Transcripts
1. Introduction: Hi, everyone. My name is Alicia, and the Oka Oki whale is
one of the most majestic, mighty, and beautiful creatures
to ever roam the ocean. Easily identified by their distinct black
and white markings, these apex predators
have intrigued us with their complex
emotions, intelligence, and curiosity and
even play a part as spiritual guides in
many indigenous cultures, which is why I can't wait to teach you how
to draw and paint a beautiful mother and
baby killer whale roaming a magical kelp forest in watercolors with a
few special tiny, sparkly touches here and there. In this class, I will
take you through every step of the
process to create this painting from simplifying the sketching process to doing a practice exercise
to learn how to paint a background and
simple kelp shapes. We will then create our underwater kelp forest and once the background is done, we will color in our mother
and baby killer whales and lift off some water
patterns on their bodies. After that, we will apply white quash to further emphasize the water patterns on the
mother killer whale and to add the effect of
sunlight striking the water. At the very end, we will use some silver metallic gel pen to create schools of
little fish hiding in the kelp forest and
the optional use of some gold metallic
pen to highlight the tops of the kelp
closest to the surface. This class is suitable for intermediate
watercolor students. However, if you're a beginner, you are more than
welcome to join in, as I will be explaining
and demonstrating every step of the process to create this
beautiful picture. So if you are ready to
create a magical kelp for us with kilo whales
roaming in it, let's begin.
2. Materials: Hi, everyone. And welcome to the material
section of this class where I will show you everything that you need to do this project. So let's start first with
the watercolor paper. I'm using a brand called
Canson watercolor paper, which has a weight of
300 grams/meter square or 140 pounds. Now, you don't have to use the
same brand of paper as me, but please make sure you use artist quality watercolor paper of a similar weight to
get the best results. We will also be using musking tape to just create a
border around our painting. I'm using one which is
just about an inch thick. Now for the sketching, I'm using a Sla mass
technical lead holder, which has a width of
about two MM lead. You don't have to
use a lead holder. If you prefer, you can
use a mechanical pencil. I'm also using two
different erasers. This is just a soft
eraser by Statler, as well as a mechanical eraser, also by the same brand, just so I can erase
little areas. For the painting
section of this class, make sure that you have two
jars of clean water with you. You can also use a rag to get all the excess water off your brushes
when you rinse them, or you can also
use paper towels. Now, let's talk
about the materials that we'll need for painting. I love using a ceramic palette because they don't stain easily. For the watercolor
section of this class, I will use a 1.5 inch flat brush so that I can
wet the entire background. I will also be using three round brushes
of the sizes four, eight and 12 by the brand
silver black velvet. You don't have to use
the same brushes as me, but please make sure they are the quality so that you
get the best results. And for the application of gouache paint later
on in this class, I've decided to use these three different types
of synthetic brushes. This one is an angled one, which is a quarter inch by
the brand original gold. I also have this
really small one, which is a size two round
by the brand Bastro I also have one quarter inch flat brush by the Brand Medan. Now let's talk about the
paints we'll be using. For the background, I decided
to use the color turquoise. I also have the color
olive green, sap green, hookers green, peacock blue, indigo, as well as paints gray. Now, these are all
by the Brand Hobein. You can use whatever watercolor paints you want as
long as they are a quality watercolor paints and you can also use
whatever colors you want. I also used this
white gouache by the brand Windsor and Newton
to put the water patterns as well as the sunbeams I also
used a silver gel pen, and this is by the
brand hybrid gel. You can use whatever
silver metallic pen you have very finally, for the optional step of painting the top
part of the kelp, I use the gold metallic paints. These are Mica watercolors, just from this brand
called superior. You can use whatever
gold metallic paints that you have on hand. And those are all the materials that you
need to do this class. So if you are
ready, let's begin.
3. Sketching Killer Whales: Hi, everyone. I hope you're all doing well and
you're all feeling good and excited because we're
about to start sketching our beautiful killer
whale mother and calf. This is going to
be very, very fun. Before I do my sketch, I actually want to use some musking tape to
make a nice neat border. Um, around my A
three size paper. If you don't want to
use masking tape, that's fine if you want
a very loose background that is uneven, some people do prefer that. But for this
particular painting, I would like to have neat edges just because I really like the contrast that you see with the neat edges and the
dark colors of watercolor. I think it really stands out and it frames the
painting really well. But this is just a personal
preference of mine. So I'm going to be using
my trusty usking tape, and I want to do this, put it down before I actually
start sketching. So, you know, I don't I
do tend to sketch big, and I just want to make
sure I don't like, yeah, just draw, you know, draw it, and then
it ends up going outside the border that
I want to preserve. So very simple to just put
down some musking tape. So the one I'm using
just tears very easily. So take your time if you want
to do a very neat border. That's fine. It's, you don't
have to be in a hurry. So the minute I
put it down there, I tend to tear the
tape and then try and smooth out any air bubbles that might be hiding underneath. So this is going to be a
very exciting painting. I can't wait to do it. Yeah, I hope you're
just as excited as me, especially if you love killer
whales as much as I do. Okay, so we got the
final border to do. Also make sure that your paper is not
being like, you know, stretched underneath,
as in, the tape is not, you know, the tape is
evenly put so that you don't have any bubbles and also your papers not being stretched. That looks good to me.
Let me just stand up. Yeah, that's good. Let's begin the sketching. I'm so excited. I don't have a reference
photograph for this, but I watched a lot of whale
documentaries to do this. Before, I want to just introduce you to a
sketching technique that I like to do when I'm drawing something quite big
and doesn't have much detail. Just to get the shape of it, I like to use this lead holder. It's just because
I think it makes the process a lot easier for me. To do a mother killer whale
just swimming past now, I'm going to start
with this shape which is a bit of a triangle, believe it or not, and this is where the
mouth is going to be. Just trust the process. I know it may seem a bit
strange to start with a triangle to make
it a bit easier, and I'm just going to now
change the angle a little. We started with a
triangle. Don't worry. Obviously, we're going
to refine this a lot. Actually, I wanted to
just make it like that. This is my triangle and then I change the angle down here, and then I'm going to just
go, I'll do this part later. I want to do the top
of the head first. With this triangle now, we are now going to end up flat on the top here
and going down like that. I will all make sense
later, I promise. Now we're just going to keep
going straight like that. And we're going to
just end over here. Now I'm just going to start doing a little
bit of refining. Now, I just want to
make this a little bit. See how I'm holding
the lead holder. I'm holding it not in the way I would hold
mechanical pencil because right now I'm
just concerned about getting the shape right. So over here, we're going to go down and now we're
starting to do a bit of a curve up here. This is going to be where
the mouth is, okay. Now I'm going to
start doing a line. My lines almost straight, but it's just curving
slightly upwards. It's going to stop here. And this is going to be the
opening of the mouth and over here, excuse me. Over here, I'm going to
now start going down. Do a little curve here and end over here.
That's all we did. Now I'm just going to make these lines a
little bit more refined. I'm going to start
curving this upwards. Remember how I said the
angle changes here. Now we've got this
nice little mouth. I'm going to just
erase this a little, these lines that we don't need. Now, I'm also just going
to flatten this part. So now we already have a really nice head that
we did quite easily. Now, I'm just going to
now continue this body. It's going to be
almost straight here, and then it's going to curve up. Then we've got a sharp
change in angle here. I just hope I didn't
draw it too long. Right over here, perfect. We're going to just
round this part a bit because that's
actually the top part of the tail and we're just going to curve this down
ever so slightly. The top of the body shouldn't
actually curve that much. We're just keeping
it quite natural. Then I'm going to also just curve this a little
because that's going to be where our tail is now I'm just going to
straighten this down a bit. Believe it or not, we've
just drew the main body of a kilo whale in
those few easy steps. And this tail, we're not going to see the
whole of the tail here. We're only seeing a very
thin portion of it. It's going to be thin here and then we're
going to make it just slightly thicker
as it joins the body. This is the tail or the flukes as scientists
like to call it. There you go. You've got the main
part of a kilo whale, the main body, and now let's just erase the
lines that we don't need. So I hope that's looking
nice and clear now. All we have to do now is just do a few more little things. I'm going to put the dorsal fin. Actually, a good indicator where to put the dorsal fin is, let's do the powerful
pectoral fins first. The pectoral fins are the
side fins of the body. It has a shape that's
quite distinct. It goes down like this at a pretty sharp angle
and then we're going to now curve it curve
it to a point. There's a bit of a
sharp point here, and then we're going
to draw a line that just goes slightly
vertical like that. Now we're going to I
hope I did that thin enough and now we're going to connect it back to the body. This part might not
be very visible because we'll be painting
in black anyway. But that's a good side fin. Since we're doing
this, we might as well do the one over here. Obviously, we're not
going to be able to see this one very clearly as it's on the far side of the side away
from us. But look at that. That's already quite a good looking whale body
that we have here now. All right. So why don't we just erase these lines
that we don't need. All we have to do now is the dorsal fin is going
to start from this angle, it's going to start over here and end somewhere over here. I'm just going to draw a
curve up here and this fin, as you can see from our little
model is almost vertical. Because this is a female, if you know a little bit about killer whale anatomy, I mean, she will not have as
pronounced dorsal fin as the males that are known to have these beautiful straight
tall dorsal fins that look quite majestic. There we go. We already have
a beautiful dorsal fin here. I'm sorry, you just
erased a little bit more of these lines that we don't
need because look at that. Our whales looking very, very well formed already. Now, all we have to do is
put that distinct mark. Where the mouth ends over here is where I'm going to start that beautiful white patch that the killer whale is so known for that striking
white and black. So the shape of the kilowe of this patch
is sort of like think of an elongated oval with maybe
edges that are a little bit, pointy for an oval. That's how I look at it. But look at that. Just like that, we've drawn a mama killer whales,
isn't she beautiful? Now, for the very fun part, I thought it would
be cool to draw the baby just slightly
below here, exploring. I just want to start off with a bit of a I don't want to
put it too close to the mom, but he's going to be a little
bit under the mom here. I'm thinking I'm going to do
a little curve like that. Think of this. This is the
very back of the killer whale and I want to maybe make the little baby do
a different pose, look like it's diving. Once more, we're going to have this triangle shape here except I'm going to do a little bit
of a instead of a pointee, and I'm going to
do a little bit of a a bit of a
blockage shape here, but it will all make
sense later because of the angle of
how the whale is. Let's just continue this. The line that goes up here, but now we're going
to just curve it slightly over here
into the tail. Okay. We've just drawn a shape that looks a bit weird,
but don't worry. Let's just refine this
a little bit more. How about this time I
start with the tail. Once more, we're going to see only the side
profile of the tail. Maybe that's a bit long, sorry. Side profile of
this baby's tail. Yeah, I think that
would be better. And it's doing a bit
of a diving pose. Now, let's make this
body look a little bit curvier now than just
um, just blocks. So now is where
the magic starts. I'm going to just imagine this is the
top of the head here. We're going to now
draw a line like this where the mouth is. I believe you call
that the snout, I know snout doesn't sound
like a really nice word, but yeah, it has a bit of a
dolphin sort of shape, right? I'm just going to try and
emphasize that. Okay? So I'm also now going to draw just make
the mouth more distinct. After I did that, I'm now going to just start doing the
definition of the mouth. At this part now, I'm going
to change the mouth slightly. Let's continue with
the black part of it. It's going to be like it's Mm, where we do this
little curve here. I've watched a lot of maybe
that's a bit too much here. I've watched a lot of documentaries on whales to
try and compose this picture. So I'm sorry I don't have a reference photograph
to work with for this one because
of copyright laws and also I haven't had
the opportunity to dive with killer whales. I'm a bit intimidated
to do that, and they only tend to live in certain parts of
the world anyway. Still considering doing that. This is a very strange
shape, but don't worry, it all makes sense when we
start adding some detail in. Let's just continue with the body and let's just erase the lines
that we don't need. Okay. I just chose a more
interesting pose for the baby. That's why the body is
a little different. I just realized that I forgot to put a patch up here for the mom. So if you don't mind, I'll just quickly do that
because sometimes when you're doing more
than one subject, you can forget to do all the details.
I'm sorry about that. Let me just do that.
It's just like just imagine an irregular shape. It's just a small patch. Yeah, kind of like longish. Something like that looks fine. Okay? All right. And also, later on, we'll be playing
around with the light, but I might just just
kind of highlight this. There is also a bit of a lighter patch here
on killer whales. But I'm just using
broken lines now because I will be doing
something later with the light, you know, I don't want to draw a very definite um
shape right now. So let's just finish this guy up first let's do the once more, those pectoral fins have a very distinct shape
for a kilo whale. We got that and then they're
at an angle and then they come a little bit pointy here. Then they go big again
back to the body. I feel like maybe I might have drawn this a
little bit too far out, so I just want to
take it in a bit. And erase this line that
we don't need as well. Let's make this little guy look a bit more like
a killer whale. Maybe I did draw that a
little bit too far out. It looked a bit dolphin like This is the part where I'm just refining it a little bit now. Let's do his little patch, that distinct eye patch. Maybe I can make this a little bit higher actually up here. Remember, it's an
oval, but pointy ends. Actually, I think this should
be a little bit lower. Let's just go a little bit
lower because of the angle. Let's give him or her a
very distinct dorsal fin. Using my trusty model over here. Think triangle, but with curves
that attach to the body. Maybe this is a male baby and just a little bit of a
pointy end at the back there. There we go. That's our baby. I just want to refine
the shape a little. It is a bit harder when
you're doing it without a um, without a reference photograph, but I just thought I think
I've got the shape down and I just want to make this guy
look a little bit more fluid the body because I feel like he looks
a bit blocky now. I'm just curving it
a little bit here. But we're almost finished already with our
killer whale sketch, and then we can already start
painting the background. It's going to be so fun. Let's get rid of these
lines that we don't need. And let me take a step back and I love what I see.
I absolutely love it. Now, I intentionally drew my killer whales over
here because I'm thinking of putting some
beautiful underwater sort of kelp. I really want my killer whale mom and baby to
look like they're going through a kelp forest because I thought that would be more
interesting than just doing, um, a blue background. I wanted to do something
like creative and, you know, really set the scene
for this mother and baby. Like, I think, you know, think about not just
the deep ocean, but killer whales are also
known to enter kelp forest. So that was the look
I was going for. So looking at this, I'm just trying to just
that's the only thing. I'm just checking whether
the shape look good. And Yeah. Okay. Alright, I have
to stop now. Alright. I think that looks good. Okay? That looks
like a mom and baby. So why don't you just erase the lines that
you don't need anymore? Just clean your paper and
get your water, jars, and your paintbrushes ready because we're gonna have so much fun doing the background. It's gonna be not
a stressful thing, I promise you, it's
going to be fun. So I'll see you in the
next video. Thank you.
4. Background and Kelp Practice Exercise: Hi, everyone. And in this
section of the class, I'm going to take you through the process of how we
are going to paint our background and build up our help forest
layer by layer. So if you're a
beginner or you're not very confident to do this
on your actual painting, I really think this is an
important practice step. I would highly recommend it. So yeah, I'm just going to take you through
the entire process. And what I have here is a spare piece of
watercolor paper. And all I've done is I've made a little border around
it using musking tape. And I've got my paints
ready that I'm going to use in the actual painting. I mean, you can use whatever paints you
want for this practice, but I just thought
I might as well use the paints that I'm
actually going to use. So what I'm going to do
now to my piece of paper that has a little frame made out of masking tape
is I'm just going to wet the area inside
here with a flat brush. That's all I'm going to do. I'm just going to try
and have an even glaze. All over this area, and this is exactly
what I'm going to do for the rail painting. Once you've got a nice
even glaze going on, I'm then going to
use a round brush to drop in the colors. I'm going to drop in my
lighter colors at the top. I am actually intentionally leaving a little bit
of white in between, not completely blending it. I'm also going to use some of this beautiful sap green color. The reason I'm painting it like that and I'm bringing a bit of that color into the blue is because I want to
create a varied wash. Now the next color I'm
going to use is some of this darker green
that I have here. As I get further down
into the painting, I'm going to start using
the darker colors. This is actually a peacock blue, which is a darker green sorry, a darker blue color that
has very jewel tones. If you want, you can blend
a little bit of it up here into your lighter green. As we get lower, I'm also going to add some of my darkest
color which is indigo. So all I've done is I've
created a varied wash, meaning the colors
are all different. It's not just one color
and it's graded as well in the sense that it goes from lighter to darker
towards the bottom. I intentionally didn't blend this all together
smoothly because I want to create a
layered textured look. That looks a little bit like underwater currents and also to suggest that there are things
going on in the background, different plants and stuff. This color that I'm going
to use now is olive green. I'm going to drop this
in throughout just in little patches here and
there because this color is a very alpi color. I just want to incorporate some of that throughout my painting. It's okay if your
colors blend a bit, the background is now still wet. Our colors it's
starting to dry now. But before it dries, I'm going to take a smaller brush right now while this is all still
drying, so it's still wet. I'm going to use my
very dark color. Which is indigo.
Now I'm going to start doing some shapes. I'm aware that this is wet now, so that's fine with me because I actually want this to
blend a little into the background because
this is going to suggest that these
are the distant kelp. While it's wet,
we can then start doing these leafy shapes. When you're doing leafy shapes, this is what I want you to do. It's going to be
pointy at this end that it is further
moos away from the stem or the
stalk of your kelp. It's going to be pointy at the end that's furthest
away and it's also going to be pointy at the part that it
attaches to the stalk. I know this may look
a bit messy to you, but the reason we want
to do this is it's creating the effect
of distant kelp, which is why it's
not so defined. I'm just using leafy shapes. We want to imagine
that this kelp is an underwater plant that's just swaying in the underwater currents
and what we can do also. Look, it looks very like it's blending into the
background and that's what we want because this is the
distant kelp in the background. We don't want it
to be so defined. I'm going to do one
on this side also, even though the paint has considerably dried now,
the background paint. I can take my time now. I just want to show you how I build up the kelp
with these shapes. Don't worry, it's spreading
now and that's what I want. It may look a bit
untidy, but don't worry. We're actually going to
do some that are more defined that are going to
be more in the foreground. This is great
practice now to just get used to using your round
brush to do these shapes. What I want you to do is if I'm going to
paint outside here, I just want to show
you the shape of your of your leaf should
look something like this, and it attaches to the stalk. I will do some that
are more defined. We also want to do things
like vary the orientation. Of the leaf. So it looks a
little bit more natural. I'm just going to continue
this one that's supposed to look like a background kelp. But you see how I'm also
changing the orientation a bit, so it's not just
going out like that. Some of them can go behind a leaf that I painted
before them or some can even do a bit of a turn
over here just because it creates some
variation in the leaves. My paint is already starting
to dry the background, which is why I'm just
going to finish up here. How about we do a leaf
that's a little bit more going towards
this direction, maybe one going a
little bit behind it, and this is all fine for it to blend together because
it's a background. I'm going to stop
now. I'm going to let this completely dry right now. Let it dry, go and
have a little break. When we come back to this, we are going to build up the foreground
of the kelp forest. Okay. So once your paper is completely dry
like it is over here, you can then take, well, a size eight round brush. And now I'm just going to wet my brush and
re wet the pain. So what I'm going to do
first is I'm going to start out doing some kelp
that's in the foreground. And how I do this is I first
start with a curve line. So how about I do
a line like that? Because I feel like the kelp
should be slightly curved, not just straight, just
because I like to give the impression that the kelp is swaying in the
underwater currents. Once I do a curvy line, what I do is I start
at the top here and I paint this leafy shape. I should just say that I
looked at lots of pictures of kelp and this is my
design for the kelp. I have a leaf there and
now I'm going to do one just slightly below it. Then I'm going to do
one in between them. There's no real scientific
method to this, but my only advice is keep the ends that
meet the stalk or the stem pointy and
the ends that go all the way outside
should also be pointy. Well, that's just my advice. Then we can get a bit we want to generally
follow the shape. Okay, off the line, the curvy line that we drew. But we can also kind of
deviate a little like this, for instance, just to kind of make things a little
bit more interesting. I've only started
using this color, which is olive green, near the top of the kelp plant because that's just my preference
because I feel like, you know, this parts closer
to the sun, the surface. So I wanted it to
kind of have a bit of a kind of like a
sunburn sort of look. So as you notice,
I'm just doing this and then I might
vary it a little bit by maybe making some leaves go look like they're
a little bit hidden behind the previous leaf
that I drew. This just all. So that's it peeking out
there, mixing it up, adding a little bit of
variation because we don't want just a uniform
looking kelp plant. But at the same time, we're
going to follow the flow. Here's another leaf that I'm
Whoops, that's a bit dark. So this is just a practice
exercise. So here we go. Sorry, there was a bit of concentrated pain
that I got there. I got a bit of water now. So yeah, it's nice to vary the appearance of the
leaves and the orientation. And what I also like to do
is I like to kind of like I don't like them all meeting at the same point if they
are on opposite sides. I like them to
kind of, you know, meet slightly like kind
of in between leaves, then we attach another
leaf rather than them both meeting exactly at the same point if they
are on opposite sides. So that's just a
preference of mine. As you can see now,
I'm just varying the orientation of this one. As I go down to the
base of the stem, I'm also starting to I'm going to start making
the leaves longer. It's just like on the top, it's going to be shorter
and it's going to gradually get longer as
we get to the bottom. At some point over here, I'm also going to this
is also my kind design. I'm going to do a
leaf that's a little bit different in orientation, but it's still going
with the flow. As you can see, it's still following this flow and
it just varying slightly. But now, I might just
do another leaf. Maybe this leaf
can go over here, for instance, it can go a little bit behind
here and then come out. Just use your imagination about how you want to
orientate these leaves. But as long as they
follow this nice flow, then you can play around
with it a little, make some of the
leaves come out a bit, make some of them
be hidden a little. As I go down now, not only are the leaves
going to get bigger, I'm also going to start
adding different colors because I love the look of that. Sorry, that's a bit light. I like the look of that. As you can see, I started with the lighter colors
like olive green, and now I'm going for a
bit of sap green now. Maybe this leaf can hide
can be partially hidden. As long as you follow the rules that the leaves are
pointy at each end. We can keep going. Now I'm just going to
start using green only. So, like I said, it all follows a flow and you're using
your imagination. So it may seem a bit
tricky at first, but I can assure you
if you practice, this will start becoming
second nature after a while. And I don't mind if some of them blend a little bit later now, I mean, because later on, we can, like, you know,
when this all dries, we can start to define certain
leaves more than others, or if you feel that some of them are a little
bit too light, then you can go over them
again with the pain. But as you can see, my leaves are just going to put a bit
of paint in that stem here. My leaves are getting thicker. Well, longer. See, I'm
playing a little bit. I'm making this leaf go up a little bit and be semi
hidden by those leaves. Have fun with it is my advice. Maybe this one can just
do that. All right. Like I said, I looked at a
few pictures of help forest, and this is a design
that I came up with. And as you go along as well, I was going to do
this at the end, but I might as well do it now. You can also add little
structures like this. Okay, and they look like I think they're called
nodes or, you know, I think this is where the seeds of the plant of
the w. All right? You can add some of those
in because they also create some interest
like you know, it's an interesting feature of the w plant that I've
seen in some of them. Okay, now, I'm just going
to change the color again. I'm going to start using a deeper green now as
we get to the bottom. As you can notice, um, the leaves are also not just going to be the
color of the paint you use, but also of the background
that you're painting over. As you can see, what we did just now that's faded
into the background, it looks like distant kelp. That's the effect that
we want to create. I'm just going to
keep going now. Oops, my brush got stuck
there, keep going. I think maybe this
one can go behind a I can go over here. See, they're getting
longer and longer. I think I'm also going to start introducing this blue
that I have here, which is peacock blue, which I will also be using later and I did use
it in the background. Maybe you can make the middle part of
your leaves thicker. That's hidden. How about we make this one maybe go behind here? As you can see, there is a flow to the leaves and you can
easily imagine, look at that. They're swaying in
the underwater breeze and that's the effect
that I want to go for. Now at the very bottom, I'm going to make this
part a little bit thicker. As you can see, there's a
beautiful color variation going on and I love that. That's something
that I wanted to incorporate in the
actual painting. We're just practicing all this in this exercise right now. As you get closer to the bottom, feel free to add, you
can add some more of these node structures
if you'd like, right? Like when we add one over here. I don't completely
paint the node. I leave some of it unpainted because that can sort of
look like reflected light. But right at the
very bottom of this, I'm going to start introducing the darkest color here
that I'm using indigo. All right. So there we go. We got one beautiful leaf
that's hidden down here, and then maybe we can do one
that kind of goes over here. Just going to grab
a bit more indigo. So there, we've painted
one and as you can see, we started out with
just a curvy line. We started out with
a lighter color at the top and smaller leaves. As we go down, we're
changing the color. So it's becoming darker and it's also the leaves are becoming
longer. So there you go. That is how we do
like a kelp plant. And if you want,
you can practice, I highly encourage
you to practice this if you're not confident
to do this yet because it's
important to be able to use your round
brush to, you know, make thin lines and
then press down, apply pressure to make
thicker lines and then lift slightly to
make them thinner again. This is just an exercise
of control of your brush. A it's great to practice
your curvy lines and yeah, and how you hold the brush
to achieve these marks. Okay? So this is all
a wonderful exercise to do to warm you up for what we're going
to do in the painting. So I hope that this
has helped you. This little exercise shows
you what we're going to do and just gives you a little bit of practice before
we do our real painting. So please try it out
and have fun with it, and I will see you in the
next section of this class where we start doing
our actual painting. So I can't wait. See you soon.
5. Painting the Background: Hi, everyone, and welcome back. And I hope you are all ready
to paint your background. This is going to be
very, very exciting. And I also promise that we want to do it in a way
that's not going to feel, you know, intimidating
and stressful. So my tips to paint
a background in the least stressful way possible is have all your
materials ready to go. So you can see this
in the camera, but I've got two jars
of water ready to go. I've got my huge 1.5
inch flat brush that I'm going to apply water all
around the background. I also have a small flat brush, which is a three quarter
inch to just get those areas that are a
little bit harder to reach. I also have a couple
of round brushes, a size 12 and size eight because I will be
using this to drop in colors as well as to do some kelpie shapes
in the background. And before I begin, I just we've already
gone through all the materials that
you should have ready, especially your palette
as well, ready to go. So when you have
everything ready, it is so much less, you know, of a stressful, you
know, experience. That way you also get to enjoy the process as well and you're not
rushing too much. Now, I would like
to take you through the paints that I want
to use for this scene. Because I decided to
improvise two kilo whales in a kelpit underwater forest that it's going to be more
on the greenish side. I've decided to use colors
that are quite jewel inspired. The first color
that I want to use, and I'm using a
set of paints from by brand called Hall Bin.
Which I really love. The first color I want to use is the turquoise. I hope
you can see this. Once more, this is just
a matter of preference, like the colors that I'm
using and it's fine if you want to use something a
little bit different from me. And another color that
I'm going to use. I'm going to keep turquoise
more towards the top. Another color that
I want to use is sap green because sap
green is a really, really pretty green
that I really love. Let me just get it out for you. This is sap green from the set, and it's a beautiful
light green. I also want to put that
kind of near the top, maybe a little bit
in the middle. So I've decided to use
quite a few colors in this one because I just want to give off these
beautiful jewel tones. So this paint is
called peacock blue, but it's very close in shade
to the color Prussian blue. So this is going to be more towards the middle
and the bottom. Okay. So these are the darker
colors that I'm going to use. And I also want to
use this color. Where is it? Sorry, I
can't find it right now. Uh an emerald green. I guess Vidian would be a
good sort of color as well. This is a color
called VidianGreen. I hope you can see that. Yeah. This is actually a little
bit lighter than I like, maybe I might actually
use Hookers green. I might just use Hookers Green actually. I'll just
put it over here. Hookers green is a green that is very rich and also on the cooler side because I feel like this is a little
bit too light for me. I think I might actually drop in just a little bit of
the color indigo. Because indigo can be
used for the shadows, the shadowy areas and also hopes to darken
the surroundings. But another color that I really, really want to drop
in because this is a kelp forest is an olive green. Olive green is pretty
available commercially. I'll just put it over here.
If you can find olive green, you can mix it with using maybe sap green and a umber paint a brown
paint to get this color. But it is quite available now. So I've got my colors
all put in my palette so it's all ready to go and all I have to do
now is to wet my paper. Just to take you through
what we're going to do because I might not
be able to talk a lot during the actual
process is we're going to wet the
entire paper until it has a beautiful,
nice even sheen. Then we're going to
drop in the colors like the lighter
colors like turquoise and some of that green
that we have sap green. Okay, near the top. And then as we get
towards the middle, I'm also going to
drop in deeper colors like the peacock blue
and the hookers green. Okay? So, yeah. Just so I don't get confused. This is Vidian, okay? I mean, this is hookers green, and this is sap green. Just so we don't
get too confused. Let me just test it out actually before I
start doing this because I don't want to be
saying the wrong color, so let me just test this
out on a piece of paper. So this is actually a Okay. So this is our sap
green over here. That makes it easier. These
two are the light colors, and this is our hookers green that actually has
a nice jewel tone to it. I'm going to be using
these two colors, but it's not a
mechanical process. I might actually drop in some other colors
here and there, like that beautiful kelp color. But then I'm going
to try and get it darker towards the bottom.
That's what I'm going to do. Also, maybe the sides, I might start putting
in some sort of, you know, kelpit shades once our background is painted,
I'm going to drop it in. So I think I've
talked a lot now, so let me just wet this. So don't worry about
getting paint on the orcas. We don't have to
avoid them because this is we're going
to just be able to paint the darker
colors over them and because even
the white parts of the aca are going to reflect some of the colors around them and
their surroundings. So you don't have to
worry about that, which makes it a lot
easier than, you know, having to avoid the orcas when you're painting
the background. So yeah. More fun, yeah, less worrying. Okay. So this looks pretty even. I might just put in a
little bit more water to make it even more even. There's a nice even sheen. We don't want puddles, it's just a very
hot day here today, so I just have to do this a few times to get a nice even sheen. Now, I'm just going to use I like personally using a round brush to
drop in the colors. So here I go. I'm going to start dropping
in some of this nice, I might have put that color a little bit too concentrated, it's going to start
at the top here. If I want, I can easily blend it later with the flat brush
if I really want to. Now, I want to start dropping in a bit of this lighter green. This is the sap green, which is a beautiful green. I'm going a little bit over
the top of the blue there. Okay. Maybe I might even bring this up a bit,
blend it up a bit. But this is supposed to be, like I said before,
a alpi forest. It's okay if my um, if my brush has some of that blue on it,
I think it's great. This is supposed to be
stress free, right? I'm leaving the blue more
towards the top there, and I just blending a
little bit down here. I don't mind leaving a
bit of white showing through because I
think that looks like nice underwater currents. Leaving a bit of white, I just think the sky looks I mean, the blue up here just looks
a little bit too uniform, so I'm going to try and go over it with some brush strokes. But now as we get down, I'm going to start dropping
in this beautiful rich green. Because this is after
all, a kelp for us. If you feel like your
greens are too strong, just feel free to wet your
brush and blend them in. I've got this green don't worry too much about
the killer whales because we will be
painting over them later. Now to bring some of that
beautiful peacock blue. Don't put the paint
on too thick, but I do want it to be
stronger at the bottom. If you want, you can easily use a flat brush to
do this if you want. I just prefer using
using around big brush. It's just a preference thing. I think I'm more confident
using round brushes. I've got the greens
and the blues going. And I've got a bit
of thick pen here, so I'm just trying
to blend that in. I might just take some
of this color over here because it looks like
a little bit bare here. I also, don't worry. I haven't forgotten.
While this is all wet, I also still want to drop in a little bit of this color
that I haven't used yet, which is the olive green. I'm doing this quite randomly. I know it may look a bit like
messy now, but don't worry. The whole idea is this
is a kelp forest, and this is a very kelpi
color and we'll also be doing something as well
while it's still wet. Everything is still
nice and wet now. I'm also just wet my brush a bit to
blend it a little bit. But I don't mind some
darker bits of color here. I'm going to put
olive green here. And I actually want to darken the bottom
a little bit more. With the blues and the greens, and you see these parts here. They don't bother me too much, but I might just try and
blend this out a bit. Okay. Remember, don't worry about going over the killer
whale. It's going to be fine. N, I'm just going to put a little bit of
indigo at the bottom. But I don't want to cover up the paints all the other
colors that I've done already. Indigo is beautiful,
the darkest blue. It's just a really stunning
color that I love using. As you can see, we got some
great colors going on now. What I want to do while
this is still wet is, I actually am going to
use a smaller brush. This is my size eight round. I'm going to now start
painting using the indigo, some shadowy while this
is still wet, by the way, just some shadowy
kind of shapes. Now, I'm going to just avoid the killer whale because as
you can see, it's spreading. I don't want this to
end up taking away any attention from
the mom killer whale or even the baby killer whales. While this is going on,
I'm going to actually just do a little bit
of leafy kind of shapes and I actually
do want this to blend into the background a bit because these are just
shapes in the background. So just a little bit of a tip. Like the leaf is pointy, right? And it's pointy at the
tip out here and it's also pointy where it meets
the stem, so to speak of it. Play around a bit,
with the leaves, they don't all have to be
in the same direction. This is a get creative. Maybe some of them might
be like this folded down. Yeah. I'm just doing
this very abstractly. Now, I know this
looks a bit messy, but trust the process
because we're going to we're going to produce a kelpie forest
now as it dries, it's starting to
dry as you can see. Don't worry about that. All right. Try and try and create variation in the
flow of the leaves, just imagine an underwater
current is going through this. It's okay if it's starting
to dry now, that's fine. Some of your leaves will
appear sharper than others, and that's fine. Okay. I'm just doing long leaf shapes. That's all I'm doing
here. They should have a flow to them. If you want, you can look up some underwater kelp
forest pictures. It's like they're
being tossed around by the underwater currents and
they sway like a like a tree, really, like the
leaves of a tree. Okay, so I've done a few
of this and don't worry about the parts that are
starting to get a little bit, you know, fuzzy and stuff. We actually want that.
Okay. All right. Like, I might do
some of these later. This was meant to be
a background one, and I might quickly do
the same on this side. So once more, I want
to just intentionally avoid the killer whales because I want them to
have their own like, you know, I want them
to have the attention. I don't really
just want it to be um I don't want the
leaves to intersect them. This one's going to appear a little bit darker
than the other one because the paints already
starting to dry a bit. But as you can see, that's still fading
into the background. That's cool. We want
some variation. That's why I'm doing
this while it's wet. Don't worry. We're
going to build up our own kelp forests. Okay. So yeah, take
your time if you want. So we're just doing
the darkest ones. We're using Indigo, the
darkest color right now. And later on, we're going to
get lighter near the front, cause these are meant to be our I'm going to
avoid doing the tail of near the tail of the baby killer whale
because like I said, I think they deserve to
get all the attention. This is supposed to be like yeah, kind of framing the sky. What you can do also is, I
was going to do this later, but you can add these
little balls that are, they just give it an
even more kelpi look. This is starting to already
get quite camouflaged. And remember, the
leaves at the bottom of the kelp plant are going to be bigger and longer than
the ones near the top. I hope you didn't find
this too stressful. Okay, so this is blending
in quite a bit here. These were in fact, I might just maybe
finish this guy off. We've used that color actually. I might start using maybe a
lighter color near the top. These are all things that
I wanted to do later on, but I don't mind maybe because the paint
has already dried. So I don't mind starting to use a starting to use different
colors now because I take it that these kelp are near the closer to the foreground. One more, just keep going with what I'm going to do is
I want to use this color. Remember, you can change
the direction where some of them are going to be a little bit partially hidden. That all adds some
realism to your work. Also, don't forget to add those little nodes, so to speak. I think that's what
they're called. I'm not an expert on
underwater plants, but yeah. I hope you practice this to get some confidence if you find this a little bit intimidating to do. Now, I'm going to start changing
the color a little bit, to have a bit of green as well. I think I'm using
my hooks green now. The colors are
starting to change. Maybe I'll just drop in a
bit of green in this one to show where it started to change. I actually wanted to I'm still doing this while the background is
still a bit damp. I actually wanted to do this in the next section of this class, but I have gotten really
into it now. Yeah. I just wanted to drop in
some of the you drop in some colors while it was still wet so that the background
looks a little fuzzier, which it should
because it's supposed to indicate that it's
in the distance. Over here, I might add some of these nodes maybe over here too. I might change the color
again of the leaves soon. Maybe this one can do a funny, it's important to keep
changing the Remember, there's swaying in the wind
in the underwater current. This one, as you can see, the leaves are
getting longer and soon I might start maybe
changing the color again, maybe adding a bit of this
blue in to give a very jewely. I'm going to just put a
leaf here because I feel like just to shake it
up a bit, make it look. I might just this
leaf is clearly these um eaves are clearly
in the foreground now. So they're going to
get more definition. But as you can
see, we've already started building up
our kelp for us. In fact, why didn't
I finish this? And then we can
take a little break and let our background completely dry because I've got a surprise for you as well. I can't wait to show you what I'm going to do
later with the kelp to make this painting even more magical.
Let me just finish this. This is an example
of how I want to, um, pain the cow. I hope you practiced
the exercise earlier. Now, don't be too stressed about this because it's
supposed to be fun, this is supposed
to be a painting that has a bit of
a magical element, so don't worry too
much about it, about the kelp being accurate. I've just chosen
to do one type of, you know, alpiort leaf. I'm sure there are
lots of others. Just imagine the
kelp are kind of reaching out for the sun and
they tend to grow, you know, with their leaves
kind of upwards and they're also at
the same time being like, swaying around underwater. If we change the
color of the leaves, as you can see gradually, it creates an even
dreamier effect. So it's okay if some leaves
may go a little bit in a different direction
sometimes because it's just catching up with
the ocean current. As I get to the very bottom, I might start introducing, oops, that's a bit thick, so I'm just going to dilute it. I might start introducing
a little bit of indigo. So now I had introduced indigo. I'm just going to put some of that in this leaf
that I did just now. Just now, I was using
indigo in the background. Maybe we can have one of those daka leaves
going through here. Yeah. So as you can see, this is how we
build up the kelp. Oh yeah, I forgot to
put some nodes in. But we can do that later too. We don't have to do it all now. Just trying to bring
some of that color in. Yeah, that was a little prelude of what we are going to do to create our kelp
forest. I can't wait. Since we just did the background and we're doing
this continuously, how about we let this
completely dry now? Okay. And go rinse your
brushes and your water jars. Let this completely dry. And when we come back, we're
going to keep building up this beautiful alpi for us. Okay? So we started by just painting a little bit in
the background there, and I can assure you, we're
going to do more plants. It's going to look stunning. And yeah, before
I talk too much, why don't you go
have a break now, and I will see you in the
next video, so I can't wait.
6. Kelp Forest Part 1: Hi you, everyone,
and welcome back. And I hope you've
had a good break, and you're ready to go again. So this is my background
completely dried, and I absolutely love it. I think it looks great. It really sets the scene
for the alpFest and Yeah, I really love what
we've done so far. As you can see over here, this was done wet on wet when I just used some
indigo in the background. So it's fuzzy, which
is the effect I wanted for plants that
are more distant. And as the paper and in
the foreground, sorry, I did do a kelp plant that was done a lot more like
wet on dry because the surface had already started to dry when I put it down, which is why you can
see a lot more detail. So doing that at the back and having more detail at the
front definitely creates more, um, distance perspective because obviously things
that are closer to us are going to appear sharper. I really like what
we've done so far and I really feel like we
can add on more to this. Over here, though,
when I had done this, you can see that I like this part because
this part was obviously still wet and it blended in quite well with the
dark corner over here. But up here, I find it's
a little bit too sharp. The leaves, it looks a
little bit too dark. Before I continue, what I
want to do is I want to use a maybe a small size
four round brush and I'm just going
to put some water on it so that it's damp. What I want to do is
I actually want to remove some of this
color because I feel like it's a little bit too sharp and dark for something
that's in the foreground. Yeah. So that's the
great thing about watercolors and this
color that I use indigo, as dark as it is,
it actually kind of lifts off quite easily. So it's a color that's actually not as staining as some colors. So this is going to
work to our advantage. So little things like this, you see that I did are easily
correctable, and I love it. So the reason that I'm
just lightening this now is because I want to Oops might have lightened
too much there, but I want to just create the the effect of the
impression of distance. So yeah, all I'm going to do is, I'm just going to
quickly do this. And what we can do after that is we can decide if we
want to leave this in the background and paint a
new kelp in front of it, which is easily doable
once I've lightened this, or we could even
paint on top of this. It really depends.
Maybe for now, why don't we lighten it? As you can see, it's great. I already lifts off. So how about I lighten it and then keep it in the background. And what we can do is
maybe paint a sharper, darker sort of kelp
in front of it. But I hope you're loving
what you got so far. I'm actually happy that I can show you this because I feel like this is how can I can
show you how we can correct, you know, what we
think are mistakes and Yeah, and still use this. So below here, it doesn't really bother me as much,
but as you can see, just by using a damp brush, we've already lifted off
a lot of this color, so it can look like something in the background,
which is great. So while this dries, let me just see if I can
lighten this anymore, even though I love the
effect that it has already, yeah, that looks
beautiful to me already, and I feel like we
could just paint over. So how about we just look
at this side over here. Now, I love what we did here, and as I showed you
in the last video, I started off with
the kelpie color, which is the olive green, and
I gradually changed it as I went down below because it
tends to be darker here, so I started to
use darker colors. And if you think
about a kelp forest, the top the leaves that
are closer to the top, they're going to get more sun, you know, so I felt like, Oh, yeah, that will be
lighter, you know. And also, you know, obviously, the deep blue is going to affect the color the lower
that you get. So also looking at the
picture as a whole, I want the killer whales to
be the star of the show, so I don't want to swarm
the picture with kelp. What I want to do
is use the kelp to frame our killer whale. I'm not going to just put
pin lots of kelp all over. So we've got these two corners here that we can work with, I was thinking I might also
improv some over here. And maybe some right under here. But I don't want to go
crazy with the kelp, sorry, such that it
overwhelms the whales. So before I start
talking a lot now, I'm just going to put
away my size four brush because I'm going to pick
up my size eight round. And what I'm going
to do now is I'm going to continue doing
what I did just now, which is, these are
fine at the back here. I just want to maybe paint
one going at the top here and it's going to
kind of, um go behind. So yeah, I can just do
this line right now. I hope you can see my
pains before I start. Yep. So just watch your hand. Make sure you don't just going to move this a
little bit just so I don't end up, resting
my hand in pain. So we're going to just
do what we did just now, which is Remember, from the practice video,
we do the stem first, and then we're just going to do I might just have
to move this for now, I'm sorry if you can't
see it right now, but it's in my way and I
really don't want to end up just getting a
very dirty hand and possibly ruining
the painting. So we got our help. If you've done the
practice exercise that I gave you at the start, I hope you've gotten
more confidence. Remember, to make
it look natural, let's vary some of
those leaves and they're not going to all
start at the same point. Maybe here we can go we
can just go out a little. All right, so it's nice. It looks natural for leaves
to overlap a little. I'm going to start
changing the color soon. Remember, it's shorter at the top and how I want to do
it is longer at the bottom. Don't worry about these
leaves overlapping now because we can
emphasize them later. We can define them
even more later. Yeah, I hope by now
you've gotten used to doing some nice alpi leaves. I'm going to change
the color soon. I find this very relaxing to do. As long as you just
follow the rules of it's pointy at both ends of the leaf and we want
to do some nice long um, Long thin strokes. This is the design I'm
working with here is just me simplifying some pictures
of kelp that I saw. And what we can do now is you can add some
of those little, you know, those nodes
on the plan over here. Don't overdo it. I have to
tell myself that as well. That adds to the whole look. Now, I'm just going
to start picking up a little bit of sap green. Okay. Um, Yeah. I think I'm just going to move my paper a bit so
you can see the paints, but so far, I've only
used the olive green. Now I'm going to start adding in a little bit more
different colors to add some cool variations. So you can vary the
orientation of the leaves so that they look more realistic. And where they start
on the branch as well. Like for instance, over here. Maybe I'll just bring some of that green up into
this leaf there. Okay, so this is all just like ways of adding some
realism to it. I'm just kind of going over some leaves with the green as
well as we transition down. I go to just have
to wet my paint a bit because it's
a little bit dry. Okay. Later on, if some leaves still appear
a little bit too light, we can always go over them again because some colors are just more
transparent than others. So I'm getting a bit adventurous with the
leaves just kind of venturing out of the
stem that we have here. And I think soon
I'm going to start, h. I'm going to start
changing the color again, and here we can add some
of those nodes again. Yeah, this is fun, actually. If you feel confident, you don't have to
watch me do all these. I'm just slowly building
building up the kelp plan. Soon I'm going to start
now using my darker green. It may appear a
little bit lighter, feel free to darken it again. So where was the stem? I lost it. All
right, there we go. All right, so I'm
going to start doing some leaves that
are overlapping. But I also have a surprise coming up later
about what we can do to make our painting
look even more magical, but I don't want to
give it away just yet because I think we should also do maybe this
leaf can come out like that. But I think we
should also work on the killer whales first before
I give that surprise away. Okay, so I've done
this one here. Maybe a few more
leaves over here. Yeah, when you get confident, you can start doing
this quite easily. And how about we
add a few nodes. So to do the nodes, I'm
just kind of like leaving a little bit a small
part of it kind of unpainted to reflect
some light, you know. Okay. So that's looking
really good to me now. I'm just wondering
what else I can do. Maybe I can do a few leaves
in the background here in using some of that indigo. Maybe this can be the start of another plant in the background. Okay. So once and then maybe this leaf can go behind it because this is already painted. Just thinking about little
things like that will help you produce a realistic
sort of um Kelp. But remember, the kelp is just secondary to the
killer whales, right? But it certainly helps
to set the scene, right? For our kilo whales
and they look great. They're gonna look great. Yeah. And probably after this, you would have probably had
enough of painting kelp, so you wouldn't
mind like a break and doing something else. Okay. And maybe I can just
use a little bit of blue now, like it's transitioning
to blue over here. Well, that peacock blue
is really beautiful. We've added some nice
color variation here. So your kelp forest might not look exactly
the same as mine because I'm kind of subconsciously
doing this as well. And yeah, so maybe we can
add a note down here. Yeah, little things like that. Okay. So if you feel
confident doing this, you don't need to watch me
do every single kelp plant, feel free to go ahead and do this, and improvise yourself. This corner is looking good. I just feel like I want
to frame it a little bit. I want to just maybe have
one of those coming up here, especially since there's a
nice olive patch over here. I'm just going to trace it with just this color first
and I'm just going to do like just a natural kind of, like, yeah, line like that, and I'm just going to
repeat the process. So feel free if you're
confident to, you know, like, skip ahead and just
work on your own, um, your own painting. And try and work with
paint that, you know, is a good consistency
where it's not too watery because that would
just make it more transparent. And we
don't want that. Yeah, that's looking
really lovely. I might start changing
the color now, adding in Whoops.
That's a bit thick. Yeah, but it's nice. A round brush can just do
these beautiful shapes. Whoops, be very careful, as you can see, I was
resting my hand there. I always make the mistake of I really should start painting
there and working this way, but every time I
started painting, I end up doing just
making the same mistake. Yeah. So just be careful. I think this should be dry up here for me to rest my hand. It also helps if your leaves start in different positions. But this is me simplifying a after looking at lots of pictures on the
Internet of kelp, this is just me,
improvising kelp, how to paint the kelp in a
way that's not too difficult. I'm now going to start
taking the darker green. Perhaps this can
come behind here. I still have a lot of
the other green to use. And I might even start now like Start getting the blues in, I think. Okay. And don't forget those
notes. We'll get to them. But for now, I just really want to start putting some blues in. Maybe this can go
at the back here. These are all little
things that you can do. Yeah, but this is
looking really pretty. Still going to work that blue. Let's do something
a bit different. Maybe this can go here. I'm just trying to make
this look natural. Feel free to I'm still going to continue this for
the students to see, but feel free to fast forward if you're confident
doing your leaves. Maybe now I'm going to start
putting in some of that, It's looking good. Yeah, so fun. I'm just gonna put maybe some
of those nodes over here. Is rinsing my brush and
go to put some up here. Oops I came on a bit thick, but, sorry, my pain got
a little dry there. Let's just try that again. Okay. So this leaf, I just want to darken this
because it looks like there's a little lack
of definition there. Feel free to go over
the parts that you want that you feel
need to go over again. I'm also just wondering if I should do one that's
just really flopped over. Why not? Let's just
have fun with this. I think I'm going to
use this green because I've got a lot of it
and I'm just going to go like, Yeah, get creative. It's just something natural. I might just start
with green this time instead of going with
the olive green. What I meant is I'm going
to start with sap green. Actually, I might put a
little bit of Olive green. Because even though this is like the bottom of the painting
and it's a bit darker. Oolive green will look more
like a will look like, you know, a bluer
version of itself. So you see, it actually kind
of looks almost like green, but I think I could use
the variation, you know? Let me just make
those shapes better. Okay. And once more, we're just going to
repeat the process. Bear in mind, this
one's flopped over. So if you want, you can turn
I find it easier to turn it, turn your sheet so that, you know, you can just kind
of kind of go with the flow. You know what I
mean? So this will make it easier as opposed to
trying to paint sideways. Feel free to, like, you know, make yourself comfortable while
you're painting. I think you could use
another little leaf. Yeah. That leaf is going to
be now I'm going to start putting some deeper Whoa, whoa, whoa, making the
same mistake again. Sorry. I really should
turn it around. So I'm just making
sure that this is dry. You see, you have to sometimes just turn your page around. Just varying the color. So I don't want to
touch the whale, any of the whales, with the leaves because
I don't want to take the attention
away from them. And let me not forget
to put some of those cute little notes here. All right. I'm just going
to keep doing this, and let's start adding
in some dark greens in. So because the background
is quite dark down here, like um the colors of this branch are
going to naturally be darker because of the
way watercolors are, they are just, you
know, transparent. So they're going to pick up the surrounding colors as well, even when you paint
on top of them. So I'm just starting to use
a bit of this blue now, the blue that we used
earlier, peacock blue. What's lovely? I using the same colors that we
used in the background adds a very lovely harmony
to the painting. Yeah, that's looking
really beautiful. Yeah. I love just painting playing
with silhouettes and maybe this leaf can come down
to just change it a bit. I'm Dory. I'm going to save
some space for the nodes. I think let's start going
with more deep blues. That's a long leaf over here. Maybe that's at a node here. Okay, so that's what my painting looks like
the right way up. It's looking really,
really cool. I love the effect and I don't
want to do too much though, I'm going to switch
to Indigo now. I don't want to do too much,
though, because, yeah, like I said, the star is the star of the painting
are the killer whales. Okay, that's a long
leaf hiding over here. Maybe this leaf can kind of
do can kind of come up here. Yeah, so we've been
painting for some time now. Uh, maybe let's do, um, another node here. Okay. Maybe we can have
one of these leaves that we can see just
coming up over here. Maybe this one, this is a branch that we
can't see either. Coming up. Okay,
that's looking good. And I'm just wondering how much more I want to do of this before we
do another layer. But since we've got, I think, how about
we start working on the other part of our
painting right now? Whoops. I just
noticed I might have accidentally done
something there. Whoops when I was painting. Let me just try and smooth
that out as much as I can, just blend that away. All right. I think it was just a
water Yeah. All right. There was a bit
of a water splash there from washing my brushes. But anyway, I want to just I know we've been
painting for a while now. If you'd like to take a break,
you can pause this video, but I just want to
finish this layer first. So this is all dry by now. And what I want to do is, I want to go over these parts. So just wash your
hands. Be very careful. I just want to go over this
part with my olive green. I'm doing this quite
fast because I can easily see the you know, I see the outline
that we left earlier. I think there was a note there. I'm just basically
tracing it with this lighter with this lighter color. Just because I feel like it's
like we can maybe use it to our advantage as a as a plant, you know, like I just use it. So it didn't just look
like a dark plant. All right. And I just
want to do this now. I've changed the color to
make it greener by adding in some sap green. Yeah, that's looking good. Maybe I can add this leaf here. Yeah, we're just making use of the silhouette that we had
already previously used. Yeah. So I'm happy
about this now. Just now, like I was saying, I just felt it was a
little bit too dark. Okay. Now, before I go
forward doing anymore, I just want to maybe paint one in the background over here. Like I said before, I
don't want too many. I think I might have to just put a little bit more olive green in here because I'm running out, but I would love to use
the other colors that I have Then I promise you we'll take a break because you've been doing
a really good job. I just want to maybe do
something like this. This can be using olive green to just repeat
what we've been doing before. So just wash your hands. I'm
pretty sure this is all dry. And I might just turn my paper just to make
this easier for me. I encourage you to
do so just so I can basically free
hand this much easier. I'm going to avoid
touching the killer whale. Okay. I'm going to start
using some green now. Watch your kilo whale's body. I mean, unless you want to, I just personally don't want the kilo whale to
be touched because I bet you guys are
going to be experts in doing a kelp by
the end of this. Okay. So this is behind, let's just
have a quick look. Yeah, I feel like we've got
a lot going on already. Like, what I feel we can
do is, let's continue. This plan is kind of why don't we make this plan kind
of go down like that. Okay. I'm just going to continue the leaves over
the other plants. I've already started
using some green. Okay, you're doing really
well to keep going with me. I know this has been
a long section. But if you know what to do, you know, you don't have
to watch me do all this. The whale's tail is there. I want to be very careful
not to do anything. So I'm going to make this
leaf maybe co like that. Yeah, there we go. Now I
can just turn it back. Watch your hands as usual. I'm just going to continue
with a little bit more green because I got a
lot of this color to tell the truth,
I love the green. It's a beautiful
color, the sap green. Let's use some of
the other green now. Beautiful. And how about we
start using some blues now? I'm getting quite
adventurous with the leaves. And I think right
at the bottom here, we might start using
some of that Indigo. Yeah, that's why I've
always asked students to use artist quality brushes because if you got a good
brush like this one, it does beautiful
pointy tips, very well. I think I wanted to
have a leaf doing that. Yeah, so that looks beautiful. What I want to do,
I think, like, you know, we have a lot
going on already here. The only thing I
can think of is, I just want to use
a bit of indigo to kind of darken these
leaves that were already here that we kind of previously lightened because I feel now like it's nice to have
some dark shapes here. Once more, giving the
whale lots of space because I don't want
to take away from it. Maybe we can do some over here. Shapes in the background. Yeah. Okay. I think that
looks really good now, and I'm just going
to rinse my brush, and I'm just going to take
the time right now to just use my little size four
round brush to just kind of add the nodes where I
want to because I might have missed that out just
now when I was busy. Yeah, we don't have to
overdo it with those. I just want to put them maybe, um, I didn't quite do any over here, so
let me just do that. Okay, I think
you've been really, really good and we've
been painting for a long time now, and
just look at it. It's really starting
to come alive, and I can't wait for you to see it when we actually
paint the killer whales, it's going to look amazing. So why don't we
take a break now? We've been working really hard. So yeah, take a break, go wash your brushes
and change your water. And when we come back,
we're just going to add a little bit more
detail to our kelp for us. And then I promise
you we're going to start working on the
whales and I can't wait. So see you really soon.
7. Kelp Forest Part 2: Hi, everybody, and welcome back. And I hope you had a nice break and you've let your
leaves completely dry, and I'm loving the
way mine looks, and I hope you love yours, too. And during the
break, I had a very, very long think about
what more I wanted to do. Because if you think, like, Oh, my painting might look
a little bit bare, just remember, we
haven't painted the killer whales yet, okay? So, they will be
considerably darker, these two areas, right? So when I had a good
thing during the break, I just decided that
I didn't want to get too carried away with the seaweed, but
at the same time, I also felt like I could frame the two kilo whales
just a little bit more with the colors that
we have left, you know? So I just felt like
I wanted to maybe do just one more leaf, sorry. What I mean, one more of these
sea calpie looking things, just to kind of frame it. So it's going to
I think something like a curve that
goes like this. I also felt like I wanted to maybe put another
one over here. But the ones that I
want to put over here, I actually want to
do that in one of these darker colors just using the indigo to make
it look like it's a distant seaweed and I'm also not going to use as
concentrated paint in indigo. I just want to create
a bit of a background where okay this is some
distant background kelp. But for this one over here, since we have a nice
light area to play with, I really wanted to use the colors like olive
green and sap green. To just make it stand out
over here because this is a nice light area that's closer to the surface of the water. Whereas down here, I'm fine
to just create a little bit of shadowy help in
the background, just to create that
perspective of a bit of distance and at the same time framing our
beautiful killer whales. I hope you're not too tired of doing these yet,
but believe me, all these steps are
really going to set the stage for our two
beautiful killer whales. Before I get too carried away, I'm going to pick up my size eight round brush
and I'm going to start I just have to reactivate my pains
because they've dried. I'm just going to use
some spare paper. Yeah, this is a
good concentration. I just want to do a leaf
that's going like this. I'm just going to work with
that because it's going to frame our mama kilo
whale very well. Remember, you must
be an expert by now at doing these
alpi leaf shapes. Remember, pointy ends
both where it attaches to the stalk or the
stem of the kelp and try and change the direction. Just imagine like
I always say it's swaying in the
underwater currents. I promise you this
will all be worth it because when I finish this, I'm going to reveal to
you what we are going to do with the calpFs as well. Oops, I think I had a little bit too
much pain there and it's just making that
end pointy again. Soon I'm going to start
changing the color, adding some some sap green because now we're working with our beautiful olive green, which adds such a pretty I think it's
such a pretty shade. Slowly adding a bit of green for some there's a bit
of color change. Don't forget to put we
are going to put those little I keep
calling them nodes, but they're kind of like these
little round structures. I don't really mind
you see I'm touching these two leaves together
while they're wet, but I don't really mind if
they merge a little bit, they blend in a
little bit there. It's fine with me.
As you can see, I've already framed
this a little bit more. I'm going to give the
killer whale some space. I'm going to, I don't want it to touch the killer
whale just because, like I said, I think
mama killer whale should should own the stage. There we go. Maybe the stem is going to disappear a
little bit behind here. I might just put a little
bit of another leaf here. Then it's peeking
out over there. Maybe another one on the side. Yeah, but I don't want
to get too carried away. I just wanted to frame this's watching out for those leaves that are coming
in front of it over here. Yeah. Look, how much of this you want to do
is really up to you. But I think maybe it's going to go like this
over here because I don't want to take away
from the baby as well. So I don't want to
then as you go down, you can start maybe
adding some blue in. But I'm just going
to leave this space. I think maybe my leaf can
come over here because I don't want to disturb
the baby either. Remember, I'll just talk a little bit about
as we go down here, even though I'm
darkening the color and I'm adding a darker green, just remember that when we
paint over darker colors, obviously, it will produce an even darker overall
effect for your leaf. But that's fine with me because the background here
is quite dark, so I'm fine with this
looking darker here. So to tell you the
truth, I don't feel like I need to do
a lot more here. I think that's actually fine. If you want, you can paint a
few more dark leaves here. But I actually think this looks okay to me. I'm fine with that. The only thing I want to do is, I'm just going to take my
small brush and I just want to paint on those round nodes
that I keep talking about. Maybe one can go over here. I think they give it like
some character, don't they? Maybe another one over here. And should we put one more up here so that
all the nodes are together? I just leave a little
tiny dot there to show a bit of reflection. The last things I want to
do here is before I do my too shadowy kelp
in the background, if you want to, I just want
to maybe go over this very quickly with the paints
that I used earlier because due to watercolors having a very
transparent effect, But if you like what
you see, that's fine. I just wanted to darken some areas that I find a little bit light
and transparent. But that is the
beauty of watercolor. You don't have to do what I'm doing if you like
the overall effect. But I just wanted
to do this pot, even though I still think
it looks pretty already. Maybe just for those colors
and maybe just the greens. I'm only doing this so I
don't have to do it later, but I actually think the overall effect
looks very beautiful. I just want to darken this
note that was over here. Yeah. I just use
green for this one. Sap green is such a
beautiful green as well as with this
particular background. I might let some of
this green just go into this leaf that's olive color. This is something that you can decide how much you want to do, but I'm not going to
darken everything. I just want to darken
this particular stock of kelp because I just felt like the greens were a
little bit transparent here. But overall, I think
it looks beautiful. It definitely has that beautiful underwater
dreamy effect. Just take some of
that blue over here. As you can see, this leaf just looks a little bit too
light for my liking. Feel free to go over the
leaves that you want to emphasize if you think they
don't stand out as much. I'm sure your paintings
look beautiful, by the way. You know, because we had some overlapping
leaves just now. So yeah. I think everything
else looks fine. This is a background leaves
that I'm fine to just leave. How about we very quickly I'm just reactivating
my indigo I want a pretty light I
want a pretty light sort of um consistency. I don't want I'm just
swapping back to my size eight round
brush because I find it easier to do
those shadowy shapes to do the leaf shapes with this. I only use the small
size four round brush for some definition. I was saying just
now, I want the leaf. I always do this. I always end up having to not rest
my hand on a wet part. I think I want this leaf
to come out somewhere here and do a bit of a curve. This is going to be a
shadowy background leaf. I like that see.
As you can tell, I've made this quite watery. Because this is going to be lingering in the
background to create a bit of like See, it's not as intense
as the other leaves, but still adds to the overall effect of an
underwater help forest. The leaves in the
background are not going to have as much intense color. They're going to
look quite faded. Maybe I can add a different orientation
over here of the leaf. They're also not going to
have as much like color. Let me make this a bit longer. But as you can see, still adding to the whole
overall effect. Maybe we can add some of
those nodes over here. A bit of an overlap over there. I'm just going to add
a little node here. You can see it just looks
like distant, shadowy. After this, I promise you, we are going to start
on the killer whales. It's going to be
really, really fun. To me, I feel like
the hardest part of this entire painting was just
creating the kelp for us. And if you have practiced
doing those brushstrokes, you should find this easy. Well, maybe your
first few might be a little bit, just
getting the hang of it, but after a while, it
starts becoming very, very natural, I feel. I think I might end it
over here with a leaf Maybe this can just produce
a few more leaves, but it looks quite light against the dark
background over here. As you can see, I've gone
for a very light look, it just looks like this is
a bit in the background. Maybe I'll just add one
of those nodes over here. All right, so this is just
a background like leaf. That's why we used
a very light, very, very light consistency of pain, more watery compared to
the concentrated ones that we used for the foreground kelp. Okay. I'm just going to do one more just over here
because I just feel like I think that will just help frame the kill wheels and also because this part does look like it doesn't
really bother me, but I just like that it looks I just feel like
maybe the pains here. I just want to disguise a bit of this effect over here. But it doesn't
bother me too much. I just really more
wanted to frame this. Okay. Almost done after
this one, all right? I just felt like that area
was just a little bit bare. I'm using pretty watery pain, but I think I have
to add a little bit more pigments in because I don't want to lift
off the pain below. That's not what I'm after. But if my pain looks a
little bit too watery, then it might start
lifting the paint off. But I think now this is a
good consistency to use. Remember, I personally
don't want to touch the killer whale. I promise all your
efforts will pay off later for doing
this help for us. Okay. Now, I'm just wondering how much more detail
do I want to add? Maybe just a few leaves. But I feel like I don't
have to continue. Look, I feel like that
looks okay to me. I don't have to I
don't really want to maybe I'll just add
some other leaves here. But I'm okay to stop soon. Because we got these leaves, I don't think we
need to put anymore. That's just personally
my own view. But yes, please, uh do it
to your heart's content. I just feel like
that's enough for me. Okay, so that's supposed to
look like background kelp. I'm going to stop
here, actually, because I'm taking a step back and I think
we've set the scene, and now let me tell
you what we are going to do that's
going to be very fun. But we're going to do it
later right at the very end. I want to put tiny
little fish hiding here. We're going to use very tiny
little silver fish shapes. So that's why I put a lot of effort into building up a kelp for us because
this is going to be very, very fun, they're going
to stand out a lot, especially in the dark areas. So I just wanted to let you know this is something that
we're going to do later on. But right now I
think everybody is dying to start work
on the killer whale. So why don't you rinse your brushes and change
your water jars? And when we come back,
absolutely no waiting anymore, no more kelp, we're going to
start on our killer whale, so I can't wait for
you to join me then. So see you really soon.
8. Painting the Killer Whales: Okay, everybody, and we're back. And I hope your paintings
have all dried. Mine have, and I'm
really happy with the overall effect of
kelp of the kelp forest. I mean, I think it looks great. I hope you're happy with
your kelp forest, too, but I think it's safe
to say that we're all a little tired
of doing kelp and we're more than ready
to go ahead and start painting the main
subjects of our painting, which are, of course, our
beautiful killer whales. So before we start, I just want to let
you know, you know, if you're not happy with
anything, about your kelp, if you want to darken certain
parts or you want to use a clean damp brush to lift off, any excessive pain now's
the time to do it. But I think everybody
is really eager to start on the whales.
I'm happy with mine. So how about we go right ahead? Before we start painting, I just want to take
you through what this step of the class involves. What we'll be doing is
we're going to be dropping in the darker colors of
killer whales first. Because I want to add, I want some harmony in
the painting as well. Since we've used a
bunch of colors for our background and we use the
same colors for our calp, I think it's only
natural that we use you know, I think indigo. Which we've already used
for the underlayer, so to speak, of our killer
whales dark markings. But because indigo itself,
when I tried it out, I felt it wasn't dark
enough to capture the very, very dark markings
of our killer whale. I think we do need to introduce this pin
which is Pains gray. Pains gray is a beautiful
beautiful color that I use a lot for shadows and
some of you may think, why don't I want to use black? Well, you can use
black if you want. But for me personally,
as a watercolorist, I've never actually
had to use black for a painting and also even for
really really dark areas, because I feel like
something like Pains gray, which is just one
color lighter than black already produces
a really rich pigment. I also feel like it complements the blues that we've used
because it's a gray. And it's already pretty dark. I feel like the
beauty of watercolors also is in its transparencies. I feel that using a very dark color black might, you know, just kind of, um, not let the colors
underneath come through. That's just my personal
reason why I like using Panes gray
for the dark areas. Just to take you through
what we're going to do now, I think we should start
with our little guy first. We're just going to wet
the entire just dark area of the killer whale and
leave the lighter areas. Actually, just before
we start doing this, I noticed that I forgot to do the little marking over
here of our killer whale. It has a lighter marking here, so it's just a little
irregular shape and I forgot to
put that just now, so I apologize for
not drawing it. I think I got very
carried away with just doing the shape and the
outline of the killer whale. It's just like an
irregular shape like that. Yeah. But I do feel like that is important
and I should just save that area before I start
painting the darker areas. That's the irregular shape. So you may notice that yeah, our little guy especially has some of the background
color in him, and that's absolutely fine
because like I said before, we're going to be layering
on top of this color, and some of the colors
will actually come through in our layer of indigo that we lay down
and our pains gray. Before I talk a lot again, how about I put some
of this pains gray. Let me just check that you
can see this from above. I'm just going to put it. How about over here?
This is pains gray. As you can see, it's
already very, very dark. It's almost black. You know, so that's why I like using
this instead of black. I think we should also just put some more indigo in here just so we
don't run out of pains. All I'm going to do
is I'm going to take my size eight round brush. I think that's a
good brush size. I'm going to use
some clean water, and I'm just going to wet only the dark areas of
my baby killer whale. So we're leaving that
white patch out, okay? So you may have to re wet the areas that
you first started. So don't worry about
all these blue markings from the background as it will all just be covered
up by the dark indigo. I'm just going to
rewet this area as it's already starting to dry. So you just want a nice even sheen for the dark
areas if you want to get a smooth application
of your indigo color. Yeah, this parts also black. I almost didn't do that. Okay. I think this is looking good. Now, we're going to take some of that indigo and I'm just going
to drop it in, okay? In all the dark areas of
our kilowon as you can see, the indigo is already a
very beautiful color. It's already quite dark. But as I said before, in some previous videos, watercolor tends to dry lighter. Let me just quickly
start putting some down here because I had
wet this part first. Another thing that we
want to do is because if we want to add just a bit
of realism into this, we need to think about the
lighting of our killer whale. Obviously, it's going
to be lit up more from the top because of
the sunlight coming in. Because of that, I decided, don't worry about this patch over here that has a
little bit of green in it. We can work on that later. I don't want to get
too distracted, but these so called lighter
areas of the whale will be reflecting some of
its surrounding area of the surroundings
like the kelp forest. So it's normal for
the white areas to be darker and to also have shadow colors. But
I'll get to that later. As you can see, we've got a beautiful it looks
really beautiful now, but what I'm going
to do while it's wet is I want to try and drop in more color into the
bottom half of the whale. I feel like even
though I do feel like the dorsal fin
is not dark enough, so I'm just going to maybe do an overall add more
color overall. Let me just shape
that dorsal fin well because that's a very
important feature. Let's shape that well. Just dropping in more color. It's looking great. Make sure you get
those edges well, for the shape of the whale. Just make sure I know if your paper is reflecting
a lot of light like mine, just feel free to move it around or move your
hand around to get the right to help you with the tos of the
shape of the whale. This is nice and wet now. What I want to do is I want to drop in a bit of paints gray
while this is still wet. I'm going to activate my pain. We don't want too thick a pain. We want the same
consistency as just now. Okay. So here I go. I'm going to start
dropping in some of this color into the fin here. I think these are
the pectoral fins, that's what they're called. Take your time, do this well. While it's wet, I'm
just dropping in this color into kind of the bottom the bottom
half of our whale, a little bit over
here, bear in mind, we're only dropping
in the color into the bottom half or maybe just
take it up slightly here, but we want to leave the top part of our
whale just with indigo. We don't want to drop anything in there because we're trying to create a bit of a
color gradient, a bit to imply that, hey, the sunlight is falling on
the top part of the whale. There we go. What will
happen here is it will spread beautifully
on its own. I might just bring the color
up just slightly more. Just letting these colors mix, but I'm not going to go
all the way to the top. That's the beauty of watercolor. I do feel that because this
is the dorsal fin though, I think we should just
drop in a little bit over here because I feel like maybe the dorsal fin might
cast a bit of a shadow. Let's just drop it here, but everything else will be lighter. Okay. I'm going to leave
everything else untouched, darkening the bottom area. This is how we're using
watercolors to our advantage by doing this beautiful
blending by itself. I'm also just going to
use the dark color to just whatever I have on my
brush, just do that tail. This is the side profile of
the tail that we're seeing. That's why it looks very thin from this angle, but it's there. There we go. That's
our little guy done. I'm just going to shape
this part a little bit because I feel like it looks a little bit irregular there. Sorry. Yeah. That looks great. I have to restrain myself
from touching it too much, but I just want to
use this time to just definitely go over
those lines. Okay. That looks good, and I'm
just going to leave it for now and let it
completely dry now. And if I want to later, I can even use a clean dam brush when this is all dry
to remove more of that to remove more paint to suggest sunlight on
the top of the whale. Okay. But for now, I just want
to leave it untouched, just letting it dry completely. Okay. And just so I'm not going to rest
my hand on a wet part. I just want to let
this completely dry before I do the mum. Hey, everybody,
and welcome back. And as you can see, A Little
Guy is looking great. Look at that nice rich
color and because we did that technique that I told
you about where we dropped in the paints gray just at
the bottom half of it. As you can see that this part is lighter and it
looks beautiful. It looks like there's
some nice reflected light coming from the surface. And over here, too, it's not
as pronounced on this side. But what we can do
later on is we can use a clean damp brush to
maybe lift a bit of paint and even add a few white streaks to make it look like there are some surface water reflections
on the top of his body. But other than that, I
think he looks great. As you can see, our picture
is slowly coming to life. These colors are just
looking so beautiful. Before I do more work on the
whale on this little guy, I just think I'd like to do his mom's dark
markings first, then maybe we can after that simultaneously
work on both of them, but I just want to
do the mom too. All we're going to do is
we're just going to repeat that same process of
just using clean water. Oops, brushes a bit. Yeah, there we go. Sorry, my
brush just had a little bit, might have touched a bit of the green paint, but it's cool. Don't worry about it. We're only just going to
repeat the same process, wet the part of the killer
whale that is dark, and we're going to leave
the lighter parts for now. Because of the
reflection of the water, I might just turn my page around because it's
making it a little hard for me to see and I
strongly encourage you if you can't see because of
the wet reflective surface. This part over here, yeah, I think I'll also
leave that unpainted, as in I'm not going to
drop in water there, but we can refine that
shape later because it's just a very light patch that I noticed is on a kilowale's body. It's not as pronounced as
the other patches, but yeah, there is a slightly lighter area on the kilowale's body that I've noticed in many
photographs of kilohales. I don't have to do that
bad pectoral fin just yet. As best as you can because we're working with dark colors, just try and avoid those lighter areas like the
white patches near the eyes, and of course, the underbelly. Okay, so make sure you go the outline is nice and
defined before you paint it. Okay, I'm just checking
if this is nice now. I noticed that I've got a
bit of water over here, so I'm just going to
gently remove it with another small brush because
I don't want that to be wet. I'm just going to
use just a tiny bit of paper towel over there. Because that's a boundary between the dark markings
and the white underbelly. Very quickly now, I'm just
going to check that it's a nice even sheen of water
just to help the pain flow smoothly when I apply it
so that it spreads evenly. Okay. I think we've got this
to a nice consistency now, nice, I might just turn this back now just
so you can have a good look. Let's
do the same thing. We're going to start
by dropping in the beautiful deep
deep indigo color, which is such a beautiful color. To tell you the
truth, I feel like I have to turn this, sorry, because it's just how
my light is set up that I can't really the
reflection is just very, very strong for this
killer whale while I'm doing this. I
hope you don't mind. I hope you can see what
I'm doing. Yeah, you can. That's good. All right. That's why we have this nice
even even a glaze of water, so it helps our
paints spread evenly. Because the mom is big, I'm using the size 12 round. If you get a little paint
in the white areas, don't worry too
much about it now. We can lift it out later. It's more important
now that we try and apply a nice even sheen
before the kilo whale dries. Nice even coat of paint before we drop in
our paints gray. Just be careful near
these boundaries here because that's what gives our killer whale its
beautiful shape. That's why it's very important
to turn your paper if you can't really see because
of the reflections. The mom is looking a bit light, so I'm going to probably
have to drop in more, more indigo when I've covered every part of
the dark surface first, I might then drop
in a little bit more because this is a bigger area that we're
painting compared to the baby. That's why the baby looks
very nice and concentrated. I can do that tail later. I'll do that later. It's
more important now that I do this beautiful dorsal
fin watch the edges. The dorsal fin should have
a nice definite shape. All right. I think
that will do for now, let's just make sure we cover all the areas
that we need to cover. I'm just going to drop
in a bit more indigo over here because I feel
like it's really light here. But remember, we
want the top part of the whale to be lighter. I actually Yeah, that's looking very
beautiful for me. I don't mind if the back of the tail the back of the whale, I mean, looks a
little bit lighter. That actually looks good to me. I think because it's
in the background, but I just want to make sure
this part is a little bit darker before I drop
in the paints gray. Look at our whale.
She looks gorgeous. Look at these colors, painted over the green that
was on her body. It's just so beautiful. Yeah. I don't know why
this looks a little bit, I'm just going to try
and even that up a bit. I think that shape is good. I'm just going to
watch your hands, by the way, don't rest
it on a wet surface. There we go. I
think that's good. While this is still wet now, and I can do the pectoral
fin at the back later. Let me just define the
shape of this fin. All right. Are you
ready? Looks beautiful. I'm just rinsing my brush
and I'm going to just reactivate my paints
gray that's a bit dry. I think I might turn this around because it seems easier
for me to paint this way. I hope you can see
what I'm doing. Now I'm just going to drop in the paints gray should be the same
consistency as your indigo that you dropped in. Once more, we're going
to repeat this where. We're not going to paint
all the way to the top and then we're going
to let those colors just blend on their own. But I am going to surround the white patch around the eye. Just be careful with your brush, Remember, just watch
those edges, okay? Yeah. But this is
actually kind of fun. I love the colors. The colors look so beautiful. We want to try and use that
same consistency, okay? All right. That's
looking beautiful to me. I feel like the dorsal fin should have a bit of this
color too because I feel like it's I should have maybe
a bit of a shadow. I'm just going to do maybe just drop in a bit of color here, but not paint the whole thing. That's looking gorgeous to me. It looks really, really pretty. So while everything
is still wet, I might just paint the tail. It's just like Yep. I'm just going to turn it around now now that I've
added all the color. I'm loving this effect. It looks so gorgeous. And don't worry so much about
little mistakes like that. We can just remove the paint later with a very small
clean damp brush, but I'm just going to shape it. Watch where you put your hands. By the way, I always
tell myself that. This looks stunning. I love, love, love the effect. I'm just going to not
touch it anymore. I'm going to be
very disciplined. I'm just going to
leave it like that first to just completely dry. But you can see the
darker area is meeting the lighter area in
the top and it's creating a very, very
beautiful effect. How about you go give
yourself a break? If you're like me,
your water jars probably quite in
need of a clean. So why don't we just let this completely dry first before we start doing more stuff to it? I just noticed I just want
to shape this part where the tail meets the
yeah, that looks great. But why don't we all
go take a break now? Go clean your water dress
and every time I say that, I notice something
about the painting, this part of the
mouth, actually, I think, I'll just do
this now while it's wet. It's almost like a little
smile where the mouth opens. Okay. I can shape that more later. I just want to let everything
completely dry first, but I love that
effect over here. As you can see, my killer
whale is nice and dry now to the touch and I absolutely
love this color over here. I love that it's lighter
up here and we also see some of that beautiful indigo
coming through underneath. My only issue with this is, I just feel like this area ended up a little bit
too light because I just want it to be darker
like this area to be darker. And because of that, I just thought I would show you. I just want to very carefully
re wet this area over here. I don't have to
do the dorsal fin because I'm quite
happy with that. I just want to very
carefully re wet this area, and I want to just
drop in a little bit more of my
paints gray in here. If you are happy with the
way your killer whale looks, you don't have to do this step, and in fact, I would
rather not have to do it, but just because I feel like this part is
a little bit too light, I need to do drop in color wet on wet again just to achieve the
darkness that I want. Maybe your kilowal looks
very different from mine. Maybe you're happy
with the color. But for me, I just
feel like I want my kilowe to have a
three dimensional look and because of that, I have to just increase the
intensity over here of it. What I'm going to
do is I'm going to very gently place water. I feel like this area is fine here where the pectoral fins. I'm not going to wet that area. I think it's quite dark already. I just roughly mapped out that the body is over here and the
pectoral fin is over there, even though it's quite dark. What I'm doing now
is I need to be very careful when I put this water in now,
when I wet this area, to not lift up the pain
that is underneath it, to not lift this
layer of pain up because that's not
what I want to do. I just want to re wet this area. Because I want to
drop in more of pains gray towards the
bottom of the whale. See, I left the
dorsal fin unpainted. It's actually okay
with me if I go over this white patch because I feel like it should
be a little bit darker. It's not really white. So once more, just
explaining what I'm doing. I just want to drop
in more pains gray, but I want to do it in a nice even way so it spreads nicely and it
doesn't leave hard edges. So this is nice and wet now. I'm just reactivating my pain and I'm just going to drop it in in the areas that I feel weren't quite
dark enough just now, just down here, and I'm
going to do this as carefully as I can without
lifting up the paint below. So just be very careful.
Look what I did over here. Just be very careful where you rest your hands
when you do this. Good thing it just went on the edge of the
painting over here, so it didn't go on my painting. That's I'm always saying,
please be very careful. Not only which part of
your paints are wet, but if you're like me and you
have a palette next to you, you also have to
be aware of that. So I'm just dropping in the
dark color near the bottom. Just to increase that
intensity because I just felt like it wasn't
dark enough just now. I want to achieve this look that the whale is
three dimensional. So just focusing on that area just now that
I felt was very light. I'm just turning it back
now to just see that. Everything else looks great. Using the wet on wet technique to just drop in paint in
the areas that I want to darken and I'm going
to let it very gently blend with
the area up there, which was just wet, but I didn't add if you notice, I only added the pains
gray near the bottom and let it blend at this paint
line as you see over here. It's just going to do
its own thing now. I'm going to leave it. I did not put any
pains gray at the top. So I just want to let
this completely dry first while I'm doing that just so I can
do something else, I'm going to take some of
my paints gray now and I'm just going to do this
other pectoral fin that you see over here with the
pains gray because I might as well do something that I can do while waiting
for that to dry. There you go. That's just the other
fin that's at the back, the pectoral fin that's
further away from us. But that looks good. So I'm just going to rinse my brush now and
I'm just going to let this paint just do
its work, leave it alone. Don't tilt your paper
here and there because then gravity will
bring the paint down. We just want to leave
it flat like that. That's why I didn't drop
any paint at the top there. So it's going to just create a very natural looking
blend over there by itself. While this is happening, while the mom is just drying, I think we can start
working on the baby a little, it looks great now. What I'm going to
do is I'm going to take my small round brush. Oh, that's my size eight. Sorry. I'm going to take
my small round brush, which is my size four round, and I'm just going to wet it. There's certain things
about this whale that I just want to fix first. For instance, this white
patch here, as you can see, it has a bit of a line
across it because we were painting the background and leaving some white spaces. So I think, um we should just kind of blend it
a little bit into, um, just get rid
of that hard line. While I'm talking to you, I'm actually just wiping
my hand because this is pain that I got by resting my hand too
close to my palate. So I really don't want to take any risk because
we've come so far. I don't want to, you know, end up having to
correct a really, really difficult mistake
by resting my hand, which has pain, and it just happens to be the darkest
pain that I have. So yeah, that took a
while to come off. Alright. So I don't ruin my painting. I'm going to take
some clean water, and I'm just going to
try and blend this now. Oops. Just be very careful
that you don't sorry, the water just jumped
out there for a while. Always have your paper
towels ready with you to just correct mistakes. I'm just trying to
soften this line here. I mean, some of you might
not have this problem. It's just from the background
just now that I painted. All I'm doing is I'm just using a clean them brush to
correct that. Okay. But also, I feel that
because this part of the white of the
killer whale is, um, going to reflect the light of the kelp
forest around it. I actually think that
once we correct this, once we actually see I blended
that line a little bit, I think we should
just use a little bit of our what color was this one? The peacock blue, which also is greenish and
I just want to drop in a little bit of it and maybe just leave a little
bit of the white exposed. All I did is I wet that area and I'm just dropping
in a little bit of that because I feel like this part shouldn't be so
white because it's um surrounded by
the kelp forest. It's going to appear greener.
I think that looks good. I'm just wondering
if it's dark enough. Maybe we can just drop in
a little bit more of that. It's starting to
look a bit greenish because I think I mix
some of my paints in, but I'm just now
just dropping it in a little bit more carefully. I think that looks good and
I'm going to stop there. What I'm going to do is
even this area down here, I'm just going to see
there's this line here that looks a little bit hard from when I did the background. I'm just going to just
use a damp brush to just smooth away that line and
also while I'm doing that, I'm also lifting some of that
color off from just now. I don't really want to lift
too much of the color off, but I just got rid of that line. This whole area is a bit wet. I'm going to do the same
thing. I'm just going to drop in a little
bit of that color. And just because I feel like it so it should reflect the light. How about we paint this area
here a little bit darker? We drop in more of that, um, bluish green color, the peacock color over here. But maybe we can let
this part towards its mouth look a
little bit lighter. That's what I think the lighting should look like because this is a picture that I've composed
now and that's what I think. I think just make this
part a little bit darker. I think that looks good. Also, what's going on with
this patch over here? I actually don't really
mind that patch, but I think we could drop
in a little bit more color. Why don't we just wet only this light area
here and do the same. We're going to drop in
some of that color. And maybe we will also just not put it all
the way to the top, maybe just down here where
the belly is and maybe just leave the top part a little bit lighter and
just let it blend by itself. Yeah. I think that looks good. Maybe just remove a little
bit of that color there. But I think that
looks really good. I might just drop in a
little bit more color over here and then leave it to dry. And then the eye here. I think that looks really good, so I don't want to
touch it anymore. That's great. We're just
going to let this dry. I'm just checking in
on this over here. I noticed there's a bit of
water pooling over here. What I'm going to do is I'm
using my clean dam brush to just absorb some of this water. I don't want it to
pool over here because that might leave
some marks that I don't want if there's
too much water there. I also want to remove
a bit of that water. All I'm doing is I'm cleaning
my brush with clean water. I'm wiping it, it's
as dry as it can be, and then I'm just going to
absorb some of that water. These are just a few
practical skills. Every time you do this
rinse your brush because, I'm starting to lift the pain, so I'm going to stop doing that. I just wanted to remove all
the excess water because I just didn't want it to create watermarks that
I didn't really want. So other than that, it's drying. So how about we just
let this dry now, okay? Everything dry. And
when we come back, we can start working more on the mother killer whale
and doing some of these lovely sun like
surface water sort of muds that will make
our killer whales look even more realistic. So let everything dry, go have a break, and I
will see you very shortly.
9. Lifting paint to create patterns: Hi, everybody, and my kilo
whale has finally dried. That took a long time
for it to finally dry, but I'm actually happy
with the color now, the richer color
that it has below. I noticed a little mark here
from when it was drying. That's why I was
trying to remove the extra water so
that it wouldn't pool. But this tiny mark is
absolutely no problem for me because I'm
going to be lifting off some squiggly lines
later on that are going to represent the surface
water marks that, you know, uh reflected
on the skin. That's no problem at all, but I am happy with the richer color that we see right now. As you can see, our
baby is dry and yeah, our pictures really
coming together. I think it's looking
really good. I just want to do a
couple of things to the mom while and
let them just dry, very, very minor things. Before we start
lifting off some, surface water patterns
on the baby's body. I just want to use this time now to just do a
few corrections. I hope you've changed your jaws during the break
and rinsed your brushes. For instance, this part of here, I just want to now use my brush to very gently lift
the color off. You see, even though pains
gray is a really dark color, it lifts off quite easily. And I'm actually just going to spread that color
over here because we are going to apply
a bit of color later to the white patches, just because they are
very, very white now. I also want to do things. I'm just going to turn this around just to make it easier, and I'm sure you can
still see what I'm doing. Just because it's easier for my hand and it's more natural. I just want to so once more, just watch your palette. I haven't gotten any stains
this time on my hand, but just very carefully
with a clean damp brush, I'm just fixing up any
little mistakes like, you know, paint
just going a little over the line because
the dorsal fin is very, very important. Like, for instance, this
ile mistake over here, very easily fixed by just doing some very gentle lifting
with a clean damp brush. Every time you lift a color, you have to rinse your brush and wipe off the excess water with a paper towel
just to keep it clean, so it's effective. The lifting is effective. Otherwise, if it's dirty, it will not, lift cleanly and it will
leave some marks behind. Also so I'm just going to turn it back to
the normal orientation now. I think everything else
looks good, you know. Maybe at the very bottom here, maybe we can just do
just a little bit. Watch your hand, any
surface that's still a bit wet, watch your hand. I think we could
maybe I might just turn her body this way just to make it
easier for me to lift. Feel free to turn your
paper around anytime to get an easy way that's natural for your hand to
either paint or lift pain. So yeah, that all looks
really good to me. I might just rinse my brush and just this tiny little splash of pain here doesn't really
bother me. It's fine. Okay. So there we
go. That's all good. Now, I said we were
going to now look at the baby who we haven't
really done for a while. So last time, we just added
a little bit of color on these lighter patches of
our baby killer whale because this baby killer whale is swimming below
his mom and it's, you know, in the deeper water. Obviously, when you
go deeper, you know, you're going to be
further away from the sunlight near the surface. Objects are going to appear
darker and they might also appear bluer because the
deeper we go in the ocean, if you've ever
taken photographs, you notice that you know, the deeper water just always
comes out looking bluer. So that's why I chose these colors for the
baby's white patches. But for the mom, I think that she should reflect the colors
that are closer to her. So I was thinking
more, um, greens, the lighter colors
that we used on this section of the background, the greens and maybe just
a little bit of the blues. But I don't know about using anything really
dark like indigo, but we'll see in a sec. I'm getting a bit
ahead of myself. What I'm doing is I'm using a clean damp brush now
to apply for the baby. What I'm going to do
is I'm going to gently lift little squiggly lines. I hope you can see this. Feel free to zoom, use the settings to enlarge if you want to
watch this closely. As you can see, just making some very squiggly
lines by lifting. Every time I lift, I rinse my
brush and I and I clean it. Try not to make it
look too uniform. Maybe some of the water ripples don't have to all go
in the same direction. That's my advice here. If you want, you can
maybe look up pictures on the Internet of what
water patterns look like. Also, I'm using a small brush
because I don't want to remove too thick lines because I feel like it doesn't really look like water surface
patterns anymore. Something like that, and we try and not make it
look so uniform. I'm just playing around
a bit with that. I remove some over here. We're only going to do this at the very top part
of the baby's skin. Okay, so isn't that
wonderful that we can use a brush to lift off color and then
create this cool effect? So I love how that looks. I don't want to overdo it. I'm famous for overdoing stuff, so I'm just going to lift very, I think that's all. I think that looks really
good, and, you know, I don't want to
overdo that too much. The babies, gotten some
nice little watermarks like that, those marks. I think it looks really,
really good on it. I don't want to do too much. If you want, if you really
want maybe the dorsal fin. But I like the
dorsal fin defined, but I was just
thinking maybe I could just remove a little bit of that pain for the top
part to show look, it's a bit of that paint
has been lifted off. Another thing you can
do is maybe the fin can have a little
bit of pain lifted off just a little bit. The fin was quite dark because we use quite strong paint there. And remember, not a wet brush, use a damp brush. You don't want to put lots
of water here and then it starts lifting up too much color, it
wets the whole area. That's not the
effect that we want. We just want to lift a
little bit of that pain. So you really do have to rinse your brush and dab it
on a clean paper towel. I think that looks okay that
the fin doesn't have to be too two lifted. That's fine. I don't want
to touch it too much. While I'm still
here, I might just use some of the color
that we used earlier. I was this blue,
the peacock blue. I just want to paint
just slightly a bit of a shadow underneath
him just to define him a bit. Just to define the boundaries
a little and that's all. I'm not going to overdo that.
I think that looks great. Just looking at this
fin and wondering if I lifted enough color off
and if it looks okay. Maybe it was a thick
layer of paint, so I'm just going to maybe
just do a little bit more. It's definitely thicker
application of paint. I think that looks good. I don't want to
touch it anymore. I think I almost forgot. We've got this little part of the head that projects out
a little bit, like a snout. I just want to go over that to highlight that see
I just did that. Just so you can see there's
a bit of a boundary here, and this part sticks out. I just thought I would
do that just by very gently lifting off a little
bit of pain and that's it. I don't want to touch it anymore
because I think it looks great and I really don't
want to overdo it. I honestly think
the baby is done. I don't think we need to do
anything more with the baby. Now back to the mum. What I want to do
here now is I want to paint the lighter
patches of the mum. But before I do that as well, I just want to just gently
lift a little bit of this out because I want her to
have a bit of a smiley, not really a smile,
but, you know, just I felt like maybe
I made her frown a little bit because I
noticed that they have these marks as well,
near their mouth. All right. Okay.
That looks good. While that dries actually, I think I think I can probably
do the patch over here. Like I said earlier, I think this is already a little bit
green from the background, but I just want to wet it again just so the
paint spreads evenly. I'm just going to use
some of the green colors. The colors that are closer
to the surface because the mom is closer
to the surface and the colors around her are
going to be reflected. I'm going to use some of
this green that we had. But let's just see. Maybe, I might have to go a little bit
darker, but that's okay. Maybe I also use some
of the darker green. This green is Hookers green. I already applied sap green. I'm just going to drop in
a bit of hookers green. I'm just wondering if maybe Hooks green looks a
little bit too green. I'm just going to lift off a little bit of
this hookers green. Okay. I think I
might just drop in. It's just quite green. It's greener than I thought. I might just drop
in a little bit of the olive green to just also
dial the color down a bit. But, looking at this. Sometimes watercolor is
also about trial and error. I'm just seeing what's good What's the better
approach to this? Does that look a
little bit too green? Maybe it's a little
bit too green. I'm just going to remove a
little bit of that color. So lifting is very easy. We just use a clean dam brush and I'm sure you're probably quite sick of
hearing me say that. Yeah, I think that's
a good amount. I don't think we need
to use a lot of it, and maybe we might also
just drop in a little bit of that blue just because I just feel like I don't
want it to look too green. But I think we should
leave it a bit lighter than the baby's
markings, for instance. This is all just me improving a little. I hope you don't mind. I'm going to do this ePatch now. Also, I don't want
to put too much I don't want the killer
wheel to look too green. So maybe don't not drop
it in all the way, as in I just dropped
it in at the bottom, even though I wet
the whole patch. Maybe we can use a
little bit of that blue. The blue color, the peacock
blue ends up looking quite like a jewelly green. I think that looks good. Maybe I might just lift a little bit of this color off over here with the
clean damp brush. I think that looks good, and
I don't want to overdo it. Finally, I'm going to swap to my size eight round brush now and we're going
to do the underside. Because this painting is based on a lot of photos and
also my imagination, I have to sometimes just
think about the colors and how I think it should look. Obviously, I don't
want my my kilo whale to look just start green. But I think it's important
that the killer whale does. I'm just dropping in colors
into this wet section. I think I am going to take a bit more of the blue here because we do have some blues in the area here and I'm just going to use
it mainly at the bottom to outline the boundary of the mouth of the kilo whale,
maybe some over here. Yeah. This is a painting based on my own idea of what it should look like
with the surroundings. Most of the color
that I dropped in is going to be concentrated
at the bottom. But what I love is, I love this little boundary
that we've created. For the killer whale to just show where the
mouth ends and stuff, the jaw and stuff. I think that looks great. I
like that. I like this look. I don't feel like it
needs to be as dark as the white patches over here because
like I said before, the m is on the top and she's closer to the
surface as you can see, we would expect there
to be less shadow. The only thing I want
to do with this tail is I think I want to
use some of that blue. That's too concentrated,
but no worries. I've used some of that
blue and I'm just going to let just blend it into the into this patch. Yeah, so we got a nice outline. But I also just want
to lift off the color, some color up here, nearer to the surface,
just because I feel like maybe that part
can be a bit lighter. Oops, be careful because
I'm using a bigger brush. I'm going to swap
back to my size four. Just be careful of
the black paint because we don't want
to reactivate that. The pains gray, I mean. I just need to be a
little bit careful. I don't want to
overwork this area now that I've accidentally
woken up the black paint, so I'm just going to
leave it for now, but I'm going to take
a step back and I think this looks
great. I really do. I think it looks very,
very natural and I feel like I don't
need to put a lot of of paint over here because I don't really want the killer wheel to
look like green green. I think it looks nice.
I'm going to stop now and I'm just having a look at what else
I have to do. Oh yeah. With some clean water and the small brush, we are
going to do the same thing. We are going to lift
off some of that pain. How I suggest doing this is use squiggly small squiggly lines. Some parts might be a little
bit harder to lift off because they're thicker
applications of pain. Um, so remember the lines are not all going to be
in the same direction. They look like I know
this sounds a bit weird, but like a snake's
tongue almost, some of them are a crossroad, so to speak, sort of a pattern. What I want to do over here
is remember how I said there was a bit of a boundary
line there that I noticed? Well, I'm going to disguise it by lifting the
paint off right there. See? Most things in watercolor
are actually very, what you think are mistakes are actually very, very fixable. If you know what to do. I feel like if you've got
a good imagination, I think then it's all
very, very salvageable. Okay. I'm just trying to do
a few more patterns here. So take your time with this, you don't have to rush and
the good thing about this is because it's not like we're working wet on wet or
anything like that. So, this is just lifting. So take your time
to do this properly because we've come so far
we're so near the end already. So maybe I'm just
changing the patterns. I would highly recommend because I'm just free
handing this now, if you feel like you need a
little bit of practice, like, um just look up
pictures of animals. Well, more importantly, whales, killer whales swimming with
the surface marks on them. Very important though, try not to make it look too clumpy. Some of these lines
can go down a little further to the body. Just as long as it doesn't pass the middle of the body, I feel. Another way that we
could do surface marks, water surface marks
that I didn't want to do it yet unless this didn't work out is to
use gouache paint. But because so far we've
only used watercolors, I felt like maybe we should
just try this method out. I think it's looking good. If it's too subtle, we can then consider maybe using some white
gouache over the marks. But so far, I feel
like it's okay. Over here, I think I could just lift off a
little bit more pain. Yeah. That's looking great. This might be a little
bit time consuming, but just take your time. I'm just lifting off squiggly
lines and get creative. Some of them can look like
Y shapes or a C shape, upside down, but just
don't use straight lines. If you are going to use lines
that go down to the body, I think you should curve it just so we get
the impression that, oh, yeah, this animal
is three dimensional. And the length as well of vary the length of these marks so
that they're not all stopping at
the same distance. After this dries, I'm going to have another look at
this and see whether we do need to use gouache pin or not because I've already made the effort just now for the
lines, the surface marks. I made an effort just now to make sure that the top part of the killer whale was lighter than the bottom part to give it that three D look. So it's looking good so far. Another place to remove
paint is over here too, where this part
of the the snout, so to speak, of
the killer wheel. I think that part you see, we can lift it up a bit because
this parts sticking out, I think it would have
maybe a little bit of surface reflections on it. It would catch the light. There we go. I don't
want to overdo that. I'm near the end already. Let's just keep going. Maybe these can start going in a different direction because and Okay. Time to rinse my brush. And like I said, curved lines to kind of show that
this object has, you know, a roundish body.
Okay, so I've done that. I just noticed I've
got this line here. Maybe I can just
blend that line a bit into the boundary here
of the killer whales body. Yeah, that's okay. It doesn't
really bother me that much. Let me just take a
step up here now. I can notice these marks. I do notice them and I
hope you notice yours too. I also think maybe let's do
the same thing for the mom. Let's try and remove
a little bit of that pain here and do
a bit of a watermark because I feel like the fin here would definitely
catch the the light. It's much harder to
lift the pants in the areas that we painted
over quite thickly. All right. I think
that's okay and I think it's still lifting. Just a subtle effect. I hope you like what
you're seeing right now and maybe should our dorsal fin also
have a little bit of maybe a bit of lifting? Yeah, that looks nice to me. I don't want to lift too much, maybe a little bit
more down here. Yeah. See, we created a nice maybe I should
try doing that here. I think when I press
down with my brush more, I lift off the pain easier than when I'm just
using the tip. But you do have to use
the tip only to try and get those thin water marks. So Okay. Just going over a few
areas just to lift off. Now, I'm considering doing
something to the painting, but I'm just going to
think about it first. I'm just going to let
these all dry before I tell you what I'm
thinking of doing as well. So how about we let
this completely dry. This has ended up looking
a bit weird to me. Let me just try and lift
this a little bit more. Yeah, I'm just going to lift
more color off because it just looks like a thin
line at the moment. So I'll just make it look a
bit thicker. So there we go. I think and also for
the baby down here, it looks a bit thin, so I'm just going to try and use
more of my brush to lift. I think that looks
more natural. Okay. So how about we just
take a little break now. We're so close to the end. I'm just going to think about what we're
going to do next, whether we want to include the next step or not,
and it's optional. Then after that, we
are definitely going to start painting our little
fish. So I can't wait. So please let everything
dry all your watermarks. And when we come back, I will tell you what we
are going to do next.
10. Using white gouache: Hi, everybody, and welcome back. And I hope you've had a
little break and that you're ready to finish this painting because we
are so close to finishing. Uh, I absolutely love
what we've done so far. And during the break, when
I've had time to just let everything dry and
look at the painting, what I encourage you to do as students as well of watercolor is keep taking breaks and when you come back with fresh
eyes, you can ask yourself, is there anything
else I can do to help create the mood
that I want to, whether it's a dreamy mood, what other effects can I add? During the break, I looked at, I really like these markings on the little little aca baby. I think that is enough for
the aca that's, you know, kind of near the deeper
part of the ocean, whereas his mom is
towards the surface. I just felt that perhaps
these markings that we did by lifting were just I
felt like they're just not light enough
and I've lifted, as much as I could of the pain. I just feel for this reason, I want to just emphasize
some of these markings. I want to do that by using just a small round brush
and a little bit of this, which is white gouache paint. If you've never used
white gouache before, it is thick and opaque, even though it is water
soluble like watercolors. But what's great about it
is it can layer on top of darker colors in a way that
you can with watercolors. With Watercolors, we
always go from light, and then we layer
colors on top of it and we work our way
from light to dark. Well, this is a game
changer when paired with watercolors because we can then create lighter marks
on darker surfaces. If you are happy with how
your killer wheel looks, that's absolutely fine if you
don't want to do this step. This is just something that
I want to do and I don't mind also showing you
how I would do it. I'm just going to put a
little bit of this white, white gouache over here. If you can, when you are
working with gouache paint, I suggest because we want
to do these markings, I would suggest using a
small synthetic round brush rather than using your
watercolor brushes for the simple fact that
gouache paint is a lot thicker and we want to apply it on thicker than
we do with watercolors. Because of that, a synthetic
brush would be great. So we guash, when
layering on top, you're not going to
use a lot of water. I just literally wet
my brush and I'm just going to test this out because I think it's really important to
test it out first. Just on a dark surface. This is a great consistency
now, what I'm going to do is, I'm not going to do
this everywhere, but I might just start over
here. I'll work my way. What I'm doing is, I just
want to emphasize some of those marks in a
way that I couldn't really do earlier because
I find that with lifting, there's a limit to how much detail you can
put in with lifting. So the great thing about this is this media
is, as you can see, I'm working it over a dark color and it stands
out so beautifully. Right now I'm just doing
these random squiggly lines and also going over the top of the areas that I've lifted. Emphasizing them a little. It's important not to
get too carried away. But the great thing
about this is as well, if you feel like it is too
concentrated or something, you can actually
use a little bit of water to dilute it down. I'll show you in a sec, but let me just All
I'm doing now is emphasizing some of those
water surface patterns. As you can see,
they're standing out a lot more now by using this media this medium, I mean, of gouache. Now, you don't
want it too thick. I dilute it enough for it to stand out and just bear in mind, it will look a bit
lighter when it dries. Just doing a few little patterns that look a bit like
surface patterns. They're always going to be
squiggly lines and maybe just vary them a
little bit by making some parts a little bit
thicker than others. I just thought I would
introduce you to this media. Media sorry, I
keep saying media. I'm just going to do so just because I decided
to do this once more because I just felt that lifting the color
wasn't enough for the mother orca as
she's closer to the surface and I
felt that the lines, the water the water patterns, since she's closer
to the surface should be more pronounced
than on the baby. I'm fine to leave the baby
just like that because I feel like if I don't
have to do extra work, I don't want to overwork
the surface of the pain. Okay, that's what I think the
water patterns look like. I just want to maybe whatever
pain I have left here, I just want to thicken it a little bit as in use thicker strokes to create
a little bit of variation. You can even maybe trail
off some lighter parts, use whatever pain is
left on your brush. Remember, we don't want to
do straight lines because of the contours of the
killer whales body. Okay. I feel that looks good. I want to stop because I don't want to overdo it and I think it looks really,
really good now. I think it's more pronounced. Another thing I was
thinking about doing when um just to set the scene even
more for the water ripples, even though it's obvious,
these are water ripples. Another thing you can
do and this is just purely optional since
we've taken out the white gouache is
we can actually use a small flat brush to do a bit of sunbeams coming
into the water. Now, this is just
something I thought of doing to set the
scene even more. Even though I think it
already looks great now. But this is optional. You don't have to do this, but if you want to, that
would be great. For this step, I'm
actually going to use this is an angled
flat synthetic brush, and this is what
I use for guash. Or actually, I'm thinking
maybe I might actually use a flat brush that is no, I think let's stick with this. I can always swap it over if
it's not good for the job. But what I want to do is, I'm going to wet this paint, and I've prepared
a dark surface. This is just a dark surface of I think I used
Pains gray earlier. What we want to do is we
want to create Sunbeam. See, the fact that I can't test it out is because
the paint was too dry. This is you want a
consistency like that. Maybe that might be
a little bit strong. I think we want it more
like we want to do that. Okay. So like I said, this step is optional. We don't have to do it. If you're not confident
doing it, that's fine. But I just felt like
think about the light as coming from a source
like the top of a triangle and spreading
out like that. That's what I want
to do. I'm just going to use some
of my white paint. I'm just going to
test it out first. The beams of light, I'm
going to just actually, I feel like I want to do this. How about I do it
over here first before I go on the killer whale? I'm going to imagine
it's coming like that. Yeah. A point to note is these lights are going
to come at straight lines. What you can do is in between
lines, the beams of light, you can also you can
put little beams, if that makes sense,
little lights. I'm going to just so
I get this angle, I'm going to imagine
there's a triangle and so it's going to start looking like this on this side. Whoops. I think I might have gone a little bit farther
there, but don't worry. Don't worry. I will dry
lighter than it appears. You can already see that it's starting to blend in
with the surroundings. If it's a triangle
coming like that, I'm going to somewhere here, it will come down vertically. Now I'm just going to
keep continuing and I'm going to stop when it hits
the surface of the whale. So you don't want
your paint to be too wet and not too dry that
you can't even paint this. So what we're going to do now is I'm actually going to switch to my I've been
using an angled flat brush, but I think I'm going to swap to my small synthetic flat brush. I'm just going to
test this out now. What I want to do now
is I'm just going to work I got the directions
of all the beams down. I just want to thicken
it a bit by using this pressing down
a bit like that. With my flat brush, just
at this angle like that. Anytime you start feeling like
the pains getting too dry, we're dry brushing on
some, white guash pain. You want it just enough
that as you can see, I'm dry brushing it and you can you don't want it too wet. I want the dry brushing
look like that, it looks like beams
of light coming down. So this is just a step
that I wanted to do. If you don't like this effect, that's fine. You
don't have to do it. This is your painting
and I'm always very open to people
interpreting the class, any of my classes,
however they want to interpret it and
maybe you might even want to do something a
bit different from me. But you see, I love the
way the flat brush works. When I'm just applying
a small flat brush like that and I'm dry brushing
on the white guash, you can see it gives that beautiful sort of light rays spreading out a bit. So we want to bring it down and also change the thickness, sometimes maybe use the
rather than press down on it, you could just use the
side of your brush. Okay. And don't worry just
try and create a bit of variation by sometimes using the thinner side of your brush. And sometimes going
with the thicker side. I think that's good. In between these light beams, you can also do a little bit of shorter strokes in between. Now, I don't want
to overdo this. I'm just going to
finish this up, but I like this effect. I like it and I think it adds to the killer whale
to the killer whales, makes the sunbeams look like they really
are making contact with the killer
whale and causing this beautiful markings,
water markings. Now, I don't want to overdo it. I think this looks great already and I don't
want to overdo it. Another thing I noticed
that I hadn't done earlier is I think
maybe the tail, we could just add so this is
just me thinking out loud. Maybe we could add
just a little bit of white gouache here. Oh, sorry. Almost going to rest my hand there. I
always keep forgetting. Maybe we can just add a little
bit of white marks there, as you can see that I just put down with the very
tip of the brush. Now, I love this effect, and I want to stop here because I think it
looks really great already. So I just hope I inspired you to try out different
things and yeah, don't be scared. Try it out. If you're not confident, it always helps to
have spare pieces of watercolor paper
with you to try out effects because that's
how you grow as an artist by trying new things and not just sticking
to the same things. I hope that I've
given you some ideas. Sorry, I just want to
make this a little bit. A little bit. Yeah, I just felt like that
was a bit thin, but yeah. Sorry, while I was talking,
I just interrupted myself. Now I'm going to
put it down now, my brush and not
get carried away, but that is a nice something
that you can try in the future, to do sunbeams. So before I end up
talking a lot again, I'm just standing up
looking at my painting, and I hope you love
what you see as well. I think this painting
is looking so good. We just have one tiny section of the class left in which
we're going to paint our little fishies
into the kelp forest. So I can't wait for
you to join me then, so I will see you in the next section of
this class really soon.
11. Adding Finishing Touches: Hey, everybody. And we're
back and look at this. Can you imagine? This
is such a great. This is such a great scene. This is such a great painting. Yeah. I love it. I hope you love what
you've created too. I mean, when you think about
it, we've done so much. We've painted a beautiful,
varied background. We painted an
entire Kelp forest. Even though that took a while, you can see now how this is all coming
together really well. We painted our
beautiful Oca we've also lifted paint
using a damp brush, a clean damp brush to create these beautiful markings of
the water surface patterns. I also introduced you to using white gouache to further
emphasize lighter markings and highlights and also for
using it as a tool to create the sunbeam
effect in the water. We've actually done a lot of different techniques in
this painting alone. But right now, I want
you to have a lot of fun with what I'm
about to show you. So I'm thinking I want to paint tiny little fish kind of
hiding among the kelp forests. I just think this will
look so cute and pretty. The good thing about this
technique is I want to use a silver metallic pen because if we paint
these little fish, when we're just kind of
moving the page a bit, the metallic pigments
are going to catch the viewers' eyes and I think there's just something
very enchanting about it. I think it also adds to
that whole magical feel. I'm just going to use my
spare piece of paper again. So oh, even better. So I've done a few
here just now. I was just practicing
some shapes of fish, and I came up with a
design that I like, you don't have to use my design, but this is just a very let me just make sure this is clean before I put down
on our painting. So how about I paint one up
here? All you have to do. This is a very easy
technique is we're literally going to do that very simple
fish shape that you see. Okay. Once you got that, this is where we're going to start making it look
more fish like. I'm just going to
thicken the tail a bit, but it still has
two pointy ends. And now I'm also going to make the fish a little bit
pointier at the mouth. I'm going to then stick a little fin shape up
like that and below, and then I'm going
to fill in the fish. So that is the fish shape that I'm talking about, and
just look at that. It catches the light and it
looks really, really good. If you don't have a silver
metallic pen like this, another option would be to
use silver ink and a dip pen. But if you're not very
confident using a dip pen, then I think the easier option to achieve the same effect is to use a metallic pen since you have a lot
more control of it. These are things
to keep in mind. How about we move this
out of the way so I don't have any more accidents
of me resting my hand on my palette and
getting unwanted paint around our beautiful painting
that's almost done now. Without any further delays, what I like to do is, I want to put the fish. I think they would look great against the darker background. Maybe down here,
a few down here, they will really stand out
among the darker colors. So why don't we
start now over here? How about I put a
little guy over here. Let's just use the
same technique, feel free if you want to do a different sort
of fish silhouet, but I found that this
was an easy one to do. We start with that very
simple fish shape, then we start making
the tail a bit thicker and just filling
it in like that. Then I start by making
the fish a little bit pointier at the nose. Then I also start extending
some fins and then I just paint it in not painted
in I fill it in like that. And that's one fish done. And so I'm going to
put another one here. I think that they look
pretty when they're like, you know, a whole
school of them. But, you know, that's the fish shape that I have
mastered doing practicing. But if you want to do
something that looks more like an angel
fish shape and stuff, you're also welcome to do it. This is all just a suggestion. Maybe we can change
the positions a bit, maybe these are all facing
the same way right now. Sorry, I skipped ahead and I was trying to
already do that shape. If you understand what I just did or if you want to go ahead and do your own
fish shape, that's fine. But I like this one. Look at that. Isn't that
so cute and pretty? Okay, so maybe we can also create a little
bit different variety. I guess you could have I
know, different sizes. Maybe some can be
smaller than others. Okay. So maybe we can have some hiding at a little
bit higher up here. But my advice is, don't do too many. Uh If you want, you can use, how about
I do this sit now? Because I actually can't
wait to do this side. Down here, it's going to be a nice dark corner here and this is going to stand out
so much better here. Go, look at that. You see how it's catching the
light and reflecting it? I might just speed up this part of the
process since you've already observed me doing it a few times and I think you've already got
the hang of it. I might start doing some
on the other plants. I'm going to just stick to the darker areas because I feel like they really
stand out there. Y I've been doing this for a while
now and I wanted to What's funny is
because I'm right handed, I find it easier to do the
fish in this direction. This one was a little bit
more difficult for me. That's why I think
these might look slightly bigger than
these fish over here. But overall, I love it. I try to stick to
the darker parts of the painting, to do these fish. I also tried to vary maybe
putting a couple up here too. I'm just having a
look standing up and seeing how many more
fish I should put in. I really do feel like I
want to put maybe we're just finishing things
up now with the fish. Maybe I really want to
put a guy over here. For some reason, I
just explain it. I really want to put
a guy over here. Maybe just so there's
somebody hiding over here in this in this kelp that's tilted sideways. I hope
you're having fun. This should be just
take your time, maybe listen to some
music when you do this. I think one guy over here. But like I said before, I
don't want to do too many. Maybe we can do a guy I like to just vary
the height a bit. So how about one guy over here? Like I said before, they do look good when you have a
whole school of them. But I feel like I've
already done a lot of them. Okay. Yeah. With a silver pen,
it's really convenient. How about just one
more little guy here? Because this is a nice
dark patch that's just screaming out for
me to as you can see, I find it a lot harder to
do fish in this direction. That guy looks a
bit big because, I'm just putting
that fin out there. Maybe I might give him
a bigger tail. Yeah. I think I'm done with this side. It's cute to have
I'm just thinking, do we need anymore maybe
how about we do maybe half a fish peeking out
over here from behind the um just to create a
little bit of variation. Maybe he's hiding behind
this leaf over here. We can do little things
like that as well. But I've already
done all my fish, looking out. Should have
thought about that. But anyway, I think I've
done quite a bit of fish. Yeah. Maybe I'll just do
another one in hiding a little But maybe there can be a guy coming
out, deciding. I just want to change the
height a bit as well. How about one guy
hiding over here? We just see fish head
sticking out over there. I know that looks a bit strange. How about over here too? Maybe we'll have almost the
whole fish out over here. Yeah. So let me just stand up. And since we did do some
of those partial fish, I might just continue
in the darker areas. Maybe we can have another
guy over here kind of just sticking out too. And how about we do one
over here, half coming out. D since this is a
leaf over here, I think I have to do
his tail like that. Yeah. That's a big fish. And another one
half emerging too. How about? Then
we'll wrap it up. I guess we could do. I just
want a different height, maybe how about over here? I can be almost the
whole fish. Over here. Let's see. We can also just have maybe
a tail peeking out. How about how about behind here? I want to do a dock area. Yeah, I guess we could just have a tail sticking out here. You see, these are ideas that I sometimes come out with
wow I'm actually painting. Doing the last final stand, and I think this looks great. I don't think we
should overdo it. I think I'm going to
reluctantly stop right now. Okay. I hope you
love this effect, but I just have one more idea, even though this looks very, very complete already and you don't have to do this
if you don't want to. But I'm in a very
metallic mood and I thought I might actually bring out my metallic
watercolor paints. I just thought for the top parts of the lp that
are being hit by sunlight, we could maybe use some of this beautiful
gorgeous gold pin. This is a very
nice golden color. Once more, this is
completely optional. Maybe we could add
a little bit of u a little bit of magic by adding it on these parts that
are just catching the sun. Yeah. That was my final thought about possibly doing this. Oh, yeah, this guy is in front of I'm not doing the whole plan. I'm only doing the
parts that I feel are going to get hit by the sun. If you think about it, maybe
this part might be too. Just this very tip here. So this is really optional, but I mean, I must say, I love the look of
a bit of metallics, not a lot of it because then
it starts becoming hard to see the whole picture if you're using
metallics everywhere. Maybe we can I hope
everything is dry now. Maybe we can also
do this side over here where the plants
are in the sun. These are just some ideas
of how you can make your painting look
even more magical. I'm tempted to just use
a little bit more gold. These are just a
few ideas I come up with sometimes
when you're painting, I may not have started
out wanting to use these, but when you're painting, suddenly some ideas
can come to you about, how can I make this
even more magical? I think these parts are
covered by the killer whee. I think that looks
really pretty. I mean, I was wondering, should I do the other
leaves as well, you know, I feel like I think maybe
that might start to take away from the I might
get a little bit too busy. I'm not sure. I've
got some gold. Maybe I just want
to do gold pots. Where else can I put it? See, the green that
I have is light. Maybe I'm just testing
out some of the green. I think that's very light, so I don't think I'll use green. I think I just want to
keep going with gold. How about I want to just maybe put a little
bit of gold on these leaves over
here of this kelp. I know once somebody
gives me metallic paints, I have to really rein myself in from putting
it everywhere. Yeah, quite addictive. I don't think I'm
going to put them down here because it
doesn't make sense. They're not going to
have even though this is supposed to be a
fantasy painting, they're not actually going
to have light down there. How about I just continue
doing these guys over here. And, I might just continue.
Maybe just these. I'm terrible. I just
love my metallic pains. Maybe just these gold. The parts that are near the top. Yeah, I think that
looks very pretty. Believe me, actually, I think I might just paint
this whole pot. I might as well just
continue this part. At first, I was just painting
the tip of the leaves, but I think this looks great. We can also put the goal
around these little what I call the nodes or the seeds or whatever
you want to call them. Um, Yeah. Okay, I'm going to stop
very, very reluctantly. After I do, maybe
this one over here, so there's some nice, even though the painting itself
already looks amazing. A, I just want to add a
little bit more gold. But I think I'm going to stop now, very, very reluctantly. So Congratulations. If you've gotten this far and you've finished
your painting. I think this looks
really, really amazing. The final step is just
to very carefully peel away You masking tape
that you've used. Oh, that's a pretty good border. Pretty good border. All right. So with this part, just peel it. Hold your paper down. Oh, that's my technique
anyway and do it slowly so that you don't end up ripping part of
your painting off. Yeah. That's why I always say when you secure a
painting with masking tape, make sure there are
no air bubbles. As you can see, no air bubbles, so no paint went underneath
the tape. This is great. Looking really great. All right. Come on. Let's see how lucky
I am to not rip off any of the painted
part of my painting. I must have taped this
part down quite well because it's a little hard
to lift off now. All right. Look at that the
beautiful clean borders. I love it. It just frames
the painting, doesn't it? Wow. This looks really
great. Come on. Last one. Let's see how lucky I am. Almost Alright. We're done. And look at that. You've got a beautiful
kiloheel painting with some lovely sunbeams and some metallic paints
that I couldn't resist and silver fish. I mean, it has such a
magical feel to it, and yet it also looks like, you know, also looks
realistic too. I just feel like it has such a dreamy look
to it and I love it. I hope you love your painting. I can't wait to see
the paintings that you upload in the project
section of the class. So please upload your paintings. I can't wait to see
what they look like. I hope you've had a lot
of fun doing this class. I know some parts of
it were a lot of work, especially the Kelp Forests, but I hope you've
also had so much fun doing your little fish as well,
little details like that. We only have one section
left of this class, which is just my final thoughts. But thank you so much for getting this far,
for trusting me, for listening to what I had
to say to get to this point. And yeah, if you've
got this far, you should be very,
very proud of yourself. I will see you in the final
section of this class for my final thoughts and thank you very much for doing
this class again.
12. Final Thoughts: Once more, as always, I would like to extend
a heartfelt thank you for watching this video
or any of my other videos. I hope that you
had a lot of fun, and this painting has
also encouraged you to combine different
media with watercolors, such as squash or
metallic paints to create that overall mood that
you want for the painting. I also encourage students to use your
imaginations and push yourselves outside
of your comfort zone so that you can
grow as an artist. Take risks with your art because that's the
only way that you are going to come across new techniques that you can
apply in future paintings. I can't wait to see all
your beautiful paintings, so please upload them in the projects and
resources section of this class so that other students and
myself can admire them. Also, please feel
free to follow me on social media at Alicia
Puran at Instagram, as well as on Skillshare
so that you can get updates on any of my new
projects in the future. Once more, as always, thank you so much
again for watching my videos and all the best
on your watercolor journeys.
Alicia Puran, Artist, Musician, Teacher
