How to Sketch and Paint an Octopus with Granulating Watercolors

1. Introduction: Hi, everyone. My name is Alicia, and I'm a watercolors who is in love with the ocean and all its inhabitants, and I would absolutely love to teach you how to paint one of its most magical creatures, the octopus. Kon as the alien of the sea, the octopus is truly a mysterious, curious, highly intelligent, and simply quite fascinating life form with its unique anatomy that gives it the ability to shap shift with ease and blend in with its surroundings. In this class, I will teach you how to sketch a unique profile of an octopus based on a reference photograph that I will provide. I will point out some basic anatomical features of the octopus using a model to simplify the sketching process step by step. Next, I will show you how to lay down loose washes of granulating watercolors in a relaxed and spontaneous way to build up the color and texture of the octopus skin, using two complimentary colors to create a variety of shades in between. I'll show you how to use different brush strokes to create different markings on the octopus body, as well as a white acrylic pen to suggest raised projections on the octopus skin and its suckers. We will finally frame our octopus by improvising a shadow beneath the octopus, as well as using some splattering. This class is suitable for intermediate to advanced watercolor students, but beginners are more than welcome to join along, as I will be explaining and demonstrating each step in the process of creating the octopus painting. So if you're ready to create a beautiful octopus painting using granulating watercolors, let's begin. 2. Materials: Hello, and welcome to the material section of our class where I will list everything that you need to paint your octopus. Let me start with the paper that I used. I chose to use this A three watercolor paper by a brand called Kansan, and it has a weight of about 300 grams/meter square or 140 pounds. You don't have to use the same brand of watercolor paper as me, but please make sure that you're using artist quality watercolor paper of a similar weight to get the best results. Now for the sketching, I chose to use this lead holder by Ser Mass Technical and it has HB lead with a thickness of about two M. If you don't have a lead holder, please feel free to use any mechanical pencil that you have. I also chose to use this staler mass plastic mechanical eraser. But if you don't have an eraser like this, it is fine to use any soft eraser that you have. Next, let's talk about the materials that we'll be using for painting. I chose to use two jars of water when I'm painting just so I don't have to keep changing the water. I also chose to use a rack to just absorb any excess water off my brushes when I rinse them. You can also use a paper towel if you prefer. I also chose to use a ceramic palette to mix my paints on, and as always, I prefer ceramic palette because it doesn't stain as easily as a plastic one. Finally, I chose to use this set of round brushes by a brand called silver black velvet in sizes four, eight, and 12. You don't have to use the same brushes as me or the same brand, but please make sure you do use artist quality watercolor brushes. And finally, I chose to use these two colors of paint by a brand called Cusa cabe and these are from the Harmonia granulating color collection. I chose to use this orange yellow color called mandarin carnaliu as well as this bluish purple color called starry Winter. Once more, as in all my classes, you don't have to use the same colors that I use. You can use whatever two colors you want to use, whether they are complimentary colors or even harmonious colors depending on the effect that you would like to create. Also, you don't have to use granulating colors to do this class. Any artist quality watercolors will do. I also used paints gray by a brand called art spectrum to do the shadow of the octopus. Very finally, I chose to add some highlights and details with this acrylic paint pen by Posca. If you do not have an acrylic white pen like this, you can also use white gouache and a small brush to add the tiny white details on your painting. If you decide to use a white acrylic pen, you may want to use a small synthetic round brush and a little bit of water to just blend the areas of white acrylic paint that you find too thick. That's all the materials that we need to do this class. Let's get started. 3. Sketch: Hi, everyone, and welcome back. And before we start doing the sketch of our octopus, I thought that it would be very useful to just show you a model of an octopus, just to get familiar with the anatomy as well as to just simplify the parts that we actually need to observe to do a sketch of our octopus today. So this is my cute little model sparkles the octopus that one of my kids actually won for me from a claw machine in Japan. So like, we don't really need a very scientific motto. And to tell the truth, I think this guy actually does the job of just explaining the main parts of the octopus that we need to know, so when I'm sketching later on, you know about the parts that I'm talking about. Sparkles over here is a really cute octopus. And to tell the truth, he's not actually, too far off from what a real octopus, um, the main features that we need to know are, I mean, we got this beautiful head that is shaped like a balloon that looks like it's almost too heavy for the octopus and that's why it really does need the water to support the weight of that head. Because if you see them going on land, just very short distances if they want to crossover from a rock pool into the ocean, you will see them dragging their head because obviously this head is heavy, they need the water for it to be buoyant to be supported. We also have these eyes. An octopus has two eyes. Obviously one on either side. I also need to tell you, obviously, we all know that they have eight arms we can call them ums. Some people call them legs, but I'll just call them ms Well, you can't really see it on this cute little toy, but they also have something called a funnel or a siphon. You can't see the siphon here, but the siphon or the funnel is actually a very important part of the octopus and it either sticks out below the eye over here or over there. And what it does is it's used for propulsion when you see an octopus just push itself forward like that when it's swimming really fast. I acts a bit like a jet propulsion system. And it also acts to expel waste and ink. When you see an octopus just want to evade a predator, it will just squirt it out of the siphon or the funnel and then just swim away like that. The siphon is a very important structure. And obviously on the arms, we've got these suckers, is what they're called. Suckers are actually an octopus way of not only gripping things, but scientists believe that they also have neurons from the octopus brains. Therefore, an octopus uses these suckers to actually feel their surroundings as well as to analyze them. So yeah, they are very, very alien like, and that's pretty cool. I'd like to thank our little model sparkles for being so handy for us to, uh, understand anatomy of the octopus. So without further delay, I've got my paper down here. So even though I just used a model to point out the main features that we need to know, I know that the very shape of an octopus can feel very intimidating to draw. I mean, it really is to a beginner. It may seem very complex. But to tell the truth, I don't actually think it has to be because, um if we just stick to the main features, I think we'll be fine. For this one, for this sketch that I want to do, and you don't have to do it in A three size if you find this really big. But for me, I love working with a big piece of paper just because I like to draw big. So let's just try and break down the reference photograph that I've provided. So as you can see, I've got my oops, the lead just fell out, but I think I can put it back in. I've got my Trustee lead holder, which I love for doing getting a rough idea of the feel of the animal. Then later on, I tend to use a mechanical pencil which is 0.5 MM thickness of lead to do the finer details. Let's just use our little model sparkles and look at the reference photograph. In this, let me just put him over here. He's like some eye candy. I'm just going to start with the head of our guy here. So let me just sorry, I'm just going to zoom in a bit on my photograph. So right now, in this part, I'm just getting the rough shape. I'm not worried about details right now. I just want to get that beautiful shape of the head. Okay. So I don't know. This is a preference of mine, but I like kind of maybe starting at the top, working my way to the bottom. And over here, I'm already going to start doing these two sections where our eye is going to be located. This is not a race, I'd rather get a very good accurate sketch and take my time so that I don't end up getting something I'm not happy with before, after I start painting it. Now is the time to just take your time to do this sketch. I'm just doing the main like what I see the main huge shapes at this moment. Over here, we can see that it almost looks like ears. I'm doing the semicircular orangy looking features of the octopus now. Then we're going to connect this down here. Let me just then you probably have another line, but we don't have to do all of that right now. I'm just getting the rough shape right now before I go down here. We're already getting into the body. Okay. Even though it looked intimidating, it looks like a very intimidating animal to draw. But all you have to do really is just break down, get the general shape of it, before you start putting down details. This is the time where we can change it around if we get the proportions, right. Okay, so I'm just re tracing this and so we're going to do the same thing over here. Over here, we've got that ear looking feature. It's probably not an ear, but kind of sticks out from the side of the octopus kind of like ears. This is actually this part over here is actually where the eyes are going to be. I think I can actually put the eyes down. So let's do the eyes. So we've got, um a beautiful shape over here. If you think about it, the octopus is actually it's like this beautiful alien, really. I know it looks a bit freaky when you first see it and when I was a child, I was petrified of seeing an octopus. Yeah, I was never one to ever want to eat an octopus at all, because I also thought it looked so bizarre. I know that sounds a bit weird that you don't want to eat an animal that looks bizarre. I don't know, later on, when I became an adult, I actually started having a real appreciation for this beautiful creature and how smart they are and just how unique they are. Yeah, it's safe to say I've never eaten an octopus before and I never will. Yeah. All right. Another thing about the octopus that's really cool is that it's pupils, unlike humans, where we have circular pupils, they have these very rectangular looking pupils. There we go. We already getting a nice looking head here. What I've drawn here is, I'm just going to sorry, refine that a little bit, even though I'm not doing details right now and the orange part should come around over here. Still getting the overall shape, but you can see it's starting to come together. You're already seeing a little face come together. Okay. And these pictures that I took of it, I actually took of it very quickly because I was just so amazed that I was seeing one in a rock pool during low tide one day. When I just happened to stroll by, it was very unexpected and still one of the most amazing memories I've ever had of a wildlife creature of an encounter. So I can always refine the shape later, but let's just keep moving forward. We've got this orange part over here. Let me just try and even it out before I move forward. But I can already see a bit of a structure here and I'm wondering if that's the siphon or the funnel. Let's just draw it in. Let's just draw it in. Okay. Let's keep going. We're just doing the top part of the body now, and I think it's safe to start putting a few lines in the top of the head is going to be let's just make just draw light lines to just illustrate where the the top of the head is, that separates it from the body. Then we have some lines coming down here. The reason I'm doing this now is it's just going to help me just place the rest of the octopus and Okay. I just kind of acts like a good way to just check the proportions of stuff. All right. And then it's a little hard to see here because this part blends in a bit with the background of all that, underwater like I used to call it underwater grass, but it's probably that's not very scientific, yeah. I'm also just getting a feel now. This is one of the arms that we can see. Okay? Just curling I will get that might be a little bit too. Let's come up it's probably this far away. That's better. I can always change this if the distance is not right, but let's just keep going with this. It comes up here and then it comes down here. I think you can actually come up a bit more here. Let's see, from the photograph, it's going to go somewhere where the orange. I think we can come up a little bit more. All right. We got one of the powerful arms here. I will refine the shape a little bit more as well as to try and include some of those suckers that we can see a bit of the sucker profile there. It's covered a little bit here with the sea grass. So Okay. This was taken in a rock pool on a day where there was very little reflection, and I could see right through the water was crystal clear. Yeah, I have to say, living in Australia, we do get some pretty amazing beaches. I'm just going to refine this a little bit because I think the angle of the shadow here should be like that. Just going to get my eraser, even though I haven't used an eraser this entire time, just because I'm still just getting that shape going. But as you can see, our octopus is looking really nice. It's coming to life all because we're just getting that overall feel right now. Because I can't see what's going on here, I'm just going to I'm just going to do a bit of a curve up here because I've watched a lot of footage of the plural, I think you call it octopi or octopuses, whatever you prefer. Now let's go do this arm over here. So far, I hope you're having fun and you're not finding this stressful because this is all about just training your eye to look at what you see in the reference photograph. I'm wondering if this is a this should be lower here over here. Once more, as always, you don't have to be 100% accurate. You don't have to act like a camera. You can look, people can already see this is an octopus and this is a very cool profile of an octopus. This is actually the front view of an octopus. I don't know how common that is. I don't know whether people usually see that when they see an octopus picture. So yeah, I got really lucky. I'm glad that my octopus that day was putting on a bit of a show and checking me out a lot from the pool. I must have looked like an alien to it. Yeah. They are very curious animals. In fact, this one got very close to me. I didn't want to put my hand in the pool because I just felt like I didn't want to, if I have any germs and stuff, I don't want to make an animal sick. As tempting as it is to touch animals and I'm an animal lover. I love to do that. But at the same time, I was also considerate about whether I could end up injuring this animal, so I didn't there were times that the octopus actually reached out one of its arms to me, and I was tempted to touch it, but I didn't yeah. And yeah, sorry, I don't know. I've just gone off on a tangent while I was talking. I think we can see maybe a bit of a faint line over here. And then we see this line over here, actually mine's a bit low but maybe up here. We've got this line that goes here, we've got a bit of lines coming down the middle. I'm just going to do a very light line. That goes over here. Okay, I hope your picture, kind of resembles mine a little. It doesn't have to be 100%. But I hope you're happy with your sketch because if you've gotten this far, we already have so much to work with. We can make a really beautiful octopus painting from here. Just using these great lines that we've put down, it's great. So All right. Now you can start adding the details if you've already gotten to this point where you've got this shape. We don't have to do the markings just yet. In fact, we can even do them later. But if there are a couple, I think this might be a little bit low now, I think I have to make this a little bit higher. Let's just move this line up here a bit. See, no problem. You can just adjust it now. That's all good. Just going to use my eraser. But I'm quite happy with the fact that we're just feeling the general shape right now without even having to use eraser much. That's the beauty I find of working with a lead holder. I think with a mechanical pencil, you're holding it a little bit too rigidly and you end up not really you end up getting caught up in the details, I feel, whereas with a lead holder, even the way I hold it is very different from how I hold my pencil, as you can see, very loosely. I'm just putting down loose markings. We got a couple of lines here. I'm just going to put them down and I also see a line here. The arms also have these, these lines in them, if you notice that are, you know, almost like the seams in seams and clothes. That's how I would describe these lines that we're seeing. Okay. All right. I actually noticed this goes up a bit here, but that's just me being a little bit too. But we've got plenty to work with now. All right. That looks great. Like I said before, I think this line comes a little bit too low here. So we got, that was a different line. Anyway, we've got line, sorry, I didn't have to erase that. We got a line coming here. We also have one kind of going here. So once more, you don't have to copy it exactly the way it is, right? That looks really good to me already. Now we can refine it a bit. I can see that we can paint this later, but there's definitely a color difference over here. I might as well just kind of draw that in now. But our eye is very much here. I'm also going to do that over here on this side. Okay. I'm just highlighting these lines right now. But I'm almost done except I want to put in a little bit of the suckers that we can see. I don't want to spend too much time doing this. I think that's good enough already and we got the eye over here. The eyes should be at the same they're almost from the reference photograph, they're almost at the same height. So, one is not really that much noticeably different in terms of placement of height, I mean, I think that's looking good. And we can paint the rest of the stuff. What I want to do now is just check the shape of the head, see if it's high enough. Remember that bulk of the head is behind what we can see right now because this is a front profile of this beautiful creature observing us. But that is looking really, really good to me. I think spockles was a great inspiration for us today. Okay. What I want to do now is maybe just put down just a few markings of the dark spots that we see, which is the Papill on the skin that is daka, and we can always do this later on, right? But I just want to do it now just to get a very good feel of our octopus. I just want to highlight some of those really dark spots that we see. Sorry, while I'm doing animals, adding in a few lines, a few of those seams, so to speak, in the skin. I don't know why this looks a bit pointed over here. Maybe I might just use my razor and that just looked a little bit pointed. All right. This point, you can just put down the dark marks. Obviously, I don't want to shade it all now because I would rather paint it. So I'm just checking this right over here, just checking my work right now. That's why I'm always saying, take your time, don't rush it. Okay. And this parts all kind of folded, right? It's darker. So if you want, you can do a little bit of shading here. But I would rather paint it in later. But if you want, just a little bit of shading just to kind of show where the folds are. But I think that's enough right now. So what I want to do that's really fun is I can see these little projections which are actually the side profile of the suckers. So we can't really see them full on over here. What I'm doing is drawing little rectangular shapes that show the side view of the suckers. This is fun. This feels fun to me. I think there's one here as well. Now I think we will start seeing because it's blocked a little bit, it's kind of obstructed by the sea grass here. I'm going to start drawing them such that we're seeing a little bit more, not just the side profile, perhaps we're seeing some of that white of the suckers. Okay. Maybe it's folded over here and we don't really see it. But this is where we get creative as artists, we're going to just start like perhaps, I would like to personally see a bit of the white of the suckers just because I think it looks interesting. And let's continue over here. This is all just us having fun. All right? I think we can just draw a line over here to just show, this is already the underside of the octopus. This is me just improving a little bit since I already know the rough anatomy of the octopus. So we're just having a bit of fun. Okay, later on, it's going to start becoming side projections, the side view again, rather than just now we're probably not going to see anymore of the white here. This is going to be just the side projections. I hope what I'm saying makes sense to you. This is going to fold over here. Basically, what I was trying to say is when we see these parts, we will see the white of the suckers. But as we go around here, obviously, the whites of the suckers will be obstructed from our view because they're facing that way. We're only going to see the sides of the suckers and over here as well. Whereas when we're down here, we'll start seeing a little bit more like white and then it slowly starts becoming a side profile again. I hope that makes sense. But anyway, I want to say, I think I'm quite happy with the overall look of my octopus and I hope you are too with yours. Now is the time to just correct anything that you want to in terms of the drawing. But I'm quite happy with mine and like I said, it's okay if it doesn't look exactly like it. I might just make his ear come a little bit rounder over here. I might just get rid of this line over here. Okay, so it's going to stick out very much like an ear, even though I'm pretty sure that's not an ear. Okay. Actually, I'm wrong. I think the siphon is on this side actually because it's orange when I look at it in the photo and over here, I think this is more like just, it could be another leg going around the back that we can't see. But anyway, I'm just going to take a stand up and have a look. I actually really love how my octopus turned out. I love this view because I feel like it's a lot more interesting. So how about we just go and take a little break for a while, fix up whatever you like about your octopus right now that you want to alter. Okay? And when we come back, we're going to have a lot of fun starting to put down our base layers of paint. I can't wait for you to join me then. So see you in the next part of this class. 4. Base Coat: Hi, everybody, and welcome back. And we're about to start painting our octopus, so I'm really, really excited. It's always just really, really exciting when you start putting down some colors to your sketch that you worked so hard on. So if you're happy with your sketch, and all I've done during the break is clean up the lines that I didn't want, but I've not added anything new, so yeah, let's begin. I'm really excited. For this class and for this octopus, I've decided to use a set of watercolors called granulating watercolors. All that means is that when you apply these colors onto your paper, what happens is that the pigments will tend to clump together to create as it suggests, granules. This is wonderful when you're painting things that require texture. We know that an octopus has, you know, skin that can change its color and texture. Because of that, I thought granulating watercolors would be a great idea to use. If you do not have granulating watercolors, you can absolutely still do this class because later on in the final stages of the painting, we will be going over dried layers of watercolor and adding more colors where we feel appropriate to create the effect of, hey, these parts of the skin are darker and have more texture. So we can just build layers up later on if you're not using granulating watercolors. So it's absolutely fine if you don't have them. I just want to quickly show you the watercolors that I'm going to be using. I've previously used this brand of watercolors for another class that I did of a turtle swimming over a coral reef. These are by the brand, um, Cusa kabe. I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly, and it says Harmonia granulating color. I got two of these sets as a wonderful gift from Japan, and I just want to show you. Every time I get new paints, I always try out the colors on a piece of paper and I tend to keep it with the box. These are a wonderful collection of granulating colors. And as you can see, some colors will be more granulating than others, as you can see, these little clums here that form and some of these colors may also have more than one pigment. As you can see this color, for instance, you can see reds and pinks and oranges. I have two sets of these. This is upside down. Sorry about that. Yeah, so this is more cooler colors. I think the first set had quite a few warm colors. So as you can see, yeah, granulating as well as I think there more than one pigment in each color. Obviously, some colors, they just have a more granulating effect than other colors. But either way, this is the brand that I want to use. As I always say with every one of my classes, if you don't want to use the same colors as me, that's absolutely fine. The reason that I want to choose these colors to use is that I'm looking at my reference photograph and I think I like the way the octopus in the reference photograph looks. I'm willing to use colors that really mirror the reference photograph. As I said before, you don't have to use the same colors as me. In fact, an octopus can change its color so much, feel free to experiment to have fun. If you want to do an octopus that is very, very colorful, that's absolutely fine too. You just create a different effect, but I'm sure it will still look lovely. I've chosen this color, mandarin Carnelian and it has tones of orange and yellow in it. Yeah, I thought that would be pretty cool because the reference photograph has a bit of orange. And I also chose this color, a starry winter, which is a purplish blue. And I just thought these two colors look quite similar to what our octopus in the reference photograph, looks like, and we can mix various shades of combinations of these two colors in between. So yeah, these are the two colors I've chosen. And I think it's just worth pointing out, you know, blue and orange, they are kind of, you know, complimentary colors to each other, which means that they will really stand out against each other when you have orange and blue next to each other. But when you mix them together, they will form, you know, kind of neutral colors like browns. Yeah. So that's exactly what our octopus kind of has, you know, some neutral parts because it's like a combination of these two colors. So before I go on talking a lot as usual, why don't we get started? But I just wanted to explain to you, if you want to use two different combinations of complimentary colors, you know, that would be great too, like red and green, like, you know, um, purple and yellow. You can use, yeah, whatever complimentary colors you want, or you can even create an octopus with harmonious colors. That means colors that lie next to each other on the color wheel, whereas these two lie opposite to each other and one happens to be more a primary color, and this is a secondary color. So just a little bit of color theory. I don't want to bore you because you probably know a little bit about it. Because I want to create an octopus that's quite contrasting, I've chosen these two complimentary colors. So let me just move my palette into. I'm going to have to move sparkles. Sorry. Hope he doesn't mind. I'm just so you can see my palette, and you can see the colors that I'm using. So yeah, sparkles can just be at the side over there. He can watch. Okay. So let's get started now. I'm going to put some, um of this beautiful color Mandarin carnelon. I might just put quite a bit in there because this is quite a big octopus to paint and just going to put this color maybe over here just so I have some space in between so that they don't mix right next to each other and I can mix them intentionally in one of these little trays. Okay. Are we ready? For this, I want to use my large a silver black velvet, size 12 round brush. Don't worry. You don't need to be too careful about what's happening. I want to start doing whoops. I got a bit of like I think this had just a slight amount of pain from just now, but that's okay. You don't have to be too precious about, not getting it going over the eyes or anything, but obviously try and avoid the eyes for right now. I'm just going to leave these areas that resemble the ears, but actually the back of its huge head that we're seeing the side profile of it. I'm just going to I think we can paint everything except the eyes with water. We're just going to wet it, but I'm going to leave these side areas unpainted. I'm just going to do the head, the face. I'm just going to leave the eyes and I'm just going to wet it all the way down to this down to the body, but leaving the arms, if that makes sense. Okay. So what I'm going to do now is I'm going to drop in. I want to just drop in my orange over here. I know this looks quite stark, doesn't it? It's okay if I don't make it look exactly the same, but I really want the colors to mix together and create a cool shades of neutrals in between. So I don't mind if this parts a little bit brighter. That actually, to me, looks cool. I'm going to leave a bit of white areas on the top of the head there. Okay. So I'm going to leave a little bit of white here and there because I want the blue to stand out in some areas. Wow, I love this paint. You can already see that there are various shades of, um, of orange of pink, it's beautiful. It looks gorgeous. I might paint this area later, let's just focus on this. Now I hope you can see that. I'm just diluting this blue, and I'm just going to go drop it in. That's actually a little bit too dark for what I want to do. I'm just going to use a smaller brush and just dilute it a bit with a bit of water and spread it out. Yeah. Maybe for the blue, I'm just going to I'm going to work a little bit fast now because I just want to I'm just looking at the areas where I see are concentrated more concentrated blue or blue purple is really this color. As you can see, I'm just dropping it in around these areas, these areas that look like patches around the eyes. I'm going to try and work quite quickly because my pain will start to dry soon. I'm just going to go in this area around the eye. All I'm doing now really is, wow it's wet, I'm just going over these folds that look that look like creases and I'm also just diluting my paint a bit here in some of these areas where it looks like purplish. I'm also going to If you feel the lines are too concentrated, feel free to just go over them with a bit of water. Yeah, I'm just keeping it quite loose now. I'm just dropping in the blue purple, where I feel where I feel like it. But I want some of this beautiful mandarin color to show through as well. This is a base layer, we can build up more color later. I'm just dropping in the purple where I feel like I want to do it. That looks like a good base layer so far. I'm also going to just drop in a more concentrated version of the blue purple color where we see these very prominent blotches of paint. I might just darken this area here too. So you do have to work. I might switch brushes now to a smaller brush, maybe my size four because I want to just do a little bit more detail now. Even though it's still a little bit wet, I just want to emphasize these areas here that are around the eyes. Sorry, I hope I'm explaining this well because the anatomy of the octopus is a little bit I call these eye patches, probably not very scientific, but just trying to Now, I'm just diluting my brush. I cleaned it, and I just want to kind of spread some of that blue color all the way out here because it kind of fades over here. And before this all dries, I just want to put in as much shadow as I can for the areas that we've already painted. Right now, my octopus doesn't look as gray as that octopus in the reference photograph. But I actually am quite happy to let some of this orange color come through. I'm just going to use the tip of my brush and a bit of concentrated blue purple paint to just get the outline really well, just the outline of the shadows and things like that, and the creases. We can do this later, but I can do this now as well. I just want to use some concentrated color over here because over here is where we see a nice dark shadow. I'm just going to paint that in. And just painting the creases, just giving our octopus a little bit more definition. But so far, this is a great base layer. I actually really like it. Later on, perhaps, well, now as well, we could just do a few of these lines even though my paint is almost fully dry now. I actually love that a lot more of the orange is coming through now. So that's just my own preference. I didn't want to completely cover it. My octopus is going to have a bit of a brighter appearance than the one in the reference photograph. And this is where I say, do what you want to do. That's why I always say the reference photograph just serves as a guide and then we can do whatever we want after that. I'm just going to keep doing these little marks that I see. But I love that the orange is shining through and I don't want to change that. I'm also going to just add a little bit more of this beautiful bluish purple color. Over here, I can actually blend this a little bit more because they're hard edges. It doesn't completely bother me. In fact, I feel like making this part maybe a little bit more orangy. This is where I'm just using intuition and having fun and playing with colors. I'm not really caring too much about the reference photograph at this point. So what we can do as well, because this is an octopus, I don't just have to use the bluish color to emphasize that texture. I can even use some of that orange now to just add a bit of texture too. I'm not using a diluted orange. All I'm doing is putting down little paintbrush strokes and maybe blending them a little bit more so they don't just look like painbush strokes. I might put some over here too. What I'm doing now is I'm just building up texture before this completely dries and I also think that right now I can also do things like, why don't we can start doing this side of the head profile, if that makes sense. I'm just going to switch brushes now to my medium, my size eight. What I want to do is I'm just going to wet this area over here, this tiny little area here. I just want to drop in some of that blue over here. It's not completely solid color. That's a bit of Yeah, that looks good. I'm also going to do the same for this thing that looks like an ear, but it's not actually the side of the head. I'm just going to drop in some of that beautiful blue color. I'm just letting it spread out a bit. We can actually bring some of that blue all the way up here, I think. Over here, we did that like we did. What I'm doing is I'm just painting in a pretty loose way, which I find very relaxing, which I find fun. But I just use whatever paint is on my brush right now to just I feel like this area is a little bit too blank. I'm just going to use my brush. If you feel like the lines are too sharp, you can always blend them with a tip of a wet brush so that it's not too solid a line. Yeah, having some fun now, I'm going to switch to a size four now just to do the lovely orange parts that we see over here that are so lovely. Yeah, I just love the contrast that the blue and orange have. I'm really not caring, if the colors merge a little bit. In fact, I'm just going to add the tiniest amount of the blue over here just to create some interest. So, as I said, we're painting very loosely. Yeah, that's looking nice. I can see the eye over here. Why don't I just outline that a little bit. Yeah. Now we can do the same for this side as well. It'd be fun to add just rinse your brush. We're going to we can wet this entire area and drop in our whoops, got a bit too much on my brush. Drop in some of that beautiful orange color here. With whatever color you're using, if you decided to go with different complimentary colors or harmonious colors, I can't wait to see the effect you have, but I just hope that right now you're having fun, you're not feeling stressed. This should be a nice loose process. What I'm going to do now is I'm going to drop in some of that gorgeous blue color over here. Isn't that lovely? Yeah, this is a lot of fun. It's very relaxing. I'm just going to go up here, just dropping color in. I'm going to take a step back and this is looking great already. Okay. If you feel that the orange is a little bit too stock, I'm using a clean wet brush and I'm just going to gently remove a little bit of that pain just because the intensity it's quite bright there, but it doesn't really bother me, I guess I'm just using the reference photograph now as a bit of inspiration. I also want to use my wet brush to blend this area a little bit. That's looking really good. Before we take a break, I was just thinking, how about we just maybe finish doing the bottom part of our octopus? Just using the same technique that we've been using. I've got my size 12 now and I'm just going to wet the bottom area because it really doesn't bother me too much if some of this pain blends with the pain up here because the octopus is this very fluid animal. So um, yeah, it's fine if the colors bleed a little into each other. I actually think that will make it look more natural and we can always define it later. I'm just going to use the same technique I did just now for the top half of the octopus. I'm just going to put in my orange and I encourage you to leave a bit of leave a few white spaces in between. I mean, this color itself is so beautiful. If you had chosen to use harmonious colors, if you use orange and reds and yellows, it would still be a great octopus, but I'm into doing more contrast, something very contrasting. It depends on what kind of effect you want to create because I'm sure your octopus will look lovely no matter what colors used. I'm consciously leaving a bit of white out. So that some areas when I put in the blue will look blue and they won't just look like orangy. But I love the look of the orange, so I'm being quite generous with the orange. I don't like this over here. It was at the lines were a little bit too bold, so I'm just blending it a little. Okay, so we got this beautiful color going on. I don't know what it is. I prefer to put the blue on because it's a darker color. I prefer to use a smaller brush just so I don't drown out the beautiful orange effect. What I do now is that I'm just looking at where the shadows tend to be, and that's where I usually start with the blue. I don't know, it's just a habit of mine, I guess, to use a darker colors more sparingly at first so that you don't take away from all the other colors that you have going on. Then I'm just going to follow these creases and just let the color blend out into the orange. Yeah, but definitely keeping some of that beautiful orange. We want that to shine through. At least I want it to shine through because it's so beautiful. I'm just working while the paint is wet now. I think I'm just putting a few patches of my paint. Yeah, not just using the same long strokes all the time, just to create a bit of variation and Honestly, use instinct here, use your instincts about where you want to put the colors. I also think it looks natural if you leave a few white patches. Now I'm just going to use the tip of my brush to create a few stroke shorter strokes. I'm following the contour, the curvature of this arm over here. There we go. We've got some beautiful I'm just going to take a step back. Yeah, it's looking great. We've got some beautiful color variations going on here. Now, I've gone a bit darker down here because this is more like a over here, it's a shadowy area. This is all just instinct, again, that I'm using because I can actually see a lot in this reference photograph because it's being blocked by the seaweed that we see in the photograph. My paint is still wet, but it's drying quite quickly now. I just want to put maybe a little bit more of blue down here. I can still see the little suckers that we drew earlier. It's okay if you go over them a bit with paint right now. That's fine because we're going to use some white, some white gouache over it, it's okay. We'll make it still stand out. All I'm doing now is going over those dark creases that I see over here or the shadow area with the with my blue. It's looking great. I just want to lay down, sorry, the reflection makes it a bit hard sometimes to see how intense it is. I suggest standing up or moving your paper around too to just if the reflection is blocking you, obstructing you, I mean, from that's looking good. Before it fully dries, I'm just going over the shadow areas again. This is all just using my own intuition and instinct to just see how much I should put in here and there. I'm doing this all over the octopus, not just the areas I've just painted. Yeah, I love the octopus. It's such a magical creature. I feel very relaxed just putting down paint where I see appropriate. My paint is starting to really dry now all over. I'm going to wrap it up really soon and let this fully dry. I know this part of the octopus looks quite light and I'm thinking of maybe going over that with a few layers later. One thing that I want to do right now before it dries is I want to use some of that gorgeous color over here. This is just my own instinct not to just add a bit of color here. Okay. I think now we should just let it dry completely. Then we have a break and we can look at it with fresh eyes again in a little bit. Maybe the last thing I want to do is just make sure that this area down here is nice and dark because this is the very shadowy area, and then it goes a bit lighter up there. I'm fine with the orange peeking through over there. But I just want to yeah do that. It's beautiful. I love it. This is only a base layer, but I think it's already looking so beautiful now that I'm standing up and having a good look. At this point, I think, whatever you're doing, let's wrap it up. Let's wrap up painting the base layer, which is a varied layer because we've been using two different colors to create this. Before we get we get a little bit carried away doing too much, I say we let this dry. And completely, why don't you go and wash your brushes, change your water jars? And when we come back, we're going to start building up texture in a very natural organic way. And yeah, I can hardly wait. I hope you are having a lot of fun doing this class. I am. So please go have a break and I will see you in the next part of this class really soon. 5. Building Up Color and Texture: Hi, everyone, and welcome back. And I hope you've had a good break and you've washed your brushes and cleaned your water jars, and your beautiful little octopuses or octopi are all dry. And minus. And I love the way it looks now. Now it looks a lot brighter than the octopus in the reference photograph, even though I did use colors that were very similar. During the break, I just had some time to look at my octopus and decide what else I want to do. Now, I might not necessarily want to go as dark as the octopus in the reference photograph, but I still do want to take inspiration from it. I think right now what I really want to do first before we start building up more textures and layers is I really want to do the eyes of the octopus just to I think that really sets the moon and it starts to, um make our creature really come to life, even though it's looking great now. What I'm going to do is I'm going to start with this eye over here. I'm just going to wet the entire eye area and I'm just going to use some of this orange color here, as you can see, layer that on and the other eye appears a little bit to be more on the purple side. I'm just going to wet it and just drop in just the slightest amount of purple. Sorry, I keep saying purple, the bluish purple color, is what I mean? I'm just going to let that dry, but I feel that over here, I'm just going to add a drop in a bit of purple at the bottom part of this orange looking eye and maybe just a little on the top here. Okay, so we're just going to let that dry first before we paint on the pupils of the eyes. As I mentioned before, octopus pupils is actually very long and rectangular compared to ours. What I was also thinking of doing now is I want to use my very small round size four brush. I'm just making this come to life a little bit. What I want to do is I want to start layering on I'm going to study my reference photograph and start building up some of the shadows, so to speak. Not really shadow, actually, maybe just the darker color. Because I don't want hard edges, I use a wet brush to soften these edges a bit, but I just want to darken it where I see appropriate. This is what you're going to do now. This is a very common technique that's used. When you apply color, I did try and build up some layers while it was wet just now. I'm just doing more building up and I'm also just using a clean damp brush, not wet damp. So make sure you dab some of the water off. You just have to be slightly careful that you don't remove the layer below, the nice orange layer that we have below. So I want my octopus to look quite vibrant. That's just a choice I made. I want to just go around now building up layer where I see appropriate. Now, right now, I'm just using the bluish purple color. But that doesn't necessarily mean I don't want to build up layers using our orangey color too. I think I will do that in certain, um, in certain other places where I feel, maybe it's a bit dull. I might use the orange later, but right now, I'm just gradually building up some of this nice color without trying to conceal too much of that beautiful, um, orange, yellow colors below. What I'm doing this technique I'm using is just really basically intuition, using my brush in ways as to, you know, just dab on the color. But to try and make it look natural, I'm also going to keep blending the color with a damp brush. A, that's what I'm doing, if that makes sense. Also like yeah, I'm using different strokes where I feel it's appropriate. For instance, sometimes I'll hold my brush quite vertically to do these long narrow lines and sometimes I hold it quite flat to dab on more color. That's just how I change the pressure that I apply to, um, to add, a little bit of color or a lot of color over a narrow area or a wide area. Right now, just very instinctively just laying down pain, using the reference photograph for guidance about how about the tone, so to speak, obviously the darker areas have more tone to them. I'm just looking at the reference photograph. See right now, I'm using the short little tip of the brush sort of uh brush strokes to lay down the color. I do feel like this area is a little bit bright. I might just start darkening it. See now I'm pressing down a little bit more with my brush. Then whatever paint I have left on my brush, I might just very lightly dab it on on the orange parts. This all helps to build up the texture of the skin of the octopus. I mean, you know, everything that we do now, we are just building texture with layers of watercolor. So I'm just very lightly doing this area just because I feel like maybe it is a bit orange. But I don't want to fully cover that orange because I think the orange is very beautiful. So parts of the orange will definitely shine through in the lighter areas. That's what I'm doing. Take your time to do this. It's not a race, take your time to dabble on. Look, observe no matter what color you're using, observe your reference photograph, just to get an idea of the shadows and the falls of the skin, where the skin protrudes. This is all going to build up the realism that we want in our octopus. So yeah. But like I said before, sometimes I'm going to deviate from the photograph where I feel like I want to because I want to just, you know, make my octopus maybe look a little brighter. All I'm doing now is just giving it a rough outline, my octopus by just very lightly going over the edges. I may have gone off a little bit over here, but that's fine. I can just use the tip of my brush with clean water to just remove that. No big deal. I think I've mentioned before. I actually like seeing a bit of imperfections in a painting. I think it looks more authentic to me. I've done the head quite a bit now. I'm still just waiting for those eyes to completely dry before I paint over. So why don't I just look at what I can do right now? So I want to just lift a bit of this beautiful orange color off because I feel like it looks lighter over here in the reference photograph. I'm saying it again. I'm sorry if I sound like a broken record. I'm just using the reference photograph as a guideline, and sometimes that's very useful, but I will change it and do what I want to when I feel like it. But this just gives me a nice guideline to go with. I'm also removing some of that pain up here. Okay? Do that with a clean brush and just keep, lifting where you feel appropriate. I'm just going to lift it a bit here because this parts a little bit lighter. The lifting does add a bit of a bit of realism in terms of, you know, the shading, how the light falls on the skin. So that's useful. This is where I feel the the reference photo comes in handy. But in terms of color and stuff like that, that's where I let my own intuition guide me. That color does lift quite well. I might have lifted a little bit too much, so I'm just going to add in a bit more of that purple blue here. But everything is looking good. I'm just outlining it slightly over here. I just want to make sure that I lifted that area, but I'm just going to outline it so that the octopus just has a definite shape and outline. I like that area light. Let's just do the same over here. Now that I look at this and I know we lifted the color, we can paint this part a little bit darker now. I'm just going to add some of that bluish purple over here, just a little bit over here. Maybe I need a more concentrated color. I'm just looking to see perhaps we could lift a bit of color over here between the orange and the purple over here. Lifting is actually very easy. With these paints, with these granulating paints I'm using, the colors seem to lift quite easily when you just apply a damp brush to it. That's a good thing. I'm also just a so this is the stage where we're going to build up layers and also refine stuff. Because now that our base layer has dried, we have more control now because we're not working against time to try and apply paint before the water dries and stuff like that for the purposes of blending. Now is where we just add build up color or we can remove color so this should be done at a relaxing pace. That's looking good to me. Also, I'm just going to add a bit more definition here because this is actually the curvature of the head. I know I called them eye patches. They look like eye patches, but this is actually where it has dimension. I'm just trying to get that going now. Yeah. This part should be darker. And it should protrude. That's what I'm trying to convey. Okay. So why don't we take a break from doing that right now? Why don't we do something really fun and bring our octopus to life? Let's do the pupils of our octopus. This is dry, touch it if you're not sure. Let's go. We're going to just outline this line that we drew earlier. I'm using the very tip of my small size four round brush because I want some control and I'm using quite a concentrated concentration of pain. Look at that eye. So much personality. I'm thinking that we can also maybe apply a bit. We could maybe lift a bit of color underneath this pupil when it's dry, or we could even add white gouache to really make it stand out. But wow, that eye just looks so great now that it's alive. It really looks like it's come to life. I'm going to do the same over here. Take your time. I'm just following what this looks like over here in the reference photograph and what I've drawn over here. Wow, so much personality. Now that we've got the eye, the pupils going. There's our handsome guy looking quite alive now. I'm also just going to take some of that paint and drag it down here because I can see and add a bit more definition to this area here around the actual eye because I can see it's darker. So this is all and also around here. This is making our eye pop now and look more three dimensional. I'm just doing that now as I see the pupil, and it should also be darker under here. So as you can see, all these things that we're doing now, maybe not that dark. I'm just going to use whatever paint I have left on my brush to just make this area around the eye just a little bit more define and pop, as you can see, it's coming to life. I want to do the same with this eye. So I'm just following what I see. The area around the eye should be darker to just make it pop and make it look more three dimensional. All I'm doing is darkening this area around the eye, like what I just did with the other eye. That's looking very good. Just blend it outwards. I did use a pretty dark version of the color. But that's looking really good to me. It looks like our guys really coming to life. So you can feel free to emphasize it more than the photograph if you want. I think I used a much darker concentration of pain to really make this eye pop, but it really does look like it stands out a lot more than it used to just now. Let me just finish up over here. Maybe I might use I might just outline the eye here. Okay, I don't want to overdo this and I'm just going to wait for this to dry before I attempt to lift any color to make it look even To tell the truth, this eye here, we can actually bring some of this purple up here because it's actually covered. Yeah, it's sorry. What I mean to say is that it's not as big as I drew it. So Yeah, just painting it a bit there. I think I might do the same over here. I'm just using whatever color is left on my brush. That way, I don't think I need to lift any color. I'm just going to bring that dark color a little bit further up the eye. Then that way, I don't think we need to. As you can see, I'm just going to take a step back. Yeah, that's looking good. That's looking really good. I don't have to I'm just going to color this a little bit more, but I don't want to make the eyes maybe as small as in the picture. This is where I'm choosing to just deviate a little bit to what I want to do, yeah, that's looking great. There we go. The eyes are done, maybe I might just use a bit of whatever paint is left here just to define this part a little bit more. I don't mind that it's quite orange here. I like that. I think it adds something cool to look at. Okay. So far, I think we've done a lot of the face, and now I want to start the body is quite bright now and we can definitely start building up some layers now. I might switch brushes because otherwise it will take me a really long time to do this. I want to work quite loosely. So how about we take a little break right now, actually, and just let everything in the head just dry. And when we come back, we can really get into this into the body, and I feel like we'll be able to finish the body quite quickly. So why don't we take a little break right now. Just go and yeah, recharge, have a stretch, and let your painting completely dry. And when we come back, I can't wait to finish the details on the body, so I will see you very soon. 6. Adding Details with Various Brush Strokes: Hello, and welcome back. And I hope by now your octopus is all dry. And before I begin, I just want to show you. I just want to point out a couple of features of using this granulating paint. As you can see on the paper, do you just see these beautiful marks where the paint clumps together? So that all adds texture to our octopus's skin. And that's the main reason why I chose to use granulating paints to paint this subject because it has textured skin. So this just adds a little bit more depth to our octopus. And as I said before, you could easily do this octopus class using the watercolors that you already have even if they're not granulating. But this is just, you know, a little bit more, it just adds a little bit more to suggest the texture of our beautiful octopus here. And during the break, I've just had a look at the reference photograph and thought about what more I want to do. I want to continue this method of applying watercolor paints very loosely. This was quite a very fluid and loose painting technique that I was using to just lay down colors in a very relaxed way, you know, just using our reference photograph as an inspiration, but, you know, changing it where we decided. For instance, just now, I decided to leave certain parts brighter than the reference photograph. I decided to, you know, add more you know, definition to the eyes. And these are I decided to make some areas, you know, like more orange than others. So this is all where I decided to just have fun and do what I felt, I wanted to do instinctively. And, you know, so before I end up talking a lot again, how about we continue with our loose style now? So what I want to do is, I think I want to take a medium sized round brush size eight. I'm just going to wet it, and I'm just going to reactivate my orange paints because I just want to I just want to point out, we've done this whole octopus just using two colors, and we've managed to create a lot of varied color using these two colors, shades in between where they mixed have produced these nice neutral areas as well. I just wanted to point that out that we did all this with just two colors. I know my granulating colors that I have may have more than one pigment in it, but I just love the overall effect that it's produced. Before I end up talking a lot again. I just decided right now I want to just I'm quite happy with the head all the way up to if you can call that the neck of the octopus. It's probably not very anatomically, not very scientific, but up to here, I'm quite happy with the tone of the octopus as in how dark it is up there. I just want to just darken the body a bit. These were little strokes that we had done in the initial base coat and all I'm doing now is I'm building up texture by maybe just going over some of them again. I'm just using there's no real technique. I'm just using the tip of my brush, just touching it lightly. What I'm doing is I'm creating texture and dimension just by doing that. I think it's important to turn your brush to kind of go with the curvature of your octopus' body. I'm looking at the reference photograph for a little bit of you know, a little bit of inspiration and where to lay down the colors. I can see this area here, for instance, is a bit lighter, so I'm going to leave that untouched. I may be deviating a little bit from the colors of my reference photograph, but this is what I want to do. I want my octopus to look more vibrant, but I'm just using it to kind of the reference photograph just to see what areas are lighter and darker. So that's all I'm doing right now. So I'm just building up some texture. And yeah, at this stage, I would just say just use the reference photograph to lay down to just observe where your octopus gets lighter and darker. This should all be very relaxed. I'm just using the tip of my brush and then I'm just kind of changing it where I feel like changing it. Um so I don't want to overdo this area too much. Now I'm just going to move on to this leg, I'm sorry, this arm over here. I know we haven't done the suckers yet and that's fine. We can do them later. Right now, I just want to see observe these lighter areas that I had already preserved earlier when I was laying down the pan. Like I said before, I don't want to cover all these beautiful shades below that we did in the base layer. Yeah. I don't want to make my octopus look too orange, but I will be going over certain parts later, that's right. Like I said, I want my octopus to look quite vibrant and they are masters of color change and stuff, it's fine. If you want to do a very colorful octopus, I'm sure it's going to look amazing too. As long as you just pay attention to which areas are lighter and darker so that you can create some dimension. As we go up here, it's going to get lighter in comparison to the area down here, as in this is more in contact with the light coming from above, the light source. So let me just like I said, very fluid application of pain and just try and get the contours right. So, as in, feel free to tilt your brush to go with the flow of the octopus body. I think that's a lot of orange that I've already applied. I don't feel like I need to do a lot more. And so I think now we can swap I'm going to rinse my brush and I'm just going to reactivate my bluish purple paint. Another advantage of using granulating colors, especially the ones that I'm using that have multiple pigments in them is obviously the beautiful color variation that you've created without even trying too hard just by laying down the pain. I might just put a little bit more in of this color, the same color. I don't want to run out of pain as I go along, so yeah. Feel free to test it out on a piece of paper first. I think that's a good tone for me to use. With dark colors, I don't want to lay it down too heavily because then it might cover all these beautiful marks. So what I'm going to do now is use the reference photograph to see where the darkest areas are. That means maybe going over areas that we already did before during the base wash stage. Yep. As you can see, when we laid this down earlier when everything was wet, the colors obviously a little bit more faded. I'm just going to reinforce those dark areas. I would just suggest this has happened to me before. Don't be too heavy handed with the dark colors yet. It's good to have a guideline like the reference photograph because I think it can be easy to get carried away and lay down too much dark color and thus darkening the whole overall effect. And what you can do also that I see is you can use the very tip of your brush and maybe do a few of these dotted sort of patterns rather than just the tip of the brush stroke which I'm using now. So as I said before, I want my octopus to have a more vibrant, brighter look about it. And applying it very fluidly. What we can also do is over here, I might do a more a more speckled look by using the tip of my brush. So there are many different patterns that we can create with the same brush just by holding it differently and applying pressure differently. I might just do a few speckles here and it really does add to the look of our octopus. So there was a reason I always start with the lighter color first, you know, because obviously it's easier to go over a lighter color with a darker color, not so much with a lighter color. It would just end up looking a bit muddy. So yeah, just take your time to do this. This should all be very relaxed. So all I'm doing is I'm creating some texture, and in the process, I'm also kind of darkening the overall look of my octopus. So see, I'm starting to just use my brush, applying more pressure now that I've done, um those darker areas. I started with darkening the spots on the octopus, those very, very prominent spots first. And then whatever paint I have left on my brush, I'm now using it in a more, um, by applying more pressure to color wider areas to create a darker effect. I hope that makes sense. I started out using the most concentrated paint to do the very, very obvious dark areas and then whatever I have left now, I'm just using to give an overall darker effect with whatever pain is left here. It's not going to be as intense and that way I'm also using it more freely, as you can see. So just paying attention to my reference photograph as I darken the octopus just to make sure I don't go really overboard. This area here looks a bit darker, this area here. The good news is the paint on my brush that's left is not too intense, as you can see. As you can see, look, I'm running out of pain. What I'm going to do now is going to now that my paint on my brush that I take straight from the palette is going to be more concentrated. I'm going to do the same thing. I'm going to start looking at those areas that are darker. I do see a few spots here, so I'm just going to use my dark concentrated paint now that I have on my brush to just do a bit of a speckled effect. You can see this is darker over here. I do feel like this is pretty dark up here already. It doesn't need a lot of it doesn't need a lot of blue paint here. Just using the tip of my brush here. This should feel like a very natural fluid process right now where you just start observing and adding pain, it shouldn't feel like stressful because you've already laid down the foundation so to speak earlier of where the dark and the lights go. See, all I did was add a little bit more concentrated pain in those very obvious dark areas. I don't actually feel like I need to do much here actually, just a little bit. I still have some pain that's very concentrated here. Why don't I just do these very dark folds of the skin here that definitely demand some darkening. And see, I'm now applying more pressure with my brush to darken these areas. And what I think is so important is keep taking breaks, keep standing up to have a little bit of distance between you and your painting, especially when you're working with something that is A three size because standing back can give you a better overall perspective of how dark and light, your octopus is looking. If you're very close to your work like this and your head's very low, you might not see the overall effect unless you stand up and take breaks. And that's also good to rest your back and, you know, your hand. It's good to take breaks when you're painting something this big. Well, unless, you know, you're using a smaller size paper than me. But I love working with A three when it comes to animals because I don't know, I guess the larger it is, it has kind of more impact, you know, for me. Okay, so just very casually laying down some paints here. The overall effect here is darker, so I might just like kind of press down on my brush a bit. But like I said before, I want a more vibrant octopus, so I don't want to cover all this beautiful orange up yet. So just laying down that pain. And yeah, using my brush quite freely now because this pots a Dhaka. But as you can see, the paint on my brush is not as concentrated as when I first started. That's just a little technique that I've learned over the years to just whatever paint is left, you can now apply quite freely without darkening it too much. Down here, it's a little bit hard to see what's going on with the octopus because it's a little bit obstructed by the sea grass or the seaweed that you see. I just improvised a little bit here. But I imagine that this part would be a bit darker. Because there's a fold here and also over here, I think we can use more concentrated pain here. I also feel that maybe this part is a little bit light. I'm going to just go with some light strokes of my brush. You're just using the tip. I also feel like we should see more grooves over here, so I'm just going to put that down. But overall, I think this is looking great. Let's just put more, I don't want to cover too much of this beautiful orange, so and just maybe using a little shorter strokes now to just add texture to this part of the arm I don't think I need to add a lot more color to tell you the truth because like I said before, numerous times, I want my octopus to be brighter. I think I might be wrapping it up soon with just doing the skin. So let's just lay down a bit of blue here. I like the orange coming through here, so it doesn't really bother me. Taking a step back. I think maybe this area could be a little bit darker, but it's not too dark with how diluted the paint is right now in my brush. Making that area lighter that stands out over here. Maybe up here. If you feel like switching to a smaller brush, if you're doing areas that are smaller, please go right ahead. I'm just using the very tip of my brush. Don't worry because we're actually going to, um, no use some white gouache later for the very white light areas that we see on our octopus that look like they are projectiles sticking up on the skin. I know I said I wasn't going to touch the head, but now I'm just feeling where I want to put more paint. Yeah. We've created texture by using our brush in different ways by obviously those long strokes for the very shadowy areas and just using the tip of our brush to create these cute little brush strokes that suggest in these areas of the skin projecting upwards. Okay, so I'm going to wrap it up soon. Every time I say that, I end up doing a lot more painting. Taking a step back and bearing in mind that I do still want to create a lighter octopus. Going to finish up now, just observe change just to vary it a little, I'm going to also create this speckled look using the very tip of my brush holding my brush quite vertically. Just for some variation so that it doesn't just all look like brush strokes. I noticed this part is a bit darker over here. I noticed something that the eye is actually a little bit smaller. I'm just going to use some dark color to just make it just look a little bit smaller. It doesn't it's not too you know, it's not too obvious, but I just wanted to do that. But I think it's fine actually. I just wanted to make it slightly smaller. Yeah, that's looking good. And bit more shadowy over here. I'm just going to stand up, have a look at the in case you're just wondering how I look at my reference photograph while I'm painting. Well, what I do is I have a computer screen behind my painting, and I have the reference photograph put up on the screen. Yeah, just so I can just keep looking up and painting. I think that's great. I know when I'm not filming, I usually maybe work from an image on my phone just in case you're wondering. Maybe just like I think our octopus is looking quite good already and I don't want to darken it way too much. I'm just going to take a step back. I think it looks beautiful. I just want to make sure that I've darkened these areas over here sufficiently. I do feel by looking at it now, some areas here would be darker. I'm just going to go over here. Hence the need to replenish the paint in your palette. Um, Yeah, but it's looking really good and I don't want to overdo this. So just using darkening certain parts. But, yeah. Overall, I love it and I don't want to overdo this. Maybe I should wrap it up right now before I end up making my octopus look really dark. I'm just going over those very, very final steps. I can see a line there that I missed just now. I think I should wrap it up and maybe this part could look a bit darker over here. Okay. Did I make this Daka enough? So please feel free to spend as much time as you want. Sometimes it's good to set yourself a bit of a time limit so that you don't get too carried away like I am. I think that's also a good idea. Okay. I honestly think this is looking really good already. I just stood up to have another look at it. I don't want to do it, overwork the area. So even though some of these areas are lighter, I actually want to leave it like that. Okay? Because anyway, later on, we will be using just a touch of white guash. Sorry, when I said I'm done, I'm just going to put a little bit more pain here. But we're going to be using white guash to just, um, suggest some little areas where the skin is projecting upwards. Why don't we just finish up right now, let this completely dry and when we come back, we will just start kind of outlining these suckers that you see on the skin. But I think why don't we just take a little break because we've been painting for some time now. Let's take a little break and finish up doing your shadows of your paint, your shadows of your octopus, I mean, let it all dry completely. And when we come back, let's finish the suckers and do the projections of the skin. We're very close to finishing. If you've gone this far, you should be very proud of yourself, and I will see you in the next part of this class. 7. Adding the Octopus' Shadow: Hi, everyone, and welcome back. And I hope you're loving the way your octopus looks. Like, I like my little guy, and, yeah, I hope you have had fun so far doing this and painting your octopus in a nice, loose, relaxed style. And I just love what we have accomplished so far. Like I said earlier, we've only used two different colors. It just shows you the power of using complementary colors to do a subject because these two colors just really stand out against each other and create something really striking. Just by using two colors that are on the opposite sides of the color wheel. So yeah, I don't want to bore you with color theory, but you can see we created something very bold and beautiful that really stands out against our white background. Now, during the break, I had some time to think about what I wanted to do with whether I wanted to create a background, you know, the truth is, these two complimentary colors, they just seem to stand out so beautifully against each other and they also yeah, stand out so much against the white of the paper that we've used that I was conflicted about painting a background, and this is where I want to let you guys decide what you want to do, how you want to finish your octopus. If you want to paint a background, whether you want to do a background that covers the entire page or maybe just the area around it, a small, sort of like a background to just frame it. I've done that before in the past. But in this case, because I just love how bold it looks rather than painting a background that is going to kind of, you know, not make our octopus stand out as much because these two colors kind of work so well and they stand out so lovely against the white paper. I'm going to leave this up to you, but what I've decided to do for my octopus is, I would actually like to paint a shadow. At the bottom of my octopus, just a shadow, so it looks like a complete picture, at the same time, it will also add to the realism of my octopus because it will treat the octopus like a three dimensional object by us including a little shadow at the bottom. And this shadow will also make these little suckers over here stand out as well. And at the same time, I feel like that will complete the picture and that will achieve the look that I want to achieve. If you've looked like on the Internet on Pintres, there are lots of these paintings that you see where many artists are happy to just leave the background white and really let the subject, you know, take full attention. So like I said before, I want to leave this up to you, but just make sure that if you choose a color, for your background. You know, you obviously don't want something that blends too much with your octopus, you know? Like, for instance, if you were going to do a dark background, I don't know, that might really kind of not make your octopus stand out very much as it is right now. So I feel because of that, I'd like to do just a shadow at the bottom. And I also have to do the suckers. I haven't forgotten about them, so don't worry about that. And maybe just use a little bit of white gouache to just make certain um areas of our octopus kind of stick out a little to create that three D effect. This is what I'm going to do. I just wanted to outline that to you before I got started. So far, I love the way our octopus looks. So rather than just, um, free handing the shadow beneath it. I actually just want to use my lead holder just to create a rough sketch of where I think the shadow should fall. Underneath it. Because of that, I didn't want to just free hand it, even though I'm sure you could, but I just wanted to be a little bit careful because I've come so far. The original picture shows a yeah, the octopus hiding out among the seaweed, and it is a cool picture. Maybe if you still want to do a background, you can maybe use a combination of those light and dark colors, but just be aware that your octopus will probably not stand out as boldly as it is against the white paper. Yeah. So if you do want to continue with that background idea, just make sure you choose a color you know, or maybe create a varied background that's kind of vague using light and dark colors just so your octopus still stands out. But I've just chosen to do this because I just feel like this is the style that I want to go for, like, pretty bold. And yeah, kind of bold, kind of unapologetic. So I'm just going to actually stand back a bit because I'm just going to roughly sketch, where I feel the shadow should go. This is all just intuition and I just think maybe it should curve in a little bit here. Even though this will be blocking the body of the octopus is obviously going to be blocking light from above and casting a shadow below here. But I just kind of you know, rather than just doing a flat shadow in this part, I might just curve it slightly inwards to also suggest, you know, that the octopus has this like a Now, just to make it look a little bit more natural is what I'm really trying to say. Now the shadow is going to be quite if we imagine the light coming straight from above, so it's not going to cast much of a shadow beyond the main body of the octopus. I think the shadow will probably end somewhere here. Then I feel like we can maybe go inwards a bit over here. This is all I'm just imagining where the light will fall. Because this part of the arm is cold up and if you imagine light coming from above, it's probably the shadow is probably going to stop somewhere here. Okay. This is and then I'm going to imagine that it's going to probably it's coming in light here, it's probably going to end somewhere like here, right? That's if the light is coming from above. And it's probably so this is the arm here, it might even go in a bit over here. So let me just get my eraser and just neaten this up. This is what I think the shadow would look like. Maybe even go in a little bit more over here. Yep. Sorry, just bear with me because this is just me trying to be a little bit maybe I might curve this in a little bit scientific about how the shadow would fall. Okay. So that's what I think it would look like with the light directly above it, because the shadow in the parts are going to stick very close to the body, but this is kind of yeah, this whole parts blocking the light. So that's what I think it will look like. So I hope that looks right and that makes sense. Okay. So if you're happy to follow me and do the shadow, let's just imagine the light's coming from right above. So it's going to cast a shadow directly below it. And, you know, this parts of curved upward. So rather than just going straight across, I thought we can even go in a bit more, I think, with the curvature. Okay. So I don't want to spend too much time doing this. Also during the break, when I had my idea for the shadow, I did try mixing these two colors together. And when they mix together, they create a sort of a gray. But for me, the gray is a light because I was thinking, Oh, what is the best way to make a shadow without just using the blue itself, which is obviously the darker color. They mix together to form this very neutral color. But obviously, it's just too light to be a shadow. I didn't want to just use the blue that we have as a shadow because that might make the viewer of your art think that, it's an extension of the octopus, which I really didn't want. I've decided after contemplating that to go with Panes gray. I'm introducing a third color into this art only because I just feel like if it's going to be a shadow, it does have to be darker than the rest of my octopus. Because of that, I've decided to use some Panes gray. I hope that makes sense. Obviously, though, if you've decided to not do the shadow, if you just want to leave your octopus the way it was and just finish it by doing the um, the suckers, that's absolutely fine too, because I feel like, like I said earlier, the octopus looks very bold. It looks great already. So this is just the icing on the cake, to make it just, you know, have even more dimension. I'm just mixing up some of this, just kind of wetting the pains gray rather. And um, I'm going to swap to my medium sized size eight brush, and I'm just going to just so that everything flows really well. I'm just going to wet this area, the area of the shadow, trying to avoid the octopus as much as possible. Even the suckers, I'm going to try and avoid them, but don't worry so much because we'll go over them later with white guash if we have to. So doing that. Okay. Now, I'm just going to drop in, as you can see, my pain. Um, The suckers are right underneath. Paints gray is a very nice dark color. Working as fast as I can before the paint dries, I'm just leaving some space for the suckers. Watch the edges of your shadow. Maybe just hold your brush quite upright and just do those edges very carefully because you want your shadow to have some sharp edges. I'm quickly going to do this before it dries just because the water just helps the paint to spread more fluidly, more evenly and it doesn't just dry in one spot immediately. There we go. That's looking beautiful. And we're going to link it back here. So because there's a bit of reflection, I hope you don't mind. I'm just going to turn. Whoops. Sorry, my table. Sorry. My tablecloth has just gotten a bit stuck to the paper, to the pad, actually. Okay, so I'm sorry, I just turned that around because I just want to make sure I get this the edges of the octopus. I might just be going over it again because the reflection I turn my paper because it makes it easier for me to paint this way and also the reflection of the wet surface was making it hard for me to see where the edges of the shadow were. All right. So there we go back to this area now. And I just feel like this area right under here should be darker because this is where a lot of the light is being blocked. I'm just going to go over that part again. Don't worry if you've painted a bit over your suckers, that's fine. Now I just want to even out the shadow. I'm just going to paint over this area again. So you do have to work quite quickly. But I think we've done it. We've accomplished what we wanted to in terms of the shadow. This is just sticking out a bit, let me just even that in. All right. Before I keep going over it over and over again, I'm going to stop. All right. So that is what our shadow looks like. And while this is wet, I'm just going to drop in more paint over here because I feel like the shadow should be darker here. So while it's still wet, I'm just going to do that, even though it's drying quite a bit now. Okay. Okay, I don't want to keep going over it. I'm just going to use a damp brush to kind of blend this outwards. Okay. Sorry, the reflection does make it a bit hard sometimes to see where the shadow ends and stuff. I know I'm going to finish, but I'm just going to put a bit more pain here just to really make sure octopus, we don't confuse the shadow with the octopus' body because as you can see, it's quite dark the blue is quite dark, so I just want to make sure that there's no confusion. All right, so this is the last time I'm going to paint over it. So yeah. And then I'm going to let it completely dry. Get that edge there. All right. Okay, let's let it dry. So we got that nice dark shadow going on now. 8. Adding Final Details: Let's let this dry completely. While that dries, I want to just mix up. We can do the white areas of our octopus, the little white projections. Now, there are many ways that you can do that you can add these white projections in. You could use white gouache with a small brush. White gouache is I've used this before in some of my classes. I think of it as a very thick watercolor paint that's white and very opaque. It's so opaque that you can actually layer it on top of darker colors so that it stands out. So another idea I had if you were going to do small spots is you could possibly also use a white posca pen, which is acrylic paint, and it's very conveniently in a pen like this. But if you want to do white gouache, that's fine with me. I can just demonstrate, for instance, if there's a white you see it just, we can just apply it quite easily like that with this. I'm now thinking maybe I could use the white acrylic pen just to be, just for ease. I can show you a white acrylic pen is actually just very convenient down to put down spots. I've used it in other watercolor art as well. What's great about the acrylic pen is that obviously it has a nice very thin tip. Just be careful that while your shadow drives, you don't rest your hand on it. Obviously, the very small tip makes it very precise for laying down small white spots where you feel like it. But if you don't have one of these and you just have white gouache pin, please feel free to use your smallest round brush to add these spots in. So I don't want to get too carried away, but I love the effect of having some of these white spots. I think it does add that really cool effect of projections of the skin. Yeah, you can see quite a lot of it, so just, that makes the white posca pen very easy to use. And the acrylic pin obviously it's waterproof. So once you lay it down, it won't move with water dry once it dries, I mean. So yeah, it's permanent, but at the same time, just very easy to use, and I don't really intend to if you do want to blend it, you're going to have to do it with, um, I would use a synthetic brush. I wouldn't use a watercolor brush. So as you can see, just a damp brush can blend acrylic paint quite well. Or if you just prefer, you can definitely just use white guash. But I love just trying out new media together. Sometimes you'll be very surprised at what media work really well together. Yeah. I mean, sometimes in a lot of my classes, I've used a white gel pen to add highlights in. But I just feel for this, I really want the white to stand out, which is why I'm using an acrylic pen or white gouache because I just feel like the white gel pen will not stand out quite as well to create the effect that I want. We want these projections to be very visible. So this could take a while. It really depends on how detailed you want it to be. I'm just jumping around a bit. I hope you don't mind. But as you can see, it's already starting to create to add even more dimension to the skin. So yeah, like I said, I will leave it up to you, to decide how much detail you want to add. Okay. Remember, you can always use a damp brush. Yeah, this is a synthetic round that I'm using because I just don't want to actually I never use acrylic paint on my watercolor brushes just because it's a different media and acrylic paint tends to be more permanent, so I don't want it to destroy my watercolor brushes. It really pays to look after your equipment that you use, all your materials. Use them the right way if you want them to last longer. This might take a while, but it's very relaxed work that I don't have to focus on so much. Once more, I'm just using the reference photograph. When I take a step back, it does add to the overall effect. Let's move on to some exciting bigger marks that I see a, bringing our octopus together. Some of these are round dots. Some of them may be a little bit more vague in shape. I'm just very relaxed and applying it in a very, very natural manner. I think we've done this side of our octopus and it looks great. Okay, maybe just a few random dots. Anyway, it looks like our shadow has dried. If you find this a bit tedious, feel free to take some breaks, and come back and do it later. But I don't find this to be, you know, work that I really have to focus on. I'm happy to just keep going and talking to you and hopefully not boring you. I just want to tell you what I'm doing. So yeah, the white acrylic pen, in this case, is really great for this. Yeah. So just putting a few more dots here. I might actually speed up the section a little. Yeah, and then you can see what I'm doing. But you already have a really good idea of how I'm adding this on. A Yeah. So I've done quite a bit already, and I just thought I would just talk you through the last part of what I want to do. So if you've observed, I've just been um putting down dots or changing it to lines just depending on what I see in the reference photograph and my own interpretation of it. I I found that there are some areas that stood out, I mean, if the white from the Posca pen was a little bit too stark for how I like it, I would just immediately take a damp brush and just go over it and just blend it a little bit. But like I said before, because this is acrylic, if you don't, um, if you don't use the brush to blend it on the paper once you put it down quickly, unfortunately, that it will dry and you won't be able to manipulate the white paint anymore. So that's just how it is. Now, I think I've accomplished most of what I wanted to do with the white. Like I said before, it really depends on how much detail you want, but I feel like, yeah, that's quite good for me. Remember, let's keep it loose, let's keep it relaxed. You don't have to do exactly what you see on the reference photograph. Yeah, I'm just alternating between using short broken lines and using dots. Some areas are light already, so I don't feel like I need to put down the white acrylic posca pen on it. Okay. So I've done quite a lot of white lines already, and as you can see, it's paid off. It may seem like work, but this is really fun work. It's not stressful, feel free to do however much you want, Lever much white marks you want to put down. I'm somebody that can get quite carried away, but I wouldn't mind actually using some of this just to do the eyes, just right under the right under the pupil there and maybe a little bit above it because I do see that I do see that in the reference photograph and I don't mind following some of that. Once more, use a damp brush with clean water and rinse your brush as well, so it doesn't get it doesn't get acrylic pain on it permanently. I also watch how you put your hand, but I'm pretty sure this is all dry already. The acrylic pain dries quite quickly. I just want to put some white right under the pupil as well because I can see in the reference photograph, it is lighter and I think that's a cool effect, so I'm willing to adopt that. Yeah. I think I see it also just a bit above the pupil as well. Wow, that is one very seductive looking octopus. The very nice eyes. Okay. I think I'm willing to put the white posca pen down for a sack, and let's just look at what we've got here and it's looking great. Ready ready, is looking cool. Now let's finish this off by doing the suckers. So to do the suckers, I'm going to need to use my beautiful octopus model again. This angle that we're seeing of our octopus looks something like that, with the arms backwards. And so we can't really see the suckers full on. The suckers are just imagine them as little white dinner plates, this is them when we see them just fully exposed. But because of the posture of our octopus, we're only going to see parts like the very side of the very sides of our Suckers. The suckers just happen to also be skin colored, but you might see a little bit of white, when it's just turned in a bit like that. I hope that was a good explanation. Think of them as little dinner plates and right now they're facing down, we would only see the side of the plate and maybe just a hint of white here and they're exposed up here, you can see, but you're still seeing very much a side profile. So I hope that helps. I'm going to just use my very small size four round brush right now, and I'm just going to use colors that, um, that we already have to kind of do the suckers. Everything here seems dry. So what I'm going to do here is Woop got a bit of eraser bits over there. I'm just going to do this is the side profile, right? I'm just doing the side of it. Later on, I can even use some white if I have to to kind of um go to do the very tip. The suckers are like projections. We're only going to see the whites of the very top part of it. The rest is very much, going to be the same color as the body. I chose to go with orange, but I think just to make it look very natural, I think I might just drop in also a bit of blue now once while it's still drying to just create a bit of color variation with the suckers. Just dropping in some blue maybe I can bring the paint up a bit here. Yeah. I believe that's part of the body. Oops, just to done up a yeah. Okay. That looks good. I'm just going to do the same over here before we do the bottom. As I said before, I like to start with the lighter color and then just drop drop in a bit of the blue just to. Maybe we can really see this part really well. We can't see the whites at all. I'm leaving the very edge here white because that would be white. Before I continue here, I'm just going to get some blue and drop it in. I'm not coloring the entire thing blue. I'm just leaving some of the orange showing because I like that. I love the orange and I don't want to fully cover it. I'm just deciding if I should just outline the white a bit, just because I feel like to give it a bit of definition. Just up here, I decided to do that. This is just my own take on it, just because I just wanted it to be a little bit more defined. Well yeah. I didn't do it too dark, just to add a bit of definition for the suckers. I think this one can really be seen. I'm just going to go back to my orange now over here. Yeah. Maybe we see some of the white over here. I'm just going to go I'm doing this quite loosely doing some of the outline of the suckers. Now I'm just going to drop in a bit of blue. In Whoops. Sorry, I got a bit of paint there. Yeah, you got to wash your hands. Even though, like I said before, I don't mind seeing a little bit of imperfections on the painting. Sorry, I'll just use a paper towel to try and get those marks off. So, uh yeah, I think it's looking good. Let me just do I just wanted to use a bit of orange to just kind of outline. We're trying to make it look three dimensional. But I just want the very edge to be defined. That's looking great. Let me just take a step back. I think our octopus is looking really, really cool. I really like that. I just feel like maybe I want to just define this. As you can see, I outlined the the very edge, but I made sure to leave some of that white showing because I want to definitely suggest the suckers, the presence of the suckers. But at the same time, I just want that defined that's looking really good. I think anyone can tell that I've drawn an octopus with suckers. Let me go. Octopus is looking really good. The only thing I would do over here is I'm going to dilute my blue, very light because this is suckers that in the shadows. When this is dry, your suckers, I just want to put like a little bit of this very light diluted shade of blue. I just added a lot of water to it. You might want to wait for it to dry us. Sorry, I'm a bit impatient, so I'm just doing this. But I don't mind the very cool, you know, effect of a little bit of bleeding happening with the pains. So I think that looks awesome. A little bit more of the blue on the white areas, but I didn't completely paint them, leave them. I mean, I didn't completely paint them blue because they are suckers. I do want them to look white. Okay, that looks great. I'm taking a step back and I'm really, really loving the overall look of the octopus. I don't want to do too much anymore because I really don't want to spoil this. But now's a good time to just look over our octopus and see if there's anything I really want to add anymore before we finish this up. Another idea that I had, if you don't want to do a painted background, I just chose to leave it as the octopus with some shadow below, and I think that looks really cool. I like it like that. But if you want to do a background, another thing you could do is maybe use some of this paint to do a bit of spattering, so, you could do that. But to tell you the truth, or maybe we could use a little bit of it, but I don't want to do too much because I love the way our octopus already looks. I'm going to take a small round brush. This is all ideas that I'm coming up with on the spot. I did do a turtle class previously. I did put up a turtle class where I did a bit of spattering in the splattering, sorry, with the background. So if you want, we can do a little bit of it because I feel like it adds a bit of edginess and all you have to do is take your pain. It shouldn't be too watery. It shouldn't be too thick that it doesn't come off your brush and do this very lightly. You give it a bit of a tap. And the smaller the brush you use, the smaller your dots will be. That's fettering. I like to spatter with the colors that I've already used. Oops. There we go. For me, spattering is something that I don't mind if some of the pain goes on the octopus's body because it just looks great. First of all, our octopus already has a very textured body, so it doesn't bother me if it has some um orange spots on it because it will just blend in quite well. That's what spattering looks like with a very small brush. I might actually use a bigger brush, my medium size round brush to the spattering to get bigger dots going on. Remember, you want the paint to not be too dry. Okay. You don't want it too dry and you don't want it too wet because you'll get very diluted drops. So it also depends on the effect that you want to create. I don't want to do too much spattering. I don't want to do too much because I do like the boldness of the octopus. The great thing about spattering is that you're creating a bit of a setting. I'm going to put a bit of blue now because I just feel like it should have some of that blue in the background too. So these are just some ideas that you could use. If you don't want to um If you don't want to paint a full background. Okay. And I've kept the spots kind of in this area up here. I don't really want, um, I don't really want them down here to tell the truth. It doesn't really bother me. It's just just out of preference. I'm just going to use a bit of a wet or a damp paper towel because I want to keep the spots in focused up there. Like like I said, it doesn't bother me too much, but the effect that I want to create is I want to focus more up here. But I really like this and I just want to finish it up now. I'm looking at what I've done and I love it. I really do love the effect, and I don't want to do too much. I don't want to just completely cover this whole area with splatters. That looks good for me. We already painted a shadow. The only thing I can think of doing is using a white acrylic posca pen to just accentuate any whites that we might have covered, but it really does look fine to me. Anything like, um that may have gotten a little bit covered. But quite honestly, I think I'm ready to just finish this painting. I really like it. I think it looks really cool. It looks very bold. And you got a bit of a background going on just a little bit. But it's very much still the octopus that takes center stage. So I really like that. I didn't want it to get consumed by a background that was, you know, very heavy. So I hope you are in love with your octopus that you've painted, and if you've tried different backgrounds, I can't wait to see them. I really can't wait to see any of the colors that you've chosen or any of the different effects that I've suggested that you may want to have incorporated. So Thank you so much for doing this class. I hope you had a lot of fun and I hope you, you know, a more relaxed watercolors now with putting down paints in a more loose and relaxed manner. So this is one style that we've covered, loose painting and a pretty cool background by just, you know, very loosely, dropping in some splattering some paint. And before I talk a lot again, I just want to say thank you once more for watching this class. And can you please join me in the very last section of this class for my final thoughts? Yes, so thank you so much again. 9. Final Thoughts: Once more, as always, I would like to extend a heartfelt thank you for watching this class or any of my other classes on Skillshare. I hope you had fun creating your beautiful octopus paintings and that you also learned a few useful skills, such as how you can use one brush to create a variety of brushstrokes that can be used to build up color and texture on your octopus skin. I also hope you used a little bit of color theory by using two different complimentary colors to create a variety of shapes in between. And also, I hope that you might consider using an acrylic pen in your future watercolor paintings to help create highlights, like the way we used it on this octopus, because of the opacity of the acrylic pen, it's just perfect for layering on top of dark watercolors. Please feel free to upload your beautiful octopus paintings so that myself and all the other students can admire them. I can't wait to see the colors that you use. Also, please feel free to follow me on Skillshare or on social media at Alicia Paran at Instagram so that you can get updates on my future projects that are in the works. Thank you once more for supporting my art and all the best in your watercolor journeys.