Transcripts
1. Welcome To The Class!: Hello everyone. My name is Will Elliston and welcome
to this Skillshare class. Just like you, I'd
always wanted to learn how to create
beautiful paintings, but when I started, I had no idea what
supplies I needed, how to mix colors, or even how to start a painting. In this class, I'll
be showing you how to paint a flock of sheep. This is a great
exercise for beginners because there's no right or
wrong way to go about it. It's just a good opportunity to have fun whilst
learning watercolor. It's even useful for more
advanced people learning watercolor because there are just so many directions
you can take it. I planned out a simple
step-by-step approach, which you can use as a
complete guide whilst to explore what's possible
in this marvelous medium. I've been a professional
watercolor artist for many years now, exploring many
different subjects, from wildlife and portraits to cityscapes and
countryside scenes. I've taken part in many worldwide exhibitions
and been lucky enough to win awards from well-respected
organizations such as Winsor & Newton, the International
Watercolor Society, the Masters of
Watercolor Alliance, and the SAA Artist
of the Year Award. I also have collectors that buy my paintings around the world. Watercolor can be
intimidating for beginners. My aim is to allow
you to relax and have fun learning this
medium step by step. Hopefully, by the end, you'll surprise yourself
with a nice painting. If this class feels too
intimidating or too simple, please check my
other classes as I have them available
across all levels. My approach to
watercolor starts off loose and expressive
with no fear of making mistakes
because we're just creating exciting textures
for the underlayer. Then as the painting goes on, we'll add more details, bringing the painting to
life and making it pop. I try to simplify
complicated subjects into easiest shapes that
encourages playfulness. We're painting a
flock of sheep today, as it's a subject open to many interpretations and
will allow us to channel our playfulness and experiments through a safe,
easy-to-follow method. During this class, I will demonstrate various
techniques and effects that can help you control and manipulate
watercolor. When you enroll in my class, I'll give you the
high resolution image of my painting to
use as a guide. I'll also include
my color charts, which are an
invaluable tool when it comes to choosing
and mixing colors. Throughout this class, I'll be sharing plenty of
tips and tricks. I'll show you how to use
mistakes to your own advantage, taking the stress out of
painting and having fun. I'll explain which
supplies I'll be using so you can
follow along exactly. I'll also cover how to choose
and mix harmonious colors. I'll be splitting everything
up into short videos, so it's easier to take in. You can also pause at any moment if you want
to take more time. If you have any questions, you can post them in the
discussion thread down below. I'll be sure to read and respond to everything
you guys post. Don't forget to follow
me on Skillshare by clicking the Follow
button at the top. This means you'll
be the first to know when I launch a new class, post giveaways, or just have an interesting announcement
to share with my students. You can also follow me on Instagram to see
my latest works. If you'd like to
discover tips and tricks that will improve all
your future paintings, please click "Enroll" and join this class as I can't
wait to teach you.
2. Your Class Project: Before we get into this project, let me thank you so much
for joining this class. I really do appreciate it. Today we're going to learn about an exercise I returned
to frequently, and that is painting
a flock of sheep. Whenever I want to experiment
with a new technique or test out a color
combination I have in mind, I use these sheep as a subject. They're quick to draw, and very adaptable to
different techniques. It's not so much about
the sheep themselves, but the opportunity they give to express watercolor
in a liberating way. The style we're painting in today doesn't rely on
heavily detailed drawing, which means there's less
stress and gives us more freedom to express and
explore new techniques. This means you'll learn more and end up with a
better painting. You can choose to paint as loose or as realistic
as you want, depending on your level. You're welcome to copy
my drawing and follow it exactly or experiment
with your own. I'll put a high resolution image of the painting
done in this class in the resource section as well as other
interpretations I have done. You can use these as a reference throughout your painting
process as well. Whichever way you
use this class, it would be great
to see the outcome and the paintings you
create in this class. I'd love to give you feedback. Please take a photo afterwards, and share it in the
Student Project gallery. You can find the gallery under the same Project
and Resources tab. On the right, you'll
see a green button that says Create Project. Tap that. Once you're there, you'll
have the option to upload a cover
photo and a title, and write a little description. I would love to hear about your process and what you
learned along the way. Once your project is uploaded, it will appear in the
Student's Project gallery. You can view other
projects here, and I'd highly encourage you to like and comment
on each other's work. We put so much time and effort into creating our paintings, why not share it with
the world and help support each other
along the way? Now that you have a good
idea of this class, let's get stuck into it, starting with the equipment
and materials I'll be using.
3. Materials & Supplies: Let's go over the materials and supplies you'll need
to follow along. We'll start with
the colors I use. Unlike most of the materials
we'll be using today, it's a lot to do
with preference. I have 12 stable colors in my palette that I had
filled up from tubes. They are cadmium yellow, yellow ocher, burnt sienna, cadmium red, alizarin crimson, ultramarine blue, cobalt
blue, cerulean blue, lavender, purple, viridian,
black or neutral tint. At the end of the
painting, I often use white gouache for
tiny highlights. I don't use any
particular brand. These colors you can
get from any brand. Although I personally
use Daniel Smith, Winsor & Newton,
or Holbein paints. Let's move on to brushes. To keep things simple, in this painting I'm
only going to use a small selection of brushes. First is this mopper brush. Mop brushes are good for broad brush strokes and filling in larger
areas or washes. But they also have a tip
for some smaller details, so they are one of my
favorite types of brushes. Next is this Escoda Perla brush. I use various sizes, but for this painting, I'll use size eight. These brushes allow for
more precision because they have a finer tip and
last quite a long time. For even more precision when painting final touches or
highlights for example, I use a synthetic
size zero brush. All brands have them and
they're super cheap. This here is a solid
brush or a rigger brush. It's quite long but thin. It's only used for
very small details much like the size zero brushes, but it holds more
water and pigment, saving time and
effort refilling. The only drawback is, it's more difficult to
control as it's more flimsy. That's it for brushes. You're of course welcome to use your own favorites as well. Onto paper. The better
quality your paper is, the easier it will be to paint. Cheap paper crinkles easily
and is very unforgiving, not allowing you to
rework mistakes. Good quality paper however, such as cotton base paper, not only allows you to rework mistakes over multiple times, but because the pigment
reacts much better on it, the chances of
mistakes are a lot lower and you're more likely
to create better paintings. I use arches because it's what's available
in my local art shop. Next, some various materials that will
come in very handy. A water spray is
absolutely essential. By using this, it
gives you more time to paint the areas you
want before it dries. Also, it allows you to
reactivate the paint if you want to add smooth
lines or remove some paint. Lastly, masking tape. This of course is just
to hold the paper down still onto the surface
when you paint along, so it doesn't slide around. That's everything
you need to know.
4. The Drawing: With the drawing, I'm going
to break it down into small steps that you can follow along as easy as possible. We'll start off just to draw
some circles, very loose. With different sizes and
different positions, you can find
different references of sheep in different positions. This particular sheep is
called a Suffolk sheep. You can draw this very
likely if you feel your composition is unbalanced
or you want to correct it. I think that's okay
for me at the moment. Then on top of those, I do a circle and then a line, circle, then a line. Just keeping it very simple at the moment, you can
always correct it. Then [inaudible] come
down from that head there when we bring a line down to mark the feet. Very simple lines at the moment, but you can already see that we're constructing
composition and the different body parts
that we'll build too later. When that part is
done, we can go in and start drawing
a bit more detail. Starting with the head. To draw the ears is
a sideways carrot. To put it simply, simplify it. I put a little two shape
in the middle there. I keep these lines at slightly different angles to make the painting a
bit more interesting. You can experiment with
your own compositions as well as copy this one, putting a different circles
in different areas. It's going to be the
main sheep here. This sheep behind can be in the background
between these two. This one, I can have a
slight angle, I think. Very loose. We're not trying to make a
realistic painting here, we're just trying to learn about how to work with watercolor, how it moves, trying to feel liberated to get
expressive with the median. There's the heads
in. Next, I'm just going to do a little
oval shape here. About two-thirds of
the way down a circle, I'm just going to draw
a line like this. Now we can start, going to randomly and unevenly
filling out the sheep, silhouette, and stopping
where the legs go. I'm stopping where they meet each other as well
for the time being. Next, we're going to go
to where the circle meets legs and fill them out. Purposely trying to keep
the line a bit wobbly. Pass the line a bit there, but that's okay, something like that. That is your line down the middle and the
direction that they're facing. Next, where these lines are, I'm just going to do
little lines like that, just to mark where
the curves would be. The curves follow the
shape of the body at that. That'll help us when it
comes to the shading for the painting when I do
the diagonals there too. Now I'm going to use the
rubber to clean up some of these faint background lines
that we use just to map it all out and we'll
get onto the painting.
5. Starting The Painting: Before we put pen to paper, I just want to go over
a couple of things. First thing is, I wanted to show you a few
sketches I did. Paintings I did in
my sketch book, to give you an idea of
the colors you could use. There's many different options, you can also include
grass if you want. That one has got many
different colors. The next thing I wanted
to say before we started, I'll be planning to use salt
and it's just a little bit, some thick granules
there just to add a few textures
whilst it's drying. To begin with, I'm going to get very thick cobalt blue
and burnt sienna. Just start putting dots in the darkest areas
which will be the heads. I'm not filling out
their head area. I'm just putting a
little random dots. As long as it's in-between
the lines, it'll be okay. You can in fact use any color. This thick stage, the
beginning sketch stage, you can just dab
in any color you want because it'll
only be the undercoat, we'll go over it later. Then I'll do the same thing down here on the legs. Now not doing it with every leg. Not doing it any
particular order, is not much logic to the
way I'm planning this out. I'm just dabbing it in in random places. That's
the first step.
6. The First Wash: [BACKGROUND] Next,
I'm going to mix. My parents CAN here. Maybe I'll add a bit
of yellow ocher. I'm going to prepare my
colors for the wash. So it'll be the first color. Now I'm going to do a
similar one with the blues. Danny blue will be fine. Maybe even a bit of
purple that side. I'm just going to do
a few dots again. Right to the bottom here. Looking at the pencil
markings where that line is, we're going to wet an area without interacting
with any paint at the moment, we're
just going to wet it. Once that area is wet, then you can interact. Touch object flow out. You can just experiment with your colors. Use it as an exercise to figure out what colors
might look nice together. So we can hear sound
to interact with that. This one, I'm going
to make it blue because it's the background. So having it fade out in the distance will give
us a nice effect. Now I can sprinkle
a little bit of salt in this pit
before it dries. So to wetness this area. I'm going to have the brown
coming out here this time. Flick it a bit. So flicks.
7. Exploring Colour & Texture: Just experiment with colors. Green, blue. I'm not going all the way
down yet. Salt in there. Don't be afraid to
add too much water. I'm going to paint this
background, shape. These ones in the background
I have decided to go all the way down, sprinkle some salt. Now going to use this fine brush just to put
in some random squiggles. Not being that neat. I'm just trying to create
interesting textures using this as an exercise to explore
what watercolor can do. This painting is a good
example of what can look very messy the majority of the time can actually look
very nice in the last 10%, the final details, it's
difficult to judge how your painting is until the very end using
this technique. When I did these practice
sketches in my sketchbook, I wasn't very happy with them until at the very end when
I added the final details, it all came together.
8. Painting The Legs: Next, it's time to move to
the feet and work upwards. So I'm mixing a dark pigment
but still very watery. This is filling out these areas, and you can experiment with
different colors here too. You can still pigment from other parts
of the painting, then I can draw that pigment out by
wetting the area above it. We can move on to the
next one and we can use a different color for each of them depending on
what you're feeling. For this one I'm going
to use a bit of blue, and then I'm going
to use burnt sienna. Just to draw it out. It doesn't matter if the
salt gets in the way. Sprinkle more salt here. Really push how far
you can take it, don't worry about
losing control, because it's a good
opportunity to see if you know how to hone it back in later when it comes
to refining the details, and you'll always
be surprised at how easy it is to actually
bring details back. So don't be scared of
getting it too expressive. Do a few splats of
just plain water. It's lavender color. Of course, all these colors don't exist in real
nature of sheep. But that's the good
thing about watercolor, you've got the freedom
to explore these things. As soon as you start
adding these legs and especially the
heads later on, it really brings it together and all the chaos that was
made starts to make sense. There is too much water
here so I'm just going to take it off and
drop some here. Then I'm going to take some pigment from here
and drop it there. That's how you get the
painting to merge together visually by borrowing elements from one side of the
painting to the other. One more sheep to go,
I think I might keep this one fairly gray. This is meant to
be an exercise in exploring watercolor and not so much creating a finished piece. But visually, it will look good enough
to be a finished piece, but don't cause stress for yourself with thinking it's not good enough
as a painting. It's more as an excuse to explore rather than just
doing abstract shapes. You can use sheep as an
opportunity to experiment.
9. Adding Splatters & Grass: I think I'm going to add some
green splatters down here. Maybe use a larger brush
for these splatters. That'll be good and then maybe a few
splatters of pure water. Up here, maybe a few
of this burnt sienna. Sprinkle some more salt. While my mind is on it, just before it dries
you can use some of these splatters just to
imply a tiny bit of grass. It's very easy to overdo this. It needs a few just to imply because the eye will
be able to work it out. You don't need to be
that obvious with it. Now I'm going to dry this
stage off before we put in the heads because it's
still wet and I don't want to interrupt what's
going on here. I'm going to dry it
off with a hairdryer and we'll be back in a minute.
10. Painting The Heads: Now that it's dry, I'm going to go over the heads and merge them into the bodies. So will be using quite
dark paint for this. It's a bit like
painting in numbers, just filling in the gaps. You can also influence
add colors into here too. To merge them, I wet
the area below it. Just one stroke in and then gradually it will
fade out as it dries. This color that we put in there
before we can reactivate. This one in the background
I'll make pure black to really set it off. This should be quite liberating
once you get the hang of it because there's no rules. The only rule, if any, is just to have fun and express yourself with whatever color
comes to mind. Whatever feels
right at the time. A way of really discovering
what colors you like, what techniques you like. See how that's
dried, it's merged out now and that's what we're
doing with all of them. I think I'm going to have this sheep coming
out a bit more. Start here I'm going to do a similar thing, just making sure that
border that edge is clear.
11. Corrections & Highlights: If you also do any anatomical
corrections you see. Think something like
that wasn't needed? I think the head is
too far above, so I'm actually going to add
another sheep head. I'm going to pull out some pigment above, is a good demonstration of how to correct mistakes that inevitably occur
every now and again. Let's soften as well, by keeping it abstract, we cover up mistakes. Reactivating the
background here. Then I'm going to
very carefully use a small brush just to
put in some details, rather to imply some details. That's just about done. Let's take the tape off
and sum up the painting.
12. Final Thoughts: Welcome back. Now the
painting is finished. Let's have a close
up look at it. I hope you have a painting of your own to look at as well. In this class, we took the
simple structure of sheep, and used it to explore different colors and
effects in watercolor. For a beginner, even the most basic shapes can be tricky, so don't be disheartened
if you face challenges. This approach is exactly
for experimenting, trying out new things
and pushing yourself, because even in failure,
we learn things. If you're more
advanced and want to take this class even further, you can take this painting to the next level by
adding a background. You may have to alter the
composition slightly, but as in these examples, all we have to do is bring the paint down to the
backs of the sheeps, head, necks, negatively painting the silhouette of the cheap. You don't even have
to paint the ground as it could be a snowy scene. The goal ultimately, at this learning stage, is just about having
a bit of fun, exploring the possibilities
of this exciting medium. It can be easy to
feel a bit stressed during the painting if
it gets challenging, but remaining
positive and keeping face really helps in the end. If you would like feedback on your painting, I'd
love to give it. Or if you'd like any advice
related to watercolor, please share your painting in the student project's
gallery down below, and I'll be sure to respond. If you prefer, you can
share it on Instagram, tagging me @willelliston, as I would love to see it. Skillshare also love
seeing my student's work, so tag them as well @skillshare. After all the effort
we put into it, why not show it off? Remember, please click the
"Follow" button up top, so you can follow
me on Skillshare. This means you'll
get a notification as soon as I publish
my next class. We'll have important announcements
like free giveaways, or sharing some of my
best student artwork uploaded to the project gallery. Thank you so much again for joining me in this class today. Please leave a comment below in the class discussion
area if you have any questions or comments
about today's class. If you have any
subject, wildlife, or scene you'd like me to do
a class on, by all means, let me know about it in the
discussion section as well. I hope you learned a lot, and are inspired to paint more
in this wonderful medium. See you next time. Bye for now.
Will Elliston, Award-Winning Watercolour Artist
