Learn to Make Creative Self Portraits in 3 Styles

1. Introduction: [MUSIC] Hi. I'm Irina Trzaskos, artist and illustrator. Welcome to my studio to explore your creativity. As an artist over the years, I created artwork for companies worldwide, I illustrated children books, and participated in art shows and exhibitions. I love supporting creativity in others. I'm a founding and active member of a local art organization. I'm an Artist Ambassador for World Watercolor Month movement, and I love organizing live workshops and filming classes online. In today's class, I'm excited to share with you the process of making a creative self portrait using different creative techniques. If you're new on this channel, thank you for joining and welcome. Press the "Follow" button on top and let's get started. 2. Supplies: In this class we'll be using an array of supplies. First of all, of course, we will need watercolor paint, the paint palette, water. Brushes, I'll be using medium brush, which is Number 8 here, but it's mostly like Number 6. Just to be safe, it's nice to have a bigger brush and small a brush. If you have Number 10, Number 6 and Number 2 will be perfect for this class. For the paper will need tracing paper. If you don't have tracing paper, you can use parchment paper for baking, or you can try to use just office paper and see if it is transparent enough. Also, I'll be using some mixed media paper, which is just 98 pounds or 160 grams. It's not as thick as watercolor paper, but we'll need it for some of the techniques. Of course, we'll be using watercolor paper, 140 pounds or 300 grams, called Canson. Besides that, we'll need some colored paper for a background. We'll need dark some light and dark colors. Also we'll need some card elements of your watercolor after work. If you have some random plots you painted, just make sure to take your time and cut some of them. [MUSIC] If you have any other elements we can use like branches or leaves, also will be nice too for experimenting. Also we need an X-ACTO knife or small scissors. Some colored pencils, a dark one, and a light one. A sharpie, or any permanent marker, which is waterproof, or some black ink which is waterproof, or some black acrylic paint, which is waterproof too. Also we need the white gouache or white ink. For cutting, we'll need the cutting mat. This kind of mat which is self-healing. It will keep you safe. It's very comfortable to cut on. Also for backgrounds, you want to use some of your paintings you like. It could be like a floral or some birds and flowers, or it could be some landscape painting or some flowers or a dark background. Also we need regular pencil of course and an eraser. That's all what you'll need, if I didn't forget something. But for the entire list of supplies is in the resources of the class. Feel free to take a look there. 3. Creating an Outline for Portraits: [MUSIC] First thing what we have to do is to take a picture of ourselves or our self portrait. It's going to be a picture in profile and that's on a position I'll show you because this is a class for beginners. What we'll do first, if your hair is covering your face like mine, we need to put it in the back so it opens more of your face. Just stand somewhere against the window or a very light wall. Using good timer, just take a picture of yourself or ask someone to take a picture of you just to looking straight. This is the easiest position to do. This is my picture. After I took it, I emailed it to myself so I can open it on the laptop. What we'll do next, we can print it so we can further work with it or I usually just transfer it into tracing paper straight from the laptop. With fingers, you have to be very careful not to press too hard on your screen so you don't damage it when you do that. First you need a piece of tracing paper, a piece of tape and then we'll need a colored pencil or a Sharpie or a felt tip pen. Whichever works for you. I open the picture and what we'll do, we'll trace the outline of the face and we'll do that in three different sizes, so we can experiment more with our self portraits. First let's do the big size. Just increase your portrait like that. I think this is plenty big. Again, you can do it with just simple white paper or you can do it with tracing paper. Sometimes when I don't have tracing paper, I use parchment paper from my kitchen. After we did that, let's try to do it with a felt tip pen. Just trace the outline of your head. Yes, it's not going to be pretty at this point and it's okay. We just need the main features and then I'll be correcting them. Right here I've already cut some of my chin, of course. Here we have neck. I'm also showing where the ear is and you could show a little bit of hair line too if you want to. This part of hair and here I have a tail. You can also show an eyebrow too with the eye. I'm not showing the eye because we'll be just drawing that ourselves. We have one size. This is how it looks. I'll show you later on the table too. What you do next, you just lift the paper and now you need to untape it. I want us to have two more sizes so let's make it a little smaller. Something like this. Maybe even smaller. Again, be very careful with your screen. Don't damage your screen. When you do this very, lightly with felt tip pen or with pencil. Don't use the graphite pencil because you'll be smudging it against tracing paper. It's better to use a colored pencil which it's harder to erase. Again, we're doing the same thing. Just a different size. Doesn't matter much because we'll be drawing that just in the style, the aesthetics. The chin. The ear is here, eye brow. Very easy. Here's a smaller size. We can show where the eye is on this one. I can change it too. You can see I just draw a closed eye like this. We can show the hairline too. Just a little bit. Now we need the smallest size. Maybe even smaller than that so we have a variety. Let's try to put it here. I'll slightly hold it in my hand and for this I'll use colored pencil. We're doing the same thing, just smaller size. Just outlining the main features. This one will be a silhouette so we don't need much information here. We've got our three different sizes heads, and now we can go to our drawing table and start creating. 4. Stylizing the Outlines: [MUSIC] Now when we have our outlines on drawing table, I put a piece of white paper underneath my tracing paper so you can better see it. We'll start actually creating our whimsical creative self-portraits out of outlines we have. I will use again, tracing paper over for the outline and you can make for each of them multiple versions with which I will usually do. But for the sake of length of this class, I'll do just one version of each size. But feel creative to experiment as long as you want and as much as you want at this stage because this is for creative stage well, one of them, it's important. On the tracing paper will be drawing with coloring pencils because they're harder to be smudged. Any color you want, just whatever speaks to you. I'll be using prolific, magenta color so you can better see it. It's dark enough, but you can feel free to use any color you want as long as it's a colored pencil. Well, we'll start with the medium-size self-portrait outline. I'm actually happy with it looking straight but I'll show you what you'll do with another ones. This stage you can do the corrections you want. That's why I'm saying sometimes you'll end up with multiple versions of the same size output chart because you can experiment, make some features smaller, some bigger, and see what you like. For example, I like making a sharper nose, and this chin, I think is too prominent so soften it a little bit and we'll make it sharper here. It's not a realistic portrait. It's a creative and a whimsical one so feel free to play with your features and this is good. For this size, I was thinking to do a line art and ink and watercolor for this size so that's why we'll be creating this drawing go that in mind. I think I need want to lower the eye a little bit just like this and make it a little bigger. Let's drop the lips. Again if you're not happy, just put another tracing paper on top and keep drawing until you're happy with the result. The neck, I want to make it slimmer a little. Most interesting part is of course, playing with hair. For this portrait, I just want to keep it simple. Maybe cover the ear a little bit, add some here, and still keep the pony tail, maybe turn it a little bit into here. Why not? We can do whichever we want it's our portrait. At the ribbon, something like this. We got the new outline which I'm happy with. I rendered and stylize some features that made the nose so sharper and the chin smaller. Anything you like or don't like, just change it. For a small portrait, I wanted to be in Victorian style so again we'll be outlining and it's going to be a silhouette portrait so with that in mind I'm trying to emphasize some features. Almost forgot. For this portrait, I want to turn the paper a little bit. I want the portrait to look down so for that I need to take this paper underneath and just turn it down. The face looks a little bit down like this. Again, for the neck, and make a shoulder a little bit higher for the lips. You can see I just left that part of the outline I didn't like and just I'm drawing next to it. This is pretty good. Here, I wouldn't be drawing good pointed too, make that short and maybe down because I wanted to be in Victorian style. Maybe we'll add a bond on top or something, strands of hair coming like this. My chin is not perfect, but it's okay. This is our second outline and for third outline, I would like the face to look up so I'm turning this paper opposites so it's looking up in that direction. They're pretty much doing the same thing. However, we're changing the hair however we want it and changing the features a little bit, not too much. It's still a self portrait so doesn't have to look realistic but it still has to resemble a person of you. The eye will go here. For this portrait, I would like her to be Renaissance style reminding of Botticelli paintings, something like that, very romantic so I want it to be wavy here. Just to keep it interesting for the class, I picked a different style, but you can keep it just simple hair. Just want to show you the different ways. You can just pick your favorite painter and do it in that style. Here we have my hair shape and here we'll keep going in a wavy weights. This is not the final, is still very find on the water card papers, so don't worry too much about it. Here we'll have probably a little braid or something and again, let's draw the lips like this. After we have our outlines and we are happy with them, we have to transfer them onto waterguard paper and I'll show you how, in the next video. 5. Transferring the Outline to the Paper: [MUSIC] To transfer our portrait from a tracing paper into watercolor paper, we'll need to use a regular pencil, a graphite pencil, and with that, I will turn the tracing paper another side. I'll show you on the smallest one because it's the same with the bigger ones. What we'll do, we'll just outline it with graphite [NOISE]. So we turn the paper first. You may dunk some more strands of hair here. Outlined it. Then I'll take our watercolor paper. [NOISE]. Then place the portrait where we want to. In the middle. A small painter tape piece. Next we'll go again with our colored pencil, we take a different color so I know where I outlined. Just go around. So the graphite on another side will imprint into watercolor paper. [NOISE]. Just like this. Also these as you add a drawing, I would like to add a small frame and it's going to be some leaves. So I'm drawing it with graphite and I will explain why. So we can transfer it right away, that's why. So here are some leaves, very simple frame. Just branches or leaves on each side of the silhouette. So now I'm going to take the tape. [NOISE] So you can see the silhouette. So let's place this branch on the one side. Again, with graphite I am outlining it. So it transfers into watercolor paper [NOISE]. Press it enough. We can see it. So let's go on with time. Yes. I can see it. I hope you can see it too, but if you don't you for sure we'll see it on your own drawing. Now, I need symmetrically to place this branch and do the same thing on another side as symmetrical as you can. Now it doesn't matter. We can go with colored pencil or water on graphite. As long as we don't smudge it too much and don't get our hand dirty. So you can see we transferred our outline into watercolor paper. Now we actually can start finishing our artwork. We'll do the same with all the outlines, I'll just do it behind the scenes. Then we can start painting our silhouette portrait. 6. Silhouette Portrait 1: Silhouette portrait is probably one of the easiest ways you can create a self portrait. However, it's beautiful and you can use it for a logo or profile picture on your social media. To create it, you just need to outline your profile and some features you want like we did with the bun, and some strands of hair. Then pick a brush with a very sharp tip, especially if your silhouette is small. Just stay focused and pick a color. I'm picking the dark green, which is called blackish green in this palette. We put it into a paint palette, of course, before we paint and just start painting. I usually start from the nose to make sure I don't mess up the profile. If I do, I just start again on a fresh piece of paper indeed. Nose. A little bit of hair. You can make it in dark color or light color, or you can do it colorful, like mixing different colors like we did in the colorful watercolor or silhouette class, maybe a first class. Then I have a bun. Because it's a dark color, I just don't really pay attention if a paint is dry or not. I just can overlay it. However, if you are creating a beautiful light watercolor wash, you have to pay attention to work faster so your paint doesn't dry. Again, we can correct a little bit as we go. I'm leaving those strands of hair after I finish painting the main part. Once we get to the neckline and we want all the lines to be flowing, some the angles. For the shoulders, I'm just rounding it up like this, but we also could round it up like this. It doesn't matter, however you like it. Just to make it more fun, we'll add some strands of hair curling like that. We have our silhouette. Now, we have to paint little leaves to frame it. Of course, I've never do this in this water because you usually start from the left to the right if you are right-handed and opposite if you're left-handed, so you don't smudge what you already painted. This is a very easy way to create a self portrait. However, it's elegant, romantic, and beautiful. You can see my green is not drying well here so I'm adding some more. Let's finish this leaves. You can paint more leaves, flowers, whichever frame you want. Most can't see this. Let's [inaudible] really well. This is one of the ways of creating a silhouette portrait. Next, I want to show you another way of creating silhouette portrait. I'll use the same outline, but the result will be different. 7. Silhouette Portrait 2: Another way to create a silhouette is to cut it out of a paper, paint it and put it over something beautiful which you like, like your landscape. To do this, I used a thinner paper. It's not watercolor paper, it's mixed media. I think it feels way thinner than the watercolor paper. Again, I transferred the silhouette the same way. I'm just refining it with a pencil. [NOISE] Then I'll be cutting it with X-ACTO knife. Cut off this piece of paper. However, you can use small scissors if you don't like using paper knife or X-ACTO knife or a scalpel or something like that. This is just to refine it more however we want. You can change the hairstyle. Let's cut it. Make sure you use cutting mat underneath so it's safe for you and you don't cut your table. Let's hope it comes out good. [MUSIC] Take your time. [NOISE] Make sure you always cut towards you. It's easier even if it doesn't sound safe, but [NOISE] it's definitely easier to cut the paper if you are using X-ACTO knife. Just turn the paper any way you're comfortable, like I do. Hopefully I'm still in the frame here. It's nothing fancy, just cut out the silhouette, trying not to damage the outline because the white paper with which we'll be using. [NOISE] [MUSIC] Let's carefully try to take it out. [MUSIC] Here is our silhouette. We can erase whichever pencil lines we have. Let's just look what you have around. For example, I brought these paintings of mine. Landscape, it's a peony, lotus flower, and another landscape we painted in another class. Most of my portraits need to be digital. So just place it somewhere where you want and snap a picture, and you have your digital silhouette portrait. You move it a little bit and you get a totally different view. You can look whichever part you like the most, like this one. Let's take another picture of this one. Let's try some other images too. This lotus flower. See we get a totally different result. Let's take another picture. [MUSIC] Keep looking for different options like this one, I think. You can get a myriad of portraits just juxtaposing your silhouette into the painting already painted. This is a bit too much, but why not? Just play with paintings you have or you can also use some map of the place you like. This is beautiful. Let's take a picture of this one too. We're taking pictures and then cropping it and we end up with a beautiful portrait. 8. Silhouette Portrait 3: Another way I wanted to show you by using the silhouette is to paint it with white paint on the dark paper. For that well take these. I'll be using white gouache, but you can use white acrylic paint or white ink, whichever you want. To transfer the portrait, I'll just take a white pencil or light blue or any light pencil. Take a piece of dark paper. This is just a craft paper. Outline using pieces of pencil here. Just outline with shape. Like this. Then I can take our paint and can start painting. Clean water, of course. You can even use a white marker or something for this. This is so simple, but it still ends up so beautiful for its simplicity. It's nothing complicated, just fill the shape. You can add several layers if you need to. Simple like mine, don't really mix this brush too well, so maybe chalk. I'm going to make it as smooth as possible. This one look just smooth now but a few layers probably will. I also want to show you how we can add some more elements around it. Pretty much the same as we would do with watercolor, but this will look more like a cameo because it's on a dark background. Again, I'm trying to smoothen the brushstrokes. Nothing complicated, just patience and stay focused. We filled our silhouette itself. Now, while it dries, we can add some beautiful branches around with leaves. Why don't we have berries, it can have flowers. After it completely dries, you'll see if you need another layer on it or not to make it more opaque. This is very relaxing so you can paint as many branches and berries as you want. I won't be painting too many because of the length of the class, but I want to keep it at reasonable length. But normally, I would play with the branches and berries a lot. Let's paint a little bird here too, and another branch. Maybe a few more berries. I should stop before I get carried away and keep painting for hours. These are our silhouette portraits. Next, we'll get into linework portrait type. 9. Line Art Portrait: [MUSIC] Line art portrait, one of the rules is to wet your watercolor very well. [NOISE] Before you start, decide on the color, pick a brush you are competent with with a nice sharp tip and the one you just love using. This is a type of portraits I would try several times because you have to be very brave with brush strokes. I'll be using Prussian blue for this. Just be brave with your brush strokes and if it doesn't come out, just do it again because it's such a fast technique. We transferred our outline into watercolor paper. Now starting with a nose, I'm making one brush stroke. Next one goes up, and again. Try to vary the thickness of your brush strokes like this. Normally I'd paint the face first and if it doesn't come out good, I just start again. I don't have to outline everything. We just need to give the hints of the features. I love this type of portraits and they are very light. Of course they remind me of Matisse. This line is probably too thick but nothing we can do about it. Next is this line, this. Pretty much, I'm just repeating the pencil lines. However, you can see I'm leaving the gaps which makes it looking more painterly, more alive or interesting. Just be brave with your brush. Don't be afraid to make some unperfect lines like these. If you are not happy result, just start again. I can show you how I did several ones experimenting with short hair, with open eye, with wavy hair, and just a simple kind. Now on the video I made this one, which is pretty good. I'll show you how to do a similar thing, but not a watercolor. When I said not with watercolor, it's actually not true because we also be using watercolor but we can do the same thing with permanent marker. Just very important, make sure it's waterproof. I took a piece of watercolor paper transfer to the portrait again. I'm using Sharpie permanent marker. You can use any marker or ink. Just make sure it's waterproof. What I want to do again, I want to create a line art portrait but then I want to add some watercolor to it. Maybe we needed to have a little bigger size drawing for this. We'll see. Once again, I'm leaving the gaps between the lines. Very fast, very easy. We have this wire like portrait. Next, let's let it dry a little bit. Then I'll take a bigger brush [NOISE] and let's add some color to it. Taking some skin tone color, painting just a little bit, or you can just leave it black and white. Sure, it's okay. Let's stick some blush, magenta. Paint it on the cheek and add some hair color too, which is this, brown. [NOISE] We end up with a line portrait with watercolor but in slightly different style. Some brave brush strokes. You can get outside the lines. Let's color around, adventure. Why not? [NOISE] This is another way to make a line art portrait in ink and watercolor. You can use acrylic paint or ink or permanent marker, even ta fine liner for a finite lines. [MUSIC] 10. Painting an Illustrative Portrait: The last type of portrait I want to show you is illustrative portrait. It's the most fun, but it takes so much time to create. However, I suggest you to create a generic portrait which represents you so you can reuse it again and again, and I'll show you how to change a smooth later after we paint it. What I did first, I transferred portrait from tracing paper into watercolor paper, then I added some details with pencil, like this braid and more weaves. I refined the lines. I suggest you do the same, however, keep your pencil lines way finer than mine. I kept on few curves so you can see it better, but for your watercolor artwork please, if they're too thick, just erase them slightly and clean the paper very well before you go into it. First, what we need to do is to paint the skin, and for skin it to be smooth, we need to mix a lot of color with water into our paint palette so we don't need to go back and mix more because if we start mixing more, it may not match with previous mix and we can see the difference in a skin tone. The next rule is to leave it completely dry and see how it looks and if it's still light, then we can add another layer of the skin tone color, but not earlier than it's completely bone dry. For skin tone, I'll be using this burnt sienna, and I'll add a little bit of raw umber to it. Also if you have red ocher, I don't have it here, that works great for skin tone. If you're not used to paint skin tones, then just try mixing different mixes and see which one matches yours the best. Usually the watercolor goes lighter after it dries, so take that in consideration, could make it a little darker than you want and it will lighten up. But also if you make it light enough and you can keep it in layers to darken it later, and if you did too dark, then you can't do that. Make sure your water is clean too. Also the bigger your painting, the bigger brush you'll need. However, make sure the tip of your brush is so sharp. It's hard to paint on top, but I'm doing my best. I think it's good. Let's have a little more water before it's too late. Now I have to go fast before it dries in patches, and will cover everything, the lips and the eyes, the entire face. We don't go back into water. We just go back into mix. I work very fast. It's a little darker than my skin, but I hope it will lighten up, and I don't want it to be darker, just mine is not. The same thing with the neck. Just move very fast before your edge dries, that's why we used them, not making this one already, but it's okay. Imperfections are always welcome, they're part of the process. We're moving very fast here. [MUSIC] So this is our skin. Your Imperfections, but it's okay, let it dry and look what happens. Next what do we need to paint is the hair, and hair we'll be painting in sections. We'll go from farthest edge of a skin tone so we don't mess up with the skin, and we'll approach this way, which is, it does make sense when you paint, you're supposed to paint from the hand you don't paint with, from left to right for me, but we'll do it. I'm taking Van **** brown for the hair because my hair is brown, but you can choose any color your hair is. I'd love to add a little bit of Payne's gray to it to make it even darker. The hair doesn't matter if it's perfectly smooth color because hair is not smooth, and so textured. First we're painting it in one color, in one washer list, and then we can add details to the hair. I'll leave a braid now and we'll move into this section, and I think the skin is dry, and this patches list, so we can paint this, but make sure it's dry. You can even curve, have a tint, something to not to mess up with the skin, if you're impatient like me. You can add highlights. You can add different tones here in your hair. However, try not to add any flowers or anything. We'll be adding that later, and I'll show you how because we want to keep this portrait the one which you can reuse again and again for different seasons. I'll be showing you how I'm doing it, and hopefully you like it and use it too. Again, colors a little bit to keep a watercolor wash more interesting. I'm mixing Van **** with burnt umber, you can play with that too. It's not as strict as weave skin tone. This hairstyle is not exactly which I wear, but I wanted to make a painting inspired by Botticelli, so ladies, I thought it'd be fun to have a braid here and some weaves. The weaves we can add later, just we could paint a little brown and end the lines, but it's easier for me like this. Instead of painting over the whole section just brown, I'd rather go with different browns right now and add the texture right away. Nice. So this is the hair. Next we'll take a little lighter brown and paint the braid. To make a lighter brown, I just add the water to the brown I had. They see this is wet, so it will bleed, and I am aware and I'm fine with that because I know what I will do next. We'll be adding more shadows to this braid, but for now we'll leave it to dry. Next, we can get back into the face, so we will wash your brush, and we'll take some more of this skin tone mix, and we'll add this line here, and maybe a little bit on the nose on eyelid, not too much. Next, let's take some brown and paint their eye brow, just two lines like this. The lips I'll take some pink magenta, very diluted with water, nothing crazy, and I'll just paint it over the face toll. Little too dark, so I will give that some color by washing the brush and then drag it in paper towel. Nice. Next, I'll take some paints gray diluted water, and maybe add some Van **** brown shade and will paint the eye. This is good. Now we have to wait until our hair dries, and we'll finish this part. I think we can also paint right here brown. Then we'll be ready with this main part. So let's let it dry, and meanwhile, we'll be cutting other elements for our future artworks. 11. Preparing the Elements for Collage: If you are practicing watercolor a lot, if you take a lot of classes, then you probably have a lot of pieces of artwork you don't know what to do with like some random like this autumn flowers we painted, and if you already used them in a pattern or something. You can easily now cut them to use for a watercolor collage for beautiful, creative self portrait. The ranunculus, this rose, for example, can easily cut. Apple blossom from a blossom, from this pink blossom class, etc. While our portrait is drying, I just want to cut this sunflower. Again, for cutting, you can use scissors or you can use an X-ACTO knife or whichever tools you feel comfortable with. It's nothing hard in cutting. Besides it's a thick paper and you make sure that your blade is sharp. Again, it doesn't have to be perfect. Just enjoy the cutting. Let's hope our portrait will dry while we do this. It's nice to have a lot of elements on hand. For example, for winter holidays, you'd be collaging into your portrait some poinsettia or some winter greenery should be nice too too. I'll show you how to do it. I think you got the idea. You take this out and the same thing I'll do all around and then I'll do it behind the scene so I can get back into our project. 12. Illustrative Portrait Final Details: [MUSIC] [inaudible] is totally dry and what I noticed is I don't really like this part of the nose I painted, so try to lift some paint. For that, you need a synthetic flat brush, and just wet it into clean water and dry it in a paper towel and then just lift the paint you don't like, like this. This is better. Next, let's take some Payne's gray, mix it with a Van **** brown, or take some other color which matches your hair. What we'll be doing, we'll be adding texture in the braid. Just showing the lines. Very simple, nothing complicated. [MUSIC] This is good. Now let's add some waves to the hair too. [MUSIC] [inaudible] darken all this part, like this. [MUSIC] Mix it with different brands with paints gray to add different shades. This is burnt sienna, some Payne's gray, add some shadow here like that. [MUSIC] This is enough. [inaudible] I want to do is add a little bit more eyelashes to self-portraits. I do whatever I want. This is good. Maybe a little bit more pink to the lips so much. When I look here, it looks like we need a little bit of shadow on this part. Next, what we need to do is to erase all pencil lines and then cut out our portrait. [MUSIC] [NOISE] Just be careful with wet cards with eraser. Don't merge anything. It didn't [inaudible] wet until it all was dry. [NOISE] Hopefully, you don't have as many pencil lines because you didn't leave them as figures [inaudible] I did, did you? [NOISE] [MUSIC] Next, I will take a look [inaudible] the knife and cut out her portrait. You can just leave it like that too. That's okay. You want to use it just like that. You can cut first. You don't need to instantly transform it into a collage. [MUSIC] [NOISE] If you don't have any paintings you want to cut, just go into the classes and specifically look through watching you would like to add to your portion, maybe some flowers, maybe seashell, or maybe fruits, or whimsical birds, tropical flowers. Just paint those in the classes and then come back and cut them out, and we can glue them together. I won't be actually gluing them, I'll just be pasting and taking pictures and also be the portraits. [NOISE] [MUSIC] There she is. Now, before we get into creating beautiful compositions, we need to put this portrait there, the pressure, on the book or something so it stays flat or we can try to iron it too. I'll put it under the pressure and their book. Meanwhile, I'll keep cutting more elements just like I did with this sunflower, and then I'll be creating compositions, taking pictures, and we'll end up with a series of self portraits in watercolor collage technique. 13. Watercolor Collage Portraits: So all our portrait painting is relatively straightened. It still has a little bit of bend, but I don't mind if it leaves a little bit of shadow. If you are making this as a present for someone, or fan, you probably would want to glue your elements. I usually use Stic glue or a double-sided tape for that, but I usually don't glue my portraits because I like their [inaudible] nature that you can compose them, then you can just take them apart and make totally new artwork with them. I got some elements, not as many as I wanted because I run out of patience. But I will show you how to work with them, how I do it. Also, I have some background papers, different colors to experiment. What you'll be doing, I'll be just composing the portraits on paper and just take a picture of it and see if I like it. Then I'll have a portrait if I like it. If not, I'll just change it until I like it. For example, this is a blue paper. Let's see, I got a piece off here, but it doesn't matter because I'll be cropping the portraits any way I want. Again, look, you can turn and change the angle of the face, if you want to. Then let's put some sunflower and put it right here. I can play and change it like this. Look, if we crop it here, we already have a nice portrait. However, I wanted to add some boutique elements. For that, I'll be just making some confettis out of tracing paper and just scattering them. This is not tracing paper. Just by scattering them around. Let's make some more. Nice. Let me take out all the way these. This is my first portrait with collage, even I didn't glue anything. I will take a picture and then I will crop it and I'll have a portrait to use as a profile, or just as artwork. You can now play and see where to place this. I think I like this better. I need to lower. Let's take a picture. Next one, I want it to be on a blush background, this one. You can see how instantly it changes the atmosphere, very gentle. For elements, I'll try to use these magnolias I cut out. Again, let's play and see where we place them. Something like this. I think it's nice. Also, I'll have these branches because I like paper cutting. I like all over the place. We can try to put this here, this here, more here. Maybe one more in the hair. Yes, I really like this, so let's take a picture and we'll have another artwork. Next, I wanted to just show you that as a background, we can use some paintings you have or some abstract watercolor backgrounds like this one. You can see how nice it looks. If you are like us in a household with random stars and just playing, you can use those too. This, one more here. If you need more white elements, you can always turn your cutout paper into another side. The bird here. We don't need this. Our bird comes. We go with flower here. We could need another star here. This is good. Let's take a picture. We don't have to use just abstract paintings, you can also use flower painting like this. That's our flower painting I really like. You can move the composition any way you want. I think I like it like this. Maybe like this. Yes, I think I like it like this. Let's find this more flower to her hair, and a flower to cover the shoulder. Again, we'll be cropping this, so don't worry too much about that. Let's take a picture. Good thing about using your paint stuff for this is that you can showcase the painting while posting your self-portrait. Here's another painting I wanted to show you how I would use. I don't have to use it like this, like it's abnormal or anything, however we can. Looks good. Let's take a picture of this too, because it does look good. We can play like this all day long, just making new compositions, new flowers, more flowers, less flowers, and branches. I hope you enjoyed this. You can also add some natural ornaments to our compositions and combine them with watercolor, or just by themselves. I'm going to use fresh flowers. You can use all kinds of stuff and just experiment, and feel creative whatever you do. This is what I wanted to show you about watercolor collage and compositions. 14. Thank you!: [MUSIC] Thank you so much for joining me in this class. I hope you had a chance to paint with me. If you like the class, please leave a review and upload the project to your project section of the class. If you are sharing your artwork on Instagram, please tag me so I can see your beautiful art. I'll see you in the next class. Bye. [MUSIC]