Introduction To Watercolor Portraits: Learn Simple Drawing & Painting Techniques

1. Introduction To Watercolor Portraits: Only a handful of subjects are as feared by beginners as portraits of people, yet we feel drawn towards them, keep on being enchanted by them and keep on giving it a try every now and then. There's just something about the watercolor portrait that's almost irresistible. Whether it's the free flow of paint or the spark in the eyes that make a quick watercolor sketch capture just enough of the subject to tell a story about its soul. My name is Jane Beata, and I'm a watercolor artist based in Slovakia. I exhibit in some artworks locally and internationally. Occasionally I work for clients and create illustrations for web or publications. In my studio, I host workshops and live events on a regular basis. I love to paint all kinds of subjects, but portraits of people are my absolute favorite and have been throughout the past 13 years ever since I started to learn them. It was a tough journey. My first watercolor portrait is this one and I cherish this greatly because it shows the long way I've come. Whenever I feel lost and frustrated, it reminds me how much I learned. I'm quite familiar with that headspace when you feel that this is too hard, that you're never going to grasp this and I've built this class with this feeling in mind. In this class, you're going to learn how to draw a portrait and how to paint a quick sketching watercolor. We're going to do a drawing warm up, and learn to simplify human head into its very basic form, and then how to sketch this form in multiple angles. We will then learn proportions and how to place different features of the face properly. Then we'll go through every feature individually and learn how to simplify and sketch them so that you'll be ready to give your portraits a more realistic look. I'll also give you lots of tips and show you best ways to practice sketching portraits on your own so that you can progress your skill without wasting time. By the end of the drawing portion of this class, you'll be ready to create your own sketch for painting a portrait. In the watercolor portion of this class, we'll learn how to prepare and apply watercolor paint properly so that you'll know how to create smooth washes and more expressive watercolor effects when you need them, and how to blend watercolor edges. You'll learn how shading works both in pencil and in watercolor, as our class project we'll create a sketch together. We'll also draw a small thumbnail of the portrait and learn how to do a very useful map of different tonal values to use as your guide while painting. Finally, we'll paint a watercolor portrait in one color and only in three layers. By the end of this class, you'll have a watercolor portrait in your hand to be proud of. As a bonus, I'll keep on adding bonus lessons to this class to give you the opportunity to practice your skills regularly. In these lessons we'll go through different portraits examples, and learn how to draw and paint them. If you're a beginner and you want to give portrait a go, this class is especially for you. I simplified every aspect of portrait drawing and painting to the essential bit to get you started, even if you want to skip to painting right away. For every portrait, you'll have sketch, download and continue with the watercolor part. If you already have some experience, but you want to brush off your skills a bit, you're also welcome to join this class. It might give you a different perspective into what you already know about portrait painting. I can't wait to see you in class. 2. Class Orientation: Hi everyone, welcome to the class. Before we dive into watercolor portraiture, let me briefly explain how I organized this class so that you have easier time to navigate through it. We'll go through the materials first. Because this is a drawing and painting class, so you will need some not a lot art supplies for it. I always try to minimize the amount of materials that I use in a class. What's important is that you're always free to use whatever substitute you have at hand for the drawing part, even a graphic tablet if that's how you'd like to practice your sketching. I even suggest alternatives for all the traditional materials. I put together a PDF for you to download that contains names of the art supplies as well as links to purchase them. Because students often ask for that you are of course, not obliged to use those. It's just that some find it useful if they don't have an art supply store nearby. This class will contain multiple resources besides the materials PDF, such as reference photos, my sketches, scans from my sketchbook, and additional slides, step by step pictures and so on. All of these can be downloaded from the tab that's called projects and resources. You can find it down below the class. Don't forget to go there and download all the goodies to have them ready, as you work throughout the class. There is also a discussions tab down below and you can post any additional questions for me or your classmates. This class is organized into two main parts, the drawing part and watercolor painting part. If you wish to skip to painting with watercolor right away, you can download my sketches, trace them to your watercolor paper and start straight from lesson 9. However, the goal of the drawing part of this class is not only to help you create your own sketch, but in the long run, teach you how to effectively create your own sketches for every portrait that you might want to create in the future. There is many subjects that do not require drawing in, order to create a beautiful watercolor painting, but portraiture does require drawing. In my experience, there is just no way around it. That's why I decided to dedicate such a large portion of this class to the drawing. This part is filled with exercises to introduce the basic form of human head, a simple and easy to understand way. Also shows you how to practice effectively and that's without wasting too much time but still progressing greatly in your drawing skills. I suggest that you do not skip the drawing part. It has been created with the intent to help in the long run and though in the short run, it might take you a bit more time to do all the exercises I'm positive that you will find this part useful. Finally, the watercolor painting part starting at lesson 9, contains a few exercises to ease you into using watercolor medium properly. You will learn how the wet wash behaves. What happens when you tilt your painting board and how to proceed if you want more expressive background or how to decorate your paintings with effects, splatters and so on. We'll talk about tonal values and how shading works. There's one very helpful exercise in lesson 10, showing you how to shade in both pencil and watercolor. You will learn how to achieve the same result using two very different mediums. As your class project, we will create a flowery watercolor portrait together from scratch to finish. In lesson 11, we will create a small thumbnail in pencil, and we'll map out all the highlights and the midtones and darkest darks in our portrait. This will help us with shading the final watercolor portrait. In the following four lessons we'll create a larger sketch, prepare it on our watercolor paper, and then paint the portrait in just one color and in three layers. I would love to see your class projects. You can always take pictures of your sketches and finished work and upload it to the projects and resources section of this class. This allows me to give you feedback, which I always do gladly. Lastly, I added a few bonus lessons to this class. Each lesson going through all the stages of the portrait creation, from thumbnailing and sketching, to painting with watercolor. Each portrait I edit as a bonus lesson will be different and allows me to show you different approaches, different angles. In order for this class to keep on challenging you, I'll be adding bonus lessons on monthly basis so you can come back here and paint a new demo with me every now and then. Feel free to upload those new works also in the project's gallery for me to see and also to inspire other students. Now we're ready to start. 3. Materials: In this lesson, I'm going to go through all the materials you might need for this class. I did my best to minimize the amount of art supplies needed because I do not want you to rush into the art supply store to be able to take this class. With that being said, I encourage you to grab any suitable alternatives, you find in your disposal. Let's begin with the paper. For the drawing portion of this class, feel free to use any spare piece you can find or a sketchbook. I did all the exercises in a cheaper drawing sketch book that I've been using for the past year or so. For the thumbnails of the portraits, I cut copy paper in quarters and those tiny cards were serving this purpose, then copy paper in size A4 is suitable for creating rough sketches to later be transferred to a watercolor paper. You might need that if you decide not to sketch directly to a watercolor paper. Here are watercolor papers I used. For watercolor exercises, I used a mixed media sketchbook. This paper in it is not exactly 300 GSM, which makes it suitable for studies and swatches, but I do not use it for actual paintings much. For final watercolor portrait paintings, I used student grade paper by brand Canson. This is Canson XL paper, and it's 300 GSM. It's not the highest quality watercolor paper because it's not cotton, but for the purposes of painting a monochrome portrait in three layers, it is very suitable. What I love about it is how bloom effects show nicely on it and it allows me to lift paint from. You can use any watercolor paper that you have at hand as long as it's 300 GSM. Here are some tiny spare pieces of watercolor paper that I use to test paint. They come very handy. When I'm using sketchbooks for watering media, I have this clip that I use to stretch the paper so that it doesn't buckle. When I work on a free sheet of paper, I use a board like this and I tape the paper on all four sides to the board so that it stays flat throughout the process. I'll only be using a single type of pencil in this class, and that is HB pencil. My favorite are Mars Lumograph by Staedtler. But pick any pencil that you like. A sharpener is a must, but so is plastic eraser, also called kneaded eraser. This one allows us to lighten any sketch or get rid of the guidelines without scratching the paper too much. I also use this pen eraser for details. It's Mono Zero eraser by Tombow. I'll only be using one watercolor in this class as we're going to be painting monochromatic portraits and focusing only on expression and tonal values, not on color. I chose Prussian Blue for my monochrome paintings lately because I just loved the shade. But the truth is that you can do monochrome portraits with just about any color that is dark enough. If you can't get dark tones with your color of choice, then this is not a good choice for this class. Brand also doesn't matter. I paint with artist grade paint and whatever brand I choose, whether it's Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam, Sennelier or Winsor and Newton. Artist grade paint will perform similarly. Since I use tube paint, I need palettes to work the paint on, and I use white porcelain plates and tiny bowls. I just love this system, but it's definitely not one that would do me any good on the go, it's definitely a studio setup. Feel free to use pen watercolors and whatever setup that you are using to mix your paint. Do not forget about the jar with clean water. Paper towels are also essential as they can save your painting. Because when you get accidental drips of paint where you do not want them, there's just no time to search for paper towels. Here is a tiny spray bottle that helps me keep my paint moist. I'm only using three brushes in this class, and incidentally, two of them are flat brushes. This largest brush is called Princeton Neptune square wash, 3/4 inch. It has soft bristles and allows me to quickly fill in larger washes and be expressive in the underpainting. This second brush is, Da Vinci Cosmotop mix B size 10. It's the brush you'll see me use the most. It has also softer bristles. I love the straight edge. It gives me a specific brush stroke that I like in my paintings, and so I use it more frequently than round brushes. Lastly, the tiny brush for details is Number 4, Silver Black Velvet brush. It has a sharp tip that allows me to draw, but it's soft enough to allow me to paint longer floating hair and doesn't run out of paint too quickly. This brush is very versatile and you can make all kinds of brush strokes with it. My brushes are listed in the downloadable PDF along with other materials. But I want to say that brushes are very personal preference. You'll see every painter use different brushes. Many use round brushes and love them. I bet that you are most likely to own some round brushes than flat ones for watercolor, so just use those. The point is to have three sizes that allow you to cover areas of different sizes and quality soft bristles assure that your brush won't run out of paint. Bristles quality can affect how quickly you paint your wash and how quickly you overwork the paper also. I'm going to use printed out references in this class that are also downloadable down below for you to print out if you wish. I do not always print out my references. I usually just sketch from my tablet. I'm also going to be doing that during drawing exercises. I have this tiny model of a skull in my studio and it comes in super handy. I'm listing that as a handful artifact to own if you're interested in learning portraits in more depth, but of course that you do not need it for this class. Lastly, keep a hair dryer close by to finish your paintings in a shorter time. In the next lesson, we'll do a few helpful drawing exercises and learn how to capture simplified form of the human head. I'll see you there. 4. Drawing Warmup - The Head: In this lesson, we'll practice how to capture simplified form of the human head. We'll go through different angles and learn how to draw them, discuss some very helpful guidelines and how they behave as the head turns in different directions. I will show you how to do a few very simple exercises to warm up your hand and suggest the best practices for regular drawing. Let's start with a drawing warm-up and draw some basic shapes to try and capture simplified human head. I find the easiest way to draw head from the front view is to draw a circle and then draw its axis. Prolong it a bit and then extend the circle to basically create an oval shape. This can remind you of an egg. Remember, this is a simplification in order to get us started and we will break down the features a little more precisely in the following lesson. We'll call this parting line middle line. It will always indicate where the two more or less symmetrical parts of the face meet. This other horizontal line I'm placing will be called eyeline. Crossing of these two lines will always indicate which direction the head is facing. Side view looks a bit more complicated, even when simplified. It consists of two shapes. The original circle extends into second shape that looks like a mask. The eyeline is always in the middle of the overall length of the head. As an exercise, draw these shapes even a couple of times to get your hand used to the movement across the page. Now, there are more angles that you can draw head from. Here is where things get a little more complex. So I'll use photo references to help me out with showing different angles as I try to explain them to you. When the head is turned to the side but not completely and the other side still shows a bit, that is what is called a three-quarters view. I find these portraits to be the most appealing, but also harder to draw. Here the head of the girl is turned to our left and so the middle line moves to the left as well. I added another small circle to this form to indicate flatter side of the head. Here's the same situation, but the head is turned to our right. Notice that the middle line follows the round form of the mask of the face. While from the front view it appears straight, from any other view is always nicely curved. Finally, the crossing of the midline and eyeline indicates the direction. So I tend to make it bolder in my sketches. Here is a situation where the head is looking up and it's a scary angle to draw even when simplified. The weird thing about it is how flat the entire mask of the face gets from this angle. All the features would appear very close together. The dominant shape is the rainbow shaped chin. In this quick sketch, I dared to add a few extra shapes to indicate features for better understanding of the angle. However, it is the one that you'll probably not draw too often. Finally, let's take a look at a situation where the head is looking down or we're looking at it from above. I couldn't find a proper picture of such dramatic angle. Not a lot of photographers find this one too appealing. But to have this lesson complete, we must try to draw it also. This angle shows quite a lot of the forehead or the top of the head, and features of the face get crowded together below it. The more dramatic the angle is, the less pronounced our face features, the eyebrows and the nose will show the most. As your first drawing exercise, draw these six sketches. You can download the example from the tab Projects and Resources down below to use as your guide. Also, we often think that we understand what things look like while observing them with our eyes, but only by drawing them multiple times, we really achieve a deeper technical understanding of what they actually look like and how the form works. I just want to strongly encourage you to do the exercise and not just watch the lessons as we progress. Now, what if the head is in three-quarters view, but it's also facing upwards? In this case, we need to start adjusting the eyeline to a rainbow shape. I just want to share this simple visual tool which always helps me out. It's imagining a mushroom and what it looks like from the point of view of an ant. Let's say that this is an ant and here is the rainbow shape that I'm talking about. We will use it every time we notice that we are observing the head from below like an ant. This is a photo example of us looking at the head slightly from below. What is typical for this angle is the chin appears wider, forehead appears smaller, and all the features will follow rainbow shaped guidelines. Another thing to notice is how wide and open the nostrils appear from this angle also. Let's see what happens when we're looking at the three-quarters view from above. Just like the previous example showed some bending of the eyeline, here all the guidelines will have a U shape. To better imagine this, we can use the mushroom example again, and this time it is observed by a fly from above. You can see how the round cap of the mushroom shapes as a U from this angle. As your second drawing exercise, gather some photo references and try to capture the basic form of the head and it's proper angle based on each reference. I created a zip folder with a bunch of photo references that you can download from the Projects and Resources tab down below and use those for your practice. But I also encourage you to create your own references and have them at the ready whenever you have few minutes to spare for drawing. You can download photos, create folders in your computer or phone. You can also use Pinterest boards, which I often prefer as the quickest way to practice basically anywhere. In this exercise we don't draw anything else, but establish the basic simplified shape of the head. I almost always start by drawing a circle and then draw the middle line while focusing on a proper direction. Then I extend the circle to create mask of the face. I then draw the eyeline. Here for just a minute, I consider the angle, whether we are looking at the head from below or from above, and then adjust the guidelines accordingly, either to a rainbow or to the U-shape. The more examples you can go through like this and think about the position of the head, the better for you. This practice can quickly become the best way to warm up before drawing a more detailed sketch. Best thing about this practice is that you can see a significant impact it has on your observation and drawing skills after only just a few days, if done even for 10 minutes a day. We'll talk about the best ways to practice in the following lessons too because with portraits, regular practice is key to build the accuracy and also to make your lines look confident and beautiful. But just hearing the words regular practice can scare people into thinking they need to spend hours every day in order to progress. That is just not true with drawing, effective practice can last only a few minutes, but when done on daily basis, you'd be surprised just how quickly you can grasp this. Also, my simplification of the subject has its obvious limits. Some heads are taller, some are rounder, some have boxy features. But let's try to stay loose and not dwell on grasping the shape perfectly at first. I believe loose approach is very helpful in reducing fear of the subject. I find it so much fun that I'm actually looking forward to do the exercise. All the examples that I've drawn here can be downloaded from the tab Projects and Resources down below to use as another example on how to do this exercise. You can also include your own sketches and exercises in your class project if you like, I would love to see how you're doing with it. In the next lesson, we'll break down features of the human face, learn how to place them proportionally, and also discuss differences between female and male head. I'll see you there. 5. Proportions - Female vs. Male Head: In this lesson, we'll take a closer look at the features of the human face, how to place them proportionally, and what are the key key between female and male head. I encourage you to follow along this lesson with a pencil in your hand using either a sketchbook or any sheets of paper that you can find. Let's start constructing the head again by drawing a circle. This time, you'll see me drawing a bit larger and also on both sides of the sketchbook simultaneously because I want to draw a female head to the left and male head to the right side. They will have the same proportions more or less and will start to vary a bit only at some point later on. I divided each circle with a prolonged middle line and also cut the circles in half in the other direction. Now, you have each circle cut in quarters. This horizontal line sitting approximately in the middle of the starting circle is where the eyebrows will sit. Now, let's take this measurement from the middle of the circle to the top and split it in thirds. This line that lies in the top third of this measurement is where the hairline would be. It's that spot where the forehead meets the hair in ideal case. Now, I'm taking the measurement for the bottom two-thirds. This is basically the distance between eyebrows and hairline. Since those two have already been established, I will bring this distance down below the eyebrows line. This is the spot where the nose will sit. To be more precise, the bottom of the nose does not go any further down than this line. Now, let's take the same measurement. Again, same distance as we have between hairline and eyebrows, and then between eyebrows and nose. Let's bring this distance again down below the nose line. This is where finally the face ends. This is a spot where chin is. We can now connect the circle with chin to create the mask of the face. But actually the circle needs to be first adjusted to better represent the shape of the human head that is actually flattened on the side. I first cut the side of the circle a little and only then I connect the sides with chin. Here is where the first difference between female and male head shows and that's the roundness of the mask of the face. Female faces tend to have smoother and rounder shape, while male heads tend to be more boxed, more pronounced jaw. This triangle here is just something that helps me personally to draw eyebrows and establish the root of the nose. I'm now going to draw the brows to both of these phases. Here again, female eyebrows are often differently shaped than male brows. Female ones are often slimmer and male might be more bushy and thick, but it will vary from person to person. It's just something to keep in mind and notice every time that you draw a portrait. I'm now drawing a rectangle that helps me to establish the space in which the nose will be. Now, it's also a good time to find where the eye line will be, and we already know that the eye is in the middle of the entire shape. So we'll just take the top to bottom measurement and split it in half. Let's also draw both eyes to the both heads, very simply representing them as an almond shape with a circle in the middle. Now, we find where mouth seats. Let's take the distance between the nose and the chin and split it in thirds. The bottom third represents the area for the chin, and in the top third is where the mouth splits. This is the most important line to place the mouth. You can try sketching in the top and the bottom lip as well. Oftentimes, the pupils of the eyes align with corners of the mouth, and so I often try to sketch these two guidelines that help me to establish the width of the mouth. We can now sketch the actual hair around the face. This will give our heads more recognizable look. I use the most common long hairstyle for the female head and short hairstyle for the male head. But this is just an example and of course that will vary greatly. I would not want to forget about ears. Those will be placed between the nose line and the eyebrows line on the sides of the head. I often represent them as two simple ovals in my quick sketches. We will break down individual face features including ear in the following lesson. For now now, a simple shape will do for every feature. Last feature that we'll discuss here is the neck. Make sure that you do not make it too thick or short and always pay attention to the reference. But in general, female neck will be a little thinner than male. I spend a little extra time to make these two sketches look a bit more polished for you. The scans of both can be downloaded down below from the projects and resources tab to use as your guide. One last difference between male and female head that I noticed during these last part of the process is the root of the nose, which is always rather delicate and doesn't show much with female portraits, but in male subjects, it can be profound and more angular. By giving this feature more attention, you can emphasize that your subject is male character, even when drawing men with more delicate overall features. In the next lesson, we'll take a closer look at individual features of the face, such as eyes, nose, mouth and ears. We'll break their basic shape and how they look at different angles to help you draw them effectively. I'll see you there. 6. Features - Eye, Nose, Mouth, Ear: In this lesson we're going to draw features of the face one-by-one and take a closer look at them. Each feature has its typical structure that can look very complex but there is a way to simplify them all, which is exactly what we're going to do in this lesson. Please follow along with a pencil in your hand and do these sketches along with me. This will greatly improve your drawing and painting them on any portrait that we're going to work on. Let's start with the most difficult feature first and for me that eyes. When I was starting out with realistic drawing my first impulse to draw the eye was these almond shape with a circle inside. In fact, it's not so far from the truth but that depiction is just a little too flat. We have to consider that the eyeball is round and that the upper and lower eyelid wrapped around it. The upper lid often covers part of the iris, which is that colorful circle with a black in the middle, which is called pupil. Drawing and painting the iris and pupil is often crucial part of the process of creating a convincing and emotional portrait. What helps me to draw the eye better and more convincing is actually lose the almond shape and draw four straight lines instead, this better represents how the lid wraps around the eye. Actually, whenever you have to draw a curve somewhere, it can be very helpful to define it as a couple of straight lines first and then connect them into a more stable looking curve. Here I suggested the edges of the eyeball as this helps me to imagine the 3D structure of the entire feature and also added iris and pupil. The tiny little white dot is a light reflection and often makes eyes look more lively and shiny. There's also a tear duct in one corner of the eye, and that can be represented by a small oval. I also added two lines to suggest that both lids have thickness. Thickness of the upper lid often doesn't show as much as it's covered with lashes, but bottom lid shows thickness very often. That's the part that we also want to keep lighter, which adds to the overall convincing look of the eye. Lastly, there can be folding above and below the eye that need to be drawn. The upper fold is usually more prominent. From the side view eye looks very round and also has this triangular shape. Both lids wrap around the bowl that's thick in outwards and the lower lid again shows thickness. One of the most common mistakes is to draw the eye in the same length as the front view but when you compare them you have to make it much shorter. Remember, this is a simplification to get us started. Next feature is the nose, a scary looking one that also can be simplified in quite a funny way by drawing this pyramid shape. It is symmetrical, has a central line and a left and a right side. We can even place the nostrils that have a basic oval shape to the bottom of both left and right side of the pyramid. I like to imagine these easy looking pyramid attaching three cushions because the top of the nose and the two sides have a basic round shape. I then connect these shapes and get quiet the convincing nose. Here is another quick way of simplifying the noise feature. Draw an oval, then drew a circle in it to represent the tip of the nose. Then below we draw a U-shape attaching both nostrils to this bridge. Then suggests the sides of the nose and there you have it. Usually the base of the nose where the nostrils lie is in shadow and the lightest point is the tip of the nose. When you observe the nose from down below, the nostrils will appear very open and you won't see the tip of the nose. Also sides of the nose will not be connected with the nostrils by line. When you observe the nodes from above, you won't see the nostrils and all three round parts of the nose appear to be connected by a single line. Let's take a quick look at some examples. Here is a photo of a girl taken in an angle that observes her face from below the horizon and so the nostrils appear open. Actually that one nostril that we can clearly see is not connected with that line that shows the side of the nose. Here is another example of a nose being observed from slightly above the horizon. Just notice that we no longer can see an open nostril, just one curve connecting the edge of the nostril with the side of the nose. Let's draw a mouth now. This feature can look so simple that we have a tendency to, again make it look flat like this, drawing the entire outline with a straight line in the middle. It is again, a three-dimensional feature that consists of somewhat round parts. And again, I love to draw those quickly as a bunch of circles. Let's position the circles around the middle line. You can create these two dots to represent corners of the mouth. The middle line where the lips meet is not straight. It appears as a V-shape in its middle. Then below the oval representing the lower lip, I draw a short line and that one represents a spot that's usually the darkest as the lower lip casts shadow there. You can suggest the top edge of the upper lip but other than that do not connect the edges with corners of the mouth. You can give some tone to the upper lip because often it's darker than lower ones. But outlining the entire mouth takes away the plasticity instantly. Let's take a quick look at the side view and here is a photo example. You can simplify this by drawing a triangular shape and then cut it in half. But when we look a bit closer, we can see that it's not actual half. The lower lip takes quite a bit of space and the upper one is smaller. I'll give a bit of tone to the lips. The upper one will again be darker and the lower lip shows some light reflections. From this angle you can see more clearly how the shadow forms below the lower lip, it curves outwards. Also notice that just like the eye mouth feature looks much shorter from the side view then from the front view. I decided to include the ear, even though it doesn't always show too closely in portraits but it has such a weird shape that it might be useful for you to show you how I simplify to make it at least look like in here. We established in the previous lesson that ears sit between the eyebrow line and the nose line. When you are looking at the head from the side, here shows quite a bit and in this case you can observe a few basic parts that should not be missing. I always draw this folder that brands a bit below the upper edge of the ear, and then there is this circular shape placed slightly off-center towards the bottom of the ear. You can connect a tiny oval to this shape and that will represent the entry into the ear canal, which is the darkest point of the ear. That's basically it. You don't really have to draw more than this to make it look like an ear. This is how ear may look from the front view of the portrait. It is much more flattened and you don't see the entry to the ear canal anymore and that fold in the upper part connects with the outline of the ear from this angle. You can download my sketches of all these features from the tab projects and resources down below and use them as your guide while sketching. There is so much more complexity to the anatomy of human face that what I covered in these lessons but the main goal here is to get you started on drawing portraits. I do hope that my sketches and explanations help to ease you into this subject, and as you begin to feel more confident, you are welcome to digging a little deeper and study anatomy of the face from books and advanced courses. In the next lesson, I will show you how I practice drawing portraits regularly to progress faster, but also stay interested and not procrastinate my drawing sessions. I'll meet you there. 7. Tips For Regular Drawing Practice: In this lesson, I will show you how I practice drawing portraits regularly in my sketchbook. These are not long practices, rather, how to quickly sketch your subjects. Focus on the most important features to get the essence of the portrait in and then move to the next one. This practice is key to create a solid sketch before painting a portrait in any technique, and you'll benefit from it greatly. Remember Lesson 4 in the exercise where we established the basic shape of the head, maybe it will confuse you, but in my regular practice, I do not always start drawing the circle and the mask of the face. Instead, I look for simple large shapes that I can spot to help me establish what I see on the photo quickly. These shapes do not have to make any sense from the point of view of construction or anatomy. Here I noticed a rectangle shape on his cheek. Then I noticed this triangle that the left eye is forming. Then another triangle for the nose, then another one for the mouth. The light on his chin also forms another triangle and this cast shadow on the side of the nose also looks like a triangle. If the portrait has such strong light like this one, it is very hard to imagine the underlying construction and it's just more useful to create your sketch like a puzzle consisting of a bunch of shapes like this. Maybe these shapes will not be so apparent to you at first, but try this a few times and they will start to come to you more and more naturally. Also, when I block in these shapes, I always check the construction and make adjustments based on the knowledge of different angles that we discussed in the previous lessons. This shape method is just to get me started quickly and be effective while they're building on what I know about the human head. I do not think that only shapes by themselves would bring you the desired results. But combining these two approaches will help you quickly sketch a portrait from any angle. Problem with construction is that you can't see it in photos, you can only imagine it. It's all those guidelines, but also important lies like a silhouette of the entire face that can be hidden in shadows on a photo like this, how can you sketch something that you don't see, especially as a beginner? While trying to imagine and draw the construction of a face like this, we often get completely lost and then have a panic attack when after 20 minutes of work, the portrait looks nothing like on the photo. Let me show you what I mean by this. In this example, the photo shows quite a straight view of the face. I started by trying to construct the face. I sketched the mask of the face and divided it based on my knowledge of proportions. I placed everything on the guidelines like we discussed and it should fit, but there's barely any likeness to the photo. It is because as I'm drawing features, many of the lines that would define them are made up. I make them up as I tried to figure out what the height looks like. But when you look at the reference, you can't really see half the lines, because it's in a very deep shadow. Basically, half the face is missing from your site, yet we are trying to construct it based on our imagination. Here is where the shape approach gets very useful. There can be lots of hidden lines in a portrait you're trying to draw. My tip is not to try to come up with their position, but simply identified the shape of the shadow and fill that area with tone. As you see me add more tone and try to shape it up in a way I can clearly see on the photo, the portrait starts to make much more sense. It adds contexts to the face and now I have it in front of me just like I can see it in the photo. The relationship of different shapes provide me finally with a sketch that represents my reference. When doing quick sketches of different portraits in your sketchbook, it is very handy to place the features in a way that's effective and helps first to establish where the feature is going to be and only then worry about the details and its shape. I'll show you what I mean on this example. Here I used the shape method to quickly set the portrait on the page. As I can clearly see, a triangular shape then I adjusted these shapes so that it contains a larger area from the nose to the chin. It is still just the large shape. But now I'm adding guidelines for the eyebrows and eyes. But before I worry about the silhouette of the nose and the line of the profile, I will set the nose feature as well as the mouth quickly by drawing an oval shape that will represent them and try to observe their position first. Serves me quite well to use the same approach for the chin and often even for the cheeks. When I now lighten the preliminary sketch, I can draw a quite convincing silhouette of the portrait just by connecting those round shapes. This approach allows me to be quicker in my sketch. In practice, I positioned the large shapes first, then I use this small ovals to place features and at this stage I can quickly move them or adjust their position because I can already see if they are off without wasting time to fully render them. I can then just block in some shadows or gift tone to the hair and I can be done with the sketch quite quickly. It's really working quickly, something we want and [inaudible] more time for practice produce better results. This is actually a very controversial tip that I'm giving you about. Here is my reasoning. Of course, the more time you spend on a craft like this, the more mileage you have, the more confident and experienced artist you become. Essentially, we all want as much time for practice as we can get. But when in this stage of learning you spend too much time on one sketch, chances are that it's because you are trying to make it look nice. Adding details, adding different hedging. While all that is really cool and fun to do, your goal here should be to train your observation and practice coordination between what your eyes can see and your hand and you do that in that moment when you start constructing the face, placing features, adding a bit of tone to it, then adjusting and trying to find mistakes in order to give the sketch likeness. Many sketching practices besides these, such as adding too much detail or going for too many values can take up a lot of times that in my opinion, is better spent trying to construct another portrait. There is another reason to bet on practicing quick 5-10 minute portrait sketches, and that's just the reality of our lifestyle. You might be one of those lucky people that have enough time for their hobbies or developing their skills on regular basis and if on top of that, you're able to stay focused and motivated, then you're living the dream. But if you're anything like me having to balance work life, family life, and self-care, you just won't have enough space and energy for the practice that is to time demanding. Even if you start strong after a couple of days, your practice tires you out and your sketch book gets buried underneath the pile of dust. We don't want that. In this regard, quick sketches are a win, not just because even when I don't have an hour, I can always find 10 minutes, and so there's no excuse not to open my sketch book, but also because that interval of 5-10 minutes forces you to really get to the point quickly and only pay attention to the important parts of the portrait, teaching you to ignore the details that often don't even benefit the painting or drawing. It is my personal experience that sketching quickly makes you progress faster, maybe not so quickly as to not give your proportions a second thought, just try not to sketch one portrait for an hour in your daily practice. Another tip is to use references of proper size. I like to sketch from my phone when I'm doing a drawing workout because the display is so small that I can better see the overall proportions. It doesn't really work out too well when trying to draw a small sketch from a very large reference, you can create your own references also by taking pictures of your friends or family. Just make sure that you have their permission. Also, it really helps if the light and shadow shows well on the reference. Sometimes we use so many filters on a self-made photo that it makes everything look very flat, then you cannot really tell how the form looks since you don't really see any depth on the photo. Lastly, I snapped my photos into the black and white or grayscale mode that also helps to see the values better and focus on light and shadow instead on the color. Few tips on the actual sketching technique, it is okay to only use one pencil for me, that's HB, but you might prefer sketching with soft HB pencil or with the harder one use whatever it makes your line seed better on the page. Hedging doesn't have to have a particular direction, but sometimes it helps if you hedge with the form instead of against it. When I'm blocking hair, sometimes I just make a flat hedging that doesn't have any direction because I'm just not focused emphasizing the form of the hairstyle in that very sketch. Other times, hairstyle is something that I want to include in the overall sketch because the lightened shadow on it makes the portrait stand out a bit more like in the case of this sketch. Here when I'm hedging the hair, I hedge in the direction that the hair would follow horizontal lines at the top of the head and vertical lines on the sides of the head. I also work with my erasers to create negative shapes that represent light, that makes my sketching process more fun. Lastly, do not be frustrated from sketches that don't turn out so well and take that as an opportunity to learn from them. In other words, do overs are the best thing you can do in this sketch, I overdid the hedging and I really felt like it took too long but the final statement feels stressed out and all over the place. It happens to me often that those studies that take the most time are the worst. I grabbed another piece of paper trying to see if I could do a better job and arrived at a more simplified statement. It's something to consider and experiment with. Then if I managed to convince you to keep a sketchbook, you can in time compare your recent sketches with your first sketches. You'll see how much you progressed. [MUSIC 8. Drawing Summary: Since we covered a lot of technical information in the drawing part of this class, let's do a quick summary. We learned that the human head can be drawn in a very simplified way, like a circular shape that connects to the mask of the face like this. We can use two guidelines to help us position this shape into different angles, and that's middle line and eye line. A very good way to practice is to draw the simplified form of the human head from different angles, not from your imagination, but from photos trying to get to the position of each head on a photo into your sketch book. We also learned proportions of the human face. If you follow this exercise from start to finish with your pencil in your hand, you have a good understanding about where all the features seat by now, but the key takeaway is that when we look at the face from the front view, the entire mask of the face can be split into thirds and those contain important landmarks. Entire top third of the face is the forehead and it ends with the eyebrows. Then second to third goes from the eyebrows to the nose and the last from the nose to chin. If you take the entire length from the top of the skull to the chin and split this distance in half, that is where the eyes would seat. Mouth and chin can be positioned by splitting the bottom third in thirds. Again, ears can always be found in the middle third. From the front view they align with the eyebrows and nose. There are also some differences between male and female faces even though proportions are similar, male portraits might have more angular features, stronger neck, and a bit more pronounced root of the nose. We now also know how to simplify features of the face. Eyes are more complicated than others, as they represent the round eyeball covered with eyelids, and we cannot draw them like a flat almond shape with a circle in it. Rather, we notice how the upper lid covers the iris and suggest roundness by adding folds around the eye. Nose can be tricky, but can be also simplified and drawn like a pyramid shape. Once you add these cushioning shapes on it, you'll have a solid nose structure to draw round. We are now aware that looking at the nose from below exposes the nostrils, while looking from above hides them. Mouth can be the easiest feature to draw, and if we will represent it as an appropriately curved middle line, emphasize the corners and stronger shadow below the bottom lip, then we can achieve a nice depth to them. Also, the upper lip gets quite dark as that planes usually turns away from the light, and in that scenario, the bottom lip often catches some highlights. Ears are also simple enough. I often draw them as ovals adding a darker fold to the top and represent the entry to the ear canal as a smaller oval shape. Lastly, we learned how to practice sketching portraits regularly to improve our drawing. Best practice doesn't take much time and focuses on proportional and mirage, rather than much detail and a beautiful hedging technique. Practice suits you best if it fits into your daily schedule and makes you happy, because only if it's fun you'll be able to stick with it. A great way to keep it interesting is to build folders with different references and challenge yourself by doing quick sketches of as many portraits as you can. Build your sketch by using the method of blocking shapes rather than constructing the head, and always try to draw in everything that you see on the photo that could provide you with contexts like the hair and the shoulders or the clothes because this will also help you with comparing your drawing and reference. You can use hedging and apply tone to your sketch as this also helps you to see proportions better. Remember, shape approach helps you quickly set your drawing onto your page, then you can continue adjusting it based on your knowledge of proportions. Use erasers to play around with negative shapes and do not be afraid to redo your drawing or draw it one more time if it didn't work out. In the next lesson, we'll start the watercolor portion of this class. We'll learn how watercolor techniques work, how to create effects and blend edges, which will be very useful in our portrait painting. I'll see you there. 9. Watercolor Warmup: In this lesson, we'll do several watercolor exercises to get us better acquainted with watercolor. We'll learn how the wet paint behaves on dry or dampen surface. What are layers of paint and how to create smooth blending or create special effects. Let's get started. Welcome to the watercolor painting part of this class. Let's take a look at how I set up my art materials before painting with watercolor. I'll be using my mixed media sketchbook for these exercises so I will set it up with a metallic clip that keep my paper stretched and straight. My palettes and jar with clean water are always set on my right side as I'm right-handed, I will lay my three brushes on my left side, but always on a paper towel because they'll be wet in a moment and I give another paper towel in my left hand. I set a hairdryer on my table too within my reach, so I don't have to get up and run around the studio too often. These spare bits of watercolor paper are also on my table. I'll be testing my paint on them and now it's time to dampen my paint with this spray bottle. There's a question you will often ask yourself, and that's how dark should my paint be? It's hard to judge the darkness of your watercolor paint when it's wet. The paint often fades during drying and here is a comparison of the same paint in its dry and wet stage. Vapor has also something to do about this. On some papers, watercolor might appear even more pale. How do we judge? If unsure, test your paint beforehand and dry it preferably on the same paper. But in time, as you get used to watercolor, you will judge by intuition and won't need to do this extra step. Let's draw a square and a circle in it. I'll grab my midsize brush and paint the first circle. This is called wet on dry, as we're applying the wet paint on a dry paper. Notice how watery paint holds inside this circular shape and doesn't just freely run out of it. You'd have to dampen the surrounding area and until you do, it just stays where placed it. When this paint dries, it will form a sharp edge around the circle. Let's now dampen the second square with clean water and then paint a second circle in this dampened area. What happens is that the paint bleeds into the dampened area around the circle and forms a blurry edge, also called a soft edge. We still see the circle. It's just a little larger and isn't sharply defined like the first one. Let's draw two more squares to demonstrate another aspect of watercolor. For this exercise we'll prepare paint in this tiny porcelain bowl by mixing it with water. I won't paint that's still transparent, like tea, but also shows some nice vivid blue color. Before painting the top square, you want to find something to help you tilt your drawing board or sketchbook, but do not make the tilt too steep. In this exercise, I will use the prepared paint from the bowl and paint the top square from top to bottom one stroke at a time. You'll see that thanks to the tilt, the excess paint runs towards the bottom of the wet area. When you reach the end of the square, gently leave the rest of the paint pool with your brush so that it doesn't sit there while the paint dries. Also keep the sketchbook tilted until the square dries. What we just painted is called a smooth watercolor wash. When you use this technique, you're able to achieve smooth layer of paint without any blooms or irregularities. Let's paint the second square without the tilt, but still stroke by stroke. When you leave your sketchbook line on the table flat like this, the excess water gathers to some spot even if you don't notice it at first and during drying process forms blooms and irregularities. You can use this knowledge during painting and think beforehand whether you need a smooth wash or can do with some irregularities that might make the painting more interesting. Now, we're ready to understand what layering of the paint looks like. Let's draw three rectangles and I'll only be using the same paint as before, mixed in a bowl. Let's paint all three rectangles with it. Not need to worry about the smoothness of the wash here. Let's dry them and make sure that they are completely dry before moving forward with the exercise. Now we'll paint a square to the second and third rectangle, so the paint overlaps with the previously painted one. This is called layering, or in some contexts, it can be called watercolor glazing, meaning that you're adding multiple watercolor layers on top of each other to enhance the color. When we dry the second layer, we can add another one to the third rectangle and observe how the paint intensity multiplies when new layers are added on top of it. You can also notice the colored glass effect that those sharp edges create and that can be quite lovely to use in your paintings as well. Now, I want to demonstrate one thing and show you a technique that will directly be useful in shading your portraits. Draw this almond shape and let's imagine that they're eyes and apply shadow around them with a midsize brush. In this example, I'm leaving the paint dry as it is, leaving hard edges all around the shadows. This can be visually very interesting, but let's see what it looks like if the edges were soft. I'll apply the shadow again in the same way, but then I dampen my brush with clean water, dry it just a little bit on the paper towel first and then gently rub the outside edge of the shadow. Result is a soft edge and it's a more natural look for some shadows on the face. This is exactly how I do it. I have to admit this technique takes some practice, but feel free to try it a few more times in order to get the hang of it. Now let's try one more time and let's go for the combination of both. You can always choose which edges soften and wish you keep sharp. Another technique I will sometimes use is called lifting, and I'll demonstrate it by rubbing a dry paint with clean, dampen brush and then lift the released pigment with a tissue. This doesn't always work, but works well on some papers. If you didn't yet apply to many layers to one area, sometimes you can even smoothen already dry sharp edges with this technique, which allows you to correct your watercolor painting. Lastly, I'll show you a few watercolor special effects to decorate your paintings with. First, let's paint a simple rectangle and wait just about two minutes to let the paint sit on the surface. But we don't want the wash to dry completely. Before it does, bring a few drops of clean water into the wash. The effect that happens between new water drops and the semi-dry wash is often referred to as watercolor blooming. Blooms look very different on every type of paper. On some, they can be more prominent than on others and on my mixed media paper, the effect didn't work out so well. These are some of my watercolor portraits where I purposely use blooms so that you can better imagine what they look like in a final painting and how the bloom can be used. Often I place the bloom somewhere around the silhouette of the portrait. Next effect is dripping paint. How to create drips is pretty self-explanatory. Just make sure to tilt your board or sketchbook enough and load enough watery paint on your brush. Last one is spatters, and I love this one. Easier to create freckles or just add a nice abstractions to the piece. Load watery paint on your brush and tap on it like this. You can try this with larger and smaller brushes to create smaller and larger splatters. In the next lesson, we'll take a look at how shading works, both in pencil and in watercolor. I'll meet you there. 10. How Shading Works: In this lesson, we'll do a simple exercise both in pencil and in watercolor to get us acquainted with light and shadow and how to depict them on a two-dimensional surface. Let's get started. I'll keep on using my watercolor sketchbook for this exercise also and we'll be able to fit this on one page. First, I'll sketch two circles and two cubes and sketch a cast shadow coming out of each shape. You can find a template sketch for this exercise in the Projects and Resources tab to use as your guide as well as a scan of final result. The left side I'll work with pencil and on the right with watercolor. Light and shadow will be the same no matter the medium you use, but the technique to depict light and shadow is very different for watercolor and pencil. Pencil studies help us greatly because we have total control over the pencil and so shading is all about figuring out where the shadow lies. But with watercolor, you also have to figure out a strategy, how to apply the paint so that the shadow shows at the right place. You'll see what I mean very shortly. Let's say that the light is coming from the left and heats the sphere. On the spot that's the closest to the light source there's going to be a high light, which is basically a complete white dots. We can represent it as a small circle. Light will then travel around the sphere but as the surface of the sphere gets further away from the light source, it gets darker and darker gradually. Here is another circle around the high light that I draw that will be filled with a slightly darker tone and then another slightly darker from the previous one. The darkest shadow, that's called core shadow, is usually on the other side of the sphere that's further away from the light source, but the darkest shadow doesn't reach to the very edge of the original circle because as the sphere is round, some of the light is reflected by the surrounding surface and shows a bit on the other side. Cast shadow is this shadow that the sphere casts to the ground. It will be dark, so you can give it some tone media pencil. The darkest spot of the cast shadow will be this spot where the sphere meets the cast shadow because it's a tight space where light doesn't have much access to. As the cast shadow moves further away from the sphere, some of the reflected light is able to show in it so it gets a little lighter on the right side. Cast shadows can be very sharp or have softened and blurry edges. It all depends on the type of light source. We can now try to shade the cubic pencil and imagine how light that's coming from the left would affect it. I included cube in this exercise for contrast with the sphere, but the approach for shading the sphere will be most useful to you for painting portraits. You can give the entire cube a bit of tone because unless light hits exactly from the top, it just won't show a strong highlight like sphere did. You can then give more tone to the side that's facing us, but the darkest side will be the one that's opposite from the light source. With cast shadow, it will be pretty much the same as with the sphere. It gets darkest when close to the cube and a bit lighter as it moves away from it and blurs a little. One difference between cube and sphere will be that the darkest side of the cube directly connects with the cast shadow, so there's no change in tone. But between the core shadow of the sphere and it's cast shadow, there is a lighter tone because of the reflected light. Please note that there is a bit of simplification in my examples. There's lots more to learn about how light and shadow works on different surfaces and as the type of light source varies, there might be gradients that show on a cube as well. But for our purposes, this will help you understand that we need to assign darkness and lightness to different forums in order to create the illusion of a 3D space on our flat 2D paper. Relative lightness or darkness of an object or an area is often referred to as tone or tone value. While in pencil, you can create darker values just by pressing harder or hatching over the same area multiple times or even to switch to a darker pencil. In watercolor, it's a bit different. Main challenge of watercolor lies in the fact that we just don't use white paint to create highlights or lighten our worksheets. We literally leave white paper behind to show as a highlight. In watercolor, you almost never paint the light, you only paint shadows. The light is already there. I know it's a bit more to wrap your head around, but that's exactly where this exercise gets helpful. Here I create the highlight on the sphere by painting my first wash around it. I spread the paint around this entire rest of the circle as well as the cast shadow because you see on our pencil study that there is just no other area anywhere that would be lighter than the highlight. This establishes not only the highlights, but straightaway defines the mid tone as well. Cube does not have a highlight, so I will cover the entire shape and the cast shadow with my mid-tone as well. We painted our first layer and I'll make sure that it's completely dry before painting on the second, but we will need more layers in order to deepen the shadow areas on both the sphere and the cube. Let's continue adding shadows to the sphere, but we need to use the pencil study as our guide and really pay attention. These new darker shadow should not reach the highlight area. It rather covers about 2/3 of the sphere and I cast shadow too. Since the sphere is round, it does not have sharp edges around its shadows like the cube does, and so we need to use the technique that I showed you in the previous lesson to soften the edge that would enact these new paint with them more highlighted area in the top third. Here I will also leave some of the wet paint to show reflected light on the sphere. We'll do the same on the right end of the cast shadow that needs lightening. I also blurred this area here a little bit my damp brush. In this regard, the second layer of watercolor for the cube will be pretty straightforward because everywhere is a sharp edge and beside the top plane of the cube, everything needs darker tone. I only smudge the cast shadow a bit in its right end. Lastly, we'll need to add a third layer to create the darkest darks. You can add more pigment to your paint mixture for this step to create stronger contrast. First, let's apply the darkest shadow to the sphere. It will be positioned further away from the light source. But remember to avoid the reflected light area at the back of the sphere. Cast shadow needs darkening as well and where it connects with the sphere will be hard edge. You can now gently soften the edges both to create a gradient on the cast shadow and to blend the darkest shadow with the mid tones on the sphere. Cube will again be very simple. We're going to darken the plane that's farthest from the light source and the cast shadow along with it. There is no edge between the cube and the cast shadow here. I will only soften and lighten the applied paint at the right end of the cast shadow. This exercise best demonstrates not only where light and shadow appear, but also the difference in approaches with pencil and watercolor. It shows you that watercolor requires some planning in order to not make a mistake and accidentally cover an area that's supposed to stay light. In the next lesson, we'll do that kind of planning and create a thumbnail or a portrait in pencil that will serve us as a map of the highlights, mid tones, and darkest darks and we'll make it much easier to apply watercolor to our final painting. I'll see you there. 11. Creating a Thumbnail / Value Map: In this lesson, we'll create a thumbnail of our first watercolor portrait. This thumbnail will be in pencil, and we'll use it to map out all the highlights, mid-tones, and darkest darks. You can download my thumbnail from the projects and resources section down below this class and use it as your guide while creating your own. If you did all the exercises from the previous lessons along with me, you're definitely ready to start creating your class project. This will be the first watercolor portrait we'll paint from start to finish. Since this class is for beginners, most of all is extra step of creating a portrait thumbnail will be very useful for two reasons. First, drawing the same portrait multiple times makes you draw it with more confidence as you get familiar with it, and second, marking all the highlights, mid-tones, and darkest darks with your pencil beforehand forces you to rethink your watercolor strategy and then minimizes the chance of applying the paint to the wrong area or losing light. Let's create thumbnails for all the portraits in this class, and I will do that on these tiny paper cards. For the class project, I pick the portrait that's not too challenging to draw or paint. This is a really beautifully shot profile portrait. I just love the floating hair around the girl's head. It stirs emotions and tells a story. Also, you can clearly see light and shadow, and reference photo also shows mid-tones although it's not that visible in the video, but please download the reference from the projects and resources section down below, and you will see them more clearly. I will start by loosely sketching the portrait to the paper card. You can see that I've blocked all the basic large shapes first such as a triangular shape for the face and a few lines to indicate the hairstyle, silhouette, neck, and shoulder. I'll add smaller shapes for the nose, mouth, small triangular shapes for the eyes. I don't mind using a lot of lines, and the portrait doesn't have to be 100% accurate at this point, but you should have at least recognizable silhouette before you start with the shading map, I am starting to add a tone to different areas as I notice them on the reference in no particular order. There are two large, really dark areas, and that's the hairstyle and the cast shadow on the neck and shoulder so I'm adding some hatching there. There are more really dark areas on this portrait, but you might not see them at first. What helps me identify the tonal values better is to squint my eyes as I look at the reference, it allows you to see only tone and no sharp lines to confuse you when you are trying to identify how the value distributes throughout the face. Smaller areas that are quite dark are eyebrow area, lashes no stroke the upper lip, and the cast shadow below the lip. There is also quite a dark shadow coming down from the hairstyle towards the chest area. Map all these out in your thumbnail. As I go, I noticed some highlighted areas and then need to tone around them. There are clear highlights on the cheek, about the eyebrow that's close to us, on the nose, then in the in corner of the eye and on the bottom lip, usually between darkest darks and highlights there are our mid-tones, but there are deeper and lighter values in mid tones as well so some areas are darkened a bit. These are the cheek area, for example, the area between lashes and eyebrows, and the base of the nose, some are on the neck as well. How you're supposed to identify all these in a portrait? It's your observation that tells you which is which. But it's not only that, because clearly there can be dozens of different values between light and shadow, and we are painting in three layers so how are you supposed to find all that and paint it in? The key is that you don't. In other words, we'll work it out by simplifying the values just like we simplified the sketch and also trying to replicate all the values, is a [inaudible] and lost before it even started. If you get yourself that you turned your thumbnail into a 12 hours long project, then you're missing the point because every picture can be mapped out only by three or four values and this exercise can be incredibly helpful as it trains your imagination. Not only you have to make choices sometimes how to shape your shadows or highlights, but you can actually design them. You can purposely choose to increase the contrast or decrease it or you can even get rid of the highlight if it makes the wrong side of the portraits stand out too much. You can basically interpret the reference picture your way, and that is definitely my favorite part of this entire process. Here's the final thumbnail. It's nothing too pretty, but it serves its purpose. I got acquainted with the shape of this portrait and have a better understanding now of how the highlights, mid-tones, and darkest darks distribute here, it will serve me a great deal when I paint my watercolor portrait. In the next lesson, we'll create a sketch for the class project. I will show you how I approach sketching this, how to proceed, whether you decide to sketch directly to a watercolor paper or transfer your sketch to it. I'll see you there. 12. Creating & Transferring Your Sketch: In this lesson we're going to create a sketch for our class project. Let's get started. For the class project I'll be using a free sheet of student grade watercolor paper, so I will rip it out of the block first before I start sketching. You can also use watercolor sketch book of any kind for your class project and painting studies like this one. I'm sketching directly to a watercolor paper and I usually do that in two steps, so I'll show you the process. But you have a couple of other options too. If you're unsure and don't want to damage your watercolor paper by erasing too much on it you can grab a copy paper and sketch there, that will allow you to do some heavy editing. By the end of this lesson I will show you two ways of transferring this sketch to your watercolor paper. I'm starting blocking shapes, this technique I explained in greater detail in Lesson 7. But when sketch to a watercolor paper, I'm keeping in mind that its structure is a little bit more delicate and I'm using very light lines because of that, I try not to put too much pressure on my pencil and I prefer not sharpening it for this part. I block in the features pretty much the same way I do when quick sketching. I represent them with simple ovals and triangles first and then try to shape them a little more precisely only when I'm sure that they sit at the right place. While in my drawing practice I use hedging to help me see the shadows and light. Here I do not hedge at all, so that makes it a little harder which is why I can really recommend doing the sketch on a copy paper first where you can hatch and create contrast to make sure that you have the proportions at the right place and then trace the line work to your watercolor paper. Here is where the second phase of the drawing starts. I now have a preliminary sketch that has somewhat fine proportions and so I can use a kneaded eraser to lighten that sketch. Kneaded eraser doesn't really take away all the graphite. It just lightens it so that you can refine your lines but still allows you to see them. It's incredibly gentle to the watercolor paper so it is a watercolor wrist must have. This is basically what my process of refining line work looks like. It is slow but steady. I do not try to rationally think and try to make my lines comprehensive. This line work will be my guide when I paint, so that is why I need to see it. But in many areas of the artwork, I do not want the graphite to show too much and I definitely do not want for sketching lines where some important silhouette is supposed to be. So while doing your linework, take your sweet time. Make your lines elegant and precise if possible. Because you are building on the preliminary sketch, this is quite a relaxing phase. I want to show you how to transfer your sketch to a watercolor paper. If you did it on a separate sheet of paper or if you're using my linework download it from the resources down below. First option is to use the light table or lead board of some kind. The idea is simple, place your sketch on it, watercolor paper on top and trace the lines carefully. I usually have to adjust the lines after I trace the sketch to make sure that everything looks good. Similarly, if you don't have a lead board you can use window during daylight or you can place a lamp over some glass table to get the same result. There is another method. You can turn the sketch around and cover the other side with graphite. Your HB pencil will do just fine. Now, grab a watercolor paper, place your sketch on top of it and just go over the lines while applying some pressure. This way your sketch transfers to the watercolor paper nicely and you can also adjust the line before painting. So there you have it, no matter which method you choose, now you have a line where grady on your watercolor paper. In the next lesson we'll start developing our painting by applying first layer of watercolor. Let's go. 13. Painting 1st Layer: In this lesson, we'll start painting our class project by applying the very first watercolor wash. Before you start applying watercolor to your sketch, never forget to tape it down to a board with masking tape. Make sure the tape holds it in position, this prevents buckling of the paper. I use spray bottle to revive my paint. It's a quick way to get that watery pool ready. I always test the intensity of the paint on a spare piece of paper to avoid surprises. The entire technique works exactly like when we were shading the sphere. We are going to work light to dark. The purpose of the first wash is to establish the highlights and so the wash cannot be too dark. I will use a box again to create tilt because I want this first wash of paint to be rather smooth. Make sure that your paint is really watery and doesn't create streaks as you paint. I start by applying paint on top because I want slide background to show as well. The only space that I intend to keep completely light is those highlighted areas that we established in our thumbnail. Keep your thumbnail and your reference close by, and if it helps you, you can even lightly sketch in the highlights to your watercolor paper. As I apply paint from top to bottom through the entire painting, I leave behind those highlighted areas. I will just bypass them with my brush as I go. But this does not always work so well for me. Sometimes I accidentally hide something underneath the paint and that's okay because if this happens, you can just use lifting technique later on to expose some white of the paper back. It's not a big deal to make mistakes. At first, this requires some practice, and that's why I chose the type of paper that allows me to make corrections, but do not worry too much. This is basically just an underpainting and we can tweak mishaps in the next layer. I just want to add that in these monochromatic paintings, I do not strive for perfection, not at all. Just like I suggested, you practice quick portrait drawings in your sketchbook. I am pro quick watercolor portraits that do not take too long and are not too perfect because expecting them to be flawless when you're first starting out freezes you from expression. You can allow for some mess in your worksheet. At the bottom of the painting, I even left some drips and random effects work there, watercolor magic. In my opinion, it makes for a much more interesting interpretation of a portrait. In the next lesson, we'll add our second watercolor layer. We will deep in shadows and practice the blending technique a bit more. I'll meet you there. 14. 2nd Layer - Deepening Shadows: In this lesson, we'll be adding deeper shadows to our portrait painting. We'll practice applying paint and blending edges. Let's get started. Before applying second layer, make sure your previous wash is totally dry in your paper flat. I'm preparing my paint on the porcelain plate by adding water into it, creating a pool. This time, it's a little more saturated than before. I really want to darken some parts more effectively, which means I do not want to paint more than three layers in total. I'll start by applying the paint to the hair as this is quite a large area that's going to be dark. Then look for some shadow areas on the face. Use your thumbnail to guide you. We already established where those shadowy areas on the face will be. Basically, look for all the areas that need to be a little darker than the first wash of paint and apply new paint there. Here we also have to think whether the edge of the shadowy area is smooth or sharp. You can follow my lead as I paint and make decisions about every shadow. Cast shadow on the neck, for example, it doesn't need blending. This one has hard edge other many shadows on the face and in soft edge, so you will need to blur those edges with your brush. When creating these blendings common mistake is to rub your brush too much and pass in to the paper. This can cause the paper to break and produce weird-looking texture. Be gentle and always use soft brushes for this technique. Another mistake is to smudge the entire newly placed paint. If you do this, then you did not darken anything because you lift and smudge all the paint. You only want to soften the edge of the new paint. Do not go further with your brush than that. I'm just following my reference and my thumbnail, and patiently adding paint and then blending it if needed. This can be a very fulfilling process, but you'll also need your full concentration and some time for this. As you can see, applying all these tiny shadows takes time. Some shadows are not as obvious as others, like those around her cheek gets a little tricky. You cannot apply dark paint here, so I'm only adding very light washes and blending them into the previously painted layer. The deepening of tone on the cheeks and on any area of her face that is overall in light needs to be done carefully and lightly while you can add more pigment and sharpness to the obviously darker shadows around her eyes, lips, and on the neck. I decided to add a few strokes to define the clothes on her shoulder, but I'm not sure if that was the best decision because sometimes paying too much attention and placing too much detail to areas away from the face make the viewer's eyes jump to these places and not to the face where we obviously wanted. But with every painting like this, we learn something new and observing our result is part of the process. As you work on your second layer, you should see obvious shift in depth of your portrait. Here is the finished second layer. Now, I let it dry again until the paper it flattens completely. In the next lesson, we'll finish our class project painting by adding darkest darks details and some decorations. I can't wait to finish this painting with you. We are really close. 15. 3rd Layer - Darks & Details: In this lesson, we will finish our class project by adding darkest darks, details and a few decorations to our watercolor study. Let's go. First, I'll make sure that the previous layer is completely dry, but you already know by now that, that is always important when we are adding new layer. I'll be working with darker colors, so I will make much more paint with water than previously. But when you work with watercolor, your paint never can be too thick, so make sure that it is still flowy and a little transparent. I bring out the reference picture again so that you can better see how I'm judging where to place this layer. I decided to start with the most obvious part and that's hair, because it's basically a giant dark mass that does not have a complex shape. I'm only leaving behind some highlighted areas on the hair as we've already established those on our thumbnail. Here, I'm trying to make those highlights look a bit more natural by softening some edges so that they appear more random and do not form such large shapes. I'm drawing some flowy hairs around the face. But if you want, you can leave this step to the end. These floating hairs can look intimidating, but with a thin brush, this is really easy thing to do. I noticed that this works better when you load your brush with enough watery paint. It doesn't have to be dark and draw slowly and one segment at a time, you don't have to draw the entire hair in one goal. Second obvious, larger dark area is the cast shadow on the neck and so I'm getting right to it. Here, I'm trying to soften the transition of the dark shadow to the face and also one side of the shadow appears to have more of that reflected light in it, and so I'm trying to lighten this area here. I am darkening shadows on her neck and some shadows on the face as well. This was supposed to be actually finished in the previous layer, but the drying process showed that the tone was still not sufficient and the face appeared a little flat still. You can always tweak the painting like this, and keep on adding layers to deepen shadows at any point unless there are some sharp details that are sitting on the area that you wish to tweak. Which is why I really tried to solve all the final deepening of the larger shadows before painting in sharper details with the small brush. Here, I continuously add small shading, mostly to the nose and the eyes, but I will be done with it in a minute or so when I'm satisfied with the tone that I've achieved there. I love adding splatters to my portraits. I only have a rule of adding very light paint as I splatter. Never too dark, sometimes it's just the water from the big jar that has a bit of pigment in it. Here are some final touches. Adding lashes and eyebrows with tiny brush while using very dark paint is almost like drawing them with a pencil. This allows you to sharpen any line that you wish on your portrait and get a little more defined look. Final stage of this water coloring process involves tweaking the painting until you are satisfied. It is a constant checking from the reference to your painting and back. I already explained in one of the previous lessons that our references cannot be taken too literally and I never make them a law, rather an advisor. When I'm lost and I'm not sure why my painting doesn't quiet contain the spirit of the photo, I can look for answers in the reference. Sometimes, I discovered that I already did the contrast or forgot about an important shadow somewhere. But often, it is the other way round. At some point, I need to put the reference aside and think only in terms of the painting needs to look like I want it. So be mindful when making decisions in the last stages of your painting process. When you decide that you're finished, you can dry your painting and then gently pull off the tape to reveal the final outcome. It's been an incredible journey to have you painting alongside me throughout this and all the previous lessons. I really hope that you'll fall in love with the watercolor portraits just like I did, and that I'll get to see your class projects in the project gallery very soon. 16. Final Thoughts: I want to thank you so much for taking this class and following along. I really do hope that you found it helpful and maybe even started a new chapter in your creative efforts. This is not the end, but the beginning for there is lots more to learn about portrait drawing and painting. To really set your newly acquired skills in stone and help you get that mileage in, I'm adding bonus lessons in which we'll paint different portraits together from start to finish. Only by practicing different scenarios, different angles, and using different references, we can build some experience with the subject and the watercolor medium. I'll be adding new bonus lessons to this class every now and then. So don't forget to check in next month also and maybe join me in painting a new demo. If you have questions that have not been answered, feel free to use the Discussions tab down below. The object tab called Projects and Resources is where you can upload your class projects and also your drawing exercises, your sketches. I always love to see how you progress. Please use this opportunity and share your work with us. You can also tag me on Instagram if you wish. I can then share your work with my entire audience. If you follow me here on Skillshare, then you'll get notified on my new classes and discussions that I post. I also have a YouTube channel where I share occasional studio vlogs and shorter videos on the watercolor portrait painting subject. This is not a goodbye because I will see you in the bonus lessons. 17. Bonus lesson n. 1 - Thumbnail & Sketch: Thank you for joining me in bonus lessons for this class. I want to keep on adding bonus lessons to provide you with more examples of different portraits painted in watercolor as every portrait needs to be approached differently. You can use these lessons to practice, and they will help you understand how to use the process that we learned in the class in different scenarios. In the first bonus lesson, we'll paint the portrait of a girl viewed from front. It will be a little bit more difficult than the profile view class project. In this lesson, we'll prepare a pencil thumbnail to map out values in the portrait and we'll also prepare a sketch for painting it. Let's get started. I'm beginning to sketch a thumbnail on a small piece of copy paper. Just a reminder, the purpose of the thumbnail is to map out all the mid-tones, highlights, darker values, and also get familiar with sketching this portrait. All these will help us paint the portrait better and plan our watercolor approach. I'm trying to block the entire silhouette of the face with hair by using shape approach and noticing every straight line along the silhouette to help me position this on the page. I'm trying to find eyebrows line, the nose line, and then mouth. It helps me out a great deal to represent the features with these small ovals and circles as I can quickly place them and then try to compare their position on my sketch with the reference. Only when I think that they are at the right place, I'm shaping them a little more and adding some tone. This saves me lots of time. Sometimes when you start with details, like eye, for example, and draw it nicely. Then when you find out that you need to move it, you rather keep it in the wrong place than lose all that work by erasing. It's why I just don't like to waste my time with details. While sketching, proportions and tone is my priority here with these thumbnails. Tone can help you also with proportions, which is why I start with some hatching quite early in the sketching process. This face is so smooth and perfect, evenly lit with softer light, so it is quite hard to draw. Main challenge of the frontal view portraits is to make the symmetry work, and central guideline can help you split the face evenly and to make sure that the nose and the mouth also are balanced in their house. I finally arrived at some resemblance to the photo, enough of what I need for the thumbnail, and I'm starting to outline the areas that will be very dark. Hair is the main dark mass, so I will do stronger hatching to reflect on that in my thumbnail. Another clear dark area is the shadow on her neck. There are also lighter areas in the hair. Not very visible from my camera, but when you download the reference for this portrait, you'll see them. They're smaller, but I want to include that in my portrait, so I will emphasize this in my thumbnail. I think that these larger areas amongst the very dark mass of the hair will help to give the hair some volume. Let's analyze the photo reference a bit to learn how the tonal values are distributed. Remember, we're going to try and simplify the values in our sketch so that we know where we want the highlights to show, the mid-tones, and the darkest darks as well. The most obvious are darks. It's the hair, the large shadow on her neck, and then there are pops of really dark small areas around the features of the face, such as eyes, under the nose and mouth. Less obvious are highlights. We'll have to make a decision whether we choose only to include the tiniest highlights, like the reflections in the eyes, on the nose, and on mouth, or we want to select larger light areas as highlights to give the face more contrast. I went for the other option and mapped out larger areas on the cheeks, forehead, and chin to try and reserve as white areas. I think that this helps to give the face more plasticity in the end. Like the mid-tones, we'll be connecting the lightest parts with the dark ones. This will help us give the features some form and show their plasticity a bit more as well as make the face look round. Remember, this process is a lot of planning, but then you will know exactly where to place paint during the actual painting process. So it pays out to do such analysis in the long run. I will now draw in everything that I noticed in the portrait to my thumbnail. Here's the finished value map, and I will keep it close by when I paint, along with my reference photo. Let's create sketch now. I draw directly to my watercolor paper but feel free to use a copy paper and transfer your sketch later to the watercolor paper if you feel like you erase a lot. I also erase a lot. But for these monochromatic studies, it doesn't matter much if the pencil or eraser leaves some marks as we are only using three layers, so the paper usually handles this well. But I use very gentle erasers, and you have them linked down below in the materials PDF in case you did not notice. For drawing the sketch, I use pretty much the same approach as for the thumbnail, especially in the first stages of the drawing process, but later on, I will try to be more precise and add more details once that I'm convinced that I have all the features at the right place. There is another difference in drawing into your sketchbook or thumbnailing from drawing sketches like this as a preparation for painting process. It's that you can't use tone, which makes it harder. I rarely hatch on watercolor paper because I noticed that hatching or blending the graphite doesn't look very good underneath the watercolor painting. It makes the paint look muddy and takes away the transparency of the watercolors, so I'll have to do without. If you're sketching to a separate copy paper, the advantage is that you can use hatching there to help you with proportions. As you can see, the portrait still looks very rough as I'm trying to position everything. I have all the guidelines here still, but soon I will go through this preliminary sketch with the kneaded eraser. In the second phase of the sketching process, I will try to polish the features, details, and make all the lines crisper and cleaner. This portrait was a little bit more difficult to sketch, and it took me quite some time to arrive at the stage when I was satisfied with the outlines. Corrections were quite heavy and frequent. At one moment I was worried if I did not overwork the paper already, but it was fine in the end. Sometimes when I'm unsure if the proportions are okay, I will just take a photo of the sketch with my cell phone and then quickly switch between the photo and the reference on my phone. That helps me to spot mistakes because the more you look into your drawing, the harder it is to notice differences. We all lack fresh point of view. It also can help you to put the drawing aside, look at it the next morning, and make corrections then because that also provides you with a fresh view. Here we have a sketch more or less ready for the painting process. You can download it to either view or use for your watercolor work. It is included in the resources down below. In the next lesson, we will paint this portrait in watercolor. Let's go. 18. Bonus lesson n. 1 - Watercolor Painting: In this lesson, we'll paint this watercolor portrait in three layers. If you did not create your own sketch using previous lesson as a guide, you can download my sketch from resources down below, trace it to your watercolor paper and start working on this portrait. You can also download my thumbnail, but I highly encourage you create one with your own hand because that will help you in developing the painting with watercolor layer-by-layer. Let's start. Let's check the reference and thumbnail one more time before applying the first layer to make sure that we know which areas to leave behind as highlights. We mapped out some larger areas as highlights, but we also have those smaller ones to look for as we are applying the first wash. I'm tilting my board and it goes like this almost every time that I paint my first layer because I want this thin layer of paint to be quite smooth with not too many irregularities if possible. I'm not painting background this time that will be kept white and we might decorate it with some splatters later on. I'm carefully trying to lay down my first wash without applying paint to the highlighted areas. You know that accidents happen, so please don't panic when you accidentally go over some of these. You can just use the lifting technique to get rid of the paint before the wash dries or with a paper like mine, you can lift pigment even when it's dry. If you are unsure that you can freestyle these, you can draw those highlights shapes on your sketch very lightly and that helps you to better avoid them, but you risk weird looking edges if your mark is too dark, so be careful. You'll get the hang of it. Don't worry. I like to add an expressive element to these portraits and that's where I live watercolor to flow and do its magic, but these areas filled with effects can't be on the face rather behind it. Sometimes it can affect the hair, so in this portrait I went for dripping paint below the portrait and sprangers on the sides. For a spranger like this one on the right, leave a larger pool of paint on paper and then blow on it. It is quite fun. Few more corrections and touch ups, and we'll leave these two completely dry. Second layer always takes me the longest. It is the one when we focus on gradually building depth to our portrait. Always use your thumbnail in reference to guide you, so I'm bringing the reference here as well because that is a better source of information for me while I paint the mid-tones. I try to gradually add more paint to the areas that contain darks and mid-tones. Dark areas like hair will obviously get even darker in the next layer, but I still add these in-between layer to them as this helps to connect the mid-tones with the darks that transition is more seamless. To paint the hair silhouette and hair strings is easy enough. More tricky are the tinier shadows around the eyes, nose and mouth that needs to be blocked with these paint as well, and as you add them to the portrait and blend the edges. This slowly creates depth around them. This particular portrait took a bit more of these additions, bindings and touch ups then what I normally tend to include in my monochromatic studies I think it was because of the look of the reference. It's very smooth, and so that might have confused me into trying to be more precise and careful than it was necessary, so after a while I was just very focused on trying to observe the reference and then compare with my portrait and then spot every single mistake and correct it. This is how I proceed usually when working on larger scale works that involve more layers and that's essentially how you achieve even more realistic look if you want to, but it's also really not necessary for sketches like this. I'm just mentioning it because I want you to notice that in this demo, I went a little bit overboard with the amount of touch ups and so you can be a bit more loose if you want to. Let's add the darkest paint to our portrait and this is the last layer, so I would want to emphasize those darks, add more pigment to your brush, but always mix it with enough water because with watercolor paint should still be flowy even when working with darker values. I'm blocking the dark shape of the hair and leaving some of those lighter areas behind. We discussed this in the previous lesson while developing thumbnail. These are not large areas but help us to give the hairstyle more volume. Here I'm trying to block another shape for the eyebrows and parts of the mouth that are dark, but I'm still using my mid-sized flood brush. Very soon however, I'll have to switch to the tiniest brush because these parts of the portraits they are too delicate and all the darks that are left to be added are just very tiny, so we'll have to be more careful. There's still lots of areas that my mid tone in the previous layer didn't make dark enough and I'm judging these just by looking at the reference constantly and comparing it with my portrait, great thing that you can always add more tone to the watercolor paper until you overwork the paper, so be careful, but it's possible to keep on adjusting the tone until you are convinced that it's at the right value. Besides the tone, we have to care for edges. We learned how to blend edges in Lesson 9 of this class and this technique I use constantly whenever I need to blend freshly painted area with the rest of the portrait. Some areas though are connected with tone and so you don't have to paint them always separately, like for example the neck and the hair. They have pretty much similar tone, and so you can paint them in one go, but then if you want to make distinction between hair and neck, you have to paint the hair darker in the next layer. This will create a hard edge between the neck and hair. I'm often using lifting technique to lighten some areas or create even softer blendings if it didn't quite work out on the first goal. Just make sure that you don't rely on these too match though as this can make the painting look overworked and watercolor always looks best when you lay down your paint carefully and even leave a hard edges in different areas, but that comes with practice and when you're first starting out, the lifting and softening with your damp brush will help you have better control over these tricky watery medium. Finally, when you feel like you've achieved enough depth with your mid-tones and darkest darks, you can start adding floating hairs and some decorations. This is my favorite part of the process. It really makes the portrait stand out. If you pay some attention to this last bit, you can add a bit more texture to the eyebrows by drawing some of the individual hairs on top of the darker area for the eyebrows. Next, pay attention to the dark details in the eyes, such as iris which is very dark and also lashes and those lashes are tricky, but you don't have to draw them one-by-one, instead think of them like one line that is a bit more split on the outward edge of the eye. You cannot observe individual lashes very well on a portrait that's viewed from some distance, so always try to think how to simplify the details accordingly. If any part of the painting process is pretty much the same as drawing, is this detailing part. You just draw with tiny brush and dark paint on it as if it were a pencil adding sharper details on top of what you just painted. I'll add a few more floating hair and some sprangers to finalize the watercolor part and I'll let the portrait to completely dry, and here's a little trick to make the portrait pop a bit more. It is to use opaque white paint to add some sharp highlights. This is some white gouache I have lying around in my studio and I'm going to add it to my tiny brush and paint in those highlights that I've lost throughout the process. The goal with watercolor is not to lose the highlights and if you're familiar with masking fluid, that also can be a good alternative to using white gouache, but if you want to see what your study would look like if you'd had some sharper whites, this is one option how you can achieve it. We can now remove the masking tape to reveal the final portrait. Thank you so much for joining me for this bonus process, and I will see you in another bonus lesson soon.