Loose and Flowing Watercolour Portrait

1. Introduction: Hi, and welcome to this class. My name is Nadia, and I'm a professional artist. I'm currently living and working in Berlin. In this class, I'm going to show you how to create a soft expressive portrait using flowing watercolor techniques without getting caught up in perfection or tiny details. Watercolor can sometimes feel intimidating because it has a mind of its own, but that's exactly what makes it so beautiful. Class is really about learning to loosen up, trust the process, and let the paint create those organic flowing effects that make watercolor so unique. Together, we'll go through the entire process step by step. I'll show you how to choose and edit a reference image that works well for loose portrait painting, how to transfer your sketch onto watercolor paper, using a simple light source method, and which materials and colors I recommend using. Then we'll start painting layer by layer, building up soft washes, depth contrasts, and expressive details while still keeping the portrait fresh and loose. This class is suitable for beginners, as well as anyone wanting to develop a looser, more expressive approach to portrait painting. And by the end of the class, you'll not only have your own flowing watercolor portrait, but also a better understanding of how to work with watercolor in a more free and intuitive way. So grab your brushes, and let's get started. 2. Project, Materials, Finding & Editing image: In this lesson, let's have a look at the materials and colors that we're going to need and then also look at the project for this class. So I've created a materials list, which I will also be uploading to the resources section, and let's just go through that for a moment. So firstly, we're going to need watercolors. We need a palette because we will be mixing our colors. We will also be needing brushes, and I'm going to be using three. I recommend you have three to five brushes of different sizes. Next, we'll need some watercolor paper, and the important thing is that it's minimum 300 GSM. I like to use fine grain, but it's up to you. And we will also be ding masking tape to tape down our paper so that it doesn't buckle. And for this, I will also have a wooden board, but you could also tape your paper down to the table. Really important, two containers for water. One is to clean your brushes with, and the other one is to make up fresh colors for which we will want really fresh water. We will also be ing graphite pencils, as we will be doing some details with pencils, and you'll want to probably have an eraser handy as well. If you're going to be using a light source for transferring your image onto your paper, you also need a light table or a window. You could also transfer your image via grid method or free hand. The colors I'll have on hand are yellow ochre, cadmium yellow, burnt sienna, cadmium red, crimson red, ultramarine blue, Prussian blue, burnt umber, and ivory black. I may not use all of them, but I always like to have a couple of different colors on hand anyway. If you can't get these exact colors, don't worry. Just try to have at least one or two yellows, one or two reds, one or two blues, and preferably also a black on hand, and you'll be fine. Now for the project, I'd love you to create one loose watercolor painting using the techniques we're going to be looking at in this class. The goal isn't to create something perfect. It's more about experimenting with flow, layering and letting the paint move naturally. You can follow along with the same reference image that I use or you can choose your own. And when you're done, upload your painting to the project section. You can also share work in progress. I would love to see that, as well. So to begin, it's important that we choose the right image for this project. We want a portrait that has high contrast and that we can simplify to basically three tonal areas of midtones, dark tones and light tones. I always like to go to unsplash when I'm looking for inspiration for my portraits. So I'm going to look for photographic portrait, and let's have a look at what kind of photos would be suitable for this project. So I've already gone ahead and selected some images. What we want to imagine is that we're going to simplify them to those three tones that I talked about before, the light tones, the mid tones, and the dark tones. And as you can see, they all have an even contrast. So we also don't want any elements in the picture that are going to complicate things for us like hair on the face or hands in the face, glasses, anything like that. Going to be editing our image to black and white anyway. So if you find an image that's already in black and white, there's absolutely no problem. Once you've chosen your image, let's have a look at how we're going to edit it to edit the image, I'm going to use Snapseed. That's a free software that you can download in the app store. If you have Photoshop or anything else, any other photo editing software, you're free to use that as well. Okay, so let's go ahead and open our image in Snapseed. The first thing I'm going to do is edit the curves, and you can find that function down the bottom under the tools tab. So I'm going to up the contrast. So I'm upping the light and making the shadows more intense by toggling these things on the curve. And then I'm going to turn it into the silloit with the filter. For that, you need to go down the bottom to Los, and it's right at the back there at the last one. And you just click on that and it turns your photograph into the silhouete, makes it a really nice high contrast image. And now we're all set to export the image so that you can just click on Export, save a copy, and then you've got the image ready to print and transfer onto your watercolor paper. Now, of course, if you want to, you can have a go at playing around with these filters and the curves and everything, and I will see you in the next lesson to start transferring our image. 3. Transferring Your Image: Okay, so I'm going to start transferring my image onto my watercolor paper, and for that, I'm going to use my light table. And you can see the best in a very dark environment. So I've just turned on, gone into the darkest spot of my studio. I'm just going to tape down the edges so that it doesn't move while I am sketching. This usually works best when you're in a dark environment, you can see the light more, and making sure your watercolor paper is the right way around. I've got a little bit of a rough edge on the top and the bottom is smooth. I'm just going to place that on there and also just take down the edges. And then I'm going to start outlining just general areas like, for example, this here, just lightly as well. See, I'm just tracing those outlines a little bit, making some fields of color. Reserving a little bit of a highlight there. We don't want it to be white at the end of the day, but we might want it to be a little bit lighter. Down the bottom eye. Top of the eyelert here is also part that needs to be lighter but maybe not white. Moving on to the other eye, I'm going to do the same thing. Outline the eyebrow a little bit. This part above the eye. Find it so much easier when it's already simplified for me. I do the hairline. So I'm looking for the mid tones, the darkest tones, and the lightest tones. Mainly. I'm just trying to sketch this all out for me because then it just becomes much simpler to paint later. Again, this part's quite dark, so I'm focusing on this. And then the mid tones and lightest tones. Now, what we've done with the photo and editing it beforehand is really simplified it. So this is really helpful right now. I'm really trying to keep it loose, as well. Remember, this is all about letting the paint flow for itself and not getting too detailed. I'm just going to also sketch in this nice cheekbone shadow for myself. It's a midtone, I would say. Continuing with the hairline, go to try and keep some highlights in the hair as well. And here where the hair meets the neck. This is obviously also going to be darker these parts here. Okay, I'm going to do the hair on the other side. You don't have to go too detailed. We just want to sketch it in roughly so that we can make a nice loose painting. Now, because we're not going to be painting the background, it might be a good idea to not have this part just the white of the paper at the top of the head and down the bottom here. We'll see when we get to the painting part, we might do a little bit of a light wash over that so you can actually see the difference between the background and the hair. Okay, loosely outlining the nose, first this side, and then moving on to the other side. There are a few very dark tones here and also some mid tones, and I'm just roughly outlining it. If you want, you can also do the bottom of the hair here. And this part. And yeah, if you want to check, you can just turn off your light source. And that's pretty much the result that we want. When you're done, join me in the next lesson, and we'll start painting. 4. First Stages of Painting: I'm going to start by just observing my reference image and I'm going to have my reference image very close. I'm always looking at this and what I'm doing on my watercolor. I suggest you also have your reference image close. Let's begin by mixing. The colors that I have told you I would be using, I've got lined up here. We've got the cadmium yellow. We've got the cadmium red, burnt sienna, crimson, yellow ochre, ivory black, and burnt umber. I'm just going to mix a orange out of the yellow and the cadmium red. We're just going to start with wet on dry, which means just painting wet paint onto dry paper. All right. You can test the colors. If you have a test strip, I've got my whole space set up, I've got a test strip type thing underneath you and that looks good. We're going to start with the hair. We just want it to be flowing. Going to use quite a lot of water with this because we're going to work wet on wet afterwards. Remember, you're also looking at your reference image. I'm just going to leave the white parts up here white for now. I'll probably go over them in a little bit. Here we've got the ear sticking out. Just a loose, very watery brushstroke here. Don't be shy with the water. If you run out of color, you can always just mix a little bit more. Then I'm just going on this side onto here, contour of the face. Remember, we're doing loose brush strokes. You don't have to adhere exactly to your drawing. Going to put a little more water on here. Loose brushstrokes. Great. Okay. And while it's still wet, I'm going to mix a little bit of my crimson with my cadmium, so we've got a really nice rich red. I'm just going to inject it into some areas here and let that expand. I'm trying to mimic the hair a little bit, and I don't want to cover it all, but I do want to make sure that there's a really nice red tone in the hair on the other side, you can see I'm just lightly going over this. I don't want to go over this too hard, then I'll be at risk of breaking the paper as well. What we really want is just a really nice organic flow of paint that expands into the other paint layer underneath. But we want it to be quite vibrant. It's going to expand on its own, I think. Okay, so while it's still wet, we're going to get a little bit of red, a little bit of black, make this into like a purplish type of color. Then we're going to just how we really want it to be intense, don't we? So a little bit more, a little bit more colour here. And I'm just going to inject that with my paint brush into the still wet areas here and here. We can intensify this later. But now we just really want to get a nice feel of this hair. Don't want to cover everything. Remember we're trying to stay loose. Okay. Maybe I want to go a little bit more intense, so I'm just going to get more pignant on my brush. A little bit more black. A little bit more. And again, I'm just dabbing the paint into these wet areas with my paintbrush. We like this contrast of the very light yellow, orangy tones, some of that red, and then this rich dark purplish color. Now, while that's dry, I'm going to clean my brush and I'm going to clean this a little bit because I'm going to go back to my orange. Of course, I've cleaned my brush, and then I get a little bit of clean water, dip it in the yellow, a little bit of the cadmium, bit more yellow. We want this wash to be a little more yellow, a little bit more light. That looks good. Now I'm going to go into these areas in the face, tracing these outlines that I've laid for myself, trying to reserve the highlights if there are any. If you've got excess paint or water on your brush, don't worry, you can always just wipe it off with your tissue, which I've got handy always in my hand or next to my workspace. Now let's have a look at the nose. Is the darkest part of this part is also not completely white. I'm just going to cover all the areas here that we've marked for ourselves. I think it'd be quite nice if we can reserve these highlights here of the eyelid. I just continue to go over these areas that I've marked for myself. Also the eyelashes, and I'm just trying to start building up the contrast really here. Then I'm going to go over to the lip part. If you make a mistake, don't worry about it. You can just lift it up your tissue paper. I feel like it's a little bit too intense, you can always add a little more water. Here, you've got to be really careful not to touch the red orange dark part because otherwise, this is going to start flowing into that area. We don't really want that. All of this can be a little bit in the shadow. Remember, careful here. Don't want to touch that. If you feel a little bit too nervous about that, you can also just wait until it's dry and then continue with this. In this instance, it's actually not too bad because you can see the neck here blends in with the hair anyway. That's actually quite nice. I think that make a nice effect. I want to do the same on the other side. It's almost dry over here so it won't blend in too much. Shall we go back to the hair and just add a little bit more very vibrant orange? I'm going to make a very vibrant and strong orange, test it on my test strip and I'm just going to go in here, give the hair a little bit more structure. We want to avoid this happening, so I'm just going to lift this up so that it's purely on the neck, that it's blending in. Don't worry if you've got this going on. It can make for a really interesting end result. It always looks different anyway once it's dry. Remember that you can always lift up anything with your tissue paper. If you're impatient, you can always dry it with a hair dryer. Just continuing to apply this fibrant orange here. This is quite wet over the side. We'll see what it looks like once it's dried. Just dabbing my paint brush on here. Going over the parts that are, you know, the lightest in the hair as well. Just really loosely. Oop. I'm going to lift up this part here. I actually quite like it. Sometimes errors, as I say, can be really good for the end result because it's unexpected. It's uncontrolled. It's actually what we're trying to do here a little bit of uncontrolled painting. Okay, great. That's looking really good. When you are at this stage, come and meet me in the next lesson to continue painting. 5. Adding Contrast to the Face: Let's try first with an orange that's a little bit mixed with the red. I'm just going to give it a little bit of a coat and then we're going to try and work a little bit of wet and wet on the face. Make sure if you're resting your hand on your paper that you're not resting on the wet parts, you don't want to go smudging your work. Careful here with all the details. Just continue filling in these areas that I've marked for myself and just building up the contrast. Feel like it's already starting to look quite cool. Going into the darker parts here. I'm gonna dab some very dark pigment in some of these areas soon. So I'll just continue working on this layer by working my way across the face right now the lips and then let's see about the chin. On this part down here. If you like the paint brushes too thin, then you can always, of course, change back to a larger one. Just getting the big shadows in right now. Now I'm going to go in with this darker color and just dab it in the darker areas. You can see it's going to spread. We're just dabbing at the moment. We can refine structures and things in a little bit. I just want to make sure it's still wet while we're doing this. We can work with a dry paint brush in a minute to refine the finer areas like the left eye. I want to do a little bit more detail on that. Okay, so I'm just going to come over to the left eye and just refine a little bit, pick up a little bit of water and paint from here, and also smooth out a little bit towards the bottom. I'm going to lift up a little bit of paint here. If you need to, you can always get your tissue paper, maybe draw out a fine point and just go in there to lift up any unwanted pigment there, and then here. If you need to smooth anything out, feel free, but it is supposed to be loose. I'm trying to keep it very loose as well. But you can always go and lift up a little bit of pigment from different areas if you want to. I'll start flowing back into each other anyway, but then you're just making a little bit different texture, a little bit of a different tone. Remember, you can always pick up any wet pigment by using a clean and dry brush and you just move that over the wet paint and that will pick it up. See, I'm just refining it a little bit so that it's not too harsh. Well, that looks pretty good already, actually. Now that this part is sort of dry, I'm going to go back to my larger paint brush. I'm gonna take this wash, as well, a little bit more intense than that. A little bit less intense than that. I'm gonna go over these areas here. Using this purple wash, which I've made using the crimson and the black. It's quite nice. Now I'm going to drop some of this into here as well, into the neck area. Here. I just pick up a tiny bit of pigment here around the jaw with an almost dry clean paintbrush, so that you can still see the difference between jaw and neck. I do the same over here. And I'm just going to smooth that out, and then I'm just going to continue adding more depth and contrast by applying more of the purple colour. Remember, we're trying to create a loose painting. This has got nothing to do with it has to look like this person or it has to be exact, none of that. We're trying to be really loose. I'm going to try and draw this neck down a little bit. Obviously, I'm going to have to do a little bit of work on this part here in a minute. Going to smooth it out a little bit this way as well. Oh. And now with a little bit of the burnt umber, I'm just going to come in here and sort of define these parts a little bit more. Darker parts here. This is still wet, so I'm trying to work wet on wet. Eyebrows. I'm not diluting this pigment. Me over here as well. Almost for park. A. I'm gonna come into the nostril, as well. This one over here. And then I'm going to go into the mouth just to find these tiger areas here. Maybe also in the part underneath. It's not wet anymore. You can always just grab your brush, go in there again, and then dab it in there. Don't worry if you make a mistake. Always lift it back up with a dry clean paintbrush. And remember, loose loose, loose. So basically, I'm just trying to add more and more contrast using this burnt umber until I'm satisfied. I actually just going to put a little bit more of this lovely orange around here. Around there. Maybe that was a little much. Just kind of lift it up. And I'm just going to go back in here again quickly with the undiluted burnt umber. Okay, I feel like I need to just wait for this to be dry. And then I can go in again with the neck and the jaw line. In the meantime, I might just do a couple of more touches on the hair with a really bright orange. Just really make a lovely contrast. Going to use a little bit of orange at the top here as well. And remember, we're still trying to make a loose watercolor painting. Please. Just gonna go in here with orange. Maybe just make it a little bit smoother here towards the face. And I'm just going to cover the entire neck area here in the shadow also just with this lovely orange. And you know what? I think I'm gonna lift up a tiny bit of this here, here. And also just around the cheek here. Maybe a little bit in here. And a little bit in here. Little I'm here. A little bit there. A little bit on the side here. And the side here. Okay, now I'm just gonna wait for it to dry and then we'll continue. It 6. Continuing Painting: Okay, that's a little bit wet, but it doesn't matter. I'm just going to get some of my crimson black mix and go into this neck line just to define that, and that's dry enough to work with. Just defining this line here as well, and I'm just going to come down here. This is all quite dark. I'm going to mix a little bit more of my crimson and black, and then just dab the pigment in there, maybe a little bit more crimson than black. I'm going to let that dry. And in the meantime, I am just going to go over this part again with some orange. That's the mix of the crimson and yellow. And so I'm going to crumb across here with a much lighter wash. Just going to go over here. Now, remember, you have to be careful not to mix those again. Otherwise, we've got the same issue as before, and we don't want this area to turn into one big area of paint and smooth it out a little bit, lift up some pigment from here and here, and from here. When it's completely dry, I'm going to erase some of these pencil lines as well. And while this is drying, I'm going to come in to this part of the neck with the orange. I want to erase some of this, so I'm wetting the paper. Then I'm going to get a fresh piece of tissue. I'm just going to come in here and really define this line of the neck a little bit more. You can always lift up pigment, even if it's dried. You just have to be careful not to also lift up the paper. So you don't go rubbing the tissue on the painting. You just dently dab it on there. And now I want to correct this area. Okay, that's looking a little better, I think. I want to correct a little bit of the jaw line here, just make it smoother. See what I'm doing there, just running my paintbrush over it so that it's smoother. I didn't mark this for myself, but that would be quite a good area to just have in there. Now I want to lighten this area in here a little bit. Same thing, clean wet brush. And I'm picking up some pigment there. I'm also going to go with a little bit of tissue paper as well. You don't want it to get too controlled. I tend to be a little bit perfectionist, and then I start getting really into the details, and then in the end, it just doesn't look loose anymore. And for this class, we're really trying to get the watercolor just to do its own thing, as well. So I'm just going to define this nostra tiny bit. And now I'm going to go into the neckline a little bit more with a little bit darker, more intense mix of this crimson and black. I don't want to overdo it, but it is quite dark, so you can see that I'm just dabbing it on there. Actually, I'm going to go in here also with a little bit of the wash with the crimson and black, the purplish color. Just a really light wash, though. I'm really trying to describe the structure of the cheek bone here with my light wash and also around the jaw line. Just kind of softening those edges a little bit. Also lifting up a bit of pigment so that it doesn't just become one big area with a clean dry brush. I think I'm almost done. I don't want it to get too controlled. One thing I want to do is I want to make sure that I do get this part of the neck nice and light because you can see that there's a light part here. I think that's going to make a difference. So I'm just lifting up a little bit of pigment here with my brush. And I'm also going to lift up a little bit here. Maybe we can extend the path of the neck and shoulder over here. But yeah, I actually think that's already looking really good. And for the last touch, I am going to lift up a tiny bit of pigment in here. I feel like it's a little bit too dark. That's better. And a little bit from here. Okay, that's great. Now I'm going to wait for it to dry. Join me in the next lesson to see how we remove the finished painting from the board without damaging the paper. 7. Finishing Touches: Okay, now that it's dry, I'm just going to remove these pencil lines here because they bother me a little bit, really carefully, but you really have to make sure it's actually dry. So I've got a patty rubber. I'm just carefully going over these and removing them. If the papers still wet, you're going to ruin your painting. So really just be careful. In the hair they don't bother me so much, neither in the neck but in the face that just yeah, bother me a lot. You see that the paper is starting to go a bit weird. Stop. That's the finished piece. Now I'm going to carefully remove the tape. So for that, I'm just going to peel it so it comes out to the side. You want to do this right away because otherwise it starts to stick to your paper. And then it'll lift up some of the paper when you remove it. The longer you leave on the masking tape, the more likely it is you'll damage your painting. Just always taking the tape away from the paper, sort of rolling it out like this. And here's the finished painting. As you can see, it's not about perfect lines or exact details. It's more about the overall feeling and flow. If there's one thing to take away from this class that is to let go of control and allow the water and paint to do the work. Thank you so much for joining me today. I can't wait to see all your awesome projects, so please go ahead and upload them to the project section of this class. Also, make sure to stop by my profile to see what else I'm teaching. And you can do that just by clicking on my name. If you've enjoyed painting this portrait with me, out my class, watercolor portrait from a photo, where we start from the very beginning and go through all the basics, and by the end of the class, you will have all the tools to paint a wonderful expressive portrait with watercolor. Alternatively, you might want to check out my class watercolor portrait from a photo, using three tones in which we paint a portrait using only three tones. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to post them in the discussion section of this class. I hope you've enjoyed this class, and if you have, then I would love it if you could leave me a review in the review section. I read every single review, and they always motivate me to keep making these classes to share the things that I have learned on my creative journey, and it also assists other students in deciding which classes might be right for them. You can find me on Instagram under Nadia Underscore Underscore Valeska. Of course, you can also follow me here on Skillshare just by clicking on this button. That way, you're always in the loop about new classes and other things that I've got going on here. I hope to see you again soon in one of my other classes.