Introduction to Watercolor House Portraits

1. Introduction to Watercolor House Portraits: hi. Many was Maisie Clark. I'm an illustrator based out of local Kentucky. I specialize in Watercolor House Portrait's. I've been creating them since 2013 for friends and family and now sell them through my website. My clients use Watercolor House portrait's to commemorate new houses weddings and I also work with Realtors to create really meaningful special closing gifts. In this class, you'll learn how to create your own watercolor house portrait. Um, I'll be walking you through step by step from the pencil Teoh ink all the way to the finished product. Can't wait to get started. 2. Project Overview: Hi there. Thank you so much for joining me for an internal watercolor house portrait. It's first. Let's talk about the project. This is the house you'll be illustrating, I think, when learning, How did you house Portrait? It's It's important to start simple both with shape and with color. And I chose this house for that very reason. You might be wondering, Can I just use my own house? You're welcome to do so, but I think it will be easier to start with an example that we can walk through together. And if, after the class you want to take a shot at creating your own House 100 I'd love to see the results for future houses that you may be interested in illustrating. It's important to have good, clear photos. After all, it's kind of hard to illustrate something. You don't know what it looks like if you're trying to illustrate a house, but you don't live in the same city or you don't have pictures of it. Google maps, and also a lot of real estate websites can help you get good, clear photographs. Next up, we'll talk supplies 3. Class Supplies: now let's talk supplies. If your noodle watercolor I would urge you to start with in extensive supplies because you can always upgrade and act your toolbox later for this class and encourage you to purchase the following items, which can be found at your craft store, local art supply store or online, I'll be sure to link the list in the class. Newts. Okay, so let's talk supplies in front of us. We have all of our supplies that were going to use in this class, so let's walk through them one by one. The first thing that we were going Teoh need most important. Most importantly is the water color block. A watercolor block is a little bit different than a pad. A block is different because it is sealed on the top and the bottom. This is really great for water color because it stops the paper from buckling as we add more and more of the pain. So something that's also great about a block is is it's easily transportable. You can throw it in a bag. You can kind of do your painting anywhere. For this class, I would recommend either an eight by 10 or a nine by 12. I think that's a really nice size to start out. Um, and when you're shopping for watercolor, you'll notice that they'll come in a couple different finishes. Um, one is cold press and the other is hot press. The difference between these is cold press is you'll be able to see more of the grain of the paper. Ah, hot press is a little bit smoother. This is absolutely up to you. If you want to buy one of each and experiment, I would encourage to do so. I prefer the cold press. I just like the texture of the water color paper. Next up is a metal or a plastic T square. Um, the great thing about a T square over a ruler is using the edges of our block. We can start to create lines that are parallel and perpendicular using at the head of the T Square and our water color block pencils really kind of any. And number two pencils will work. Um, all linked my favorite brand. You can find them at a cross story. You could find that at any major store like Target or Wal Mart. Um, and so that's pretty self explanatory. Um, a white rubber eraser. Obviously, pencils come with a new racer, but sometimes cheap, Cheaper number two pencils. The pink eraser leaves residue. So I always use a white rubber eraser for for erasing those pencil lines. Um, Micron tens. These are really great for watercolor. Like I mentioned that they are there archival ink, So they're super durable. They're gonna last a long time and also their water color are seizing their waterproof. So that's great for watercolor as we lay down pigment on them. So the sizes that I recommend are 02 or a 01 and that's gonna be used for the bigger outlines on our illustration. And then for the finer details, I would recommend a 005 I'm using black. Um, that's something I use on all of my illustrations, but if you want to mix it up, they come in other colors as well. A set of basic water colors. I use a variety of different types of water colors. You can use pigments that come in pans like this one. They come in tubes. There's liquid water color, but for this class, I think it would be nice to invest in a little traveling watercolor set. We get all the colors that will need for this class. Um, it's just kind of a great way to experiment. So brushes brushes are a great thing, but also another way that you can spend a lot of money. So if you're just starting out with water cooler, I would recommend just buying one ju three. The great thing the great thing about watercolor brushes is you don't need to switch brushes when you're searching colors because we're gonna rents them out between between different colors. So all link the different types of brushes that I would recommend, but I kind of like to do a small, medium large, um, and I'll link those those numbers in our class suits. Um, we will need a jar of water and also some paper towels. So that's how we're going to switch out our pigments. And we're gonna add different layers of color to our painting, a couple extra things that are not necessarily required for this class but could be kind of something you might want to think about in the future. So the first thing that I'm going to show you this is called an eraser shield. Um, my background is in designed, so I feel like a lot of the times. The tools that I use on a consistent basis are ones that I learned about in design school. So this is an eraser shield, which, which is great about this is if you are creating a drawing and you have a couple lines that you want to get rid of, you can use an eraser shield and really isolate that area and only get that part and not the other lines around it. So these air, usually pretty inexpensive. It's kind of nice to have in your in your drawing tool box the last thing I won't be using this in this class, but it's something that is. It's a helpful tool to know about Um, and it's called masking fluid. Masking fluid is great for water color, and what it does is it goes down kind of like the similar consistency of liken Elmer's glue . And what you'll do is you'll put that over any part of your painting that you want to remain white. So in water color we don't have a white paint that we use the white that you see in a watercolor is gonna be the white of the paper. So this is great for really small little details that you want to remain white. So the way you use masking fluid is you. Once you created your drawing, what you'll dio is you'll fill in the areas that you want to remain white with masking fluid, and then that once that dries, you can paint around it, and once your paint is drawing, then you can start to peel up the masking. Next video will discuss how to create the pencil drawing, which will serve as the base of your illustration. 4. Creating our pencil outline Part 1 : Now that we have our house picked out all of our supplies, it's time to start to create the base of our house illustration. So as we start to create the pencil outline of our house portrait, um, I've been doing this for a long time, So typically, I can look at a photo on my computer or on my phone and just eyeball the dimensions. This might seem a little daunting to you. So what I suggest is, if you have a good photograph like we dio of this house, go ahead and print it out at relatively the same scale that you think that you're painting will be that way. You can start to use your T square and take measurements of the house of the different shapes of the house and basically replicated on your watercolor paper. So this is a way to kind of still get that hand drum look. But your proportions are still there and you're still representing the house, so it looks like the width of my house is about a little under 8.5. So what I'll do knowing that the base of the house is about eight inches wide I don't necessarily want to start from the edge of the paper. I'd like to have some white space around it so that when I frame it, I have a nice border. So what I'll do on my paper and again, I'm working on a block that is nine by 12. So so used this accordingly in terms of your measurements of the size of your print out and also the size of your block. But what I'm going to Dio is I'm going to mark my CenterPoint. And then what I'll do is I will add the edges of the house here. So I've marked my CenterPoint and then I'm gonna go about a little over four inches on either. When creating your pencil lines really encourage you to keep them as light as possible. This is gonna make erasing them a lot easier. So what I'm going to do is I'm gonna continue toe, look at the proportions and also feel free to use your ruler is well, when we're starting our outline of our house. We don't want to dive in straight to the small details, like the window pane on the door. What we're doing is We're trying to get the overall shape and the overall proportion of our house down. And then what we'll do is we'll work from outside in adding details, - Um , when we're looking at a section that has a peaked roof like this, sometimes it's hard to just kind of create that triangle by eyeballing it. What I like to do is, once you've identified that section, I'm gonna go in and I use my ruler and find the middle point of that section doable tick mark, and then use my T square tip. Bring up where that where the point of the pitch is. And then I'm able to bring it down a lot easier than if I were trying to eyeball it and feel free at this point. Still, to use your ruler to create those measurements, those corresponding measurements of where the sections are, how wide the roof is, how tall the structure is, how tall the roof is, and so on. So what I've done is I've added these simple shapes where the peak of the roof is where this roof line is, and then with this higher roof line starts and ends, too, so as you can see. I'm just creating this loose outline. They're not. I'm not worried about details. I'm not worried about things like that. I'm simply just kind of working from the outside in in terms of the bigger details and the work our way into the smaller details. So now that we have kind of the sections of the house identified, what I'm going to start to do is add in where my windows are and then also where my door is . And then we can start to add a little bit more elements around and again, Feel free to use your ruler to compare the dimensions on your print out to your water color block. So for added in this window, I use that central point that we added to at the peak of this section of the house. And this is just going to be a nice sort of bad line of where that window is located because it's pretty dead center on that section. So what I'm gonna do is I again, I'm not worried about exactly all the lines of the shutter. I'm more worried about the general shape and location of that window. I'm keeping my pencil lines very, very light as I use my teeth square to help me create straight and perpendicular lines on my page. So it created that general outline of where that window is, and so, nets, I'm gonna work on adding where my front door is, my friend, or doesn't take up that entire area of the center of center of the house. We have kind of our steps that start about there and then a little bit further up. We have the threshold of the front door, and then you can see our front door doesn't go all the way up to that gutter line. We're going a little bit short of. I like to create these sort of tick marks. This helps me kind of create a plan of where I use my teeth square. And it's just sort of a nice way to create that proportion before I start drawing. So using those tick marks, I'm gonna create some white lines, uh, where those where the stairs start or start, start or end, and then where the threshold of the door is, and then the top of the door. And then, like I said, the front door doesn't keep doesn't take up that full section. Like I said, that door does not take up that first section entirely. So I just kind of created these little tick marks to show where the outer molding of this door ISS And then from there, we can kind of work our way in and create the edges of where that green front door actually starts. So, again, this is a super loose start Teoh are drawing, but we can kind of start to see that our that our house is starting to take shape. 5. Creating our pencil outline Part 2: so I'm going. Teoh, use some of these. Some of the lines that we can see that will help us. So this top of the window, this top of the door and these tops of these windows kind of seem to be pretty much in line . So that's helpful to we can use our T square. When we start to make the outlines of our windows, it can help us create the top. And now the bottom of our windows on this side, something that is another nice feature of having starting with the general outline is that we have the general outline and now we can start to divide that shape. For instance, we have a line of our three windows. So what we can do is we can take our ruler, and we can get really precise about those measurements. Or we can come to use our tick marks an eyeball and kind of adjust that start to divide that area to I'm going to take a look at some of the landscaping elements because these elements are gonna appear in front of the house. And when we start Teoh Inc. We're going Teoh ink from the front and move back that way. We're not creating lines that shouldn't be there now, in terms of landscaping, I'm not super worried about representing each different species of plant and things like that. At this point, we just kind of want to add some greenery. It adds a little bit of life to our drawing on and also kind of softens the house as well. So kind of this blob shape for it later escaping. These will come to life as we add color and shadow. But right now we're just sort of identifying where they are in in the landscaping. And as you can see as we add the landscaping, there gonna be some of the lines that we've created earlier. When we are outlined in the house, that will be then blocked buyer landscaping. So this is just kind of a nice way. This is why we start out with pencil were just kind of getting the lay of the land. And we're work creating the areas that we're gonna then Inc later. So I'm going to continue by adding a little bit more detail. Let's start to add a little bit more detail to our window here So we have our shutters and then we have the window and also the window box. So what I'm gonna do is I have this outline of our window, and I'm just going to add some tick marks that are going to show the outer edge of our shudder. Using my teeth square, I'm gonna create those vertical ones that show where the shutters are. And then we have our shutters, and then we have the outline of our window. Um, so with windows, in order to represent them accurately, we need to pay attention to the casing of the window as well as the pains. So what I like to do is, once I have a general outline of where the window is, I like to kind of create little dots that are sort of insect from the corner. And that's going to show me where my T square is gonna line up to create the thickness of that casement. So now that our window has a little bit more of a thickness and it's not just a box on the side of the house we're gonna use, we're going to start to add kind of a couple more little details on those windows. And again I'm using the T Square. It's a great way to get those straight and perpendicular lines. So for our house sues me for our window. Here it is, bisected way. Have a double line. That's that cuts the window in half, and then I'm just gonna add some tick marks to show where the actual pains of the window appear. So I'm going to use this same technique of adding B, adding the panes of glass to my windows over on the other side. Great. So we have our three windows that are divided. I'm gonna add a tick mark so that I can add the double line in the middle. And again, I'm keeping these pencil lines very light. This is gonna help when we think over it and then a raise. I'm going to segment my windows here identifying where our windowpanes will be so you can see I have our windows pretty well mapped out. I'm going to kind of go back and add a little bit more detail to our shutters. - And you can see at this point I'm not really worried about which lines are in front of others. We're really gonna look at that when we start Teoh Inc are drawings. Right now, we're just trying to get the general location of of these elements. And then when we add Inc. We can kind of start to worry about what's in front, What's blocking on what what is in the background and also the foreground as well. Um, so I have my windows pretty well outlined. I'm pretty satisfied with that. Now let's look at the front door. So our front door is made up of the top half of windows and then also, we have some detail down here. So what I'm gonna do in order to tackle this is I'm gonna divide my door two sections so either measured out with my ruler or just kind of eyeball where we think the middle is So on The top half of this store we're gonna add are panes of glass very similar to our windows are and then we'll take a look on the best way how to do this. But first, let's add our panes of glass. - So for this bottom portion of where this detail is, what I would recommend doing is creating a box that this detail lives in, and then we'll work our way inside. So I created that box. And then what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna created X inside of that box. Hopes you can use your ruler or you can eyeball it on. What that's going to do is that's coming. Be able to give us the framework to create that X inside of that door. And again, I'm just taking it to that level. I'm not really worried about getting every single detail in with my pencil drawing. I'm more worried about just the location and the proportions. I'm also going to add in a little box of where that my door handle iss on my door. I'm going to add this lying here, coming showing that part of the wall here again. You can use your T square or just kind of create a faint line I'm gonna add in my little front porch light. It's just a little rectangle. And then I can add in my numbers here in my little mailbox again. So now that we have our pencil outline of our house and the surrounding elements, our next step is gonna be in Keene are drawing 6. Inking our drawing: So our next step is to adding to our drawing. The micron pens you were using are great for watercolor. Since they're waterproof. That'll come in handy when we start to add pain to our illustration. Okay, so now we're going to start to add Inc to our drawing. I am going to start with a 01 out our my Krohn. This is good for kind of the outer lines, and then we'll use the 005 for the smaller, detailed things. My recommendation is when we start to add Inc to our drawing, we want to start to think about what's in the foreground and then are and then work our way back because if we started drawing all of the elements of our house, we would then have lines that we don't really want because the landscaping is blocking. So what I like to dio is I like to start my thinking with the elements that are in the front, like the landscaping and again when I'm adding Inc to my landscaping. I'm not worried about representing every single element in this Bush. It's more just creating the general outline, and we'll start to add to mention and a little bit more life with color. So now all of our front landscaping is inked out. When you're thinking over your pencil lines that you created with T Square, feel free to either in things by hand or feel free to use the T Square again. I typically like to just do it. Freehand kind of gives a little bit more of a whimsical vibe than a very sort of strict and harsh line, but experiment with both. So now that we have the line of our front landscaping, we have our bushes, and then we also have our sidewalk leading up to leading up to our house. What I'm gonna do is I'm going to kind of think about what's the next level. So for me, it's gonna be the the railings for the stair and the stairs themselves. So now that I have kind of that front layer of landscaping added, I'm going to look at the structure of the house and start to add ing Teoh, identify those different areas and again, since we added those landscaping and the stair detail, we kind of have a clear area of where to stop that detail so even though that the house continues behind that landscaping, I'm stopping that one because that landscaping is blocking that corner of the house here. So I have my sections kind of outlined. And then also, if you want to take a look in between the landscaping, you can kind of start to see that bottom edge of the house that will start to kind of add a little bit of dimension that we see that the front a front border batley escaping appears in front of, um the landscaping and the landscaping appears in front of the house. So I'm gonna continue to add add my ink details for the larger elements of the house. Awesome. So now that the general different shapes that we've created are inked on our house will start Teoh work on the windows and the doors to add the ink there with these window boxes. Though I want to make sure that I start with that because some of the window boxes I want to be sure to start with those on our windows because in some places it blocks some of the pains of the glass. So again, I'm starting in front and working my way back. So I added the length to my windows. And now I'm starting. Teoh, add the ink outlines to my door so you can see that the windowpanes in the door are very similar to the windowpanes in the windows. And this is where I'm starting to use kind of that outline that have created with the pencil to create that molding detail on the bottom half of the door. And you can see that I'm not using a ruler for adding in these details. I think that we use our first starting out. You might want to use the ruler to create these lines. But as you get more and more comfortable with in Kenya drawings, I would experiment both ways because I think that there's there at it adds a little bit of kind of a hand drawn quality again, you might not feel comfortable with it right at first, but that's okay. Just try it out. Um, And now what I'm gonna do is I'm going, Teoh, start adding in the other little details that we've seen in our house. We have our front porch light. We have our house number, and then we have a little mailbox, and as you're thinking, you're going to find that you've for gotten Teoh outline something or for gotten to do something on your drawing. It's always a great idea to kind of stop and add that pencil line before before continuing on now than a switch over Teoh 005 Typically, I use a 0 to 01 and 005 If you find one white, feel free to use it for the whole entire house throwing. That's totally fine. I would encourage you to kind of to experiment and figure out what you like. So now what I'm gonna do the last part that I'm thinking are the vertical lines on the siding on the right and left section of the house, as well as a small peak up here. While I'm doing that, I'm gonna add in this detail of the area on the right, and then we'll be ready to race. So we are almost ready to a race. I wanted Teoh ad that we can start to add a little bit of kind of dot detail in our landscaping. Sometimes this is nice toe. Add a little bit of texture So what I'm doing is an assembly kind of creating this little freehand pattern of dots within these bushes. This kind of just gives us a little bit of a texture level. Something that's a little bit more natural in our house. Obvious to the plants in the window boxes as well. Awesome. Looks great. Next step is I'm going to use my white eraser and get rid of all of this pencil line. - So we now have our ain't house portrait. Awesome work. The next step will be to add color. 7. Adding Color: Now that we have our ink drawing and erased our pencil lines, we need to start adding color to our illustration. A couple of thoughts about watercolor. It could be sometimes a frustrating medium, so go slow. Have a scrap of watercolor paper to the side so you can test out your paint brush before you add it to your final illustration. It's better to start out to light than to dark water. Color pigments will build on top of each other if your brushes to wet the colors have a tendency to bleed, and colors need to be super dry before painting in the same area. In terms of our strategy for this house for trip, I'll show you my technique so that colors will not bleed. Also, it's great to have a spare paper towel handy to drive some places that might get too saturated Beanie Jack quickly so that doesn't drive before you get to it. So when starting toe add paint to our illustration, we're gonna work on opposite sides or different groups so that we can allow these different areas to dry in between working on them. So first we're going to you start working on our landscaping, working primarily in green once. So I have my little starter palette, and I'm going to start with a brush that is a size four watercolor brush. This is gonna give us moderate coverage, but also able Teoh get into smaller areas as well. So on our on our painting, we can kind of see that the darker the bushes here are a little bit darker. And then I'm inside. We have a little bit of a lighter green. So what I'm gonna dio is I'm just going to start with my green and all I'm doing is I'm wedding my brush in my water and then I'm getting pigment from the pan. Uh, and it's nice to have a little area where a palette so we can make some color. So I have this sort of green that's straight off of the pan. And what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna start adding color to this bush that right next to the stairs and this is really where If you want Teoh, if you want to move away from the actual colors of your from the photograph or if you want to remain true, it's totally up to you. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna use this same green, and I'm just gonna put down a layer on all of these landscaping elements. And again, watercolor were working in layers. This is not gonna be the final green. We're just layering colors on top of each other. And again, I'm really used sort of the tip of the brush here, toe added some color, have our window boxes. I'm not too worried and sort of staying inside of the lines that we've created. I think that there's something kind of nice and a little bit freer with water color that it's not all going to stay inside of the lines. But the lines are a little bit more of a guideline. So some more green and you can you want to experiment with watercolor. You'll see kind of how the pigments react differently whether that first layer is dry or wet. So play around with that. You can kind of see that when the paint is still wet on the page. It's a little bit easier to kind of move around and manipulate. So I have my landscaping here first, Layer said. Now that my first layer of green for my land Sea Penis down I'm gonna let that dry and I'm gonna move on to my front door color. Since we're working in greens, it seems like the next next step. So I'm taking my green Add a little bit more pigment there and again I'm rinsing off my brush in between colors. So I'm gonna add a little bit of yellow to this green, but I'm gonna use for the front door and again if this pain is kind of watered down, that's kind of okay because we want to make sure that we're gonna layer the colors and we don't want to start to strong because it's really hard to take color away in water color after it's dry. So I'm gonna go through and add that base layer of color for my front door and with this brush to, I can also, uh, the frame around those pains Thio was when the pains in the door Next, we're gonna add our color to our roof for this I'm gonna add for a Ruth. I'm gonna add some brown to our palates here, and this is really handy to have kind of a a sheet of scrap watercolor paper. It's just to kind of start to test out colors. So you're not, uh you're not doing that on your final illustration. So, like to kind of just have a little scrap piece of paper so we can kind of start to see what that Brown will look like, how it will layer things like that. - So as you can see, this color doesn't quite match my roof, but it's kind of just a good way to sort of get started on adding color. So this is a little too kind of orangey. So I'm going Teoh experiment with adding a little bit of black and maybe even a little bit of blue, so that once this roof color is dry, I'll be able to layer another color on top of it. While my roof is drying, you can see that our landscaping elements are sort of starting to dry as well. What I'm gonna do is I'm going Teoh, add some color for our shudders. The shutters were sort of like a steely blue, so I think what I'll do is I'll start to mix a little bit of a blue and black. And again, I'm not worried about exactly getting that color completely right. I just want to start to put down a layer of color to serve as the base. So we have sort of our our blue sort of our dusty blue base for the shutter. What I'm gonna do now is I'm now that our way of escaping is pretty dry. I'm gonna go back and add a little bit of a stronger hurry into it. And again, I'm just using that paint straight from straight from the pan. These little pans of water color hate. And so what I'm gonna do is start Teoh, add a little bit more green and we're going to see the first layer underneath. And that's okay. That's sort of the beauty of watercolor is It's all about. It's all about this layered look. And again, I'm not being super precise. We're gonna add a little bit of shadows in the next video, but I just wouldn't bring out a lot of that green and something with watercolor if you've added pigment or if you added water and it's a little bit too much water on your page, there's a couple ways we can fix that. What? We confuse, weaken, dry off our brush on our paper towel and then go back over the area. And what that dry brush does is it kind of sucks up some of that moisture. What we can also do is take a little corner of our paper towel just like a dry piece of paper toe and simply dab it on the areas. And so what that does is that brings up some of that extra moisture, Um, in our water color. Yeah, I'm just gonna add a little bit more green to our landscaping details, and I'm keeping it kind of loose. I'm not being super precise. Not every single area of these landscaping elements air filled in. We're just adding a little bit more green. Next, we're gonna move on, Teoh, we're gonna go back to the front door. Um, again, we can kind of see that this store is reading a little bit too yellow, maybe put a little bit too much yellow in what we'll do now is what kind of layer another, um, wash of green over it. I kind of see what that does for it. And again if we if we're putting down a layer of paint that we don't like, it's important to act quickly. So we way we didn't like where this green was going, I would take a piece of that paper towel and soak it up. Now that our roof area is getting driver, we had a need to concentrate on bringing that back to towards sort of a grayish brown rather than kind of the orangey color that it is now. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna use, um, just black from my palate, and I'm gonna test it on some of this watches that I've added earlier. And I think that that kind of adding sort of ah light washes black is gonna add that kind of dimension and sort of that gray brown look that we're going for. - So next I'm gonna add a little bit more of a black layer on our shutters. So next I have a couple little elements that still needs and color before we move on to adding shadows to our drawing. So first we're gonna add a little bit of brown for our flower boxes and again with this sort of little area, we might want to switch to a smaller brush. I'm going to switch to a to and we want to make sure that the green in our flower boxes are pretty dry. Add a little bit of the first layer of ground and you can see over here some of that green wasn't quite dry yet. So what I'm gonna use is I'm gonna use my little piece of paper towel, and I'm just gonna dab it really quickly before it dries and wait a little bit longer on this window box so that we don't have any issues with paint that's bleeding onto another color. We have our our little porchlight. We have our, uh and we have our mailbox. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna add with my smaller brush one add a little bit of black to that area and then fill in my mailbox completely black. You'll notice that when we painted the front door that I painted over where that handle is what I could do with water colors. Since we layer layer the color What Aiken Dio is since black is the darkest of that um, in that door, I'll add the I'll at the black handle at the end. Once the green is dry and again, you can see what happens. That green on the front door wasn't quite dry. So use my paper towel and I'm gonna dab it up really quickly before before it bleeds anywhere else. So I'm gonna let this dry Well, let that area dry a little bit more And while Aggie that I'm gonna add some green in that front. Your and we use my bigger brush and I'm just gonna start toe, add some washes of color again, I wanted to keep the paint a little bit on the weather side. That way it's easier to spread and we're not going to get kind of blocks of color. And while we're working on the front yard, I'm gonna add a little bit of a yellowy yellow color. Mix up a little bit of brown to you. Add some color to that front step. The next video we'll learn how Teoh add some shadows to really give this drawing some dimension. Once we're happy with the color of our illustration, we're gonna let it dry completely so we can start to outer shadows without bleeding into the other colors. 8. Adding Shadows: so we've added dimensions to our house with layers of our color. Next up, we're gonna add shadows to our house to create even more dimension. Again, it's really important for everything to be dry. If the paint is still a little bit wet, it could bleed. So now everything is dry and I think it's starting to look really, really good. What we want to do next is we want Teoh add shadows. Adding shadows is going to be a really great way toe add dimension to our pain. So what we need to do first is we need to identify our lighting source. So let's assume that the sun is in the top right hand corner of our drawing. So what that means is we need to pay attention to where the shadows will be cast and where they won't be cast. So let's go back and look at our at our house structure. So if our lighting sources in the top right hand corner, what that means is all of our shadows are going to be cast essentially to the left if we're looking at the front of the house. So this little alcove of where the front door is we're gonna have an upside down l I'll show you that on Ben. All of our roof are our roof lines here are going to cast shadows this way. So let's get started for shadows. What I like to do is I like to use a very water down black, this little area here. So I'm gonna years a water down black is my shadow, and then they use my little scrap paper to kind of see, see where we are in terms of pain. I think that this is kind of a nice area to be in. We can always layer more, um, paint on top, But this will be kind of a good starting point. So the first thing that I want to dio is a one Teoh work on where the roof line is going to cast shadows. So, up at the top section of this house, we want Teoh at our shadow underneath that roof line here and again, I'm just keeping this is like a really light, transparent black. And here are light sources here that this peak of the roof here might be blocking a little bit more. So this portion right here is gonna be in a darker shadow. Looking at this peak here are Shadow is gonna be really strong on this right hand side because remember, are letting sources here. So we're gonna layer that, and then there's gonna be a a smaller shadow on the left hand side. Moving down this roof line is going to cast a shadow as well. So I'm gonna take my brush, and I'm gonna follow the roof line there. And I think you can kind of start to see is that the shadows of this ad in shadows to your painting is really going to start to add a lot more dimension. So on this roof here it's the shadow is a lot larger and stronger on the right hand side. Then on this left inside. So those air kind of the general big, um, shadows that we see in our pain. Now we're gonna get a little bit a little bit more detailed in our shadows. Like I said before the alcove of where that front door is gonna have a pretty dark shadow. So I'm gonna add a little bit more of a shadow there, and then what? We can also Dio is since the siding the vertical siding is is raised. What we can also do is add a little bit of shadow Teoh the left of each of these vertical lines. I keep this a little bit lighter than the roof shadows, but again it kind of just adds a little bit of dimension and a little bit of interest. Do that over here as well. Again, this is kind of a little bit on the lighter side, and we can also do that for the horizontal siding. And I couldn't typically do that right on the incline. I think that that gives a little bit more of interest. So you kind of start to see that the elements air sort of. They're kind of coming toe life with the shadows. I think this is really kind of a fun way to add dimension, and it's It's pretty easy to, for instance, like on the door, this paneling detail isn't a flat detail, so we can see in our photograph. This is great. This is a mother. Great reason, have good photographs, is weaken. See that where those triangles are formed on the door. That's a little bit of a shadow line. So I'm gonna take my black paint and sort of light wash of black pain and kind of follow those lines of that of those triangles. So the flower boxes underneath our windows are also going to cast a shadow as well as these shutters here in terms of windows, I think leaving Windows white is a little too stark. But I also symptoms don't necessarily want to represent what's on the inside of the windows because sometimes it's their ugly blinds or it's a little bit harder to see. So what I like to do is take that same black that I've used for my shadow and again still paying attention to that my light sources here. So this casing of the windows kind of casting a shadow on the on the glass there and I like Teoh add a little bit of shadow slash reflection to the window. I think that this adds a little bit more interest without leaving those windows really stark white. And so for this front door to do that as well I could do it. I might go a little bit darker just because it's under that out co again. My paint still wet so I can kind of go back and add add pigment kind of easily. Um so I'm also gonna add a little bit of shadow to my landscaping elements to if my light source is coming from here, this bottom edge or bottom corner of these bushes are gonna have a little bit of shadow. So again, I'm taking that really water down black, and I'm adding in some shadows with our steps. We can do that as well is I like Teoh. Add a little bit of that black underneath each step and then also at the bottom. So now we have the opportunity to kind of let it dry and see if there any other areas that we've like Teoh add some more shadow or at any more detail. But I think that this looks pretty great and I hope that you had fun 9. Closing Thoughts: all right. Our shadows are in, and I hope you agree that they had some really great to mention to your painting. So now that you're illustrations complete, don't forget to side and dated. I also like to add a caption like the address or the years the family lived in the house. Things like that. I hope you've enjoyed this class. I love creating House Portrait's for clients as well as my friends and family. I'll be coming out with more classes for House Portrait's, including one point in two point perspective to create more three dimensional illustrations as well as diving into details of how sport drifts. I'm looking forward to seeing you soon happy illustrating.