Create a One-of-a-Kind Watercolor House Portrait

1. Introduction: hi and welcome to create a one of a kind watercolor house portrait. I'm Carly, and in this class I'll walk you step by step through a very straightforward and accessible way to create your very own customhouse portrait. I went to school for mechanical engineering and worked in Silicon Valley as a software developer and designer. But I've been an artist all my life, and I am thrilled to be bringing this last year on skills. This class is for anyone with genuine interest in making their own house portrait. Regardless of skill level. You'll need a few very basic art supplies, but we'll save all the details for a future lesson. If this all sounds intimidating to you, don't worry. I'll break everything down into simple steps to make everything very accessible for you along the way, step by step. If you could mostly color inside the lines, I think will do just fine. Now, some water color experience will be very helpful, but it's by no means necessary. In this class. I'll talk about what supplies you need, how to choose your subject, collect reference material, how to set up for sketching your house and the whole process of taking your project from pencil to ink and finally, watercolor. Why Vega House portrait. Aside from the fact that they're fantastic, meaningful gifts, they're also very beginner friendly. Yep, that's right. By and large, houses are made up mostly of straight lines and simple shapes. My method will help you get the broad strokes right so you can have fun with all the details. Join me and let's create some one of a kind custom house portrait's together. I can't wait to see all your projects, and I'm so excited to dive right in with you up in the next lesson. Let's just jump right in and start talking about your supplies and your workspace. 2. Supplies and Workspace: Now what do you really need to get started on your project? As it turns out? Not as much as you might think. First, let's talk about setting of your workspace, where you'll actually be doing your drawing in your painting. I'm filming this class in my workspace, a k a. My dining room on our old beat up dining table. It's big, it's flat. It's next to some windows, so I've got decent light. It works now. This is all dressed to say that you don't need a studio or other dedicated workspace for your art. A dining room table is more than sufficient. All you really need is enough light so you can see what you're doing and enough space to put down all of your supplies your water colors, pencils, pens, whatever it is that you happen to be using. So don't freak out if you don't have some kind of fancy workspace. Speaking off, let's talk about your supplies. Like I said, you don't need much, but you will need a few basics. First of all, you only paper to draw and paint on. This is the pad I use, and I'll provide Amazon links to everything I can in the class worksheet. It's Bristol board, So not technically, a watercolor paper, but I find it does a great job. Anyway, One thing I like is it smoothness? Most watercolor papers have a lot of texture, and since we'll be drawing with pencils and pens and erasing a fair bit, it's nice to have a smoother surface. If you prefer watercolor paper, by all means, use it. Just make sure whatever paper you're using is thick enough so that it won't warp when you paint on it. A quick test or Google search can help you figure this out for whatever paper you choose. Next up pencils. You can use anything you like here, as long as you could erase it fairly easily. Speaking of, you'll need an eraser of some kind. I like to have a separate eraser just because the erasers on pencils themselves tend to be so small. Do some tests with your pencil and eraser before you start, so you know you'll be able to erase when the time comes. Next, you'll need some waterproof pens. Waterproof is pretty important here, since we'll be painting over our pen drawings. I like these micron pens. They're popular with lots of artists, but you can use any kind you like. If you're not sure if they're waterproof, do a quick test draw line on your paper, wet your finger or a brush and swipe over your line. If it bleeds, it's no good. Finally, you'll need your watercolor supplies for me. This includes my watercolor paints, rushes, a cup of water and a paper towel. My water colors and brushes are not anything fancy. Whatever you can pick up online or your local art store should suffice. If you're serious about watercolors, by all means pick up some nice paints and brushes, but you certainly don't need to spend a lot of money to create a great house portrait. My paints are pretty basic in sheep I like. Using the lid is my mixing palette, but feel free to use a plate or something else to mix colors if you like. I only have one brush that I use for these House Portrait's. It's a size four. Honestly, I only use this when doing a house portrait. It's a great all purpose size for the stale, so I could do details and bigger sections like the roof with control. But ultimately it's all about personal preference. Just don't feel like you need to go out and spend a ton of money on any of this. Like I mentioned before, all provide links to everything that I used in the class handout. Hopefully, you've got a few things on hand already, so gather your supplies, and in the next video, we'll talk about how to choose what to draw. 3. Selecting Your Subject: Hopefully, now you're equipped with everything that you'll need to create your one of a kind customhouse portrait. Now let's talk about how to choose which house to draw. The best subjects for your house portrait are meaningful. A meaningful subject gives you lots of motivation to get started and keep chugging away. If you're planning to give your house portrait as a gift, and it could be to yourself, chances are you already know what you'd like to paint and why. But if not, think about the places that you've called home could be your childhood home, your favorite coffee shop anywhere you call special and familiar your love of your subject or your recipient. If you're creating a gift, will shine through in your painting. Next. The best subjects for your house portrait are ones you're able to visit in person. This is because gathering reference materials for your painting is so much easier when you can physically be there taking photos. We'll talk about gathering reference materials in the next lesson, but know that your options are much more limited if you can't visit the site yourself. Finally, the best subjects for your house portrait are ones that aren't too busy, meaning they aren't excessively large or extremely ornate, with tons of details are obscured by tons of trees and foliage. That doesn't mean you can't still paint a subject with a lot going on. It may just make things a little more difficult for this project. Simpler is better. Hopefully, this has helped you narrow down your choices. And now you have a house in mind that you're excited about painting for your first assignment. Please post which house you've chosen and why. To your project page for me. I'll be painting the house that my husband and I first moved into right after we got married. In the next lesson, let's dive into collecting reference material for your house. 4. Gathering Reference Material: Okay, now that you've chosen your house, it's time to start collecting reference materials. Your goal in this step is to end up with one photo that defines your composition, and I mean that literally. However, you want your final portrait toe look. That's exactly what this photo should look like. You'll also optionally collect a few other photos to help with details that may be hard to parse in your main photo, like windows or trees or lights. Any details that don't show up well and you'd like to include now how do you collect these photos now? By far, the best way to collect reference images is to jump behind the camera and take them yourself. That's why it's so much easier on you if you've chosen a subject that you could actually visit in person. If not, we'll go over your options a little bit later. The best reference images will both flatter your subject and be of high enough quality, but they give you insight into all the details that you'd like to include in your painting . Like I said, your best bet is to show up in person, camera in hand. We'll dive into that in just a minute in a pinch if you can't visit your location, but someone else you know can have them take the photos for you after giving them some simple guidance. Otherwise, you can check real estate listings for some usually professional quality photos of the house. Websites like Zillow or Redfin are great places to start if the house has been listed for sale in the not too distant past. If none of the above options air working for you, you're not totally out of luck. Yet. It's possible you might have some success with Google Street View. If they're camera happened to grab a good angle and things aren't too blurry. The other place you might check is your local main library. Often there will be photo archives, and there's a small chance your house might show up. Now, all that said, taking the photos yourself or having someone else take the photos for you is strongly preferred. You'll have the most control over how your final painting looks. If you're the one in charge of gathering your reference material, which brings us to so how do you take these photos? I'll start by saying you don't need a fancy camera. Any modern phone will take a photo that's plenty high quality. Enough to stand is your main reference image here. Sometimes all you have to do to get a great House photo is take a few steps back on the front lawn and snap a photo standing directly in front of the house. Done. But there's no guarantee that that will be the case for you. It certainly wasn't for me. I'll give you three things to think about while you try to compose the best photograph first, to get a great main reference image. Think like a real estate agent. How are you gonna present the house? And it's absolutely most flattering light. Are you trying to make it look big? Cozy, Accentuated Front porch. Have this in mind when you're taking the photos and you'll end up with a more thoughtful composition. Be willing to deviate from just a straight ahead photo and explore some different angles. Got creative here? Second, if you've already gotten a great main reference image, you may still need some secondary reference images, particularly if there are details you love about the house that might not be captured well enough in the main image. Take some photos close up so you don't lose those details. You'll be able to use these photos to fill in any gaps in your final drawing. Finally, speaking of gaps and you're drawing, what do you do if you've got a big tree or something blocking your house and you don't want to include it in your painting? This happened to me. Here's the angle I originally wanted to draw Big tree in the way lots of branches and leaves everywhere, Just not great. I moved around a bit and figured out how far forward up the walkway I needed to stand to eliminate the tree from the photo. And here's where I ended up. But what if that's still not the case for you? My best advice is to take the photo exactly how you want the house to look, even if it's obscured, just like my first photo. Then go around the obstacles to take photos filling in the gaps. You'll later be able to stitch these images together, either digitally or in the sketching process. It complicates things a bit, but it's certainly doable by now. You should be prepared to go out and collect your reference images. Remember, we're going for one main reference image that you'll define your composition by and optionally a few other reference images that give you a little more insight into some details that you'd like to include. Your assignment for this lesson is to post those reference images to your project page and the next lesson we're finally going to get set up to start sketching. 5. Setting Up For Sketching: Now, before we jump into our sketches, let's talk about how to set up for success, and I'll let you in on a little secret. We're gonna be tracing directly from your main reference image. Why? Well, houses could be pretty tricky to draw. Actually, they're tricky because they're highly geometric, lots of parallel lines, objects like windows with relatives spacing that you really need to get right. And you know what? You could make all of that really, really simple. Just by tracing. Tracing ensures that the broad strokes will be correct and you'll have unidentifiable house . All the little details don't matter so much when you've got the basic structure. Right now, I hope that's a bit of a relief for any of you who are nervous about putting pencil to paper. Trust me, it makes getting started a whole lot easier. Before you get started sketching, though there's a bit of set up to dio. First, you'll need to determine what size you'd like your final painting to be. This will usually be dictated by the frame that you'd like to use. I don't recommend going to much smaller or larger than eight by 10 inches, too much smaller in your details. Start to get really muddy and crowded. Too much larger, though, and it gets difficult to manage. But it's completely up to you, so do what you're comfortable with. If you don't like your sketch, you can always start again very easily. Next, decide if you'll be matting the photo in a frame or just letting the painting speak for itself. If you're matting the painting, anything outside the boundaries of the mat will be hidden so you don't have to worry about string marks or drips. But if you're planning to leave a border around your painting, you'll want to be extra careful about leaving that border clean and intact. Now you can set up your paper if you're using a map. This is easy. Just lightly traced the inside border onto your paper, and that's where you'll sketch. That's what I'll do if you don't have a map or something else to trace, grab a ruler and draw a box the size. You'd like your final painting to be with our paper all set up and ready to go. It's time to trace. I'll cover four different methods for tracing and depending on what kind of equipment you've got access to at home. You can choose whichever one works best for you and you're more comfortable with. And don't worry. I guarantee at least one of these methods will work for you. The first method uses a glass surface like a window. You'll print out your main reference image to scale That's important. Then tape it to a window or something else that will let light in. A glass table or desk would be perfect to. Then place your paper on top of your photo, tape it down, turn off all the lights and trace away. The second method uses justice screen. Nothing more, no printer required. All you need is a screen as big as your final painting size, so a mobile phone probably wouldn't work. But something even a small is a tablet might, depending on the size. What I use this method, I use our TV and hook up my laptop via HTM. I I bring up my image on the screen, resize it, then carefully take my paper in place and reposition the image of necessary to turn off the lights and start tracing the next method and my preferred method uses a projector. I know not everyone will have access to a projector, but if you do, you're in luck. Pick a wall to project onto and tape up your drawing paper, then project your image onto the paper. Re sizing and repositioning the projector or paper is needed again. Turn off the lights and trace. Lastly, if you have access to a light box, this is another easy way to trace. It's the same concept as the glass surface method, but the light boxes just a little more convenient. You'll still need to print out your main reference image to scale, then a line into your paper, tape it down to the back and set it on the light table, then just trace away. This is the method that all demo in the next lesson. Now that we've covered the four tracing methods, you can pick one that works best for you, or come up with one yourself and set up your paper to get started. Sketching your assignment for this lesson is to pick a method and post a photo of your set up to your project page. Have a look around at the other students and what they're doing. Maybe you'll get a great idea from one of your classmates. Or maybe your project page will give somebody else a great idea to. And the next lesson will finally put pencil to paper and get started sketching. I can't wait to see your projects finally start to take shape. 6. Creating and Refining Your Sketch: Now that you've chosen your tracing method, it's time to get started. Follow along with me as I started my sketch. Ordinarily, I would try to make the room as dark as possible to better see where I'm tracing. But for demo purposes, I've left the lights on. I start with the broad strokes first. I want to make sure I get the roof lines correct right away, since they're the most important part of making your drawing convincing. If you get these right, you're well on your way to a great portrait after the big features. Then you can go fill in the details. I encourage you to go as light as you can hear with your pencil just enough so you can still see. You'll be making it darker when you refine your sketch and you'll be erasing everything later, so make it easier on yourself. Don't worry too much about getting all the details in place right now. Really. The tracing is still the walls and roof, and major elements like windows are all in the right place and roughly the right size. We'll go back and refine everything later when it comes to things like trees and bushes. I like to keep things really light and sketchy all out, a little bit of texture with pens and a lot more with watercolors. Speaking of texture, it's a good idea to go easy on the siding and roof textures of your house as well for the loose look, I'm going for less is more too much detail can actually take away from the final piece, so just be judicious here. That said, you can always erase when you're done, check your work. Turn off your projector, your lightbox. Take your paper offer window whatever it might be, so that you could really see what pencil marks you've left and see if there any gaps or things that you need to correct before you're done tracing. Just make sure you're not missing anything important, and you can parcel the visual elements. If it all looks good, it's time to move on to the refinement stage. The goal of the refining step is to have your pencil sketch totally ready to go so that when you goto ANC, you're leaving nothing up to guesswork when inking, you'll want to turn off your brain and follow your pencil marks so I'll fix things like making this roof line a little straighter. I can see that this deck over here is sloping upwards a bit, which doesn't look quite right. I couldn't see this detail on the side of the house, so I want to get that right in my sketch. Basically, I want to take my reference image and anything I've missed. I want to fill in or correct. Now, if I can't see you know my print out, for example, this area under the tree, it's all black. I really can't see anything. What I'll do is I'll use my computer screen as a secondary reference while I'm refining because it does a much better job of illuminating these dark, low contrast areas. You can also take this time to decide which details we're going to include and which details you're going to omit. For example, I'm not gonna include this 80 T security sign or this pot. I'll draw this tree. What I won't include these guys and I'm also not going include this lattice because I find it distracting. Now is the time to make those kinds of decisions starting to refine. I've got my laptop reference image and eraser handy. I'm drawing. So it's a bit darker than my rough sketch but still erase herbal. I'm using a ruler not to make my lines straight, but to make sure certain elements are lined up properly. I'm filling in the placeholders. I left for things like window and door details and generally making things clearer for myself. When I go to start inking, here's my final sketch ready for inking. I've erased any extra lines that would confuse me later on. I'm satisfied that my major elements are mostly correct. We're off and running now. This is where your creation finally starts to take shape. Your assignment for this lesson is to finish up your sketch, take a picture and post it to your project page. I'm so excited to look at all of your work. Next up will make the transition from pencil to pen, and if you're a little nervous, don't worry. I'll give you all of my tips and tricks to help you make the transition. I'll see you in the next lesson 7. Inking Your Sketch: congratulations on completing your sketch. Truly, you've done the hard work, and the rest of it is downhill from here Now. Pens might sound a little bit no permanent compared to pencil. But don't worry, it's so worth it. Just let your pencil sketch guide you. I've got a couple of warm up exercises that will help you feel a little more loose and a whole lot more confident before you start thinking. So grab your pens and paper and let's get started. One thing that might be a little scary is drawing a bunch of straight lines with pen, where you've only got one crack at it. So a good idea is to do some warm ups before you actually start drawing on your riel drawing just so you can work out any kinks. Figure out what techniques work best for you. I personally like to start out by just freestyling with my pen, drawing a few straight lines, seeing where I'm at and then right down here. I've taken a ruler, and I've drawn out a bunch of lines not of arbitrary length. I figured out that the longest straight line only to draw in my drawing is about six inches long. So I've made by lions at least six inches so that I know I'm confident going in that I've got, uh, enough practice drawing straight lines of that length, so I'll just take my pen. One thing I like to do is rotate my my paper a little bit. It just helps me to draw straight lines. I don't know about you, but it's kind of difficult. It's a little bit awkward toe force myself into that position. I'm right handed. So if I rotate counterclockwise a little bit, I find that I have a much easier time of things. So I'm just gonna see where I'm at. Draw a few lines now. These aren't perfectly straight, but that's okay. They don't have to be perfectly straight in the drawing. In fact, I think they look better when they're not perfectly, perfectly straight. That said, it doesn't look great when they're really, really wavy either. So that's why we're gonna practice on these. One thing you can do if you're a little bit nervous about drawing one whole line all at one time, is you can kind of break things up into chunks that are more manageable. So let's just say we're gonna break this line up into a few different segments on. Then you can take your pen and draw its first segment, and you can connect it with the second segment and so on and so forth. And then once you erase it, obviously you won't see these little hash marks anymore, and you've got a fairly straight line. Now, I tend to kind of start in and go up a little bit at the end. So this isn't necessarily the best technique for me. One thing to point out is that when you're drawing a long line, uh, it's better to use your elbow as a fulcrum rather than your wrist. And that just essentially means instead of resting your wrist on the paper and limiting your range of motion this way, you're gonna need to rest your forearm or your elbow on whatever surface you're drawing on . Uh, that's gonna mean that if you didn't vary the position of your pen at all, you're gonna draw an arc. So obviously you're gonna need toe hold your pen. A study is you can along the straight line as you go. That's why we've got a few toe practice songs. It's not necessarily the most natural thing. So I'm just gonna go ahead and get started here. I want to rotate my page even a little bit more. So okay. We're not great here. We've got some improvement to Dio. All right? That one was a lot better to see. If we can keep going here, you'll notice that I'm going a little bit quickly. If we go slowly, then it tends to amplify you're deviations a little bit. So I like to just see, we've got some pretty serious waves. The faster you're going, the smoother your mistakes. They're gonna be. So even if you're not drawing a straight line, it can actually look a little bit better. So some of these lines not so good. Some of the lines are better. All this is just to say practice, practice, practice. And once you're feeling confident, then you can start in on your drawing. And I guarantee you your lines will be better. And you won't be as nervous going into it once you're feeling warmed up and ready to go. Ah, highly recommend just jumping right into it. But before we dio I have a few things you should keep in mind. First, don't be afraid to change up your page orientation just like we did for the warm up. Turn your page upside down if you need to. Whatever you need to do in order to feel comfortable next, embrace imperfections. You're not going to be perfect. And that's okay. That's good. Even your work of art will truly be one of a kind, and it will be all the better, looking like it was made by a human and not a robot. Next up smudges. You can prevent smudges by doing some tests beforehand to see if your Angus smudgy. If it is, just rest your hand on a scrap piece of paper as you draw. So you avoid getting big blobs of ink where you don't want them. Easy peasy. Lastly, straight up mistakes lines in the wrong place. Unexpected smudges, ink blots, whatever they may be, resist the temptation to use white out. You can't water cooler over that stuff. My best advice is to roll with it. Your final drawing may not look exactly the way you wanted it to, but so what? It'll still look great and don't forget that will still be water coloring over this ink. Drawing houses have so much detail, and watercolor adds so much interest that it's unlikely you'll even notice a few mistakes when it's all done. Keep forging ahead, I say. After a good warm up, I started right into thinking my drawing. I did the roof lines first, since those were the longest straight lines, and then everything fell into place from there. Take your time and have fun. It should be a blast. Seeing your drawing really come to life, I leave the trees and bushes very sketchy, knowing little at a lot of texture. With watercolors later, I like to make my house the most detailed part of the pen drawing. But, of course, feel free to do whatever suits your composition best. When you're done inking, take your eraser and get rid of all your pencil lines. Just make sure you wait long enough for your ink to dry so you don't smudge anything accidentally. We're still close to having a finished portrait now, and actually, some of you might just love your ink drawing so much that you want to stop there, and that's totally fine. Thes portrait's could be beautiful in just black and white, but I highly encourage you to keep pressing on. There's just something about water colors that can give it so much personality and life, and especially if you've never done watercolors before, I think this is an awesome first project to use them. Your assignment for this lesson is to finish up your ink drawing, snap a photo and post it to your project page, then have a look around at your classmates work. I guarantee you're gonna be really inspired by everything that everyone else is doing. Next up, we're gonna work on water colors, so finish up your ink drawings and I'll see you in the next lesson. 8. Adding Personality With Watercolors: Finally, it's time to paint. This is where your painting really, really comes to life. You can add color and personality. Really. Just make it your own. It's time to have fun. All that said, if you're comfortable with another medium. And like I said in the last video, if you just love your drawing the way that it is, by all means, leave it there, hanging up on your wall and be so proud of yourself. But if you're more comfortable with something like colored pencils, absolutely. This is your creation and whatever you want to do to bring it to life. I am absolutely on board with those of you forging ahead with watercolors. Follow me and we'll get started talking about how to get set up. You'll need your watercolor paints, a container of water, a paper towel or something else absorbent, and your brush or brush is you'll also need your paper and a place for your reference materials. If you have an easel, by all means use it, but I don't and here's what I do to prop up my paper. Instead, I stopped a couple of books on the table and use that to put my paper on an incline. Inclining Your work isn't necessary by any means, but it can help prevent your paint from pooling and weird and unexpected ways as it dries in this class, we won't be talking about the very basics of watercolors or how to mix colors. But there are so many awesome skill share classes available to you on this platform that will go over the basics, and I highly recommend if you've never touched watercolors before, just going and having a peek at one of those other classes before you dive into this project. That said, if you're feeling adventurous and you just want to get going, by all means, have fun with it. But because we're basically treating this like a page of a coloring book, we've already got all the lines in place, and we're really just filling in these big areas. This could be a great first project for a beginner to prep for painting. I highly recommend testing your paints. Mix up your paint colors, like for the siding and roofs so you know it will look like when they're dry with houses. A lot of the colors are neutral colors, not bright pinks or blues, but more understated, subtle colors that may not live in tops on your palate. You might need to mix and try again before you find a combination that works. My palate happens to have a gray color, but before I see it on paper, I have no way of knowing if it'll look right before I commit to that color of my painting. I want to know what my options are. So here I tested out a few color combinations to see what I liked best, I think at my house a bluish gray. So here I mixed blue with its complementary color, orange and different ratios and painted a few difference watches. One thing I want to point out is that this watch right here, which looks way too blue to me right now, actually looked like the perfect gray When, what so a warning. Make sure you're making your pig color selections based on what they look like. Dry, not wet. They could be different, and you don't want to be taken by surprise. That said, if you can't totally nail the exact colors in your reference, that's fine. This is your painting and you. Do you mean this part should be fun, not stressful? Have a little fun mixing up some colors before you start painting, and you'll take a lot of the guesswork out of your painting later. Now that we have our colors, let's get started painting. There's really no one right order to paint things, but I'd recommend doing the bigger, lighter areas first. Remember, you can always go back and make things darker, but you can't easily make them lighter. First I start on the roof. I mix up a gray with a red and a green that I tested earlier. I like to test my colors right before painting to make sure they're not too dark. And I could do that on the extra space on my paper. If you don't have extra room, I'd recommend having a scrap paper around for that purpose. Once I've done the roof, I start on the siding. I know we'll have to go back and make this darker later, but I'm just laying down a good base to work from way. I'll save the trees and greenery for last, since I think those are the most fun to Dio. So after the siding and roof. It's all about details. Pay attention to the shadows in your reference image. You don't need to copy them exactly, but they should give you some ideas about how to make your painting more lifelike. Painting an area one solid color looks fine, but varying. The intensity can add a lot of interest. Just be judicious and don't overdo it. Now you might wonder at what point you're done, and one tip that I have is to take a photo of your work in progress. Take that photo, comparing it to your reference photo, and I guarantee you're going to see your painting in a different light than you would if you were just staring at it in person. I don't know why that is, but it always works for me. Now you might guess that your assignment for this lesson is to break out your watercolors and go for it. Do your painting. Take a photo of your finished painting and post it to your project page. Have a look around at all the beautiful work that your classmates are doing and just be in awe of everything you've accomplished. I can't wait to see your work. We have just a couple small details left, so join me in the next lesson and we'll talk about how to wrap things up. 9. Finishing Up: congratulations. You now have your own complete beautiful one of a kind house portrait. Let's take a couple of minutes to make it ready to hang on your wall before we do anything else, Sign your work. Don't ever think this. Just put your signature on the bottom somewhere. It won't be too distracting. I like to put the Year two. If this is a gift, it's a nice touch to put a little note on the back for your recipient. Next, let's frame it. I have my frame right here. And here's the map I traced to bound my composition. I'll need to trim my paper down so it'll fit. I'll just grab a pair of scissors. A box cutter or craft knife would be fine to anything you have lying around and cut so it will fit inside the frame. I just need to leave enough extra paper to taped to the back of the map. Then I'll put it in place, sticking in the frame and Walla. Now the frame is totally optional, but after all your hard work, it's really nice to be rewarded with a view like this. Your final assignment for this class is to show off what you're painting. Looks like hanging up. Show us how you finished it and where it lives. Take a photo posted to your project page and again Take a look around and see what all your classmates have done in the final lesson Will do a quick recap to wrap everything up. I'll see you there. 10. Recap: you made it. Congratulations on finishing your one of a kind watercolor house portrait. Hopefully, now you feel confident in tackling Moorhouse. Portrait's in the future. If this one was for yourself, maybe your next one will be a gift for someone you love in this class. We learned how to gather reference materials set up for sketching, trace and create your sketch, and you're drawing used water colors to bring your portrait so life and then wrap things up with a couple small details. You can use this method to draw and paint just about anything. Pets, cityscapes, really, the sky's the limit, so get creative. That's all for creating one of a kind watercolor house portrait. It's Don't forget to post your project your project page and admire all of your classmates work, too. It's so fun to see what beautiful creations you've painted. Thank you so much for taking this class, and I look forward to seeing you on your project pages