How to Paint Metallic Tones in Watercolor

1. Introduction: Hi, I'm Katharine Rogers. I'm a watercolorist, and I'm also watercolor instructor locally here in Virginia. I'm a military spouse, and I'm greatly influenced by my current situation where I'm living and I'm living here in Northern Virginia for the next couple of months, So we move someplace a little bit more tropical. Once you learn the formulas to paint metallic tones, you'll be inspired to go look around the house and find something else to paint. We're going to start with something basic as a spoon. You could just pull a plastic spoon out of your stash, and I'll give you some easy techniques to get its sketched on the paper. And then we'll begin painting anything like me. You like to paint things that you find around the house. I think that food is a great place for beginners to start to learn the paint still lifes, and people always want to know how I paint my fruit and the metal bowl. I'm gonna guide you through this process, step by stuff. Very beginner friendly. Most beginners have these colors on their palates. Will talk you through how to use the wet on wet painting technique to allow for very soft edges. In this painting, I'm also going to show you how to use masking fluid to save the whites and highlights, as well as using a scrubber to go back in to soften edges or lift paint. And in the end, you're gonna have a really nice final project to share. There's a reference photo that's attached down in the description. Go ahead and print that out before we get started. I think that you'll find it helpful. And lastly, if you need a snack, grab that now is next. We're gonna talk about supplies. 2. Let's Talk Supplies: Let's talk about supplies. You will need a lizard, crimson cadmium, yellow yellow Oakar, cadmium, orange quinacrine on gold, burnt sienna and French ultra marine on your palate. You'll also need a size 10 round tip brush and a scrubber, as well as a silicone tip, brisket applicator, some masking fluid and a rubber cement pickup. You'll also need some paper. I prefer to use arches, the £140 paper. This isn't a block, it's cold pressed. It's about a size eight by eight. You can see on the paper that on the front there is a nice texture to it. It's very important that you paint on the front of the paper, and this is what the back would look like. You could still paint on the back, but it doesn't have the same effect as using the front. The next thing on the supply list is the liquid frisk it, also known as masking fluid. I like the incredible white mask, and I have a silicone tip applicator that I used to apply. I also use a 10 inch round brush. I like the glow Cornell, but any brush will do as long. This is a big brush and has a very nice point at the end of it. The point is going to be very important for fine details. Lastly, I have a scrubber. This is going to be kind of a hard bristle brush that is specifically used for scrubbing the paper. I also like the tip of it on the end because that you will use that later to apply masking fluid. Lastly, a pencil have on hand as well as a plastic spoon. This doesn't have to be metallic. A white plastic spoon that you have during around your house would work as well. This photo can be found in the attached media. Be sure to print it out as a reference. 3. Sketch Your Spoons: in this short five minute video, we're going to sketch or spoons. I'm gonna show you a quick and easy way to get a rather proportionate spoon onto your paper . First, let's look at composition. We could put all of the spoons facing one direction. Or maybe we want to go ahead and put them in different directions. So let's take the middle one and face it up. Next. We'll take our pencil and we'll go ahead and trace around the spoon. If we have the spoon facing up, it's going to be harder to get it accurate. So if you actually face it down, it's easier to get a pretty accurate tracing around the spoon. I'm gonna go around each spoon, speed up the video here. So you guys get to your drawings. Do the 1st 1 says Nice point on the end of it, make a few corrections. It won't be perfect the first time, so you may have to go in, make some parts skinnier and even fattened ups in different areas. Straighten them out and lastly are copper spoon. Next, we're going to put the spoons back over the drawing, and we're gonna add in where the shadows are seeing my light sources above. So the shadows air gonna cast down and out. This will add some realism to the picture. Please note that at this point I have the spoons facing upward, not downward, like we did initially when we were doing our tracing. Some of the spoons have two different shadows. They have a heavy shadow, which is a primary shadow. And then they have a secondary shadow. That's a little bit lighter that you can see on the white paper. - Now that we've finished putting our shadows on our drawing, we're going to get ready to look at where we see highlights. I have several lights in my studio coming from above us. You can see them on each individual spoon. Ah, there's some real distinct highlights. What I'm showing you here is the reference photo that I printed out. This isn't actually the spoons on the surface. Um, so I have my incredible white mask liquid. Frisk it. I love this stuff because I think it's the only stuff that I've seen I could leave on for about a week. I can come back and it'll still easily come off my painting using the rubber cement pick up . Ah, you can also use your fingers, but it's not recommended as the oil from your hands and skin will transfer onto the paper. I'm using a silicone IB to add the highlights onto the drawing. I have gone over a few spots already, and I'm just adding a little bit more. I'm gonna wait until this completely dries before I began my initial layers of paint. If I want to do real thin lines, I'll get my scrubbing tool. You can also use a credit card as well. Put a little bit of the masking fluid on it, and you can draw very thin lines with the masking fluid. Some artists will use that trick to do very thin pieces of hair if they're doing portrait work. So that's one of the things about this particular scrubber that I just love because it's got that nice edge on the backside of it. You never want to use one of your paintbrushes to apply masking fluid. It will never come off, and the other thing I recommend is to not put the masking fluid applicator into your bucket of water. I just peel it off with my fingers, or I'll clean it off on a, um, paper towel. Just take a paper towel and comes right off. And there you have it, but you don't want that floating in your water. 4. First Layers: So now that the masking fluid has dried, we're going to go ahead and start our first layers on our spoons. First to close, we're going to mix French ultra Marine blue. It's a brilliant, beautiful blue that I love to use, and I love to mix it with burnt sienna. You'll see that when you mix these two together, it makes a gorgeous gray color. It's also known as kind of a fake Payne's gray. If you've heard of Payne's Gray, we'll take a little bit of the brown and will begin to mix it into the blue and you'll see the gray kind of come about on the plate. I'm doing this on a plate so that the rest of my palette colors don't distract me, and I can really focus on using exactly what I need to achieve the Silvertone of the Spoon . We'll put a little bit on the back of this papers. You can see that color in that gorgeous a little bit of water to it. Let's see how that flows really makes a nice soft grey. Now that we've made our gray color, we're going to go ahead and start to put the pain on to the paper. The way I approach the spoons is a wet on wet technique. I go ahead and wet the entire spoon with clean water. So I keep using the water all the way down the spoon until I get to the very end and it's gonna start absorbing at the top where I first initially started. So I'll start their first when I began to drop in my color. We'll see, though, by using the wet on what technique, though you get very nice soft edges, real nice softness to the entire spoon. There is a reference photo that is linked on the class notes, so if you have that handy, you can kind of see it in my video up towards the top. I'm using that as a guide on where I'm gonna put my darkest darks mirror. I maybe go back and lay in some more paint. I'm going to continue to try to just pull paint right out of that puddle that I mixed in the middle. Easy way to remember this. Payne's gray is ah F U Plus B s, and that'll make French ultra marine burnt sienna make Payne's Gray Payne's Gray was actually named after William Gray, who was a teacher at the Royal Academy of Art in London. And there's not a whole lot of information on him. But that's where pains the name pains comes from too little tidbit of information for you. So I kind of go back up to the top and go back and working back and forth between the top and the bottom and continue to kind of lay the color in. You can see where the masking fluid is. You can kind of see where I've put paint down, and it slid off the masking fluid. Sometimes it lays right on top is kind of a slick, slick piece at a little bit more detail across the handle. This could be a very flat wash. Your first wash, your first layer could be very flat. It doesn't have to have a lot of dark areas, and after this dries will go back in and we'll add in some dark areas onto the spoon. I think that's gonna be about it for the silver spoon. Next up is gold, just adding my last color to my palette. It's the quinacrine own gold on my favorite colors. Ah, the other colors I have on my plate. Here are cadmium yellow and yellow. Oakar. I'm going to start this spoon the same way that I started the silver spoon which is toe wet , the entire area starting at the top on this one and working all the way down Something to think about with using cadmium ones is that they're very opaque pains. But we will use them in our gold spoon. I think between the two choices of what most beginning watercolors have on their palate for yellows between lemon yellow and cadmium yellow, the cadmium yellow makes the most sense. If you don't have the quinacrine on gold in your, uh, toolkit on your palate, don't worry about it. You can get similar results using a little bit of burnt sienna instead or touching the darker spots with a little bit of the yellow Oakar just going to start putting in some of the yellow across the spoon again. This is gonna look like a very flat wash is gonna be quite light to start out, and then we get to our second layer and the next chapter will be adding some details and we'll getting a little darker spots since of different place, especially across the handle, where there's some more detail. Again, if you have your reference photo handy looking where those lightest lights are, where those darkest darks are, I'm dipping into the quinacrine on gold. Now you can see it's a very translucent color. I mean, if you're painting a gold spoon, you might as well use gold, right? I think it's just one of most beautiful colors. I love to mix quinacrine on gold in surreal Ian to make green. If you haven't done that yet, give it a try. It's the green that I used to do the stems of tulip flowers. It's beautiful green that it makes. So in the reference photo, you can see that the handle is a little bit darker, so I am using the darker gold here. I don't even touch in a little bit of the yellow car keys so you could see how that looks. I'm letting all these colors of mix on the paper instead of mixing them like we did in the silver on the palate. I'm allowing the water to mix the pain for me. It's gonna have much more pure and brilliant color on this spoon. If I allow that to happen now that the gold spoon is finished, let's set up our palate for the copper so far on our plate, I have a little dub of cadmium, orange, cadmium yellow, small amount of burnt sienna and my little dab of a lizard crimson. Once again, we're going to start our spoon with wedding the entire area first, just like we did with the other two starting at the bottom, working my way up on this one. If we allow the colors on the copper spoon to mix like we did on the gold spoon, you're gonna have a brilliant, brilliant result. I think once you learn the formula for copper, you're gonna find all sorts of things around the house to paint. I guess I am assuming you have a stash of copper. So this is nice and wet. You can see where the masking fluid is at the end. Now I'm gonna start with orange and I'm gonna thin it out, and I'm going to go across the top and pull this all the way down. The orange is going to be kind of your base color for the entire spoon. I mean, when you look at copper, it's It's a funny pinky orange color and you'll see that's where the lizard crimson comes in. And I loved add a little bit of the cadmium yellow just for the brilliance and the shine that you get again. Just keeping in mind that the cadmium are going to be opaque. Watercolors get across this bottom here. Hopefully you have your reference photo nearby. You can see where some of the lighter parts are. Have a little paper telling diving off your handy to have a paper tell with you while you pain. Now I'm gonna pull some of this illiterate Christmas. Listen, Prison is a very staining pigment. It is beautiful and mixes so well with other colors. I'm going right along the edge of the handle and I am allowing this to mix on its own with the orange. This particular spoon had this really neat, almost like a hammered effect to it. And I'll show you in the final chapter how I went back and achieved the hammered look. I'm going to keep that a secret for now to keep you guys watching leaving that very light in the middle just to kind of give it that Kong cave appearance. So I just tried my brush off, and when you pull the moisture off your brush, it's what's called a thirsty brush. So if you have some very wet areas, take your brush and dry it off on your towel, and then you can go back over those extremely wet areas and pull up some of the paint pigment or excess water. Keep in mind that this is going to dry lighter than it looks right now. Okay, I'm going to just continue to add little drops of color and allow the pain to mix on the spoon itself, just sharpening up some of the edges. Clean off my brush a little bit. Now my final color that I'm gonna add, which is the darkest I think it's the burnt Sienna, and I just dabble this in in a few spots, looking at the reference photos seeing where the dark spots are. I go ahead and add this in by using the one on what technique I keep everything very soft across the handle, a little darker through there and then at the very end, of course. And our second layer will add some more dark values to the end. Just going around the edges here, the little dribbles, and I think I'm gonna call that done. 5. Second Layers and Details: Okay, It's now time to go ahead and put on our second layers. I'm looking at the reference photo, and I'm pointing out some of the dark spots on each of the spoons. So let's start with the silver spoon. The masking fluid is still in place. I'm gonna start on this far edge, and I'm just using some of the Payne's gray that I mixed in the last video to go ahead and make a dark for value on the spoon. Remember with watercolor that the less water you use, the darker your value is going to be. The more water use, the lighter pigment you have can go around. The handle here will go up around the top of the spoon. I'm just going, I'm using my reference photo, and I'm just kinda adding, And where I see some of my dark spots, I like to leave a small amount of the edge visible on the spoon across the top. I'm not going back into my water bucket. I'm just mixing a little bit more of the pigment, picking up some of that pain and continuing to make my dark values. Now, when I do go back into the water bucket. What I will be doing is I will be softening these edges. You see, that happened in just a second. I'm gonna go ahead and draw one of the lines across the top. You can see on that far side near my finger. I have left a little bit of a great edge. So let that drive just a bit before I go in and soften and continue working on the handle, carrying the dark all the way down. I like the detail that's in this particular spoon, the fanning. So I am gonna go ahead and add that end. All of this is optional. So if you used to spoon from your kitchen household, take out stuff and it's just a plain spoon. You don't need to add in all of these small details. But if you're using the reference photo, it's nice to have these little details in this, especially kids. Each of the spoons that I have on hand were all different. Remember was silver. That silver is a mirror, so it is going to reflect what is around it. So, unlike the other spoons, you can kind of see some different colors in the silver versus with the gold in the copper spoons so you could see how a fine point brush really helps with details. I'm not using a six or two or anything small. I'm using a 10. Still, this is still the same brush I started the painting with and by having a good brush on hand that can really get to a very fine point with Watercolor is so helpful if your brushes more rounded at the top because maybe it's an older brush or your noodle watercolor. Um, you can go ahead and go down a couple steps, maybe to a four, and if your brushes a little bit drier, you might be able to get a nice point on it. So now I've wet the brush, and some of this pain authorities started to soak in and dry. I'm just using clean water here, and I'm going around to the different areas that I first initially laid in. And I'm just softening those edges just a little bit, just adding that water, and I'm letting the water do its job. I want the water to do most of the work. It's helpful to have a paper tell next to you while you're working, I get my paper towels from a home repair store or even the auto repair store. They're a little tougher, and they last longer. And Aiken generally keep one paper towel for an entire project. Some artists would use a dry sponge as well one of those large, thick fat sponges next to them as they work. But I admit I I prefer to use the paper towel. I'm continuing to soften the edges you could see across the top where I've lost a little bit of the shape of the spoon. So I'm going to add a little bit of water there and continue to try to push that out until I can retain that shape. I've cleaned off the brush, and I'm going to go back into some of that dark value again and continue to add some of the details. Try to kind of put that edge right back in place. Just a little bit of pain right across the top. So I'm pulling another pallet over because, like I said, with the silver spoon, it is a mirror. So when you look at the reference photo, you can see in there some of the other colors that were around the studio the day that picture was taken. So I'm going to drop in a little bit of the lizard crimson. Some in the handle is Well, I think the picture I'm wearing my I love New York T shirt actually seem to see a little bit of a red heart. And if you look closely, I'm not going to get into that much of the detail. But I'm going to just continue to drop in little bits of color onto the spoons. Maybe add a little bit of the yellow in, since it's right next to the gold spoon, small amounts less is more. In the next video, we will go in and do all of the final details and remove the masking fluid. And I'll show you how to remove that a little bit more red on the end, just to give a little bit more darkness. But I think I'm finished with the silver spoon. So next I'll go ahead and move on to the gold spoon. I'm just gonna hit this a few more spots with the burnt Sienna. Now I'm gonna work on the gold spoon I've loaded my brush with some of the quinacrine own gold to do a second layer. This is called glazing. You put one layer on top of another, just another reminder that less water darker color gold is one of those colors of reverends . It's a highly revered metal. It's, you know, it's sister metals, iron, copper, silver. They all contain what are called mobile electrons. So this is why they strongly reflect light and gold is valued really high because it is scarce. Of course, as well as it doesn't tarnish. I mean, when you think about silver and copper, they really do tarnish, don't they? Interesting to know that Europe does not have a very high supply of gold. They don't have the minds like we do over in the United States, or even in Africa or in the East. But, of course, when there's a gold rush, everybody goes out to get the gold right. So I continue to work on the handle, the palace a little bit off the screen, but I'm dipping into the quinacrine on gold, and I'm putting in some of those details. Got my paper tell again I'm drying the brush off cleaning it off, making sure it's completely clean. And then I'm going to go and soften some of those edges, just using a little bit of water. Nice clean water, and I go back down and soften some more of the edges. Now this spoon is really starting to take some shape, isn't it? This is the second layer, not painting the entire spoon. I'm really just trying to go into some specific areas to add some of the details. He's a little bit of the yellow Oakar. Let's put some of that into the bottom. Yellow car is another one of those opaque colors. If you took a black marker like a Sharpie draw line and paint some of the yellow ochre or one of those cadmium is over top, you'll see that these are definitely opaque colors. They go right over the black line. I'm getting my palette that I used for the silver spoon, and I'm picking up some of the Paynes grey and I'm going to make a few more dark spots on the gold spoon just dropping in, dribbling it in. I like to say these air wet areas so you can see where as I drop in the color it mixes for me with the quinacrine on gold. It's doing the work for me across the handle, of course, right across that top and that reference photo you can really see across the that middle handle work. It's darker, continuing to drop in some of the dark Payne's gray across the back of the handle. Across that top, these areas were still what you can see when the pain goes down, how it kind of spreads itself out giving, picking up a little bit more Payne's gray. We continue just to dabble some more along the bottom of the spoon, saving some of those highlights continuing to kind of build some layers. Dark spots. Okay, lets start the copper spoon. We'll start with our palette that we used for copper to begin with and add in our darks. I'm going to start by mixing a little bit of the burnt sienna and some of the blistering crimson. Those are probably the two darkest colors that can go ahead and achieve some of these dark spots that we see in our reference photo again. I'm not gonna use too much water here. Uh, I'm gonna primarily use what I've got on the palate and what's on my brush. That way, the pigment stays nice and dark. The burnt sienna and the Eliza in crimson really make a very ready brown. We talked about how gold doesn't tarnish, but I think we're probably all pretty familiar. That copper definitely tarnishes. And when it does, it gets to a very dark, ready brown color. And in some spots you get that beautiful blue patina. It's almost a teal color. We don't have any in this particular spoon. But if you were gonna do a copper pot or something that you have around your house, you may see along the edges where the pot in the handle meet. Some of that patina did look from the copper. I'm continuing to drop in a little bit more of the mix of the brown and red, especially down along the handle. Give it some shape and form using a thirsty brush. I'm gonna pull what I have already on the paper up. So I'm now I'm gonna go towards the middle and continue to darken that and you can see where it's nice and what we're just kind of moved out on its own. I'll let that dry and I'll come back to it and soften it will soften with the scrubber. If you don't have a scrubber, you can use an old brush. Even a little bristle brush will work. I'll show you some of the techniques for scrubbing watercolor paper. Part of why I use the cold press paper is because you can scrub on it. And it does not seem to damage the paper. Looking at the reference again, I'm looking where some of these highlights are. I'm going to try to paint around where they are going to go right into this pink. The pink will definitely add some interest and brightness to the spoon. I'm gonna continue to soften some of these edges. I'm using a thirsty brush and picking up a little bit of that excess paint that has puddled . And I'm gonna move some of this down towards the handle, darken that handle up just a little bit more, picking up a little bit more red to add in little bit more pinky color that you see in the reference photo. Of course, that's ah reference vote of a plastic copper looking spoon and not an actual copper spoon. But I think it shows a good differentiation. Let's get back to the Paynes Grey. Mix up a new little puddle hair. Nice dark spot to add to the spoon. Very, very, very dark, More blue, more brown, more blue, more brown. I go back and forth between the French Ultra Marine blue and the brown, just like I did on the other spoons. I'm gonna drop in some of the grey. The pains graze. I call it into the handle into the end of the spoon. Keep darkening. Remember, we have that little hammered look on this spoon and the reference photos, so I'm gonna just dabble in a few more spots. This is where having a nice tip on your end of your brushes of good benefit. It could be very pinpointed and purposeful with it. A few more little spots. And then in the next video, we'll remove the masking fluid, and I will show you how to soften some of the edges with the's scrubber, and we'll do our final details 6. Removing Mask & Scrubbing: Hi And welcome back in this video, we're gonna be removing the masking fluid and also using a scrubber to soften some of the edges. This is a new rubbers, men eraser. But I want to use my old one used by the corner. You just slowly go over your painting. I fast forwarded to some of this video to try to eliminate some of the shaking of the camera. I just go over the different areas that I can see or feel the mask with my hand. Once I have all the mask removed, I rub my hand over the painting one last time to make sure that everything is complete. Everything feels nice and smooth. So I'm gonna go ahead and get my brush one last time to put in some last details. I mainly using the French Ultra Marine and the bird sanded mix the Paynes grey that I told you about in the first video. I'm gonna go in and add just a few more dark values and sharpen up some of the edges. I'm really working off of the reference photo here, adding these edges around the spoon, giving the spoon a lot more depth and detail and making it look more reflective. I think that the gold spoon has quite a lot of nice darks to it. I don't want to make it too dark, so I wanted to remain shiny and sharp. Remember, gold doesn't tarnish, right? - I'm very careful as I go around the handle of the gold spoon to not lose those whites that I saved with the masking fluid. I just want to add a little bit of dark value right next to where I've saved the white of the paper. By having a dark value next to your lightest light, you really create a point of interest in the composition. So something to think about when you're painting is where is your darkest dark and where your lightest lights I love working on this copper spoon. I'm gonna go ahead and add in a few more details into the bottom of the spoon and then I'll go on up to the top and start adding in some of those details. There is an edge there that I need to sharpen. I had masking fluid right around the edge of the head of the spoon, and I'm gonna paint a very, very, very thin line to try to maintain that white white that I mast off to give that spoon and edge. Now let's work up in the handle. Still, mixing that Payne's gray with the burnt Sienna and the French all terrain add in a little bit more of that dark value. You could see that in the reference photo. It might make a little bit easier if I turn this around trying to provide you guys with a good view here, another little thin line just to make it look like it's a scoop on. And now a little bit of that hammer. Look, I'm gonna go back in, and I went and dribble in some of these dark values, but the paper absorb them. And then when I get to the next section of this video, I will use the scrubbing tool to give it that hammered Look, I think I had been painting probably about six years before one of my instructors here in Virginia showed me her secret tool. The scrubber. I always use an old paint brush to try to lift paint back off. Whenever I tell other painters that I'm a watercolorist, they always reply with Oh, it's so hard you can't correct things and tell you having that scrubbing tool in my back pocket is how I go back in correct things. Look down on the lower right hand corner of my copper spoon. You can see where I lost a little bit of this shape of the spoon. The smooth lines looks a little bit more jagged. You'll see in the next section where I come back and I make those corrections. I'm gonna keep adding on my dark value across the top of the silver spoon and give it that nice edge. And I'm looking for, you know, after the masking fluid comes off. We do have some very sharp edges on our highlights, and you'll see in that next section. They keep talking about that next section, but I'll go back in and I'll smooth out where some of those highlights seem very, very, very sharp. One final edge here on that silver spoon. Well, wet towel. I'm just gonna pick up where I've made a mistake here, usual clean water and just kind app that off, I'm continued to add a few more dark values on the bottom of the silver spoon looking at the reference for you see kind of a little bit of a blue tone to the handle. So with the clean brush, I'm going to go right into my French ultra Marine blue, and I'm gonna do a very light, very watery wash right over that handle. Like I've said in earlier in the video, Remember, silver is a mirror. You should be able to see some other colors in it besides just graze. Okay, Now we can demonstrate how to use the scrubbing tools, very stiff bristles. And, of course, that end that I used earlier dip it in clean water when apply a small amount of that clean water wherever I want to soften. After I do some very gentle scrubbing, I will then lift the paint off with the paper toe. It's very important that you go very slowly when using this tool. Let's just go ahead and remove a little bit of the quinacrine on gold down here at the bottom and leave a nice highlight. I would be careful not to scrub too hard or too deep, as you will go through the paper, especially if you're using a piece of £90 paper, and I really do not recommend using a scrubbing tool on hot press. The grand add. Another little shine will highlight down here. Just gently scrub and I used my clean paper tell and I lift off the paint. Same thing Along this edge. You'll notice that I am going in one direction by adding this highlight down here. I am going to continue to give it that bull con cave. Look that a spoon has. I frequently go into the clean water and clean off the scrubbing brush. I don't have other colors that are on the scrubbing brush. Another thing I do too, is I checked the moisture on it, and I also will dab it off on a paper tell if it's too wet. I'm gonna go ahead and correct that bottom little jagged E edge I told you about earlier. I went the scrubbing brush. I'm going right up to the edge, and I'm just slowly doing this very small correction to get clean part of the paper towel. And I'll just lightly dab off where I've loosened up the paint. Okay, using my tool, I'm going to go back up to the top of the copper handle, and I'm gonna add that hammered look doing very light scrubbing motions to remove some of the paint off the handle. I show some of the detail work here, and then, in my very final steps, I went back and did a little bit more thought I was finished and I didn't record. And then right before I took my last photograph of the painting, I actually ended up going and doing a little bit more on the right side to give it that hammered looked like in the reference photo. So when you see the final project, you can see that it's actually is done on both sides. I'm just gonna keep softening and lightning the spoon, adding in a few more highlights here and there and softening some of my edges. I'm always going in one direction, very important, because the paper is bound together, and when you go and scrub, you break those fibers, and if you go back and forth too hard or you're too aggressive with your tool, but we'll end up happening is you will fray the paper and you'll actually roll the paper up underneath the scrubber, so trying to keep it in one direction 7. Shadows: Hi. Welcome back. This is gonna be our last video, and this is going to be putting our final touches in our shadows on our spoons. On my palette. I have French, ultra marine, blue lizard crimson and cadmium orange. This will be my basic formula for making shadows. I'll take the French Ultra Marine blue with a little bit of the Eliza in crimson lizard crimson can be a very strong and overpowering color. It's also extremely staining, so I use a little bit of that, and I mix that in with the blue to create A. I would almost say it's more of a lavender purple color a little bit on the heavier on the blue side that on the red side, once I get this mixed and I want to make a pretty decent sized puddle of it cause I have three spoons to do shadows for I'll wash off my brush and then I'm gonna dip into the cadmium orange. Next, I mix a cadmium orange into the purple mixture that I've just made with the French all terrain a lizard crimson because it starts to neutralize the color. It tones down the intensity when you look at your color palette. The opposite colors on your palate, your complementary colors. Those will make your neutrals. And that's what really we want to use for our shadow color. We want our shadows to really blend into the background. Okay, let's start with this silver spoon. Have a very light drawing of my shadow. And this first layer here on this shadow is going to be quite dark again. Having a nice point on your paintbrush will allow you to use a larger brush for your entire painting. This is still my size 10 brush that I'm using. I'm going to hold it almost straight up and down at one point, cause that will allow me to get it very, very, very thin line. Alice, do the point underneath the neck so the spoon will bend up away from the surface. So I'm going to go ahead and put my line down, and then I'm gonna take water, and I'm going to just lightly move the pain over underneath the subject matter. I want that to be a little bit lighter than what's right underneath the head of the spoon. Okay, let's move to the gold. One right around the end, remember? And the reference photo, you can kind of see where the light sources and where their shadows are right across the end. This is another great example of having a strong value change. The end of the gold spoon is very, very light and intensity and in value. And then I put in that shadow right along the edge, and it really makes the spoon start to pop off the page. Okay? And then it's just like the silver spoon. We're going to go ahead and do the part underneath the neck, and this is gonna be a little bit lighter since the bend of the spoon is right there. I can't wait to see your projects. I hope you guys will post those down below. Let's just go ahead and add in this last little bit on the gold spoon. Just moving that water droplet around. Really get this shape of the shadow in place now. We're not done with the silver spoon just yet. There's actually a secondary shadow there, but I want to let that first layer of paint dry as I continue to move across one more light shadow across the bottom Let me move my painting up here for you guys. You can see it a little bit better. The shadow is going to be lighter. This is what I would consider a secondary shadow compared to the one that's on the left hand side. So this one's gonna be lighter in value. When you use a little bit more water, you can really see how much more saturated this one is compared to the the other one on the left hand side. Just sharpen up a few spots here looking pretty good. Okay, time for the copper spoon. I miss drawing in one of the cash shadows on the copper spoon, so I'm going to go ahead and draw that in first and make a few corrections on my drawing. There's one here that I missed, and then I don't think that I've got the drawing along with handle very well. Someone never do a little correction on that as well. It's a very, very, very thin shadow that goes on the handle on the copper spoon on the reference photo. Apologize about the shaking. I promise. On my next video, my camera will be attached to something else besides my table learning curve. Okay, we start at the top of the handle, and I'm gonna go ahead and started to paint down. I'm mixing a little bit more. I need just a little bit more to finish this last spoon and get these secondary shadows in place. So I'm just gonna do the same thing on the copper spoon that I did on the other two. Moving right down the neck of the spoon. And again, I'm I'm painting the primary shadow here, which is gonna be the darker shadow First got a little too heavy there. So I've just dried off my brush and I'm gonna pick up some of that water droplet with my thirsty brush, and I can go back in and just continue. Teoh, move the droplet around and get my shadow in place. And I think by the time we've finished with our copper spoon, we will be able to go right back over to the silver spoon and at in the next shadow, our secondary shadows those There's real nice, faint purple shadows that you're seeing the final picture. Yep, it's dry. So let's go ahead back in here and do our secondary shadow. I'm using the same mixture. I've did not change mixtures. What I am doing, though, is I'm going to be using more water on this one. This is going to be a very, very light, soft shadow. We're gonna go ahead and paint it in first. You could see that bead of water there. The beat of paint and pigment there that I'm moving around. That's all I'm going to put down nice and sharp around the end of the spoon and I'm drying my paintbrush off on my paper towel because I really wanted to be very, very light and faint. Next thing I'm gonna do is you're gonna see me dip my paintbrush into the water. I'm gonna dry it off, and then I'm gonna go right up against the edge of the shadow right up against the edge and you can see it bleeding out a little bit into where moistened the paper and we do the same thing on the other side. I went into the water, I dried off a little bit on the paper towel and then I went right up against the edge. I'm just softening this edge. Do a little bit more. See if and carried out. I'm actually now not along the line of the shadow. I wanted to start to spread out, and I think that should be enough and it will. It'll do it, the magic on its own. It's nice it'll do the work for you. Let's do the same thing to the copper spoon. Go ahead and paint this in very light. Much lighter than the primary shadow, I think had the mixed up a little bit more pain. I was running really low there, and I'm gonna go right back over that primary shadow. That second glaze will darken up just a little bit. Where there's two Intersect. I love those two layers right there, and this little shadow just goes right off the page. It's the same thing like I did on the other side. This one's a little bit darker. I'm going to go ahead and get the water and I'm gonna lighten this up. Go, go right along the edge. It's gonna bleed out, go a little bit further out, gets more clean water a little bit further out thirsty. Brash will pick up some of that water again, and they don't do the same thing on the other side right along the line, and it's not dry it, so it's going to do its magic. It's going to really soften is gonna do the work for you. You don't need to pick up the scrubber at this point and try to soften that line. Go ahead and just use the water and just wet the paper, so it's going to continue to spread out for you. As it dries, you may find a few little edges. Okay, I think that's it. I think it's done. The last thing I think we should do is go ahead and sign your finished painting and please post it when you have a chance. Thanks so much for tuning in. I hope you come back for another lesson soon. All the best