Flowing Color: An Introduction to Blended Watercolor Washes

1. Welcome to Flowing Color: The beauty in a freely flowing watercolor wash is one of the common reasons artists are initially attracted to the medium. At a same time, effortless looking washes can be tricky to achieve and easy to overwork. Yogis Davis and since 2016, I've been practicing watercolor, learning it's mechanics and figuring out how to create beautiful watercolor washes simply by letting the color flow. This class, It's a fun, project oriented introduction to learning how to create blended watercolor washes. This class is best suited for artists who are beginning but not completely new to their paints. There's also no special materials required for the class. Simply use the paint, brushes and paper you're currently enjoying. Specifically made for those who may be struggling with the subtleties of a great wash. The class lessons are also filled in real time. So you can gauge timings in movement, will warm up with some light color theory and get your feet wet with trying blending on some simple subjects. Sure, On the difference between charging and blooming will cover that too. Will be painting a pair for the final project. The first, we'll learn how to prepare for a painting with a value study and colormap sketch. The final pair will be done in three layers. To help you focus on color blends, value in details, building a form one layer at a time. Each lesson in the class, we'll touch on water control, color mixing, brush strokes, and timing. Building trust in your paint and trusting yourself. If you've been looking to smooth out your washes, I'll see you in the first lesson. 2. Class Flow & Projects: Since the best way to learn about water control and color blending is to simply dive in. We're going to do three different projects, starting with something easy and then increasing the difficulty of our applications. We'll do a light review on color theory and mixing our paints first. And then we'll take that knowledge and move into creating some fun, colorful, blended bookmarks. Once you're confident and you can get a smooth wash, will then go into applying that into some simple subjects. Will do a maple leaf and a banana project to play with shifting color and tone in our painting. After that, we'll move into our main project. But first we'll prepare by doing to practice sketches will do a value study, which will help us understand light to dark and how saturated our paint will need to be to get the proper values. And then we'll do a, what I like to call a colormap. And that will tell us what colors we need to mix and where they need to be on the subject to get the local color of our subject. Or you can play around with it, completely exaggerated colors if you'd like. But this is just to help us learn what colors we're going to need to mix with our value study and colormap in hand. We'll start the main pair project will be broken up into three layers. Our first layer we'll focus on just the color blending and getting some fun local colors into our pair. Then we'll let that dry and then add extra value and shifting colors in the next layer. Once that layer is dry, we will add our final details in any last minute crisp contrast elements. You can find the reference photos for the leaf banana and pair in the class project resources area. There'll be a PDF with a color and black and white image of each of those subjects. Whether you're interested in doing one of the projects or all three, I'd love to see your results in the project gallery. Be sure to share them there. As I'm always eager to reply with some encouragement and also feedback. Some other notes to keep in mind is since the class lessons are all filmed in real time, if you ever feel like the class is moving too slow, feel free to change the playback speed to one-and-a-half or two times speed to get through the lessons at a quicker pace, or simply elect to skip a lesson if it doesn't interest you or you're already familiar with that element. If the class, it feels like it's moving too fast. Feel free to pause the video or too slow the playback speed until you have caught back up. At any point during the class. If you have a question, feel free to use the discussion forum below. And I'm sure it myself or even another student may get back to you on it. If you're ready to get started, let's go into the next lesson and review the materials you'll need to do the class 3. Supplies: If you're already painting with watercolor, then you probably already have everything you need for the projects in this class. In this lesson, I'll be quickly reviewing the materials that I will be using for my project and how they might produce results that are different from the materials that you're using. As exciting as it is to grab a new recommended art supply, I highly recommend trying the techniques with the supplies you're currently using. Oftentimes it is not the tool, but the technique that is at fault if you are not having success. Okay. Paper, this is a block of Blix 100% cotton one 40 pound cold press, and it's a block, so it's glued along the edges. Now, I don't really need to have this buckled down because we're only going to be painting small. If you do find that paper buckling bothers you, if you have a block, keep it on the block. However, I'll just be taking sheets out of this to keep things nice and neat. I have my paint, which is tubes of artist grade watercolor paint and you can see mixing brands, not a big deal. I have them set into this ceramic palette, if you're new to painting with two paints, I do recommend waiting till they've set up a bit so that they're no longer gooey. If they're gooey, it's really easy to scoop out too much, and then you've got to rinse it all away. Let them set up. You don't have to use a separate palette. You can also use your regular palette, say, this is how I would normally be painting out of. I will also be using this for an extra paint color for a value study. I just have a neutral tint here that I'll be using these particular colors because if you're already using a pre curated set, most likely you have at least something similar to these colors, if not these colors themselves. We have lemon yellow, lizard crimson and ultramarine here in this cotton set. But you can use whatever colors you'd like. Just if you'd like to follow along with the same colors, they're really easy to find. For brushes. I've got this number 12, Princeton elite brush. This is a synthetic sable. I have also this number six Princeton elite brush. Both of these being synthetic sable, have some nice snap to them. But use whatever type of brush you're used to or you like using. The only reason I have the smaller one is when we get into the final projects, I may need to get into some very small areas. This brush holds less water. We'll talk about not introducing unintentional water. I've got these two brushes that I'll be using. On extra accessories for your water color, you've got a jar to rinse your brushes, rinse the pigment out. I also have a jar of clean water. In case I need to mix a clean color or add some clean water to my page to blend something out, I have that reserved. I also have a rag to block my brushes. I also have an eraser and a pencil to label things or to perhaps draw out outlines of our project. Other things you can have ready is if you would like to do a physical printout of the project references, all those are available with both a color in a black and white. I like to work from paper when I'm painting, but you're welcome to work from a screen. Okay. Other optional accessory is if you want to fit this into a small time frame, you can also use a heat dryer. The only cave is you don't want to use until the shrine is off the paper. That means the pigments settled into the paper surface. If there's still enough water for those pigments to move, you don't want to use this yet because you're going to cut short that mingling time. Let it air dry for as long as possible, if not for the full time. But we're all set with all of our materials. We've got our paper, our paints, and our brushes, and we're all set to get going. 4. Exploring Color: Secondaries: Whether you've already decided on the colors you're gonna be using or not. This lesson will help us explore any colors you are considering, as well as start getting a taste for water control. Once you've picked out the three colors you want to use or whatever colors you'd like to use. If you want to use a set or anything, you want to swatch them out and start exploring your colors. Not only seeing how these colors will look on, say, the paper you're using. But also we're going to practice mixing our secondaries and our neutrals. So I've got my sheet here. I've got my paints all set, my palette. And I'll just pull this in a little bit. We'll just be using these three wells for now. And what swatch out just the primaries for now. So what I'm looking for is enough water to create a really consistent puddle of paint. So you can see I'm kinda spinning my brush and tapping it because you can see how there's little bits of paint that is undiluted in the interior of the brush. So I'm just kind of spinning it and letting, pressing down, letting it soak up the paint. So I have and we'll do it the same way here. I have my yellows is lemon yellow. Then I want to take out as much extra paint as possible because that will keep my rinse water cleaner for longer. And then grabbing some water and doing the same thing for the alizarin crimson, working up the same dilution of paint. This is really good practice keeping these the same dilution. Because as you'll see, when we go to put them in a wash together, the more assistant your dilutions, the smoother your wash. One more time with the ultramarine. You a little bit more water. Because you need enough water to let the paint move freely across the paper, but not so much water that you get very weak color. And I'm paddling. Okay, so we've got our ultramarine blue, alizarin crimson and lemon yellow. So I'm just going to label these real quick. So now signed the mics are secondaries. And originally I was going to say this palette. That's a little hard for you guys to see. So I've got this just ceramic plate from target, which is a really great way to mix your paints. So let's start with our green. So I always like to anything that uses yellow, I always like to use my yellow first because it's really hard to go the other way you Austin the more paint than you'd like to use. So yellow is much weaker tinting than our blue. So I really only need a little bit of blue. And you can see already, I've got this nice green. Now this is kinda leafy green. So if I grab more blue, this might be more of an average between those two, but let's see what we get if we mix it a little darker, a little more blue. We'll use this. This will be our mid tones. So anytime we're mixing a second nearer, we're looking for an average. And that average is up to you. We've got hairs are green. Making sure to rinse our brush between mixing secondaries. So we'll just turn that stick with yellow again. And we'll grab for our orange. So we've got our yellow. Then once again, I only need a little bit of red. I think that's a pretty good mix, just right off the bat there. But once again, you can be deciding what is the good average. You can see so far all of our swatches are about the same dilution. The other thing I'd like to point out is that each one I did not go back in and fiddle with. So see how even all of these look. So our last one is our Alizarin. I'll show you when I applied this one. Don't worry if it takes you a little bit to get the right color going back and forth. It's all just kind of an exploration and a fun, fun game. So a good way to get a nice even swatch, which is really good practice for getting an even wash, is to just go from one side to the other. You don't want to draw a rectangle and then fill it in. And you want to use a big enough rush to get it in in a couple of strokes. So you see how it's just get it in and then let it settle. That lets the paint blend a bit. So this also comes back to talking about that dilution level. So if you don't have enough water, it's really hard to get it in quickly because you're going to end up getting some dry brushing. If you have too much water, you end up with puddles of water and then it tends to move around and backflow and give you blooms. So it's really just getting the knack of the right level of dilution. If we did something with too much water, for example, if we added a whole bunch of water maybe to our green, we'd get this puddle really, really light week tint. And then you'd be tempted to go back in and add in some paint, mostly how that dries. Then on the other side of it is if let's say we do mix it right here, something really thick. Let's make a really thick purple. It's almost harder than it sounds. I know I'm getting my paints all all messy. So see how I get all this dry brushing and I can't really finish the swatch. It's not super even. However, this is a really interesting fact on its own. Saying with this, it's just not what we're looking for. So these are the many different levels of dilution. It's finding a good balance. That's key. So now that we have our secondaries, let's label them. Let's just add one more for comparison in our Goldilocks, Zone C, This is what I mean, Like if you add too much red, it's very hard to come back to editing of yellow, so see how that works. He just flows. Perfect. Mixing secondaries is pretty straightforward. But in the next lesson we're going to add in that third primary and learn how to navigate mixing neutral colors 5. Navigating Neutrals: Sometimes mixing neutrals can seem very intimidating and complex to those who don't know how a neutral is composed of different proportions of your primary paints. In this lesson, we'll go over how to proportion a blue, red, and yellow leaning neutral color. We're going to mix our neutrals. Now. You can see I've just moved my paper up and move my page down here so you can still see it. And neutrals are just what happens when you mix some proportion of all three primaries together. So technically, I could just come in here and mix all three of these together. And that gives us a neutral that to me looks like it's leaning. There's much more red and yellow in here seen as this looks kinda orange. If I added some blue, we get to more of a gray. So what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna wipe this clean and we'll start straight from scratch. So secondaries people kinda usually have about, but when it gets into neutrals, what you can also have, and this is just a color wheel. You can pick up anywhere. So complements are what are directly across from each other. So this one actually has this on the back. And so you can see that, say, we were looking at red and green. They are across from each other. At the same time. They don't need to be like this red. So technically our Alizarin crimson is more like in-between red and purple. It's a little pinky. So it's compliment would actually be a green That's not quite green, green, it would have a little bit of yellow in it because purple's compliment is yellow. So it'd be in-between there. So always remember that everything is relative when we're working in this space in here. So you have, the other ones are yellow and violet, and blue and orange. Then we already did our reading green. Mixing those. You're always thinking about sushi. If you're working with primaries, we're talking about proportions. So the anatomy of a sec or a neutral is if you think about a Venn diagram. So think about it like this. This will help you think about how much of each primer you need to use. So if for example, we were making blue and orange, I would take my blue in, that would be this whole this whole half. Here. This is a good example of why you use a bigger brush, because it's going to take me too long to fill this in. The paint starts to dry. So getting a big brush. Just filling this in really quickly. So much better. Okay. And then on this side, you have half of the amounts of each of the other colors. So we will just have, you know, this will be, you know, if this will all way up in there, this is yellow and then red. And we'll fill in the middle with, let's blend it here. We have our orange here in the middle. Then if you take, so we've got a little bit of yellow, a little bit of red in a lot more blue. Now, this came out as TL, which means you need to adjust this. It was too much blue. There we go. Now also knowing what to expect will help you get. So this is kind of like what you would get if you did eight, orange in a blue, obviously there are steps in-between. So that's what you get in the middle, but knowing that it's less amounts of the other two primaries. So if you were to do red and green, there would be more red in less yellow and blue. Same thing with purple and yellow, there'll be more yellow, red, and blue. So it just goes to show that's how you proportionate. Label this real quick. And then we'll mix our other, other neutrals Okay, So I'm mixed or yellow and red. We get an orange. You can also kinda do it this way. So we have orange and then our blue. Now this came out more green, which means I need to add more red. So this isn't gray neutral. Now, if we were to do the yellow and purple, there would be more yellow and probably a bit more red. You see I'm not being exact. I'm not mixing each of my secondaries and then adding the other color because it's all relative between our three primaries. And then if it was the sweetest, blue and orange, yellow and purple, red and green. Red. Then we'll do a little yellow and a little blue. Red and green tends to come out as a brown with the colors I'm using. It can also come out kind of like a black. So just keep that in mind. Darken this up just a little bit. So we can see we've got different neutrals who continue to these to get whatever shade you really need. But you can see we've got more of a gray, more of a tan, and more of a brown. So it's just a matter of balancing between what I came up very yellow is very dirty. Between your yellow, your red, and your blue. So all these kind of exists in this space. You can see if we blend them together, forced them to mingle in the middle. You'll get all sorts of different colors in there. So those are our secondaries. This is emphasis on the blue leading. This is yellow leaning leading. We'll let these dry and we'll check in with these are waiting for our neutral. So finished drying up, we can go back in and check in on how our primaries and secondaries dried. You can see that each of the original swatches is really nice and even you can see that too much water got really and there's a little bit of shine on there. But the pigment separated out, which can be lovely. It's not wrong. It's just if you're looking for something even this will give you hard edges. Different settling of pigment. It's just a different effect. So knowing that this will get you this as good to know. It's also good to see how this swatch where we started to run out of paint at the end and then I lifted my brush net, let this whole extra water out and then it bloomed kinda backwards. So we got also an uneven effect here as well as all this dry brushing. So then are even swatch, once again, very predictable edges, even color coverage, even drawing. So like I said, none of these are wrong. It's just knowing that if you combine these in any one wash, you're going to get different effects. It may not be true for smooth. So we're going to practice that in the next lesson of the little mini exercise. But just keep that in mind. Then here on our neutrals, you can see that we've got are a couple of different tones and just knowing how much of each primary to add. Just getting familiar with where in that neutral color verse you are in, in comparison to where you are close to a primary. And you can also use this when you're mixing between like if you have a green, a green tube of paint or green pan of paint and you read, they will mix a certain color. They will mix a range between each one. So just explore and get familiar with your paints. So in the next lesson we're going to do a little color map and just explore keeping this consistent, keeping that water dilution consistent. Now that we've demystified neutrals a little bit, let's put all the knowledge we've learned so far into creating something fun. We're going to make a blended color bookmark in the next lesson 6. Colorwash: Explore Dilution: Now that we have an idea of how the colors we've chosen will mix in a blended wash. This lesson, we're going to apply that in a fun project. We're going to create a blended watercolor bookmark or two. I will also be demonstrating not only the how strokes will blend together in different water control situations, but I'm also going to be demonstrating how it looks when you draw a wash immediately after finishing and also letting one air dry. In this lesson, we're going to do a little practical application, keeping our water consistent. This will help us when we start to actually care about the shape of the object that we're creating. For here, I'm just going to do two little bookmarks. For instance. You could do just little squares. If you have room on your paper, you can just do a little swatch. So you can see these are ones I've done before, and these are different colors. But you can see how when the water changes, the water dilution changes, you get different effects. So we're going to try and see if we can get areas that are smooth and then maybe try and create some of these effects just so you can have an idea of what it feels like to have the different water dilutions. So here I just have two pieces of the cold press paper and they're taped down with them. This is just the cheap on tape, washi tape. I'm gonna be working on both of these. And then I'm going to show you what happens when you force try one early. I'm using a nice big brush. I want to get these in really quickly. I'm also going to spray my watercolors so that they're nice and moist. Because I want them to re-wet real quick. And I should want to add even more water. I'm going to mix up a nice puddles of each one to begin. Because that's the other little trick is making sure you have enough color. And we'll talk about what colors to have ready for each subject. But having colors ready. So this is dirty. That is not yellow anymore. Take some clean water. Mix a nice yellow puddle. There we go. I may need to mix more throughout here, but like I said, we're also going to practice adding some more watery dilutions to and to seeing what that looks like. So just pick a color, start from one corner to the other corner. Let's just start with yellow. Since we were already in there. You don't have to rinse your brush between colors. Since we were, we're going to be blending them anyways. It's in pure blue there. The only thing is if you want pure colors, you kinda have to make sure your brushes rinsed. Let's go for more yellow to finish this one up. So we are good there. Now, if I had used say in more watery yellow, Let's put some more water. Say I wanted to come back in and fix. But I've got all this extra water in my brush because I just rinse my brush and I only I only did this. I went into fix this. We're going to see what that extra water does. And then also you could, it's called charging. So if you take thicker paint, you can kinda drop that in. So we'll see, we'll do some red to see how much thicker that is. That some more over here too. Okay. Let me see if there's some liquid up there that's bubbling too, so we'll see what that does. So let's start with red this time. Let's start in the middle. Nice blue end up here. Want some more purple. This one here. You get a nice clean yellow. So let me really rinse my brush. There you go. Some greens. Okay. Now the other fact is, like I said, if you could see you come in and you don't realize you have too much water. So let's try and fix this. Whatever. Maybe we didn't like something in there too. So we're going to let this one dry naturally, and I'm going to heat dry this one. Now this one is not completely dry. And actually you can see that some of the water on the tape is actually still wet. But that's okay. But at this point, the pigment has settled. It's no longer shiny. Actually, if I there are no spots that I can see. If I can lift it The light, there's no spots anymore I can see glistening. Which means that if I want to finish this up with the heat dryer, it won't affect where the paint is. So we'll do that real quick. So let's remove our tape. It's always the best part. You can see here. There's a lot of differences between these two because obviously it's really hard to get the exact same thing twice. And that's the beauty about painting. So right off the bat, I can tell that my colors were much more saturated here. I used a little bit more water and I got more flow. But some of that is because I dried this one immediately after we finished. The colors do not have a chance to flow quite as much. So like this, blue may have ended up looking more flowy like that one. I also have a lot more delicate almost pastel tones here. So you can see just some slight differences. Obviously, depending on what you're looking for. Two different looks. And you can get one by setting an early or letting it blend. But you can also see where we added in the extra water to fix things. We've got blooms. But it may be something that you would like. Maybe it suggests an element of your subject. So keep that in mind anywhere where we added really thick paint and charged in. It's got this really deep value and saturation there. So these are great practice. I love doing these little cards of sorts. I use it for bookmarks. These are really awesome from this project. It's really fun to see how different effects can change your results. So we have two different bookmarks here that I did. So we had one that I let air dry and one that I forced dried. Both we played with different water levels throughout the wash. So it's really lovely to see the difference between the really thick dilutions and they're really watery blooms. Now, in the next lesson, the goal is to tighten up our water control and try to get a smooth watercolor wash bookmark 7. Colorwash: Smooth Wash: In the last lesson, we explored the range of watercolor dilution. So we got different effects by having loose and really saturated strokes altogether in the same wash. In this lesson, it's really important to focus on tightening our grip on water control in case you ever do need to get a smooth wash. So try to get one more bookmark and maintaining a observation on your water levels in your brush, in your paint, in, on your paper to get a smooth watercolor wash effect. How about we try and do one more bookmark this time, not trying to get different levels of water dilution. Let's try and aim to get a solid wash. So same process, we're going to start from one corner, kinda move to either fill the areas quickly as possible, big brush. So I'm going to start with some yellow, myself, some blue, red. And let's get some purple in there by bringing this blue down. And I could tell him getting that same dilution because not only I'm not dipping into this puddle and if I do, I'm tapping my brush like some orange in here. I'm also not picking up my my brush. Mid mid wash. I had some thicker red there. So what it is I came in with yellow. Same dilution we're going for and just going to fill in this area. And I'm going to end with my brush off the off the wash here. I think this is a pretty even level of saturation here. You can also, if you want to encourage some blending, you can tilt your paper. You see that shine there, that even shine. That's what you want to look for. If you have anything that looks like it's got up a puddle, like a radiant April puddle. That's too much water. If you do get too much water, you could always kinda tilt your paper, let it accumulate in one area, and just take like the tip of a paper towel and so would that be to water? You can just kinda touch it to it and suck it up. You can also use a damp brush to suck up extra water. The only thing you don't want to do is actually like touch the paper with your brush because that will disturb your paints and give you uneven results. So we're going to let this completely air dry. So might even swatch or bookmark has dried. You can see that that has no blooms in it. It doesn't have any hard lines. It's just soft, even color. It almost looks like I applied it with pastels and then kinda smushed the edges. So this is a really good skill to have. If this is what you need, It's always good to be able to get the effect that you want. So this is how to work on avoiding unexpected disturbances in your wash. So let's pull the tape off of it and see how everything looks. We've got our three are three little bookmark wash experiments. So we've got the one that we put things down. We did a little experiment in here, water dilution levels to get different effects and know what's causing them. And then this one was dried immediately with the heat dryer. This one was allowed to air dry. And then this one we aimed for even water dilution levels and letting it air dry to mingle, blend and soften. We're going to take these skills into the next lesson with us. Now whether you ever feel like you will want to create a smooth watercolor wash. It's always just really important to know how to do one. You can see the difference in visual effects between this smooth watercolor wash, which almost looks like pastel, that it has been smushed out a little bit. And this wash where we had different water levels interacting with lots of hard spots in watery blue. So it doesn't really matter which one you prefer because both are great. It's just knowing how to achieve one or the other, depending on the artwork you're trying to create, it's a little easier to start learning these techniques on a simple rectangle. In the next lesson, we're going to integrate water control with shipbuilding and learn to create a simple maple leaf 8. One Layer Leaf: In this lesson, we'll step up from creating a blended wash in a simple shape and move on to a specific subject. We'll paint a maple leaf pre mixing our colors based around a core color. If your water looks like this, now's a good time to switch it out. If you're not quite comfortable painting onto a paper without an outline, draw in your leaf pretty simply. You don't need to make it exact, but try to get it close if you have trouble matching locations between the reference photograph and your painting. There we go. All set. So one of the easiest ways to introduce yourself to blending color on the page is to create a base color and then create tones or different hues around that base color to simply shift two. So if you're not comfortable putting straight primaries onto the page and mixing them on the page, what we're going to do in this lesson is create a little well of each of the kind of different shades that we're going to need in our painting. So here I'm creating a base green color. I'm shooting for a green that's in between the really bright yellow and the darker green yellow. Here we have, maybe a little more yellow to shift it towards the brighter and a little bit of blue, we'll shift it towards the cooler side of green. If we mix in a little red going by our neutral mix, we're going to shift it towards a darker, more neutral shade of green. So what I want to do now is create a little puddle of each of my key mixes. So I have my base green. So now I need to make a brighter green well. So this one needs more yellow to be a brighter mix. And this next one is going to have more blue. As well as a little bit of red to darken it up. And sometimes getting the right hue is a balancing act. It takes a little bit of going back and forth, adding different colors. And if you add too much of one color, sometimes you have to balance it back out the other way. There's nothing wrong with that. That's just part of color mixing on your feet. So here we have our green. So I just need to rebuild my base color because I took some of that to mix my other wells. And I kind of want to make sure I have enough of each puddle to do this subject because once we start laying down color, it's going to be very hard to stop and remix these puddles without our wash starting to dry. So here I'm just practicing seeing how these blend together. So by putting them down right next to each other, it allows them to blend between each other. So I can kind of see if they're the right dilution. Starting in on the leaf, how you take that application and color theory here in having our three contons and applying it is that much like direct painting, even so they have the outline, I'm going to work on building this shape. Working from one end to the other just laying strokes down next to each other. You see, I'm using the full breath of the brush stroke. Getting paint down quickly is key to getting the wash in before it starts to dry. Very few strokes, I'm looking at it if I need to change color. Even if the photo doesn't necessarily change color that quickly, it's nice to vary your color to keep it interesting. You can see here, I'm just adding in strokes, making sure to come back to edges before they dry and using my strokes coaching my strokes even to not in the middle of a wash. If I end my stroke in the middle of a wash, I'm most likely going to end up with a deposit of water in the middle that will not dry evenly. So I'm working from an area of paint to an area of no paint. Here I've added more yellow to that mix because I wanted to be a little different than the other side a little stronger in color. Once again, just continuing to add strokes. Here I am working into the wash a little bit to introduce more color and just finishing up the final few strokes. Getting this wash in De is usually still better than perfect. You don't want to go back into areas because you're most likely going to end up with blooms. If you do rinse your brush at any point during the wash. Make sure you blot out any extra water. So here I'm just mixing a neutral, much like we mixed in the last lesson, mixing that kind of red and green brown, and I want to just get it so that's a nice neutral stem color, not too watery because I don't want it to introduce extra water into where I touch the leaf, and I'm just pulling out this stem. Just enough. I don't want to pick up my brush near the leaf because it could drop water into that wash. We don't want that Now, we practice mixing colors in a wash for a specific subject. In the next lesson, we're going to paint a banana and two layers to work on mixing shadows and creating depth and using our knowledge of mixing neutrals. 9. Two Layer Banana: Now that you've handled a mixing color within the first wash of a specific subject. In this lesson, we're going to paint a banana in two layers. And the purposes that is that we'll use that second layer to build up shadows, define form. And we're going to use the colors pre-mixed and our palette that involve a lot of mixing neutrals. This lesson, same thing if you would like to preach, draw our subject. Go ahead. I'm going to be demonstrating how you could do this without a pencil outline. And I'm also going to remind you to make sure you have some clean areas to mix your colors. Removing all of the paint from the last lesson, because I don't want any other colors kinda diluting the colors that I need to mix here. So this lesson, I'm going to be making my base colors and more shifting the, the tone of it and creating more shadow, then shifting the hue. So I'm creating a base color that's more of a buttery, sunny yellow. Red, and yellow. And it's always nice to have a little piece of paper nearby or the edge of your sheet to swatch out your colors and check to make sure your colors are where they need to be. Because here we're going to mix our second color, which is a warmer. I'm orangey, yellowish color. That's pretty similar to the first color, will just adjust that a little bit. That's a little more neutral. I like that a little bit more. So our third color is going to be a more shadowy colors. So we need to add more red and more blue to neutralize the yellow and to darken it. I'm aiming for more of a neutral brown color. Leaning towards the cool side, if anything, we don't want to be too warm because the areas we're going to do, color two are in shadow. So we need it to not be super warm, it would not look correct. So that's a nice neutral brown. And then we're going to use some of that to start this mixture, adding more blue to create a more watery shadow color. So we have all our colors are ready. To start the layer process for this banana, I'm going to put down clean water on the top edge of the shape. And that's going to help me preserve my highlights while still getting a soft edge on that next color. So next to the clean water, I'm going to lay down the the core color or our base color, which is this yellow, and just letting it mixed into that highlight area as it would like to. I don't feel like I need to force it to do anything in particular. Then as we move down the shape, adding in those darker colors. Remember, you can always tilt your paper to let the paint move in, mingle without you having to put a brush in it and potentially mess it up. So continuing to build our shape, almost like adding clay on, building it out. Remember this is our first layer, so we do not need to make crisp edges in this layer. We're just creating some form, adding some interesting colors. So grabbing some of that darker color to add some interests at the edges. Just charging and those colors, they're adding some to the below. You can see anywhere where your brush picks up a little bit. It is good to deposit a little bit of paint, but don't worry too much about it. Oftentimes the paint will dissipate on its own. As long as the area has been left into to dry and it will mingle in and look just fine once it dries. It often looks better than if you go in with your brush and try end, quote unquote, fix it. So here I'm pretty happy with this banana wash shape. So we're going to add a quick stroke of a shadow color here, just touching the tip of the brush to that banana. And that way the colors will mingle, but they should not rush into one area or the other. So I'm pretty happy with this layer. When you're happy with yours, let it dry. You will need to be sure your paper is fully dry. Before we start this next layer, I want to start with this flat plane on the bottom. And I'm using this darker but more colorful color. And because the paper is dry, I will be able to get some clean edges. So starting with the top in a nice thin line and then using the brush as I go down to create a thicker and thicker section. I don't want to use the tip to color in this full section because it would take too long. So you see I'm using the full body of the brush to lay in this And get it done quickly. Once that's done, you can see in the picture that moving up from the bottom you have a section of dark and then a light ridge and then a section of shadow again. I'm just gonna move my water jar so I get this correct angle. And so I'm going to put my point in, leave a space between these two sections to act as that lighter rich. So that's the darker section. What I need to do now is use my clean water, but move that back. So put some clean water on my brush and put this stroke next to them. Stroke I put down to soften it. Just massaging the edge of that wash section so that it's nice and smooth creation. So the next thing to do is while it's wet, is add in some of these smaller shadow areas that show that the bananas kind of round at the end. That way they kinda flow into that wash and becomes smooth. And also repeating that shadow area, making that a little darker. And it may flow up a little bit into that stroke I put, but that is fine. And then adding a bit more color right underneath where that crevice shadow is. I need a dark color for the next section. So I took a little bit of that shadowy color, but it was much too watery. So here I am mixing all three of my colors together to create a dark brownish black. And you see, I'm just kind of going back and forth, not only getting the right color, but I'm also working on building up the concentration of this paint. So just adding a little bit of each one, solely building that up. And here you can see testing that out that it's a nice dark concentrated color. So I'm just using that to kind of add in these details, those really dark darks, some of these blemishes in anywhere I add it where the paper is still damp, it will become nice and diffuse. It will smooth out and look like a, you know, those wider, softer blemishes that on a banana. And anywhere where it's dry, it'll be nice and crisp. So I get the best of both worlds here. And I'm also going to take some of this color and put it into this damp wash at the bottom to really bump up the shadows next to the underside of that banana. I wanted to do a quick review of Bloom's versus charging because we did add some paint to awash in this lesson. If you're having any issues, hopefully this will help you troubleshoot what's going on. We have our base wash here, and we're going to add this more concentrated paint mix to the bottom. And you can see that this does not travel too far. It does diffuse, but it does not create any distinctive edges. Then. And a more diluted paint mix to the top here. You can see it pushes out much further and that water spreads farther and creates more visible edges. So the bottom one is considered charging and you are adding a more concentrated puddle of paint, brush load of paint. And that does not necessarily need to mean a darker application of paint because if you're using, say, something with white or just a lighter tone like Buff Titanium, it may actually be lighter and yet still more concentrated. And then once they get here at the top, we added a less concentrated mixture. And because water likes to level out or even out, it pushes out further because there's less water in the existing wash. Once again, less concentrated mixture added into your wash will create bloom. And a more concentrated mixture of wash that you add is considered charging. In the next lesson, we're going to start on our final pair project, but we will begin by doing a value study, which is a great way to assess the lights and darks of any subject. 10. Pear Project: Value Study: One of the most common tips that most practicing artists tell you is that to understand a scene or subject, try doing a value study of it. And what is a value study? Well, it's simply a painting done in one color, usually a dark color like neutral tint Payne's gray or brown. And it's just to gauge the light and darks of your scene or subject by getting a little practice study in first, it gives you hints about how diluted your paint needs to be, or when to transition, or where your key highlights are and to pay attention to them once you add in that distracting element of color. Be sure to take advantage of the black and white reference photo that's included with this class. For this, it might be a lot easier for those of you who are not used to doing a value study to use that as your reference. Much like our other lessons, if you feel more comfortable drawing the outline for the subject, you can go ahead and pencil that in. The only thing. You can pause the video if you need more time, but don't put too much effort or detail into this drawing. You simply want to make sure that the proportions are fairly similar to what will be your final drawing. Because we're gonna be using this sketch as a reference for where certain dark or light colors will be going. And the last thing you want is for you to get confused while you're referencing this, because things aren't lining up, you can't compare. So just make sure it's similar in shape. So for this pair project, we have our black and white reference photo and I'm going to be using neutral tint to do my value study. So you can use any color as long as it's kinda dark enough to get a few tones out of it. So here I'm going to swatch out for four different kind of value stops if you will. And so I have a light, a light mid, and I'm trying here to get a mid dark tone and then going straight from the pan to get my darkest tones. So I'm going to use this as kind of like a checkpoint as I paint to see where I am. And so looking at this reference photo, we have few different ranges. We've got the big highlight, some mid tones and a darker ridge down the middle. Now this highlight, unlike the highlight we did for the banana where we added clean water. And then I put the paint around it. Kinda working at a different approach for this. It gives you some options. I'm gonna be working from the rest of the pair towards the highlight, and that'll be the last part I fill in. I'm prefixing a few puddles. One is going to be on the lighter side, more diluted. And in this second, well, I'm going to mix a darker, probably between my light to mid and dark. So about 50% they're leaning towards the darker side. So I'm going to start on this left ridge where it is that shadows he just at the edge of the pear. And then as I worked my way inwards, I'm going to switch to the lighter version and then back to the dark version. Using my brush, coaching it, the paint in this back-and-forth kinda squishy motion to get this ridge in. It looks Kirby and yet it goes in pretty quickly. So here swapping back to the lighter dilution because as we round that point where the shadow breaks around the edge, it goes back to being a lighter shade. And then as we get to our highlight, like I was saying, we'll finish up with this Clearwater to fill in the rest of the wash on the paper, but without adding any extra pigment. So if I wanted to blend, you could use a damp brush. I also like that. The damp brush has a little bit water in it. So I'm going to use the sketch to play around with moving my hand on this jittery motion to mess up the pigment that's on the paper and create that deeply pair texture. So like I was saying in the bookmark lessons, it's really good to know how to get a smooth wash and how to not get a smooth wash. Because it's nice to lay down the paint purposefully and then choose to create extra texture by using that water imbalance to your favor. So here I'm just blocking out some of the extra paint that kinda moved a little bit further into the highlight, then I would have liked. So here, switching to a smaller brush. And that's to get in just these really small details, filling in the stem. And then also I'll be working on putting in those portions of the pair, flush that kind of roll into where the stem emerges. So this is the lighter, lighter shade to start that color. And then work my way out to the highlight. And then while it's wet, I can take that really dark paint and just charge in some of those deeper shadows. Now I'm not trying to be super detailed in the sketch. I'm just trying to understand how dark my paint needs to be. Where for the shadow being a larger area. Switching back to that larger brush, try not to mess up the pink that's on the pair. So this is a separate shape. And starting with a light tone, charging in a mid tone here. And then to finesse that and blend it. I'm just using a damp brush so I didn't clean my brush and add extra water. I just wiped it. And then further building up my tones with that kind of straight from the pan paint. That is my darkest value. And doing the same thing, wiping my brush, finessing the edge, blending out the tones into that grid heated shadow. You can do that until you're happy with the level of value range. Now that we have our values study to reference back to understand how dark each area of the pair should be an out-of-control our water dilution. The next lesson we're going to build on that by adding back in color. We're gonna do a modified colormap. And this is so we know beforehand what power colors need to mix to get the right color and also what application techniques we can use secrete texture and interests. All while keeping a tight grip on our water control 11. Pear Project: Color Map: Now that we understand our value a bit more from the value study, we're going to move into this lesson and add back in color. We're going to create a modified colormap of our pair. So mixing our local colors, seeing how they blend within the subject may be different application techniques or directions and brushstrokes that we need to use in order to get the colors and mixing in the right way. This is also kind of like our little dry run for the larger pair will do in the next lesson. Unlike our value study where we use a black and white photo using a color reference photo for this lesson. Creating a color map helps you work through what colors you will mix. You could even take a reference photo and draw on it is Sharpie to help you break down what colors may go. Where? Here you can see I have drawn out what colors will be going in each of these sections, including blues, reds, and what particular shades of brown. Just like in our value study. In all other lessons, you can pre draw your pair for this lesson, or you can choose to not. If you are pre drawing, make sure it is like the value study and a very loose not detained. You just want to make sure that it is the correct proportions, or at least similar proportions to the pair will be drawing for the project. The point of this study is to determine where in the pair each color goes. So you wanna make sure you can reference the same type of shape between projects. For the same way we did our leaf and banana projects. I'm also going to swatch out some kind of base colors and outlying colors. So I have the same yet I'll actually I use for the banana which is a good match for this pair. And then I'm going to continue to mix some alternate colors here so as they get more neutral like that yellow, green tinge. And then also mixing up a, even more of a brownish, greenish yellow. So it's just a mix of all three colors there to get this olive color. And those are like my base colors that cover most of the pair. And then I'll also practice here just dotting in some of that red. Because what that will do is diffuse. So starting with that yellow color, I'm going to do something similar to my value study and even play with practice in starting on the right side of this pair. Trying to somewhat avoid that highlight, you can see the color actually does go up quite a bit higher than if we're looking at the black and white photo. So I got a little closer. And then just like before moving over, making it more olive as I go over using an interesting brush movement to add the center stripe. And then practicing this dappling to add in the red blush. And this is all practice to see how much paint do I need in my brush? How far apart do the dots need to be? Do I need to blend them in all after they enter the wash? All of this is practice here, creating a darker stripe by adding some blue. Adding blue along the more shadowy left edge, and then blending. Just trying to get the right look because there's always multiple ways to get the same look. Here. Also just adding in without pre mixing a color, adding in some of that red to create that brownish edge that is on the left side. Mixing different browns can also take a little bit of time. This is more of a warm brown. And then when I go to add in the shadow, I would want to add in a little of this blue to make it lean towards a cooler brown. Same thing with these crevices as well. They have a little bit of a cool tinge to them because they are in shadow. Once we get to the highlight area, I don't want to add too much water. I'm just using a damp brush to move the pigment and blend it. To be more gradual, I'm going to mix up a little bit of a shadow color and then practice getting that shape in and kinda let it touch the pair and get a little bit of that color to seep out as more of like reflected light. I'm also practicing a different technique here where I'm using clean water sprayed or speckled in to create the dapple texture. I also want to maybe re-up some of this color that has faded a bit. And it's not quite as vibrant as it is in the photo. Just adding a bit more red seat. How far I can push the boundaries of how much paint, how vibrant I can make it without it making it look too unnatural. So just playing with that, I've also switched brush sizes. So I'm playing with seeing if maybe this deposits less paint and it spreads a little bit less. Here I'm adding in yellow paint. That makes it more orangey instead of red paint that's been added into yellow paint. Just playing with different approaches in this study. You can hear also practice adding in. This is just yellow paint to create some more dappling on the left side. So just observing your photo and seeing what textures are going on and what colors maybe have been mixed to create that. They were mixed in the palate or maybe combined on paper. So there's lots of different options for you to explore. And you can always make your painting more interesting than the photo. So always remember that here. Finishing up by smoothing out this highlight gradation in making sure that no part of this is like not been tested in this study. It's always a new adventure, mixing colors in a brand new subject. If you feel like you need to do a few more of these before we move on. Be sure to do that. Sometimes you learn something with each try. This is really, it is a dry run for the next pair. So be sure to do as many as you need to feel confident to move on. If you're ready to go. We'll move on into the next lesson. We will do the initial wash for our main project 12. Pear Project: Layer One: We're going to ease into this pair of project by focusing on one of the things we've learned with each layer. In this lesson, we're going to be focusing on layer one, which is an initial color wash. Way I like to approach subjects, is to kind of get just some color down and then build up from there. So in this layer, we will not be focusing on details besides avoiding our highlights. But we will be focusing more on blending a really lovely wash of our local colors. Use the information you learned from your Colormap to lay down your initial wash of color. We're going to draw one last pair. This pair is going to be bigger. It's going to take up the whole, half the other sheet. But we need to keep things proportionate to how we did our other two pairs. So I'm going to draw this in the same way. I'm going to speed this up a little. You've seen me draw it twice now. So just drawing basic shapes, using the pencil to feel out where those angles are. Just so I can reference my sketches accurately. So now that I have the pencil sketch in, I'm just going to erase any errant lines and clean this up. Then I get to be a little more detailed with this sketch. So we're going to put some more character into our stem. So you get that little more detail and then quickly sketch in our shadow. For this project, I'm actually going to fall back on the approach we use with the banana. So I'm going to put down clean water first in that highlight area and then move out from there because I thought that gradation into the highlight area was really nice. So I've got my lightest color that I will add first and then move out using those darker tones in all of the colors that I'm adding right now are the colors that I mixed in the colormap lesson. So that sketch was a really good practice run for knowing what colors to mix for this project. That way, I can move from right to left pretty quickly and just get some paint on this paper. As I move along, I am using my brush in directional strokes. So using these squiggles and kinda curvy strokes to suggest the form of the pair. So here I'm adding darker, cooler, greenish yellows to fill in the shadow side of the pear. And I'll get close to the highlights, but leave them alone for now. As we move into putting paint into an already existing wash, we want to make sure that whatever we're adding is at least the same dilution if not thicker than the area we're adding it into. So you can see I'm adding blue paint straight from the pile, just loosen it up in the wealth and just charging that in to start building up the value and shadow. What areas of this pair. Now that's a little stark because that charge paint won't move very far. So I'm going to take some looser yellow paint and start working the edges just to smooth that out. And you can see all of this because it's still wet, is going to settle an even out. Now, shifting gears a little bit, I'm going to take some of this red paint and start adding in that blush. So this is probably equal dilution to what's on the paper. And you'll see that it will spread a bit more than if I'd taken red paint straight from the pile. And this'll give it a chance to blend out to more of a subtle tone versus like individualism. And I also want to add it over on the left side to build up that kind of brown tinge on the edge. Now, instead of the red paint, I'm going to take some diluted yellow paint. This is more diluted than what is on the paper. And what you can see what this is doing is almost acting like if I added water droplets and it's just creating some texture. And I want to add in this texture now while the wash is wet, because once it starts to dry, there'll be a little bit too crisp on the edges. So as the paint has been settling, I'm taking a damp brush here and just adjusting in, lifting out. Maybe some more of the highlight that I want to emphasize. While the paint is damp. It is nice to do this while it's still wet because if it dries, I won't be able to lift it out. I'm also taking this small brush and putting in some of those small little folds, a pair flesh that go into where the stem emerges. Just trying to work those in while I'm on the pair section. Now that I'm happy with how the pair section looks for now I'm going to try and get in some of this stem color. I'm mixing up a brown for the first layer on the stem. And you can see I'm using that little brush because it's a very small section. And I'm going to be really careful as I get closer to the pair body. I'm also keeping that right edge blank because that side is split with with light. And just putting in a couple little dots that come up in that texture and form on the top of the stem. Once I'm happy with the base of the pair there, the bottom of it has had to dry so I can move on to adding in the first layer of our shadow. So as I mix the color for my shadow, I do want to test it out. It makes sure it's the tone that I'm looking for. And this will serve as the base and then we'll adjust it from there. Once I'm happy with that color, I'm using this nice big brush to put it in quickly so that I can move to my smaller brush to charge and other colors. So the only thing I want to make sure is I'm careful around the edge of the pear layer here. And it's okay if it kinda kisses it and blends little bit. I'm actually going to encourage some of that pigment too, blend out a bit more. So I'm using that smaller brush to minimize the risk of that big brush, drop it in maybe a bit more paint than I want in creating a bloom that is too much of a visual disruption. So once I've blended it, we're going to add in some of this red tone that's there in the photo. And I'm taking pigment straight from the piles of paint. This prevents me from accidentally putting in extra water. Once again, always trying to minimize adding in new water to this layer. And I do want to work quickly because as the layer dries, I won't be able to blend things. You can even see the left side of that shadow is starting to dry. Now that we're working in a larger size subject, Be sure to watch your wash as you go along. The further from the beginning you get, the more likely you're going to give myself some dry spots. Those are prime instances for developing a bloom. If you come in with extra water or a different level of water than what's there. Be sure to keep an eye on your layer as it starts to get drying. Once you're happy with how your layer looks, time to let it dry completely. As I've mentioned in the previous lessons, you are welcome to let it dry until there's no longer a shine and then speed that up with a hairdryer. But the longer it air dries, the more color mingling you'll get. Once you're ready. In the next lesson, we will add some extra value and build up our form 13. Pear Project: Layer Two: Once your layer one is dry, it's time to move on to layer two. And the first half of starting a second layer is always evaluating your first layer. So in this lesson, we're going to see what needs to be adjusted or changed. We're going to build some value. And we're going to work on maybe adding color or texture to our pair. The first step in doing a second layer is to evaluate your first layer. Here I can see I need more saturation everywhere. And I also looking at the reference photo, need to up the kind of like brownish Oliver ssh colors that are in the pair and also the stem. So the first thing to think about is where to start in your second layer here I want to start where these yellows need to be much warmer, much richer. So I'm actually going to add yellow over the whole pair. But the first part of this layer is putting down once you have this clean water to preserve my highlights as best I can. So I'm actually going to be adding paint straight from the well here, straight from the pan. If you if you have working with pants and I'm just going to work, add this over the entire pair. It really does need to be bumped up everywhere. So what I'm technically doing is glazing this pair with the yellow color. You can see how it's nice and transparent. And it goes over very well. You can see how as it goes over those cooler bluish green areas. Now it becomes a much richer, more line, the green, more olivine, and we will bump up that next. Bump up those more neutral tones. But for now I just want to get a base coat of this pure yellow. The next section I'm working on is bumping back up the blush on this pair. I'm really adding this reddish color. It's got just a little bit of yellow in it, so it's on the warm red side. And just doing a mixture of dotting and scrambling and just charging in a bit more of this tone. And then once again also repeating on that left edge, where that wraps around the left side. Now that I've adjusted the yellow and the red, I'm going to work on bumping up the value on the neutrality of the shadow side of this pair. I'm just working on mixing a darker, neutral color. It's more of a purplish brown color. And I'm just going to repeat the sections that really need to be deepened. Going with that ridge, doing the same stroke marks. Same thing with the bottom side following the shape of the pair. Always remembering to add my strokes as if they may show through at the end. And that way it adds to the dimensionality of my subject. So just using a little bit of scrambling here to charge in some texture on those sides and then blending. So once I have that ridge and the shadow sides kinda been deepened, I'm noticing looking at the reference photo that I need to create some more dimension here on the right, where the pair has a little bit of little bit of shadow underneath that top bunk. So just adding in some dirty yellowish colors there. This time to create the light texture, I'm going to tap a brush on my finger to create the speckle. Or I could use a feral of another brush. This creates a more forceful tab. And you can also play around with the size of the brush you're using for different textured speckle. Now that I've added this extra texture, I'm noticing that my new value layer comps kinda sunken underneath this visual texture. So I want to deepen that once more. So I'm mixing a darker version of that neutral we added before. So what I'm going to do is apply this to that crescent at the bottom and also that ridge up the side. I'm not however, going to do it as a blocky shape. You can see I'm being much more selective with the, where I'm putting my strokes and it's a bit more textured, more complex. Also going the same paint and add some extra value and interests to the other smaller sections that need a bit of darkening, including that left edge, the top creases, as well as adding in some to add some complexity to the right side. Some of us might even come across as natural imperfections, as well as just the texture of the pair skin. So the next section that's left is the stem. We're going to hold off on the shadow for this lesson, but the stem definitely needs some extra saturation. It's looking very pale compared to the rest of my wash. So I'm just being careful not to let it run too far into the pair wash, but I'm adding this richer orange-ish brown at the base and then turning it to be more purply and cool as we get towards the side and the top where it is a little darker and gives away the form that the top is a little bulbous. Just adding it till little sections as well. And might even spread this around to tie it into the pair base and denote these creases. So that's a good place to stop for now. The main goal of this lesson is to get the value of your pair to start looking more three-dimensional. And also to shift any colors that maybe came out to light. A good way to check the value Vout is to take a photo with your phone and turn it into black and white. That way you can compare it to the black and white reference photo that's been provided. Good way to gauge how your value is looking without being distracted by your color. Once you're happy with how your layers looking, it's time to let it dry completely. And in the next lesson, we will build up any last little bits of contrast and value and add in any of those small, finicky details. 14. Pear Project: Layer Three: One of the best parts of any painting is getting to the finishing touches. We're going to do just that in this lesson. It should be fairly minimal, although everyone's painting will be different. So feel free to do as much adjustment as you need. But for the most part we are going to be adding in our final details. So small details as well as crisp contrast and the areas of the deepest value like our credits shadow. The key thing to note is that as fun as these details are, is to only put in as much as you need. It's very easy to overdo it. So just step back every once in awhile at this stage and just see if you're painting Wilkes finished from a couple of feet away because it's really hard to tell when your only about a foot away from your painting. We need to start with evaluating our previous layer so we can see our shadow needs to be worked done. Looking at the photograph, we can see the shadows actually darker than this shadowy portion of the pair. And we also need to pay attention to this little crevice shadow. We're going to start this final, final touch wash with working on the shadows. So I'm mixing up very similar wash to what I used for the shadow in the previous layer. Just building this up so that I can get a lot of subtlety and a little bit of nuance in this shadow. So just trying to get the right color here and always testing. That's pretty similar. I'm going to take that and laying down the initial layer of wet paint here. So I get to be a little bit careful but a little bit easier putting this in, knowing that it's not going to move into the pair because the pair is dry. So adding this in and just adjusting the colors a little bit, maybe I think this might try to light. So it's always just kind of a site judgment call. So just adding a little bit more pigment here to make it a little darker. And then I'm going to take some clean water. This is from my dirty water jar, so it's not totally clean. And just pulling that out into that wet area and just smoothing that out. So now that I have that base wash down for the shadow area, I'm going to mix up a darker mix. And what this is going to do is it will be thicker than the paint I put down. And I'm just going to charge in this extra pigment as you get closer underneath the edge of that pair here. So this is to push that pair forward. I'll use that same paint mix to work on the stem a bit more. So because we know the stem is circular, but it has a bulbous top and the base goes into the pair. They need a little bit more definition with shadows being what will tell us where the shape is turning or expanding or becoming a different shape. I have a little bit lighter paint here on my brush and I'm just filling in that lighter side of the stem just so it's not completely white and dark brown. This way it gives us a few different ranges. And just also adding this lighter paint along the top of the pair. And just kinda falling along the same thing. We're, this remained a little too white. I'm adding this light yellow color just to make sure that the pair stands out against our white paper just enough to differentiate it. So while I was working on that, you can see that my shadow layer is drying a little unevenly. It's not quite a bloom. It's just that the left side was drawing faster than the right side and I was getting a little bit of a hard edge. I just have a damp brush and I'm just blending out there edge so that it dries a little more evenly. Now that has been blended out is that the base is a little more even. We're going to mix up a very concentrated color here. So just mixing up the darkest, dark we've done so far. So this is using all three colors. Basically, I'm just trying to, once again find a neutral color that's close to a black, but also on building up the concentration of these paints and you've seen using hardly any water. So once I get a color that I like, I will test it out and see how much darker that is. What I will do is use this paint to start to put in that crevice shadow. So it's much darker right underneath that room of the payer. This is what's known as a crevice shadow. And it is usually the darkest, dark in your painting or in a photograph. So it was wanted to make sure this is where our darkest dark goes. And I'll also use the same pink just to put smaller amounts in the crevice shadows of the creases at the top, as well as the very, very top of the stem. This is definitely one area where you want to be careful not to add too much. Because too much of this darkest color can very easily make your painting look like you drew it with ink or very heavy. And then now that it's set a bit, I'm just using a little bit of a looser mix to blend this out just a little bit so that it doesn't look like I drew a line underneath the pair. Just a reminder, the closer you get to finishing the painting, the more often you want to step back and just see if the painting works as soon as you back away from it. Once you get to that point, you're all done. Now that we're done with the third layer of our pair, time to step back a little bit and just see if you're painting looks done. There is nothing wrong with walking away from it for a little bit and coming back once the paint is dry to tell if you need to add another layer, you could definitely do more than three layers. But if you are ready with how your painting looks after the third layer or whichever layer you finish on. The next lesson, we'll just quickly review our pair project 15. Pear Project: Review: A useful practice to institute is just to review projects you've recently finished. So in this awesome, We're going to quickly review the pair project and just touch on some key notes. In our final evaluation here you can see comparing it to the reference photograph that it looks pretty similar. I do like to make some changes GG my PDF from the photo because that's kind of like the beauty of art. But overall, it looks like a pair. I would also recommend waiting to your painting is fully dry to make your final valuation. So just tilt it to see if there's any shiny spots left. Was that could skew your judgment. And then also you can see as we tilt it all the different texture we created layer by layer. One last tip to keep in mind is that as you can see, looking over all of these pairs that I have created, why was making this class is that no two are alike and I'm the same artist. So just keep that in mind as you look at other's projects and my work that no two paintings will ever be the same. We're done with our pair project. I hope you're painting looks as delicious as the parent cell. I can't wait to see everyone's projects in the project gallery, so please be sure to share them. Not only the pair project, but also the banana leaf or bookmarks, whichever projects you chose to take part in. That note, it's time to move on to our conclusion and wrap up this class 16. Conclusion: Each of the projects we did in this class will help build your skill in water control. The key to making sure your wash goes down with more success than frustration is simply knowing where your water is and how much is there. So next time, be more observant about what water is in your brush, in your paints and on your paper. And I'm sure you'll be met with a lot more success. I'd also love to see your projects in the project gallery, so be sure to share them there. If you enjoyed the class. I also encourage you to leave me a review here, Skillshare. I use the reviews not only to tell if you guys let the class or not, but also to help inform and improve my future classes. So I really appreciate it if you guys would leave me a word or two about your experience with the class. If you'd like my classes and want to know the next time I'm publishing a new one. Be sure to subscribe to me here on Skillshare where you'll get an automatic notification whenever I release a new class or if I send out a channel wide discussion posts. If you'd like to keep up with what I'm doing outside of Skillshare. You can follow me on Instagram or Facebook, actual the status art, or simply go to my website, which is just Joe Gus davis.com. Thank you so much for taking my class and I hope that from now on you will have a better handle on water control. More success and less frustration in your next wash. See you in the next class.