Cat. A Free-Flow Watercolour Masterclass with Jane Davies | Jane Davies | Skillshare
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Cat. A Free-Flow Watercolour Masterclass with Jane Davies

teacher avatar Jane Davies, Professional Artist and Teacher

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Lessons in This Class

    • 1.

      Introduction

      4:22

    • 2.

      Materials

      4:20

    • 3.

      Sketching Out

      5:52

    • 4.

      Ears

      5:02

    • 5.

      Eyes Part One

      2:28

    • 6.

      Eyes Part Two

      5:28

    • 7.

      Eyes Part Three

      4:59

    • 8.

      Eyes Part Four

      3:03

    • 9.

      Body First Layer

      9:00

    • 10.

      Head First Layer

      7:56

    • 11.

      Body Second Layer

      14:04

    • 12.

      Head Second Layer

      21:10

    • 13.

      Finishing Off

      22:33

    • 14.

      Final Thoughts

      1:29

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About This Class

Have you always wanted to create beautiful, loose, quick-flowing wet-on-wet watercolour with the simplest of touches, then let me show you how! 

In this class, I will show you how to paint this pretty tabby cat in real-time without any brushstrokes, that's right without any brushstrokes… we will simply be placing paint onto wet paper and allowing the magic to happen. If you have ever been curious about how I paint my pet portraits this is going to be an interesting insight for you

Enjoy :-)

If you’re just starting your watercolour journey and feel a bit daunted I have three beginner classes that introduce you to my basic techniques

Simple trees

Butterflies

Balloon dog

Though if you are feeling game come and join me :-)

I’ll be showing you:

  • How to create softness and subtlety using two layers
  • How to section areas off so we can control where that beautiful paint flows to
  • How to create those lovely loose stripes
  • How to paint those characterful eyes
  • How to add those all-important finishing touches that bring your cat to life

You will be creating this tabby cat and be amazed and inspired to add these simple techniques to your future artwork with confidence

Past reviews

"There is only one word to describe Jane Davies' classes - MAGICAL!”

“Another Fantastic class from Jane. Jane's gentle & patient approach provides students with lessons that feel like you are sat opposite her with a cuppa. She provides wonderful feedback and encouragement. Without question, she is my favourite teacher on Skillshare.”

"Highly recommend this class. Jane has a different way of painting in watercolour, straight from the tube. For me, this resulted in the best watercolour painting I have ever done. She gives clear instructions, step by step, and works at a pace that is not overwhelming. I cannot wait to try another one of her classes"

“Jane is an excellent teacher, and her clear instructions mean anyone, even complete beginners, can have a go and produce a piece of work that they will be very pleased with. Highly recommended.”

“This is a great video class by the very generous teacher Jane Davies. I really enjoyed attempting this with Jane's unusual but effective technique. Thank you, Jane”

"Wonderful class. Jane is an excellent teacher, guiding you through each stage with clear instructions and demonstrations. I love her friendly, informal style”

Music by Audionautix.com

Meet Your Teacher

Teacher Profile Image

Jane Davies

Professional Artist and Teacher

Top Teacher

Let me tell you a bit about myself...

I'm an international selling artist specializing in painting pet portraits and wildlife. I live, paint, teach,
and walk my lovely Spaniels in the beautiful South Downs National Park, England.

Over the last twenty years, I've taught myself the watercolour techniques you see today. Not having been to art school, finding my own way has been fun and sometimes daunting but has allowed me to develop my own unique style.


... See full profile

Level: Advanced

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Transcripts

1. Introduction: Hello and welcome to this advanced watercolor class. Today we're going to be painting this pretty little tabby cat together. Now, this has been a much requested class and I always aim to please. Now, have you ever been curious how I paint my own pet portraits that I think this is going to be an insightful and very useful class for you. I'm Jane Davis. I live, paint, teach, and walk my lovely spaniels in the beautiful South Downs National Park, England. Over the last 15 years, I've taught myself the free flow technique that you see today. Not having been to art school, finding my own way has been fun and sometimes daunting, but has allowed me to develop my own style. This has led me to teaching others, either on a one to one basis or as part of a group in a wonderful studio in the heart of the South Downs. I also run a successful commission based business, painting pet portraits and wildlife art in my own home studio. In all my classes you will follow along in real time where I can guide you to keeping your work loose and fresh without over fussing. I have over 20 classes available in skill share. Now if you're just starting out, my three beginner classes will guide you. Then you'll find over 20 master classes covering a wide range of beautiful subjects. In each one, I'll share the techniques that I use in my own professional work. We'll have a lot of fun together and you'll gain the understanding and confidence to incorporate everything you learn into your own work. Plus I'll share a few of my tips and tricks along the way to, as ever, I provided you with a wonderful reference photo along with a downloadable template for you to print out. The template gives you a stress free drawing, so you can just enjoy the painting. I'll be showing you how to keep the whole painting lovely and soft by adding two subtle layers that add depth and interest. I also want to show you how to add those stripes. I have a nice technique that keeps them lovely and loose. I'll be guiding to creating those beautiful, all important eyes that hold so much character. There's a wealth of other tips and tricks I want to share with you. From sectioning areas off to adding the final crisp details. If you'd like to learn more about me all my work, please pop over to my website at Jane Davis, Wardcolors.com.uk This can be found on my profile page along with links to my Instagram and Facebook pages. I'm very active on my social media pages where I love sharing my art, especially on stories with many ideas, works in progress, and tales of studio life. I really hope you will share all your paintings on the projects and resources pages, as I love seeing your masterpieces. And don't forget, I'm here to help. If you get stuck or have any questions, I want you to experience that buzz of painting in this liberating, wet and wet loose style. So come and join me. 2. Materials: Welcome along to this much anticipated cat class. Actually, many of you requested this subject. Here it is, okay. The materials I've used today are as normal, a lovely selection of Daniel Smith paints. There'll be a little swatch on the projects and resources pages. If you haven't obviously got the same colors as me, you can color match up the colors. We don't be afraid to experiment with your own. Don't let that be a limit to this class. But what I'm using today, and there are some favorites here that I've used in multiple classes. Pa, I got soda light genuine. I've got great titanium goite brown Oka. I have admin, a yellow, deep hue just for the eyes laps last just because I love it. Slight genuine and a very tired looking tube now of white Gh. Now my paper is Bockingford and it's been stretched. And I would recommend stretching your paper because it's quite a complex subject you don't really want to be tackling also with it, buckling and dipping on you. I would highly recommend stretching it or buying a gum pad which is gummed obviously around most of the edges. That gives you a little bit more of a stretched paper, been stretched on a perfect paper stretcher. And I will put a link to that because it's a useful board. I've got my pot of water, I have got my normal things, a rubber, got my little heart which is just an inch high. I don't tilt the board a lot in this class, but there are times when I have, it might be useful for you to little bit of kitchen roll, paper towel. Then I've got my brushes and obviously a pencil, I've got a number that's for doing the eyes and the smaller details. If you haven't got a not a number one or two would be absolutely fine. I got number 16 for the bigger parts. Watering, wetting stuff down and applying some of the wet washes. I've got a number ten and my trusty little eradicated brush, which is just had little bits of light out. Now I have a magic sponge. Some of you may have come across these, but they're a handy little thing for taking color out. And I'll explain further in the class about that. I've got some masking fluid. I've used that to create those whiskers. If you haven't got masking fluid, you could use white paint when it comes to it. Again, it's something that everybody has, but quite useful. What else is there? I've got a hair dryer, which is off camera but handy to dry your painting in between layers. There is that in the soil, in the projects and resources pages that larvly reference photo, which is beautiful to have open. If you can have that open while you work the template. Use the template. As I say, it's a, it's a tricky class. I always find cats a little tricky and harder to do than dogs. But maybe that's just me. But it's nice to be able to feel confident that you have everything in the right place before you start. Because as I always say, this is a painting class, not a drawing class. So don't feel afraid to use that. So I don't think there's anything else to remind you about. I think let's go and sketch them out and I'll see in the next lesson. 3. Sketching Out: Right then it's onto the sketching up out part. Again. There's that lovely reference photo in the projects and resources pages get that nice and opened up and so you can see this lovely cat. Don't be afraid to use that template. It's there for you to have a nice shapes. You've got this right before you start the painting, as I say in the introduction. So you can just enjoy the painting knowing you've got all this correct. Obviously, as you can see, I've already got this sketched out. So I'm just going to give you just a few pointers that will hopefully help you when you come to sketch. Her, I think is a her. Let's go with her template. If you've used that to go round, as I always say, I'm probably repeating this if you follow me regularly. So apologies for that. But I'm not sure. We pit, I'm going to have to point my brush but yet make sure you get that larvly shape right. We section off the head, ears, and the body. So just make sure you've got these lines down here, which I'll make sure I've popped on the template for. You can see, you can see quite clearly, this is obviously where the coat goes. You've got a lovely white chest, and this is where the coat starts to get that in and the leg, obviously the eyes are super important. They're always important. But I would probably say more important for this cat because they're such a focal point. Really take your time getting that shape right. She's on a slight angle, so it makes it a little harder. What I would suggest is draw them in, go away 10 minutes sometimes enough, come back and then look at it again. Because you'll see if there's any other tinkers you have to make little small adjustments. So it's always worth giving yourself a little bit of time before you start painting just to make sure you got that really lovely and correct. I have put the eyeballs in. It's just nice Sometimes if you've got a nice sketch in front of you, it gives you a boost when you start painting, because some of my students have said, there's always that ugly stage where I'm feeling like it's all going a bit wrong. If you've got a nice drawing in front of you, it helps. I think what I'm doing for you today, we're going to do the eyes a lot sooner than I normally do. Which I hope will help some of you with, with that problem. That middle stage looking a little odd. Anyway, I think I'm rabbiting on a bit too much as normal. So what I'm going to do first, we're actually going to use a little bit of masking fluid today. Don't often use it, but those whiskers, they are terribly prominent, aren't they? We're going to put a little bit of masking fluid in top off. Put that down. Now, word of caution, if you haven't used masking fluid before, get an old brush. Whatever you do do, use your best brush because you will never get it out. As you can see, it probably was a nice brush at one point, but it doesn't wash out very well. You can use any, sometimes the actual, the end of your old brush, or I have used in the past the little toothpicks and stuff. Something very small and it's got an edge. Or I saw point. This is an ideal I must admit. But I've got a little tip that will help you to reduce the size of them in the finishing off bit. Don't panic if they get a little bit chunky. First off, with the whiskers. It's a nice movement with your hand. If you want to practice out on a little scrap of paper just to get that nice movement in, then that's worth just spending a little time with that. Just to get your wrist action right. But we're going to start then. We're just going a bit scary, isn't it? Do a few lines, if they go a bit chunky, if they go a bit wrong. Before you start painting, you can always rub out the ones you don't like A quick wrist action. I think the large you paint this cat. If we were to be doing this on a, say, two or something really big, then obviously these whiskers would be proportion. If you're painting this cat even smaller than the template you'll find. Obviously in relation you'll have chasers one up here as well. I think that's probably enough because as with every you can get carried away because you can add a little bit of white paint as well to incorporate in that so you can mix it up a little bit. When we do the finishing off bits, we can add a little bit of white. I'm also going to do just a few splatters. Just gives a little bit of movement that you might not like this, but that one's a bit big. But let's have a little splat tick you around the chest again, if you don't like switch your angle a little bit. Can use in another hand you don't like. Once they drive then you can rub those out. Obviously this is too chunky, I don't like that. But once that dries completely, make sure that the garmin is completely dry, then you can just rub them out, which I will show you in the next little lesson. But for now, I've got to allow that to dry. And you can see a big one in the middle of the eye, which I really don't want anyway. Allow that masking fluid to drive you have used it. And I'll see you in the next lesson. 4. Ears: Okay, before we start these ears, let's just get rid of some of these little bits of gum before we get distracted and forget about them. Obviously, that one I don't want, so I'm just going to gently peel that back. Probably probably haven't left that quite long enough, has left a little bit of a mark, but get the one out the eye. These have dried thoroughly, but a big splodge like that takes a long time to dry. Okay. Anything you don't like? I didn't really want anything around the chin of that one. Probably. That one there. Okay. I think I like the rest. They look All right. So just take your time. Have a little look. See if you have used the gum then just take those out. Okay. Nice and easy as ever. I've been kind to you, so we're going to start with those ears. I'm picked up my number ten brush and I'm going to wet the two ears down. You can see whether we would put that line in just wet to there. Make sure you have plenty of water. On to number two, make sure you stay within those lines. Not so important on the lower part that joins the head, but on the outsides of the ears, it's nice to get, keep it nice and crisp. Now with this whole cat, we're actually doing two layers over everything. The first layer we're doing is just to put a little bit of base color down and get us going. It's always quite scary, isn't it? When you've got that blank piece of paper, they're looking at you, it's nice to start with something simple like the ears, which I always tend to do with most of my pieces. I've picked up the Gradanium, the sug light, let's just, I just want to get a little bit of color. It's obviously quite light here. Now, if you have a pink, you could have a little bit of blush pink here. I'm honest, I didn't want to add too many more colors here for this color choice. But if you have got a little bit of potters pink, it is quite pretty. But the equally a little bit of gray is absolutely fine, just mixing it up a bit, just tapping it in and allowing it to move. I'm not trying to do too much trying to round it, Getting any particular shadows or anything particular. That's all all I want. Put those two colors down. Clean brush. Just picked up Pia. Actually, I'll have the Gothit have these two together. I just want to stop picking up some of the darker edges around that ear, Around the outside of that ear gain. Just tapping, wheeling, allowing, get a little here, Mix the colors up a little bit. You can see there's spa probably at the base and a little bit of Gothyite. Oh, that's too much spa around the top, so let's just get rid of that. But it doesn't matter too much. So put a little bit of Gothite there. If it runs a bit too much, just gently suck it up, push it back again. You don't want to do too much because say we can build up the color on the next layer just to start getting some interest. And body down a little bit more spa there, tap in. Of course, the first layers will always move once you start. Partly if you start going over three or four, you'll find the paint won't move much at all. If you want it to spread, it's always best to do that on your very first layer because the paint will move the most. If you see something you like and it's looking pretty, then leave it. You're just after something that's pleasing to your eye. Brush away. See what we think. I think for now that will do me. I've got started, I've got some color down. I feel like I'm on my way. So all we're going to do, we're going to need to let that dry ideally, but we are going to be doing the eyes, if you're careful and you're quite confident you aren't going to touch those ears, you don't need to dry in between, but I will allow that to dry. And then we start with those eyes. A little bit of a mix up today. 5. Eyes Part One: Okay, it's on with the eyes. Which seems a bit strange to be saying that at this stage in the painting, if you haven't followed me in any of my classes before, I generally leave the eyes right to the very end. This time we're going to do them earlier on and see how that feels for you because I think I'm in the majority minority, should I say that, paint the eyes at the end. Most artists will do them at the beginning. See how that feels. You may find it's a game changer for you. Okay. So it's very simple. This first layer, we're just going to wet both eyes down and we're going to pop some yellow and the go tight down. It's all in little stages to say, make sure you stay within those lines. I suppose the beauty of doing the eyes right at the beginning is when we come to do the face, we can adjust. If we've gone a little bit too big, we can then adjust a little easier. It will be interesting for me to revisit doing this way round as well, if I'm honest. Let's have the yellow not doing anything complicated, I'm tapping rather than actually painting it in. Just allowing it all to blend and move around, rather than actually painting. I could have painted it in, but I just find this just gives me more softness somehow. Again, just tap, allow it's quite a strong color. This cabin, lovely. As soon as you got that, probably shouldn't need any more of that cabin actually. It's nice and strong. Then with the GothiteI' going to tap underneath, we're starting to put a little bit of shadow we don't want below the lower part of the eye, it's just the upper part of the eye you can already see that's creating a little bit of shadow and a bit of interest. It's a really important tip to do to get that strength. Obviously, we can add more in a minute on the next layer, but this is just starting to build that up, honestly. You don't want to do too much more than that. You know, you're going to say you're just going to have to allow that to dry before we can do the next little layer. 6. Eyes Part Two: Okay, once thoroughly dry, we are going to wet back up. Wet the back down again very gently, because we've already got one nice layer. You don't want to rustle that up. So you want to keep your brush ever so light. Try not to scrub, just gently add. Sometimes by doing this, you'll find you've got a little bit of a puddle. All you have to do is then to soak that puddle up. But it's better to have a puddle than to rustle that first layer. You can quite easily see by bobbling your head up and down, whether you've got a puddle. I think that looks all right, from what I can see, lovely. I'm going to pick up the sepia and the sod. Like genuine. We're going to start putting that eye make up on eye makeup, but you can see she's got some lovely dark around that eye. We're going to stay with inside that eye. We're not going to the outside of it, we're going to be painting inside of it. The idea of wetting it down, it will give us a nice soft edge rather than a very hard line which you would create. We were painting this on a dry eye. I hope that makes sense. But yeah, make sure you stay with it inside the line of as you'll end up with a cap with some very large eyes. Sometimes when you look at animals or reference photos like this, it can get a bit confusing whether you're adding the color inside or outside. And they have all this little gentle marking. Yeah. Make sure you stay with it inside. Too much color there. Strike that. Away talking and not concentrating fully. You see she's got, it's dark at the top again. And we're going to add just a little bit of that was a CPA. Just a tiny little bit of so light genuine. Now just say very gently, little taps. It can be the eyes of the minutest thing. Tiny little bit of color can make or break. So take your time. If you're in a warm climate and we have wet both eyes down together, if you find your right eye to think about right and left has dried, you can always add a little bit more water. And we'll do that in a minute because I can see mine has starting to dry. Just take my time. And if you like sitting, I am standing and I like to stand when I paint. But doing the eyes is a nice time to take your weight off your feet and get nice and close. Sadly, I'm a little way away as normal, so I don't get my head in the shot as often say in the classes. Something looks a little bit different When you come back to the next lesson, it's just because I've been able to get a little bit closer to my painting. It would be nothing I haven't told you about in that lesson. Okay, I can see that my right height has dried a little bit. Add a little bit more water in there just to get a nice, you can see the top of the grain of the paper, but it's not sitting on a paddle either and it's obviously not dry. Again, we're doing exactly the same. Start with the Pia. I tend to start at the top because that's a darker at the top. And gives it a little more paint, a little more freedom to move. And then very gently, stay inside the eye, don't go outside. If you find it moves too much, you just your brush, Take the color out off your brush and then just gently guide it. Do the same. We're going to add a little bit of P at the top. Again, keep your eye on that reference pot squint your eyes is a corny thing, isn't it? Squinting your eyes, but you can see if you feel you need a little bit more, go again. You can pick that up and add a little bit more go. That would give you a bit more strength without too much color. Genuine and P is quite dark. Gothit might be enough for you to my CPI. I can see something gone a little astray with this eye. Quite work it out at the moment. That looks better. Okay. Once you got something you're pleased with and to say you may have got there before me. If you do, then stop and if you feel you haven't quite got there, then take your time, pause the class and get that right before you move on to the pupil. So you want to be happy with it? Yes. I'm sure you know what to do, so just pause it and get it right and allow it to dry before we add that pupil. 7. Eyes Part Three: All right. Once thoroughly dry, we are going onto the scary spot. Pick up your PA and you so light genuine. And we're going to paint those eyeballs in. Take your time. And they're going to look ugly for a minute. Bear with it, starts in the middle. You've probably got that sketched out because it's always helpful to get them sketched out. We're just, I would go with, honestly, it doesn't matter. I've got both colors actually on my bush at the same time. It doesn't matter too much. But you're starting in the middle of the pupil, slowly working your way out. If you did the owl class before this, then you know the thing we're doing slowly. Make your way out. Take your brush away, have a look a little bit more. She almost loses that pupil under the lid. We're going to wet that way down in a minute to soften it, so don't worry too much. And we're going to go onto the next one exactly the same. Just keep going round and round around. Keep an eye on that reference photo. Take your brush away. If you get something you're like, oh, that's it, I'm done. Maybe it's not the right size how you've sketched out. It's not quite right, but it actually looks really good on the painting. Then stop. Have a little look. Don't blindly follow your pencil marks if what you have in front of you looks good. Okay, I'm going to leave it there for a minute. P, two colors down per second. I'm going to rely the eye including that little pupil. It shouldn't be, but if it is very wet for any reason, just hang fire. Just let it dry a little bit. Now this will gently soften that pupil from looking too stark and round. It also gives you the opportunity, let's go to add a little bit more color underneath that eye because I think I need a little bit more underneath the lid. You may not be a judge of your own piece again. You think the shapes may be gone a little something not quite right for the shape of that eye, but just gently tinker everything's very loose. Also, if you feel like your color is running a little bit and you're losing that yellow, you can just, again, clean brush and wipe the color away. So you then get back to that yellow. You can add a little bit more yellow if it feels a bit too much yellow, If you feel like it's escaping you a little bit, add a little bit more color. It's just a case of really looking your own piece. We're all going to be slightly different at this stage. Take your time. Just have a little tinker. And if it's all getting a little bit beyond you, just break for a minute. You can let that dry and re wet and then go over it again and have a little look. Sometimes you just need to step away. But I would say maybe the advantage to doing this now with the eyes, which are the trickiest part, we're fairly fresh into the painting, we shouldn't be too fatigued with it. Also, it may help you. Sorry, I'm doing exactly the same as I did with the left eye. The same on the right eye. Just gently adding a little bit more color. Just trying to get that eye but eye just right so it's soft but a nice man of shadowing in better go fight in that corner. Maybe you can pick up the yellow again if you feel your yellows escape you a little bit. It's a little odd in some context because you've got nothing else around the eye. You're just painting two eyes and there's no body. I think that's probably why I prefer generally putting the eyes in later, but that's just my personal preference, probably. Okay. I'm going to leave it at that for a minute. I'm going to allow it to dry. I'm also, if I'm honest, going to get a little bit closer, which I can't do at the moment, and just tidy anything up and then we will put that catch light on. But again, just take your time. Don't be afraid to have a little tinker. This is a good time to tinker. There's a good time and a bad time in the eyes you really want to get right. So it is worth taking your time. 8. Eyes Part Four: Okay. So how did your tinkering go have you got there? They're tricky cat's eyes. They're a lot harder than dogs because obviously you've got that pupils very exact as dogs eyes are particularly soft. So they're harder. Definitely harder. Okay, I'm fairly pleased with mine. I think they look alright. I say I did tinker. I must confess, I did spend a little time trying to get those right, but what we're going to do now is take a little bit of color out underneath, you can see this. And especially if you squint your eyes and a lovely light. So we're just going to slightly bigger brush, Gently wipe some of that color away. You can use your finger just to give it a little squidge, another one under here. Try and get them in the same places and probably funny light sources coming in from that reference photo. But I'm going to try and just take it out from the left hand corners on both eyes. Take your brush away. See what you think. Let's say I find it hard not to have the rest of the animal in context. It will hopefully make sense once we start painting her in a bit more. But let's do those catch lights because I think they are always a lovely thing to put in. I'm going to pick up my white gresh, give a bit of a rustle my little brush, there's actually two little dots. We are actually going to put two little catch lights on each eye. I'm going to roughly follow the reference photo, so it's one up top. One a little bit lower, isn't there? You can see that even with no body that's bottom to more to life, lovely. Okay. Now, if like me, I think some of my ages aren't quite the right shape, but as we then do the head, we can then sculpt the eye a little bit more. That should be fine. But what we're going to do just very quickly is the nose, it didn't really warrant a whole a lesson on that. All we're doing, we're wetting that nose down a little bit of, just tap that right at the very top. And then pick up your, like, genuine, tiny a little bit at the bottom. So you can see there's a bit of shadowing there, can't you? That's all we're doing because we'll put all those nostrils in and the more detail, the shadowing around the nose in the next layer. That's all you need to do. Of course. Let that dry. 9. Body First Layer: Okay, let's get some color on this lovely body. So I'm going to pick up my number 16 brush, get it lovely and wet. And what I will do, which I think is helpful, this is just for you to see where I've wet down. So don't add color. Just get your brush nice and wet and we're going to wet this area. If you look at your reference photo, there's a dark, I'm going to call it a collar. It's obviously not a collar, it's just part of her markings. But just for ease, I'm going to call it the brown collar, so you kind know what I'm talking about. So we're going to wet that part down and we're going to wet it roughly to that leg joint, see there. And then we're it halfway down that leg. You can see where the stripe starts somewhere there. It doesn't have to be exact again on this side. And then carefully stay within your lines and then fill it all up. You don't want dry patches. You can easily see if you duck your head up and down or even move your paper. If you can do that, you can see where there's any dry patches. I've just got rid of my yellow and the grass. If you're wondering why the desk looks a bit bearer because I shouldn't need those colors. We might do a little bit of fiddling with the eyes in the finishing off bits, but mix it, less likely to pick up the wrong color. Okay, once that's lovely and wet and you've got no dry patches, then let's put that one down. I've got the labs, Lazaro and the sug light. I'm going to pop some color where I'm trying, I'm going to pop some color underneath the G in. Just allow that. It's just, again, a bit like the ears. We're just trying to get a little bit of color down. Doesn't have to be exact. I just want this just to be a little bit blue, obviously. She's got a white bib, so we're making up a little bit of color here just to give us some picked up. The gray, that's a really nice color. It pushes other colors around. As I mean, it you can see, can't you? It moves the colors around. It's a nice paint. Sometimes you end up using the paint for their character and what they do, almost as much as they're beautiful colors, you can see there's a shadow line, isn't there? So we're going to try and fill in that shadow line. Just tapping and all you could. I don't necessarily think I need it, but I've got my little heart, so I can always just talk my ball a touch. And that will encourage all this lovely painter move a little bit more down. We can tap a little bit more so we're not putting any strong coat colors on that will come on the next layer. So say just a little bit of color. Okay, I'm just going to leave my flax because I don't really want to tilt on it. And I can see if you are tilting it, watch out for your water puddling on the bottom. I don't really need that in the moment. Suck that up. That's quite puddly. Okay. I've got something. Got it off down there. That's enough color. Just make sure Gomer that in. I put those colors down for a second. I'm going to pick up the Go site. We're saying we are putting coat color in. We're not doing the stripe. I'm misleading you. There were just along that coat line you can see where the color she obviously got a white bib. You can see where her coat color comes in because she tap along that line, along that back as well. You can pick up some slight whatever colors. You don't worry too much just getting a little bit of base color down. I don't want it too heavy on the top, so I'm going a little bit light weather, so light genuine. But there's a bit of strength there. Go way down in a minute, we're going to wet further back into this area and this color will then be dragged down. Get a little bit of color in. Just tap. It doesn't have to be anywhere, say no where exact. We're not doing anything fancy at the moment. We're just putting color down and just tapping. Okay. I'm going to clean my brush. Put those colors down for a second and we're going to wet that edge down. We're just going to pull, so we're wetting all this paper back. And pulling it right off. That will drag the color that's here into the body. We'll get down this way. You can see it moving now. You can just keep moving it, keep pulling it back. Now I've got a little bit, I've stretched my paper. It's got a little bit of a kink in here. It's sitting in a puddle. It's not moving particularly well. I'm going to give it a little bit of a help. I'm just going to tilt my board as well. Now, I can now add a little bit more color because obviously that's moved. I've lost a lot of the strength now. Just add a little bit more, keeping ever so soft still. I don't want to add too much color. I want this to be, there's quite a lot of color in there. I just want it soft. I don't want to add too much in there really. I think the interest is mainly going to be around her face and their head. This is Sbviously got a body and we've got those lovely stripes to put in next as well. Which will be done on the second layer, pulling those out. So if I can get that to move, doing a fantastic job that's going. Now actually once that starts to move, you want to then just do the same with the leg and just drag that down as well. And will be the back leg lovely. A little more stripped up there. I don't want to be doing any flicks even though we'll do those later. So say this is just a little bit of bad color. Now if for any reason you've lost this white, because we want this to be this little area here. There's a nice, a nice amount of light there, isn't there. So you always pop a little bit of water in there and just clear and that will run, just give you a bit of interest. Mine stay quite white and I'm okay. But you can easily do that and should almost clear that area for you without having to sort scrubbleor doing anything else. Okay. Last thing I'm going to do is she's going to put those colors down. She's going to lay her flat again. I want to start to put up just a little bit of strength down as a really strong line down this leg where the join is. I just want to get that in and we can strengthen that again on the second layer, but it's, it's quite pronounced, so we want to make sure it's nice and strong. I also want it to move quite nicely as well. By doing that on the first layer, that should encourage that paint to move a little bit more. Okay, always a temptation is to fiddle, but I'm going to be good. I'm going to put that down and I'm going to allow that to dry. Now obviously you can speed things along with a hair dryer, which is obviously fine just if mine's quite puddly here. So you don't want to put a hair dry over white. It's puddly because you'll end up just blowing pigment around. Just hold on until it, if you can see it on the camera, but it's just starting to go off. That's the perfect time to run a hair dryer over it. 10. Head First Layer: Okay. So once that body's fully dry or if you're clever and not likely to put your hand in, you could then carry on with the head and allow that to dry on its own. But to me, it's a little risky because it's so easy to smudge things as you're then working on the head. Anyway, aren't these lovely colors? I think there's such a pretty combination, right? We are going to wet the whole head down, but we're not going to include what I'm going to say calling that brown color, which we haven't put in yet. But again, let me, again, this is just for you, but I'm just going to pop a little bit of color down so you can see the areas of wet down, particularly the lower parts. You can see what I mean. So you can see the lighter parts of her head. It's almost like two joints to the head, so we're sticking with the lighter. The upper bit go carefully around the nose. I tend to if I'm missing parts out, I tend to go around those first. So I know I've wet that area down like the eye as well with the eyes carefully around those. I think I might have just gone into the eye a little. We're going to miss out the ears because we're going to do another layer again. Just want to get a little bit of color down on this first layer carefully around the eye, But you want to touch it. If it starts to be a little, that's perfect. I could say that's perfect, but I wouldn't lower myself to such a Cory joke. Okay. Once it's again, once it's nice and wet, which you can see by dipping your head up and down, gone over that chin, round the nose, and carefully around those eyes we are going to pick up I've got my buff titanium. I'm going to where I did the sug light and I'm also going to have a little bit go, may be a bit of so light genuine. I've got four paint in my hand as you can see this, this is the lights probably coming from the left hand side. The right hand side is going to be a little bit darker. Making sure I've got that plenty wet enough because we want this paint to move your paper. If you just what the hair dry over your lower part of the body like I did, then the paper can warm up and then obviously dries quicker, right? A little bit of titanium, little bit of the goiteI'm literally working right on that corner and just tapping if your paint doesn't move and it didn't get that quite wet enough like maybe I did. You always add, make sure your brush is also wet. And just keep tapping and allow that to move into the center. Come up to the ear a little bit. Touch that line. See you, you're touching it so you're not leaving any white mark. Sorry, just continue adding colors. Have a tiny little bit. So generally, I don't want to get too heavy, just scrap the PA as well. Let's go for a five paint handful. Just squint to the photo. You're looking for the dark areas, really. You're just putting this heavier color in and allowing it to move to the center. You can, like we did with the lower part of the body, drag some of this, we encourage that paint over again. You can give a little bit of tilt to be fill it and find it hasn't moved. I'm going to keep mine flat. But it's just another little trick bear in mind. You've got a white chin down here, so you don't want too much color in that white chin. So I'm going to actually put some of these colors down. I really need such a big handful I'm going to keep hold of. I've got the Gothite, the sug light, and the gray titanium. My hand still, I'm going to put a little bit of gray. A little bit of sug light. Just tap it on the forehead. Just a little bit. Movie a little bit. Just give it a little bit of a squeech. Put a little bit of other color over the top of it. That's absolutely fine. Just allow it. Just allow it to move. Have a look. Take your brush away. See, see what you think. Say, keep bearing in mind, we will do another layer. My paper stretching has not worked very well. A little bit of a puddle going here as well. Me telling you to make sure you have your paper ice and stretched and flat. That's fine, right? A little bit. She's got some lovely colored cheeks, has it? She said, let's just just pop that in. It doesn't have to be exact because we can take color out and tinker on the next layer. We're just getting a little bit of something down. Although this is quite a dark nose and we will put more strength on the second layer. Let's just get something down there already. It will help the paint not move so much. When we come to do the second layer, there's something already there. Okay, let's have a little lap side because I love this color. I'm just going to put something. There's quite a dark, it's obviously just her coat markings. But there's quite a dark coat color on this left hand side, which I'm not as keen to put in because it then boxes her in a little bit more. So I'm not going to, I don't think, add too much color onto the left hand side, although it is there as we're not actually painting this as a pet portrait, so I don't have to be that exact. We can have an artistic license on that part. The other thing I'd want to get just to start getting some little bit of color underneath because she's got some lovely dark markings underneath. Again, it's all just tapping and allowing if your paper starts to dry on you. If you have a little, it's just starting to go off and you still want to do a little bit more work. You can just gently tap a little bit more water into that drying area, but if it has dried completely, you want to just down tools, allow it to dry completely and re, wet the whole thing again, you can end up with some rather nasty watermarks if you carry on tinking like I'm doing now. But if there's an area that's completely dry and you'll find you end up with a rather hard line, Right. I'm having a step back from that because the eyes are there. You can see her coming forward, can't you? Now, she's, she's looking more like a completed painting while gush creature without any eyes, which my friend, if I ever show her painting, my works in progress, she hates to sing the bare eyes. She will be pleased I've painted the eyes in first on this one. Okay, I'm going to stop thinking because I know I'm doing another layer and we've got all those lovely stripes to put in. That again, needs to completely dry. 11. Body Second Layer: Okay, now once this is dry, we are going to be doing the second layer over this body. Before we continue any further, I have done a little demo of the stripes, A useful little exercise. You're not confident of how your paint will react to the wet paper on a second layer. It's worth doing a little swatch like this. This one here obviously put these base colors down to start with. Allowed that to completely dry. So I'm really replicating what we're doing here. I then re wet my little splodges and then put with CPA, the stripes on. Now this one was done while the paper was quite wet. You can see how that has disbanded and bled quite a lot. This was just as it was. It's hard to explain, especially given that I'm not sure how well you can see the paper. And obviously everybody's paper and paints are going to react slightly differently. But it's an exercise worth doing as it begins to dry and you start to see some of the tops of your grain of your paper emerging. This was done about that sort of time. This one again, hit dry a little bit more. It wasn't, it was almost dry. So you can see that hasn't moved as obviously. If we were to do a stripe when it was completely dry, it would obviously look something like that. So it would have a very hard edge to it and you wouldn't have any bleeding whatsoever. Hopefully, that's, it's a helpful example. I will put this up on the projects and resources pages for you to have a look at and maybe it'll be useful little guide. But it's worth doing one of your own and gauging how your paper and paint works. Right? With that said, we're going to say wet the lower part of this body down. The whole body down. I don't think it's going to be very useful to put a color on my brush for you to see. But we're going to be wetting the whole body down. Even this lower part here as well if it's a gentle, because we're obviously working on the second layer now, so you don't want to disrupt what you've done on the first again, I'm just letting my brush just fall. Finally going to be doing the color color. We're including that area and we'll put that down quite soon, the way down it, off that page. In theory, you would mount this and frame it, obviously it would be somewhere like something like that. So obviously you lose a lot of the edge of this lovely again, just make sure that the top bit is nice and as we've worked our way round, some bits will start to dry, especially if you're lucky you are in a war, slightly warmer place. Where are we now? We're coming into April, still waiting for spring to arrive with any warmth that's been ever so cold here. Right. So, first thing first, I'm going to pick up my CPA, and I should have explained this was CP I used on these stripes. It's a nice color because it doesn't move as much. If I'd done that with light genuine, say for instance, the stripes would have moved more. But obviously, you may not be using the CP. It's worth doing that little exercise and seeing how the paints that you have react I CP and light genuine actually downsize brush. So I've got my number ten. It's nice to work as large as you can, but sometimes a large brush can feel a bit clunky. I always feel I have a bit more control if I downsize a brush. Start off with, let's finally get this color color on. We're just, we're tapping up right up against that edge and allowing it to move down. Now if we've done this on the first layer, this would have moved a lot more. But because we're on the second layer, it's not moving as much that you can gain the control like that as well. We have to be mindful to do a few of these little flicks as well, which I might do because I can see this is starting to dry already on me. Picked up my little tiny brush, just wake it up. I'm just going to pull out some little flicks, not starting right on the edge, coming in a little bit. And just just gently flicking, You only want a few. But I don't. I want the flicks to be done. While that paints, nice and wet, they will look like they've been stuck on, again, on the left hand side. She has got some color there. And I'm just going to put a little bit, I don't want too much. I might pick up the gray as well. Just tap a little bit of the gray in there. I want to make it softer. I want to think too hard. I want that to be a little bit more lost, that edge. Okay, now let's put that down. This now depends a little bit. If you feel you want a little bit more strength on the body, you can go ahead and add a little bit more color. Let's put a little bit more color for you to see. Pick up the gray again. You can tap a little bit more color in pick up the Go. Let's have these five handle so you can add a little bit more color. If you feel you want a little bit more strength, you can. Anything down the back, we want it a little bit more down the back. I'm quite happy with mine. But again, to say we're strengthening now. Let's put that down for a second. For that one slight, we need to do this edge as well. She's got some nice markings down this outer right hand edge, genuine and spieth. I'm again tapping that right on the outside edge and allowing it to move in. I know if I put this a little bit of this gray here, you'll see if my paper wasn't buckle dated, it would move a little bit more. I say I've got of course, a bit of a buckle going on here which isn't helping things. So I picked up the go flight as well. Just make that a little bit light as we're going down. I don't want that to be too strong. Further down, I know you can obviously see more, but we want that to be ever so. I want this to be loose. I want it to almost to disappear. Too much color there. Push some of that up. Okay. I'm going to leave that just to work its way in on its own. Let's put those two down now. You have to be a little bit of a judge. Now, say with that little example I showed you, my my paper is drying at different rates. I can see this little top part where it's sadly started to buckle and this is the higher part, it's starting to dry. I need to get some little stripes on in here. It's going to be a little bit of a case. Find the stripes you want to add and find the piece of paper that's ready for your stripes. Because I think we're all going to be at different stages at different times and different stripes, you may only want to put a handful down. You might want just a suggestion of them. You might want to add a little bit more. That's going to be a touch up to you. I'm never a fan of lots of stripes but that's just, again, just me, these classes. I hope it just a bit of a guide and I'd like to think. I allow you to. Yeah. Make up your own mind of how some of the elements of this painting goes. The Stripes I think is one of them. I little bit of Goite's ever so week, just a hint of it. Just a suggestion of those there. I can see this area is beginning to dry and there is quite a nice stripe here, a little bit more sepia. Again, you can mix the sepia and so the light genuine together striped coming up here, go sit, mix them up. Don't be afraid to put the different colors on your brush at the same time. This is quite puddly down here because it's where it's buckled. Taking my paint brush away, seeing what's happening, keep you all nice light, keep your eyes squinting. See where that papers drying on where it's not drying on you. You may want some lovely soft stripes similar to this. You can carry on adding those into the quite wet paper. But if you want more defined stripes, you're going to have to wait for the paper to dry a little bit more on you. So I don't know why I did that. I'm just trying to get rid of that piece of a bottle of water in there really is sitting there not being very helpful for me. I just want to strengthen this line up here a bit. Sug light, don't think I'm going to get there is an very obvious stripe and it goes all the way down. I'm not going to follow it all the way up. I don't want to section her off too much because I think if we join those stripes up, it's going to look a little bit too much. So I'm going to leave a gap. See what's running into my buckled part, aren't you? Sometimes these things you just have to work around them. If you got a little bit of a bobble mine, sometimes they just work in your favor, put that stripe over there. I don't want that too exact, although that paper is quite wet there. I want it quite soft. It's probably about the right stage. Okay. Keep squinting your eyes, seeing what your painting looks like. Take your brush away bearing mind, got a lot of water sitting here. But if you're drying here, you need to do those little flicks as well. Also the back as well, you can see mine. Let's put those down, Jane, clutching too many things. I can see my back is starting to dry. So I'm going to do some of these flicks along the back here. This is too wet. I was going to say, sorry, but yours might be ready to go, so have a look at your own piece. They're ideally done when the paints here, there's a certain amount of paint there and it's doing quite nice and wet, but not puddling like that. I think she's coming together quite well actually. This long shadow down here, once we do the face and on the finishing off bits will run that shadow down a little bit more. If yours is a goal loss, don't worry too much about that. This stage I'm liking what I'm seeing. Actually, if I'm honest, I don't want to put too many stripes in her. She's coming together quite nicely. Again, I'm going to leave you to put how many stripes you want in there and how you want them, But I will just show you this. I want to put some little bits of kitchen roll marks which will give the impression. You can see the coat is crinkling a little bit. Just this area here. I folded up a little bit of kitchen roll if you did the eagle, similar to this but just going to soak up. I don't know if I've got enough paint here. I make some just some little random marks where the kitchen always going to soak up the paint. She says, I may have left that a little bit too late. Chatting away, Yes, I think I have it starting to dry. But the theory is it will take a little bit of paint out and give you some little lines. And I'll show you on this part here, you can probably see it's only very subtle. It just gives you another, a little bit of texture. Can I do it here? Oh, look, it's working over here because it's still nice and wet. Can you see It's just a very, very random way of adding some texture in like that. I'm going to allow mine to dry and I will monitor it a little bit and I will do those flicks when this feels ready. Yeah. As I say, just do your stripes in your own time. Don't panic if it begins to dry, you can add a little bit more water, just like I explained, hopefully on top of the head. But if it does start to dry completely, I can see this area here is dry. If I was to start adding water here again, you'll end up with a very nasty water. Yes. Enjoy doing your last, a little bit of tinkering and then allow that to completely dry. 12. Head Second Layer: Right, it's onto the second layer over the head. This is a lovely layer because we end up, we put the stripes in, we do some tinkering, we pull it all together. Obviously there's going to be the finishing off lesson, but this really does pull all together, this one. Let's put that one down now. I'm going to pick up my big brush, and we're going to do the ears, the head, the eyes, the nose. Let me start down here. We're going to include this collar this time. And a little bit further down. I don't know if you can make out on the reference photo. She almost looks like she has a double chin. Bless her. We're going to go a little bit underneath it. Probably just because I've wet this area down doesn't necessarily mean we're going to put any color here. But what it will allow is this collar, if it needs to be, just to allow it to bleed into this area with wet down, it just helps keep everything soft, gently, say keep everything gentle because this will bleed. The brown color will bleed into the head. And that's just what we want, just allows everything to stay lovely and soft and we get away from those dividing lines that we've divided up to allow us to control some of this paint. Okay? Carefully around the eyes. Again, touching the eye, make up carefully around the ears. Again, that's where this line, the joint between the ear and the head will gently soften. If it doesn't, you can always give that a rustle as we work away along. Again, if you wanted more color in those ears, this is a good time as well, we can add a little bit more color. It's quite a big layer, a lot going on to say it's not a large, expansive area, but it's going to be a few bits to do and keep an eye on. Again, if it starts to dry and maybe you've put the hair dryer over to dry the body, you'll find your paper will dry quicker. Again, you can just tap water in. Just keep an eye on, don't allow any area to completely dry on you, but as long as it's damp, you can just tap a little bit of warm water in and it'll allow you to say, continue playing and tinkering. Just make sure everything's nice and wet. Now, I'm going to start up at the ears because I want to put a little bit more color up there. I don't want to do my stripes yet because it's too wet. I don't want that really bring the sample back. I don't want this really expanded stripe and that's when the paper was quite wet. I want more of this. I would have said as the paper begins to dry, you have to judge a piece, keep an eye on it. It's going to be a little bit down to you to keep that nice and wet so you can add the color. Keep it nice and damp. Right? Let me put my bigger brush down. I'm going to pick up my number ten. I just want to put a little, start putting just a touch more strength on those ears. I'm good. I've picked up sepia going to tap and I might actually have a tiny little bit of light genuine. I can do just some little flicks in over a wet so it's not going to show too much, but it will give just an impression of that white hair almost. Again, we can do on the other side, let's pick up the sight. See why I haven't wet area down. Got you. Oh, legit. And CP down this side. Because it's a little darker area down here, isn't it? Again, it doesn't matter if that bleeds into the head. That's what we want. We want to get away from that strong dividing line. Again, we can just flick a few in here because it ever so wet, you will only get a slight impression of some hair lovely. I actually put just because I like the color more than anything else. A bit of that satellite right at the very top just to give a little, sometimes you just have to, if your intuition tells you to do something, sometimes you need to trust it. So I just wanted a, a little bit of color up there. Now I'm going to do exactly the same, this side, just strengthen that ear. Of course, if yours is strong enough and you're happy with your ear, you don't need to do this. As we work our way through, we all end up in slightly different places and how we also want the painting to ultimately finish up again. I will just do some flicks in there. If you get, you see the little dots where I've flicked and the paint sil, sat in little bubbles a little bit. You can always just flick it back a little bit of your finger. We're just after a little bit of texture, really, not after trying to put all those delicate hairs in. Yeah, take your brush away. See, we think you can see this is almost gone. You almost lost it. But it will just give enough. Hopefully, now she has depends if we want to put them on in or not. But she has got some little whispy hairs which would be better done. My little bush dry, it should be enough paint already on your ear. If not, you can just put a little bit, tiny bit on your brush. Just flick up some eir, you might want to put the ear hair on. It's up to you. You may be trying to replicate your cat a little bit more and your cat might not have a little whisky bits. Okay, that's enough. Put those down again. I'm keeping an eye on that paper. I've got quite a puddle here, but this is beginning to get, I'm just going to put a little bit more water that's beginning to dry a little bit. So I just want to the ability to be able to keep working on this. Now, as I said, I want to keep this quite clear. I don't want to put too much color. She obviously has got some dark markings down that side, but I'm not inclined to put too much in there. So, I'm going to pick up the Gothite. I'm going to start working mainly because this is quite puddly this side, this is dryer swap bushes. Pick up my number ten. I'm just going to start adding a little bit of detailing. I say I love this patch underneath the eyes and you also want to maintain, you can see there's obviously a light area right underneath the eye. If that which she hasn't done, it shouldn't do too much. Say we're on our second layer, we can just wipe away just to keep that white area and clear, squint your eyes. If you're ready to do some little stripes. I'm going to do some very subtle ones this side, she's got one coming down here, hasn't she? And there's obviously a lovely one actually, off the eye of the corner of that eye. That's probably worth putting in. That's where we picked up my little brush. It gives me a little bit more control. They both gone in the same direction. I just wanted to split that up a little bit. So I'm going to sticking with my brush just to give us a horizontal line rather than both going vertically, shut down. Okay. Now I can see you saying my little bit is starting to get a little bit right? I'm going to go back to my number ten, brush clean, got hold of the now there are nice dark markings right on that corner of that eye and it starts to make up the muzzle as well. You can see that tapping those in, I got picked up a little bit to go light and also because mine's starting to dry a little bit, I'm going to get that marking in that's running up the nose because that's, again, another nice bit to get in and you've got a nice clear area as well, a white area, weather white marks coming. So you can just for cleaner brush, just take off your excess water and then just pull that down so you gain you reclaim that white paper. She looking okay? I think I need to add some little bit up at the top here. It's got a little bit a little markings up here as well. I'm going to pick up the sug light. Just tap them in so I could want to keep that little bit a little bit lighter. Squint my eyes, that's too much water in there. And white brush, just a tiny of satellite boight in that corner. Now I'm losing that quite nice flick of her eye to put that back in. Again, this is just about right for me to start adding my stripes in, so I'm going to start tapping those in. Okay. That's a, it's probably enough for me get a little bit more strength on. Over the top of the eyes, you see a bit of Goth height and a little bit of the sug light. I'm still quite puddly here, but let's, I can see that's creeping up underneath the eye. Let's get back a bit of multitasking and watching everything going on at the same time. Actually just a little bit more color above the top of the eye. And as that begins to dry, and we want to do a few flicks just from the top of the head, just a few. It's beginning to a little bit dry. Just gonna put a little bit of paint on my brush just to be able to pull those up. Just watch your your side of your hand. You don't put your hand fist in in the wet bit. Yeah, that looks right. I don't want to do too much again. It's still quite wet, but this is beginning to dry. So I'm going to continue working round the nose. I want to get that nice, it's quite dark round there, so you want to start adding some nice color around the round the nose, start to start forming that mouth. Pick up my little brush again, because it is just about the right stage of dryness. I can then start putting that mouth in, it's just soft enough. I'm probably at this number three stage here, that's just going to give me a little bit of softness. We have got the finishing off stages, so we can always have another little play. But ideally we won't be wetting areas down, we'll just be adding bits onto dry paper any bit you want. So you need to get in in this layer taking my brush away, see if I need anything anywhere else, or I'm losing some. Sometimes bits will get Wd or washed away. We had this nice bit of color here on the cheeks, which we put on the first lane. It's got a little bit lost. So I'm just should have my slightly larger brush for this, squint my eyes. I need to keep an eye on that bit. Going all over the place here, not particularly. If your paper is drawing the same rate as mine in the same place, you're fine. We're drawing at different rates. You have to be a guide to your own piece and to judge your paint needs to be applied. Depending on how wet your paper is, you want to put a little bit more strength underneath this are. Let's pick up my filling around with the tiny brush. Let's pick up my number ten, tapping a bit of sug light under underneath that. That's pretty color, a little bit of gray titanium. Keeping my eye on that reference photo, taking my brush away. Seeing how she looks. Yeah, I think she's doing al right to put a little bit of go a little bit of gray, try and get that mouth, chin a little more defined. Yeah, that's looking quite pretty now. I need to I think those down for a second all out of place, I'm sure, but Okay. Just hang onto my CPA, I'll try and start. Get those stripes in there a little bit wet down here, but it's not too bad. Sometimes you can just start and see how it looks, how it feels. Because you might find, depending on your paints and how your paints react, you might find that's just about right. You can always start. If it looks like it's moving too much, just stop and just allow it to dry a little bit more. One going in there. Pop that one down. Take my brush away. Lost a little bit on the head there because I probably started a bit too soon. Let's just put those back in again, running the risk. This is almost dry here, to be a little bit careful. I can still work on here because I'm only working on a small area, in small little bits, but I won't want to be doing a sort of a large wash of color now because this area has dried. Okay. How are we doing? Let me put my brush away a little. Look, I think she's doing all right. Actually, I think she's looking quite pretty. Have a little bit of lapse Lazari down here on that chin. Now the mouth can be, can tell a lot of stories depending on literally how you run this line. You can look sad, happy, smiley. Careful not to go to cartoon, but you don't have to go all the way along. You can add a little bit of color here, leave a bit here that's softer. And then add a little more strength here. Be careful, have a play around. You can almost add it in and take it out. If you don't like almost the character it's giving you, keep, keep this nice and clear ups that's got a bit color my bush. Put those down to keep, make sure I keep that clear underneath the eyes. But it can be taken out on the finishing off bits, so don't worry too much. But if you take it out now, it allows it just to be soft rather than too much of a hard line. If you take it out once the paints dried, you can then end up with quite a hard line. With this way, while it's still nice and soft, you'll end up with a nice soft line. Too hard. I'm getting to that stage where I fiddle too much. This is began to dry. I don't want to fiddle here too much. It's gone off too much now. It's almost dry. Here is quite soggy, so I could continue playing here, but if I'm honest, I feel like I've probably done enough. I know what we haven't done, I haven't done. You just want to go with your CPA. You just go in and do those nostrils. You're almost just going in and painting those nostrils in. That makes sense. I think I can see this is a little bit away away from doing very detailed stuff. Probably have a little tinker in a minute, get that in properly. But yeah, just take your time on that little area. Let's have a look at her what I would quite like to do. Well, this is still drying. I'm just going to wet my brush and drag some of that color down and give us a little bit more sense to that shadow. This, it's almost dry, most of it. And if it runs a little bit, that's lovely. Keep it lovely and soft. I just want to add a little bit more color underneath here. It's lost a little bit. I can just then add a little bit. It's probably enough actually. I probably don't want to do too much more. I can just gently move some of that out into that white area. I can never squeech my finger what I want to avoid any hard lines by doing this, I should avoid anything because it's quite a soft color there. Anyway, we haven't done a very hard, not a lot of paint and it's not a particularly hard line. Should keep it nice and soft. Just keep an eye on it now as that begins to dry, careful about adding too many stripes if this starts to go off. Ideally, I'm not so keen on the very dry this line. When the paper is completely dry, that's nice. If you can, as long as your paper stood a little bit, Dan, you can add a few more little stripes if you're doing a little bit more. If you're feeling like I really want to add more everything's sort drying on me. I'm getting all a little bit muddled. Allow this completely dry. There's absolutely no reason why you can't, once it's dried, re, wet the whole area down again and just start almost doing this layer again, but just adding those stripes in. You don't want to tinker too much because the more layers you add, the mud it can potentially get. But it's another way. Quite often pet portraits, I will do four to five layers. I would let that dry, add another layer if I needed more stripes in there. But I think I'm happy with those stripes. I don't think I want to add too many more. I'm just going to allow that to completely dry and then we can do those very last little tinkery bits. 13. Finishing Off: Right. This is probably my favorite bit now. We're just going to pull it all together. We're going to take off this gum. We're going to do any tinkering that needs doing, if you like a bit of tinkering and really who doesn't, we can sit down, we can take our time. We're not going to be wetting lots of big areas down, making just little bits and pieces we need to. This is a good time to take weight off your feet. Go and get a cup of tea and enjoy this a little bit. But what I would say and which I find useful, and I'm sure many of you probably figured this one out already. If I take a picture of my work at this stage, nothing's fancy to me, it always helps. I can see issues. Hopefully, that doesn't reflect on my phone. Looking at my image, I've taken almost more than I can actually see my actual original pieces sitting in front of me. I quite often finish my portraits by looking at the image on my phone. No, that sounds weird and I'm sure there's a very logical explanation for that, but I find that a useful tip. Let's make sure, really do, make sure this is dry Before we rub out this gum and any pencil mark. I'm going to fairly confident it's dry. I'm just going to very carefully take off these gum splatters and the whiskers can see some of those whiskers are quite chunky, but I have a nice useful tip to make them a little bit smaller. Obviously, if this had been a big painting, they would have been absolutely fine, but they're not a huge piece. But the way bush those away, I'm also going to rub out any pencil marks as well. So it's just going to go in there gently now, especially if they're inside the painting, because you can actually rub some of the paint away. You can almost see how that improves it already. Just taking out the pencil marks that many around the face, some around the chin. And hopefully you haven't gone quite as strong as me either. So I think that's enough for taking out. I don't think I can see too obvious there. I'm going to shut down some of those whiskers as it were. Let's make them not quite chunky, are quite particularly chunky actually. It's very hard to be, to make that gum very light. It's a trickier thing. I picked up the go, I want a similar color that's underneath the whiskers. All I'm doing is just literally just inside some of that white. Let's pick up where is it the light you want to end up with a very hard line like that. But all you have to do is just just gently wet the underneath of it. You can go round all your whiskers if you've made them. You may not, you may have had found a better brush than mine to keep them lovely and thin, but this is quite a nice way to shut some of those down a little bit thinner. Bit of a wrong mismatch of color. Again, you can squeitz it by your finger. Finger is very useful for just sort of softening things down because you're not actually soaking the paint up, you're just squeezing it. I'm quite sure why, but really big, chunky bit there, you can get the gist. We're going to spend a long time here, I can do that. It's not being filmed. I'm going to have a little tinker a bit later on. But you get the general gist. I think you can then shut them down. You can see they now appear more whisker like. You can also add a little bit of white gouache. You need to get this really creamy. It doesn't show up particularly well, but you can paint some on. It works quite well over the darker areas, you can see that. But yeah, it just adds again to the variation, variation on color as well. So what I'm going to do next, I'm just going to go round and take some little bits of color out. Firstly, there's all little white hair here, wasn't there? So you can see on that reference photos a little bit of, a little bit of fluff there. I'm just going to squidge it and just brush it upwards. That will actually give you a little impression of fur as well. Just a little squitchjust bush upwards. See, that's just as giving you a sort of divide line, but not, not anything too hard. Keep an eye on that reference photo and where you think you need light out. We're all going to be, say all our cats are going to look slightly different. Now I'm just going around, I think is quite important. This line underneath the eye and beside the nose, just going to take that out. And again, I can sculpt the eye if the eye has got a little bit big or bit misshape and you can just gently sculpt it, it will be only tiny little tinkers probably. It's quite a nice way to change the shape of the eye if it need be. Again, she's got some nice. If you haven't managed to keep that nice and clear, then we can take that out and say it can end up looking a little hard, but just give the squid of your finger, it usually softens enough. Now I'm going round here, I want to lose this corner here. I know there's color, but I want to almost release that, give it a little bit of a sense of light, Take it out of the kitchen role because I want it gone here. That's looks better already to me. I think where the gum, we I use a quite a lot of gum here. Some of the paint has it's got a bobbled round the gum. I think I've lost some of the shape of the face. Yours might be fine. I say I'm almost tinkering my piece at this stage and hopefully showing you how to alter a little bits and just finish them off. Say I've just put a little bit of color on my brush brush dams, definitely not wet. Just so as you can see, there's a little sense of flick there if you want, this is a little bit more defined, the color, you can do exactly that. Just flick up. When you put the color on your brush, try and make sure the hair is going in the right direction. Obviously, chin hair is coming down, sweeping down this way. If we sweep up, we will create the impression of the chin hair coming into that collar. Doesn't make sense. Okay, same with the mouth. Really? Let's stick with, I'm jumping all over the place that's trying to be methodical. Again, I can put just a little bit more color here if I need, again, not ideal to pull out these colors fluff here when it's very dry. But actually, as long as you've got enough paint, you can flick out when you don't have enough paint and actually paint, paint them onto the edge. They can look a little bit stuck. Have I gone around enough? Yes, I think I have. Doing a little bit that there is this nice line here. I don't know, we lose this a little bit just in the nature of having to wet whole area, but I quite like to have a defined line here for a change. I'm actually going to wet that little portion here, like the top of her thought it would be a muzzle on a dog. Wouldn't it default to dogs, We just just wet that little area down there and I'm going to put a little bit of slight get that off. I'll get that off in a minute with my magic sponge, which I got the pleasure of showing you that a little bit of gram. I just want to get that edge. I want to actually want to create a little bit of a line here. It goes to the corner of that nose, doesn't it? That is also where we can add a little bit more strength. Let's put those two down with the Pia. She's quite dark around her eyes. Just a little tiny bush. I just want to create that sort of darkness that's in the corner of the eye and goes down to the muzzle. If there's any part you think, oh, no, I don't want to be doing that, I don't like the idea of that. Especially the finishing off bits all become a little individual. So don't feel you have to do these. You can just put your brush down and watch and decide at the end, when I finish fiddling what you would like to do to your piece, I just go back into the nostrils, tiding those up a bit. And there's a little tiny little line that runs down the middle. It's just that little crease, but make sure again that goes in the right direction. It's heading to 11:00 All the little things make a difference because obviously got a head a little bit tilted now we'll keep hold of that and I'm just going to pick up the gray titanium mouths. She's got a little bit of an attitude. It's just the way I've painted this corner of this mouth. So I'm just going to a little bit of sepia we can alter that looks better already. I think it was just a little bit of a gap there which is where the paint had run up. They can just take the edge and just soften it down to the chin. Just blend it round. Say, be careful not to do a very obvious smile. What I would be inclined to do is add a little bit of color there and leave a gap in the middle. See what you think. If you see, be like that, you can always join it out. It's harder to take it out. Again, just soften that again. Just squid you your finger. Always Just tiny little movement, tiny little bits of paint. Just take my brush away. See what I'm thinking? I quite like it. He's coming along. I would like this ear. It's got a little bit lost. It's all a little bit merged in. So I'm just going to pull those colors there. Let's grab hold of the go sit and the sulinight paint on your brush would be helpful. Try not to put my hand in anything. Almost want to squinting my eyes. I can see a little bit that kicks around off the ear. Yeah, it's tiny, tiny little thing. Again, I think the thing with the gum, it can create like a little bit of a barrier that stops the paint some sort of running. I think up here I've, I've picked up the sepia. I've had quite a lot of the sort of eyebrow because I've lost it's gone round them a little bit. I want to see if I can put those ears a little bit more defined around those ears. My brush away. I almost want to create a little bit of a line. Although we soften the, that layer. On that very last layer we added that we wet the ear as well as the head to avoid the line. Now I feel like I need a little bit of a line to define it. Only a little, it's only tinier. Say you repeating myself, but yeah, you may find you've already got that already in there now. I think she's looking quite pretty. But I do want to I didn't put quite enough color when I was doing the layer on the leg. I just want to make sure I can see it at the front leg. All I'm going to do, I'm going to wet down. This was a pencil line, so I'm just wetting beyond it into the leg. I'm going to pick slight, something very soft. I don't want to think too hard and I'm just going to get a tiny little bit of color on that edge. Just allow it to bleed in. That's all I probably need. And I will then just gently switch that out on my finger. I don't want to line. Hopefully you can just see now there's a scent of Ellg coming in there. Now, there's magic sponge. I don't know if you've come across these, you probably have. They're actually a cleaning product on Amazon. I'll pop you a link in the projects and resources pages, but they're wonderful, particularly, this is why I initially bought them, is to take little sponges out like that, but you can take, if you're careful, little bits of color using this. They're quite harsh, so be careful because they can take out a lot of color. But you can see she's got some nice color color, even lack nice little white patches just here. Just very carefully. You can almost touch it side it with your finger. That's just taken the color. Where else can I show you? Let's take a little bit of light out of here. You just sort of tap it. If I had a piece a clean kitchen roll convenient on my desk and I can just soak it up. But for taking any splodges any splodges like this, it's amazing the you're working on a I tend to work, I don't often do backgrounds, so it's always tricky to keep your paper very clean and splodge free. So these are brilliant for taking that out. Okay, if you've lost the white, I've managed to retain that quite a nice light there. But again, you can just squidgero that magic sponge there. They're useful. They're useful thing to have. Again, is that I have a little bit of light just underneath that. Muzzle, Muzzle. Cheek? Probably not muzzle. I think I would like to see if I can find the chin again. I'm just taking that off. You can do this, but if you haven't got one of these magic sponges, you can do that with a soft bush as well, then it's probably it's a little easier. There can be a little clunky in these. Yeah, I think that's enough because I can end up taking too much out, but worth the investment. They're not expensive but they're great for this. And soft lines out, if you want to soften a hard edge, that line there would be nice, a useful thing. One other thing. Although we pulled some of that hair out, you can just see the impression there, can't you? But I've got my eradicated brush and I can then take a little bit of color out, see if we can description color out just a little bit. You don't want too much, it's just an impression. You could have done this for gum. And I did try on one of the practice pieces, it looked a little bit too much. If I'm honest, that's enough. I don't really want to do too much. Right. The only other thing, and I think when we were doing the eyes, I said I would show you if they all got a little bit muddy and it's quite small area and we've done quite a few layers over those so they can get a little bit, my lot man to something on hand. Yes, we can take little bits of color out from that eyeball. These eradicated brushes are great for this, but another soft brush will also do the trick. I'm just wiping a little bit of color out just to bring that p of light into the eye. So take your brush away. See what you think. I think she's looking. All right now. Again, I've been same as you. We've been working on this for a little while. So I did a little bit of color at the top of the nose for the brush that's soils quite nice and you can reshape the nose with this. But it will be useful to step away from this piece. I know I always say it, but do come back and look at it with a fresh pair of eyes because it is amazing what you see. Because I think we've been painting together now for a good couple of hours. You almost don't see, even though you can do the, take a photo and look at it on your phone or even a camera surprise. Surprise U. There's nothing quite like coming back and seeing your piece sitting there on the shelf, on the table and going. I can see now I can see what I need adjusting, which you just can't see when you've been painting for this amount of time together. Even if you think you do, you're quite likely to make odd mistakes because you just get tired and you almost get, I say frantic is a little bit wrong, but desperate to get it finished and get it right and looking right. And you don't almost sometimes know what you need to do to make it right. And often where mistakes happen is you rush the end bit, trying to complete your bit. So you've gone, I've finished. But it's well worth stepping away. I'm sure there'd be little bits that would need tinkering with this, especially as I'm always standing a little way away from it. So it's quite hard to get close to it. Like I'll say at some of my later classes, if there's a lot of little tinkerings I think would be helpful for you to see. I will recatill recall a little U in times two, finishing off bits and how I've finished and adjusted my final piece. I think she looks all right. I can't see anything starkly obvious that needs adjusting the whiskers need tidying. I can see that. But I will do exactly what I was doing when I first showed you anyway before I go on and too much. Yes. I hope you enjoyed this class as ever. And thank you for joining me for those who requested the cat. I hope she's lived up to expectations because there was quite a lot that you wanted a cat class. I hope you've enjoyed her. Please do share these on the projects and resources pages. Any questions you got stuck on something, something didn't make sense, so I didn't explain quite well enough. Which more than likely please do put that in the discussions and I'm quite good at getting back to the quite promptly. I do try my best and if I don't then please do re reply and some things do get a little lost along the way. So yes, thank you very much. I am going to carry on waffling if I'm not careful. Thank you very much for joining me and I really look forward to seeing all your pieces. 14. Final Thoughts: I hope you enjoyed the class and it's given you some useful insights on how I paint my own pet portraits. Did you enjoy adding two layers? It's a nice way to build that depth and takes the pressure off having to do it all in one layer. How did your stripes go? It's important to learn about the timing and how your paints and how your paper reacts. It's a really useful thing to learn. What about the eyes? Remember to take your time. Don't panic. And if it gets a little muddled, give yourself five or 10 minutes away and come back to it. As I always say, it's worth stepping away, coming back and looking at your whole painting with a fresh pair of eyes and tweak if you feel necessary. So we look forward to seeing you in the next class.