Feathers and Frost: Balancing Detail and Softness in Watercolor

1. Welcome To The Class!: Hello, everyone. My name is Will Alliston, and today we'll be capturing the delicate beauty of a small little wren perched on a snowy mound. One of the key techniques I'm teaching today is how to achieve the soft feathery textures of the bird's body and form while maintaining crisp detail in the wing feathers. It's all about balancing control and allowing the water to flow. I'll be walking you through how to create depth in the snow touched earth and how to achieve those delicate frosty drips. They add just the right amount of visual interest without detracting from the main subject. I've been a professional artist for many years, exploring lots of different subjects from wildlife and portraits to cityscapes and countryside scenes. I've always been entranced by the possibilities of watercolor. But when I started, I had no idea where to begin or how to improve. I didn't know what supplies I needed, how to create the effects I wanted, or which colors to mix. Now I've taken part in many worldwide exhibitions, been featured in magazines, and been lucky enough to win awards from well respected organizations such as the International Watercolor Society, the Masters of Watercolor Alliance, Windsor and Newton, and the SAA. Watercolor can be overwhelming for those starting out, which is why my goal is to help you feel relaxed and enjoy this medium in a step by step manner. Today, I'll be guiding you through a complete painting, demonstrating a variety of techniques and explaining how I use all my supplies and materials. Whether you're just starting out or already have some experience, you'll be able to follow along at your own pace and improve your watercolor skills. If this class is too challenging or too easy for you, I have a variety of classes available at different skill levels. I like to start off with a free expressive approach with no fear of making mistakes as we create exciting textures for the underlayer. As the painting progresses, we'll add more details to bring it to life and make it stand out. I strive to simplify complex subjects into easier shapes that encourage playfulness. Throughout this class, I'll be sharing plenty of tips and tricks. I'll show you how to turn mistakes into opportunities, taking the stress out of painting in order to have fun. I'll also provide you with my watercolor mixing charts, which are an invaluable tool when it comes to choosing and mixing colors. If you have any questions, you can post them in the discussion thread down below. I'll be sure to read and respond to everything you post. Don't forget to follow me on Skillshare by clicking the Follow button at the top. This means you'll be the first to know when I launch a new class or post giveaways. You can also follow me on Instagram at Will Elliston to see my latest works. So if you want to paint your own beautiful little wren in a snowy setting, then let's get on, and I'd love to have you in my class. 2. Your Project: First of all, thank you so much for joining this class. I really appreciate you being here today with me painting this glorious little wren. This is a very exciting painting because we're going to learn how to experiment with layers. We're going to start off painting a soft, muted background, mixing our own grays, not finding a gray tube of paint, but using palettes and complimentary colors to mix our own grays and look at the relationship between warm and cool rays and how we can still create a feeling of warmth despite using grays. Then on top of the smooth atmospheric textures, we're going to have an exploration with texture and sharpness, the sharpness of the details in the wings in the feathers and the beak and the little drips of ice on the rock formations below the snow. So let's have fun and explore what we can achieve. In the resource section, I've added a high resolution image of my finished painting to help guide you. You're welcome to follow my painting exactly or experiment with your own composition. As we're going to be focusing on the painting aspect of watercolor, I've provided templates you can use to help transfer or trace the sketch before you paint. It's fine to trace when using it as a guide for learning how to paint. It's important to have the underdrawing correct so that you can relax and have fun learning the watercolor medium itself. Whichever direction you take this class, it would be great to see your results and the paintings you create through it. I love giving my students feedback, so please take a photo afterwards and share it in the student project gallery under the Project and resource tab. I'm always intrigued to see how many students have different approaches and how they progress with each class. I'd love to hear about your process and what you learned along the way, or if you had any difficulties. I strongly recommend that you take a look at each other's work in the student project gallery. It's so inspiring to see each other's work and extremely comforting to get the support of your fellow students. So don't forget to like and comment on each other's work. 3. Materials & Supplies: Before we start the painting, let me go over all the materials and supplies I generally use. Having the right materials can greatly impact the outcome of your artwork. So I'll go over all the supplies I use for this class and beyond. They're very useful to have at your disposal and will make it easier for you to follow along. Let's start with the paints themselves. And like most of the materials we'll be using today, it's a lot to do with preference. I have 12 stable colours in my palette that I fill up from tubes. They are cadmium yellow, yellow ochre, burnt sienna, cadmium red, Alizarin crimson, Opramarne blue, cobalt blue, serlean blue, lavender, purple, viridian, black. And at the end of the painting, I often use white gouache for tiny highlights. I don't use any particular brand, these colors you can get from any brand, although I personally use Daniel Smith, Windsor and Newton, or Holbein paints. So let's move on to brushes. The brush I use the most is a synthetic round brush like this Escoda Purl brush or this Van Gogh brush. They're very versatile because not only can you use them for detailed work with their fine tip, but as they can hold a lot of water, they are good for washers as well. They're also quite affordable, so I have quite a few in different sizes. Next are the mop brushes. Mop brushes are good for broad brush strokes, filling in large areas and creating smooth transitions or washes. They also have a nice tip that can be used for smaller details. But for really small details, highlights or anything that needs more precision, I use a synthetic size zero brush. All brands have them, and they're super cheap. Another useful brush to have is a Chinese calligraphy brush. They tend to have long bristles and a very pointy tip. They're perfect for adding texture or creating dynamic lines in your paintings. You can even fan them out like this to achieve fur or feather textures as well. And that's it for brushes. Onto paper. The better quality of your paper, the easier it will be to paint. Cheap paper qwinkles easily and is very unforgiving, not allowing you to rework mistakes. It's harder to create appealing effects and apply useful techniques like rubbing away pigment. Good quality paper, however, such as cotton based paper, not only allows you to rework mistakes multiple times, but because the pigment reacts much better on it, the chances of mistakes are a lot lower and you'll be more likely to create better paintings. I use arches paper because that's what's available in my local art shop. A water spray is absolutely essential. By using this, it gives you more time to paint the areas you want before it dries. It also allows you to reactivate the paint if you want to add a smooth line or remove some paint. I also have an old rag or t shirt which I use to clean my brush. Cleaning off the paint before dipping it in the water will make the water last a lot longer. It's always useful to have a tissuete hand whilst painting to lift off excess paint. Also, you never know when an unwanted splash or drip might occur that needs wiping away quickly. I also have a water dropper to keep the paints wet. When you paint, it's important to have them a similar consistency to what they're like in the tubes. This way, it's easier to pick up sufficient pigment. A hair dryer is useful to have for speeding up the drying time and controlling the dampness of the paper. And lastly, masking tape. And this, of course, is just to hold the paper down still onto the surface to stop it sliding around whilst painting. Also, if you plan on painting to the edge, it'll allow you to create a very crisp, clean border. And that's everything you need to paint along. I always encourage you to experiment and explore all different types of materials to see what could be useful for you in your journey. Now, let's get on and start the drawing. 4. How to Sketch It Out: First thing I want to do before I put pencil to paper is figure out the placement of the composition. I want the bird roughly a third along the way here, so I'm just going to start by a simple circle, the body of the bird right here. Doesn't have to be correct. I want it to go this direction, starting to add the idea of a tail right here. It's a bit like a triangle and then another circle for the head up here. We can start connecting the circles like that a bit. You already see it coming together there. Then the beak slightly below center. The rough lines for the time being. Rough lines. Then I look at different patterns on the feathers maybe, but that's not essential at this stage at all. Maybe start to add the legs where the legs might go. We've got to paint the mound of snow I think we'll put here. I like painting snow with watercolor, because that means we can use the white of the paper. So let's create a bit of uneven edge for this snow. Keep it interesting. You can have the edge, however you like it. You can have a curvy straight. It's your painting to do what you want with at the end of the day so you can experiment with how you want that done. Now I'm putting a few circles here for where I might want to add glimps of shade or the texture or the soil underneath the snow. It might be I'm planning to have this painting conveying melted snow on the rocks. So I'm just laying it out like that for the time being. Now, I've got it all mapped out with a soft lead pencil. I'm going to move to a hard lead pencil, one of my many mechanical pencils. And I can go in with a confident line now. I'm not pressing too hard because I don't want these lines to be showing at the end of the painting. I'm going to scan this in so that you can use it for a template. If you want to skip the drawing stage and go straight to painting, you can follow that. So rather than spending lots of time showing you the boring stage of adding these details, I'm going to go straight into the painting stage next and show you the painting what the drawing looks like when we are ready to paint from it. So I won't draw this all out on camera. You can see how I'm now adding more details now that we've got everything mapped out. You can always use I use this mechanical rubber to clean a few lines that I don't like. Maybe like that. So that's the rough idea. Keep it nice and organic, get your drawing ready and we can start the painting. 5. Wetting The Background: So the first thing we're going to do is paint the background because this little wren is perched on a mound of snow, we need to use the white of the paper to indicate this snow. So we're going to negatively paint that mound by painting the background a bit darker. And I'm using this mop brush, which is very nice because it's got a very fine point despite being quite a large brush. I'm also going to have a tissue in my hand because if we paint over here, I want to blot out some of the water. We can start straight away. Pure water to begin with. So like I said, we can paint over the bird if we want, except for the top edge here. I'm going to try and be very clean about the edge on the top here. Because I do want to keep some of the white of the paper up there. Down there, the bird is quite dark. So it doesn't matter so much down here if we paint over the background. I'm just tilting my head slightly off camera so that I can see the reflection of the water against the light to see which areas I've wet and which areas are dry. I'm pre wetting this area to allow me more time to fill in this whole background area before it starts to dry. I want there to be smooth transitions all over the area. So like I said, I can paint all the way across the bottom of this wren. And today I'm experimenting with a brand new paper. A Bower hog paper. I've never tried before. It's still 100% cotton based. So even now I'm experimenting with different materials and supplies. It's a ongoing process. I really like this brush because it's half synthetic and half real fur. So it's got the best of both brushes going on here. And if you make a mistake, if you paint over the line like I just said there, this is what this tissues for. You can dab it like that, and it'll dry in no time at all. Likewise, you get the tissue up there, you can fold the tissue. It's very malleable. You can fold it around and stab wherever you've over painted. Like that. So, got it nice and wet there. 6. Mixing Greys: Now we can start thinking about what colors we're going to mix. And the color scheme for this painting is actually quite monotone, keeping all the colors quite neutral. There's no vivid colors in here, and that gives it kind of a classy look, I think. It's got bronzi silver, gold kind of elements going on. And of course, neutral color is gray like this. You can take it directly from the pan like that if you want. What I like to do is actually mix my own because it feels a bit more alive that way. And what you can do to do that is take two primaries. So for example, I'm going to take this cobot blue, but you can use any blue. And the opposite end of the color wheel to blue is orange, so I'm going to take this burnt sienna and you see how it neutralizes itself there. There's a bit more warmth, a bit more interest than just the plain neutral black. Maybe a bit of warmth for using red. So that's how you can make a nice gray. But before we jump in, I'm also going to mix a warm gray. So we've got the cool gray here. Let me give you another example. So we just mix blue and brown to make that. We can mix green and red to make another gray. You don't actually have to own black at all. See that? The knowledge of the color wheel really helps and I'll show you a third one if you want. Take some purple. If you look on the color wheel, yellow is the opposite of purple, in theory, when I add this yellow, it should start neutralizing it. That was a bit too strong, the yellow so a bit more purple. Now a bit too much purple. So Now, that's a bit too red now, so we can add a bit of green. There you go. But I actually quite like the yellowness in there. So I'm going to keep that yellow like that. That's a bit too much. Bit of wet pigment on there, that easily happens. But you know what? That doesn't matter. We can always come back to this because we're going to use a lot of this brown. I don't mind having that on the palette. Just going to mix it all up so there's no thick blobs on my brush. Then I can take Taron, do you see how? It's mixing back into a nice neutral color there. Okay. 7. Starting The Background: So before the paper dries, let's get onto it. Like I said, you can always use black if you're more comfortable with it. I'm just going to start filling in this Caland. I think that's a bit too warm. So I'm going to add a bit of blue into there. There we go. Doesn't have to be strong. Maybe some areas can have a bit of warmth. Especially when we get down here where we need to create a feeling of snow. I And if you find it starts to dry on you, you can use this water spray to give it a bit more life. Don't get too close. You have to do it at a bit of a distance. So again, I have my tissue here, just to dab away the bird. I think I want a tiny bit more warmth at the top. Just to drop. I mean, coolness, actually, not warmth, coolness. So a little bit of this blue in places. That You can always swap to smaller bruh, if you want. Just doing that a bit now. Down here, just define that edge. I 8. Finishing The Background: Whilst it's still wet, it has a lot of flexibility. You can still manipulate the colors a lot. I think it looks too green, just add a bit of red, tie a bit of red. Okay. I'm going to add a few lines here. A few lines as it's starting to dry here. Of course, these will blend out. So now I'm going to let it dry completely because we want it to flatten out. But thinking about it, before we get to that stage, we can start painting a bit of the snow. It's leaving a little gap at the top to give the snow the illusion of form. Maybe it connects every now and again, just a tiny little bit of a connection. See I've swapped to a smaller brush now, bit more control. I'm not painting the whole area here. There's some bits I want to add some texture later so we can make sure to block those areas out. A bit too dark. I was using a tissue just to dab. Trying to dab and then let watercolor do its thing. 9. Painting The Snow: Now, I'm going to be very daring here and mix a very diluted yellow ochre, drain out some of the water from my brush and just do subtle little dabs of this golden yellow ochre. And it's barely noticeable. But it does something to the eyes, having that subtle warmth contrasted with the white there. And now, I'm going to dry it completely with the hair dryer. As it's drying, I just want to create a few textures, so I'm just going to use a small brush. And by textures, I mean, a few leafless twigs that will have quite soft edges. Only one or two of them at this stage because it's still slightly wet the paper, so the edges will be a bit lost. Adds a bit of depth. Maybe one flick here, one flick here. Now, clean the brush, and a bigger flick of water there. Now let's get the hair dryer. As it's drying, I'm assessing my values. I think it's a little bit too dark just below here. Let's rewet that area. Of course, if your area is already lighter, then you don't have to do this. If you're watching this before you paint, which I always suggest, then you can learn from my mistakes. I've got this rough brush which I would use to pick up pigment, but I've overworked. And because it's cotton based paper, it's very durable. It can take a lot of abuse. It's really scratching it, and it's not marking the paper at all. There we go. Subtle difference, but it makes a difference. Now, I'm going to add a few abstract marks. So wetting some of the paper here. Dabbing a few drops here and there. 10. Adding Splats: Using my tittue box to protect the rest of the painting I make some splats. Now I'm going to do a bit of experiment with this iridescent blue silver. But there's no need for you to buy this tube. If you've got any interesting pigment you want to experiment with, you're more than welcome to do that. I'm just going to drop it straight from the tube in there to create a bit of granulation. I know this pigment is very granulated, so I'm keen for that hell. Put a bit of it there on my palate. That's coming out the tube. I want it a little bit bluer, actually. It's a bit too gray. To. Okay. Bit more water. So this is a slightly blue mix at the moment, of course. The pesky little drips made their way onto the background. And then mixing a tiny bit burnt sienna, we have this yellow ochre. See how that might look. Yeah, for the time being, maybe that's okay. Always useful to have a tissue in hand for when steaks and splats happen when you don't want them to. 11. Starting The Bird: Warm up that brown. Create some organic shapes, trying to be random, not trying to overthink it. If you overthink it, you'll miss the shot because you're trying to mimic nature, which is very random. Using my hand to block and protect the rest of the painting. Spill loads of water. Okay. For the time being, I think we can leave it like that. Again, this is just the underlayer for the time being. So I'm going to let that dry whilst we move up here. We can, of course, use the hair dryer, but I don't feel like I need to do that quite yet. I'm going to take a bit of this blue silver, which is a gray blue. Use the tip of my brush. Start like that. Yeah, there's a bit too much water in there. That's okay. Now, let's mix a nice warm brown. So we can mix a warm brown like that, but tone it down. Neutralize it a bit. Carefully avoiding the eye. I got to wrap it around the eye and connect it with this water. And start bringing it down. Because we preserve the white of this paper, we can really make the most of the transparency of the medium and the layering. Some kind of dap bit of warmth there. 12. Working On The Underlayer: Thinking about what we want for the underlayer. Maybe we can dab in a little bit of blue at the bottom here. Just doing a first pass. Maybe a bit of blue silver just in there. Okay I'm actually going to let that dry because this is just the underlayer. And whilst it's drying, I'm going to take a brush with no water on. I just kind of create a few highlights, maybe even use a titto itself. Just to get the white of the paper just in the center. Like that. Now I'm going to use a hair dryer. Now I'm going to go in with a smaller brush and start to refine some of the areas. I'm thinking of where the tone should be. I'm squinting my eyes to simplify the tone. I don't want to focus on too many too many different ranges of tones, mid tones, highlights and dark tones. Now, got a wet area below the eye here very lightly just so I can see where the water is. And then I'm going to drop some pigment. Mix of blue. Maybe a bit of red in there. A 13. Problem With Small Brushes: I went a bit overboard with the water. That's the problem sometimes of using a small brush. It creates drips. Sometimes I prefer to use a bigger brush that still has a tip. Now I'm going to wet wet the belly. I'm going to start to drop various colors in there, so take a bit of this brown. Now, that's a bit too red. So I'm going to put a bit of green in there. Try to keep that head soft. I'm falling for an error that's very common at the moment. Though I always have to remind myself. I shouldn't get stuck in the details. The details are for the imagination of the viewer. If we do all the details, then where's the fun for the viewer to use their imagination and enjoy the watercolor? The mystery. 14. Starting The Wing: It's a bit too purple, that is, get a bit of ultramarine blue in there, I think. It's just a few dabs. Really getting to feel what the water go is doing. Take as much time as you need. Let's try using the hair dryer. Okay, now we can go back up to the top. And I got to mix. A dark reddish brown up at the top here. Start off with this pure pigment just at the very top. This is going to contrast lovely. Right down there. Going to dilute it a bit. Add a bit more vibrant C to it. If your brown is looking too cold, add red to it, and if it's looking too warm, you can add blue to it. So I'm going to do a couple of strokes like Then I'm going to let the watercolor do the rest. 15. Painting The Tail: The top. I can add a few strands of this nice golden colors a bit more blue, I think. A bit of doc pigment. Now, a similar thing down at the bottom, where the tail is. I'm going to use my tissue. Just to slightly lighten up a bit. Now I'm going to paint. The legs? Just a suggestion of legs. Again, don't spend too much time trying to paint accurately because the more time you spend, the more of a struggle it looks like it's better for a painting to be incorrect and done in one go or incorrect but with an air of confidence than something that shows a lot of struggle and corrections. 16. Starting The Rocks: So even if you're not perfectly happy with that, I'm not happy with o's claws. It still looks better than if I spend five more minutes refining, going back and forth. Maybe I'll make the feet a bit lighter. Now, here comes the eyes, and I'm going to mix very strong black paint. A nice confident circle in there. Now, we're not finished with that bit yet, but we can disallow the watercolor to rest for a bit and we'll come back to it with a fresh eye in a few minutes. Now I'm going to start finishing off the snow down here by negatively painting some shadows. So I paint the bottom edge and use water just to fill it up like that, maybe at a bit of temperature difference, so we got warm and cool working together. I'm going to add a bit of lavender in here. I and you can see I'm not painting anything in particular. As usual, I'm trying to suggest details using kind of visual language. And what I mean by that is, like, what the essence of it looks like, trying to convey that in as simple a term as possible. 17. Adding Texture: Were titting. Use my hand to cover the rest of the painting. Just a few splats there. Down here, I'm going to try and work quickly so that I don't overthink it. It's a bit too thick. A few dry brush marks there. We go. Now, I know this looked very bold at the moment. That's okay. Let's add a bit of water onto there. Agitate it a bit. Bit of the earthy colors coming through. Maybe we can add a bit more blue into some of these areas down here. And having fun. This really is my favorite part of mine when I paint. It's just exploring the expressive nature of the medium. Again using my hand just to cup and stop as many splashes. But there's always a cheeky one that gets through. 18. Some Refining: No. You can add a tiny bit more tone of the top using a very light, just a tiny bit of tone adds a little bit more volume up here. A few branches maybe twigs too light, too dark, I use the tissue to correct that. H. Now I'm going to add a little highlight right at the very top. A little at the bottom, like that. Two little dots there. Decided. I'm just going to smooth out some of these. Text is up at the top here. I Now I'm going to use the hair dry to dress out completely. 19. White Gouache: What I'm doing now is taking some white quash or white watercolor and just enhancing the feeling of contrast by painting this light on gray background. Because, of course, on a frosty winter autumnal snowy morning, a lot of these twigs have frozen Being quite brave, being quite bold, rather, adding a lot of thick pigment here. In fact, I feel if the pigments very thick, then it might even achieve a dry brush effect, which again, adds to that frosty, snowy texture and feel. Working my way along the edge of this snowy mound. I want there to be a nice striking contrast between the gray background and this snowy mound. Maybe working my way down now working into the textures, where the frost is melting against the rocks. Again, trying to make the most of that dry brush effect every now and then. Dabbing in random places, trying to mimic nature. A few vertical strokes to suggest the melting of snow. 20. Adding Details: Now I've decided to go back to the bird because I took the tape off, gave it a few days, and it just didn't feel right to me. And that's often the case. Sometimes you just have to disconnect for a while. And in the moment, a few days ago, I didn't know where to take the painting. There was something off about it. I was trying to minimalize the details, but it didn't work. It didn't capture the imagination. It didn't seem so inviting. So I'm back at it, and I'm going back with a small brush, trying to get very fine lines. The blue on my palette is from a previous painting because I've painted in between this and the last painting. So you can see I'm using a very fine point using thick pigment, and I don't need to clean my brush, my palette, rather. I never actually clean my palette when I'm doing personal paintings because I can always mix them with other colors to fit what I'm trying to paint. For example, there's no strong blue in this painting, but by mixing brown, it neutralizes it and turns it into a gray. Which is what I'm doing. So where it's light on the wings, I want to create a bit more texture because we've got softness on the belly of the bird, and contrasting that with a different kind of edge, a different kind of feeling. We've got sharp textures and soft textures, and they're counterbalancing each other. Using pure black because also I wanted to increase the contrast of some of these areas, the clarity of it. Because down on the rocks, you can see there's black paint and white paint right next to each other, creating a very strong visual element. But in a way, that's distracting. So I need to do the same thing with the bird above because the bird is, of course, the focal point. Adding a bit more shade to the legs. Now you can see me mixing this red into the blue turns it into a purple that I can add down the bottom of the belly here. And then applying an almost dry brush effect here, just a few not painting every individual feather. I'm just suggesting a few of them, and then the mind of the viewer can fill in the gaps. So even though I decided in the end to add more details, I'm still trying to keep it quite elusive. Of course, different styles of paintings cool for different techniques. And originally, I attempted to have more of a smooth painting. I wanted to have a smooth finish to it, but it just wasn't working. And that's often the case with watercolor. You've got to adapt to the medium or even beyond watercolor. You got to sometimes adapt the painting and make judgments that are different from how you previously expected the painting to be. Now I'm working in with some highlights and this little bit of cardboard that I've got in my left hand, I just use to make very thick pigments. Sometimes there's too much water going on or the paints in my palette are too wet and I can't achieve a thick pigment. So by just mixing them on this cardboard, it almost soaks up the water and leaves the pigment a bit thicker. And by getting it nice and thick, it's almost like dry brush marks again, creating more texture. But 21. Finishing Touches: Now I'm going directly from the tube. Again, trying to achieve that thin but dry brush mark. In particular, on the wings, I want to be nice thin light lines going over that dark because it will really make it pop. It adds a sense of clarity of focus. If you think about photography, a lot of photos have clear focus on the main subject, and then the background is all blurry. And that's the kind of effect that I was thinking of here. And that's the way we can lead the viewer's eye. Now I'm mixing a bit of white with yellow ochre to create a kind of light yellow on the highlight of the top. Because all the painting is quite muted. But the bird itself, I want to have a bit more color, slightly more just to give it that radiant feel about it. The eyes are very important there. They're what really captures the soul. If they're misplaced, it kind of doesn't have the same quality, the emotional aspect. Even though it's a bird we're talking about, there's a connection that we have when we see it and getting the eye in the right place and those glistening highlights are quite important. So make sure to take your time to get them right. I've just painted the eye black recently, so I'm waiting for it to dry a bit more before I go in with my white guash. Taking my time adding a few more strands of it's almost like hair rather than feathers, they're just little fine lines I'm adding following the curvature of the form. If you want, you can rotate the paper around to get a better angle like I'm doing now. I'm not confident at achieving a nice direct line, straight line at an angle, so I've just rotated the paper around. Going back and forth, waiting for the pigment to dry to add a few more layers on top. Even though we're using a small brush, sometimes small brushes don't even have a nice fine point, which I learned with this, I struggled a bit to get a nice, fine point. Whereas brushes that are twice the size of this, they kind of the force of the water brings them together into a nice fine point at the end. But I was only doing a few small details here, so I didn't feel like the need to change my brush. Now, the paint is completely dry, so I'm just refining the eye details there. Just a little dot with a slight line at the top, just to convey some curvature. The closer the highlight is to the edge, the more it will be a line, and the closer it is to the middle, the more it will be a dot. And that's pretty much the painting done. I'll again, disconnect for a while, just to see how I feel the painting is in a few days' time. So let's have a look at all the techniques we've done in this class and some of linkup. 22. Final Thoughts: So welcome back, and I really hope you followed along and watch the entire process so that you're better equipped to give it a go yourself, which I really hope you do do, and I'd love to see your results. Now, during the process, we explored many different things. We looked at creating grays, creating soft textures, creating sharp textures. And in the process, we've come up with a lovely, delicate, beautiful little wren on a snowy mound. We looked into techniques that make the background soft and out of focus, creating a natural kind of effect that gives the painting a sense of atmosphere and depth. Remember, watercolor painting is not just about technical skills, but also about expressing your creativity and personal style. I encourage you to continue exploring, experimenting, and pushing your boundaries to create your own unique watercolor masterpieces. As we come to the end of this class, I hope you feel more confident and comfortable with your watercolor painting abilities. Practice is key when it comes to improving your skills, so keep on painting and experimenting. I want to express my gratitude for each and every one of you. Your passion for watercolor painting is so inspiring, and I'm honored to be your teacher. If you would like feedback on your painting, I'd love to give it. So please share your painting in the student projects gallery down below, and I'll be sure to respond. If you prefer, you can share it on Instagram, tagging me at Will Elliston, as I would love to see it. Skillshare also loves seeing my students work, so tag them as well at Skill Share. After putting so much effort into it, why not share your creation? If you have any questions or comments about today's class or want any specific advice related to watercolor, please reach out to me in the discussion section. You can also let me know about any subject wildlife or scene you'd like me to do a class on. If you found this class useful, I'd really appreciate getting your feedback on it. Reading your reviews fills my heart with joy and helps me create the best experience for my students. Lastly, please click the follow button Utop so you can follow me on skill share. This means that you'll be the first to know when I launch a new class or post giveaways. I really hope you enjoyed this class and learned a lot from it till next time, Happy Painting.