How to Draw and Paint a Weedy Sea Dragon in Watercolors and Ink

1. Introduction: Hello, my name is Alicia Paran and I'm so happy that you're joining me today for my Skillshare class. How to draw and paint a weedy see dragon in watercolors. And we didn't see dragons, also known as common sea dragons and these unusual, beautiful and magical creatures that live amongst the seaweed beds and are related to seahorses, in my opinion, even more regal and elegant. They also have special features such as leaf-like appendages, which let them camouflaged among seaweed, making them very hard to spot. In this class, I will teach you how to draw a 3D sea dragon from scratch. And I will also teach you how to then lay down a very base coat and subsequent layers of watercolor. And finally, I will teach you how to use ink pens to add the very final touches to really bring your 3D sea dragon to life. This class is designed more for intermediate to advanced artists, as you will be expected to know, basic watercolor techniques, such as wet on wet, wet on dry. As well as how to lay down a varied wash. If you would like to learn these basic techniques. I have dedicated an entire section covering this in my previous class. How to draw and paint a sea turtle in watercolors and ink. Feel free to review that class if you would like to do this one. So if you're ready, let's begin drawing and painting a beautiful 3D sea dragon. 2. Materials: Hello. We are now at the materials section of our course where I'm going to tell you everything that you need to undertake your project of drawing and painting or VDC, dragon and watercolors and ink. So let me start first with the paper that I use. I'm going to use this brand of paper by Kansan. It is artist's quality paper and as you can see, it is 300 g/m square, which is what you should use because this simply means that it can absorb a lot of water. It's not going to buckle under the weight of water as you layer more paint on top of it. And I love using this format of an A3 size bound book of paper. Simply because I have a habit of drawing very big and I like to have the space to work with it. And I loved that all the papers are bound together so you can keep all your art in one place. All there are little dotted lines over here that assist you in tearing out whatever paintings you want. You don't have to use the same brand of paper as me, but I only suggest that you use are these quality paper that has the same weight. Next, I'm going to take you through all the materials that you need to draw. So I use this brand of mechanical pencils called Pilot super grip, 0.5, which simply means that's just the width of the lead. I love these pencils as they're very comfortable to hold. And I tend to use two pencils at a time just in case one runs out of lead. I also have an eraser. This one is just by the brand state law, but you can use whatever soft white eraser you have as long as it erases, clean me. And here's a tool that I discovered recently that I can't live without. This is a mechanical eraser pen, soda. I don't exactly know the name of this, but the brand is Tombow mono zero. And this is such a handy tool to have because it looks like a mechanical pencil. And you push out the small little area of eraser that helps you erase very small lines and very tiny areas of your drawing. This is so handy to have. Next for the painting. I just want to take you through some of the equipment that I use. So I tend to use a ceramic palette simply because with ceramics, it just doesn't stain when you use paint on it. Even though most pain sets would come with their own little pallets, I prefer to use a separate palette that's bigger just because you have more space to put more paints on it and large areas that you can mix paints with. So I would highly suggest using a separate palette. Next, of course, you have to have water to work with watercolors. And I tend to use two glass jars of water. The glass jars just let you see how how much paint is in your water and when you need to change it. And I tend to work with two jobs at a time simply because you don't have to keep changing your water and you can keep working for longer. I also tend to use either paper towels or a rag to absorb the excess water off my brushes when I rinse them, I tend to prefer to use a rag though simply because it's more absorbent and whenever it gets very stain, you can just simply throw it into the wash. Next, I want to talk about the brushes that I'll be using for this project. So this is the brand of brushes that I've recently started using. So it's silver black velvet and these are all round brushes and I got them in a size for a size eight and size 12th. I love this brand of brushes because when they're wet they still tend to retain their very pointy tip, which is very handy for painting very small areas. You don't have to use the same brand of brushes that I do, but I would highly recommend you use Addis quality brushes because it will really affect your brush strokes. Now next, I want to talk about the pains that I'll be using for this project. So I've decided to use this brand of pain by Jane Davenport. And there are two different palettes here. So this is the bright palette and this is the neutral palette. I love these paints that I discovered pretty recently too, because they're very vibrant. And these are artist quality paints. So for this particular project, I'll be using only a couple of colors from here. So I'll be using this yellow, which is named buzzy, which is very similar to a cadmium yellow. I'll also be using this purple Which is very similar to ultra marine violet, and this is called royal. I'll also be using this dark color here, which is called Inc. which is very similar to indigo. From Mutual palette. I'll be using this deep yellow, which is called mango, and is very similar to Indian yellow. I'll be using this red called Apple, which is also very similar to a cadmium red. Next I'll be using this color, which is very acutely named kiss, kiss, which is very similar to burnt sienna. And finally, this jock beautiful color called Raven, which is very similar to just black or even Payne's gray. Now you don't have to use the same brand of pains as me. So I've given you the names of the colors that are very similar to this brand of pain. And I just suggest that you use artist quality paints as well because they will really make a difference in your work. And last but not least, I wanted to just talk about the pens that I'll be using right at the end of the project to add some highlights and texture and dimension. So let me start first with this white gel pen by the brand's Sakura Gelly Roll. And 0.8 is the thickness of the lines that you can create with this pen is so useful and I've used it so much throughout the years. Next, for this project, I particularly chose this brand, penn called Pilot G2. And it's a 0.7 width. So it's a beautiful pesto yellow. And what I love about this pen is like the white gel pen. It can stand out on very dark surfaces. So for our VDC dragon that has lots of little yellow dots all over its body. I test it, this pen out and it stands out beautifully against dark colors. If you can't get this particular brand of pen, you can try other brands as well and of pastel colors. I would just suggest that when you are at the shop buying them, perhaps you can bring a scrap piece of paper that has some dark paint on it, some dot watercolors, strokes that you could lay down before that and just test out the pen just to see that it actually stands out. But you can also use a brand such as signal that should also work. So this is the yellow pen that I chose for this project. I also want to add some dark shadows and a few outlines with this pen, which is by the art studio graphic pro fine line pen. And it's in purple and it's 0.5 MM width. Last but not least, I shall also be using this black fine liner pen by fabric Estelle. It's a Pitt Artist Pen fine liner. And it's small, which is actually 0.3 nm. So that is pretty small, but these are just for the final touches. So that's all the materials that you'll need to do this project. So if you're ready, let's begin. 3. Sketch - Part 1: Hello everyone. Now we're about to sketch our beautiful 3D sea dragon. And something that I like to do to help me with this sea dragon who shape is quite complex. I mean, like first of all, it has this very thin, straight snout that's like a pipe. And then it has a very curvy body and tail. So something that I would like to do to help me just get the proportions right is I want to draw sort of guideline that's going to go through the body of the Sea Dragon just so we get an idea of the shape. So we're not like I'm confused by it and I feel that it will help me with the proportions as well. So I'm going to start first with a straight line, and I'm going to start all the way at the edge of my paper over here because I tend to draw big when I'm looking at a reference photograph. So I like to get myself a lot of space because I think my 3D sea dragon is going to occupy this whole piece of paper, which is an A3 size. So I'm going to start over here and I'm going to first draw what is a relatively straight line. So I'll see dragon is going to have a straight snout, I believe is what you call it. And so I'm going to just draw a little line just to remind myself this now it's gonna be this long. And now I'm just going to go a little bit further straight to because this is sort of where the head is, where the neck begins. Now, I'm going to start going down. And this is where the neck is going to be. And it doesn't have to be a straight line, so it's going to be quite curved. And this is a line that if you imagine is going through the sea dragon. But it's not going to go. So I'm going to just do this neck, but I'm going to curve up a little bit here. So at this part here, I'm going to start curving up, but this line will make sense later when I start doing the underside of it, so to speak. And now there is a very nice obvious curve here that I'm going to continue down. Yeah. And then it's gonna go up again and go here. And here. Starts to become a little bit less angled and straighter here. Then it's going to at an angle here, go up. So that's a bit of an angle. Turn here. Another angle here. When I say angle, I just mean these little parts here, as you can see, it seems to form an angle as real change in direction is what I mean. This is going to go quite up here. So right now it doesn't look like we've got much, but believe it or not, we actually have a lot to look at here. And we can, we can always adjust. This is a very rough guideline. So this straight line here is going to represent the snout. And now I can sort of add a little bit more detail to it. I can do this, the cute end of it. One of the reasons I chose to draw this animal when I really wanted to teach a class on it is because sea dragons, I just really, really beautiful. They are just stunningly beautiful. And they just have this really amazing shape. They are cousins of the seahorse, but for me they're like, you know, even more elaborate, just very majestic looking animals. So what I've done now is this. Now from here I can also like start doing a bit more detail of the head. So the guideline that I've drawn is just a rough guideline. Like sometimes it may go to an edge of the animal and sometimes it might just go to The through the middle. So it's a rough guideline and now I'm just starting to add more detail like I've done the sort of like under a chin, so to speak, like a jaw so to speak of the of this animal. It's a little hard for me to, I'm trying to relate it in, in terms of a human body which is hard. So this, I is going to go somewhere here like that. And I will add the detail in later. And then there is a bit of a, a little curve here. And it finally goes up into what I call a crest, so to speak. Like a dragons crest on its head. So I'm just adding a bit more detail to this. Still using the guideline though that I've drawn here, which is very handy. So we've got a little bit of a kind of like a curve that sticks out here. I can see that from the reference photograph. And it's also going to go down here. So as you can see, my guideline is now going to sort of like the extremity of sea dragon. So over here, it's actually going to dip down. Let me just try and get this right. It at this stage, we're still feeling the shape so it doesn't have to be accurate. We can always change it later, like, you know, refine it more. That's what the whole drawing process is about. It's about getting a rough idea of us, is what I do before I really dive into details, because if you don't have a good idea of the shape, I do feel that then that's going to affect how realistic your drawing is. Some still feeling the shape out of it. Which is why I've got an HB lead. So it's not going to leave a lot of marks over here is where it's a very important point here because I'm going to have a I'm definitely going to have a FIN coming out here. And this part is gonna go up here. And as you can see, I'm sort of following the guidelines that I've given myself, but also defining it a little bit more. So this part should go a little higher. I'm not going to draw the vignette as I really do feel that I would do the fins later when everything is done, when I get the proportions right. So I'm going to just just so I know that the thickness, so to speak, of the sea dragon, I'm going to do the head as well, like the top part of the Sea Dragon. Just to get a to get the thickness right because I don't want to work on the bottom and then it doesn't really correspond with the top. So as you can see, my guideline now is connecting the extremity of the top of our sea dragon. And now I'm going to marry the two, so to speak. The bottom lines and the top. I feel now when I look at my reference photo and looking at the guideline that I can sort of make this even more curvy. But the guideline has been very useful for me. So it's gonna go down here. And I feel like there is a bit of a notch here, like this is where another tiny little thin is going to be. So I'm just going to mark that now. But the guideline to me has been very helpful in just getting the shape right so far. So we're going to have a fin here. And I feel like maybe this fins should be like more this shape. So I'm going to use my eraser for that. Okay? And I also feel now looking at the reference photograph that I can go up more, I can curve it more. And this should be a little higher here. So this is now going to meet over here. So I can erase these lines that I've drawn before. Because I'm just refining the shape a lot more now So a fin is going to be here. Well, two things actually. And I've already got this beautiful curve going on over here. So this, this curve should be more like that. Now I've also got something another little thin over here. It's kind of like, like it's tiny. And if you think about it's sort of like when you see a plant, right? It's like a, a new bud, a new leaf bud, so to speak. And now that I'm looking more at my, at my sketch that I've drawn. I feel like we could move this a little bit back because I feel that I'm just trying to decide now looking at my reference photograph and like I've said before in my past videos, that you don't have to follow a reference photograph exactly. Like the whole point of art is. You're not taking a photograph. It's about capturing the essence I feel of my subject rather than taking a photograph. If that's the case, then you don't need to draw it. If you are going to do it exactly the same. It's also your interpretation. So I feel that this should start a little bit later and maybe perhaps be a little bit bigger. And there is a bit, a bit more of a curve here then my guideline. But I feel very happy that I did do the guideline because it's helped tremendously with this process. And I feel I can move this a little bit back. So over here, this is sort of like a diamond shape, so to speak. And from the reference photograph, this should come before this fin here. Now, I'm just looking back, just taking a step back. I mean, to just have a really good look at this because I do want to try and resemble my reference photograph. And I've just decided to just move this slightly back. But I'm probably being a little bit pedantic here, but I just wanted to get to really capture the essence of it really well. Okay, so I'm happy with that now because I do feel like, okay, the proportions are right here. And now we have this little area here before the tail. I can even make this a little bit higher. And I'm just going to now start with the tail. So this is the tail end. So I've got a curve here. As you've noticed that our, the shape of our sea dragon has gone from thin, a little wider here it goes down narrow. The body is the thickest part. And now we're going to taper, taper onto the tail. So one small, I can always change the guideline a bit. Now my guidelines seems to be heading towards the I'm just looking at the reference photograph. I feel like this part should be a little higher. And we can erase all these lines later. So I'm now doing the bottom of the of the tail. So it's going to taper all the way to the top. Now, just, I'm not getting confused here. I'm just going to gently erase all the lines that I don't need. Like I've I've made it go a little higher here. This line too. I just want to make sure I can see it properly. And I feel like I want to change the guideline a little. I feel that it should dip down more over here. So then it should go up here like that. So it doesn't have to be this thick over here. And I even feel like this should just kind of like do, do that. If you can draw continuous, like a continuous lines, I find, I love to break them up like, like what I'm doing here Because I feel it gives you more control over your pencil as opposed to just doing a continuous line. So these are all drawing skills that you pick up just from practice. So I'm just taking a step back looking at my at my we do see dragon feeling quite happy with the shape. Yeah. Because it is a complex shape. And it goes down here. And it goes up here. So I'm just going to now, I'm at the stage now where I can add a little bit more like a details with the curve, with the curvature of this line. Make it look more natural and less just like a straight, a straight line. So we're going to see like sort of like little segments. If you can call them that like each part of the tail has to have, has a little bit of a curvature over a sudden part of the length. And this last part here is actually more like a leaf, a leaf shape. And I can actually see one of the fins, Yes, I just wanted to put that in. And this is sort of ending in a leafy shape. So I might as well just refine that right now. And just go down here in a second. I'm going to erase all my my lines that I don't need anymore. Overall, I'm really happy with how this turned out. And now, now that we're happy with the with what we've drawn from the guideline. We can really start to refine it a little bit more. Now, just so we can see things a little better. I just want to erase my guideline. Just so everything becomes a little clearer and cleaner to this. Mechanical eraser is just one of the greatest things I've ever discovered as an artist for sketching. It just works so well for these little thin areas. Yeah. So here is our sea dragon, what we've done so far, and now I want to just refine it a lot more. So now's a good time to just check things like, Oh, look, little, little curvatures here. The I Did I make it the right size. So I'm just going to it even has a pupil. Yes. So I just want to add the the pupil here. And just now, I'm just now checking things like, Oh, did I make the crest big enough? I think I did. But I just can now just refine the shape a lot more now. So just it's looking good. I think that's a little bit more of a curvature here than just a straight line. So this goes up here, comes down a bit here. And now I can just erase those lines that, that I don't need. Now what we're really bringing it to life more. And let me just check these a little bit more like if you think that maybe I made this a little bit too low here, or this is too curved. Now is the time that we can just fix that before we paint it. Overall, I was quite happy with the way this turned out. Actually, I think it should end here. And we've got this little bulge here and the neck, and then it comes out slightly over here. And we got this part that comes out here. I feel like now this is a little bit, I can probably make this have a little bit more shape to well, I don't have to totally erase this actually because it's the fin is going to come out here. And so we also, I feel that now if you're happy with the shape of your sea dragon, we can start doing things now like adding the fins in, which is gonna be quite fun to do 4. Sketch - Part 2: I think I want to start with the top little thin that it has. So the Sea Dragon has fins that really help it camouflage that look, look like it's kinda very leaf shape. And it's kinda going in this direction, like this one here. So I'm doing another little guideline. I really find guidelines to help you to get the direction right and the shape of a, of a feature. So I think this should be about the right size. So these beautiful fins and it has really helps it camouflage with its surroundings, which would be like seaweed and kelp. Which is very clever. This little thin here should be smaller in proportion. So that's my guideline. I'm just going to, you don't have to do it exactly the same shape, alright? Like it's because at this point everybody knows what you're drawing. What I'm seeing here actually is the start of a of a fin like, sort of like a bud that you would see on a flower, on a plan. I mean, so I'm gonna do, there is a very beautiful massive fin over here that looks like a giant leaf and it's attached to this thing that looks like a bud. And I'm just going to do this so it comes out in this direction. Kinda like that. Once mom using broken lines to draw this. So it does come up a little bit away from the body. And then it's gonna do, it's gonna do this. We're gonna go out here. So it almost ends in a bit of a look kinda like a square, like it's quite unusual. This fin, it it does look I think I might have made my fin a little bit wider than it. Then. I'm just going to narrow that down a little right now. One small all part of the drawing process. There we go. This fin does stick out quite, quite a distance. And I'm just going to do there is another thing over here that starts here that is folded like so to speak. Or it's just the, this angle is a little is a little different. It's one small, very leaf-like. And just just do your best to try and use the reference photograph as a guide. But It's okay. I know some parts might be darker than the others in the reference photograph, so we got a thin that kinda looks like that, like it's folded. I might just make this part a little longer. And now we also have, so we've drawn the start of this like a thin. I'm just adding a little bit of detail here, like so this is where it sticks out. Now we've got a sort of like dorsal fin on the back. That's very, it's like a ridge. In fact, this animal is just so unusual and so beautiful that it's kinda like something you would see on fish, right? The dorsal fin. So looking at the reference photograph now, I just feel like I want to I want to just curve. I just wanted to make it a little bit curvier. I wanted to do this now. You can, it's fine to change the shape now I haven't started drawing it. It's just when I was doing the dorsal fin, I noticed that this pot could be a little bit more raised. I like this small. It's a lot. This animal is very, very curvy. So I've decided I just wanted to make this ridge a little, a little bit, a little bit more pronounced. So that's okay. So see the shape is still it's still like I'm still keeping to the guideline, but I'm just going to do this dorsal fin over here. That's gonna go like that. Then ends over here Hope I haven't made that too high. So let me just refine again. And can I say that the drawing process, It's not a race. You don't have to do this really quickly. I would say enjoy the process and really like learn that, you know, use this as practice. So I'm going to just do this fin. So it has a bit of a kind of sticks out over here like that. And it's going to come at a pretty steep angle from the reference photograph. This should actually go higher than this thin. So even though we're also using the reference photograph as a guideline, we're not using it as, you know, as something to be copied exactly. So at this point, it's going to just go like that. And there's a bit of a tip here. And then I actually, I'm just going to check that this is definitely, as I use my ruler. I sometimes use a ruler to just check. Yep, it's definitely higher. And I can even make it like high of I12, but I don't have to. And I might just raise this a little again. Yes. Because I just feel like I might have made the fin a little bit too thick. So I think that that will that looks better. One small, it's up to you how, how much you want to follow the reference picture and how realistic you want your sea dragon to be. But I'm pretty sure that you guys have something that resembles a sea dragon. Now, if you're happy with what you've got and it, and it resembles it. It's good. That is good. You don't have to be as specific as me. So we got this another tiny little thin here that looks like a leaf as well sticking out. And I just feel like I want to just raise this just slightly. Because I just think this should be a little bit higher because our sea dragon does have big fins. And now we got this little roundish shape on the top here. And what I like to do is I'd like to take a step back and keep looking at my drawing just to make sure that from a slight distance you can see if you feel that the proportions are alright. And right now over here, there is a, another little leaf-like thing that I see that that's pretty curved. It's it's kinda curved all the way here like that. Not too big. So it's just like a slight little. There we go. So this is looking good so far, looking really good. And while I'm at it here, I'm just going to I'm just going to add a little curve here because I feel like I can see this pot was a little bit too straight for me. So these are all part of the refining process and it can happen just when you notice something, alright, and I'm happy with that now. So I've almost done all the fins. I just want to say there is a little thin that's sticking out on this segment here. We are almost finished doing our sea dragon This is gonna go up like that. So we've got a leaf that's bigger than the last one that we've done over here. That's a rough shape here. So we don't have to add like all the detail right now because when we paint it, there will be more detailed at it. So I'm just looking at the tail and just using this opportunity to refine it a bit, especially the parts that I feel are a little bit too straight. So I'm going to just add another leaf here. I'd say leave another leaf-like thinness. What I meant, they really do look like leaves. Cut this shape. I'm just going to do that. Something like that. And then this segment is kinda bad here, but there is a, another little leaf looking fin here. So it's gonna go up like that, this angle. And it's gonna be smaller than the last one. Slightly smaller. And finally, we have the little one that I did previously that sits pretty high up here. And then it finally, I'm just going to make the tip look more lifelike now. And also just make it look a little bit curvy. So now you can erase your guidelines. Now that we've drawn the outline of our sea dragon, there are a few more details that we would like to just indicate on the paper as a guideline just so you have more detailed to work with. Once again, this depends on how detailed a picture you wanna do. As you can see, I've taken quite a lot of time to get the shape right, to get the proportions right. Because I do believe that doing the drawing, getting it as accurate as possible really does help to give your subject a very realistic look to it. But this really depends on how much you want to do. But I do feel that even though we will be painting the whole body and you're not going to see all these lines. I do want to now add a few things to our sea dragon. For instance, I want to add, I want to now refine the shape more like adding these little details like how it has a bit of a of a shop, shop sort of a thorny projection above its eye there. And I also do see a bit more of like sort of like a cheek, so to speak, like over here. So I'm just going to add these little details now. Just, just a few things to really give it character And so when we do this head now, I want to now do the neck, which is going to have some, some lines that go all the way to the body. How I wanna do this is I'm not going to think about this too much. I just want to once more, I've looked at a few reference photographs just to try and get an idea of what this should be like. So I'm just going to start over here. Actually, that's gonna be a sort of these lines yeah. Once more. Like you don't have to I'm not counting like, Oh, I'm not looking at a picture on the Internet accounting exactly how many lines there are, like how many segments there are here. I'm going to stop here and then I'm just doing this, just following. Not even really following. I've just looked at a couple of photographs of how its body should look like. Now, I'm going to just at a guideline here. I now want to add some dots here that are going to actually represent. These are just more and more details to this creature, which is very unique. It's a very unique creature. And now I'm going to just add these spear like shapes. Like it's kind of like how would you describe it? Kinda like like a flame, the flame of a cat on top of the candle, like these markings that this beautiful and very unique creature has. And they kind of go all the way up to the neck. And I'm not going to like like count all of them like, I think that would be too much. But they are here. And I think they do get a little smaller and less prominent as you, as you go along the body. To tell you the truth. I just want to make this a little bigger because it is bigger in reference photographs, these little markings, you might not even see them once we're done with our sea dragon. So that is a rough idea of what it's supposed to look like. And yes, it is. It is a very strange creature. And that, I think that would be enough detail. You don't have to go overboard with this because we will be painting it as well, these pots and using some pen later. I actually want to use my time now to just do things like give our, just like how I was defining the cheeks here and staff, we can use this time like for instance, this make this part a little bit more pointed. Hour. I will see Dragon also has like, I wanna give it this a bit of like protrusions here. These are all things that we can add now that we've done the actual the first sketch. So these are all just like really the icing on the cake, making it look more realistic. But I feel that getting the general shape right is such an important part of the art process before you even start painting. Because it will determine whether your animal does look realistic or not. But if you're going for a very Adi look, that I just wanted to make this tail a little bit more realistic. If you're going for a more abstract look, that is absolutely fine too. It's just, this is my style that I like to do where I like to make it look realistic, but I'm not going to really go overboard. Trying to capture every detail, trying to capture every every number of dots are, or who, you know, or segments that it has. So I can even make this part a little a little wider. So I'm just going to use my eraser to just clean up a little. So far. I'm really happy with the shape of this. So if you see me like making lots of alterations during the drawing process, this is this is the drawing process. Like I it's okay to change your mind halfway. If you feel like, oh, I can add more to this animal. I just wanted to also do this c Erase, so we're giving it more shape now. And there we go, just cleaning up a bit. And I'm just checking to see like is there any other like, little bumps and stuff that I can I can give it to give it a more three-dimensional feel. So that's looking, I'm actually quite, quite loving it already and I don't want to add too much to the point that yeah. So later on, we're also going to add a lot more details with our Pen once we finished painting it. I don't think there's any point in doing that right now. So I'm just standing up, having a better look at it just to make sure that there's nothing more that I can add right now before I start painting, but overall, I'm really happy with the way it looks now. So it took us a while to get here to get to this point. And I really did take my time to draw this as accurately as I can draw this live with you. Just so you can see my drawing process. I just wanted to make this pot a little thicker here. Because if I look at a few reference photographs, I do see that it is a little thicker at the beginning and then it tapers down. So there we go. And I do believe now we are really ready to start painting. So see you in the next video. 5. Painting - Base Coat: Hello everyone. And we have come now to the painting section of our course. And we are now going to lay down a base coat for our beautiful weedy see dragon. And so I just want to, I have my palette over here and I've chosen some colors from my paints. And I'm just going to try and put them over here so you can see them. So the first color I want to use is this color called buzzy from my Jane Davenport pin collection, watercolor paint collection. Now, a buzzy is very similar to a cadmium yellow. I also want to put down this beautiful color cotton mango. So I'm just going to put it here. So it's like a, a darker yellow. I think it very closely resembles Indian yellow. And I also wanted to just put down this color called kiss, kiss. I don't know if you can see it over here. So kiss, kiss is very similar to burnt sienna. And I'm just having it ready in my palette. And also this color called apple, which I feel is very similar to a cadmium red. And after that, we're going to drop in another color called royal, which is very similar to ultramarine violet. So this is a beautiful purple. It's very nice and deep and more towards the bluish side. So what I like to do is I'm going to use a bigger brush and I'm going to wet very carefully within the lines with clean water. This whole area of the Sea Dragon. I mean, you don't have to be too precious here. My water is already a little bit colored. And I don't have to do the leaves, these little leaf structures right now, I want to mainly focus on the body. It's okay to go out here a little. So everything outside the main body can be done later. Because when I lay down this base coat, we do have to work reasonably quickly because our water will evaporate and we want to have a uniform a uniform sheen on it. The same amount of wetness because some parts were already started to dry. As you can see, this part's already starting to dry. So I'm going to just re-wet this area. So try and work quickly. But if you have to, we can always rewet areas. That's the beauty of watercolors. And we are going to be laying down multiple layers for this project. It's already wet now, I want to switch to my smaller brush. And what I like to do is I'm going to, I like starting with the lighter colors. So I can see there's a bit of yellow here. There is a bit of yellow down here. So all I'm doing is using wet on wet technique to drop in the yellow. The yellow areas where I see them there under I'll see dragon over here. And this is all just based on looking at reference photographs on the Internet. Because the reference photograph that I personally took of the, of the see dragon was in an aquarium and the lighting was not particularly really great that I can also see just a tad bit of yellow right on the edge here. So what I was saying earlier is I like to lay down the, the lighter colors first before I do the darker colors. It's just habit, but it's darker colors will always lay a well will always sit well on top of lighter colors, whereas a lighter color will not sit on top of a darker color in watercolors. So now that I've done this, I'm going to use this. Just dry my brush a bit. This pane called kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss is kind of all around, all around our sea dragon. So what I'm doing here is I'm not going to cover every every area of it because From what I see, there are I can get more from there are also beautiful red colors. So I'm just going to drop it in here, but I'm not I'm not like being particularly careful. So I just wanted to put down some kids, kids over here first. I'm now going to use a bit of this beautiful red called Apple. And I'm just going to drop it in. The only thing I would say is try not to try to leave these little spear shapes that we create it. We want to try and leave that uncolored. Well, try to, if you don't have to, but because we are going to do some purple on it later. So we just want to kind of leave that unpainted. So as you can see, how pain is already starting to dry. But that's okay. You don't have to panic because we can always re-wet it. In my reference photograph towards the end, the the tail does get pretty dark. So what I want to do now, and I did, I want it to actually add a bit of mango. Mango is like, it's almost like an orangey yellow. And I do see it in certain parts. So it just builds up some color. But to tell you the truth, I can already see a lot of mixing going on between the the color buzzy and this red. So I'm just dropping in a little bit more to emphasize, like to emphasize these yellow parts here. It's just like another layer of color. Some parts are just going to look a bit more orangey. But at the end of the day, it's perfectly fine because we are, we want some color variation and we're also going to do plenty more layers, so you will see a lot more color, colors mixing. And I also want to just re-wet this area here. Even though it's very dark. Now, while I'll paint is still a bit wet, we're going to do something quite exciting. We're going to use this color royal. Now. It is. Sorry, my, I hope my arm is in blocking too much of this, so I just have to angle my hand over here. So this part of the weedy see dragons snout is Dhaka. And we're just going to go up here a little. This is not really a time to do a lot of details, but we just want to drop this in now while the paint is still wet. As you can see, the paint is already starting to dry. Here. We are. I do have to work quite quickly here, but I can always re-wet this area. So I'm just going to this area is up here dark. We don't have to save some time on the to make sure it doesn't fully dry. I just wanted to do the areas that I really have to. So this purple kind of acts a bit like a shadow. Before this dries, I've cleaned my brush. I've used just a clean damp brush to kinda spread this paint a little so it didn't have any hard edges of purple. Now, I'm just going to work quite quickly to do. I can see that shadow down here. So I just wanna do these pots while my paint is still wet. The puppet really does add a bit of shadow, but I think it also gives us a bit more of an outline of where, of what's happening. Where the boundaries n. I'm going to go back to my paint. My just get a little bit more pain here. While this is still wet. I want to just It's okay if it spreads out a little because I actually don't want this to look to define these little spearheads patterns, whatever you wanna call them. So it just spreads out slightly, which is fine, which is actually quite like what the pattern on the rail see weedy, see dragon looks like. So as you can see, there's a little bit of spreading. And this part actually gets quiet. Is in shadow. So I'm just gonna do this pulpal border over here. And just so I'm quite happy with the way that it's mixing right now with the way you're seeing some blending happening, but it's not, it's not too pronounced. And I also want to take the purple up here because I do see some purple there. And this is just like we're going to let it just blend in a little more purple. There we go. And I just want to carry this on here. So as you can see, I'll paint is already starting to dry towards the tail here. So I'm just gonna do this like outline the tail as much as I can, working quickly but also trying to to stay within the tail boundaries. While as you can see, we already have a very beautiful, colorful and I'm just going to, well, this is a base coat so I don't have to like work. I don't have to do much detail now what I'm doing now though, is I want to re-emphasize this boundary here. And I'm also going to use a bit of water to spread this up here to blend it more with the tail. It's quite subtle, but we're just now that that's wet, I can actually just drop in a bit of purple here and it will spread. So with this base coat, like I said, we don't have to put a tremendous amount of detail in and I'm just trying to work as fast as I can. So taking a step back. Yep. I'm quite happy with what we've got so far because we are going to add a lot more layers. And I just want to I can see some light purple markings over here that I kind of like, yeah, a little bit segmented. And I just want to blend that in a bit more with a wet brush. These are just subtle markings on the on I'll see dragon. So, so far, we have done that for the body. That's our first base coat, which is great. Like we can always add to that later. So now that we've done that, I feel that we can start working on these leaf structures. So what I'm gonna do is I'm going to wet them and I want to drop in the color. Kiss, kiss. Very cute name. I'm not going to paint the whole thing. Just going to leave a bit of white. And while that is still wet, I'm going to use a pretty strong mixture of Royal. And I'm going to let this, I'm gonna do the outline. But as you can see, it's blending in. And we're going to repeat the process with, with this, this huge one over here, this huge fin. Okay, that's looking very, very lovely. And now I'm just going to do these little fins here. Same, same method of dropping kids, kids in. For these peck fins. I noticed there were a bit darker. So I don't mind dropping in like maybe a bit of the red, which is called Apple In a little bit just, just to like, you know, I'm all about creating variations. So one small same method of using the purple. It's okay for this structure to be quiet. Dark these fins here. So the base of the, of this fin can be quite dark. It's nice to have some variation. And I like if you feel like you want some to be more purple than the others, It's fine. Okay. And that's looking quite good. And in fact, I might even just use my purple to just give the tail even more definition by just kinda outlining it a little. I'm gonna do the same on this side. But we are going to drop in a lot more color in the next round. I might as well just do this little part here. That's this fin here. So this is looking very, very good for base coat. Some quite happy with this. But I was actually thinking now of dropping in even more color, like a darker color. So now that we've got the purple is going on and stuff, I actually wanted to introduce this color ink. As you can see, it's very much, It's like a shadow color that I really like. And it's, I would say it's very similar to indigo. So what I wanna do with this color that's very dark is I want to drop it in in some parts. So I definitely see the snout being darker. But what I wanna do to make sure that there are no hard lines is I want to introduce this very carefully by just wedding. Wedding, the areas that I want to drop it in. So it's not gonna be put everywhere. I can definitely see a lot on the head here and the neck here. So I don't want to drop this in every way. I just wanted to re-emphasize that. So which means I'm not going to wet the entire area. So I'm going to work quite quickly now. And I apologize about my hand, but I'm going to drop this in here. So as you can see, it's a strong color. This is still part of our base coat, but I just really wanted to introduce this coloring because we even have a darker color that's very similar to black or Payne's gray that I'm going to put in later. I think it's a bit early in this stage. So as you can see, it's already giving my weedy see dragon some definition. It's already, you know, making it look more realistic, more three-dimensional by adding this color. And yeah, it's a very beautiful color and I actually want to bring this up here as well. I'm going to use it to outline my end to make sure that it, to make it look more natural, I'm just going to use my brush to blend this in a bit because the leaf has already started drawing. I'm gonna do the same here. What's important is use clean water and a damp brush. If you don't want very hard edges to just like smooth these edges a little. If you don't want hard edges in your painting, but if you do, it's fine. Like I'm just wondering, move a bit of pain here just so this looks more three-dimensional guy. So as you can see, this color is a very beautiful color. I use it a lot because it just, it, it provides shadow and dimension without being as strong as a black, for instance, or even gray I find could be very strong. And it also has like a sort of a purple purplish kind of tinge to it, which I love. And so I'm just now re-emphasizing these pots. And I can even put some on this like little fin sticking out here. So with this color and it's looking really, really gorgeous, actually. I'm just going to do the same with these fins over here. So I just want to wet it so that I can introduce the the I forgot what the color is called. Sorry. I know this. That's like indigo, but they call it Inc. in this particular set of pins by Jane Davenport. So we're already, as you can see, we're introducing so many colors to our fins and their judges looking very beautiful. And now I'm just going to work quite quickly with these fins as well. I think I can just wet them. Think they should stay wet until I get to them. And I also think I would like to introduce this color. So these are things that I can decide while on the go, so to speak. Like, even if I do plan on a painting, I feel that I can change my mind and decide, Hey, I think I want to add in these effects as I go along, which are perfectly fine. Feel free to change your mind as you go along. I think I need a stronger, stronger version over here. So as I do this, I'm going to go along, yeah. Introduced that color. And as you can see, it's blending very beautifully. And it gets pretty dark towards the end of the tail. So I'm just going to go down here. Alright? And we can actually, I'm just going to use my clean wet brush now just to try and blend these colors a bit. Just so they know like, uh, real hard edges. So as you can see, it's looking quite, quite great. I'm quite happy with this. I might just want to add a bit more shadow color under here because this is the underside of our sea dragon. And still making sure that the yellow can be as visible. But I'm going to take a step back now. And I think that that is a really good start to the gray to a base coat. The only thing I would like to do is introduce some of this color in here, in these little what do you want to call them? The spearhead patents that had some purple in it, but I think that they would benefit from having a bit of the shadow color in it too. There is one little thing I'd like to do now. I'd like to just add, I forgot about the eye of the, of our little guy. I might just use some of the kiss, kiss to just go over this area here. I think I'll base code is done. And we're just going to let this dry. And I will see you in the next video. 6. Painting - Second Coat: Hello. We're back. In this video. We are now going to add more layers of watercolors to our beautiful weedy see dragon. As you can see in the last video, we've already laid down a very beautiful base wash, which I feel is the foundation of the painting, the base wash. And now in this video, I'm just going to teach you how to build up layers and in turn, give your weedy see dragon a more three-dimensional look. I'm also going to introduce a new color. So this set calls this color Raven. And to me it's a very, very, let me just see if you can see that in the palette. I'm just going to put it over, over here actually. So Raven to me is a black. I don t think it's the Payne's gray. It's actually pretty dark. It is a genuine black color. So this we are going to introduce now. I didn't feel that I needed to introduce it in the base wash because I felt a strong color. We also want to use it only sparingly in certain parts of our sketch on watercolor sketch. So right now I'm doing what I always do, which is just adding some water. Wedding. Our subject, I might just leave the eye area untouched now. So all I'm doing now is gently introducing water because it's just going to help our pain spread when we add more layers on. And while I'm doing this, I'm just taking care to try not to move the base colors around much. So you just want to gently dab it. So I'm going to start again by introducing the lighter colors and I want to reinforce the yellows here. Down here may have become a little a little less obvious down here. So I'm just using the wet on wet technique of just dropping in some color, some paint, I mean, so I'm also going to emphasize the yellows here. And I do believe there was also a bit of yellow up here, just slightly. Once more. I'm just doing this based on reference photographs that I've seen on the Internet and also a little on my own, my own reference picture. So I've done the light yellow now I'm going to drop in a darker yellow, which is called mango. And I just wanted to put some over here. So this is a DACA stronger yellow. I just wanted to maybe just reinforce some of these areas here that are supposed to be yellow. So don't worry too much about about the colors like bleeding there for now because we actually want that. And now I want to use kiss kiss. So I'm just going to drop kids, kids in like in some areas. Like not not all over. And I'm just letting this, don't worry too much about these colors fading here. Because to tell you the truth, these bleeds, they will all dry very nicely. And we're also going to cover this area later on with some ink pen. So don't worry too much if things are bleeding out right now. It's cool. I'm just I feel that the tail should have the tail should be darker than the rest of the body because it's a narrower area. And I now want to add in some of this apple, this apple red, but I'm gonna do that sparingly because this is a strong red. As you can see. I just feel like I see some on the tail. Yeah. So I'm just dabbing it in. I just want to make sure I don't put put it everywhere such that you just see a red, the big red tail. Because I do like these other colors that are coming through, the purples and the yellows. And it's also mixing very well with with the kiss kiss color. So what I'm doing now is I'm going to use the red a little to kind of go over this little segment lines But I'm I'm letting I'm actually letting it just bleed. But it's also just giving me a bit of a of a line as you can see, but one that's not very clear. So I'm just letting this just bleed in here a bit. This is all going to add effect to our beautiful sea dragon. Some recent dropping, just a slight amount of red here. One small, you don't have to follow the exact placement of the colors that I do. This is really your work. And this particular VDC dragon is this color. But we do see dragons actually come in many different colors too. So I feel that it is a painting. It's not it's not a photograph. Like I always say. We're just capturing the essence of the animal, not the exact the exact photograph of the animal. So now that I've done this, I'm going to work quite quickly. And I just want to introduce a bit of the purple again. And I'm going to drop in some more kiss, kiss because I feel like it's, it's kind of faint here. So what I'm doing is I'm just using the wet on wet technique. And I also want to introduce our black here now. So be very careful about your hands touching a wet surface. You don't want to smudge your paintings. So I'm introducing this beautiful black color which the set calls Raven. So as you can see, it's starting to just spread a little bit. But I can help that by just letting my brush go in a little bit more. And I also wanna do this. So as you can see, it's starting to mix quite beautifully. And, um, while I just have to check that the snout looks a little bit too wet still. I don't want to drop in my black in there just yet because I don't want it to just become very muddy. So I might let that weight a little while. And in the meantime, I can do this fin over here. So what I'm gonna do is drop in a bit of the eye one more color. So I want to drop in more of the kiss, kiss. So once more, just using that wet on wet technique, dropping it in, try not to cover everything up. If I want to create a bit more variation, I can even add some of the red in, leaving a bit of white gaps over there. And I'm going to just pick up my black. I'm just going to need more black. Oops, I think I got the wrong color. I think the black is actually this one. Sorry. I don't want to dirty that, so I'm just going to bring it down here. So this is what happens when you're working live. I'm just going to keep going. So I don't want I don't obviously don't want the whole thing to just be black. So we're going to yeah, that looks good sparingly. Let it spread in here. That's looking good to me. So I'm just going to use and actually, before I go on to the next fin, I can see that the trunk is looking quite it's not as wet as it was before. So I'm just going to drop in a bit of this black. So that's a very dark trunk. Did I call it trunk? And then a very dark snorkel. So just letting the black spread very slightly up there. And I I'm just Going through letting these little details, I'm trying not to go into it, just really sticking to their outline because I really would like this. The colors to still shine through. I only want it to be black in certain areas. So as you can see, it goes up there. Yeah, that's looking good. All right. Can you see the difference? It's a beautiful like three-dimensional look now to our sea dragons head. And I didn't feel like we could take it a bit further here, but I don't I don't want the whole head to be black, so I'm just spreading it a bit here. That's looking very good. And now I can go back to doing the fins again. If you think it's looking a bit dull with the blackout put in, I can't wait to show you what I'm gonna do with the, with the pens. This dark surface is actually going to make our the pen really stand out. Just wetting this, just repeating the same thing I've done last time, just dropping in a bit more color. And I want to make this a little bit, little bit red, a little bit different. And I'm going to now introduce the black again. And also just to add a bit of red, just to make it a little bit more vibrant. Alright, so just going to blend this again with a wet brush. And I might just add a bit of purple up here because I just want the tail to have some color. That's looking good to me and I don't think I really want to touch it anymore. So all I'm gonna do now is finished. My, whoops. I don't want that color. I wanted the black, so I want to just finish up the fins. So this is just spreading before, before the water dries up so that the tip of the tail is going to be quite dark in my, in my painting. That's looking very good to me. I'm going to take a step back and see what else I could do right now. And I think I do see what I can do. Now that this part is semi dried. I want to reinforce the purples to do things like reinforce the, the eye. So I just wanted to add a bit more of that color. Kiss, kiss. Yeah. Emily, I'm purposely leaving the top a little lighter just to create that three-dimensional look. I also feel like I wanted to just add a little bit of it here while it's drying. I'm just looking and I think I want to start reinforcing the the gorgeous purple. These little spearheads sort of shapes. If this is dry now, I want to do the, the, I I don't know if you'd call this the pupil, but I just wanted to leave a little white.in the middle, I like that whole look. I still feel that this whole snout can be a bit darker because we really want it to be dark when we do our gel pen work on it, it will really look more striking. So I might just use a little bit of black on this Once more in a very controlled way because I just feel that this needs to be quite dark for our gel pen to stand out later. And I'm just gonna I'm gonna carry the color around the eye. But I'm going to blend it out very, very, very carefully because I don't want the whole face to be black. I just really feel it's very important for the snout. I'm sorry if I keep calling this a snout, I'm in well, I guess I would call it a snout. Okay. So what else can we do? We're just going to put a bit more purple here. I feel that I could make these these segmented markings a little bit more pronounced. So even though we did do a bit of that just now, I, I wanted to just do this like I feel that it will help give our 3D sea dragon even more definition. So just using some of the apple red color to just reinforce those segment lines. So that's looking good. Just rinsing my brush to smooth out. Using a damp brush just to smooth out anything that I feel is too too sharp edges. And what I like to do is I always like to take a step back and have a look. I'm happy with this effect. I also see a bit of like red coming down over here. So I just want to at this little red line that I see in some of the reference photographs I've looked at of our guy. And I also still feel like the face could use a bit more of a reddish tinge to it. So I'm just going to drop in a bit of red the user a wet or damp brush just to smooth this out a bit. Just blend that with more water if you have too. And I might drop in a bit of kids kids too, into that. Yeah. I just feel that this part should be a bit redder. So this is all a matter of preference for me. But if you're happy with how your weedy see dragon is looking, you don't have to do exactly what I do with the colors. Like, you know, feel free to play around with the colors. Just using this time to just add a bit more color. But overall, I'm really happy with what we've done so far. And so I'm just looking to see where else I want to add more colors. So this is where, for instance, I want to drop in a bit of purple just for some variation to make it a little bit darker. Just in certain parts, not everywhere. I feel that maybe I want to add a little bit more shadow. I want to drop in a bit of purple here And even some more of this ink color. Because I feel like it should be darker towards the end. And just spread this a little. And believe it or not, I still want this part of the tail to be a brighter red. So I'm going to wet it and I'm going to drop in a concentrated amount of red, apple red here because I just think it would look great. Being a bit red, a k, and a bit more purple here. So, so far, I think it's looking really, really great. And just trying to see what else I can do to reinforce it. I actually wouldn't mind just reinforcing these purple areas. Again. The shadow will not Shadow, sorry, these patterns. So this is what watercolor is all about. It's all about layering. So if you want to go darker, you just layer more on top of it. And I think it's great because that way you put one layer down and it's not dark enough, you can always just layer more on top. And another thing that I want to do, just wanted is to really redefine these dots that we may have lost just now. That are an important part of the, of the pattern. I feel like I'm just going to just gonna do that. And I'm just going to spread these under here. Okay, and taking a step back and having a look, I think this looks great. I just wanted to add. I still feel that it could use a little bit more shadows in certain areas. Like I do feel that I wanted to just drop in a bit more purple up here. Once more. This is up to you how defined you want to make it and the amount of color you want to add to it. Just adding some purple here for the tail, just to give it a little bit of give it a bit more of a textured look. I also want to add a bit of the shadow color I feel like just to the shadow color ink. So these are all things you can do now before you do the very final touches. But overall, I'm really happy with how my seahorse, I mean, my sea dragon is looking. I just want to also use a touch of black to just do this sort of pupil area. Yeah. I'm still going to try and keep that nice that really, that nice white dots. Just to give our our sea dragon a little bit of life, so to speak, like to give him a bit of a twinkle in the eye. And I'm actually really happy with how this has turned out so fast. So I feel that I'd like to stop it here. And in the next video, we will be doing the very final touches of our VDC dragons. So I can't wait for you to join me then 7. Painting - Final Touches: Hello everyone. We are in our final stage of finishing our beautiful VDC Dragon. This is gonna be very fun. After we add the very final touches of pain, we are going to use our ink pens. And this is going to get is always to me, kind of like the icing on the cake is probably my favorite part of doing watercolor sketch like this, just to emphasize all those beautiful things like patterns, highlights, and outlines with pen. And I just feel it just goes so well with watercolors. It just really compliments the watercolors so beautifully. So without further delay, what I wanna do now first is I'm just want to finish the very final layers of pain fibers that are going to really make our sea dragon pop. In the last video, I had started doing these segments with the red paint, if you remember that. So I just wanted to continue doing that because I was studying the patterns on the weedy see dragons bodies, just looking at reference photographs. And I do believe that the pattern is going to continue all the way into the tail. It's just that from the reference photograph that I personally took in the aquarium, you couldn't quite see that from the picture. That's because the tail was in the shadow. So I just want to just reinforce this. It may seem like a bit of an effort to do, but the final product is just going to look so beautiful that I really do feel that it's worth it. But this is totally up to you if you're happy with how your VDC dragon already looks, That's fine. I'm just somebody that likes a lot of detail in my art. I'm just using the red color apple. Now, this whole segment will actually be covered in yellow ink, but I am just re-emphasizing this just because it will stand out. It will make the yellow ink stand out more against the darker backgrounds, so a darker red. So now these stripes are going to continue. So I just feel that I would like to use the very dark color, which is called Raven, which corresponds to black. I'm going to use a separate brush. And I'm just going to wet the area that I want to drop it in. I do like the snout. I think it is. It is quite dark, but there are just certain areas. I want to just emphasize a little bit more shadow. I just wanted to just drop in a little bit of black here. And I would just advise you to go very, very carefully, very sparingly with your paint groups. And as you can see, please be very careful with your hand. So I'm just very subtly adding a bit of shadow here where I see it. So we're not gonna do a whole outline. I don t feel that we need to just be careful with your hand again. So just going to do that a little there. And I don't want to overdo that. So I just want to drop in a bit more black over here. And just a little bit over here. I feel that the tail is dark enough already, but there are other things that I'd like to do. I want to use my black color to actually add a bit more depth to these patterns here that you see on the neck. So what I'm doing is, I'm not, I'm not painting the entire purple purplish spear or teardrop shape. It's just I'm just adding a little bit more shadow to the bottom area. And if you take a step back, that does make it look even more three-dimensional And I'm also going to use my black now to really emphasize certain things like the stem. Well, I call it the stem, but the base of the fin that attaches to the main body, I just want to make that whole structure darker, more pronounced. So just just dry brushing here. That's all I'm doing. I'm re-wetting the area, anything like that. Just so I've got a bit more control over. Once more. Please be very careful where you put your hand down. You don't want to smudge your beautiful picture this late into the process, even if you do do it, don't panic. I would just advise you to very quickly use a wet brush to try and correct that. Try and remove the pain as soon as possible. I personally never think that a painting is ever like non salvageable. I've made many mistakes in the long time that I've been using watercolors. And I've always found a way to try and make the mistake work. Just using the black to emphasize certain areas. So I did this little thin here, and I might just darken these areas here because I'm gonna be using pen over them. But I don't mind having the purplish color like be visible. And I don't want I like keeping that color there so you don't have to do everything very uniformly. So I already feel that that does now is dark enough. So maybe I should probably stop touching it. But I do feel. So watch your hand again. If you have to turn, turn your whole arm. Whoops, let's do that a bit, a bit more carefully. I'm just want to reemphasize these dots that we see on our weedy see dragon that, that kinda acts like a, like, a like a cross-sectional line that goes through its main body. It is such a unique animal, it really is. But these dots do, based on reference photographs on, on the Internet that I've looked at, they do seem to not go all the way through to to the tail. So we'll just leave it at that. So let your pains just completely dry before we do the next part. The colors that I want to use for the gel pens. Or I've got these, this pastel yellow pen that I talked about in the materials section and it's a Pilot G2 07. This pen. What's great about it is it's going to stand out against a dark color, which is really cool. It's like white gel pens that I previously used in the past. So I want to use the white gel pen right now too. At these cute little, as you can see, cute little white dots that we see. And I'm not really doing this. It's kind of random. I'm not really thinking too hard about where I want to place them. I'm just doing what feels natural. So as you can see, the reason I had done the snout dark because these white gel pens just stand out so beautifully against a dark background. I've used white gel pens so frequently to add things like stars against a dark background. They're great for so many things. Adding highlights, adding shine. So I don't want to overdo that, but I'm quite happy with that. And also I want to take the white and do the base. The pattern that we see here on the base of this fin on the head. I also see it here. I add another one here just to it's very easy for me to get carried away with this pot. So I have to be quite mindful as I do love adding, adding little, little details like this. So yeah, this is definitely my favorite part of the process, just doing the finishing touches with ink pens. From reference photographs. It does n on the stem, though. We don't really see it being carried all the way into the main body of the fins. So I might stick with that So that's nice. I'm just taking a little step back to have a look at that effect and it's looking so good, it's really coming alive. Now. I think I will add some white gel pen over here. Not too much on this part. I don't really see them in reference photographs down here, but it's really up to you if you feel that your picture would benefit from having a few more dots. Go ahead. Like I said, this is not an exact photograph of your subject. And in fact, I didn't have a clear photograph to work with in the first place. So I did have to look at reference photographs and things like that, but I'm very happy with how my weedy see dragon has turned out. So now here's the really fun part using the yellow gel pen. And I can't wait to start. This beautiful little guy has quite a few yellow dots. As you can see. The yellow dots, they stand out very well against this dark background here too. And these dots kinda go all around, even around this eye. And this is also going to one small, I'm just gonna do a little line, guideline of dots that goes down here just so I know where, where the boundary is. And so that looks so beautiful. I'm having a lot of fun doing this part and I hope you are too. And a bit more yellow here. And as you can see, this yellow pen not only stands out against the dark blacks and purples, but also against the lighter colors like the red and yellow. So it really is wonderful. And these dots kind of continue over here. And this is where our yellow pen is going to come in very handy too. I can see that the yellow lines kind of, you know, kinda continue up here too. And so this is like my boundary line to work within. And I'm just going to add these yellow lines that you see now. They are going to kinda go down these these boundaries. A little like the segment area that we, that we were emphasizing earlier. So it's also going to cover these purple dots from here onwards. Once more, I'm being quite specific, but you are more than welcome to do whatever yellow pattern you want. Just a bit of trivia for a long time, I was only using white gel pen to add highlights because I didn't know about these other gel pens that were, that I could use compatibly with watercolors that, you know, that stand out against watercolors like almost in the same way that an acrylic pen would stand out against the dark background. So I was very happy to find a pen like this one that I could use with watercolors that wasn't just white. And in fact, I've bought other colors as well that I'll pass delete that I can't wait to use in future projects. I think combining pen like this and working with different media for watercolors, it really compliments the watercolors and it creates such beautiful effects rather than just using watercolors alone. So something I've noticed now as well is that there is a little bit of a yellow, very, very thin yellow border at the top here. That I just want to you don't have to do this. This is just something I've noticed now and I don't know if it's really necessary. So I might just, while I'm doing this, I might just kinda spread it a bit with my finger, blend it in a little bit because it doesn't stand out terribly. It's not very noticeable, but I noticed that yellow, yellowish color. So right now, before we put our yellow pen away, we've used it a lot and it's been wonderful. I just wanted to just emphasize certain dots, makes certain dots bigger. The great thing is also about with this yellow pen, I can do something where if you work very quickly, you can take a wet brush and just blend it in to make this area like a more natural yellow. It's not too bright. So I just wanted to add a bit of a yellow touch. They're just moving some of that pain because yeah, I do feel like this this area should be a little bit lighter. I can now, if you really want to, you can like make sure you you're happy with the dots on the head. I feel like there are enough there are enough dots on the snout. It's very easy. And I've done this before to get carried away with putting dots for stars, for highlights and stuff. So I would just say, try, try and do it in a controlled manner. I thought I'd put this pen down before I get really carried away. Away this yellow pen goes. I've got a bunch of pins here, as you can see. And I want to just try out the black. So what I'm doing is I don't feel I want to outline the entire animal, the entire body, but I just wanted to emphasize certain edges. So I adjust with a steady hand. Like, like the edges of the snout. For me. It's very defined, so I just want to do that. But at the same time, I'm not trying to outline the entire animal like so I'm not going to put it everywhere and I'm also going to use a lot of broken lines to do this. This is the effect with black just doing a few ridges. And I'm just kinda looking to see where I really need it. Like if my paint looked a bit looked a little bit like it kind of went out of the border a little here. I just want to emphasize that. But even with this yellow paint down here that's going out, like I'm actually fine to leave that. It's part of the painting process. And sometimes I like seeing like I like seeing the whole process so little bits like that, they don't really bother me, but if they do bother you, you can work very carefully with a wet brush to try and just remove that pain like that. Very gently. But personally, I don't mind seeing a bit of pencil sketches and stuff like that to me, it's quite pretty, it looks kinda organic. Now. Just going to take some of that yellow off if I just want to show you how to do it. So you just use a clean damp brush, not a wet brush, a damp brush just you don't want to introduce a lot more water to your painting because that could cause it could reactivate the pains, make them move around and you don't want that. So you're being very careful with a damp brush to just go around those areas that you want to remove pain. So personally, I like them, but if you want to, you can you can remove it. The snout here for me is a little undefined. But I'm going to experiment a bit rather than using black, I want to see what purple would look like. And so even though I defined it, that, that section a little bit more, me using purple instead of black, I feel like it adds a bit more color to the painting, rather than if I just toned everything down with black, which you are welcome to do whatever you feel you would like to do for your painting. But I'm fine to stick with purple. And this is a pretty dark purple by the way, it's not like really bright or anything, so I'm fine to just use it too. You see like just define some edges. So I just made that middle projection right above the eye a little bit more defined. Like so. Yeah. I I want to do there are a fine a couple of fine hairs, hair-like projections. I shouldn't call them hairs. I'm not sure of their hands, but hair-like projections that I've seen on numerous reference photographs that kinda come on this part of the tail. And I'm just deciding between purple and black. How about I just tried this with purple for us because I can always go over it with black if I don't like it. So poeple here would look a bit light, so I think I might swap to black now. Now we're just going to finish our hair-like projections. It's a very, very unusual and beautiful animal. So just try and keep the has like as thin as possible. So it kind of goes down a little here and it stops at the first segment of the tail. So it's very unusual animal, but I just thought I include those heads because I just thought they were very cute. Actually. I'm not too strict about removing pencil lines, but if you want a cleaner look, you're welcome to do it like this just very gently. Before we call it a day. But if you have something that you're really happy with, this, you should be so proud of yourself. This was not not a really easy animal to draw and paint, and you definitely tested all your watercolor skills like wet on wet, wet on dry, doing varied washes. So congrats to you. You've done very, very well to get this far. So I'm just looking at my beautiful sea dragon and just deciding if I wanted to do anything more, like if you want to define anymore areas now. But personally, I'm, I'm really happy with it. And erase this line here. And if you are happy now with your painting, you can do what I love to do this as a very satisfying pot where you can just sign your name with a pen, sign your initials. So I I use pen sometimes to do that, but I'm also very happy to use a paintbrush to just so I hope you're happy with your VDC Dragon. This has been work but really rewarding fun work. And you've used new techniques of combining watercolors with ink by adding the beautiful dots. For the patent of your sea dragon with ink pens. I hope you're really, really happy with your painting and well done. And join me in the next segment, just for my final thoughts. And once again, congratulations 8. Final Thoughts & Thank you: I just wanted to thank you so much for watching my class how to draw and paint a weedy see dragon in watercolors and ink. I hope that you've enjoyed yourself and that you've also learned a few helpful tips about how you can create very beautiful, very vibrant, and very realistic art by combining watercolors and ink. Please feel free to upload your arms so that I can see them. Also. Please feel free to follow me on Skillshare or my Instagram page to get updates from me about new upcoming classes. One small, I just wanted to say, thank you so much. And I wish you all the best in your watercolor journey.