Gouache Portrait essentials

1. Class Introduction: Hello, everyone, and welcome to Watch For All Painters. I came up with this course because I've met a lot of students that were not happy with their old portraits. They were worth rendering, and the paints were missing that textural effect that a simple workplace stroke can have. So whether you're looking to prove your old painting skills, we just want to dive into a new medium, this course is going to be real helpful. In this course, we're gonna paint Indy. The process I use is called tile painting. What I mean by tiles is basically brush strokes that represent a piece of information. That information can be anatomy or just serve as a transition to trim the form. My main goal is to give the tools and confidence to approach your paint with dust and without fear, which will lead to looser brush strokes and more powerful portents. 2. Setting up your materials: Okay, guys, I'm going to go over supplies real quick and show you how to set up your space so you can get to painting, okay? First of all, we have our butcher tray palette here. I believe it's made out of enamel. Check out the resources. I'm going to have a link for you so you can if you choose to buy one, you can get got our shop paper towels here. These paper towels are way more durable than your regular paper towels. That's the main reason why I use them. Feel free to use regular paper towels if you want to. Got our brushes here. These are watercolor brushes. Short handle, different sizes, different types of brushes. We got rounds, we got flat. We got brights, another round real small, and another flat real small. Feel free to get different sizes, different shapes. I would say start with maybe four or five different brushes. You'll be in good shape. Get a cup for water so we can clean our brushes and we can grab a little bit of clean water so the paint flows better. This is really useful. It's just a spray bottle with water. And what I use it for is to spray water on the paint that's dried already. That way I can reactivate it without having to get more paint out of the tube. Pencil, eraser, so you can do your drawing before you start painting. And the colors I have here, go from left to right. Usually that's the way I set it up on the palette, as well. I'll show you in a second. We'll go Avery black, traman blue, burnt sienna, lzarum crimson, cat red, medium, yellow ochre, naples yellow, real useful for fleshtones and titanium white. The way I set it up, I br a paper towel, and you can either dunk it in the water or can kind of fold it, put it on the palette and then use your spray bottle. To wet the paper towel? Make sure you do both sides. And the reason we're doing this is when we put our pin out, it doesn't dry as fast. If you don't do this, your pin's gonna dry within the first 30 minutes, and you're going to be wasting a lot of paint. So I'll show you one that's already done here. That's the way I set up my paint. Every time I paint. Every time I do art, whether it's oils or wash, I do it the same way from left to right, white on the right, my darkest on the left. And the reason we use burned Sienna in this setup is sometimes I don't feel like using black. And the way I get my darkest dark is by mixing ultramarine blue and burned sienna. But you'll see that on their first video. Oh 3. BW Thumbnail: Alright, guys. I'm going to start with the black and white. I think I'm gonna do this little one as a black and white thumbnail. So go ahead and follow along. Don't forget to wet the surface a little bit. Also, I have a dry paper towel on my left hand at all times to wipe off excess paint or to dry my brush. So feel free to do the same. Try and kill the white. I'm just gonna grab a little bit of black. Really diluted with water. Gonna change. My water position overhear more accessible. All I have just black and water. Yeah, I think that works. Remember, we trying to kill the white at this moi Now, we're going to try and get our darkest dark, which in this case is gonna be just pure black. With just a little bit of water so the pain flows. You don't want a lot of water. So I think I'm going to go and pick this area as my darkest. At this point, we want to simplify the values on the thumbnails. So if you see a lot of values on your reference, go and combine squint first, and you'll find out that the values compress. It's like magic, really. So that's going to be all part of the same value at this point. Let me do this core shadow on the head. It's gonna be part of it. It's the reference I'm using, it's really dramatic lighting, so there's a lot of contrast. I think I'm going to include this part. It may be a value. Yeah, it may be a value higher than this, but I'm going to combine it at this point. Something I usually do on the bigger paintings, too. I'm going to grab a bigger brush and kind of block in the background. So I'm gonna grab a little bit. Why am I a little more water? Because I don't want it to be as dark as this, but I still want it to be dark enough. So the portrait kind of comes forward. I want to go back to my darkest dark and kind of restorish this core shadow because it was I guess I used too much water in the beginning. I think this shadow here can be part of the same value. Maybe a little bit of calligraphy. So design elements in the background. Maybe connect these shapes. Every time I draw or paint, I look for opportunities to combine shapes. For instance, this and this are three different shapes than combining into one. And what that does is just visually it's more visually appealing to the eye. When you simplify shapes into one, you get that feeling that it's well structured and it just flows better. Maybe a little bit more here. I'm still on the same for value. I haven't moved on. See, when I have it loaded on my brush, I look for areas that I think belong in the same family, and I move around fix the shape a little bit? No worry I'm not gonna worry about the eyes. I think I'm going to go up one value and not even worry about the eye. Remember, on the reference, this area is really bright, so I'm going to try and paint around it. If I lose it because it's really small, it's really easy to make mistakes. I'm going to have to come in with almost pure white and re establish, but I'm going to try and preserve that as much as I can. Actually, before I move on, there's a shadow under the jaw that I mean, maybe one values above this one, but I go ahead and establish right now before I lose it. So that's pretty good. And indication would be no, so I don't lose it and the aye. Okay, so let's move on to the next value. And since it's used black and white, why not just add a little bit of white to our black. And as you can see, just making a really cool gray mix it in more black hair so you can compare. What you want to do is just go one step up from the black, and you want to compress your value. So you work with maybe five or six values. So they need to be closed, but not perfect. This will be perfect. It's all guesswork, really. So I'm going to go ahead and introduce this value squint squint. So I think here. If it doesn't flow, add a little bit of water. So what I mean? When I talk about tile painting, this is where I mean. There's a shape, and then I'm adding another shape right next to it that represents a value higher or lower than the shape that was already there. In this case, it's a little higher, but it's just another tile. So there's a tile and then a second tile next to each other. And that's how we make transitions. The thing with these little tiny thumbnails is that you need to stay with small brushes. Okay. As you can say I'm just closing shapes. Maybe add another tie here for the ear. Case. Look for places where that value may work on. You may be wrong, but you can always come in and fix it. See, I'm trying to exhaust all the places where this pile belongs. No way around it. Got to keep mixing your paint. If you use add water, it's gonna kill your chroma, your opacity. So you just got to keep mixing. I think this shadow may benefit from this value I'm working on. Connect this. Always connect the shapes. I pile right next to the one I have here. It's a bit of way to soften edges without blending. If you put a tile that's brighter, just a little brighter than the one you had there. I'll look like it's a soft edge or a softer edge without the need to go in and blend with water. Okay. I think I'm going to move on from that value. And I feel like this value that I'm mixing now is going to go on a lot of places. So I'm going to I know there's two separate values here, but on this thumbnail, I'm going to combine it just one. Can Bar would go here. You'll notice that when it dries when watch dries, usually dries darker or lighter than what you put there. And it takes a little bit of getting used to, but once you get used to it and calibrate your eye, it's just second nature, really. Okay, I'm going to close this also. And this is part of the shirk area. So it's going to be a little brighter than the shadow area here. But I'm just going to add a pile next to the black. So it's not a super hard edge when I come in later with a little bit of brighter value. This can also be a shadow here. Make it here. I'm going to do the same thing I did here. I'm going to do it here. I'm going to use this for this at area. I mean here, here, it's black and then the next step up and then the next step up. But I'm saving room here for a step higher than that Always working in tiles. I know this is going to be a little brighter, so I'm going to say that. Part of the hair probably can benefit from this tile I'm working with. The shadow area of the ear, maybe along the edge of the jaw line. See, I'm not worrying about eyes really. I'm just going to indicate eye sockets. If you squint, I can barely see the eye, so I'm just going to follow what I see when I squint. All right. Let's keep working with this brush. So I'm going to go up one value. I think this is going to be in the light side, so it's going to make quite a jump. Let's see if this works. I'm going to try it first on the highlight part of this head. Squint de little bit. I think it may work, not for the brightest part, but for the transition. I think that works. Same here. Remember, these are just lose studies before you start your painting. So don't worry about likeness or proportional errors. Excuse as long as you get the general feeling, you're gonna be okay. You notice I'm not Once I move up, I'm not putting the tiles alone by themselves. They always or they almost always go next to another tile. And that's because if I put it on just a white paper, it's going to be hard for me to judge if it's a correct value. But if I put it right next to another tile, I'll be able to know or to judge better if it's the right value or not. Close the 5:00 shadow here. Another transition here. Don't be afraid to go over paint that you have there already. For instance, I'm going to work this value that I have here and maybe I go in here and goes over the heil that I had there already. I mean, it's okay if you make a mistake. You can always come back and re establish that. I want to a transition here. I think this tile can work for the shirt here. We have to mix more tape. They had here. All right. I'm going to move on. I'm going to move up one value. So this is getting into the lighter areas. And I think the big highlight on the left of the face can benefit from this value, which is not the lightest, not a highlight. But it's pretty close. I'm going to close the forehead area with this one. And the nose. Let me kill a little bit of this way here. Maybe I'll use the same value along the edge of that core shadow and move up. So this is almost pure wade with just a little bit of that gray that I had there. Keep it simple. Don't worry about anatomy. Use big planes, big brushes, or big strokes. It's a tiny thumbnail. Now it down. Right here. Okay. Before I place highlights, I'm going to reestablish this dark area on the jacket. I think it's not pure black but one step up. Okay, that's pretty good. Think of this as abstract shapes. You're not pinning a jacket or you're not painting an eye. You're just pinning shapes. I have transition here. Every time you see a hard edge that doesn't that jumps out, get a value, a step higher than what you have there, and then put it right next to it. And it'll look softer. When instance here, I had almost I think that's pure black. I'm going to grab a small brush. Make sure there's no paint on it and make something that's a little higher, a little lighter than pure black going right next to it. So maybe a little little lighter. Go next to it and create that transition, that softness. Okay, now that everything's laid out, and play around the background and there a little bit of these proportions. I know I come in with a lot of black and kind of darken this area, the background and go inside the hat, so you lose that edge. And this side, stay outside of the head. And use it as a design element. So lose that edge. Lost edges are just their grave. What they do is it loses an edge but invites your viewer or whoever's looking at your pin to kind of make it up with your imagination. So it's almost like an interactive technique. A ding that ground. Maybe I want too dark. So maybe go in and add a little bit of white little do gray. I think that's pretty good. I think that's pretty weird. I feel you just need to reestablish or kind of cover this ear here. I know it's a lighter passage here, but I don't want it to grab the viewers attention. Ears are ugly, right? So you want him you want him in the background. You don't want it to be screaming for attention. I'm just going to cover it up with a little bit darker than the virus light that I have. And now, I need to fix where the ear ends and the head begins. I see the reference, it's a little darker than I had. And basically, that's going to separate this background element from the foreground element. That works. Use a transition here to your solvening edges as you go. Maybe here. And that should be good enough for a thumbnail. Well, one more thing. I'm going to use that value I was working with and add a tile translation tile here because it looks really, really hard edged right now. So that tile works. Real simple, broad shapes, no detail, no blending. It's great practice. 4. Color Thumbnail : Okay, Roy. We're back and now we're going to do the color thumbnail. First thing I'm going to do is do a little wash like we did in the black and white. But obviously, we're gonna use color. So everything. But the face and the first wash. So I'm gonna do something neutral, maybe some blue with some yellow ochre, a little bit of red. That's pretty dark, but we're gonna do a lot of water. I I'm gonna be careful and not touch or if I go over this highlight park. I'm gonna make sure it's not too dark because I want to preserve it as much as I can. It's pretty nice. It's got a little warmer with this wash to might do a little bit of the shadows and the face. Is pretty good. Now I want to do a pass on the face. I'm going to go by the color zones on the face, which is yellow on the forehead. Red, the middle. Some neutral hard blue here in the jaw area. Again, who is killing the white, so it doesn't have to match. Okay, I think we're ready to start. Like, before we're gonna go, we want to start with the darkest. In this case, I'm not gonna use pure black because I want the dark areas to be chromatic. I want to do blue with some red. This is burnt sienna. I like to use burnt sienna with blue when I don't have access to black. It's a really nice chromatic black or really dark color. So I'll show you here. So let's use ultramarine blue with just a little bit of burned senna, and that burnt sienna neutralizes that blue, and it looks almost black. Real chromatic. I like it. All right, so let's start again with this shadow, bring it in. Makes a little bit more of that black. So that's nice. I think used the lines are kind of like a design element. Yeah. That's pretty good. Again, I might not worry about the eyes or features. I'm just going to deal with it in the black and white. Real simple, real, real broad, real abstract. So I want to come in and fix some of the shapes. Here. I know he's casting a shadow right here. I'm going to add it now because I don't want to lose it. I mean, if you lose it, you can find it again. If you draw it the first time, you can draw it at second time or third time. So this one, I'm going to move pretty fast, I think. Now that you saw that black and white, you probably have a pretty good idea of what the process entails. It's a little more complicated because you're adding color and temperature. I I think I'm going to mess in this whole shadow into one pretty warm shadow right here. This shadow area starting from here all the way down to the chain. It's going to be a pretty warm shadow because it's right around that middle area where it's really warm on the face. Someone grab some water. Probably coming later in more values. But for now, I'm just gonna do this one big shape. Don't be afraid to use that same color that you have already loaded in other areas that are similar in value, and similar in temperature. Collecting. I have to get a little cooler but around the same around the same value in order to find this color right here. Okay. I Okay, I think we're doing pretty good, but I need to get the value right for the background. Similar to this blue. And I'll just make this blue darker. We'll see. I'm I'm gonna mix that blue over here. Like a little prayer. Okay. No, we should take care of this area. On this same pile, I'm going to bring some cool red, which is lyserin and then go a little lighter with maples yellow. I kind of neutralizes the purple, but it brings it up in value also. I'm trying to use the jacket right here. I think I can use it here too. And now mix. I'm going to try and find the value and temperature for the shirk. I'm still in the shadow area. I can see here that I'm trying to get. I'm trying to keep the worms from cool separate. And the background, usually or something else that's not in the face separate from this fleshy mixture. So this for the shirt in the shadows looks pretty good. Then just trying to get a general feeling. I'm not trying to be exact. I'm just trying to paint shapes. Since I'm doing the shirk, I'm just going to go up a little bit and the shirk in terms of value. So maybe I'll come in here. What we're trying to do is we need to we're trying to cover the face cover the surface. And then we can take another pass and be a little more exact on the values that we see. It's okay to go from face in the shadows to jacket to shirt to background. It's okay as long as you stay close in value. I don't want to paint the shadow here on the face, and then paint highlights here on the shirt. You could, I mean, at the end, but with this process, you want to kind of stay within the same value range every time that you move you need to establish this right here. Similar value to this right here, but different temperature. So I may be even able to use this right here. This little pile a little more. Cooker, carne. Let's see what it looks like. Yeah, it kind of works. M Yeah, moving along. You want to establish the darkest areas in the background with some black, some of that red, and go here. I know this is going to be kind of a highlight or the rim light on the head. So I'm going to do I'm going to go dark right next to it, just to create contrast and drama. Use that same value on the design elements. See, all we're trying to do is frame the face better. Someone that did this really good was Norman Rockwell. It was a master of composition. Okay. I think I'm gonna go up in value so I can establish the fleshy ears and the nose. Actually, let's let's do the facial hair first. I'm using some yellow, some red and blue in order to get that his car type. That's a little bit too dark. I'm gonna need more red and more yellow. My some yellow, some maples yellow. You can see I'm making it warmer, but still cooler than this. So you see the difference. And the reason why we like to mix like this is because I'm right next to this. If I was here alone, I would think that's really, really warm. And it is warm, but next to here, it's not. So color and color temperature is relative. U I want to get rid of the mouth. I haven't made the mouse. That's good enough. Let's move up to a more fleshy color. So a lot of red, a lot of I introduce white naples yellow. And that alone, you may get me a good ear. Maybe audio is here. I'll use that same color for under the eye right here. That connection, remember, C? The shapes. Link them up. You'll end up with a stronger painting that way. We'll use the same color for the lips. That same color for this transition tile. It's looking pretty good. I'm going to go back in value and reestablish these darks, mainly because I want to fix this shape right here. So again, blue with red. Make a little bit of bunt cena to neutralize it. Or blue, so it's darker. We want to be chromatic. A little bit of water so it flows better. And being, right there. We'll separate this shadow right here. Okay. Moving along, moving along. Next thing I'm going to do before I jump into the lights, I want to get a good sense of the hair around the sideburn areas on both sides. When you do something on one side, try and see if you can do it on the other side as well. So let's figure out this here. I think this is gonna be good for this side. My it go up a little bit to get some volume into this hair. And I know, I may be able to use the same one and this other side. I don't know. Let's see. I think it works. Okay, let's kind of block in or finish up the head because it's really at this point, it's kind of bothering me. It's jumping out. A 5. Finishing the color Thumbnail: I think that works. I'm going to leave this with no pain. I think it matches the value and temperature of what's on the reference. So I may just leave it. Here, though, it's supposed to be a little warmer and a little lighter. So I'm gonna maybe Maybe dark in the background. And if you're dark in the background, your Vallow here is gonna appear later than what it actually looks like right now. So let's do that. Let's come in and dark in the background. I'm kind of working on this pile for the background. So let's see. So if it's too dark, keep grabbing from this pile right here until you find what you're looking for. And maybe two per boy. I think that works, but I still need to make this lighter. A That works. Okay, let's go into the lights. I'm gonna mix a good kind of warm light that I can use on most of the face from some nipples yellow, some white. Try and grab some of that red that was already there. Red. Let's see this works. Sold to dull. I need to add a little pink to it. So pink is red and white, so just add red and white. And that'll make it more fleshy. I think that works, actually. So again, I'm trying to use it everywhere I can before I move up to next one. Um, Ling the shapes again. Good. I think here need more that 5:00 shadow. That's a little dark. So let's see. D and grab some of these right here. With some maples. Can I reactivate that blue that was getting dry and add some burnt sienna. That's a little bit, this bunianasre strong. Will be real ochre. And let's see if that works. It's a little too dark. So let's add some maples yellow, some white, and some red. So I think that works for the beer. Now, there are some areas that I need to go a little lighter, for instance, here and here, as well as here the side of the nose and obviously the forehead. So that makes a good fleshy tone. H. No, I can fix some shapes. I think I need to fix this right here. Well, at this point, we have everything covered, and we can go in and add more. We could stop or we can go in and add more transition tiles. For instance, one transition tile that may help is right around here. Let's go here. So it's pretty dark right here, but on the reference, it's a little lighter. So let's see if we can get ilusion of gradiation that goes from dark to light. Again, designing my shapes. Another area that may benefit from a transition tile is here. See, not want to worry about ice. I just want to get ilusion of ice. I can use that same. Maybe a little darker value, but still pretty warm. Here. So you see the shadow right here it's really sharp. If we add a tile of a value that's between this and that we'll we'll get the sense of softness of a self edge. So that's one in between. So now it's dark. Light? Lighter. I'm gonna get rid of this dark spot. I wasn't open. Quin. Whatever disappears, don't paint it.'s gonna go in and kind of find all these shapes. I saw when I lived them pretty basic. But I want to give them I want to kind of give it a sense of structure. As you can see, at this point, I'm just going all over the place and just fixing or adding fixing some shapes and some design elements. So calicorh and some tiles here along the course shadow just to get rid of the sharpness. Okay. I've been neglecting this area. I think it looks the same. Value. I see under reference picture. So I may just leave it in Okay. So instead of airing a lighter passage, I'm just gonna paint the shoes. Just to give the illusion of a shirk remember just painting shapes. So reflective light here. And then just to finish it off, I'm just going to highlight almost pure white, just white and a little bit of blue right here. I think that's good enough for a Tom Nil. It's enough information to get me started, but not too much detail where it's gonna confuse me when I move on to my final painting. 6. Setting up and toning the white: Before we squeeze paint out, we need to place a wet paper towel on a pallet. This is to make sure the pin doesn't dry too fast. I do this at the beginning of every painting session. You need all the colors I have here. Leti pallets are great for training. You will have the drawing. Feel free to trace yours if you want to dive straight into painting. You can use fixative spray or just hair spray to fix it, but it's not required. Next thing we're going to do is to wet the surface we're working on. Whether it's paper or illustration work, doing this allows for the paint to cover the surface with less effort. Think of it as priming the canvas. Next, we're going to kill the white of the canvas. We do this every time because it's easier to judge your values when you have a mid tone value on the canvas. In this case, I'm going to kind of go for the general color that I see in the reference picture. So there's going to be a lot of red in the middle of the face. I'm going to add a little bit of gray on the background, and I'm going to try to match just a general color of the heat and shadows. But at the end of the day this is just to kill the white of the canvas and so you can judge the values correctly. When you're tuning the surface, it may take you a few tries to get the right ratio of water to paint. Don't worry if the color doesn't match or if it's way off at this point. We're going to cover it anyway. Almost done here. When you're done, let it sit for a minute. Go get a coffee or tea and come back with fresh ice. 7. Tiles and more tiles: Okay, guys, we're getting to the fun part. This process is really methodical and almost zen like. We're going to try and go from darkest dark to lightest light, trying to exhaust each value and use everywhere we see it before moving on to the next one. Squinting is key here. We squint in order to simplify values. When I squint here, I just see a big shape with the first value and mixing. By the way, to mix the shadow, I'm using some blue, maybe some black and add a little red or something warm. Try and avoid using straight out black or blue for shadows. They will look lifeless if you do that. Okay, moving on, I'm going to speed this up a bit. I'm trying to use that first value everywhere I see it before going up in the value range. Now I'm starting to move up to the second darkest. This one is still pretty warm. My main concern right now is value. I'm not too worried about color temperature. We can always adjust that because we're using gouache as we use oils. Make sure you're not using too much water here. You want the paint to flow but not get diluted. As I move up, in value, we're starting to get closer to the dark mid tones. I think I'll cover the background as well. I left that out until now because it's a completely different temperature, but I feel I need to address it in order to judge the rest of picture better. Notice how I'm starting to introduce more yellow into the mix. As I move up, I'm trying to hold off from adding white as long as I can. Yellow ochre is great, but naples yellow is your best friend when it comes to skin tones. If you've never studied the planes of the head, this hand is a great tool. It helps to have it handy when you're drawing or painting. It's basically a simplified version of all the different planes of a human face. Here you can see how this little triangle is so helpful at finding the connection between the corner of the eye to the corner of the mouth. By simplifying it, you end up with a plainer looking, well structured drawing or painting. It reads well and design wise, it's very strong and appealing to the eye. I'm starting to venture into the light parts. Okay, I'm gonna go silent for a little bit. I want you to pay attention here. Notice how in my palette can clearly see the cool colors from the warm ones. I started mixing cooler tones when I introduced the background, at this point, I'm fighting the urge to add that strong highlight on the left. But I'm living that blank for the time being. At this point, I'm still thinking broad strokes. I want to cover as much as I can with big tiles before adding more transitions. Something I forget to do when I get in the zone is to clean my palette. Once I start to get dry patches on the palette and it starts to look muddy, I take a break, clean up the palette with water, and come back fresh. And Okay, time for a break, guys. Go get a coffee, some water, some tea or something to drink. Clean out your palate and come back to paint with a fresh palette and fresh ice. Okay, guys, now that we're back with a fresh palette. I'm gonna go ahead and introduce some shadows, some darker tones that I missed on the first pass, such as this shadow that's inside kind of inside the color and next to the neck. Mixing some blue, some radiant, some lazarin maybe some cat red medium. I'm going to go over and add those dark tones that I miss in the first pass. You don't have to do that, but I feel like they're going to help me define the shapes better. For instance, the dark corner of the mouth, the dark axon below the jaw line, et cetera. As I add darker tones that I miss, this is probably a good spot to go over how tiles work. As you can see, even without blending, by placing the proper values next to each other, it creates illusion of a gradient. This is what we're going after. The ability to mix and find the correct color value for a transition. I'm gonna let you watch for a few minutes here. I'm going in and out from the dark areas into the light. Here, I'm looking for places that stand out that need attention. Something worth mentioning about gouache is that many times the color you mix will dry either darker or lighter than what it looks like when it's wet. I believe it's the chalky nature of it. It takes a while to get the hang of it, so don't worry if you have trouble in the beginning. Something I like to do is to have a small piece of paper next to the painting, and if I'm not sure about a value, I'll place a small stroke on the paper, wait for it to dry, and adjust the corny. As you get more experience with it, you won't need it anymore. This is another reason why it's such a great training tool for oils. You'll rely on your mixing intuition. Okay, guys, I'm going to place a few more tiles here before I place the highlights. I'm going to do a little more modeling. What do you mean by modeling is just placing more tiles, more transitions to make the form turn a little bit better. After that, I'm going to take a break and then I'm going to come back and go for the highlights. 8. Finishing strong: Okay, we're bad guys. The moment we've been waiting for the lightest lights. I'm going to start by adding a few highlights. The way I miss highlights depends on the situation, but a good rule of thumb is that they're usually cool. Sometimes I use pure vidian green and white. Other times, I'll mix a cool purple with a cool red and blue, the add white to that. Try not to add too many colors to it, in general, it's not great to add more than three or four colors to the mix because your colors start to get muddy and too gray. My hand gets in the way sometimes. I apologize. What I'm doing here, I'm supporting my hand with my pinky in order to blend two small tiles. Y After you place your highlights, you'll be able to judge other areas more accurately. This is where you train your eye to perceive value plus temperature. Remember squinting? I'm still squinting for value, but I'm opening my eyes for color. Some of the tiles I need to use now require some temperature change, especially in the beard area. Remember a squint for value, open your eyes for color. Sometimes a little blending is okay. The way you blend with gouaches by using a clean brush with a little bit of water. It takes a bit of practice to get the right amount of water. You don't need that much. Notice how the eyebrow went from super sharp to kind of a soft edge. This is called working an edge. Generally, we'll have softer edges around areas with hair. I'm going to try to do very little blending in this painting. When you work in oils, because of its workable nature, you blend without noticing sometimes just by placing a tile against another tile. At this point, I'm refining shapes. This is more about design and anatomy than anything else. What it means is that I am moving dynamically between the darks and the lights, adding tiles of a different value, temperature, or both in order to get that gritting effect we talked about earlier. Notice how warm the half tones at musing on the nose. Something that really helped me getting started is the color zones of the face. They can vary a little bit, but for the most part, are pretty consistent. The zones go like this. Most red stays in the middle, yellow on the forehead area, and gray below, especially on males because of the 5:00 shadow or beards. I'm going to blend this eye a little bit. I feel I can use it as Anchor point. What I mean by anchor point is one area with more level of detail that helps me determine what level I'm going to take the rest of the painting to. As you can see, it takes a lot of back and forth. You have to be careful when blending. If you use too much water, the paint may come off and you have to repaint that area. Or maybe you brought too much of a cool color into a warm area. Blending takes fins, but honestly, it's a lot of trial and error. H I watched a lot of Bb as growing up. One thing I will never forget. There are no mistakes, happy accidents. In this case, I made a mistake on the eye, but a little blending helped me get a better shape than I had before. Remember, it's just shapes that you are painting, not eyes. Adding some dark warm accents here, they help to anchor the shapes. A few strokes is all this ear needs. The thing with ears, you don't want them to grab the attention of the viewer. I like them to be as understated as I can make them. Time to refine the highlight area. Now that I have pretty much all the information I need, I can open my eyes a bit more and replace some tiles with a more appropriate value. For instance, I had a highlight value here, but in reality, it was more of a light, fleshy color. I can add a few more tiles to close the gap leading up from the beer, and I'll be really close to being done with this pass. Remember, we want to use these exercises as training, not a finished painting. In addition, we can leave them sketchy and raw. I feel that they're more powerful that way. Notice how I add a stroke and immediately go to my palette and mix a lighter or darker mixture that will go right next to it. This is a common workflow as you approach the final stages. Something I learned from my illustration classes is adding this red stroke on the edge of cast shadows. This is an old technique. It's mostly used in sunny scenes, but it can be real useful anywhere. It basically resembles where the light kind of infiltrates the shadow. I'm not exactly sure how it works in real life, but in art, it works and looks more realistic. If you see me glazing often, it's because glazing helps with darkening some areas without having to mix a fresh batch of the value we're trying to darken. It's a technique that's been used forever with oils. It's a little more complicated because you have to wait until your paint is dry. With wash, it literally takes seconds to dry so you can practice that technique as you need it. Here I'm fixing some shapes and adding more transition tiles as I go. Sometimes I don't feel like cleaning the whole tray. So I just wipe some areas of the pallet with a clean towel. Something I forgot to mention is that I always have a paper towel on my left hand to wipe off excess paint and dry my brush. Remember this guy. Let's see if we can find another matching set of planes. Yep, there it is. Keep an eye out for planes of the head drawn tutorial in the near future. I. Something I often do. I start with big brushes, then switch to small ones. Then I switch back to big brushes. In this case, going back to big brushes was necessary because the hat needed a little love. Going back to bigger brushes allows you to simplify the painting a little further. Remember, less is more. Remember the spray paddle in the supplies list. Here it is saving the day. S, I'm almost done. I don't want to squeeze more paint out and it's getting a little dry, so a little spray here and there does the trick. Okay, guys, we're approaching the finish line now. Just keep watching as I add a few more tiles to turn the form even further. Real subtle. Remember, a painting is never done. It is only abandoned. Thank you for being here. I appreciate it. As always, shoot me an email if you have any questions and keep pressing play.