How to Draw and Paint a Giant Manta Ray in Watercolors with Metallic highlights and Ink

1. Introduction: Hello. My name is Alicia Paran, and I'm an artist who works primarily in watercolors and Inc. And one of my favorite ocean animals has got to be the Giant Man Dre. I've been lucky enough to snorkel with these beautiful, large, peaceful and enigmatic animals that can get to be as large as 28 feet and yet are completely harmless to humans. In this class, I will teach you step by step how to draw and paint a giant manta ray with beautiful light reflecting highlights, framed in an ocean background, complete with coral formations and a school of tiny silver fish. This class will cover a general giant manta ray anatomy that will help you understand the basic structure of the giant mantra, so you can sketch it with ease. You will also learn how to create a background for your mantra by laying down a base wash using the wet on wet technique. I will also teach you how to build up the dark color of the manta ray by gradually adding more layers of water color and how to lift off pain to create the distinct lighter pattern on the manta rays body. We will then use ink pens to add definition and highlights and finally, strategically add some metallic watercolor pain on the lifted areas to give the illusion of the pattern of our manta rays body shimmering underwater. This class is designed for intermediate to advanced watercolor students, as you'll be required to have some basic watercolor technique knowledge, such as how to lay down a base wash, how to use the wet on dry and the wet on wet techniques, and also how to lift color off so as to preserve lighter areas. So if you are ready to create a beautiful mantra shimmering underwater, let's begin. 2. Materials: Hi, everyone, and welcome to the material section of this course where I will point out all the materials that you need to create your beautiful Manta picture. So let me first begin with the paper. I'm using for this project this canson A three sized watercolor pad, which I absolutely love. It has a weight of 300 grams/meter square, so it is really good for layering multiple layers of watercolors on top of it without the paper buckling. What I love about this pad is that it also has these little dotted lines that make it very easy to tear paintings out after you're done, or you can just keep it in its nice bound book form. Next, I will talk about the materials we need to sketch the painting. For this project, I have used the pilot super grip pencil, mechanical pencil, which has a lead thickness of 0.5 Mm, and I tend to use HB lead. I will also use two mechanical eras. One is a statel plastic one and the other is a tomb mono zero. We will also be using general purpose Musking tape to simply stick around our painting so that we have a nice neat border when we lay down the base wash. I'm just using this brand called duck. But it's just simply multi purpose usking tape that you can find at an art store as well as a hardware store. I'm using one which has a thickness of 18 M. Next, I'm just going to talk about all the materials you need for the painting section. Every time I paint with watercolors, I tend to have two jars of water. It's just handy so I don't have to keep changing the water while working. I also tend to use a rag to absorb all the extra water when I rinse my brushes. Okay. For this particular painting, I will be using a few brushes. I will be using a 1.5 inch flat brush. The brand I'm using is Ads first choice by teclon. I will also be using three round brushes, and I tend to use the silver black velvet and I have them in sizes four eight and 12. Obviously, the four is for doing more detailed work, whereas the 12 is for coloring larger areas. I will also be using a ceramic palette to put the paints on just so we can have a large quantity of it when we want to do a big wash. I love ceramic palettes because the pain tends to not stick to the well stain this palette. Now I will be talking about the paints that you'll be using for this project. We're not using many colors at all. I'm using the brand Jane Davenport, but you don't have to use the same brand as me. In the brand of Jane Davenport in the palettes, I will be using this color, which is called butterfly. It is very similar to your classic Prussian blue. I'll also be using a color called ink, which is very similar to indigo, lastly, I'll also be using this color called Raven, which is very similar to pains gray or black. The very last pin that I'll be using for this particular project is this beautiful metallic glittery pearly pain. It is by the brand usa kab. It's actually from Japan, and this is called Shine P watercolor, number 41 in dan color blue. If you can't get this particular color or this particular brand, you can use any white metallic paint that you can find. Okay. Last but not least. I will be using a couple of pens. I'll be using a Faber Castel pit artist pen fine liner in black in the size of S, which is 0.3 MM thick. I'll also be using this white gel pen by Sakura. It's jelly roll zero five. This is going to be used to add some white highlights. Lastly, I'll be using also by Sakura this jelly roll metallic silver pen to add little details such as the school of fish. Okay. And that all the materials that you'll be needing for this project. So if you're ready, let's begin. 3. Manta 101: Basic Anatomy: Hi, everyone, and welcome to this section of our class that I like to nickname Manta one oh one where we are just going to talk about the very basic anatomy of Al jian manta rays. The reason I want to take just a couple of minutes to just point out the main features of Al Manta is from past experience when I was trying to sketch and paint a subject that I wasn't very familiar with. I found that I would put a lot of effort in sketching it, painting it, and then at the end, realizing that Oh I didn't even notice that my subject had this feature, this particular feature, or that I didn't get the proportions quite right because I didn't actually do enough research of my subject, especially since I like to do realistic or semi realistic paintings of my subject, I really do feel that even if you're not planning on doing completely realistic sketch and painting of your subject, it really does benefit you to be familiar with at least the main features of your subject that you're painting, which is why I just took a few minutes to just do this very simple watercolor sketch of the giant Manta ray, just from the above view, just so I understood the main features of my subject. The main features that I want to point out before we start sketching and painting from the reference photograph that I've provided is, you'll probably first notice that the manta is quite a flat animal, even though it's not completely flat and it has these massive fins that resemble wings that help it glide through the water very gracefully and these fins are called pectoral fins. It also has another very small set of fins that are almost completely hidden by the pectoral fins and these are called pelvic fins and they're more visible on the underside of our manta. The giant matter ray also has this cute little dorsal fin, just like a little shark that's very close to the edge of its body where its tail begins. What's interesting is even though it's related to sting rays, it has a tail that doesn't have a stinging barb. That's an interesting feature too. It has two eyes on the side of its head, and it has these cool structures that are either called cephalic horns or fins, they are the same structure except when the manta is trying to trap plankton, These fins then unfold, as you've seen in videos or pictures, they are using them to usher in plankton into their mouth. However, when they're not feeding and they're just cruising in the ocean, these fins can be rolled up to form what looks like horns. Hence, in this particular picture, it is in the horn orientation, so we would call it scephalic horns. Another interesting thing to note about the giant manta is that it has these lighter patterns on the tips of its pectoral fins and also on the main body. This is just what we call a chevron pattern where it's lighter compared to the rest of the manta, which is rather dark on the top. These are things that I want to showcase in the mantra painting that we are going to do for this project. So once you're familiar with the main features, you will also understand when I'm sketching or when I'm painting a certain part of my manta, for instance, if I say something like the pectoral fin or the pelvic fin, you will know what I'm talking about. So I'm glad that we took just a few minutes to familiarize ourselves with the main features of our manta that we will see when we're sketching. So if you're ready, let's move on to the sketching portion of our class. See you then. 4. Sketch: Hello, everyone, and welcome to the sketching portion of our class where we will sketch our mantra. I hope you've got your paper and your pencils and rasors ready. Without further ado, how about we begin? The picture, the reference photograph that I've chosen of the mantra is a slightly above view of the mantra, but you also get to see a little bit of the side profile. You get to see the eyes of the body, but it's mainly a top view. But you will see a few cool features as well because it's swimming in this direction and we are viewing it from slightly above. Because I tend to draw big, I want to start over here, and I want to start first with the sphalic horn in the background. I'm just going to draw a little roundish like a rod shape with a rounded end. This is the sphalic horn that's at the back of our picture. Now, if you have something that looks like this, that's good, and I tend to use broken lines when I draw. Now, we are just going to draw a line that connects the bottom and the top and slightly diagonal and we're just going to go above like that at an angle and up there. We just by doing that, we've done the top of the head that is in the background. Now, I just want to make this part a bit thicker, actually, because it is g a bit thicker here. Now, I'm just going to an extension of this line, and I'm going to just curve it around like that. This line is now going to come around here because this is going to link this sphalic horn to the one in the foreground. Because we are viewing the sphalic horn in the foreground, it will look bigger. It will look slightly bigger and it extends a little further out than the one we have at the back there. There we go, and we're going to do the same rod shape that has this roundish here and the rod that extends a bit over here. If you remember the section we did on manta anatomy, the I should be somewhere down here. I'm just going to draw a little bit of a roundish shape here, a bit like a fat. This is where the e of our manta is going to be. I'm just going to draw a very rough. We can refine it later, just so I know the position of the. So it looks very simple, but believe it or not, we've already started laying down the foundation for our mantas head. To me, that's the hardest part. So I just want to also thicken this part and make it a little bit fatter, like it's becoming fadter as it goes up here. And We can always do this later, but I just want to make sure I get that shape right, the mats mouth. If you have something that looks like this, that's great. We just want to extend this line here into to touch the curve line here. That is going to be the inside of our mantas mouth. We've got something that looks like this now, which looks rather simple, but if you have got something like this, you're doing a great job. Now, I just want to extend this line up here a bit. I just want to get the angle right. I'm just going to erase that previous line I drew. I'm just going to go at a bit of an angle here because this is the top of the head, it goes a bit up here, and then it's going to also at a bit of an angle but a less steep angle. It's going to go up here, and this is where we're going to start drawing our pectoral fin. But before I go there, I just want to finish the head over here. We can just roughly put the markings over here. Even though we're going to paint them later. This is just the tip of my sphalic horn. I just want to draw the part that is a bit darker. The sphalic horn has black tips here. I just want to mark that on my drawing, even though we're going to paint this later. So it also helps me just make sure that I kind of get the proportions right as well. So I've got the eye here. There's also a bit of a black darkish mark here, which is just some pattern on the cephalic horn. Over here, it kind of goes in like that. Once more, we can refine this later, but I just thought I would just put rough markings here about where everything goes because you'll just help me get the shape of the head right as well as the proportions. What we have is something that looks like that now. Now, I'm just going to extend a line past the eye that's a continuation of this line, just that the eye sticks out a bit. This would be the under side of our mantle body. From the eye, we've got a bit of a a line here, a black mark here. We're going to just follow this line. Only goes a bit past the eye because I think it's very important that we just map the black part of our mantas head. So you know how the manta ray has a distinct sort of pattern. So it's kind of lightish at certain parts. So I just want to mark that before we painted, I think it just adds a bit of guidelines. And this is then going to go up here. All right. But before I continue doing more of the pattern, I think we should start drawing the pectoral fin at the back, just so I can also get the pattern at the at the right position. When you have a head that looks something like this, and I'm just going to draw a very rough line here because that's just going to indicate when the light pattern starts, we are then going to go up just like this, and it's okay if you're like me, you can use broken lines. We're going to do a nice curved triangular shape that looks like a shark's dorsal fin, is how I would describe it. This is our pectoral fin and it is very triangular in shape, except it has this pointy end over here, a beautiful pointed end that's also a little bit round. To me, it really looks like a big sharks dorsal fin. I'm probably going to have to refine this a bit more, but I just really want to get it's like a smooth line, a smooth transition that looks really beautiful. It sticks out a bit here and then it goes to tap to that point. Then it comes down here. Okay. So I'm just doing this kind of like that and we can refine this later. So now that I've got the fin, I can just use it to kind of sketch the the boundaries of the body where the body meets the pectoral fin. The manta is quite a flat looking animal, but I'm just going to draw this imaginary mid section line that's just going to curve slightly up and extend out like this to where the tail is. It's a very light line that I'm drawing just to add as a guideline. Because yeah, we don't want it to appear totally flat because it does it's not a completely flat animal, even though it is kind of flat. It still has some dimension. So I'm going to then I'm holding my pencil like this because I just want to sketch I just want to try and get some light lines and also just kind of follow the shape. And I don't think I can really do that with my pencil like that. So I'm just going to hold my pencil like that and feel free to experiment with holding your pencils because it also makes a lighter line for me. So I have this shape over here. So it's kind of going down in a curved way down to this mid line that we drew. And this also kind of helps me look at the shape of the pectoral fin I've drawn above. And I actually feel like perhaps I should make it a little bit u a little bit why longer. I think it should just go slightly longer because these are very big fins. If you're lucky enough to swim at one of these animals, which I was fortunate enough to do on a snorkeling trip, they are massive. I definitely want to capture the beauty of that tail. I mean, the beauty of how massive it is the wing span, so to speak, of the fins, is just so wide. But what's lovely is it's such a gentle animal that's not even very interested in us. I'm just going to what happens with this fin, it's a beautiful shape. Just think of a triangle, think of the dorsal fin of a shark. It's triangular, but it has a roundish tip, and then it comes back down like that. But it also goes up a little like this. Okay. And we're going to taper down here. We're going to meet with this line here. Another thing that our mid line that we've drawn helps us with is the placement of its cute little dorsal fin. Amanda has this gorgeous little dorsal fin. That also looks like a little shark fin. So this dorsal fin is going to have that very distinct kind of sharkish shape and because of the angle of the photograph, you'll see part of it. And I just want to get that cute shape in. Then we can extend this out. There is a bit of a in this photograph. It goes a little bit like this, and then we've got this beginning of the tail. And the til the dorsal fin sits where the tail is. I just want to do that. This is a very rough sketch. The tail of the manor ray is not actually that long in comparison to its body. It actually has a pretty short tail in proportions to its body. Now, while I'm doing this, I'm happy with how this is looking, but I'm just feeling that perhaps I just curve this part a bit too much. I'm just going to extend this a little. This is the part of the drawing process where when we lay down the foundations, we can start refining it a more. Perhaps I might have made this part go out a little bit too much. This is the time. I'm just going to use my eraser to just fix stuff up that we're not happy with angles of lines, things like that. Also once you're happy with it, let's just erase the lines that we don't really need because we want to clean look before we start painting. It also helps us just to see things better. I feel like that is good. Let me just clean the lines that I did previously. Okay. All right. So that's looking good. All right. I've got a lot done already. I've got a lot laid out, which is great because this is just going to help us finish our sketch. Now, I'm just going to There is this part over here that extend what I'm sketching now is the blackish section. Then this is a little bit of the under side of our manta that's showing here. I'm just going to now make this extend the pectoral fin. The pectoral fin at the front should be a little bit bigger than the one at the back because it is in the foreground. So once more, we're trying to do an upside down so shock shape. So I'm just looking at the photo, my reference photograph. And I feel that I think I think it should probably come out a bit more here. I think I probably made it come out a little bit too late. So I want to just so please take your time to sketch to get it right because you don't want to finish your painting and then, you know, have regrets that, oh, I should have done this part better or something like that. So I feel like it should sort of do that. I come to a point over here. And then Okay. Come back. So that is the shape of our I'm just trying to see whether yep, I'm happy with that. So I'm just going to now use this curve to kind of refine that a bit. I think I might have I might have made my might have made it go a bit too. I think this shape. So what I'm doing now, it's a matter of, you know, refining it now, just looking at your reference photograph or, you know, if you want to make it as accurate as possible to a reference photograph. But if you if you're happy with what you've got so far, you don't have to spend as much time as me refining it. I guess I'm I'm a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to trying to make an animal sketch look very well, at least semi realistic because this is also this painting has a bit of of some fantasy elements because I do want to add that shine. So your four ground pectoral fin should be larger, slightly larger than that, and it should also, I'm just going to use a ruler. In the reference photograph, you can see that the tip of this pectoral fin, that's right starts. It kind of goes more to the right. It's not exactly on top of this one. It's not the same distance. Yes. Okay. I'm I'm just looking to see what else I can refine a little bit here. We've got the, but so far, I'm really happy with the shape. Finally, I just want to now, I'm going to just trace the boundary between the pectoral fin in the foreground and the body. So as you remember, our the mentor anatomy portion of this class, the sketch that I showed you that I studied shows that the The pectoral fin is going to taper all the way over here. But in this particular photograph, we can see part of the pelvic fin sticking out. I really want to include that. What I'm going to do is I've got this part of this is where the pectoral fin ends, and we've got the pelvic fin coming out in this photograph. Every manta is different, but that is the anatomy, basically. We can see it quite clearly coming out and it has a bit of a white marking on it. I'm just going to highlight the white marking by just drawing it there, and this is where I'm also just going to draw the pelvic fin in the background. You can also see that quite clearly in this photograph. I just want to put that there. This is the boundary of the other pelvic fin. Okay. I hope that doesn't look too messy. Let me just clean that up a bit. This line is clearly the tail, and let's just do our tail. And we've got this is the back pelvic fin, and then we also have this is the pelvic fin in the foreground here. And it has this marking on it a bit of a white marking here. And that's as much detail as I want to do of this because I feel like that's enough. Okay. That's looking good to me. We've got our dorsal fin, which is very, very far at the back here, almost right where the tail is. Now the only thing, if you're happy with the shape of your pectoral fins and let me just see what else has to be done before we can finish this sketch. Yeah. We've got that shape there. I'm just going to erase these lines that we don't need because we're going to paint it Okay. So let's just round that tip there of the pectoral fin in the background. Yeah, I'm happy with that. And this looks a bit thick. So let's just erase these lines. Yeah. I think that looks great. I just want to see if I left anything out. Oh, yes, the shading. I just want to check the shape here. I think that's a good shape. I think we can see it comes a bit down like that. It is a bit at an angle there. I just want to try and replicate that. This is a time to do all these little adjustments before we paint now that we have everything laid out. All right. Okay. So I just have to do the the markings. So where the markings, so we've got The marking here is just going to follow the boundary of the pectoral fin and and the body. But what's important here is the marking up here. Up here, we've got it's going to come here. As you can see from the reference photograph, it goes like this, and then it kind of meets in the middle, the very mid line that we drew. Then we see that again over here. And it's just going to also kind of come down at an angle like that. And then it's not very clear, but that's all we really need. We've done it. That's good. And, um, I just want to refine that line a little bit. Yeah, it's going to meet where, I think that's good. I think I'm just being a little bit too meticulous. So we've got the eye. I guess I could mark the pupil right now. I mean, I could always paint it later, but I guess it's nice to have that. So there's our Manasing much like a shock may I add. That looks great. I might as well just add this little line here because I can clearly see this inside part of the mouth is much darker than the outer part. All right. Let me just take a step back to have a look at it. I think a ray is looking really good. What we can do now is also just erase this mid line. We don't need it anymore. Just erase the lines that we don't need. Okay. We can who. Let me just adjust this. We can erase this line. Oh, that's looking really good. I'm just wondering whether I should just keep the mid line over here. I don't think there's any harm in keeping it. So I'm just staring at this and it's looking really good to me. So if you're happy with your sketch, we can then move on to the next section where I will show you how to use masking tape to create a border around your painting. So see you in the next step. Thank you. 5. Creating a Border with Masking Tape: Okay. Hello, and welcome back. In this section of the class, I'm going to show you how to use Musking tape to just tape a boundary around your subject so that you can then paint a background and it won't go past that boundary. So in this particular painting that I've designed, I want to just work with a very simple rectangular background. In order to do that, and to just make sure our paint doesn't go past the paper, and it will also create a really cute little frame when we finish our painting. I decided, I'm just going to put this tape right at the very edge of my paper. So I'm just going to put it right here. So take your time to do this section because it's worth like, you know, placing it very carefully on your paper. The great thing about masking tape is, you can just tear it off, which is wonderful. You want to try and create a straight border that's going to so you can see it's sticking out a bit here. I just want to readjust that and place it down. I'm also doing this in my book. I think this would be easier to do if you had loose sheets, but I just want my painting to be in my book for now. So that's looking pretty good to me. A very important thing you need to do is once you place your tape, you need to just go over it gently with your finger, just to make sure you get rid of all those air bubbles underneath. Otherwise, your paint can just go through underneath and then you don't have that nice neat border anymore. I just tuck my tape a little bit behind the paper, the sheet. But please do take some time to really do the step. Otherwise, the paint the pain can see through underneath and then you won't have that neat border. So when you're happy with that, it's time to do this side. So I'm going to go as close as I can to the very edge of my painting, and I'm trying to create a neat rectangular border. I'm going to tear this. Just tuck it in there. One more. That looks good to me, looks very secure. Next, Okay. Remember, this step is not a race and you're better off doing it very carefully. As close to the edge again as possible because you will be painting a little bit over this tape when you do your background. It's going to tuck that in. Smooth out any air bubbles. I'm just going to put this down here. As you can see, I've a dotted line on my paper where you can tear it out. I'm just going to try and use that dotted line as a bit of a reference line and tear out my musking tape. Smooth all the air bubbles away. There we go. I can see one big one there. And when you are happy that your tape is in place and you've smoothed out all the air bubbles, we can start doing the background, which is going to be a lot of fun. So see you in the next video. 6. Base Coat: Hello, and welcome back. And we are about to do our very exciting laying down of the base wash. Now that we have our sketch secured with usking tape. We are now going to create a very loose background to kind frame our mantra and really will make it look like our mantra just floating above some very rough coral shapes below in the sand below. So we're not going to put an incredible amount of detail in this because l mana is the star of our painting. But what this is going to achieve is it will really give the illusion that Amana ra is just swimming very gracefully above the coral beds below. To do this, we're only going to use two colors. I'm using Jane Davenport paints. And so the paints all have their own names. Even though the colors I'm using in this set will be this blue over here, which is called butterfly in the Jane Davenport set, but it is very close to Prussian blue. We'll also be using this color called ink in the set, which is very close to indigo. If you are ready, let's pick up your 1.5 inch flat brush that we're going to just now use some clean water, and we are just going to apply and even glaze of clean water. So what you want to do is you want to make sure your whole page is wet evenly. We don't want pools of water. We don't want it to be just soaked. To do this, you might have to stand up because even as I sit down, the angle makes it a bit hard for me to see parts of the paper that have already started drying at the top. I'm just going to go over with my brush again. Now, you just want to be a bit careful that you're not hurting the paper. You're not applying too much pressure and making the paper you're not compromising the integrity of the paper. To do that, I would just suggest very gentle brush strokes of water. I'm standing up doing this part because I just want to see if you have put the right amount of water in your entire sheet should be have this lovely sheen, there shouldn't be any puddles of water, there should just be a nice and even sheen. I can see that now. While this is happening while I have this even sheen, I'm going to take some of this pain and I'm going to put it here. As you can see, this color is very similar to Prussian blue. I am going to I'm going to have quite a generous amount of it because when I tried out this color earlier and I did a flat wash. It may look very strong and intense, but I can assure you that water colors always tend to dry lighter. It will end up looking lighter. Don't be scared if the color looks very strong. But right now, I'm just going to do that. I'm going to pick up some of this pain with my 1.5 inch brush and I'm just going to as you can see, brush over here. I just want to make sure that I don't leave any little bits of of unpainted areas. I'm just going to try and apply and even sheen. I'm going to have to try and get more paint out because this is a huge surface area. I'm getting more paint out just going to dip my brush back in and I'm just going to continue. Don't worry if it's not completely even because after all this is supposed to be the ocean. Okay. So I've gone all the way to the bottom of my page as you can see. But I want to I think, I just want to make the top slightly darker because I feel that in the reference photograph and since I was there when the picture was taken, the sand at the bottom is actually lighter then we've got the ocean around it. So, that's looking good to me. And what I want to do now is, I'm just going to let let this pain just settle. So I think I'm okay with that. I mean, I was thinking of maybe even going over it another time with with the blue pain. Because like I said before, when I tried this out, it actually dried a lot lighter than I expected. Okay. So I'm just going over it one more time. Just carrying the pain all the way to the bottom. As you can see, my paper is still very wet, which is exactly what I want. Because now. Sorry, my brush split a bit there. Now I'm going to do the fun part of adding the coral shapes in. I'm not going to need my 1.5 inch brush anymore, so I'm just going to leave it aside. What I will need is to use a brush. To take some indigo. I call it indigo. It is very similar to indigo. In this set, it's just called ink, but I'm going to take this now. What I'm going to do is, I think I might use my size 12 round brush. I'm just going to wet it I'm using very concentrated pain because I'm going to now drop in. I think I need to make this more concentrated. I'm going to drop in some shapes, as you can see. I'm not thinking too much about these shapes. What I want to do is I want to create the illusion that there are rocks or C shapes at the bottom. I need to do this while the pain while the background is still wet. As you can see, what you're seeing is the paint is blending into the background, it's moving. I'm just creating a bit of cor shapes, really, this is very abstract. I'm not really thinking much about it at all. And I can assure you it will dry a lot lighter than it looks. So I do want to even though this is supposed to look natural and organic, I do want to avoid, as you can see in the reference photographs, A manta is swimming above some corals, But I would rather have the corals touching the boundary of the manta because I really want the manta to stand out. What I want to do actually is use the corals as well to frame the manta. That is why I don't really want to paint rocks like touching the boundary of the manta. I'm just once more, just doing the shapes. I think we can put I'm running out of pain. I'm concentrating the shapes to be in the lower half of the painting. Okay. Once more, I'm really not thinking very hard about, what should the shapes look like in stuff except I am varying some of the sizes of the shapes because I feel like some variety would be cool. Some are going to be smaller than others. As you can see, it's blended, but it looks so much lighter than then putting down, you know, The strong indigo just now, it really does when it blends out, it becomes so much lighter. So I'm going to now work. As you can see, my painting is already, the background is starting to dry. So I'm going to start trying to put the shapes down. I have to work a little bit faster. Okay. The bottom is still a bit wet, but as you can see, starting to I definitely want to do a little bit of shapes like Well, my brush is as you can see the background paint is really drying. So as we get higher in the painting because our manta is kind this is a bit of an above view. I just wanted to do the sing a bit kind of diny and small. In the background because that's supposed to be further away from our view. It makes sense for that part to be a bit lighter, if you really want to think about perspective and stuff like that because if you want your manta painting to look realistic. It's just like how things appear smaller in the distance. That's what I'm going for here. Maybe not as many Rocks and stuff in the background. Don't worry about the bottom because we want to make that look a bit darker. I'm using it looks pretty diluted, which is fine. The stuff in the background is going to look a little bit. What I also want to do now. While it's the paint is still a bit wet is, I'm going to use a bit of splattering. All I had was paint on the brush I was using. Don't worry if it goes on the manta. It's okay. We're going to paint the manta pretty dark color so it won't really matter. I'm just trying to create texture, trying to create the illusion of hey, they rocks and corals of every size on the ocean floor. That's all I'm doing. Okay. And if you really want to, you can even dilute your paint even more and just do some rough shapes there in the distance. Even though I think that the water is looking fine. Okay. So I'm quite happy with this. I think I just want to splatter a bit more. What I want to do is, I really do think that my splattering did go out there, but don't worry, it's fine. It actually looks like distant rocks. It's totally fine. I want to now use a smaller round brush because I'm going to use my size eight. I'm just going to get some more of that paint. What I want to do is this is already dry. Well, drh. I want to just go over some of these shapes just to try and emphasize the fact that hey, the corals that are closer to the foreground of this painting are going to be darker than the ones that are further away. That's all I'm doing here. I'm just creating shapes with my brush, not really thinking much about them at all. I'm letting some of that previous layer just shine. We'll see some because the view is slightly above the manta. We will see some edges of coral, but this is still very much and above view. But we will see a bit of edges of the coral. That's what I'm trying to create. Now, going to use more of the ink in color, I'm really not thinking about this much. I'm just using my brush to create I guess the pointy edges of corals. Okay. And I'm going to let some of that previous layer show through. Almost has a bit of a crystaly look about it, which I love. So now you understand why we've got our tape here, right? It's going to create some nice a clean border later. And I think I might while my paint is starting to dry already, I'm just going to I mean, the backgrounds already drying. So now it's almost like a wet on dry technique that I'm using. As we go further out into the painting, it should definitely get lighter, the rock shapes or the coral shapes, whatever you want to call them. They should get lighter. I just feel like this will look good here. I'm just rewetting the pain I already have and just trying to see the fact that we did some coral shapes surrounding our manta will make the manta stand out even more in this painting. Okay. So these rocky shapes are looking really cool. But it can also come down here. Just turning my brush upside down. Wow, I'm going to need more paint. Okay, maybe a little bit here. These are all random shapes, but it will really come together at the end. When we paint our man, it's going to look really cool. So how much you want to do of this really depends on you. But just try and fade your coral shapes out as you get to the background. So, I'm kind of already kind of going Okay. So it's a bit of an ambiguous shape there, but it's cool. Maybe I might do this one just a little bit more. But my paper is the backgrounds almost semi dry, as you can see, which is why we're not getting a tremendous amount of bleeding of the pains anymore. They're not blending as much anymore. I'm just doing my own little technique of pressing down with my brush to create pointy shapes in the background. Okay. So look, if you want a more roundish shape, that's fine too. You can you know, these are supposed to be rocks or corals below Al Manta. Okay. So to tell you the truth, I think the top part is looking fine. I don't think I really need to touch a lot on that. I think that's more like it's more just, you know, distant orally shapes. Okay, I'm I don't actually want to spend a tremendous amount of time like, you know, doing this because I feel that we are already suggesting the shapes at the bottom of the on the sand. So I don't feel like I need to do the ones over there. As you can see, we got this cool effect here, which is just really when we splat it. Yeah, it's interacted with the wet paper and created some cool patterns. I'm just going to take a step back. I'm just looking at this, and I think, I think it actually is pretty cool. These random shapes. Just having a look. They're looking nice and they kind of fade out in the background there. What I can do actually now is just create a little bit more texture. With the pain that I have left by just splattering, whatever's left in here? I don't have a lot of pain on my brush, which is why the splattering is not as pronounced, but we're just creating, pebbly look on the floor of the ocean. Just to fill in a few spaces, but I'm actually happy with that. We don't have to cover everything. Tell the truth, I think that's looking good. I'm happy with it. As you can see, it's darker shapes in the foreground fading to the back there. We don't want to touch these shapes at the back. I'm just wondering if I need to darken this anymore I don't think we really need to because the corals are not really the star of this painting. I feel like that's fine already. I'm just having a final look. Perhaps I just want to add a little bit more of dimension on this coral over here. Okay. Doing some funny brushy pattern here. Okay. Yep. This guy over here. So this is my own technique that I'm using to create these orally looks. It's kind of, yeah. I don't really have a name for it. I like. Okay. What I'm doing here is I'm concentrating the darker color. The darker color should be nearer the foreground here, but I can also alternate it between the lighter areas and the darker areas. So it kind of looks like, you know, coral kind has a bit of a three dimensional feeling to it. But like I said before, the corals are not the star of the show. The mantas. So I don't want to wait I guess I'm kind of eager to start painting the manta. That's going to be so much fun. The last final bits to try and create just a little bit of dimension. Okay. Yeah. And as I said before, how much detail you want, with your coral, with your painting is really up to you. I think that's looking really good. I might just a bit more some dark shapes over here. Well, I'm taking a step back and I'm looking at it. Maybe a bit of dark shapes here. It's almost like doing petals on a flower, kind like a crystal shape. Almost done. Let me just re wet. I'm just going to use whatever pain I have left in my palate to just darken some of these shapes. All right. I think we are done. I really think we're done. I really don't think we need to do anymore now that I'm standing up and having a look at this. So what we need to do now is just completely dry. Because even though I said the background is drying, I can still feel it's not completely dry. The paper itself still feels kind of damp to me. It's like you can feel the weight of the water. It's still in the paper. It hasn't fully evaporated yet. So the paper is still not completely dry. What we want to do next before we start painting Amanda and bringing it to life is we want to let this dry completely. In the meantime, go have a break and relax. And when we come back in the next video, we are going to start painting manta, so that will be very exciting. See you in the next video. 7. Manta First Coat: Hello, and welcome back to our manta class. I hope you had a good break while your background was completely drying. So this is completely dry now, and I can't wait to finally start painting my manta. Without further ado, why don't we begin? Now, what I want to do, it's to build up the color of the manta in layers. Now, you might just think, am I just going to use black because black is obviously a dark color or pines gray and just use that color to build it up. I mean, we could do that, we could. But for me, I feel that rather than just applying two or three layers of black or pines gray, I would rather apply the colors that I've used in the background. So as you can see, When we painted our flat wash in one of the initial steps, O manta has obviously got some of that flat wash, it's gotten the Prussian blue, which is known as butterfly in this set of paints. It is already has a blue tone to it. But because I would like to paint the manta in a way that we're going to build up the layers of color, but I would love some of the blues and indigos to come through underneath when we go over them finally with black. So rather than just use black, I feel that laying down a couple of washes of the Prussian blue and the indigo would really give our manta a sort of richer color that also has hues of blue and indigo rather than just black because some of that color will come through. So that's what I'd like to achieve. Before we start painting, I just want to take you through what we're going to do. So I'm going to start off using the blue that we used earlier in the background, which is Prussian blue, but also called butterfly in this set that I'm using. Rather than paint the entire manta at once, using a flat wash of butterfly. What I intend to do is paint the manta by sections. As you can see, there's a line here where the pectoral fin in the foreground meets the body. There's a pectoral fin at the back that meets the body over here at this boundary, and I think I would prefer to paint each section separately. Just so we have more control over each section rather than to paint it as a whole, because we are going to use a technique called lifting. If you look at your reference photograph that I've provided of the manta, you will notice that the manta has some lighter coloring at the tips of its pectoral fins. It also has a lighter pattern here on its body. I want to try and achieve that by applying down a washer pin and then using a clean dam brush to slowly lift some of that color off, so that we're exposing the lighter coat underneath. If you want to do lifting, and I think is a pretty big area of Amanda we specifically want to lift in these areas, I feel we have more control if we just paint one section at a time. This is just my take on this. I'm sure there are other artists out there that can paint very quickly and lift the paint off. But because we're going to do this lifting technique several times while we're laying down the colors, I just feel that focusing on one section at a time will just give us a lot more control. So I've just spent a lot of time talking about that. So what I want to do is, I think I'm going to use my size eight round brush. I hope you've cleaned your water jar from the last step that we did all that we used the Prussian blue and indigos. I hope you've cleaned your water so that you've got two new clean jars of water to start with for this part. So I think what I want to do is I'm going to start with the pectoral fin in the foreground here. So I mean, you could probably use your size 12 brush for this too. But I'm just going to lay down a clean Nice even layer of water. This pain that I used in the previous step, the Prussian blue or butterfly, as it's called, it actually is quite a staining pain, meaning that once you lay it down, it is very hard to remove. Some watercolors have more staining properties than others, and in this one, As you can see, when I put the water down, it didn't lift. It just when it's dried, it stays very put. Some watercolors do that and you call them staining. Others don't really and you can lift them up quite easily. That's fine for us to work with. I've already wet this area and there's a nice even sheen. Before it dries unevenly, I'm going to put down some of that color we used previously. What I'm going to do is, I'm just going to drop it in. As you can see, it's a nice rich blue, and I'm making this pectoral fin darker. Don't worry so much about me going past the boundary. It's perfectly okay because we'll be painting that area anyway. What's very important to note here is, I want to leave this area over here lighter. Okay. Sorry, can be a bit tricky to see because of the reflection of the light above me. I might have to shift around in my chair a bit and I encourage you to do so as well if you can't really see. So I'm sure going to paint at the boundary over here. It's it's almost a flat wash except I left I've intentionally left that area a little bit lighter over here. Okay. But everything else is pretty uniform. I'm going to stand up and have a look. That's lighter. In fact, I thought I would have to lift it, but I don't have to actually because I've left that area quite a lot lighter. I don't actually have to lift it much right now at all. Perhaps I'll do the lifting later. If you don't have to lift to, that's fine. I want this area to be slightly, as you can see this tip is lighter than the almost flat wash that I've laid down on the rest of the pectoral fin in the background. Okay. But if I am going to lift it, I just want to show you what I'm going to do. I'm going to rinse the brush I just used. I'm going to wipe it on my rag, and I'm just going to slowly scoop up some of that paint. But I had already preserved it quite well. As you can see, this part is a little bit lighter than the rest, and that's exactly what I want. It's looking really good now. I feel that I can start doing the pectoral fin in the background. What I'm going to do is once more, use clean water to paint. Well, I use clean water to just lay down a layer even layer of water because we're going to do the exact same thing. Okay. This is still very wet and I will still be observing it because if the pain start to come into that area, we will have to use the lifting technique again. But in the meantime, it's looking okay. I may have to lift it later. While this is happening, I have a pretty even sheen going on here. I'm going to do the exact same thing. I'm going to drop in my Prussian blue. Right at the boundary here and going to get more of that. Go all the way. I think since we want to save the area right before the tips, we can go all the way to the tip here. Just watch your brush here because you just want to make sure that tip of the fin is nice and that nice rounded shape up there. Now, I'm just going to well, as you can see the surroundings, the water is already drying. It's a pretty hot day here in Sydney right now while I'm doing this. As you can see, it's already starting to dry, but don't worry about that. We're just going to clean our brush. I'm just going to even though I left this area bare, I didn't drop paint in this area. I'm just going to smooth out the edges of that area that's lighter because I wanted to To look I don't want hard lines, and I'm going to do that again. I'm just going to lift a bit of the color here. This part is looking really good. Don't worry if if it doesn't look even, it's okay because we're going to go over this with quite a few layers, so that's really fine. In fact, because this dried very quickly, I'm going to just re wet the area. Okay. Don't worry, if it looks a bit messy now, what I want to do is, I'm just going to re wet this area, the entire area. I'm just going to repeat what I did last time. I'm just going to drop in the blue. Very careful. Watch your hands. You don't want to rest your hand on a wet area. Because the manta is supposed to be, it doesn't matter if I'm redoing the step, I just want to make sure I cover this area well. Dropping in the pain again. And we're going to try and drop in the pain everywhere except that very tip that we want to be lighter. That section. What I'm going to do now is I'm going to rinse my brush again in clean water, dab it on the rag, and I'm just going to very carefully lift out some of that color. Because this area is wet, it will be a look a lot smoother than the edges that you saw initially when I did that. Now this is already starting to almost completely dry, as you can see, but it's not completely dry yet, but it is a bit lighter. I feel that since this is going well, and we've already lifted out some of that color here. And it's still very wet we've lifted out a lot of color, and I think that's enough. You can just try and look at what the pattern is on my reference photograph. It looks something like that. If you have something that looks like that, that's great. You can even see it's slightly lighter here, I can lift a bit out here. It's just slightly lighter. If you don't really want to do the step, that's fine too. All right. That's looking good to me. What I'm thinking is this looks very light. As you know, as I've said many times before, water colors always tend to dry lighter than when you apply them. I just want to repeat this step. Like I did for the pectoral fin at the back, I want to just re wet this area and drop in the Prussian blue color. Same thing. I'm going to just drop it in Okay. Just drop it in. And you're going to work you're going to work quite quickly, but not to the point that, you know, you feel very rushed, but you do want to lay down this color. Reasonably quickly because your paper will start drying, especially if the weather is similar to what it is for me now in Sydney where it's very hot and dry right now. So your paper is going to dry very quickly. So you want to try and get that color down carefully, but working quickly. There we go. That's looking good. Okay. All right. So that's looking good to me. And I've left that area kind of kind of free of pain. So I don't think I really particularly have to lift it too much right now. Sorry, I know that this whole parts actually blue. It's just that it's the reflection that you're seeing now. I'm happy with these two areas being left and I don't want to lift any more paint right now from this one because it's already semi dried. If I do attempt to use a wet brush and lift the pain now, I'm going to leave some marks that I really don't want. I'm going to leave some hard edges. I'm fine with what we've done over there. You can clearly see it's lighter. This one you can also clearly see is lighter. I feel that right now, Before we do the main body and we repeat the steps that we just did for the pectoral fins on the main body. But then we're going to lift some of that paint off over here to do the pattern. I think that right now, we should just let the two pectoral fins completely dry because we don't want to start working on this area yet. We don't want the pain from here to bleed into the pectoral fins. My advice to you now is just rinse your brush. And go have a break, a well deserved break. When your pectoral fins are completely dry. Let's start doing the body again. Hello, and welcome back. I hope your pectoral fins have both dried really well. If they are completely dry now, we can start painting the body. Now, in the section where I talked about anatomy of the manta basic anatomy, I mentioned that these giant manta rays have what we call a chevron pattern on their body, where it will be a little bit. It appears to be these white markings. What we're going to do here is before I do it, I just want to let you know, we are going to wet this entire area except the scephalic horns, which I want to leave lighter. We're going to wet this area all the way until the tail, and we are then going to drop in the same Prussian blue color, which is called butterfly in this set. We have put down even layer of the blue color, we are then going to apply the lifting technique, where we are going to lift some of the blue off to create that chevron pattern. I just thought I would talk you through what we're about to do. I'm just going to use my size eight round brush again. I'm going to wet this area all the way from the eye until Yeah, until the tail. Once more, as always, we want a nice even glaze of water. I'm just going to go where that boundary is. If you have bright lights like me overhead, please feel free to move around your chair or to stand up to just check that you've completely wet the area that you want to drop paint in because it can be a bit hard to see in this bright lighting. I will also paint the pelvic fin. Because later on, we will Tell, I don't have to do I notice the pelvic fin has a bit of a white stripe there. But that white stripe can easily be defined later on with a white gel pen. If you notice I'm not doing the inside of the mantas mouth right now. I will do that when this is all dry. In fact, I might only start working on the mouth like after I've done the body. Maybe we can also start doing the scephalic horns as well. I'm just going over it again with water. The tail is not too important right now. We don't have to really do the tail that well because, We can always use a black pen later to define it. If you have a nice glaze going on as you can see here, once more, I'm going to just my paints are really drying in this weather. I'm going to start with the head. I'm going to drop in the color as you can see. The color is butterfly. All the way in the head here. So it goes all the way into the eye. And we are going to just let this color just spread. So as I said before, we do want to work like, you know, at a swift rate. You know, we don't want to rush and make mistakes, but we do want to keep that paint evenly wet when we want to do the lifting. There we go. The tail is not that important. In fact, I don't have to do the tip right now. I will just because it would be better if I did that with a black pen later anyway. I'm just going to go over this area again. In fact, I can use a more concentrated version of butterfly paint because manta is supposed to be dark. Once more, try and cover the entire area even with the blue paint, including the dorsal fin. The tail. You don't have to do the tail that well. All right. Right now, I've got this going on. For the Chevron pattern, I'm going to switch to a smaller brush, the size four round brush. Wet your brush, remove excess water with the rag as you can see, I'm going to lift some paint here. Cleaning my brush, lifting again. Every time you lift pain, you do have to rinse your brush. Just dab it on your rag to remove the excess water. I can see this pattern goes down here. Okay. Did you know that every manta has a different pattern. It's like a fingerprint, which is how scientists can identify them. So thought that's an interesting fact when we're doing this Chevron pattern now. I'm only going to lift the pain where I want it to be lighter obviously to create this pattern. So I can see that it goes down here. It's a bit thicker here. That sound that you're hearing is me rinsing my brush every time I do this. So Okay. Yeah. So I would say we lift the color all the way until maybe the middle of the body, then we stop. And we are just going to as your pain dries, the pain is drying now. So I'm probably going to stop lifting the pain soon because I don't want to leave I just want to do this part, just want to lift the pain off here. I'm happy with that. I just feel that we might have to I don't know if we have to repeat the step just yet, with blue again, like we did with the pectoral fins. I think it might be all right to move on and maybe start with Indigo. I'm happy with that Chevron pattern that we've accomplished by lifting and our paint is already starting to dry. So I think if you have something that resembles this, you've done a good job and we can stop doing it because I think our pain is really sin and dry, so we have that pattern done. What I suggest doing now is, why don't we let this body completely dry and while we're doing that, why don't we pay attention to things that we can do like the scephalic horn over here. We can start working on the parts that are not touching the head that we just did. So I'm just going to use a bit of that blue and just kind of painted a little where the black tips are supposed to be. So I'm just laying down some color there, and then I'll go on top of it with the black later. So don't worry about little marks like this and stuff. I think that just has to do when I lifted the paper because we can easily cover that with the black paint later on. So that's all looking good, in fact, I might just use this blue actually to just outline that boundary. This is part of the underside of the manta that we're seeing. This part is actually supposed to appear a bit blue, so I'm just going to add a bit of color there near the eye over here and then it's just a little bit lighter over there. A man is going to look a lot darker once we're done with it. These are little things that we can do right now while waiting for this to dry. I might just go over the tail because the tail is like a separate part, so it doesn't really matter if I touch if the pain there is still a bit. I just want to outline my define it a little bit with the blue. But in our next step, we are going to move on from blue. And we're going to start doing um the indigo. We're going to use the color indigo, which is called ink in this set to go over our pectoral fins again, each done separately. But as you can see, the reason why I chose to do each separately is we have so much more control that way rather than painting the entire thing and trying to lift pain. I think that can be quite stressful, especially if you're not an advanced watercolor student. I'm glad we decided to do each part in sections. Right now, I would suggest we can just wait For the body, the scephalic horns, everything we've just painted in this step to completely dry. Go have another break, rinse your brushes, change your water. I will see you back here when your body of your manta has completely dried and we will start with the next color. 8. Manta Second Coat: Hello, and welcome back. And I hope your mantas body has completely dried because now we're going to start adding a much darker color, the darker color of ink that we previously used in the background to do the coral shapes. Without further ado, let's begin. We are going to start with the front pectoral fin again, and we're just going to repeat the same steps. I know it may seem like a little bit tedious like doing this over and over again, but we do have to build up the intensity of the color of the manta. Okay. And, you know, my approach is to take a very, you know, relaxed approach. Just, you know, enjoy the process. It's actually relaxing to tell you the truth now that we're doing each section like individually. I did when designing this class, I did try to do the entire man in one go. I can tell you that the lifting of the color was very stressful when I had to lift color in several areas at once. I'm quite happy that we're doing each section separately. If you've got a nice even sheen here with the clean water, it's time to have fun and put down your color ink. Okay. So once more, we're just doing exactly what we did last time. So we want to work quite swiftly, but carefully. So we're just dropping in pain up to that boundary. I think I'm going to need more of this color. And, um, We're just going to add that in dropping it in. Try to stay within the boundaries. Try not to go out of the boundaries. We're going to try and work fast. But remember, we don't want to drop the color into that nice lighter area that we've saved that we went to the effort of saving. I'm going to have to put more I'm going to have to put a more concentrated version of the color. I'm going to go all the way to the end here, but do you notice I'm avoiding that area. Okay. So just dropping it in up here. That area is it's looking lighter now, which is what we want. I'm just going to drop in the color. You want to try and drop in this color gently so that you don't move the blue around. The blue that's already dried, but even though I told you, it's quite a staining color, the Prussian blue or what's called in this set butterfly. It doesn't which is good because we don't want to lift right now in this step when it's already dried. We just want to move our indigo around. As you can see, it's looking really good. The indigo has definitely helped to darken the overall look of this pectoral fin. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to rinse my brush, the same brush I'm using the size eight round. I'm just going to dab it on the rag and I'm just going to do a bit of lifting just a little bit, even though we'd already left this area, untouched with the indigo pain. I'm just lifting it slightly because it will bleed a little bit, so I'm just going to lift that I'm standing up to have a look and that's looking really good to me. We've definitely kept that area lighter. I'm just going to do it one more time. Remember, clean brush, and you want it damp. You don't want it soaking with water, which is why you have to dab it on your rag first to remove excess water. If you're happy with that and I'm happy with that, I'm going to move on to the next pectoral fin. I'm going to do exactly the same thing that I did before, putting some clean water in That's why it also helps to have two jars of water. I use one jar of water as my clean water to put it down on the paper, and I have the other jar to wash my brushes in. I'm doing the same thing. I'm just lifting the paper just to check that it has a nice, even she. This is drying really beautifully. Just watch your hand that you don't rest on the wet area. That's looking great. Now, I'm just going to get more of this color ink, and I'm going to start dropping it in. So we do want this area. There's a little bit of a lighter area here, which I'm going to save as much as I can, but I do want it to look natural. I don't want it to look like very edgy. I'm just going to drop in my color like I did just now, all the way from the boundary of the pectoral fin and the body dropping it in As you can see, we are building up the color of our manta very beautifully, may I add, which is why I really didn't want to just use black. I wanted to use blues and indigos because all these colors will come through a little. At the end, even when we do go over them with b, some of it will still shine. It will have a bluish tinge to it, wh I feel prettier than just having it all black. All right. That's looking gorgeous. And as you can see, I left that area very light. I'm just kind of blending around it. And it looks good. I don't think I really need to lift much. This part might be a bit too light, so I'm just going to drop in a bit more paint here. I'm just going over just the boundaries of the fin. That's looking really good to me. I don't think I really need to lift it very much, but I might as well just use my clean brush. I just don't want hard lines, so I'm just going to use it just a bit. I'm just going to lift a bit. But to me that looks great. I just don't want hard edges. So I'm going to stop because I don't want to remove too much of the pain and have hard edges because the paint is already starting to dry. So I'm just outlining the boundaries right now, but as you can see, I clearly have a lighter area, the lighter area here. So what we can do now, actually, while this is drying is, we can start working a bit more on the cephalic horns and the mouth. What I want to do is, I just want to go over I might actually go inside the mouth. All I'm doing is putting some of that indigo that was on my brush in here. Remember this part's going to be darker because this is where there's a bit of a shadow with the entrance of the mouth. I'm also going to just carry this color in here. Yeah, because we wet the area, so it's spreading a little bit, but we don't want it too dark. I might switch brushes now to my small size for round brush and I'm just going to try and blend this so it looks good. Yeah. That looks good. I was just using indigo, by the way. As that dries, I can just put some indigo over here. Along the edge there. I'm also going to do this over here. So these are the dark tips of the scephalic horn. Okay. And I might as well do the eye too. Okay. And I might just do the outline over here while I wait. I'm kind of doing this while my hand hovers over this wet area. Just so we can start laying down some of that color. So this part is going to be a bit lighter. I'm going to leave that a bit lighter the underblly And, that's looking good. I might just take as you can see, my pins are drying very quickly in the palette just because it's such a hot dry day here. And let me just want to do that section again. Yeah, it's looking good. Okay, that's looking good to me. Now, I just have to it's not fully dried yet. The body. I mean, the pectoral fins, they're not fully dry yet, so I don't want to attempt to paint the body yet and lift the color because I don't want bleeding from the body to go into the pectoral fins. So once more, we are going to take a little break. Go and stretch your back or your legs and go have a walk. It won't take long. These pectoral fins are going to dry very soon. Why don't you just go give yourself a little break, rinse your brushes, change the water and your jars, and I will see you back here when your pectoral fins have completely dried and we shall do the body next. Hi, everyone, and welcome back. And I hope your pectoral fins have dried completely. So without wasting any more time. Now that you had a nice little refreshing break, let's get back into doing the body and adding the color of ink on it and lifting out the paint where we want to have that Chevron pattern. Here we go. I'm using a size eighth round brush, and I'm just going to re wet this same area over here. And this time, we're just repeating the same steps we did previously. So I'm sure you must be pretty confident at doing that by now. Yes, as you can see, we've got that beautiful chevron pattern, very distinct looking pattern, and it's going to look even better when we apply our darker colors and lift out. I'm just going to do the doors fin. I just want to that parts white, but don't worry about it. We can always use the white gel pen later. And not paying too much attention to the tail now. I'm more concerned about the body and doing that evenly wetting the body. Okay. So I'm only tilting my paper because I just want to see that I have a nice even glaze and I haven't missed any spots. So there we go. Just bring it up to the dorsal fin and a bit to the tail. So I'm going to take more of the color ink. I do want a nice dark concentration of it. That looks good. Now I'm going to just drop it in Okay. And we are actually going to just cover this entire area. So working swiftly but carefully, I love that the manta is getting its darker colors now. So what I've noticed actually is, it's starting to look more three dimensional, isn't it? Like now that we're leaving a bit of that area a little bit, you know, lighter and stuff and the curvature of it, I better be very careful here. I just want to go to the edge of my dorsal fin. And not caring too much about the tail at this point. So I just want to make sure that I drop in a nice dark layer before I start lifting, while my pain is still wet, as you can see, I want to do this area. Yeah, that's looking good. Okay. Now I'm going to switch brushes to my size for round brush, adding some water on it, removing some water on the rag, and I'm going to do the same thing I did last time, the lifting. We want to try and lift in the same area that we lifted in just now. After every lift, you have to clean your brush, or you will get it won't lift properly. That's just the t I'm also going to lift this part over here. Okay. So at this point, we are going to work quite fast because our pain is going to start drying. So I'm just going to lift. As you can see, that's lifting very beautifully. But we also want to lift in a way that it's not going to damage the paper. All right. So that's looking good. I had just rinsed my brush again. Okay. And I'm just going to do this part again. Okay, that's looking good. And we're going to stop soon and just let this dry. Yeah. So, I feel like that is that's good. I don't want to overdo it. I think I just want to do this side a bit more because it is a bit. Okay. So that's looking good. And Yeah, I know this might seem a bit tedious this process. But the reason why I'm doing that is we really want these areas to be lighter noticeably lighter because it's going to look so good at the end when I put that really cool glitter. Well glitter or metallic shiny effect on it, it will really stand out on those nice lighter areas. Once more, as always, that's looking great. We're just going to let this dry completely. Then when we come back, we're going to do our very final layer of paint of color. We're going to do we're going to add our black layer of paint on, and that's going to really give the manta its characteristic color and appearance. Right now, lucky you you get to take another break. Just let this completely dry. Go have a nice little walk when it's completely dry, I will see you back here to start layering on the very final coat of paint, see you. 9. Manta Final Coat: Hi, and welcome back. If your manta is fully dry now, we are more than ready to just lay down our very final layer of color onto our manta and now really make it look a lot darker and a lot more real. If you're ready, I'm going to now use a different color. I'm going to use a color also from by Jane Davenport, this color is called raven, but it is very similar to pines gray or even black. It is very dark color. If you're not using Jane Davenpot pines that's absolutely fine, black or Pines gray will do. Now, you're probably an expert at laying down glazing each individual part with water and dropping in the pain, and of course, leaving those lighter areas for us to paint over well, leaving the light areas, sorry, rather unpainted, so that they will really stand out later when we do that very final cool effect that I have planned for later. Let's begin. As usual, we are going to do the pectoral pectoral fin that is in the foreground and we are laying in an even glaze of clean water. And if you have been lifting your color out, you should have a pattern that looks like this. This whole class really does show you the importance of lifting and how valuable a tool it can be to lighten a specific area while still having a bit of that original color. That's looking really good to me. I'm going to get out some of that color raven I do want it quite dark. Without any further delay, I'm going to just drop it in, and this is a beautiful dark inky color. I love it. We can really see our manta come to life. You want to try and put it as close to the boundaries as you can. Once more because this is a dark color as well. We want to work reasonably fast because I find that when you have a strong dark color, it can dry quite quickly, especially in the weather that I'm in right now. When you have a dark color, it's heavily pigmented. You want to place those pigments where you want as soon as possible because it's not mobile. This is something I've noticed. It's not as mobile as your lighter colors like shifting your lighter colors around. I'm going to try and work as fast as I can to lay down this dark color. Okay. And as you've noticed, I've avoided I've avoided that area, that same area at the tip of the Okay. So that's looking good to me. I'm just going to stand up to see if I have. So now I hope you understand why I was choosing to lay down the blue and the indigo in the layers, the previous layers rather than just black. As you can see, some of that beautiful blues and indigos are coming through, sorry, I went to the wrong part. Under the under the black. So that's exactly what we want. It creates some variation. As you can see, Beautiful variation rather than just seeing. We have now we've got blues coming through. As you can see, paint is already starting to dry. I'm just going to lay down the very final I just want to really outline that the boundaries of the But it is starting to dry already. Sometimes I find moving my page around might help. But this is already drying. As you can see, what I said with dark colors, it dries very, very quickly. I think this has to do with the pigments about how heavily pigmented it is. That lighter area is actually looking pretty good to me. I don't actually think I need to lift it. I think it's very clear. All I want to do now before this pectoral fin completely dries is, I'm just going to use the tip of my brush to really just Make sure that the outline is all good and it looks really good to me. Yeah, it's already drying, so I really don't want to lay down more black now because it can look quite uneven after that. I'm happy for this to just fully dry now. I'm going to start with the other pectoral fin while this dries. S, exactly the same thing. We're just going to wet the whole area. This beautiful triangular shape. Okay. All right. I don't mind that we have a few lighter areas here because that creates some color variation. Okay. All right. So is that nice and even as you can see the papers already drying, so I'm going to just supply the water there. All right. Okay, I just want it to be a bit wet when I work because it's already starting to move around. This is going to be our final layer of color. I know you must be slightly relieved. I know it's been a lot of work doing each of these parts step by step. Now I'm going to drop in my dark color here and I'm going to work as fast as I can. I'm going to need more pain. Oops. Just trying to do that carefully, and we've got. Try not to touch the wet area with your hand. And I just want to drop in a bit more over here. Okay. Okay, that's nice and dark and we still left that area. But I think I might have to just lift that a little bit. So I'm going to get my clean damp size four round, and I just want to lift a bit of that color off, rinse my brush, and lift again. Because we've done such a good job preserving that lighter area. I don't want that to go. That's looking good to me. Because the pain is still wet, I'm going to lift it just a bit more. All right. That's nice and light there. We don't have to lift it anymore. It's done. The paint is still a bit wet. And I also want to lift this area a bit where it does look a bit lighter in the picture. There we go. Okay. That's looking good to me. All right. You've got that lighter area there. You got the lighter area here. That's great. While these two areas dry again, how about we work on the cephalic horn and the features at the front here? I'm just going to go with the raven color over the inside of the mouth here. I'm going to put some on the tip of the sphalic horn. I goes a little bit higher here. Okay. And I'm just going to also just yeah, laying down the dark color over here. And And I'm also just going to use some of that color. On the eye, I'm very careful to kind of let my hand hover over the wet area so that I don't rest my hand on it. And That's looking nice. Yep. So that's good for me. I might just use whatever paint is left on my brush to just make this area here a little bit darker, but not as dark as this area, as you can see that from picture. So that's just a bit of shadow, I guess I'm just going to rinse my brush and to a clean the brush and I'm just going to blend this a bit because I don't want any hard lines. There we go. We got a bit of a bit of color there. Okay. No. That's looking good. I'm just going to let I'm just using my dam brush to kind of just soften these lines just a bit. And so it just kind of makes a bit of color kind of, you know, flow a bit through the rest of the sphalic horn that we haven't painted. Because I just feel like I just want a bit of that color to bleed out a bit. But, you know, it's quite light and I do want it light. I think I just need to put a little bit more of the raven color here. But other than that, I think it's looking good. Let me just add a bit more over here since I blended it out a lot. That's looking good. Don't worry about these little parts that are going out a bit because we will use a black pen in the next step to outline our fins and give even more definition. I'm just looking at this and it's looking good. Just taking a step back. As usual, we're going to have to just wait for these two parts to completely dry before we add more color onto the body. I hope you can just be a little patient and go and give yourself another little short break because this should be dry in no time, before we repeat the same process and color in the body of our manta, which will be fun. I will see you after this short break when the pectoral fins have completely dried once more. Hello and welcome back. As you can see, the pectoral fins of my manta have dried completely. This is what it looks like when it's dried. I'm happy with the intensity of darkness that I see here. Obviously, some parts I feel could be a bit darker. But overall, I'm okay with it, and I'm just thinking that maybe later on, when I finish doing the body and I'm just doing the very final touches, I could possibly dry brush on some black pain later. But if you're happy with the intensity of your mantras pectoral fins, let's move on to doing the body. If you feel that your pectoral fins are not as dark as you want them to be, you are more than welcome to repeat the last step of wetting each pectoral fin and dropping in the dark color raven or pains gray or black, whatever you have repeating that step again to get the desired intensity. But I'm actually okay with what I have here. Otherwise, if you're not happy, you can repeat that step with the black pain or. We can just move on to doing the body now. Since I'm happy with this, I'm going to move on to doing the body in black. So we are getting closer to the finish line here. I know this process may have seemed a little tedious, but it's going to be worth it when you see the very final result. What I'm going to do, as you probably know by now is I'm going to wet the entire area of the body that I want to color in There we go. Not really caring much about the tail at this point. So all I really want again is that even glaze, I might just move my paper around a bit to move that water. And I'm going to work quickly. As I explained earlier, I have this theory that from my own experiences, The dark colors are heavily sorry, heavily pigmented. And so I feel that they don't move as fast as the other colors when you're trying to move them around. So I feel like you kind of have to work a bit faster with them. So here we go. I'm just going to start spreading that color as fast as I can. Okay. But you can already see the areas that we saved earlier that are lighter. They are kind of shining through even under this layer of black. I'm just going to taper that off into the tail. And while this is wet, I want the manta hit to be very dark. I want to drop in more black because I do want the intensity of my manta to be quark. Before I start lifting the color. Do dorsal fin carefully. Okay. So if that's dark enough to your satisfaction, in fact, I feel like I want to just make the head a bit I guess I do really want to repeat the step of adding more on again. So let me just try and get that color going. I do think that is quite dark. I'm going to rinse my brush now, and I'm going to use the clean damp size four again to lift color. Because it's so dark, I can't actually see very clearly the lines I just now. I'm going to just estimate that it's over here. Believe it or not, the paper is already starting to dry as well. While that happens, I might just take more of that black color and do the tail since there's nothing else I can really do right now. Yeah. Just filling in the blank here. The the shaping it a bit. How cute is this animal that it has such a cute little dorsal fin. I guess I could do things like do the inside of the mouth with your hand very carefully not touching the wet areas. I know that can be a bit difficult to do, but I'm used to doing this might as well just do the scephalic horns while I wait for the rest of it to dry. Overall, the effect is looking really good. And as you can see, we can clearly see that the chevron shape, even as I stand up. As it dries now, I might actually even paint the pelvic fin. The pelvic fin here is it's black but with a bit of a stripe. And a bit of an outline there, so I might just do that. Might as well just do a couple of things while I wait for that to dry. Now, even though I'm looking at this now, and I just feel like maybe the intensity here, it's not as, It's like a little bit more black in between that chevron color. And I'm just thinking of how I can possibly achieve that in the next step. I'm thinking that now since this is already drying, I don't really want to mess with it. What I want to do actually is when this completely dries, I might use a brush to just dry brush on some of the black marks that I would like to see on the body. So my manta is completely dry now. I just had a good think about what I wanted to do with it. I'm actually happy with these two pectoral fins. I think I'm all right with that. I was just thinking more about this area here. And I was just wondering if I should re wet it or dry brush on it. So but there's also a couple of things that I wanted to do now that I had a bit of a think about it. I wanted to take you remember how we did a midline earlier? Well, I just wanted to go over that a little with my I'm just using my size four round brush, and I just want to. I just want to keep that line there because I feel like this is just a bit of a mid line where the dorsal fins. And I'm also just thinking about, Okay. Whether I should dry brush on some paint. Or if I should just kind of repeat that step again. Yeah. So these are things that I'm just thinking about doing right now, actually, now that it's dry. And Okay. Even though in the previous video, I talked about dry brushing. I feel that if I dry brush this on, it will create very hard edges here, which I don't really want. So I've decided that I might just take this time to re wet the area. I know I just drew this line, but I think I want to actually repeat this step one more time before we finish it. Even though I'm happy with the way the pectoral fins turned out, I just feel like I feel this area is just a little bit light. What I want to do is the great news is we already have the intensity. The darkness. We already have some good darkness to work with on this section. I don't feel like I really need to lift any more color off it, which is why I want to do this step where I just drop in color where I need it. I'm just going to use my size eight brush actually rather than the I did use the size eight deny I just want to make the head darker. But this is the thing. I don't want to wet, drop in pain on the entire area. I just want to drop in pain where I need it. I won't be lifting anymore. So I'm just following that line, the kind of guideline that we had the midline of the dorsal fin. I want to color the dorsal fin. Okay. So even though I had a very good idea of how to execute this painting. Sometimes when you actually do it, it doesn't work out exactly the way you thought, for me, I didn't feel the intensity was dark enough. So before I go on talking, I just want to drop in a bit of black over here. Because I feel that this part was very light where we lifted it. I just want to drop in a bit of black there, and I also want to do it up here. But in order to have a dark appearance of my manta, I will not be lifting any more color off it. That's what I want to do. I'm just looking at this, I think I want to make sure that my dorsal fin is nice and dark. As you can see, I'm leaving these lighter areas. I don't think we reading a line going down there. I think, yeah, that looks good to me. And I shouldn't get very hard edges, which is what I really didn't want. So I think that looks good. As you notice in this step, I didn't lift off any more color because I actually want it to be dark. So let me just go over my dorsal fin one more time, even though I think that's dark enough. I think the heads dark enough. We've also done the body. As you can see, the paper is already starting to dry. When it's starting to dry, I don't really want to put down any more paint in it because I don't want to get hard edges. What I will do now is I'm going to use the black to just go over that little bit of pelvic fin that's sticking out there because it's supposed to be dark. So just outline that. But other than that, I'm glad that I did this step again because I really didn't feel like the mantle was dark enough and I had maybe lifted a lot of color off. So I'm quite happy with this now. And if you're happy with your mantle and how it's looking, let it dry and we are going to do some really fun finishing touches in the next section. You're going to love it. We are going to use some pens to really define our manta, of course, there is that really really fun shimmery effect that we're going to add in in these light areas that you work so hard to save, that is just going to make manta look like it is catching the sunlight at certain parts under the water. It's going to look amazing. I will see you in the next section. 10. Adding Definition with Pens: Hello, everyone. And I hope your painting has completely dried now, we are so close to the end now. I'm actually really excited for this next step. Well, there are going to be several steps, but I can assure you all the hard parts are all done. And if you've gotten something that resembles, something that looks like this, you should be very proud of yourself because we did something called lifting, which is it's not terribly easy to do. It does take practice. The more you lift the better you will be, the more experience you will get at lifting and soon you will be applying this technique of lifting to many other projects you undertake with watercolors. For example, I love laying down a flat wash of blue and using the lifting technique to make cloud shapes. That's just a few examples of how important lifting is and why we used it in this particular project. So if your manta has completely dried and I'm looking at these lines here. And so some of the black paint has gone a little bit further than I wanted it to go. I think it's okay on this chevron pattern, but over here, I just want to show you something. So we were lifting when our paint was wet. You can lift when the paint is dry, even though I don't really like doing this because I am scared of the hard lines that this will produce. I mean, if you are happy with your chevron pattern and you don't want to lift anymore pain, that's fine. You don't have to follow the reference photograph exactly. I just want to demonstrate, I just want to lift a little bit of this pain to just define this part a little bit more. All I'm going to do is I'm going to use my size four round brush. I dip it in water and I remove the excess water by dabbing it on the rag, I just want to demonstrate lifting. I'm just lifting when dry. As you can see, I'm just very gently lifting a bit of paint, a bit of that dark color. Okay. So that was very subtle, what I did, but I can assure you, I just did lift some of the pain, which is why it looks a bit lighter here. I don't want to do this too much because I don't, as you can see, a very hard edge has formed, right? So that you can lift when your pain is dry. But I would say in my personal opinion, I prefer to lift pain when the paint is wet. I just feel like it's easier. Even though you may have more control when you're lifting when dry, it can be very tedious if we were to lift all this paint when, you know, the black was dry. It would be really hard to do it without compromising the integrity of the paper because I feel that, you know, the paper also you can tear. If we are repeatedly using a brush and water and scrubbing, so to speak, it can destroy the integrity of your paper. So for me personally, you are better off lifting most of your paint while the paint is wet. I just wanted to demonstrate to you by doing this that you can lift it when it's dry. However, I would highly recommend only doing that if you want to define a very small parts. So, I can do that over here too, as you can see, I'm just lifting a bit more pain to make this area lighter. But as you see, it starts forming a harder edge. That's why I would rather lift when wet. I just talked a lot about lift when your pain is dry. But now, let's get back to the fun part. Okay? So Before I put my paints away completely, I think I want to take a bit of time now to just fix up things like the cephalic horn, the inside of the mouth, the eye that we may have not given much attention to because we were very busy painting our manta and lifting colors up. I'm just going to use a little bit of this color butterfly. To I feel like it's a bit blue here, and I just want to kind of I wouldn't say I'm following the reference photograph exactly, but I just want to definitely use it as a guideline. I'm going to add a bit of that blue in the eye here even though I think the scepalcors looking pretty good, I guess I just want to give it a little bit more definition. I've used the blue there and in the eyes. At any time, if you feel it's too much, remember, you can always rinse your brush and use clean water to blend it more. I also want to just add a little bit of that blue in here just to darken the inside of the mouth a bit. Now, I just want to use some of that dried up color ink. Just while that's wet, add a a little bit of shadow here where the inside of the mouth meets the top arch of the mouth there. Okay. And yeah, but I don't want to completely color in that area. So now, you know, it's just about Just using your own intuition and just fixing up the parts that you like if you feel like you're happy with what you've got already, you don't have to do this. Now, I'm just going to finish up with that final color, which is like black called raven. I'm just going to put a little bit of that in there while it's wet and I don't like this hard edge here, so I'm just going to smooth it over with a wet brush and I'm happy with that. That looks good to me. So I think I'm quite happy with the painting section of this already. I think that's done. I don't think I want to use any more pain. And the minute I said that, I just want to add in just a little bit of the black color over there. And just using my dent brush to just get rid of those hard edges and just move over. I think that's looking pretty good already, and I feel that we are now ready to just move on to our pen section of this course. Even though I feel that my manta personally, like the edges very defined to me. I don't see too many mistakes of pain coming out. But what I like to do though is I do want to use a black permanent. This is called a fine liner and it's a size and as you can see, 0.3, and it's waterproof. I just want to use this pen now. Just to do things like define certain things that we may not see so clearly. For instance, how about I start with the e? We can the great thing about this fine line black pen is, you can add definition very easily. Instead of, for instance, using a small the tip of a small brush. You're just never going to get as precise and accurate as with a black pen. This is where I like to use it right at the end to just define the boundaries because it's a lot less stressful to me than using a small brush and trying to control it. All I'm doing now is just going over the very edge of of this pectoral fin. Just smoothing the lines. Even though I think it's pretty defined already, but I just want to do that. So the fin is going to end somewhere here. You see, we can define that very easily. And we also defined this like a little black area over here that I didn't have a lot of definition. And I also want to use it for the very tips of the cephalic horn. Well, I don't mind outlining it. Yes, you can see from the reference photograph it is black there on that side. And this is going to be great to use I'm sure all the pain is dry now, even the part that I lifted previously. So I'm just going to go around this area. As you can see, it's just so handy for adding those really dark lines with precision that you would feel a bit nervous about doing with a brush. I really want to use this to define that beautiful arch of the mouth. So we're kind of just reinforcing it, you know. Yeah. That's looking good to me and also this part over here. Yeah. Yeah, to me, it just gives the manta more definition. Even though I don't feel like you need to be particularly heavy handed with this step. I feel that the manta is already looking really good. So I'm just turning my body a little just to try and accommodate that angle. Okay. So that's looking good. I believe we did this pectoral fin already. So I might as well just I feel that by outlining it because it's black already, I don't think it takes away a lot of realism. I just feel that it just gives it that extra additional sort of Well, dimensions, but it will also make it. I'll really make it pop out of the background with this definition. Yep. So I'm just going to go around here. Yep. Okay. And just once more, I'm using short broken lines because it just gives me more control even with a pen. All right. That's looking really good. Yeah, it looks great. I'm also thinking I might do the doors I don't think we really need to do these two boundaries where the pectoral fins meet the body, but that's just my personal opinion. I just want to do the dorsal fin. Yeah. Just really define its shape now. It might have been lost a bit like the shape when we were painting using the color raven just now. Of course, how handy does this black liner come in when we're doing something as thin as the tail that tapers to a point. So this is so good. You can accurately do that, see. Okay. There we go. The tip of the tail is very thin and the pen just comes in so handy for that. And I see a bit of a black line. I think that's part of the mid line that comes here, where the dorsal fin is. So I don't mind just kind of defining that a little bit because it can be hard to see against the black of the manta. All right. That's done. I just want to maybe outline the pelvic fins a little. And if you're happy with that, I think I'm happy with that. I think we can put our black liner down. I'm just taking a step back and I love what I see. It looks great. And now we're ready to move on to just a little bit of white gel pen. I don't mean a lot. Just a little bit. Because there are certain white marks that I can see here. For instance, there's a bit of white ware the top of the mouth is, and I think that will look good being defined. I'm just going to use my zero five jelly roll, white gel pen. Even though we define this with black, I just feel like I just want to this area is slightly lighter. So why don't we just define that? Of course, my pen just decides not to work now. I'm just going to use I've got another one on standby because this always seems to happen to me when I'm filming. It just seems to jam. There we go. This one's working. As you can see, the white gel pen is just so. And it really stands out against a background. So, I just see a bit of a white line there looks like this guy's jamming too. Yeah. That looks good to me. I'm just looking anywhere else I can see white. And I guess this part has become a bit blue. So what we can do is we can just add a bit of the white gel pen here. That's looking good to me too. Um I honestly don't think we need to use the white gel pen a lot. I think that's enough. I think it looks pretty good. How about we move on to the very fun step of making our lighter areas shimmery and beautiful and making it look like it's catching the sunlight at those parts of the body and just sparkling. You can tell I'm really excited about this part. I mean, we've done all the hard work. I really do think we deserve to have some sparkle and shimmer going on. 11. Adding Shimmer and tiny fish: Metallic paints are so useful for adding some shimmer and making your subject well, look a little bit magical, so to speak. But personally, I've done a class in the past where I demonstrated how to use some metallic paints to add shine and sparkle to two clown fish that I did that I painted with regular watercolor paints first. My tip on using these metallic watercolors is that You don't want to get too carried away and color your entire animal with this because then the effect of the sparkle just gets lost. For me, I honestly do believe less is more. You will see the sparkle. It will stand out more if you actually use less of it and you only use it in certain areas. I've just talked a lot. I did talk about this in the class, how to paint some clown fish with metallic paints. I don't want to repeat myself too much. But I will be using this brand of paint. This someone who knows how much I love art bought this for me from Japan as a gift. This is called Shep Watercolor number 41 and it's called Radon Color blue. What this is is it's a water based pain. But It's beautiful. What it is is like a white metallic pain, but it has a bit of a blue sheen, as you can see from this. And this just looks beautiful against a dark background. So what I intent on doing with this is, and by the way, if you can't get this exact same pain, you are perfectly fine to use a white metallic paint. You can find all kinds of brands. In fact, I only just acquired this recently. So A white metallic pain will be absolutely fine to use. I just happen to have this one and I just happen to love the color. How we're going to apply it is, I would like to apply it, very gently on those lighter areas that we've saved on the chevron pattern. I also would like to apply it on these lighter areas of the cephalic horns, and maybe also on the pelvic fin. To use this, we are going to apply this wet on dry. Now, this pin I'm going to take my size four round brush with a bit of clean water. To wake the pain up a bit because it doesn't really immediately go into your brush as you can see you do have to work it a little bit. You do have to add a bit of water to get that sparkle going because it is a bit thick and it also is a bit like a gel, this one. When you have enough on your brush and you don't want it too wet I have this type of consistency here where it's loosely the sparkles, as you can see a Lucy coming on my brush. I'm going to start with this No, sorry, pectoral fin. And I'm just going to go on the areas that, look at that. Isn't that just so beautiful? I think I have a lot on my brush. I'm just going to dab my brush a bit, and I'm just going to very gently lay it down without trying to move the pans underneath. I mean, now you can tell why I love this color. And what I'm doing is, I concentrated it over here, but I'm not going to put any more on. I'm just going to spread this outwards on that light area that we saved. And just very gently because I don't want to disturb the pain underneath. And I mean look at that. It's so gorgeous, isn't it? Can you see that reticence that shine it's gorgeous. I'm quite addicted to that. I have some more up here. I think that's enough. In my opinion, that's enough for that fin. I've covered that whole lighter area. And I'm going to do the same with this pectoral fin up here. So I just concentrate it in that area that I want and then I'm just going to brush it gently outwards. Okay. And this is dry brushing, really like dry brushing. Yeah, I mean, I love sparkle who doesn't. Look at that. That's looking good. I don't want to put too much though on it because, trailing it out into the middle of the pectoral fin. That's beautiful. Very in love with that. Also, we're going to put some on this Chevron pattern here. So I'm just so that's why we saved it. If you see the video in the introduction of the video footage that I provided of the manta swimming, you can see that the parts that are lighter appear very shimmery. So that's what I'm trying to capture with this paint, and we're only putting it on the lighter areas. I'm just going to pause for a moment and just close my window because there's a bit of a thunderstorm going on now that's just suddenly started. So that's a lot more quiet now. So I'm sorry if it was a bit noisy a second ago. So there we go. And just trailing it Who's a lot there. Just going to dry brush it off there. I'm in love with this color. It's gorgeous. Yeah. And I mean, look at that. It just really stands out so well. I'm I feel like I concentrated it a bit too much here, so I'm just trying to spread this gently. I'm just dry brushing off the whatever's left on my brush. Yeah. I love it. Just playing with it a bit. That's great. Okay. Okay. So I'm going to have to re wet this because it's like it's like a gel. And I'm just going to put it on the chevron pattern here. Yeah. So I hope now it's clear why we were lifting the paint. Like I'm going to stop it midway like that. So that's looking so beautiful to me. You can trail it a little bit further down if you want. I mean, the Chevron pattern is supposed to well, chevron pattern for every manta is a little bit different. But you can if you want. I mean, there are no rules. I guess that would kind of define that part even more. And I'm just using whatever is left on my brush. I'm just going to dry brush it down. You know what I'm thinking as well. I wouldn't mind putting some of it on the dorsal fin. Just because I feel like it will help to define the boundaries of the dorsal fin. This was not in the photograph, but I just want to do that for my own pleasure, really. What else am I going to do? I think I would like to put some very gently on top of that white gel pen that we put down. We don't want to move it of the pelvic fin, those markings. Now, whatever I have left, I want to put on the lighter part of the cephalic horns. Wow, isn't Amanta looking so dreamy? Yeah, that looks great. I'm not going to put it inside the mouth. I also feel like I want to put it maybe on just the whites of the eye. Just to give our mantas eyes a bit of sparkle. Yeah. I don't think I'm going to put it on the underside. So I'm just going to take a step back. Wow. I'm loving what I see. It's just so beautiful. I mean, I could get so tempted. Whatever I have left on my brush, I'm just going to just dry brush on, and there's not much of it left. Just dry brush it on And so far, I don't think I've actually disturbed the black paint underneath, which is good. I love it. Okay. I'm getting very carried away. I really have to put this down. Actually, now, the more I think about it. This is not an excuse to use more, but the lighter area that we put down earlier with the white gel pen, I'm going to gently go over that. Just to Well, that is quite a thunderstorm outside. Um, yeah. All right. I mean, there we go. That looks so good to me. And, you do have to restrain yourself. Well, I do have to restrain myself. I could end up, like, you know, putting a lot of this everywhere. So I'm going to put this down, but look at that. That is so pretty. And that's exactly the effect that I wanted. I'm really glad about that. I had to think about this earlier and B in the photograph, you can see shadows of little fish in the background. I thought of maybe using a darker color to fill them in. But then since we have a bit of sparkle going on, I just thought, why not add some fish shapes like you know, following the manta to add a bit of interest. That's just me because I feel like even though the manta is a star. I do think that that would also enhance the mantas appearance a little because I feel that you know you do see tiny school of fish following the manta in real life. So during the break, I had to think about it and I thought that instead of using I mean, I didn't want to just use this sparkle to do the fish because I just felt like it wouldn't really stand out. So I have this little pen. It's also by jelly roll, and it says metallic and it's in silver. It's by the brand Sakura. I just thought, why not do a few fish shapes here? Just for interest, I think it would look fun. It would look cute. I'm just going to move my pains now that I'm not using them anymore. Let me just have a look at the camera. I'm just going to move my painting a little bit over here. And I am going to do a few fish shapes like tiny fish shapes. So I'm not thinking too hard about this. I just want to do something that looks kind of like I'm just going to use so I see them swimming underneath the manta like under its tail. So I just want to do a shape that looks a bit like that. Like and then just fill it in. So, that's a fish shape over there. So can you see that? And it also reflects light. So how should I do this? Maybe another one down here. So they are just swimming under Amanta I just feel like this kind of It adds a bit of interest in the painting, and they probably well. You don't have to do this step. I just it would look kind of cute and just complement Amanta even more. Okay. Yeah, that's looking good. And you see it kind of like tapers over there. I'm just going to fill in the fish with the silver pen, wherever I see I left a gap. But that is looking so good to me, and I don't want to overdo it, so I'm not going to put fish all the way down here. I think that looks good. And I'm just wondering if I should put it near the body, but I feel I don't want to I don't want to take away from the I do want the manta to stand out. This is the mantis painting. So I think I'm okay to just stop doing fish now. And I'm going to put my pen down. And now the last part of this painting is we are going to carefully remove the masking tape that we laid down before. And hopefully, if we smoothed out all the air bubbles before we started, we should get a very nice clean border. The way I like to remove masking tape is I did put it down this way, like I did it clockwise. I'm going to do it anticlockwise like unmask it anti clockwise, so this is the very last thing that I put down. That way, there we go. We can unmask it easier than if I tried to do it clockwise with this tape on the top. To remove masking tape, I encourage you to do it slowly. Never try and rip it out like a band aid because you might rip part of the paper out. Do it slowly and carefully and use your hand to hold down your paper when you do it and just very carefully. Wow. See what I mean? You have to do it slowly. Even if you do it slowly, sometimes you can still take some of the paper off with you. It's just that way, but that's okay. You can hardly even see that. But as you can see, I don't you just love that nice neat border that it's created. So very slowly. That's great. And I'm just going to gently lift this off because I did tape it down. Scrunch that up, put it aside, and same thing here. Very slowly hold your paper down. Oh, wow. Love the border that it creates. Yep. No paper being removed here, which is great. And I tucked it underneath. There we go, scrunch it up, move it aside. I'm going to have to peel this one off. So I'm just going to very gently peel that off. Okay. Fingers crossed. We had a bit of I think air bubbles there, but it's really okay. All right. Holding it down. Nice, Looking very clean. Scranch it up. All right, one more to go. All right. Let me just peel this off. There we go. Whoops, I can feel a bit of paper coming off there, so I'm going to be very careful over here. I'm just going to hold this down. It's okay. You hardly even notice it. And if you are going to frame this up, you know, I'm pretty sure you would cover that part. All right. So, Good old Musking tape, so handy. Wow, overall, I'm really happy with the result. So very last bit last bit, very last part. Little bit there. No worries. Oh, that's done. I'm just taking a step back. Wow, L that looks so good. Let me just move that aside. Oh, look at that. I love it. I hope you've had a lot of fun creating it. Well, there is one more thing to do. That would be to sign your name on your art, which is what I love doing at the end. I feel great satisfaction in doing that, you know. We did a great piece of work and let's now put our name. I hope you've come up with a logo of your own. I want to do this with this just my choice. I want to just use my silver pen. There we go. And you're done. Okay. Just look at that. That is so cool. What we've done is we have painted a manta with beautiful shimmery accents. We've also added a school of fish in, but we have set our manta against the backdrop of the ocean floor. You really do get the impression that it's just floating very gracefully across the ocean, across the corals below. Yeah, I'm really pleased with this. I hope you've had a lot of fun and you're pleased with your work. So thank you so much for doing this class with me. I would like to just share my final thoughts in the next section, but I hope you've had a lot of fun and you've learned a few new techniques that you will apply in the future. So see you in the next section. Thank you so much. 12. Final Thoughts: I would just like to say a huge thank you for watching this class and I hope you had a lot of fun creating your beautiful mandara paintings. I can't wait to see them. Please feel free to upload your completed projects in the projects and resources section of this class so that other students and myself can admire them. I hope you've had a lot of fun doing this class, but you also learn some very useful techniques such as how to create a backdrop for your subject. Using loose shapes by using the wet on wet technique and also learning techniques such as lifting color off to preserve lighter areas. Both these techniques are so useful and applicable in future watercolor projects that you undertake. Please feel free to follow me on Skillshare to get notifications of new projects that I have coming up in the future. Also, please feel free to follow me on Instagram. My name is Alicia Paran and feel free to tag me on Instagram if you would like me to see your work on Instagram. Once more, I want to say a huge heartfelt thank you for watching my classes and for supporting me, and I wish you all the best on your watercolor journey.