colors, I've said this before in the previous section, I believe, I said it's a delicate dance between pigment and water and also between kind of going back and forwards between colors, add less, take away more, add more yellow, add more red till you've achieved the color that you want. I'm going to add a little pinprick of red to my green that will help to desaturate it just a pinprick. I don't want it to look too bright. That's why I don't want. And then I'm bringing it into the face because I can see some greens. There's certainly some very yellowy greenish tones to the skin. So I'm dropping some of that green within that shadow at the top of the bridge of the nose in, like, the corner of the inner corner of the eye. I'm bringing some of that shadow here at the top of the temple. I can also seen it going like, kind of out into the face. It's very right. So I'm going to clean my brush and tap it on the kitchen paper and just kind of smooth that green out just so that it's a little bit less bright than it was looking. I don't want it to be in your face. You don't want it to be distracting, of course. Anything that is distracting will take away from the focal point. So make sure that Things that you're putting down are not stealing the show, so to speak. And anytime you need to blend anything, of course, just use your clean damp brush, go in, pass it over, pass your bristles, sweep your bristles over the edges of the area of the hard edge you want softened and just blend. It's as easy as that. Okay, I'm bringing some of this green also under the lip, just to reinforce that shadow that we'd already positioned there. Between the hands at the bottom, maybe at the top here as well. The almost always is a bit of green in the hands. I'm just placing it over the thumb here where I see this shadow area. At the root of the thumb and then going upward. And I'm still using the small brush because it really does offer me so much more control. For the hair, I'm just going to use a mix of the yellow and the red. I know the hair is a different color in the reference image, but I kind of just going to use this as a shadow value. And the paint is very thick, almost buttery, not quite as thick as butter, but I would definitely I define it tooth pasty, to say the least. And I'm just going into the shadow areas of the hair. The hair is very very choppy. So it's kind of easy when you're painting hair to think of it as sections. So break it down into sections. Don't think of it as a whole mass. That will make you, um, it will make the whole experience more daunting. So just kind of break it down into sections, get working on those, and don't really think about the rest. I've just cleaned my brush here. And again, I'm just sweeping that paint out a little bit just to, you know, move it around a little bit, start getting that shape filled in in areas, not even all over the place because it might go in and actually add some green. I'm not sure about that, but green is a color that always looks good in blonde hair. As it is light that is often reflected of blonde hair, as is blue, for example. Blues and greens, that kind of color always look good in blonde hair. We can also do some lifting, so I will clean my brush, dry it on my kitchen paper, and then I can go in and just by pressing it down and moving my bristles around, I will be able to lift some paint out and hence make things lighter. You can do this as a lifting technique, which is the only kind of eraser we have in watercolor. Or you can use a kitchen towel, again, by pressing down by dabbing down, not by swiping across your paper, but by dabbing down by blotting your watercolor paper with kitchen paper, you can easily lift some paint that's gone down too dark. So that is something to always keep in mind, of course, and always to have handyche when you are painting. So I might want to go into the eyebrows here, and for now, I'm just using the same color I used for the hair. Again, just holding the brush at the back, kind of, you know, at the back, not right at the front does offer incredibly more control than you would expect because it kind of gives you a firmer grasp on your brush. I feel, so try and do that if you aren't doing it yet. I know it's something that they teach in art school. So some of you might already know it, some of you might not, but it definitely is something that you should be practicing if you aren't yet. They've created quite a dark value. Let me show you just by mixing our primary colors together, I've got this very dark value, and I am going to use it to go into the opening of her lips. Again, I'm just tap tapping with the very tip of my brush. You don't want to put much pressure on your brush at all. Because the last thing you want is that harsh line right across the lips, it's just going to take away from how delicate the painting is. You can use the same colour to go into the nostrils. And again, being very gentle, being very delicate with your brush, tap, tap it so you have control, of course, and the paint at this stage should be pretty thick. Be sure to have that kitchen paper handy in case you need to blot up anything because it's very easy for your dark paint to bleed beyond the nostril, especially if you haven't been careful and dried your piece, which I didn't need to because mine was already dry. I'm also using this color to go above the eyelid into the root of the eyelashes. And again, without putting any definition, without putting any pressure on my brush, I am just basically hovering with my bristles above the paper. You don't want to get any thick, ugly looking lines here. So we've just defined her top lashes, and that automatically brings a whole new defined look to her eyes. I can also go in to that line on the bottom of the eye. That is just something that happens because of the underlying structure of our skull our eyeball. That is just the shape of the eyeball within the socket. It is normal to have this line below your eye and it should be in there. Try to remember to get that in there. Then I'm just going into the tear duct. It's very easy to place the tear duct in there. All you have to do is a little round shape, a little drop shape, and there you've got your tear duct. I can also use this color to create the illusion of an eyelash just kind of bringing it down a little bit and creating that little line that goes down. We might add a little bit of a darker value there because she is wearing makeup, and if we want to convey that, we might need to add a darker value there. I'm just going back into the nostril to reinforce what I'd lost when I went in to blot up the paint with my kitchen paper. And yeah, she's starting to look a little bit more three dimensional, let's say, and I'm going back into the hair with that dark mixture and just popping in some darker values here and there. Again, just like little segments. You don't want to go in and create long lines or anything like that. Just try and follow what you see in the picture, so we have this darker value close to the temple. Again, my paint is quite buttery, or at least, again, more like the consistency of toothpaste or cream, definitely not watering. That's not what you want at this stage of your painting, and I'm also going into the other temple. So hair is always going to look darker, closer to the face, and it's always a good trick to make it darker so that you can frame the face better and draw attention to it. I am then going into the eyes with the green that we mixed earlier, just kind of going in the whole eye. I'm even covering up the white of the eyeball because white of the eyeball is never white in case you didn't know that. There is something, please don't forget it. Please, I don't want to see any white eyeballs. The eyeball is not white. It captures shadows. It turns back into the head, so it's got shadows at the corners. I'm using the blue, the Prussian blue to create that shadow. It's got shadows in the inner corners because it's a ball. It's a sphere. It turns back into the eye socket. There is no way that an eyeball is ever going to be completely white. It will look flat if you painted white. And also, we very often capture highlights. And if you make it white, you will not be able to add a highlight to the eyeball because it won't be visible. And believe me, adding a highlight to the eyeball sometimes can really make a painting pop. I have mixed some of that Chinese red with a yellow, and I'm bringing it into the lip, and it's definitely looking a little bit too vibrant for me. But I have my trustworthy kitchen paper close by. I do not want her lips look this bright, like, she's wearing so much makeup. But yeah, you can do what you want. If you want to make them look this bright, then that's totally up to you. And I might change my mind because I very often start with, you know, one idea in my head, and then I completely change my mind. So I might change my mind here as well. It depends on how this ends up looking. But I'm definitely going to clean my brush. And tap it on my kitchen paper, and then I'm going to kind of move some paint around that lower lip because if you look at the reference image, you will easily be able to see that the lower lip is lighter than the top lip, so we don't want to make them the same. So yeah, actually, of course, I'm kind of rethinking what I just said. It looks a bit too bright, but at the same time, we do know watercolor does dry lighter almost in 100% of cases, differently from gouache, for example, which tends to dry darker. Watercolor dries lighter, which can be a little bit frustrating because we end up putting down the washes, and then we have to go over them because they have lighter. But still, it's something that we can play with and something that we have to keep in mind when painting. So I might leave it like this. I might clean my brush, just go in and do a little bit of lifting just so it's not so harsh. There, you can see that lifted out beautifully and the lips looks. The lip looks a little bit less aggressive, so to speak, now. Again, mixing that dark value using that dark value that I had for the line, the opening of the lips. I'm going to go into the eye and always remember to have your reference image nearby because you really need to look at it closely. So I'm kind of fixing that line that runs under the eye because I can see it goes up almost towards a tear duct. And then, of course, I'm reinforcing the line where the lower eyelashes would be because it looks more kind of like what she looks like. And also going over the eyeliner at the top. Again, remember, do not have too much water in your brush. Do not use a brush that's too big and also do not use a brush whose bristles are ruined. Otherwise, you'll have a hard time getting the definition in here. Then I'm just going over the top area of the iris, again, pushing this buttery consistency around the top of the iris, but not the bottom of the iris and you'll be wondering why not the bottom of the iris. Because the bottom of the iris is the area which usually catches the light more. Because there is no shadow cast by the eyelashes or by the eyelid and brow bone, which usually sits at the top of the iris, the shadow. Even though there's no light in this reference image, I want to keep it in just to show you and teach you that you will obtain some more beautiful effects if you leave the lower part of the iris lighter than the top part. You can easily do that just by lifting or by leaving it out as in just not going too dark with it. Let's put it that way. So I'm just picking up more of that mixture, and I'm almost running out of it, actually. It's become a little bit more watery over here, and I can tell I have less control because my mixers less watery, less thick over here. And on this side, I could also just leave a little bit of light shining through. Like a highlight. I think this iris might be bigger than this one. Now that I'm looking at it, let me see. Very often, you underestimate the power of the crease of the eyelid, but the shape and the direction of the crease of the eyelid are crucial in portraiture. They define where the eyes are looking. They define whether you're going to get symmetry between the eyes because if you have one thicker and one thinner, it's going to look off, it's going to look upward. So always pay attention to the position and the shape of the crease of the eyelid. Okay, I think that looks quite nice. It's always handy as well to step away from your work, take a picture of it, and then go back to it, or, you know, just take a picture of it and look at the picture. It just helps you detach from your work of art or step away from it for a couple of hours for a day, and then go back to it and see if you think that everything looks right, or if there are some adjustments that you need to do. For example, right now, I can't tell whether the eyes are symmetric. So I'm going to kind of step away from it from a minute, take a picture of it, and check how things are going. So this is a picture that I took. It's picked up a lot of the texture in the paper, but I get what I want, which is I can tell that it also looks a little bit darker than it actually is in real life, but I can tell that the eyes are as I want them to be. I definitely want them to pop a little bit more, but I can do that later with my white gase or white bleed proof ink, which is what I like to use. And I'm just checking around the reference image whether I need to add something I think there's a little bit of red above the eyes. She does definitely need a bit more pop of color. So I'm just putting that Chinese red and it's basically undiluted, like on the inner part of the eyelid and on the outer part of the eye, again, I have not switched up from my number four. And you can tell that that was a good idea because my paper was wet, so the paint bled out. And, you know, that is, again, why you should always have that kitchen paper handy because you need it there to correct these mistakes. I've added some red to the hair, just wet and wet to add some warmth. And again, with that dark value, the same kind of really buttery dark value I obtained by mixing the primary colors. I'm just going to go in and add some definition again, around the mouth area. I want to get some of those little lines in that she has. Now, this is an area where you will want to trade carefully because if you get them too thick, they're just going to look awful because that's not what they look like in real life. I've already got one too thick, so have that kitchen paper handy to blot them up if you need to. Just go with a very, very light touch and remember they don't go straight down. They are curved, maybe just a central one and lower lip goes straight down. The other ones are curved like commas. Don't exaggerate, don't go over the top. Don't put too many in. Leave the lip as loose as possible, but just get a couple in two or three to give the impression that there's that texture to the lip, which there is. Because there's no denying that we do want to get that in there. If you need to define those nostrils a little bit more, maybe if their shape is a little bit wonky, now's the time to go in and define them because you've got the right kind of mixture on your brush. Again, into the eyes, I'm kind of outlining the iris on this side. It's important also to get the iris in the right position. The eyes is the eyes are something that I absolutely love working on in watercolor, probably one of my favorite things to work on in watercolor. So I'm very happy with exploring and playing around with eyes, even, you know, using different colors and having the eyes, you know, one brighter, one lighter because they are being hit by the light in different ways. So Again, look at the eyelids because it's very easy to the shape of the eyelid will make your eye look wonky, which if you want to make your eye look wonky, then that's fine. But if you don't want to make your eye look wonky, if that's not your purpose, then get those eyelids in the right shape. And the pressure has got to be barely there, like a feather touching the paper. Getting a little bit carried away here, and I am adding a little bit of rainbow here. I'm going to add a little bit of yellow just kind of over here. Which, you know, is already in our hair, so that won't make much difference. You could dilute it a little bit more. When you see that you're starting to drag your paint brush across the paper, then that means that you need to add a little bit more water. And then I'm going to add, just a very light blue one here. And by light blue, I mean that brush and blue with a lot of water in it, but on a small brush, which will offer some control, and let's see how that turns out one strand of that blue hair. And this is not something that you have to do if you don't want to just thought I'd do it. For that extra bit of fun, actually. And you can kind of go around and add these reflections around her hair, not all over the place again, just kind of in small sections. Something important we can also do is glazing. Glazing is when we use a puddle of water and we just barely tint it with some color. In my case, I'm using that yellow, and it's barely any color there. And then we use this to warm up the complexion, for example, in this case. And you just glaze it over the skin. You can use this technique for several things. For example, if you're painting flowers, you can use it to make them look cooler to make a petal look cooler. If you use a color like blue, for example, you'll make a pink petal look cooler or you can use warm colors to warm underlying tones up. This is something that I like doing in portraits a lot because sometimes I feel that they're looking a little bit too cold for my liking. And just by adding this step, it immediately brings them to life. And we get this effect of a much more glowing skin. And we can obviously bring this down into the hands as well, because even though very often the hands in the face are slightly different in coloration, we want to be cohesive when we're painting and not make anything stand out that we really don't want to stand out. And once we've done the glazing since the paint is wet, it's also good time to go into the blush areas like the cheek, for example, and I can pick up a little bit of that red, just not very much of it at all, really, and place it on the cheek. And by doing that, you will see this will spread out automatically on its own and create a very natural effect and a very natural. Look. So I'm doing this on both sides, just dropping the paint into that wet surface. And you can see how beautifully this spreads out to create this really beautiful, glowing, kind of red apple cheek or rosy cheek effect. And something else that you can do is that if this gets a bit too bright for you, you can clean your brush off, of course, as always, as I've taught you, and just kind of clean up the edges of it. Like you see me doing here. And if you feel that's necessary, you can also bring that into the nose. If you like a particularly pink or red nose, you can bring it into the nose, and it's really completely up to you how much you want this to show up, how much you want this to be evident in your piece. So you can play around with this and make the cheeks and lips and nose brighter, or you can, you know, keep them more subtle if that's your cup of tea. This stage, I feel it's right moment to go in and dry my painting with my heat tool. This is the heat tool that I use, but you can use a hair dryer, as well. Something that is very often lacking in paintings is contrast and depth. How do we achieve more depth? It's very simple. We just add darker values. So for example, here, I could add, like one or a few darker values. I've just mixed, again, my red with my blue, and I am going to just add a few strands into the fringe or banks. It depends where you're from. Uh, what you call the bangs. You know, I think in America, we call them bangs. They call them bangs in the UK. We call them fringe. We call the hair coming over the forehead fringe. So I'm just going to add a few strands just to, you know, get that contrast, get that depth. Also, again, because as I said earlier, watercolor does dry so much lighter. That sometimes towards the end of the painting, we see that we have to go in and maybe darken some shadows, dark in some areas. And this will just really allow your painting to pop so much more. So it's definitely something that I would advise you keep your eye out for, but always make sure that your paper is completely dry before you go in with your darker values because if they spread out, then of course, that can be a bit of a problem. The last touch when I'm painting a portrait are definitely highlights. Recently, I've discovered doctor PH Martin, which is blade proof white, and I think it works wonderfully for highlights. It's kind of like a paste inside, so it looks very thick. But all you have to do is pick up your smallest brush that you have, you know, your detail brush. A number zero or, you know, a number one at the most, I would say. Wet that brush slightly, and you just have to kind of dig that into your mixture into your doctor PH Martin, and then go in and check where the highlights are in your reference image. I don't really see many in her eyes. I do see some like on the lower rim of her eye on this side, but that doesn't mean we have to faithfully stick to the photograph we are looking at. We can switch things up a little, and I am going to play some highlights in her eyes because it's something that I just love to do. And I just very delicately, again, without really touching the paper, but barely touching it, like feather touches, I just go in and add the highlights, and to me, almost always, they immediately make the eyes really pop. They just add that extra let's say, life to the eyes. And you can have one highlight. You can have two. You can also leave the white of the paper as a highlight, which means you will paint around it instead of painting on top of it, of course, instead of covering up the whole paper. She also has a little bit of a highlight in the white of the eye over to this side, and again, in the lower rim, so we can just add a few dots. I also always like adding highlights in the lips. Sometimes I tend to get carried away a little bit and overdo it. Very often, the Cupid's boat will catch a bit of light because it's protruding. So sometimes I will have a highlight up there, and I will have a highlight maybe in the center of the lower lip. But I always am very careful when applying these highlights because I do not want to have a big thick blob of paint where the highlights supposed to be. That is not going to be a good look. And also the tip of the nose is a good area where you might want to have a highlight and sometimes something that I also like doing is adding maybe a strand of white to the hair, and that is because the hair sometimes catches the light and especially flyaway strands like this one, could end up looking like almost white or much lighter than the rest of the hair because they're on their own. They're not part of the mass of the hair. So obviously, they're much finer, and they will catch the light more easily. So you can see that just by adding this strand, this flyaway strand of hair, in front of her face, I've added three dimensionality because I have pushed her face backwards by placing this strand, this flyaway strand of hair kind of in the forefront of the painting. So that really helps kind of make things more realistic. And then, of course, it's up to you always check with your reference photo where there are highlights, where you want to put them. Maybe don't exaggerate, but I notice that rarely you exaggerate. Rarely do my students exaggerate. I'm the one who exaggerates. And there, I think I will stop myself here with the highlights. Oh, wait, maybe not. I always love to add a highlight in the tear duct. I just think it adds that I don't know. If you know what I mean, it just looks more beautiful to me. I am quickly going to add just these I think it's peaches or apples, whatever. It really does not matter. I just thought the composition looked cuter with these three apples or peaches or whatever they are here. So I'm quickly going to add those in. And after, we're going to move on to the next one. As you can see, these are very basic. I am not going to spend much time on them. And I'm just using that red, the Chinese red again, and I'm moving it around the paper. And then I will add maybe a little bit of yellow and a little bit of green Just make your mixture quite watery because you want it to flow smoothly. Of course, that also depends on the kind of paper you're using. This paper, which is Saunders Waterford. This paper which I am using does absorb a lot of water and tends to dry really fast. So I have to use more water than I use with other kinds of paper. So that's also something that you have to keep in mind when painting with watercolor. What kind of art supplies are you using? What paper are you using? How does it work? What is the climate you are living in? Is it dry? Is it humid? So these are all factors that you have to take into consideration. I'm now picking up some more of that Chinese red, and this time, maybe it's slightly more concentrated, which means I have a little bit less water in it, and I'm just going over certain areas, not all the areas. I'm not going to go, as I said, super into detail about what I'm doing with this because we're going to be painting fruit over to this side in a minute. So this is just a very basic breakdown of what I'm doing. If I need to smooth out any edges as usual, I will go in with my clean damp brush. And do so, I will then go in and add a little pop of yellow just to bring some warmth. And after I've done that, I can add a little bit of green, and you can either mix your yellow and your blue, or you can pick a pre mixed green. What suits you better? And that's that. Just let the paint do the work. Just let the paint flow, work wet and wet, 6. Painting 3 Peaches: At my reference for the peaches, I have mixed this quite watery, but not too watery mix of bread and yellow to create a sort of orange. It doesn't have to match what we see in the photograph 100%, remember? You don't have to stick to that completely. And I have a number 12 brush, and I am just spreading the paint making sure that when I get close to the edges, I am shifting my bristle so that, you know, I get more precision and I don't risk going beyond the sketch outlines, which in this case, wouldn't be the best of looks. So I'm kind of creating a base, let's say, and I will be picking up more paint whenever I need it, which is basically now. Again, this paper absorbs so much water so fast. So for me, it's necessary to pick up paint more often. It might be that I have to pick up paint mixture more often than you have. So what you can do here is rinse your brush. Tap it off your kitchen paper or off the side of your jar and do a little bit of lifting like this. You see how well it works just to press those clean, almost dry bristles to your paper and just lift out a highlight because that is what it is at the end of the day. We can also lift out a highlight at the back here. And the peaches seem to have a kind of mottled appearance, so we'll try and obtain that with some texture that we will create. There's also a bit of a highlight at the top, remember to clean and rinse your brush every time you do this. Otherwise, you will just be bringing, you know, more paint to an area where you're actually intending to lift the paint out. So I am going to lift some paint out from the top of the peach, as well, just like this. I just work my way around the peach and see where I, where I need to lift and where I don't. I hope these are peaches. I hope I'm not, you know, mixing them up with something else. And you can see that that is working really well, you know, the effects that we wanted to get are, you know, that of roundness and luminosity. And then we can start dropping a little bit of, you know, just the red or just the mixture that I have here. It's the same one I started off with in this little ceramic plt. And you can just kind of drop pinpricks of that around your peach to start creating that mottled appearance. And I definitely think it's going to need, in my case, at least a little bit more yellow in there. So I'm going to proceed and add some more yellow to my mixture. As you can see here, I have something that's much more leaning towards orange now. Again, I always make sure to roll your brush on all sides so that you get a fully loaded brush. And I'm going back into my painting, and again, I'm just dropping that paint around the peach, and the surface of my paper is still wet, so it is going to spread out. Not too much. As you can see, it's not going too far. It's not going to the areas where I lifted the paint out, and that is because the paper is drier there. So, as always, watercolor won't flow where paper is dry. And that is something that you can always use to your advantage. I'm also going to drop of that color, some of that mixture down at the bottom, and I will let it sit there and will let the paper absorb that. And then I might go in and do some lifting or just do some blending with a clean damp brush. If they look too stark, I don't like things to look too stark in my paintings. I like things to look soft. Again, that is something that's up to you. I can add a little more dots up here. So we just want to see, you know, we want to see that this peach is not completely smooth. We want to see, you know, that it's real, that it's organic, that it's natural. So play around with it. Like, really try and have fun. Don't think you have to create anything perfect because that is not the purpose of our painting. The purpose is the process. It's having fun, it's learning, and it's taking your mind off other stuff. I'm just going to add some more here up at the top and using a nice, large brush, especially if the size of your peaches is kind of similar to mine, you will definitely need a larger brush. And while this one dries, I will go down into the next one, and I'm still using that same exact mixture. And I'm going to work my way around that peach leaf I just bringing it down. I can even go for a completely smooth finish on this one, just to give it that kind of foundation, the basis, and then work on top of that. So I'm just making sure I fill in the whole area. Working with the tip of the bristles when I move closer to the edge of the sketch. And then, of course, I can just pick up something like red, of course, because that's what we're working with. Again, I added some red to my mixture. As you can see here. And then I'm going to drop that into the top of that peach, just to start adding that pop of color, start bringing it to life. I can add some streaks here. Of course, the paper is still slightly wet, so it's kind of spreading out very nicely. And maybe a little bit over here as well, and down to this side and just let it be. And then I can rinse my brush and maybe add a little bit more yellow to that mixture, so we have a variation in color. So what I do sometimes is I just kind of add it to the side of the well here, and I use that and I'm going to drop it in here. So we have this much more orangy tone on this side. I'm going to rinse my brush and pick up just a little bit of yellow on its own, and I'm going to drop it in over to this other side. This is quite bright, but I think it works really well. Painting fruit, painting botanicals is a good time to allow to really let it do what it wants. So painting wet and wet is absolutely the best technique, and also blending the watercolor directly on the paper instead of blending it in your mixing tray, which is another way we can blend watercolor and sometimes obtain really beautiful effects. Of course, practice and exploration are key. And I'm just working my way around that leaf. Again, remembering to switch the direction of my bristles according to which area of my subject I am painting. And then I can go back up into the one at the top with what's on my brush and kind of brings some color into the bottom of that peach. You're probably working in different areas, compared to me because obviously paint moves in a different way for everyone for a number of reasons, of course, because watercolor is unpredictable. So you might not have to work on the same exact areas as me, but just learn to appreciate what you see, what you have. Look, I have these nice hard edges here, and that is something that I really want to keep in the peach because it kind of resembles, again, that mottled effect I can see in the reference image. And again, I'm going to keep on popping some brighter colors here and there where I think I need them. You don't want to make it like all one colour. That is the main thing. I am rinsing my brush and picking up some more of that yellow and where I lifted that paint out, I'm just going in and getting that yellow in there. And I'm ready to lift that back out in case it looks too dark, and it's making it all the same color, which is something that I wouldn't want. It always will leave some of that yellow behind, so I won't lose it completely, can go in and add a little bit more. And just keep looking at that reference image, keep looking at things you notice. I think my peach is a bit kind of a little oval, so I might to fix that, I might bring this bottom leaf over the bottom of the peach to detract from that. My peaches are now dry, so I've picked up my smaller brush again and I'm just going into that red, and I'm going to start adding some definition. So we know that the peach has this kind of slit running through the center of it, and I'm just going to get that in with a clean and steady and very slow, as you can tell, brush stroke, and that is already allowing us to start seeing the shape of the peach a little bit more. And I'm kind of good to bring that down. Again, make sure you don't put too much pressure on your brush. That is super important. And I want to add this little I'm not a massive fruit eater, I will have to admit, and that is probably why I, you know, don't really recognize the shapes, the exact shape of the peach, but it looks like it appears to me like this one has this kind of little pointy area at the bottom. So I'm going to have this one in there. I'm going to have that in there. And it definitely does look a little bit more like a peach now after I've done that switching to my larger brush and cleaning it off in my water and just smoothing that out. And again, I do feel like I have to bring some more yellow into it, quite diluted. And I'm going to bring it up into the top area here, down again into the bottom here. I've been to this area. I want to make sure I'm not going to go into any of these hard edges because as I said, I really think that helps us get that appearance of that kind of organic effect of the fruit in. And it's very important if you want to get these cauliflowers. They're called cauliflowers or blooms or hard edges in watercolor. Then it's very important to know that if you are having a hard time obtaining these, then probably it's because you're working on paper that's very smooth. And so the water will just flow right back into the position. It was in previously, while here basically spreading out and kind of sitting in the little grooves of the paper's texture, and that is why it's easier to get hard edges, cauliflowers and blooms on cold pressed paper. So paper that has more texture to it to it and which is also sometimes called not NOT. So learn to know your paper it's super important because different papers from different brands will behave extremely differently, believe me, and you will probably already know this yourselves. So I'm still spreading that yellow orange mix around my peach. And it's a little bit of a back and forth thing, let's see. You have to kind of learn with watercolor, what works, what doesn't work. And mistakes are so important. They're not important because, you know, it's like you've got to blame yourself for them or think that you're not good because you've done them or they teach you that you've got to give up. They teach you what not to do, and they teach you to grow. So please learn to embrace your mistakes. It is so important. I cannot stress that enough. I'm also bringing some of that into this area, again, without disturbing those hard edges. And at this point, let's say, our peach is kind of done, but we can add a little bit more details if we want to, maybe a little bit more red in this area up here. My paper is still slightly wet. Just, you know, those little dots again, to add texture just to make it look so much more natural. And it's strange for me, I don't paint fruit that often at all, admittedly, but every time I paint something that I'm not used to painting, something new opens up for me. So it's so important to explore with watercolor, probably with every art medium, I'm sure. But since I paint with watercolor, I can only talk for watercolor, let's say. It's so important because experimenting, exploring, making mistakes, that is what pushes you on. That is what makes you discover your style. And that is what makes it so exciting and fun. I have now mixed this green with the blue and the yellow to get into the leaves. Again, I'm still using a number 12 round brush, making sure I get a fully loaded brush by turning the bristles in every direction. And I will start by going into this leaf, and just by pressing my brush down, I can get the shape of that leaf in there quite easily. As you can see by looking at the reference image, the leaves are all different colors, as in they're not different colors, but they're different values because, of course, there are areas that are in light and there are areas of the leaves that are in shadow. But to begin with, I'm just going to paint these with that same mixture of green and yellow, of blue and yellow to create the green, sorry. And then I'm going to work on top of that to create the sharp shadows we can see in certain areas that will, of course, create the three dimensionality along with the midtones. So that is exactly what I am doing now. I'm just filling in all the leads with that green. I did go in and add a few leaves that did not have a sketch like this one and this one. Did I show that this one and this one here at the top. But yes, I think that really looks nice as it is already. I'm quite happy with it. I wasn't expecting that, so quite chuffed. But what we're going to do now is into that mix of green, we're just going to add a little bit more of blue so that we can start getting the shadow in. I don't want to create anything too harsh because, again, I don't want to detract from the softness of the painting. So yeah, that is what I'm going to do now. For having mixed the green with a little bit more of blue. I'm going to add a pinprick of red. And the reason why I'm doing this is because it desaturates the color a little bit. I always love even adding a pinprick of red to blue because it just makes everything a little bit more dusky. And also, I think that more than a shadow tone, I've mixed like a mid tone here, but that is fine because, you know, we need three values or tones in every painting. So that is fine. And I'm good to go into the areas of the leaves where I see the mid tones. For example, where do you see a mid tone. I see a mid tone in this leaf here in this area. And again, you don't have to be too precise because otherwise it can get very fastidious and painstaking, so you don't want to make it too precise. Just try and remember that this is also about having fun. It's not just, uh, work. I'm sure most of you are not here to think of this as work. So remember to have fun and to have that kitchen paper handy in case you need to lift anything out. Kitchen paper is our eraser in watercolor or our clean damp brush, of course. So I went in and added, you know, this kind of mid tone here, and then I can work my way around the other leaves, just adding that slightly darker value. It does look much darker now because it's wet, of course. And it's like with the hair, our hair looks much darker when it's wet, and then when it dries, it looks much lighter, and the same applies to watercolor. And I'm just working my way around the leaves where I see the mid tones, and it doesn't have to replicate exactly what you see in the photo, again, I've said that. I don't know how many times by now, but you can kind of play it by ear. You know, that the areas that are closest to the peach in general will be more in shadow. And but the ones above the peach, the shadow area is more up at the top for some reason. Probably there's another peach on top of them that we can't we can't see. So I'm just going to go in there and add that darker color. And I'm also going to add that darker color completely to cover up this leaf at the top here. Just because I think it would be it's a nice way to point the eye in the right direction, if you know what I mean, I always I very often like using triangular shapes that can be leaves or strands of hair to kind of like arrows to direct the gaze where I wanted to go towards the focal points of my paintings. And this leaf isn't even in the reference image. So I'm completely playing it by ear. I just trace that line down the middle. I'm adding some of that paint mixture to this one down at the bottom, just at the top of it. I'm doing the same thing over here with this other leaf. And then the leaf that's going on top of the um, peach here, of course, I'm going to darken up this area right at the top. Trying to get a nice sharp definition in that leaf over there. And this one I'm imagining that the shadow would be on this side. I'm probably coming down almost to the tip, I would say. Just imagine where you think the light would be coming from and take it from there. And then I'm going in here. And I think that is it for the midtones, and I might be doing some smoothing out with my clean damp brush. Just in certain areas, maybe here where the cut off between the two tones is a little bit too sharp. Shadows are usually sharp. They can be soft as well, but the transition between mid tones and louder tones is usually more subtle. And you can clearly and easily solve that by smoothing things out with your clean brush. After you've done this step, you will let this dry or you will dry it with your heat tool or your hair dryer, or you will let it dry naturally. Okay, and now let's just add a little bit of blue in there. Usually what you want to do is when you're mixing a mix, you want to use a larger brush, and then if you need to go into any detail areas, it just makes it quicker to mix the mixture with a larger brush like this, and then move to a smaller brush like this. This is a number four. Just making sure I am picking up enough paint. Rolling it on all sides. And then I'm going to go in, if you're wondering why my sketchbook looks slightly tilted, is that I always like to keep it a little bit tilted even when it's not on my easel, because it just helps the paint to flow better. And going into the areas where I see the darkest shadows. So when I see the darkest shadows, I'm just going to think of them as geometric shapes. And here I am going to go in to this leaf and I'm just going to add this sliver of a shadow down the center of it. My paint is a little bit too watery. Maybe it shouldn't be as watery, but I can make it work and then maybe add some more paint to make it thicker for the next leaf, but you don't want your paint to be too watery for this stage because you want that control to get those nice sharp shadows in there, and a little bit on the tip of that leaf, as well. Again, as I said, I'm going to add a little bit of paint in there just to make it a little bit darker. You can also add a little bit of red again. To give that dusky look to your mixture. And I'm going in and going into another shadow. And this time, it's going to be on this leaf, and I'm just going to trace it along that side, kind of almost dividing the leaf in half, but the top half, let's say, smaller, as you can see than the bottom half. And then maybe I'll pull out a little kind of line here. Okay. And then in this leaf, again, they're not exactly the same as they are in in the photograph. I just kind of place them a little bit more randomly. So again, plate by ear, just imagine where those shadows are going to be and have fun with that. Adding more shadows up at the top here, one here, one close to the peach over here. Then again, of course, on this one, I'm going to reinforce the shadow closest to the fruit in one smooth brush stroke. Maybe bring some of that into the tip. At the top, I could add a little stem here. Again, I'm sorry if my names not exactly are not precise are not correct. But again, I don't know too much about the scientific names of parts of leaves and fruits. Just adding a little bit of shudder there. And you just keep on working, bouncing from one leaf to the other till you feel that you've got that intensity, that you've got that depth, that you've got those three values, that midtone, that highlight, and that or highlight. More than highlight, it's like your light is value. We don't really have a proper highlight here. We could add it, but I'm not sure that I want to add any gas or bleed proof white to this part of the spread. I think it could end up making it look a little bit too stiff, so I might leave it very soft and natural with no highlights. And as I said earlier, sometimes the green from the leaves will be reflected on the on the fruit itself. And I can see that here. So let's give that a try. It also is a shadow, of course, but there quite well might be some green in that shadow. So there I have it in there. I might bring it just a little pop of that same color here just to be cohesive. And I think after we've done this step, we can start working on the stem on the branch, on the twig, which is really going to be a matter of a very short time. Work on the leaves how much you want. Just be sure not to overwork them. They don't need that. It's better for a watercolor painting to look loose and almost underworked than to look overworked, because that will really take away from the transparency of watercolor if you overwork it. So I'm just going to move on to the twig now. I have mixed a brown by mixing the three primary colors again, and I'm going to pick up that smaller brush I was working with earlier, digging into my well in every direction, making sure I have a lot of paint on my brush. And again, it's the same thing. We have three values in the branch as well. We don't really have to worry about it too much. But of course, if you're going to be, you know, I'm teaching here, so I have to tell you that there are at least three values on everything, and that applies to the branch, too. If you want to get that in there, then, of course, do it. But it's certainly not the part of the painting that is going to be the focus, but it definitely does add a nice touch. There are also little kind of sprigs coming out, little tiny. They're not thorns, of course, but, you know, like, the branch is not completely smooth. And here, I've just darkened up that mixture by adding more blue to it and more red. And I'm adding in some shadows here and there just to make, you know, the branch pop a little bit more, and I am going to leave it at that once I've completed this step. Just place little, you know, horizontal lines on the side of your branch like you see me doing here. And assess, of course, if there's any areas if there are any areas that need more shadow, if there are any areas that need a little bit more blending, you can always if you need to blend something, even if the paint is dried, you can always go in and be a little bit rougher, put a little bit more pressure on your brush, and it should still be able to lift and blend. It's not something I advise you to do often. Try to avoid it. But if there's something that really annoys you, that is something that you can try doing. Okay, and that is that for our peaches. 7. Painting 4 The Rabbit: And now we're moving on to this cute little rabbit. As usual, you will find the reference image and the sketch out line for you to trace in as part of this course. And always refer back to your color wheel and, for example, in this reference image, we do see a lot of pinks in the ears, and I think we could also get away with using kind of pink and blue variation of colors in there. So the color I want to mix is more or less up here. So it's a sort of pinky color, maybe one of these, too. So I know that I will have to mix something that's going from yellow towards red, and I think it's always really useful to have somewhere you can swatch your colors before you use them. Just to make sure that you've got the right amount of color, the right shade you want. This is a pink. I might add a little bit more yellow to it, and then use it on your painting. Don't dive right in. Swatch it beforehand. And another important thing is make sure to change your water. You do not want to start a new painting with a jug or a jar of dirty water and pollute your whole mixtures, which in this case, since we're working with only three colors is very, very pure. Let's put it that way. So let's start painting a cute little rabbit. So I think I've more or less got the pink that I want to use in the rabbit. What I would like to say is, again, always refer back to your color wheel and choose which colors you'd like to mix. And looking at the position within the color wheel, you should get quite good idea of the colors of these three colors. There's only three that you need to mix to get more or less the same shade you have in your color wheel. So I am just starting again, very watery. Almost with a tea like consistency, and I will be going into the ear of that rabbit, which for me is always the cutest thing when I'm drawing a rabbit or a bunny, having that pop of pink in the ears, I think, is something that's so cute. And as well, the ears tend to be translucent, so the light will shine through them, and that will make the pink in the ear pop even more. And you can exaggerate that as much as you want. Exaggerating certain things can also help you bring out your style and discover new things you like to do when painting with watercolor. I will also bring this pink around the eye area, maybe a little bit into the nose. You can't really see the nose properly here. It looks almost white because it's caught in the light. We can bring it at the back. We're almost using an underpainting technique with this pink. But then we will be overlaying it with some kind of yellow browny colors. And we know that we get those brown colors by mixing the three primary colors together. You just push it one way a little bit more or push it the other way a little bit more by adding blue or adding red or if you've gone too much in one direction, then maybe you can add more yellow, and you will eventually end up getting a brown, trust me, different kinds of browns, as well. And we will be overlaying some of that brown onto a rabbit. Also going into the back of the rabbit with a bit of that pink. And up here, let's say, in the forehead of the rabbit. And at the back of the head, I'm just checking around my reference image to see areas where this might go. Partially, it's going to disappear before the following layers that we will put down. As we get closer to the lower part of the rabbit's back, we can see that things get a little bit more out of focus in the photograph. So we can go a little bit looser and just kind of move our bristles in a zigzaggy kind of fashion and not worry about it too much, or we could even drop some water into it to get that nice smooth outline. That kind of reminds one of the out of focus look, as well. Yes, so I think we should let this dry and then start going over it with maybe I'll add a little bit of pink here just because I feel that there would be some continuity in the distribution of color. Almost like the skin is going through, though I'm not sure that rabbits have pink skin, but they might. I think they probably do, especially bunnies. Okay, and we can dry that with our heat tool, let it air dry, and then go back to it. Usually, when I'm mixing a brown, I will start off with a red, and then I'll go in with a yellow and try to achieve some sort of orange like you see me achieve here, maybe put a bit more yellow into it. And then what I do is I clean my brush off really well and I go in with a pin prick of that Bussian blue that I'm using. And this will start verging towards a brown. And I think just with that pin prick of blue that we added, we can test it on our paper and make sure that we've got a brown that's the right, kind of beige brown, I would say. I think this is perfect for that. So we can start going into our little rabbit with some of that brown. And what I will do, I'll just go into the back of the head and use the bristles of my brush to start creating that kind of fur effect. Which means, again, you can use a zig zag motion or you can use the bristles to create little commas when you see the fur changing direction like at the base of the ear. For example, you can use it above the eye. And again, the consistency of the paint is quite watery, maybe slightly less than tea like consistency. So more towards milk or milk mixed with water. I don't know if that's making things too complicated. Milk with tea in it. Tea with milk in it as we do in Britain, and just bring those brush strokes down, try to follow the direction the fur goes in in your reference image. So keep a careful eye on your reference image. And I think I will try to go over the body, the rabbit's body as quick as possible because ideally, I would not want this to dry before I go in with some darker values so that they will spread in a more organic manner. I'm not sure whether I'm going to be able to do that because this paper absorbs the paint and water rather quickly. And I'm also running out of my mixture, which is something that happens so often. So be sure to mix large quantities of a mixture if you need it to last a long time. Otherwise, you'll find yourself having to keep going back into that mixture and mixing new wells of it, which can be really annoying and get in the way of your painting process. I'm just adding some water to it just to have that wet effect last a little bit longer going up into the ears, around the ears, around that area where we put the pink, and I think I have the rabbit all covered. What I can do now is mix just with the same idea. So in with a yellow, again, in with a yellow, in with a red, and then in with the blue and see if we can get a darker brown. This time, I'm going to try and mix a little bit more so we don't run out of it too fast. I can definitely tell already that we're getting that darker brown that I need for the let's say shadow areas. If I test this on my watercolor paper, I will see that it's surely darker than the one next to it, which it is. And we can start going in to the rabbit in the shadow areas here at the base of the ears and the back of the head. Also, there's a kind of shadow here at the front. Okay. Getting some shadow in at the base of the ear. We've got some lines. Now, it's very wet because I added that water to it. When it's slightly drier, we can get more of those brush strokes in that resemble the movement and the texture of animal hair. We can dot the paint around with our bristles as well that will also give the effective movement, which will look like animal fur, as mentioned. But you can see it's already coming alive because we've got those three dimensions in it that those three values, three tones, mid tone highlight and darker values. So we've got three values in here. And the minute you have free values, really just everything starts coming alive. Everything starts popping and looking more like you want it to look. And then the more you go into the darker details, the tighter the work becomes and the more things kind of get into into focus. And that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to again mix up darker brown. So I will probably have more red and more blue in it and a little bit less yellow. And even if by any chance your dark brown tends diverge more towards the blue, it doesn't matter because the fur will reflect colors around it. And one of the typical colors that fur or anyone, objects, people outdoors reflect is the color of the sky. Mine's looking a little bit green. Adding a little bit of blue to it, testing it on my paper. I've definitely got a much darker color here. It's almost a black. Let's see how this works. I'm going to go into the neck area just like dropping the paint in very delicately, not putting much pressure on my brush at all so that I don't get any harsh effects, which is definitely something I don't want to. But you will see that as you put this darker value in, that three dimensionality of your subject really will begin to pop. And these are some rules in watercolor. I'm speaking for watercolor because I don't really paint that much in other mediums, is one of those rule of thumbs that you have to remember. Every time you are painting with this medium. It's one of the important things to remember. Also kind of dragging and pin pricking the bristles around the rabbit's body, just to create that idea of movement. Maybe we can have some longer, slightly longer brushstrokes not too long because the fur is not long. But I really like the fact that I got by pain pricking that paint into the wet surface so working wet in wet. It's spread out really nicely, really evenly, and I think that looks very natural, which is what I want. I'm cleaning my brush, I'm tapping it on my crypten paper. I'm just smoothing out these darker areas that we just put down. There's a bit of a darker area here at the very back of the rabbit bunny rabbit. I think it's a rabbit, but I'm not sure or a hair. Getting that darkness in at the back here. And then maybe smoothing it out just a little bit here with a clean brush. Remember, I know I say this a lot, but remember to clean your brush every step of the way. I'm not adverse to leaving some of this kind of, again, mottle defect here. I think it really helps with the expressiveness of the piece. So it's something I am totally happy with. And for now, I'm going to leave the fur like this. I'm going to re enhance the pinks because that's something that I said. I really love looking at the pink in the inside of the rabbit's ear. So again, I'm going to mix a pink with that red and that yellow making it quite a bright pink. Let's see what it looks like. I think that's quite good. And this should be dry. So I'm going in and just popping that pink into the ear. Okay, so I popped in some at the top, some at the bottom, cleaning my brush, drying it on my kitchen paper or by just kind of swiping it on the edge of my jar water jar and then I'm going to kind of with a pulling method, I'm going to pull some of that paint into the central part of the inside of the rabbit's ear so that we get a bit more of a transition of values. And then I'm just smoothing out the edge of that pink on the other ear as well. Kind of using the side of the bristles. I'm not using the very tip of my bristles, but I'm using the side, the tip and part of the side to it to explain it as clearly as I possibly can. We could also drop that pink around other areas just in a playful manner if you want to get this really expressive, which I do. I love painting expressive, so that's my thing. I think it just adds so much more interest to a piece. And I'm going in with this darker value that we mixed earlier. And I'm just using this with a small numbered zero brush, making sure that I roll my brush in it well so that I get a fully loaded brush. And I'm going to enhance the outline of the ears because I want to separate the two ears. Make sure that your painting is dry before you take this step, otherwise, the dark paint will spread everywhere, and I assure you that is something that you don't want to happen. Outlining the ear in the background. Then I'm going to go into the eye and just outline the eye as we're at it. Okay. And I will have to dry this because then I will have to go into the iris and create the color for the iris, which we're going to play around with a lot. It's amber here, but I very often like doing having blue or pink eye, so we'll see. I have mixed my blue with a little bit of red, and I'm not sure whether Wait, that's gone a little bit too far. I want to show the mistakes, too. So more blue. This is Prussian blue again. And a pin prick of red helps to desaturate that blue and make it a color that personally I prefer. And I'm going to go into the eye of the rabbit. And I'm not sure whether I'm going to leave it blue or have it as an underpainting, which means that watercolor being transparent, that blue is going to shine through whatever I put on top of it unless it's a really thick, buttery black. In that case, it wouldn't shine through. But I always like starting the eye with an underpainting. It's very difficult that I will go in and just use the white of the paper and have the eye be like all one color. That is something I never do. I'm going to dry this off. Indeed, another thing you could do is just do some lifting, dry your brush, do some lifting on the bottom part of the eye. That always looks good so that it becomes lighter on the bottom part. You just kind of push your brush back and forth, turn it over. If it's not picking up anything, it means that it's too wet, so dry a little bit more. Okay. And there you have it. And let's try it. I'm also going around the painting, adding some darker values where I feel that they are needed. And this is just that mix of the one that I accidentally got wrong but used anyway. Or did they not? Maybe they didn't use it. But anyway, just mix a darker value by mixing your red and your blue and maybe add a little bit of yellow to it and just go in to any areas that you see in the reference image that are darker. But by any means, but by no means, don't overdo it, because that will take away from the expressiveness of your piece. And if that is a look that you like, then now is the time to trade carefully. Otherwise, you'll overwork your piece. I'm just going to do a little bit more work, I think on the eye. You can get some of those little veins in the ears if you wanted to. You would have to go in so delicately, hardly touching the paper with your brush. You can see some eye as the ears are translucent. Then I will go into the eye just to make the pupil a little bit larger. Again, I'll be mixing my three colors to get something that is as close to a black as possible. So definitely starting with the red and the blue, I'm getting very dark, very fast. I think this will be enough. It doesn't matter. Maybe if I had a little bit of yellow, it will tone things down from blue but end up going more towards the green. So it's kind of a little bit of a dance, let's say, between the colors. And I'm going to go into the eye and make that pupil slightly bigger as you see in the reference image. You could also use a horseshoe shape because we have that highlight at the top. And also, there's a bit of darkness around the outer ring of the iris. So I'm going to have that in as well. And up at the top. That will also help us make the highlight pop more because it will be surrounded by darker values, so the white will end up showing up much more. Maybe just give a little bit of definition to that face because that's where we want our focal point to be. The noses are kind of a bit you can see it and you can't see it, so we'll just hint at the shape of it. Add a little bit of darkness under the chin, at the back of the ear to balance out. So the eye is going to go where the dark values are. So if you put them somewhere and you want the eye to travel around your piece, then you also have to position them in other strategic areas as well, which is usually where you see them in the photographs. And yes, maybe I'll outline the base of this ear as well, but not too much. We don't want to make this too harsh. We just don't want to make it look like there's nothing in it that captures the attension. That's what we want to avoid, and I'm drying it, and then I'm going to go in with my highlight with my bleedproof white. And carefully looking at the outline of that highlight in the eye, I don't think I'm going to go all the way into the details because it's not a if you look at the reference image, which you should be looking at the reference image, you can see it's not an even shape, and we don't have much room. If I had painted this larger, then maybe we would have had more room to get that highlight in that kind of shape, but as you can see, it's not necessary. I'm adding a little kind of pin prick at the top, and then a smaller one here over to the side. And you can see that that really helps as it is to make the eye pop. You can even add more kind of like in the tear duct, and that really makes the eye nice and, um, shiny. If you wanted to, you could go in very delicately at the base of the ear here, add some fur. So tufts of fur just to get the idea of whiting, maybe some up here. You can use gas. You can use acrylic for this. You can use basically what you want, as long as it's not too thick and that it's properly diluted. And maybe just add a little bit where the nose, because if you look at the reference image of the nose, it's kind of white. You didn't know like to think that it would be pink because it makes it look. It probably is pink, but it's a light bouncing off it and makes it look white. And you could add a dark background to this if you wanted to once it's dried, like a kind of just a very painterly background, maybe drop some salt into it, get that really nice texture in the background, and then you could paint the whiskers white, and that would make them stand out really nicely on that dark background. But for the sake of this lesson, I'm actually moving on to our next subject, which is the owl. 8. Painting 5 The Owl: I tried the best I could to make some sort of gray with our three primary colors. And I did this by again, mixing all three colors and maybe leaning more towards the blue. Let's see what we have here. If it's satisfactory. I think that is the best I can do. And this owl looks a little bit tricky. Don't be intimidated. We are going to use the power of the brush to get those little patterns in. So just start dotting your brush around the owl, and this means that basically you have to kind of.it around by using the tip of your brush and the beginning of the side of the bristles. Just avoiding filling in every white space you see. Just use this kind of dot, dot, dot, kind of again, with the tip of your bristles, but also with a bit of the side. And then we can go down and get this shapen and then we can go up and get this shape in as well. And I think we can also do that for the ears. Just get that out of the way because it's nice and easy, definitely easier than creating that pattern. You just lay your brush down and create the shape with your brush. And then there's also that area around the eye where we can kind of just go and get that circle in, try and have a confident non shaky brushstroke. When you do this. I know it sounds easier than it is, but you've just got to try and go for it. Eventually, you will see it will become almost second nature. The more you practice, the more it will become easier to get these non shaky brush strokes in, which will also help you define your work and they will become incorporated into your style. It will become your own unique signature. I'm going down into this area and kind of creating this zig zag motion with my bristles to create that kind of moustache effect that the owl has and again, it has a mottled kind of effect over to the side here so we can just go in the side and repeat what we did at the top of the head, and the same applies to the other side. And another way you can do this is going with paint that is quite thick, and then quite thick, as in buttery thick, and then go in with a little bit of water and reactivate that paint and have it spread around. And that should also create a really lovely kind of splotchy, mottled effect that will resemble. The feathers of this owl I'm just again, dotting my way around that owl's head and then bringing my brush down to create those semicircular darker areas around the eye. And again, we have to kind of do the same down in the chest and in the body of the owl, kind of just tap, tap tapping our brush around the area without really pressing down hard on our paper because that will allow us to create the most random effects which resemble what we see in nature more than if we try to control them or try to replicate them. There's no way we can try to replicate that unless we go into a technique that's more similar to photorealism. So that would mean spending way longer on that, which is fine that is your thing, if that is what you like. But otherwise, it's much easier to kind of just let the brush and the watercolor do its thing and create that illusion. Let's leave this area whiter down at the bottom because there's a sort of beard there. Let's call it that. And maybe some brush strokes going upwards around the nose between the eyes just to create the effect of those feathers. My brush is quite dry here. My bristles are quite dry here. And using the dry bristle, using the dry brush stroke effect is really helpful when you are painting animals because especially when you have cold press paper, the texture of the paper will show through will peek through that paint, and you will automatically get that feather effect, for example, in this case. So again, maybe here, just try working with very little close to no water on your brush. I think we can go in and maybe add a little bit more of a darker value there just in certain areas. Again, I'm mixing a blue, I'm mixing a red. I'm mixing a blue again to make it darker. I'm adding a little bit of yellow. And again, it's a song and dance between these colors to get the closest we possibly can to a really dark value, which believe me, you can get close to a really dark value or to a black by mixing the primary colors. This will teach you so much about color theory. Okay. So now we have this darker value, and I'm going to dot that around less areas. Compared to where we position that previous color and just to create this variation where we have some darker areas and some lighter areas, we might want to go into the ear, again, not the whole ear, but partially, maybe just a top of it. You can't really see it on this side, but I put it in anyway. And maybe like the top of this stripe, this kind of C shaped stripe that comes down and also on the other side, here in above the beak, also working our way around the beak. The beak of the barnal is almost like an upside down, triangular shape. You can see that very well. If I go in here, that is just an upside down triangle with this kind of shaft in the middle, which again, resembles it's just the top part of the beak I think. It's just an unusual way. Usually owls have this kind of, like, very narrow nose coming down. But this one seems to have again, excuse and forgive my ignorance when it comes to the certain aspects of the animal kingdom. Just dry my brush off here, but this one seems to have a larger beak here or I don't know if it's just an optical illusion or it's just a shadow. I think it might be the back of a shadow and then the beak is narrower. But anyway, I paint what I see, I draw what I see. I'm not going to make up anything because I don't know enough about the anatomy of owls to be able to do that. I'll just paint what I see. Keep tap, tap, tapping that darker value around certain areas. Maybe have some larger ones down here. Again, we want to get at least three values in every piece we do in every painting we make, mid tone, highlight, which might not be white again. It might be just lightest color and a dark value. And actually, many more in between those I'm cleaning my brush and I'm just going to splatter some water on the owl's head, see if that will make anything happen. Definitely, it should reactivate some of the watercolor, which is what watercolor does. It does reactivate even when it's dry if you wet it and see if we can get some cool effects just by moving the paint around with our bristles on our paper. I detect slightly some yellow in this area, but I'm going to be careful to lift it quite fast because it is not as bright as this. And, okay, watercolor does dry lighter, but I don't want to risk it. So I'm cleaning my brush. It's almost dry, and I am beginning to smooth that out and do a bit of lifting with my clean, damp brush, almost dry brush. Lifting is better when done almost with a brush that's almost dry. Moving that around so that the yellow doesn't stand out too much, but I could definitely detect some yellow down there, and definitely the eyes are super yellow. I've added a little bit of yellow to that blue. Sorry, blue to that yellow. So I have more of a green eye effect. You don't have to do the same thing if you don't want to. Maybe the yellow would have popped more. I'm not quite sure, but I like playing around with colors. So I just thought. Maybe you could do one yellow and one green and see which one I prefer. There is still some blue lift in this one because it's not quite the yellow lemon yellow that I have. Okay, maybe you could bring some very buttery yellow into that other eye and kind of make them more even. Bring some green into this one. I like playing with, like, eye color. Even in human portraits, I like sometimes having one color light one eye lighter, one eye darker or different colors. So I'm doing that in animals as well. Yeah, and it's got quite the impressive pupil, so we're going to have to go in dark quite soon. And I'm going to dry this off. And now grab your darkest value and your smallest brush, and let's get into that circle around the eyes owl. Make sure you don't have a big blob of paint on your brush. It's really hard to go in there with a lot of precision because you're trying to get that perfect circle. And at the same time, you get that urge to wobble because you know that you're under pressure to get that perfect circle. I'm going over to the other side. We might have to make that darker, but in the meanwhile, let's get the circle in on both sides. Keep looking at your reference image. Okay. And we could also go into the eyeball, of course, and get that eyeball in there as well. Just using this, let's say, creamy consistency. Fill in the whole of the eyeball, excuse me, the pupil. You could also attempt to leave some of the white of the paper showing through to get that highlight in there, or you could go in and add it later with white gas, gelpen, acrylic or white bled proof paint, if you have it or bleedproof white, excuse me. I don't want to get my names wrong. Then going over to the other side, same thing. Let's get that pupil filled in. You want to leave out the white of the paper to get those highlights in, which means you paint around them and you don't allow any water to go on over them. Otherwise, the minute you put the paint down, it will just flow into the area where the paper is wet. Let's get that right. Nice brown pupil in there. Okay. So going back around the circle around the eye, I think there's a little triangular shape almost here on the upper left side of the eye. Soy you want to try and get that in, always be very delicate. And just going around the eye, barely pressing the bristles down to the paper. Otherwise, you'll get one of those thick lines which just takes away from how soft and beautiful the pieces. I think we could actually go with exaggerating that kind of triangular shape at the upper left corner of the eye. And I think that makes that eye look much better than this one. Maybe I can round it off a little bit here. In my case, because I thought it was looking kind of odd as a shape. Pick up more of that paint and do the same. Around the other eye, again, make sure you are not putting too much pressure on your brush. You don't want any thick, thick, thick lines. That will take away from your work. Then again, we have this more triangular shape at the upper right corner of the eye, again, very lightly. Then we can go into the eye and maybe get part of the pupil darker, maybe the top part, and leave the lower part lighter and do that on both sides. That will help the highlights to stand out more. As you can see, just cleaning up a triangular shape there. I think this makes the eye look much nicer. If you want to enhance this effect, you can clean your brush in your water, tap it on your kitchen paper or make it as dry as you possibly can and no water dripping off the bristles, and you can go into the bottom of the pupil and just kind of clean it up, just rub back and forth with the side of your bristles, and you will see it will lift out some of that paint. That's. Don't do that much here, admittedly. It must be a very staining mix that we've created. But usually, if you go at it for long enough, you will see that result. There it is. We've definitely got more of it on this side than we had before. I think we've got more of our natural effect of that on that side because it just happened to go in with a lighter value, but I'm going to give it another try on this one, and my brush is truly dry, and you see that's when it really works its best. And then go over onto the other side again with a brush that's clean. You don't want any pigment on it, a brush that's clean and dry, and then you go in and you work uplifting some of that paint out to get the idea of a bit of light, maybe moonlight shining into the owl's eye. Turn it over as well to get a clean slate on my wristles Okay, and I think we've kind of more or less achieved that effect. It really does make the owl's eyes look more alive and vibrant, which is something that I love and that I carry across eye painting in every subject. This is the technique I use, and to me, it's foolproof, and it's the one that makes the eyes look the most beautiful, in my opinion. And even though I cannot detect any pink in the um, Bak, I have seen pink in banal beaks in the past. I just feel the need to go in and add a touch of it. I'm going to lift some of this out. So it's not in your face, if you know what I mean. I think that brings it together quite nicely. I's got quite a funny face. It's quite a character. I have to say. And I would say that's done. You can add some highlights to the eyes with white. Let's see how that goes for the sake of experimenting. I hope I don't ruin it. So this is my la proof. This is what I use, and you can drop a little bit into the eye just to reinforce that highlight or add one if you wanted to, like I did over here, go over the ones you have if maybe the paper wasn't like completely white or if it's off white. You could also add a little bit of a highlight lengthwise in the beak and some little splotches of white around the owl. By doing this, we're technically turning this into a mixed media piece because we haven't just used watercolor. We've used something to add highlights. We've not used the white of the paper as highlights. But to be quite honest, I feel that one should do what they love doing. Isn't that, you know, what life is all about. So if we restrict ourselves in art, too, then yeah, I don't think that's a very good idea. So just do what makes you feel better, what gives you more satisfaction, and just what works for you. And there is our cute little owl. I've mixed some of that, Prussian blue with some of that. Chinese red, and I've got this color, which is not exactly what it was after actually because it looks more like an aubergine color. So I'm just going to go in and add. That's what happens when you don't test your watercolor, mix on a scrap piece of paper. So let's do that. Okay, so it's a nice blue. Quite dark blue, and I'm not bothered by the fact that there's this other color here. I like variation of colors in the same wash. And I'm just going to go in, just like we did for the Ram, I am going to kind of create this painterly background like a night sky. And then if you want to, you could go in and add stars either by leading them out by drawing them in advance, or you could go in and, yeah, add them with your white gouache or your white gelpin or whatever you have or you're using for your white. So again, very painterly, we've not got a defined border. I would say all around the owl, make sure not to reactivate any of the areas that have dried by going them with a very diluted wash. If you go over them with a wash with a mixture that doesn't have much water in it, nothing should happen, but if you go in with a tea like consistency, you might reactivate the underlying layers, so be mindful about that. I think mixing the colors you get in these painterly backgrounds is something that I really love because it just creates so much interest in your piece. I usually use vertical brush strokes for this. I hope I'm not contradicting myself in any way with what I've said up till now, but there's been some time between me doing the top part and me doing the bottom part of the spread. So I can't exactly remember everything I said, so I might be repeating myself. Or contradicting myself, which is something that I sometimes do, admittedly, because I changed my mind during the course of the painting, and, you know, that's something that happens. I think it's part of creativity, and it's perfectly okay to change your mind. So again, vertical brush strokes. And I think this is a nice little frame for this ow. We can dry and go in with some stars if you want to. You don't need to go in with stars. I'm going in with my ble proof white and just make sure it's not too watery because that might spread things. And what I would advise is to have some stars on the smaller side and some larger. Because if you look at the sky at a starry sky on a beautiful night, that is the way it is. They're not all. So are further away, some are closer, some are more some are brighter, some are, you know, larger. So by adding some larger and some smaller, you're kind of getting that effect. Or you could be getting the effect of snow, whichever you prefer. If you want the effect of snow, maybe you would want to go over the owl with these little dots. But I'm going for stars here. You can also add a little moon in the background if you wanted to, but I'm not going to, and I think my owl is done. 9. Painting 6 The Cat: And we are on our final session of this lesson of this course, and we are going to paint this little cat as our last element in this spread, which we completed using only three primary colors. I have gone ahead and mixed some yellow and some red in this little bowl. If it's verging too much on the orange, add a pin prick of that prussian blue and that will desaturate it and bring it towards more dusky, let's say, orange. As usual, make sure to get a fully loaded brush by turning your bristles, rolling them in your well or your mixing tray or whatever you are using, make sure your bristles are damp because we're going to start off with quite a watery consistency and let's go in and start painting our cat. We will start getting the impression of furin by going in with our bristles. And again, I'm using the tip of the bristles, especially when I get close to the edge of our sketch outline. And I'm using more of the body of the bristles or the side of the bristles where I'm working more central to our sketch. And I'm just working my way around the eyes, making sure I don't get any paint on the eyes because if we want to make those eyes that nice blue green that we see in the photograph, then we have to we really have to make sure that we're keeping out of the paper clean. And when we go in with our paint in that area, it won't be polluted by what's around it. I'm wetting my brush again. I'm picking up more of this mixture, and I'm dropping it in, trying to create some cauliflower effects or hard edges that might be interesting. You will not always get a cauliflower or hard edge when and where you want it. That is the beauty and the nature of watercolor. Accidents can create beautiful effects. But you can't always recreate them. But by dropping in different consistencies, you are more likely to get that effect than if you weren't put it very simply. So that is what I am doing here. And I might go in and add some more prussian blue to this mixture just to make it a little bit darker. And again, making sure I roll my brush in it so that I get a fully loaded brush, I'm going to go down into this corner. I think I'm going to need some more of that blue in here, and it doesn't matter even if it looks two blue. Remember, colors are not what matters, but it's the values, so how dark or how light they are. It's not going to look crazy or this cat is not going to stop looking like cat just because you use, let's say, a green or a blue, which is a color that you usually wouldn't see in a cat. Though you might see it reflected off their fur, and I'm now working wet and wet because I'm placing the paint over an already wet surface. And that is when all the paint spreads out. So it's a fun and scary moment at the same time. I'm bringing the tip of that brush up into the ear so that I can get that outlined, and I'm doing the same on the other side and down again. Cleaning my brush. I've just got wet bristles here, slight lame, polluted by the color I had the mix I had on it previously. And I'm just kind of doing that pulling method again, where I'm pulling the paint downwards and creating this effect, which was quite accidental, but I have to admit, I do like it. So we have these two colors blending together on the paper. And I pull pulling this mix up, this color up into the back fold of the ear. I've mixed quite a day, dark orange, and I'm going to use it to go into some of the shadow areas. My paper is still wet, so I'm just going to drop it in and hope that that snuff lake effect that you get in these cases as you see here, will kind of resemble fur, which is something that you can do to replicate the look of fur, use this kind of wet and wet technique where the paint kind of spreads out like fluff and that does end up resembling fur. And start placing it where you see that the darker areas, where you see that movement in the fur and just pinprick it and drop it down. Then go up the top across the top of the head. We could also use the blue to go into the side here. Let's see if I place it in this mixture, and then I go into the side here where we have more of a shadow area because of the fact that the body is turning backwards away from us. So that is where we have the shadow under the chin here or the face here. We have a darker color in the tip of the ear. I think it's a tuft of hair, actually. I won't go into the nose area. There is some dark around the nose area as well, but I need more control in that area because it's so small, so I can't work while it's this wet. So I will wait to do that. I'll keep going in this area below the face, which is the area where we have more of that shadow. And you can even pick up a small brush like a zero and flick some of that paint outwards just with the very tip of your brush. If you look at the photo, there is some fur kind of very lightly sticking out and you can barely see it. So that is effect I'm creating over there to get that idea, that impression of fur. Some interesting effects, again, can also be achieved by dropping salt into your paint and letting it dry. You get some really interesting granulating effects. And if there's any areas that are starting to dry and there's any hard edges or things that you don't like in that specific position, then use your clean damp brush to go in and kind of blend them out and make them more even. If instead, you've got some snowflake, cauliflower or hard edge effects that you like, be sure not to go over them with your brush or you will erase them. You will lose them. So when you get something you like, be sure to let it dry, and then don't go over it with your brush again. I'm now going in with the darkest mixture that I created also previously for the owl over here. I'm just going to go into certain areas. My paper is still wet, but it's not sopping wet. So I have a certain level of control, not complete control. Do we ever have that in watercolor? Not really. But anyway, I'm going into just these areas. One is kind of here at the bottom of the face to the left. Then one is kind of up where the eye is. We could also kind of draw a little line coming in towards the eye because we do have that in the cat. And if you do it at the right time, when the paper is just a right level of dampness, then it will spread out but just a little bit, and you will get that lovely effect that will help it look like fur. We also have that same line on the other side. Be very delicate again. Don't put too much pressure on your brush. Subtle tea is, yeah, the best thing to do. And we can start going around the top of the eye just with what's left on my brush, not much water in those bristles at all. Trying to mix a pink, not dissimilar to the one we used in the rabbit's ears, but it's looking a little bit too orange to me. So I'm just going to kind of add a little bit more red to it, and you just play back and forth as usual with the two colors. And if you feel daring, you can even add a little bit of blue, and that will cool down the pink that you get. If you get one that's two towards verging two towards the, let's say, a warm color, then you can cool it down by adding a little bit of blue, which is what I'm doing here as I keep on ending up with an orange, which is something that can happen. Okay, I think I've managed to achieve more or less a pink that I want to use, which is this one over here. Any of these would be okay as well, leaving us the verge more towards the orange, and I'm going to go into the cat's ear with that pink. I know we don't exactly see a pink in the cat's ear in the reference image, but we can take reference images with some poetic license, I would say. So we have that fur. I might just fill in the whole ear and then use the white bleed proof bleed proof white to create those tufts of white hair, and it would make sense to have the pink of the ear showing through. I'm going into the nose as well, using that same pink, and I'm going to fill the nose up. I think it looks like really cute. This pink nose on the cat is definitely something we want to be able to draw attention to even though, of course, again, it's eyes that are the focal point, but you can again, allow find a way for eye, the viewer's eye to travel across or your own eye to travel across the piece by adding pinpricks of color and of contrast and colors that are slightly brighter. That is why I've just kind of put a bit more of that red on the corner of the nose there so that it just kind of pops a little bit more. I'm just using the palette that I've been using for the cat. And you know what's going to happen when you mix the three colors together randomly, you're probably going to end up with something like a brown and hence, I'm going to use what I have on my brush and what was in the palette, and I'm going to get those kind of squiggly lines in the fur here just to add a bit of detail and make it a little bit more interesting. And I'm using my brush in a zigzag motion to make it more realistic. And don't make the lines, like, straight across. Give them a little bit of a curve downwards, that will make them look again, more realistic. There's some lines coming down from the forehead. Or you can use just dotting technique where you dot your bristles down randomly just to give an idea of movement within the fur. And then we do have a bit of a darker area just above the nose on the so called, let's say, bridge of the nose, and you can place some of that darker color. And there, clean your brush, tap it on your kitchen paper or what have you? You can use a rag. You can even use a sponge like this, for example, I use whatever is close to me at the moment of painting, which is usually kitchen paper, rag or a sponge. And I just kind of ease it up. So with a clean damp brush, you ease that up so it's not too dark and doesn't draw attention away from those areas that we want the attention to go to. I think I am going to use some of the mixture as well to go into the corner of the ear to get that shadow in. Because now that I look at it carefully, there is definitely a shadow in the first section of the ear on this side a little bit at the top, I would say on this side. And again, if we want to clean that edge up, I'm reaching for a larger brush here and it's wet it's damp, not wet, but damp. And I'm just cleaning up that edge so that it's a softer transition. And remember that anything that you want to lift up, clean your brush or just use a kitchen paper, blot it down and lift it. This is a green I mixed with the lemon yellow and a little bit of that prussian blue, and it's what I am going to attempt to use in the eye. I think I better move on to smaller brush. You definitely want a little bit more control when you're going into areas like the eyes or smaller areas if you're painting a smaller portrait, and I'm just going to get that foundational uh, wash that initial wash down in the whole eye. I have too much wash on my brush finger to get rid of it by tapping it on that sponge over there, and I'm just spreading this first quite watery wash all around the eye area. In animals, you cannot see the white of the eye. In most cases, you can't see the white of the eye, so it's always a good idea to go in and fill the whole area. And I'm then just picking up some blue and adding it to that wash just to get a bit of a brighter color. Okay. There's almost a turquoise looking blue in the cat's eye. So that's what a pressure blue looks like on its own. And I think if I just try and add a little bit of yellow to it, I might get something similar to that. But it is an extremely bright turquoise looking color, which I don't seem to be able to match perfectly with this. Let's have a look on my swatching. Area. It's quite bright, but definitely not as turquoisish as you see in the in the reference image, of course, I'm going to drop some over here to the side, and going to drop some over to this other side. And then in the inner corner of the eye, of course, I haven't dried the eye, so it's still wet, but the amount of paint and water that a small brush can pick up is minimal. So there's not as much spreading of water and paint as there would be if I were using a larger brush that holds more water in its bristles. And I'm going to dry this now. Now with a small brush that's hardly wet with your darkest value that you can obtain mixing your three primary colors, just go around the eye and with a very light touch outline the top of it, around it, and the bottom of it, as you see in the reference image, this will really help the eyes stand out. I have now dried my cat completely, and I would like you to pick up some of your blue And in my case, what I'm going to do is I'm going to mix some of this Prussian blue with some of the red, just because again, it's too bright. A again, adding more blue to that because it went in the opposite direction too fast. And I think that is the color I'm going for kind of like a gray almost, a purply gray. And keeping on that song and dance between the two. Colors because if you look at the iris in the cat, the top of the iris is pretty dark where let's say the upper eyelid, if you want to call it that way, casts a shadow on it. So we need a dark value. There we go. We need a dark value to get that in. Don't get too much on your brush. Don't get a buttery consistency, get something that's creamy. You don't want to overpower that eye and go in very gently and just get that shadow at the top of the iris in like you see me do here, it's kind of a half moon shape. It goes all the way down to the tear duct and do the same on the other side, just following the shape of the eye up at the top of the eye like this, and then we have a bit of a shadow in the inner corner as well. And then you can add the pupils. And these are just two vertical stripes. It's very easy to position them, position them in the middle of the iris and move your bristles up and down to get that shape. While you're at it and you've got that color, you can also go into the nostrils of our cat, assuming that your nose. The cat's nose is dry. You don't want that dark color spreading all over your painting, and we can also go in to the bottom of the nose or some darkness there as well and reinforce the shape of the mouth. But again, just barely touching our bristles to the paper. We don't want any thick lines to detract from the softness of the piece. And you can also go into certain areas in the stripes and the fur. You can make some areas darker just again so we get that variation of value. You can add some in if you feel like it. Like, for example, over here, again, use that zigzaggy, slightly zigzaggy brushstroke. And just check around to see if there's anything that you believe you've missed and that you need to add. We can also add the little dots where the whiskers come out of Once we are satisfied with the positioning of the darkest colors in our cat, so we're sure that we have the shadows and we can start going in with our white, which in my case, again, is this one. Um, and we can start going in placing a highlight in the eye at just at the top of the pupil so that it kind of goes over the dark area, which makes it stand out more. We can position some on the nose. And you can see how that really brings this little portrait of the cat to life. And then with some diluted paint, and, you know, very, very delicately, let's go in and get some of the tufts of fur inside the ear. Again, try to barely touch your paper and use a kind of curved brushstroke almost like a C on its side, like the letter C, of course, and get those tufts of hair in the inner corner of the ear going upwards. And then we can do the same thing on the other side. Again, and this is something that again, I would not overdo. I would kind of step back from the work and see if you think that it's enough. I had the tendency to exaggerate with the highlights. I really love highlights. But at the same time, if you're using white on top of watercolor painting, you can very easily detract from the transparency and the luminosity of the painting because you're using an opaque medium. Well, they're a transparent one. So always be mindful of how much you use this. And I would always say less is more. As I said, I've been guilty of using too much white as highlights in my paintings, and that is why I know that less is more. You can go in and add a few whiskers, using your white. Again, try and just add a few, not all of them. The eye is not going to go there and count them anyway. It's just going to be like it's going to pick up on the fact that the whiskers are there. Again, if you allow one of the whiskers to go on top of one of the darkest areas, it will show up more. I could also just use what's left on my brush to enhance that white area that's around the mouth. And then I think it's basically up to you if you want to go in with a painterly background, as we did on the other ones, I would always use one of the three colors or a blend of the three colors, look at your color wheel that we created at the beginning of the class and decide whether you want to have a painterly kind of vertical brush stroke background behind the cat. Be sure that your painting is 100% dry if you decide to do that. I think I'm going to leave mine blank. And at this point, our lesson is over. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you were able to take away from it a lot of information that will be useful to you in your watercolor journey. And now, I would like you to create a project where you create your own spread, if you have a watercolor sketchbook that's perfect. Otherwise, any sheet of watercolor paper will do using the primary colors. 10. Sketchbook Spread Complete! ( Conclusions): And here we are. Congratulations. You have completed this beautiful sketchbook spread with just three colors. I'm excited to see what you will share in the project section and to give you my feedback. I hope this class has taught you that watercolor can be fun and expressive, and that sometimes limiting your palette is a really good idea. Don't forget to leave a review and to check out my other classes here on Skillshare. Will also be able to find me on YouTube at drawings in a drawer by Fiona Di Pinto, Instagram, at the handle drawings in a drawer, and on my patron, where the teaching continues every month. I hope you never give up on painting with watercolor. It keeps you creative, and I believe it's also a great form of active meditation that will soothe your soul. See you in the next one. Bye for now.