Learn to Paint Whimsical Portraits in Watercolor

1. Introduction: Hey guys, I made an address because am an artist and illustrator, also, I like to teach water color classes. Welcome to Whimsical Birthrates and Water Color Class. In this class, I'll show you how to draw, paint, and come up with ideas from Whimsical portrait. Whimsical portrait make wonderful gifts, Also their great for the book and editorial illustration, stationary or a social media print. In the next video I will show you the supply, so we'll be using in this class. And if you are new to this channel, welcomes, Press a follow button on top and let's get started. 2. Class Project: In this class, I will show you how to draw, approach and paint whimsical portraits in three styles. One will be a profile portrait, frontal portrait and a portrait for the back. Also I want to show you what inspiration, some of the projects I made using whimsical portraits. Some book illustration, this is a card for a friend and then it went to art licensing. This is another art licensing piece and some sold t Waldorf I think, it's called artist amuse. Another piece. This one was for a message in Autumn. He brought aside this on Instagram. This one was a motivational one. This artwork I made for a craft organization, a mascot, and the number of full one. Let's get started. 3. Supplies: In today's class, I will be using the following supplies, a set of watercolor paint, any paint you have, just make sure it has some red ocher in it or some color you can use for skin tone. Also these and water of course, and just to mix extra paint and water and then bigger volume than just the regular paint palette tooth to mix other colors, and paper towel, tracing paper, watercolor paper, and regular office paper we'll be using for our sketches. Also, we'll need a big soft watercolor brush, this is square brush number 2, but usually, brushes this big are number 8, 10 or 12. Also, we need a medium watercolor brush, this is number 4. If you'll be drawing the smaller details, then you may need a number 2 or number 0. A pencil, eraser. I'll be using a white gel pen. You can use a white gel pen, white wash, white ink, but this is all optional. Also, I'll be using some rubbing alcohol from pharmacy. But this is also optional, because it will make it more beautiful. Let's get started. 4. Drawing a portrait in profile: So to draw a whimsical portrait in profile, let's learn first how to draw a regular profile, just a generic one. So have a rectangle and then we'll divide it in three. Here we'll have a forehand and then a nose, and this going to be a chin. You can see it's very easy. So here we'll have the eye, closed eye, and eyebrow and somewhere here we'll have a mouth, we'll draw lips and of course you can modify if you feel like your chin has to be a lower or your nose has to be bigger. But in general, this is all the drawing you need to know. So here's the forehead and in the row of the nose we'll have the ear. So just like that, you have a rectangle divide it in three parts and then drawing a forehead and nose, a straight path, a chin, and then ending with lips. Here we can play with hair but I'll show you that later when we'll be generating ideas. So what do we do when we need the aura? Head to look up or just draw our rectangle this way and again we'll divide it into three and then we'll have our forehead, the nose and the chin. Here's the eye and we'll have a mouth and here she's looking up. You can tilt it as much as you want. The same thing when you want your portrait to look down. We have the rectangle tilted this way this time and again divide it in three parts, forehead, the nose, and a chin. Here we'll have the lips. So what if you want the eye to be open, you just draw it like this, and the ear on the level of the nose. Here's your portrait. Also we need to add a neck. So you can see drawing a profile is not as difficult. Next we'll be generating the ideas based on creativity by adding different elements to our profile. 5. Generating ideas: Now let's brainstorm some ideas how we can transform our egoportrait into a whimsical one. Here we have few areas we can show how creative we are. First of all we have the hairstyle, and here we have a lot of variety it can be in different, like wavy hair. Well, first of all the color over here for the hair is so different, and then now we can have braids or a braid, it's going to go this way. It's can fly up, where it can be like a geometric hairstyle like this and this. That's all the things that can play with. Next we come have some hair accessories. It's going to be flowers, it could be hair piece, we could dye them. Whichever accessories. It could be butterflies in branches. Whichever you can think of especially if you're making a costume portrait, just think about like favorites flowers or favorite colors or maybe even a hat. It could be seashells if the person likes sea. Also another area where we can get more creative are earrings. It can be small one, it could be big earrings. Also we can show something on the earrings. Could be different shapes, so earrings. Next part we can make a necklace or just show a sweater. This neckline could be really, neckline elements, so it could be a chunky sweater or a turtle neck or a lacey collar or whatever you can think of. The last top part where we can get creative is could be surrounding. Here we can have branches, flowers, the sky or just one color, even the snow, whatever you can think off. Here all the creative areas where we can do whatever we want and transform our portrait from a regular until a whimsical one. I can show you how I'm doing it by using tracing paper. First of all I can also refine the portrait I have. I'm leaving more space for the hair. If I decide I want to smaller nose, I can draw it right here. Maybe I want this more round so am doing it right here too. There is more forehead, also here. I'd love the eyes to start a little bit lower. The good thing with tracing paper, you can do as many of these as you want without losing your initial sketch and I know. Here we have the hair and neck. I'd love to have a huge flower and because so many of you like poppies, it'll be a poppy. Also for the sake of length of this class, we won't get too many elements, but you can add as many as you want. Then model leaves some branches. Here I'd love to have a wavy hair. The hair will be a cut, in my version but you don't have to do it. Here, the hair will just fly in there so I can add more flowers or elements like this. This is one of the girls. Next let see or we can have and show you how we can paint or we can jump in geometric. Again, we have our face. Here I would love to have a geometric hair cut, like a Cleopatra style. You can see how it totally changes them, most of the portrait. You can see how geometric one looks like, totally different from our romantic wavy hair. You can play with tracing paper as much as you want and as many ideas as you want, and it could be a feather in the hair or you want to go with Cleopatra, you could add some elements to the necklace. Whichever you think will work for your whimsical portrait is great. Just draw as many ideas as you want and next week we'll start painting. 6. Transferring the drawing to watercolor paper: After I completed my sketch on the tracing paper, I want to transfer it onto watercolor paper so we can start coloring and painting it. If I'd like the sketch on current paper to be looking that way, then, I will just put this tracing paper over water-guard paper and I'd go over the pencil. But because I want it to be exactly the way I draw it, then I'll do following. To transfer my drawing from a tracing paper to water guard paper, you can use a window on a light box, or you can do the following. I'm just repeating the lines with a regular pencil. Here, we have flower. Doesn't have to be precise. We just need to have enough pencil graphite on the paper. So it will transfer nicely. You can see the sketch is pretty rough, but it's all what you need for the drawing. Because most of our work will be painting, anyway. I'm not going to draw the entire leaves because I want to paint them free hand. I don't need other shape to contradict my freehand of brush strokes. You can see already, it transferred from another side but because I want it to look this way, I put some office paper underneath so it won't transfer on a watercolor paper. I think you've got that. Now, I'm going one more time. I'm going to put pencil lines, and you can see it's transmitting right here. You can take a color pencil for this so you'll remember which part you already transferred, because it'll be with different color. Right about now, we just transfer her face, and the neck, and the hair. I won't lose the proportions, and everything else I would just leave for freehand and brush strokes so we can get as creative as we want for the process of the painting. The second flower and the third one and this line. Let's see. You can probably barely see it, but I can. I've completed drawing so you can see it better. Again, at this stage, you can still fix some features if you need to. Then repeating this in every clause, your sketch has to be really light and don't mind, our cursor so you can see it. Here, we'll have a flower, and this is the wrong angle for the eye. Yeah, this is better. I hope you can see her mouth and some poppy flowers. This is all the drawing we need before we start painting. 7. Whimsical Profile portrait Part 1: Now when we have our drawing we can start painting. We'll start with the skin on the face and on the neck. We'll just do an angular flat wash like we did in basics of watercolor painting. For it I'll have an extra dish, I'll pour a little bit, that's a little bit of water. Then I'll dilute red ocher in this little dish. A lot of red ocher. So if you have a painting tube, it would be way more easier to do this, than just taking the paint from them. I cake sometimes. So if you're planning on painting big washers, big landscapes, it's always better to get your paint in tubes. So this mix has to be pretty dark, as concentrated with paint as possible. Of course, if you have different color skin tones, you can mix in different colors like adding more brown or yellow to it. However, for most of my skin tones, I'm using just red ocher and I'm painting one layer of watercolor wash, and if I feel that I need more color to scheme, then I would add another wash after the previous one totally dries. So here we have a very concentrated solution of red ocher and water. Then I will take a big soft brush and will apply the solution on the entire face and neck. So don't let the edges dry. Work pretty fast and make it as uniform as you can. If you see you don't have enough, just add more. That's why we mixed enough solution so we wont keep adding any water or paint it, so it will look the same all entire area. Not lighter not darker. I always paint the necks too long. So it's totally up to you to paint them long too or not. So this is the skin. I don't need this anymore. If you see some paddles, then I just absorb them with a dry brush. I think this is pretty good. So this was the most stressful part of our painting. Now while this is drying, we can't touch it. So we can start painting the flower meanwhile. The flower is so easy to paint. We've painted so many flowers with you, and especially this one is a poppy. If you watched my watercolor poppies class you probably can paint it with no problem. So to the edge of it, I added some Carmine orange and to the middle of the flower, Carmine red. As usual, I have my paper towel next to me. I'm painting with a medium watercolor brush with a good sharp tip. So you can get as creative as you want. Actually, all the painting you can get as creative as you want. They didn't make a very complex head piece, just hip flowers for the sake of the length of this class, but again, you can do whatever you can think off. It can be stars, feathers, it can be a bridal head piece, even a veil. So first we are painting the elements, the creative elements in the hair, like with flowers and leaves and branches. Then we will be painting the hair in between them because the creative elements are the main part of our paintings, so we don't want to restrict ourselves in space by painting the dark hair first and then we'll decide on some flower and we can't paint it anymore. In my case I wanted only three flowers. I create a triangle a classic composition and next let's add some leaves. I wanted this painting to be bright and cheerful. So let's take look at classic green and we'll mix it with a little bit of canoe yellow. Just be careful if some petals are not dry yet, they blend together. Like here, its still wet so I'm really trying to be careful. Lets add a little bit of blue. So here we add three leaves in our sketch. Our skin is already dry so I could paint that leaf there. So I add some leaves, I'm looking at the sketch. Add some leaves here. If you remember, I wanted to paint them right with a brush, that's why I didn't draw them. So have this freedom of painting them however we want. So I'm not painting the leaves very dark because the hair is going to be dark, and I want them to be contrasting with the dark and you can see them. Be contrasting with the dark color. Then one more leaf here. So don't be afraid to add all the elements you can think of. Just be creative, always. Now, let everything dry and we can continue with more elements in details. Now, on our first line is totally dry we can add more details to our face. As you can see on the red ocher is a nice pigment which represses so uniformly, and it's nice to use for skin tones. We'll get back to our mix of red ocher and water, and we'll add the shadow with the same mix right here and under the nose, and a little bit on the eye, I"ll let it dry for now. Next we'll mix some, Carmine red because we used it in a flowers, I want to use it also on the leaves. Our color scheme will look more harmonious, I'm mixing red ocher with Carmine red for the lips, and you can do it as watery or as pigmented as you want , depending on how dark would you like the leaves to be. It's always good to start with a lighter wash, and then you can always add more color, we're adding another layer. Feel free to rotate your paper and work on it more. Okay we'll leave the lips dry and after we can decide if they are dark enough or not and we'll add another layer little pink wash. For eyebrows, I will take sepia. Next, You can take a small brush if you need to and I will be painting and move a small sharp brush strokes so they will look more natural. Next, we will wet one, the eye will dry and I will add a line of sepia on the eye and I will add some eyelashes. We'll have to wait for it to be dry. Meanwhile we can paint our flower so we can add another layer on the petals and so we can add some texture. I'm saying on return we can use any flowers you want here. It can be even branches with various, it can be of lemon fruits or oranges, olives, on the winter scene you can use, you can paint posy flower or Holly or even mistletoe.Next what will do, take some black and we'll add some ultramarine blue to it, so it won't look so flat, I'll now paint the middle of a flower this is good. Now let's let it dry and on other flowers we'll mix some Carmine red with a little bit of emerald green, I'll now add some darker shadows and maybe a little bit here. Now our eye is dry I think we can take some sepia and eyelashes this is good. The lips look good so we don't need to add more color to them and we'll take some more or this mix and we'll add some shadow next to hairline like this. We have to let it dry this line we just painted and then we can start painting the hair unless you want to add some more elements to your flowers. I think I want a little more, I was saying I'd love to add some more leaves, I know we can always decide later if we would like to add some texture to our leaves or not. That will be the last step in our illustration. Okay, now let's let it all dry and then we can paint the hair. 8. Whimsical Profile portrait Part 2: Now, we have to paint the hair and I want my portrait to have brown hair. I'm mixing a lot of sepia. We have water right here on the palette and [inaudible] requires [inaudible] a lot of patience. It's nothing difficult, just carefully avoid all the other shapes and this is also a good brush control exercise and a good exercise to feel how much water and how much pigment do you need in your wash. The less water you'll have, the more control you'll have. But also if you have way too much pigment it will be so hard to move on the paper and it'll leave ugly strokes. That's very important to know balance and it's the thing you can learn only by practicing, by painting as much as you can. The same way around here just depend on how many elements you have, and here you're deciding what shape of hair. You can have some strands coming out if you want. I like the precise shape of them, hair style. Here, I went all the way to the edge, assuming there is more hair somewhere, but we don't see it. Now finish this portion and I will show you how I do. Like the top part shape and everything else, you can be yourself. Here we will [inaudible] go [inaudible] on this little branches, and then again, we'll just fill the shapes. If you cover this bridge somewhere, it's okay. We can always edit with white gel pan or whitewash or with white acrylic. I think you've got the idea. Finished [inaudible] off camera and then I'll get back to you. 9. Whimsical Profile portrait Part 3: Now when I finish to paint the hair, I would like to add some branches and flowers on the sides so they will balance with branches and flowers on the hair. Of course I will be using the same color scheme as I used in the hair, and I won't be adding a lot. But again, you can add more or less. So without enjoying or plenary, I'm just being creative and I didn't glue the branches and leaves or wherever I feel I would love some. I think by accident, this was a Scipio, but It's okay, I'm adding some blue to it and it works. So here I'll have a flower. Take some more green and then bigger flower, a leaf I mean. So I'm going with the blue, and let's repeat some more forms from them here. So we have these green berries or which one of those? You can always add words or butterflies or dragonflies or lady bugs, whichever you like, whichever makes sense for you. Let's add a couple of flowers and we've drawn them over the green leaves to compliment the flowers and the hair. So color that. The previous one was some kind of orange. So just very simple. Again, you don't have to make them simple like I do. Make them more complex. Some more orange to this one, maybe have ovaries here. Of course you can add some specials if you want, well if you're doing [inaudible] when you are doing it. I think this is enough for flower around the portrait and now with the wide jump pen, we can add some texture to our leaves, some dots as part of her still pretty words. If yours is white, still be careful. Maybe an extra leaf or an extra branch. Again, some more textures. So I'm doing it with wide because her hair is dark and I want to create a contrast between them, the flowers, berries, and hair. But if the hair would be light, then we would go with darker patterns with the leaves. Again, I would live here maybe. If you lost some of the branches while painting like I do, you can easily add them with white, to make them sharp again. I think this one is a good portrait already. 10. Galaxy portrait: So let's paint a portrait which is a front of a face is looking straight at us. I'm starting just without any anatomy, drawings again. Just drawing like an oval, not a completed oval because it's covered by hair and again your sketch has to be light and mine is too dark but you can see it so it's good. So here are the shoulders, along the neck. Here we'll have the eyebrow and the nose. That's how I'm drawing the noses, but you can draw the nose in your own way. This portrait I was thinking if you have a friend who likes stars and galaxies, instead of hair, we can paint like a night sky and just give it the shape of the hair. So again at the level of the nose we'll have ears, which will be passionate curled by hair. Here I want the hair to go like this, then like this, and go up. I sketched it in advance so you can sketch your own and play with hair shape and the face. Already this is a really easy drawings so you can do it just with me right away. That's how my frontal portrait looks with drawing and next, I saved the same mix from another portrait so we can paint with skin again, with a big soft brush. Then I advise you to keep mix for the skin tone too, just in case something goes wrong and you need to paint another portrait. You have already mixed the way you like. I don't think if you'll save it more than one day, I think it will be still good or still it will be good but probably the consistency will be different. That's all the skin tone we need. Again, if you think your skin tone is not best still, you can wait until this layer dries and then add another layer. Just make sure the first layer is totally dry and by adding new layers, make sure the previous one is always, always dry like [inaudible] dry. Okay so while the skin tone is drying, we can start painting the hair and for this one, I want to turn my painting upside down. I can have some eraser of things here. Just make sure you don't touch the skin, just leave one little wide line and hair for this lady, I want it to be like a night sky. So I will be mixing ultramarine blue, probably some purple chant or burgundy, and black. These are three colors, so it will be a variety and I'll try to make it as dark as I can and if I don't succeed making it dark enough then I'll be just adding more layers, which I am trying to do. So here is blue and black. Again, I'll try to work fast. Since [inaudible] , I think I said it already, was to tape this piece of paper to the board like we are doing in wet-on-wet techniques because it will start to change a shape on me and it will be harder to work. I feel like I need a little bit of sepia too just to warm it up a little bit and also purple is good for it but a warmer shade. So very, very careful and we'll fix this line with the smaller brush later when the skin tone will dry. You can really go with any colors you want. You can go with rainbow colors or any kind of colors or like orange, like a fire color. This is not a very big brush, but I'm trying to work first, make it work because I don't want it to be too watery. You can see how I move around the colors. If your wash is not, some black shade layout for more drama. Here I want to leave a little bit of edge. Let's hope my tablecloth for filling classes will be all right. I want some water blue right here. This is good for now. So what we'll do next. We'll take some rubbing alcohol, and we really have to do this fast. With a harsh brush, I will just be dripping it on a wet, what a wash and ending some stars. So this area is dry already and this one is dry too. That's why the stars didn't happen. But I think it looks pretty best and while when, we can always add more stars here with white. It's really not a problem. The skin tone is dry and we can add the shadows just like last time, with the same wash, add shadows to the nose, on the eyes and the ear, something darker, and also here on the neck. For the lips will make some carmine red. We have a tiny bit of red oca. After all these eye shadows will dry, will add eyebrows and eyelashes and we shall look in the mirror. So meanwhile, I want to paint some earrings. That area was still wet. So on this side I'd like it to be like a one shape. Let's add some black to it, and then this side will have let's say a comet. Of course it would be nicer if I would draw it before. I will just try to do it right with my brush, next time. So here we'll have a star. So this is just an example how you can customize a portrait. Just my story, so if you have a friend who likes astrology or stars or galaxies, something like this would be a great gift. Maybe you like galaxies so it can be a nice outer portrait. You can draw a constellation here and write your astrological sign. Let's draw a constellation here just behind it, I'm not sure if it's only [inaudible] doesn't exist. So whichever you think can work. I want to add a few more stars and a few more splashes and I will pretty much done, after we're painting the eyebrows and eyelashes. Some stars which we can't see. Something is missing here. Now let's paint the eyebrows. Say there. [inaudible] and a lot of troubles. A few more dots here. Here something missing. Again, you can add some more stars with white ink or white wash. I almost forgot we have to fix this white line because we were so careful when we were painting. So just to have watery mix. You can see it's not as dark as another the hair, but this is just enough to pull it together. This is our another portrait. A galaxy portrait as I called it. 11. Whimsical portrait from the back: Today also I want to show you another type of portrait. When the girl is churn chars with her back. This portraits are also used a lot in social media [inaudible] seen. Many of these portraits. I forgot to show you the drawing. What I drew here is just a regular circle. This is supposed to show us where our head is. This is the hair and here we have a hair burn, and here we'll have neck and shoulders. That's all the drawing we need and this as a super-fast if you need a fast portrait and you don't have to have a burn. You can have a hair cut. But outside some more interesting efforts. Not just straight hair, put some braids. Somehow all the hair is arranged more interesting when just on a shoulders plus you want to show them the shoulders, the neck for it to be more understandable it's a person. Again, I used the same mix for the skin. It's a red oak [inaudible] a lot of water and next, I'll be working with medium watercolor brush. This portrait will be of a blonde girl. I'm taking [inaudible] and just also mix some a little bit of sepia and some with purple to make it a little darker, so have different shades and of course, we always cover the color by adding more or less water. Also, I like to live a strand-like this and you can leave some white space too, here and there, and now am done. I'll add more texture layer too, but we are going this moves and it's too brown compared with other hair. Let's just add some more [inaudible]. Too dark on the hair a little bit here. It's always nice to have a little bit of moves that are dynamic. Now I have to let it all dry. Meanwhile, I want to paint some herbs here and flowers and I want to go pretty well achromatic. I'll take some broken teeth receiver to paint, just grapes. Berries, maybe. Just paint something in your own style then define some leaves and take some sepia too. Since I'm looking too boring, I need at least more value and again, we'll just do brushstrokes, just raising painterly. Because the entire fill of this illustration has to be like dreamy, painterly, easy, relaxing. But I guess some broken hair too. Just to keep it balanced. This one is the easiest of all pre-portraits if you need daily fast card or a gift, or just to post a message of something since it's really easy. It's very relaxing to paint something like this and you can come up with all hairstyles like braid coming on the side or two braids. Also, very popular artists, like Sister portraits on next to each other and then braids come together. You can try to paint one of those. Because it's nothing difficult. I'm sure you can do it. You can see I'm not getting to the edge of these herbs and plant. Just want to show that we don't know where they started, where they end. I'll start with some of this portrait. I want to add up a little bit of branches in her hair and then we'll add some texture to the hair and some shadows on the neck and that's pretty much it, or I just wait for this part to dry and meanwhile, we can paint the herbs and florescent berries or whichever you decide. I think it's dry enough. We'll take again. I think for this portrait, we need a little darker shadow here and then the hair. Just a little bit of shadow and right here on one side too and next, I'll mix some with some burgundy and purple. Purple can be overwhelming. Be careful with just taking over other color and next we'll add a texture to the hair and some shadows. Try to keep them white. I know sometimes it's not easy. I don't want to over do it but a little bit and now I want to add some green orange here. I mean, orange of green leaves and probably some bourbon berries. Again then I'll paint nothing complicated. [inaudible]. I feel like we need a dark border between the hair and the neck, like this and the last touch shall be of a berries. I'm using same burgundy. Just picked them right there. This is like an easy girl portrait from the back and you can write a message on top there. Feel like we need a couple more greens here too. I think our portrait is ready. 12. Thank you and see you soon!: Thank you 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 on the project section of the class. If you're sharing your project on Instagram, please tag me so I can leave you my feedback and see you in my next class. Bye.