Learn to Paint Realistic Muffins Without Reference

1. Introduction: [MUSIC] Hi everyone, my name is Mia, and today I'll show you how to paint these muffins without reference. This does not mean we're not going to look at references at all. But instead, I'll show you how I look for references in order to pick up the characteristics that I like about them. Like the shape, form, and color of a certain muffin. I can apply it to my own version of muffin flavors. Muffins are one of the subjects which are really easy to paint and draw. However, in this class, we're going to take it to the next level and try to paint it realistically without the use of reference. I will also include the drawing portion in this class. You'll be able to create your own base sketch for your painting. However, if you would like to get right to painting, I will also have the outline available for you to download in the projects and resources section. This is only available to be downloaded through desktop. If you're watching this through mobile, just keep that in mind. In this class, I'll be showing you three different flavors of muffins that I've chosen. The first one being the classic chocolate chip. I am going to paint them as chocolate chunks, but you can paint them as chocolate chips too if you will like. The second one is a blueberry muffin and as for the third one, I picked rosery and white chocolate chip muffin. These all have a similar base technique in terms how to paint the key portion of them. So if you have the techniques down, you can actually bring this across a variety of flavors. And hopefully, you'll be able to paint within your imagination after this class. For this painting, though it's not too difficult, it will still require for you to have some basic knowledge of watercolor techniques like color mixing and things like brush and water control. So I would recommend for you to take this class if you are intermediate levels. However, if you just started with watercolors, but you feel like you have a good grasp of the medium, feel free to go and get physical and see what your experience is like. Just a disclaimer before we start this course, I will be skipping or speeding through parts of the painting if my hand is either inactive or off the camera. So it'll seem like I'm painting really fast. So I would always recommend for students to watch the lesson or the class prior to painting along. This way you know what's going to come next and you have a good grasp of what the course structure is like. And when you are ready to paint along, you can pause in between each step. This way you won't feel rushed and you can paint at your own pace. So if this sounds like something you guys are interested in giving a go, let's begin. 2. Supplies: [MUSIC] In this lesson I'll go over the supplies that I'll be using. Firstly let me just go over the paper. This is Strathmore 500 Hot Press, and 300 GSM. I'm going to use two of these, one for the final painting, and another one where I'll be using to demonstrate certain parts of the painting. You can use this as scrap paper for swatches as well as practices. It's better to use the same brand because different paper tend to absorb the paint differently. Next I'll be using this sketchbook as I show you how to draw your own muffins. Since it's just for sketches you don't really need any particular paper, you can just use print paper if you want to. Here are the colors I'll be using including Bleedproof White. I'll go over them in detail before painting the muffins, but I'll also give you a list at the end of this lesson so you can have them ready. For the palette, I just use a cheap plastic palette from [inaudible]. You can use porcelain palette or plastic. I would just suggest to use white or light-colored palettes so it's easy for you to see the color mixtures. Next, I'll be using a clean jar to hold my water, tissue to clean and dab excess water or paint off my brush. For the brush I'm only going to use one. This is [inaudible], size 2, and it's a synthetic round brush. The brand itself doesn't matter too much because most synthetic brushes are very similar, but if your brush is already a bit frayed at the tip, you might also want to use another smaller brush to get to the smaller areas in the painting. I'll also be using this pencil and eraser. The pencil is by Pentel Sharplet, and the filling is HB. For the eraser I'll be using this brand by Boxy. It's my favorite eraser because it erases really well without too much pressure. This is optional, but you can also use a hairdryer to make the drying process much quicker. That's pretty much it for the supplies. I'll just give you a list here that you might want to screenshot to get everything ready before we start the class. [MUSIC] 3. Looking for References: [MUSIC] Here are the references that I've picked so far. Personally, I just like to create a mood board on interest since I feel this what interests was paid for, but you can also save images from Google and print them out to compile them together if you would like. The pictures that I have chosen here, might not be the perfect picture that I can completely copy straight out of, but it's more of a compilation of things I like including color shape of the liner, shape of the muffin and how the muffin cracks are formed, and also how the toppings look on top of the muffins with the flavors that I have chosen paint. This is just aid your visualization of the subject. If I want to see how the blueberries are formed and things like that, I will look for an image specifically just for that characteristic that I'm looking for. Let's start with the pictures that I have chosen to reference the shape or the silhouette of a muffin that I like. Personally, I already knew from the start that I always want my muffins to look quite tall, and I like the high-rise of this muffin top. I personally like how this one booms up and I like the simple cracks and colors of these muffins. I wanted the center to be more like the one on the right-hand side though, but I do want the sides to spread a little bit wider, but I find that this image is a really good start. This is a second one that I like. Again, I loved the yellow and golden brown color for the crust, and for this one, I love how the sides are a bit wider here. Though, I know for my painting I'd want at the top center to zoom up a little bit more. For this one, I also loved the blueberries and how their place, and it has a slight boos. This one isn't the flavor that I'm going to paint, but I really love how clean the cracks are here, and it's also a good reference to see how some of the shapes of the cracks can be formed. A second point for this one is also the liner. I really love the white area on top of the liner here, I think that it's acute detail and I'd like to incorporate that in my painting. These ones also have really nice silhouettes, I also love the shape and angle of the liner, and I also like the golden brown color off the liner and whatever's underneath the muffin top. This works especially well with the bright color of the blueberries, so the golden brown color on the muffin and the liner is something that I definitely want to incorporate into my painting. Let's move on to the muffin flavor. For the first one, I'm going to do the chocolate chunks. Originally I wanted to do regular chocolate chips, but I came across this image and I personally like the chocolate chunks instead. I like how I feel like I can play around with the color of the faces more and because the shape is more geometric, but this image lacks the cracks and the texture of the chocolate squares that I'm looking for. I went to look for other images where I can search for those textures, and here's one that I found. Again, the base color of the cake is different, but I like how the squares are not cut perfectly here, and some of the angles of the chocolate chunks are a bit weird. Another plus for this image is also how the chocolate chunks stick to the muffin. I loved the interaction of the chocolate bits with the crux of the muffin, so it looks well embedded into the cake. This is something that I'll take into consideration even though the color of the base will be different in my painting. Going back to the previous image, I think that this will be a good reference photo for you to use if you want to do the chocolate chips instead, because the shapes of the chocolate chips are fairly clear here for you to use as reference. We've gone to the blueberry topping, I know we went over this before, but for this image, I like how wrinkly the berries are, and you can see that it's still somewhat plump, but it's pruney. I also love the juices flowing from the berries all the way down to the muffin liner, and I like how the choosiness also help enhance the shape and curves off the muffin top, which will really help to create the form of the muffin as we're painting them later. Let's Move street to the raspberries now. The form isn't the best here, but I love the vibrancy of the colors. I can also see from this, that the raspberries can be easily broken into random pieces, so the shapes can be more squiggly on the muffin top. I also really like how vibrant the red is against the liner. This is something that I want to also bring across to the blueberry muffins as well as chocolate muffin as well. Here's another example of how the red looks against the liner. I like how this one flows from the top to the bottom of the liner, and you can also see how the white chocolate chips are going to be burnt around the edges from this image. It's not too clear, so let's look at another image. Here's a clear reference for the white chocolate chips, I like how the shapes has more formed here, and you can also that most of the chocolate chips for head down, so most of the circles are flat, but there's still some with the top swirl showing, but they're mostly burnt around the tip and also some of the edges. You can also see how they've been embedded into the muffin, including the raspberries. That's pretty much for my compilation of images that I've gathered for the specific characteristics that I'm looking for in a muffin. But if you would like to create a different flavor or shape, you can also create your own mood board as well before starting your painting. Hopefully from this lesson, you'll be able to see how and why I pick a certain reference images, and hopefully this is something that you'll be able to bring across to any painting no matter the subject. [MUSIC] 4. Drawing Basic Shapes: [MUSIC] In this lesson, I'm going to go over the basic shape of the muffin, so I'm not worried about the three-dimensional form for now. I just want to simplify the shapes. It's just divided into two sections, which are the muffin top and the liner. You can change the characteristics of these muffins by playing with the height of the liner and the width of the liner, as well as the side angles of the liner. From this, you can also determine the height and width of your muffin tops as well. Some can just make straight up or some can melt to the side during the baking process, which gives you that crunchy muffin top on the sides. Sometimes the liner could even cover the side of the muffins if the butter wasn't filled to the maximum capacity when baked. These are all the different factors you can take into account before drawing your own. Here, I'm just sketching out a few different types. You can do this to determine which muffin shape you prefer for your painting. Since in this class I'll be painting three types of muffins, you can choose one style that you like or you can even mix up these different muffin shapes for all three muffins and your composition. 5. Drawing Liner and Angles: Here, I'm going to show you the different angles you can paint your muffin in. This first angle that I'm drawing right now is what I have used so far from the previous lesson, and this is if we're looking at the muffin straight from the front so the liner looks more or less straight, the bottom could have a slight curve or it could also be straight. Moving to the left, I'm going to change the angle so we're looking at it from a higher viewpoint, and now we can see a slight curve to the liner at the top and bottom. This is even more exaggerated as we lift the viewpoint higher. As we move to a higher angle, the liner will also be covered by the top of the muffin until we basically just see the round top of the muffin if we're looking at it directly up above. With the previous angle, you can see the edges of the muffin liner, but with a higher angle, the tip of the ridges on the muffin will no longer be visible as it will be covered by the muffin top. Now we're going to shift the angle lower, in which case the curve off the line of the muffin will face opposite direction. This angle would look nice if we do it subtly. But if we exaggerate the angle to an even lower angle, the liner would end up looking longer and more dominant, which is not what I'm looking for in this composition. The edges of the liner would also face the opposite direction here, so the curves would be facing upwards instead of downwards with this angle. [MUSIC] Here just examples of what the tip of the liner would look like, the curves would be exaggerated as we exaggerate the angle further, it would look more flat from the front, and if we shift the angle to the opposite direction, the edges would curve the opposite direction also, and with the curves being more exaggerated as we lower the angle further. 6. Drawing Form and Features: [MUSIC] In this lesson, I'll be showing you how to draw a muffin form and features, which you can adapt to paint different flavors of muffins. I'm going start with the base of the muffins. I want my painting to have a slightly higher angle, but more or less, eye level. But this is something that you can adjust according to the angles that I've shown you in the previous lesson. It's up to you which part you want to draw out first. It can be easier to draw the liner first for your final composition, so it's easier to align all the muffins. But since this is just a sketch, I'm starting with a muffin top. As I mentioned, you can make the sides of the muffin top wider, or make a dome upwards evenly, or even something softer, which would make the top not rise as much, but more of a fluffy, even dome. What I want to make sure at this point is that the dome is directly in the middle of the liner and the angles of the muffin liner is, more or less, even on both sides. Sometimes it also helps to paint a line in the middle of the muffin, to make sure that the shapes are centered. [MUSIC] Next, I'm going to show you how I draw out the cracks, which I find is iconic in muffins. I like to draw them out from the side, so I can play around with how the crumbs are being formed. Of course, you can also draw them out in the middle, but this is just a personal choice. I like to create uneven, jagged lines and play around with the width off the gap in-between the lines, and I try to vary the shape of the cracks. [MUSIC] Next, I'm going to erase the lines on the edges of the cracks, and I make concave shapes in-between. This can be around concave shape. It can also be a little bit more angled. As for the crust, I'm going to make them protrude out more, especially near the cracks, and you have the choice of making the edges a bit more jagged or smoother and rounder. This just depends on the texture that you're going for. I'd use more rounder shapes, if you want to make the muffin look more fluffy with less of a crunchy crust. But even if you're going for a more smoother and softer crust, make sure to keep the shapes uneven still, to give a natural form. [MUSIC] As for the liner, I'm going to make the curve facing down. As I get towards the sides, hopefully you can start to see that the curves are facing outwards according to the direction. To make it easier for you to see, I'm just going to erase the line at the top, and I'm going to draw out the edges off the liner again. Whenever I draw this, I always like to start in the middle, because that's where the curve will be facing downwards exactly, and this way I can shift the curves to face outwards little by little as I get towards the right and the left hand. [MUSIC] For the actual sketch for the final painting, I won't be drawing the lines, but I just want to show you how to divide up these curves that we just drew out earlier. Whenever the curves face inwards towards the muffin, that's where I'll draw out the lines. As for the curves which are facing outwards, I'm going to draw the lines where the tip of the curves are. [MUSIC] Next, I'm going to draw out the toppings. For this first one, I'm going to draw a simple choc chip muffin. For the choc chips, I'm going to draw mine as choc chip slices or just small squares. But if you want, you can also turn them into those little Hershey Kisses shapes. For the squares, I like to make them face the muffins, which will help with a three-dimensional form of the muffin as well, and I turn them into flat cubes by adding on the sides. Before I finish off the shapes, I draw out uneven crumbs, so it looks like they're attached to the muffin. I also try to make the shapes imperfect by curving the lines slightly or adding cracks to the chocolate. Or even add really weird angles sometimes, because the chocolate will most probably be deformed after being processed into the muffins. [MUSIC] The blueberries are very simple. I'm just going to draw deformed circles basically, and don't forget to draw some which are peeking from behind the muffins as well. That's it for the sketch. But as we paint later, I'm going to draw out the texture of the juices oozing out of the blueberries, to make it look more convincing. [MUSIC] For the next one, I'm going to paint raspberry white chocolate muffin. As for the chocolate chips this time, I'm going to draw them as the Hershey Kisses shape, which is more or less like this. But I'm going to draw them facing downwards, mostly to make it a bit easier. If you want though, you can also just stick with the cubes, just like the classic choc chip muffins. For this first one, I'm just going to show you what it will look like, if it's facing downwards, is basically just like a flat cylindrical shape, and then I close it up with the crumbs, just like what I did with the cubes before. For this next one, I'm going to make it face upwards, so I want to create the Hershey Kisses shape for the top, and then I'm going to close it up with the crumbs, so the bottom is not clearly showing. [MUSIC] As for the raspberries, I like to make random blobs and chunks, and I like to also make smaller dots as well, as the raspberries can easily be broken into pieces. For this one, just like the blueberries, I'm going to paint them with the juice oozing out as well. [MUSIC] 7. CHOC CHIP: Colours: [MUSIC] Here are the colors that I'll be using for this first muffin. Firstly, this is Hansa Yellow Medium by Daniel Smith, Quin Sienna by Daniel Smith, Yellow Ocher by Holbein, Sepia by Holbein, Mineral Violet by Holbein, and Paynes Grey Bluish by Schmincke. For the highlights and sugar dusting, I'll be using Bleed Proof White by Dr. Ph. Martin's. 8. CHOC CHIP: Muffin Base: Let's begin to paint. I'm going to start with the base color in this lesson, and we're going to be making a few color mixtures, which we're going to be using for the base of all the muffins. Firstly, I'm going to mix enhance yellow medium with a little bit of yellow ocher. I'm going to use this to paint the muffin top minus the cracks and the chocolate. Even though I'm mixing these two colors, I always like to have it separate but touching on my palette. This way I can adjust the ratio if I ever need to. For this I'm going to use a very light consistency so I added a lot of water. Whenever I mix a light consistency, there would usually be a heavier load on my brush. I made sure to tap off the excess using my tissue. As I'm applying this color very lightly, I'm wiggling my brush around to create the soft crumbly texture. However, this is not necessary because we're still just doing the base color. I just want to make sure that everything is applied very lightly and the texture is something that we can build as we progress with more colors. If you want to though, this is where I just warm up my hands and practice the movement in order to get those crumbly textures when I start to incorporate the golden brown colors. While we're on the subject, let me just show you the texture that I'm trying to make up close. This is the movement that I do when I'm painting the texture on the muffin. This is to create the uneven crust. I'm using a darker color here just so it's easier for you to see. I mostly move up and down in curves and also twirling my brush around with the tip of my brush. The distribution of paint becomes a little bit more uneven and I also leave out some white negative space. I'm just going to draw a mini muffin top here. I'll just show you my thought process as I'm making this texture. Basically I'm still trying to somewhat follow the cross contour off the muffin top, this way the brushstrokes, if some of them are visible and the white negative space also follows the curvature or the cross contour line off the muffin. It will help with a three-dimensional forms so the muffin doesn't look too flat. Hopefully this is visible, but I'll also try to do it with pencil and hopefully it's clear for you guys to see. [MUSIC] As I layer on the different colors or the darker colors, I'm going to follow this same way of application. Because the base will most likely be dry, you can see that the edges are very distinct so I'll come back in with a clean damp brush to pull some of the excess paint outwards. This will create a softer transition. But while pulling the paint, I'll also follow the same movement so we don't lose and flatten the texture. That's basically my thought process to make the texture of the muffin for the base and the layers on top later on. If you feel uncomfortable with the movement or the motion after watching that, you can try it out on a scrap piece of paper first just to get used to it. But I'm just going to move along here to the actual painting. As I mentioned before, at this stage, it doesn't matter too much. You can actually just paint it flatly because we're still going to build on the layers. But this is a good chance for you to practice the movement or the motion on the actual painting without it causing too much of a disturbance, since we're only using light colors and it's only the base color which we're going to still layer on after this. Next I'm going to be painting the cracks. For this I used a mixture of paints gray-bluish, sepia with a lot of yellow ocher. The paint gray-bluish and the sepia is just there to slightly mute the color. Just like before, I'm going to use a very thin consistency so I added a lot of water and took off the excess with my tissue before applying the paint. I'm still going to use the same motion here to warm up my hands. You can see that I am just twirling and wiggling my brush around. I'm also leaving out some white negative space. If something like this happened and you start the puddle up the paint, you can always take the excess off by using tissue. [MUSIC] Once the base color is mostly dry, I'm going to use a mixture of quinn sienna with a little bit of yellow ocher. For this, I'm just going to throw my brush around to get a similar texture. I'm applying it starting from the bottom where the areas are protruding outwards because I'm just imagining that this would be the most baked area. Since I use a medium consistency, I'm just going to use extra water. I dumpen my clean brush and I pull the color that I've applied already and apply the excess paint around that area and also upwards while still trolling my brush around to create the same texture. I'm going to apply this to the left side as well. But as I move upwards, I'm going to start adding a little bit of the base color mix that I use. This golden brown color will be a little bit more yellow towards the top. [MUSIC] While during this motion, I'm only using the tip of my brush as you can see, this is so I don't cover as much area while I'm doing this and I'm leaving out small negative spaces. At the top here I don't want it to be too golden or too yellow, so I added yellow ocher and I'm just going to apply it the same way. If you accidentally put too thick of a consistency, you can always take the excess off using tissue while the paint is still wet. [MUSIC] Now I want to increase the vibrancy for the bottom portion. I'm just going to use the same color mixture as before. I'm using the quinn's sienna mixed with the yellow of the base color. Then after this, I'm just going to build a golden color further. [MUSIC] After I've increased the vibrancy, now I want to add more of the golden colors so I added more quinn's sienna in to the previous mixture, so it's a bit more reddish brown. I'm applying this to the bottom cross. [MUSIC] This time I'm also going to get close to the liner and paint directly on top of it. [MUSIC] If there are parts which needs softening, I would just use a clean damp brush to soften the edges and blend it with the base color. 9. CHOC CHIP: Choc Chip Base: [MUSIC] In this lesson, I'm going to be painting the base color of the chocolate chips. I'm going to start with a purplish brown mix by using a mix of Quinceana with mineral violet. I'm going to use a thin consistency to paint the faces of the chocolate chips which are facing the left side of the composition. When I was painting the texture of the muffin earlier, I twirled my brush around in order to get the crumbly texture of the crust. But this time, because I want to create a different surface, I'm painting lines as my brushstrokes so the negative shapes look a bit more geometric. Now, let me just show you up close what I did. It's not completely necessary to only use straight lines as your brushstrokes, but it does help to make these negative shapes turn into geometric shapes, which will help the form of the chocolate to be imperfect. [MUSIC] As for the darker colors on the sides, I'm going to apply it similarly. I'm making mostly straight lines with this, but I also want to use this darker color in order to cut off the sides, to again, make the chocolate squares look a little bit more unprocessed so it's not perfectly square, and these might have cracks or cuts which are uneven. You can go back in with a slightly thinner consistency to layer on more of these textures using those geometric shapes, again, to further exaggerate the imperfect form and the rough surface. [MUSIC] Just like the previous texture, this might be something that you might want to give a go on a scrap piece of paper. But if this makes sense to you and you want to paint straight on your final painting, you can also do that. But take advantage of your scrap paper to do drafts, and to do these exercises beforehand whenever you're feeling unsure about certain techniques. If trying it out with paint is still scary for you, you might also want to use pencil first. Again, I first sketch out the cube, and then this time I just use my pencil to create really random geometric shapes to add cuts and cracks on the chocolate, making the surface uneven. Hopefully, after sketching out with pencil, it might give you a better visualization. It's not necessary to do this. In fact, for me personally, I find it easier to just paint straight away. But, this is just a different approach and method that you might want to try out to help better visualize it. [MUSIC] You can continue to do this with pencil or with paint before you start painting on the actual painting until you're comfortable. But, I'm just going to continue on with the actual painting by showing you the next steps. Let's get back into it for the darker sides of the chocolate which are facing either downwards or to the right-hand side. I used a mixture of CPR with Quinceana. I used a medium consistency to begin with, and I use a slightly lighter consistency to paint on textures like cracks and things like that. I like to do this for the sides and also the midsection of the chocolate chips as well. I just tried to make the surface look uneven. You might not have anything in mind to create these random shapes. But, I just like adding darker colors randomly and preferably as geometric shapes, and this will help you visualize where to go next and where to add on the shadows after that. When you're unsure about adding certain details, it's always best to use a lighter consistency. This way you'll get a better visualization of it, and it's safer for you to layer on top of in case you make a mistake or to take off with tissue if the paint is still wet. [MUSIC] I'm going to do the same thing for these smaller cubes as well because the larger square is facing the top-left, I use the light consistency of the purplish-brown. For the bottom and the side, I use the darker mix of Quinceana and CPR. [MUSIC] If your chocolate chips look too squared, sometimes it helps to use the darker color to cut one of the edges of the square, and this way the chocolate chips won't look too perfectly squared. [MUSIC] Whenever you feel like you want a tone in-between the two-color mixtures that we've created, you can always use the two mixtures and mix them together. [MUSIC] Because the square is facing the right-hand side, is actually supposed to be darker. But because I wasn't confident enough, I started with a lighter consistency, and then I'll later build it up. This way if I've made a mistake of the shapes that I want to create, I can always take it off with tissue, and if I'm ready to darken it, I'll just layer on more colors. [MUSIC] For this whole class, I'll just be using one brush. But if your brush is a bit frayed and it doesn't come to a fine tip, and you're finding it hard to get to some smaller edges, you can always switch to a smaller brush. [MUSIC] 10. CHOC CHIP: Details for Muffin Top: [MUSIC] In this lesson, I'll be layering on more details and increasing things like the vibrancy, and also the value of the painting. I'm going to start out with the cracks. I am using the previous mix from the base, from the Hansa yellow medium and the yellow ocher. I also mix the base color from the cracks as well to mute it slightly, but it's not as blue. So the difference in the undertone is very slight here. I'm using a very light load on my brush, so I can use the tip of my brush and apply it using the same motion as I did for the rest of the muffin top. [MUSIC] For a wider crack like this one, I try to use a slightly thicker consistency, and I try to break up the shapes slightly, so parts of it will look like it's deeper than the rest. [MUSIC] After painting the cracks, I feel like the muffin top need to be a bit more vibrant. I'm going to go back in, starting with the base color again, with the Hansa yellow medium and yellow ocher. I'm just applying it to the bottom portion of this top part of the muffin. Still applying it with texture, and as I move downwards, I slowly add the mixture of quin sienna with yellow ocher. [MUSIC] This time, if you notice, I am putting a bit more pressure on my brush. The texture isn't as visible because I find that I added too much texture to begin with already. So this is mostly just a glaze, but I'm still leaving out a little bit of a negative space so I can see the base color through it. Now, I'm going to switch to the light consistency of this purplish brown from mixture of quin sienna and mineral violet. I use this to glaze lightly on top of the cracks. Just from my personal taste, I find that the color looks a bit too cold, so I want to warm it up by using this brown. [MUSIC] For the area of the cracks near the chocolate, I added a slightly thicker consistency of the quin sienna and sepia mixture. This is just to continue on from the chocolate, so the chocolate looks like it's melted into the muffin. [MUSIC] For the lighter cracks, I use a light consistency of the purplish brown, just to make it a little bit more consistent with the cracks at the bottom where the chocolates are. For this area here, I felt like it was looking empty, so I decided to just paint the darker brown color to show a little bit of a chocolate chip peeking through the muffin. Now, I'm going to work on the chocolate chips themselves. I'm going to add a bit more details like more cracks using a slightly thicker consistency than the base color, but I'm still doing this fairly lightly in case I don't like the detail that I painted on. Just like before, when I'm painting the details on the light face of the chocolate, which is facing where the light source is, I try to use a lighter consistency, this way I can control it much better, and I can adjust the random geometric shapes that I'm making on that area. Now I'm going to build the form of the muffin top further. I haven't added the shadows behind the liners. This is what I'm doing by using a mixture of sepia and quin sienna. I'm using the tip of my brush to get to those tiny areas on top of each small curves, and then I'm going to go back in with a clean damp brush to soften the edges and also extend it upwards. This is just going to give space underneath the muffin so it doesn't look too flat. [MUSIC] While I'm extending it upwards, I try to vary the height of the areas I'm painting. I'm also still doing the same motion to create the texture. If you feel like after extending it, it just keeps on going and going, but the color is still too dark, it means that your brush is holding too much of the paint. So you can clean it out again and create a clean damp brush to further pull it upwards. This way, if you keep cleaning your brush, it would take off more and more pigments to make a softer transition. After the top of the muffin has mostly dried, I find that the colors are a bit faded. So I'm just going to use the same color mixture but in a very thin consistency to add additional details. For the edges though, I decided to use a slightly thicker consistency, and I'm using the tips of my brush or you can also use a smaller brush. I'm just going to add burnt edges because I find that these parts are usually the crunchier areas. So I just want to portray that in the painting. After that, I also felt like the left side off the cracks look a little bit too blue still. So I used the same color to just glaze on the warm brown. I find that if the temperature stays the same, it looks flat, so I try to vary the temperature of the crack. Some parts are a bit more warm and some parts are a bit cooler. I also want to add a little bit of this color for the chocolate as well, but I also felt like it was still too light, so I added a bit more sepia to increase the contrast and value, and also to separate the edges. Now, going back to the muffin top again, I'm using the same color and painting near the chocolate chips while leaving out a little bit of the base color showing just to separate those edges. If not, the values would look too similar on the muffin and the chocolate chips. [MUSIC] 11. CHOC CHIP: Liner Base: [MUSIC] Since we have a good amount of detail for the muffin top, now I'm going to move on to the liner. I'm going back in with the same base color from Hansa yellow medium and yellow ocher. I'm going to use the tip of my brush or you can also use a smaller brush to paint the lines that we drew out earlier from the sketch. I'm just painting on clean lines in-between the curves that we've drawn out. When I'm painting the lines, I don't really care to paint it right to the bottom. But I left out a little bit of space since we're just going to fill in that bottom space with color anyway. But I do try to angle the lines as we drew it out before. In the middle, it's more straight and on the left and right and there are more angled. [MUSIC] Next thing I'm going to do here is to use a clean damp brush. I'm just going to soften the edges on both sides of the lines. While doing this, I want to leave out white in-between those lines and you can see that I'm just scrubbing it through to reactivate the paint and softening the edges to distribute them to the sides. [MUSIC] Once I'm done softening the lines, I'm going to use the same color to just paint the bottom. I'm painting curves again to follow the curves from the top part of the muffin liner and I'm going to try to connect this color to the lines that we painted earlier. To connect the lines like usual, I just use a clean, damp brush to pull some of the color upwards. I'm going to use the same color again and a thicker consistency and with more yellow ocher in the mixture. I'm going to paint the bottom of the lines again using this color. I'm trying to create different heights here and I'm also leaving out the top portion. Then after this, I'm going to try to connect on these darker lines with the color at the bottom by using a clean, damp brush. I am also going to soften the edges for the top as well using the same method. This part is probably my favorite part of all the painting. This is to show the ingredients picking through the muffin liner. For this one, because this chocolate chips, I use the same mixture for the chocolate chips that I painted for the top part of the muffin, which is from Quinciana with sepia. I'm just painting broken lines in-between the liner where I've painted the lines earlier. I'm trying to randomize the placement to show the chocolate chips peeking through the liner. Even though I'm doing quite a lot here, I still try to not do too much because we're going to soften the edges as you're seeing me do here and this will expand the size of the lines that I painted earlier also, so try to not do too much off the initial brown since we're going to extend the length. I'm just going to leave that for now and try to redefine the liner detail again by going back to the first color mixture from Hansa yellow medium and yellow ocher. I'm going to line the darkest part of the lines where the curves are being pinched. I want the lines to mostly dry. After it has dried it off, I'm going to go back in with the same color and I'm going to paint on curves following the curves on top of the liner. I'm just lining this so I can separate the two areas from the bottom and the top. I'm just going to color it or pull the color downwards. [MUSIC] I'm going to go back in with a mixture of Quinciana this time with only a little bit of sepias, so it's not too dark. I'm going to use a light load on my brush to again further redefine the pinch part off the liner by adding those thin lines and between the curves. This is only for the top portion, but for the bottom. Even though I'm using the same color, I'm trying to create what I created before with the light yellow base color. I'm painting thicker lines with the same color. Then I'm just going to make sure it's connected to the bottom part of the liner. As you can see, the color mixtures are quite similar or they're fairly repetitive and I'm just changing up the ratios to create different shades. I'm just playing with a lot of layers. Here I'm just going to extend the size of the chocolate chips if I feel like it's looking empty after I've added the additional brown color. 12. CHOC CHIP: Shadows: [MUSIC] In this lesson, I'm going to be painting the shadow of the liner and because the liner is white, I want to make a grayish color. I use paints gray bluish with a little bit of mineral violet to warm up the gray slightly and I'm using a very, very thin consistency to paint the white parts of the liner. I tried to leave out slight negative space for the top off the curve, so I tried to leave it white. For the parts in the middle I also try to leave out a white line. This will just help with the form of those curves so the white parts look like it's protruding the most. I want the right to be a little bit darker than the left so I'm just going to lay around more color. For the second layer I'm also painting it near the lines this time and leaving out the base color from the lighter consistency, just keep in mind that it's much easier to layer on slowly because it's much easier to paint more colors on them to take it off. For the right part, I'm actually extending it lower and I'm going to just add a little bit on the left [MUSIC] as well for a little bit of color variation. I'm also going to use this color to further darken the muffin top as well and I'm placing a little bit off this is quite watery that's why it looks quite dark, but it's actually just a medium consistency and I'm going to also extend it upwards. For the muffin top, I end up using a really thin consistency just to make the right side a little bit darker than the top left. Make sure you only use a very thin consistency of this because it is quite blue in comparison to the warmth of the muffin, if anything, I ended up glazing a little bit more of the mixture between quincy yana, and sepia. The blue becomes a little bit more subtle, but you [MUSIC] can still see a slight shift and the temperature. While I'm at it, I also decided to just add a little bit more detail to the muffin top as well after it has dried and has flattened out a little bit. I use the mixture between hansa yellow and yellow ocher again to add really subtle details and a medium consistency. I also went back to the [MUSIC] chocolate mixture again and use a very thin consistency to further accentuate the edges of the cracks. Going back to the liner again, I'm just going to add extra chocolate chips for the chocolate chip color and I'm also going to redefine the lines further after it has dried. I want the bottom portion of the liner to be darker so I ended up using the base color again from yellow ocher and hansa yellow medium and I'm just going to do a glaze for the bottom portion as for the lines, I use a mixture of quincy, yana with a little bit of sepia and I'm just going to define those lines again and to also further increase the contrast and value for the bottom portion off the muffin liner. Basically, I just want the bottom of the muffin to look more brown or burnt because that's the area where it has made most contact with the muffin tin. This is something that you can keep building along the way depending on the state of your painting. 13. CHOC CHIP: Case Shadow: [MUSIC] The next thing I'm going to do here is to add on the cast shadow. I'm going to add a few different colors here. I'm going to start with the same shadow color for the liner from a mixture of mineral violet and Payne's gray bluish. This time I'm also going to add sepia to mute the color slightly. I'm starting out by just wetting the bottom-right corner of the muffin. You can see a little bit of the color here because my brush wasn't completely clean, but this wasn't intended. Since I didn't have too much pigment, I just went along with it and I just added more water to further dilute the color and extend it outwards until I create the shape. While the surface is slightly damp, I started adding the color. I'm just coloring the bottom right first because that's where I want the largest part of the cast shadow to be. I'm using light medium consistency and I also left out a little bit of whitespace directly underneath the muffin on the right-hand side. After that, I use a clean dry brush because the surface was still damp to extend and soften the edges. Then I went back in with a little bit of a mixture between sepia and quin sienna and a thin consistency to add on another hue to the outer portion of the cast shadow. Since this part is very wet now, I'm just going to completely dry it off because I want to build on the value going back with the first color mixture again, [MUSIC] I'm just going to work on the dry surface, and soften the edges using a clean, damp brush. I'm going to do the same thing with the warm brown. This time I'm using even less because I want the outer portion of the shadow to be lighter than the previous color that I just painted. Here I'm using the tip of my brush to make sure I get to those very small corners as well. I'm using a thin consistency here and a clean damp brush to soften the edges again. Then I just want to completely dry it off because it is quite wet so I don't accidentally smudge it. 14. CHOC CHIP: Highlights and Final Adjustments: [MUSIC] In this lesson, I'm going to be painting the highlights and sugar dusting on the muffin top and after that, I'm going to also add the final adjustments. I'm going to use Bleed Proof White in a medium consistency so it flows easily from my brush, but in a very light load, so the brush comes to a really fine tip to get really fine lines and really small dots. [MUSIC] I mostly just going to dot the top of the muffin and clusters, and I'm also adding highlights along the way. Honestly though, after I've painted on the highlights, I didn't really like it, so I ended up taking most of them off. Initially though, this is what I did. I used the Bleed Proof White to line the edges of the cracks to make the edges look a bit more defined. I also add the sugar dusting, which is something that I'm going to do all across the muffin. But in terms of the highlights, I also added bigger ones for the muffin top as well. I just find that it was a bit too much detail for my liking, which is why I will end up taking it off. If you're still unsure whether you'd like to add the extra highlighted detail and texture, you can try it out first. This is actually quite safe to do because if you ended up not liking how you've painted the white in certain areas, this includes the dusting as well, you can actually make corrections by taking off the paint with a clean damp brush to reactivate it then take off the wet paint with tissue. This is limited though, and some of the pigments would still be on paper, but you can easily paint on top of it using whatever color you use underneath the white. For the liner, I accentuated the tips of the curves using just a really thin white line and I also added white in the middle of each of the curved liner, if I accidentally paint over the middle portion of those protruding edges. [MUSIC] After I ended up taking some of the paint off, this is how you would go about fixing it. You can just reapply the paint from the base color again and further adjust the vibrancy. While I'm at it, I'm also going to do the final adjustments to make sure that the vibrancy is what I'm looking for, and to also make sure that I get a good contrast and value and also details. This just depend on the stage of your painting. This is something that I'm also going to go back to after I finish all the muffins to make sure that it's consistent all throughout. Things that I paid attention to here is just increasing the value for the chocolate chips to make sure it's separated from the muffin top, and I also made sure that the liner looks almost as vibrant as the muffin top as well. After I'm done, I want to make sure everything's completely dry and erase any remaining pencil marks. [MUSIC] 15. BLUEBERRY: Colours: [MUSIC] Moving on to the blueberry muffin now, these are the colors that I'll be using. It's basically the same with one additional color. I'll be using Hansa yellow medium by Daniel Smith, yellow Ocher by Holbein, Quin Sienna by Daniel Smith. Quin red by Daniel Smith. Mineral Violet by Holbein. Payne's Grey bluish by Schmincke, and Sepia by Holbein. I'll also be using Bleed proof white by Dr. Ph. Martin's. 16. BLUEBERRY: Muffin Top Base: [MUSIC] Let's begin to paint the blueberry muffin. I'm going to start making the same base color as before. This is a mixture of CPR, Payne's gray bluish, [MUSIC] and a little bit of mineral violet. As for the yellowish base, I use Hansa yellow medium with yellow ocher. At the beginning, my yellow had a little bit of red, which is why the color was a bit more warm. So I'm going to take a little bit off the Quin Sienna and take the excess off on my palette and use whatever it was left on my brush to tint the yellow slightly to make it slightly warmer. Then I'm going to take yellow ocher and a little bit of that muddy brown mix, [MUSIC] and I'm going to use a very thin consistency to paint the cracks. I'm going to use similar techniques all throughout the three muffins [MUSIC]. It doesn't have to be exactly the same steps, but what you want is to get a similar outcome all throughout the three muffins, which is why I showed you the steps in detail for the first one. But now that you know what the outcome will look like, you can adjust the techniques or the steps according to how it's comfortable for you to paint. After painting the cracks, I use a light consistency of the yellow mixture. I'm doing the similar motion of moving my brush around but this time I'm not using the tip of my brush so [MUSIC] the texture isn't going to be as vivid as the first muffin. Even though I'm painting using the same motion because I put [MUSIC] more pressure on the tip of my brush, you can see that it has flattened out a little bit more with less detail. But I'm still getting the uneven distribution of color, which is what I'm looking for. [MUSIC] The next color mixture that I'm going to make is Quin Sienna with yellow ocher. Just like before, I'm going to use this to paint parts of the muffin top. I try to distribute them around the middle section of the areas and then go back in with a clean, damp brush to soften the edges. [MUSIC] While I'm painting them on and softening the edges, [MUSIC] I'm still following the exact same motion. If you watch the first muffin again and you want to compare how I painted it earlier, I'm not using too much of the tip of my brush; instead, I'm using the tip and the side for this muffin. This is because it's much faster to paint it this way. We're not going to lose the details since we're going to layer on the details with a thicker consistency later on. I'm still getting the uneven color distribution, but the texture are just not as distinct as the first muffin for this stage. To build the color further, I added more Quin Sienna into the previous mixture. Again, I'm just going to paint them on the similar areas, but I'm painting less and less. So I'm building the form slowly layer by layer. You can probably tell from this that the base color isn't completely bone dry because some parts might be a bit more blurry and some edges are cleaner than others. With a slightly damp surface, I was still able to layer on more colors because when I was applying the paint, I was using a very light load on my brush, so I distributed evenly and very lightly. However, if you used more of a heavy load and your paper is a little bit more wet, you might want to dry it off with a hairdryer before layering on more colors. If not, everything is just going to spread and blur out. Next, I mix sepia into the Quin Sienna that I had on my palette. I'm going to use this to start adding on the darker browns right on top of the muffin liner. Just like before, I added it very lightly to the bottom portion and I go back in with a clean damp brush to pull the paint upwards and create a soft transition. After that, I'm going to go back in with a mixture of Quin Sienna and yellow ocher to paint on a little bit more texture for some areas which are still looking a little bit flat. Next, I'm going to be painting the base color of the blueberries, but before we do that let me show you a closer demonstration. Hopefully, the steps are a bit easier to see. I'm going to discuss the colors later. But here, I just want to show you that the blueberries are like a mounted circle that I've drawn out. Here, I'm going in with the base color and I'm following the curves of each shape to make sure that whatever negative space I left out also follows the curves. Then, I'm going to go back in with a thicker consistency of the same color and paint one side following the same texture while leaving out some negative space from the white and also the base color. I'm going to show you the same thing again. This time, I'm going to use a lighter consistency so it's a bit easier for you guys to see the individual layers. As you can see from the second layer, I'm treating it the same way as I did the first by creating these random movements following the curves of the shape while leaving out more negative space this time. So some of them are white and some of them are off the base color peeking through. Afterward, just like how I treated the chocolate chips, I like to go back in with the same blueberry color and create uneven textures onto the outer edges so it looks like the blueberries are embedded within the cracks of the muffins. Just like the chocolate chips, personally, it's easier for me to just paint it freehand, but let me show you in pencil in case that's easier for you to digest the information. Here are the shapes that I'm going to leave out for the negative shapes which will represent the highlights of the blueberries. For the colors, I'll be using a mixture of mineral violet and Payne's gray bluish with a bit more Payne's gray bluish in the ratio. [MUSIC] I'm going to use a medium consistency to a light consistency to paint the base color. I'm just going to follow the same movement, trying to follow the same curvature and leave out some white negative space, and apply this to all the white space that I've allocated for the blueberries. In this lesson, I'll only be painting the first layer for the blueberries. But let's move on to the next lesson now, where I'll be painting on the second layer as well as additional details. [MUSIC] 17. BLUEBERRY: Muffin Top Texture and Detail: [MUSIC] I'm just going to wait for the colors on the blueberries to settle first. While I wait, I'm just going to add on the second layer for the muffin top. I'm using the same mixture of quin sienna and yellow ocher, and I'm painting them on the midsection of all the space, just like what I did in the previous layer. It's fairly repetitive. I'm just following the same motion as before to create the texture and then softening the edges using a clean damp brush. [MUSIC] Next, I'm going to add more quin sienna into the mixture and do the same thing. This time I'm painting less and less and more to the center of the peaks off the muffin tops. I'm going to carry it out the same way as before, but I'm covering less area here so you can see more of the base color. I'm just trying to accentuate the texture with a slightly darker consistency. Just like before, if some of the adjusted look a little bit too rough, I'm just going to soften it up, but I try to limit it on this layer so the details can still show through. [MUSIC] Since I want the top to be lighter, I try to put less and less off the darker tones for the top portion off the muffin. [MUSIC] Next, I'm going to be adding the second layer for the blueberries. I'm going to use the same mixture between paints gray bluish, and mineral violet. This time I'm using a medium to thick consistency so you can see that the color is quite dark. I'm just going to paint it like how we practiced before. [MUSIC] After I finish painting the bottom-right section, I'm going to go back in with a clean, damp brush and pull some of the darker paint over to the cracks. This is something that I'm going to build up on the next lesson. But I'm just going to go through with the rest of the blueberries now and paint the second layer. For the left side, I try to leave a little bit more of the highlights. Whereas as I progress to the right-hand side, I try to make the overall blueberries a little bit darker. [MUSIC] For some of the edges, I've kept it nice and fluid. Whereas on this right-hand side as an example, I try adding a little bit off the cracks already from the muffin. I'm still going to build upon the texture around the blueberries later on. It's up to you, but I still want to try to incorporate itself at this stage. [MUSIC] Lastly, since the cake portion is now dry, I'm going to add additional details. This time I use a mixture of quin sienna and a little bit of sepia. I'm going to paint the darker tones mostly on the bottom right of the muffin top. However, I'm still going to add this texture all throughout. But as I get towards the top left, I try to add less and less in a thinner consistency. This time I'm also using more of the tip of my brush so the textures are a little bit more defined than before. [MUSIC] 18. BLUEBERRY: Juices: [MUSIC] In this lesson, I'm going to be painting the juices oozing out of the blueberries. I love painting this part. I'm going to use the same blueberry mixture, but this time I'm going to add a little bit of quin sienna. The juices are a little bit more pink or purplish. I'm going to apply a thick consistency of this where I feel the juices would ooze out. This is mostly near the cracks. But if there are no cracks, I try to follow the curvature of the muffin top and I try to curve it following the cross contour line and this will also help with the form of the muffin. [MUSIC] I'm just going to add a little bit more off the blueberry color here because I felt like it was fading a bit too much after it has dried. This is just part of adjustments. You don't have to do this if this doesn't apply to you. [MUSIC] I'm also going to increase the vibrancy of the juices that I initially painted already. I'm just adding Quinn-red into the previous mixture and layering on more colors. [MUSIC] For this particular one I find that it'll look nicer if I somehow connect it to the blueberry at the bottom. I'm just going to add a light consistency of the juice as if it has been absorbed by the cake part of the muffin. The color isn't as vibrant as the rest. Sometimes I also find that blueberry muffins tend to have a bluish tint to the cake part. I just used the same color as the blueberry mix. I'm just going to do a light consistency on random places using this color to add that grayish tint for the cake area. I found that the top of the muffin looks a little bit empty, so I decided to add another blueberry. This is possible to do, but I would try to limit this as much as possible and try to get it right on the sketch. Because the color won't look as vibrant since we're painting on top of the brown colors from the muffin. But I'm just treating this the same way as how I would if I were to paint the blueberries on white piece of paper. Later we're just going to add the highlights using the proof white. As an example here you can see that the colors just won't be as vibrant as the blueberries that we painted earlier. [MUSIC] 19. BLUEBERRY: Liner Base: Since there's a good amount of detail for the top portion of the muffin, I'm going to go ahead and paint the liner. I'm starting with the base color from mix of Hansa yellow medium and yellow ocher, and I'm going to treat this mostly the same way off how I treated the chocolate chip muffin. But instead of the chocolate chip muffin peeking through the liner, this time I'm going to add the blueberry colors. Just like the chocolate chip muffin. I started out by adding lines in between the curved lines which are pinched together, and I'm going to soften both sides of the lines using a clean damp brush. [MUSIC] Next, I'm going to use the same color to paint in the bottom portion. I'm just going to paint a line and also add curves on top until all the sections are connected together. Next, I'm going to mix up the blueberry color again from Mineral Violet and paint scraped Bush, and I'm going to use a thick consistency to paint short dashed lines on the lines that I initially painted already. You can make longer ones as well as shorter ones. I'm just imagining lumps of blueberries which are sticking to the liner, and just like the chocolate chips before I try to distribute the spacing. For the one on the right-hand side, I want the juice to run along the inside of the liner. Whereas the one that I'm painting now, I'm thinking off around squish blueberry, which is sticking to the liner, and that's why I'm thinking of a circular silhouette while I'm painting these blueberries on the liners. Before adding on the juice color, I just want to make sure that everything's dry so I use a hairdryer to make the process quicker. Next, I'm going to paint the juices around the blueberries on the liner. I just added quinn red to the previous mix and I'm going to extend some of the lines with this color. For some of the blueberries, which I feel is just peeking through the liner, I only extended a short amount. Whereas for the longer ones, I try to imagine the juices flowing out through the liner, which is why I'm going to extend it more. I also try to vary the height since I've gone over this over a few lines. But I try to add some which reaches the bottom of the liner to make the muffin local a bit more juicy. I'm also going to add the juice color two parts which might not have the blueberry speaking through, and this will just suggest the juice is sticking to the muffin liner. While I add that onto random places, I try to almost even connect the lines together to show that the juices are seeping through the muffin liner. Next I'm going to add on the form of the muffin. I'm going back with the browns again. This is a mixture of [inaudible] with a little bit of sepia, and I'm just going to use this to add lines in between the softened lines from the base color, and I'm also going to add thicker lines for the bottom portion as well while trying to connect them all together with curves in-between. You might notice that the steps or the method might be a little bit different compared to the first muffin that we've painted, but the outcome will be similar. This is what I mean by knowing the outcome and knowing what you want the painting to look like, and then finding the technique in order to achieve that. Since I want the bottom portion to look more burnt, I'm just layering them slowly, But I'm not following the exact steps as what I did with the previous muffin. Here, I'm extending it upwards with a clean damp brush and I'm also going to add curves so I leave out some whitespace for the top portion. Then I'm going to fill in the bottom portion with a base color from a mixture of Hansa yellow medium and yellow ocher. To keep the forum, I'm still trying to paint them next to the lines and then softening the middle. If I left out some whitespace, then great. But if not, if they joined together, it's also fine. But having a little bit of the light color in-between the lines will just enhance the three-dimensional form off the liner, showing which parts of the liner are protruding outwards. After I add on that color, parts of the brown that I painted earlier might disperse to the wet area. I'm just going to add that on and try to increase the vibrancy of the overall colors. At the bottom here I mix both the yellow mixture and the brown to get something in-between, and I just try to make a nice gradation following the pattern that I'm going for. Since I've added more of the mid tones, now the darker tones are kind of flattened out because the tonal value look too similar. I'm going to increase the darker colors by adding the darker brown mix from [inaudible] and sepia. I'm just going to paint this on the bottom portion just to get a better balance for the colors and the values.[MUSIC] I'm just going to quickly dry this off because next I'm going to be painting the juice and I don't want that to lure with the rest of the colors, and this time I also added more quinn red into the ratio because I want the vibrancy of the red to pop out. I'm just layering on this color on the designated areas, but I'm also going to add a lighter consistency of this and smudge it around arts off the liner. You can see with a higher ratio of quinn red, the color is a bit more pink and vibrant and it looks nice against the darker colors and the browns that we painted earlier. I'm also going to layer on this color on the cake portion of the muffin as well. The muffin looks like it has soaked some of the juices from the blueberries. Here. I'm just extending the size of the liner little bit because I felt like in comparison to the muffin top, the liner is a little bit too narrow. I just added the dark brown color and add another section to the liner. Next, I'm just going to further balance out the colors, and after this, we're going to move on to the next lesson where I'll be painting the shadows. [MUSIC] 20. BLUEBERRY: Liner and Cast Shadows: [MUSIC] I'm going to treat this the same way as the previous muffins. I'm using a mixture of [inaudible] gray blueish with mineral violet to create a warm, grayish tone, and I use a light consistency to paint the white parts going downwards past the yellowish area of the liner. I'm also trying to leave out a little bit of white space in the middle of each section. I tried to also leave out a little bit of white space at the very tip of the muffin liner where the curves are, so there's a white outline. However, if you miss, this includes the line in the middle of each section. If you accidentally paint the color on, it's okay because we can still go back in with bleed proof white to add it on. Just like before though, I tried to use a darker tone or a slightly thicker consistency on the right hand side compared to the left because I want the right hand side to be in more shadow than the left side. As you can see, there's a bit more blue on the right part of the liner. [MUSIC] I just want to make the curves here look a little bit sharper with a dark brown, and after this, I'm going to move on to paint to cause shadow. For the cause shadow, I start with the same mix of [inaudible] gray blueish, mineral violet with a little bit of sepia. I'm going to have that ready on my palette. But now I'm just going to wet the area of the cause shadow again. I'm following the same shape as the previous cause shadow on the chocolate chip muffin, and I'm also leaving out a little bit of a line underneath the right-hand side of the muffin. After the surface is dampen, I'm just going to go in with a color that I've mixed already and painted close to the edge of the muffin liner. Whenever I'm painting the cause shadow, this goes for all three, I always like to take into consideration of the cause shadows that I've painted previously, which is why I've opened up the muffin that I've covered earlier. This is just to make sure that the angle stays the same and the lengths and the color placement are not too different from each other. [MUSIC] I'm using more or less the same colors here, but for the second color it was a bit yellow so I'm just going to layer on more quin sienna to hide that part. Then I'm going to go back in with the first mix and just paint the left sides and then softening it with the tip of my brush to get right to the edges. As the quin sienna settles, I find that it has overtaken the yellow. I'm going to add a little bit off the yellow mixture from the base color, which is a mixture between [inaudible] yellow and yellow ocher. I'm also going to layer on more of the darker grayish purple color for the area closest to the liner. [MUSIC] Of course, I'm just going to soften them all together with a clean, damp brush. For the white line that I've left out, I'm just going to fill it in with the brown mix from quin sienna and yellow ocher. [MUSIC] 21. BLUEBERRY: Highlights and Sugar Dusting: [MUSIC] Next, I'm just going to paint the highlights. I'm going to take a medium to thick consistency of bleedproof white. I just want to make sure that it's evenly distributed on my brush so it glides easily on my paper. Firstly, I just want to add highlights to parts off the blueberries. I'm following the curvature still and I'm keeping the lines very thin. As for the muffin top, I'm just going to add sugar dusting by making really small dots and little clusters. I'm just using the tip of my brush here. You can also use a smaller brush for this or even a frayed brush to make uneven pumps of sugar dusting. But because I realized that I didn't want additional highlights on the muffin top itself, I'm just going to keep it simple by adding the icing sugar. [MUSIC] I tried to make the clusters uneven, so some parts might not even have any sugar dusting at all. Some parts are closer together and parts of the icing sugar are more far apart. I also tried to make them all come together near cracks because they might gather in those areas. [MUSIC] Using a thin consistency of bleedproof white, I also want to add a little bit of highlights on some of the juices oozing out of the blueberries. [MUSIC] I'm also going to add highlights on the liner, same places as before at the top of the liner with just a very thin line and a slightly thicker one around halfway through in-between each liner section. 22. BLUEBERRY: Final Adjustments: [MUSIC] Onto the final adjustments now, you can add on or whatever you've forgotten to add or adjust the colors further to balance everything out. Here, I'm adding more of the juices speaking through the liner because I really like how the queen red look against all these colors on the liner. I've realized that I haven't added enough shadows for the top muffin. I'm going back in with a mixture of paints, gray-bluish, mineral violet, and sepia to firstly add the shadows in-between the muffin top and the liner. I also realized that I haven't added enough shadows for the top part of the muffin and I'm going to glaze on the same mixture as before on the bottom right portion off the top muffin. [MUSIC] I'm also going to accentuate some of the cracks using a mixture of the shadow color with a mix of quin sienna and this will just give a darker shadow for the cracks with slightly warmer temperature. After looking at the choco chip muffin, I felt like this blueberry muffin looks narrow, [LAUGHTER] so I decided to expand some of the edges slightly using the base color in a thick consistency. This is just very slight and of course, this just depends on the sketch that you've made. If yours is fairly even, you don't need to do this. I want to erase the pencil marks now so I'm just going to dry everything off so I don't accidentally smudge or tear the paper. After this, I also realized that I wanted to add more juices on the muffin top so I'm going back in with a mix of paints, gray-bluish mineral violet and a lot of queen red, in this case, to make the color a bit more pink. I'm firstly using a medium to the consistency and then I'm going to soften or blend the outer edges with a clean damp brush. If by doing this you've accidentally covered some of the sugar dusting from earlier, you can just dry this off and go back in with Bleedproof white to add more on. [MUSIC] So far, that's all for the blueberry muffin. Let's move on to the next one where I'll be painting a raspberry white chocolate muffin. 23. RASPBERRY: Colours: [MUSIC] Here are the colors I'll be using for the raspberry white chocolate muffin. Hansa Yellow Medium by Daniel Smith, Yellow Ochre by Holbein, Quin Sienna by Daniel Smith, Sepia by Holbein, Mineral Violet by Holbein, Payne's Gray Bluish by Schmincke, Quin Red by Daniel Smith, and Crimson Lake by Holbein. Lastly, I'll also be using Bleed Proof White by Dr. Ph. Martin's. [MUSIC]. 24. RASPBERRY: Muffin Top Base: [MUSIC] I'm going to begin by painting the base color for the cake part of the muffin. I'm going to follow more or less the same method, including using the same color mixtures. Considering this is the third muffin that we've painted so far I think that this is a good chance for you to paint freely without too much instructions since most of them have been said anyway. You can just paint along to what I'm doing here and then I'll get back to you again once we're ready to paint the raspberries and the chocolate section. [MUSIC] This time for the base I decided to also add in the shadows underneath the muffin top at the very top of the liner. I used a mixture of Quin sienna with sepia. Even though the steps might be a little bit different, we can still achieve something similar for the finished painting. By the third one I was also feeling more confident since I've done this a few times already. I'm adding on a bit more detail compared to what I would for the base color and that's okay. You can even finish off the muffin top completely without working on other parts if that's comfortable for you. I feel like I have a good amount of detail here already and I always prefer to go back and forth in order to get the balance that I'm looking for. After this I'm going to be painting the base color of the raspberries. But before that let me just show you close up what I'm going to do. This is more or less like the blueberries, but the blueberries were a little bit more rounded, whereas this one is more of a randomized squiggle. Because raspberries tend to break apart easily, especially when they're mixed into the butter and then baked. But in terms of the application of paint I am going to treat it more or less the same way. I'm using a thin consistency of this pink color and I'm painting with the tip of my brush while I try to follow the curves. Whatever white space I leave out will follow the curvature of this random squiggle. Preferably I would wait for this layer to dry completely, but I'm just going to move on and paint the second layer using a thicker consistency of the same color. I'm still following the same motion as before leaving out some white negative space. But I'm mostly painting this on the bottom right-hand side so the top left-hand side is a little bit lighter in comparison to the bottom right. Depending on how you apply the paint it might dry off faded. You can add on as many layers as you want, but this is more or less what you're trying to do. Here since it's completely dry the color is a little bit lighter now. I am going to just build on the layer using the same color and a slightly thicker consistency. I'm doing the same thing, but I'm painting less and less and adding more of the darker color on the bottom right-hand side. [MUSIC] For the sides, just like the blueberries I like to create the jagged edges to portray the uneven surface of the crust. You can add this on during any stage of the painting. You can paint it alongside of the base color of the raspberries or even wait until you finish painting the whole raspberry and then adding it on for the last step. I'll also try to draw it out for you. These are the types of shapes that I'm trying to leave out as the white spaces. Now, I'm going to paint the base color of the raspberries. I'm going to use a mix of Quin red and crimson lake to create this really vibrant pink color. I'm just going to paint all of the sections that I've designated for the raspberries. [MUSIC] For the white chocolate chips I'm going to be using the same mix as the base color from Hansa yellow medium and yellow ocher. But this time I added more Hansa yellow into the mix. It's a little bit different to the color of the muffin top. I also use a very thin consistency here that it almost looked like it's just tinted water. I'm also going to add a little bit of this burnt white chocolate for the edge of the chocolate chip in this area. For that I used a mixture of Hansa yellow with crimson lake. The orange is a little bit more muted. 25. RASPBERRY: Muffin Top Textures and Details: [MUSIC] Next I'm going to add on the details with the second layer. I'm going to start with this burnt chocolate chip before I added a little bit of brown. I just mix in a tiny bit of sepia to the previous mix to create this burnt color. I just add a really thin line to the edges, and then I soften it with a clean damp brush. For some parts if I don't want it to look too burnt, I would add more Hansa yellow in the mix. This will just add some dimension to the faces of the chocolate chip. [MUSIC] For all the white chocolate chips I use a really thin consistency for this, because if I go any thicker it would look a bit too similar to the cake part of the muffin top. I tried to make sure that at least the base color of the chocolate chips are fairly light in value. But I try to darken the edges using the orangey-brown mix to make sure that they're still form to these white chocolate chips. The reason why I added the edges is also to separate the faces of the chocolate chips. It doesn't have to be neat. In fact I'm applying mine fairly loosely here because most of the edges of the chocolate chips would have been melted after it's baked. But I just want to make sure that the faces are clear enough for you to still see the form and differentiate it with the cake portion of the muffin top. I'm going to move along to the raspberries now. For this I use the same mixture of Quinn red and crimson lake, but in a slightly thicker consistency this time. You can see the differentiation and value. Just like before, I'm using the tip of my brush and following the curves of this random shape, and try to leave out some white negative space, and also letting parts of the base color peek through. Because the base color was fairly light I ended up adding quite a lot of the second layer just to make the color a bit more vibrant. But I still [MUSIC] try to concentrate most of the darker color on the bottom right-hand side. Just like the blueberry muffin before, I felt like this area need a little pop of color, which is why I decided to just add a small piece of raspberry. I just used this thick consistency mixture and painted on the muffin top, and because the base color was already established you can see that the color is not as vibrant, but it's not as bad as the blueberries [MUSIC] because these are harmonious colors that you're putting on top of each other. [MUSIC] Next here I'm adding details to the cake portion of the muffin top. I want to make this one a little bit different because I find that the red is already nice and vibrant, so I don't want to lose the vibrancy if I add on much of a darker value on the muffin, so I want this one to be more golden brown instead of it being as bait as the previous two muffins. As I'm layering on more colors here, I'm just using a thicker consistency of the base color from yellow ocher and Hansa yellow. As for the darker brown, I'm using a thick consistency [MUSIC] of a mix between [inaudible] and yellow ocher. If I want to darken the values further I would just add more [inaudible] into the mixture. Even if I were to make it even darker, I would only use a tiny bit of sepia, so I don't lose the vibrancy. Even when I'm introducing the dark brown here, you can see that I'm placing them much more sparsely in comparison to the previous muffins. This is just for added texture and value, but I don't want this color to be a dominant color of this muffin top. [MUSIC] I want to work on the cracks as well as the cracks underneath the white chocolate chips. For this I use the same base color for the cracks. That's from a mixture of mostly yellow ocher with a tiny bit of sepia and mainstream bluish. But this time I also added [inaudible] to make the color more warm. I use the tip of my brush and a fairly thick consistency, so I can get right to the edges of those cracks underneath the chocolate chips. [MUSIC] Then I soften the blend using a clean damp brush. For the larger cracks I didn't want it to be too dark because the space is quite large to fill in, so I added more Hansa yellow and yellow ocher into the mixture. I'm just painting small sections here, making things up, and also creating the same textures as before using the tip of my brush. You can still see a lot of the lighter base color peeking through. I just want to make sure that the cracks are not too dark. If the color looks too muted or too bluish, I will also add a thin layer of [inaudible] to warm up the color. Here I want to further deepen the color of the raspberries, so I added a little bit of sepia into the raspberry mixture of crimson lake and Quinn red. I'm just going to apply this very sparingly on the bottom right-hand side while still trying to enhance the highlights that we painted earlier. 26. RASPBERRY: Liner Base: [MUSIC] Since we have a good amount of detail for the muffin top, I'm going to move on to the liner base. I'm going to treat this the same way. I'm not really going to give too much instructions here because I'm pretty sure you guys know the drill by now. The only difference for this one is because we're making a raspberry-flavored muffin now. The juices that we'll add on later will be from the colors of the raspberries themselves instead of the previous ones where we use the color of the blueberries or colors of the chocolate chips speaking through the liner. With this portion of the painting I'll just let you guys paint along to what I'm doing here. I'll get back to you when we're ready to add on the raspberry speaking through the liner. [MUSIC] Once I establish the lines I want to add the raspberry speaking through the liner, and also the juices. I'm starting with a medium consistency of Quinn red and crimson leech. I'm just going to treat this as how I treated the previous two muffins. Just like the blueberries, I'd like to add longer lines using this red, because I want some of the juices to ooze through the muffin later. Whereas for the other lines [MUSIC] I want to make them fairly short. Just like the previous muffins I will extend these lines further as I soften the edges and add more of the juices. Don't go too overboard with this first application. After I have a fair amount, now I'm going to go in with a clean, damp brush to smudge the edges. For this it's up to you if you want to extend the lines longer or shorter. Personally I like to just vary it and see how I go as I build upon the new layers. This is completely up to your interpretation. [MUSIC] 27. RASPBERRY: Juice: While I wait for the colors on the liners to dry, I'm going to move on to paint the juices on the top part of the muffin. I'm using the same mix from Quinn red and crimson lake, but I use more Quinn red in the ratio this time so the colors are more vibrant. I'm just going to treat this similarly to how I painted the blueberry muffin before. I'm trying to follow the curves of the muffin when it comes to some of the juices which are oozing out and dropping down the muffin top. But I tried to also add on a thinner consistency glaze around the raspberries themselves as part of the juices are being absorbed by the cake. I tend to add more smudges around the smaller raspberry pieces, whereas the larger ones I tried to add on a large amount of the juices flowing out and dropping downwards, reaching either the liner or the cracks of the muffin top. I've also decided to add another raspberry piece here. It's up to you if you want to add more to yours. But I just felt like I needed some color in that area. [MUSIC] After the first layer of juices have dried up, I'm going to go back in to brighten the color further. I'm using the same color in a slightly thicker consistency, and I tried to just increase the overall vibrancy. [MUSIC] 28. RASPBERRY: Liner Detail: [MUSIC] In this lesson, I'll be painting the details on the liner. I think you guys know the drill by now, and the color mixtures are fairly similar except for the extra juices that I added at the end with the color of the raspberry. The overall pattern or the colors that I'll be using will be the same so the bottom will be the most burnt area. Then I slowly try to decrease the value by using lighter browns and then finally to the base color and white after liner at the very top. Then finished off with the additional reds from the raspberries. Just like before though, I won't be giving you instructions for every single step here because [MUSIC] I find that this is a good chance for you to paint more freely and use your instincts. You'll be more practice in case you want to create your own flavors. [MUSIC] 29. RASPBERRY: Shadows: [MUSIC] Next I'll be painting the shadows on the liner. For the color, I'll be using a mixture of this gray bluish with mineral violet and a thin consistency just like before. I'm just going to layer it on thinly and build on the layers if I need the color to be more vibrant and darker. For this one, I'm going to change the mixture for the shadow underneath the muffin top. Instead of using CPN, Payne's gray bluish, I use quin sienna with Payne's gray bluish and a medium to thick consistency. But I'm going to treat it the same way by painting thinly right on top after liner and then going back in with a clean damp brush to pull it upwards and create those textures. I'm then going to use the same color mixture with added mineral violet to add the shadows on the muffin top using a thin consistency. You may realize again that the color mixture is a little bit different, but it doesn't really change too much. I just want the color to be more warm instead of it being too blue, which is why I added the additional mineral violet. As for the cracks. I'm going to treat them similarly as the rest of the muffins. After painting on the shadows, I decided to bring up the saturation of color again. I want to go back in with brighter colors using a mixture of quin sienna and yellow ocher. You think I'm fairly happy with how the muffins looks? I'm going to move on to paint the cast shadow. I'm going to treat this the same way. The color of the cast shadow might look a little bit different in between each muffin because we are using a wet-on-wet effect. The paint will be traveling around more loosely than if we were to paint on a dry surface. But I find that it doesn't really matter too much as long as they're all facing a similar direction. It really helps for you to compare the cast shadow from the previous ones that you've just painted in order to get similar angles and positions as the previous muffins. So the light source will look more cohesive. 30. RASPBERRY: Highlights: [MUSIC] In this lesson, I'll be painting the highlights. I'm going to begin by using a thin consistency of bleed-proof white to add on some highlights for the raspberry that I added since it doesn't have any off the white spots it needs. After this, I'm just going to add the usual sugar dusting for a muffin top as well as the highlights on the liner. Everything is under procedure here, so I'll leave you guys to it. [MUSIC]. 31. RASPBERRY: Final Adjustments: [MUSIC] Lastly, I'm just going to do final adjustments for this raspberry white chocolate muffin. I just want to make sure that the colors are fairly balanced. Here I'm just enhancing some of the darker colors for the liners. Just like before this just depend on the state of your individual paintings. Final adjustments are always very personal and it might even help for you to try to look at it from a distance. You can get a better overall perspective [MUSIC] I just want to make sure everything's dry before I erase the pencil marks. After this, in the next lesson, I'm going to balance out the overall colors and between the three muffins to make sure that everything's nice and cohesive. We'll be looking at these three muffins together [MUSIC] 32. Overall Adjustments: [MUSIC] If we take a look at these three muffins, I'm fairly happy with the vibrancy of the colors on the blueberry and the raspberry. However, the chocolate chip muffin needs a little bit of work, so I'm going to just layer on the brighter colors. This is a mixture of Quin cyan and yellow ocher, and I'm just going to layer on more of these colors. It's mostly a lot of glazing to increase the vibrancy, and then I'll go back to it with some of the bleed proof white to add on the dusting off icing sugar again. [MUSIC] I'm also going to go over the chocolate chips. I decide to make less highlights and to darken certain parts even though it's still going to be lighter than the sides. I just felt this looks a little bit too dull compared to the rest of the muffins, and I'm also going to increase the overall value for the muffin, and this includes the detail on the liner as well. [MUSIC] Here I'm going to add the hansa yellow and yellow ocher mix. And whenever I'm adding on or glazing more of these colors, I always like to compare to the muffins next to this one to make sure that the depth and the tonal value of the overall painting is cohesive. [MUSIC] You can always go back and forth to the other muffins as well to make sure that everything's nice and balanced. This is pretty much just like any other final adjustments, just depend on the current state of your painting, and I'm just going to finish this off. You can paint along to this and just see how I like to adjust between these three muffins. Some adjustments might be applicable to yours, but if it isn't, don't pressure yourself to add it on, this just comes down to mostly personal taste. You can even add embellishments or decorations, or even use these techniques to create different compositions, or even try this out in a setting or a scene. That's pretty much it. I'll just leave for you guys to do the final adjustments, and I'll get back to you at the next lesson where I'll go over the closing and class project. [MUSIC] 33. Closing and Class Project: Congratulations for completing this class. For the class project, I would love for you to give this painting a go using your own base sketch. However, if you'd like to get straight to painting, feel free to also download the outline from the Projects and Resources section, so you can trace it onto your watercolor paper using your preferred method. This is the completed painting for this class, but let me show you what the trial looked like. You can see that even though I painted the same subject matter and the same flavors of muffin, they're slightly different because when you get to draw your own base sketch, you get to play around and be a bit more flexible with how you place the fillings and cracks and textures, so you can really make this your own. I even played with the spacing for my trial, and I add a little title at the top and also small letters to describe the flavor of each muffin. I just find that this is a really fun project and if you would like to, it would also look great displayed in your kitchen. If you're feeling extra creative, you can try to create your own flavors using the techniques that I've shown you for the base cake of the muffin, or you can even try to compose this into a scene, where you can embellish it with backgrounds and details. It's so exciting for me to see how you guys will interpret this one. Once you're done with your painting, please don't forget to post it in the Project section of this class, so you get to share it with me as well as other students. If you enjoyed the class today and you would like to see more tutorials by me, I do have a YouTube channel called Nianiani, where I post weekly watercolor tutorials ranging in different subject matter. If you would like to see more art by me, you can also follow me on my Instagram, @ig_nianiani. If you guys are still here, thank you so much for watching until the end. Happy painting for all of you. Best of luck, and I'll see you at the next one. Bye.