How to Paint a Dolphin with a Shimmery Background in Watercolors

1. Introduction: Hi, everyone. Have you ever wanted to dive into the mysterious and magical world of dolphins? My name is Alicia Paran, and I'm an artist who works primarily in watercolors, and I would absolutely love to teach you how to sketch and pin a bottle nosed dolphin swimming through shimmery waters using watercolors and metallic watercolur paints. In this class, I will teach you how to sketch a bottle nosed dolphin from a reference photograph that I have provided. I will then teach you how to create a gorgeous, shimmery water backdrop surrounding your dolphin. We will then lay down washes of watercolor to build up the color and dimensions of our dolphin before adding some final touches of correction pen and gold metallic pin to create the illusion of water surface patterns on the body of the dolphin. This class is suitable for watercolor students of all levels because I will be breaking down and demonstrating each step of the process. So if you are ready to create a gorgeous underwater painting of a bottle nosed dolphin swimming through glistening waters, let's begin. 2. Materials: Hi, everyone, and welcome to the material section of this class where I will list all the materials that you need to do this project. So let's start with the paper. I'm using a brand of watercolor paper called Kansen and it has a weight of 140 pounds or 300 grams, and it's A four size. You don't have to use the same brand of watercolor paper that I use, but I highly recommend you use a brand that has a similar weight if you want to get good results. Next, let's talk about all the materials I need for sketching. I used a lead holder by the brand staler just to get the rough shape of the dolphin, but you don't need to use a lead holder. You can go straight to the mechanical pencil. I used a brand called Pilot Super grip, and it says 0.5 because that's the width of the lead that I used. I also used HB lead for sketching. I use two different erasers, so there is the Steler one that's big and soft and there's also a mechanical eraser by the brand Tombo Mono zero, which is great for erasing small areas. Now, let's talk about all the materials we'll need for painting. I always paint with two jars of clean water so I don't have to keep changing water. I also used a rag to soak up all the excess water when I rinse my brushes. If you don't have a rag, you can use paper towels. I also used usking tape. This has a width of about 1 ", and you can get it from any hardware store or art supply store, just to tape around our paper to create a border for our background. I also used a ceramic palette. I love using ceramic palettes to mix paint on because they are so easy to wash and they don't stain. Next, let's talk about the paint brushes. So I used this three quarter inch flat wash brush or square wash brush by a brand called Princeton Neptune. And this is for just laying down the layers of your background. I also use two round brushes in the sizes four and eight by this brand silver black velvet, which I really love. Now let's talk about the paints. For this project, you are welcome to use whatever colors you want, but these are the colors that I chose to use. This is the color bot Turquoise Light by Windsor and Newton. This is the color that I used for the background, and this is the rock Mica layered watercolor by the brand supervision Art and it has a number 321 on it, and it's from the Ocean Paradise collection. If you can't get hold of this brand of paints, you can create a very similar effect by using metallic watercolors to layer over your background. Next, I also use this color for the dolphin's body that's French ultramarine by Windsor and Newton. I also used burn umber by Artist water color. That's the brand. I also use this color of Indigo blue by Art Spectrum. So as I said earlier, you can use whatever colors you want for this project and get creative. My only advice is please use artist quality watercolor paints if you want to achieve good results. And very finally, I used this, which is called correction pen or also known as whiteout or liquid paper in different countries. And this is by the brand paper made. And last but not least, I used gold metallic paint from this set that I have by a brand called Superior. If you can't get this brand, use whatever gold metallic paint that you have because you achieved a very similar result. So those are all the materials that we use for this project. So if you're ready, let's begin sketching. 3. Sketching: Hi, everyone, and welcome to the sketching portion of our class where we will sketch our beautiful dolphin. So yeah, without wasting any more time, let's begin. I'm really excited about this. What I want to do is, and this is optional. If you want to use your mechanical pencil, that's fine. But I just tend to like to use a lead holder just to get the rough shape of the dolphin first. Then later on when I need to add finer details, I tend to use my mechanical pencil. But if you just want to do it with a mechanical pencil, that's fine. This is just a little habit that I've started. So because I tend to draw big and I want my dolphin to fit in the confines of this A four page, I'm just going to start doing a very rough sketch now. And funny enough, I'm actually going to start with the tail, even though when I did a practice run, I actually kind of did the head and stuff, but, yeah, I just want to make sure that I don't go over the page with my dolphin. Funny thing. I'll just tell you a story while I sketch. Dolphins are a lot bigger than you imagine in real life, when you're actually underwater with them, they look a lot bigger than I think we all perceive them to be. I think we just think, Oh, whales are really big, like, you know, killer whales and stuff. But a dolphin, they actually were a lot bigger and longer than I thought when I was underwater. I think some of them were definitely as tall as me, as long as me. Well, I'm just going to now so like I said, this is I'm just getting the feel of the angle. So there's definitely an angle that goes here, here, and then this kind of continues at a different angle. And I can always just change it later if I feel that it's, um, it's not 100% accurate, but like I said before in all my videos, the reference photograph is not meant to be a carbon copy of what we're doing of our art, but, you know, it's a painting, so it's open to interpretation, but personally, I'm just an artist that likes working with a reference photograph. All I'm doing now is just sketching, trying to get that rough dynamic shape of the dolphin. So as you notice, I obviously haven't added in any dorsal fins or pectoral fins. I'm just trying to get that shape going first. Oops. That lines not supposed to be there. Yeah. Sorry if I take a while to sketch this, I just like to have a sketch an accurate sketch for myself. But this is all also up to you if you want a more abstract looking dolphin, because I mean, that's completely up to you too. I'm starting to just add a few little lines because we got that angle there, and then we've got this one here going up to the dorsal fin. And then I think I can start putting the dorsal fin in now. Yeah. My whole sketching process may be very different from yours. Some people, like I said, in previous videos like to break down the shape of something that's an animal into very blocky sort of like blocky parts, but I'm a free, easygoing person, so I don't really do that. I think I sketch in a more organic way and I just try and get the feel of the animal rather than let's break it down into very, um, rectangles and blocks. But you're welcome to do that if you feel that it will simplify the sketching process. I hope I haven't drawn the Now I'm starting to refine this a little bit more. I don't know if I've drawn the dorsal fin a bit big, but we can work on that later. But I want to get this beautiful curvature here that goes all the way down. I think I might extend the dolphin's head a little bit here. Yeah. Dolphins have this beautiful like rounded forehead. I think I'm going to now start doing their snout. I'm just deciding if I should just I think now that I've gotten a good idea of the shape, I might start using my mechanical pencil to just add thinner lines and more detail. I do love this nice beautiful curve here, this nice big chest that they have that looks so muscular and strong. Then I think I might start switching to my mechanical pencil after that. That's what I think the rough the rough shape of the dolphin is, but obviously we can still keep changing that. Let me switch now to my mechanical pencil because I want to do. You see, I use the lead holder to just very organically move my hand around in a way that I probably wouldn't with my mechanical pencil like that at angles that I wouldn't I'm just going to do this beautiful mouth. The mouth is like a smile. That's why a dolphin always looks really happy, which is really charming. I'm just going to go down here. So once more, I can always just refine this a little bit more once I get the shape going. See, I think that's sticking out a little bit too much. So we just have the mouth. The bottom part of the jaw tends to hang a little over, right? Like the dolphin doesn't have an overbite. It's just like, yeah, quite the opposite. So there we go. I'm just trying to do that little mouth. I think the angle, I just have to make this a little bit flatter. And now I'm just going to start refining it a little bit more now. I think I can start erasing some lines just so we have a clearer Clear. Clear, look, I find having lots of lines can be a bit distracting when you're trying to sketch. Let me just try and erase as much stuff as I don't need right now. Okay. Yeah, that's looking good to me. I hope you're having fun sketching this. I feel like he could smile a little bit more, but maybe let's just try and get stuff like the eye. The eye, let me just first check if the head curvature is good. I think it should probably maybe go down like this, whereas, I think that looks better. Okay. Yeah, I'm happier with that, this looks better to me. I feel like the eye, how about I do the eye first, and then I can start placing the smile a little bit more accurately. But like I said before, you don't have to make a carbon copy of the reference photograph, but I just as an artist myself, I find it so helpful. Then later on, just to get the shape. But later on, we can do whatever we want when we're painting. Okay, so I feel now I've got a better idea. The smile should be a little bit higher up like that. It just kind of stops a little bit right under the eye, and let's give our dolphin a beautiful, huge smile. Feel free if you're doing, you know, an abstract painting. Feel free to, you know, really emphasize that smile. But I'm happy with mine. Yeah. Okay. So there's a nice smile. Let me just check now if, uh, I think the eye is at a good place, and I just want to start adding a little bit of lines in that very lightly that will help us later with my mechanical pencil and I'm using HB lid, so it's not hash, it's not dark in case we want to paint over it. I see a bit of shadow area here from where the eye is all the way here. That gives the dolphin its very distinct head going over. The dorsal fin, let me just focus on the head first because I just want to make sure I get the head right and then later on I'll see if my dorsal fin might have been a little bit too pronounced. So far, I'm happy with this and um so just looking at the reference photograph, a rough guide is this very edge of the dorsal fin is where we see. I'm just going to draw a very light line here because that's a bit of a guidance, a bit of a bit of a guiding line for me to just do this fin over here. The pectoral fin that's just at the back that's darker. So it should be somewhere it should end somewhere here and there should just be a bit of a once you draw, draw one thing. You can start using it to draw to place other things down. You can use it as a reference point. This goes over here. Roughly, we can always change it later. This fin up here, it's actually very close, it's going to be somewhere here. The pectoral fin that we can see, there's a bit of an overlap. I just want to move the fin a little bit back here. Let me just look at my reference photograph. I think that it should probably start somewhere here. Feel free to draw your light lines, light ones and use that as guidelines and you can always erase them later. Yeah. I think I placed the back fin a little bit too forward. Let me just erase that so I'm not confusing myself as well. This fin here, is gonna go somewhere like here. Yeah, I think I like this. Once you're happy with your fin, you can just erase the guidelines. Like I said before, sketching is a very organic process for me. Sometimes it takes me a while to achieve the final sketch that I want. But like I said before, if you want something abstract, you probably are not going to take as long as me to do it. Now I'm just going to draw the back pectoral fin. And this is just going to go down a little bit like that. This is obviously in shadow. Now we can erase this line here because obviously this is not being blocked by the body. That's looking good to me. I just want to check that I feel that maybe this is a little bit long. Let me just try and cut it a little bit. But I'm just looking at the pectoral fin and I'm just wondering if maybe it's looking a little bit big because I love the rest of my dolphin. I'm just wondering if maybe I could just trim this down a bit. Yeah. But I love the shape. Let's just look at the shape again. Another useful tip for sketching that I like to do is sometimes I will just take a break or take a step back because it just get out of your seat and just look down at it from a bit of a distance and then you can get a better perspective of whether, you know, of size, yeah. I encourage you to do that as well. What I'm doing now is I'm just going to make my dorsal fin a little bit smaller because I feel like it's just a little bit too big right now. That's all I'm doing. But other than that, I'm really happy with the shape. Yeah, it was really a wonderful experience for me to observe dolphins in the wild, just swimming underwater. Yeah, I had to hold onto a boat underwater to watch them and glide through the water with them. And I have to say, if you could ever do that, please do it's an amazing experience if you go with a good cruise. Yeah, seeing them underwater when you're in the water yourself, they are so curious. They come up to you. We're not allowed to touch them or anything, obviously, to not pass on our germs to them. But, yeah, you know that they are highly intelligent, highly curious. They are very aware of us being underwater with them. And, yeah, they're just gorgeous. Okay. I think I'm I'm happier with that. Um, Yeah, I am. In this very final stages of the drawing of the sketch, I just want to just double check stuff, personally, if something's just bothering me, I think I can just move the eye just down slightly. But that's just me. I just think it needs to be a little bit down. This smile should probably be here. Like I said, up to you how accurate you want to use the reference photograph. I actually did do a trial run of this class, and I think you're going to really love the effect that we're going to create with our sparkly water. It's going to be so cool. I can't wait for you to try it out. So last thing I'm going to do. I'm just fixing the smile slightly. But I'm very happy with the overall sketch. So let's just I hope your dolphins are smiling too. So later on, I will color the eye. I'll be darker, but that dolphin smile is just so important for me because they genuinely do look like they're smiling. So I want to preserve that in my sketch. Yeah. I just want to now. Yep, just looking I think maybe this could go just a little bit higher. I'm just going to This line looks very thick. I'm just erasing the bottom part of the line, but still keeping the same shape. Okay. I think I'm really happy with this now. I just want to now before we start putting down the base wash, I just want to I noticed some lines in the dolphin that we might want to preserve them with light and dark before we start painting them. So I'm just going to use my mechanical pencil because I just want to preserve this part, which is going to be lighter. And there's also a very distinct line. So very gently, I'm just using my pencil because I see some lines that, and this is what I did with my trial run. I did do um So parts are darker, we just want to preserve that and this comes up here like that. This is a bottle nose Indo Pacific dolphin. Some parts are a little bit darker. They also add dimension. I just want to save some of these lines. Then we have a line here that runs all the way making it curvy to the eye here. Don't worry so much about the streaks of sunlight now because we are going to add that, add some liquid paper over that. Don't worry too much about that, and I'm just going to draw another line here that I see that kind of goes up and then goes down here. These are just guidelines that are very, very light, just because I feel they add dimension to our dolphins. So just sketching it very lightly. I see a line here that then goes up to here. So yeah, just feel free to use my reference photograph that I've provided to just get these lines right. Okay. But other than that, oh, I do see a huge, I don't know how I didn't see that. This fin is a lot should end somewhere here. I think because I redid my fin, it didn't look This fin should end somewhere up here, not as low as that one. So see, that's why I tend to also take little breaks when I sketch something just because sometimes when you have a break when you've rested your eyes, you can see things that you may not have seen when you were just sitting down the whole time. But now that I notice that I'm okay with that. Yeah. So this fin, as you can see, the back pectoral fin should be longer. It should be longer than the front one. I mean, that makes sense. Okay, so that was the only thing I noticed. And let me just stand up, do one final check on my dolphin, but I'm actually quite happy with how my dolphin looks. And I think we can start moving on to the next part of our process, which is we are going to add a border of musking tape. So good work for sketching your dolphin. I hope you really love what you've done, and I will see you in the next part of this class. So see you soon. 4. Adding Masking Tape: Hi, and welcome back. And now that we have finished our dolphin sketch, we are now going to apply the masking tape just at the very edges of our paper so that when we paint the background and it dries and we peel off the masking tape, we're going to have a very nice neat border. So let's begin by, I think for this part, I actually might. You don't have to pull it out actually, but I think I might just leave it inside the pad and then take it out later. I'm just going to apply this masking tape and I believe this is about 1 " wide, and I'm just going to put it right at the very edge of the paper. In fact, to tell you the truth, because my paper is not very big, I don't mind just letting a little bit of the tape hang over the page because I don't want to put it up with the snout of the Actually, that looks a little bit crooked, so let me just redo that again. Sometimes I don't get it right all the time straightaway, so I'm fine to just redo it because this is an important part of the process if you want to have a nice neat border. You want to make sure that you really push down so that there are no air bubbles that are trapped inside your masking tape that will allow paint to seep through because we want to create a very nice air tight border. So what I'm going to do is that's fine to just hang off the page like that. I might just tear this part off because we don't really need that. Okay, so just repeat for all the edges. With this part here, I don't mind going all the way to the edge of the of the page because we have quite a lot of space at the bottom. I'm just going to put my tape right here, right on the edge and once more, just repeat the same process, make sure that are no air bubbles, and this tapes just going to overlap with the other one. Just so it doesn't get in the way, I'm just going to fold this down here like that. No air bubbles, let's do it. Once more because I just want a little bit of space. I'm just going to leap let half the width of the tape just hang off a bit. Just so the border is a little bit away from the tip of the tail. So there you go. Same process as usual. Sorry if I sound very repetitive, but I just want to show you every step of the process. And finally, let me just tell this. The very, very last part. Okay, I think I don't mind putting this also at the edge here because we have some space at the top to play with. So here we go. And just this very last part here, see? It's very important to get rid of all those air bubbles that could let the pain seep through underneath. Okay, just go to fold that over. Just do a last check. And I think we're good. And now in the next video, we are going to start laying down the wash, the background wash. It's gonna be so fun. And, yeah, I can't wait. So see you in the next video. 5. Dolphin background 1 : Hi, everyone, and welcome to this section of the class where we're going to have a lot of fun and apply some color to our background. So before we begin that, I just want to talk you through what paints I'm going to use to achieve that gorgeous metallic blue background that you saw in the introduction of this class. I bought these set of paints by a brand called supervision, and this is the Ocean Paradise collection. What this is is it's rock mica layered watercolor, meaning, these are what the colors look like when you wet them and apply them on a piece of paper. It has pigments of a few watercolors in each tube, but it also has the mica, which gives that beautiful reflective sort of quality that we see in what they call metallic watercolor paints. What's unique about this set is it already has a few different colors in it and it gives that metallic sort of sheen to it, which is really cool. Which is why I decided to use it as a background. Now, this set, it has quite a few colors in it. I've decided to go with this color. It's just called 321. It doesn't really have a name, but it has a beautiful, bluish purple, purply tones to it, which I really love that I thought would add some color variation to my, um, background as well. But I just want to tell you a little bit about these paints. So before I use them and what I always do when I buy new paints is I always do a little color chart just to test out what their properties are like, how opaque they are, how, you know, transparent, how staining, et cetera. So that's the color that I want to use. As you can see, it's beautiful. It's beautiful like purple and blues to it. And it has that metallic sheen to it, but you won't see the metallic sheen throughout the entire area that you paint. Some of the mica, I think will come together. It's a bit granulating as well. It's quite a cool product. That's what one layer looks like, and this is what another layer looks like. As you can tell, I also do a little bit of experimenting trying to see whether I can layer on top of it. So when I tested this out on a piece of paper, there is a bit of a shearness to the paint. So paint if you just use this and paint it all over your background, your background might appear a little bit light. And this is once again down to your own preference. But because I want a beautiful deep blue, I've decided to also first, do a base wash with this color with some turquoise, because then it just adds another layer of color and deepens it. Otherwise, my own preferences, I find this is a little bit too sheer on its own. What we're going to do is we're going to put this down first and then layer this on top. If you do not have this, you can't get hold of this supervision brand, that is absolutely fine. You can still create this effect that we are going to do by using some metallic watercolors that you can get any brand that you can get. For instance, I have this one. I've used this a lot. So we can just apply the base color, wait for that to dry, and you can use whatever blues you have, maybe you want to put a little bit of purple in. This is all very doable if you don't have this brand. I just really liked using this because I love the color variation that it produces. So that's just a quick explanation of what I want to do. So before I spend a lot of time talking, how about I'm going to use my flat brush right now, my three quarter inch. I'm just going to use clean water, and I'm just going to wet the entire background. So just very carefully, you don't have to be too precious about not getting any water on the dolphin, but just try your best to avoid the dolphin. One of the reasons I like to do backgrounds first before I paint my subject is just in case some of the paint from the background goes onto my subject, at least, I can just layer paint over those areas when I'm painting my subject. So that's just why I prefer to do backgrounds first, just in case some of it goes onto my subject. So there's our little dolphin. Try and apply a nice, even layer of water. If you have to tilt your paper just to check that it's nice and even, you have a nice even sheen on your paper. We don't want dry areas. We don't want puddles of water because that would just be too much. And some areas that you paint previously would probably already be dry. So I'd probably go over it with water one more time. Okay, as best as you can, I'm just going to tilt my paper to just see what areas are dry, I just want to try and apply, you know, a uniform. What What I want to do is even though in the picture, the blue around the dolphin in my reference photograph does lookie does look quite a little bit slightly lighter at the top and darker at the bottom, so that's okay. All right, so I'm just going to use my just going to put some of this nice turquoise paint down in my palette I hope you can see that from the camera. Yeah. So we got the turquoise paint I'm having a bit of trouble getting this out with the big brush because I have it in one of my travel palettes. I just thought that's easier to use. Okay. So as you can see, this is one of my favorite colors. It's a gorgeous turquoise. So now I'm just going to go ahead and lay down some beautiful turquoise. I think I'm probably going to need more. Yeah, it's a light color, but trust me, this will add just a little bit. I will make the water look just a little bit deeper than using the metallic watercolor alone. Sorry, this is it's quite dry. All right. So I'm going to have to scoop out more paint. Okay, there we go. Got some going here. I'm not thinking too hard about this. All I'm doing is applying this turquoise and maybe trying to get the color a little bit deeper at the bottom, making it a little bit darker at the bottom, just to give a little bit of perspective of the ocean being darker as we go deeper. Okay. That's still a bit light for me. I'm going to try and get out more turquoise paint. Then we're going to let this just dry before we apply our next layer on. This is a nice stress free process. I just want to put some around here. I just want to get more turquoise out. It looks a bit lighter than I thought. And as you know, watercolors tend to dry lighter. I just want to make sure that we can see the color, well, Okay. I think that's good. I think that's nice. Just want to make sure that I got all the areas. I think I ended up lifting off paint there. So let me just reapply that. Yeah. Okay. Okay. I think that's looking good. And so what I'm going to do now is we're going to let this completely dry first. So why don't you go and have a break, go and rinse your brushes, and I will see you in the next section of this class. 6. Dolphin background 2 : Hi, everyone, and we're back. And as you can see, our background is nice and dry now. So I waited for it to completely dry before I'm going to put my layer of this beautiful rock mica, layered watercolor. Oops. So I'm just going to put it over here. I hope you can see it. It already looks so beautiful when you put it in. I find that with this color a little goes a long way. It does come out quite thick and concentrated. I'm just going to close that now. If I need more, I can always take it later. I hope you can see that very clearly. Okay. I'm just going to do the same thing that I did last time first. I'm just going to re wet this area because this paint does apply on quite thick. So we just want to make sure that, um, it doesn't all just clump in one area, so I'm using the water, wetting the background just to help the pain spread a bit. I'm really, really excited to show you this pain. I've never made a video before using this paint, so I'm really, really excited. And who knows? Maybe you guys might want to buy some of this paint later on, like an experiment yourself. I have actually used this paint before, in other personal art projects. And yeah, but this is the first time I'm actually doing a class using one of these supervision rock Mika layered watercolors. I apply the water as carefully as I can so as to not disturb the layer of turquoise underneath. So now, oh, I'm so excited. I just want to show you what this color is like. Look at it. It's so beautiful. I already can see the metallic nature. So I'm going to start at the bottom, actually, because I want to kind of do a bit of a graded wash. So right now, it may just look like, oh, I'm just deepening the blue, right? But I also want to create a bit of variation with the strokes that I use just to once more, if you find that these little areas around the dolphin are a little bit hot to do with a thick brush. You can just use your smaller brush to just go into these areas that you want to, you know, get to around the fin and stuff like that. Like, yeah, I don't know if you can see this. So the paint is already starting to diffuse a bit. But as you can see, there's some beautiful variations of purples and blues and oh, I just can't wait when it dries, like how gorgeous this is going to look. So once more, if you find that you're struggling to go around the dolphin, in these areas, please use a little brush. I'm just going to go around the tail, but I don't want to completely cover the turquoise. So that's why I started at the bottom, and I'm going to go lighter towards the top, just to create a little bit of, you know, light perspective of the ocean, like how it goes, it's darker towards the bottom, but this is going to create some beautiful color variation. So I might just, you know, kind of use less pain, whoops, at the top. But I still will go. Make sure you get all those areas and I mean, this is just so beautiful, right? Like, I'm in love with this color. It's so beautiful. Yeah, see, I'm also kind of using the tip of my brush sometimes to just add a bit of maybe some what looks like water currents, like underwater currents. I'm just going to go over again at the bottom because I just feel like let's create that illusion that it's darker at the bottom of the ocean. All right, using my little brush to get into those hard to paint areas. You will only really see the extent of the beauty of this paint when it dries. But, I just love it so much though. You can see why I'm in love with it. It's going to the other colors in this set are also really beautiful. Like, yeah. So yeah, if you're interested, check out this brand of paint. As I said in a previous video, I love to introduce my students to new products in watercolor that are out there, you know, that you may not know about that were not around, you know, like even ten years ago. Okay. So what I want to do as well, is I'm going to use a little brush now because in the reference photograph, you don't have to do this, but I noticed that there are a bit of, you know, sort of these lines that kind of suggest the waves above the water. So just to make it look a bit I don't know, add a bit of realism in a little bit. I'm just going to add that in Obviously, this is wet on wet, so it won't be as distinct. That just gives I don't know the ripples on the surface kind of thing. I think that's interesting to I'll add some interest to our painting. Just doing it as naturally as I can. But I'm not thinking too hard about this. It's supposed to be fun and relaxing, so I'm just doing it like that. While it's still wet, so it won't be really harsh lines. Yeah, so how fun is that? That's really beautiful. Maybe just some over here. I'm going to bring some up here. Yeah, and as you can see, the colors are just kind of spreading a little. They diffuse, which is beautiful. All right. I don't want to overdo this step. So yeah, the pants are beautiful. I don't feel like I think I can just kind of I don't need the lines to be so defined there if I'm doing these surface lines. Whoops. Got some on the dolphin, but don't worry about it. That's okay. I'm just going to use a clean wet brush to just remove that. That's okay. No harm done. And yeah, for me, this is looking really nice. Like I said, I don't want to overdo it, but I just really want to emphasize that little like Okay, I'm going to stop there, even though I'm tempted to do more, but as you can see, this is very, very beautiful. And what we want to do if you're happy with everything and how it looks, we're going to let this completely dry, and then you can see the extent of how beautiful the paints are, like when they're dry and yeah, you'll see there's beautiful color variation. There's also metallic shiny elements to it. So why don't we go take a break right now, go clean your brushes, maybe change your water. And when we come back, we are going to start working on our dolphin, which will also be a lot of fun. So I will see you in the next video. 7. Dolphin paint part 1: Hello, and welcome back. And as you can see, my background has completely dried and just Ah, look at it. Like, do you see those beautiful sparkles and the beautiful color variations of purples and blues because of this beautiful paint? Also the graded wash that I did as well as the top of the ripples that we created. As I told you, it is really, really beautiful. I hope you can see the way the background is reflecting light. Yeah, that's why I really like these paints and I just thought it would be a great idea to use them for a background because I feel that because they have their own color variations and because they have some sparkle, they add an interesting background for a subject. That's just how I thought I would use them. I also want to say the thing with these paints with these you know, metallic paints a mica layered watercolor is that every time you use it because there are different color pigments in there, you might get a different outcome. I did do a trial run of this before when I was planning this class and the background turned out to look more on the purplish side than on the blue side. Whereas with this one, I think it's more blue with some purple. But anyway, yeah, yeah, the only issue that you might encounter with using paints like that is sometimes it can be a little bit unpredictable, but I think the color variations between paintings would be subtle. I don't think they would be very drastically different. But either way, I love this. And before we paint our dolphin, if your paintings have completely dried and if you feel you want to go a little darker with the background, you're welcome to do that. But I think I'm quite happy with this one. So I'm ready to start my dolphin if you are. So, let me just sit down and um just to talk about the dolphin, as you can see in the reference photograph, um, yeah, we tend to think dolphins are gray and it's like a uniform gray. But I don't really see the dolphin that way as just being, you know, uniform gray. So because of that, I want to actually make my own sort of grayish tones, rather than use, you know, a plain gray color. So that also adds some interest, some dimensions to our dolphin. And when I did a trial run of this class, I actually kind of made up the colors as I went along, but I understand that maybe that might be a bit intimidating if you're a beginner, you know, and, you know, you're trying to put down colors and it can maybe add a bit of pressure when you're trying to mix it all really quickly to put it on. So I thought maybe this time around when I'm doing it, maybe we could actually make the grays up already before we even start our painting. Because if you look at the reference photograph I provided, it's also a study in tonality. We have some parts of the dolphin that are a lighter gray. We see that, you know, along the arch of the back then we tend to see a much darker gray, a much darker tone or value down at the tail at the back fin. There are a couple of mid value ranges along the body as well. Because of that, I feel like maybe we should mix up some mid value tones in here and some light value ones. For me, the darkest color that I used, I didn't really have to mix a gray for that. I actually used indigo. Which is a really nice, bluish gray color. So those were the colors that I chose. They were turquoise, French ultramarine, as well as I mixed the gray by mixing French ultramarine with a brown that I use called burn umber. Then I also decided to add some turquoise for the lighter parts. I'm talking a lot, why don't we just get started? Just now, I used up all my turquoise. I'm just going to put some back in the palette but while I do that, I just want to say, I really hope you're loving your background and you're really pumped about it and you can't wait to do the rest. That'll be great. We're going to have a lot of fun and this painting is going to be beautiful. That's turquoise, before I actually start. The colors that I'm using, you don't have to use the exact same color. A palette as me. You are welcome to add some warm colors if you want. If you want a multi colored dolphin, that is fine, too. You can do whatever you want. That's the freedom that you have with art. But for me, I just wanted to stick to these colors that are sort of in the cool range. But be my guest if you would like to add some warmer colors or do a multi colored dolphin. My only advice to you is just still be aware of the value differences if you want to add some dimension to your dolphin no matter what the color is. I've got my turquoise. Now I'm going to get some This is French ultramarine. If you don't have French ultramarine, ultramarine is fine or whatever blue you want is fine. One of the reasons I also want to put turquoise, in my dolphin is because I want to I want a bit of the color in the background to reflect on the dolphin, you know, on the dolphin's body. I'm also going to take some of this brown. I hope you can see, yeah, from the palette. I'm just going to put the brown over here away from I made a bit of a mess over here with the with the mica color. So I just have to yeah, put it over here. So this color is going to help us. We're going to mix blue with this brown to make a gray. That's just a little bit of color theory. And finally, can you see this part of it? Yeah, I'll just put some of this over here. So this is indigo. It's one of my favorite, colors. It's a beautiful beautiful color that I use for night skies or, you know? Yeah, or just yeah, the dark of the ocean. I love it. It's a beautiful shadow color. Okay. So the first step I would do is, we don't have to care so much about preserving the white areas that you see in the photograph because that's when our liquid paper is going to come in. So those are very pretty sharp white edges. So it's okay if we just paint over that. That's fine. During the initial sketch, we kind of, well, I just highlighted to you that I wanted to just very lightly draw with pencil to just show where there are areas, values that are a little bit darker than other parts. And just so we could keep that in mind. But right now, we're going to do the same thing we did with our background. We're just going to a bit of the tail got covered here with the pain, but don't worry I'll paint over it. So what you want to do is very carefully with clean water, wet the entire body of your dolphin. This is going to be a lot of fun. I promise. So did I do the dorso fin already? Not yet. Okay. Yeah. This is gonna be a really fun, beautiful, magical looking painting when we're done with it. It's gonna be yeah, really, really spectacular. All right. So it's okay to go over the eye. That's fine. Yeah, I'm not really preserving any white areas here right now. So the reason I'm wetting the whole dolphin is because I don't really want to have very hard edges, you know, between light and dark areas. I just have to rewet this area as it's already gone a little bit dry. Yeah. So what I want to do is a bit of I like to do things quite loosely. Okay? With me talking so much, I forgot to mix the gray. So while that's still wet, let's mix this gray. As you can see, the brown and the blue mix, a very pretty gray. This will be our mid value. Obviously, our darkest value will be the indigo. I mix that, but let's just first start with sorry, I talked so much, I forgot. Let me just re wet this area. Seems to be drying very quickly. Okay. I wanted to just mix that first and have it already on the palate. If we want to make it lighter, we can just add more water to. Okay. Are we ready now? Okay, I want to start with a bit of with some nice turquoise here because I do see when I looked at a closeup of the dolphin, I did see some nice blue going on there. And I'm just going to keep it light here. I think I don't mind just adding somewhere down here just on that outline. Yeah, I want to just add it as I said before, this is very whatever you want to do. I just want to I like the color turquoise, and I just want to bring a little bit of it in everywhere. Now I'm going to try and apply my mid value gray in this area over here. Like I said before, the reason that we can always go over this again later is because I just don't want any hard edges. And we can see that this area down here is a little bit darker on the dolphin, and I'm just going to bring a bit of that color down here and over here. I'm just leaving those parts a bit lighter. Just down here. I'm obviously going to need more of that color. It's kind of used up already, and a little bit more over here. Another mid area here. So you can just feel free to use to use your reference photo as a guide. I mean, the dorsal fin is obviously a lot darker, but I'll just bring some of that mid value color up here. And like I said before, it's okay, we don't have to preserve the white areas very carefully. Okay, I just want to mix a little bit more of the I'm need some more brown. All right. I just have to mix more of that mid value color. If you want, if you're like me, I'm just going to use a smaller brush now. I don't mind also having some of this blue of just ultramarine blue in here as well. I like to create a lot of color variations in my subjects. I am following what I see as values, but it's okay, I like to play a bit with color. So yeah, I'm just going to add a bit of blue in here now. And I can go over it with some gray that I make up later. So anyway, let me just make up that mid tone gray again. I think I made this a little bit dark, no problem. I can start doing things like the dorsal fin. I mean, sorry, that's not the dorsal fin, the tail with this color. I can always go over it with indigo to make it a little darker if I want to later. This carries through here and I can also use this for this fin over here. I know it looks like I'm jumping a lot. I do tend to do that. As I said before, I like to paint in a very natural organic way. I can use some of that color over here actually near the eye because that's where we saw it goes a little bit darker there and also down here, And up here. Whoops went out a bit. No big deal. Okay. There we go. Now, I'm going to switch back to my bigger brush and let's start adding those mit values in again. If you feel like your paper has become a bit dry, feel free to rewet it. So yeah, I like creating some color variation in my subjects. I also see that this part could use some darker color here. Also, if you're starting to get hard edges, you can use a damp wet brush to just blend the color outwards up here. If you want, you can wait for a layer of this paint to dry before you do the next layer and build up colors. That's what I'm going to do. But because I like seeing some color variation, I'm going to add more of this blue in here. If I want to make it daka, I can always go over it later. Over here, I just want to do a few. I am going to use liquid paper later, so I don't have to let me just focus on this first. I tend to jump a bit, sorry. Just putting some color down where I feel I need to also here too. Looks like I ran out of that nice color. There is a bit of a white area here. Yep, it's looking nice. I know it looks very incomplete now, but we can fix that. So how about I mix a bit more gray. Yep, brown and blue. But I will have to, um, I will have to let it dry before I do the next layer, I feel. And there's definitely some down here. I know I've neglected this fin a little bit. I have to give it some attention soon. This should be a nice, easy, fluid experience for you, it shouldn't feel stressful. I think I see some darker tones here. I'm just going to use a wet damp brush now just to blend the colors. So there's no hard edges. But I think I will have to take a little break to let this all dry us. But I'm just going to make sure there are no hard edges right now while I do this. I don't mind this hot edge over here because that's where we have quite a separation of dark and light there, that's okay. I'm just going to add a bit of the mid value over here within this pectoral fin. My advice is just observe what you see in the reference photograph to get an idea of dimensions and shadows and things like that. But I think I'm going to have to stop soon. I might just color the eye. I don't mind coloring the eye because it is darker in the photograph and bring some of that color down here. Okay. I think that's looking good so far as a base color. Let me just use my smaller brush to just even out any website dried it too much. Yeah. I think that looks good. That can be our base layer and we can start slowly building up layer by layer of our dolphin. So, how about we take a little break now and just let this completely dry and then we can come back to it. See you in the next section of this class. So give yourself a little break. 8. Dolphin paint part 2: Hi, everybody, and welcome back. And as you can see, our dolphins looking really nice. Like, we're definitely, you know, getting there, and we just have a little bit more to do to make our add a little bit more dimension to our dolphins. So we've already laid down a nice base wash. And as you can see, we've got a lot of nice colors going on there. We see a bit of the turquoise. We see a bit of the French ultramarine, as well as the mid tones that we mix together to get some of the mid tone values. And for this next stage, I want to just reinforce the colors because I just feel like some parts of our dolphin are just a little bit too light right now because later on when we add those beautiful light reflections on our dolphin, we want them to stand out. I feel like I need to put a little bit more color on my dolphin, but I love the different variations we have of blues and grays because we used a variety of colors and we mix our own gray rather than just using a very flat gray. So yeah, how about we continue now? So before I just start laying down paint on my dolphin, I just want to do what I did last time and just have all my paints ready in the palette first, just so I can just add them as we go along. It's just good to have them all ready. So what I'm going to do is I would love to stow have a little bit more turquoise. Uh, to put some on my dolphin just because I love the color, and I also feel like certain parts of my dolphin are just a little bit too light for my own preference now. But as I said earlier, I'm not using the reference photograph. I'm not going to make a carbon copy of it. I just use it as a reference. That's what it's there for. I can change whatever I want to it. I can make certain parts more um, more pronounced. For instance, I can add more shadows if I want, more highlights if I want. It's just a reference. But it's useful to have a reference if you want to paint something semi realistic. I've got my turquoise and my French ultramarine here. I think my dark color, which is indigo, I think I can just reactivate that later when I need it because I'm more concerned now about adding another wash over it, varied wash using all these colors. But what I want to do now first is use some of my brown that I used earlier. I'm going to mix another mid tone color. I just have my brown over here. I just want to put some here because when I start painting my dolphin, I just want to have everything all ready for me to go. This is my mixing palette for my mid range values of gray. So as I showed you earlier, we're just going to mix because I want to have some blue that I'm going to just drop down, I'm just going to take some French ultramarine from my paints and mix it here to create so this is a gray. It looks a little bit dark, but let me just go and test it out first on a piece of paper, a rough piece of paper. This is quite dark. I think I want to just add a little bit more blue to it because I feel like I think it had a bit too much brown to it. So I'm just testing it out on a piece of paper. Yeah, that's okay. I think that would be good because watercolors do tend to dry lighter. What I want to do is I'm going to use my size eight round brush and just so we create we don't have hard edges. I just want to, um wet the entire dolphin's body again and just try and do this really carefully, really lightly. We're just putting water down because I don't want to disturb the paint underneath that we've already put down. If you have to tilt your brush like what I'm doing here, I don't have to do this back fin now. I can just wet this and leave the wet fin for later. I mean, the back fin, not the wet fin, sorry. Getting my words all mixed up. We're just going to put down We're just going to do that nice even sheen that I keep talking about when we want to create a varied wash, very carefully trying not to disturb the paint. Okay. I'm just going to switch to a smaller round brush a size four because I just want to have a little bit more control. I just love this turquoise and I just want to drop in more of that so that we can see that quite clearly in our dolphin. Yeah, I don't mind putting some here as well. Remember what I said. This is all like, we're using the reference photograph just as a guide. I want this to maybe be my light color. I'm just going to put it in little wherever I feel like it, really. I love this color, so I just want to see it throughout my dolphin. This is completely up to you. You don't have to use, you don't have to do this step. But I just felt like my dolphin right now is light and I love this color, so why not just try and put it in maybe a little bit up here too. Even though the fin will have a darker value. But yeah, I just like that. Yeah, that's looking good to me. While that's still wet, I'm just going to clean my brush and I also want to add some of these gorgeous blues, I mean, what is this called French ultramarinin. I might just put it underneath to create a bit of a shadow line for my dolphin. This part and I also see, I want to put some color here too. I'm not completely covering the turquoise, but I just want to start building up more value and dimension for my dolphin. You see this part's a bit darker too around the eye. Maybe up here too, we see some. What I'm doing now, it's very subjective. I'm just trying to create value by using a variety of colors or varied wash. I hope I'm explaining that right. But we had already laid down the groundwork in the earlier part of this class right before this, where we had already started laying down the values for the dolphin, which part is lighter, which parts darker. We had a rough guide already from the previous section of this class. I want to some of that color to also go up here. Remember, my dolphin is wet, so all I'm doing is dropping in paint wherever I feel like it. To just create some nice beautiful values. I think I also even though this part of the tail is going to be dark, I just want to add some of the French ultramarine to it, even though I'll probably go over it with a dark color like my shadow color, indigo. But I just wouldn't mind if some of that color comes through underneath. So this is looking very, very lovely already. So see, I've created some nice variation, and now while this is still wet, I've got my beautiful mid value color that I got here and I'm going to start putting it in, I feel over here this part that we had kind of worked on earlier, that we drew very lightly with a pencil to kind of show that, hey, this is a nice mid value area that I just want to but Okay. And down here is also a little bit has some color, but I'm just going to leave the very tip white. So I don't want that to be too dark, so I'm just going to retrace my steps here because I feel like I just want to really emphasize that section being a mid value section. So my paint is still wet. I'm just looking for the other mid value sections over here. It's not as dark, but I'm just going to bring a little bit of that color through here because we do, like I said earlier, we want the white of the reflections of the water to kind of come through. I'm going to bring some of that color up here too. And we also bring it here for this? Yeah. Even though I'll probably wait for everything to dry before I add the really strong dark values in otherwise, I think it'll get too messy. But I also want to bring some of that mid range value to the belly of the dolphin. I might have drawn my dolphin to be a little bit more fuller figured, but I like him. I think he's really cute. By the way, some of these male dolphins do look quite big. They look like they work out when you see them underwater. So yeah, I'm not too concerned about that. Okay, so that's looking good to me now. I just feel that maybe I might just so let's just look at this part first. I just want to make sure that this part's not too dark, but the area around the dolphin's eye is darker as you can see. So before I let this completely dry, What I might do now is use a clean damp brush to just I want to preserve this area. I'm removing a little bit of the paint here because in the reference photograph, there is a bit of a lightness here around the mouth. So I think I'll just preserve that by just removing a little bit of the paint. I'm just wondering if this part looks a bit light, maybe I might just while it's still drying, I might just drop in a little bit of um Turquoise, because I love turquoise very gently. But other than that, I think it's looking really good. I think before I add in another layer, I might just let it completely dry. I think in the very next section of this class, we're just going to add the darkest values to the dolphin. And I think then yeah, we can go on to the really fun stuff as well, adding the light reflections. I'm just going to let this completely dry now. Oops. Before I say that, I just want to remove a little bit of this paint with the dam brush because I feel like I might have painted that part a little bit too thick. So very simple. If you want to remove pain, you simply wet your brush, pad it on a paper towel or a rag, and then just remove the color, and it should be fine. So that's looking really great to me. I'm not going to touch it too much. So how about we let this completely dry? And when we come back, we're going to add the very final dark details, so I can't wait to see you. 9. Dolphin paint part 3: Hi, and we're back. And as you can see, our layer has completely dried and it's looking so good that now it just needs a couple of more just adding the darkest values to give it that more three D look about it. So I can't wait to finish this. So how about we start? I'm just going to use my size four round brush now, and I just want to maybe start making it look more three dimensional by doing the tail and the pectoral fin here. So I'm just rewtding my indigo paint. I'm just going to apply this wet on dry as in I'm not going to wet the area because I do want it to be quite dark. Even now, while putting this paint on, I still think that I might have to go over it again. I don't think this is dark enough for me, so I'm just going to maybe go over it with some more paint later. Yeah, but I think this is very important to start adding some dimension. All right. So that's looking nice. I'll let that dry. I'm going to have to get a bit more indigo pane of out of my box here. So I'm just put it on now and I'm just going to start adding, yeah, some definition to the tail here to that edge there. So all these little things that we're doing are going to give our dolphin dolphin's tail more definition. And so a bit of the body kind of goes in here, so I'm just going to leave. So I'm just talking to myself now. This part's a little bit you'll see when I finish it. So I'm just going to try and follow the outline now. There we go. I might have to go over that again because I just didn't feel it was dark enough. Yeah, but I just want to do these parts. Yeah. So that's looking pretty good. And I just also want to use some of this gray to kind of add a bit of an outline under. Sorry, I'm just going to, like, angle my hand a little differently just to try and get a smooth line going. So this is just the bottom, like, shadow on the underside of the dolphin because, you know, it's obviously, away from the top light. And I also feel like I wanted to do this just to give my dolphin more definition because so it didn't just blend in too much with the ocean background. So I'm going to bring that all the way up there. So that's looking good. If you feel like the line is a little bit too harsh, you can, you know, choose to smooth it. But I actually I am very happy with this. And what I'm going to do now is I'm also going to outline. I can see this fin where the body meets. It has a little bit of shadow here too, and I don't mind making this part a little bit more like the shadow more pronounced there than the reference photograph. We can also see that there is a bit of shadow here. Yep. Yeah, that looks nice. So just having a good look at this and trying to see where I can see some shadows. And I think I might as well use this color combination now to give our dolphin a more defined smile. There we go. Beautiful smile going on here. And, um, so please feel free to take your time to try and find these little areas. My pain has already dried, so I'm just going to re wet it. And I also want to do the eye because our dolphins eye here looks a bit darker at the bottom, and then there's a bit of a lighter area above where the eyelid is. So I'm just I actually think the smile should kind of go up a bit. Yeah. So that's looking good so far. I also want to use some of this color and re wet it and also do the dorsal fin. It's obviously a little bit darker. So There we go. And, um, I actually just want to remove a bit of that pain with a wet brush. I feel like maybe I made it a little bit dark, so I'm just gonna go over it. I hope I'm not removing too much of it, but don't worry. Maybe I can just wait for this to dry and then redo this part. It's okay. This is part of the process. Sometimes you might overdo it, but it's okay. I think that's right, actually, but I just noticed this part over here should be darker, so I'm just going to drop in a bit more paint there. But other than that, no dramas, it's looking good. I think I might have to this to me, I'm not really happy with how the paint dried here because it was dark. I'm just going to go over it a bit with my wet brush just so you don't see any really harsh lines within that tail fin. And just going to use, a wet brush, some diluted paint to just try and smooth over all those hash lines within the fin that I didn't really want to see. Okay. And also, please be careful where you put your hand down, all right? I'm guilty of that, so I think I put it down here, but luckily nothing was smudged. Also, um the ultra no, sorry. I was going to say ultrame Also with the indigo. There are certain parts of the dolphin that I just want to reinforce a little because I still feel like maybe my dolphins looking a bit blue. I just want to do this area around the eye very carefully. I just want to go in there because I can definitely see um, that this area is daka, and I think I might just do this fin again because I rested my hand on it. Yeah. I'm just going to take a step back and just look at look at my dolphin. Yep, it's looking good. What I want to do now is I want to use a bit of this diluted indigo, just to add a bit of I'm just going to dry brush on a little bit of Oops, I went a bit too far, but don't worry. I'm going to go over that part with white letter. So I'm just kind of dry brushing on a little bit of the indigo just to kind of just slightly mute um the blues that I have going on. Because I do want this color to just the dolphin to look a little bit darker at the top where we do where we're going to do that cool effect of the water reflections, which will be a lot of fun. I'm just adding alt, a little bit of this color which I love, indigo. I'm just slightly muting some of these grays that we see. Well, some of these blue, sorry, that we see. Just slightly, but, you know, so I'm just dry brushing. I'm not re wetting the whole dolphin, it's just see just dry brushing on a bit of color. And I also want to do that underneath here. I think I just need to pick up some more of this color. And with my brush, I might just kind of tilt it a little bit. Yeah. So as you can see, we're getting more defined lines, and I love that. Yeah, we're getting a lot more definition, you know, we're keeping some of those lighter areas to kind of, like, you know, make the dolphin look like it is, you know, it has a nice smooth body that reflects light as well. So parts of it will be dark, some parts will be light. Everything's going really well. I hope your dolphins going well, too. I'm just going to add a bit more of the shadow color here because I feel like it's a bit brown. What's wrong with me? It's a bit blue. Sorry, I'm having a bit of a a problem with my words now. I think it's that time in the afternoon where I start to really need another tea. All right. So I'm loving what I'm seeing now. I seem to be running out of indigo in my palette very quickly, though while I'm doing this. So I'm just going to have to make a little bit more. So please feel free to take your time to just do these little areas. As you can see, I'm applying the paint wet on dry because I just want a little bit more control, and I don't mind these lines that I'm creating this more defined lines than the base wash, for instance, where we had wet the whole dolphin because we wanted the colors to spread. So here I just want a little bit more control. I'm adding a little bit more shadow here where the fin attaches to the body. And we can see that clearly from the reference photograph. Anytime you feel like you've applied too much color and some parts are a little bit too dark, please feel free to do what I did by using a damp, sorry, a damp brush and just very gently lifting off the color. I see a bit of a light area here, but then this part goes over. Still using the reference photograph. Goes a little bit lighter up here, so I'm just using whatever pain I have left in. I'm loving this. I'm loving the effect. I'm just going to stand up momentarily just to have a look at the overall look of the dolphin and I'm loving it, loving, loving, loving it. Adding a little bit more color here. But I don't want to overdo it. Well, all these colors that I've added have certainly made my dolphin look slimmer than just now. So uh yeah, just having fun now. Please feel free to take your time to do this. It's not a race, if you want to have a dolphin that you're happy with. I'm just going to I also see there is a part here that is a little bit darker and we're going to do the light the reflections of the light, what do I call that the shape, those lines of reflected light that you get from the sun hitting the surface of the water, and then yeah, that just ends up on the body of the dolphin. So it's looking good so far. I don't want to overdo it, but I just feel like maybe this part could be a bit darker here. And, um, Yeah, that's looking great. Also, there will be a few lines here. So what I want to do very briefly, I'm sorry, I know this seems a bit strange, but I want to just actually use a pencil and just kind of put the markings, write the positions or rather draw the positions of where the light go because I want to just be able to, um, paint the areas in between to make them. You don't have to follow this exactly the way I'm doing it, but later on when we put our liquid paper down, I'm going to it'll be easier for me to just put the markings on. I just want to very carefully just sketch this so I can make the areas a little bit darker around it and the light will really stand out than the light areas. Okay. I think those lines are a good guideline. I think there should be another line sort of like here. But you don't have to follow this exactly the same as it is in the photograph. But yeah, I think that will help. Okay. I hope everything I said just made sense. So in between these areas of light, I'm just going to that's a bit dark for me. I'm just going to add a little bit of color in between the areas just so it really stands out when we have the light areas next to it. Okay. And and a bit here, maybe. Okay. All right. So I just wanted to And then maybe this part we can just go like that. Yeah. Don't worry. What I drew will make a lot of sense when we actually use the liquid paper, but right now the very final stages, I just want to make sure that it's all looking good. I'm just going to just use a little bit more of this indigo over here and also just try and smooth these lines a bit in here within this section. But I'm happy with it being defined. It's really fine. Um, and let me just so just feel free to use the reference photograph now to just, um, make sure to reinforce the areas that you want, u to be darker. And I'm actually just going to use a damp brush to just blend this line a bit outwards. How much shading you want to do now really depends on you and your own observations of your dolphin. I'm also just going to remove a little bit of paint here with a damp brush just because that area is a little bit lighter. The only thing that's bothering me now is I just want to get more indigo. And just reinforce this area down here that should be shadowy. Okay, that's looking good and Yep. Okay. Okay. I don't want to get too carried away, so I'm just going to darken this tip over here. But I think the rest of the fin looks okay. And what I might do as well because I'm going to I might just outline this part a little bit with my indigo. Just so we can see I'm just doing the very edge very lightly just so we can see the whole dolphin. It doesn't blend in too much with the blue background. I'm just outlining it slightly very lightly. Yep. Looking good. I might just do the tail as well and leaving that small bit of white that we already had when we painted it. The very last thing I'm going to do is just use some indigo. Yep. That's looking good. I'm just going to do the same over here. Okay. That was a bit of a longer step than I thought to do this. But, you know, I'm very happy with the outcome now. Let's just make sure there's definition over here. The last thing I'm going to do is just the eye of my dolphin. I just want to I think this area here can be a bit darker. I'm just going to extend some of that color over here just at the edge here. I think it just makes the dolphin's nose look a little bit more realistic. And yeah, but I think it's looking really good already. I don't think we need to do a lot more. Like I said, use it as a reference, you know, and let's just finish up. This is gonna look so cute. Just bring a bit of that color up here, but you can definitely see a lighter area here. I'm just going to go over it very lightly, but I don't want to lose that lightness. In fact, I might have gone over a bit too much that I'm using a damp clean brush to just, you know what? I'm okay with this area being lighter. I don't think I really want to hide it too much because I think it's like the dolphin's cheek. Maybe I can just put in a bit of ultramarine instead of gray here just so it's a bit lighter there and you also have a bit of color. Yeah. Like I said, this is all just my observation. All right. Um, Okay. You know what? I like my dolphin the way it is now. And the only thing I can think of is I might just start using my my indigo paint just to get the shape of that fin all done, darken this part a bit of the pectoral fin that we see closer to us. But we're not going to do too much, just so we can see it clearly. I'm just going to do the same with the dorsal fin. I just want very good definition. Just using a paintbrush, I'm not going to use a pen this time to go over that. Okay. I think that's beautiful. We already did the tail. The only thing I can think of Jeff is just to darken the eye a bit. But other than that, everything's fine. I'm just going to be really careful and just do the smile again. But Sorry. Every time I say I'm going to stop, I end up doing more outlining, but let me just outline the bottom draw. Okay, take a step back. I think our dolphins looking really great. I don't think we have to do anything more now. Why don't we just let this completely dry? And when we come back, it's going to be really, really fun. We are going to start putting liquid paper to make beautiful light reflections on our dolphin. And then right after that, we're going to add the beautiful gold sparkle to make it even more realistic and special. I will see you in the next section of this class. Thank you. 10. Final Touches: Hi, everyone, and welcome back. And we are so close to finishing our dolphin. Yeah, as you can see, the paint has completely dried now. Now, when you look at the reference photograph, my dolphin does look a little bit darker than the reference photograph and also more on the bluish side because I chose these colors, and I personally didn't just want to go with grays, even though I did show you how I made, like, a gray mixture from using French ultramarine with the umber paint just now. But I'm actually happy with this end product. The great thing about art is, you know, it's your own interpretation. So even though at the start, I did say that, you know, you could use whatever colors you wanted. If you wanted to make your dolphin multi colored or, you know, with warmer colors, that was fine. So I'm happy with my dolphin, but right before I do those beautiful white reflective lines that we see in the picture. There's just one last thing I want to do. I just want to use a small damp size four round brush with clean water and for it to be damp, not wet to just, um blend a couple of the lines that I find a little bit harsh on my dolphin. You don't have to do this. Once more, this is all a matter of preference. If you're happy with how your dolphin is looking now, that's fine. I'm just going to use a damp brush, and I just want to this part for me, this line is a little bit harsh, so I just want to just spread it like blend it outwards a bit so it's not so harsh. But since my dolphin already has very strong color, I don't want to be adding any more color to it. Everything else about this dolphin is fine. I just think maybe this part over here, if I'm using the reference photograph, I find that that's a little bit harsh too. I'm just going to just blend this out a bit. Try not to move the other layers of paint too much that we've already laid down. And the only other lines that I find maybe a little bit harsh now is, I just want to try and blend this outwards a bit by just moving my brush over it a little bit. This is the very final stages before we before we start to lay down our white reflective light. Sorry. I got a little bit distracted there while I was doing my painting, sorry if I sounded a little a little distracted. I also because I love turquoise so much, they're just certain this is a stage where you can choose to, I just want to drop in a little bit more color here. I'm just dry brushing on a little bit of color just because I love that whole blue look that my dolphin has. And I'm just going to add drop in a little bit of that French ultramarine, too. This is now the stage where you can do little things like this before you start, um, like, doing the very final touches. Also, I see that this part here. I'm just going to lift a bit of this color off because I see that this part here is a little bit lighter on my picture on the reference photograph. So I'm fine to do that. So whatever you want to fix now, yeah, now is the opportunity, but other than that, I don't feel like I need to fix a lot. I'm quite happy with how my dolphin turned out, but now it's just the time that I'm making these little observations and, um, using the reference photograph, and it also depends on how much you want to follow your reference photograph, as I said that before many times. I think I'm quite happy with this already. So let's get to the really, really fun part now. Now, earlier and when I did do a practice run of this class when I was planning it, I used just good old fashioned liquid paper. This is by paper made, and we call it liquid paper back where I grew up when I was using this in high school. But over here in Australia, it's called correction Pen. So if you're wondering what I kept saying, why I kept saying liquid paper. That's what we called it back then, and I'm sure you guys must have used this in high school and stuff like that. All it is is I can just show you on this piece of, um on this tape here, and of course, it has to jam now, don't worry. I'll just clean it out. But like I did my previous planning with this liquid paper. But now when I think about it, I used to use white gel pen a lot to add highlights and stuff. So I have white gel pens of different sizes. So I have a 0.5, a 0.8, and a ten by jelly roll. I used this a lot in all my previous classes. At first, I was thinking maybe I would use liquid paper instead. But I feel that some of the lines are quite thick. That's why you wouldn't use a small pen like an 05 because it would it be too time consuming to color in, but I think a size ten might work. I was going to use liquid paper. But the only issue I have with liquid paper besides it jamming sometimes is that you have to press down a lot to control the amount that comes out. I think by the end of it, your thumb and your point of finger might feel a little bit sore. I want to just try and maybe use my thickest white gel pen first to see whether I can do this without liquid paper. I know I did mention liquid paper earlier in this class, but let's just see how I can do this with white gel pen because to tell you the truth, it is easier with a gel pen and there is more control. Also, if you don't have a white gel pen, you can easily use a small brush like a size four around and use white gouache. White gouache is also an option. So how about we try out my thick white gel pen first. I hope you can see this. As you can see, the size ten is great. But I'm using it now, but also I need to know whether it will stand out, whether it's strong enough to use here. I mean, is it standing out enough or maybe I might have to use liquid paper. Of course, this thing is jammed now. Okay. Maybe Fate is just telling me not to use liquid paper now. Yeah, I got it going. But like I said before, you have to press down quite a bit, that might just be a little bit tiring and you also have to control it. Right now, it seems to be cooperating. I'm just dispensing some liquid paper over here. But if this continues to be quite difficult, I don't mind switching to white guash. So there is a little bit of flakiness going on here. But you would also get that white guash. So it's not a big surprise. I'm still going to keep going with the liquid paper and I see a little bit of a white mark here on the fin. Once more, I'm just using the reference photograph to map out where the whites of the reflective light are. You have to just control how much is coming out. If you don't want so much coming out, you just press down less on. So I can understand if you don't want to use liquid paper, if you find this is a little bit too tedious, white gouache is a good option for you as well. I don't mind the flakiness. I don't mind that it adds a little bit of, you know, I also looks like it adds a bit of dimension to the light. So I'm just going to do this one here now. As you can see, we are adding these gorgeous, um, what would you call them, reflective patterns of the sunlight from above hitting the water and just being on the dolphin's body. I didn't follow the lines exactly the way they are in the reference photograph. I just took inspiration from it. There we go. There's another one. I think it's looking really cute. I also just want to add, there's a little bit of light coming down here. I don't want that too thick. I'm just using my hand just to. The good thing about liquid paper is you can use a damp brush to spread it a little if you find maybe that was a little bit too dark, that's okay. I'm just going to let that dry. Yeah, here's another line here. With art, what I find is you can achieve effects that you want with different materials. You don't have to just use the same materials. For example, this is the first time I'm using liquid paper because I saw I've been watching videos of a lot of artists using liquid paper as well as an option for adding highlights in. I thought I'd give it a go for this class, even though I just have to clean the nip a bit, even though, yeah, maybe if you find this is a little bit causing a little bit too much pain for you to keep pressing down. With liquid paper, it actually works, once it keeps flowing, you can actually do little dots or you can extend it to lines depending on how much pressure you exert on it. I know liquid paper also comes in different versions. You can even get it in the form of a paintbrush dipped in a little container of it like ink. But I think this one just works better because it has a tip, so it's a little bit easier to use, in my opinion. There we go. We have the lines going on really well now, that's really cute. Let me just look at my reference photograph. I also see a bit of a white line here. Now, as you can see, just now, when I drew I used a pencil to just mark out these areas that was so I could just, you know, not just have to free hand it. It was useful for me to just know the rough locations of where I should put this down. So, yeah, that's the reason why I used the pencil just now, even though I'd already painted the dolphin. Okay. So now, we've got this thin tip here, and I'm just going to use maybe a little bit dotted line. So I'm using a bit of broken broken, like, what would I call them? Sort of like strokes if you like, for a liquid paper pen. There we go. As I showed you before, you can do dots with the liquid paper or you can do lines. So it is versatile if you don't mind having to keep applying pressure. I just want to do the white of this dorsal fin. Also what I observe when I was planning this class is the liquid paper does stand out very well on top of watercolors. Whereas I found with the white gel pen as I showed you earlier, I felt like it wasn't quite achieving the type of bright white highlights we wanted just now. Uh, yeah. So that was just something to keep in mind. Okay. I think the line stops somewhere here. Just blowing that away. I'm loving the way this is looking. I think it looks really cute. I'm just going to I just want to go over the tail here where now we might not have completed it. This goes here and a few white marks on the body that I see, some faint marks. These are just faint marks. I can just lightly do that. Yeah, just a few faint marks. Yeah, so what else do I see? I might actually use the liquid paper a bit, and this is my own addition to just add a bit of a Woop sorry, that's a bit of a highlight in the eye. So that's what I did here. I just want to add a little bit more. Then this is just my own, I wanted the dolphin to have a highlight in the eye. I didn't really see one in the reference photograph, but this is where I just decide, you know, hey, if I want to do this in my painting, I'll do it, you know. And so. We're almost done with the white highlights, I think. So I hope your painting is looking good, too, and I hope you're loving the effect that we've created. I can just see a few more lines here, so I'm just going to do a few faint lines. Yeah, it adds interest to the painting, I feel. But I can't wait for us to do the beautiful metallic, lay down some nice metallic paints on the around these lights to create that beautiful gorgeous, light effect. So just giving my painting one more little scan. So the markings on the body here are not very dark, so I'm just kind of, you know, not putting too much pressure, not applying too much pressure on it. Um, Yeah, I don't really see anything on this side of the body. There is a little bit of a light area here on the mouth, so I don't mind just putting in a little bit of a white spec there. I think that looks pretty cool. Just scan your painting now and if you're done doing this step, we can just put this away now. The good thing about liquid paper is it dries really quickly. It's all dried already, so that's great. I think I'm happy with this, so I think I'm going to stop and just put this away. I just find that maybe these marks here on the body are a little bit, a little bit distinct. So I'm just going to use my damp brush to just kind of blend them a little bit. Yep, as you can see. So the liquid paper is just has a bit of a flaky quality to it, but I don't really mind that. This depends on you. If you would prefer gouache, you can use that too. But I don't really mind this. I think it does stand out beautifully against the paint. So are you ready for some fun now? We are now going to do add a bit of notice if you just zoom into the reference photograph a bit, you can notice, like, a little bit of a goldish sort of hue. And I just thought, I really want to capture this. I think this will be so cool on this painting. So now, I showed you very briefly in one of the earlier videos just my box of metallic paints that I have that I've used before in some classes. And I was saying if you couldn't get the supervision art paint that I used for the background, you could easily use some metallics over your painted background. I just did a bit of testing out of some paints and I found this gold. Very briefly about these metallic watercolor paints, there are so many brands out there. This one's called Superior, but I'm not even sure if it's in production anymore, but you can just find a gold a gold metallic pin. They're very common. You can actually buy a set online. I got this online. So I saw this beautiful deep gold, and it's very nice and sparkly and I wanted to try and create this cool effect. So let's just try it over here. What I'm going to do, let me talk you through it is I'm going to just apply some of this around the very edges of our white lines that we've just put down. I'm going to try and kind go as close as possible to them. And it just for me, creates a really I'm not going to do, like, every part of the line because I feel like, you know, every line, it might look a little bit too a little bit too, define because I actually want this to sort of like have that really cool sunlighty effect. I'm not going to do every part of each white line. It's okay to just have a little bit and maybe just create a bit of variation, make some parts thicker than others because this is just a play of how the light is falling on the body of the dolphin. See, some parts I'm going to actually even go out. I'm just creating a little bit of variation here and there. But as you can see, we are getting a pretty cool effect. Yeah. This is really, really cool. I like that. If you feel like your metallic pain, I apply it with the consistency that you want. I'm just going to just trace this part here of the white line. I don't mind if the gold goes into the white a little bit, but I'm also leaving part of the white just as it is. So see some parts I'm going to vary how intense it is. This is a thicker stroke than when I applied this one which is thinner and more concentrated with color. And we got some here. If you look closely, some parts here, they just have a nice sheen of gold. It's really pretty. Yeah, what do you think? I'm loving this effect. I think it's going to look so good. I'm just going to take more of this color. It's just like a deep gold color. But I think you can achieve this with any gold. Once more just going to not thinking about this too hard. And then I'm just using a dam brush just to spread it a bit. Spread it out into the dolphin's body. Yeah, I hope you're finding this part fun. I see a bit of goldish like hues here. And I'm just going to, like, trace underneath this white line that we laid out. Oh, that's looking really cool. Just go to add a slight amount of gold tinge here. Yeah. So what do you think? That's pretty cool. I just want to do in certain areas like maybe I think the tail. I just want to do that again. Yeah. I'm going to leave this part of the body untouched, but I do see some gold here, but I'm just going to dilute it a bit. I don't want it to be too thick, because I feel like the gold should be a little bit subtle. I don't think it should come on, really strong. So just observe your but I have to say, I love the way the gold and the blue like just stand out against each other. It's really, really beautiful. Yeah, so my advice to you now is just observe the picture, the reference photograph and just, like, do what you feel for your dolphin. Anytime you give me metallic paints, I can get very carried away with them, so I just have to be a little bit a little bit restrained. Yeah. Um, and maybe just under the snout a little bit because I don't mind highlighting this beautiful snout. Yeah. Well, look at that. So you've got a dolphin that has some nice reflective light, some nice metallics and going on. Like the gold that I put on this pectoral fin is very, very light. But it's looking great. So I'm just deciding whether to stop right now because I already feel like this is looking really, really beautiful. So just around here. I know, but this is a painting, so I don't mind just emphasizing it a little bit more than the reference photograph, you know. Oh. Okay, so we got that fin going on. So right now, I'm just finishing up. Getting a bit carried away with the gold, but I just love metallics. You can also see, I'm just dry brushing on whatever I have left on my brush. Dry brushing on just a little bit of gold on the top. As you can see, the goals are mainly at the top, where the lights where the light pattern is. But I do see just very a little bit in these little sections here that are being reflected off the smooth body of the dolphin. Take your time. Have fun with this. I mean, we've come to the end already, so, you know? Okay, I think I'm gonna have to put down my brush very reluctantly. Let me take a step. Um, just sit up and Wow. I think that's really, really cute, and I think I'm going to stop now, put these away from arm's reach. And I'm just looking at my beautiful dolphin, and it's gorgeous. I love this whole effect that we have created. I hope you can see this up close. So just look at the beautiful metallics and the gold. It's just all so beautiful. Like, yeah, I'm really happy with how this turned out. And, um, now, all we have to do is actually just, um, take out the masking tape that we have. So make sure everything is dry. I'm pretty sure mine is dry enough. So what I want to do now is very carefully because we've come so far, very carefully tear this out. Oh, that's great. It seems to be coming off very, very cleanly. Just holding it down just so I don't take any of the paper off with me. Be very careful with this step because you've worked so hard. Whoops, see, a little bit of paper got taken, but no big deal. You can't see it. It still created a very nice neat border. So that's done. I'm just going to peel it in the order that I laid down the masking tape just to make sure that, you know, I'm removing the tape where it overlaps the other tape. So wow look at that. The border is very, very neat. Okay, go to carefully remove that. Put it away. Once more. Okay, there we go. Two more strips to go. Nice neat border. It really pays to press down and press out all those air bubbles. Lovely. And we've got the last one to do now. Last one. Wish me luck. Whoops. This one's kind of stuck here. Let me just peel that off very gently. Okay. Smooth sailing now. Whoo, and we're done. And look at that. It looks so beautiful. Wow. Whoops. Where did we sort this. All right. So you've got your beautiful dolphin and look at that. It's such a cool, reflective picture. And we also have some nice gold highlights that just add to it. I really hope you've had fun doing this painting. I really hope you're in love with your dolphin. I just want to say, thank you so much for sticking with me and doing this class, and I really hope you love your dolphin and I can't wait for you to upload photos of your dolphins because I can't wait to see all the beautiful colors that you've used, and I just can't wait. So please join me in the very last section of this class for my final thoughts, and thank you so much for following me and doing this class. Thank you. 11. Final Thoughts: Once more, as always, I would like to extend a deep, heartfelt thank you for watching this video as well as any of my other art videos on Skillshare. I hope you've had a lot of fun doing this class, and I can't wait to see your beautiful dolphins. So please feel free to upload them by pressing the submit project button in the project and resources section so that myself and the other students in this class can admire your gorgeous dolphins. I hope this class has given you some ideas of how you can use metallic watercolors to not just highlight your main subject, but to also create very varied and interesting backgrounds that complement your main subject. Once more, as always, I would like to say, thank you so much for all your support. Please feel free to follow me on Skillshare if you would like to get notifications of upcoming classes that I have. You can also follow me on social media at Alicia Puran at Instagram. So I can't wait to see your dolphins, please upload them so that I can enjoy them. I would also like to wish you all the best in your watercolor journeys.