Transcripts
1. Welcome To The Class!: Hello, everyone. My
name is Will Elliston. And today, we're going
to be diving into an expressive and dynamic
watercolor painting of an orca leaping
from the ocean. Acas are powerful and
majestic creatures, and this class is
all about capturing that movement and energy in
a loose and expressive way. We'll be combining traditional
watercolor techniques like wet and wet blending and
glazing with a fun twist, using a straw to blow and
shape the splash of the waves. This technique helps create spontaneous organic
textures that are perfect for water
and adds a playful, creative element to the process. I've been a professional
artist for many years, exploring lots of different
subjects from wildlife and portraits to cityscapes
and countryside scenes. I've always been entranced by the possibilities of watercolor. But when I started, I had no idea where to begin
or how to improve. I didn't know what
supplies I needed, how to create the
effects I wanted, or which colors to mix. Now I've taken part in many
worldwide exhibitions, been featured in magazines, and been lucky enough
to win awards from well respected
organizations such as the International
Watercolor Society, the Masters of
Watercolor Alliance, Windsor and Newton, and the SAA. Watercolor can be overwhelming
for those starting out, which is why my goal
is to help you feel relaxed and enjoy this medium
in a step by step manner. Today, I'll be guiding you
through a complete painting, demonstrating a variety
of techniques and explaining how I use all
my supplies and materials. Whether you're just starting out or already have some experience, you'll be able to
follow along at your own pace and improve
your watercolor skills. If this class is too challenging
or too easy for you, I have a variety of classes available at different
skill levels. I like to start off with a free expressive
approach with no fear of making mistakes as we create exciting textures
for the underlayer. As the painting progresses, we'll add more details to bring it to life and
make it stand out. I strive to simplify
complex subjects into easier shapes that
encourage playfulness. Throughout this class, I'll be sharing plenty
of tips and tricks. I'll show you how to turn
mistakes into opportunities, taking the stress out of
painting in order to have fun. I'll also provide you with
my watercolor mixing charts, which are an invaluable tool when it comes to choosing
and mixing colors. If you have any questions, you can post them in the
discussion thread down below. I'll be sure to read and
respond to everything you post. Don't forget to follow
me on Skillshare by clicking the Follow
button at the top. This means you'll be the
first to know when I launch a new class
or post giveaways. You can also follow me on Instagram at Will Elliston
to see my latest works. So grab your brushes
and a straw, and let's get started with
this exciting painting.
2. Your Project: Thank you so much for
joining me in this class. I'm very glad you're
here with me. So we're going to
be painting an aca bursting through
the ocean surface, using expressive brushwork and creative techniques to
bring the scene to life. What makes this project
special is the focus on movement and splash rather
than tight details. We'll be working with
soft gradients and transitions to capture
the aa's smooth form. We'll be using bold
contrasts to make the aca pop from the
background and straw blown paint techniques
to create splashes and dynamic waves in a really
fun and unexpected way. In the resource section, I've added a high
resolution image of my finished painting
to help guide you. You're welcome to
follow my painting exactly or experiment with
your own composition. As we're going to be focusing on the painting aspect
of watercolor, I've provided templates
you can use to help transfer or trace the
sketch before you paint. It's fine to trace when using it as a guide for
learning how to paint. It's important to
have the underdrawing correct so that you can relax and have fun learning the
watercolor medium itself. Whichever direction
you take this class, it would be great
to see your results and the paintings you
create through it. I love giving my
students feedback, so please take a photo
afterwards and share it in the student project gallery under the Project
and resource tab. I'm always intrigued to
see how many students have different approaches and how they progress with each class. I'd love to hear
about your process and what you learned
along the way, or if you had any difficulties. I strongly recommend
that you take a look at each other's work in the
student Project Gallery. It's so inspiring to see
each other's work and extremely comforting to get the support of your
fellow students. So don't forget to like and
comment on each other's work.
3. Materials & Supplies: Before we get started
with the painting, let's go over all the materials and supplies you'll
need to paint along. Having the right materials can greatly impact the
outcome of your artwork. So I'll go over all the supplies I use for
this class and beyond. They're very useful to have at your disposal and we'll make it easier for you
to follow along. Let's start with the
paints themselves. And like most of the materials
we'll be using today, it's a lot to do
with preference. I have 12 stable colors in my palette that I
fill up from tubes. They are cadmium
yellow, yellow ochre, burnt sienna, cadmium
red, Alizarin crimson, Opramarne blue, cobalt blue,
serlean blue, lavender, purple, viridian, black, and
at the end of the painting, I often use white gouache
for tiny highlights. I don't use any
particular brand. These colours you can
get from any brand, although I personally
use Daniel Smith, Windsor and Newton
or Holbein paints. So let's move on to brushes. The brush I use the most is
a synthetic round brush like this Escoda Purl brush
or this Van Gogh brush. They're very versatile because
not only can you use them for detailed work
with their fine tip, but as they can hold
a lot of water, they are good for
washers as well. They're also quite affordable, so I have quite a few
in different sizes. Next are the mop brushes. Mop brushes are good for
broad brush strokes, filling in large areas and creating smooth
transitions or washes. They also have a nice tip that can be used for smaller details. But for really small details, highlights or anything
that needs more precision, I use a synthetic
size zero brush. All brands have them,
and they're super cheap. Another useful brush to have is a Chinese calligraphy brush. They tend to have long bristles
and a very pointy tip. They're perfect for
adding texture or creating dynamic lines
in your paintings. You can even fan them
out like this to achieve fur or feather
textures as well. And that's it for
brushes. Onto paper. The better quality
of your paper, the easier it will be to paint. Cheap paper criinkles easily
and is very unforgiving, not allowing you to
rework mistakes. It's harder to create
appealing effects and apply useful techniques
like rubbing away pigment. Good quality paper, however, such as cotton based paper, not only allows you to rework
mistakes multiple times, but because the pigment
reacts much better on it, the chances of
mistakes are a lot lower and you'll be more likely to create
better paintings. I use arches paper because that's what's available
in my local art shop. A water spray is
absolutely essential. By using this, it
gives you more time to paint the areas you
want before it dries. It also allows you to
reactivate the paint if you want to add a smooth
line or remove some paint. I also have an old rag or t shirt which I use
to clean brush. Cleaning off the paint
before dipping it in the water will make the
water last a lot longer. It's always useful to
have a tissue at hand whilst painting to
lift off excess paint. Also, you never know when an unwanted splash or drip might occur that needs
wiping away quickly. I also have a water dropper
to keep the paints wet. When you paint, it's
important to have them a similar consistency to what
they're like in the tubes. This way, it's easier to
pick up sufficient pigment. A hair dryer is useful
to have for speeding up the drying time and controlling the
dampness of the paper. And lastly, masking tape. And this, of course, is just to hold the paper down still onto the surface to stop it sliding
around whilst painting. Also, if you plan on
painting to the edge, we'll allow you to create a
very crisp, clean border. And for this class,
in particular, we're going to be using
a straw to create lovely expressive splash marks. I also encourage
you to experiment with any other materials
you like to explore. Now, let's get on and
start the painting.
4. Sketching Tips: Always start the sketch with a very soft lead because we don't want to
press the paper and mark it. We want to be able
to rub out lines and capture the
energy to begin with. Then we can move over to
a finer pencil later on. You can see I'm
just generalizing. I'm going over my
lines multiple times, trying to create a
spatial awareness. A lot of them are just circles, distorted in different angles. Not one straight line
occurs on my paper, and now I swap over to a finer lead now that I know I'm happy with
the composition. I can be a bit more refined. And because we started with a light lead to begin with,
when we use the rubber, it's going to be
those soft lead lines that rub away first, leaving the actual
construction lines we need for the painting. But even when I'm using
this fine lead pencil now, I'm not pressing too hard because I don't want there to be pencil marks at the end
of the painting process. So start off with blocking
shapes with a soft pencil, and then when it comes
to refining the lines, use a thinner lead. And I'm only using these refined lines for the detailed sections
like the whale. The waves can be kept ambiguous because those are going
to be abstract pigments.
5. Light & Easy: So starting off with a
very, very simple step, I'm just going to pre
wet the paper where this white little gap is on the whale's
head above the eye. I'm not an expert
on whale anatomy, so I'm not sure what part
of the whale this is, but I'm just pre wetting it
with water and then adding a little bit of yellow ochre
and maybe capium yellow, just to give it a
little bit of warmth. And you can see how
lightly I'm doing this. I don't want it to be
too obvious at all. And in fact, at the
end of the painting, this is going to be
barely perceivable, but it's a nice step
just to warm us up, take the edge off because by breaking things down
into simple steps, we can relax and
have a bit more fun. The reason I'm adding this
warmth here is because there'll be a bit too much contrast with the
white of the paper. And the black is going to
be very blue, a blue black. We're going to make
our blacks very interesting by integrating
a whole range of blues and a whole variety of different colors on the
cool side of the color wheel. So adding this yellow here
right now will create a lovely complimentary contrast
with the colors later on. Even if it's barely perceivable, there'll be an influence on our eye that will make
it look very attractive. We're building up
pigment nice and slowly, so there doesn't have to be
too much room for mistakes. Started off with
that yellow ochre. Now we're integrating
a bit of burnt sienna. I say burnt sienna, but that's just
the general term I use for this particular
color of a brownish, warm, almost orange color. You don't have to use
exactly the same. In fact, I have multiple different tubes that
can count as burnt sienna, even though they don't say
burnt sienna on the tube. If you Google what burnt
sienna looks like, I'm sure you have a tube
already that looks like it.
6. Using Your Own Colours: Now I've taken a
bit of cobot blue. But again, if you
don't have cobot blue, you don't have to be concerned. You can use ultramarine, Serlan. The choice is yours. It's these decisions
that allow us to be creative and find
our own personal tastes. See how I'm dabbing
little bits of color from the various
pans on my palette. This is not something I'm
overly conscious about. I'm not thinking, Oh,
let's take a little bit of purple here or a
little bit of red. And this is what I mean by
exploring your personal tastes and help your creative
muscle grow and flourish because I could create this
class in a way in which I limit what colors I use in order to make it
exactly replica. And I could tell
you exactly when I use a certain color and how much of that color
I'm mixing with a different color to
achieve a whole new color. But that's not the way I paint, and that's not the way many
watercolor artists paint. They are more intuitive. So it's best to practice that skill rather
than making sure you're using the exact same
pigments that I'm using because there's so many
incredible pigments out there. When you go to the art shop, you can see all those
tubes of paint, and they're all unique
and different and despite them having
different characteristics, there's a lot of crossover, actually, and you can
still follow along with this class and create a captivating painting with your own personal
set of pigments. And what's more because they are your personal
set of pigments, they'll be unique to you. That said, in the project
and resource section, I do have my pigments listed. If you are still a beginner or want easy starting off point, a comfortable starting off point because
there's no shame in having a good comfortable
base to start off with. In fact, that's
what it should be. You don't need heap
loads of pigments, and the pigments that I use
are the ones in my palette, and that's all I really need for every single painting I do. So it's a good
starting off point. A,
7. Wet On Wet: And we're using wet
on wet technique. So we pre wetted the paper, added that yellow ochre, and now we're just
dropping in little by little pigment diluted, and we're swirling the brush gently and manipulating
where it's going to go. And gradually over time, you can see how the
tone builds up. We're not actually putting
strong pigment at the moment. We might be mixing
it on our palettes, but we're gradually
building it up, doing a swipe and then
evenly distributing it. By keeping it wet
on wet like this, we can use the brush to take out more water if there's too much
water on the paper. That's why I have the sponge
there above my palette because if there's too
much water on the paper, I can just tap my brush on that sponge to dry out
my brush, basically. It won't completely dry, but it'll make the brush
work like a sponge, and then I can soak up water that excess water from
the paper onto my brush. And it'll make the
wash a bit more even so that it won't
dry in some areas faster than other
areas and create inconsistencies which would
then cause unwanted effects. So where the fin is, I'm preserving the white of the paper because
I don't want that warm burnt sila
to touch that area. And like I said before, this will be the lightest
part of the painting, really. And it looks quite dark now. But once we paint
the pure black, the heavy pigment, for
the main of the body, it'll make this area
look much lighter. You've got to keep that in mind when you're painting this area. If you paint this
area too light, then when we come back with
the very dark figment later, the contrast won't be right. I'll be too much contrast. As this paper is slightly
bit by bit drying, the brush strokes hold
their form a bit more. So I'm just going along
the edge of the belly or underneath the head
here with a bit of a darker blue color just
to help build the form. Because like I said, the
paper is still damp, the edge will be nice and soft. It'll blend out into
the rest of the body. Adding a bit more pigment
underneath the fin. So there's a nice
soft shadow there.
8. Blue Underlayer: So we can leave that bit for
the time being and start painting the underlayer of the
main body and the top fin. So I'm using serlean blue.
I really like that color. That's the color
that we're going to use most probably for the
splatters and the water. But to keep it in harmony, we're going to do an
underlay for the body, and I'm just using a nice
medium to light dilution of this pigment and just filling this area in using a bit more water to spread
it out if we need to. H. If it's too pale, you can add a bit more pigment, and if it's too strong, you can use water to dilute it more. There's always that
going back and forth. And by now, this yellow area above the eye should
be pretty much dry now because we
haven't added more to that from when we started
the painting 12 minutes ago. So it should be
pretty dry and we can go all the way to the
edge of that pencil line. And then once we've
filled in that area, we can start dabbing
in more pigment, again, using wet on wet. If there's too much, we can reabsorb it
back onto our brush like that and spread it out. I've got a tissue there just to clean up the edge and pick up any drops that have splattered on the paper
in unwanted places. Notice the size of my brush. It's a medium, small size brush. I wouldn't say it's too big, and I wouldn't say it's
too small either. It works for me because
there's a nice tip to it. So I can paint in
those shapes nicely. And because it's not too small, it hold enough pigment and water to fill out these washes. If the brush was too big, then there'd be too much
water on the brush. And when I paint these shapes, they'll it spill out and there'd be too much
water going on, it would be a bit uneven. Because the shapes that we're painting here are not too big. Maybe when it comes to
painting the main body later, we can change to a larger brush. But for the time being, having this small brush,
is good enough. I rarely paint with a brush smaller than this, by
the way, actually. So I used to use a hair
dryer to completely dry what we've done so far before painting this
top fin because I'm placing my hand above it, and I don't want to smudge
the wet paint, obviously.
9. Using The Straw: Now I'm going to
show you how to mix a gray without using black. So I've got red here, and then I'm going to
get a bit of green. And because those are
complimentary colors, if you find the midway point between them, it'll
turn to gray. So if it looks too warm like it does now,
add a bit more green. And if it looks too green, then add a bit more red. And eventually, bit by bit, you'll find the midground, which is a nice gray. And these kind of grays
are very interesting because if you use black, the pigment is black, and it can be quite bland. But if you use two complimentary colors
to find your gray, when you apply that onto the
painting and look closely, you can actually see the
two different pigments, the red and the
green inside there. I only from a distance
it looks gray, so it makes it so much more
dynamic and interesting. It might not be easy to
pick up on the camera. Even in real life, you'll
have to go close to see that this gray isn't actually gray,
it's just green and red. Because the pigments within these paints are
different sizes. The green pigments are larger
than the red pigments. When you apply the brushstrokes, they settle on the paper
at different times and the larger pigments of the
green float above the red. There's a nice little
effect that goes on. It still looks like gray. But it's just a more
exciting way to create gray. So it's time to paint
these splatters. And technically, as you can see, we're not even painting
these splatters. We're dropping a few splashes of diluted pigment
onto the paper and then using the
straw just to blow them in the general direction of where
we want them to go. Starting with gray,
because gray, as you can imagine, or work out, is the
least vibrant color. And you might be
thinking, why do I want to put a color
that isn't very vibrant and is the opposite of vibrant a dull color.
Why would I want that? Well, because having
this dull gray next to a vibrant blue creates a big contrast in the vibrancy and it boosts
the vibrancy of the blue. If I were to paint this
water purely blue, then because it's got
nothing to be compared with, it won't be so eye catching. But applying this gray next to it really makes
those blues pop out, and it makes the
viewer appreciate the color of them and
makes them more exciting. Adding a few splats
from my brush as well, just tapping the brush on there, being careful not to
splat the whale itself. I've actually connected two
straws end to end to make a double straw so that I don't have to lean
right in to blow it. But it is easier
to use one straw. I just don't want my head
to block the camera. So when it comes to
painting yourself, experiment with just
the one straw or you might want to use
two straws because you can bend it around
twice as much. A, because I'm, of
course, filming this, I want to keep the frame
clear and aligned. I'm not rotating my painting. But when it comes to
you painting this, it's much easier to
rotate the board and blow the straw in the
direction that you want without having to
move yourself around, you can just move
the painting around. Notice how I've also premixed my blues before I started this. So even though I
haven't used blues yet, they're prepared
and ready to go.
10. Mixing in Blue: Now we've started the left
hand side around the edges. We're going to start implementing
the blue in the inside, and these will blend nice and
organically with the grays. Again, reabsorbing that diluted pigment from my brush
and just letting it fall off onto the palate then using the straw
just to mix them. This is where the
medium really shines because we're not controlling. We're not forcing the
medium, the watercolor, the pigments, we're allowing
them to move themselves. We're manipulating them in
a way that we want them to, but we don't have direct control about how they'll
actually turn out. We can choose where we want
to add more pigment and how diluted we want that pigment to be and where we want
to blow the straw. But the actual details of it, that's where the
beauty and the magic comes from in the watercolor. This is where we have to put
our faith in the medium. You can see that this blue is
a lot darker than the gray. But to keep it exciting,
every now and then, I add a splash of pure water on there to affect
their consistency. And then every now and again, I add pure pigment on there. Now I'm influencing the
blue with a bit of red to make purple. T,
11. Creating Chaos: And this is the polar opposite of what we
were doing before, painting the underbelly
of the whale. When we're painting the
underbelly of the whale, we're purposely keeping
everything controlled. We didn't want any
inconsistencies in the pigment or the
water ratio to pigment. We wanted there to me nice smooth transitions where
we want them to be. But what we're doing now, we're
purposely creating chaos. We're purposely creating
inconsistencies. We're encouraging that mess because that's what makes
this part exciting. And that's how we balance the expressive side of painting
with the controlled side. It's impossible to paint details or at least
very difficult to paint details in
an expressive way that's convincing
and captivating. So when it comes to
wanting to paint in a style that has
expressive elements, as well as defined elements, we've got to look at our
subject and figure out which parts are going to be
the expressive parts and which bits are going
to be the refined parts. And with this painting, it's a great example
because, of course, the water is going to be the expressive parts and the whale, especially around the eyes and the fins are going to be
the more detailed parts. So once we know
that, we can take advantage of the
medium in those areas. We can be expressive
and messy as we want in the water areas because that's what that part of
the painting cools for. And then once the
painting is done, it'll all make sense in a
convincing and captivating way. If we try to do
it the other way, painting the whale in a
very expressive loose way, but then painting
these waves in a very refined, detailed way, I'm sure some people will
be able to make it work because everyone has
different techniques and different ways of painting. But for me, it
wouldn't work for me. I wouldn't know how to
do it in that respect. So that's why I've chosen
to do it this way.
12. Varying The Consistency: I just used a tissue to dab some areas to make
some areas lighter. And now to contrast that, I'm going back in with
a very thick pigment. And this pigments
just going to bleed out and create a nice smooth, soft edge, but not controlled. There's lots of uneven
pools of water here, and these brush marks
are going to catch some of them and miss others. So it's going to
be quite random, and that randomness is what's exciting because
it's unpredictable, and it looks unique. And again, that's
what I'm trying to encourage it's two
different ways of thinking. Ironically, when we're
painting the whale, we're focusing on avoiding
mess and randomness. We want to put as much
control into it as possible. And now we're doing
the opposite. We're working hard not to be controlled to
try and look for where the inconsistencies are to provoke the watercolor
medium, in fact. Purposely provoking
it, looking for where the danger is breaking
all the rules. We started off
with Cerlean blue, and I incorporated some ultramarine and maybe
a dash of cobalt. And also a bit of
purple in there. So we've got a nice
range of cool colors. And there's really
no limits or rules to what colors you want to use because as
long as they're blue, they'll be harmonious together. So I'm excited to see
what blues you've got and how you can make
this painting yours. Despite the expressiveness and the rule breaking I was
just talking about, it's not completely
abstract, though. There are some anchors in there. For example, I'm trying to
force a sense of direction. So it's almost like
a curve or a V, and I'm working within
that main shape, and then there's a little
root like branches coming off we've got a main plane that's perpendicular to
the whale jumping out. And it meets in the
middle down below. And right where I'm
painting the dark pigment, if you squint your eyes, you can almost see a
line from left to right. It's a shape made up of smaller
shapes and dots, really. Now I'm going back with a
tissue to smudge some areas, to absorb out some
of the pigment, and then I go back with
a brush to agitate some hard lines or edges
that are too obvious.
13. Adding Dots: Now I'm going to add a
few artificial dots. By that, I mean, I'm
painting in them myself because sometimes dots are a bit random and you don't know where
they're going to land, so I'm just going to place them where I think
they should be placed. And now a lot of these strands have dried a bit,
they're a bit too light, so I'm just going to
go back into them, make some of them a bit darker. Basically trying to
refine the mess now. We've done the chaotic part. Now we're just trying to
bring it a bit of context, force it a bit more now. Add a bit more texture
as it's starting to dry. Adding a few flicks increases the texture
that's on there, the difference in
texture and consistency. Mixing another gray, using the red and green
mix for my gray. And then you can add blue to further make it
more interesting. This is a lot thicker now. I'm running along the bottom
edge of these ripples. I just dabbing in
this gray to make it a bit darker on the edge to frame it to make it
feel a bit more grounded. I could have used blue for this, but using the gray again, just helps stabilize
it a bit and add a bit more variety without overloading the amount of
colors we've got in there. That's another
reason to use gray because gray isn't
technically a color. It's a desaturated color. So it doesn't affect
the color scheme. See how I'm going
back and forth with the hair dryer,
drying some sections, trying to create
inconsistencies again, creating those hard edges,
those organic edges. Adding pure water. And the brush I'm using
now is quite rough, and I'm purposely
scratching some of the edges to smooth some edges. So we've got a nice range
of hard edges, soft edges. And now we're going
to put a tissue to protect the whale and now
we can do a few splats, which will be behind the fin. We just in general, close to the whale, but using the tissue to stop
us from touching it.
14. Giving The Water Form: Trying to add a bit of form to the water by adding these little dots that
look a bit tilted, and they add a bit of depth, a bit of perspective. I call them dots, but
they're really lines. And they follow the flow and
the direction of that water. You can see it's quite angular, diagonal from the top
left down to the center. So these little
marks help again, give the randomness
a bit more context. I'm not putting them everywhere. Little touches of them affect the subconscious of the viewer and make it feel a bit more
understandable and immersive. It gives a feeling of anchoring and it makes
it easier on the eyes. Water's pretty much done now. And to be honest, if
I stepped away from it now and moved on
to the next step, I probably wouldn't notice or it wouldn't make
much difference, but there's something
inside of me that's in the moment and feels that
there's more to be done. Maybe I have to blend this
water into the belly of the whale a bit clear or get the tones right
underneath that fin, because we're going to be
painting that fin dark. So I want there
to be a contrast, but I don't want
it to be too dark. I want it to match
the rest of it, add that shadow underneath. So there's a bit
more of a transition using the tissue to
dab it off a bit. If I know it's not right,
whilst it's still wet, you can use a tissue just
to remove your mistakes. I always have a tissue
in my other hand. Defining that edge, making
the edge a bit darker, an outline, so to speak. That's the water done. Just added a few layers
to tighten it up a bit. Add a bit of control
to the chaos. Now I'm starting to
think about the fin because that's what
we're painting next. I don't want there
to be a hard edge at the bottom, before we start, I'm just going to pre wet underneath here
with clean water.
15. The Top Fin: Now that we've wet the
bottom of the fin there, so it's going to be
a nice smooth edge, we can start getting
the pure black. You can mix your
own dark blacks, but it's quicker when
we're going to be using so much of it just to use
the neutral tint that I use. I don't use black or
ivory black, lamp black, I use neutral tint and very carefully filling
it out to the edge, painting the edges
to begin with, and then painting the
inside afterwards. Black can be deceiving
because when it's wet, it looks much darker than
it is when it's dry. And already I'm trying
to make these darks more interesting by
incorporating some red and blue, some purple because black or
neutral tint is so intense. We don't need to be worried
about it being too vibrant. Just adding a little
influence of red and blue just makes it subtly more exciting without it changing too much because black by itself is just a
dead color, really. Of course, if you're doing the whole painting or any
painting in black and white, just using pure
black, then that's a statement within itself,
and that can work. But when I try to
incorporate blacks into any other composition that has got a full
array of colors, I try to integrate other colors into the blacks to make them more interesting. Especially when there's a
slight variation of tone, see how there's a blue influence going on there in the center. And now I'm smoothing
that edge into the wet paper below
that we pre wetted. And whilst it's wet
and wet like this, it gives us time to
manipulate it a bit. Of course, we don't want
to fiddle around too much, but the most control we do
have in watercolor is when it's wet and wet because we
can keep on taking away, keep on putting back on. As long as we keep it
even, it should be fine. The reason I kept the
edge of that thin smooth. Why I wanted it to
blend out subtly is because I wanted to have a little checkpoint here where I could think about the rest of the painting without
having to work on it. And if it was a hard edge, it would be too disconnected
and jolting for the viewer. But having a smooth
edge like this, it actually connects it and glues it into the
whole composition, so you can take a break and then think about
what we want to do.
16. Starting The Body: And in a similar way to
how we painted the fin, we're pre wetting the paper first just to give us
a bit of a safety net. So when we dab in the pigment, it can spill out for us, and we'll have a nice smooth
edge to these brushstrokes. So that we are allowing
the watercolor to do the work for us, really. And it's a similar color to the water with a bit more
black in to desaturate it. And this is just
to start it off. This is just to help us see where the pigment and
water is on the paper, and then we can start
building on it until it's basically pure black. Adding a bit of red. And when
that mixes with the blue, that'll create a
nice little purple. Seeing where it meets
the water's edge there. Gradually building
up that pigment. You don't have to
work really fast, but fast enough so that the pigment doesn't dry and create hard edges where
you don't want them to. And you can use a water spray. But what I tend to do, I
just work in one area and gradually build on it so that I'm always working where
the edge of the washes. I'm trying not to move forward until I've already finished
the area I'm working on. So you can see, right here, I've already got very dark, deep pigment, and we
haven't even touched the middle bit or the other part of the whale on the
other side yet. You always have to be aware of your edges with watercolor, because if they were to dry now, it would be very difficult
to smoothen them out. I mean, it would be possible, but a lot of the magic will be lost and it won't look
so sophisticated, really. But the good thing with
painting dark pigments like this is that it hides
a lot of the mistakes, so we can always do
another layer on top to camouflage
those mistakes. And that's what I'm
doing now. I'm adding a bit more water to reactivate it because I wasn't quite happy with
where it was going, and I wanted to give
it a bit more life. So adding more water in
there gives us more time, more time to get it right before it dries. A,
17. Making Darks Interesting: I've purposely made it
lighter at the top, because that's going to
be reflecting light. And it can't be a hard edge. It has to be a smooth
transition because, of course, in real life, the orca doesn't
have sharp corners. It's a smooth curve
around the body. So to achieve that smooth edge, I just used my brush
to suck out some of that pigment and it automatically creates a
nice curved edge there. I can reactivate it, maybe go over it a bit more
with that serlean blue. And as long as it's wet, we can manipulate it and
go back and forth. You can see, of course, we've used a lot of black there, but as it starts to get lighter, we've incorporated some blue. So it doesn't look like it's full on black color because we've added
that color in there. And even in the dark
dark bits down below, we've added red in there. So having that nice blend
of red when it's at the darkest and blue when
it starts to get lighter, makes it a nice color
to experiment with, but you don't have to
use those same colors or at least not the
exact same colors. Like I've said before,
maybe you want to add purple in there or green, if it's your favorite
color or turquoise Brown. And there's so many
different types of blue that you can buy and so many types
of red and purple. So choose the colors that
really speak to you, excite you, because there's
no wrong answer, really. Right here in the middle, I'm making it a bit lighter, adding a bit of brown in there. Because it's going to
be lighter as well, reflecting some of that light. But I don't want it to just be the same color as it gets light. I want to make it a
bit more interesting. Of course, these colors
aren't actually natural. The oca doesn't have blue
on it or brown or red. I'm softening that edge. So I start with a bold stroke
following that pencil line. So I'm outlining where that
white bit above the eye is. It looks like a big white
eye, except that it's not. And then I go back
over it and scrub it a bit to blend it out. Then wrapping around
the other edge. I got to be careful here because I don't
want to paint over the delicate pencil lines
where I actually drew the eye.
18. Complementary Colours: On this right hand side, I'm going to make it a
bit more interesting, a bit more variety to it by
adding this burnt sienna. Because, as I've said
in many classes, brown is the complimentary
color to blue, it's nice to have a bit
of a burst of it here, even though it's not
naturally on the aca. Having a few dots here
and there adds to the complimentary color effect that makes it very pleasing. And then we can start painting around it and blending it in. Been careful around
the eye there. I can still see the pencil lines underneath where
the eye is there, even though we're
using dark pigment, all I need to see
is a little bit, and I can fill it out later
with some white gash. At the bottom here, I want there to be a nice
sharp contrast. And we can see now that we're
adding the darkest darks in that first bit of painting we did on the underbelly
doesn't look dark anymore. So when it comes to
painting itself, don't be afraid to
go just a tad darker on the underbelly
because we're definitely going to add dark dark blacks later that will make it
appear lighter than it is. So I'm noticing on
the left that it's starting to dry a bit when I'm
adding this thick pigment. The thicker the pigment
you put on the paper, the actual faster it dries. And now that it is drying, it's actually a bit too light. It's so difficult to
judge it when it's wet because black already
looks so dark. But now that it's
starting to dry, it feels a little bit too light. So I'm going to have to add
a bit more pigment in there. But I want to make sure
that the papers ready for it because it's all a bit
inconsistent at the moment. Some bits are drier than others. So I'll have to get back to it. Maybe spread it with
a bit of water later. At the moment, I'm just
concentrating on this bit here, around the eye, adding the darks while it's
wet or wet there, so there's going to be a
nice smooth transition. Now I'm going to add a bit more tone just
above that white bit to increase the free deniality of it and to basically
balance the tones. There's a bit too much contrast. Light and shadow describe
the form of the object. So if it's misplaced, then the object will
look a bit deformed. So I'm trying to take a bit of time to assess it and see what needs to be
done to correct the form.
19. Simplifying The Form: Again, as it's starting
to dry, it's going light, so adding a bit more
pigment onto it, especially around
the mouth area. And then the forehead. Notice how I'm not
fully loading my brush. I'm really having to put
quite a lot of pressure on my brush strokes to allow
the pigment to come off. It's not like my brush
is fully saturated with water and it
just all slides off. The papers not so
wet at the moment. So whatever lines I put down there are
going to stay there. They're not going to flow across the surface of the
paper so much anymore. And if we want to
create smoother marks, we're gonna have to
add more water now. So I need to correct the form on the main part
of the body here. So to do that, we need to change the tones. So I'm going to make
it a bit darker. I do like that brown. Maybe we'll add a
bit more later, but to begin with, I just
have to paint over it a bit. And then we can add
a bit more water to help soften it up. Then we have another brush, cleaning it and creating that smooth edge at the
top, that transition. So I'm never applying
a full load of water. I'm only doing it gently
to help smooth out areas. I don't want the water
to run and glisten on the page on the
paper at this stage. And if I feel like it's
getting too dry to work with, if I can't do a clean job of it, I'm starting to feel that now. I'm just going to have to add a lot more water and do the
whole thing again, basically. And that's not
necessarily a problem. By rewetting it
all and scrubbing, it's going to even itself out because it'll all be evenly wet. It won't be
inconsistent anymore. It'll all be the same
because I'm wetting it all. Of course, if I
didn't wet it all, if I just re wet one area, you can already see where it's wet and where it's dry and the ugly line it's creating. So that's why I'm
coming back now and rewetting all of it to
smoothing it all up. You'll see how I'm scrubbing that line away and
allowing the pigment to reform itself. A,
20. Making it Shiny: And now I know what it looks
like when it was drying, when it was almost
dry like before, now we can add more
pigment knowing that it'll be a closer tone. We re wet it so it actually
looks darker again, but I do know that
it'll dry lighter, so that's why I'm
adding more pigment. That monotone blue. Now I'm trying to refine a bit more where it's
touching the water, negatively painting the
swirling of the waves as it connects with the whale. Where the mouth is on the lip, there's a bit of a highlight,
bit of a curvature. So I'm just using
this small brush just to add a bit of a
shadow underneath. And then we can also suck out
some water above to create that illusion of a little
ripple where the lip is. Let's give it some time to
dry to see how it goes, and then we can start to check and see if we can
move on to the next stage. I just noticed there
was a bit of a splatter here below the lip, I just want to clean up a bit using a bit of highlight
or white guash, really. Then whilst we've got
this guash on our brush, maybe we can use it actually
slightly wet and wet. It's still damp and using the tissue just
to draw out some water, then we can scrub away just
a few soft highlights. Because again, the light and shadow affects the
illusion of form. So having these highlights here tells us where the
curvature of the whale is. So I'm using pure water
and scrubbing away there. Not so much water that
it all spills out, just a little drop on the tip. I scrub it a bit and then
use the tissue to dab away. It's a bit too much, so I'm just going back and forth,
adding more pigment.
21. Adding An Outline: Now we've almost
finished the body, and I just feel like there needs to be a
little bit of an outline. So I'm using the very
tip of my brush, using the same pigment
that we use for the body, the dark pigment and just
adding a very soft line. Again, this informs
the view of the form, and there's going to be a slight shadow on the edge of this whale as it curves around. So adding this little fine line helps make it pop even more, especially against
the white background. And now that we've added
that black onto the whale, I can see I didn't go dark enough when painting the belly. So I think I'm going to add a bit more shadow
to the underbelly. So I'm re wetting that line so there's a nice soft
curvature over it. And then we can use
that same serlean blue. That serlean blue is
a bit like a motif. It's connecting all
the different parts. We've used it in the water on the main body and
now the underbelly. So I paint the general area, and then I clean my brush and use pure water just
to blend it out. I sing a bit of purple that I already had
mixed in my palette increasing that
contrast. Of course, we're going to paint that
flipper in a minute, and that again will affect
how we see this underbelly. We're painting the
shadow of the flipper, the fin before we actually paint the fin itself. H
22. Adding Highlights: But before we paint the fin, let's add a few touches of
highlights where the eye is. Just a very delicate,
small line. We're not painting an eye. We're painting the reflection of the light around the eye. And it doesn't need to be obvious that it
is an eye, really. So I just do a little dab
of the whitewash and use my finger just to soften it
and smooth it out a bit. And these little
highlights also convey the glistening
feeling of wet skin or the wet surface
of this whale. It feels very wet and glossy. And whilst we have this
white gouache on our brush, we may as well make the most of it and paint the little
shimmering highlights on the top of the body because I think we imply the highlights, the glistening surface on
top of the whale's body. So I'm just going to make it a bit more
diluted so it's not so thick and white and just add a few strokes,
not to the very top. I want there to be a
little line at the top. I'm just painting a
little few brush strokes in between the
body and the edge. So you can see I'm still maintaining a little
bit of a line there, using my finger just to
blend it out softly. This, of course,
will dry darker. The black paint dries lighter and the white
paint dries darker. And it can take a
bit of practice to get a feel for how
the white paint works. I suggest doing a
few experiments on a separate piece of paper
until you get a feel of what's the right consistency
because it's very deceiving when it's wet
to when it's dry. U
23. Painting The Side Fin: When it comes to
painting this fin, we have a bit more freedom
to it because there's a bit of texture on this
fin on the surface of it. So it doesn't need to be a
nice smooth wash. Basically, I'm going to add a
few brush strokes in the direction of the fin, and then I'm going
to just go over it with a bit of water just
to blend it out of it. So rather than the
different ways we've been painting so far, first of all, filling
the area with water and then dropping pigment into that water to let it blend out. And then, um another
way we paint is by applying a thick stroke of pigment and then
blending it out. This way, we're
going to just apply a few directional brush
strokes to add a bit of texture using that
same serlean blue, but with a bit of dark in
there, a bit of black. And then we can just
blend it out a bit. Maybe making it a bit
darker where it connects to the body and the edge where the highlight is giving it a bit of time for those
edges to dry a bit so that the edges remain so that it still keeps a bit
of that texture. Then we can go over it,
soften up the majority of it. And in fact, most of those brushrks we've just painted have actually dissipated and
blended completely out. So it really doesn't matter sometimes how you
apply the pigment. I want the edges of
this fin to be a bit darker and then a bit
lighter in the middle. And now we can start
to bring back some of that texture that's on the fin, some of those directional lines, those little
wrinkles or ripples. And because we know that
the paper is slightly damp, this will be nice
soft, molty lines. The color looks a bit
saturated at the moment. It looks too vivid. So when it dries a bit, we'll have to go over that
and muten it out a bit, make it a bit less vibrant, but we can't do that right now, otherwise, all that tonal work that we've just spent
a couple of minutes on will blend out completely. So we have to leave
it a few minutes. Whilst the top area
of the fin is dry, we can paint the edge of it with a very dark pigment because it's not
facing the light, so it's going to
be in pure shadow. And again, because that area is wet above when we touch it, it'll softly blend into it. We could have easily
painted this bit first this shadow
side of the fin, and then painted the
top bit afterwards. But a lot of the time,
it doesn't matter. As long as we know what we want to paint
and how to paint it, we can change the order
in which we paint things. Some things can be flexible, some things can't be flexible. We had to do the underlayer
first, definitely, and then the S but this fin we could have
painted before the body. And there's also a fin
on the other side, we could have painted
first, as well. So sometimes we can change
the order of our painting.
24. Finishing The Fins: That fin is still a bit too wet to darken it and take
the vibrancy out of it, because you can see at the moment that it's
a bit too vibrant. So I'll come back later
and correct that. Just adding a bit more subtle shading underneath the chin. Of course, it's not a chin, but I don't know
what to call it, so underneath the
mouth area there. Dabbing in a bit more
tone, wet on wet. And unfortunately, I painted the fin without
pressing record button, but I scrubbed it out and I'm going to repaint it
for you the best I can. This fin is probably the easiest part of
the whole painting, actually, because
we're just going to paint it a block black color. Start off just filling it in
with a mid gray tone just so that we know which areas wet and which areas
we've covered, and then we'll just dab in lots more pigment
until it's fully black. So now we know it's
all even and wet. Now we can start bit by bit
dropping in pure pigment. And because it's wet, it'll all blend and flow into all
the areas you want it to. There's no problem painting the whole thing a
pure dark black. But maybe I will make it a
bit more exciting by adding a little of directional lines, especially at the front because the inside is going to
be where the shadow is, so I'm just going
to add or rather leave some of that underlayer
showing through there. Now we're coming to the stage where everything's coming
together quite nicely. We don't have anything
major to do now. We've just got to add some refinements and bring
the painting together. I decided in the end
that the texture on that fin was a bit unnecessary,
a bit too distracting. So just filling it out and
you can see after drying it, it lightens up again anyway. Now I can now that I
know that it's dry, I can go back and
bring the color, the saturation of this fin down. And to do that, I use its complementary
color, which is brown. Brown on top of
blue turns to gray. So rather than using gray
to make it less saturated, less vibrant, using a bit of brown on top like
we just did there, just brings down the vibrancy
and makes it more balanced.
25. White Splats: But that fin does look
still a bit odd to me. So I'm just adding a bit of this lavender I've
got in my palette, which is basically cobot blue with a little touch of warmth, a little touch of
lazarin crimson to make it slightly purple,
and then white. But you can buy that
as a tube like I did. But if you don't have a tube, you can easily mix
it with cobot blue, a touch of red, a little touch, and then
white to make it lighter. And then I'm just
applying that on the fin to give a suggestion
of highlight. Using the tip of my
brush just to add a few highlighted lines. And these lines will indicate where it's wet and
glistening again. Little highlights. If
it was a dry whale, these highlights wouldn't exist, and it would look
very different. But these little
glistening highlights make it look shimmering wet. Very fre di. But now comes another fun
stage of the painting. I dried it off and
putting a tissue on there to protect
the majority of the whale because I don't want to mess up all that effort we
put into getting nice form. Maybe I can add two tissues actually because it's
not quite big enough. Because I'm going to apply
some white splatters. And it's going to go
primarily on top of this fin. Making sure it's nice and wet, my brush fully loaded, so it's ready to be released. Just tapping it lightly
onto that area. And that connects the
fin to the water. And as the fin goes closer to the water
down at the bottom, I want it to be a bit
more dense splats. And then maybe on
the other side, you can add a few splats too. Of course, we can't control exactly where these splats land. We can just hope for
the best and hope that it looks all right. If it doesn't look
good, like just then, you can use the tissue just to quickly take them away again. I don't want it on the thin,
so coming up that thin, I'm just trying to get that
back bit of the whale, especially where it's very dark, where it's going to
boost the contrast. Um,
26. Finishing Touches: It's a lot easier
to do those splats with the brush tapping onto something rather than using your finger to tap
on top of the brush. Because if you use your finger to tap
on top of the brush, the splats go everywhere onto
the table, your computer. But if you tap on the brush, for some reason, that just
makes it a bit tidier. And I made that
mistake just then. Now I'm actually using the
brush to refine some of the water shapes, splashes. Where there's already pre existing white
gaps of the paper, I'm using the white guash to
emphasize where they are and the shapes of the
waves because you can feel a sense of movement
and form in that water, even though it was quite
random the way we applied it. And sometimes it
can be tricky to use this white gouache,
as I said before. So you might have to go
over it a couple of times because it will dry lighter, rather it won't dry
as light as it looks. So sometimes you have to
go over it a couple of times to get that
consistency right. Adding a few more splats to help balance it
out a bit better. And now we are coming
very close to the end, maybe a few dark splats
right down here, just tiny little
finishing touches. This is the time when you should maybe disconnect from it for a couple of hours and then
come back with a fresh eye. Adding a few larger
controlled splats here. These splats also
help to give it movement and depth. I
27. Final Thoughts: Welcome back, and
congratulations on finishing this
watercolor aca class. I hope you had fun
experimenting with watercolor and giving that
straw technique a go. It's amazing what a bit of
air and fluid paint can do. We combined strong contrasts, loose water effects, and playful techniques to create a painting full of
life and motion. You don't need to
master every detail to make a bold and
beautiful piece like this. Just the right techniques, a little courage and a
willingness to go with the flow. Remember, watercolor painting is not just about technical skills, but also about expressing your creativity and
personal style. I encourage you to continue
exploring, experimenting, and pushing your
boundaries to create your own unique
watercolor masterpieces. As we come to the
end of this class, I hope you feel
more confident and comfortable with your
watercolor painting abilities. Practice is key when it comes
to improving your skills, so keep on painting
and experimenting. I want to express my gratitude for each and every one of you. Your passion for
watercolor painting is so inspiring and I'm honored
to be your teacher. If you would like feedback on your painting, I'd
love to give it. So please share your painting in the student projects
gallery down below, and I'll be sure to respond. If you prefer, you can
share it on Instagram, tagging me at Will Elliston, as I would love to see it. Skillshare also loves
seeing my students work, so tag them as well
at Skillshare. After putting so
much effort into it, why not share your creation? If you have any questions
or comments about today's class or want any specific advice
related to watercolor, please reach out to me in
the discussion section. You can also let me
know about any subject, wildlife or scene you'd
like me to do a class on. If you found this class useful, I'd really appreciate
getting your feedback on it. Reading your reviews
fills my heart with joy and helps me create the best
experience for my students. Lastly, please click
the follow button Utop so you can follow
me on Skillshare. This means that you'll be
the first to know when I launch a new class
or post giveaways. I hope this class has inspired
you to experiment with more creative and expressive
painting techniques. I hope to paint with you again soon until then, bye for now.
Will Elliston, Award-Winning Watercolour Artist
