Beginner Portraits in Gouache

1. Gouache introduction: Hey, everyone. So in this class, we'll be discussing the medium of guash. Well, now Guash is not as common as, say, acrylic oil or watercolor. I do find that for people that have maybe spent a little bit of time drawing and are interested in learning how to paint, gouache is a great medium that kind of bridges the gap from drawing to painting. When I first learned how to paint, gouache was the first medium that I was introduced to, and what I really liked about it is that it was fairly straightforward, and I didn't need a lot of materials to get started. While in this class, we'll primarily focus on portraits. All of the concepts and ideas that I discussed in this class can be applied to landscapes, to still lifes, or any other sort of subject matter that you might be interested in. Now, while starting any new medium can feel a little intimidating at first. I'm going to cover all of the materials so that you can get started, and you don't feel like you have to go out and overspend on things that you may not need. Getting started with Guash should be really simple and straightforward, and you can learn everything you need just from using black and white. Now, we'll begin the class discussing a little bit about drawing and where we want to get started before we get painting. From there, I'll show you how to stain your surface so that we can prepare the painting and then move through a black and white study in a very step by step manner. The ultimate goal I have for students is not to necessarily complete a beautiful finished painting, but more to get an understanding of the steps and procedures involved from start to finish. A lot of discussion throughout the demonstration will be on paint consistency and finding the correct balance of that so that when we later on go to soften edges and model form that we get the right effect that we're after. Now, there's certainly a lot of ways to paint and guash, but I'm going to focus on just a few so that it's a little bit easier to follow. After the black and white demonstration, I'll do a shorter color study, so students can see how I approach the painting with a limited palette. Now, while color is totally optional, this approach to the painting will give students an idea that if they don't want to spend a lot of time on a longer study, how they may approach something that's a little bit shorter and manageable, depending on how much time they have to work. By the end of the class, students should have a good understanding about how to approach a painting from start to finish. The end goal that I have for everyone is not necessarily to complete beautiful paintings, but just have a good understanding of the medium so that they can explore it on their own and see what they come up with. Thank you for watching. 2. Materials: Now, I wanted to do a brief overview on sort of the basic materials that we'll be using. And I want to say that in general, you don't need a lot to get started. I think with any medium, it's probably a good idea to start with the minimum amount of materials so that you don't have to go out and buy a bunch of stuff that you may not need realistically. The other thing, too, I'll say is that you may try this out and decide that, you know what? I'm not really liking this medium as it turns out. And so that's okay. And so what you'd want to do is just buy a handful of things just so that you can get started, gain some experience, and then you can decide if you like it, then you can go out and accumulate some more stuff. Now, there's obviously lots of different things that you could potentially get in terms of colors and other materials. But again, I want to keep it at a bare minimum just so that you can get started and get a feel for the medium. And so even though I have a bunch of colors here, for the majority of people, I would say, starting out is just stick with your primary black and your white. You don't necessarily need to have all these colors here. I'll explain kind of what they are. But again, just start it real simple with a black and white. You can pretty much do anything in terms of figuring out how the paint behaves and how the material works with just these two colors. So there's no need to go out and buy a ton of extras that you may not really need. Now the majority of the class, you'll see me actually do a black and white painting from the beginning and you can see me go through the various stages of that. Now, if you decide that, you know what, I want to try some color and I want to just experiment a little bit more without adding too many additional colors, the next step I would suggest would be just adding a basic primary palette range, and that would just be a yellow or red, and a blue. Now, the one thing I will say is that you can do that and pretty much get everything that you need from that. It's just a lot of additional mixing of colors. But given the nature of just those three primary colors, you may not get as expansive of a range, so it might be a little bit limited in some of the temperature ranges that you can mix. But that's not a problem at all. Like, I think there's a lot of value to working in such a limited range like this because it forces you to maybe compromise a little bit on some things. But, again, we just want to add maybe a few additional colors, and it opens up a whole new world of complexity, and it kind of limits the amount of choices you have to make. So this might be a good stepping stone once you get a handle on black and white. Now, again, I'll emphasize that you may not be able to mix every single color that you may want with just this basic palette, but I think it will also be highly dependent on the subject matter that you're working with. So if you have anything that requires, like, a very unique sort of color, let's say it's like a floral still life or something like that, then you might want to expand your palette for certain unique colors. But for general, I would say, you know, portraits, some landscapes, um, and kind of, you know, maybe some still life. These sort of five colors is enough to get you started, and you can kind of work your way around some of the more unique colors. Now, that said, if you wanted to expand this a little bit further and I would say greatly broaden your range of colors, then the next step we can go from here is that we can add an additional a set of yellows and reds. And what I would consider this is basically, we're still using a primary palate, but this time we are adding a warm and a cool to that palette so that we have a little bit more variety. So in this particular instance, I'm still using my primary yellow, which is actually a colder yellow. And then for my warm yellow, I'm just using a yellow ochre. Now, you can certainly substitute out any specific colors that you want, depending on either A, what sort of tickles your fancy, or, you know, if you wanted to just use a different set of colors, that's totally fine. In this particular instance with guash, I don't really recommend things like cadmiums or anything like that. I don't think it's necessary and cadmiums in general are kind of expensive. So you know, I kind of just kept this more on the budget side in general in terms of the colors I chose. But I find that just by having a warm and cool of each color, it just broadens your range quite a bit further so that if there's certain things you couldn't get with just the regular three primary colors, the addition of a couple extra, you know, colors on your palette can take you quite a bit further. Now, for my reds, I'm substituting out the primary red for a flame red, which again, this is Windsor Newton's names. It's kind of just a middle of the road warm red. And the reason I substitute that one out is that the primary red is very cool already. And I just don't really like the way it tints as much as the flame red. And then for my cool red, I'm actually using an alizarin crimson, which is a very cool red, kind of leans more towards a purple range depending on what's mixed with it. And that's a good all around cool red, and it's something I've used on my palette regardless of what paint medium I'm using. And those are pretty much it from that standpoint. But again, you can substitute out different reds. You just want a warm and a cool. Now for the blues, I'm still using the primary blue because it's very kind of close to a cerulim blue, which is a very warm blue. You can kind of see it has, like, a yellow cast to it. You can certainly use cerulim or cobalt. I just find that they're much more expensive paints, so I kind of don't really suggest that if you need them. And then for the blue, I'm just using a ultramarine blue, which is, like, a standard cold blue. And so that's pretty much it in regards to the palette. And again, like I said earlier, unless I was painting a very specific subject matter where I needed a very specific color, this is enough of a range for me to really almost anything I could think of in terms of a portrait, still life or landscape. And again, if there was something really unique subject matter wise that I was painting, and it just I couldn't necessarily mix it. If it was, like, a bright teal or, like, a super, super bright pink or anything like that, or, you know, a very specific shade of green or orange, then, you know, I may want to have some supplemental colors. Now, in this particular instance, if I was going to add additional colors to my palette or to have things that were just to be for the sake of convenience, I love, you know, certain things like earth tones like a raw sienna or a burnt umber or anything like that. I find those are super useful just from the standpoint of not taking the time to mix them from the primary colors I have in front of me. So Again, that's kind of up to you and whether or not the budget permits. You can certainly use a much more simplified palette, and then if you decide that I really want to have some fun, sort of, you know, convenience colors on my palette just to make things faster or to capture a certain color that I absolutely want to nail, then that's maybe something to consider as you're working. But again, if you're just starting out, stick with the black and white, and then kind of gradually add colors to your palette if you decide you want to start experimenting with limited color palettes or anything like that. Now, in terms of other materials, obviously, you're going to need some brushes, a tray of some kind to actually put your paint in to mix on. And then I like to have some masking tape just to mark off my area on my surface so that I'm kind of giving myself a little bit of a border to work on, but that's totally optional and not necessary. Now, the last thing I recommend having is some sort of spray bottle or mini atomizer just because the nature of guash itself is that it will dry over time as it's exposed to oxygen. And so you can spray the paint itself with the atomizer to kind of refresh the paint by keeping it wet. And I'll go into that a little bit more as we start building out our palette. And then, lastly, you need some sort of container for water. But that's pretty much it in a nutshell. You don't need a whole lot. As far as, you know, the brushes are concerned, you don't need to have a huge variety. You really just maybe need a small handful to get started. And if you acrylic paint already, you could certainly use acrylic brushes because it's all water based at the end of the day. The only thing I say I'd recommend for gouache is if you don't have short handle brushes already, I do find that short handle brushes are a little bit easier for me to use for guash. But if you have long handle brushes already that you use for acrylic or any water based medium, then those are totally fine. And so, again, you don't need to have a huge assortment of brushes. This is maybe a small fraction of what I've collected over the years. But nonetheless, you do want to have certain brushes for certain things. Now, realistically, I'd recommend having one larger brush, whether it's a flat or, like, a mop style brush or anything. And that's because you want to have a nice larger brush to lay down washes. Now, depending on how large you're working in Guach, again, the scale of your brushes may become a thing, but realistically, I think gouache is more of a smaller format medium. So having like a half inch or 1 " brush to lay down initial washes to cover your surface is nice to have. Now, outside of that, whether you decide to get more, say, rounds or flats or anything like that, it's really up to you and your personal preference on the kinds of brushes you like to use. Now, if you've never tried either, and this is your first sort of venture into painting, I recommend trying both and see kind of what suits you. I found that over the years, I just prefer to use rounds for pretty much everything, but I still have some flats for occasional use if I needed a very sort of sharp edge for certain things. But again, it just kind of it's very situational, and it depends on you as an artist and what you like. Realistically, maybe having a couple of medium sized brushes, a couple of smaller brushes, you don't really need more than that. And realistically, some of the smaller super fine brushes are kind of unnecessary. You know, you don't need those to have to put in details or anything like that, unless you were just working super tiny, like postage stamp style painting. But again, I don't think most people are going to fall into that situation. So just have a small variety of brushes and no need to spend a ton of money on just having a huge assortment. Like I said, just a couple of medium to small brushes and having maybe one or two larger brushes to lay down washes, and that's more than enough to get you going. 3. Materials pt 2: Now, I did want to spend a little bit of time talking about the surface that I'll be using, and this is just going to be my recommendation, but is not sort of an absolute that you need to have. Now, this is generally what you would call an Illustration board, or you may also call it crescent board as that's the company that makes it. And it's essentially like a heavy duty board that comes in a variety of surfaces. Now, for guash, we want to be looking at a hot press board, and hot press is basically going to be a very smooth, fine surface. And it's very similar in the way that you would see watercolor paper listed as either hot or cold press. This illustration board comes in both kinds, and for our purposes with Guash, we really want to just focus on a hot press board, because that's going to be sort of, I think, the ideal surface to use for this kind of painting. Now, really the main difference between hot press and cold press is really just going to be, for the most part, a sort of surface texture with, again, the hot press being very, very slick and smooth, and a cold press is going to typically be a little bit more of a kind of have a texture to it or a little bit more tooth to it. Now, you can certainly use it, but I would say for this particular sort of purpose, it's sort of not ideal. So if you're able to, I would recommend picking up this sort of hot press crescent board and there are a couple of different kinds that you'll see listed on websites. And this particular board is a Crescent 200, and you'll see it typically labeled on the very back side of the board. I believe there are a couple other varieties they might have a slightly different sort of finish or the overall thickness of the board might be a little bit different. But again, I'm using a crescent board hot press number 200. And the reason I prefer the illustration board is because it does have a little bit of a thickness to it, so it won't warp or buckle if we use washes in the painting, whereas if we were using something else that was thinner, then that's something we might have to worry about. But if you're able to, again, this is what I would recommend. It's not super expensive, and you can actually get a big sheet of it for, you know, I would say, relatively cheap. Now, alternatively, if you don't want to use the illustration board, that's totally okay. And you could very well use a hot press watercolor paper like I have here. Now, the only sort of stipulation I'll make with the paper is that because it's going to be a bit thinner in nature is you won't really be able to use washes as much with the guash, you might just have to do a little bit more just direct painting onto it. So that's one thing to consider. You can try doing washes on it, but you'd have to be very sort of careful, or you may want to tape down the board or tape it down to a board so that if you start doing too heavy of a wash on it, it will have a tendency to warp and buckle as the paper gets wet. So that's just something to consider if you want. Now, there are certainly very sort of heavy watercolor papers that you can but once you start buying those heavy watercolor papers, it ends up being probably more expensive than just getting the illustration board. So that's something to consider, you know, as you're kind of maybe thinking about what surface you may want to paint on. So just keep that in mind, there is no sort of right or wrong answer, but there are some sort of setbacks depending on what surface you choose to use. Now, one thing I'll mention again about the illustration board and why I like it so much is because it's not super expensive overall, but as I was sort of saying earlier is that I consider gouache to be a sort of smaller format medium. So when you buy these illustration boards, they're generally a bit larger in general. So I have a tendency to actually either cut them or just take some masking tape and start sectioning them off so that I have multiple panels to work on. So even you know, one piece of illustration board might be more than what you're used to paying for, let's say, you know, a pad of paper or something like that. By the time you start sort of gridding it off and whatnot, you can actually have several panels to work on. So it kind of does become cost effective from that standpoint. Now, the last thing I'll mention that you want to have on hand is obviously some pencils, which most people are going to have, I would assume. But nonetheless, I do want to bring it up for the sense that with gouache painting, I do think of it more in terms of approach, I kind of treat it almost like it is watercolor in the sense where we're not just painting direct like we would with oil or acrylic. So I'm not starting a painting with a brush and just going for it. Typically, with any sort of gouache painting that I do is I am starting with a line drawing of some kind so that I have something to paint into. And if you've watercolor painted before, this is going to be very much a similar approach in that manner, where we're going to start with a very sort of simple drawing of some kind, and then we're going to work into that. Now, the one thing I will say is if you are going to be using washes of some kind, which I would encourage people to do, you do want to have a harder lead pencil. So something along the line of an H or an HB lead pencil is what I would recommend to have on hand as you do your drawing. Now, you could use a softer lead, but the only sort of risk that you may have is that it may have a tendency to smudge on the illustration board or like a watercolor paper. And then as you lay the wash down on top of the drawing, it may potentially have a chance to smear if you're using too much water in your wash. So that's something to be very careful about. But something harder like an H or an HB lead, you might have a little bit easier bit of time doing your drawing with one of those versus a softer lead. And so you'll see in the demonstrations that I'll always begin with some sort of a drawing before we actually get started with the painting. Now, I'm not going to actually go through the drawing process so that I can just focus purely on the material of just how to use quash paint and that demonstration. So you're going to see me start with a drawing already completed. Now, depending on your drawing level and your subject matter that you're working on, it doesn't necessarily have to be the most sort of beautiful drawing. It's really just a guide or a roadmap that you want to give yourself so that you're not having to think about drawing and painting simultaneously. We're really trying to approach the painting process in a very sort of step by step fashion where the drawing is that initial step where we want to kind of start with that so that we have something to work into. And that way, we can just focus on the paint itself. Now, how you go about doing the drawing is maybe not as important. It's really just a matter of using enough information in that drawing so that you feel comfortable that you can paint into it. The only thing I will say is, you know, you want to try and keep the drawing relatively clean in a sort of simplified state, so you don't need to have a ton of detail in the drawing, but you do want to have enough information that you can move on to get to the painting. 4. Palette: Now, I just wanted to spend a couple of minutes here talking about how I set up my palette before we get started painting. Now, this isn't necessarily sort of mandatory. It's just kind of a suggestion, and it's kind of the way I was taught when I first started learning how to use quash. Now, again, the butcher tray is kind of an optional thing, but I like it for the sense that it kind of contains everything, and it's not just a sort of, you know, loose palette without a border around it or anything like that. So you don't necessarily need one of these. You could have something in plastic. But there is a couple of things that I like to suggest in terms of setting up the paint before you get started. So initially, what I like to do is I like to take a paper towel, and I like to soak it in water first. And this is basically just so that it gets a little bit damp. So I'm going to ring out the water so it's not just super wet, you know, or anything like that. I just want it to be damp so that I can lay it down in my butcher tray. And what I'll be doing is I will essentially be placing my paint on top of this. Now, the reason for this is that Guash has a tendency to dry immediately as you put down paint. So when you have this paint just sitting on your palette, it is sort of constantly oxidizing. And unlike oil, which will stay wet for a longer period of time, Guash will dry relatively quickly. So I like to have a damp paper towel in my palette so that I can put the paint on top of that, and it provides a little bit of extra moisture for the paint so that it doesn't dry out as fast. So once you have your paper towel down, you can essentially lay down your palette or your colors, however you like. I generally like to go in a sort of chromatic order. So I'm not going to lay out a full palette here, but if I were, then I'd kind of generally go like, yellows, reds, blues, and then, like, a black at the very end. Or if I had any other earth colors, I would put the earth colors at the very end. Now, again, the paper towel doesn't want to be like, you know, kind of super wet where it's just kind of leaking water. We want to just have it be moist so that we can put the paint on top and kind of slow down the drying time a little bit. Now, that said, we still have the paint that is being exposed to oxygen, so it will still be in a state of drying as we're working. And so that's where the sort of atomizer I mentioned earlier comes into play. So you can get one of these atomizer bottles at, you know, an art store, hardware store, maybe even, like, a drugstore. They're super cheap and super handy. And so as I'm painting, I'll just gradually, you know, if the paint starts to feel a little bit tacky or kind of starting to dry out a little bit, then I'll just go ahead and just sprits the paint with a little bit of water. And that way, it just kind of reactivates the paint with some moisture, and then I can just kind of go back to adding, you know, painting as normal. Now again, depending on, you know, I find that certain colors have a tendency to dry out a little bit faster. So your earth tones and black will have a tendency to maybe dry out a little bit sooner than, say, like, a white or some of the brighter yellows or reds or anything like that. So it's just one of those things as you're painting, you'll start to notice the paint will get a little bit tacky, and if it goes too long without any moisture, it may even form like a little bit of a skin, sort of how acrylic does as it dries over time. So you just want to periodically, you know, kind of check on the paint, and you can kind of tell just by looking at it, if it just starts to look a little bit dry and if it does, go ahead and give it a few sprays, and you should be good to go. So one last thing I'll mention about the palette, and part of the reason I like these butcher trays so much is that if I know that I'm going to be able to paint over consecutive days, then what I'll end up doing is at the end of my session, I'll go ahead and place the tray in the refrigerator so that the colder temperature will slow down the oxidation of the paint, and it just gives me an extra day to go ahead and use whatever's left on my palette. Now, typically, what I'll do is at the end of my session is I'll go ahead and just spray down the paint one more time. And then I'll go ahead and if I can, I'll cover it in plastic wrap, and then just place it in the fridge. And so what ends up happening is it does give me about an extra day to go ahead and use those colors. Now, some colors earth tones like burnt umber or black or anything. Sometimes those colors will dry out a little bit faster, but everything else should generally be okay to paint with the next day. You may just have to let the palette out of the fridge and kind of let it get back to room temperature and then spray it down again. But otherwise, that will kind of give you a little bit of extra opportunity to use those colors so that you're not having to, you know, get rid of paint too soon or just have to toss it altogether. So that's just something to keep in mind. You know, if you don't have one of these trays, I think they're great um, just to have as a palette for guash, but also just a great to kind of have to mix colors on as well, even if you're using it for other purposes. 5. Paint consistency: Now, before we get too far ahead into any sort of painting, I wanted to spend a few minutes talking about the consistency of Guach because I find that for most people just starting to paint, it's a very unique sort of consistency to it that is a bit different than, say, watercolor or acrylic and those sorts of water based mediums. Now, the reason I say this is that Guash can certainly be used transparently, but where it really shines is in its opacity. But the difference is is that you wouldn't necessarily be painting super thick with quash. So it's not like acrylic or oil paint where you're kind of mixing these big, large batches of heavy thick paint and putting it on a surface. Guash is going to relatively stay kind of flat and thin. But the degree in which we paint transparent and opaque is where it gets a little tricky. And so my recommendation at first for most people, is to actually take a piece of scrap, whether it's illustration board or, like, a very sort of thick, you know, watercolor paper of some kind and to actually just practice getting the right consistency. Now, the reason I say this is that when you're making your mixtures, you don't want to necessarily have these big runny mixtures where there is paint just flowing with a ton of water. But you don't also want something that's so thick that you have a hard time mixing or pushing it around. And so it kind of takes a little bit of experimentation to kind of find that right balance of paint consistency. Now, the other tricky part is that sometimes this consistency can vary from one paint brand to the next. So it is part of the reason why I recommend if you are just starting to buy guache paints, is to maybe stick with the same brand with whatever colors you buy so that you can get used to the consistency of that one particular brand. Now, as you kind of play around with mixing simple values or colors, you want to just sort of get a feel for the amount of water that you're putting in as you mix. And so even as I kind of dip my brush into my water, I'm always just kind of just barely putting the tip of the brush in as I'm adding water to the mixtures because I don't want to add too much that it gets too sort of transparent or too flowy. So I'm always just kind of trying to find that right balance where the paint is flowing, but it doesn't look overly transparent and it's not like this heavy mixture. Now the reason this opacity is so important is gouache is unique in the sense that you can actually reactivate the paint with a little bit of water on a clean brush. What this would allow us to do is if we have areas where we want to soften edges or blend one paint passage into the next, we can actually do that with a slightly damp brush. That's where it's a little bit different with watercolor or acrylic. In that with those mediums, you're either building up layers of washes and gradually increasing the amount of paint in a mixture. But with gouache, the relative consistency of the paint is, for the most part, fairly even throughout the painting process. Now, that's not to say that you couldn't build an entire painting gradually up with washes, but the approach that I'm going to be discussing and teaching is more about using the paint in an opaque manner because I feel like that's where you get the best out of the medium. Now, as you get comfortable with how the medium behaves, you can absolutely mix and match transparent and opaque passages. And I think ultimately that probably leads to some great painting. But in terms of learning how the materials actually behave, I find that kind of sticking with that even opacity overall is the best way to start. Now, what I've learned over time with using Guash is the trickiest part to learn, and I think what takes the longest is really just figuring out the right amount of water that you need to get the result that you're after. And again, I find that doing these little sort of experiments on scrap pieces of either illustration board or paper, just kind of allows you to sort of dial in that consistency that you need to get. And so, oftentimes, even on my own illustrations or paintings that I'm doing with quash, I'll actually have a separate piece of illustration board on the side that I'm working so that I can just do little test values, test colors, and also just test consistency. That's something that might be worth doing as you're kind of working and just kind of getting started. So keep that in mind as you're going. But if not, just have something on the side that you can just do little test marks on. And I find that that's really helpful. And gradually as you get more familiar with the medium, you'll have to do that less and less. But for now, just starting out might not be a bad idea. Now, the other important thing I wanted to mention would be to really pay attention how the paint dries. Now the reason this is important is that, generally speaking, gouache will dry a little bit darker than the mixture you see on your palette. And so for obvious reasons, as you're working on a project, this can be very important because you think you're doing one thing and it's going to dry something else. And then I would say this becomes even more important as you kind of start playing around with color because now you have to factor that in as well. And so while that's a little inconvenient at first, I would just chalk it up as that is the nature of the medium itself. Every medium is going to have some sort of quirk or some weird thing about it that is maybe a little bit different than another medium you've tried. So just kind of take it as it comes and you'll gradually adjust to sort of the value differences that you sort of have to think and plan ahead for. Now, the last thing I want to mention about just beginning to paint with gouache is not so much anymore on the paint itself, but you'll notice that I have a sort of paper towel right next to my little scrap of illustration board here, and this is going to serve two purposes. So obviously, as we're mixing new values or colors, we're going to be cleaning our brush in between those mixtures. And so I'll be cleaning off my brush with the paper towel. But more importantly, I'll also be using the paper towel to get rid of any sort of excess water as I go. And now this may seem very sort of obvious and almost silly to even bring up. But the reason I do is that, again, for me, gouache painting is really about regulating the amount of water in my brush. And so, again, we're kind of going back to this idea is that I'm trying to get this nice and even consistency in the paint mixtures so that I know later on as I'm painting, I can go back in and soften areas and I'm not going to have any sort of surprises. So that's why you'll see as I'm kind of making any sort of new value or new mixture is I'm always just gradually dipping the tip of my brush into my water so that I'm not oversaturating the paint and just kind of making a mess. So that's something again, that will take time and just a little bit of patience to try and find the right degree of opacity in your mixtures, but it is something to sort of pay attention to and keep in mind as you're working. And so we'll talk more about consistency as we move on with the demonstration, but it is something I wanted to bring up separately. As new learners to guash, we'll have a little bit of time figuring out the consistency of the paint and how it behaves. 6. Black and White Introduction: For the black and white project, whatever you decide in terms of finish or modeling is totally up to you. I understand that not everyone is going to feel comfortable trying to sort of render form in a new medium if you're just getting started. More importantly, what I really suggest focusing on is the various steps and stages in which the painting is done. So how far you choose to complete the painting is totally up to you. But what I really focus on is just trying to make each stage of the painting as best as you possibly can. Now, one thing to consider as you approach the project is, you may not want to do a fully completed painting that requires a large investment in time. So that's totally optional. And something I might suggest for those that are just starting out is maybe try several smaller projects that don't take quite as much time. Again, the important aspect of the demonstration is just going through the various stages, and the more comfortable you can put yourself through those stages, the more confidence you're going to feel, and then it's going to make completing a painting that much easier. So follow along the demonstration as best you can. There's always going to be little roadblocks here and there, and whether or not you're having some troubles with drawing or just getting used to the medium itself, that's totally okay. Again, more importantly, just absorb the stages and getting understanding of what it looks like to go from the very beginning to the very end. 7. Establishing Drawing: Now, before we get started painting, I wanted to spend a little bit of time talking about the drawing. Now, I'm not necessarily going to do a drawing demonstration as that would greatly extend the video itself. So what I do want to talk about is how we want to establish some sort of a drawing before we get painting. Guash is not one of those mediums, I would say, where you would just sort of work wet into wet, like you might with, say, acrylic or oil paint. It's much closer to watercolor, where you would traditionally start with some sort of underdrawing and then go ahead and paint over it. And so depending on your subject matter, this is where the drawing could be fairly simplified, or in this particular instance, it could be fairly detailed. Now, given the nature that it's a portrait, I'm trying to account for a lot of the information in here. So obviously, features, the overall proportions and placement and things like that. And versus if you are doing a still life or a landscape, you may not have as detailed of a drawing. Ultimately, it's up to you to decide how much of a drawing that you need. But in the case of a portrait like this, where we're going to be flushing out everything, I do find that you want to try and account for as much as possible. Now, the reason for this is that we want to have something that is foundationally sound so that we can just focus on putting in the paint. I don't want to be thinking about drawing and painting simultaneously. So if I can isolate the steps a very sort of systematic way, in this case, having the drawing done first, and then afterwards, we can go ahead and focus on just the painting. No, that's not to say that I won't have to make any potential drawing corrections as I go, but I at least want to have some sort of solid framework that is already established. And then from there, as I put information in, I can always go back and make changes. Now, you can see in the drawing right now that there's no tone or anything like that. It's very linear. And what I've tried to do here is I've tried to really design a lot of the features so that the shapes are all very specific and nothing is left to ambiguity. It's as much information as I think I'm going to need before I start painting. How you decide to do this for yourself is going to be unique to every individual. So I don't necessarily want to preach a certain way of drawing or doing anything like that. Again, it's more about the placement and the information that you want to have in. But I do find it is helpful if you can try and really slow down and design the shapes so that they're so specific that by the time it comes to paint, is you already know exactly what you're painting into, and you're not having to try and solve that problem at the same time. The other thing you'll notice is that I've also sort of vignetted the image. So I'm not trying to necessarily copy the entire reference here. So thinking about the background and the environment that the person is in, I'm just focusing on just the head, and I want to sort of design a little bit of a way to end the painting itself. So in this particular instance, I'm kind of ending around the bow tie, including a little bit of the shoulder line and some of the shadow. And so depending on the reference that you're using, this is something to factor in. And if it's helpful to you, what I recommend actually doing is doing little thumbnail sketches of the actual reference first so that you can figure out the design on a smaller scale before you start drawing on your illustration board or paper. So, lastly, again, I'll mention that the drawing doesn't necessarily have to be super detailed, but you want to just have the major components down on your board so that you don't have to account for them as you're painting. Whatever that looks like for you or whatever your drawing level or skill level or at, just do the best you can so that you have something ready to paint into. The other thing to keep in mind with your drawing is that you don't want to draw it overly delicate or light, but at the same time, you also don't want to go super dark or heavy handed. And so we want to try and get this sort of middle of the road with the overall values of our lines in the drawing. And the reason for this is that as we stain the initial wash over the drawing itself, if we draw too light, we potentially could lose some of the details in some of the smaller areas, like in this instance, for the eyes and the cheek and some of the features. And I don't want to risk losing some of that information that I already spent all that time trying to figure out. So we want to keep some of the value and the linework of the drawing kind of in a nice, happy medium so that we still retain the drawing afterwards, and then we have something nice to build into. 8. Staining surface: So before we get to the actual staining portion of this process, I just want to mention that the only reason we're doing this is simply to eliminate the white of the surface. Now, depending on what surface you're working on, whether it's illustration board or perhaps a heavier watercolor paper, you don't need to go super heavy with the stain. It's just meant to be sort of a neutral value or color if you're painting in color. And it's just again, to eliminate the white of the surface so that we have something to work on top of now, I'm not looking to take advantage of any of the transparencies of the paint or anything like that so that I can work in layers. It's really meant again just to be like a single wash so that I'm working on top of a neutral ground. This is pretty much the same way I would be doing as if I were doing an oil painting as well as I generally like to work on top of a stained surface. And while it is personal preference at the end of the day, I just find that staring at a bright white surface is just harsher on my eyes. So I like to kind of at least calm it down a little bit, even if it's a very, very light wash. Again, the whole point is just to not have this really bright surface staring back at me. And even though I mentioned it before, I'll say it again is that this drawing was done with a H lead, and reason being, I used a harder lead is really just to prevent any of the water from potentially smearing any of the graphite. So if I was using a softer B or B lead, there is much more potential for that to happen. Now, obviously, I'm not going to be using a ton of water so that I'm just smearing it all over the surface, but it is something to keep in mind when you're doing your drawing. So I would recommend using something like an H or a two H lead if you have it. If not, you can probably get away with an HB lead, but it's something to keep in mind before you get to the actual painting portion of this. So I'm just going to be taking a big brush and a little bit of black and making a big neutral value that I can stain my surface with. Now, this is where having a large brush on hand can be super handy just because it allows you to cover a large area very quickly. Now, this will kind of depend on how large of a painting you're doing, but either way, having a larger half inch or 1 " brush can be super useful just so that you can quickly get the surface covered. Now, in terms of the value itself, I'm just going to take a little bit of paint, and I'm just gradually adding more water to it. One thing you can do is just have a nice scrap, either paper or illustration board and make a test value. That way you can get a better idea of just how light or dark the stain is going to be. It doesn't hurt to spend a little bit of time getting the exact value that you want, but more importantly, I think it's more about preserving the drawing that you already spent a bunch of time working on. So you don't want to go super dark and then potentially lose some information in the drawing, but you want to just go light enough to where you get that stain, but still preserve all the lines in your drawing so that you have a nice roadmap to work on. This value right here, I feel like is probably good enough compared to those first few swatches, which are way too dark. So we can go with a value like this, and I feel like that's going to be suitable for this particular painting. Again, depending on your sort of situation and the size that you're working on, have a large enough brush, spend some time figuring out the right value that you want to get. And just more importantly, don't lose the drawing why staining too dark. You can always go darker if it's necessary, but I would error on the side of going a little bit lighter at first, and then if it's too light, you can always add another layer once your surface dries. So I'm going to start by just adding a little bit of water to my surface. That way, the stain goes on a little bit smoother for me. Now, this isn't mandatory or anything like that, but it may be something to try at first, just to see how the surface is going to behave as you add your stain. One thing I would recommend as you're applying water or stain to your surface is try and go in a single direction as you make passes over it. I generally recommend not just sort of brushing back and forth in sort of a chaotic way to apply the stain. We want to try and aim for some degree of evenness as we apply this stain to the surface. As you apply the stain, one thing I'd recommend is try to move a little quickly as you do it. If you wait too long between strokes, the paint can still potentially dry fairly quick, even though we're using a lot of water for this process. Now, if you move too slow, you kind of increase the risk for having some streaks on the surface. And while it's not necessarily a bad thing, if we can avoid it at all possible. That's usually the best case scenario. But nonetheless, I find that even after doing this multiple times, I still occasionally end up with some streaks on the surface and I just don't beat myself up over it because I know I'm going to end up painting over this anyway. So if I have a few here and there, it doesn't really bother me. Do the best you can and keep that in mind, but you want to try and work a little on the quicker side as you apply this initial stain. So I'm going to leave this stain probably about this range. And while it might look a little bit darker on film, it's actually maybe a value lighter when I see it in person. So there's a few little streaks here and there, and, you know, again, it's not the end of the world. Now, if you stained your surface and it's maybe too light for you because maybe you added just too much water and not a ton of actual paint, you can always stain over it again. What I'd recommend doing is actually if you've already got to this state and it's maybe a little bit too light, wait for the surface to dry and then go ahead and apply another light stain on top of it. If you still add a bunch more water on a surface that hasn't fully dried yet, it's still kind of damp. You could potentially by adding another stain and more water to the surface, again, you could potentially run the risk of smearing or losing some of the drawing. So that's just something to keep in mind. So if you went on the sort of safe side and stained it a bit lighter, wait for it to dry and then add another stain afterwards once it's completely set. But again, you've kind of got this nice middle range then I think, you know, you're good for the most part, and any potential streaks that you have in the surface, again, we can be covering that up with paint at the end of the day anyway. So, again, don't beat yourself up if you have some on your surface. So here is my surface after the wash has completely dried, and I'm happy with this overall value as it's kind of a nice middle of the road. It's not too light, and it's definitely not too dark. More importantly, I can still make out everything in my drawing. All of the details have been preserved. Now, unfortunately, yeah, there's a few streaks here and there, and I'm not worried about it. You know, again, this is going to get covered with paint anyway, so I'm not going to beat myself up over it. If you run into the same situation, it's totally fine and just know that it's going to get covered. Alternatively, as well, is if for whatever reason, you've lost some of your drawing when you put in the initial stain, once it's completely dried, you can go back in with pencil and try and resolve some of that if necessary. But hopefully, that's not the case, and you still have everything intact. From this point forward, we can now start the actual painting process, as everything up until this point was really more of a buildup so that we can prepare ourselves. As you gain experience and familiarity with the paint, you can certainly skip some of these steps like the washes. But if you're just starting out, I'd recommend following this progression so that everything becomes a step by step approach. Afterwards, you can always experiment and find out what works best for you. 9. Establishing Darks: So before we get started putting any paint down, we just want to make sure that our image has a light tone over it, that we can still legibly see our drawing if for whatever reason that there's any portion of the drawing that is maybe a little uncertain or maybe a little too lightly established, it's okay to go ahead and take some pencil and re establish any areas that you might be a little uncertain of just so that you make sure that you have an entire drawing to work from. Now, generally speaking, I like to work from dark to light. So in this particular instance, I'm going to be starting with my shadows and gradually progress through my values. Now, you can absolutely work from light to dark. It really is just a matter of preference. And sometimes depending on the subject matter and the lighting situation, it might be more advantageous to work from light to dark. In this particular scenario, it's a fairly shadow heavy image, and I'm going to I think that for the most part, it's going to be easier for me to work from the shadows and gradually build up to the lights. So that's how I'm going to go about it. One thing I like to do when I'm first starting out is to stick with a larger brush or at least a relatively larger brush for the size of my painting in general. By using a larger brush, this will force me to not get caught up in small details or try to overstate anything too early on. So, for the most part, I stick with a larger brush for the majority of the painting and then only pull out smaller brushes as needed. As I'm putting in a shadow value, the one thing I'm keeping in mind, at least from the very beginning is the overall range in which I'm going to be working. Now, given the reference itself and the fact that I need to sort of compress these values and sort of simplify them so that it makes sense in the context of this painting, I want to be very wary about using a pure black right out of the gate. When I look at the image itself, there are some blacks in the image, and I would say, if I look at the background, the hairline, the bow tie, there are some true blacks. But now, when I compare that to the relative shadow value that I'm working in that shadow value is actually a bit lighter. Now, they're still within a comfortable range of each other, but I do want to make sure that I have enough room so that when I do put in a true black, that really jumps out and makes a statement and I don't want to exhaust my value range by getting a black in there too soon. Now, even though there's some reflected light in these shadows, I'm not going to think about that just yet. I'm going to give myself a little bit of room to insert them later. But for the most part, if I can help it, I want to try and stick to one value at a time. I don't want to be jumping around too much mixing a new value if I don't have to. You'll see that I have a tendency to mix a certain value and find as many areas throughout the painting where I can inject that value so that I'm not having to constantly remix new values all the time. Now, this is just a preferred method that I like because it kind of simplifies the process down into a sort of almost like a paint by numbers system, not in the sense that I'm just filling in areas, but just sticking to one value at a time, it allows me to just gradually fill in the entire painting in a very sort of sequential manner versus trying to stick to one area and mixing values over and over again. I find that by focusing on one value at a time, it really just simplifies the process for you so that you can build up the entire painting gradually as you go. Now, if I were to be mixing values constantly and sticking to, let's say, one side of the painting, then I could certainly do so, but I find that it would probably take me a little bit longer because I would have to be constantly remixing new values as I approached each new area of the painting. But by just simplifying the process down to one value at a time, I can gradually fill in the entire thing as I go and then really focus on just that one value and seeing where I can put it throughout the painting. This is also helpful from the standpoint is that we want to have an overall value harmony throughout the painting. So I'm going to try and stick within a sort of five value range overall, for the most part as I build up this painting. Now, it's not counting any sort of smaller values that I might use to make transition tones or when I blend the painting later on, I'm not sort of factoring that in. But what I do want to think about is, how can I create this painting in as few values as possible. Now, generally speaking, I would say three to five value range is kind of somewhere we want to end up, but three values might be a little bit too limiting, but five is actually a nice little sort of middle ground that we can work with. The reason this is so important is we need to be thinking about our painting as it works as a picture. We're not necessarily trying to copy the photo per se, but we want to capture an impression of it. And so by limiting our value range, there's going to be a greater overall cohesion, versus if we try and get every little tiny value transition throughout the entire image, it has the potential to have this really sort of fractured look to it, and that's not what we're after. At the end of the day, we are trying to make a piece of art. So we want to keep that in mind as we're building out our picture. And I'll mention, again, that a lot of this is very dependent on your image and the overall value range of it. So depending on, you know, let's say, the lighting scenario and the overall background of the image, a lot of these value ranges can be quite different. So for this particular example, this is sort of a high contrast image, and there's a lot of shadows. There's a decent amount of light. There's not a large amount of highlights per se, but there is enough of a brighter value range that it has a nice, sort of moody look to it. You can have an image that has sort of all over the place in terms of being a brighter sort of overall value range or something that's maybe even more dark and is, like, super high contrast. But nonetheless, this approach still remains the same. I want to focus on one value at a time. And in this particular instance, I want to work from dark to light and just gradually build up the painting in that fashion. The last thing I'll mention as we're getting started here is I'm trying to keep the consistency of the paint as even as I can as I'm making these mixtures. Now, even though we're just working with a single value for now, I want to have a nice opacity in the paint as I put it down. I don't want to be seeing any of the board through any of the brush strokes that I'm putting down, and I just want to have a nice even consistency overall. As I mentioned early on, one of the trickier parts of learning how to use squash is finding the right opacity in the paint mixtures so that when you have a nice flat shape when you put it down on your surface. Now, it'll take a little bit of time getting used to that consistency. And this can also vary from brand to brand. So every paint manufacturer has its own sort of consistency. And so that's something to keep in mind, too, as you're working is if you have different paints from different manufacturers, they may have some sort of nuance that you have to get used to. So even as I move on to lighter values in the painting, this overall consistency is something I'm going to be really focused on. Now, the reason for this is that later on in the painting, when we want to soften areas or make gradations in values, if we don't have enough paint on the surface, then it's going to be harder to create those gradation effects or rounding of forms. So if I have any areas where the paint is too transparent or thin, or I notice that as I put down a stroke that I'm seeing my board underneath it, I may have to go back in and just add a little bit of paint on top of those areas so that I make sure I get that opacity that I'm after. Now, this is especially important, again, in the main focal points of the painting. So if I have transparent paint in the background where it's maybe less important and I'm not blending paint, that's okay. I can get away with that. But in the focal point, in this case, the portrait of the painting itself, I want to make sure that I have that opacity that I'm after, so I have the option of either leaving the paint as it is, or I have the option to blend it and soften it to whatever extent I need to. 10. Building Shadows: So as I continue to build up the shadows, again, I'm still trying to limit myself to a single value and to put it in as many places as I can see it. Now, if I find myself seeing that a value is in the sort of general ballpark, and maybe it's maybe slightly off to this value, I may decide to either group it together with this single value or save it for the next value up as I go along. And so as you build up your picture, you're going to find yourself having to make these decisions where sometimes it might make sense to group a value that is close enough to a darker value or close enough to the next corresponding lighter value so that, again, you can maintain that overall sense of harmony. And this is just a good strategy in general because the larger you can make these shadow shapes kind of stick together and be a little bit more cohesive. The greater the picture is going to read in the long run. And so my first goal in establishing the shadows is to get a very simplified light and dark effect. So while, right now, I don't have any lights in whatsoever, what I want to have by the time I put in the darks is I want to have a very established shadow pattern that feels like it's adhering to the face. And as long as I get these shapes in the right place and the right relative value, I should be off to a good start. Now as I'm looking at the hair, there are some value fluctuations that I'm seeing. And in this particular instance, it would actually be important to look for some differences. Now the reason I say this is that if I were to make the hair a single large mass, it would look very sort of cut out and pasted on or almost look like a helmet instead of hair. I want to try and avoid that if I can. So now there is a large portion that I can group together in a large value mass, but I do want to leave myself a little bit of room, as there are some darker portions, as well as a little bit of room for the highlight that is around the top portion of his head. Now, I will say hair in general has a lot of variables to consider. But at the end of the day, you just want to break it down into simple light and dark shapes or patterns. And depending on the person's hair type, there could be a lot more values going on. So in this particular example, because he has darker hair and it's in shadow, I don't have a whole lot of variety. But if it was someone with a lighter color hair, there might be a lot more going on in the overall value structure. So it is a very much case by case situation that you have to assess as you start to paint it. As I get back down to the shadow in the face, I'm switching over to a new value. It's not a huge jump overall, as it's still relatively dark on this shadow side of the face, but it is enough of a step down to where I can separate the two. In this particular piece of reference, he does have a bit of reflected light on this shadow side of the face, and that's more so that he's not quite dual lit from both sides, but there is a little bit of bounce light coming onto the left hand side. And so, well, I want to have some of that reflected light in there. I don't want to overstate it. And so I'm still squinting down my eyes so that I can simplify this shadow overall. Now, this would be something to consider in your own image is if you have any sort of reflected light in the shadow side, you want to kind of tone that down or make it less obvious. Oftentimes, I've seen students really over emphasize the reflected light areas in the shadows, and it kind of makes someone look dual lit if you're not careful or it's too abrupt of a jump in value. So what you want to do is you want to squint down and you want to try and assess how much of that reflected light do you actually see in the shadow when you squint down. And whatever that is, that's how you want to paint it. Because if you open up your eyes and you see too much, you're going to paint it way brighter than it needs to be. Working into the shadow of the nose, I kind of have a similar situation where that I do actually see some information in the shadows because this shadow is not overly dark, but I still want to try and simplify it down to a simple flat value. And then later on, I can always go back into the shadow and pick out some small details or accents later on. The problem with putting too much information in the shadows as you start to break down the shadow and fragment it when you start injecting all of these smaller things. So we want to think of our shadows as these nice simplified masses so that we can emphasize more information in the light side of the form. It's not to say that I don't want to just completely eliminate information in the shadows. I just want to be very selective about what information I put in and what information I take out. In this particular scenario, when I squint down, I still see some information in the wing of the nostril, and I would also probably include the nostril itself, which will end up being a dark accent. Other areas like the side plane of the nose, I don't really see jump out as much. So those areas, I'm going to have a tendency to simplify it down. And then if I need to add anything later on, I'll make that decision as more of the painting gets covered. As I continue to fill in the shadow, you can gradually see how this is coming together where we have these nice shadow shapes that are just really sort of locked in and the face is slowly emerging out of it. Now, even though we don't have a whole lot of detail, you can see by just the simple graphic shapes that we have, the nose, eye socket, cheek, and a little bit of the mouth is slowly starting to emerge. And as you can see so far, I don't really have a whole lot of detail or anything like that. The shapes are fairly sort of straightforward. I'm only working within a couple of values. And I guess, more importantly, what it does emphasize is that you want to make sure that your drawing is dialed in, because if you have to be thinking about any sort of proportions or anything like that as you're going, it sort of adds another layer of complexity to the painting itself. So that's why I emphasize in the very beginning is really try and dial in the drawing and pencil first. And then once you get to the painting portion, you really are just kind of filling it in per se. But now, there's certainly other things that you have to think about. But at least by working on top of a solid drawing, it does kind of help solve a lot of the initial issues you may have. This is why I also recommend early on the first few paintings that you try is look for images that are sort of high contrast or have very obvious shadows like this one. You can certainly choose other images that are maybe not as dark or maybe don't have as many shadows. The only problem with that is that it certainly adds a layer of difficulty, as you'll have less to sort of work with. Now, again, it's totally personal preference and what you want to paint, but it's something to consider before you get started in terms of choosing reference or what sort of source material you choose to copy. 11. Shadows Continued: As of now, we have a good portion of the shadow filled in with just a little bit left to go. I'm using a slightly less dark value to get some of this reflected light area filled in so that it's still different than the initial shadow value that I started, but it's still very much in that shadow range. Mm I'm going to fill in just a small value shape for the eyes. I'm not going to try and paint the entirety of them, but I want to at least have some sort of value. That way we can get a sense of the overall direction that he's looking. Eyes can be a little bit tricky because there could be a lot of small value transitions within them at first. But if you squint down and just look at the overall shape, you can kind of simplify them to a simple mass, and then later on, we can always pick out some small details and add things like highlights and a pupil. Generally speaking with eyes, the more you can simplify the iris and pupil area in general and just try and capture the overall gaze, then it's going to work a lot better in the long run. And that way, you can just add a few small details at the very end to kind of get that nice effect that we're looking for in the eyes. Getting back to the shadow side of the face, I'm going to have to go with a slightly lighter value because I do need to account for the reflected light in his face. However, I am squinting down so that I don't go overly bright in value overall, because if I were to have a super bright value right next to the dark values that I see, it's going to sort of break that overall light effect, so that's something I need to keep in mind. Generally speaking, reflected light is much darker than what we would like to think it is. So that's something that I find that a lot of beginners, at first, maybe go overboard because they think it's going to look really cool or something like that. But you really want to squint down and accurately look at the values, and you can see how much that reflected light blends back into the main shadow. And that'll just help you so that you don't overstate it in the end. Because it's still early on in the painting, I'm still just thinking about the large effect. So any smaller details or, you know, kind of minor fluctuations in value, I'm not really focused on just yet because it's not going to really help move the painting forward. So even though I do see some of these things in there, I'm trying to kind of almost actively ignore it so that I don't get caught up in it. And now, that's certainly easier said than done, but you just have to remind yourself at the end of the day, we want to capture this overall light effect, and the only way we can do that is to really kind of have a nice, simplified shadow and light. So if I get too involved at this point with some of those smaller details, I risk losing that as I move on with the painting. It certainly doesn't mean that I'm not going to account for it at some point, but given that the stage where I'm at so far, it's not going to really help me. So even as I kind of work within a slightly, you know, lighter value range, when you look at the painting the way it stands right now, you can still see that we're working within the overall shadow family of values. So none of the values I've worked with so far jump out to me as being overly bright. And so I want to kind of stay in this range until I got that nice shadow effect working in my favor. Until then, I'm going to try and simplify areas down and ignore any sort of details. Now, as I get to this top portion of the shadow, there is a little bit of bounce light in that top portion of his forehead. Now, because it is so bright, it's something that I'm going to probably not paint in just yet. I'm going to leave that area blank for now because it's such an isolated value relative to the darkness of the hair and the darkness of the shadow. But it's a big enough shape that when I squint down, it's still quite obvious. So even though it's not necessarily going to be a super bright sort of highlight or anything like that, the range of values that I'm working in right now, that little corner is a little bit too bright, so I don't want to really mess with it just yet. So for now, I'm going to leave that space empty and then get back to it later. And I'm going to start building into some of the forehead shadow area. And while it's not as dark as some of the lower jaw areas that I see, it's still, for the most part, shadow compared to the lights. So it's something that I want to group together with the rest of what I've established. Now, even though it's a slightly lighter value, relatively speaking, to even, let's say, the eyebrow value, for the most part, when I squint down, it does join together as part of a larger shape. So I want to go ahead and include that. And while there's a lot of things going on in some of the sub forms in the forehead, for right now, I just don't want to even pay attention to that, and I just want to think about the shadow shape and the creases or any sort of cut lines that I see in the forehead, I'm not going to really focus on probably not until, like, the very end. And I really just want to think about the overall shadow shape that I'm seeing and just put that in. You know, later on in the painting, as we get more information, we can start looking at some of those details. As I feel like for him, some of those forehead wrinkles and things like that is part of his character. So I want to make sure that I do include it. But I don't want to be thinking about that sort of thing this early on. 12. Finishing the Darks: So as of now, we have the majority of the darks filled in. Now, you can see that we've established the shadow side, and we have about a couple of value separations because, again, I do have some reflected light in there that I need to account for. That said, the overall value range is still relatively on the dark side, so I'm still focusing on that overall light and dark effect before I move on to the lights. Now, there is this portion of the forehead that while it's not entirely in shadow, it is a very sort of dark half tone. So it's not really what we would call a part of the shadow pattern, but the majority of the forehead up in this area is sort of in a very subdued light range. And so I want to go ahead and put that in so that it's going to make the lights, once I build them up, that much more obvious. Now, it can be a little bit tricky in terms of thinking about half tones versus shadows, as depending on the lighting scenario, sometimes it can be a little ambiguous to tell what is what. Now, in this particular instance, the obvious shadow sides are on the left hand side of the face. But again, this top half of the head is in a very sort of darker middle range. So I'm grouping some of that information so that by the time I go in and fill in the rest of the forehead, it's going to be easier for me to make those transitions. Now, I'm going to actually go ahead and inject a little bit of black into some of the smaller areas that I see. Most importantly, I would say the bow tie is a nice sort of black value to have. And it's also kind of a cool design element in this particular piece of reference. And then there's also the top portion of the head. And the one thing you'll notice is, as I start to put in some of this black value is it's going to make all the other shadow values that I established from the beginning sort of take a back seat a little bit. And what I mean by that is when I put down the first shadow value, you may have saw that and thought, Wow, that's, like, really dark. And for the most part, that's true. And I think the tricky part about that is that when you first start out, you have very little context for other values because there's nothing else on your surface. And so as you gradually add information, everything will start to kind of reassess the values that you put down initially. And that's why I usually recommend to not put a black value in from the very beginning because it's just such a dark contrast that you could potentially exhaust your value range if you're starting with that. Now, you can certainly argue that it might be a good strategy to establish the darkest darks and the brightest brights initially in the painting and then essentially build the rest of the value range around that. And I would say that is a very valid way of working, but it might be a little bit more advanced for those starting out. The way I look at it is the brightest brights and the darkest darks are going to essentially be a very small portion of the overall value structure in your painting. So I like to think of those values as almost like being accents. And so we want to use those sparingly so that they really count by the time we put them in. Now, I'm not including these values in relationship to things like the background or anything like that, because depending on the environment in which you're painting the subject, there's all sorts of variables that you have to factor in. So I mostly mean this in the context of this portrait itself as we're thinking about the head. So the way I like to build up the value range is to try and get as much as I absolutely can with some of these darker gray values so that by the time I introduce a black or, like, a super light value that's maybe not quite a highlight, but just about that highlight range. I want to try and get as much mileage out of my range as possible so that by the time I put these accents in, they really stand out and help turn the form or make something appear really bright or allow a shadow to fully recede into, like, a very dark area. So that's kind of what I'm thinking about is I'm building up my value range from the very beginning, and I want to save these accent values to where I feel like I really need them so that I get a better idea for where the rest of the values are. So I'm just filling in the rest of the hair. Now, I know that I need a little bit of room left to put that sort of highlight or rim light around the back portion of his head. And I think a lot of that, because it's such a small accent in that area, I'll probably wait till I get some of the background better established. But right now, you can kind of see as we're introducing these dark values, is that it really does allow the shadows we built up so far to kind of just sit a little further back so now that we get a better idea of the overall value range within the shadows of the face, and that's just going to make it easier for us to gauge when we begin the light portion of the portrait. One thing with the hair right now and I would say the nature of his haircut kind of being a more sort of simple haircut, and I don't see a lot of detail is that the value range that I've established kind of has this sort of banding effect, which is right for now, but it is something later on. I know I'm going to have to take some paint and some water to kind of soften it and blend it together. So I'm mostly thinking about the value ranges and building them up in a sequential manner. Now, the one thing I am focused on is making sure that I have enough opacity in the paint so that when I do go back later on with a wet brush to soften some of that paint it's gonna allow me to blend it a little bit easier. So, again, you really want to make sure that we hit this sort of opacity in the paint where we're not seeing any sort of transparent passage, but we're fully covering the surface and kind of trying to get each passage of paint right next to each other. So by the time we go back in with a little bit of a damp brush, we can really soften that paint much easier. At this point, there's not a whole lot left to fill in, maybe just a small little portions in the eyes so that we kind of fill in those irises a little bit better. But you can see, just from the little bit of the hair that we built and as well as the bow tie, having that dark value introduced into the painting now really sets us up so that as we slowly sort of transition into the lighter passages through the light side of the face, we have a really nice solid foundation. And so as you're working on your own paintings, my first sort of recommendation or goal I would set for yourself is to try and get to this point where you have just a really strong overall shadow range that's developed and you have a clear understanding of where light and dark is. And then from there, building out the lights is going to be so much easier. 13. Beginning the lights: As I start to work on the light portion of the face, I still like to begin on the shadow side. The reason for that is that even the light passages that I do see on this side of the face are still relatively in a middle value range overall. And I also essentially just like to build out of my shadows first. So depending on your reference and how much shadows you're working with, I still like to gradually work from that dark to light. So in this particular instance, I want to build out out of my shadow and gradually work across to the light side of the face. I will say, for this particular piece of reference, the overall value range, even in the lights is still kind of a middle value. Now, there are certainly some lighter passages that we have, but it's nothing that's super bright overall, and we don't have any sort of really bold highlights that jump out to me. So I'm trying to keep that in mind as I'm building up towards the lights. But for the most part, again, I just want to slowly build out of my shadow and gradually make my values progressively lighter. Now, I'm still going to work one value at a time, just like I did in the shadows. So as I paint with this particular value, I'm going to try to find as many places in the portrait that I can inject this one individual value. I still want to try and avoid just jumping around from value to value and having to over mix paint or anything like that. So as I mix one value, I want to see where else on this portrait, can I go ahead and place that value or where does it look close enough to where it might be okay to place that value in a given area? As I complete each value, I'll gradually make a lighter mixture until ultimately the rest of the face is filled in. F. Now, working through the forehead, like I mentioned earlier, there's a good portion of that front plane of the forehead that well, even though it's in light, it's still in kind of a darker middle value range. And so that's one thing I'm having to sort of be cautious of because I don't want to make it overly bright. I think this area will be important later on as I build it up because it's going to really emphasize the lighter portions that are through the nose as well as the cheek area on the light side of the face. Now, there are a few details in the forehead that I do want to make sure that I get in. More importantly, it's that it's part of his character, and if I were to sort of eliminate them, it would take away from his face in particular. So some of the cut lines that I see in the forehead, I do want to make sure that I account for them and get them in there. I will say, however, when painting an older person and there's lots of laugh lines or wrinkles of any kind, you do want to be cautious about how much of that you put in, because if you put too much emphasis on them, it has a way of drawing the eye away from the overall large effect of the portrait. This is particularly important if you're painting a female, and you just want to be very cautious about overemphasizing those kinds of details. Now, it can certainly be useful if you're kind of painting a character type of some kind. But the more important aspect is to try not to lose sight of those small details versus the overall light effect that we're trying to capture in the portrait itself. In this particular instance, the value of the crease lines that I see in the forehead is so close to the overall average value that I see that they're not going to jump out too much once everything gets filled in. So that's just something I'm sort of being cautious of even though I'm putting in this information now, it will get covered up. And then as we move forward into the other portions of the face, it hopefully won't jump out too much. And And so as I start to fill in this middle portion of the forehead, I'm slightly mixing a lighter value mixture, but it's not too far off from the previous one I put in. So, again, this portion of the forehead is although it's in light, it's still kind of this darker half tone area, so I'm not going to be painting a super bright value overall. So I'm trying to keep the value range in this particular area fairly close together so that nothing jumps out too much. Now, as it does get down closer to the eyebrows and, like, that brow ridge area, it is going to slightly lighten in value, and then even more so as we get down through the bridge of the nose and then into the rest of the face itself. So the way I'm treating this is that I want to just gradually work towards those lighter values so that as I'm building up the painting, nothing jumps out too quickly or abruptly in the overall value range. I don't want to just be putting in something super bright because I want to just gradually work from area to area and slowly start to see the painting develop as I build up the value range. And so you can see as I start to fill in some of the values around these forehead lines that they don't jump out anymore because the value range is so close together. And so, ultimately, that is what I wanted to try and do so that I don't have these sort of horizontal lines just cutting across his forehead, but they just look like they're part of the overall forehead mass. And so, again, it's just kind of important to remember that it's okay to have some of these details in there. It's just more a matter about how we handle them so that they look appropriate and they don't just jump out as something that's really sort of abrupt or sort of out of place with the rest of the picture. With the majority of the forehead filled in, I want to start looking at other portions of the face where I can start interjecting the same value range. Now, there are small little pockets in the chin and the mouth area where I see the same value, but there's also a lot more little accents that I see, especially in things like the mouth and, like, around, like, the lip area. So I'm being cautious about how dark of a value I go. Now, I am thinking about as the light is kind of coming down, as it reaches towards the chin, there is a drop off in the overall value range as it starts to tuck under the chin. So I know, for the most part, it's going to kind of be a heavier sort of middle value range, so I can kind of build up some of this value here. But as it gradually starts going towards the cheek and kind of the lower portion of the mouth, it is going to get a little bit lighter, so I'll leave those areas open. I'm still keeping in mind that even as I work towards the lighter portion of the face, it's not an overall bright value. Even the highlights themselves with the exception of the highlights in the eyes, there's not a lot of sort of bright highlights on the nose or in the cheek or anything like that. So the range is still going to be slightly compressed, and I just need to make sure that this middle range that I'm working in now is built up well enough so that by the time I do get to those lighter passages, they really do stand out and separate themselves from the rest of that I've established so far. 14. Continuing the lights: As I'm continuing the lights, for the most part, we're still in this middle value range overall. But as we move forward, we're going to slowly work towards those lighter passages. I think in this sort of middle value range, things can sometimes be a little ambiguous because it feels like you're working in mostly this single value. And that could definitely be because of this reference where, again, the lighter passages in this portrait are not super bright, so it is mostly a middle value range for the most part, even though it does have that illusion of being really high contrast. So that's just something I'm keeping in mind. But what I'm hoping for is that I build up enough of this middle value range so that by the time I get to the lighter passages, they really do stand out and separate themselves from what I have so far. And so this is something to keep in mind, even when you're choosing your reference to paint. If you really want to get that high contrast, super bright highlight, you know, surrounded by shadowy, you know, dark shadows, then that kind of Rembrandt effect, you may want to choose a piece of reference that is a higher degree of contrast. Now, the one thing to keep in mind in this particular painting right now is that I don't have the background included, and that is something that we will get to eventually. And I think that'll really help kind of drive that light effect. So that is something I'm keeping in the back of my head, as well. What I'm focused on mostly in this area is making sure that as I put down a piece of paint is that the value fits relative to everything else around it. Again, in this particular instance, around the sort of brow ridge area and in the forehead, there's a lot of middle value ranges that are very close together. So I'm trying to make sure that as I'm putting down a piece of paint that the overall value feels like it belongs to that area and it doesn't jump out too abruptly compared to the other things around it. This goes back to what I mentioned in the beginning is where I like to try and do my best to work one value at a time so that as I'm working from dark to light, as I enter a new value range, I try and inject that value into as many areas as possible. Again, this goes back to not only having a good sense of cohesion throughout the entire painting, but also makes it a little bit easier on myself because I can just focus on that one value, and I don't feel like I have to control multiple mixtures or multiple values all at once. This is certainly easier said than done, and I'm definitely prone to making, you know, wrong values, mistakes, and what have you. So it is more a matter of trying to keep that thought process in the back of my mind so that as I'm doing mixtures, I don't want to jump ahead too soon to the next value range. I want to carefully look throughout the piece of reference and look at my painting and kind of make those choices about where can I put this value or where does it feel like it could go so that as I'm covering the entire surface, I can slowly move on to one value to the next. Now, as I get down into the chin and the far side cheek here, we're closing in on some of those lighter passages. And so any area that appears a little bit lighter if I see a lighter half tone or a highlight, I'm just going to go ahead and work around it and try my best to create a shape that I can later on go fill in with a lighter value. The other thing I have to consider as I work towards the lighter passages is that some of the anatomical information does get a little washed out compared to the shadow side of the face. However, one benefit of this particular reference is he is kind of an older man. So some of that skull structure that I see is a little bit more evident than it would be if this was a younger man or let's say, a female. So that's something to keep in mind as you're working on your own portrais is depending on the character type, as well as the lighting situation, the lighter passages can sometimes be a little bit tricky if you don't have that anatomical knowledge. Nonetheless, if you don't still just think about how the head itself is kind of that egg shape and how it's being lit and how that value is dropping off from a brighter value to a darker value and focus predominantly on that versus the anatomy. 15. Completing the lights: As we're getting close to fully covering the portrait, with these last few lighter values, the one thing I'm trying to keep in mind is that I want to do as much as I can with these last few values without including any sort of highlight. And although it's incredibly tempting to just want to put in those highlights just to kind of get that nice little pop of a bright value, I ideally like to save them to the very end or at least close to the very end because I want to get as much out of the values I have to create that sense of form so that by the time I do get to the highlight, it really does feel and look significant and kind of accents that form that I'm describing. Now, this will vary greatly depending on your reference and the overall lighting situation. And if you feel like having a highlight is going to help you, then maybe try and put it in, but I'd still recommend holding off for as long as you can so that you can try and create that sense of volume and form with all of the other values at your disposal. So Now, as I'm getting to portions of the cheek here, the one thing I have to be careful of is that the values are relatively close to each other, but I still need to differentiate them enough so that it looks like there's a plane change that's occurring. What I'm looking for specifically is that there is a light most facing plane on the cheek, and then we get a subtle drop off as it's turning down towards the corner of the mouth. So the overall value jump is not overly significant, but it is different enough to where I need to make that distinction so that there's an obvious sort of shifting of the form that's taking place. And just like in the cheek, we're getting that similar effect around the mouth and that overall muzzle shape as it's connecting to the cheek. The overall value changes are relatively close together, so I need to be cautious of that. Then later on as I go back in and start maybe refining some of this, I can separate out those forms a little bit with a few small accents that I see around the mouth. As we're getting down to these final few areas, I know that in the end, I'm going to have to soften the paint so that they transition and kind of get that gradation effect. So I'm kind of keeping that in mind. Now, if I wasn't planning on softening these areas later on, I might build in a few more transition values, but for the most part, I feel like I can put in this lighter value shape in the cheek and in, like, the bridge of the nose. And there's enough paint on the surface for me to go ahead and later on, take a brush and soften those planes together so that I get a nice smoother transition. So with the face fully covered at this point, what I want to go ahead and do is start looking at the entire thing overall. And if I see any areas that for now where the transitions feel perhaps a little too abrupt, I want to go ahead and make some of those corrections right now before I get too far ahead or I begin softening anything. Ideally, because I worked one value at a time, any of these smaller corrections or transitions that I need to make are hopefully not that major. If you find yourself where you need to make these bigger changes, then you want to sort of be very cautious because we don't want to paint over large areas with opaque paint. Again, gouache is not really a layering kind of medium like oil or acrylic. So given that we have this opacity of paint built up on the surface, we can't really layer all that much, because if we go back in later and soften it, it's going to get really sort of muddy and it's not going to look all that great. So this is something to keep in mind, too, is that even though we're at this stage of the painting so far, I'm not really making huge adjustments. What I'm going to go ahead and do now is I'm going to just add in element of the background. I do want to keep in mind that because of the lighting situation, there is that top sort of rim light around the back portion of his head. So I do want to leave myself some room for that. And initially, what I'll do is kind of just lay in a thinner wash of value. I can go back in later on and build opaquely on top of it. But for now, I just need to cover a large area. So I'm not too concerned about covering it later because all of this paint right now is very transparent. I'm also not really concerned with some of the variation in value that I see in the background because there's other elements behind him. So right now, I just want to put in a sort of overall value just so that I introduce some contrast. Later on, I'll go back in and maybe darken a few areas so that we can kind of create a nice little atmospheric effect so that it looks like he's part of the background. Depending on, you know, your own situation and the portrait, you could certainly do this in the very beginning if you wanted to. I really had no sort of reason for not doing it initially. I just kind of wanted to just get started with the head, and then I knew I was going to add the background later. And there's really no right or wrong. I do think that having the background maybe in a little bit earlier gives you a better sense of the overall light effect, but for the most part, it wasn't something I felt like I needed at the time, so I just knew I was going to include it later. 16. Softening edges: Now that the entire head is covered and we have a little bit of a background, I do want to address some of the supporting elements in the painting, mostly just the coat and how I'm going to design it with the rest of the head. I knew from the beginning that I wasn't going to be painting this portrait edge to edge, and I'm going to have to design how some of these elements of the jacket sort of create the finished composition. Now, I'm going to probably end this in a very sort of triangular style composition, which is a very common sort of portrait vignette that you see a lot of painters do. And in order to kind of separate the head from everything else, I'm actually going to use a little bit more transparent paint because by making the paint a little bit more transparent down here, it's not going to detract from the head itself. So this particular instance, I'm sort of reducing the opacity, and I want to just go ahead and think about how I can creatively use some of the shadows to kind of design some of the elements around the head so that we have a nice pleasing composition. Now, as I get to the other shoulder, I can maybe use a little bit more opaque paint as this portion of the jacket is actually getting directly hit by the light source. So it'll be, I think, a nice sort of balance of transparent paint in the shadows on the left shoulder and then opaque paint on the right shoulder. And for the most part, I don't necessarily need to paint a whole lot. I just need to have something, especially around the areas that are coming into contact with the face. And then as I build up the background, I can add a little bit more paint, as well. All I'm doing is really just keeping in mind that these portions of the painting are sort of a supporting element, and I don't want to detract too much away from the face, but I do need to have something in there so that I don't just leave that space empty. Now, at this point, I want to begin softening some of my edges. Now, in order to do that, I'm going to be taking a clean brush and dipping it in water. But before actually applying it to the paint, I want to take a paper towel and make sure that I absorb any excess water from the brush. What I'm looking for in terms of consistency is just a slightly damp brush as I don't want to oversaturate the paint. If I begin softening with too much water in my brush, I could have too much water on the surface and overblend. This could potentially lead to the paint getting kind of muddy and it would ruin some of the initial paint that I put down. So I really want to make sure that I have just a lightly damp brush. And as I go to soften, I'm not really pressing too hard. I'm really trying to use a minimal amount of force on the paint itself so that I'm just gently blending two areas together and making a nice even gradation. If anything, when you first start this process, use less water than you think. The only other thing I'll say is that it does take some experimenting to kind of get that right feel very similar to how we discuss the opacity and the paint consistency we needed to put down. The same goes true for how we soften with water. And the one thing that I find that is a little tricky, as well is that different paint brands will respond differently. So that's something like I mentioned at the beginning, too, is that every manufacturer kind of has a certain consistency to it that takes a little bit of getting used to, and you kind of have to find that sweet spot in which you can get the correct opacity. And I find when softening the paint later on with the water is that that same thing rings true and that can vary from brand to brand. So that's something you just have to experiment, and it'll take a little bit of time. As I continue to soften, really what I'm looking for is, how much do I need to really transition some of these areas from shadow into light? And that's going to determine how much of that I end up softening in the end. Now, the shadow sides are, generally speaking, a little bit easier to work with because it's a very obvious transition as forms are rolling from shadow to light, especially as we work along that form shadow. Once I get over to the light side of the face, it's a little less obvious, but at the same time, the values are closer together, so I won't necessarily need to soften quite as much. The other thing to consider is that as you soften the paint, you may find that it will affect some of the values overall as we've blended them together. So what'll end up happening is once I kind of make my way through the entire portrait and soften the areas to a degree that I feel is comfortable for me, I may still have to go back in and apply some opaque paint to kind of make some corrections or maybe fix any areas that perhaps got affected by softening the things around it. So that's something to keep in mind is that even though have gotten to this stage of the painting. We're not quite done yet even after we soften, so there's still going to be a little bit that happens afterwards once we finish this step. I 17. Softening edges pt 2: As I continue softening, I'm going to spend a bit of time in this shadow side of the face because I do have a lot of paint on this particular area where there's not a whole lot of transitions that I painted in, mostly because I knew I was going to spend a lot of time softening in this particular area. So for example, a lot of the area of, let's say, the hair, as it kind of comes together with the reflected light and the rest of the shadow in the face, I didn't paint too many transitional values in that area because I knew I was going to be softening it down, and that would kind of allow me to make those transitions as I kind of blended them together. Now, again, depending on what you want to do with your own painting, I'm generally not a fan of overemphasizing information in the shadows, and I have a tendency to keep them a little bit more simplified so that it emphasizes more of the lights. So that's just sort of a sort of aesthetic choice that I prefer, and that's kind of why I did it this way. As I'm working my way through the shadow side of the face, I'm still keeping in mind that I don't necessarily need to soften absolutely everything. And there's a part of me that actually likes to keep some of the original paint that I established in the beginning because I find that if I over soften it can start to give the painting this sort of sort of like this too soft, kind of rubbery kind of a look. So having some of the paint still in its original state with maybe some sharp edges gives a little structure back into the overall aesthetic to the painting, which I kind of like. So it's trying to find the balance between sort of hard and soft edges as I'm working. And so again, part of there is an aesthetic component to making those kinds of decisions, and a lot of it can be personal preference, but it is something to keep in mind, as well as I mentioned earlier, is that anytime you soften an area, you may have to go back in later on and actually re establish some values because it may lighten a value a little bit too much as you're making a transition from one form to the next. But all of these things are just something to keep in mind, and it really does depend on what your ultimate goal in terms of the kind of form that you want to establish in the final painting. Now, as I'm working through areas like the forehead and around the eye, I'm trying to not over manipulate the paint, and I really just want to soften what I feel is absolutely necessary. The one thing I'm keeping in mind too is that as I need to soften things up, I can go back in on top and add fresh paint if I need to sort of enhance an area with a slightly darker value or make any corrections. Again, one thing to keep in mind is that as you do soften an area or start to join two passages of paint together, you will end up creating new values, but at the same time, you may lose a little bit of information as you continue to model the form. So anything that you end up sort of losing as you make those transitions, you may have to go back in and inject fresh paint so that you can re establish any information that you have potentially lost. You can see, as I work on this particular area, I'm not necessarily doing a whole lot. As I kind of soften things and re establish information or maybe sharpen an edge or anything like that, it's very minimal effort in terms of actually putting new paint down. And realistically, if we made that first pass and tried to paint it as well as we could that first time, we shouldn't be making large corrections or changes in the paint at this point. Now, obviously, that could be easier said than done, but that is sort of the goal that you want to have at this particular stage of the painting. We're not making big changes. We're really just kind of refining, softening edges. And then if anything else needs those little touch ups, we can go ahead and take care of them at this point. As it kind of work on this eye area, I'm just looking for some smaller little areas of detail that I can kind of inject because I do like a lot of the small little anatomical nuances that are happening in that particular area. And I think, at least in this particular portrait reference, the eyes are such a strong, you know, sort of presence in the portrait that I do want to spend some extra time kind of flushing those out. Otherwise, you know, most of the shadows in this area are relatively simple, and I really just putting a little bit more emphasis on some of the eyelids and some of the wrinkles around the eyes. I feel like that's part of his sort of character type. As I'm kind of working my way down through some of the shadows, there's, like, little bits of information I see here in the nose that I want to make sure that I don't lose it entirely. Now, even though it's in shadow, I do see some reflected light in this particular area, and so I do want to account for it. That said, I don't want to over emphasize some of the information because if I were to sort of put in too much information, it's going to sort of stick out, and it's not going to feel as part of the shadow, but part of the light. So that's just something to be mindful if you're working in similar areas. Outside of that, I do want to go back in and sort of re establish some of the shadow values around the form shadow on the side of the face. As I've softened some of these areas, the value has gotten maybe just a little bit lighter than I'd like. So just by adding a little bit of paint, I can go ahead and re emphasize that. For me, this area is important as I really want to emphasize that area as shadow is rolling into light and to be able to get that nice rolling effect. If the overall value of that form shadow is a little bit too light, then it's not going to have that same effect that I'm after. So even as I add just a little bit of a dark value, you can really see how that form begins to pop a little bit more because I just increase the overall contrast through that form shadow. So it's just little small things like that that can really help your painting to get a much better sort of rounded effect overall. And you can't necessarily get that right out the gate sometimes. Sometimes you really do have to go through the different stages of softening an area and then just re establishing it afterwards. 18. Finishing up: As I continue to kind of work my way and soften through different areas, I'm going to be doing just a little bit more on the light side of the face to kind of tackle that, but I'm not really intending to complete this whole thing from edge to edge. I just wanted to show you what the sort of last step of the process is as you work on your own gouache paintings. How far you decide to model form or render specific areas is totally going to be up to you. And realistically, I think it just depends on how much time you want to devote to a particular piece. If I were to just sort of keep going and just modeling this all the way, this video would be so much longer than it needs to be. And I feel like with just this little bit here that you see and kind of a sort of half finished, half unfinished state, you kind of get a good idea of what you can achieve once you get your painting fully covered and begin the modeling process. I have a tendency with gouache paintings that I've done in the past, is to maybe only put key emphasis and form modeling in certain areas that are the focal points in the portrait and then kind of leave a lot of other areas a little bit more simplified overall. It's more of just, like, a personal aesthetic choice, but regardless, you can ultimately decide to finish it however you want. I've certainly seen people do super tightly rendered gouache paintings that are beautiful. But it's really just kind of, again, a matter of how much time you want to devote to that given piece. I actually have a tendency to do more simplified pieces overall, as I like to use gouache as more of a study medium versus a finished sort of, you know, rendering medium, like I would with, say, oil paint. But again, that's just kind of a personal preference. Getting to some of the smaller forms around the mouth, I don't necessarily need to do a whole lot. And especially on the lighter side, I don't there's not a whole lot of information for me to necessarily latch onto. It's just kind of a few small value changes around the filtrm of the mouth and then some of the upper lip and corner of the mouth. Now, I can certainly try and push out more details if I wanted to, but I don't think it's particularly necessary in this instance. When I squint down, the mouth itself is kind of simplified overall because half of it is in shadow. So I don't want to carve out extra information if I don't have to. If anything, I'm looking for areas where I can sort of strategically edit some of the information so that I don't necessarily have to paint everything that I see, but I just want to imply some of the details that really jump out at me that's going to allow me to sort of indicate that mouth without having to over emphasize any one particular area. And As I'm working in the light side of the face, I think the initial passages of paint were perhaps a little too abrupt. So I'm going to go back in and really try and soften some of these areas. I think that some of the information around the lower part of the eye too is also a little dark in value. So I need to go back in and touch up that area so that it's not sort of out of place the way I see it now. As I mentioned before, if you soften the paint, you can gradually sort of reduce the overall value of a given area. So I know as I go back into some of these areas around the eye and into the cheek plane, I can kind of reduce some of that contrast overall and getting it to feel a little bit more like what I see in the reference. The other option I have, too, is if I find that some areas are perhaps overstated and I need to sort of either repaint or add paint to the surface, I can do it to a limited extent. If I needed to completely remove something, I could potentially oversaturate the brush with water and try to remove some of that paint. Or in some instances, I can go ahead and actually just paint on top of what I already have. The only sort of precaution being is that I don't want to go back later and soften it again, as that will pull up all of the paint that I've already put in that area. And so as I start adding a little bit of lighter paint around the orbicular of the eye, it's going to just sit a little bit better with some of the surrounding areas on the cheek. Now, again, one thing I'm going to be precautious of is I'm not going to go back in and soften that area anymore. I'm just going to kind of leave it as is and then work around it so that I don't alter those values too much. And so I'm going to just get back up to the eye itself and just do a little bit more softening around the lids and some of the interior portions of the eye just so I can kind of match it with the other eye I've already established. Generally speaking in a portrait, it's a good idea to choose one of the eyes as a focal point so that they're not equally dominant to each other. Now, in this particular instance, I actually do prefer the eye that is in shadow, as I do feel like that the shadows kind of have a nice supporting element that we have this shadow and light that are surrounding the eye, and it just kind of has a cool effect to it. So in this particular case, I would actually have that as my dominant eye, and then I might leave the eye that's in the light a little bit more simplified. In this particular painting, we could also say that because the shadow side of the face is more modeled than the light side of the face, it's naturally going to be the focal point, and I'm going to kind of just leave it at that. Again, if there was enough time for me to go ahead and just spend modeling each individual area of the portrait, I would still want to be thinking about the overall focal point and choose one eye over the other, as well as really kind of think about what areas I want to emphasize so that it's very obvious to the viewer where I want them to look. 19. Closing thoughts: Y. So at this stage of the painting, realistically, what would have to happen is just a matter of spending enough time to go ahead and resolve each individual area and then finish up with whatever touch ups I felt like it needed. Again, the whole point of this demonstration was not necessarily to do a complete painting, but to walk you through each individual stage of the process. Working up from the original drawing to applying a stain and slowly working from dark to light to fully cover the surface, then followed by softening the paint and then refining each individual area. At first, it may feel like a lot of steps are required just in order to get to this particular stage. However, as you get more familiar with the medium and you learn how it behaves, you can sort of speed through some of the steps to allow you to finish things a little bit faster. More importantly, by seeing a step by step process, hopefully, it gives you the confidence to approach gouache painting with feeling like you have a specific map laid out that you can follow from start to finish and have a good understanding about where you need to go with each individual stage. I think the important part in approaching Guash, especially if it's your first painting medium that you're trying, is to really just remember that this is drawing with paint, and realistically, I think that this is probably the best introduction to painting that is not only very accessible, but I think it's actually a little bit easier to pick up than oil at first. There's just a lot less variables to juggle with guash than there is with other mediums like oil. And while you could certainly argue that acrylic might be a very sort of similar kind of paint, I find that even Guash is a little bit simpler and perhaps there's less options to sort of factor in compared to acrylic, because we're not necessarily layering paint, and we're just working on a much smaller scale overall. The other thing I'll mention again is that I think of Guash as being a study medium where a lot of the things that I end up doing in guash are meant to be sort of sketches or smaller studies. And I don't put a lot of pressure on myself to do these really elaborate finished works with the medium. I don't necessarily think it's the best medium for that, to be honest. I find that by doing these smaller scale studies, it's a nice way to flush out ideas with paint that is a little bit easier to get set up and going versus something like oil or acrylic. 20. Color demo intro: Now, for this color project, this is something that is, again, it's totally optional. And what I might suggest is that if you don't want to do a longer painting and you like the idea of doing something that's a little bit shorter and abbreviated in terms of its sort of finish, then if you're not quite comfortable with color yet, then there's nothing wrong with just doing this in black and white. Again, I do think it's about just putting in the hours and sometimes doing several small little projects is a little bit more fun because you get more variety out of the paintings themselves. Now, that's said. If you do want to do color, I would suggest just sticking with a limited palette. Now, this will ultimately depend on if you choose to invest in any other colors than black and white. And if you did, then hopefully you maybe followed my suggestions in just terms of a primary set of colors. Now, that said, there's so much range when it comes to choosing colors that it's kind of just up to your preference. And so take my suggestions with just a grain of salt and maybe choose the colors that you feel comfortable now the suggestions I made in the materials is a good starting point. But if you already have some other colors that you maybe have had from previous experience with quash, then feel free to use what you have. Outside of that, again, I think the important aspect is really just going through the exercise and just getting those practice sessions in. So follow along with the color. And again, if you want to try this in black and white, I find that that's a great idea as well, because this approach to painting is a little bit different than the previous black and white painting. And so some people may enjoy doing these shorter sketches instead of something that's a little bit longer. 21. Color study portrait: So for this sort of study, we're going to be approaching it very similar to how we did the black and white. However, we are going to be doing this in color, and I'm going to do this one in a little bit more of an abbreviated fashion, meaning I'm not going to be focused on rendering as much, but I just want to try and capture the essence overall about how the sort of shape and some of the color notes in the head, just so I can get, like, a nice little sketch and not necessarily a finished rendered painting. You could also try this approach in black and white, and the sort of goal that I'm looking for for this, again, is really just sort of a sketch. I'm not trying to intentionally do a highly realistic painting or anything like that. I just want to get, like, a nice sort of feel that maybe has, like, a slightly sort of looser quality to it. The other thing I'm sure you'll notice is that the image reference that I'm working from is not actually a photo of a person, but is actually of an illustration. And so this is something I'd also recommend using Guash four as a study medium in that I like to do master copies of other artists. And with Guash being a small scale medium, it allows me to maybe pick and choose little pieces of paintings that I like and maybe just do smaller studies. And so for this particular example, I'm taking a portrait of an illustrator named JC Lindecker who I absolutely love his work, and I'm going to just do, like, a small little sketch, you know? And so even though this is part of a larger painting, he has such cool little design elements in all of his work that I want to just focus on doing a little head sketch. And so, again, if there's a particular artist that you like, I think doing smaller master copies with gouache is kind of a fun little exercise, and it's not about doing an entire copy of the whole painting of, you know, whatever artist you choose, but find little areas that, you know, you just kind of maybe see like, Oh, you know what I like the way this artist designs a head or the way they design a hand or just find little elements about a given artist that you like and choose small sections of a painting and see what you can come up with. I find that it's a great exercise. And again, with Guash being a smaller scale medium, it's fine to just do little tiny studies, and you can kind of see, like, just by the sort of size of my hand and the painting itself. This isn't very big. So this is a great little quick way of if you want to just do a shorter painting and you don't want to have a ton of time to really do a fully rendered image, this is a great way to still get that practice in. So with the initial painting, I still applied a stain over my drawing. And given that this is color, I'm trying to just think about the head in sort of a sequential banding of color. So the top part of the head being a little bit more yellow, the middle portion being a little bit more red through the nose and the cheeks. And then the lower half of the face, generally speaking, kind of a sort of bluish gray color as if they were to have a beard. Now, that's just sort of a general way of using a stain. But depending on the person, it's maybe fun to sort of play with different color banding when you're laying those initial washes in. This is very similar to how I would work in oil if I was sort of staining my surface for a portrait and maybe putting an initial layer of paint down to sort of try and capture the general color spectrum of the person's face in a very sort of thin layer of paint before I paint over it with opaque paint. And so once that stain has dried, I'm just going back in now and I'm looking for the darker areas in his face. So mostly any sort of area that I see that is within a darker shadow range. And so even though there's not a lot of shadows per se in this image, and it's kind of dual lit, I'm still looking for, like, the dark around his cheeks, the nose, the mouth, some of the shapes of the eye, the eyebrows, any areas where I can sort of spot little darks just to get me started. And so as I look around the rest of the face, I'm just going to be working from dark to light, very similar to how I did the initial black and white painting. And I just find that for me, that's just the easiest way to work. And so, given that the overall range of values is not overly sort of dramatic, and it's kind of a fairly even, you know, in terms of a lighting situation, there's not a whole lot of darks for me to actually latch onto. So I want to at least spend the initial stages of just trying to find as many as I can so that I feel like I have a good foundation to work on. The one thing to sort of keep in mind is that, you know, if you're coming from doing a black and white painting and we're now switching over to color is that while I'm thinking about value, I'm now also factoring in color temperature into the equation. So as I'm mixing some of these darker values, I'm still looking at the image itself and saying, Okay, this is a reddish, sort of brown. This is a grayish, you know, or a yellowish, grayish blue. But what value is it? So I want to think about the value first before I think about the color. And so best case scenario is if I don't get the exact color match, I can still be with the correct value, and it's still going to have a very similar feel by the time the painting is completed. Color matching in general, whether you're painting a piece of reference or doing a copy of another person's painting is generally kind of hard to do, especially if you're not quite sure what pigments, you know, the artist is using in this particular instance. And so, given that I'm using essentially a warm and cool of the primaries for my palette, I'm just going to do the best I can to try and get a close proximation to the colors. But more importantly, is I want to just try and get the right values so that it has the right sort of feeling from a value standpoint, and then I can kind of maybe let myself slide a little bit on the exact color ranges. Now, the one thing in particular and part of the reason why I like Lin Decker so much is that he has such a great way of designing his shapes, and all of his sort of characters in his paintings are kind of like this very fun sort of character type, and I really enjoy that about his work. And so that's, I think one of the things I wanted to try and capture by doing this study is to try and really pay attention to how he's designing some of the anatomy and some of the shapes in the portrait. Now, if you decide to do a master copy yourself and, you know, whatever artist you end up choosing, you want to try and look for the unique things that make their work stand out to you. So you want to ask yourself, what qualities about this artist's work do I like? And how can I try and replicate that in this medium? Now, one thing to keep in mind when doing a master copy is that I do think some artists are a little bit easier to sort of translate into using Guash than others. And what I mean by that is that I think someone like Lin Decker or Norman Rockwell or Dean Cornwell, other sort of famous illustrators, I think their work is much easier to translate into Guash versus someone like, say, Sargent or Velazquez or Bouguero whose sort of technique is a little bit more refined than, say, an illustrator. And it's something to consider before choosing an artist you want to copy. Now, that said, I wouldn't discourage you from doing any sort of master copy, and the fact that we're focusing on Guash really isn't that important. In the past, I've certainly done copies of Velasquez and Sargent in Guash before. I just think that their sort of aesthetic in their paintings is perhaps a little bit harder to translate with Guash, given that we can't necessarily layer the same way we would layer with oil paint. So that's just something to consider as you're choosing an artist to perhaps study. So you can see so far just by establishing these darks, we're starting to get some of that character of the portrait in the painting. And at this point, we really haven't put that much information in. So this is kind of like a good sort of thought process in terms of working, is that if I can get this looking as close to the source material as I can with as little information, then we're off to a great start. Again, the only difference right now is that I'm still putting in dark values, but I'm also having to mix darker color ranges to try and capture that same effect. 22. Middle values: With most of the darks filled in, I'm going to move on to sort of the next value range. And for the most part, the way I kind of see this portrait and how he sort of painted it is that there's not a whole lot of darks per se. There's a few accents that we mentioned earlier, like in the eyes and in pockets of the cheek. Uh, but for the most part, I kind of see this predominantly living in a middle value range and then a light range. So now that said, there is sort of a dual light source that's taking place as he does kind of have a little bit of a sort of rim light on the far side of his face, but then he also has some highlights on the nearer side of the face, and part of that is just the overall technique of Line Decker. I think he had a tendency to really sort of paint people with sort of a shine to them, and I think that's just sort of an artistic sort of license that he took when he was doing his illustrations. But for the most part, I'm trying to ignore the highlights or any areas like that because I do consider those details. When I kind of remove that as part of the equation, I really do see this predominantly being in an sort of middle value range overall, and then with a few shadows sprinkled here and there on top of the highlights. M Now, there is this portion through the forehead that it looks kind of like a shadow because it is dark enough to maybe fall in that range. But when I compare it to the values that I see in some of the front plane of the face, like in the eye sockets and that, it's still a bit lighter. So I'm going to go ahead and kind of treat that as a middle value and leave a little bit of room for that far side of the forehead that has a highlight in a little bit of extra light catching around the brow. The majority of the hair as well is kind of in that middle value range. And when I sort of ignore the highlights and some of the streaks that are designed in the hair, it's kind of like an even kind of brownish gray value overall. So I want to simplify that down at least initially and kind of group that in as a middle value. And then I can always go back later and add those details. Now, some of the information in the hair, again, there's a lot of, like, little sort of design elements that are definitely important. But for now, I want to try and simplify that down and to find an overall average value. Now, the major ones that I do see, I may try and just work around them a little bit so that I'm not painting over opaque paint. But for the most part, again, I just want to try and get the hair filled in with an appropriate value so that I can start moving on to the rest of the portrait. Now, getting down into some of the side of the face here where we see the beard, and it kind of has, like, that 5:00 shadow effect going on, I'm going to go ahead and squint and think about how this sort of shape is coming down the side of the jaw and attaching to, like, the rest of the chin area. And so what I want to do is I want to just look for the overall value that I see. And I'm going to try and ignore some of the little hatch lines that I see that are coming through as part of, like, Line Decker's design sense. And that's just going to allow me to think about the entirety of the whole shape that I'm seeing. And then later on, I can go back on top and maybe inject some of those lines so that I can kind of capture more of the effect that he's getting. But because it's still early on in the portrait, I just need to focus on getting everything filled in. So I'm really just thinking about darks, middles, and lights at this point, and anything else on top of that, I'm going to sort of think of it as a detail. So I don't want to spend too much time even thinking about that just yet. Now, that said, in certain areas, I may paint a little bit thinner, not quite a wash, but not fully opaque, because I know I'm going to have to go back in and put some of those little design elements that he's using in kind of these middle value ranges. And you'll see that all over in his paintings. And that's just part of, again, his sort of design aesthetic. But trying to get that in guash is a little bit different than trying to do it in oil, which is what he predominantly painted in. So I'm just kind of keeping that in mind because that is something that I want to capture. I'm painting in this middle value range. You can see right now in terms of color, I'm not really trying to get an exact match per se. I just want to get the relative value. That being said, I do think that this particular piece of reference, it's not the most colorful. It's really kind of not quite monochrome, but there's not a whole lot going on in terms of color. It's fairly uniform. There is some redness, like in some of the flesh tones that are in the light, like the cheeks and the nose. But for the most part, if you look at it, there's not a whole lot going on color wise. Now, that wasn't intentional on my part. I really just saw the image, and I really liked the face. It was such a cool character that I just thought, you know, let me do a study of this. And so, well, I'm not going to kind of really dazzle you with color or anything like this in this particular study. There's still going to be elements that we can put in there. But, again, I was mostly just really driven by his design. And I think that's probably my favorite thing out of Line Decker is just kind of his design choices. And even though it's kind of like cartoony, you know, especially compared to say, some later illustrators like Rockwell, I just really enjoy it. So that was sort of the reason to choose something like this. So I'm just putting a little bit of information in the mustache. Now, it is definitely brighter, but I'm just kind of putting it in with a sort of middle range that I'm going to paint the highlights back on top of it because I think that's going to work this value range is going to work better as a base, and then I can go back in and later add the detail. But I think for the most part, most of the middle value range is about in, and then I, you know, once I kind of get this filled in, then I can move on to the lights, and then we're going to get a better idea. And I do think right now because we don't have any of those lighter values, some of these middle value ranges and the shadows might look a little dark on the screen when you look at it. So I can't really make a good comparison just yet until I get those lights filled in, and then we'll have the sort of relationship of the lights and the darks and the middles together, and then we can reassess where we need to go. 23. Painting the lights: Now, with the middle values filled in, we can start focusing on painting the lights. And I feel like once I put these in, it's going to kind of piece everything together. As right now, the value range kind of maybe feels out of sorts because we're missing such a large portion of the lights. Now, the overall sort of color range that I see is kind of in a mostly a warm kind of yellow if I ignore the highlights, but I still want to make sure I capture some of the complexion. So around the cheeks and the nose, there is going to be a little bit more of a reddish complexion that I want to capture. And I'm still going to give myself some room, though, because he does put a lot of highlights in and around that area, so that's something that I want to keep in mind. Now, I do think with Lin Decker in particular, it's a little tricky because a lot of those little design accents that he puts in the shadows and the lights, if you try to ignore those and you kind of leave them out, it kind of really takes away from the aesthetic. But in order to sort of simplify this for myself, I'm just wanting to think in sort of flat colors, flat values for the most part. And then later on, once I feel like everything is covered, I can go back on top and start injecting those details, and hopefully that'll pull the head together. Getting up to the forehead, there is, for the most part, kind of a warm yellow range, and it does slowly shift as it's getting to the far side of the head, but on this particular light side, there's a lot of sort of wrinkles and highlights that are taking place. And with some of those larger shapes, I'm going to leave myself a little bit of room so that I can paint them in and then sort of maybe soften those areas together. And while I do think some of the wrinkles in the brow ridge are kind of a detail, I may go ahead and just put them in a little bit because they're very prominent in this character. So I may want to just go ahead and put those in. I'm hoping you see, though, is that as I've introduced the lights, the initial darks and middle values that we put in have calmed down quite a bit and everything is feeling a little bit more cohesive. Once the rest of the lights are filled in, I can go back and gradually refine and add details to the rest of the portrait. For the most part, though, I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time really refining or softening, as again, this is intended to be sort of like a sketch exercise, and I'm not really spending as much time on this as I did in the previous demonstration. Getting into the nose, there's a lot of sort of smaller planes that he's really sort of carved out, and I want to make sure that I get those in there, but I'm trying to look past all of the highlights that I see, and I'm just thinking about the general planes of the nose first. Once I have those in, I can go ahead and try and really capture the effect that he's getting by placing those different highlights in there. Now, you'll notice I haven't even addressed the glasses on his face, either, as I want to try and get as much information in the face itself. And then once I feel comfortable enough, I can go back in and add the details of the glasses on top. The reason I want to wait to add those is if I were to put them in too soon, then I would be having to paint around all the small little sections of the glasses, and I don't really want to have to deal with that because it's gonna make it that much harder. So I'm still going to plan on trying to just cover the entire head first, paint whatever small little details that I want to add. And then at the very end, I'll go ahead and place those glasses on top. Okay. Now, just a few small areas to finish covering the rest of the head, and then I can slowly start to refine and add some of the important sort of details and highlights that he has in this particular piece. Getting to the ear, it's easy to get caught up in some of the smaller shapes and details, but I still want to just look at the shadows and the lights and then go ahead and fill the ear in with a sort of flat neutral color. It's going to be a little bit more on the reddish side, similar to the cheeks as that's typically an area where you're going to see a little bit more complexion around the ear. So I'm trying to just work around some of the small shadow shapes that I have. And even though this ear is relatively small, I can still kind of simplify it down and just, like, a couple flesh tone colors and pretty much leave it at that before I go ahead and refine it later on. But with the head mostly filled in, I can kind of just start focusing on some small areas and work section to section and try to refine that. Again, for this particular head, there's a lot of little small light shapes that he sort of injected into the characters. That's kind of the overall style for the most part with indcker is that there's a lot of small faceted areas with little hatch marks of light or shadow, and I want to make sure I get that in there, but it would be much harder to do without this initial layer of paint I already have on the surface. And so while I mentioned earlier that I typically wouldn't layer guash because it's not really how it behaves, a lot of the instances I see in this example, where I see some of these smaller highlights that are kind of almost like little hatch lines or anything like that, those areas aren't going to get softened later with water. I would just essentially paint them and leave them alone. So I'm almost thinking really treating this more like a drawing because I'm not trying to get these really smooth transitions for the most part in this particular head. It's very this whole portrait is very shape specific, so I'm thinking more like if I was doing an ink drawing, but I'm doing it in color in this particular example, if that makes sense. Although there's a lot of smoother areas in some of the forms of the head, this overall painting style, to me, is very it's almost It is like a drawing because there's so many drawing and design elements in it that are very linear. So it's not like I would be trying to really smooth out any particular area for the most part. And so what's cool is that everything becomes sort of like these little faceted shapes. And so all I'm really looking for is how it can go back in with this initial layer that I established and then just gradually start adding to it so I can get more of what the actual painting looks like. And 24. Finishing up 1: Now that I have the head fully covered for the most part, I want to go back and just start to refine each individual area. In this particular instance, it's really a lot of the highlights that I see within the painting that although I didn't put them in at first, I knew I would have to go back and just essentially paint them on top of what I already have. And so while I mentioned earlier that I typically wouldn't layer opaque paint with guash, the base colors that I've established so far are not they're not super opaque in some areas, but also at the same time, too, I'm not planning on softening a whole lot for this particular exercise. So a lot of the paint that I'm adding on top of these base colors is not going to get softened or moved. So I'm essentially just building on top of it and leaving those strokes alone after I put them down. This only really works because I'm not softening the paint afterwards. So any sort of accent or detail that I put on, as long as I leave it alone, I don't really have to worry about the paint getting overly kind of opaque in certain areas because if I were to try and soften it, it could potentially get muddy. But if I know that I'm just going to paint something on top and leave it alone and not go back to it, I can kind of get away with some of these linear strokes that I'm putting in in the light areas. Now, I will say that this is maybe specific for someone like Line Decker. I could also see this working for some of the other illustrators like Rockwell or Cornwell, that there's a lot of sort of linear design elements in some of their paintings where you can kind of get away with some of these kind of brushstrokes, whereas if it was more of, like, a softer kind of painting style, it wouldn't necessarily work. And then that's kind of where I would suggest, you know, kind of getting that right opacity so that you can make smoother transitions. But again, it's really going to depend on the kind of master copy that you're copying. So as I get to putting in the glasses here, I'm really just looking for small elements that I can sort of indicate the glasses. So in this particular instance, I'm looking at sort of the sort of the darker rim of the glasses themselves and then where the highlights are in relationship to that. And that's just kind of a good way for an accessory like glasses because you don't really want to try and paint all of them. You want to just kind of hit the few important indications so that you can kind of suggest that the glasses are there. So in this particular instance, it is kind of the circular accents of the frame, and then there's going to be a little bit around the bridge of the nose. And you might be able to tell now why I kind of saved this area for one of the last things because if I were to just paint them too soon in the painting, and then I would have to go back and try and work in areas around the eye and the cheek and the nose, it would just get really sort of difficult having to try and work around the glasses themselves. So that's why early on it was important to just paint through that and ignore it. And then once I felt good about the rest of the head, I can go ahead and just add that detail. So pretty much at this point, I'm just going around the painting and looking for the smaller details that I need to put in to kind of get it a little bit more back on track to the actual reference that I'm copying. And you can see, it's like, I'm not really adding a whole lot per se. It's just these little few small brushstrokes in certain areas. And the only thing I guess considering with Line Decker is that they're pretty much everywhere throughout the whole painting, but they're little small sort of minute brushstrokes that you see within the shadows, you see in the lights, and I'm just kind of just looking over the whole area and seeing what I missed, what I can go back in. And if there's anything I missed on that first pass, I can go ahead and start injecting that now and add little accents or highlights. I'm sure at first, the painting looked perhaps a little odd because I was ignoring a lot of those smaller shapes. And I feel like in his particular style, it really does need those details and accents to kind of capture that look. But to try and paint those in right from the very beginning, it would be so much harder, I think, because as we would continue to add paint to the surface, we would start to lose some of those details because they would kind of just get blended in, I think, over time, or it'd be too hard to sort of micromanage a lot of the details. So by starting with a base layer and then putting some of those details on top, it was much easier to manage all of those extra shapes. So hopefully, this was beneficial to see. As, again, this is a different kind of way of learning how to use the paint in a different way of studying than the earlier black and white demonstration. And so what I really recommend for a lot of people is to try and find a balance of doing shorter studies like this and then mixing in some longer studies, and just try and do a little bit of both as each has its own sort of benefits, and they kind of exercise different skill sets. I always thought that doing smaller, shorter sketches like this was a great way to just squeeze in some extra study time and just doing something where I knew I didn't have to devote a long sort of time to, you know, model or render or anything like that. I could just put down some paint and, you know, maybe do a cool little study. And while, it may seem a little difficult at first. I do think it's important to give yourself a time constraint with some of these, and it's a good way to sort of see what's intuitive in terms of a knowledge base, but it also forces you to learn how to make decisions so that you can kind of keep moving and progressing the portrait. So I'm going to leave this study at about this stage. And as you can see, it's not a one to one copy because, again, I kind of did this with a time constraint, but it captures the overall essence of the image that I was after. And so that's kind of the idea when you do these shorter studies is you kind of have to know going in that you're not going to be doing an exact copy, but you want to just get sort of the feel and the character of the portrait you are trying to do. And so whether or not you decide to do master copies or use your own photo reference to do these exercises, I do think, again, it's a great way to kind of just do something quick and simple and it's not overly committal like doing a longer painting. And so, again, trying to find a balance between the two exercises, and, you know, again, depending on how much time you have to devote on any given day or week to study or to learn and to practice. So just kind of keep these in the back of your mind as you're learning how to use the medium and finding different ways to study and learn the different aspects of how the medium behaves is a great way to learn.