Color Palette Basics: How to Mix and Paint with Watercolor Greys

1. Welcome!: When I first started watercolor, I didn't know how to properly mix paints. I used the colors that simply came with the palette and left it at that. Little did I know that one of the most misunderstood but best part of watercolor is mixing. Hi there, my name is Audrey. I've been teaching on Skillshare since 2017. I'm a top teacher and you may recognize my loose florals, wreaths, and paintings of nature. I'm so excited to welcome you to my class, Color Palette Basics: How to Mix and Paint with Watercolor Grays. I chose gray because it's the last color that people think of when it comes to watercolor. It's often associated with dullness, dreariness, and gloom and most people would gravitate towards the pinks, purples, and greens. But I want to show you how the color gray can be bright and beautiful when used in the right context. Through this class, you'll increase your color theory knowledge, learn how to paint with values, and paint vibrantly with a limited color palette. This class is for you if you already have a basic understanding of how to paint with watercolors and you're ready to challenge yourself to think more critically about the colors you use in your painting. Well, what are you waiting for? Let's get our brushes and palettes dirty. Start mixing the color gray, and take the next steps in our watercolor journey together. I'll see you in class. 2. Your Project: Your project for this class can be any or all of these suggestions. Gray swatches. Maybe you're not ready to paint something just yet, but you're having fun mixing colors and discovering new grays. Show off your gray swatch grids and share the color combinations you've tried. Cityscape and cat painting. If you followed along with the painting videos, share that painting. Your own painting. Maybe you are inspired to paint something of your own. Think of a winter landscape or a stormy beach or a different animal. I'd love for you to also share your thoughts on color mixing and what new things you learned. Make sure to share your project here on Skillshare. Go to the projects and resources tab on your computer, not a mobile device. Click the button to create a project. Upload your cover image, title, and description, and add more content by clicking these buttons here. Then hit Publish and be proud of what you've accomplished. When you're ready, I'd love it if you could share on social media too. Tag me @AudreyRaDesign and use the hashtag PaintWithAudrey. Now let's get into the class and look at the supplies we need. 3. Supplies: Here are all of the supplies you'll need for this class, watercolor paper. I'll be using 140-pound cold-pressed watercolor paper. I like to buy large pads of paper and then cut them to size. For the paintings, I'll be using five by seven sheets. I'll also be using larger 11 by 7.5 inch sheets for the mixing and swatching sections of this class. Watercolor brushes. I like to use round brushes for painting. You'll need round brushes and sizes 2 and 6 or comparable. For the swatching section, I'll be using a half-inch flat brush. You can still paint with a round brush, but I like the flat brush to paint the squares neatly. I will also be using a five-eighths inch mop brush for your project paintings. Watercolor paints. Watercolor paints come in different forms such as pan, tube, liquid, etc. For this class, I recommend using tube paints for fresh colors. For the tube project painting specifically, I will be using the following colors; ultramarine PB 29, burnt sienna PBr7, violet PV3 and PR81, and chromium oxide green PG17. Please note that the names of your paints may differ from mine, but what's more important is the pigment name. If you are using tube paints, you can easily find them on the tube itself, perhaps on the back of the tube. If you are using pan paints and don't have access to the original wrapping or if you didn't take notes, that's okay. If you know the paint brand, you can look up the color on their website and get the pigment name that way. For this class, it's more important that the pigments match rather than the paint name. For the mixing and swatching, I will be using a variety of colors for demonstration purposes. If you have the same colors, that's great. But even if you don't, it's important to watch in order to understand color theory. Here are the various colors I will be using in the later videos. Viridian green hue PG7, black PBk6, brown red PBr25, red ocher PR101, yellow ocher PY42 and PY83, cerulean PB15, Prussian blue PB15:3, red PR17, yellow lemon PY3, PW6. It's important to note that I'm using mostly ShinHan watercolor paints and Lukas watercolor paints. Sketches. Make sure to download the sketches in the project resources or click on the link in the class description. There are three sketches; the swatch sketch, the cityscape sketch, and the cat sketch. Aside from these watercolor specific supplies, you will also need the following tools; a pen and pencil, an eraser, paper towel or cotton rag, jars of water, a light pad or you can use a sunny window, artist tape, washi tape or painter's tape, a ceramic palette or other plate tray or large surface to mix your colors, and a spray bottle of water. Now that you have all of your supplies, let's discuss why painting with gray is important. 4. Why Painting with Greys is Important: In this video, let's discuss why painting with gray is important. I believe there are three reasons why this practice is important. Number 1, you will increase your color theory knowledge. Number 2, your paintings will be more vibrant, and number 3, you will understand how to paint with values. Let me expound on these points a little bit more. Increase your color theory knowledge. Up until now, if you have used gray in your paintings, you either water down your black or used a convenience gray color like Payne's gray or Davies gray. But you may not have stopped to look at the pigments that make that color, or you didn't know that you could mix your own unique gray color. Later in this class, we'll discuss how to use color theory to make your own unique grays and you may be surprised at how easy it is to create your own grays. Your paintings will be more vibrant. With watercolor oftentimes less is more, and sometimes a less pigments that you use, the better. For example, I painted this blue jay two different times using slightly different colors. The first time I used cerulean blue, burnt sienna, and a watered-down black for the gray. The second time I used ultramarine blue, burnt sienna, and a mixture of the two for the grays. In both instances, there's color harmony because of the blue and brown mixtures. But in my opinion, the grays and the second blue is a little bit more dynamic because of the various values I was able to achieve. Because of the granulation of the paints, created an interesting texture and effect. In the paintings you'll be doing in this class, we'll be using complimentary colors to mix our grays. In the cityscape painting will be doing, you can see how the mixture of the orange and blue made the gray. Then using that same orange and blue in the painting mix those colors really stand out. Using complimentary colors in a painting will do that. It will bring out the best of those colors when used properly. You will understand how to paint with values. Value is the relative lightness or darkness of a color. Now when I first started watercolor, I knew that adding water to my paint would make the color lighter. But I also thought that if I wanted to paint a darker color, I would mix black into the paint. I quickly learned from that mistake and became less shy about liberally using up my paint. Because there's a tendency in us to try and stretch out the use of our supplies for as long as possible. But in the end, that's only hurting the quality of our paintings and you are also missing out on how to paint properly. In your projects, you're going to paint a variety of values of the gray that you create. In this cat painting, you see a really dark, almost black color. But it's not black. It's simply a very dark value of the gray that was mixed using the purple and green colors. But you also see a very light gray around the face and mouth. In the cityscape, you see the dark colored branches. This is simply a dark value of the gray that was mixed using the brown and blue. You see very light values of the gray in the building background. Knowing how to paint with various values will create a more interesting painting and give your subject a more realistic look. This class is going to help you think more critically when painting. Instead of reaching for the most convenient paint color, think about how you can mix and create a unique color to bring visual harmony to your paintings. In the next video, let's begin our exploration of how to mix to get a gray color. 5. 5 Common Ways to Mix Greys: In this video, I will briefly explain five ways to create a gray color. Number 1, black plus water. This is by far the easiest way to make a gray by simply using a lighter value of a black color. The color black is usually part of a basic watercolor palette, so this is a great place to start. Number 2, black plus a second color, plus water. This is a great way to add a unique gray if you don't have a variety of other colors to make gray. Here are some examples of black plus a different color like yellow, ocher, green, purple, and burnt sienna. Number 3, a convenience gray plus a second color. Similar to number 2, you can mix a convenience gray such as Payne's gray or Davy's gray, with a second color to create another gray. Here are some examples of a Payne's gray, a cool color, mixed with other colors. Number 4, primary colors. The primary colors red, yellow, and blue can be mixed to create black. Then you can water it down to make a gray. Note that using warm or cool variations of the primary color will affect how your gray turns out. In this swatch, I mixed red, yellow ocher, and Prussian blue, all of them on the warm side, and they created a very dark gray color. In this swatch, I mixed cool primary colors such as cerulean, lemon yellow, and Alizarin crimson, and it created a lighter gray. In both instances, you can modify the gray to make it more warm or cool by adjusting the amount of primary colors you're mixing, or mixing up the warm and cool primary colors. To make it more warm, add more yellow and red. To make it cooler, add more blue. Number 5, complimentary colors. This is my favorite way to mix grays, especially when I'm going to use those same colors in the final painting. This is also the method by which we will be doing our project paintings. Using the color wheel, you can locate complementary colors, or opposite colors. You do need to be careful though, because sometimes mixing complimentary colors will result in a muddy brown color. The key to a nice gray color is to mix blues and greens with oranges and earthy colors. Here are some of the various grays I was able to mix with complimentary colors. The reason I prefer this method over watering down black, or mixing primary colors is because using complimentary colors allows you to use as little as two pigments. You'll notice in watercolor paints that when you mix too many pigments together, the muddier, and more unpredictable your color will be. When you look at most convenience gray colors, it will have at least three pigments. For example, Payne's gray from the Winsor and Newton Cotman line has three pigments, PBK7, PB29, and PB15. This is basically a mixture of black, ultramarine, and Prussian blue. The neutral tint gray from Lucas has four pigments. PY153, PV19, PB15: 1, and PG7. Now if I were to mix this gray with a second color, that's adding at least one, if not two or more pigments. While it is convenient to do this, it could affect the quality of the mixed color, and dull the vibrancy. But when you use two complimentary single pigment colors, you only have two pigments, which makes for a more vibrant, clean color, which you'll learn more about in the next video. Now that you know the five common ways to mix gray, let's dive deeper into doing the mixing ourselves. 6. Mixing Our Own Greys: In this lesson, we're going to create our own swatch grids of various color mixtures to make gray. If you'd like to make the same swatch grid, take an 11 by 15 inch sheet of paper and cut it in half so that it's 11 by 7.5 inches. If you don't have a printer or cutting machine, no worries. You can still create the swatch by just free handing your swatches. Grab the swatch grid file in the class resources or in the class description link. The file can be used in two ways. You can use the JPEG file to print and then use a light pad to trace the squares. You can use the PNG file with your cutting machine like a Cricut or a silhouette, and then cut out the squares. Either way, prepare the grid and draw the squares on your 11 by 7.5 inch sheet of paper. I use several of these grids to show the different ways of mixing your own grays. Since your project is going to use complimentary colors, let's focus on that. Orient your paper horizontally so that you have eight columns and six rows. We will use the first two squares for the complimentary colors. The third will be the mixed gray at the darkest value. Then the rest of the squares will be the same gray in lighter values. This swatch grid is helpful because you'll be able to see the original colors, the mixture, and the values. If you don't have these same colors, that's okay. Try to work with the colors that you do have. Or if you don't have enough complimentary colors, feel free to use the other methods like mixing black plus a color, or a convenience gray and a color. Let's start with our first color combination, ultramarine PB29 plus burnt sienna, PBr7. Now the first square will be ultramarine. Second square will be the burnt sienna. The third square will be the gray. Use your spray bottle to prep and activate your paints. I'm going to use a round size 6 brush for this exercise. Let's start with the ultramarine. I'm going to grab it from my palette here and then move it into the ceramic palette. I want to try to get the darkest value of this color, so my brush is not too wet and my paint is not very watery. Now I'm going to use my half-inch brush, pick up the paint, and paint in the square. Let's do the same for the burnt sienna. I'm going to drop the burnt sienna on the other side of this palette because I'm going to mix them very soon to make the gray. You know what, I'm just going to stay with my round brush and paint the squares. Now let's mix. As you're mixing, you can probably tell within the palette whether it's making a more muddy color or a more gray color. As you're mixing, try to adjust as you go. At this point, it looks more brown than gray. I'm going to add just a touch of the blue, just a little bit at a time to make it more gray, there we go. Again, my brush is not very wet and my paint is not very runny, so I'm going to get a fairly dark value. Look at that. We start with the darkest value here, and now I'm going to wash out my brush little by little to remove the pigment and add some water to get lighter values. All I'm going to do is just swish around my brush in the jar just for a second, maybe even less. Just dip it in just for a second, take it out, blot for another half second, then paint the next square, and it should be visibly lighter. Now, if you went too light, that's okay, just bring in some of the gray that you already mixed and just add that. You don't want to go too light because we want to show that range of values. Do it again. Swish, blot, paint the next square. Your squares don't have to be perfectly painted, so don't worry about that, it's okay to go outside the lines just a little bit. Just keep washing out and blotting until you get lighter and lighter values and your last square should be almost as light as possible. That's our first color combination. Let's keep going. Our next color combination is the red ocher PR101 and ultramarine. Let's take that same ultramarine that we used earlier, drop it in our ceramic palette. I'm going to paint the second square this time with it. Wash out your brush. I'm going to pick up my red ocher color. Again, I want really thick colors. Make sure not to use too much water. I'm going to paint this first square with it. Now let's mix. Again, as you're mixing, take a look at this; this is very brown. It's almost reddish brown, I definitely need to add a lot more blue. I think even more blue than that, and just add just little bits at a time. You don't want to go too far the other way, because then you'll end up adding too much of that paint. What you'll notice about this one is that this color is a little bit more purple gray than the ultramarine and burnt sienna combination, and that's because of the red in the red ocher color. Red plus blue makes purple. Once you have a nice purply gray, I think that's when you can stop. Again, to get lighter values, simply dip your brush in the water just for half a second, blot, and then paint our next square. Just keep going. You can already start to see a range of grays from warm to cool. Let's see what else we can make. The next color combination is cobalt violet and chromium oxide green. Let's start with the violet. Now, the green. Let's mix. This is the color combination that we're going to use for our cat painting. I hope you like the gray that it creates. Wow, I think I got the right mixture of both the purple and green. Let's go ahead and paint that third square. I love this. This for me creates a very neutral gray. It's not quite warm, it's not quite cool, it's pretty neutral. The next complementary color combination, red and viridian hue. Again, if you don't have some of these exact colors, that's okay. Just try to use as close to these colors as possible. If you don't have red, but you have a red-orange, try to see what that looks like. Now my viridian hue is very saturated. I mean, look at this. I barely grabbed it from the palette, and it's so richly pigmented. It's not that quite common to see a green that has a single pigment. This green is just one pigment, PJ7. Because of that, two single pigment colors is going to create a really rich color. Let's see what it looks like. I'm going to add just a little bit more of the green, and it creates this almost black color. Can you see that? Make sure to mix your paints quite thoroughly, Here we go. Look at this. This is the darkest gray I've ever seen. Two more color combinations to go. We've got alizarin crimson plus viridian hue again. It'll be interesting to compare the alizarin crimson plus viridian and the red plus viridian because the alizarin crimson is a cool primary color. Let's see how that gray turns out. Let's add the green, and now let's mix. Definitely had way too much green. Just add touches of the red until you get a nice dark gray color. You know what, it was still a little bit too green. I think, unfortunately, I did mess up on this color because I think I didn't wash out the green properly from my brush, and so you can start to see in this square right here, it's mostly a green hue. That's my fault. Make sure to wash out your brush thoroughly. Now see the last combination, brown-red PBr25 plus prussian blue. Now let's mix. Definitely needs some more brown. This is making a beautiful gray too. Let's see how it swatches. This created a very neutral gray as well. I'm liking that color combination. Great job in painting this swatch grid of complementary colors and the gray mixtures. If you're curious about the other swatches I've created, or other color combinations I've done to make my gray collection, download my ultimate grays sheet in the project resources. Before going into the projects, take some time to get to know your paints. Create your own swatch grids. Play around with your convenience grays and blacks to make new gray colors. Experiment with different color combinations and see if it makes gray. If it does, great, if it doesn't, then, you know, take notes and you can remember that for next time. Once you've exhausted your color palette and painted all kinds of color combinations to make grays, let's go ahead and start practicing and apply our grays to our paintings. Make sure to watch the next video if you need some warm-up practice with the wet-on-wet method. If you're fairly confident with this method, feel free to skip it and I'll see you in the following video. 7. Wet-on-Wet Practice: We're going to use primarily the wet-on-wet method to paint both the cityscape and the cat. This video is for those who feel like they need a refresher or warm-up practice before painting the final projects. I love to use the wet-on-wet method when painting subjects like landscapes and animals. It helps me cover large areas with a soft wash and keeps me from overthinking and over-planning. While the wet-on-wet method can be unpredictable and frustrating, I want to help you with some warm-ups in order to control where your paint goes. First, grab some watercolor paper. It can be any size, next, with a pen or pencil, draw, six squares, mine are about two inches wide. They don't have to look perfect. As for the brush, I'll be using a round size six, and for the pink color, you can use anything. Maybe you can use up the grays that you mixed earlier while we were swatching. In each of these squares, we're going to practice different ways of controlling the paint. The biggest tip I have for the wet-on-wet method is to understand how wet your paper is, and then control how much water there is on your paint, and on your brush. Let's prepare our paint first. Spray a little bit of water into your paint and activate it. Just a little bit and swirl it around with your brush. Now if it's too runny, it's going to be too watery and the paint is going to spread really quickly and the color will be diluted on the paper immediately. What you can do to get a thicker consistency of paint is to either add some more paint fresh from the pan or tube or make sure to blot your brush before picking up this paint. Now let's start with the first square. Fill the square with clean water. Hold your paper at an angle periodically to see how wet your paper is. You want to see a shine, but still see the texture of the paper. If you're seeing water that's pooling, it's too wet and your paint won't spread beyond the pool. Blot your brush. Now, touch your brush anywhere in that square and observe how the paint is spreading. It's okay if it spreads too fast, just make a note of it. Notice how it's spreading fairly slowly, now watch what would happen if my paint was too watery. Do you see how that's spreading really quickly? It's spreading really quickly, and then the color has been diluted so just take a moment and take notes of what just happened in that first square. In the second square, let's fill it with clean water again, but this time let's concentrate on adding the paint just around the border. Again, hold it at an angle periodically to see the shine. Now, this time I want to add the paint around the border, but I don't want it to spread too far into the center of the square so I really have to make sure that my paint is not too runny or watery, and that my water is not pooling at the edges. Now blot your brush, pick up your paint, make sure it's not so runny, and here we go. Do you see how there's just a little bit of spread into the water or into the wet paper, but it's not spreading like crazy. Again, take a moment to take notes of what happened. In our third square let's add our water again, and this time I want you to paint horizontal lines and make sure that there is some space in-between the colored lines. Make sure to blot your brush before you pick up your paint and now let's paint our lines. Watch how it's spreading just a little bit, but there's a lot of control because I made sure that my paper is wet, but not overly wet and that my brush is not too wet because I blotted it and my paint is not so runny and watery because I made sure to use a thicker consistency. In the fourth square, again, let's add clean water and this time start with a lighter value or drop in lighter values and then while that square is still wet, add darker values. To add darker values, you can simply pick up your paint directly from the pan or from the tube. I'm going to use a watered-down ultramarine, and then drop in pure ultramarine for the darker values. Again, blot your brush that it's fairly dry, and then pick up your paint. Here's my lighter values, I'm just painting some circles in the corners. Watch how it's spreading, and now while it's still wet and I wash out my brush, blot it, pick up the paint fresh from the palette, and then drop it in there and it should still spread a little bit because it's not completely dry paint and it's still spreading a little bit. For the last two squares, draw some smaller circles within your squares. I'm going to draw three small circles, and in each of them we're going to do the opposite. In this square we're going to paint inside the circle, so drop the paint just inside and for the last square we're going to add the paint outside of those circles so we want the circles to be white, but I'm going to challenge you and still cover that entire square with water. The idea is going to be making sure that you can control where the paint goes. Now, I will mention another technique called lifting, which means like erasing the paint. When you lift paint, you want to do it while the paint is still wet, and you can use a dry brush to pick up that excess paint so it's just going to make it lighter it's not necessarily going to erase it completely, but it's just going to make it a little bit lighter. Once you've got your square filled with water, let's pick up our paint. I'm going to use that same ultramarine. Again make sure that your brush is fairly dry and try to paint and stay within the circles. Now, it's okay if it spreads out just a little bit but what you don't want to see is this paint spreading like wildfire see how I'm controlling it very well. Now if you wanted to try what we did in the fourth square by adding the darker value, try that too. Add that to the centers, and now they look like blueberries. Now, let's work on the last square. Again, add the water to the entire square, but now the challenge is going to be adding the color and avoiding the squares or the circles. Now, I did forget to demonstrate the lifting so if we go back to the fifth square, so this paint that's spreading outside of the lines if I wanted to erase that or lift it, then I can make sure that my brush is fairly dry and then simply rub my brush along that pencil line, and then pick up that excess paint that went rogue and notice how it slowly disappears and make sure to blot your brush in-between the lifting so that you're removing that excess paint and not re-introducing it into your painting. Now you have clean circles. Let's go back to our last square, I'm just re-wetting it. Pick up your paint, make sure it's not too watery, and now I'm going to drag my paint and brush around the circles and try to avoid getting the paint inside, but even if you do, you can use the lifting method to try to avoid it and clean it up. I'm going to go ahead and just fill in the entire square, and then as soon as I do that, I'm going to go back and lift the areas so that the circles are a little bit more obvious. Now I'm just blotting the brush and then picking up that excess paint. Good job with these warm-up exercises, I know this was just a quick practice so if you want to keep practicing, draw some more squares and challenge yourself, or instead of squares, draw organic shapes. Once you feel comfortable with this method, let's go on to the next two videos, where we will apply our knowledge of grades and paint a cityscape and a cat together. 8. Cityscape painting: In this video, you're going to mix a gray color using complimentary colors and applying them to a cityscape painting. This cityscape is of Chicago where I live, and this iconic sculpture is nicknamed The Bean. This photo is from Unsplash or royalty-free photo site. First, let's get our sketch ready. I'm using a five-inch by seven-inch sheet of watercolor paper, and the sketch can be found in the project resources. You can trace the sketch by either using a light pad or tape the sketch to the back of the watercolor paper and use a sunny window to trace. Next, use artist's tape to position your paper on your work surface. We're going to use the wet-on-wet method to paint and taping your paper will prevent it from buckling. For this painting, I'm using the ultramarine PB29 and burnt sienna mixture PBr7. Let me squeeze some of each color into my palette. We're going to start with a small amount because you can always add more if you need to. Have some scrap watercolor paper available so you can swatch and test your mixed colors. Now before we begin painting, let me walk you through the general steps because once we get started with the wet-on-wet method, it will move fairly quickly. In general, we will move from lightest to darkest value. One of the first things I like to do, especially if I'm working from a reference photo, is to desaturate the colors so that I can look at the values. Once you do that, you can really see where the lightest and darkest values are and that will help you plan your painting. First, we're going to cover the sky and tree areas with clean water and apply our lightest ultramarine and burnt sienna values. As it's drying, we'll add the medium and darker values of the ultramarine and burnt sienna. Next we will work on the bottom half of the painting around The Bean and paint and grade the buildings and the foreground. Then we'll paint The Bean itself. Notice how the top half has various gray, blue and burnt sienna colors in various values. We'll use mostly the wet-on-dry method for this part. As the layers are drying, we will mix the darkest value of the gray and paint in details like the branches, railings, windows and other shadows. Finally, if you'd like, you can add some splatter with the burnt sienna for the leaves. Now, since my style is more loose, I omitted a lot of the details that you see in the photograph, especially on the buildings. I instead focus on the details more on The Bean and the foliage because they are in the foreground. Let's go ahead and mix our grays. In two of my walls, I put both the ultramarine and burnt sienna in there so I can just mix them directly together. I think I need a little bit more burnt sienna in this one. Now I do want to swatch this and see what it looks like. Yes, that's a great gray right there. Let me just get some lighter values to see. Wonderful. I'm going to take that gray now that I like it and just move it to the middle and add a lot of water to it. Because that's going to be my lightest value. I'm going to use my mop brush to add lots of water to my painting. I'm going to use my size six brush to drop in the colors. Then the size two round brush for the final details at the end. For this first part of the wet-on-wet method, I'm only going to add water to the areas above The Bean. Right about here and above. The mop brush is great for this because it can hold a lot of water. It just distributes it really nicely. Again, make sure that your paper is just wet enough. Now I'm going to take the lightest value of my ultramarine, just add a little bit of water to that. Then add in the sky. I want to leave some white spots. Just like our practice, I want to add some of that darker value. Just here and there. Now I want to add some of that lighter burnt sienna for the tree. Again, leave some white space here too. Now while it's still wet, I'm going to add in some of that darker value. I'm just being very loose with my approach. I'm going to take some of that light gray and then add it to my buildings in the background. It's a very light wash. Now I'm going to add water to the bottom half of the painting right around The Bean, using my mop brush again for that. I'm dragging some of that burnt sienna down, but that's okay. I want to go right around The Bean. Use that gray color to add to the background buildings here. Some of the foreground has a little bit more of the burnt sienna, starting a little bit more to the background buildings. Now the area underneath The Bean is going to be fairly dark because it's in the shadows. I've established that dark shadow area. I'm also going to add another shadow layer to my buildings up here. My paper is still a little bit wet, so that's good. Again, lift as necessary. Now we need to wait for this painting to dry. While that is happening, let's get to work on the bean. At the bottom half of the bean is going to be a little bit darker. I add a little bit more gray or get a thicker consistency of that gray. I'm just going to paint that in. As I do that, I want the bottom part of that bean to have a darker value so that we can make the illusion that it's a 3D shape. Next, for the top half of the bean, I want to start with that sky first. I'm going to start with that light ultramarine blue. Note where the highlights are, meaning where the white parts are going to be. There's some concentration of the blue here for the sky. I'm going to add some more of the darker values right there, I wash out my brush and drag that light ultramarine around the sides. They're really trying to preserve the white space. Then towards the right, I'm also going to try to preserve some more white space because that's where the buildings are at. I'm going to pick up some of the burnt sienna in a thicker value or darker value and then run it along the middle line because this is going to emulate the foliage. You want a fairly thick consistency so that it doesn't bleed into the blue or the gray below. There are also some other shadow details so use the dark gray. Going to add them to the corners here. I'm going to add some more of the darkest values to some of the shadow areas here in the foreground. I'm going to use a slightly lighter or medium value of that same gray and then add another layer of wash to the buildings. Going to use the darkest value of the burnt sienna to add some more details to some of these stonework up here. All I'm doing is just outlining the walkway. I start adding some windows and use a very thick consistency of the ultramarine. You can make it a little bit grayer if you want. I'm just going to add them just very loosely here on some of these buildings. It's okay if it bleeds a little bit. It doesn't have to look perfect. The buildings in the background, they're just to give you an indication. They're not really there to have any concrete details. I'm going to switch to my size 2 round brush. These are the final details, so make sure that your painting is completely dry before you move on. I use that darkest value of the gray paint that we mixed up and then start adding some of the final details like the railings and the branches. For these branches, I'm going to use the very tip of my brush and really just the lightest touch. I'm also going to take my size 2 round brush and use a very thick consistency of the burnt sienna to add some more leaf details right around where I painted the branches. I'm just dotting it right around it. If you wanted to add some splatter, use your round size 6 brush and water down that burnt sienna, make it really watery, and then hold your brush close to the paper and then just tap on it. Great job in painting this cityscape. In the next video, let's mix another gray using complementary colors and paint a cat. 9. Cat Painting: In this video, you're going to mix grays and complementary colors and apply them to a painting of a cat. I have a cat of my own, and although he's not gray, I thought an animal would be a great subject for painting in grays. Other animals that you might want to consider painting on your own are rabbits, wolves, dogs, birds, rhinoceros, etc. Take the principles you learned in this painting and apply them to your next painting. I found this beautiful gray cat from Unsplash or royalty-free photo site, and let's do the same to this photo as we did to the cityscape. When we desaturate this photo, you can see that the darkest values are right around the eyes, the forehead, and the corners of the ears. Note also where the lightest values are because that contrast of light and dark will make your subject and colors really stand out. Let's get our sketch ready. I'm using a 5 by 7 sheet of watercolor paper and the sketch can be found in the project resources. You can trace the sketch by either using a light pad or tape the sketch to the back of the watercolor paper and use a sunny window to trace. Next, use artist's tape to position your paper on your work surface. We're going to use the wet-on-wet method and taping it down will keep it from buckling. For this painting, I'm using the violet PV3, and PR81, and Chromium Oxide Green colors PG17. Let me squeeze some of that each color into my palette. We're just going to start with a small amount because a little goes a long way, especially using two paints. Before we begin painting, let me walk you through the general steps because once we get started with the wet-on-wet method, it will move fairly quickly. In general, we're going to move from lightest to darkest values. In the first step, we're going to cover the entire face except the eyes with clean water and then lay down the lightest gray value. While it's still wet, we're going to add darker values and just let it spread organically. We'll also add in hints of purple along the ears and the nose in a light value. Once the face layer is dry, we will then work on the eyes and the darkest value details. Remember the wet-on-wet practice that we did earlier so that you can have some control over how the paint spreads. Let's mix our grays. I'm going to takes some of my chromium oxide green here and mix it into my purple. I do have some scrap paper ready just in case. I'm not sure how this looks so far. It's hard to tell, but let's just swatch it out. I feel like it's a little on the green side. Let me just add just a little bit of purple. Make sure to incorporate it really well. There we go. Yeah, I feel like that looks a little better. I think that's a good gray. I'm going to take some of that gray. That's going to be the darkest value, but I want to move some of that to another well, so I can add a lot of water to it to get the lightest value. Go ahead and use my mop brush to add water to my cat. Again, avoiding the eyes. Remember we're going to start with the lightest values and use the reference photo to figure out where to place the colors first and which areas to avoid it. I pick up that really light gray. Make sure my paper is not too wet. Here we go. Start here in the forehead. We've got some grays happening here onto the bridge of the nose. Little bit here along the ears. Right here from the eye out to the cheeks. Right around the eyes too on either side of the nose. Right here on this under lip where the bottom half of the lip. Let's start adding some of that darker value grays. Really concentrate them in the forehead and right around the ears. Right here around the nose and the inner corners of the eyes. Let the paint just spread and do its thing. Now while this is still pretty wet, I'm going to add a little bit of a very light purple along the ears and the nose. I know that the nose is actually more pink than purple, but for the purposes of using these complimentary colors, I want to keep it purple. I'm going to switch to my size 2 brush and start painting in the eyes. Now for the eyes and starting with the green and I'm going to make the top half of the green of the eyes a darker value. Then wash out my brush and then paint the rest of the eye in a lighter value. You have that beautiful gradient happening. Same thing with the other eye. The top half will be a darker value. Wash out your brush, and then paint the rest of it. I'm going to use a really dark gray to paint the other details in the eyes. I'm going to outline the nose just a little bit painting the nostrils. My paper is still a little wet, so I might come back to that and define the nose a little bit more. Define the lips and the mouth a little bit using just very short strokes to outline the chin. Use that same dark value of the gray to outline the ears and then draw some very fine furs for the hair. Finally, I want to add some whiskers and again, use very light strokes for this. If your paper is still wet, that's okay. Come back to it later. Just going to erase the pencil lines around the border. There you go. Great job painting this count with me. I can't wait to see yours. Join me in the last video as I share some final thoughts. 10. Final Thoughts: Congratulations on finishing this class. I hope you had fun exploring your color palette, mixing grays, and painting using only three colors. Don't forget to post your project and show off how beautiful the color gray can be. A couple of tips before you go. Number 1, take notes on everything. Whenever you're exploring something new, like a mixture of colors or a new technique, take notes, mark the date on the sheet of paper or the sketchbook that you're using because you never know when that information may come in handy. Number 2 remember less is more, especially when we're talking about pigments. Be selective with which colors you're mixing and try to keep the number of pigments to three or less. Last but not least, challenge yourself. Perhaps this was the first time you painted with mostly gray colors or only a few colors. It's actually a lot of fun when you limit yourself and focus on painting values rather than trying to get the colors right. You'll be amazed at what you can accomplish. Now that you've painted a cityscape and an animal, try something else. Maybe you'll try a landscape or a seascape, or paint a bird. I'd love to see what you paint with your grays. Well, that's it from me. Thank you so much for taking my class. I hope it was valuable to your understanding of color mixing and that you had fun exploring and experimenting. I'd love to hear from you. Please share your project. Post in the discussion section of this class. Shoot me an email or find me on social media @AudreyRaDesign. Happy painting and I'll see you next time. Bye.