Expressive Watercolor Portraits: Embrace watercolor's "flaws" and discover a whole new approach

1. Intro: Hi, my name is Fiona Di Pinto and diamond Watercolor artist based in Rome. I love painting portraits. In this class you're going to be bringing your Watercolor Portraits to a whole new level of expressiveness by embracing the hard edges and blooms. Colour and water create organically as they interact naturally on your paper. Follow me as I walk you through the process step-by-step. And trust me, you won't be disappointed 2. Materials I Used: Materials you're going to need for this class. Good Watercolor paper. I'm using Winsor and Newton hot pressed. It's 300 GSM or 140 pounds, and it's 100% cotton. You don't have to use the same exact paper, but makes sure it is professional or a good-quality watercolor paper. I'm using these brushes and we have an Skoda number one that stands for one inches and it's flat. As you can see. I have a trickle. Number six, I have a silver black velvet three-quarters of an inch. I have a silver black velvet round ten, and I have a small silver black velvet number two for the final details. And you can use different brushes, but try and get some large ones, medium ones, and some small ones in there. Grab some kitchen paper. A palette, possibly a clean one. This is ceramic, but you can use the white plate from your kitchen that will work just as well. A pencil, a jar of clean water. Your watercolour paints. It doesn't matter which brand you use. However, you will find the complete list of colors I Used for this class in their attachments, as well as the reference image and the sketch outline which you can trace if you prefer to do so. Don't forget about those. White gouache, white acrylic, or of white gel pen to add highlights. Are you good to go? 3. Painting With Puddles: Now I have my clean sketch and using this large brush which has any Skoda number one. I'm just going to pre wet my sketch. Accidents happen. So I'm just going to remove that little piece of fluff from my sketch. And I'm just covering the whole area with a lot of water. So don't worry too much of the water goes outside the sketch and just cover the whole face and neck area. The paper shouldn't just be damp but actually glistening. So when you tilt it, you should be able to see Shane. I'm picking up some madder lake red light and I'm starting to position that on the cheek just using this large brush that I have. And I'm going to bring that into both cheeks. I'm just going to let it flow because of course the paper is wet. The paint is going to do what it Lakes. And I'm going to get it into the lip area as well. I'm just going to go over the lip with the brush in this fashion. Don't worry, this might look really strange to begin with, but actually it's a good way to get expressive when you're painting and to get the color in the lip to go beyond the lip as well. You'll be smoothing this out using a smaller brush. And this is a silver black velvet number ten. And I've picked up some cobalt blue. And I'm going around the eye area. Again, everything is extremely wet. And this is what allows the expressiveness to happen. I'm going into the flight of the eyeball and I'm going around the cheek area like this. I am then going to pick up quinacridone violet, but it doesn't have to be quinacridone violet. You can use any color that you want. Any violet will do, for example, or any blue, but we've just used blue. So I would suggest use violet. And I'm going to bring it over here and to the side of the forehead in the corner, inner corner of the eyelid. And here I'm going to be using the tip of my brush. I'm going to bring it into the other eyelid as well. And at this point, really the more water you have on your brush, the better. Because it's in those areas where the water pools that we are going to get all those lovely hard edges and cauliflower effect that so many people tried to fight in Watercolour. But that's totally embrace because they are beautiful and show us what the nature of watercolour is. And I absolutely love that. I'm reaching out for some green and I'm bringing it under the eye on the site. Again, there's a lot of water on my brush. Silver black velvet is a really thirsty brush. So I can be sure that anytime I use it, I'm going to be picking up a lot of water. I'm bringing it above the lip. Then I'm picking up more water and going back into that cheek and dropping more water in there. And again into the other cheek because we do see quite a lot of pink in our cheeks now, don't worry if the water, if the paint goes beyond the Face and into the hair. Indeed, I very often actually bring some of the colored from the skin into the hair as well. So that is absolutely fine and feel free to do that. I'm bringing a little bit of orange by White Nights into the cheek just to give it a little bit of a pop of color on both sides and a little bit up into the forehead. As you can see, the color is going to travel where there is water and a kind of dent has formed in the middle section, horizontally in the middle section of my sheet of paper, but that's fine. You can to some extent move things around with your brush if you want to, or you can just go with a floor and let things be as they are. Then I'm going in with them, burnt umber, and I am just adding that on top of what I have put down. Again by doing this, not only am I adding more color, but I'm adding more water as well. This point we have something that is really sopping wet. I'm bringing some of that color down into the neck. Next can be boring to Paint. So try and get that color in the neck as fast as possible, as early on in your process as possible, so that you don't have to worry about painting the neck by itself later on. Either use your reference image as your guide and check where you think you might see these colors. Or you can just go randomly and place them wherever you want. It's really an exercise in creativity and imagination. We're almost painting a skin that is radio-like. But at the same time, it's important to remember that skins do a reflect lights that are the late that's around them. So it's not too crazy to think that these colors might be in the skin. Indeed, you will find them in skin very often. I'm going to add some red to the lip because it came to float all over the place. Try to make it quite intense. You can move on to a smaller brush. At this stage, I'm using a tracheal number six. And I'm just using the tip of that brush to help me move the paint around certain areas. And when you've reached this messy stage, you just let this dry, naturally selected air dry. Don't try and go in with any heat tool. Don't triangle and would like hairdryers or anything or speedup the process just leave it. Sometimes I have to leave this overnight. And then in the morning you will see what results you've got and how the water has dried naturally. If you're in a rush and can't wait, you can always go in and start painting the background. I've mixed some madder lake red light with some Naples yellow, which gives us soft, fleshy, peachy tone. And I'm just going to go around the whole background with this. And the idea is that when I go in and paint the hair later on, I will get this nice soft effect where the edges of the hair will blend into the background. So just use a large brush for this. I'm using a silver black velvet number ten again. And I'm just going in with us quite wet, wash and getting the background. And then to get some dimension watch would do is just for example, pick up some madder lake red light on its own and just add that only to certain areas. While the surface is wet. You will see that these colors will easily blend and create these nice transitions. 4. Incorporating Hard Edges: What we end up with once or painting has dried. It's something that can look quite messy. And you should not be intimidated by this and actually just go with the flow. We all know that painting is go through an ugly stage. And that is even more true for this kind of painting. One important step at this point is to revisit the sketch. Sometimes you can lose a sketch. As you can see here, the features are not very visible anymore. So I'm going to go in with a pencil and I'm going to try and outline them so that when I go over them with more paint, I want I will be able to see them and I will be able to see where they are. So I'm just using this pencil and I can see the sketch through the paint. But I know that if I go over it with more paint, then it's going to become less and less visible as we layer. So unimportant step is just to retrace your underlying sketch so that we don't lose any important pieces. Why am I saying this? Well, it's very easy to actually get something off balance or to lose symmetry. Even if we make like the eyelids slightly different, or if one is higher or there's more eyelid space showing compared to the other one, it can make the portrait look off. So it's important to recuperate those lines. So make sure you do that. And then we'll come back for the next part. Once you've got those sketch lines back in and you can see them clearly. Look at what you've got, where the hard edges are. I have one up here. I have one on the cheek. I have a hard edge across the top lip. Of course it has some going on in the hair and I also have one down in the neck. So you want to try and avoid painting over those Hard Edges because that is what gives us Portrait personality and what makes it different. So we will start zooming in on the details. The lips, the eyes, the nose. I'm going to start with lips. And I have mixed some madder lake red light with some Naples yellow. I'm using a tracheal number six brush again. When you put your brush into your well, be sure to roll your brush properly so that you are picking up paint on all sides of the bristles are not just on one side. This is called the fully loaded brush, and it's very important to be aware of this. I've, how much paint and water we have on our brush when painting. And I'm just going to go into that lip and start to fill it in with this nice color. Make sure your mics is not too watery at this stage. I'm just filling it in. We already have some underlying color. And of course that will show through. I know bringing some burnt sienna into that mix and just dropping it on the bottom lip. There are usually quite lots of colors going on. In the left, we have cold and warm colors. And then I'm also wanted to pick up some of our quinacridone, violet. I'm going to use that to go into the lip as well. Especially on the bottom lip. And we're not painting wet and wet. So you can allow the paint to bleed slightly and let it go where you, where it wants to go. And then of course, you can still timid with your clean damp brush and go in and push the paint around and gently push it in a direction you want it to go or bring it back in and clean up any edges that you don't. Like. I've added some more of that madder lake red light and I'm just going into the cheek because her cheek is very pink. Cheeks are very pink. So I'm just adding that pop of color on the cheek. And the technique I Used to pay the cheek is to usually go in wet and wet of course. And I start by adding some color on that to that area. Then I just go over with a more, less diluted version of that color. So maybe I'm going to go into the side of the whale here and pick some of that up and just drop it into the center of the blush areas, so to speak, and keep dropping it in there. I then clean my brush, dab it on some kitchen paper, and smooth the edges out so that we get a natural effect and a smooth transition into the rest of the skin tone. You can do this for us off as often and as much as you like Just dropping war of the mixture into the center of that wet area. And then cleaning your brush and gently smoothing it out. In circular motion. Makes sure you are aware of how light everything is going to dry before you decide how much paint you want to add. In this case, I've decided to go in with more of that pink to just get even more of a pop on this other site. In my case, I have this hard edge and it's already creating a global blush. I do not want to get rid of that hard edge, some kind of play around it. Now in your painting, you will see that those hard edges, those cauliflower, dried in different areas. So it's up to you to decide which ones you want to keep, which ones you'd want to get rid of. If you want to get rid of them, basically, you really just have to paint over them. And if you like them, then you just paint around them or trying to integrate them into the painting without going over them with wet paint or with water. Because that will reactivate the Watercolour. And we'll basically just smooth everything out, which might just get rid of the cauliflower effect or even make your painting muddy if the color is dark. So it can be quite tricky. But I think the magical thing about this kind of Painting is the result is completely different. I'm going to go in above the eye, into the eyelid with some roles during by Winsor and Newton. I love this color. It is so pretty. I use it in almost all my Portraits, some gently using the tip of my brush and I'm bringing it along the eyelid. There is quite a lot of eyelid space in this portrayed in this reference image. And I'm going to go over the other eyelid as well. I have quite incredibly mixture at this stage, so not too much water. And I'm just using, again, the very tip of my brush to get that color in that eyelid. Again, once I've done that, I am going to clean my brush and I'm going to tap it on some kitchen paper just to get rid of the excess water. And I'm going to smooth that out while the eyelids dry and going in with some burnt sienna into the nose area. Again, I don't have too much water on my brush. Of course, it's not dry either. We don't want that in Watercolour, but it's not super Puddles either. So we kinda bring in that nose forward and when we put some warm color in an area, we're definitely going to make it warmer. Yeah, of course. Stand out more. That is what it was trying to get at. And we're focusing inward, zooming into the details of the Face and trying to make them stand out so that the I is not only drawn to the hard edges that are around the painting, but the eye is drawn initially to the details of the Portraits, of course, the eyes especially. And then it travels around the Face and takes in the hard edges, which makes this interesting and unique. Be sure to clean your brush and the color you put down into your, into the nose, upwards, into the bridge of the nose, and outwards 5. Shadows and Final Layers to the Face: I've mixed some quinacridone violet and burnt umber into my well, and I'm going to go in to the shadow areas on the side of the Face. At this point, everything is dry in my painting. But there is, if you look at the reference image, that there is quite defined shadow on the side of her face. And we do want to get that in there because it's still important to get values. In the Face. Of course, even though we're painting it in a quite abstract manner, we still need those shadows and highlights and midtones. I'm getting that shadowing very likely initially, I might darken it up slightly as we move on in our process. And I'm going to go into the other side as well. I'm also bringing some shadow down into the neck area because we can see clearly and reference image that it is in shadow. And again, I'm using that mixture of quinacridone, violet and burnt umber. I'm not going to bring it all the way down to where I had the hard edge because they want to preserve that. I'm working my way around it and darken it up as much as you feel that it needs to be dark. I will probably add some more allylic violet to that. Any Violet really will do any purple color. Or if you don't have that, blue is also good option. I'm now using cerulean blue to fill in the iris, but not just the iris, I'm actually filling in the white of the eye as well, that eyeball. I see this in every single tutorial workshop or class that I teach. The eyeball is not quite. So getting rid of the white right off the bat is a good idea. And it's also easier to place highlights there and have them stand up more. At the end of the painting. I'm filling in the whole area. And if you're wondering what I am making the eyes blue, even though the eyes are not blue. That's because very often like to have a blue highlight in the dark. I, you can very often see that even when you look at animals, eyes and highlights are not always just white. They can select the colors surrounding them. Before the next step, make sure that everything is dry. Go in with your heat tool if you need to do that or let it dry naturally. Know that the eyes are dry. I'm going in with sepia. And again, I'm rolling my brush in that very carefully so that the bristles are fully loaded. And I'm just going to go in and paint in the iris. So if you see that your mixture is a little bit too watery as usual, just take your kitchen paper and let some of the excess dampness out and bring your brush back to the iris and start filling in the iris. Using the point of your brush. Go in and very carefully. It almost looks like the iris is darker on the right side. So I'm doing that. I'm just getting that darkness in there, making sure that also try not to distort the shape of the iris. That's very important, that can happen. You can make it wider, larger, bigger and that kind of Shange's expression and the I. So try to avoid that as much as possible. And as you can see, I'm leaving that highlight there. Then I'm moving on to the other. In undoing the same thing, again, just makes sure you stay within the iris, that you don't change the shape of it too much. In fact, try not to change it at all if possible. And again, I see that the inner side of the iris, the inner area a slightly lighter and are going to be leaving a little bit of a highlight there as well. And we can also use the same color that's on our brush now the same mixture to define that upper eyelashes. I'm just going to go in with a very tip of my brush and very gently hardly putting any pressure on it at all. I am going to bring that line, the root of both eyelashes, down to the end of the I. Now don't make that line too thick. If you think it's too thick, have your have your paper handy and go in and pick it up, for example, in my cases sits a little bit too thick in the inner corner. Just go in, press a paper down and lifted. I'm going into the other eye and I'm going to enhance the eyelashes or the root of the eyelashes with the same color as well. Over on this side, always remember to put very little pressure on your brush. If you think the iris and his darkening up, feel free to go in and do so. You can also use the same mixture to go in to the crease of the eyelid in certain areas and darken that up to something I would advise you against this to just go over the whole crease. It can be deeper in certain areas. So I would do that. I would only darken up certain sections of it. If you darken up the whole thing, it will end up looking a bit to cartoonish. And of course, you can use the same color to go into the eyebrows. The eyebrows are kinda downcast at the sides. That is not because she's got a sad expression on her face or anything of the sort. But I think it's just because she's looking over to the side. Under eyebrows are raised. Again, go in extremely gently. Your brush barely touch the paper when you reach the center of the eyebrow or the area towards the top of the bridge of the nose, change the direction of the hairs and go almost vertically. And I'm going in with neutral tint around the teeth. Era. Don't try to color in the teeth, just try to kind of get the shape around them. So use negative painting. That means painting around the shape rather than painting inside the shape. The teeth already will not be quiet because we went over them in the first layer and just try and get the ship around them, suggesting, suggesting at the teeth. Rather than trying to exactly as I said, Paint them in inside. So that is enough for me. I'm not going to do anything more about the teeth. I'm also going to use mutual tint mixed in with Indian red, which is just kind of like a dark brick color dread to go into the nostrils and define them. And for this, I am using a small number two brush. Of course, it has to be a very creamy mixture. I would compare it to the consistency of toothpaste because we need all the control we can get when going into the nostrils. We can also define a side of the noise very slightly, as there is a shadow there. While we have this brush on this mixture on it, we can go in and add a few random eyelashes. They are not many eyelashes, so don't go crazy with a step. Just add very small, very fine. And again, don't add too much pressure to your brush. I'm just going in and suggesting these eyelashes. I'm literally not going to have any of them. A lot of them in there at all. 6. Hair, Floral Element and Drips: I've mixed some browns in my well here it's basically burnt umber, Mars brown and burnt sienna. And I'm just using this large three-quarter inch brush to go in and drop some color into the hair. The hair is going to be very loose, very simple. And maybe we'll have some more details on the outline of the hair where we have all these little curls showing almost like a halo. But for now we're going to just drop this very watery mix of paint into the hair, just using the shape of our brush to fill it in. And just adding water and paint on top of the layer that we've just put down. Then if you want to, of course have some more defined shapes, you can go in with a less watery mixture further on in the process. But for now to kind of break the ice, I'm just going to use this very watery mixture, get the shape in there so that it becomes less scary, so to speak. And I'm just working my way around the head. Her hair is almost in the shape of a heart at the top here. And I've added the slower, which I plan to have it melting into the hair. So it's not going to be too defined. Just keep filling in that hair. I'm going in with some darker color as well here and there and everything is wet. So it's just going to blend by itself, which is exactly what I want it to do. I do want to fuss about where this to match the shape of the head over here and more or less here. So try to keep within that area and just drop the darker color around the hair. Not all over the place, of course. Just a certain spots. And let it do its thing. Try and get some darker color close to the neck, close to the Face. Of course, make sure everything is 100 per cent dry in the face area at the stage, or the color from the hair will bleed into the Face and that will be hard to lift with your kitchen paper. I'm going to drop some big dollops of pink. You can drop pink or violet or even blue into the hair. One thing you've got to do is just make sure that there's lots and lots of water in these dollops. That is why I'm using this brush that holds a really huge amount of water. It's a very thirsty brush. And then what I do is I simply tilt my block of paper to get Drips. This adds to the overall expressiveness of the painting. Of course, we're not done yet, but I like to get this done in early on so I can paint a rounded decide whether I want to add more Drips are different colors. For example, I think a violet or blue, as I said earlier, would look nice next to this. Pink. But I also plan on getting this flower and here and possibly have some Drips going from that too. So let's jump right into that now. Now I'm using the tip of this large brush just to add in some little curls here and there. And then using that mixture of neutral tint. To do this, I'm just using the tip of the brush which has half dry. It's still damp of course, but it's not too wet. It's not dripping wet. And I just use that to create these little curls. You don't need to do it all over the hair. Because just by being able to see a few of them that will suggest that the hair is indeed curly. It's now time to go into the flower and I'm going to make this Loose because the whole painting is very expressive and very loose. So it's only makes sense for the flower to reflect that. But you can make it as detailed as you want to go into every single leaf and painted carefully. Whereas I'm just going to lay down this first wash of rows Doran. And then I'm going to go in with some Indian red, which is just again a dark, dark red brick color. And I'm going to start dropping it into the center of slower. I don't even have a reference image for this. I just pencil the end. Quite basically creating a sort of spiral shape. And I'm just adding some shadow areas to give it some depth. Don't go all around. You do go all around to create the shadow area, but don't just create circle after circle after circle. Try and make it more. Let's say, with less of a balance in a way, try to make it more asymmetrical. You can pull some of the shadows out when your brush is clean to bring them into a section of mid tones. Just under the rules, I'm going to place some purple. Again, it's going to be extremely wet, extremely partly because I plan to create another drip. So we have a lot of water. And make sure you have coarse enough Painting there to have colour and the Drips. And again, I'm just going to tilt it. If you stop the tilt halfway, let's say you can easily create a half-day trip, which adds a bit of variety and you can add this many of these as you want. You can actually go in and create a green one next to the leaf that would make next to the petal, that would make sense because we have them. We would have the greenery surrounding the petal. You can have another one over here. You can make it blue. We have blue and the Face. So it's nice to kinda keep the Painting cohesive and have the same colors going on around the whole Painting. Note, let's dive into the final touches for our piece. 7. Highlights and Goodbyes: And then going with white acrylic gouache, I find acrylic gouache or acrylic to be better than simple gouache, because gouache reactivates with water and it tends to be less opaque and to allow the underlying layers to show through more. I'm using this small number two brush. I'm picking it up just as it is. I'm not adding any water. And then I'm going to add a highlight into the eye. And in the same and the other eye. And this is a moment that I absolutely love because adding those highlights really brings the portrait to life. You can also add some highlights under the eye. You can see in the reference image we have sunlight just on the rim of the eye there, and also in the tear duct and over to the other side. Here. Again, even though there are no freckles, who am I to take away the funnel body, a few splatters. So just by using some browns, I'm going in and tapping the back of my brush. I just added the freckles and you can see that they really add more interests and make the portrait portrayed look really cute and interesting. So this is the end of our class. I really hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. I hope to see you again here on Skillshare that you will visit my other classes. On here, I have two more classes, once more suitable for beginners. And another one is a Watercolour. I please, please share your projects don't below, I will be sure to give you feedback. You can also share your work on my Instagram handle, drawings in a drawer, all in one word. You can also find me on YouTube. And again, I'm Fiona Di Pinto. It was great being here with you and having this the Paint along. And I hope to see you very, very soon. Bye for now. 8. Portrait 2 - Rainbow skin pt1: Welcome to this bonus section I added on so that we could practice with another painting. Of course, if you didn't take the previous part of my lesson, I suggest you go back to the beginning and do that one first. Otherwise, you will be painting this with me today. You will have the sketch out line and reference image linked below. We will be having a lot of fun together with this. Again, I want to thank in advance all of the people who shared their work with me on skill sharing the projects. But a lot of you also shared them by tagging me on Instagram. I loved your work, and a lot of you had questions about obtaining puddles and hard edges. So I'm going to a little bit more in depth in this one. As you can see, I am using a lot of water. I'm using a silver black velvet 1 " flat brush. But that's not important, Just use any brush that you want. I'm using this brush in particular because it holds a lot of water. I painted this in the evening. In fact, you can see the artificial light shining off the water on the paper. The reason why I did this is because I usually leave the painting to dry overnight. I went in with some cadmium red, very diluted again. There was a lot of water in my mixture as I started off because it's a matter of adding water on water. It is not predictable. You don't know what you're going to get. You don't know where you're going to get your hard edges or your blooms. You don't know how many you are going to get. But one thing is for certain, if you don't use a lot of water, you are not going to get those hard edges and those blooms. Then I went in with burnt umber. I had changed my brush at the stage and I was using a quail brush and I just started dropping more water and added that darker color up on the forehead area. Mint is a color by white nights that I did not use in the previous portrait this lesson. But I wanted to bring it into this one because I think it adds a little bit of interest as it has a certain coverage that water color usually doesn't have. It probably means it contains white. I'm just laying that down on the cheekbone area and adding more water by splattering my brush over it. So you can see we have a lot of water here. And I will show you in a moment how the water is puddling in the specific area. And by tilting my block of paper, you will be able to see the actual flow of water and paint. That is what you are looking for. As you can see, everything is very wet. Not just damp, but very wet. I'm just bringing some burned timber down in the jaw area. It's important to keep your reference image printed out or on a tablet by your side so that you can check where all the values are, the darker areas, the mid tones, and the highlights, which are always so important When we are working on a painting or a portrait, or anything literally, that we want to represent. I'm dropping some ultramarine blue just above the eye, in a shadow area. And you can see that there's so much water on the paper that it's spreading by itself. And I'm allowing it to do its thing. I'm also bringing it down below the jaw line on the neck where of course we have a shadow cast by the chin. And that is nearly always there. So you can take it almost for granted that you're going to have to go in and put a shadow on the neck area. One thing I've noticed with ultramarine is that it almost always creates a hard edge. Some colors tend to create probably because of the pigments that they are made with. They trend to granulate or create hard edges more than other colors. And also darker colors will dry with their cauliflower edges showing more than lighter colors. Just because probably you can see them more because they are darker and dropping cadmium red light into the lip. And as you can see, I'm just allowing it to flow where it wants to go. And I'm dropping it into the side of the nostril as well. And everything is pulling over to the left side where most of the water is. And I'm also bringing some warmth into the ear. That is another thing you should always almost take for granted. We can see some warmth in the ear almost every time. And I'm dropping rose array over in the cheekbone jaw area because it seemed a bit light compared to the rest of the portrait. You can see me pressing my brush down. Now, what am I doing here? By doing this, I am creating dents in the paper by pressing your paint, brush down. It doesn't always happen, you're not always successful. But you can try to create some, well, some indentations in your paper. By doing that, you will pull the water towards that, well, towards that dent. Of course, that will help you create cauliflowers, effects and get hard edges. In that area because basically edges that are hard end up forming where the wet paper meets paper that's more dry. If we have a, well, if we have a pool of water, then usually the edge of that pool or where that pool spreads is where we'll get a hard edge. Now using neutral tint, I'm going up with a fully loaded brush into the hair and I'm not going all the way down close to the skin which is still wet. Otherwise, the neutral tint would just spread down into the skin and ruin everything. As you can see, I left that clean area between the top of the forehead and where the hair starts. I will go in later to fill that in. When everything is dry, I'm going towards the back of the head as well, and just lightly dropping some of that on the eyebrow to start getting the idea of that darker area where the eyebrow sits. And also between the nose and the top lip, hinting at a bit of a mustache, let's say. And also dropping some into the cheek. And as you can see, I'm also pulling down some of that dark paint from the hair. By pressing my brush, I'm just adding burnt amber to the cheek area just because everything was still a little bit too light over there. And I'm also then adding rose ray above that area to bring some warmth into the cheek. Everything will still tend to flow, in my case, towards that puddle that's formed in the nose and in the forehead. And I will try to get more of a puddle on the other side of the face as well. As I said, you don't always succeed at this. Sometimes it's just the way the paper is made. Sometimes there are some defects in the paper that can cause the water to flow more in one direction. But I just wanted to get a good foundation, get a lot of color going on in this one, so I wanted more kind of a rainbow skin, so to speak. And then I picked up some indigo. And I went in to the neck area to darken up the shadow. So I went in on either side of the neck to frame it. I'm going in with that flat, silver, black velvet, large brush again and using mint and swiping it across the cheekbone just because I want that pop of color in there. I was leaning more towards a rainbow kind of skin, as I said earlier, compared to the previous painting we did in this class. So I wanted more color in there. And I sped the section of the video up slightly, not because I want to make things too fast for you to follow, but because it really helps you to see how the water moves on the paper. When you speed things up, I advise you to use color according to what you have obtained up till now on your paper. If you feel you've gone dark enough, then be sure to stop. Otherwise, go darker in the areas that seem too light to you. It may seem logic, but sometimes we can easily overwork a piece by ignoring these aspects. I've picked up some turquoise and gone into the side of the face again and used more indigo to darken up the shadow in the neck area. You can just see by barely touching the paper with my brush how that paint flows. Painting in this way with watercolor really brings you together with this medium. It really makes you like one with it. I find it almost cathartic and I think it's a beautiful way to paint with watercolor. This was what I had and what I left to dry overnight. You can see there is so much water when I tilt the watercolor block. This is the end of the first section of this part of the lesson, this bonus part of the lesson. I will see you once my painting has dried. See you in the next section. 9. Portrait Rainbow skin pt 2: It's the morning after. This is how it has dried. We definitely have some hard edges going on, as you can see. Also, I tried to dab up some of the water and paint that had bled beyond the head area. What I ended up doing was I tilted the block of paper upwards, and I used my brush to push some drops outwards as I was tilting the paper to create this effect. And I was thinking, I will go ahead and do the same thing over down here. Going up the way. Of course, it's never completely predictable what it will do, but I thought it would be a nice added extra element to do that composition wise as well. I think it will look nice. As you can see, a result is slightly more colorful and rainbow like compared to our first one. We have a little bit more of interesting colors going on as we did for our first painting. I'm just going to go in and start working on the lip. I have my palette over here to the side, and I'm just going to mix some rose ray with some purple. I'm going into the corner of his lip where I can see this nice intense and bright color. I really want to get that bright pink in there on his bottom lip because it really adds pop of color and intensity. Whereas everything is quite hazy at this stage. By going in and starting to add this color in a more precise and controlled way, we are bringing some balance between a chaotic painting style and one that's obviously more controlled and more precise. I'm just bringing that color into the corner of his bottom lip. I'm laying it down. I'm then picking up some of that violet on its own and dropping it into the corner of his lip. Of course, at this stage, the paper is wet because I just laid down that paint. The paint is going to spread by itself. I'm gently tapping it, just with the tip of my paint brush. I'm cleaning my paint brush in clear water, tapping it on kitchen paper, and just smoothing it out ever so delicately, bringing it over to the other side of the lip and then back again. I'm going to keep working on this. I'm going to go into the top is a very subtle color. It's a dusty pink. I'm going to obtain that by mixing this rose array with some naples yellow, which really tones it down and makes it look creamier. Mixing this in the small plastic palette, and I'm going to go into that top lip with this softer color and work my way around it. If you feel that you need more pink, just go and add that in. I really like the heart shape of his lips. I'm trying to preserve that. Use the chip of your brush. When you get closer to the outline of the lip, you can use the side of your brush when you're towards the inner part of the lip. While it's wet, it's a good time to make some decision making. I'm going in with my, this is actually permanent rose. It's Quinacridone rose and some cadmium red light. I am going to mix them together on my palette. I just want that brightness to be showing a little bit more on that bottom lip. I just feel it's not enough and that is very common in watercolor. You think you're going to get a certain color to show up quite bright in your paper, but then it doesn't and then especially when it dries, of course you're going to get a different result. I know right out of the gate that I really want that to show. And also going in, in the center, towards the center of the bottom lip, close to the opening of the lip, I want that bright, darker skin where the skin of the lip goes backwards and starts to become the inside of the mouth. That that makes sense. Like the inside of the lip, it's shinier and darker in that area. You can see that in your reference image very well. There are also some little lines coming down. Just use the tip of my brush to move the paint downwards. Now the paint is quite thick at this stage. Not too thick but quite thick. Make sure that when you bring that down, you don't bring it down in a straight line, but in a curved comma shape like you see me doing here. I'm using that same color to go up into his nose. There is some brightness in the tip of his nose. I'm just going in there and adding that there. Now we will all have come up with different results. We cannot expect to get the same results when we are using this technique, because water will go where it wants to go. And it's not possible to, let's say, foresee exactly what's going to happen. We've got to play with what we have. I have some redness on the nose, pink or some kind of earthy tones. Let's say I have this very bright dot of red over here. I can try to reactivate that with my damp brush. It will because water color, that's its nature. It will reactivate if you go in with a damp brush. If I want to make that softer, I can do so. So I'm cleaning my brush in my water, again, tapping it off my kitchen paper. Let's always remember to go through these motions. And I'm smoothing that color upwards into the bridge of the nose. I have to be careful here because of course, I have this mint color, and I'm not too sure that these two colors would blend well together. I'm going in with small, circular motions. If I press down too hard on my brush, it's going to be very easy to reactivate this mint and to have these two colors spread together. When I'm not sure yet if that is something that would work, I'm bringing some raw sienna into the tip of the nose. Again, just dropping some more paint in there. Again, cleaning my brush, tapping it on my kitchen paper. And again bringing that up into the bridge of the nose without putting too much pressure on my brush. And I feel that rosen is a good color for the inside corner of the eye as well. I'm just placing some there. I'm just checking around the picture if there's anywhere else I want to have it. And I think I want to have some up here that probably won't show up much because I have quite a dark area in that spot. But I'm over laying this rociena on top of it. Maybe I have an area that is pretty light here towards the temple. I'm going to bring some rosina into that area. If you have any areas where the paint has not spread at all, maybe that now is the time to assess those areas and decide whether you want to go in there and add some paint. I wouldn't go in and add paint that's too dark, I would just start off light, or even if you want to leave them blank. That's up to you that, let's say, a stylistic choice. That's up to you to make. It can help you discover interesting things. I'm also bringing the rosa into this blank area down on the cheekbone also because looking at the reference image, I can see that it's quite light over there. I want to achieve the same result. Also, I have a blank area over here and I'm not quite sure yet what I will be doing with that. I'm going in and just getting rid of the white of the paper by dropping some rosen into it and just making it more normal looking, something that I can decide what I want to do with later on. I definitely know that I don't want it to remain white because it would look too odd and too distracting while we wait for things to dry. Let's look around our painting and make sure we've not lost any of that underlying sketch. I have most of it still showing through. But I just want to go over that jaw line and make sure I can see where it is. Maybe you can check if you can still see where the eye lids are. The edge of the eye and also in my case, the edge of the lip is quite dark because the lips end before the outline of the face. I have to be able to see that. Make sure that there's nothing that you need to have showing through that is being covered up by paint. I'm going into the ear as well. Just retracing that underlying sketch. Just going into the eyebrows as well. Getting the shape and definition of those hairs in there, and maybe the outline of the nose as well. I'm just using this very small calligraphy brush to go into a mix of neutral tint and Indian red. I don't like using blacks. I tend to mix stuff colors like burnt umber, ultramarine blue, or Indian red and neutral tint, or reds and blues. And get a dark value by mixing these. And I mix it with a larger brush, and then I go in with a smaller brush because it's so hard to pick up color with a small brush like this. It's really tiny, it just does not absorb enough color at all. I mix that with a larger brush and I'm going to go in to the opening of the mouth to start get and get some definition in there. I'm really paying close attention to the reference image as I do this because I want to follow that opening of the lip that I get it right, there always is a larger dot at the corner of the lip. Just place that there and then I'm dragging it in towards the center of the lip. There's a little bit of a shadow on the outer edge of the top lip, down at the bottom, near the opening. Again, I'm just getting that in there just so that we see where that lip ends, ends before the edge of the face. Since in my case, that area is really quite dark. I really need that stand out. And I may go in there with a highlight as well. Not in the lip, but beyond the lip because there is some light on this side of his face. Maybe I will bring some of that darkness into the corner of the upper lip, over to this side as well. 10. Let's Wrap it up!: A good idea. Once everything is dry, it is to go into the nostrils. It also helps us visually to get a little bit more of definition as everything is, so let's say puddly and foggy. By getting those darker values in for this, I am using neutral tint. It really helps us see the whole picture come together and give us more of a sense of direction. Just ready by placing those nostrils in, things are starting to make more sense. As you can see, I can use that same color to start going into the eye. Now the eye is very dark, we can't really see the tear duct. It's all like one value actually, if you look at the reference image you easily just use the one color to go in to that tier duct and the iris if you want you can leave the highlight blank or you can go over it with your paint and just reintroduce it at the end of your painting with white gas or white acrylic, I decided to leave it blank, which is something I always do even if I always end up using white acrylic at the end. Anyway, at this stage, your paint should be really pasty of a very buttery consistency because we don't want anything flowing around at all at this stage. And I'm going to use that color just to bring it along the lash line, just barely touching the paper with my brush. And I'm going to add in two or three eyelashes as you can see. One, I can literally see, I think four in total. But for me, and I've said this before, less is more. When it comes to eyelashes and paintings, I am just going to have maybe a couple and maybe a smaller one. And make sure that they are slanted in that direction, if you know what I mean, because he's looking over to that side, It only makes sense that the eye lashes as well would be tilted in that direction while we're at it. We can go in and start getting the other iris in as well, with that nice, buttery consistency that offers so much control. Again, I'm leaving that highlight out. Make sure you get the positioning of the irises right, or that can end up making your painting look off. I have to pick up some of that paint with my kitchen paper because I accidentally went over the edge. And again, just add a few random eye lashes. Again, they're almost horizontal. That's it when it comes to eyelashes, the tear duct of this one, of course the iris is over to the left on both sides. The iris is not close to the tear duct in the left eye or in the eye to the left. I'm just going to use that color to outline the shape of the eye. Okay, there is a little bit of eyelid showing. We have a very slight crease, barely touching the paper again. Make sure you're barely touching it. Remember you can always go in again, But then it's harder to erase things and lift them once they're halfway dry, or when you're using darker colors again, just very delicately, very delicately. And the more delicate we are, the lighter the pressure of our brushes and the finer our lines are going to be. Make sure you're observing. Make sure you're painting what you see and not what you think, you know. Look at the distance and the relationship between the features. That is extremely important as well, just as much as the shape of the features themselves. Again, I'm using this smaller brush to go in to the individual strands of hair in the eyebrows, simply because it's really hard to get fine hairs with larger brushes starting from the center, which is always a good idea because that helps to assess how thick the lines are turning out. This brush is actually perfect for eyebrows. I'm just looking at the reference image, which you should always have close by. By the way, don't think you can open it once and then just listen to the instructions of the tutorial, because that's not a good idea. Try and follow the direction of the strands as you see them in reference image. Some of them will overlap, some of them are going straight up towards the beginning of the eyebrow and the center of the forehead almost straight. Some of them are curving towards the top of the nose. When we reach the outer edge of the eyebrow, you will see them go towards the temple. You can allow your first layer eyebrow hairs too dry, then you can go over them and make it slightly more defined. I see some random strands down here as well, so I'm just going to get those in. Then I'm going to hop over to the other eyebrow, which just seems to be a little bit more out of focus. We don't have to be as detailed in that one. We can get away with being a little bit more clumpy. Let's say it's more like a clump of hairs rather than you can't really see the individual strands as much as you can see in the other one. Of course, make sure it's clear that these are hairs but you don't have to be as careful as you are. Wear with the other eyebrow. Make sure they are at the same height. Use your brush. Actually the edge of this one, slightly lower down and I'm going to lift it up in the corner here that it's at the same height as the other one. I'm going into the eye and I'm adding some put mort which is just a reddish brown in that shadow area into the ear. Did I say eye, I meant ear. We can see it near the fold and down at the bottom here. We don't want to go into too much detail when it comes to the ear. Otherwise, it just attracts a lot of unwanted attention, at least as far as I'm concerned. But if you want to attract attention there, that is fine, and it's completely up to you. I've mixed some ultramarine blue with neutral tint and I'm bringing it into the white of the eyeball. I let it sit there for a while to allow the paper to absorb it a little bit. I'm doing the same over to the other side. Then I go in with my kitchen paper and I lift, especially in the outer corner. I will maybe let it sit a little longer in the inner, in the inner corner but closer to the iris. Because if you check your reference image, you will see that there is more of a bluish hue close to the iris. Maybe you want to let that sit there a while longer and then go in with your kitchen paper. And lift it so that we have some left behind, but not as harsh as it is now. Always a good time to go into the hair and just using neutral stint again, I'm going in with quite a thick and buttery consistency. I'm going down into this area closer to the top of the forehead as well. As you can see from your reference image, we do have that area with hair in it as well. I'm just filling it in. I didn't do that initially because I didn't want that to bleed into the face at the edges. I'm just using the tip of my brush to create that hair strand effect. Then I'm bringing it down to the root of the hair like this, again, using the bristles to create that effect, which makes it look like hair. Use some water to spread some darkness there, but not do much else with it. Because one he has saved on the side of his head. Not that I really want to convey that, I just want to kind of get the idea of a darker value on the side of his head. But I'm not going to go into any details at a. We've now come to the part where I'll show you how to create those, those upward drips. I'm just pre wetting the area with a clean brush. Of course, there is quite a lot of water on my brush. I'm creating a puddle into which I am then proceeding to drop some ultramarine blue, and I'm just spreading it around. Then I flick my brush, I use my watercolor palette, tin, to hold the watercolor block of paper up to tilt it downwards actually. And then I tilt it even further. And if you don't achieve a drip by doing this, just load more water onto your brush, position it onto the paper, and you will see that once there's enough volume of water, gravity will do its work and you will eventually get a drip. So don't fear then I'm just adding some other color. I can't remember honestly what I used, but I think it was just one of the pinks or reds I'd used. But it got mixed with the blue. It changed it. It became more of a purple, a cold pink. I did the same exact thing. I just added water till I had enough there to create that drip. And if you don't get it, you can help yourself along with your brush by creating a path for your drip, as you can see me doing here. I spread that paint into the indigo in the neck and I achieved a really nice effect. And I really liked how this turned out. I'm getting near to the end of the painting, I'm just going to be adding some highlights of my white acrylic gas. This is pretty simple. Use a very thick to do this and I added them to the eyes, the eyeballs, the lips, the nose, and the outline of the face to the left. Thank you so much for having been with me for the tutorial and I really cannot wait to see your work. I was so happy with all the work you shared for the first portrait. So I would love to see you share work from this part of the lesson as well. It should be pretty simple, but I am sure that if you need any help, you can ask questions and I will be more than happy to give you feedback. You can tag me with your work at the handle drawings in a drawer, all in one word on Instagram. You can also find me on Youtube. I am called Fiona Pinto drawings in a drawer. This time, not all in one word on Youtube. Weekly videos on there with tutorials, reviews, and everything. Let's connect, let's make more art together, and let's share this passion. I hope to see you soon because this is what I love doing and what I want to do so much more of. And hopefully with you. Bye for now and see you next time.