How to Draw and Paint Clownfish in Watercolors with Metallic Highlights and Ink

1. Introduction: Hello everyone. Have you ever wanted to learn how to Draw and Paint Clownfish? But I'm not talking about any ordinary painting. I'm talking about a realistic painting, but with a dreamy feel and a beautiful magical shimmery finish. Hi, my name is Alicia Puran, and I'm an artist who works primarily in Watercolors and Ink. And I love all marine life. To me, one of my favorite fish, clownfish, because they are cute, bubbly, and they have this very distinct orange color with white and black stripes that make them easily identifiable. Clownfish or refurbish. And they also come in different colors, such as yellow, red, and black. And they tend to pair and mate for life. In this class. I'm going to take you through each step in drawing and painting a pair of clownfish. I will teach you how to lay down a very base Coat by dropping colors in using the wet on wet technique. Will then teach you how to give dimension to your fish by layering more paint, followed by how to add a shimmery finish to your fish using strategically placed layers of metallic watercolors that make them truly come to life. We will also frame them in a partial background that compliments their colors. Finally, we will use pens to add more detail and to add highlights and accentuate dark areas. This class is designed for intermediate to advanced Watercolors students. However, if you feel confident to follow along and if you really want to learn how to Draw and Paint Clownfish, you are more than welcome to take this class. As I will break everything down step-by-step and clearly explain everything that I'm doing in real time. So if you are ready to Draw and Paint a beautiful magical clownfish pair, Let's begin. 2. Materials: Hello, and welcome to the materials section of our class where I will take you through all the materials that you need to create this beautiful clownfish project. So let's get started. First off for the drawing, I've chosen to use Strathmore mixed media board, which is 8 " by 10 ". The reason that I'm using mixed media board for this project is simply because this is very hard, as you can see and rigid and very absorbent. But if you don't have mixed media board, you are more than welcome to use artist quality watercolor paper. As long as it's 300 g/m square, then that's absolutely fine. I simply want to give this as a gift to somebody. And I find that with mixed media board, it also frame really well because it doesn't buckle under the weight of the Paints. Next, I just want to show you the drawing materials that I use. I love using pilot super grip pencils, which are 0.5. And then that's just the thickness of the lead. I also use any Raisa. Whatever brand you want is fine. I use Staedtler and I can't live without my mechanical eraser, which has the brand Tombow mono zero. And I've used this in many projects before. It's just works like a mechanical pencil with a very fine tip eraser just so you can erase those very small lines in very small areas of your drawing. Next, I want to take you through the painting section of all project. So first off, you're going to need basic things like jars of water. I tend to have to just so I don't have to keep changing the water. I also love using a ceramic palette simply because it gives me a large area to mix my paints on. You can also use either a rag just to absorb the extra water from your brush when you rinse it or paper towels. Now, I wanted to talk about the brushes that I'll be using for this project. I love to use this brand of silver black velvet and I have them in sizes 128 and for all of them are round brushes. And they are such great quality. So I've used them a lot lately. You can use whatever round brushes of this size, whatever brand you want as long as they are artists quality because I find out is quality, ones tend to keep their pointed tip when they're wet. I now want to talk about the paints that I'll be using for this project. I've chosen to use this brand of pain called Jane Davenport paints. They are artists quality, but you can really use whatever artist quality paints that you have, whatever brand you have. And in this particular project, I've chosen to use the colors of mango, which is very similar to Indian yellow. I also chose to use this color, this orange, which is called vitamin C in the set, but it's very close to cadmium orange. I also chose to use this color ink, which is very close to indigo. I also chose to use this dark purple color, royal, which is very similar to our ultramarine violet. I also chose this beautiful color, which is very like a turquoise, which is called 70s eye shadow. In this brand. I also chose to use this blue, which is called blueberry, but very similar to ultra marine in other sets. And finally, I chose to use this black, which is called Raven in this brand, which is just very much Black in any other artist quality paint set that you have. Now, let's move on to the metallic Paints that I shall be using. I've chosen to use this brand called superior. If you don't have this brand of Metallic pens, as you can see, there is a very huge selection of colors here. There are so many other brands that you can by now on the market. And you don't need as many colors as this. All you really need for this project is a white, gold, light blue, as well as a purple. Other than that, those are the only colors that will be using for this particular project. So you are more than welcome to just by colors similar to the ones I've shown you. Or you can buy a set, It's really up to you. And finally, I just wanted to take you through the pens that I will be using. Just to add those finishing touches. I've chosen to use these to wipe pens and thereby the brand sakura. And they're Jelly Roll. And one of them is a 0.5 MM thickness and the other is a 0.8 MM thickness. And very finally, I just chose to use these pens by Faber Castile. They are Black and they're waterproof and they Pitt Artists Pen fine liners. And I have them in the sizes of excess, which is 0.1, and then S, which is 0.3 M, M, and M which is 0.7 MM. Those are all the materials that you will need to complete your beautiful clownfish project. So let's begin 3. Sketching: Hello, and welcome to the sketching portion of our course where we're going to sketch out to really cute clownfish. So without further delay, let's begin. So once more, as I've mentioned in the materials section, I've got this Illustration board to sketch on. And I'm just going to start now I, with my, I think the large female clownfish first. I want to just, I tend to Draw big, so I'm just gonna give myself a little bit of space. So I want to start first with the face and that cute little mouth of the clownfish. So it's going to just go in a little bit like that. Clownfish to me, I really cute because they have this kind of grumpy look on their faces. I don't want to put too much detail into this, but I just want to use the mouth like as an anchor point just so I am. I just have I know where this all is and it can also help me just get a little bit of proportion, right? But really at this point, not much detail at all. So we've got a little bit of a little bit of a depression there. But I want to do the face first just so I have a rough idea of the size. As I said before, I tend to Draw really big. I am using a much smaller surface area than I'm used to. So I just have to be a bit cautious that I'm not gonna go really too big. So I'm just gonna do this little Stripe here and we will refine it later on. So this kind of, I'm still just doing the black marking. So this is the first white stripe that I'm putting in. One small, I will refine this all later. Just want to get the proportions right. And so now that I've got the face, I can start like really just getting the whole shape of the clownfish. And I would just want to add there's a little bit of a depression here. So I'm still very much like in the early stages of Drawing and I'm going to refine this more. I just want to try and get that shape so I'm very happy with the head the way it looks there. So just want to get that streamlined look. And I feel that here is where the tail should start. I mean, if you wanted to, you could have drawn the whole shape of the fish. But for me, I just wanted to use the face as a guide for the proportions for the body in relation to the face. And so for this part of the tail, What's really cool about the clownfish is it has a very roundish tail. And I might just so it's around kinda tail. So that's why it's such a cute animal to me. Now that I've got the shapes so far, I want to just add a little bit more detail and then I can really start just really getting all the details. So I want to add that big I that this large female clownfish has. So I just want to maybe widen this a bit and one small, we're not trying to get absolutely the same. I always say this. We're not out to copy a photograph. We're just using the photograph as a guideline because it will help us to get a more accurate drawing. So with this now, I can start doing things like I drew a pretty straight line. But if you look carefully, it's kind of very jagged and not really even. I'm just going to erase the lines that I don't need. And, um, well that was actually alright. So it goes in a bit. So once more, these little things, you don't have to do them perfectly accurately. So let's just try and refine the shape a bit more. I feel that we don't need these lines over here. And I just want to start doing this. The top dorsal fin a little bit more in. I don't think this shape is quite right, so let's work on that. So I want to just add this fin. It is a very, very beautiful fish. And I have to say, I'm lucky enough to have to clownfish. And they really do have really clear personalities. Like, as like I said before, the female can be a bit bossy, but she's very protective of her male mate, which is nice to see because we have other fish in the tank. So there is a bit of a, as you can see, a bit of a depression here in the thin for my fish anyway, which is what the photo is based on. So I'm just going to do this a little bit more. So this kinda continues this sort of ridge up here with a bit of a break in there, continues over here and then it tapers down. So I might just bring this part down a little. Then we're going to have that, whoops, sorry. We're going to have the white Stripe. And then we're also going to go up here for another thing that my fish has. Just gonna go like that. And then down here, look, I'm sure there are variations in Clownfish. In fact, I've seen some with like mine has three. And I've seen clownfish with only two stripes, somewhat only one Stripe. So this photo is based on my clownfish. So yeah, I can speak for the markings of all clownfish out there. I want to just this, this massive Stripe, the biggest Stripe that this large female has, its kinda straight down here from the reference photograph and then it kinda goes up like that. And over here, yep, I'm happy with that. And so it kinda continues in here. But we do have a a fin that's blocking all of that from being seen. So I'm just going to continue this pot down here. But it attaches higher up there. But that's okay. In my reference photograph, the clam, It's kinda blocking part of the fish, but that's okay. We can just sketch that thin as best as we can. I mean, most of the spin is gonna be on the other side of the fish anyway. So it's okay if we can see it. And let's just do the black marking that the fish is so famous for. Okay. I will clownfish is looking quite nice. I just wanted to now add little things like this is just where the boundary of the black marking. I just think it's good to put that down because they will come in handy later when you're painting. And I also just wanted to start yeah, putting down the black marking over here. And we also still have another thin to Draw. This has a bit of a black marking up here. And down here is where we have another black marking. But the the white stripe here in the middle is not quite as wide. We want to try and keep the white Pots clean because we will be putting some nice color, light colors on top of it. Okay. That was a bit, let me just try. Alright. I just want to refine the tail a little bit more because I didn't quite do that. I was more getting the shape just now. So we have the tail should come out a little bit like that. Has a, a bit of a little gap here. And I just wanted to try and put that in. Now, I feel that I can start doing. The black marking. Pen comes out at this angle here. Now I feel like that's good and I just want to add the black marking. It gets a bit thicker here than it is up here. And then it just cuts back in here into the fish. But it kinda goes a bit narrow there. And just try, and try and make this look like more natural by not having it these such straight, unbroken lines. I feel that's good. Now let's just start adding a few little details. Like, um, I think we can start doing things like adding these little lines on the thin. I mean, you could add this later in the painting part, but I like having a pretty detailed sketch ready just so I know where everything is. Over here for the tail, we have these markings as well, but they don't go all the way to the white Stripe. They just kind of a more prominent towards the bottom. Just trying to make them look natural by curving them a little. And the angle should go up like that. And it's looking really good. I can actually see a bit of a, let me just finish the thin first, like these fins. So we should have these lines coming out like that. But I just feel that for me, the head. I might just want to make the head just a little bit smaller because I feel like I might have gone a little bit might've made it a little bit too bubbly, so I just want to so this is the stage where you can start refining everything. Yeah. I think I'll guide. I'll go. I mean, not all guy. Looks better with a slightly smaller head. But I didn't that I think she looks really, really gorgeous. Yeah, I think that the proportions just kinda look a lot better now. So I think we've got enough detail here to start painting her. And there are some scaly sort of patterns up here, but I feel like we don't have to really add them in with pencil now, but I can, I can sort of very lightly do do this little scaly pattern and I'm not thinking too hard about this. I'm just doing these little, you know, curvy lines, these little you will sort of like a U-shapes that are just doing a couple of where I see them. I see them a lot in this photograph towards the top of her back. You can't really see them much here. So maybe we can just emphasize these patents later when we're painting. And let me just fix that. I again, do I want to make her eyes smaller since I made her head a bit smaller, maybe maybe I'm mind even though she does have big eyes for her head. But I'll just do that a little bit smaller. Just you just want everything in proportion. So she does have these big round eyes, black eyes. And I think she's ready to go and now I think we can do her little male companion. So if you're ready to keep going, let's keep going. For his particular, I liked this picture because it's giving us two different views of the clownfish. Like we have, have full side on profile here. And with whom we're getting like a kind of a frontal view. And I'm just deciding, do I want to put him a little bit higher for to just add a bit of effect, I think so. So let's put him here. So for this, I'm going to just start sketching a little face, but I'm just going to use the eye. His eye does stick out a bit of his from his head here. I'm just going to just kinda do that. This is the other eye that we can really see the black part of his in because we can only see this side. This is our very cute little male. And so I'm just going to try and do that face and one small we can always refine it later. So what I wanna do is add the mouth because I feel that that will help us to just get the proportions right. And this I is, there is going to be a Stripe already that's going to surround his face from this angle. It's very cute. I get that this can seem a bit difficult to draw. This angle, this full head-on angle, but I feel that you can definitely do it if you just try and break it down a little sun right now, I'm doing that Stripe, the white Stripe. The angle of the white Stripe kinda goes down like this. It changes as it surrounds the face and then it goes really thin underneath the chin if you want to call it a chin. And then it kinda disappears around this side of the face. And then it goes down here to where the I is. In fact, I might make the I just took out a little bit more. So please don't be intimidated by this angle. It's good for us to learn to draw animals from different angles because it really does improve our Drawing Skills. So right now I'm just going to do that top dorsal fin that we've done for the female, but it's just at a different angle. And then it's like that with a bit of black on the top here. Don't worry. It may seem look strange now, but it will all come together. So I also want to now do this. Let's just go down here. The fin should be kinda like below the mouth. So I'm just going to do the fin like that and we're going to add in another thing that's gonna be a little bit higher. We can see much of the fin and we have these like jagged lines because of the angle. This is where the orange meets the black. Marking. Something that you might not have noticed before is that the fin extends a little past the black marking to this kind of transparent part that appears. And I've also, I want to include it later, like over here for this fish that I've drawn. We can suggest that transparent part by just painting a transparently of watercolor over it. It's not very easy to see this, but they are, I'm sorry, I'm just jumping from one fish to another. I apologize. I just wanted to I just thought that is an important point to make. Just like with the tail, there is a sort of extension of the black that is very difficult to see because it is transparent, but it does sort of just extend slightly past the black marking. But I do feel that we should put that in. I will put that in. And you also get it a little bit here. A little bit here, just a tiny border. I thought, hey, since I can see it quite clearly in the reference photograph, when I zoom in, I really do think we should put it in, but if you don't want to put it in, that's absolutely fine because most people wouldn't even notice it. In this drawing here it is a little bit of transparent part that extends pass the black. And I'll Black marking. This is our black marking right here. I don't want to color it in with pencil because I can do that later. Then we've got this part of orange here. And I'll guys kinda dive in and he looks a little strange right now he does it look a bit like a bananas. I want to try and fix that a little bit. I think I made him probably a little bit to Angular there. Let's try and this part will be black But don't worry, it will make a lot more sense when we paint it. Like people who definitely know that, that is a clownfish, not a banana. I just want to refine that a little bit. I just want to remove some of this, this thick line here. So there's all little guy looking very cute. And I just want to make the eye more prominent to this. I is gonna be a little bit bigger. I do want to keep the smile. I do think the smile is very cute. And let's just refine that face a little. Okay? And I want to raise the eye a little bit, just a little bit higher because I do feel like it's a bit low right now. Actually, I want to move this, I just slightly down. So I just want to make this change because sometimes you may notice things like like that, but it could affect your drawing. Like, I just noticed that this is actually a little bit lower than the other eye. So I just want to incorporate that. This eye is going to be up here. But we're not going to see the black of the eye because that's facing away from us. Very pedantic about this, but I just want to get it right because this is a strange angle. I'll admit that we just want to be able to suggest to people that, hey, this is an, a clownfish. It is just a different angle. I think people would actually appreciate that a lot because you're giving them a different, a different view. And personally I'm somebody that likes to see an animal from a different view. Now, I just want to them the black marking over here. And also I just feel that maybe the fish, the fin was taking up a little bit too much space. So I want to just bring it up a bit higher. For me right now, I feel like this thin is looking a little bit too big for our little guy. So I want to just try and fix that up as well. I just wanted to take it in a little bit. I'm just covering my hand a bit. I hope you can still see it. But another trick that I like doing is standing up to take, to get a different view to stand back a bit so you can see the full view of your drawing. And sometimes you can notice things like you might have made something look a little bit too big. I just feel like I just want to take this in a little bit because it just to me, from that view, it looked a little bit big. Okay, I think I'm much happier with this now with this fin looking a little bit smaller, but I've just want to bring the blacks down a little bit. Now the black will be there. And now I can add these little orange lines, the same lines that we had in the other thins is going to be there. Sorry if I crossed out a bit. The little happy guy. So this pot here, I just want to explain. It's transparent. It's the transparent part I was talking about before. The Black starts down here. And just I just want to clean that line a bit. Other than that, I'm really happy with our little guy. And I'm taking a last look. And I'm actually really happy with the way our fish look. And if you join me in the next section, we will start painting our beautiful clownfish, and I can wait. So see you then 4. Base Coat: Hello, and welcome to the very exciting painting section of our course, where we will be adding some beautiful colors to our, to clownfish. I can't wait to start because it's gonna be a lot of PFK-1. So let's begin. The first thing I wanna do, I think we're going to start with the large female. And the first thing I wanna do is use some clean water and just wet the areas that I want to paint. I'm just using my number eight brush, round brush and just wetting this area. And I wanted to start with the yellow and orange colors. So I'm just going to wet this area and skip this pot where the white Stripe is. Because obviously we don't want to put orange on that. So I'm just going to do wet this pot where the fineness and I guess I can do the dorsal fin as well because it does have orange in it. So there we go. I can do that. I just wanted to there's a lot of water here. I just wanted to try and spread that and also do as I said before and even sheen. That's how we know we're ready to start dropping color in and working wet on wet. And I'm just going to re-wet this area. I don't have to do this fin just yet, but I mean, we can as well. That does no harm in that. Before I wet this section, I guess I could just work with these two sections first because as you can see, there's an even sheen and I don't want to lose it. Just making sure this is all even just so paints spreads evenly. And so there we go. It's looking good. These two sections. So I might just swapped to a smaller brush, my size four, before I'm going to take some of this color. This is the color mango, and I think I can put it over here. Mango, which is similar to Indian yellow. That's a very nice warm yellow. And I'm also going to get my vitamin C color, which is very similar to cadmium orange in my palette as well. Okay? And another color, ink, which is similar to, I might just put this in the small section here. Similar to indigo is what was going to say. We're just going a little bit of that. But before because I just spend some time talking. Sorry, I might just wet this area. I didn't mean to drop the paint in there yet. It's just a bit of orange on my brush, but it's meant to be water. It's clear water. Okay. It's just that I've been putting paints here, but let's start. So I'm going to start with, I like to start with the lighter colors first, so I'm going to drop in some of this cadmium. Sorry, I had some Indian yellow. And I'm just going to basically drop it in all over. So that is the color mango. And I'm also just going to drop it in over here. As you can see from the reference photographs, there is a bit of a color gradient where it goes a bit lighter towards the top. And I'm just going to I can actually bring the pain all the way up the fin now because there's a black marketing and we can easily go over it with black. Basic Art painted almost like a flat wash with just that symbol, that single color. Now, I'm just going to take some of this orangey color now and I'm just going to drop it in. As you can see, the surface is very wet and it's all spreading. Very lovely. And I might just bring that down here. This color may, may look a little bit orange, but yeah, it will it will settle more later. It won't be as dark when we when it dries. I'm just gonna keep putting dropping more of this orange color here in. I can also take it to the FIN. Yeah. I also want to to kinda let it just Help it spread a bit up. And over here it's going to go just in the middle of my fin here. And then it's going to go around. I might need a bit more. I'm just gonna get more from my paint set. And it's also going to go up here. But I'm just going to take a little bit of caution not to bring the orange all the way up. Because as I said before, that the light falls on the top of the clownfish. So let's try and leave a little bit of that yellow color coming through at the top that and I might just drop in a little bit here because there's a bit of a depression there where sort of like the bridge of the nodes, even though I know the fish doesn't really have a nose. That's looking nice to me. And now this part is gonna be a little bit tricky. And we just have to have a bit of control. I want to just use my very small size four brush and I'm only going to use the tip of it and dip it in this color. And if you want, you can use like a rough piece of paper just to test out. To test out how a rough piece of paper to test out how strong your color is. Like a weather, it's very diluted, a strong and I think that's the right amount. And while it's wet, I'm just going to drop in, use the tip to just go a little bit around here. This is where the black marking is, but we're just going to go a little around here and let it spread a little bit up here. You using the very tip of your brush, adding a bit of, of a darker color here. And I'm also going to do the same around here. So as you can see, and I'm going to bring it into the middle of the fin where adding a bit of dimension to our fish, tell fish's body by dropping in this color. It's just yeah, just making it look a lot more three-dimensional than a flat fish. And so we have to remember, our paper is getting drier. I mean, our multimedia board is getting drier. So we just want to work not, not really quickly, but just at a nice steady pace. And we also want to bring this color up here a little whether the Stripe is I want to just bring it slightly around the fin here. And it's going to also go up a bit here. So see you how I'm using the tip of my brush to do this. And I want to add that color very, very lightly over here as well. But do you see how we are already making our fish look so much more three-dimensional. By adding these colors in. There is a bit of a scale pattern going on here, but I won't, I won't really go do all that yet. This is just a base coat that we're working on. So just work at a steady pace. I just want to take that color, the same indigo ink color to just go around this line. As you can see, my paint is just at such a great it's drying at such a nice pace that I've set for it. That I'm not I'm not rushing. I'm not like, you know, I'm getting the job done to give it dimension. We can also bring it up here. So I'm quite happy with that. I don't I don't think we need to go too dark. Now. I'm just going to use a clean number eight round brush and I'm just going to do this section. And in fact, I can also go up here to this fin. I can go down to this fin. We're going to skip this part because that's where the other white mark is. And I'm just going to go over here. And now I'm going to just drop in. In fact, I can use this brush. It's big enough. I'm sorry about that. I'm going to just add more mango. Bringing the mango down here to this fin where it is lighter. Bringing it up here. And stopping at the white mark here. And I'm going to bring mango down here to Okay, and now I'm going to drop in some of that cadmium orange color over here. I'm going a bit close to the as you can see, my I'm already getting my paper. My section over here has already starting to dry, so I just had to dip my pain to get my brush again in water just to re re wet the area and I'm just dropping in more of the orange color as we go along. And it should be a little bit darker towards the bottom here. Just getting a little bit more. And it's a bit, there is some up here to very orangey color. I want to bring some of that orange up here by using the tip of my brush. There are some parts where it looks a bit more. Dhaka. It's gonna be darker down here. And as you can see, it's spreading a little here, but I don't really mind. I'm just going to add a bit more down here. And I'm going to drop in some over here. Just this part is already almost dry. I just am creating a little bit of space there, but it is almost dry. And now I'm going to swap brushes again to my size four because I want to do the same thing that I did earlier with ink once more. If you're not sure how strong the how strong the paint is, just test it on a piece of paper. I think that's the right consistency that we want. So then let's go. We're going to just very quickly near the black line. I'm just going to stay very close to that border and let it just kinda gradually spreading. And I also want to take this up here from the reference photograph. This pot does go a bit darker and it goes a bit darker here too. And over here. And if you feel, oh, I also want to do this side over here because this is where the other black markets. And I'm just going to add a bit of water to this to make it a little bit more diluted. Because I just want to do this part here which is not as dark. I just want to dilute it just so it doesn't look too dark. It's just a little bit more shadow for the fish, for the body. So all I've done is added a bit more water there. And I'm quite happy with that. I don't want to make it too dark. And I'm gonna do the same over here. So where the black market is gonna be, this part of my paint is already the sections already quite dry. So I'm just going to almost like I'm just work like kind of wet on dry because this area is quite dry already. I just feel that this section is daka. So I'm just adding more of that indigo over there that I think it's looking quite good now. Another color that I'd like to drop in now is our pupil color Coat royal, which is very close to ultramarine violet. So I want to use this type of consistency and let me just show you because while it's still wet, I wanted to what's very it's almost dry. But while while it's still a little bit wet, I want to just add in this purple here because I feel that it blends in nicely and I do see like some purple purplish sort of of tones. Yeah. And I also want to add the purple over here. Even though this area is almost completely dry, this purple is really going to be quite complimentary, even though the complimentary color of orange is blue. Still, I feel the purple works really. It's very striking against the orange. And I also want to add in here as I can definitely see some shadow. And then another reason I'm using the purple is because I don't really want to darken the entire picture with indigo. Remember this is only just a base layer, so we've got more layers to do. And I just want to maybe outline this a little. And as you can see, the tips are kind of dark, so I don't mind Doing that as well with the purple for now. And I also want to take some of this purple and put it into the fin a bit like these lines and the thin. As you can see, it's still a bit damp this Paint. And I think I want to just bring it down here as well. And just around here. Just be careful where you put your hand because you're near the your your touching a wet surface, you might smudge it. I also wanted to put the purple around here and maybe just bring the purple up here. And I also want to just add a little bit very lightly around the eye. So we are like accentuating the I by adding a bit of shadow around it, but just with purple. And I think I might even use the purple for this nice line that you can see at the mouth area. It's not as dark as indigo. And now that does not much pain left on my brush. I just wanted to really dry brush this section with purple. We're just creating a bit more shadow. We don't want to go too dark because we don't want to lose these beautiful orange tones. But at the same time, we're just adding more dimension to our fish. And just remember this is a base coat. So there's a lot more to do. We can also bring the color up a bit here. And we also have some purple tones here. And I'm using my brush really like just using the tip now to suggest a bit of scaly pattern. This is only a base coat, but like I said before in previous videos, like every, everything you do really does help build up the picture, like every step. So if you add a little bit of detail here now, it helps in the end as well. I want to just use very little purple that I have on my brush to just darken this chin area just slightly. So take a step back, get up your seat and have a look at it from a little distant, a little bit of distance just to see that you're not putting, You're not making it too dark. It's very easy to get carried away and which is why we should take regular breaks and have a look at our Art from just a slight distance. So as you can see, like, I think this is going quite well. It's looking quite pretty. I want some of that orange to come through. Yeah, so the purple and orange, they kinda play very well together. And I just want to bring this up a bit more. And I think add a little bit more, just a little bit of purple over here very lightly. And in that sort of scaly shape. That's looking quite nice to me. And now I wanted to do the same over here. I might just get a bit more of the puzzle out and just dilute it a little bit because this area is well dry. Now, I might actually even re-wet this area just so I can drop in, just re-wet it Kathleen by applying a clean, damp brush very, very lightly so you don't move the pigments that you have around that. Whoops. Let me just get that. Okay. So this makes it easier to drop in the color as you can see and let it spread a bit. There we go. Oh, want to just bring this up here a bit around the strike and down here. And just a little bit like that. And I just wanted to make sure I'm not going too dark, so I'm just stepping back can having a look. It looks okay for now. And the bottom fin actually looks very light. So I don't want to add too much color, that thing That's enough. Up here too. That's fine. I just wanted to take it around that Stripe again. And the lines on the spin can be in purple. Yeah, and I think I think that looks good. I don't want to overdo it. So I'm just looking back here. And I think that is a really good base layer already. So why don't we stop here and let it dry and we'll come back to it and add more layers. 5. Second Coat: Hello and welcome back. And now our base layer has completely dried. So we are now ready to add more layers on the top and also have FUN doing the really cool markings on the clownfish that it's famous for. So let's begin. So I just wanted to make sure I don't do the fish to dock. So what I wanna do now is to brighten up the oranges because I feel like I might have doubted down a bit with this color. So I just want to wet the areas again that don't include the the white stripes. So just putting water as carefully as I can trying not to move the colors around too much. I think I might start working on that now, these two areas first, so I'm going to use the same color of mango to just brighten up certain areas like over here. I'm just kinda painting it over over here, but I wanted to leave the top part light. I think it looks good that so I'm just going to just do very little up there. So just to give it, it's nice, like orangey glow. And definitely over here, as I feel like it's a bit It's a bit light up there. Yeah. I don't really want to use any more dark colors anymore, purples or indigo just because I just wanted to get this looking good. And I just want to put some over here. But even in the reference photograph we do see there is a bit of a, a reflection of light over there. Just so I'm going to have to grab more of that more of the mango just to brighten up like these areas here. Yep, that's looking nice and bright. I might even mix in a little bit of this orange. And I don't want to, I just don't want to darken it too much as I, as I already feel that the fish is, is nice and it's a great color, has some great shadows. So just adding some orange to the top there and maybe around the face. But now I just wanted to do the same over here. I'm not going to use anymore shadow colors. I just wanted to add the yellows and oranges to brighten it up a bit. So just going to use some of that nice mango over here. Over the yet not, not needing a lot. I'm just going to I just liked that area to be lighter, so I'm going to preserve that. And now for the tail, I think you could just use a bit more of mango because it has a lovely, there we go. So I feel that that's nice and bright now, while that dries actually, I might start on our little guy because I feel like he's a little left out because he's so small. We don't have to do much actually for him. So I'm using this is supposed to be clean water. You just rinse that. It's supposed to be clean water. It's just that my brush has a bit of paint on it. So this part over here is in front of that white Stripe and then this part over here is behind it. So I just wanted to leave the white Stripe out. But I'm going to drop in paint everywhere else. So let's start again with this mango color. Look at that little smile. This guy's adorable. So let's just keep going. And we can actually make him, he doesn't have to be the exact same shade as as the larger female. He can actually be yeah, I can make them brighter as well. He doesn't have to be as shadowed. So I just wanted to now drop in that cadmium orange color. So I wanted to put it more towards this side of the face because I see the light is coming from this side. But that being said, I want a bit of orange up here to around the chin And I'm going to take it down here as well. And I'm sorry, it should it should get a lighter towards the top. They're getting more of this orange putting at the bottom. Oops, let me just rinse my brush. I'm gonna have to get more of it out. And I'm just going to put it down here. And here. There we go. Look at our little guy. He's looking great when acuity. So that's looking good. And while it's a bit, well, it's still a bit damp. I feel I might just use a clean damp brush just to take away some of that orange because I feel like the bottom part isn't quite as orange. I think I should use some more of that lighter mango color. They're actually so there we go. While he's still quite damp, I wanted to just drop in a very small amount of that indigo color ink just at I just want to be careful I'm not making this too dark. So if I add it too much in, I'm just going to rinse my brush and remove a little bit with a clean damp brush. So that's a technique that I use a lot. If you do it very quickly when you lay down the color and it hasn't had time to get absorbed, then it will lift quite easily. So I'm just adding a bit of that color near the bottom. This also just adds to give him the three-dimensional look. And it's just a little bit up here. Just a little bit there. But he, he, he's kinda light at the bottom is not as dark as the female from the reference photograph. And I also just wanna do these fins here. And we're not going to add a lot of that color in. And I also see some of that color over here on this side of the face. So I'm just dropping in. This is just the color ink, the indigo color. Then I'm just adding. There we go. Just taking a step back and having a look and it looks great. So adding a little bit more and a bit around the chin. Yeah. Yep. I'll you guys looking very cute. So that's looking very cute. And I think at this point now, we can let him dry a little. And we can now go back to our large female. And what I wanna do now is I feel like I'm done doing the orange pots. Let's have a little bit of PFK-1 now and do the stripes. So with white, when you have a color as bright as white and it's in shadow, it will not appear black. It will actually have a bluish tinge to it or a purple tinge to it. That's really pretty. For that reason, I decided to use these colors of this really lovely blue, which is like a turquoise. I'm just going to put it here just so you can see it in my palette. It's a beautiful blue. And I also want to use that blue is like a turquoise color. And in this set it's called 70s eye shadow, which is a really cute name. And then we also have this color, which is blueberry, and it's very close to ultra marine blue. Ultramarine blue is a beautiful blue that's used for Painting oceans, use for painting skies. It has a lovely, lovely color. And I also want to add in some of that ultramarine violet that we used earlier. Because I love the effect of purples and blues on wife to, to show a shadow. So let's just focus first on the very first Stripe. We don't have to worry so much about this orange, this orange stain here, because two times three if we were gonna do the black, the black mocking over it. But if you want, if that's very distracting, I can use a damp brush to try and lift it. Even though we will be painting over it. So it doesn't really matter Okay. So it's still there, but don't worry, we really isn't going to bother us because we will be using black over it. So I might as well just keep going by adding, just wetting the area again until it has a nice even sheen. Just like what we did for the previous, the previous video, where we only did each section at a time. So I can see this has a nice sheen about it now. So let's start to drop in our colors. So I always start with the lightest color. I want to go with this turquoise. And I'm just going to put it around the whole Stripe, just where the shadow kicks in, which is over here, like midway through. And this part's completely white at the top. And that's fine. So we just are going to drop it in a little like that. I love it already. Like I think it looks beautiful and we don't have to color the whole thing. It's fine. I'm just going to remove some of that over here. And over here. What I wanna do now is dropping a little bit of this blue, which is like ultra marine. So just a little bit over here. A little bit down here. There is a bit of a, of a gap over there with the, with the colors and it's fine. We're creating variation. I think it looks beautiful. And just rinse your brush and just a slight amount of purple. That's just beautiful. I love the way purples and blues look. It's so pretty. I don't want to put too much. And as you can see, it's mixing so beautifully now. I just want to use my brush now to just kind of just remove some of this purple here. So just using a clean damp brush to lift a little because I do notice there is a bit of a, of a lightness over here. But I mean, that's just such a beautiful effect that I think that's enough pain. We don't have to put more over that. I think it looks beautiful just the way it is. So we can now move on to the next Stripe by doing the same thing, just wetting the area until we get that nice even sheen. I might just want to use my brush just to, I rarely want to preserve a little bit of a lighter area here because I see it very clearly in the reference photograph and I feel like that will add some, some dimension. So sorry about that. I'll get back to this Stripe over here. It's looking really great. And now let's do the same thing. But this time, to get more of that turquoise color, I see a bit of blue up here. So I'm just going to drop in a little bit up here. And we can now go and focus on this area here around the fins. So this line around here is actually the transparent part of the, of the thin. As I mentioned when I was sketching the clownfish, there is a slightly transparent part around each of the fins, which makes all Animal even more unique. So I've got the blue going on there. And in this one, I'm then going to put in some little bit of the dark blue and I'm not I'm not following the photographic exactly. I'm just letting it like spread a little down here. And definitely not forgetting about the beautiful purple to drop in. So I can, I can take the purple all the way up to the fin there and just drop it in. And I see the pupils are more concentrated up, up this side of the band of white and the bottoms kind of a bluish light turquoise. That to me it looks really pretty. I don't want to overdo it. I really loved the way that looks. Speak a little bit of a, they're looking gorgeous. And let's move on to our final white Stripe. I think you probably have caught the hang of this now about how we do the stripes. One small, just going to drop in my turquoise fast. And I can see a bit of turquoise out there. So then there's a gap of white there were and then I'm just going to drop my turquoise in at the bottom. And one small. All these different colors are going to all give dimension And variation. I mean, that's, that's what we want. Finally, I'll gorgeous purple. That's really lovely. Yeah, I'll fish is really coming to life. And the placement of these blues and purples, they really do add a more three-dimensional shape to all fish. Let's look at our little guy. I don't want to darken him too much. I already think the orange on him looks great. I think we can actually start on his one big Stripe that we see here. I think we can, we're just going to repeat the same thing that we did for his mate. And going to wet that nice even shine. And let's start again. Dropping the turquoise. And I can see the colors are more concentrated on this side as opposed to that side, because this side is more in the shadow. And I'm going to add a bit of the blue, the darker blue. And finally, some of the purple. Even though I feel that he has a more bluish tone to him. So there we go. Just wanted to remove a bit of that pupil and replace it with a bit more turquoise because he really is much more in the light. There we go. And I don't want to overdo that too much. I think that's more than enough and I might want to just remove some of this actually. Alright, that's looking very nice. Now, we want to do something pretty FUN. Now, we want to start on the stripes of the fish of both of them. I feel that we could actually do both of them at the same time. So how about we just wait for these two fish to completely dry? And I'm just thinking, I want to maybe add a little bit more orange to our little guy because I think he's got a very orangey tone about him. So let me just add a little bit more of this orange color around here. And it's darker on this side up here. Then is that okay? We're done doing the painting of both fish now I would say, and now we're going to let it completely dry. And when we come back, we're going to have so much FUN, just rarely adding the detail and the markings to our clownfish using black as well as some pens. So I can wait. I'll see you in the next section. 6. Adding Black Stripe Details: Hello, As you can see how fish have completely dried. So I actually want to start with, I might just start with our female again. So she's looking beautiful as you can see. She's got some nice dimensions and I just loved the effect of The White Stripes. I mean, the way that the blues and purples just blend it together so beautifully, I love that effect. It's gorgeous. So let's now start with doing the black markings I feel, but before I start using Black Or Raven as it's called in this set, I actually want to use the purple. The color is Royal. And hope you can see that in the pellet. Let me see if the pellet a little closer. I just want to use purple for us to go over the areas that I'm gonna go over in black. And the reason I do this is because I just feel that that also builds up the color. And it's nice to see a bit of that purple light come through under the black. So I'm just going to go just like this and I'm painting wet on dry, so I haven't wet the surface simply because I want more control over this stronger, more concentrated color. So I'm just going to take this here. And as you can see it, it doesn't spread as much. But when looking at the reference photograph, I noticed that it's not just a perfect smooth line. There are a little breaks in here that go into the white Stripe and I think those look a lot more natural when you start adding those little sort of like dense in here like that. Yeah, it's not a perfect straight line. So these are all the little details and it can come out a little bit more as well. Like over here for instance, it doesn't have to be a straight line. And I'm just going to go here. And I think I might break this part of the white here by adding a little bit of purple in there. And then just following on over here, trying not to make it look too much like a straight line. I'm using very concentrated purples so it is a bit dry, so I just need to re-wet my brush to get more out. And I'm just gonna kinda go a little bit using the tip, the very tip of my of my brush to do that. Yeah, This is just making our clownfish look even more realistic. N, the line gets a little bit thinner here and it kinda like so I'm just using the very tip of my brush to do that. Yeah, it's looking very, very beautiful. And actually just in the reference photograph, it just seems to stop there. But I might just take my brush and just outline it. Just because I like that whole border. So I've done that already. I might actually go up here and just start adding a bit more dimension. Some definition to these two, this fin up here. It has like some purple, well, a darker tone here. And the top parts are actually kind of filled in a little like that. So I'm just doing that. And the very top parts are darker than the bottom. I just wanted to add that in also at this end, one thing is about using purple first before I, I, I might go over the top parts with black again, but I just feel that it just it's not too dark. If I went over this width Black immediately, it might look a little bit too dark. And something that I really wanna do using this purple and the very tip of my number four round brush is I want to just go over these little scaly pattern that we had done earlier. Because I feel that it makes the fish look more real. And I could actually see this very clearly from the reference photograph. So I thought, why don't we just keep that once more, not thinking too much about doing this as accurately as the as the reference photograph. I'm just suggesting the presence of scales. And it just goes down a little bit more down here. But I wouldn't bring it all the way down to the fin. I think this is enough. So that a little bit more detail on our fish I think that's enough. I'm just going to use the lips. Pink Drawing pretty quickly. I'm just re-wetting my palette before. I just wanted to bring that pattern down here a little because I can see there is a purple shadow over here. So I might as well just continue that over here. And I also noticed that there is a bit of of a purple shadow here. So I'm just going to use the tip of my brush to bring this out a little bit from where the Stripe is. Purple and orange. They just like really stand out against each other quite well. Which is lovely. And I'm, I just want to do the other parts right now. So I'm just gonna get a little bit more purple from my palette. And I'm going to just, there is a bit of like a curvy lines over here. And I can even emphasize that more later when I have the white gel pen. I think that'll be more accurate. I just want to work a little bit faster because this is it's nothing that I really have to really concentrate on to tell the truth. I can't wait to get to the, the Fun glittery side of things. Metallic pens or glitter paints as they called. I might just darken this a little bit more with another coat of purple. And I actually wanna do this as well, almost missed this. So there is another marking over here. And it kinda tapers all the way there. That's looking good. And I also want to just use my purple to just do a very thin line around the fin. Because this just like I'm kind of sets the boundaries of the fin. That's looking pretty good. And whoops, I forgot about this now, now that the scaly part has dried, I'm just going to add to this and this Stripe will actually go all the way down here because this very narrow part of the finished transparent. And we are going to suggest that beautifully later by putting a thin layer of metallic watercolor paint over it. Once more. Just going to repeat what I'm doing for this part of the fin. I mean, this part of the Stripe. I would suggest to vary the thickness of the black marks around your stripes. Just because I think it looks more realistic, rather than doing them all the same thickness. And we're almost done actually like I've got this line that connects all the way to the bottom part of our thin I mean, of our tail. I'm going to need more pain. So this is the thin and we just have to go around the little white Stripe actually that it connects. And now we're just going to connect this part of the tail by just very thinly using the tip of our brush to go around. It's a bit thicker here, so I'm just emphasizing that our tail is looking beautiful. It's really, really good. And so that's, that's pretty much done now for our fish. And what I wanna do now is focused on our little guy. So let's just checking that we've done all the pupils that we need to do on our fish. So let's move on down a little guy and repeat the same process. So obviously from this angle, he doesn't have a lot of stripes to paint and he is pretty small. So I see the Black Stripe is going to go around this white Stripe. We're going to use that purple and just the tip of your brush. Just watch your hand when you put it down. The wet surface, you don't want to smudge your work. And I'm just going to do that here. Get more purple and do the top of top of that Stripe. And down here, pretty thinly, it's just going to stop here. I can't get over how cute this little guy is. I just want to continue that purple into the top of the very top dorsal fin. It's going to have some purple up here. There we go. And he's looking very, very cute. And I just want to add a little bit of a line down here. Like where, where there's a bit of shadow, where his body is. Because this pot is sort of in the dark. So I might just use a little bit of purple to emphasize that. But I just want to go around the Stripe again because I didn't feel like I did it. The paint wasn't quite as strong. So let's just do that pot again. And around here. There we go. So cute little guy. So just watch your hands again. You've come this far, you don't want to mess it up. So I also want to use the purple now, just taking a step back to have a look at it. I want to use the purple now to do the I I think I'll surface is pretty dry. Always test it first if you're not sure. And I just want to go around the eye with this purple. So the whole eye is not really painted. There is a bit of a gap there. So I'm gonna go over that in black. And I can actually paint this part, that's fine. But I'm just saying that the whole eye is not exactly like painted all the way through. And I also want to do the eye of our little guy. His eyes pretty much like kind of fully filled in there. So I pretty much felt that in. I'm just looking at my fish now and just seeing where I want to add any more purples before I move on to Black, I just am looking at my picture and I just wanted to just make this part a little darker. The tips. This part may be. But I think we're more than ready to move on to the Black. I do feel that I was wondering if I should use a bit of total up the total a bit of purple on this tail. Maybe just a, just a very light amount, very light pressure that I'm applying just to make those parts of the of the tail and the thin stand out. But I already feel like I'll fish is pretty dark already. And I don't want to dowel the color down, but I just feel that a bit of purple will add some definition. I don't think we rarely need to underline that. Maybe over here, just the boundaries of the body. We can just use purple as like a shadow, sort of color. Like it's just outlining the boundaries. Just going heavy-handed, just very lightly, just barely touching the paper. Because in fact, I feel like that's a bit dark, so I'm just going to remove that with the wet with a damp, clean brush. Yeah. I don't want that to be looked too dark or it might look like another mocking and it wasn't. So there we go. I think that's good. I'm just checking our little guy here. I guess maybe we could use a bit of purple just to emphasize those markings on his fin. Maybe down here that'll just the bottom part's okay. I think we're ready to move on to our very final color of black. So the black in this Jane Davenport set is called Raven. So I'm just gonna put that color maybe over here, just so you can see it. And so this is basically black. So I want to I want to use a strong, a strong concentration of it. And I'm just going to now go over those areas that I did just now in purple. And like I said before, the reason I'm doing that is not only will it, will it make the black look even stronger. And please go slow on this part. If you're not very confident and use the tip of your brush by holding your Brush almost perpendicular to the paper or to the, sorry, to the multimedia board, which is what I'm using unless you're using paper, of course. If you're confident, you can go at your own speed. If not, go slow. Really it's not erase. And I'm just adding a few markings here. And as you can see, the purple has helped strengthen the Black. And I feel that some of the pupil will shine through under the black layer. So that you've got like a gorgeous Stripe there. And let's do the same for this spin over here. Let's do the Black mocking over here. And yep. Yeah, so definitely helps to strengthen the black. I'm trying to make that look natural down here. Wow, that's gorgeous. Just taking a step back, having a look at it. Beautiful. And let's just continue. And I can start adding a few little marks in there just to the white just to make it look. Keep using that word more natural. But yeah, but honestly, I think all these little things that you do, they rarely all come together in the end and they ready create a beautiful overall effect. I'm just going to, That should be a bit thicker. Go down here with black in here. I'm just going to use the tip of my brush to break into the white. I hope you're having FUN with this. And one small, please don't feel that you have to follow the reference photograph perfectly. But having a reference photograph to me is a very invaluable tool. It rarely helps you to study a subject and then you interpret it yourself when you're Art. But it, I feel that it really helps to produce pretty realistic drawings because you really do see the colors and the proportions of the subject that you're painting. Then you can change it however you want to make it as realistic or as fantastical as you want. Just eating into that orange bit a little bit. Okay? If these parts like here don't really quite make sense to you yet, it will come together when I paint a little bit of a water background around. A little guys, I feel that this is a little bit to to straight here. So I'm to use my brush to very lightly remove a bit of this pain. I feel like this part should be a bit thinner. I'm doing this very carefully, just using a wet, damp brush to just remove a bit of that pain? Yes. I'm much happier with that. It looks a lot better. I just felt like it was looking a bit too straight. And I just wanted to also remove a bit of it up here too. Thin it out a bit. Yeah. Okay. Oh, and of course, let's just do that top bit over there, which I really feel should be quite dark. So just adding some of the black up here. And over here on the tip CIA. And if all those areas are dry, just watch where you put your hand. I think Stripe over here should be dry. I wanna do the eye. Now. I'm just going to fill in the very middle of the eye because it looks like that in the reference photograph. It's not all filled in. And by just doing that middle part and I also want to just outline the under part of it. That looks like a very realistic I and I just wanted to go up here, but I'm not going to outline the entire I think that will take away that realistic look. So I'm quite happy with that. It doesn't have to look exactly matches. Do this a bit, a bit of a doubt pot there. But I'm quite happy with that and I just wanted to stop there before before I do too much and then it starts not looking very realistic. But yeah, just looking just studying the The picture a bit and taking a step back. I think that looks good. Let's leave it at that. And for our little guy, his eyes pretty much all black. So it's, I feel confident to just fill that in with black. He saw Smiley and I might just use a bit of black for his, for his little grin. And now I'm just going to put the black around his Stripe on the purple areas. I think that it looks pretty good now. I think it's time to have a lot of FUN doing our Metallic Highlights now. But before I do that, I just wanted to use 0.5 Jelly Roll white gel pen. Just to emphasize any of the White, any highlights that I want with white right now, like I see a little highlight here. So as you can see, the white gel pen stands out beautifully against, against a dark background. I also want to add a little bit of white here, just because I feel like the lip of the fish should be a bit lighter here. I might need a thicker pen to do this top lip here. I'm sorry, sometimes these white gel pens don't seem to. It can freeze a little. So let me just get another one. So it's always handy to have a couple of these. So I've added some of that there and I'm just going to use a clean damp brush to spread it a bit. As I felt that was to lie Me. Might have spread it a little bit too much. So just going to it looks a bit like a I'm just going to remove some of the water from my brush and yeah, that looks good. And where else do I want to put some white markings? I see like a highlight here for instance. And I also see some white highlights here. But I can't wait to do the Metallic, the metallic effect. I see a white highlight down there. I might need to use the thicker pen that for it to come out. Yep. See a white highlight down there. We're just gonna do a bit more white up here. And I'm just having a look at where else I can see the white highlights. We can I feel that this should go out like that. That's the thin. It points out like that. I see a white highlight there and yeah, they're not too many white highlights on this fish. And that's fine. I don't want to keep adding to it. I'm just looking at the I and I'm just wondering if I could use shoot, use my little white gel pen to just add a little bit of a highlight there. But I didn't that I'm quite happy with the way my fish looks. I don't want to overdo it. I have a habit of overdoing it. So now I want to just very quickly look at this guy. I think we can add a little white highlight there because this fitness in the light, I can see a bit of a white highlight there. Always have to pens handy because one might just gems suddenly and you have to go and sort of like, right, It just draw on a spare piece of paper to get it working again. So that's what's happening with one of my pens right now. So I just added these little white lines to just emphasize the little jagged appearance of this Black Stripe on this orange part over here. And I also just wanted to like, alright, this pens working again, just highlight that just to make it look more natural. But I feel like it's already looking pretty good. So in fact, i'm I'm just going to let this dry first before we continue with the metallic Paints. In the next section, we'll be right **** 7. Metallic Paints and Background: Hello and welcome back. Our white gel pen has now dried and we more than ready to add our Metallic Highlights as well as to paint a beautiful background. But we're not going to paint the whole piece of multimedia board. I actually want to do a cool effect where we only just kind of go around the fish. What's great about this method, which I've used in some of my previous arts, is that it frames the fish, but I feel like it doesn't, you don't have to paint the entire background and it still creates a very cool effect that makes the fish pop. And especially if you use a color that is, is that very complimentary to the orange that you've used? I feel like I want to do other bluish background because I feel like that will be a bluish purple background. Will really make this orange of the clownfish like just really stand out. So I just want to show you these are my metallic watercolors. It's a very beautiful set and the brand is superior. But as I said before in the materials sections, if you can get this brand, there are so many other metallic watercolor paints sets that you can by now. You can even order them online. I actually audit this online. So you have a lot of variety. You don't have to use the same brand this mean. So when you do, when I add metallic metallics to a painting, I have my own method like everybody else. I don't feel that you need to cover the entire subject from head to toe in metallics, because the thing with some of these metallic Paints are, some of them are more shear than others. Some can be quite opaque and some can be quite transparent. So I would highly advise you to make a little color chart like what I did before, where you take a piece of watercolor paper and you test out every single color in your set. And so it helps you visualize how transparent or opaque paint is before you use it on your actual painting. I never use metallic watercolors on their own to color a subject from scratch. Because most of them are quite transparent and you will have a very weak color. So what I love to do is I like to paint with add this quality watercolor paints first. And then I layer the metallic watercolors where I feel appropriate. So I've just talked a lot now, so I would love to just show you what I like to do. So this is just my own thoughts on this. So what I like to do is I like to add metallics to the lighter areas of my subject. Where you see the light come here on the face, on the top, a little bit on the thin. And that's how I like to add them. I don't add metallics to the very shadowy dark areas because if you have a very glittery metallic painting, it can be hard to see your subject because the reflective quality of the metallic Paints can make it quite distracting to see your whole subject. So I would rather highlight the lighter parts of the subject. I feel that that will help it just really come to life. So once more I've talked a lot. So the color that I've decided to use is this beautiful gold color. And it's really lovely. And I might just show you on a test piece of paper that this color. It just let me do that probably. When you wet it, you wet the area and just look at that. It's almost like the gold is dancing on this wet surface. It's beautiful. So those are all the metallic pigments. So what I've decided for my fish, and I want to start with our lovely female, is that I'm going to use some of this gold. If you don't feel confident using it straight from the palette, you can just put it down, like I might put it down on this palette here just so you can see, for me that's a good consistency. And I'm just going to very lightly added on like that. That looks so beautiful already. In fact, I might just add a little bit of water to this, to just it just has such a beautiful dance like to just help it spread a little. And it really helps to look at your reference photograph for this part just to, so you can see, I want to put it down here too. So you can just see where the highlights are. So color like this, which is gold. It adds like I just showed you. Look at that beautiful. It adds such a beautiful sheen to it. But we're not doing the whole fish for reasons that I explained. I just want to add this a bit to the top here. I'm not not on the whites It's yet because I'm actually going to add another color, another metallic color for that. We can spread this down a little bit more here. This gold itself is not very, it's not very opaque at all. It's quite transparent and it sits on top of the colors very beautifully, but it obviously adds this beautiful sheen to it. As you can see. Yeah, I have to admit I love. And they do stand out lovely among a dark colors. So I'm just going to add a bit of that on the top. We're just going to basically add it wherever we see a lighter, a highlighted orangey area in our reference photograph. And as you can see, it just, it's beautiful. I mean, who doesn't like P playing with these metallic colors? So I'm just gonna get a little bit more from here. I want to just do this area here. It's very highlighted. I'm just trying to also save the purple marks on the thin because I do feel like those those separations do do come in handy in making our thin look real. So as you can see that that has such a gorgeous effect. I think we should bring it up here too. Yeah, I love this gold. It's so beautiful. So I also want to just add a bit of the goal on the top here, but I'm also going to add some shiny white to it. I'm just looking where else I wanted to put it. I might put some over here just at the very bottom and a little bit over here. So as I said before, this is a light area too. You can get very carried away with these with adding Metallic Highlights. But this is really up to you again. So this is just my, my own like preference to one add it where I feel is a lighter area. Otherwise, I feel like it's too distracting for the overall painting, but I definitely see some highlights here. So let's add it over here, right above this purple line. Yeah, that's really FUN. I do see a bit more on the face here. So let's do that. I do have an orange option over here, but after I tested it out on paper, I found it to be way too opaque. And I just felt that it was going to cover some of the details of my that I've already added to my fish, so I opted not to. And I found that the orange color was very orange, whereas I've just thought the gold would just looks so beautiful. Yeah. I hope you can see that shimmer on the camera. Yeah, so I'm just adding a little bit on the body here. While I have this gold, I might actually go to my little guy over here and put some on his face. Just going to finish up our little guy. I'm gonna put the, the gold over here. It's yeah, this has been very FUN to do. And I hope that by demonstrating to you how you can add highlights, this opens up a whole new door for you to use metallics in your future watercolor paintings. He's looking so cute. I don't want to cover him completely in in these metallic pins. So just having a look at our female, doesn't she look gorgeous? I just want to add a little bit more here, even though I said I wasn't gonna get carried away. But now let's move on from gold. And I really want to do these stripes, the white stripes. So I'm not going to bother adding metallics to the dark areas like I've mentioned before, like the black markings are of the stripes because I feel that a black, a color like black, which is very dark, it shouldn't reflect much light, it would actually absorb light. So it makes sense to add the Metallic Highlights on the lighter areas of the fish. But that's just my opinion for this pot. Just so I'm going to just I don't think I actually really need to wet that area. I'm gonna just choose this gorgeous white over here. And I don't think you can actually see it if I put it down on the palette, but I hope you can see it here that this is a shiny, a beautiful shiny white. And I'm going to add this now to the very white areas of my Of my fish, because this is a beautiful white that reflects it, has a bit of other pigments in it, but it's mainly a shiny white. So we are going to add that in here, making sure that I added enough there. And the white kinda stops over there. I want to add it here too. So I wonder if you can see that. Can you see that? Why? While that's going on, I might actually add the white here too. Just so I don't have to go back to this color again. So the whites, very prominent over here. Over here. Oops, Try not to go into the purple. I'm just going to put the white all over actually all over this guy because he's Stripe is so small. There you go in. This white actually does let some of the purples come through. So if you, if you want, you can test it out. Like I just wanted to put this over because it's white. It might. I want to also let the blues come through for that particular reason of the Stripe, I want to swap to this blue. Look at that. So this is a lot of fund to do. You can try and blend it to if you want. I'm just going to put the blue on top of the blues. If that makes sense. It was this blue that I was using might just put it down here so you can have a look. And of course, you can do Blues without purple. I'm just going to put the purple down here just so I can have a look at it. I'm just going to add some purple here. So all I'm doing is dropping it in and letting it blend on top of the, the colors that we've already put in. We using the purple and letting it blend into our already white. The already, sorry, the already colored Stripe that we've that we've add, I'm just blending it. These paints are as you can see, the gorgeous. They are so light reflecting and I'm just going to, I kinda paint it over this. So I'm just going to remove that because I want the Black Stripe to come through. So I hope you're having as much FUN as me. Just look at that. I mean, it's just makes the colors really pop. I just want to add a bit more blue here. And while I do that, I'm going to add the purple and just blend it in. This is so, so PFK-1 and dreamy. And I'm gonna do the same over here with the blue, same blue that we're using. There we go. That is so gorgeous. I think I actually want to add a bit of the light blue to this little guy Stripe and a bit more of the purple. What I wanna do now is while this dries, whoops, I almost forgot. I would like to put some of that shiny white up here to where we've got these definite like hi highlighted areas here. I'm just putting it I'm still letting that. I'm putting it in the middle of the scale path and I'm letting the scale pattern come through. I still want that. I think that's really pretty. So the whites just gonna go NEA, NEA, this part over here, because I do see a bit of a highlight in the reference photograph. And I just want to also use some of that same light purple to do this, to go over these Stripe, stripes, these scales. As you can see what that produces, it's even more shine. Our little guy over here doesn't have much of that shine of the scaly pattern. I can really see it on him. But I just wanted to bring that purple down here to yep. I feel like that's that's looking really beautiful. So what I have in mind is I want to do the background. That's going to, I'm going to use my big brush for this. I'm going to very carefully wet the area around Around my fish. So the reason why I'm wetting the area around the fish with clean water is simply because I'm going to this is going to help me let the paint flow in the background so that it will dry at an even rate. I can feel that this has already drying up here, so I'm just going to add some more water. There we go. Alright. I can see it at I just want to I'm sorry about the angle. I'm just turning it so that I can just see where the water is. Now, for the water that's going to surround these fish. I really want to use the blues that we've used previously. That is the ultra marine. So just so I'm just letting I'm just adding more water to just so that this area doesn't dry up. And that's an even sheen around the fish. Like it. If you find this really tricky, like lifting, lift your paper up just so you can see it. Alright, before this dries, let's drop in our colors and we can wet them if they start drying. So I'm going to start with that beautiful turquoise that we've used. So I'm going to start dropping it in here. One smart, not thinking too much about it, but if I, I wanna point out that I'm focusing the lighter blue around the on towards the outer part of the fish. Because towards the outer, sorry, that's not very, not very good English what I mean is I'm going to put it further away from the fish as possible. And because I want to get the darker blues which was ultra marine. So that's quite diluted. I might need a stronger concentration of that. I hope you can see that. I'm just going to put it back where it was just now. I need it stronger. I'm going to just drop that in here. So now when you're near your fish body, I would really highly advise you to go slow and use the tip of your brush to go right up to the body. This is, this is a bit tricky. So you go slow if you have to use the tip of your brush to go as close as possible. I'm going to that is the reason that I decided to wet this area. It just helps the pain flows so much better. And as you can see, we are framing our fish up. What she's leave. Before your water dries. Do try and go. Just let these pens, these colors in the surrounding water just blend. And as you can see, I'm going all the way up to that black mark because that part of the fish is actually supposed to be transparent. So it's going to let that Watercolor come through. I hope you loved this effect. Before the blues dry. I actually want to drop in a bit of purple because we've used purple as the shadow color for our fish. So I would like to drop that into There we go. We've made it because we wet the area. We've let the Paints go exactly where they're supposed to go. And now I just want to drop in a bit of blue here because I just think she put some more. I want to get as close as possible To my fish body without actually going into the body. I mean, I love this effect. I hope you do. So let's use the same purple that we used. Because this wall, this will just add like even more. It contrasts very well. There's no point adding Lot of colors that you haven't used on your subject because I feel that it can look a little too colorful if you add lots of new colors. And now I like to add some of the colors I've already used. I'm letting the just seeing where I need to put more color. Like I want it, the water to be darker towards the body of the fish and gradually go out to that beautiful turquoise color. So that's what I'm doing. That's the effect I'm going for. This is a method I've used before to give my subjects some sort of frame rather than paying the whole thing. I just feel that this kind of adds a really cool like surrounding for the fish and it has its own style because you're not using up the whole paper, the whole Background. That is so cool. I'm really happy with that. I'm just trying to look at add all the parts that I have then that I have any gaps between the fish and its surroundings because I just want to fill them up. Before we do the very final thing that I think you're gonna love. While this is wet now, while it's still wet, as you can see, I want to do something really FUN. I want it, I'm going to use a smaller brush, a size eight. And I'm going to now add some of those cool colors that we've used while it's still wet. So this is the water. So I'm just going to add this shiny metallic colors. Kinda keeping it where I see these. The similar, a similar sort of color. And I'm just going to let them blend. The thing about Metallic pens that I've noticed is they don't, they don't quite blend as, as easily as watercolor paints, for instance, like normal watercolor paints. So it's just using the same blues that I've used on the fish stripes. So this is going to add some cool, cool effects. So let's go for a darker blue. For the darker areas. Well, this metallic blue is not quite as dark, but it'll still add a bit of a cool, shiny effect. Some, I'm not putting it everywhere. I just like with my fish. I just want a bit of that to come through. But the fish is the star of the show. And also, I might as well throw some purple in there, just the same purple that we've used before. We're doing this all while. It's still wet. You probably have to use your brush to encourage it to blend a little because as I said before, Metallic pens don't seem to move around as much. Loving it. So I don't want I think I've covered most of it. So just want to make sure that that is filled up with their. So what we're gonna do now is we're going to let it completely dry, let this background completely dry. Before I add the very final Touches of paint. There is a herder from my brush, so just wanted to remove that very gently. Just going to remove that purple because I just want the outside to be, to be blue, but I'm pretty happy with this anyway. Thing that will be fine. Let's let this completely dry before we do the very final Touches of our painting. 8. Final Touches: Hello and welcome back. We are at the very end of our class, just literally putting the very final touches on our to beautiful clownfish. And I'm really happy with the way they've turned out so far. After looking at them a lot, I decided that I want to actually outline my fish to really make them stand out, but I'm going to use a very, very fine black pen. So this is a Faber Castell, Pitt Artist Pen fine liner. And it's an excess, so it's only 0.1 MM and it is waterproof. I just feel that it will make our fish pop more. It will make them stand out more even though our fish are looking really beautiful. So I might just move this out of the way a little. I got a bit of room for my arm. And I'm going to just start outlining. Very, I'm going to use broken small broken strokes like that. And as you can see, like it's already making our fish stand out a little bit more. And I'm just trying to do this in an, a natural organic way. And I do want an outline around this transparent part of the fin that I've left that because I do want to go over that pot with some of our metallic paint later. Just because that pot is supposed to be transparent, that part of the fin. Okay, I'm just gonna do this a little bit carefully over here. And I'm gonna just go very lightly here too. And if you have to, like turn your multimedia board or paper, whatever you're using around just to, to make it easier to outline it. So I'm going very lightly and this is already a very fine pen. So it doesn't look too bold. But as you can see, it does make our fish stand out more. I just felt that even though this is quite a realistic drawing, and you don't want to do such a thick outline. I do feel that we needed it a little just to finish it. Just go over very lightly. Just approaching the face. I'm gonna do this as lightly as I can. And it should just go into the mouth here. There is our fish already. I feel like it stands out more. And I don't want to go too crazy with this black pen, but there are certain things that I wanna do like this fin over here, for instance, I would just outlining the boundary, the edge of the transparent part of the fin that the clownfish has. I also am wondering now if I should use a thicker black marker to go over the dark sides, the very thick black stripes. But for now, I'm just looking. Perhaps I can use the fine liner just to outline the, the black of the eye. Just to make, I do like the eyes of my Animals to stand out. I think I think that will help a bit. But at the same time, I don't want to overdo it. So I'm just, I feel that the outline for this vicious done and I'm just going to move over to my little guy over here and do the same. So just outlining the very edges and doing it very lightly. Yeah. That just makes him stand out more. There we go. And I just wanted to do this That was a bit of a space over there. But that's cool. It's all done. And maybe just using this to outline his eye a little. But that I think it's looking really nice. What I'm gonna do is just use a thicker black pen. I think I'll use a size S, which is zero point and three. Just to emphasize certain things like certain areas like like you don't have to do this. This is just me wanting to just make those black the black stripes just stand out a little bit more because we've only used our black pen so far. So this really depends on how bold you want the stripes to look, but I love the stripes to look bold. So I'm just going to try and darken that a little. Just these boundaries. Yeah. I do feel that it the overall it will make our fish look look nice and bold. Sometimes I do have to tell myself to stop. Okay. So that's looking nice to just yeah. I am working quite fast, but I just wanted to just emphasize those beautiful black markings on the phi1. Okay, almost done with the tail. Because there is I feel that there is a limit to how dark you can go with the Paint. And I feel that the pens do help to emphasize the darker areas. So I feel like that's quite dark because in our reference photograph it is pretty dark and believe it or not, I also do have a black pen that is even thicker if if you want to really fill in those those areas. In fact, I'm just wondering if I should do that now. I have a 0.7 actually, I guess I could do. I'm just filling in these making it DACA. But once more, I feel like you don't have to do this. So I feel that it is pretty dark already. This thicker pen just makes it easier to fill in the areas as opposed to the small pens which are very thin. But I am I'm now looking and I think that that is good enough. It is bold enough. So I want to move on to the very, very last step, which for me was to use some metallic Paints just to paint the, the transparent parts of the fins. For this color, in my reference photograph, it does look rather purplish due to the UV light that's present in the tank. So I'm just one to two, but I'm just wondering if I should go with the white that we've used earlier because just re-wet that. I feel that yeah, I think the white it does give off a bit of it has it's not just pure white, this white that I have. It does have sheen of other colors in it, like a bit of a green in it. And I'm like, even I can even see pink. It does add quite a few different colors to our fish as well. So this all adds a cool effect in. So those are the parts of the fin that I've painted. And now I just wanted to do the same over here. Like this transparent pot here that we've outlined. Very lightly. You can just see it. It's looking so beautiful, just that nice transparent part. And I'm gonna do the same for this part over here. And here. And believe it or not, we have completed our fish. Definitely move that out of the way and just look at the beautiful sheen that, that has, that so gorgeous, that beautiful metallic reflection. I'm very happy with the way the fish looks now. I can't really think of anything else I really want to add in because I feel like it is complete. And the only, the only other thing I can think of is to use a bit of white, some of the metallic white chest. Even though we've already done this part just to really emphasize those white areas too. We've already done this, but I just noticed that this pot was a little bit it could use more reflection, but other than that, I think that I'm fish is looking really beautiful. And I think it is quite done. To stop myself from adding more stuff in. I just want to do what I always do, which is just sign my name. I just want to do that. I hope that you've had a lot of FUN doing this. This was really FUN for me to do a class with metallics. We're done. And I just wanted to say congrats on on doing these fish. And please join me for the very last section of this class, which are my final thoughts. Thank you again for joining me. This has been really, really FUN. I'll see you in the next video. Thank you. 9. Final Thoughts: One small as always, I just want to say thank you so much for watching this class. I hope that you've had a lot of PFK-1 creating your beautiful shimmery clownfish paintings. But more importantly, if this was your first time experimenting with Metallic Watercolors, I hope you've had a lot of PFK-1, but it's also opened your mind up to possibilities of using it in your future watercolor paintings to really enhance them. To add a magical field, please feel free to upload your beautiful clownfish paintings in the Discussion section of this class so that other students and myself can admire them. Also, please feel free to follow me on Skillshare or on my social media account on Instagram so that you can get more updates about future classes. Once more. I just want to say, thank you so much for watching my classes and following me. And I wish you the best in your watercolor journey. Much love