Halloween Illustrations: Transluscent watercolor painting techniques for stunning results!

1. About this class: Hi, and welcome to the class. Thank you so much for joining. Today, I have three fun little Halloween themed projects for you. I have a pumpkin, a witch's hat, and a little ghost. What makes these three illustrations special is that they're all made of glass. You're going to learn how to paint glass and how to create that sense of transparency and luminosity that these crystal sculptures have. The materials and everything you need is included in the project section here on the platform. I'm also going to show you in the next video, and then you can get your colors ready and trace your outline onto your paper and get started right away. 2. Materials : The materials you need to paint these projects is just your basic watercolor supplies. So cold press watercolor paper, a set of paints, different size brushes, and then whatever you need to trace the outline onto your paper, I listing everything for you here so you can get started right away. 3. Pumpkin Part 1: Okay, let's get started. We are going to mix our colors. So I thought I would paint this pumpkin with a very limited palette, meaning only the primary colors and some burnt sienna. So I'm starting to mix up some windsor lemon. If you don't use Windsor Newton, it's probably called just lemon yellow. I'm just watching it out here. We're going to need quite a lot of the lemon yellow because it's going to be our underpainting, and then we're also going to use it to mix the oranges and also the greens. Now I'm mixing an orange. I'm going to add some scarlet lake. You can also use Quin red if you have it in your palette. Generally, I'd say just use whatever pigments and colors you have rather than buying new ones to paint a specific painting or do a tutorial. You can always just use what you have. If you're wondering why I am mixing my orange here, when I have it right there in my palette, I took the liberty of doing a little chart here for you. It's a bit complicated, but it's really not. I just wanted to quickly show you that when you mix your secondary colors. When I use my lemon yellow, which is the PY 175 pigment, it's going to give me my yellow, my orange, and also my green. That creates a lot more harmony overall in your painting. Whereas if I used pre mixed paints like a different orange that's PO 62 here or a sap green and a darker green by Windsor Newton, I have all of these different pigments. It might still look good. It might still look okay, but it just looks a lot more harmonious when you use less colors and especially when you mix your secondary colors. Also, always my top tip, move away from SAP green as soon as you can and mix your own greens. They come out so much more brighter and more beautiful, so I always advise people or make suggestions to mix your own greens. So coming back to our color mixing, Like I said, we're going to need a lot of windsor lemon here, and this is again scarlet lake. I'm just mixing another batch of orange. This one is a bit more thick and a bit darker. Let's see what that looks like. I want it a bit darker yet, so I'm just adding more red. I think this one looks good. Then we just need a tiny amount of burn Ciena just as it is. This is the pure burnt sienna. You've seen it. I'm swatching it out anyway. Then I'm just looking at the reference photo and I'm thinking, do I need another shade of orange. So I did mi another orange again with Windsor Lemon and Scarlet Lake. That's the scarlet lake again. Then I thought I wanted to dull it down a little bit, just like neutralize it, so I added some cobalt blue to get like a very dark, looking orange. I don't think I ended up using it in the actual painting. Sometimes I do mix a bit more colors than I actually need so that it doesn't hold me up during the painting process. I'm just adding a tiny bit of blue and a bit more water. The complimentary color always neutralizes a color a bit. If you have a super bright orange and you just want to knock it back a little bit, you just add the complimentary color, which is blue. Yeah, but I don't think we'll actually need that one. Moving on to mixing greens. We're going to mix two shades, one very bright and light one and another one that. This again is Windsor Lemon. I keep repeating myself. And then I'm adding a tiny bit of cobalt blue. Oh, that's Phil blue, actually, my bed. Sorry. I just gives this beautiful, I love this like super aggressively bright green. And it's just so easy to mix it. There's absolutely zero point. I do have four or five greens in my palette. I don't use them a lot. It's just so easy to mix it. That's a lot more yellow again. If you are painting with Windsor Newton color, there's also in the student grade range of colors, there's one called intense blue. I think that almost identical to Phil Blue. If you have that one, just use that one. Thee yellow and the same blue, just a and that makes it. One. I almost looks like cobalt green. I'm just holding up because the shine of the paper, I couldn't see clearly because it was wet. I am adding a tiny bit of neutral tint. If you don't have neutral tint, you can also use paints gray. That wouldn't be a problem because paints gray also has a bluish hue to it and since there's also blue in that mix, that will go well. That is the darkest color that we're going to use. I also use neutral tint as black, by the way, for just some black low lights. Then also white quash. You can hit pause and look at that color chart again to see if you have all the mixes. I'm just rubbing out some of the pencil lines because they tend to shine the yellows and the oranges and it's almost impossible to get rid of them once you've painted over it with yellow or any other color. So I'm just rubbing out most of them. A. That that's done. I'm getting my masking fluid ready. What I usually do is I just pour a little bit of the liquid into the lid of that little plastic container. And then I have this, I don't know what it's called it, like ancil or like a metal pen. It came with the coal tracing paper that I ordered three years ago. And I'm just using that to apply my masking fluid. If you don't have something like that, you can just use an old synthetic brush, probably. The easiest way to not ruin it forever and ever is to put some liquid soap over it and then dip it into the masking fluid and then put the masking fluid on your paper, and then that kind of, like, saves your brush from using it. Ruining it. I mean. This is just how I use it. There's probably a more sophisticated way to use masking fluid if there is such a thing. Then I'm just applying it to the little areas that I want to stay white. I'm going to show you from the side in a second. There are a few areas that are going to be bright white where the light hits the glass and it's just easier to cover it than having to paint around it. Some people don't like using masking fluid. I don't know why. I don't see anything wrong with it. I apologize if the colors of the video here are a bit off. I tried to match them to the other lens or camera and I tried my best. It's not exactly the same, but I hope it's good enough so that you can see. I'm just applying it here and there. When I'm done, you can just hit pause and copy where I put the masking fluid, and then let it dry completely. It must be really, really dry before you start painting. If you don't have the patience to wait, I usually just make a coffee or do something else for 20 minutes and then I come back. You can also use a hair dryer and dry it off. But just make sure it's completely dry, otherwise, you'll have to start again. Alright, so that's the masculine fluid done. Mine is completely dry. So now I'm using my big brush. I think that's around 12. If you have one that size ten or eight. That's also fine. Just use a bigger one. And I am wetting my entire pumpkin. I did speed this process up a bit because I'm usually like super slow when I'm applying my water to the paper, and I didn't want you to have to sit through the whole thing. So just put water over your whole pumpkin, make sure it's nice and even, and then pick up some of the pure windsor lemon. It's not super thick, it's fairly diluted, and I think that's a size eight brush that I have there in my hand. This is the under painting under layer, first layer, whatever you want to call it. I am painting just yellow across the whole thing because I do want that brightness to shine even through the dark and the green parts that we have in the Pumpkin. And the lemon yellow just gives me that opportunity to add more brightness because when you do work with oranges and especially reds, it's like sometimes it can be really difficult to make them to get that intensity out of red colors, and then people layer and layer and layer them. And a good way to start is to have a yellow under layer. So I can take my time here doing this because I'm painting on wet paper, so that allows me to make sure that my edges are nice and clean. And I'm not going to have any hard water lines because this is wet on wet. This is some more windsor lemon. Now that the first layer has dried completely. I'm switching to a smaller brush. This is a size one round brush, and I picked up the first mix of orange that we made. This is the, the brighter orange, and I'm going to paint in the different segments of the pumpkin. Bit by bit. This is another transparent layer. As you can see, When painting these glass sculptures or crystals or also jewelry it's more or less the same thing. I found that working slower is usually the best way to go. That means painting maybe an tra two layers with another and yet another transparent mix of colors rather than using super thick dark colors right away because then it's just easier to get that transparent look that we want. It just means you need a bit more patient because you just do need to add another layer of paint and then be a bit more patient until you get the result that you want, but it pays off to paint more transparent when doing these glass sculptures. When you do have different segments like here on the pumpkin or maybe when you paint. I'm just making sure painting inside the lines. It's always a challenge. When you paint something that has different segments like this one, paint them bit by bit and always leave one free in between. Paint every other segment that allows it to dry and prevents the color from bleeding over. Here I have the stem in the middle between the two parts that I've already painted. So I'm just going to go around the whole pumpkin and you can paint after me, and I'll meet you when we're both done. The first layer of orange is down and while the rest of it is still drying. We can move on to the stem, and we're also going to add a first transparent layer of green. That is going to be the light green that we mixed. I'm just picking it up on my palette. Then we can paint this on dry paper as well because the area is small enough. We can get the paint on there fairly quickly and we don't have to worry about getting any hard lines, which we don't want this painting, sometimes you do want them. I am really taking my time, picking up that green. All right. Probably dried in the meantime, so I just needed to add some water in. There it is. This also goes across the whole stem. That's more or less the base color and then we're going to add low lights, and then get that glass crystal look hopefully. I used to try and not turn my paper at all when recording a video, but now I'm thinking like, whatever, it's just easier, and it allows me to paint in a fairly normal position. I'm already somewhat hunched underneath the lens of the camera. And it's easier to paint neat when the outline of the form or segment, whatever it is, your painting is where the tip of your brush is. So I'll always be turning my paper so that the tip of my brush runs across the outer line of the shape. Okay. So the stem is done for now, and I'm now moving on to the pumpkin part of the pumpkin again, and now it gets a little bit trickier. So you can see I have two brushes in my hand. One of them has paint on it. That's the smaller brush. What is it? Size zero, and then I have a size one that has no paint on it. It's just stamp and has clean water on it. First, I'll use the small brush to get the paint on and then immediately After I'm painting, I use the slightly bigger brush to just smooth out the edge of the paint so that I still have a soft line, even though I'm painting on dry paper. Here you can see I'm just softening the edge, just pushing the pigment around a little bit. Make sure that the second clean brush that you're using is not too wet because if it has a bunch of water on it, the water ends up on the paper and then it creates like a backflow or blooms, as it's generally called, I think. Here with the clean brush, I'm just running across the edge and you can see how that's softening the paint edge. Then we get that smooth transition from the darker part of the pumpkin to where the light hits it and then the glass immediately goes super bright in color and white around the edges, but we're going to do that with white gh at the very end. Here I'm just adding a bit more orange there as well. The main focus here is really to not get any hard lines and to make sure that it's a smooth transition from dark to light. Actually, this isn't the darkest, this is the medium tones that we're painting in now. Whenever I pause for a couple of seconds, I'm looking at the reference photo, and I'm just trying to figure out what goes where. I did no try run or practice run with this pumpkin. I'm looking for a long time there. This is my first time painting this as well. That's the orange mix again on dry paper and I'm just running it across the outline there. Then with the clean brush, scrubbing a little bit. Just making sure I get like a flat wash a flat wash, but just like a smooth gradient. Then when we're moving toward the bigger segments towards the center, we're going to use the darker orange and also some more yellow because if you do look at the reference photo, you can see that there's some really deep yellow shades in there as well. We're just going to add that on top. I was thinking about speeding the whole video up and make it twice as fast because I just paint really slow. I wasn't sure if other people have the patience to watch me paint in this incredibly slow manner. This is pure windsor lemon, again, but this time it's quite thick. When we used quite transparent wash on for the underpainting, this is almost winsor lemon at its full intensity. Then this is the darker orange that we mixed on a slightly bigger brush as well. I'm painting it next to it and then I'm I'm smoothing it out again with the clean damp brush. But this also shows you because this is in real time that you do have quite some time when you're painting. You don't need to be super stressed. Oh, my God, the paint is down, now I need to smooth it out and is it drying you have a bit of time and there is no need to not be completely relaxed while doing this. Now, with the darker orange, I'm holding my brush at a really, like a 90 degree angle. So I'm just adding some lines there. I'm sorry, you couldn't see properly. If you look at the reference for there is texture in the pumpkin, there are Oh. The camera stopped there for a moment. It does that sometimes when it goes from one memory card to the next and when I don't constantly look at the display, I missed it. This was just painted on dry paper and it was the darker orange, and there was no magic to what I did. I just painted it on that little segment. I'm sorry that it got lost. I think that happened once or twice while I was doing that pumpkin because I don't have a clear look onto the camera display, sometimes it just stops and then I don't see it. Yeah. But this was just two, 3 minutes. I am wetting this section with water first because I want to paint wet on wet. Because I want everything in that segment to be super smooth and just the colors flowing into one another. This is very concentrated windsor lemon again. You can see that actually it does get quite dark. If there is no need to use cadmium yellow here. I'm just picking up some more. Orange. S. This is the lighter orange. I'm adding these lines that go up and down the pumpkins, just the natural structure of the, this is a glass figure that we're painting, but in nature, you've seen a pumpkin. We do want a hint at the natural texture that this sculpture is still trying to imitate, and we're trying to imitate the imitation. That's always fun. Like I said, this is the first time that I painted the pumpkin and probably it's going to be the only time I'll be painting it. So I will be making some mistakes here and there. For example, I'm going to try to soften that hard line that I'm getting there. From the top section that I'm painting right now to the one that's dry that we're not painting at the moment. Then you see what I mean when I say I don't want hard lines. This is giving me obviously, this is giving me a hard paint line and then I'll use the eradicator brush which I love, and I'm so grateful that I found it online. I'll just rub out some of the paints and it just works wonders and you'll see how easy it is to get rid of hard paint lines when you have them and you don't want them. So there are quite some ways in which you can go back on mistakes that you've made. This is the side zero brush and the orange again. My paper is still wet. The paint is still wet on the paper, and again, I'm just adding some of those faint lines there. They're very faint. I just want to break up that block of yellow that I have. Also, it is what I see on the reference image. And here I'm using the size six brush again. This has no paint on it. It's just clean, but a bit damp and I'm smoothing everything over again. Whenever you do this, the most important thing really is to just add no additional water to your paper. Because then you get blooms and it just turns into a mess. But once you figured out how damp your brush is supposed to be when you're smoothing out paint, It's not magic. It's quite simple. This is some more yellow. Trying to get a bit more intensity to save us additional time with extra layering layering. Sorry. This is some more orange. Yeah, I'm just going back and forth here a little bit. Moving towards the bottom of the pumpkin. Again, this is the dark orange. And I'm painting on paper. A Do look at the reference image while you're painting along with me because it'll make much more sense to you and it gives you the learning path is going to be much shorter and more efficient for you if you constantly look at reference images and then see what the artist is doing and how they are interpreting this section of the painting, whatever it is, rather than just copying what they're doing. That's the light orange again, also on dry paper. That segment is still wet. I'm picking up some of the dark orange and I'm dropping it in at the very bottom of the painting. This is called charging, by the way, painting a second color into an color that's on the paper. Then the two are just going to blend into each other. Again, I'm running my brush across the edge of the dark orange. This is just one of those dents that separates the pieces of the pumpkin. So you can see how my painting process is rather slow ish, and it's a bit more meticulous. O. I always admire people who paint loosely without any outlines and they're super expressive and then things come out perfectly in the end. I just have a different process and a different style, I guess. This is water. We're going to do the same thing on this side, like we just did on the other side. Also, again, I'm wetting only the top part of the pumpkin because it's just like the reflection on the glass. This is the pure winds lemon again, very concentrated. Adding some more. And then I'm just pushing around the pigment. This is the light orange. I think that's a size four brush. I don't know. Brush sizes don't matter that much. Pick up a brush that suits you the best for whatever it is you're trying to do. If you need a smaller brush, if you need a super fine tip for this, for example, use a size zero brush. It really doesn't matter. You use the material that you need and not always the one that someone else is telling you that you should use. Here, I'm already painting in the directional form. I'm suggesting these vertical lines So now I'm switching to a smaller brush again, and I'm just going to push the orange around a little bit, adding some more of these lines. This is the dark orange. So there my yellow wasn't wet enough anymore. I just went back on adding more of the lines. Here, I'm just making sure everything is nice and even and smooth. This is more yellow that goes in the middle here on the dry paper and the light orange mix again. So I'm going to finish this layer in exactly the same manner for the remaining parts of the pumpkin that we did now. I'm just going to go ahead and do that, and you can, of course, paint along with me. I'm not going to add any music to it so that you can have your favorite show on in the background, and I will meet you when I'm done. H. So now I think we're already seeing some shape and form and some sense of transparency. So I did mention earlier that I'm going to use this adictor brush to smooth out, sorry, the camera is moving a bit, to smooth out some of those hard lines that I got there while I was painting the upper part wet and wet. So maybe you've used a brush like that. If you don't have a adictor brush, you can also just use a very stiff brush because that's all it is. I'm using the brush by dampening it with water. It has no paint on it. It's just slightly damp. Then what you do is you just scrub along the edge or the piece of paint that you want to eradicate or erase from the paper. Then you have a paper towel ready, so you scrub a little bit and then you blot off with your paper towel. Then you scrub again quite carefully, and then you blot off again and then you do this until you're happy and you managed to erase your mistake. But this is also a great way to lift out some highlights. Here I'm actually using it like an eraser on the paper. There was a bit of a splash. Yeah, the eradicator brush is also great for lifting out highlights. That's probably one of the best ways to do it. Besides lifting while the paint is still wet. So now I have more yellow on my brush there. I'm changing my mind. Still yellow, smaller brush though. This is pure Windsor lemon on dry paper. And then coming in from the other side with it's a bit more concentrated, the light orange that we have. Coming in from the other side and I want to meet the yellow while the yellow is still a bit wet so that I can create a smooth gradient. I just cleaned up my brush ale bit and I'm smoothing out the edges. The process of painting is very repetitive. If you're new to water colors, I don't know if you're a beginner or if you've managed to get in a bit of practice already. But once you've managed to blend and smooth out the colors, the way I'm doing, then that's really the only technique that you need. More or less, this is again the light orange mix on dry paper. That's why I like focusing on illustrations that use one or just one or two main painting techniques, and you just repeat them over and over and over again in the same painting. It's just a way of practicing, but while doing something fun and not just doing bland practices on scrap paper. You can practice here and you're also creating a nice painting. It's how I taught myself to paint and how I managed to stay motivated. I appreciate all the technique exercises in the books on everything. I included them in my book as well, but I never did them. I just learned through watching and doing tutorials. Again, this was Windsor Lemon on dry paper. And coming in with the light orange mix while the yellow is still wet. 4. Pumpkin Part 2: So now I think we're already seeing some shape and form and some sense of transparency. So I did mention earlier that I'm going to use this adictor brush Let's move the cameras for a little bit of those hard lines. I got there there was this and red that we. So mash that. If you don't lie definition Eadicate a brush, you can also just brush because that's all it is. I'm going to zoom in in a second. So I'm using the brush as well. Dampening it with water. It has no paint on it. It's just slightly damp, and then what you do is you just scrub along the edge or the piece of paint that you want to eradicate or erase from the paper. Then you have a paper towel ready, so you scrub a little bit. I'm block and I'm really just you scrub again, quite careful creating block off again and then what I see you're happy and you've managed to with these erase your mistake. Crystal sculptures, there are but so many way to In the glasses highlight. If you in your other reference photo and more on the paper. You can find just like a does the dict brushes highlights shapes and bits and class. So Sotes that help to look in the reference photo and try to figure out to the paint so that you don't have to paint in every single little bit because that would just be overwhelming. Mess on your paper. So sometimes you need to look at it and you need to my brush there. What can I leave out or what should I leave out so that it benefits my paint ow smaller brush. But in a way that is dry paper. Create a sense of realistic painting. So sometimes that's easy. In this case, it was very easy. Sometimes it's a bit more difficult, but that really just comes with experience, I guess. I'm continuing to work on the stem with the dark green again. This is the dark green that has a little bit of the neutral tint, like the very dark green that we mix. Again, I'm just continuing to look at the reference image and wherever I see a blot in a certain shape, I try to put that blot on my paper and that's how I work my way. Forward, I suppose. This is on dry paper as well. Yeah, you can see it adding the neutral tint definitely gives it a different ue. But I don't mind it because where the stem meets the pumpkin. It really needs to be like super super dark, so the darker we can go right away. The better is just saves us time. And of course, with the masking fluid in place, we don't need to worry about preserving any highlights or anything. We can just paint over them and we don't have to worry about it. So a good rule of thumb is that I mean, you can look at paintings and try to see for yourself if that's true. But most of the time, if you have a very, very bright or white high light right next to it, you'll find probably the darkest area of the painting. So the very lightest is usually right next to the very darkest because it's just a contrast that makes the highlights pop and really makes it look realistic and just s lively. So I'm using the dark green here and I'm painting right along the masking fluid. And then when we rab the mask out, we'll have the white of the paper right next to a green line, and that'll just give it a real cool cool look. So contrast just brings any painting to light to life. Sorry. And contrast is just nothing more than super dark next to super light. Hey. I'm continuing to paint here with the medium green, the one that's darker but doesn't have any gray in it, any neutral tint. I'm just filling in the middle part of the stem here. I'm trying to paint light and do thin strokes so that I don't have a massive blot of paint there. Try to paint super fine lines, as much as I can manage. This is a 30 brush even, feel very free to pick up the smallest brush that you have. And then try to do these intricate fine details. I'm just continuing to give the stem some more depth. And it's always one of those tips, right? Try to give it more depth. Yeah, great, how. I try to give it more depth by really looking closely at the reference photo, and I'm just repeating myself here at this point. Um I try to make sure that the darkest areas are really really as dark as I need them. Then I try to make sure that I have some mid tones in there. Ideally, some soft color gradients, although that stem is like super small and there's enough going on there already. So just a good mix of light, and then at the end, we'll have the white highlights even more and then midtones and super dark. This is the light orange mix again on dry paper. Now we can work on really bringing out the shape and the form some more. We do want to paint a three dimensional object, but since it's natural material, it's not a natural pumpkin, so it doesn't have that shadow that you would get on a natural ob, piece of fruit or a piece of veg. This is also I think this is the light orange as well. Bit more water in there now. Also on dry paper. I just cleaned off my brush and now I'm just smoothing out the edge again. Because on the top part of the pumpkin, like horizontally the top. We do want super light edges because that is where we get reflective light. Reflective light is where the light that shines on your object is reflecting. It looks as if the edge is almost white. Usually it's like a bit grayish. And that increases this like transparent crystal glass look. But it also makes the object look more realistic because you do have reflective light on most smooth surfaces. And now I'm moving towards the bottom again. This is the light orange on dry paper. Cleaning off my brush and just smoothing it out. Again, looking at my reference image. Now, the top is still a bit wet, I think. This is the darker orange. Again, cleaning off my brush. And making sure it's nice and smooth. Cleaning off my brush. And smoothing everything over. Again, this is the light orange on dry paper. I'm going to paint for a little bit in exactly this manner. There's really not that I need to do at this point. So just follow along with me and I'll be back with more explanations when they are needed. Now in a second, I'm going to use the dark orange, but I mixed a little bit of Burnt Sienna into it. Burnt Sienna is not too far off from orange, and they are in adjacent or in the same family to a degree. So I just wanted an orange that was like, almost leaning into brown a little bit. So I mixed it with a bit of burn sienna, and you'll see how the hue is different. So that's that. Also on dry paper. And I'm continuing to use. Let's call it the brown orange. Here on this bit. Just making sure I don't paint entirely over the yellow because we do want that yellow glow that's coming from within. Again, this is fairly concentrated. It's like a medium concentrated mix of paint. It's not super thick, but it also doesn't have a ton of water in it. Again, I'm just painting it on, also painting over the masking fluid there, and then cleaning off the brush quickly and feathering it out, smoothing it out so that the gradient is nice and even I'm dropping in a bit more color here. And also on the edge there. Moving on to the back part here, I could have switched to a smaller brush, feel free to use a smaller brush there. This is also the brown orange on dry paper. Again, this is the brown orange on dry paper. I've been moving my paper in a direction, so I don't paint into the edge of that little segment there because that's where we'll want to create that reflective light look, so to speak. Again, just painting on dry paper, then cleaning up my brush, d it off on the paper towel and then just moving it out here, I'm dropping in some more paint. Cleaning off my brush and running across the edge. I'm realizing down here, I have a pretty rough edge that I'm trying to soften. This is the brown orange again on dry paper. So again, I'm just going to keep painting like this for a little bit longer. I have the orange, the very dark orange. I'm going to paint on dry paper, then clean off my brush and smooth out the edges so that I don't get any hard paint lines, and I'm going to do that for the remaining segment of the pumpkin there. I'm done with that step of the painting process. Everything is completely dry. I've waited for a bit. I have this rubber thing here that I use to take off the masking fluid. If you don't have that, I don't even know what it's called. You can just use your finger and take it off with your finger just by it. That's how I usually do it actually. I almost never use this. Now all the white highlights are coming to life, so to speak. They don't look they're not super precise right now because I mean, maybe it's possible. I've just never managed to put paint down the masking fluid like in a super delicate way with the perfect edges. It just doesn't happen. Here, I picked up the eradicator brush again. It's damp and sorry holding my hand at a very steep angle here. And I'm just rubbing across the edge of the high light so that it just looks a bit more organic. So I'm just softening the edges a little bit, trying to create a smoother look. Okay. Now that I've worked a bit on the highlights, they do look better. I have this like teeny tiny brush. I think it's a 50 brush. There's a bit of paint. It only takes up a little bit of paint of the dark orange on it. I'm also going to zoom in from the side in a minute. And I'm adding the tiniest bits of details alongside the outer edges of those white highlights, just to break them up a little bit. It makes them look more natural and it just adds a bit more interest to the painting. Most of the time highlights also have a lot of color in them, just like shadows usually have color in them. The color of your if this were a natural pumpkin, and I had taken a photo of it and there was a cast shadow on the floor like that cast shadow would also have some of the color of the pumpkin itself in it. So here you can see how tiny the detail is, and you can just like wiggle your brush along. There's no right or wrong with these shapes. Just make sure they're as small and fine as you can paint them. So I'm just going to continue doing exactly that, just breaking off the edge of the white highlights for this one in the center, and then the slightly smaller one on the right side, and you can just watch and follow along. Now we're really in the final stages of the painting. Looking at the reference image, I can see that there's a lot of detail on these top parts. It's mainly just maybe some bubbles that are captured in the glass, and then the light and color reflects differently. Here I have the orange. This one has more scarlet lake in it. T. I have my 30 brush and I'm painting on dry paper. If you look if you hit pause and you look at the reference image. Again, you can probably do this part even without me. You can just see their little blobs and shapes of very dark paint, and that's what we're going to paint in. This is burn Sienna with just somewhere orange, red, and burn sienna. Then those details are going to add to the overall look that this is actually a glass sculpture. So all of this is Brancana. Then these little shapes, I did not paint them. I did not put them into the outline that I made because it would have just made it more complicated. I think you would have had to trace so many more pencil lines. Also, there's not really a right or wrong with these shapes because they're just random. No one can tell you that, this blob of color in the glass is incorrect and now it doesn't look natural anymore. That just doesn't happen. You can just really feel free to add random shapes there. The only thing to watch out for is to make sure that you have the right intensity of the color. If all of this is like is the darkest bit of the orange part of the fruit part of the pumpkin, then they should all be the same. They should all have the same darkness. That's really the only thing and here, I'm intensifying those lines. That also helps to create a bit more of a three dimensional form. Whenever there's a dent in the glass in the middle at the bottom there. We're going to make it darker so that it retreats visually. This is burn Sienna still. You can also mix burn Siena with red actually. This is pure burn Sienna. There are going to be some horizontal lines there. They also don't have to be exactly the same as they're in the reference photo, mine aren't. I can just paint as if. Yeah. So if you managed to do really fine lines, that's always a plus now. The finer and more intricate, the detail, the better, depends how much patience you have. Now there are some really dark details. This is just pure neutral tint. I find that if I use neutral tint at its full intensity without any water more or less, then it just looks completely black to me. That's why I don't have a separate black. Many people also mixed blacks. I haven't started using that because whenever I need to use black, it's just in those small details like here, for example. Here, I'm also just with some more burns Na just darkening the areas that I feel need to be a bit more dark. Adding more interest. Yeah, I'm going to go over these small areas and Paint these random shapes until I'm happy with the intensity basically because I did look at the reference photo and found that this top part is just the color is just so much more intense than the rest of the pumpkin. And I was thinking, Okay, how do I do this. Yeah, I'm just going to add small details with Burn Ciena moly on dry paper. Now, this is the orange mix again, and I'm also going to use the dark orange mix on the right side of the top part of the pumpkin there. Now, this is the dark orange again or burn sana, actually. H. I'm sorry, you can't see properly. I'm just using the very tip of my brush, so I'm holding it at a 90 degree angle. Unfortunately, my hand covers what I'm doing. But it's just the dark orange and I'm just adding more fine details on lines and in a minute or in a second, you can just hit pause and add what I've added. Yeah, you can see by the movement of my hand that I'm just adding some of those fine horizontal lines to give it a bit like a more interesting texture. Then I'm coming in with some more pure burn sienna. For the bottom part here, do mix some burnt sienna with the red that you used to mix the orange. I don't know if you also have the same red that I have or maybe you used croon red or maybe Alyson crimson. But it's just more at the bottom and brownish. I thou. And I'm picking up some of the dark orange again. And I'm adding more lines to this segment at the bottom, just like we did on the left side previously. Now I'm just going to glaze the top a little bit. Glazing just means adding a very transparent layer of paint on top of your almost finished painting. Actually, you can do glazing at any stage. It doesn't have to be the final stages of a painting. This is pure scarlet lake, pure red. I could have done this earlier. I think. I don't know why I didn't. I could have painted this bit red and then added the details with darker burnt sienna. I don't know why I didn't. Sometimes I also don't see everything the first time around. Then I look at the reference image and I'm like, Well, this is a completely different color. Why didn't I use that one? So that's a little bit what's happening here. This is also red. Now I'm looking at my painting and I'm thinking the details with Burnt Sienna that I painted in. They're looking a bit faint now, so I have pure burnt sienna on my brush and I'm just going over them again a bit because I do want them to be more. I'm just adding a bit more paint. But it's a quick fix, really. So I think I'm pretty happy with how it looks now. Now, the last stages of painting are usually white gah for me if I do use it. So the process is the same. I have white on my 30 on my small brush here. And then I have another brush. That's just clean and wet and I try to smooth out the white guage so that it blends in with the orange. Then we get this look of there being light reflected in the surface, and it doesn't cover all of it and the color does shine through, but we do need those smooth transitions. And sometimes it depends on what kind of gah you have. I did switch to a different brand with this one. And sometimes white gah can look very, like, grayish, like chalk almost. And I was very unhappy with the one that I previously used. I went to the shop and I was looking for a different one. I found this one and It's just wider. But sometimes or oftentimes, I find that white coach needs layering. If you have your first layer and you're applying it like I do here, and then you're using a wet brush to feather it out a little bit, and then it dries and it looks too transparent, you just need to layer it. That's completely normal. And it's always also best to go slow. Even if that means that you need to go over it once or twice. Again, it's better to be on the safe side and use less color first when you're not sure how it dries, rather than using too much and then getting that off the page of the paper is not going to be easy. Yeah, just use less and have a wet brush here and I'm feathering it out. I know it's going to dry lighter, but that's okay. So I'm going to do exactly this for all of the top areas of the pumpkin. And there's not much more that I need to say about it. I think you can just watch and paint along. With the lightest areas all in place, more or less, I'm looking at my painting again, and I'm looking at the darkest areas. If they need adjusting, and I that they do, especially at the bottom there. This area just looks unfinished. I have the red with I honestly I can't tell if it if it has burned Siena in it or if it's just a pure red. I think it has a little bit of burn Sienna in it. Shouldn't make too much of a difference though. I painted this three weeks ago, and now I'm on holiday with my family in Italy and I'm doing the voice over. So, this area at the bottom needs to be way. So I'm just painting over it again. I in the bottom segment there, I'm going to add some more lines with like red and burn Sienna. I just I must have completely forgotten it earlier. So this is red, and, just some more wobbly horizontal lines til that's also done. I think this looks good. That left middle section right here is going to get another code of white because in the reference image, it has just more reflection on it. It's just more prominent, and I felt like I needed a bit more. But look at your painting and figure out if you're ha with it or if you need to adjust here and there. Then here on this side, I'm also going to add a bit more white. Again, adding it and then smoothing it out like we did so many times. Smoothing it over with my bigger brush. That helps when it's not such a tiny area. Then on this side as well. This is white ge on dry paper. And then we're done with the pumpkin. Thank you so much for watching, for painting along. If you finished your painting, I hope you did, please do post it. I would love to see your result. 5. Happy Ghost : Let's start by looking at the colors that we're going to use for this fun little glass ghost. I already have a fairly diluted transparent mix of neutral tint and cobalt blue here. It has a bit more blue than gray, so you can just mix that up and then This is pure neutral tint. If you don't have neutral tint, paints gray is also good because it has that blue tint to it, and this is more concentrated neutral tint. We're just to use those two colors for this ghost. The gray, the neutral tint is also going to serve as black in a very concentrated version. This is the pure cobalt blue. If you don't have cobalt blue, you can also use ultramarine. I just didn't want to use ultra meolen because it granulates and I just want to try to achieve a really smooth look for this glass ghost. We're already painting on cold pressed paper. The structure of the paper already takes away from that super glossy perfection. I didn't want to add a granulating pigment to that. That's why cobalt blue instead of ultramarine. I'm just rubbing out some of the pencil lines here, so they're not so prominent when I'm painting, and then this is masking fluid, I usually pour a little bit into the lid of the cup that it comes in and then I have this metal densel that I use to apply it. If you don't have that, you usually or you most likely just have a small old brush like a synthetic brush that you can use to apply the masking fluid. Just make sure you clean it o after because once it's dried on the bristles in a bruh synthetic or natural, it just ruins the whole brush. Then you can do this two, three times and then you have to throw it out. This little like metal pen came with the tracing paper that I got online, and it turned out to be a really useful tool to apply masking fluid. Yeah, this is not exactly a time lapse, but I did speed the video up a little bit because I take my time applying masking fluid and you don't have to watch me do this in real time. When I'm done, you can just hit pause and then take your time applying it everywhere that I put it. There are a couple of highlights that I want to preserve. No super big areas, but just tiny ones. Masking fluid seemed like a handy choice here. There's some more on the bottom there. This is all of my masking fluid. Hit pause if you need to see exactly where I put it, and let it dry completely before you start painting the first layer. Really make sure it's very dry. Leave it for 20 minutes or dry it off with a hair dryer. But just make sure it's very before you start painting. Then I have this big round brush, and I'm going to use the transparent blue gray mix. And I'm going to paint across the whole ghost. This is like it's not really an under painting because it's not really an illustration where you'd need such a thing as an underpainting. But this is just the first transparent layer. It's like the base color of the little ghost. It's just light blue. It's almost completely see through. It just has this slight blue, grayish tint. I'm just making sure I have clean edges here. It could also be a jellyfish, actually like a fun jellyfish. But it's Halloween, so it's not a jellyfish. It's a. Then I'm turning my paper. Like, I'm trying to be precise with my edges, but I'm also trying to paint fairly quickly so that the paint doesn't dry because I don't want to get any hard lines in the middle of my ghost here. Anything that's like smooth glass, should or could also be painted with wet on wet for the first layer. I just thought I'd get the paint on there quick enough. But if you want to take a bit more time doing this first layer, you can also paint wet and wet, that would mean putting a first layer of water on your paper, and then you can really take all the time you need to put down that blue gray mix. So when this is done, I'm going to let it dry completely before I continue with some of the detail areas. This is actually a fairly simple illustration. We have the base layer here, and then we're just going to move across the whole ghost and add little bits and pieces of detail. There's this bottom under section that has more detail, and I start painting that with diluted neutral tint. Now I have the blue grayish mix again on my brush. I'm painting on dry paper. Because the underside of the ghost has more deeper colors and also more details, like I just said, I'm just giving it another coat of this color that we just used before. Whenever I pause for a little bit, I'm just looking at the reference image and try to figure out where the paint goes. Now this is gray and it's just bleeding into the blue gray mix. In the beginning, these glass illustrations can be a bit of a headache when they have a lot of detail and everything is just very intricate, and you don't know where to start. My advice is to start painting slowly and start identifying just the biggest areas of paint and then getting those in and then move your way towards the smaller areas. It just gives you a sense of orientation. If you break down maybe it's also a piece of jewelry, maybe you want to paint a diamond or something like that where they have just 1,000 reflections and so many different areas and little segments, just moving from big to small is a good way to not get lost in your painting, and also not to get frustrated because it can be overwhelming sometimes. Now, I have a flat brush here. I never use a flat brush. You can also use a round brush to wet that section. There's a smooth gradient there. I can see it in the reference image, so I want to wet that area and then drop in some of the blue gray. It's not necessary to use a flat brush here, just any brush will do literally. So this is neutral tint. It's not very concentrated. It's fairly transparent. But it doesn't spread across the paper like crazy because I didn't add that much water to my paper. And I also wet it a slightly bigger area then I'm going to add paint that prevents the paint from creating hard lines where it dries. This is some more of the cobalt blue there. So it's just for the whole gos, the gray and blue are just going to blend into each other, and it's like a smooth transition from blue to light gray more or less. Here, I'm just working over the water line so that it doesn't dry as a hard line. I don't want that. Then down here, I'm painting on dry paper. This is neutral tint now. You can also look at the reference image for yourself and figure out look at the little detail segments and just paint them in and then meet me again in the video when you're done with it. That's also a good way to learn. Just do it the way you think you do it and then see how I do it and then decide which method you prefer. This is pure cobalt blue now. The gray is still a b, so it's going to blend into that, which is exactly what I want. Here, I just wanted to show you really close up how I use wet on dry and wet on wet technique in one painting. This is cobalt blue on the dry paper. Painting carefully so that I don't paint over my little segments here. I was dabbing off my brush and now I'm just pushing the paint around a little bit. Now this little segment, this is also a super small area. But there is a gradient within that area. So that's why I'm wetting it, and then I'm going to drop in some of the neutral tint. This is pure neutral tint. You can see that if you don't use a ton of water to wet your paper, that the color, even though I also have lots of water in my gray mix here, the color doesn't spread like crazy. It's not uncontrollable. So you can still have control in small areas when you're painting wet and wet, you can do that. Just don't use as much water as you would for a bigger area. And then I was just adding some more blue there, and now I clean off my brush and I'm smoothing out the edges. Making sure paint doesn't go where I don't want it to go. Cleaning up the lines there. So for the rest of this bottom section, I'm just going to paint it all in cobalt blue, still very transparent mix on dry paper. So if you look at the reference image, you can see that on the lower left side of the ghost here, there's a gray area, and then there's some wavy lines, and it's just suggesting the shape of the glass or maybe even the movement of the ghost and those are more bluish. So I'm just starting to get the general shapes in with neutral tint here, and then some cobalt blue again on dry paper. Now I'm going to start painting in the face, the eyes and the mouth, and since this is not a natural being, it's not a person, it's not an animal, the eyes, of course, are also way less intricate and way less complicated. The only thing that I always think is really important to watch out for when you're painting eyes is to not mess up the general shape of them. Because once, even if it's an artificial figure of a ghost here, even if you like mess up the shape a little bit and you paint outside the lines, and it has a bit of a wonky eye. The whole figure just looks weird and crooked, and it's really hard to correct that mistake, and then you want to correct it, so you end up making the eye even bigger and then it gets worse. Yeah, just I use I think this is a 50 brush that I'm holding. So the smallest brush that I have. And I'm painting on dry paper. This is a media mix of the neutral tint. And I'm just painting in the first layer. And then after we're going to paint another layer over it for the bits of the eye that are completely black. And then coming down to the mouth, this is even simpler. So I switched to a size one brush. Again, s of gray on dry paper, and I'm just painting in the entire mouth. This just really makes this a very beginner friendly illustration and tutoria. But I was still so happy when I was done with it. I thought it came out looking really cute and really fun, but it's not complicated at all to paint. Yeah, with the mouth, same as with the eyes, I'm just making sure I get the shape right and I don't mess up. The outlines of the mouth. So I'm just jumping back and forth here a bit first the face and then painting down here again and then up where the head is. The reason is that A, I want all areas to dry completely before I go near them again. Now this is pure neutral tint on dry paper down there. Also, I didn't do a test painting. I didn't try it out before I filmed it. I thought I can just go ahead and film it straight away. This is just my intuitive way of painting, and sometimes I do jump around a little bit in the picture in the painting. And if I do like, if I try it out first, just for myself, then I know exactly what to do and where to do it and when to do it, and then the tutorial maybe is a bit more methodical. But I think this is fine. I think it's easy enough to follow. So this is Cobalt blue over there in this egg area. And then we're going to come back to the head again and do some wet and wet. Okay. So the eyes in the mouth and everything is completely dry. If you look at the reference image, you can see that there's a bit of a color gradient coming from the top left of the head, and then it disappears towards the middle. I'm just wetting it with water and I'm making sure that I don't paint that I don't put any water over the eyes that are already painted because I don't want to disturb that paint and I don't want it to bleed into the rest of the face. I'm really being thorough here, making sure I don't touch any of the gray. If you want to be extra short, maybe just don't paint the water right up until the eye at all. Then I'm leaving out this segment on the very left of the ghost because I can see a bit of a hard line there on the reference image. Then we're just going to give the head a bit of a bit of a shadow, and that will help create the illusion of it being round and three dimensional. I'm going to go back and pick up my gray blue mix from the very beginning, and I'm just dropping it here and letting it flow a little bit. Then while the paint is doing its own thing, I can focus on the edges and make sure they're all nice and crisp and clean just how I want them to be, and the pigment can just flow wherever it wants to go. This is like I said, it's the same transparent mix that we used in the first layer. You can just see that if you put two or three coats of that onto the paper, it just gets darker and darker each time, of course, and it's a really neat way to create those really soft gradients and that transparent look. There's really just hints of color. The more I look at it, the more I think that the ghost is actually completely colorless. But as with anything, so when you paint white things, like white botanicals, flowers, for example, you'll hear right away that there is no such thing as a white flower. It's always gray, it almost has lots of color in it. So the ghost here is quite similar. It is more or less colorless and transparent, but we do need to paint color to make it visible on the paper. Also, there's a lot of color that reflects in glass. So even Though the glass can be completely transparent. There's just going to be a bunch of colors that reflect from it because they're in the light that hits it from its surroundings. Yeah, long story short, the ghost is blue. Sorry. I'm going on and on here. Now, there's this transition area where wet and wet meets wet on dry. I'm still using the blue gray mix here, and I'm filling in this section. And then on this left side of the figure, there are some like fine lines. Some of them are very faint, some of them are going to be a bit more pronounced, so I'm just introducing them with this transparent wash of paint. There's also a line that goes from the top And then really, you can just yeah, this goes all the way up. That's what I meant. You can really just so look at the reference image yourself and look at what's there and then paint it in yourself and come back to this video whenever you feel like you've completed one section and then what I did and how I did it. And that's also a really useful way of learning. Just doing it yourself first and then seeing what the teacher did and then comparing techniques. Maybe you prefer the way you did it. And then you're on a really good path of creating your own art style and your own method of painting. So now I'm already starting to paint in some, like, super fine details. I don't know why I didn't use a smaller brush for that one. This brush that I'm holding does come to a very small tip, so I was okay using it, but feel free to use like a size zero brush for that part. A. This is the blue gray mix again. It is becoming a bit more concentrated because as I paint the paint mixes in my palette are also starting to dry a little bit. But that's totally fine because as we move forward in the illustration, I do want more. I do want darker colors. Also because this is on paper, it's a bit darker anyway. Yeah, this is just really looking at the reference image, figuring out what goes So coming over to the right bottom part of the ghost again, now I have my small brush, my 30, and this is neutral tint. And I'm just continuing to paint in more details on paper. Now I have much more concentrated gray on my brush and I'm going to paint right next to the masking fluid that's on top of that little segment, and that's going to give me a nice contrast when we rub out the masking fluid at the end, I'll have the white of the paper right next to a super dark segment of paint, and that contrast is going to increase the effect of this being a glass sculpture, and contrast just always makes a painting come to life. Even when there is sometimes There's not a lot of contrast where I feel like I wanted to be or I feel like this could look like much cooler if there was. Sometimes I add it in my painting, especially when I paint jewelry, when I paint gemstones and diamonds, I usually add a lot more contrast than I see it on the reference image. It just makes it look cooler and more vibrant, I guess is the right word. Here I'm just painting on dry paper and you can see that this is already super detailed work. I'm painting a bit more slowly because I want my lines to be very thin. And one cool thing about painting something. I mean, it's not abstract, but it's just artificial. Is that you can make a lot of mistakes and get away with it. For example, when you're learning to paint super realistic botanicals and leaves, and then you don't get the shadow right, you don't get the veins and the leaves right, that's visible. People can tell that that's a mistake that you made or you've been a bit sloppy painting or the hue isn't slightly correct, no leaf is going to look like that. But with these artificial sculptures and figures, there's no such thing as a correct or an incorrect reflection of light So for example, those fine lines that I just did there at the bottom right, you can just paint them more or less completely different and nobody will be able to tell you that that's not the right way you've done it. It's more about creating a general feel of this bleeding glass than painting 100% correct. If you do want to copy everything exactly the way it is in a reference image. I mean, that's very admirable to do if you have the patients. I do sometimes, sometimes I don't have the patients. But then that's more an exercise of am I able to replicate exactly what I'm seeing, no matter what it is. Okay. So now I'm just continuing down here in the same manner that I was before. There's not much that I need to exp here. This is on paper again with more concentrated gray. So remembering what I just said before about contrast, I'm now putting some more color over this little bit that we masked off with masking fluid. Because I was looking at it, and I was thinking, if I rub it off, then the white of the paper will almost have no contrast to the super transparent blue. And then having a highlight there, you know, it's not going to be very visible. It's not going to have an effect. Surrounded it with a bit more darker pigment so that the highlight is going to be visible at all. Then it's going to make a difference because there will be a bit of contrast. This is again neutral tint. I keep wanting to say paints gray because I've had paints gray in my palette for like four years and I just recently switched to that different gray because I don't always want to have the blue tint that Pains gray usually has. Although the one by Windsor Newton is less blue than other pains gray versions. Anyway. Here again, I'm using a super small brush and I'm taking my time to make sure that I'm painting the finest lines I possibly. I'm just trying to create interest here by either of these details. Now I'm continuing with some cobalt blue, more concentrated this time. Again, painting on paper and just adding more details. I'm just switching from gray to blue. Now I'm picking up some more gray again. There's a gardener now working in the background here, making some noise. I hope you don't hear it through the microphone here. If you do, I apologize. But I also don't think you can hear the ocean that's in the background. I'm in Sicily right now recording this. Maybe you also won't hear the gardener. Yeah, there's not much explaining I need to do at this point. You can just watch me add more details and add them likewise in your painting. Then let's meet when I'm done with this intersection. Now I have the very transparent blue and gray mix on my brush again, and I am painting into those like semi highlights that we have there just around the outside of them more or less. So I'm just trying to break them up a little bit is all I'm doing. This is the transparent mix again. Then coming back to the bottom section of the ghost. I guess the feet even though it doesn't have feet. Again, with some more concentrated gray, the rest of this bottom part needs some more detail, like the first half that we did. Again, I'm painting very fine lines and details and wobbly bits on. Again, I keep switching between gray and blue, the way I see it on the reference image, so this is blue again, and I'm just working my way across this area. D. Here there's a slightly bigger segment in the middle there that has a gradient in it, where the color smoothly moves from darker to lighter. Because it is such a small area, I'm not wetting it beforehand. I'm just cleaning up my brush here and moving it across my own paint line, and that just smoothes it out. I have a soft color gradient here. Then I'm just continuing to paint down here. This is transparent gray. I know, this is the blue gray mix again, or is it? It's hard to tell right now. Sorry. I think this is the blue gray mix. I'm just looking at the reference image, trying to see what I still need to do. Here again, this is the transparent mix from the beginning, neutral tint and cobalt blue. I'm just strengthening the lines a little bit. Then this area here, if you remember, we did paint this wet and wet in the very beginning. Now that it's all dried and I have my mid tones and my darkest tones in. I feel like the color that we put down there is almost not visible. Again, I'm the blue gray mix on dry paper and then I'm cleaning off my brush and I'm smoothing it out. When I'm done with this in a second. Unfortunately, my camera stop because it does that sometimes when it switches from one memory card to the next. Then when I don't look at the little display in my camera, which I don't really while I'm painting. I sometimes miss the moment when it stops and then I just need to hit play again. But you're not going to while stop was remove the masking fluid. I waited and I just rubbed it off with my finger. You're done painting details. You can also take off your masking fluid and then we'll continue together. Then we can focus on the face and the eyes again because we do need to make them like super black, and they need to pop and make the whole ghost more fun and more lively and vibrant. So mix up some super concentrated gray. You can test on a piece of scrap paper if it looks black. And then with a very small brush, again, make sure you paint inside the lines. It can be a challenge, even as an adult. And I'm going over the mid tones here and the eye, really painting carefully, so I don't mess up the shape. Before you cover everything with black that we previously painted in with gray, look at the reference photo again and you'll see that not actually the whole eye is completely black. It has three different tones. Then we're just going to continue in the same manner for the left eye as well. Now that the eyes are done, it makes such a difference. It's such a friendly ghost already, Having fun, living his best ghost life. So we're going to paint the mouth in. I switched to a slightly bigger brush. This is my size one, and I have the same concentrated dark gray on it. I'm painting the mouth and it's quite simple, except for a fine line at the bottom there. Other than that, there is no detail in the mouth. Oh. With my 30 brush. I'm an outline and then that's that. All right. The face is done. Brace yourself for even more detail on the bottom there. I have a look at the reference photo and you'll see that there is much more that we need to do. So same procedure as before. I'm darkening some of the gray areas that we already have with the darker neutral tint mix. And I'm just looking at my photo and deciding where I need to have more intense color areas, so to speak. I don't know what the correct term is or if there is one. So I'm darkening here and there. So we're close to being finished with this little ghost. I'm just going to adjust some of the shadows like I did on the lower right hand corner, where I said, I need to deepen that shadow. I'm going to do the same thing on the lower left and then for the head of the ghost as well because I'm looking at it now and it doesn't have any roundness to it, and we need to change that. So Here I'm adding pure cobalt blue. It's like a medium thick concentration. I have my size four brush there. Then I'm cleaning off my brush and I make sure I'm smoothing it out. I might need to add a bit more paint there. Training the paper is a good idea. Yeah, because the glass does have quite a few folds, and we need to make them appear with and we do so by creating shadows. So that's already a lot better. Just dropping in some of the blue. So here as well. I'm just continuing to do the same thing here at the top of the head. This is the blue gray mix from the beginning, and I'm applying it on the dry paper. Then again, cleaning up my brush and with the damp brush, I'm smoothing it out towards the middle. Then it just looks more three dimensional, I think. And then at the bottom there as well, it's going to need just a bit more shadow again, with the same blue gray. And I'm also applying it on dry paper and then smoothing it out like that. I'm just making sure that I don't disturb the concentrated gray that's in that right corner there right there. I don't really want to touch it with my wet brush because it might just bleed out and then create a bit of a problem. So I keep it dry. Then this little section here, I'm also darkening. Just with some gray. And with that, we're pretty much done with this little fun Halloween ghost. I really enjoyed painting this one. I think it came out really nicely. And I hope you also finished yours and you enjoyed the video. And as always, I'd love to see your result, so please do take a quick photo and upload it so that we can all have a look. And I hope to see you next time. 6. Witch's Hat: All right. Let's start by getting our colors ready. For this, which is hat, it's going to be really simple. We're only going to use one color, which is gray. I have neutral tint in my palette. If you don't have that, you can use any other gray that you have, paints gray, for example, is also a good choice. I'm just going to swatch it out on a piece of scrap paper that I have. We're just going to use this in a very diluted berry watery mix and then more concentrated. Here on the side, you can see, we'll just have neutral tint and then white gash for some highlights at the very end. I almost never paint anything monochromatics. This is quite relaxing when you don't have to worry about color mixing and all that. All right. Let's get started right away. I have a quite watery mix of the gray on my I think this is a size brush that I'm holding, and I'm starting at the top of the heat. I'm painting on paper, and this is just the first base layer that we're going to put down. There are highlights that I'm going to paint around. I did not cover them with masking fluid. It didn't seem necessary for this illustration, so we're just going to paint around them. Here I'm zooming in a little bit so that you can see better. Also, if you don't mind because I'm curious. Maybe you can let me know in the comment section if you prefer the frame to be really zoomed in when you're doing tutorials or if a slightly more zoomed out, picture frame is also fine. I'm like switching back and forth, but I don't know what you actually prefer. I hope you can see everything that I'm doing. Here, I'm just painting all the way down to the bottom. And now I'm switching to a bigger brush. If you look at the reference photo, you can see that there is a really big highlight on the right side of the hat there, so I'm just painting around it, and I'm using a bigger brush so that I can get more paint on quicker so that I don't get any hard water lines in this area because with anything, that's crystal or glass, it's always good to have a really smooth surface. When you get hard lines where you paint dries, it disturbs that effect we're trying to create here. So when I'm done giving this a first coat of gray in a second, I'm going to let everything completely. And then we're going to continue painting some wet and wet segments. Okay. So the first layer has dried completely. And now I'm going to wet this middle section here with clean water. There's no paint on my brush. But I'm not wet it until the very edge of the hat. So there's a line there and I'm staying inside that line. You can also see that on your outline. All this hat is basically just different shades of gray and we just need to figure out where there is hard transitions hard lines, where there are smooth gradients, and that will determine whether or not we're painting on wet paper for smooth color gradients or on p for hard lines, we're going to do both here. This is also a really good exercise when you're just trying to get in a bit more practice for both techniques. I am taking my time with the water here. I usually do. I'm quite slow when I just put down the water. I don't know why. But I'm trying to make sure that I'm staying inside the line, that I have the right amount of water on the paper, that it's all even. Yeah, I could probably speed this up a bit, but it's not going to take too long. Just making sure I have everything covered, also a little bit at the bottom here. So now, I switch down to my size brush. You can also use a size two brush if you want, and I have a more concentrated mix of the neutral tint on my brush. And you can see that it does travel across the paper but not like super super quick, and it always comes down to your paint and water ratio when you're painting wet and wet. If you have a wet paper and you have a very diluted mix of paint on your brush, which means less pigment and more water, then it's going to travel super quick across your paper. Whereas if you're painting on the paper with the same wetness and you have a much more concentrated mix on your brush, then it just travels slower because there's more pigment in there. And the sotom part is going to be almost black. So I am going in with a fairly concentrated mix. And you can see how I'm not sweeping my brush across the paper in one long motion. I'm always lifting it off as I paint along this line because that will make the paint spread more evenly. If I do just one sweeping motion and then lift off my brush at the end of the hat, I'm going to get a blob of paint there. If I lift it off, I'm going to get little blobs of paint, and then it just gets easier and more even. Now I'm just pushing the pigment around a little bit. I do want it to spread smoothly towards the middle section of the hat. I can see that the paint is not traveling very fast. I'm just pushing it around a little bit. Make sure it goes where I want it to be. And then I'm dropping in some more color while everything is still wet at the bottom here. And then also while everything is still wet, and adding more paint on the sideline. Again, I have concentrated gray on my brush. I'm painting this part on the right side here. This is on dry paper because the area is really small and there's no need to paint wet and wet. I'm just adjusting the tone and I wanted to bleed into the other part that we just painted. This is also on dry paper here. So at the top here, we have some bits and pieces that are a bit fidgety. It's where the hat just bends and has folds in the well, leather or f, but this is glass. But we still do want to create that effect. I'm not making a huge deal of this. I am going to paint in some detail there, but I'm not going to go crazy. So I thought, let's just try and hint at the shape and then see if that gets us that realistic transparent glass look that we want. Here you can also please do look at the reference image. I know it's always easy to just paint after the tutorial, the video that you're watching, but it's going to help you so much more when you actually also look at the reference image while I'm painting. Now I'm just looking myself and I'm trying to figure out where the paint goes more or less. This is like a medium concentration of the gray and then we're going to go over it again with almost black to create those shadow bits there. So this is more or less done for now, and I'm coming back down to the bottom here. This is where the glass sculpture is not 100% even. And we're going to try to imitate that by applying. This is also quite a transparent mix again. This is the same that I used in the very beginning for the first layer. So now I'm just layering that on top. I have a size I think 30 brush in my hand. So do pick up the smallest brush that you have. K. And I'm painting on dry paper here, and what I'm going to do for the bottom part of the hat is I'm going to put down some paint and then clean off my brush and then just feather it out and smooth out the paint a little bit. So that I get the hard paint lines where I want them, and then a smooth transition on the other side. I thought that would be a good technique to hint at the slightly unevenes of the glass where just the light breaks different, and then you get some shadows and some lighter areas. That's what I'm doing here. I'm adding some more gray and then smoothing it over again. Here you can see from the side how I just move the tip of my brush across like one edge of the bit that I just put down there. Then I'm adding some more paint. Now it's a little bit wet, so it does flow a little bit, and then I can come back with with the brush and smooth it out again if I want to. These are just super tiny strokes of paint, and we're going to add another layer there in a little bit to make them more pronounced, but I thought it'd be better to start out fairly transparent and then work my way towards the contrast that I want in the end. Like I said, we're going to add another layer and I'm doing this straightaway. Again, this is fairly transparent mix of gray, and I'm just deepening that fold a little bit that I can see there on the reference image. And this is my clean brush again that I use to feather out the paint. This is the size brush, I think. And this is also fairly transparent gray. It's like a medium. And I'm giving the right side here another. This is on paper. So at the top here, I'm switching again to a size 30 brush to add some more detail to it. This is more concentrated gra now, and again, I'm painting on dry paper. Here I'm in a little bit so that you can see better. I'm not painting as all of the gray sections again so that there are going to be layers where a lighter gray peaks through and then it's completely dark, and then it's like super white for a white highlight. So I'm trying to create form and depth in the glass by just switching between the intensities of the gray that I'm using. I. Here I'm trying to preserve that little white line that we have there. So I'm painting slowly and carefully so that I don't lose any of my white highlights as we didn't use any masking fluid to mask them off in the beginning. If you look at the reference image, you can see that this whole right side of the hat is really fairly dark. I'm just giving it another coat of more concentrated gray. I could have done this from the very beginning, I guess, but I wasn't sure how transparent I want it to be. M go two method is usually to just paint more carefully. Even though that might mean that it's going to take another one or two layers in the end and just like slightly more time, although this is not very time consuming right now. But, yeah, that's just like my general method in painting to move slowly and do more layers because that assures you that you are going to achieve the result that you want in the end. This left side of the middle part is also going to get another coat of paint. But we do want the gray to slightly fade out towards the middle. Again, I'm giving it a coat of clean water, and the color is not going to lift off because it's completely dry in that area, so I can just ret it again. I'm doing that just like I did before and then adding another coat of gray and make sure I have a smooth gradient towards the middle where my white highlight is. Thank you. So while this is drying, I'm coming back down here again. This is on dry paper, more concentrated gray, and I'm painting a fine line around the outside. Here because on the reference image, you can see that it has a really what's you called? I don't know what you call that part of the at. I'm trying to paint thoroughly and slowly because if I mess up that line now, it's going to lose its general shape, and then it might be hard to correct that mistake. So I'm painting a bit more slowly here. And also not in one go because that gives me more control over my brush. Now that I have the line down, I can give it another coat of more concentrated gray to create that really dark black, and now it's easier to do because I already have line down, so I can just go over it. Because the hat is transparent, even though it does have color, we can see that part of the heat through the top. More faintly because we're looking through the glass. I'm picking up some very transparent gray here. Often when you have glass and you're looking it, the stuff that's behind it, the lines and shapes are distorted. Because of the way that the glass breaks it. This is why this line is not aligned 100% with the one that's on the outside of it. I hope I'm making sense. I'm sure you know what I mean. It's a bit hard to describe right now. Anyway, the line does not align 100% and here, I'm continuing the stroke, but with even more transparent gray, And then I'm just going to go ahead and add a bit more detail on dry paper, and you can just hit pause whenever you want to and just follow along. I'm again holding my very small brush and moving over to this section on the left side here. I'm just giving it a thin coat of water, not too much because the area is quite small. Then I'm going to paint it in, but I'm doing that because it's quite a long segment and I don't want any hard lines while I'm painting it in, I'm just we it a little bit. And now I have the medium dark mix of gray, and I'm just running my brush along that side of the segment, picking up some more paint here. So you can see how it just buys me a little bit of time painting on damp paper here. Adding a bit more color to this line. And now let's look at that highlight. So this at the moment is just like a really big area of just white, and there is shade and shadow in the highlight. So I'm wetting the area, and then I'm going to give it a bit of color. It doesn't need a lot of water and also maybe make sure that you don't put the water until the very edge of the highlight because that will just increase the chance that you get a really hard line there once it's dried. T, I'm just making sure I don't have too much water on it. This is the medium mix of gray, painting it along the right side of the high light fairly quickly, and then it spreads a little and then I can push the pigment around. Dropping in some more color. On the reference image, I can see that there's a really dark fold in the hat there. I'm just preparing for that and adding more gray to that section of the highlight. Here, I'm just lifting off some pigment that spread a bit too far. Then I'll make that der in a second. My paper is still from the water and then from the paint, of. I can take my time here. And push the paint around and add more until I'm happy with it. And while that's drying, I'm coming back down here again. This is also a black area, as you can see in the reference image. So I'm painting on dry paper. I'm adding very concentrated gray then cleaning off my brush and smoothing it out a little bit. I'm just trying to create smooth shadows across the whole hat. That's more or less all I'm doing. Adding some more paint, and again, smoothing it out. And then coming back to this highlight again. Now, this is more concentrated, gray, as you can see, and I'm now painting on dry paper as the area has dried off completely. And then I cleaned off my brush really quickly, and I'm just running along the edge of my paint line. Smoothing it out there. Side of the highlight. I feel like I need to adjust the other side as well. I'm going to pick up my biggest brush round brush and I'm going to pick up really transparent gra you can see my brush is fully loaded the, of water in it. I'm just painting across that whole side of the hat. A Again, not until the very outer edge like before. I'm just doing this just so that the tones are adjusted. I want all of my darkest Tones need to be the same darkness and all of my mid tones need to have the same medium darkness. Otherwise, the whole illustration is going to be all over the place and you're not going to know what you're looking at. That's why I'm adjusting that side as well. Then I cleaned off my brush and I'm running it across my paint line here and you can see how easy it is to really smooth out that paint. It's like a completely smooth gradient. So that works really well. Back to this lower part. Now adding some more details again on dry paper with different concentrations of the gray. This is a more concentrated little area that I'm painting in and then cleaning up my brush again and just smoothing it out. Really, it's the same technique all over. It's quite repetitive, but that also means that it's good practice. If you have to do the same thing 35 times in one go. That makes it a good piece of practice. I'm just going to continue doing that for the lower section here, and you can just paint with me and hit pas whenever you want to and catch up with me. And then I'll be back with explanations for the top part of the hat. A All right. Now for the top here, we need to create a lot more contrast to really bring out those folds and create that illusion of the glass being folded over. Creating contrast, all it means is really having your lightest colors. In this case, it's the white of the paper next to your very darkest tones, which is the almost black of this gray shade. So I'm looking carefully at the reference photo. I have my smallest brush. This is a 30, and I'm painting on dry paper. And I'm just adding I'm just darkening some areas of the medium tones there. Then down here, I'm also darkening some lines. We don't have a lot more to do for these illustrations. Now I'm just moving to the detailed work really. What I do at this stage of a painting is just continuously keep looking at the reference image, and I keep looking at my painting, trying to figure out, where do I need to darken? Then when using white as in a little bit, where do I need to add white highlights? I'm just darkening here as well. Then the edge of the hat or the rim. I really don't know. I need to look up what that's called. I'm also carefully giving that another coat of gray. I don't want to make that light any thicker. So I would advise to paint slowly because when you go over thin lines, you always make them a little bit stronger because we're not robots. We can't paint in exactly the same manner. Yeah, just go more slowly where there's more attention needed. Now also on dry paper, I'm adding some wavy lines there also to create the illusion that that the class structure there is not completely even like I explained in the beginning. Now, I'm happy with my gray areas, and I just mixed up some white gas. I'm adding highlights. Little bits and pieces of white paint here and there on dry paper. And then the left side of the heat also get some white highlights in the form of vertical lines that go up like that. The reason why I'm using white gash here is because I would not be able to lift these fine lines out with a bruh, maybe an adicate a brush like that would be I'd never be able to create those super thin lines and using masking fluid. It's really difficult to paint so intricately with masking fluid. You can do detail work and you can put down really fine lines, but it's just so difficult and masking fluid would have made it a bit more messy. That's why I thought, I'm just adding them with white guash. Some people don't prefer whitewash because they say it just creates a totally different look than compared to using the white of the paper, which is true. But I still don't think that's a reason to not use it. Like a different look is by no means necessarily a worse look. I do use it frequently. I do both. I preserve the white of the paper, and I use white ash and I feel like both are good ways to have highlights in your painting. Here also white lines, a bit wobbly. It doesn't have to be exactly straight because like I said, the glass is not completely straight. So this line is interrupted here and there. And then it's more strong in some areas and then a bit lighter in others. So this imperfection in the reflection is also what's going to give us that look that we want. This is it almost with the white gash. I'm just I'm just finishing this line here. Then I was looking at my painting and the reference image again and thought I do need more black details, a few, not a lot, just like one or two. This is the very concentrated gray and, and I'm just adding very small wobbly lines at the bottom. And then we're done with the witch's hat in glass. I hope you enjoyed painting it. And if you finished it, which I hope you did. Sometimes it's easy to start something and not finish it, but I hope you finished it. And just take a quick picture of your painting and share it here on the platform. It'd be really cool to see what you made. Thank you for watching. 7. Last, but not least!: Thank you so much for joining this class. I hope you really enjoyed it, and I hope you painted all three illustrations. If you did, do share them here on the platform, it'd be so nice to see what you made and connect with me here on the platform or on social. I'd love to get in touch and I hope to see you next time.