Loosening Up with Watercolour and Ink - Duck Walk | Nadine Dudek | Skillshare

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Loosening Up with Watercolour and Ink - Duck Walk

teacher avatar Nadine Dudek, Professional Watercolour Artist

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Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Lessons in This Class

    • 1.

      Introduction

      1:07

    • 2.

      Materials

      1:50

    • 3.

      Pencil and Ink Sketch

      2:10

    • 4.

      First Wash

      5:06

    • 5.

      Beaks, Feet and Darks

      5:45

    • 6.

      Finishing with a few Details

      3:27

    • 7.

      A Final Word

      0:51

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15

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About This Class

This is a fast and fun class aimed at keeping you loose. In this lesson you'll be using water-fast ink to get the duck shapes in and then I want you to 

  • leave white paper, not worrying too much about keeping within the lines 
  • move quickly with the paint allowing mixing on the page
  • splatter and spray to stop you getting fussy

No overthinking allowed on this one

Meet Your Teacher

Teacher Profile Image

Nadine Dudek

Professional Watercolour Artist

Top Teacher

Hi, I'm Nadine,

I'm an Australian watercolour artist with a particular interest in wildlife art. I love the spontaneity of watercolour and the wonderful effects that can be achieved with very little input. I strive to keep my paintings loose and love the challenge of drawing the viewer into the work through a well placed shadow or detail.

For me, the quicker the painting and the fewer the strokes the better the result. I endeavour to teach my students to relax and remember - it's just a piece of paper.

To see more of my work head over to my website or find me on instagram, YouTube and facebook


See full profile

Level: Intermediate

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Transcripts

1. Introduction: Hi, I'm Nadine. Thanks for joining me for the lesson today. We're going to be doing another one of those really fast exercises that aim to loosen you up. So not much thought required, very little in the actual painting. It's a really simple painting. But we're going to do it with pencil and ink, which I think is a little bit more frame because once you've got the ink lines on, you don't have to think too much about the paint. So what we're going to do is go through the reference photo and the sketch with the ink over the top of it, and then we're going to go really quickly through the painting. It's just a few steps. So a lot of wet and wet, a lot of just throwing the paint on. And I've set it to intermediate, not because it's difficult but because I want you to keep speed. So if you're a beginner, but you're happy about going quickly, then by all means, give it a go. But it is a really fast paint. We'll go through step by step, even though there aren't many steps, and then hopefully by the end, you're happy with what you've got. So let's get started. 2. Materials : Okay, so we'll start off with materials for the class today. This is a reference photo. This is actually mine. So what I've done is taken four different photos, taken the duck out of them, and pasted them together. It took a while to fiddle around to decide what composition I wanted, and really, it was getting these two to face in to bracket the four ducks together was what I was after. So you can download this directly from the materials section. I'm painting on 300 gram Arches coal press paper. I'm painting flat on a board, but I'm not taping it down. Got a regular HB pencil and an erasa I've got a bunch of different paints today, but you don't have to use all these. You can really use whatever you want for this one. It really doesn't matter. I've got for the purple and green in the heads here, I'm using some quin violet and some poturquoise. From Daniel Smith. The bodies, I've got some transparent brown and some cadbd scarlet hue from Daniel Smith, and I've got a Windsor on Yeroka You could use raw sienna for that. And the yellow that I'm using for the beak is Daniel Smith hunts yellow medium. I'm using a fine liner. This one is a 0.1 fine liner. It doesn't really matter what you use. I just need you to make sure that it's waterproof so that it doesn't disappear on you everywhere. I've got a spray bottle. I've also got three brushes for this one, a tiny little synthetic for getting into the beaks and I'll use those on the feet and some of these shadows. Then the bulk of the bird, I've got two bigger brushes and the details of these are on the materials section. Other than that, you'll need your palette, a jar of water and preferably some cleaner tissues than this. We'll get on to the sketch ink. 3. Pencil and Ink Sketch: Okay. So here's my sketch, which you're not really going to be able to see at the moment. I've just used a HB pencil. And actually, for this one today, I've just traced it because I spent ages putting the composition together. These are just a couple of different two different ducks in here, different photos of the same two ducks. There have been ages doing that is I don't feel like drawing. I feel like painting, I don't feel like drawing. So it's perfectly acceptable to use a last box, use some tracing paper. Whatever makes you happy, it doesn't really doesn't matter. So what I'm going to do now and then you will be able to see the sketch, I'm going to take let's see it's a 0.1. Doesn't really matter. 0.1 0.3, whatever fine line you've got hanging around. All that matters is that it's waterproof. I'm just going to pop some lines in here to make it easy for me when I go to paint. So just roughly getting the sketch in, and I'm not being super careful. I'm just getting some lines in so that when I put the paint on, I can see where I'm going. The only place I will be careful is around the face and the beak. So this in here, I want to get the shapes. Right. Now, I've popped a little bit of the eye, a little bit of that black on the beak end, but I'll restate that later. So that bit's the only place you're allowed to be fussy. The rest of it, keep your strokes, nice and broken, nice and loose. And particularly down these feet, some of them aren't that easy to see. Don't worry about that too much. We'll sort that out with the paint. Okay. That's all I'm going to do for the sketching. I'll pop this as a photo up his nostril so that if you're not tracing or drawing from the reference that I've popped up for you, but you can use a template as well. Now we're ready to start painting. 4. First Wash: All right. So this is going to be really, really fast. What I'm going to do initially is wet down with some water through the body, just whacking a little bit of water on. Leaving white? No painting everything in. Now, I'm not painting any water into these little white stripes on the neck. I'm going to throw a little bit of water just into the heads, not all the way the edges just to get me started. I'm also just going to spray. Just down the bottom, a little bit of water. I hold it up, you can sort of see there where I've gone. All right. Then I'm going to grab my big brush. I'm going to grab some of my transparent brown and drop that in. Water milky to creamy, I guess. I'm not going to worry about filling in all the up to the lines, all that, chucking some paint on. I'm going to grab some yellow ochre, throw that through the bottom. Really rough, checking it on, not caring if some of that bleeds out. Then I'm going to grab. I've got some, what is it? It's cadmium red scarlet hue. I'm going to throw a little bit of that on the top of the neck there. And maybe a little bit down low as well. Just working my brush through. Then I'm going to switch to a slightly smaller brush for this guy. I'm going to pick up a little bit of quinacridone violet and a little bit of turquoise, and I'm going to throw in these sort of a couple of these tail bits. So just throwing a little bit of paint around. Doesn't have to make a lot of sense. Then I'm going to look at these feet and I'm picking up now back to that scarlet color. I'm going to drop a little bit of paint so the legs first. Then I'm going to drag my brush through it's just going to bleed and that's fine. Then I'm going to switch to my little brush and I'm going to pick up again, I've not put my hand in the mix that's on the page. I'm going to put in the faces. I've got some purple there. Now I can paint straight through that eye because the pen is in there. I'm not using the same color as the actual photo because I prefer the ducks come in all sorts of colors and I prefer the purple and pho mix. Keep going. The page it doesn't matter if the page is drying off if you're not getting much movement up here. I'm not really bothered about that. Trying to get a mix of the purple and the green turquoise with the where I was going for. So I'm being relatively tidy up here. I'm just really looking for that to be mixing on the page. You can do the dts. No, actually, I wouldn't. I want you to do them all at the same time because it stops you fussing. Okay. So I'm just whacking those in. Now, before that fries, I'm going to take a bit of that purple and a bit of that turquoise, and I'm just going to flick. Just to stop me. This is just to stop it being perfect and, you know, overthinking. Get a flick, and then before that dries fully, I'm going to treat my brush, and I'm gonna throw a bit of water underneath. Take a bit of the turquoise blue and the turquoise, the pho, and a little bit of that orange and just chuck a little bit into the ground. Then I'm going to come out of that, let that dry. Then we'll come back in and add another layer of wet and wet. But come out of that for ten and let that dry. 5. Beaks, Feet and Darks: Alright. Now my little splotches aren't quite dry, but I'm dry enough. So I'm going to pop yellow the beacon I'm taking my little brush. Get some milky, cad yellow. What have I got? It's hunts a yellow medium, actually. And my brush has got a bit of green in it, but that's okay. I don't care. Then I'm going to actually take a bit of that red, and I'm just going to pop a bit into each of those beaks on the side just while it's all a bit damp. Just so I've got a bit of variation. So just a touch in there. All right. Now what I want to do I want to strengthen a little bit of the dark around under the tummies here. So for that, I think I'm going to try. Let's have a look. I'm going to try a bit of palo, a bit of my queen violet, and a bit of my transparent brown to mix a dark. You see what that looks like on a bit of paper. I'm going to wet the page. And my brush wasn't very clean then. I'm gonna wet the page here on the bottom of the tummies. And then I'm just going to throw a bit of that dark in. I might take that bit. I came a little bit too far over there. Bush my brush, soften off that edge. I don't want too much of a hard edge. Yeah, but still being pretty messy, and it's not dark enough, so I'm gonna make it feel. I didn't really quite make enough. I need to replenish my wells. I'm being lazy. So just throw a bit more of that in. I might throw a bit of the red in as well for funzies. Wash my brush then and dragging that around. If you start to think, where should I go next, then you're fussing and you need to get out. While that's still wet, I say get out and then I go back in. I'm just softening those edges. I'm going to take my small brush and I'm going to restate with my red scarlet, whatever it is, thick paint. I've got water down the bottom here of each of these. I'm just going to restate a couple of those red the feet, let it bleed. I can bleed. That's not a problem. So it's quite a dry brush. I just chucking a little bit more of the feet in. Then I want to draw attention. I quite like that little white strip with my little brush, I'm just going to throw in a bit of water under that collar. I think I might use I'll use the brown. I have a look what brown looks like. I'm just throwing a bit of paint up on that really roughly, just so that I've got. A bit more where that collar starts. Just dragging that around. My spots have disappeared. I don't think I've got enough splutter. Again, before that starts, I'm going to pick up milky. If it's not milky, it won't splutter. I don't really now want to splatter up there, so I'm just going to take a piece of paper and let it splutter down. Whoa. Maybe some of the orange as well. The red, rather. It just stops you being uptight. All right. Now, again, I have to let that dry before we come in, and we're just going to pull out a couple of little darks, a couple of little highlights maybe as well, and then we'll be just about. Come out of that and let that dry. 6. Finishing with a few Details: Alright, so I'm not quite my splatters aren't dry, so I'm going to have to be careful not to get my hand in things. But we're just going to finish off with a couple of darks with paint, and then a couple of more lines with the black pen. So initially, I want to push, you know, see who's in front, see who's behind. So this bird is behind. So I'm going to take some indigo with my small brush. I'm going on to dry paper, been careful where I put my hand. And I'm just going to pop a bit of a dark in there. I'm going to wash my brush. I'm going to soften that. Edge. And as I'm softening, if that is too, that I can just grab a bit more pigment now that I've kind of wet the page and drop that back in. And that should push that duck a little bit behind. And on this side, I can do a similar thing. I'm going to chisel out that shape. Wash my brush and just soften that edge. I'm going to do the same here to show that this duck is in front. I want to dry paper, paint a little bit in, wash my brush and soften the edge. I started really messy and rough and then here, I can be a little more careful. These two ducks should feel a little bit forward, those two going back. Then I'm going to take my pen and I'm going to color in the little bits on the beak, which I could have done when I did the sketch. Sometimes I do these with paint. But I've done this quite small. I find these spaces because my vision is pretty rubbish. I find these small little shapes difficult if I'm using paint. So for something like this where I've already got ink in, it's quite nice to be able to just use the pen. Yeah. I think that's all I'm going to do. I don't really want to do much else. You could put more darks in here and spend some time shaking the face, but I don't really I don't think I really want to. I quite like the clean wash in there. I reckon probably probably done. I'm going to go and eat some cheese, I think. I put my brush down. I 7. A Final Word: Alright, so I'm nice and dry now, and I haven't fiddled with it anymore, so I'm hoping that what you've done with this one is that you've gone quickly. I want you to embrace that Got to go, got to go, got to keep moving. And to not let yourself fuss and get caught up on the fact that, you know, I've got lots of bits of white paper. I've got lots of messy lines I haven't kept exactly to my pencil lines, and it absolutely doesn't matter. So keep it really messy, keep it really loos. Focus on a couple of fine details to finish it off, and hopefully you're happy with what you've done. So upload a photo of this one to the Skillshare site for me under the project section so I can have a look and thanks for joining me.