How to Sketch and Paint a Sleeping Pup in Watercolors and Ink

1. Introduction: Hi, everyone. My name is Alicia Para, and this is one of my little pups named Dragon, and we would absolutely love to teach you how to sketch and paint a cute sleeping pup in watercolors. In this class, I will list all the materials you need for this project and take you through each step in creating this cute and beautiful painting from how to sketch it to laying down loose base washes and gradually building up the layers of color and texture to create the illusion of fur. This class is suitable for watercolor students of all levels, including beginners, because I will be taking you through each step of the process. So, if you are ready to draw and paint a cute picture of a sleeping pup modeled by my Pup dragon, let's begin. 2. Materials: Hi, everyone, and welcome to the material section of this class where I will be listing all the materials you need to do this project. I'll be using this A four size watercolor pad by the Brand Kenson to do the sketch. It has a weight of 300 grams or 140 pounds. You don't have to use the same brand as me, but please make sure you use paper of similar weight to get the best results. For the sketching, I'll be using this lead holder by Statler. You don't have to use a lead holder and you're more than welcome to use a mechanical pencil. I'll also be using a variety of erasers, such as these mechanical erasers, a standard soft eraser, and even a kneadable eraser just to lighten certain parts, but you probably won't need to use all of them. It's just good to have options. Now, I'll be listing all the materials you need for the painting section of this class. I'll be using a very handy rag, which is great for when you rinse your brushes and you just want to wipe off the excess water, what's great about them too is you can just throw them into the washing machine when you're done. I'll also be using two jars of clean water just so you don't have to keep changing the water. I'll also be using a ceramic palette to put paint in the brushes that I will be using will be three round brushes with the sizes of four, eight, and 12, and I love using this brand called silver black velvet. They are artist quality brushes. You don't have to use the same brand as me, but please do try and use artist quality brushes. Next, here are the paints that I'll be using. I'll be using raw sienna. Rose Mada genuine. Burn sienna, burn umba, sepia, French ultramarine, and ivory black. All these paints are artist quality paints. You don't have to use the same brand as me, but please do try to use artist quality paints to get the best results. And finally, to add the final details, I will be using two white gel pens. They do have different sizes. I'm using a five as well as a seven. Those are all the materials that you'll need for this class. 3. Sketching: M Hi, everyone, and welcome to the sketching section of our class where we will start sketching our cute sleeping puppy. So as you can see, I have here my A four size Kanson watercolor pad, so I'm just going to open it, and I've got my lead holder and a couple of erasers, you know, a different sizes, but we might not have to use all of them. I just have them ready anyway. So for this particular class, even though I usually sketch with a traditional mechanical pencil, I recently purchased this lead holder by Stapler. And it has as you can see, a long piece of lead here that's being held. This is pretty new for me because as I said before, I usually sketch with a mechanical pencil. But I found that when I practice with this, it helped me create some loose lines and I felt I could just sketch freely. But if you don't have one of these lead holders, you are more than welcome to use a traditional mechanical pencil like what I used to use, these pilot super grips, 0.5 and all my other classes. I just thought I might as well put it to use now. So before I get rambling, let me just talk a bit about the sleeping pup reference photograph that I've included. Usually, when I sketch in the past, I would tend to maybe start with a detail like the e and then work my way out. But since this is also a class designed for everyone, including beginners, I want to just get a very simple overall shape first because I think that would be much easier to do rather than focus on one area. So when we look at the sleeping pup picture, it looks a little bit like a jelly bean to me or, like, well, a kidney. But I think a jelly bean sounds a bit cuter. So what I want to do when I look at the photograph is I want to just get that shape. So how about we start with we have this shape here, like I'm going to start here. So this is where the mouth is going to go, and I'm just interested in getting an overall shape now. I'm just going to go up here, even though it doesn't look like it now, but it will and later on, we can refine it. But let's just try for the beginners out there who may not be very used to sketching. Let's start with a very simple shape and then we're going to work our way into the details. And actually, a lot of great artists out there tend to do this. I might have gone a little bit too big, but let me just get that. So all I'm doing is getting that shape first, as you can see the mouth, and then we're going to go down here. See a bit of a jelly bean sort of shape going on. And as you can see, this lead holder is you can even the great thing about this is you can make the lead longer if you want, if you feel that will help you, and it doesn't kind break really easily. And so over here, remember, we can always refine this later. Let's just get the overall shape is where we would find that foot shape. And so we're just going to kind of highlight that foot shape. And now we're going to start refining it a little bit more. But why don't we just in the meantime, let's just do this. There's a little curve here. So I'm just getting the overall shape. Okay. I already I'm already looking at this. I feel like this parts a little bit too skinny. But now, let's just check first that the nose or the snout, as whatever you want to call it, it should be almost touching this foot here. Let's just get those main things with the foot goes down here. I got a little bump thing going on here. I'm slowly starting to refine it, but still nothing too detailed at this point. And then we got little tail sticking out over here. So it doesn't stick out too much. It just sticks out a little bit. And then a bit of a angled curve that goes down here. And now we see that the butts a little bit more pointed than I thought. Okay. But so now we're going to start working, getting the shape going first. So we've got the main things, we can see where the snout is and then the foot is actually right under that. That's why I started to elongate it a little bit. Yeah, we got these main things going on first. And I think also that maybe I made the foot a bit long. So let's just raise it a little bit higher, this little very obvious bump that we see here. Well, it's kind of like, you know, where the sort of knee of the back knee is in this picture. And I think this chest is kind of at the right. It looks good. I'm just going to now take my erasa the big one and just start, just cleaning it up a little bit just so we can see a little clearer. But remember, sketch is not race. I like to make my sketch as accurate as possible because that to me is the first step in creating a very realistic portrait of a pet. So yeah, this is very important. So we got that, and now I'm just going to refine it a little bit more where this leg. See how it sticks out there, then it kind of curves in at this beautiful curve. So I just want to get that right. And this is actually where one of the patches are. So I'm just going to refine this a little bit and erase these lines that we don't need. So jersey raise those extra lines that we don't need. Okay, it's looking good, believe it or not. So like I said before, I feel like the body's a little bit too thin, but before I address that and make it bigger, I really want to work with this head. So we've got a great shape going on here already. So let's work with the snout a little bit more. So yeah, that's a great thing about this lead holder as well, I found. I feel really natural drawing with it, but, you know, for my entire artist's life before that, I was using a traditional mechanical pencil. So please don't feel like you have to run out and buy one of these, but I feel like it's kind of handy. And the lines also tend to erase pretty easily because I feel like you don't have to put a lot of pressure down when you're drawing. And maybe I do that a bit more with a mechanical pencil and it leaves hher lines. That's just one of my thoughts. Yeah. So right now, let's try and work this really cute snout that she has. So I'm just getting these lines going here. Still not putting a lot of detail in. I'm still just kind of feeling out, what this face, what this jaw line is about. So we see a little bit of a of a little protrusion there, and then it kind of goes in a little bit here. So I'm just starting to add a bit more detail now. And there's this angle that kind of goes up like that where the jaw meets the neck, and it doesn't go all the way to the end. Okay, so let's just work with this snout shape now. I see she's got a little bit of a bump here where her nose is. And then down here, now, I'm just going to do a little marking where the nose is. She actually has a dark patch around her nose. I'm just going to very roughly put that shape here. So just working from the reference photograph that I've included. Now I can if you want, you can use a smaller eraser, but I'm okay to use the edge of my eraser just to. Like I said, you probably won't need all three erasers. It's just handy to have them here. Okay, so we got that little bump going on here, and then over here, we've got part of the we can see the eye that she's sleeping on. We see part of it, but it's obviously closed. She was genuinely in a deep sleep when I took this photo. As you probably everyone with puppies who had puppies nose, dogs well, puppies can sleep very deeply. I could take as many reference photographs as I wanted without her waking up. Okay, so I see this eye here, but I also see now that it kind of goes in a bit here. So I'm starting to slowly put details in. So we got this here. And then we also have this shape here. Like it's kind of like a line that goes here, the roundness of the top of the head. So I might still refine that, you know, I'm just kind of trying to do the overall wow slowly adding details in. So we see there is a bit of a curve here, and then this is the start of her white strip on the top of her head that goes all the way from the bridge of her nose to the top of her head here. So let's just try and get that shape going here, and I might just start. So if this is the eye, and we see a bit of a bit of a shadow in there. Feel free to take your time. It's not a race to get the sketch done. Like I said before, the sketch is so important in getting a realistic drawing if that's what you're after. I'm just going to take my time to do this. Now I'm going to start working just looking at the angle. I'm going to start working that stripe. Let's start. Here's the very narrow bit, and it goes up a little bit here. And then it curves around and it narrows all the way at the top of a head there. Okay, so we got that going on now. I feel like this shape is a little bit wrong, so I want to just it should be very narrow here. And now we're starting to do the brown area around that eye. I feel like this was a little bit too close, so I'm just going to erase it a bit. Yeah. The distance from the nose. I'm just going to this is just the region around that eye that we can see. And there is a bit of darkness here. I mean, you don't have to sketch all this now. This is just how I feel it. And now I'm doing this slit, which is her eye that is closest to us that is obviously closed while she's sleeping. And okay, I don't have to fully darken it, but what I want to do as well, is just get this rough shape around the eye just for my own reference. Yeah. So we have that eye, as you can see. Yep, she's starting to take shape now that we got the face going on. And I'm just going to also just slowly, just kind of very lightly sketch a couple of lines here, just for my own reference. That will come in handy for the painting later, and I'm just going to sketch it. If I don't really feel like I need it, I can just lighten it maybe later with, um, eraser. Okay, we got that going on now. Now, before I go further into the head, I just want to pay a bit of attention over here to this nose. So we don't have to put a lot of details in. I just see this little nostril, so I'm just highlighting the position of it now. But now, I'm more concerned about getting the shape of the snout right. We got this line here that goes down. This is the opening of the mouth. Sorry, also the picture as well. I just have to see what I can see with the picture. And And then we got this little smile, almost like a smile that she has while sleeping. It's very cute. And yeah, now, I just want to get the shape of the mouth right. So this part kind of overhangs a little bit. So I'm just going to use my little eraser to just erase that. So as you can see, there's a bit of a overhang here before we see the bottom of her chin. So the chin comes in at an angle like that, and then it kind of sticks out a bit. I think we did get it right. It was kind of good. So then go up a little bit here. But I don't think we need this whole bottom part here. Maybe that was a little bit too much, so I'm just going to So this is the bottom of the chin. I'm just trying to, I think I extended that line a bit too much, so let me just I might just want to lift this chin up just slightly. So just so I can see, we've got this line here, just a very light line just so I know where everything is. And then with this line, we have like these little dots that you see where the whiskers kind of come out. I'm sure that's a proper scientific name for them. Sorry, I'm not. I don't really know what that is at this moment. I'll have to look that up. So I just want to make sure I do that mouth. Well, okay. I'm just going to erase this bottom line here. Okay. Maybe I might just make the now I'm starting to obviously, let's just erase some lines we don't need. Obviously, starting to get into the details now. And look at that. She looks so cute. I'm just going to like I said before, there's a little bit of an overhang there. There's just a little bit of jaw that we can see sticking out. I don't I felt like I had drawn it a little bit too thick just now. And now we've got this little bit of flesh here. And now we've got yep, we've got that little bits of folds of skin here, and now the angle starts to go up. So if this looks a bit messy, I will clean it up as soon as I can. Alright, so let's now make this line a little bit clearer. So I'm just erasing the bottom part that we don't need. Okay. And so where we've got this nice little fold here. And then this goes up a bit here. And then it comes out again. And it goes up. Alright. So there got that cute little line there. So I'm just kind of refining her little jaw line a little bit. And then we've got this little fold of fur here. And and don't worry, we will make it look a lot more like later on. And we've got this. Okay, so we're doing well. We're doing well. I just want to check my proportions here. So if you want, you can kind of draw in this little darker part of the around the mouth, the darker skin. And then we got that little smile here, and it also goes up here, but we don't have to do that right now. But I'm very happy right now with what we've done. So let's just erase those lines we don't need like the ones in the in that white stripe. Okay. Doing well. Okay, now, let's start doing that year. So I'm just checking like the angles now first are very important. Just checking that Yep. And I want to just do that ear now. I'm just getting the base of the ear down. Okay. So this is just the base of the ear. They have pretty big ears for their size. This goes here. This is where that's why I drew this line just now to just try and get just know where the brown areas are and the white areas. This goes somewhere here. So now I just want to draw that year. That year is just gonna come out a bit. So just getting that angle right? So the year kind of comes a little bit over them and it's gonna come down somewhere around here. She's got very big cute floppy ears. Even now that she's older, her ears are still floppy, which are really cute. I feel that maybe I drew this a little bit too close because I see that the base of the year is not big enough, so I might have to bring that a little bit forward. So these are all things that I'm starting to correct now now that I'm, you know, drawing that year properly. I still feel like maybe the year, I think it should probably come somewhere. Yeah. So that's why I was checking the let's just get that. I think this the e is a little bit bigger. So that's okay. That's why we're doing this step now, like, just getting everything right. So I feel that the year should actually come somewhere here. So that's why the base of the year should probably be moved a little bit more. So let me just check that angle of the ear flopping down. Yeah, I just want to get that angle right. Okay. Okay, erase all those lines that you don't need so you don't confuse. And the base of the ear for me it should now go a little bit more inside the head here. So I think it should come somewhere here. Yeah, I think that looks better. I just want to check something out. I just feel that, like, take a step back if you're not sure. Like, just to check the proportions out. So we got this line going on here. Everything is looking good except I just feel like the ear is a little bit, little bit too far outside the head. So I'm just checking my proportions again. So I'm just doing that eye and just checking if the eye is here and then we got this, I feel like the ear should come somewhere here. I feel like, yeah. So yes, if you want to have it accurate, you do have to just refine it a little bit more. Um, so I'm just checking my lines now. Sorry if I'm taking a while. I just want to make sure I do this right, and it looks the proportions look right. Yeah, so I would say the ear would have to come somewhere like here. The space between the eye and the ear. Yeah, I think it should come somewhere here. So in the ear itself. There is this fold here that I see now. And yeah, her ears pretty big in proportion to her head, as you see with a lot of puppies, but they kind of grow into their ears so to speak as they get older, then their ears start becoming looking small in relation to the rest of the head. So now I feel like we've got a good and yeah, check your work. Always, I always stand up to have a look, I look at my reference photograph, just to double check because, you know, if you've come so far, you just really want to make sure that it looks good. I'm just going to I see this little circle sort of thing in the reference photograph once more. I don't know the scientific name of all the parts of the ear, especially a dog's ear. So I just see this thing that's darker, and then I see this. And we can just erase some of these lines now that we don't need here. All right. And make sure that we've got that angle going right. Yeah. The head. I know it may seem like that looks a lot bigger. Now I'm just tracing out the area around the eye because I just want to double check that it's right, just the right size. There is a shape like this that surrounds the eye, and then we've got like Okay. Yeah, I think that looks good now that I've checked the proportions. And this part here is just going to go in like that. Okay. All right. That looks good. So sorry if I took a while with that. The year I just felt like, yes, it may seem a bit strange that a small puppy has such a big year, but okay, now now is the really, really easy part. Now that we've done that head and we've done the ear and the eyes and we've done everything really accurately, can I just I just want to darken this eyelit a bit just so I can see it very clearly. It is a thick line in the reference photograph, so I just want to do that. Okay. All these other lines like this, if you want to keep them, but you don't want to you just want to lighten them, but, you know, they're a little too dark. You can even use one of these, which is a malleable eraser. So if you press down on that, you will save the line, but you'll just lighten it a lot more. So it's still there for your reference when you want to paint later, but, you know, it's not just really dark and yeah, Okay, so I got distracted. So let me just let's start refining it a little bit now. How about we do this shape? Because my puppy is looking very, very skinny now. So I can see that the line actually kind of comes up here, the line of the body. It's very close to the top of the ear, but not quite. So our puppy is looking a bit skinny now, well, minus. So I'm just going to fatten fatten her up a bit by just making this getting the lines of her body. So as you can see, there's a dent, well, not a dent, but sort of like a goes in a little bit here, and then there's a line that goes down almost straight and then it comes somewhere here, and then we start curving again. You can use the other features that you've done well to try and get your drawing accurate. Everything that you drew previously is going to help you get an accurate drawing, an accurate sketch. There we go. Just a bit of further. Then it goes in here and then it kind of comes out. Okay. She's looking more accurate now, her size. So I'm just going to erase that old line that we did, but I don't regret starting out with a simple shape like a jellybean because as we actually used it, it was very helpful rather than, um what I used to do in the past, which was to focus on one feature and then, you know, try and work my way out. But lately, I've been trying to simplify things because I feel like it helps me draw faster rather than getting very fixated on just one feature and working my way out. But, you know, if that works for you, that's fine, too. Everyone has a different way of drawing, but lately, I just wanted to try and simplify stuff and work my way from there. Now, sorry, I just want to make sure I have that from the picture, now that I've done the draw very accurately to my satisfaction, I just want to elongate this part of the foot. Now that we're adding more details, I just feel that this part of the foot should almost touch that chin according to the reference photograph. I just want to do that and then there's a bit of I think I see a nail sticking out here, and then it comes down. Right now I'm just doing one of the last few things for the sketch, refining the foot, and then the foot comes in like that. So it's a bit of a dentia. Maybe I did that a little bit too fat. Let me just narrow down that line a bit. Okay. And okay. So we got that and then we've got the little nail here. I'm going to draw that nail. Got another little nail that's sticking out here, right under the chin. Okay, so I'm just adding more detail now to my foot. I won't bother doing the little fur lines yet. We can paint that on later. It'll be so fun to paint later. So I don't have to do that, but I do see the shape of the foot, and then now there's a little bit of like a tool sticking out over here. Yeah. So All right. And then we've got this bump that we drew just now. So that actually connects to the foot, so we can erase this line a little bit. As you can see, it's really starting to look a lot more real. I just feel that, like, I don't know if I drew the foot a little bit big, so I'm just going to take a step back. I think it's looking good. Maybe this is kind of sticking out a little bit too much. So maybe I might just make that a little bit more subtle than before. And then we've got this part here. And then we've got the nail here. So just checking everything is in the right proportion. I just felt like it was sticking out a little bit too much, so let me just just do that. Okay, so the shape was fine. I just wanted to kind of go in a little bit more. All right. Yep, I think that's a good foot. Okay. And it comes out here, maybe not that much, but yeah. Okay. Then we've got this little fold here. This comes out this much. I'm just going to erase that. All right. Get rid of those lines you don't need. We got everything is looking really good to me now. Maybe this could just go a little bit higher, but I'm not too I don't think that's a really big deal. Yeah. Yeah. The gap area here looks kind of similar to the area that I seen in the reference photograph. And then we have a bit of the fold here where the knee is. Okay, so this is looking good. Okay. Our jelly bean shape did help us at the start. Now this is this shape looks fine to me where the butt is coming down here and the tail. My tail is probably sticking out just a little bit, but to tell the truth, I don't really mind. I'm fine to just exaggerate that part a bit. I think it looks cute, feel free to modify whatever you want. I don't have to erase it, I feel because I wouldn't mind a bit of that tail showing. Now I just have to maybe Yep. I think the shape is good. I think it's a good shape, so I don't think I really need to change it so much. And now we get to do the really fun part. Let me I'm just going to draw this little line in here that I see because I think that will be important later when we do the fur detail. It's just a bit of a fold, but it's quite obvious, so I want to keep that. Now, the fun part of doing that giant gorgeous brown patch that she has over here that really I feel gives her a lot of character. So doing this patch is also going to help me see whether I made the body thick enough. Even though we already thickened it, I feel like the shape is going to also help me see whether I need to extend it even a little bit more because, you know, puppies are very cute and chubby, you know, you don't see a skinny puppy unless it's really malnourished, so I just want to make sure that I capture that. I'm just using a bit of broken lines now to get that that patch looking good, just to make it look a bit realistic. And so there's a bit of a it kind of goes up here. Yep. And then it kind of goes a little bit over here. So maybe the patch almost takes up the full width of the body here that we see. So I think I actually did draw it accurately, even though it does look like a big patch, but yeah, just standing up one more time to just have a look to see it from a little bit of distance. I think that the patch, um, we could just go maybe a little bit higher here at this part. But than that, I think it's looking great. It's looking really great. Nice. Okay. Now I'm going to do the bottom patch over here. Okay. This comes up here and then we see I'm using broken little short lines actually because I just want to make it look a bit fur like. This is where but right where the tail is. This whole part here is a brown patch. So, yep. She's got gorgeous coloring, my dog. I have to admit, yeah, she's very beautiful. Sorry, I just jumped over here because I just wanted to get that refine that shape a little bit. So I tend to jump around sometimes. So I think 'cause I may not have noticed something earlier and now I do, so I just wanted to do that. But everything else, I'm really happy with the proportions. I think it looks very good. And then we just have one more patch to do over here, and we're done. Yay, I think we're done. I'm just going to stand up and have one more look at this. I think everything looks good. I'm just going to the white stripe here goes very, very thin at the bridge of the nose from this angle. But I just also want to refine that shape a bit. Even though I think it looked really good already. So just erase all the extra lines we don't need. And I'm just going to make the nose come a little bit further out here, the snout because I do see just a little bit of an angle, and, yeah, that's all I want to do. Yep. So I do see that angle here. H that a little bit too fat there. So this is the stage right where I'm almost ready to just stop drawing, but I'm just looking to see if there's anything else I need to refine. But honestly, she's looking really good. The nose does come out a little bit here, so I'm just going to do that. And then, like I said before, we have this fold of the upper lip, so to speak, of the dog that kind of comes a little bit over the jaw line. So just refining all that. But to tell you the truth, I think she looks really good already. I don't think we need to do anything more. So I'm going to stop here, and I hope you're happy with your sketch, and Feel free to erase all the lines that you don't need, and I will see you in the next video where we start doing the base wash and coloring in our beautiful pup. So I can't wait to see you later. Actually, I think that right now, um, I just had an idea that even though our reference photograph looks a little bit like you see two different cloth. She's kind of lying on two different blankets. But what I want to do is I want to kind of sketch some lines that are going to indicate the fold, u of a blanket that she's sleeping on. So to do that, going to use these lines. I'm going to place lines around my sketch. Now, this is not a part that you really need to put a lot of thought into. What we want to achieve with these lines now that we finish sketching our pup is we want to give the illusion that she's sleeping on a blanket or some soft surface and they're falls in the blanket. I see this one in the reference photograph, but I'm not going to copy the reference photograph exactly. What I'm doing is I'm adding a few lines now if you notice I'm trying to do curve lines. They're not straight, and I'm varying the I'm varying whether each line is how many lines I put together and how long each one is, like the length. So it might help if you want to get that angle right, you might have to turn your hand or even the um, the paper around. So as you can see, see, I put quite a few lines here. I left one line there. So this is just varying. And here I might put a fold here. So we're doing the illusion of her making a dent. Her weight is kind of making a dent in the soft surface that she's sleeping on, and I think it's probably a blanket. And you don't have to put a lot of thought into this part because, in fact, I don't really I don't want to do that. Actually, I want to just so what we want to do is the lines that radiate we're varying, Okay. As you can see, this is obviously a very nice soft surface that she's on. Okay, so this is really, like, you don't have to put a lot of detail into this. This is really, secondary to, you know, the puppy. The puppy is the star of the show, and this is just going to complement her sleeping. So don't get carried away and put too many lines. You don't have to. Like, you don't have to space them out, like, you know, regularly, like evenly. I mean, you just see, I'm just trying to do what's natural, what feels natural. And I'm quite happy with that. As long as the lines are not straight and they look curved, that will look natural enough. And you can even add a line fur down here, like, you know, like it's like the cloth is kind of, you know. But yeah, my advice is don't get too carried away with this part. I could get carried away. Alright, so that to me, looks really great. And if you're happy with the lines you've just done, that's wonderful. And I'm happy with this. I think it's ready to paint. So if you're ready, I will see you in the next section of this class to start laying down the base wash, and we're gonna have a lot of fun. So I can't wait. See you in the next section. 4. Base Coat: Hello, everyone, and welcome back. And this is a very exciting section of our class because we will be starting to lay down some color, which is always really fun, and our beautiful sketch is going to start coming to life in stages, and this is always really exciting for me. So without further delay, let me just get right into it. So as you can see, I've got my jars of water here, all ready to go, both of them. I've got my ceramic palette all ready to well, to the side of the ceramic palette, I actually have all my brushes ready and my rag, as well as my paint. So why don't we begin? So when I first studied this picture, I decided I wanted to lay down the base colors first. That's usually how I work when I want to build up the texture of fur. So we're going to lay down the lightest shades first. So what I want to do first is, as you can see, my puppy dragon has these beautiful brown patches on a mainly white furry body. She does have short fur. And in the reference photograph, you can clearly see those sort of hair like strokes of fur. So even though it's short, you can still see the strokes of fur, which means that, you know, we can still give that fur some definition. It's not so short that, you know, we don't see those kind of like the shadow cast by the little clumps of hair. So we do see individual hairs as well. But obviously, we won't be drawing every single individual, strand of hair. We are going to suggest the texture of fur. But I'm going to start first by building up the layers and then gradually we will add detail to really accentuate those clumps of fur. So before I start talking a lot again, I'm going to start putting down just into my palette, the color raw sienna. So I'm just going to get some of that out, with my clean brush. And so this is a color. I think I might put it over here. So I'm just getting some out, um, from the tube because the tubes pretty dry, I kind of have to cut it, but here we go. I'm going to put quite a bit down because this is a color that I'm going to use in a few different areas. So I'm sure you've probably worked with asiana before. It's a beautiful light sandy brown color. And so that's one of the colors. I just want to get my colors ready before I start painting. And another color that will go down for the base color will be this really lovely pink called rose madder genuine. I actually haven't used it much since buying it. But when I was testing out colors, as you can see, to plan the colors that I would use for this painting, I thought that this was a very lovely pink. And when diluted, it's a pink that really kind of matches the softness the soft pinkness that you see on puppy skin, especially around the nose areas and around the paws and on the tummy. So this was a color that I thought would really, do very well in this painting. I thought it would really capture that pinkness of puppies. That's so cute. So I've got these two colors now, and what I want to do. Oops, I want to use my size eight round brush, and I'm just going to actually, I want to start with the pink. So I hope you can see this. I just want to dilute this pink down quite a bit because, um, I obviously don't want it very concentrated, but do remember that watercolors tend to dry lighter than when they look on your paper when they're wet. They tend to look lighter when they're dried. So what I want to do now is, I'm just going to wet Oops, my brush has a little bit of pink, but I don't mind because it's just a little bit. I was just going to wet this area around the mouth over here where the cheek bones, and even a little bit. Well, actually, I can just kind of, you know, I'm sorry that was still in my brush, but don't worry about it. This whole area, I just want to drop in a little bit of pink because I see that in the photograph. I also see pinkness in so sorry, I already had a bit of pink here, but I just want to drop in a little bit more. So I wet the area I wanted to drop it into, and now I'm just dabbing on a little bit more pink. I'm okay with the pink going into this area, even though it will be darker and just a little bit around the mouth, it's okay to leave a few gaps. And over here, this areas a little pinker, too. So that's just the pink skin that we get with the puppy. And I also see a little bit of pink down here, even though it's a little bit covered and it's a little bit in the shadow. Now, I'm just going to wet the foot a little. This is a very staining pink. So even though I thought my brush was rinsed clean, it seems to be sticking. I've wet the foot and I see a little bit of pink where the toes are here, so I'm just going to drop that in. Don't worry if it spreads, we want it to spread because we want it to look a bit natural. Don't want it to look we don't want harsh lines. I'm also going to drop in a little bit more over here. I'm sure those of you who had puppies at one time have noticed that pinkness that you get around their toes. It's so cute. It's so endearing. I see a little bit here too. So I'm just wetting, like, the area around it just to spread it. I also see a bit of pink here. So when they're puppies, even though my puppy dragon has white fur, sometimes we see some of that pink coming through the white fur as well. Like, that gives her, you know, some of that color comes through the white fur. Maybe it's because white is a light color, so it lets some of that through. What I want to do now as well is, I'm just looking for other areas where I might just, for instance, spread a bit of that pink over here, even though I don't see a lot of it here, but just so it looks natural. Just spread it over here. I might drop in a little bit over here. As I was telling you, you can sometimes see it through the white. We're just laying down a bit of that pink here. And since it dries a bit lighter, I'm just going to add a little bit more. And a little bit more here. So I would encourage you for this part of the class project. Observe the photograph that I've provided and just try and add pinks where you see them. So I see some up here. I mean, I'm guilty of getting carried away sometimes, but it really doesn't matter too much. Oh, another area over here that I see some pink and shadow, we will be making a shadow color later, but I just want to drop in the pink here. So the tip of the tail has a bit of pink on it. And I also see some down here. If you feel that the lines are too harsh, use a damper brush and just, yeah, smooth the color, spread it a bit, so you don't get those harsh edges because this is supposed to be a cute little furry animal. Yeah. I like to have some of this pink come through. I even see some of the pink in areas like over here, so see, I was doing harsh lines, so all I have to do is dilute my paint by using a damp brush and spreading it through. I don't mind some harsh lines because this part's going to be in shadow anyway. So that's okay. And if you want, this is really up to you. If you want the appearance of a pink, more pink in your puppy, it's okay to, you know, deviate a little bit from the reference photograph. I'm just going to just watch out sometimes some of the paint just tends to clump together on my brush. So I don't mind a little bit of pinks, kind of, like I said before, poking through the fur because we will be using a shadow color to, you know, illustrate some of the strokes of hairs. But I don't mind just letting some of that pink come through. I even see a little bit over here, but this is up to you how much you want the pink to come through. So there we go. Okay. Look, that's what I like about t. You can sort of accentuate certain things even if the photograph doesn't show it because I just love a bit of that pink to come through. So yeah, that looks pretty light from my camera. I'm just standing up to have a look, but I'm happy with that for now. If you want to make some areas pinker later, it's okay. We can come back to it. But for now, let me just finish up. I just see a few of this a bit of pink coming through. So let me just Also, if you don't have this particular color rose meta genuine, you are welcome to use whatever pinks you have. You can use Alizarin crimson, you can use, you know, any other pink like permanent rose, but you just probably have to dilute it down a little bit. Okay. So finishing up with the pink now, and even. Oh, yes, another thing you might notice if you have a dog is there's some of this pink in the fingernails. Well, I don't really call it fingernails. Toenails, I guess. Yeah, that they have. Some of dragon's nails are black, and some are pink. She's, yeah. She's got beautiful color variations. And so you can see there was a bit of pink there. So I'm just dropping in a little bit of pink, where the foot is. But I'm going to finish up soon before I get too carried away. Yeah, there's just subtle pinks in these areas. And just maybe reinforce some of that with a, because those are beautiful marks that she has. Okay. I think that's enough pink for now. And like I said before, if you want to emphasize it more later, you can always come back. But why don't we move on? And this will be fun to our raw sienna. So it's dried in this time that I've painted. So I'm just reactivating the paint a bit. So what we can do to make it look more natural and not have those, for instance, when I'm talking about the head here, so there's a certain area here where it's lighter, but it still has a little bit of this raw sienna color, but it's lighter than this area here where this line is. So what I can do for that is I can use my brush. I'm using my size 12 now with clean water and I see, everything has that pink in it, sorry, let me just get rid of that. All right. I might have left some pink on the tip of the water jar. Okay, making it very, very clean now. I'm just going to wet this area here where we're going to drop in our paint. I think it's okay to carry it all the way here. Okay. So what I'm going to do now is drop in some raw sienna, all the way from the eye. And what you can do to make this look natural is don't paint the entire, what I'm using here at this area at this very section between the white stripe and the brown patches. I'm using these little hair like strokes rather than just painting a straight line like that. All this is going to help me, um portray the texture of fur, but at the same time, also, it's important to leave a few spaces of white because this will all help with the illusion. I just realized while painting that there is a little pink area in here, so I just want to leave a little bit of that light, and I'll go inside with pink later. But right now, so the year has many different browns, so we're only using one brown now. We're only using raw sienna, and we will build up the layers later with other browns. But over here where this is lighter, I have rinsed my brush, and it has clean water now. And you see, I'm just kind of um yeah, wetting this area and just removing some of that pain because in the reference photograph, it is considerably lighter. Maybe there's a little bit of pain down here, but the rest of it is darker. So as you can see, I created a little bit of color variation by simply using one color of raw sienna, just one brown. But what is important is to leave gaps. Don't just do a flat wash. Where by leaving gaps, we are creating a bit of texture. So that looks good. And also, like what I said before, rather than just painting a straight line, I tried to use brush strokes at this intersection here between the white strip and this brown patch all this helps to create the texture of. And I can see a little bit down here. Yeah. And Yep. Okay, I'm happy with that. I'm going to need to get more raw sienna, so I'll just get some more in here. Okay, for the rest of the patches. But so far, it's looking great. And once more, I'm just going to use a clean brush. I really hope this is nice and clean this time. I'm going to this is another brown patch here. I'm just wetting this area. And I'm just going to use the same size eight round I've been using. So I can see some parts are a little bit lighter, like this middle parts a bit lighter. So I'm just using the reference photograph as a guide. But like I said before, if you want to accentuate something, it's fine to deviate a little from the reference photograph. So here, I'm going to do, like, a few brush strokes, little short hair like strokes to try and create the texture of rather than just a straight line. So, oh, these will help. So this area, yeah, we're going to need to build up the color more with other browns. But as you can see, it looks a little bit lighter here. Okay, now, how about we go to I'm going to paint this little one over here. So I don't think I really need to This is quite I don't feel like I need to dilute wet this patch because I feel like I can just use my brush. I hope you can see what I'm doing. I'm just kind of using my brush to kind of create these very defined strokes that make it look like fur, where the white hairs meet this brown patch here. So I'm okay to work with just, you know, not very diluted paint. So I didn't wet this area. I felt like, look, we can just color it in. So there we go. We got one patch here. And I think I feel comfortable to also do the same over here so I'm doing hair like strokes at the very border that the white fur meets the brown patch. I hope you're having fun doing this. This is a fun part. You don't have to feel stressed over here as well. See, rather than just painting a straight line, I'm going to use short little lines like this. That suggests for I'm also now just going to use my brush. I'm pressing down harder. As you can see, I'm creating thicker strokes to just try and fill up this area. But at the same time, I make an effort to just kind of leave a few white gaps because as I said before, that also helps to create the illusion of f. So I'm leaving a few white gaps, and that's okay. Yeah, that looks great. I see a little bit a tiny bit of brown here, even thought this was a photo of her when she was a puppy. I don't remember her having a bit of brown, but I see it now here. I'm also okay to put a little bit of it here, even though at this is a shadow area, but that's okay. I'm just putting it in because I see that there. So remember, we're only still just using one shade of brown now, but you can see we're already starting to create the illusion of fur. Also, I just want to maybe darken this area a little bit. I feel like the patch this area down here is darker than the middle part of the patch. So just doing that, but already I'm very happy with what we're doing. And now let's just do this other patch over here. For this one because it's just a large area, I'm just going to use a bit of water to just help help the paint spread when I'm painting. And I look it looks like I'm running out of raw sienna again, so let me just grab some. Okay, that should be enough to keep me going. Okay. So what I'm going to do here as well is I'm using the tip of my brush, my size eight round to just kind of let the brush strokes just kind of come out slightly from that pencil boundary. This all helps to create the illusion of fur because it's never going to be one straight line, you know, of a fur pattern. As you can see, these strokes here are looking a little bit too uniform. So I'm going to start like you know, you can change the direction, but just make sure you can see a few individual. You don't want just one very straight looking line, even at the boundary of a patch that's irregularly shaped because all these will, you know, trick the mind into thinking that, oh, this looks like fur. Once more, just trying to So she has short hair. So you don't really see like curls, like the way you would see in, like, a labradoodle. You don't really see like waves like, you know, like what breech should I talk about? Like a King Charles cavalier would probably have waves, you know, Labradoodle would have, or Cavuto would have like curls very obvious curls. So we see short strokes because she has short hair. Alright. So what I can do now is, if you look at your reference photograph, you will see the direction of the of the fur. So just by looking at the picture, we can see that the strokes of fur seem to be coming downwards like this. But then as we go off to the side here, they tend to change direction and kind of become more horizontal. So these are all things that we can observe from the reference photograph that will help us just become more observant as artists. So there we go. See the direction of the fur also plays a part in tricking the mind into thinking that, oh, that really looks like fur. So, you know, if I just painted it all down, it would look a little bit fake. So yeah, just pay attention to your reference photograph because right now you see how it starts becoming, like I said, more horizontal as you get out towards the border of the patch. But then up here, it clearly looks like it's going this way. So yeah. As you can see, I'm just leaving a bit of white gaps. I think I have to just get more pain out. Okay. Leaving some white gaps just to make it look a bit more realistic. And then it goes out there. Yeah. But as you can see, there's definitely a pattern to the direction of each each hair. So, like I said before, we're not going to paint every single hair. We're just going to suggest later on some of the hairs, and then your eyes and your mind will do the rest to put it together that, Oh, this is a furry animal. Okay, so I've done that. I've left a bit of white. I think that's looking good, but I might go back to the top of the head here and get a little bit more raw sienna going on. But so far, I'm really happy with what I'm seeing I just want to finish up with the raw sienna before I move on to another brown. Just, you know, just, like, finish it up. Yeah, so that I don't have to keep going back to a brown or another color that I've already used. But, you know, at the end, Okay, so let me just tell you what I'm doing now. I'm using the very tip of my brush to just paint a few, like, strokes of hair with the raw sienna color. So just look at your reference photograph for this. So like I said, we don't have to paint every hair. I just want to go to reinforce some hairs like at the boundary here. Yeah, so we're not painting every hair. I'm just doing a little bit of a little just to suggest a few hair strokes. So as you can see, the head the first base layer that we painted has completely dried, and I'm just going over it now. So you can see a little bit of texture going on now now that I'm adding this second layer. But we are far from done. We will definitely come back with different browns that are going to add so much richness to the color of her fur. Okay. So I've added a little bit of this where I see it. And there's something. I'm just trying to decide first how much I want to do now. But I also want to just even though these areas are darker, I'm going to use darker browns here. I don't mind just going over this area a little bit more. And and also another I can do is use my brush to just kind of at the boundary, kind of do short little strokes, some of them that stick out. And yeah, this area will be darker. What I can do now with my brush is just kind of go over the areas that should be darker, even though I'll be using other browns later to build up the intensity of that color. But I guess I could lay this down here as a guideline. Okay, so Yep, that will all be. And in here, I think it should be a little bit darker. But remember, I told you that I actually should have painted a little part in here pink. So I'm going to have to do that. I'm just going to add a couple of strokes here. Over here in this lighter area. And what I want to do actually is I'm just going to get my very small size four round brush and just use very diluted raw sienna to just go a little bit into the white area here because I just happened to see a little bit of color there, but not a lot and just at this boundary here. But as you can see, it's obviously a lot lighter up here down here, sorry, than up here. Maybe I'm just going to add a couple of hairs on the eyelid. Yeah. So how much detail you want to do, I will leave that up to you, but I'm someone that loves to do detail. That's why I'm doing this to just suggest the fur. And before I retire, the raw sienna, I also just want to go over certain areas that I feel, you know, could be darker with the raw sienna before we put it away. Okay. Uh uh, um, I think the intensity here is enough. I'm just going to have to use, you know, a darker brown over there. Maybe we could just do this area a little bit more, but we will have to build it up with darker browns. This area looks a little bit light, so maybe we could just go back there. But I also feel maybe over here, we can extend it just a little bit. When you look at the reference photograph, this area here is a little bit darker than, for instance, this area here, down here. These are all things that you can observe and decide how much you want to do, but let me just get out more. Raw Sienna. Yeah, I find obviously with the light colors, you tend to run out of them pretty quickly in your palette because you're building up the intensity with the light colors. All right. I just want to make sure I don't overdo this, but it's a light color. Okay. Other than that, I think it's looking great. After we finish the raw Siena, actually, maybe we could take a little break. Yeah. Just take lots of breaks just so you don't feel like it's a chore to do. Okay. I'm just going to go over this area here because I feel like it's dark and this will just help me later on when I lay down more color. Just a little bit there. Yeah, that's looking great. Now I'm just going to use small strokes to just build up that intensity of color here with the raw sienna. But I also have to use other browns. But I'm going to put this away soon. The patch is darker up here, so it's okay for me to put that in there. Remember, those little strokes at the boundary really do help. Okay, I think that's looking good. There is just one thing that I want to do with the pink that I just noticed from the photograph is I want to put a bit of pink here because I see that in the ear here. Even I see a dark area here where that's the inner ear. So we're going to leave that, but I just wanted to this part's a little bit pink, so I just want to put that down there. I mean, this part sort of has a bit of a pink shade, even though it's darker. I'm okay to just How about I just paint this whole area pink first, and um when I come back, I can just add more shadows with the other browns. So before we take a nice break and come back and let this fully drive us, just standing up now to get a good view of my painting and seeing where else I need to what else I can do now. But to tell you the truth, I think it's looking great. So why don't we go take a break? And when we come back, we will start using the other browns, as well as adding some shadow of the fur in, and she's going to start to really come to life. So see you in the next section. 5. Building up colors and texture: Hello, and welcome back. And as you can see, our the previous layers have completely dried and she's starting to get some form, a little bit of definition. It's always nice to see some color being added, starts to bring our subject to life. So without further delay, how about we keep going at this? And by the end of this session, she's going to look even more realistic. So the first thing I want to do is start applying a different brown. So I'm somebody that likes to go from the lighter color to the darkest color. So I'm going to save, like, you know, my very darkest brown for the end. So in the previous section of this class, we laid down some pink and some raw sienna. And we only use those two colors so far. So right now, I would like to start with the next brown that I'm going to use, the next darkest one. So I want to use this color called Burn Sienna, and I'm just going to put it in maybe over I guess I could put it over here. That's right. I hope you can see that in the camera. Yep. So this is a nice, kind of like a medium brown with maybe a little bit of reddish tones to it. Oops got a little bit of dried paint there that fell. So what I want to do now is I'm just going to look at my picture. And so obviously I'm not just going to paint over completely over this raw sienna. We definitely want some of this raw sienna color to come through and also the white areas that we left. So what we're going to do is we're going to look at our reference photograph, and I'm also going to use my small size four round brush, and I'm just going to get this paint going with a bit of water. And I'm just going to look at those dark areas again on the reference photograph. And that's where I want to start laying down this some strokes of this color while still letting some of that raw sienna come through. So you might want to just use a spare piece of paper to test out. Yep, that looks like a good intensity for me to lay down. So with my size four round brush, I'm going to start maybe I might start over here on this, um, this side of the face that's a little bit hidden. So what I'm just doing is I'm using just the tip of my small brush to do some hair like strokes of fur rather than, you know, just paint that whole section. I want to I'm letting some of that color come through. And over here too. So this is where the other eye is. But because it's quite hidden and it's closed, we don't see it very clearly. But, what I want to do is, yeah, I'm just letting that area darken that area according to the picture. And I'm just going to put a little bit up here. There's not a lot of darkness going on there, so just a little bit, just for some color variation. And that's actually what is over here underneath the pop that we'll paint later is there is a bit of shadow being cast from this side of the head. So the lighting for this photograph was obviously above. So there will be a bit of shadow that we can paint on later, but that's for much later. So this side does look a little bit darker, but we're going to leave it for now. But I just want to do a little bit more of this brown. And now I'm going to jump in right here to this eye. And as you can see from the reference photograph, this section here looks a little bit darker. Even though the brown might not be right, I think that brown's a lot darker. It's more like a sepia color. But I'm just going to just add some of this some of the strokes here because I just want some color variation going on. If you look very closely, you will see some individual strokes of brown around the eye and they seem to be going in a certain direction. They seem to be going a little curved up here and then This is all about your observation, and I also see some of it going a little bit flat here. So right now, I'm just using the reference photograph just to get a good idea of how to, you know, create some nice, some realistic hair like strokes. Above the eyelid as well, I just want to do a few of these like hairs. So remember, feel free to use the picture, the reference photograph I gave you. It comes in quite handy when we're studying fur and things like that. I've done a bit of that. I don't want to completely, you know, to get very carried away and cover all the previous layers of raw sienna. So I'm just starting to build up a little bit of variation. I might just do a little bit of that over there. And I also see some some of that, you know, a few little hairs here and there. So I'm going to let you decide how much you want to do here. But I'm just going to kind of sort of do this as naturally as I can. I'm just using a few of these brushstrokes in areas of the reference photograph that I find are a little bit darker. For instance, there's this a bit of a gap here between the eye and, you know, so I just want to yeah, sort of if you want, you can always take a step back to just have a look to make sure, you know, you see where the dark areas are. So I'm just building up some of that dark area using this new brown. And as we go closer to the ear, we can see this area is a lot darker. So I'm just going to start getting in there a little with my um with this beautiful burn sienna and also just trying to follow the way the strokes of the fur are. Now, how much detail you want to apply is really up to you. If you just want an overall effect of light and dark, that's fine too, and that will still convey, you know, the look of your pup. I will still convey you don't have to do each hair, my aim is not to do each hair. My aim is just to suggest the texture of fur. But I feel like it does help if you have if you use some of these short hair like strokes, now I'm pressing down a little bit with my brush to kind of fill in an area a little bit faster, a bigger area rather than drawing each hair. My paint is starting to get a bit dry, so I'm just going to use a bit of water on it. We also want to do things like I can see lots of individual hairs here. So just try and follow the direction that you see in the reference photograph. All this is helping to build up layers, but at the back of your mind, just remember we don't want to cover the entire raw sienna that we've painted. We want that to come through as well. So we're going to leave gaps. Okay. So like I said before, how many hair strokes you want to put really depends on you, or you can press down with your brush to create a thicker strokes that still, you know, create darker regions. I'm just kind of varying it a little bit. So what I do is I kind of, um do a few hair like strokes, and then sometimes I just press down with my brush like this to cover, like, you know, wider areas. And this also extends a little bit down here. I should have drawn with my pencil later, but I can just do a pen that she has sort of like a mole here that's very cute, that has these two little hairs coming out. I'm sure you've seen that on many, many dog breeds. They seem to have a mole right on their cheekbones on either side. Which I think is very cute. So yeah. So I'm letting some of that color come through, but at the same time, I'm also darkening the area. Up here, the hairs up here seem to be a little bit darker, too, so I'm just going to try and do that. And so by drawing individual hairs up here, right at the boundary of the head, I'm definitely suggesting that this is furry and not just doing a straight line, just like what I said in the previous video. Okay, so we got I might just jump around here and there because as I talk, so we've got this part of the ear here, the nice floppy part that just comes down like that. Obviously, I'm going to need the darker browns later to color this in. But I don't mind just, like I said before, emphasizing these darker areas by just laying down, um, more paint in these areas and trying to keep the areas that are lighter unpainted. Okay, so I'm just going. So as you can see in the reference photograph, there's a little bit of a lighter area here. Ah, pin's drying really quickly, so I'm just going to now press down a little with my brush, like doing bigger strokes to cover this larger area and trying to also do little hair like strokes at the boundaries, just to create that furry effect. Feel free to stop stand up and have a look to make sure that you're not overdoing a certain area and just to see where the light and dark areas, stop again. Oh, I think she's looking really cute, and I'm just going to I mean, if you want, you can do the eyelid. You can do it with this pain, this color, even though that's more of a darker color, and I was going to go over it with Sepia later. But I guess we could, you know, adding layers and stuff might just help it even more to look more realistic. So there we go. I've done this closed eyelid slit. And then I'm just going to go over with sepia again later to just really emphasize it. As you can see, these areas are a little bit lighter on the photo, but you will get a few little hairs maybe here going up here. We can definitely go over now that this area is dry, I'm just doing wet on dry, just building up some more color here. Doing those little hairs here to create puppy fur. Yeah. This boundary here where the ear meets connects to the top of the head, there is a definite darker region here. Let's just emphasize that by putting down more paint. But also, I feel like we see a little bit of the inner ear here. So this is how detailed you want to make this part it's really up to you. Personally, I don't tend to really focus so much on the inner ear detail. I don't feel like I really need to when I've done pet portraits in the past, and they still bore a very strong resemblance to somebody's pet. So yeah, like I said, it's up to you, how much detail you want to put in that. So I'm just going over what I'm doing now is just kind of going over what I previously did, just, you know, re emphasizing those areas that are supposed to be darker. And remember, like at the year here, we can also do little strokes like that, broken lines too, give the impression of fur rather than a straight line. Okay, so that's looking nice and I'm just going to Okay, that's looking cute. And I think for now, we can just, I feel like I'm just going to use my brush a bit to kind of lift a bit off here because maybe I felt like I went a little bit too close there. I think this area is just a little bit lighter. Yeah. I just want to put maybe just a couple of strokes down rather than. I think that's okay for now. I will come back and look at this again in a little bit. But it's good to maybe take a break from each section and then come back so that I don't just overwork this section and then come back and say, Oh, maybe I did that a little bit too much. How about we go to let's jump to this patch. I'm just going to rewet my paint a bit. I don't feel like I need to re wet this area and then put down this pain. I feel like I can very comfortably apply it wet on dry rather than wet on wet because I want to have more control over where I put my darker brown on. I'm not going to wet the whole area. I'm fine to just use my little brush, and as you can see, this area here is a little bit lighter and the darker area of this patch is up here. So how about we get working on that? Here I go. I'm just going to I'm also looking at the at the direction of some of the fur here. It's going a little diagonal over here. There you go. See? Yeah, it's definitely looking more like fur now. I was going diagonal here, but as we get out here, it starts to change direction a little bit. Fur is interesting, isn't it? It's like it has movement, even though this is a short fur. Making sure I don't get too carried away. As you can see, I'm obviously leaving a lot of gaps in between my strokes just so that raw sienna comes through. Yeah. But stand up if you have to zoom out of your reference photograph to just see where the dark areas are and the light areas. The direction of the fur has changed here. But because it's lighter, I'm going to leave more spaces between my strokes. They're obviously more concentrated on the top. See, leaving a lot more spaces here the direction is like that. All these little observations will really help to produce a more realistic pet portrait. And at the boundaries, I like to make them go out a little bit. I think I'm going this part looked a bit unnatural, so I'm going to put more strokes there. And we want jagged edges, right? That's what's going to really make it more realistic. So I don't want to spend, like, too much time on this because I don't want to get carried away. So I'm just going to just going to put down a few more strokes, and then I want to just maybe take a step back and have a look to make sure I'm not overworking the area. I'm taking a step back, standing up now. I still see that this area on the top should be darker, how about we go back to just this? Feel free. With a rough idea of the direction of the strokes, you then start, do it in a nice, relax, comfortable way. And, my wrist is very loose. I'm just feeling what I'm seeing, but I'm not thinking really hard about every stroke that I'm putting down. So maybe even pressing down a little bit more with my brush to cover larger areas rather than just using the tip. So just applying a little bit more pressure on the brush. So that's looking good to me. And, you know, we're also probably going to have to add another different brown here to make it look even more realistic. But so far, I'm really happy, I'm really pleased with how this is turning out. And I'm just using the tip of my brush now as I get out here to the boundary just to, yeah, emphasize that cute for effect here. Okay, so as you can see, definitely darker here. I just want to this area especially should be a little bit darker. A little bit of darkness here and there. But this lower part is kind of quite light. Okay. All right. I'm standing up now. I'm liking what I'm seeing now. I'm just going to move to the next patch, and then I can always come back later and build up more layers if I want to. So taking more of this burn Siena. Over here, this is a pretty small patch. So I don't mind going a little bit concentrated here. And as you can see, it's a little darker down here. M and we can see long hairs coming in here, but don't worry. My magic tool that I use in almost every class is the white gel pen and that will just work wonders here to create that hair effect later on. I only really use white gel pen right at the end because it's usually a finishing touch that I like to put in. Yeah, I was getting a little carried away here, so I just want to make sure I don't overdo this area. I think that's enough for now. Now over here, I can see definitely darker Darker hairs over here with this patch. And see I'm still following the direction that I see of the hairs from the reference picture. You see how they curve in this direction now. All this is very helpful. Okay, making sure I leave gaps to let that raw sienna in, and it's a little darker down here. And it's okay for us to, like, you know, kind of go in woods a little bit, you know, to try and make it look natural. Don't do it too uniform is what, yeah, nothing in nature is really very uniform. So, uh, yeah, it helps to not make it look too planned, so to speak. Okay, so I think that's looking right. I just want to add a little bit of this darker brown here, this where the tail is here. But this is more like a shadow part, but I just wanted to add that in. I don't know why I see a little bit of brown there, so I just want to add it in there. Now, just looking going to stand up again. I'm just wondering whether should I should darken some parts of the head a little bit more. So these browns that I chose for this particular pet portrait, what I feel are the closest to the picture. You know, obviously with watercolors, there are, you know, lots of different variations of every single color, lots of different reds, lots of different blues. So even with the browns, I felt like these were the closest. But, you know, there are colors like brown ochre, you know, that you could probably also use here. But first of all, when I planned this class, I wanted to use what I already had, and I also didn't want to, you know, have to use so many different, colors to list so many different colors that you would have to use or buy. So I'm using what I have, and I also feel, but if you have browns that are very similar to the ones that I have chosen and you have them, like, you know, feel free to use them. You can change the color variation a little bit. You don't have to follow exactly what I'm using. You know, use what you have. That's how I started out using what I had and then saving up to buy, you know, other colors. But I pretty much had a very basic palette when I first started out. I think I only started out with 12 different colors altogether. Okay, so I think that's looking cute. And so just adding a few more little hairs here and there. And yeah, maybe just trying to I just feel like maybe this area is a little bit darker here, so I'm just adding that. But you see this kind of like a dark streak here. You see this and then there's a bit of a curve, so to speak, over here, where the eye is a little bit here. Yeah, that's what I see in the reference photograph. Then maybe if you find some areas are still a little light, you can just add, just a couple of strokes here and there to make it look natural as well while still letting that area remain light. So I'm just looking to see if I may have overlooked, maybe that's a little bit dark here. I'm just going to use a bit of a wet damp brush to just kind of um, yeah, darken this area but not too dark. Maybe using a very diluted version of this color to just also come down a bit. Um, Yeah. But I don't want very strong boundaries, I might just dilute it even more, but I do see that there is a bit of this color. This is what I observe. Yeah. You don't have to do exactly what I do if you're happy with your drawing. This is what I see. So I think that's okay for me. I might just lighten these strokes a bit with my wet brush, but I definitely see some color there, but it's just not very dark, if that makes sense. I'm just putting a little bit more diluted color there. Okay. Overall, I like what I see. So remember, if there are parts that are a little bit too light, you can just add in maybe just a couple of very light strokes just to so it's not like a very stark light. Okay. Little bit around the eye, very diluted. Okay. I think also with the eye, I just want to get that line, that shape right. Yeah, I'm just going to extend that a bit there. But I think this looks great now. Just standing up, having another look. I might just want to add a few more strokes in here. See very quickly, I'm just doing this in a very natural way, not thinking about it too much. Okay. All right. I actually think it looks good, and I think we can stop now. And when we come back, we're going to apply, I think we might as well do both the other browns that I have left a little bit of burn umber and then the sepia. And once I start doing that, wow, our puppy is going to really start coming to life. So how about we take a break now? Just let this completely dry and I will see you in the next section of this class. 6. Adding more colors and texture: Hi, everyone, and welcome back. And as you can see, our previous layers of brown have dried and our puppy is starting to take on more dimension in the brown areas of the fur. So before I move on to the white areas and making them look more fur like, I want to just use a couple more darker browns inches just use it just, you know, in certain areas just to emphasize a little bit more shadow and color variation. So I will not be using them as widespread just in certain areas that we see from the reference photograph that need to be darker. So without further delay, let's just get right into it. So the next brown that I have chosen is burned amber. Burn umber is just darker than our raw sienna obviously and burned sienna, but it also has, um, it's dark brown, but it's not quite as dark as sepia, either. So it's somewhere kind of in the middle, and I just want to oops Okay. Move some of that drip paint that just kind of crusted off when I just opened the tube. So I'm just going to use this very sparingly in just some of the areas that I find darker. So just checking you can see that in my palette. Yep. So I just want to, um, not dilute the pain too much. As you can see, that looks good for me. I'm going to start with maybe this area here. As you can see, it's a darker, deeper brown. I'm just going to use short hair like strokes to just use it in the inner corner of this eye. I'm just building up even more dimension with the fur and I'm also just going to use it a little bit here on the edge here. But once more, just using short strokes, trying not to cover up the entire area, all the previous layers of lighter brown. I'm just doing what I see in the in the reference photograph. And this eye over here especially, is a little bit darker. So I'm just going to this little corner here clearly has darker brown fur, like a darker patch here. I'm just going to go over that. I'm going to use more of this and we also see it down here at the bottom. Using very short hair like strokes, just making sure I don't get too carried away. So yeah, you can definitely see that little corner of the eye here is a darker, just a little bit darker. I also want to just use just a couple of strokes here because I see that as well in the reference photograph and just a few not a lot, just a few big strokes coming out of the eyelid. I'm also just going to use whatever pain I have left to just do a couple of strokes going upwards and diagonally like this that I see in the reference photograph. Obviously, we're going to have to go over again with a darker brown, but as I said before, I'm just adding building up layers. Rather than having to just use the dark brown, all these little steps that we're doing, we're building up the layers in a more natural way. There's also a lot of variation in color. Using this color where I see appropriate and I advise you to just look at your reference photograph that I've provided and just put those darker strokes where you feel you see them. Obviously, they're not going to go everywhere. They seem more concentrated in this region up here. Whoops. If you feel like you did a stroke that was too thick, I'm just rinsing my brush. Even though that doesn't really bother me too much, but I just wanted to correct it because I think my brush might have gone a little bit too I might have put a little bit too much pressure there. So I see just a few lines here. So remember, take constant steps back, like, stand up and just look at your painting from a little bit of distance just to help you decide where those dark areas are. Because when you're sitting down for a long time in painting, you know, it might be a little bit difficult to see where they are. So I'm just see some up here. I'm just going to lay down a few more of this dark color up here. And then we start seeing it up here too. So I'm just using the tip of my brush because I don't want to cover a really huge area. I have more control that way. And I might as well just add the little cute mole that she has over here. So I'm just going to put it here just so I know where it is. And later on, I can do those little hairs that come out that are very cute. So I'm just using my dark brown now and I'm just going to I think I'm going to go into the base of the ear here where the ear attaches to the top of the head. I see that this part is darker, so I'm just going to just lay down some strokes that are thicker than what I was doing just now because to me, I see them as being thicker and this is going into the ear. Also, we've got this little inner ear here that's darker. I'm just going to define that a little bit. But as I said previously, I don't really pay too much attention to the inner ear. It's just not something I particularly focus on. And up here there is a bit of darkness here. I'm just looking at the reference photograph now and how much detail you want to put in really depends on you. And I'm just going to now darken this part too. As you can see, the ear is starting to get a little bit more definition now. I'm just using the tip of my brush to add these fur strokes, not everywhere, just in the areas that I see are darker. You can clearly see a lot of the lighter colors coming through. Also at these boundaries here, I'm also intentionally going a little bit out to create that furry effect because it's not going to be a straight line. Just building up layers now Okay, that looks good. Okay. And if you feel like maybe this area is a little bit light, you can use a diluted a diluted version of this color to just All I did is I just laid down a bit of a light wash of this color burn umber just because I felt that was maybe a little bit light. And I think I might also do it here. Like maybe I'll do it this way, just because I felt that it was maybe a little bit too light there. It's not as yellow. So in those areas, I'm just toning it down by using just a very light wash of what was left on my brush of the burn Amba. But I think it's okay now over here. Okay. I just adding a few fur details over there. Just a little bit, adding to that effect of fur. Okay. So let me just before I move on from the head, I think that's looking good. So all these layers of brown that we've done, I just have to go up here right now. I don't think I've done this part here. So this is also darker here where the ear attaches to the head. I just want to emphasize that too. All right. And there should definitely be more shadow, darker area over here under this flap of the ear. Okay. Yeah, so that's looking good. And I don't think I did this yet, did I? I'm just going to go and just do that eyelid. Just go over the eyelid with this darker brown, just to emphasize it a bit more. And even though I will go over it with the darkest brown later of sepia. So I'm going to stand up now. I think that looks good. So, um now that I stood up just a little bit of hairs here, maybe. I can always come back to this later. So how about I just keep going? And okay, let me not get too carried away. And maybe over here. All right. Okay. How about I come back to that later if I still want to add more. So let me move on to this patch. Remember, you can always add more color later if you feel like it rather than to overwork the area. So from the overall view of this from the photograph, I feel like the darker colors the darker regions more concentrated on the top. I'm just going to start there by doing these short hair like strokes, trying to follow the direction that I see u on the reference photograph. So there we go. We're building up some nice layer. H Okay. And like I said before, the direction kind of changes a little. I'm also going to intentionally let a few of these hairs go outside the patch because they just yeah, they just make it look a little bit more realistic. So as you can see, the top part definitely looks darker. And also just I see a little bit of brown down here. Just a little bit of that color here. A, Yeah. I don't want to overwork the area too much, but I just see a little a sparing amount over here. I don't want to overwork it because then it will start looking too dark compared to the top. Yeah, I think I might stop and move on to the next patch. I like working on this little one first. This one also looks darker nearer to the top, let's put that in. Uh, Okay. I love the color variation over here of this patch, so I don't want to overwork it, but it's darker on the top here. I'm going to let a few dark lines just go up there, and then I'm going to stop because I think that looks great. Now I'm just going to just a little bit more here, near the top too. I don't know why all the patches seem to look darker towards the top. Using my short, define strokes using the tip of the brush. Watch your hands. Make sure you're not resting it on a wet part. Okay. I just want a few strokes going through this area so it doesn't look too light, but we will keep the color. Yeah, I like that. I like the way this is looking. I don't really feel like I need to well, I guess I could put some of the dark color here because even though I'm going to paint over it with shadow later, yeah. So that's looking good to me. I think I just want to add a little bit more darkness here. Okay. Let me just take a step back. I'm loving what I see. I think it looks great. I'm just looking at the head again, just seeing whether I need to now that I'm standing up, I think I want to just maybe put a little bit more color here. There's a bit of a very obvious lighter area here. So let's leave that. I feel like maybe this part looks a bit too uniform, so I'm just going to break it up a bit with a wet brush, like, yeah, a damp brush. I mean, okay. But I do think it looks great. I think that's looking good. And I do feel like the inside of the ear here should be a little bit browner, so I'm just going to add some brown here. So just observe and yeah, decide what to do, just by looking it's as simple as saying, Oh, this part looks a bit darker, so I'm just going to put down more paint there. So I can see now that this part of the ear goes up a little bit like that, and kind of goes up like that. So these are all little observations I'm making. And this part's definitely darker down here. This little, like, nice rounded part of the ear. And we will definitely have to build up even more layers with the brown layer. So I'm just going to make this part darker again by putting just a little bit more pain here. Okay. Okay, I think that looks good. So how about we start having a little bit of fun now, and we can start doing things like using the sepia. So sepia is a very dark color that I have. So I have it in my, um Sorry, I was just getting Alright. So I've got sepia here. Sepia is this beautiful dark brown. I just happen to have some my little in my little travel set of paints here that I've prepared. So this is sepia. As you can see, it's a gorgeous, gorgeous, dark brown. It's probably the darkest brown that you can find. And this is a color that I want to use on the nose around the mouth. It's a great color to use when you don't want to use black. So I want to use this now on these areas. So just check that you don't put your hand down on a wet patch. So I'm pretty sure that this is pretty dry already because I used quite concentrated pain. It's not too diluted. So it feels dry for me to rest my hand on. So what I want to do here now is I'm going to use the sepia where the um, darkest areas of our puppy. So like, we don't see the whole eye here because it's like she's resting on it and also on this side. And also, we've got the shadow coming through of the when she lies down on the cloth from the reference photograph. I hope I'm saying that correctly. I hope you understand what I'm talking about. I'm not going to work that area too much until I do the shadow. And so this is a very strong color. So I would just advise you to go go slow and just keep taking breaks and standing up to see that the intensity is right for you. This eye over here, you can see gorgeous sepia in the photograph here in this corner of the eye. This is what I'm using. Over here, trying to follow the hair, the stroke pattern and we see a bit of it coming down here, but it's mainly concentrated in the corner of the eye. I'm also going to use it on this slit here of the eyelid. As you can see, wow, it's really a strong color. And there we go. And to make it look a bit more natural, you can use very short strokes around the eyelid, just to make it look natural. Yeah, that looks good. That looks great. With the sepia as well, I'm using a bit of a concentrated consistency, so I'm just adding a little bit of water because I want to do certain areas. I see this ear down here, right at the tip here, I can see that it's darker, so I just want to add that. I'm only going to use it sparingly on the ear because there are only certain parts that look noticeably very dark. Trying to follow the reference photograph to Remember, trying to follow the direction of the fur, too. Up here. The direction of the fur, keeping that in mind. Remember, it's not very dark towards the top. That to me seems like a lot already. I'm also going to use some of it here where the inner ear is a little bit down here. So this is just a matter of observation and how much detail you want to put in. And we got the shadow coming down here. Okay. Yeah, I think that looks really good. It's very, very strong. I don't want to use too much of it, but I can see just a few dark strokes here. I'm just very sparingly using the tip of my brush and whatever pain I have left to just do a couple of those. Maybe just a few over here. Maybe just that mole here. I might just do that. I suppose I could actually do those two hairs that I see coming out of a mole that many dogs have just using the very tip of my brush. One of them is longer than the other, putting that in now. I think it's fine to start adding details in. Now I just want to use the sepia, but I'm just going to dilute it down a little bit because I just want to paint that area around the nose. So it's over here that we see this little pattern around the nose that kind of goes down a little to to the lip. And here, I'm just going to trace out the, line of the lip just so I can see what I'm doing and the color goes a little bit down here too. Now that I'm using this, I'm wondering if I may have to go darker with pains gray or something, but I'm fine to just use sepia at the moment. I suppose I could just paint the nose as well. I'm just going to follow the pattern that I already drew just now. I'm just going to shade it in. The nose is very dark, so I'm fine to just go all the way. I don't mind if it bleeds out a little into that region that I just did around the nose, Yep. So there's a nose. So as you can see, her face is starting to come alive now. And we'll have to go back later and layer the nose again, but to make it darker and to just add the nostril. But I think she's starting to come alive now. Let me take a step back. Yeah. Wow, that face is starting to come alive, which is always exciting. I'm just going to do the All right. I'm just doing the mouth. Okay. And I'm just going to very lightly drag it out. So how much you want to I'm just emphasizing this little smile a little bit because I think it looks very cute. So there we go. I'm going to now use diluted sepia to add these really cute little freckles that I see that she has. Oh, that's so cute. Yeah, she's really coming to life now. This is the fun part when we've added a few, like, layers already of color, and we start adding the details. And yeah, our subject just really comes to life. So don't get too carried away with doing the freckles now. And, um, so vary the size of some of the freckles. Some of them are bigger, obviously than others. Yeah, that's looking very cute. I don't want to do too many. And, um, I'm just wondering now if I just a little bit up here, if I should start doing the shadow part of the f by mixing a color. But before that, let me just sorry just thinking aloud now. I just want to use very little sepia right now to just add a few dark hairs at the top and remind myself not to get carried away because obviously, I don't want this patch to just become really dark overall, but there are a few shadow bits or darker color that I see here. All these steps that I'm doing, they're all making your fur look more realistic. It really is. Yeah, that looks great. So remember, not too much, and the top part should be darker than the bottom. That's the overall look that I'm going for. Okay. Oops, I didn't notice that I left a low mark there, but don't worry about it. That's outside the picture. That's why I'm always saying, please make sure you don't rest your hand on a wet pot. Okay, but I don't want to do too much. I'm going to leave this up to you as well, how much you want to follow the reference photograph. But I felt that the fact that this part of the patch is darker than the rest of it kind of, you know, gives it a bit of realism, too. Okay, so that I don't get carried away doing this, just as I do that. I'm going to move on from this patch and start going to the next one here. Literally just a couple of dark strokes. That's it. I don't want to get too carried away. Okay. Yeah, I think that's it. We're done. And I'm going to put some more over here. Remember, let some of that white come through because that looks natural too. And try and follow the strokes, the direction of the hairs. Okay. And I'm just going to use some of that over here. So diluted, it's diluted, and as you can see, it forms like a bit of a shadow color. And I felt like that line's a little bit too. I'm just going to use a damp brush now to just kind of blend the color because I felt the lines were a little bit too harsh in the tail. There we go, and that's it. I don't need to touch the tail anymore. I'm just finishing up here with a few dark strokes of sepia. Sorry if I jump a bit. Sometimes if I see something, I might just jump to something I missed earlier. Okay, I don't want to touch that anymore. No more using sepia. To tell you the truth, before I do the nose again and add more definition, I think I might have to go with a darker color than sepia, like black or Paine's gray. But before I do that, before I add more definition, I think it's time we start really, um bringing the white of the fur to life by adding some shadow, by mixing a shadow color. But since we've just done all this brown and it's looking amazing, how about we take a break first? Let everything fully dry so you don't end up resting your hand on wet paint. And how about I see you in the next section of this class and we will mix a shadow color and finish doing our puppy's fur. I can't wait. Go have a break, and I'll see you in the next section. 7. Adding detail to white fur: Hi, everyone, and welcome back. And as you can see, everything that we've done previously has dried, and I'm very pleased with the appearance that we have, the overall appearance of the brown patches, and because we were doing things like applying different types of brown, different shades of it, because we were also making certain areas darker than others, because we were also following the strokes. Uh, of the hairs that we saw in the reference photograph. There's almost like a beautiful flow to the fur in these brown patches that we've done that looks very realistic and just really, you know, gives us that overall furry effect. So we have achieved what we set out to achieve by trying to, uh, you know, give the illusion of fur in our painting. So now that we've done the brown patches and they look fantastic, we need to now do the same for the white areas of our puppy. And we will be doing that by mixing a shadow color which I will show you how to do in a second. We're going to apply it in areas like under the neck here where the creases are on white because white is obviously the lightest color. When we do a shadow on the white, that is not, you know, not very dark because in the photograph, we have light overhead that's just, you know, shining down on our puppy. So on white, the shadows are not going to appear very dark. Maybe they will appear darker in the falls, like in between the neck and the rest of the body. But on the very top surfaces of the white fur, they will appear in light gray. And then the intensity just gets darker where we have falls of the skin, that makes sense. So before I talk up a storm again, I just want to show you how to mix a shadow color that looks natural. So what I want to do is I've tested out quite a few colors just now, and I came up with this beautiful gray that I got by mixing one of my browns, which is not the darkest one, but burn umber. That's somewhere in the middle. It's not sepia. Sepia is very dark. I didn't want a very strong shadow color. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to mix some burn umber with this color, French ultramarine. French ultramarine is a beautiful blue. I really love it, not only is it a beautiful blue on its own for skies and oceans, but it makes a really cool shadow color when mixed with a brown because they will kind of, you know, as you probably know, blues and browns, they make a gray. So I'm going to leave this up to you now how um, what type of gray you mix? Because personally, I like a gray with a bit of a bluish tinge to it. I don't like it just, you know, a very dull gray. So I would like a little bit more blue in it than brown, if that makes sense. So as you can see, here's a spare piece of paper. So this to me, the gray is still a little bit dark. So I want to just mix a little bit more blue into it. So I don't mind if it has a bit of a bluish tinge, bluer than our reference photograph because yeah, I like that. This is just a matter of preference because I don't really want it very gray. Yeah. So I'm going to leave this up to you. But if you want something that's, you know, not as brown, quite simply just add a little not as blue, sorry, just simply add more brown to it. I'm just going to leave a bit of that here. Yeah, because I just find that when I add equal amounts of brown and blue, I just found it a little bit dull. So now I just want to add a bit more blue to it. So there we go. And if you're not sure, just test it out. So that's okay. That's okay for me. Just now, maybe it was a little bit too blue. And you also don't want it too dark straightaway when you're working with it. So maybe the areas that we can start with are just to get a feel of it. Maybe why don't we just do you know, the mouth that I started just now? Well, I didn't really complete it, so I just want to kind of do that now, like complete it. So there's a little dimple here, and we also see a bit of the fur. So I'm just using the very tip of my brush to add a little bit of fur detail because their little snouts, obviously covered with fur as well. I'm also going to use a bit of that shadow color right here in this bottom corner of the mouth that we see here. Okay. Maybe my paint is a bit diluted now, but I'm fine to build up layers later. I also see some of that shadow over here. I'm just going to use little very small flicking action flicking movements for that to try and show a bit of fur here. We also have these two freckles over here, that's what I call them. So we're just slowly adding a bit of color here. I'm also just using the tip of my brush now to do a little bit of this white fur now and just add a little bit of some shadow color here. What I'm doing here, I'm just following the reference photograph. This is a little bit of shadow that we see on the white fur itself. I hope you can see that. Because it shouldn't be stark white, the white fur because we will see some angles of shadow, maybe not everywhere in the white, but just a little bit. I don't mind putting some up here. I did see some over here that I did just now, but maybe it was a little bit light. All this is adding to the effect of the fur, and we're also just making our white fur also not look so flat right now because it looks very flat in comparison to the brown patches. I also see a little bit more here. So there we go. So we're just kind of slowly building up that fur a bit. So my advice is, you know, don't go too heavy handed with this right now. You can always add some more later if you feel, you know, you want to. But yeah, it's best not to cover the entire area with this gray that we've made. And I also see some of it down here. I'm using a pretty light, um, a pretty diluted version of this color that we mixed because I just don't want to lay down very strong color, it's supposed to be white fur after all. We can also use this color to just darken certain areas like the pink areas that should be a little bit darker. I'm just going to use very diluted version now because I see this area where the pink is has a little bit of the grayish tone to it, but I'm just going to lay it down here. I think that's too much of a straight line, so I'm going to get into it in a sec. So let me just lay down that color first. And I'm just going to use a damper brush to just whoops and my rag to just kind of smooth this a bit because I feel like that line was just a little bit too harsh. So yeah, there we go. Trying to make it look a bit natural. Yeah, following the reference photograph, maybe trying to get this, I'm just kind of softening those edges just a little bit. I also see a bit of this gray color under the eye here. So this is it's not just a shadow color for our white fur. We can also layer this onto our previous layers of brown or pink to just add a little bit more shadow to darken some areas a little bit that might be a little bit light. Okay, so I just want to make sure I don't overdo it though. And now I think I want to just start going a little under the chin. I'm just using broken lines on the very tip of my brush to just kind of create that furry effect. Remember, intentionally kind of going over the lines a little bit just so I have that fur effect. I also see there's this line here. But rather than do a straight line, I'm going to use little broken brush strokes. I also see, I think the color that we painted earlier this area should extend a little bit out. This is all about just kind of, you know, following what you see. Obviously, that just looks a little bit too. I'm just going to Remember, anytime you have an edge that's a little bit too hard, you can just use a clean damp brush to just smoothen it. Okay, so you get the idea of what I'm trying to do now. I'm just trying to add a little bit of realism with this gray. I also see the gray over here coming on this tip of the nose there. I'm just going to add that in. I'm just doing what I see right now and going to take some more of that color and I'm definitely going to need a stronger color under the neck here because it's darker, maybe I might go over it with another layer later on. But I'm jumping around a little bit because I see some of the gray here. I see some gray shadow under the ear over here. I'm just trying to do that now. Also that gray comes over here to and then maybe we just do a bit of, like, fur stroke, little short strokes there to, like, haf fur. And I'm just going to also do a little bit here. Yeah, so that's looking nice. I also noticed there's more gray here. Yeah. So just observe, you know, your reference photograph to see what areas look darker to you. And you can even use some of this gray mixture. I think my mixture has turned quite blue now, so I better just get a little bit more brown in there. Yeah, there we go. Always test it out on a spare piece of paper if you're not so sure what it looks like. So that's okay for me. I'm just going to use this concentrated color now to just go under the neck because the fold over here, obviously it's darker. I just want to emphasize that. Yeah, that looks nice. And the shadow also kind of kind of comes here a little bit. So I'm just going to bring some of that shadow under here. So this is all kind of adding adding a three dimensional effect to our puppy. And I see, like, you know, the fur, there are little bits here of the fur. Even then, I see shadow here too. Anytime you feel like, Well, there is this very defined line, so let me just do that over here. I'm using just the tip of my brush and broken strokes to just convey that. We see a little bit more of this here too. So I'm now just dampen my brush with clean water because I don't want the strokes to be too defined, so I'm just kind of diluting them down a little bit, breaking it up a bit. Yeah, that looks good. And I'm just going to blend a little bit here too. All just using a clean damp brush. If you feel like your mixture is a little bit too concentrated, just dilute it down in your palette. And yeah, this might be a little bit time consuming, but I can tell you it is worth it to get that overall realistic effect. So that's what I'm doing. I'm just observing the reference photograph. Anything that I feel is too defined, the shadow that I've added is a little bit too defined. I'm just going over that brown over there, and I just wanted to I'm actually dragging a bit of that brown color down, but it doesn't bother me. That's fine. I don't mind a little bit of that color. It could just be the reflection of the brown of the white. White tends to reflect colors. Yeah. What I don't mind as well doing is I don't mind mixing different shades of gray where some look a bit bluer than others. When certain areas look a little bit bluer or browner, that's fine with me too. I feel like it all adds variation. So this is going to take me quite some time to do. So how about I get back to that section later? Maybe I can do a sped up version over there. I want to try and just focus on show you some other areas that I like to work with first, and then I might get back to that. For instance, over here, we can clearly see that the strokes are kind of gray that we see there are kind of going diagonal like this. I feel like, we're not going to do every hair, obviously, but I don't mind doing a few, just like that, using the tip of my brush, short strokes. So what we're doing is we are building up a bit of gray color here that's supposed to show that this white foot is in a little bit of partial shadow down here. So as you can see, it's darker towards this side, towards the right side of the foot and then it gradually gets lighter, you see less gray strokes over there. That's what I'm doing here. I'm also going to use a bit of gray because I see some of that gray on the bottom of the foot too. And some of it is shadow that's being cast on this surface that the puppy is laying on. But we will address that later when we paint the background. So as I said before, more concentrated or strokes over here, then it gradually gets lighter here. That's what we're aiming for. I don't want to get too carried away with this. We have a dark fold here. It's in the paw here. That's one of the toes so to speak. Just like how, you know, we have fingers and the spaces between our fingers. That's just one of those over here for this, I guess, the individual toe, so to speak. Just want to get that shape right and it goes up here actually. So yeah, then it's a little bit dark here, and then we got another nail over there that you can sort of see in the photograph. I'm just going to try and do that. And down here, All right. Great. And it looks like I'm going to have to mix more gray again. So get your brown going. So as you can see, so that's a different sort of look of how the gray is being used. Like, this one had quite a pattern that was kind of going diagonally. Okay. I just want to finish up over there. I'm just testing out my paper and testing it out on rough paper. I just want to finish this foot. A matter of observation. I just want to darken this space between this toe here. This should be darker. Um, Okay. I think I'll get back to that later and add a little bit more pink. But why I just let that dry first. Mixing, just using very light strokes now here. Yeah, I think I might just do a time lapse of this part later because it might be quite boring for you to just watch me do every hair. I want to just also emphasize this there's this fold here with the fur. And down here as well. Okay. And up here, Okay. All right. I think that's cool for now. If you want, you can add more I feel like this part should be a little bit diluted. All right. There we go. Okay, I'm going to use some of that gray over here because there's a very clear shadow. And the brown that I laid down just now, that kind of helps with the shadow. Okay, so get some more of that shadow color going. And we see more of that shadow closer to the body of the tail. I'm just going to use some diagonal strokes. We also see some of that shadow coming in over here. Try and follow the same direction that we did over here. But I'm just going to finish the tail first before I move on to the body. You got a few long hairs coming out here of the tail. Okay. And if you feel like the lines are a bit harsh, even though I do see clear boundaries on the tail, it's okay. You can just smooth it a little bit blend it with a damp brush. I'm just going to do that for a more natural look. Okay. So that's looking good for me. While that's dry, can I just pick up some pink here and just go right where the nail is? Yeah. Because I felt like I might have painted that a little bit too much. Yeah. Okay, a little bit of pink there, where the toenail sticks out. They are very cute little toenails, little dogs. Okay, so let's get our gray color again. If the gray is looking a little bit blue here, like I said before, I don't mind if it looks a little bit more brown in some areas and a little bit more blue because tell me the truth. I like that effect, you know, I feel like, certain parts, you know, the lighting is a little bit different in certain parts. And like I said, white is also a color that tends to reflect colors around it. So what I'm doing now is I made up a gray and I'm just going to follow the direction of the hairs. So in a very natural way, using these sort of broken brush strokes, just, you know, and try and follow the direction of the fur that you see. That obviously makes a huge difference in relaying, um, you know, the effect of fur. Obviously, you just don't want a straight line like that, that doesn't look natural. As you can see, my, um, hair strokes that I'm doing have a little bit of a little bit of a curve. They might not be curly, but just a little bit of a curve. Not only are they diagonal, but they curve slightly. Just pay attention here. In this middle section, it's going diagonally downwards this way. But as we get to the outer part, the direction of the fur tends to change a little as we saw when we were doing the brown patches, so there we go. I'm obviously not going to do every hair that's a little bit tedious. But I don't mind just, you know, taking my time here to do this because personally, I find it relaxing. I don't find this stressful. It's just me doing the first stroke. So I don't even feel like I need to vary I don't have to concentrate so hard on this. I'm just kind of looking at my reference photograph. But it's good to take short breaks just to step back and have a look and just make sure that the overall effect is there, it's looking good, because sometimes you can end up going a little bit on autopilot and not really paying attention to what you're doing. And even though, like I said, I don't have to concentrate, but I am very conscious that of following the direction of the fur. So as you can see, we are already making that fur look a lot more realistic the white parts that were a little bit flat earlier just by adding these strokes of shadow color. Now, as I head out to this side, I can see that it's starting to kind of get lighter the shadows and also the directions kind of changing just a little bit. So I'm just observing all that as I go out. And some of those hairs kind come out like this. So I don't mind doing that, but we'll see it more clearly later when we paint the background. Okay, so I don't think I need to do every part, and some parts are darker than others. So there we go. I'm going to need more gray, and I'm going to just I don't mind if it looks a bit bluer this version that I'm doing. It all kind of creates variation and I love variation. We've got a bit of a shadow line here. I just have to make sure that I don't bunch them together too much. You see how the hairs are starting to change direction here. That's what I want to do. They're going almost horizontal here. But then when they come to this part, they start transitioning to a straighter direction. Over here, we can see that happening too. I'm going to let you decide how much detail you want to put in to this. Like, if you don't want to do as much detail as me with the white fur, that's perfectly fine. And sometimes there's also like, you know, a bit of, like, patches. It's not just all hairs. We can do that, as well. So shadow patches. Just be careful not to overdo it. Yeah, some areas I'm going to make a little bit more. Take a step back and observe the reference photograph to just see which areas are darker, then you can sort of apply more pressure on your brush to darken those areas. Like, I see one patchy, a darker patch over here, somewhere here, somewhere there. This all also adds to the realism of the fur. I'm going to have to mix more brown again. I mean, mix in more brown to make my gray again. That was a little bit too much brown, so I'm just going to. Look, I actually am having, I'm actually having a fun time because I don't find this too stressful. Now I'm going to just use that gray that I just made. I just want to re emphasize this area over here because this is where there's a major, you know, fold over here where the knee goes over. I just want to dilute down my paint a bit because I feel like it's a little bit too dark right now, testing it out on just testing it out on paper. I just wanted to look a little bit more blue. I'm just going to get more blue going on. Okay. This color, let's start doing the top here. I feel like this is a bit concentrated here. I'm just going to use this little free space that I have here and I'm just going to dilute it down a bit because I feel like I might have put a little bit too concentrated. So, I hope you don't mind. I'm just going to mix it over here first because I want to keep going. I'm just going to dilute it down a little bit because yeah, let's keep going with the fur now. This is a little bit of a bluer mixture, but I love the variation. I'm just going to start working my way up now. I see some of that fur here. I see some bits going out a little bit, yeah, not concentrating too hard, just painting what I observe in the reference photograph. Okay. I jump around a bit when I see something. Just using the tip of my brush now to dot down the effects of the way the fur looks from this area. It's dotty here. It's not really stroky yet because we're seeing it from above here and maybe the fur here is sticking up rather than over here, it was sticking down. This is the angle. It's just the angle of the photograph that the fur is sticking up here, so we see dots rather than lines and then it slowly starts to transition into lines. Yeah. Fur has movement. That's what we're trying to capture. And also, so these dots here, we see them up here too. They're not like long hairs. And then they start slowly becoming very short hairs, compared to the bottom part where we see very clear long hairs. Okay, and just consciously make an effort, right to just make sure that, you know, certain areas do have to be lighter, right? That also creates the illusion of white fur. Some parts are going to be lighter than others. Like here, I see a bit of, like, a shadowy a very light, shadowy patch that seems to extend all the way up here. You know, it's not really so much individual hairs that I'm seeing here, more like a collection of, like, just the color, like a shadow color here is what I mean. And doing a few more dots here. Whoops. That one's a bit big maybe. But like I said before, it dries a lot lighter watercolors than when you apply them. I'm just going to take a step back. I think it looks great. But I feel like I really don't want to overwork this area. I'm just going to add a few dots here, but I want it to remain light. So there we go. And I also feel like I want whoops, remember, watch your hands. Make sure you don't lay down on don't lay your head down on a wet patch without knowing because you might end up ruining your painting. But this is almost dry already. I'm just going to bring some of that color up here because it's a light. Yeah. It's a light shadow patch, so to speak, if that makes sense. Alright, I'm going to use some of this color over here too. I just don't want to overdo the area. That looks a bit too dark for me, so I'm just going to lighten it a bit. And bit of shadow there. I really do think we should take a break after we finish with the shadow color. Right now, just try and finish up your work where you see you should put more shadow in. I don't mind emphasizing the smile. And remember, anything that you feel you put down a little bit too strongly, a little bit too dark, use your brush, a clean brush to just remove some of that pain to lift off, is what you would call it. We do see a couple of lighter patches. I'm just trying to preserve those. Okay. And whatever you feel you need to darken again, like this area where the near the ear, if you feel like you need to darken it again, go ahead, go over it again. Okay. Okay, using the shadow color now wherever I see fit to just finish up this area before we let it completely dry and we start putting down the very final touches to our puppy, and then we're going to paint the background and we're done. This is not too long a class, I hope. I'm just adding a bit more shadow where I see fit. You can even bring some of that shadow color into the brown patch that we painted earlier if you want to, but it will doll down the brown color bit. I'm okay to not do that too much. Another thing that looks realistic is just clumping some of the first strokes together. That looks kind of real rather than spacing them all out like individual hairs. I got the short hairs. Maybe put down a bit more of that shadow over here. Okay, that's looking really good to me, and I don't want to overdo the area just as I put down more strokes. So I think I'm going to stop. And I actually really like what it's looking like already. And when we come back. So let's take a break. Let's let this completely dry. And when we come back, we're going to use the darkest colors. Maybe I think I will have to use some black to just do the detail of the nose, the nostril, the mouth, and also the eye. But everything else seems pretty good to me before we start using a white gel pen just for a little bit more detail of the white fur. And then we're finally going to do the background and we're done. Let's take a break. I will see you in the next section of this class, have a good rest. 8. Adding facial details: Hello, and welcome back to the very final stages of finishing our puppy. And as you can see, all the layers have dried and she is looking gorgeous. All the shadow color that we use, the brush strokes that we use, that's, like, such an obvious flow to the fur. That is very natural. And I think she's looking amazing. And so we're so close to the end now that I can't wait to just get right into it and finish up just the little details that I still have to do for my little pup. It's not much because I feel like we've already covered a lot of the fur and I don't want to keep adding to the fur and making the overall effect darker. There are just certain things that I noticed that I wanted to do, such as, I just want to extend this eyelid a little bit more further because when I was during the break, I did notice that in the reference photograph, I feel like this line goes a little further. So that's no big deal. I also wanted to darken the nose and add a little bit more detail there. So this also is no big deal, very little things to do. And after that, I want to just get into the background. Now, the background is going to be very simple because the main focus of this piece of art is, of course, our pop. So with the background, I could have just done, like, a very simple, you know, uh, flat wash or graded wash. But I just thought that it would just look more interesting to have her kind of appear like her body weight is kind of causing a little bit of a dent in the material that she's lying on like a blanket. So I thought that's cute, but I just want to tell you, I won't be spending a lot of time doing every fold of the blanket with incredible detail because she is the star of the show and I want to keep it that way. So before I talk up a storm again, let's get right into this. So for the eyelid, I think I'm okay to keep using sepia pain but for the nose, I think I'm going to use a little bit of black just to make it darker. I'm just using the old sepia pain that I already had here, and all I'm doing is just looking at the reference photograph, I just want to extend the eyelid just a little bit further. Because I just felt that maybe I kind of stopped it a little bit too prematurely. So yeah, that's all I'm doing. So all I did was used a bit of a concentrated, a concentrated consistency, using very little water to really harness the power of sepia, the darkness of it. So that's all I wanted to do here. Also, I suppose I could use the sepia to just darken certain parts of the ear. But as I said before, I'm not so concerned about doing a lot of detail in the ear because I more like to focus on what we can see on the outside. This all depends on you, of course, I'm just going to use whatever sepia I have left on my brush to do a couple of strokes just to go over certain areas of the ear that I felt were could be a little bit darker. But like I said, we already have a great overall effect, so I don't want to darken it too much. So I'm okay with just doing that. Yeah, I also feel like, um maybe just wherever you feel it needs it, but just be mindful. We don't want the overall effect to be significantly darker than the reference photograph. So I think I'm done with the eye and whatever I wanted to do with the sepia. I'm going to move on now to that beautiful nose, that gorgeous nose. For that, I'm just going to use a little bit of ivory black, and I don't mind just putting it in here just because I feel like I'm running out of space here now with all the colors in this palette that I've used so far. I don't tend to wash my palette like, you know, in between, adding layers of paint just in case I might need some of the previous colors I used, you know, to just go back and build up the intensity. So I try not to. I also have other ceramic palettes that have more, you know, wells, so to speak, so I can use more color. But I just chose to go with this one today. So this is my black. Hope you can see that in the camera. Yep, I'm just weaning it a bit, but I do want it to be quite concentrated, the pain. I don't want it to be very watery. So I'm just going to go, um not all of it. Not all of the nose is just, like, a uniform black color. There are some areas that are lighter than others. So I'm just going to keep that sepia. And then we've got a nostril here that I'm just going to highlight. Yeah, it can be a little bit hard to see the detail sometimes in a photograph or something like the nose. So I'm trying my best here, and then it kind of comes down over here like that. So I just felt like, and I think I might just shade in this part a bit and maybe I made the pain a little bit too concentrated. So I'm just using my wet brush to kind of spread this a little. Yeah. You don't need an incredible amount of detail on the nose because it's kind of dark as well in the reference photograph. So that's okay. I just felt like it needed to just be a little bit darker with the black. And I'm just going to bring down that's the septum and perhaps maybe we can also put a bit of black here where the mouth opens just so we can see that clearly. Yep. And I also feel like, I think it's darker up to here, so I can leave it there. So she does look like she has a little bit of a smile when she's sleeping, which is kind of cute. And, um, yeah, I feel like maybe this area is a little bit darker, too. Like I said, it's a little bit hard to see a lot of detail in the reference photograph sometimes. So that, to me, already looks good enough. So it depends on how much detail you want to add, but I feel like that's good. So part of it's a little bit lighter. And maybe later we can use a white gel pen just to add a little highlight that I see there because of the nostril. It's just reflecting a little bit of light. Okay. And I also feel that I'm going to use just a little bit of this black paint to just do the bottom part of the There's a bit of a coloring here that I went over with sepia just now, but I think it looks a bit better if I define that a little bit more with my black, a bit of a diagonal line that's going there. And I think we can also just add a little bit more of spots here and there, make it look natural. But to tell you the truth, I think she looks great already, and I don't want to overdo it too much. I'm just emphasizing a couple of these freckles. The very obvious ones. Let me see one here. Yeah. I don't want to overdo it, so I think she looks great already. In the reference photograph, some areas do look like, they're tone down more. And if you want, you can take some of your shadow color to go over those areas, like, to kind of tone them down. But to tell the truth, I kind of like this vibrant colors that are coming through. I did add some of the shadow color, as you remember, over here, over here, a little bit here, but I don't feel like I need to dull it down. Even if it's not completely true to the reference photograph, this is what art is about. We can change certain things that we want and emphasize certain things. So I want the brightness of the browns to come through, you know? So I don't want to use a shadow color over these certain areas. I feel like, Yeah, I want her to be vibrant in this painting. So with that, I've decided that we finished doing all the painting for our little dragon for her body. And as I talked about it just now, I want to use a white gel pen to just sorry, emphasize certain highlights and for her fur to kind of stick out a little bit. But I can only do that when I first finish painting the background because I want to paint the background so that I can then let it dry and then use my white gel pen to just emphasize that a few of those white hairs are kind of sticking out and going into the background. So that will also add to the realism of it. So before I paint the background, I just want to make sure that this nose is completely dry because we've worked so hard. We've come so far. The last thing I want is for this to bleed out into the background when I want to paint it. So how about we just take a tiny break right now? Let's just let the nose completely dry. And when we come back, we are going to get right into the background and then use our white gel pen, and then we're done. So I can't wait. So see you in just a little bit. 9. Background: Hi, everyone, and we're back after that really short break. And the nose, while the black paint that I've used is completely dried now. I just want to talk very quickly about the background. So I wanted to choose, even though you're welcome to paint the background whatever color you want, I decided to go with the French ultramarine. This color the blue that I used just now to, I mean, in the previous section to mix a shadow color that we used on the white fur. Now, the reason I just personally wanted to use this color is because I love the way that browns and blues look against each other. I feel like they really complement each other. The reason I just chose to use this color rather than introduce another new blue into the painting is because since we had already used French ultramarine earlier to do the shadow color, I feel like it will add a sense of harmony to the painting by just using the same blue again because, you know, to me, I like seeing some harmony in the painting, but this is a personal choice. It's completely up to you whatever color you want to put in the background. You can do a pink. You know, you can do a green, whatever you want. This is just my personal choice to just introduce some harmony into it. So, since we're so close, I want to finish this. So I'm going to use my size 12 round brush. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to carefully just kind of, um, go right at the edge of the body, trying not to go inside, but not stressing too much if I do. Just around the edge. For this background, I just intend to do a partial background, so I'm not going to extend it all the way until the edge of the paper. This is also a personal choice because for me, I just love the way a partial background looks because I love how it frames the subject. And I feel like, you know, sometimes we do a full background, like, you know, it can seem a bit bare. So I don't mind just doing the area right around our puppy's body. But once more, this is just a matter of preference. There's no right or wrong way. If you want your background to go all the way till the end, you can do that, too. But I never planned to do that, which is why I also didn't use any masking tape. So I'm just carefully putting the water because it's a hot dry day here today in Sydney while I'm filming this, I might have to redo re wet certain areas after that. But like I said before, this is really I'm not caring too much about the detail in the I'll do this part later. I can do that later with more control because it's kind of sectioned off. So I just mainly want to do the area around our pup. And I might have to, I just have to tilt the paper because I can't quite see that even sheen just because of the reflection of the light above. But once more, no biggie, if you know? This is not a perfect flat wash now because it's just the background. And I don't mind a little bit of, you know, some areas drying faster than others. That's fine with me 'cause it will create an interesting effect, too. This is I'm not going for a uniform, perfect, you know, flat wash. So I think we're good to start. So I'm going to just wet this French ultramarine, and I'm just going to just drop it in like that. And yeah, I'm not even caring too much about, you know, about making this even because I will do the creases later. It's more about trying to get that color in now, laying down that color now rather than caring too much about About how even it is. And I'm also gonna do a few things to this later. I'm going to paint the Croesus just to add a little bit of dimension, but not caring too much. So I've gone for a light blue. I've diluted down my French ultramarine quite a bit. I didn't really want to go for something too dark and too powerful, I don't really want it to compete with my puppy. I want it to just compliment the puppy. So as you can see, that blue is kind of adding a nice, yeah, nice background for my pup to stand stand out against, but also, like I said before, add some harmony to the painting. Do I have enough or do I have to put down some more? I wanted to go for a very light blue. I feel like I've achieved that. Just extending it a little bit outwards. Where the creases are. But I'm going to go over the creases again. Don't worry about that. Just making sure it's all kind of, it all surrounds my pup, especially around the head up here. So it will help. This blue is also helping the white area stand out more, as opposed to if it was just white paper. Even though I love the look as well, sometimes of just doing a subject against a white background. I like that, too. But in this particular case, I just wanted her to really stand out with a blue background. Now, I'm going to have to get more paint out. I'm just going to put a little bit more there. And I suppose I could still use this same size brush. So in here, I'm just going to do another flat wash, too. I don't have to really wet this area because it's a small area to work with, so I don't mind just painting it on wet on dry. Yeah, so the blue, as you can see, it helps to just, um, helps the white parts stand out more. I'm just going to let this now dry. Well, actually, I'm just going to ignore this part for a while. I'm just going to let this part dry. And now I'm just going to start using my small size four round brush. And what I'm going to do now is, while it's still damp, I don't really care, I'm just going to kind of follow a few of these creases that I've put in. Here. Now, as I said before, I don't care particularly much about the background. It's not going to have a tremendous amount of detail, but I am still trying to mimic the texture of cloth by just, you know, I feel like it will be darker, a little bit darker around her body because that's where the cloth is kind of, you know, you feel like the weight, it's kind of making a dent here. So it makes sense with the light for it to be darker around right next to the body and kind of getting a bit lighter as we go away. So that's all I'm doing now, but I'm not, you know, going to put a lot of effort into the background because it's not the star of the show, our puppy is. So what I like to do is, I don't want this to look too uniform, so I might just try and yeah. Just try and don't Well, the lines that we drew just now, they're a nice guideline. So just making the area around my pup, like, you know, noticeably darker and then it kind of goes outwards. So if you feel like, you know, maybe some pots look a little bit, you know, the lines look a little too define, you know, feel free to use a wet damp brush to just kind of blend it. But I'm okay with how it looks. And try not to make it look too uniform. Like, you see, I feel like maybe this is a little bit too I'm just going to use a damp brush to kind of smooth that line a little, to blend it out a little bit. You can also just rewet this area if you feel like it's become a little bit too dry when you're putting your paint down just so you don't have very harsh lines that you don't want, even though I actually do want these creases, some of them to be quite defined. But like I said before, I really don't care too much about the background. It So just be a little bit careful near the boundary where, you know, her fur is. And I'm also using the tip of my brush sometimes just to Oops. I think I went a bit heavy handed on that one. But no, I think it's okay. So that's what I'm doing. If you feel like maybe the line looks a bit unnatural, you can just see blend it out with your brush. That's fine. And maybe let's just vary it a bit by maybe putting one long crease over here. Yeah. So you can try not to make it look too uniform. I'm just going to jump over here now. And we will also just be adding a little bit of shadow under her body on the surface of this blanket. Like, painting cloth is fabric. It's another class, I feel. That's why I didn't want to put too much detail into this. So see, I'm just varying the length of some of these creases that we see. But also, I feel like there will be some shadow around the body, more shadow. And we will emphasize that later. But right now, I think it's looking great. We're definitely conveying that that effect that we want to show that, you know, our puppy's body weight is causing a little bit of a dent in the fabric that she's on. So there we go. I think it's looking great. Just watch out for those, you know, pores and the little hairs around her mouth and stuff and on top of her head. And how I like to do it is I like to do the strokes going out from the body towards towards the outside. So I start here and then I kind of go out and I flick because I feel like that makes a more natural stroke to kind of illustrate cloth. So almost there, almost finished. Okay, let's just finish this off now. It's looking great. And I also feel like I might I might mix a little bit of shadow color to just lay down a little bit of shadow wear her just underneath her head and her body. Because I do see that on the reference photograph, but maybe I might just do it on one side rather than on both sides. I think, you know, the shadow is stronger on this side of the reference photograph. So what I'm doing now is I just want to go over some of this closer to the body. I'm just going over some of those strokes and just noticeably making the area closer to her body darker as you would expect because it's casting more of a shadow closer to the body. Okay. Honestly, I don't want to overdo this too much. I already think it looks great, and I'm just going to do that. Whoops, my paint dried up a bit there. I'm just going to do this a bit of a couple of fools in the material over here that I just want to try and convey. And I also just want to now do this here. I did kind of copy this part from the reference photograph that there was a bit of a fold here of cloth and then a few creases closer to her foot there, and then a couple of creases here, and then this part is kind of darker. But also trying to make it look natural with the fur in between. Yeah, I think that looks fine. But Okay. Yeah. I think that's fine. I'm just going to take a step back and have a look just standing up, and I think it looks great. So how about we just do and once more, I always leave it up to you how much detail you want to add. I just like adding adding some detail, but like I said before, this is just the background that's complementing our pup. So I don't want to put an incredible amount of time and effort into it because I think she looks great. This is just, you know, to just to compliment her, really, her colors. I see, I might just leave this area kind of bare, and then I'm going to put a shadow color there. So this is why we didn't get rid of our paints just now, the paints that we used previously because now we can the beauty of watercolor is we can just reactivate it again with just a little bit of water. Yeah. I love how you can do that with watercolors and guash, just reactivate, you know, colors we used previously. So just test out your paint on a spare piece of paper just to double check. Yep, that's good. So, what I'm going to do now, and like I said before, I don't want to spend an incredible amount of time doing this because it's just a background. I'm going to use some of that shadow color where in the very darkest parts of my u of the creases of the the creases and the folds of the fabric, that's what we're targeting and only the very darkest parts like this part here where it's kind of, you know, in a very tight area between her foot and her body, we're going to see a little bit more shadow here. And you can see that in the reference photograph. So this part I'm kind of just kind of, you know, using the reference photograph quite closely to just illustrate that this is the shadow area here. So my shadow color is kind of is quite well, not kind of stronger than what I used for the blue, 'cause I'm just going to emphasize just some of those folds. To tell you the truth, I don't think I really want to emphasize this one so near her nose. I'm just going to go backwards a bit because I don't want that to distract. You know, I don't want that to look like it's too distracting with the nice, you know, shape of her nose. So see, that's the beauty of it when you lay down watercolor and you decide, No, I don't think I want to do that, immediately lift the color off. So yeah, I'm going to leave that part, even though I had started following it from the reference photograph. I don't mind doing the ones just a little bit around her around her face, but I just wanted to keep that, you know, don't disturb this beautiful, this beautiful silhouette that we have of her profile. I didn't want to ruin that. So I'm just putting the shadow down even closer to her body, as you can see. It's darker, watch your hands, make sure you're not putting it down on a wet surface. So it also helps the white fur stand out, I feel. So I'm just putting some darker strokes closer to the body, and as they go out, as you can see, they get lighter. So this is all I can actually put some shadow very close to her face here. And using little strokes because I just want to make sure that I make the white fur look, you know, I make the white fur stand out. So I'm just doing this very close to her face because I do see a bit of shadow down there. So that's good. It, it doesn't just take away attention from her beautiful profile. It's just emphasizing it a little bit more. So I'm just putting it down around here because I see a definite shadow there. I also see it a little bit up here. There's a little shadow being cast very near her body that you can see in the reference photograph. So that's all I'm doing here. Yep. And I don't feel like it takes away. It's not too distracting from her beautiful profile that we worked really hard to do. Okay, and we also see that shadow right under the foot here. I might have to mix a bit of a bit of the burn umber in to make it a little darker. Okay. So, so close to finishing. There we go. We've got some nice shadow color going on here and we see the shadow. So that's also adding a three D effect to our pup is making her stand out more, as well as the weight that she exerts on the blanket. These are all making her look more real. I feel like this part is a bit in shadow, so we can do that without touching the touching her chin. Yeah, I think that looks good. Just reemphasizing that shadow. We definitely see a lot of shadow here in the reference photograph. So I don't mind coloring that in without shadow color because I felt that even though we're using the blue, maybe some Some areas are darker than, than the blue we're using, and that's why I brought our shadow color back from just now because I felt the blue wasn't quite dark enough to show the shadow being cast there. Okay. So let's just keep going because we are close to finishing. I also feel like this should be a bit darker, so I'm just going to put that shadow color back in here. So I'm using the reference photograph here as to let me know where I should put the shadows. Now, I'm going to have to mix a little bit more of the shadow color because yeah, I didn't know I needed so much. So just adding a bit of burnt umber, like what I did just now, bringing it in here, taking some of the French ultramarine and mixing my shadow color. Remember, test it out if you're not very confident or what it looks like. So this is fine. Going to use this. Now I'm just going to go under that tail there. I see a bit of the shadow and it doesn't stick out too much, and then it goes quite close to the body. So I'm taking a step back. Yeah, she's looking really good. It looks really cute and realistic. I'm also going to just use a little bit more of that shadow color because I feel like this is quite dark in here, this little fold of fabric. Maybe add a few of these little creases as well because that all adds to the effect. Wow. Even though I didn't really want to to do a lot of detail. In the end, I have actually for the background, in the end, I kind of am doing more detail than I thought when I first started out. But that's okay. But I will leave it up to you. If you don't want to do this folded, you know, this folded cloth, look, you know, if you don't want to make it look fabricy, you could have easily just done a flat wash, but I don't know why I can sometimes get a little carried away with an idea. And then, yeah. So then I just have to kind of finish what I started. But if you just did a plain background, a flat wash or a varied wash without doing these fabric folds, that would've been fine, too. It would have been a great background too. It's just this one is just emphasizing her weight, the weight she exerts. Alright. Okay. So what I'm doing now is just darkening the area right around her body because I feel that also adds to the whole effect. Maybe we can just maybe make this a little darker here, just some areas to just make it look like, you know, there's a lot of shadow being trapped here. Yep. But I didn't want to go so dark around her nose there because I felt like, yeah, I didn't kind of want to lose, you know, lose the contrast with the nose there. Okay, so I'm just going to mix more of the shadow color, and we're almost done. How about we just go around this is actually not something you really need to think too much about. So I don't mind not putting a shadow right here because, you know, her ears kind of on the top of her head here. So maybe it doesn't quite cast as much shadow on the surface that she's lying on the ears kind of elevated. So these are just little things you can think about. I'm not saying, you know, we need to study a lot of physics to just, you know, decide where to put the shadow, like so that's all I'm doing here. That part's fine because the ear, as I said, is elevated. And yeah, I'm just going to emphasize darkness right around the body, right at the edge there, just because that's where the shadow would be cast very close because the light is right above her. Okay. Remember, take breaks. You don't have to paint as long as I did. You can take regular breaks and rest your eyes, rest your hand. And I'm standing up again just to have a look to make sure I'm not overworking the region. I actually love the way it's looking on this side. I'm just trying to see whether what I can do to just kind of kind of do this site as well as that sit. This site looks quite defined with the shadows and stuff. Let me just get some more blue, mix it in here, make a darker shadow color. I think I do have to go a bit darker, so that's what I'm doing here. Yeah, that sites looking great. So I'm just trying to figure out how the lines should go, like the direction, just to make it look natural. So yeah. Seems like I have to mix a lot of this shadow color. So where are we now? So this side looks great, very, very defined. Let me try and whoops now it's too concentrated. I couldn't paint with it. All right. So I'm going to leave this up to you, how much detail you want to put into the background. But I think I'm going to stop really soon because I feel like, yeah, I've achieved the effect I wanted to. So as you can see, the shadow color I've used has not gone all the way out, you know, to the very edge of my little of my little border that I've painted around her. I have kept the shadow color quite close to the body to emphasize that, hey, the shadows being cast very strongly closer to the body, and then it just kind of gets lighter. So I'm taking a um I'm just standing up, taking a good look. I think I'm okay to stop now with this background. I'm going to stop. I'm going to put my brush down because, like I said before, I didn't want to you know, get really carried away. But as you can see, the overall effect we created is so cute. It actually looks like she is real and she's, you know, just has a weight, and, you know, it's pulling the fabric down. So I think we've achieved what we came to do. Even though I didn't intend on doing such a detailed background, it actually just really complements the entire the entire picture. It really does make it look like she's alive and she has weight. So I think we've achieved that. So now let's just add the very, very final touches. 10. Final Touches: So I've got my white gel pen. This is a 0.5, but this pen is notorious for not working, especially when I'm filming. So I'm going to try it out, but if this doesn't work, I have another white gel pen on standby that I will use. So let's try this out first. The reason I chose a 0.5 is it has the smallest diameter of the white gel pens that I'm using right now. And I just see so just be mindful. Hope you know, you're painted this is a little bit wet for me, so I'm not going to rest my hand on that. I'm just going to rest it on the puppy, which I know is dry. I'm going to just observe now, oh, great. It works. That's that little white highlight that I saw on the nose in the reference photograph. I also see a little bit of a highlight here. I'm just putting down what I see. Okay? I don't think I need to use the white gel pen a lot on, um, any more highlights, maybe just a little bit over here, but I mainly want it, and I'm not going to draw every little hair. I just want it on some of the boundaries where the white meets the brown. And as you can see, I'm just doing tiny little flicks up. Oh, there it goes. It's starting to not work. All right. All I'm doing is I'm trying to do hair like effects. Just to break up the boundary between the brown and the white to make it look more real, more furry, more hair rather than a straight line. But I feel like we already did that by using our browns to go like, you know, up in little tiny hair like strokes. So we don't actually have to do that a lot, which is great, which means that, you know, we don't have to put more effort in. I'm just using the white gel pen now where I see. I need to just maybe put a few white hairs in, maybe lighten up certain areas that I may have gone a little bit hard on. That's all really, but I feel like we've done a good job already. So, you can break up a few boundaries with the white gel pen. But actually, I'm kind of loving the way it looks. I think we had already done a lot of that earlier. So now we can do okay, over here, you can sort of see break up this gray shadow line a little bit by having some hairs go over, but don't completely cover the whole gray line because then we lose that shadow that we created. So what we're going to do is very sparingly, whenever you see a boundary with the white fur and the and the background or the white fur and the brown patch. So this part's dry. I just want to show you what I'm doing. I'm just flicking my white gel pen out a bit to create tiny little hairs that just add to the overall effect that this is fur and it's not flat. We can also do that in certain places like where the foot is. Just make sure you don't overdo it, though, because you don't want your we want some of that shadow that we worked hard to keep. So we don't want to just get rid of it. So, you know, sometimes what I do is I just get into a bit of a rhythm and I just tend to you know, do a little bit. Oh, this white ja pen is also great for emphasizing the whiteness of the toenail. If you may have lost that, you know, when you were, like, painting just now. So this can also re emphasize that white toenail, which is really cute. And just, you know, just a little bit of hairs. That's all. Yeah. So just this depends again on how much detail you want to do because I'm fine to just go down here. See, I'm not totally going over the shadow because I don't want to lose the shadow. I'm just making it doing a few hair like flicks within that boundary. I can also see do the tip of the tail. See how I'm just so this is getting sorry, so this is starting to get like clogged or something. So this is my other white gel pen I have, which is a 0.7 diameter tip, so it's a little bit thicker, but this pen works like marvelously. So I'm just doing a few hair like strokes here and there. This is all adding to that effect of fur but like I said, if you're like me, you kind of have to tell yourself not to get too carried away with this or you'll end up just coloring everything white. So I'm just it's great for re emphasizing those white areas that you may have accidentally painted over. Now, this part's really cool. So if you look at the at your reference photograph, you see a few long white hairs just kind of flicking out like that. So that's what we're doing here. And so, see, it looks it gives a bit of realism to the fur. So it's kind of like coming out and we can see it and this edge over here, I don't mind just try not to make it look too uniform, though. Like, yeah, so you know, vary the distance and stuff of the hair. Also, we can do things like go into the patch a little bit, over here, and that also creates some realism. But just try and vary your strokes a little, you know, so it doesn't look too uniform. So that all also plays a part. Maybe you have a little bit of white in here too. Yeah. So all these are little tricks that I do to try and give the impression of f. So I don't want to do this too much, but you can also go over, like, you know, certain shadow areas that we painted to just kind of break it up a bit so it doesn't look too chunky. So that's all I'm doing here. And you can go into this patch a little bit too. I can clearly see, clear white lines going into it from the reference photograph. So yeah, and take breaks, take a step back to have a look. It's looking great. It's looking really, really cool. And maybe, you know, we can just trace the outline a little bit here. But also just varying the hairs are kind of going down like this, but you don't have to do it. You don't have to do like, you know, every MM of this, like, yeah, naturally, breaking up that any harsh lines that we see there. To tell the truth, I think the pup already looks great. Like, so I don't want to get too carried away. I'm just going to flick a couple of longer hairs out here because I do see that in the reference photograph. But she's looking so good. So just a few vary the hair lengths a little bit, even though the direction is pointing out like that and then it slowly seems to change direction and go down. And they also look a bit longer in some parts. So that's all going to add our pup. I don't have to do too much white here because I also left some gaps, as you can see, when we were painting. So just a few strokes are good. Yeah, I think we actually did a lot of work, saving some white areas, doing these jagged, you know, edges with the boundaries between the brown and the white that I don't actually have to do a lot anymore. And that's really great. My life is actually a lot easier now because I'd already done that earlier. So where else can we put white in? I don't see so much white up here, and we already did do this boundary a little bit. And, you know, I don't feel like we need to do a lot. In fact, I might just be overworking it. So I'm going to take a step back, have a really good look. Do we have any other highlights we want to do? No, not really. Oh, yes, I do see this. The bottom of the chin is white, and it has a diagonal shape. I'm just going to try and trace that because we might have lost it a little bit when we painted the background there. And you see chin's at a little bit of an angle here. So this is where our white gel pen makes our life very easy because we don't have to, like, use a brush and, you know, do a very thin area. And now I'm just going to try and blend this with the other part by just kind of, you know, going in a bit and doing hair strokes. Wow, but she looks so good. I honestly think she's done. I think she looks great, and I don't want to overwork her. Let me just put that. Yeah. Just move that in. So if you're satisfied, if you get to the point that you feel, this looks good, I don't want to touch it anymore. Feel free to stop. And what I love to do, at the very end is sign my name. It feels very satisfying because after all that work, should I use a white gel pen or maybe I might use a I might use my shadow color, actually, that I made, the famous shadow color. So I'm just going to sign my name over here, and I encourage you to do so. I hope by now you have your own little, like, logo. I think every artist needs one. I just do this because I'm Alicia Paran, and I kind of link the A with the P. And as I do this, it is the year 2024, so I'm just going to write the date. I like doing that because when I look back at my old work, I love that I have a date, so I have a rough idea of, um, you know, what happened that year and stuff like that. It's just nice to know when you did your art, I feel when you're looking back and feeling very nostalgic. So I hope you've really enjoyed doing this painting with me. This was a very fun class. I didn't feel like it was very stressful at all, and as you can see, I think she turned out wonderful. That actually looks like there's a sleeping pup on my paper, and we're playing with the viewers eyes because it looks like she's causing a dent in the material that she's lying on. I think this turned out beautiful. I love how the blue is also complementing the browns. So I can't wait to see what you guys have come up with. Please feel free to upload your student projects for me to have a look at. I can't wait. Thank you so much once more for doing this class with me. And in the next section, I just want to conclude with a few final thoughts, but I really hope you've enjoyed this class, and please join me for the final thoughts section. Thank you again. 11. Final Thoughts: Once more, as always, I would like to say a huge heartfelt thank you for watching this video or any of my other videos on Skill Share. I hope you've had a lot of fun sketching and painting your cute sleeping pup painting, and I can't wait to see all your projects. So please feel free to upload them in the submit project section of this class. Also, please feel free to follow me on Skill Share to see all my upcoming projects that I have, as well as on social media at Alicia Puran on Instagram. Once more, thank you so much again for following me, for watching my classes, and for all your support. And all the best in your watercolor journey.