Easy Watercolour Portraits: My 3-Value Group Method!

1. Class Intro: One of my favorite subject matters as an artist is portraits. And if you don't believe me, I published an entire book filled with 200 of my portrait drawings and paintings last year. My name is Chris Hong and I'm an independent artist based in Canada with over 600,000 fans across Instagram and YouTube. Well, I'm thrilled to be back with a watercolor portrait class, which has been highly requested by many of you over these years. This class is all about my three value group method to approaching watercolor portrait painting with lessons on how to break down the values and design your shadow shapes through tons of real time demos on the major features of the face. The 1 hour final portrait demo is fully narrated in real time, where I walk you through a watercolor portrait from start to finish, explaining my thought process and decision making every step of the way. Watercolor can be a challenging medium, but I believe breaking down the values into simple groups makes it much more approachable. My hope is that by the end of the class, you'll walk away with the knowledge and skills to create more impactful watercolor portraits. So grab your watercolors and let's get started. 2. 3-Value Group Concept: Most artists would agree that watercolor is quite a challenging medium, and truthfully, myself included. And yet I keep coming back to it time and time again because watercolor is just so magical. Well, what if I told you there was a way to think about painting in watercolor that made things easier? Over the years of creating portraits, I learned that the key to a successful portrait painting is really in the values. If you've taken my level up your portrait drawing class or my color pencil portrait classes, you're likely already familiar with the concept of grouping values and designing shadow shapes. But in short, to group values is to draw shapes to separate the areas that are darker in value into the shadows from the areas that are lighter in value in the light. To help you visualize this concept, let's take a look at this photo reference. How would you group the values? If I take it into Photoshop and push the values in the levels adjustment layer and force the values to pick aside from white or black, you can see the value groupings more clearly and see the shadow shapes emerge. Here are some photo references and an example of how I might group the values and design the shadow shapes, keyword being design, because there's no one right way to approach it, and every artist will probably draw it differently from another. Distilling down the values to just a few value groups provides the necessary building blocks for our paintings, upon which we can then build more nuance and complexity. So the concept of grouping values into shapes is really the basis of my portrait painting approach. It really isn't a secret, but here's how I like to break down my values for watercolor portraits to just three major valley groups, the shadow shapes, the midtones, and the highlights. Here are some examples that demonstrate these three valley groups very clearly. These are painted monochromatically, which makes it easier to see the value relationships. Now, I don't normally paint monochromatically like this, but this is essentially how I organize the values of my colors when I paint down into these three distinct groups of values. Let me further explain how I use these three value groups to structure my portrait. I identify the darkest values in the photo reference, then group the values and design the shadow shape in the block and drawing stage. Then I start by painting in the shadow shapes with a darker value, which I feel provides the bones of the portrait that I can then build on top of. Then I'll establish the midtones and the highlights, which are both areas in the light. So I'll make sure to use lighter value colors than the ones I use in the shadow. Highlights are actually super simple. They are the brightest points in a portrait, usually found on the eyes and the tallest points on the nose and the lips. To establish the highlights, I simply paint around them when establishing the mid tone values, since the white of the paper is brighter than any watercolor paint. Midtones is sort of used like a catch all term for all the values that are between the shadows and the highlights. And it is in the mid tones that usually reveals the local color of the object most clearly. If you feel intimidated by watercolor portrait painting, I hope breaking down the values like this makes it seem much more approachable. So now that I've exposed my secret to watercolor portraits, are you excited to put this three valley group approach into practice? In the upcoming demos, we'll take a look at the major features of the face and learn how to approach breaking down the values, then build up the painting step by step. Then finally, you'll learn how to put all the features together and put all those new skills to the test as I walk you through the final portrait demo from start to finish. So grab your paints and let's get started. 3. Eyes Lesson: Eyes can be somewhat tricky as it requires a bit more work than lips or noses and figuring out how to go about drawing the shapes. In general, this is how I tend to approach breaking down the values of the eyes. I include the eyebrow, the line of the crease, if there is one, the lash line, the iris, and the lower lid into the shadow shape. If you look at an eye from the side, you can better understand why I choose to group them this way. Assuming the light source is coming from above, which is the case in most typical lighting scenarios, these areas will appear darker since they are down facing planes and therefore turning away from the light. Whereas these areas, the upper lid and the water line, which is the edge of the lower lid, face up and therefore catch the light and appear lighter. Of course, eyes are going to vary wildly from case to case depending on many different factors. Sometimes most of the eye is entirely in shadow like this. So you're going to have to approach each eye on a case by case basis. But I try to design the shapes in a way so they're as descriptive as possible as to what the eyes are doing in terms of the eye direction and the expression and the overall shape of how it looks, prioritizing the clarity of the read above all else. Now it's time to finally get into the painting demos. 4. Eyes Painting Demo #1: I love this reference because the eye is so sparkly. So I feel like it's a really great opportunity to show the highlight, like, the full strength of how bright that highlight can feel if you set it up right. So I'm just drawing blocking this in as I would if I were doing a portrait painting. So drawing as much as I think I would need to with all the information that I need in order to do my best painting. Here, I will block out where I think the highlight should go instead of doing it in paint because I want it to be placed pretty intentionally. I think I think we might be ready to bring in the paints. So here we have a pretty strong shadow in this one. I'm going in with my shadow color. I'm kind of echoing off the color of the iris of the model here. And I'm using a dark, like cobalti blue turquoise color. I'm starting with the darkest point in the reference, which is this shadow in the eye sockets brow ridge area. And I think I'm going to include the eye brow, the rest of the eyebrow. But notice that I'm now kind of dipping my brush onto or wiping my brush onto my paper towel next to me, which you can't see. But I'm just wiping away the excess paint so I can kind of grade it to a lighter finish there. And then I'm going to continue on with that shadow color. To this area. And also carefully paint around those highlights. Can't lose those highlights. Okay. I already feel like I get the sense of that I paint. Going I get the shadow underneath the lower lid crease which really helps so that the eyeball is round because it hugs the eyeball. So while my paint is still a little bit wet, I'm actually going to bring in some orange because I want to bring in some warmth into these areas. So into this shadow shape we established, I'm going in with this orange color and, uh, just kind of bringing in some warmth into these areas here. While it's still sort of kind of wet so that it blends a little bit more seamlessly. Again, these down facing planes, they are likely to get that warm bounce light. And that's why. That's why I'm bringing the warmth in to try to mimic that phenomenon. And then, I'm gonna go in and and color the pupil. Or the iris. I always say. I always mix the two. But, the iris is technically, I think, part of the shadow group. So I really should have just painted it all together. But sometimes I like to separate things, too. It's tempting. It's tempting to want to separate separate all these elements, paint them separately. But honestly, the best the best result you're gonna get by grouping like valued things together instead of separating them. Right now I'm actually going back into the shadow shape and strengthening it because I feel like it got a little bit light. But maybe I shouldn't have done that. Maybe I should move on to other things. Getting a little bit distracted, is towards the end of the day here. So I might be getting a little distracted. Alright. So now let's focus. I'm going to go in with a or a light color, just a little bit of paint on my brush, a little bit of dirty kind of water, dirty blue water. And I'm toning the white of the eye because the white of the eye is really not that light, especially because it's kind of cradled by the flesh, and it's like, inside the skull, right? So it's actually not gonna be that light. It's actually in the shadow. So the trick to making eyes look more realistic is, I mean, one of many tricks is to darken the white of the eye. And I am working white on wet here because I find with eyes, working white on wet gives a more naturalistic kind of effect. So I like how that's looking so far. So now I'm going to establish the local color of the skin. And I'm going to work this area, this top fleshy part of the upper eyelid area and, like, the eyebrow area. I'm going to tackle that together in one kind of shape, in one single kind of stroke, I suppose. You'll see what I mean when I get into it. And that is to keep it kind of cohesive. So I'm going to start from here and kind of move it up this way and towards the brow. So working together like this, I find it kind of helps marry all these separate elements together, like I had with, for example, the eyebrow and the little crease of the eye, painting over this whole area and treating it like one big shape, it kind of it marries those separate elements together and makes it feel a lot more cohesive that way. That's kind of a trick that I use when I'm painting, and I want to make certain, like, disparate parts feel more cohesive. I will I'll start painting in, like, overarching shapes like that. So kind of similarly, I'm going to paint this whole lower lash or lower eyelid altogether. But I'm actually going to leave a tiny light sliver right along the waterline. As a little bit of a highlight there. A little bit of a little bit of pinky oranginess in because I feel like it looks a little bit too cool. I think I'm almost done, but I'm gonna go in and strengthen strengthen the shape a little bit more. It's got a little bit a little bit muddied. Warmth. And under facing planes or down facing planes. Yeah. Pretty happy with that. 5. Eyes Painting Demo #2: So in this example, I'm going to approach painting this eye a little bit differently because this whole eye here is actually technically in shadow. And so instead of trying to pick out all the shadow areas first and then establishing the mid tone values, I'm actually going to start by putting it all in shadow first in a kind of a mid value tone, and then I'm going to carve out the darker values from that point. So yeah, every photo reference presents its own challenge. You're not going to be able to use the same solution for every single situation. But I guess that's part of the fun. So I'm going in here with kind of a dilute wash of paint, so I'm not going in too dark, hopefully. But dark enough so that it feels like it's shadow. So I am going to kind of paint all over all over except that little white of the highlight because I really want that to pop. But otherwise, putting this whole thing into shadow. Even though I see a lot of nuance in this area, this is just going to help me establish a nice base to work off from. I'm going to let this dry a little bit, and then I'm going to apply the darker values on top. But while it's wet, actually, we can throw some colors around throw some warm colors underneath here because we see a lot of warm colors in the photo reference. The skin around the eyes tend to be very thin, and so it shows the blood vessels more. So they tend to be warmer around the eyes. So I'm not changing the value up too much just yet, just kind of glazing on these colors. I'm trying to bring warm colors wherever I think is a down facing plane. Now I'm gonna go in with a slightly darker value build up the values. We'll start with the pupil. But remember that I'm trying to keep the values pretty close together because technically, this is all in one shape. But I do want to bring some contrast around the highlight there, so it really pops. Building up the values. Building up the nuances. Trying my hardest to keep these values close. I don't want anything to start standing out too much because I want the main focal point to be that bright highlight. Hm. So, yeah, this is, um, how I would approach an eye like this or an example like this where the eye is mostly in shadow. And see how closely I've kept all these values together so that it reads as one shape for the most part. With an exception of just a few areas of contrast around the white of the eye or the highlight of the eye. So to recap, you can bring a lot of nuance in the colors and the modeling of the form if you can control your values and these shapes that you're creating. I'm just going to try to bring out that crease I lost it a little bit. Yeah, I find with eyes, it's more effective to be just a little bit understated and a little bit left more to the imagination than trying to define everything, everything that you can see. Our brain just kind of does the job of making up the information anyway, filling in the blank space. So yeah, with that said, I think I'll just leave it here. Okay. 6. Nose Lesson: Here is how I typically break down the values in the nose. For me, the easiest shape to start with is to find the bottom plane of the nose, because in typical lighting scenarios, that is where the form turns away from the light and falls into shadow. Of course, noses come in all different shapes and sizes, but anatomically, they are all pretty consistent. So I find that I generally draw this kind of M shape as a shorthand for the bottom plane of the nose. Here are a few examples where you can see some variations of this shape. Establishing this bottom plane helps us skim past the complexity and visualize the nos as a simple geometric shape. So first, I start with the bottom plane of the nose as the base. Then I look for case shadows. In this example, there is a clear case shadow under the nose. In this case, I group the case shadow into the same shadow shape as the bottom plane of the nose. When the values are this similar, it's a simpler and stronger statement to combine the shadow shapes into one bigger shape. You'll see later in the upcoming demos how easy it is to introduce more value range and bring out the subtle details in the anatomy within these shapes. As for the highlights, I take a pretty minimalist approach and limit them to very small areas for maximum impact. I try to limit to just one small highlight on the ball of the nose and thinner strip of highlight along the length of the nose, depending on the shape of the nose, of course. The key is to keep these shapes small so that they feel bright and contrasty against the mid tones. Usually, I don't even draw the highlights in the blocking stage, since I paint them in when I paint in the midtons. And what about the size of the nose? In this example, you can see that the size of the nose are subtly darker as these planes slant away from the light. Unless there is a very clear cast shadow like this, where the nose is more at a three quarter angle, I tend to group the size of the nose as part of the midtone valley group, as opposed to drawing them into the shadow shapes, since they appear too harsh when treated with the same darker values as used in the shadows. So I often find it more appealing to simply group the size of the nose as part of the midtones and bring out the definition in the painting stage. So to recap, the main thing I look for when it comes to building up the nose is to find the bottom plane of the nose and the case shadow, then grouping them into the shadow shape. Seems pretty simple, right? Well, let's get into the demo where I'll show you how to use this concept and build it up in paint. 7. Nose Painting Demo #1: Alright, so I'm going to go in with a shadow color, and I'm going to block out that shadow shape like we had established earlier. And, you know, I'm as I'm moving up, I'm gradually getting a little bit lighter, dabbing a little bit of the paint off as I go. Because I want that cast shadow area to be the darkest point, like, along down here. So I'm kind of dragging the paint up as I go in and then wiping the excess off as well. So there's a bit of a gradient. So I'm gonna now paint in this little triangular shape that I uh created and just behind the nostril there. And then the brow ridge area. And here I'm just gonna kind of feather it out. And then on the other side, So that is our shadow shape, the darkest dark value shape established. Feel like it really provides a structure for the nose. So now I'm going to go in with the mid value. And by doing that, I'll also establish the highlights because I'll be painting around them. But even though I see a wide range in the mid values, I'm just going to try to paint it as evenly as possible, just establish it as an even shape to begin with. And then once I have all the structure in place, then I can start to add the nuances in the values that I see. So again, I'm going to go in and draw around the highlights. I feel like I didn't do the best job there. So I'm just gonna glaze this color all over. But before I accidentally paint over the other highlight on the nose or on the ball of the nose, I will do that, so I don't forget. And actually, while it's wet, while it's still kind of wet, I'm going to bring some more reddish color along the ball of the nose here. And the nostril down into the shadows or down into the bottom plane of the nose in these areas as well. So now that we have these the structure established, now I'm going to go in and apply some of that darker value that I've been talking about along here where the nose is turning away from the light on this side. And the warmth I'm bringing in the noses tend to have a lot of blood vessels, and so that's why I'm throwing all this warmth around. Um, I find that brings a quality of life to the painting. And it's just, like, it's a nice contrast to the green that we started with for the shadow. And I'm going to go in and indicate the nostril. And then Just kind of keep glazing this warm color. Right now, I'm kind of taking a really dark color and cleaning up the shape a little bit. Hopefully that will provide a little bit more structure there. Help strengthen the painting a little bit. Strengthen the side of the nose a little bit there. We got the shadows. We got the mid tone values, and we got the highlights. 8. Nose Painting Demo #2: So here is the blocking of the nose. This is how I would probably draw it before painting it, which is what I'm going to do now. I'm mixing up a kind of a turquoise color for the shadow pass, the shadow shapes. Yep. And I'm going to start with the cas shadow here and then move the paint up into the bottom plane of the nose. And, uh, yeah, move that feed up there. And fill in the brow ridges or eye sockets. I honestly don't know what to call them, but I keep calling them brow ridges. I think that makes sense. Hopefully, that makes sense to you. And yeah, that's our structure for the nose. Just establishing these shadow shapes just makes it feel like a nose, doesn't it? Like, our brain intuitively understands these shadows because we observe them when we look at ourselves, when we look at other people. We inherently know what these shadows mean. Um, so my brain, I mean, you can look at these as three little blobs or four little blobs on a piece of paper, but does this not look like a nose to you? It looks like a nose to me. I mean, the lines definitely help underneath as well. But even without the lines, I feel like most people would say that this does look like a nose. And I'm going to go in and establish the a mid value of the nose, which is basically the local color of the nose or local color of the skin. And while I do that, I will also establish the highlight on the nose by drawing around it or painting around it, and then I can glaze this color all around. But let's also get that highlight there. I did go in intentionally a little bit darker here to show that forehead kind of curving in. And, you know, I'm gonna work a little bit wet on wet and I'm gonna throw in some warm warms along there. And here, because I'm picturing that warm sunlight bouncing into these areas, as well as the bottom plane of the nose. I'm gonna work that up into the ball of the nose a little bit. And the nostril. And, I'm going to pick up that turquoise color again and, indicate some shadow on this side. I forgot to do that. So it gives that nose a little bit something to work against. A little bit of structure on that side. I'm going I went in with an orange color for that transition. The transition between shadow and the light area, basically the terminator along the skin tends to have a warm color. So that's why anytime any transition along the skin, especially places around, like, the nose, eyes, the lips, where there are a lot of blood vessels to be found, ears. I always use those as opportunities to throw or bring a warm color in because it really it really gives a lifelike quality to the painting. Just go to strengthen this shape here. So I'm fairly happy with that, but I think I could bring a little bit more nuance in terms of the values here. I want to kind of accentuate the ball of the nose a little bit and also darken this area, the side of the nose here a little bit so that it doesn't feel so flat, so we get a sense of the this plane of the nose, the side plane, but I have to be careful not to go too dark because that will I still want, remember the midtones I want to make it read as one shape. I don't want it to read like now, this side of the nose is a part of the shadow shape, that is not what I want. I still want to feel part of this just the midtne shape midtone group. And, uh Yeah, I wonder if that is enough. I'm not sure. I totally love the highlight placement of there, but it's too late now. Got to kind of work with what I got. So again, I'm still trying to kind of, uh, show this ball of the nose a little bit. So I'm rendering this kind of ball here. I think that I think that did the job. So now I'm gonna go in with a darker value to try to indicate the nostril. We'll see how that goes if it'll be dark enough. I think so. And on this side. And just kind of cleaning around the shapes that we've established Yeah, just cleaning up the shapes a little bit. Throwing in some harder edges. So it doesn't feel so mushy. You need a balance of both hard and soft edges. Honestly, I'm really using whatever color at this point. But I really love starting out with kind of an unconventional shadow color, like I did with the turquoise and then, you know, basing it off the photo to build up the rest of the portrait. So it still feels grounded in reality, but you get that pop of color that you wouldn't otherwise have gotten if you had just tried to stick to what's in the photo. Yeah, I still trying to model this, like, ball of the nose here. That's why I'm kind of working in this, like, spherical motion. So there, there is our nose. I'm pretty happy with that one. I think this one turned out pretty well. I think this one was a pretty good demonstration of how I used that three value structure to build up features like this. But 9. Lips Lesson: I treat the lips very simply when it comes to breaking down the values, usually to just two main shadow shapes, the upper lip and the area just underneath the bottom lip. I personally find it easier to draw the entire upper lip as a single shadow shape, because in most typical lighting scenarios where the light is coming from above, the upper lip is actually mostly in shadow since it is a down facing plane. I draw sort of an elongated M shape again as a shorthand for the upper lip shape. The second major shadow shape is the area under the bottom lip, where the form dips just above the top of the chin. I usually simplify this into a trapezoid kind of a shape or a rhombus depending on the viewing angle. So those two are the main shadow shapes, and sometimes these shapes look a little bit different if there are cast shadows involved, since the lips protrude from the face and also cast small shadows. But notice how these shapes, like the shadow shapes for the nose, stay fairly consistent and somewhat predictable from one another. You'll eventually develop your very own shorthand for building up your portraits. As for the highlights, you can observe them usually along the top part of the bottom lip, as the bottom lip is an up facing plane that catches the light. On some lips, the highlight is more obvious than the others. So in the case where I can't really identify a very clear highlight, I'll use artistic liberties and just create one. I like to draw a small, horizontal highlight shape to suggest a shiny surface of the lips. So this is a very simplified way of breaking down the values in the lips. But hopefully, it gives you an idea of how I try to distill the complexity of what I'm seeing down to something much more manageable. In the upcoming demo, I'm going to show you how I take this simple statement to bring the lips to life. Um 10. Lips Painting Demo: How I would group the values in this lip in this photo references that I would group the entire top lip with the opening of the mouth together because even though yeah, the opening of the mouth is darker, I feel like the values are close enough together that it doesn't justify breaking these two apart. They're close enough in their value range and different enough from these lighter values around them to justify grouping them together. And then for the highlight, I'm just going to there's a little bit of highlight maybe on that side of the lip there as well. And then basically everything else is the midton values. So this is how I would break down the values in this photo reference here. Again, with this photo as well, I'm going to just group the entire upper lip into one shape. And include the shadow underneath the lips here as well. And just to show you, I will probably block the highlight out like this when I'm painting in paint. And then, you know, the rest is the midtone Valley group. I'm mixing up my shadow color, so bring in my shadow color pass here with a pretty thick mix of paint. And again, I'm just simply blocking out this entire upper lip with this mixture. I'm also going in to this kind of fold in the corner of the mouth there, as well as this part of the corner of the mouth. And then the shadow underneath the lip. The lower lip. I'm going to, um, soften the transition a little bit here because I actually maybe here as well. So now I'm going to establish the midtone values while painting around the highlights. So really establishing both highlights and the midtones. So I see the highlights somewhere along there. Actually, I'm just going to Do something like that, right? And then quickly glazing the wrist. Kind of like that, I think. Maybe I just feel this. Yeah. This is a simpler statement. I feel like this shadow shape down here is getting a little bit lost. It's competing a little bit with the midtone value, so I have to go in and reinforce that a little bit. So initially, I thought that, you know, this was quite dark when I laid it down, but because we established just midtone value, in context, it doesn't look quite as dark, so it's getting a little bit a little bit muddied up here, especially because I didn't do the cleanest job boundary here is getting a little bit muddied, so I'm going to kind of reinforce the shadow underneath here with a darker value. And because I'm doing that, I'm also going to now bring a little bit more nuance in that upper lip. With some darks. So I'm just laying on a darker color within that shape. So I'm being careful not to go too dark because I don't want to create I don't want to start creating all these disparate, like, shapes within that upper lip. I want the upper lip to read as a single shape. So I got to keep the values still pretty close to each other. And you know what? I think I kind of just like the simplicity of that. And here I'm just kind of softening this edge. So it feels a little bit more naturalistic. Maybe. Maybe the one last thing I'll do is I want to bring another color between this area here and the shadow so that there is a more gradual transition from the lip to the shadow. And I want it to be kind of like a brighter pink color. I think we're in business. Yep, I think we're in business. 11. Features Recap: Eyes, Nose, Lips: [No Speech] 12. Full Portrait Demo Part 1: Block-in Drawing: I'm going to start off by blocking in the drawing. So I'm trying to kind of measure with my hand how much space I want this portrait to take up on the page. So I get the general size of the portrait that I want. Okay. And I'm going to go in and roughly measure out the outer shape of the silhouette of the head because I find that this photo has a very clear silhouette of that. Whatever is the easiest for you to pick out is what you probably want to start off with. And for me, that is the head, the silhouette of the head. So just trying to find the overall angles of what I'm seeing erasing, the less kind of accurate lines as I go. And then building up from that get our lines in for the features. I like to draw these parallel lines for roughly where the eyes sit, roughly where the base of the nose is, and then roughly where the line of the mouth is. And then from that point, I'm going to measure out the hairline. You know what? I'm just going to start over with the features. I'm really not liking how the features are turning out, so let's just start over. I'm gonna find the line for the eyes again, approximately where they sit, line for the base of the nose and line for the mouth. And this time, let me try to walk things in a lot looser establish the bigger shapes sooner. And maybe and maybe yeah, establish the big shapes first. And then break the shapes down further once I feel like I've gotten a good placement. Yeah, I mean, that's kind of what I recommend to students, so I should probably, uh, follow my own advice. So that to me, looks better than what I had before. And then I'm gonna go into more detail with the drawing and find the eyes. Yeah, I feel like the eyes are really the key to this particular portrait here, so I that's why I want to make them. As accurate as possible. So I'm paying closer attention to things like how wide the creases, how much wide of the eye is showing in relation to the iris because that really affects the eye direction. I definitely want to set myself up for success with this one. So I am being a little bit more meticulous about the drawing than I normally would be. I think I will I usually don't like to include any kind of accessories, but I think I will include the earphones. Just as a fun little prop. H. Part of making the drawing to your taste is, I think, really understanding what it is that you want to accentuate with your painting. For me, I really, really want that intensity of the eyes to really come through, and as well, something I really want to highlight is her nose because I feel like it's a very striking nose. Right now, I'm actually extending her head a little bit because I feel like we see more of that top of the head than maybe how I drew it. So, yeah, it's okay to constantly reassess and adjust your drawings. You know, give your painting its best chance at life before you get in there, a it'll be hard harder to fix these kinds of things. It's harder to fix proportions once you start painting. But yeah, my main goal for this portrait will be to highlight the intensity of the eyes. And also, I want this nose to feel very, like, structural and kind of be one of the focal points in the picture. I'm gonna try to go in with some of these shadow shapes now. I just realized that I made her nose ginormous. I'm going to fix that. See, this drawing drawing can take me quite a while, actually. And then I'm gonna get that casado underneath the lips. And it's making me realize maybe I should draw her chin a little bit longer. So I'm always always adjusting. The more marks I put down, the more information I have to work with to measure everything else out. I'll draw in this other earphones. So I'm going in trying to kind of roughly map out and make mental note where I'm going to paint in that shadow pass. So here is my drawing for this portrait. I don't normally flesh out my drawings nearly as much. But for the purpose of this demonstration, I figured better go in a little bit further than I usually would. But before I bring in the watercolors, I just wanted to talk about how I'm going to approach painting this. So I really want to highlight the intensity of her eyes, and I do want to also highlight her nose because it's such a a prominent feature on her face. But that said I don't want to highlight all the features and have them compete against each other because that's going to be a little bit overwhelming. So I'm only going to highlight one of her eyes, and I think the eye that is going to be in focus is going to be this one. It's a really good idea to have some areas of focus and some areas of rest so that not everything is competing for your attention. And also, you can use that as a way to move your audience's eyes through the portrait. I think I want my audience's eyes to generally stay on this side of the face. And this side, I kind of want for your eyes to get lost a little bit, so not have so much to grab onto so that this side can pop against something. Because I want to highlight the nose as well, I feel like the lips could take a little bit of a back seat. So again, similarly, I'm not going to build up my values as much as I would in the focal points, and I'm going to keep the values pretty close to one another so that there's not as much contrast there to draw your eyes and focus. So that is kind of what I'm thinking of when I'm looking at the photo reference and thinking about how I'm going to approach this portrait painting. But once I get into the actual painting itself, things could change on a dime, so we shall see, but I'm excited to get into it. But before I start painting, I think I will take my needle bot eraser and lift off some of these lines because they feel a little bit too heavy for my liking. So I'm gonna do that by just gently rolling my need eraser across, picking up some of the graphite off. The lines are a little bit too strong, and I don't want to feel confined by the lines when I'm painting. I want to be able to see them, so I know what I'm working with, but not so much that I feel constrained by them in any way. 13. Full Portrait Demo Part 2: Shadow Shapes: So I'm going to start this painting off by establishing the shadow shapes, doing a shadow pass first. And that's going to establish a very strong sense of structure to our portrait to work with. Alright, so I'm going to go in with a pretty dark mixture of this kind of turquoise color and establish some of these shadow shapes and see what we come up with. Little bit nervous, but hopefully it works out, and hopefully we can all learn something along the way. Wetting my paints so that if I want to grab a little bit of orange along the way, then it's kind of ready to go. If I want to grab a little bit of red along the way, then it's ready to go. I don't really have, like, pre mixes or anything like that. I just like to kind of pull from and incorporate colors as I go. Alright. Gonna go in with the shadow pass. And I think for the shadow color, I'm going to pick a turquoise color for the shadows and kind of work off that base and see what we end up with. Alright, so I'm going to go in with this prominent shape here. And then be careful to leave that highlight of the eye because that's kind of the whole star of the show. And I'm gonna pull some orange into these areas 'cause it looks warm in the reference, as well, while this is wet, I'm going to throw some orange in this area. We'll see how that looks once it dries. Yeah, trying to carve out those shadow shapes, those dark patches of value. And then I'm going to go into the shadow shape or the case shadow of the nose here. Again, starting with the blue. And remember how I said I'm going to keep the contrast on this side pretty condensed. So I think what I'm going to do is actually treat this whole shapes as one shape instead of breaking it apart, although I will try to leave a little bit of the highlight for that kind of water line on the eye. But I'll see if I want to kind of kill that later on. Maybe it's not necessary. From this point, if I want to, then I'm going to pick out certain darker areas to bring out in this shape, but painting it as one shape like this to start with, that's going to help me keep those values close to one another so it doesn't feel too contrasty. It's going to soften this edge up a little bit. So whenever I'm like, I don't know what to paint next. Just like paint the easiest thing. Paint what you think is the easiest thing to paint and then go from there. And then it gives you a better idea what to paint next. I'm using the turquoise color as a base for these darker shadows, but I'm also pulling into other colors like the orange, for example, especially around areas like around the features where they do have that more warmth, where it is a little bit warmer than the rest of the face. And I'm going to tone the wide of the eye down a little bit here. Use the white of the eye is not that light. And then I'm going to go in with the lips. Again, I don't want the lips to take too much focus away. So I'm bearing that in mind, and I'm going to keep the values here kind of close together, I think. See using the turquoise as a base, but also just kind of pulling other colors into it as I go. Maybe I'll throw a little bit of a highlight on the bottom lip. Just in case, because highlights I can kill down the line if I want, but it'll be hard to get them back if I change my mind. So I will put one in there just in case. So so far so good, I think, in establishing the features. Let me try to get that iris in. So I'm going to now mix color for the mid tone values, which is essentially the local color of her skin. And then, yeah, just kind of lightly glaze it across to establish that Uh, the midtones. And that feels a little bit too red for me, so I'm gonna bring a little bit more cooler colors into that. I'm going to leave a tiny highlight along that waterline. Then I'm going to carve out this shape. For those under eye bags, which I feel are very characteristic for her face. I feel like it wouldn't feel the same if I didn't have that. Then I'm going to go in with the nose now, establish the midtone values there and the local color. And so I'm going in and I'm going to draw around that highlight on the ball of the nose. Make sure I have the right placement. Then Just glide that bead of paint around. And then I'm going to establish a highlight on the bridge, as well. Maybe not quite that big. I just kind of merge these features together a little bit. I'm going to try to soften this edge up here a little bit. I don't like how stark of a line it is all the way from the top to the ball of the nose. So just breaking up this line. Just trying to lift up some of the paint there. Alright, so now I'm going to try to tackle the shadows kind of along the face. And I'm going to probably have to work a little bit quickly because I don't want to create too hard of an edge all over the face. I want to because that's not what I see in the photo reference in the photo reference, the edge is between the, like, form shadow and the areas in the light. They're a lot softer. So once I go in with the shadows, I'm probably going to try to go in and establish the mid tone values for the rest of her skin. So I'm gonna probably work a little bit fast. But we'll see, maybe, maybe not. Let's go in now. And again, I'm gonna pull in other colors into that base turquoise color. So pulling some oranges in here. I'm pulling some right along this side cause cheeks tend to be a little bit more reddish. And then back to turquoise. And this ear back here is gonna be a little bit warmer. So I'm gonna try to soften up this edge of the cheek here. Bye giving her a little bit of blush. And then I'm going to go in and even out this kind of under eye shadow on this side as well. So the last bit of very clear shadow shapes that I see in the photo reference that I can throw in here is the shadow shapes in this ear. And for that, I'm going to go in with a bright orangy reddish color because of subsurface scattering, the shadows inside the ear tend to be warmer. I'm going to even out this side of the cheek and give her some cheek definition on this side, as well. So I'm gonna go in carve start with the darkest side. And then gradate out to a softer finish, softer edge. Like so. So it balances out that side because, you know, our faces are symmetrical. So I kind of like how this portrait looks at this point, even without the midtne of the skin really established. This is why I like working like this with watercolors because I think I could technically stop here if I wanted to. And I think it's still like it's an interesting statement that I'd be making with this portrait. You know, not every inch of the painting has to be filled in. Everyone's definition of finish is different. Again, I kind of like how it looks right now. And from experience, I know that you if you like how it looks, honestly, just kind of step away from it. Don't try to mess with it too much, and then see if it's even really all that necessary to build it up any further, I kind of really like how it looks right now. So I'll move on to the nose and define what I can there, just kind of cleaning up and bringing some of those darker values. But honestly, I feel like I don't need to do too much. I'm just cleaning up the drawing a little bit with some darker values while bringing in a little bit more color. So I brought a little bit more of an intense orange color in this area. And I will bring a little bit darker color in this corner of the mouth here just to kind of pinch that corner of the mouth in a little bit, maybe on this side as well, but that may be the only dark value I throw in the mouth because I don't want the mouth to take over. Alright, so from this point, I think I want to now start working on this eye a little bit. But because I really like the contrast between this eye that's in focus and then this eye that's fading into the background, I really don't want to do too much of this eye. I just want to bring out just a hint of detail in there so that we still get what's going on. So how I'm going to do it is just keep working with the turquoise color so that we have less visual interest than this side. But I have to be really careful with this because I really, really don't want to bring too much detail in here if I can get away with it. And I'm definitely not going to go in with the highlight on that eye. We're gonna kill that highlight. Honestly, that might be enough. Maybe a little bit, I already feel like I'm going a little bit overboard. Yeah, honestly, that might just be enough and a little bit more definition of the eyebrow there. So, the values in here stay very close to one another, so that the overall impression is that this whole eye is in shadow, and meanwhile, I'm going to bring a little bit more definition to this eyebrow. I'm going to bring some color into that ear. Now that we have established that shadow shape, all I need to do is just to kind of glaze a more dilute color over. And that shadow shape holds the structure of the ear together. Like, so 14. Full Portrait Demo Part 3: Filling in the Mid-tones: So really at this point, all I need to do is fill in the remaining part of the skin, which is going to be the mid tone values and then work on the hair. And before I fill in the rest of the skin, I just want to talk about how I'm going to approach it. So because the light is coming from above and from this side on the right, we can observe a a gradual falling off of values. So it's lighter on this side, and then it kind of gradiates towards a darker color on that side. That's also what I want to achieve when I go in to fill in these blank areas. So I'm going to start off by working on the forehead, and what you're going to see me try to do is establish a gradient going from darker to light on this side, and probably a little bit of a gradient in terms of the colors as well, a little bit more bluish on this side, as opposed to maybe warmer on this side to play with that sense of movement, not just in terms of values, but in terms of color temperature. So that's what you're going to see me attempt to do, and I want to also try to see if I can get, like, a rounded feel on the forehead. So we're going to try to do a lot in just a few strokes. But here we go. Maybe that's a little bit too too dark. Too blue. And I am leaving out some shapes that I want to keep a bit lighter. So we'll see how that looks. Yeah. I think that is pretty much what I set out to do. We'll see how it dries. So while this is wet, I'm actually going to go and bring some warmth into the edges here where the skin meets the hair because it tends to be warmer. In this area. And also because the hairline tends to be softer. So that's why I'm doing it while it's wet. So hopefully it doesn't create, like, hard edges while I impart some of the warmth. So I think that worked out pretty well. Now I'm going to fill in this side of the face here, and it's going to be kind of a similar color to whatever is up here. So again, I'm trying to establish a bit of a gradient going from darker to lighter on this side. So yeah, I'm going to try to go in with what I think will achieve that. And I'm going to tint that And then the chin. See how since I've established that shadow shape, it's just so easy to just kind of glaze on colors like this for the remaining parts of the portrait. Just kind of filling in the blanks. And yeah, trying to pull a little bit more yellow into this area to keep it warmer. But yeah, there you have it. I think I might actually go back in to this side. I feel like it in context, now it looks a little bit too light. But I do have to be careful not to layer too much. I don't want to lose some of these shapes I've established. The more kind of fiddle around and layer paint together, the uh, riskier it gets. I think I want to glaze on a little bit more color onto onto the lips cause it does feel a little bit, little bit anemic, especially the bottom lip. So I'm just glazing this color onto it onto the structure we've established. So There should be pretty easy and straightforward. Actually, I'm going to glaze a color onto that highlight as well. So it's, like, a bright pink instead of a stark white. That will help also keep the visual interest down a little bit, and keep the interest up on the eye and the nose. I'm going to carve out one more shadow shape on the ear here. I find painting ears this way so easy. You just, like, pick out whatever geometric shape you see and draw it exactly as you see it, and then somehow it looks like an ear. 15. Full Portrait Demo Part 4: Designing the Hair: Okay, so I'm pretty happy with how the face looks. Now I have to address painting the hair. Usually, when I'm painting the hair in these portraits, I really try to err on the side of leaving the hair understated rather than overstated because it has the potential of taking over the portrait and taking too much attention away from the face. And I think in this case, I will try to use the hair as an opportunity to incorporate some more water coolory effects. So work wet on wet in certain areas. So now I'm trying to decide where I want that wet on wet area to be because I know I don't want a harsh outline all around the hair here. I want a little bit of the boundary of the hair to be broken and have that, like, wet on wet water coolory effect. So I'm trying to decide where I want that water colory effect on this side or this side. I'm thinking kind of up in this direction here. So maybe wet the edges along this side and then keep the harder edges on this side. So we feel that crispness on this side of the portrait, and then on this side, things are a little bit more, like, loose and lost and up to interpretation. So yeah, maybe let's do that. And because her hair is a pretty dark color. I'm not really going to see, this is the thing. When you're working on a full portrait and you're not working on separate just like features individually, then you have to really take into consideration the entire picture, which makes you realize that you don't necessarily need to bring every part of the picture to, like, full detail to, like, the full range of values. You can really just leave things a lot more simply stated. Hopefully, you'll be able to see what my plan is here. So actually, first thing I'm going to get ready is try to mix that color for the hair. But actually, I'm going to work off the kind of turquoise base, and then I'm going to incorporate, pull the color of her hair into that turquoise base, just like how I did with her skin. So we keep that kind of turquoise shadow base consistent throughout the entire portrait. All right. Now that I have some paint kind of ready to go, hopefully I can work pretty quickly. Alright. So I'm just dipping my brush into my water container. It's a little bit dirty, but we'll go with it. And I'm going to just wet wet this whole area here. So wet paint can disperse into that the area that I wet on the paper. And then I'm gonna go in with the blue and see what we get out of this. Oh, boy. Try to corral it a little bit, so it doesn't get too out of control. So, yeah, starting with the blue, but I'm going to slowly pull pull those colors in And, yeah, you know, I'm not gonna worry about the highlight. I think I'm just pain over it. Because the highlight on the hair is actually not that not as bright as we think it is. Again, bringing in or starting with our turquoise base. Incorporating Incorporating the color of her hair. And this side is going to be a lot more crisp in contrast. How do I make sure to draw draw that edge pretty clean. So I'm glancing up, and I'm not sure how much how I love that what I ended up with on the left side there, but hopefully we have some time to address that and get it to a place where we're happy. Maybe I'll leave that little highlight up here. Well, too late. Actually, I'm going to kind of double down on this and darken it. While it's sweat? Yeah, double down. Maybe it just wasn't dark enough. You know what? I'm actually gonna I really like the soft edges here. I think I'm going to try to create an area where it is not so soft like that. Just to break up the line a little bit. So we go from soft to less soft to soft, 'cause I think that might be a little bit more interesting. And once this dries up a little bit more, then I'll be able to control the shape that outer shape a bit better. Yeah, because I hadn't wet this area because I knew I wanted a little bit of a tension point there. So I I want to have that hard edge on that side. Let's even out this hair a little bit more. So again, yeah, I don't want to end up doing too much with the hair, but right now it is feeling a little there's a little bit too much going on on this side, so I want to even it out as much as possible. So now I'm gonna try to soften up this hair line a little bit. Actually, I feel I kind of feel like the hair here is a little bit too dark. So I'm gonna try to Hmm. I think I can live with that. Maybe. Try to do that as well. Yeah, I feel like I went a little bit too dark on the side. So I'm kind of lifting up parts of the paint here. I'm dabbing it with my tissue paper. And I actually kind of like the effect, 'cause I felt like this whole top felt way too heavy in terms of the value distribution. So even though that looks a little bit splotchy, I kind of like that. Right now I'm strengthening this little cast shadow of the hair. The hair, like anything else, has masks, and it's going to cast a little bit of a shadow onto the face. Paying attention to things like that. Like, that's really what's going to give your portrait a sense of, like, realism. 16. Full Portrait Demo Part 5: Fine-tuning the Details: So now I'm going to clean up the kind of edges around the hair slash, give it a little bit more of a design. So that's when you can now go into picking out little shapes, little flyaway hairs. The little shapes that kind of break away from the main shape. But I don't try to go too far beyond that, 'cause I don't think it's necessary. I like letting our brain kind of do most of the filling in the guesswork. So I know that we wanted to create this soft edge here, but I do want to I feel the need to kind of draw a little bit of a line there. So, I guess, now I am moving into kind of the putting in the final touches part of the portrait. Because I feel like everything everything is in place. And so it's really just about now fine tuning the drawing and adding any little bits of color variants to just push up the interest of the portrait and just fine tuning the colors and the shapes and just overall design of the portrait and making sure it's reading how you want it to read and reinforcing shadow shapes like what I'm doing here. Just kind of simplifying that. And, um, what else do I want to do? Trying to pick out just a little bit of the hair texture just so it doesn't look so smooth, but really being very minimalistic and very selective. Yeah, and even that might be too much. Even that might be too much, so I'm gonna knock it down a little bit. I'm gonna put a cast shadow on this part of the earphone. So yeah, I'm kind of scanning scanning around now and trying to see what else I could do. So I'm gonna try to define the earphone a little bit. But I'm gonna keep it crisp white. So I'm not painting over it. I'm painting kind of around it. Well, other than the little shadow areas. But yeah, painting around it. Like so. Now that we're in the finishing stage, I'm kind of jumping. My eyes are jumping all over the portrait, and I'm trying to see, like, what more I could do to make this better. And right now, I just kind of feel the need to punch up the saturation on the lips a little bit. I know that I said I didn't want too much focus there, but I just I want the lips to feel saturated. I want a punch of color there. And I'm going to bring a little bit of a shadow detail along the jowl here. But trying to keep the value here pretty close together as to not create too harsh of a shadow. I think I'm going to draw out this ear a little bit, put an outline around it to kind of punch it up 'cause I really like I want this area to feel a little bit punchier and stronger and also defining this corner of the jaw a little bit to kind of echo those lines that I did for the ear. I'm going to darken this ear in the back. So one of the last few things I want to do is I want to suggest a little bit of the hair for the eyebrows, this part of the eyebrow anyway, the eye that's in focus here, so that when you look, you get rewarded a little bit with some detail. Strengthening some of the show shapes. And just punching up some colors, bring a little bit more of an intense orange in that crease here. Bring a little bit of an orangy transition along this along the shadow here, along the chin 'cause it feels a little bit boring there to me. I always look for opportunities like that. I like looking for areas where I can bring any more color into it. Alright, so I think the last last last thing I will do from this point on is I want because I drew in the ear foams and I want to keep them white, I have to now paint the background a little bit so that the earphones actually stand out, and it's not just supported by the pencil linework. I want the background to have a subtle color, but I don't want it to have any, like, hard edges anywhere. I think I want to just highlight this one out in the front. But maybe maybe this one in the back, I can just paint it in. And I think that might create an interesting contrast. Alright, so what I'm going to do is I'm going to just wet around it, wet around the earphone. 'Cause I don't want hard edges around that. Alright. Alright, let's get in here. I think I want just, like, just our shadow color, again, maybe a little bit I don't know. A little bit more subdued. Maybe I'll play around with bringing some other colors into it as well. I don't know. We'll see how I feel about this. Okay. But yeah, I like trying to incorporate as much of that wet on wet. Watercolory effect as much as possible because I tend to have a pretty structured approach to painting watercolors, painting portraits in watercolors. So I try to look for opportunities where I can be a little bit less structured, be a little bit more spontaneous, bring a little bit more of that uncontrolled quality of watercolors that is so appealing and so, you know, iconic of the medium. So I like that, but I think I'm going to dab away a little bit underneath here and actually just keep the brightest point near the top. And actually, once this dries, I'm probably going to paint this because right now it's reading a little bit flat. Now I'm going to So I think that yeah, that makes it feel more like, less flat on the page. And I like that. I'm going to try to draw in a little bit of the flyaway hairs. So the hair doesn't feel like this so, um, you know, smooth and perfect. But trying to be careful not to disturb what we've established. So keeping the value very light. I'm constantly still trying to refine the design of that outer shape. And, I know I said I wouldn't bring too much attention here, but Alright, I'm pretty happy with that. I think that is our portrait demo for the class. I really hope you guys liked it. I hope you found it insightful. I walked away from my portrait and came back to it, and I think I do want to darken this area. A little bit, because it does feel a little bit too light. And maybe with the little details in it, it does feel a little bit too contrasty now. So the point that I want to make with this is it does help to kind of walk away from your portrait a little bit, get a zoomed out look at it from, like, a different point of view, and it'll help give you ideas on what to do with it. If you feel stuck in any way, it'll give you a fresh perspective on how to approach it differently. But, yeah, I kind of felt when I thought I was done, I just checked back my recording, and I realized that, I think I want to I want this area to be a little bit. So I think I want to darken it a little bit. Just give it, like, one even kind of pass all over. So let's see. I am going around the highlights this time. So hopefully it kind of simplifies that whole area. And once that area dries, I might go in and glaze this highlight down a little bit so that it's not so bright cause I still feel like those highlights are a little bit too bright. But yeah, I like how I made that decision to go in there. I like it a lot better now, actually. I don't have any patients. I'm gonna go in. I'm gonna go in now and try to darken this highlight a little bit. Or maybe too much. There. Okay, finally finally ready to call this done. Bring a little bit more shadow definition along the crown or along the part of the hair there. I'm actually going to soften up this edge. It looks a little bit too too strong. So I'm just lifting it up a little bit, soften up this area. That gives nice contrast to the harder edges along there. Alright, now I think I'm finally happy with it enough to call it finished. I really like how this portrait turned out, and I hope you like how it turned out as well, and I hope you found this demonstration helpful. I 17. Student Project: Thank you all so much for taking this class. I sincerely hope you found it helpful because now it's time to create your own watercolor portrait. For the beginners, I made this drawing from the full portrait demo available to download, which you can print out and trace onto your watercolor paper or even print directly onto the paper, or simply just use as a guide when drawing your own blocking. There are no rules here. Just make sure to simplify those values and group them into the three value groups and see what kind of result you can achieve. Have fun and don't forget to upload your work into the class project section. I can't wait to see what you can do.