Transcripts
1. Trailer: Hi, I'm Louise De Masi. I'm a professional artist and I live on the East Coast of Australia. I specialize in painting in watercolor. I sell my paintings all around the world. I paint lots of animals and flowers. But my most popular paintings are my birds. I live on a rural property. My home is surrounded by State Forest and the amount of wildlife and birds that visit my garden is amazing. We had all sorts including kangaroos, cockatoos, and galah. For this class, I'll walk you step-by-step through a watercolor painting of a galah. I'll demonstrate lots of different watercolor painting techniques that I use. I'll show you how I work wet on wet and which I'm drawing. You'll learn how to soften edges properly and how to lift color to create highlights. You will paint some deliberate watercolor glimpse and we'll paint some of the feathers negatively. I'll talk about how much water to put on your paper and how it makes most of my colors on the paper and not on the palette. You will have access to my reference photo, a line drawing of the galah and my final painting. You can paint along with me. At the end of the class, you'll have a beautiful watercolor gala painting that you can be proud off. If you're ready to improve your watercolors skills, then join me in this exciting class. Let's get started.
2. Supplies : Hi, everyone. I'm so glad you're here. Welcome to the class. You're about to paint one of Australia's most well-known birds. They are common and widespread throughout our beautiful country, they're noisy and they're sometimes a bit mischievous, but they're well loved. They visit my garden regularly and they feed on the grass seeds and the seed pods in some of my trees. They can become quite time. All of the files that you need to complete the Galah painting are included for you to download. In this video, I'm going to show you all the supplies that I use to finish my painting. These are the brushes that you'll see me use throughout the painting. This one here is a Da Vinci Casaneo round brush, it's a Number 8 and I use this one for doing all the initial washes at the start of the painting. This one here, you'll see me use this as a Da Vinci Casaneo brush, Number 4, it's a round brush, I also use this Da Vinci Maestro Number 2. Now, I probably could have gotten away with just using the Da Vinci Maestro Number 2, I find I prefer using the maestro brush because it has a finer point on it. This brush here is a Da Vinci Cosmotop spin liner brush. This one here is a 3/zero, I also have a size one that I like to use. The other brush I have is a Winsor & Newton short flat bright bristle brush. This is just a stiff brush that I use to remove paints sometimes. The paper that I used for my painting is arches hot pressed watercolor board. This is 1,045 GSM in weight, it's very thick and heavy and I didn't need to stretch it. If you're just using ordinary watercolor paper, I suggest you stretch it before you start painting on it. These are the points that I used, I used all Winsor & Newton paints and this main color here is quinacridone red. Now, this is the pink that are used to paint the main body color on the bird. This color here is permanent magenta, and I use this color on the darkest areas of the pink parts of the bird. This color here is Windsor Violet and I use this quite a lot when I'm painting. This color here is Burnt Sienna and this is French Ultramarine Blue. I mix these two colors together to make a lovely gray that are use on the gray parts of the bird. This color here is Paynes gray, I use a small amount of Lamp Black to paint the pupil of the eye in and a tiny bit of Van Dyke brown that goes on the eye as well. You need a pallet to put your paints on I like this one because it's ceramic and it has sloping wells. I'll talk about this a bit more in the technique video. I also used an old towel to wipe my brushes on, I've got a water jar here to wash my brushes in and a squirt bottle just to refresh the paints when I need to. I also use my mechanical pencil and my eraser just to rub out the pencil marks. I also have a hair dryer plugged-in next to me when I'm painting just to help speed up the drying time of the paint. The other thing I like to use is saral paper. This is just a transfer paper that helps me get my drawing onto my paper. This just comes on a roll and I just cut it to the size that I need. This is good because it doesn't smear the way graphite sometimes does. They're all the main supplies that I used for this painting.
3. Watercolour Techniques used in this Class: In this video, I'm going to demonstrate some of the techniques I used when I painted the Galah. Now these are techniques that I use in just about all of my paintings so they should be useful to you if you're having any difficulties painting in water color. The first tip that I want to share with you is about how I put the paint on my palette. Now, if you've done any of my other classes, you'll know that I like to use a palette with sloping wells, like this one. Here's my palette and you can see that it's sloping wells. What I do is I squirt my paint here, at the top of the well to the highest point on the well, and then I just squirt it with water before I use it, and then all that watery paint just falls to the bottom of the well. I can mix more paint into it to make it darker if I want. By having the paint not sitting in the water, this goes hard. The paint that I've squirted out goes hard after a little while. It's not going all gluggy and sticky so that gives me a choice when I'm ready to paint, I can use the watery paint, when I want light color, but when I want darker rich pigment, I can use the paint that I've squirted out at the top of the palette because it's not sitting in water. All I have to do is wipe my wet brush over it, and then I get that beautiful rich dark pigment. I usually use the hard paint at the top of the palette on damp paper. I rarely mix colors so this system works well for me. 95 percent of any painting of mine is painted with colors that are straight out of the tube. Most of the mixing I do is on the painting itself, when I drop one color into another, which I'll demonstrate later in this video. This little palette I use in my classes so that you can see how I put the paint on the palette. My big metal palette that I use every day has all the colors that I use most often in it, and these wells in this palette are also sloping. Another reason to use a pallet with sloping wells is that if you mix a lot of colors, you risk dirtying your paint with other colors. If you use a pallet with sloping wells, then all that sludge and debris falls down into the watery paint and it doesn't accumulate on the paint that you've squirted out. I work a lot of the time on damp paper. Most of this painting is painted on damp paper so that's why I recommend stretching the paper so it doesn't buckle and packer. How much water do I use? Let me show you. I'll just draw a feather shape here on the paper just so that I can show you how much water I use. Just imagine that that's a feather. When I wet the paper, I spread the water out smoothly with my brush. I want nice even coverage and I don't want any puddles of water anywhere. When I paint the water on, I take just as much care as when I put the paint on and by the time I've spread the water out evenly, it should be ready to put the paint on. I put it on carefully and then I remove any puddles that might be forming with my brush. I just take them off with the damp brush and damp my brush on a paper towel. I'll just move in closer and show you the water. You can see that there is no great puddles anywhere on the surface. It's a nice even coverage, and there's a nice sheen on the paper. It's too damp and it's ready for me to put the paint on. I'll just put some watery paint on here. Now, it's important to not have a really wet brush when you've got water on the paper or when your paper is damp, you don't need to have a very wet brush. You just needed a damp brush to pick up the watery paint. Just damp your brush off on a cloth before you pick up the watery paint. You can see I've got nice even coverage all over that feather shape. I'm just going to paint another feather now but this time I'm going to put too much water on the paper just so that you can see the difference. I just painted onto the shape and straightaway. I hope you can see that there's just too much water there. It's just swimming on top of the paper. I'll show you closer. You can see there's quite a lot of water there on the surface. Now if I put some paint on there, you can see that the paint just goes everywhere and I've really got no control over it and if I move the paper, it will wash all over the paper. You'll know if you've got too much water on your paper because you won't have any control of where the paint is going. If we just have a look at that side-by-side, the one on the left has got about the right amount of water on it and the one on the right has got too much water on the paper. You can see I've got much more control with the one on the left. The paint is nice and evenly covered and it's not floating everywhere all over the top of the paper. If it's floating all over the surface of the paper like this, you might have too much water on your paper. When you paint the detail on the Galah, you want a nice even coverage of water with a slight sheen on the surface of the paper. Having said that, I do have a fair amount of water on the paper when I'm washing the body and the wing of the Galah. When I start to add detail by working over the initial washes so when I'm working on individual feathers, I don't have this much water on my paper. Here I'm working on an individual feather, and I'm working over the top of that original wash and you can see there's not as much water on the paper here. One of the techniques I use in this painting is called lifting out highlights and that just means literally lifting the paint from the surface of the paper to create a lighter area where you want to highlight. Now, to do this, you have to remove the paint while it's still damp and you also want to use non-staining colors, which we will in this painting. I'll just put some color on the paper here and I'll show you how I lift it out. Once you've lied the wash down and you want to lift the paint out to create a highlight, just wait a little while until the shine on the paper is just starting to diminish. Then you just use a damp brush or slightly damp brush just to remove the paint from the area that you want to highlight. Just wipe it on a cloth. Now if you try to remove it too quickly while the paper is quite damp, then the water in the pen will just return to that area of the paper. I'd like to wash the paint out of the brushes well and then I just stamp off the excess moisture on a cloth. You want your brush to be damp when you do this. If it's not damp, if it's just dry it won't absorb any paint. You also don't want you brush to be too wet because if it's too wet, it will just wash water back into your wash and just dislodge all the pigment. Just have a practice on a piece of scrap paper before you start if you're not sure how to do this. When you're painting with watercolor, sometimes you want a hard edge on the mark that you've made and on the times you want a soft edge. If we have a look at the Gala painting, it has a mixture of soft and hard edges all the way through it. To create a soft edge you need to work on damp paper. I'm just wetting the paper here. Then I get some color and I drop it onto the damp paper. You need to keep the paint within the boundaries of the water that you've put on the paper. My paint doesn't go out as far as the water goes out and that keeps my edges soft. All these edges here are lovely and soft. To paint a hard edge, you usually paint it on dry paper like I'm doing here and that will give me a hard edge all the way around. You can also paint a hard edge on damp paper if you take the paint all the way to the edge of the water line. I'll show you that here. I'll just paint another round shape and I'll put the paint on, but I'll take it right to the edge on the left-hand side of this shape. When I take it all the way to the left-hand side I'll get a hard edge on the left-hand side here. If I stop it short on the other side, so the water extends further than the paint. Then I get that soft edge in the paint again. It's hard on this side and whereas within the boundaries of the water, we've got a nice soft edge. If you want soft edges, do you always have to put the paint down on damp paper? No, you don't. You can put the paint down on the dry paper and then very quickly use a damp brush to run it along the edge of the mark that you've made to soften it. When I want to soften the edge of a mark that I've made on dry paper, sometimes I use two brushes, so I use one to put the paint on and one to take the paint off. If I make a mark on the dry paper with one brush, my other brush is sitting there damp, ready for me to use. Here it's just damp. I use that just to run along the edge of the mark that I've just made. Now I've got to do it straight away. Otherwise it will start to dry and I won't be able to remove it. You can see I've created a soft edge thin now and I can soften this edge here as well. The brush is just damp. Now I'll make another mark that I'll soften but this time my brush will be wetter. I have more water on the brush I want. To have it off on a cloth, I'll just put it in the water. It's nice and wet and then I'll try and soften the edge with this one. You can see I've got too much water on my brush because the paint just flies into a new area and creates another hard edge. You want to make sure your brushes is just damp when you try and soften edges. As I said, I really mix colors on the palette other than the gray that are mixed for the wing of this painting. Instead, what I do is dropped one color onto another color while the paper is damp. This is an expressive way of painting that creates these beautiful subtle changes in the color. What you'll see me do when I paint the Gala is I'll lay a color down. Now, might be on a feather, for instance. I'll just paint a feather shape here. While that color is still damp, I'll pick up a different color and I'll drop that onto the first color and it will blend with the first color and it will create beautiful subtle color changes on the painting. If you've taken any of my other classes, you'll know that I love my watercolor blooms. Sometimes they are called backgrounds or cauliflowers and they can be created by mistake and they can cause all sorts of frustrations towards watercolors. But I often create them deliberately. I think they're one of the elements of painting in watercolor that make this medium so unique and beautiful. In this painting, I create a few watercolor blooms when I paint the body. I also put some on the larger feathers. To create a watercolor bloom, all you have to do is drop some water onto a wash that's nearly dry. I'm just washing in some of the pink paint nail. Then I'm going to wait a couple of minutes for the shine on the paper to diminish. It's too wet at the moment. I'll just wait a minute or so. You can see here that the shine on the paper is starting to diminish, that's when I'll drop the water gently onto the surface will not look something like this. Drop the water on and then that rushes in and dislodges some of the pigment that's drying and it creates these interesting organic shapes in your painting. They just make your painting more interesting to look at. If we have a quick look at my Gala painting, I've painted some watercolor blooms here on the tail and I've put some more on the body as well. We hope that this explanation of some of the techniques that I use will help you with your watercolor painting.
4. Transferring the Drawing to the Paper: In this video, I'll give you a closer look at the paper that I use and I'll show you how I transfer the drawing onto the paper. I mentioned that it's important to stretch your paper before you start so that your paper won't pucker and buckle. I didn't need to stretch mine because I used watercolor Board. Don't forget that once your drawing is on your paper, make sure your lines aren't too dark before you start painting. So many people have asked me how I paint my Galahs, so what I thought I'd do in this class is take this Galah here on the left and I'll show you exactly how I painted it. I'm going to grab a piece of tracing paper and I'm going to trace directly off the one that I've already painted. That'll give me the line drawing that I can use to put onto a new piece of paper. This is just normal A3 size tracing paper and I'm just using my mechanical pencil, and there's the drawing that I'm going to use. The paper that I'm going to use for this painting is Arches Watercolor Board. This is hot press paper and it's 1045 GSM in weight. I don't have to this stretch the paper. If you're just going to use ordinary paper that's not Watercolour Board, then make sure you stretch it before you use it. Now these Watercolour Boards are 50 cm by 70 cm. I'm just going to cut mine down just to a standard A3 size and that way I'll be able to put my Galah just into a standard size frame. An A3 size is 42 cm by 29.7 cm and that's about 16.5 inches by 11.7 inches. The size of my Galah painting is A3. I just use a metal ruler and a sharp knife, and I've got a cutting mat underneath my board, and then I just lightly cut the surface and I just run through it a few times. I don't try and cut through it the first time I do it. I'm just lightly going cutting it over and over until I cut through. There's my paper cut, Now I've got to get my drawing onto the paper. To do that, I'm going to use seral paper, now I find these a valuable to have in my watercolour kit. This is like transfer paper, It doesn't contain any wax or grease and it's not going to smear the way pencil sometimes smears, this just comes on a roll. I just cut it to the size that I need, and I can use it over again. I'm just going to attach my drawing to my board so that it doesn't move when I'm tracing it. Just a couple of pieces of sticky tape, then I just slot the transfer paper underneath, and it goes between the tracing paper and the board. Then I can just use a stylus to transfer the drawing onto the paper, or if you don't have a stylus, you can just use an ordinary biro and just trace over the feathers like that. I have to be careful when I trace over the feathers because I don't want to press too heavily and indent the paper, I want to be able to see it but I don't want to leave a groove in the paper and damage it. There's my drawing on the paper. It's got a few grabbing marks here and there from the seral paper, but they just come off easily just with an eraser. Just rub straight off. It's always a good idea just to rub lightly over your drawing too just to reduce the pencil marks. We're ready to start painting now.
5. Washing in the Pink Head Feathers: Let's get some paint on the paper. In this video, I'm going to wash in the pink feathers that are on the head. Now I use quinacridone red for this, which is a really pretty transparent pink. I also lift some color out with my damn brush to form the highlights on the feathers around the cheek area. The first color I'm going to use is Windsor and Newton's quinacridone red. This is a beautiful transparent, pinky-red color, and I place it at the top of my palette, and then I'll give it a squid of water. What I'm going to do first is, I'm going to work on this part of the head here, this pink part. I'm going to run the paint along the cheek line beside the bake and then up under the eye, and then back down the neck. Just here I want to a soft edge, but along here, there's a hard edge of paint. I'm just going to wet this area here and then I'm going to take the water down just a little bit further here down his neck. I'm going to stop the paint along this line where his cheek is, and I use my Da Vinci Casaneo number eight brush to supply the water. With some clean water on my brush, I can just paint that onto the face and I just take it down to that cheek line that you see. I'm just painting it carefully around the beak and then under the eye as well, and then what I can do is take that water down further past that cheek line because I want a soft edge there. Along here where the cheek line is there's a hard edge. But down here, I want the edge to be soft so I've got to take my water further down. Now I've picked up my smaller Casaneo brush just so that I've got more control, and I'm picking up some of the watery quinacridone red, and then I paint that straight onto the damp paper. Now I want to keep my color pale at first because I'll be building color over the top of it. Keep the paint fairly light in color at the start. Now this water on the paper stops any hard edges from forming in my paint. When I get down to these neck part, I can pull it down just a little bit further, and I want to try and keep a soft edge here. I've just got water on my brush at the moment and I'm just softening that edge. It's cause I've got to try and join the pink neck feathers up with the rest of the body so I don't want to hard edge there. Now I've got a clean damp brush and I just want to take off just a small amount of paint where those cheek feathers are. I'm just taking the paint off with the brush and I'm wiping it on my towel. You might have to do this a few times because the paint wants to creep back into their part that you've just taken off. We I use my brush like a sponge, and I'll just keep going back into it just to take the paint off, I dab it on my towel, and as I said, you've got to keep going back over it cause the paint tends to move back into it. Now I'm just dropping in some clean water just with the tip of my brush, and I'm just going to create some watercolor blooms there just to give the birds some texture, I've got a bit of a hard edge forming here. If I just get my damp brush, I can rub it away. I've got the hard edge here, and then I've got this soft edge here. Because that has to join up with the rest of the bird.
6. First Wash on the Body: I wash in the rest of the body in this video with the Quinacridone red. I'll work with Home Weeds so that I don't get any hard edges forming in the paint. After I've washed it all in, I'll drop in some water droplets here and there to create those watercolor blooms that I was talking about in the technique video. The head is dry now, and what I want to do is just work down the rest of the body with the Quinacridone Red. I'm just drawing in some of these little feathers so I can see where I'm going. I'm just going to soften some of these feathers here just with my eraser. I don't want them to be showing throughout after I've put the wash on. I'm using my Davinci Casaneo brush again and I'm just starting to wet the paper with water. I'll take it up past my paint line here. Just so that I get a nice join on those neck feathers. I won't go any further than about here because it'll dry up too quickly on me if I do. Now I've switched to my smaller Casaneo brush just so that I can get up in there beside the beak, and then I pick up some of the watery Quinacridone Red again and I paint that onto the wet paper. Now I've just got a damp brush here and I'm just merging those two areas together with my damp brush. It's a bit more paint now, and I just take it down further, and because the paper is wet, I've got plenty of time.Take it up beside the beak here, and then I'll just continue down the body with it. Now I'm not going to take my paint all the way down to the water line, I want to stop it short of the water line so that I continue to get that soft edge along the paint. I'm not going to take it down to here, I have to stop it up further. Now I've got my liner brush and I've got a bit more Watery paint with a little bit more pigment in it this time. I am just defining the edges up here and pulling some feathers out, just to create those little spiky feathers. Now back to my big Casaneo brush and I just take the water down further. There's some little Grey feathers here, I think that I've gone a bit too far. I just want to make sure I don't put the water on them. I'll just move in closer so that you can see the water on the paper. I'm using a fair amount of water here, because this is a large area that I want to wash in at once and I don't want it to dry before I get it done. If you find yours is too wet and your paint is going everywhere, just sop some of it up with your brush. When I start to paint the detail on the feathers, my paper won't be quite this wet. Just kept going until you've covered all of the wet paper on It's tummy. Then I'll just use my liner brush just to push that paint right to the edges of the bird, and I can create some little flicks off the edge as well. Now if I go back up the top here, I can see that I've got a hard edge starting to form here on the neck feathers, which is what I don't want. If I just take a damp brush, I can just blend that edge well, so I just want to remove a little bit of paint down here. So I'll just use my brushes as sponge again. Then I can just pick some of that paint off just with the damp brush, wipe it on the tail as I go. Such as removing the paint just to create a highlight. I may have to wait a little bit longer to take these off, so just give your paper, just a little while to start drying just so that the shade starts to diminish. Then we can drop some water droplets on to create some blooms. I'm just dropping in some water now just to create the watercolor blooms, and that'll give the bird some texture. Up here I can see a hard edge forming again, and I don't want that, so I'll just use my damp brush just to remove it. I have to keep my eye on this area as it dries. We just want to paint another water droplet down here just to create another bloom and that gives me a nice textured base that I can work on top of. I'm just going to let that dry and I'll keep an eye on these little highlighted areas and make sure the paint isn't going back into them. I'll just keep pulling it out as it does, and I have to keep an eye on this little edge up here. Because I don't want a hard edge forming up here.
7. Washing in the Wing: As I mentioned in the Technique video, I rarely mix colors on the palette. There is one exception though. I like to mix a gray with two colors. I use ultramarine blue and burnt sienna, usually and I mix them on the palette, and I use that gray to wash in the wing. I'll show you how I do that in this video and I'll also drop another color onto the gray paint while it's still damp. My galah's dry now and what I want to do now is, wash in the wing. To do that, I'm going to mix up a gray color. I'm going to use French ultramarine and burnt sienna. Now, if you don't have French ultramarine, you can just use ordinary ultramarine blue, or even just a blue like cobalt blue will do. I'm going to squirt both of these colors into the same well. I put them at the top of the well just as I did the quinacridone red. Just up the top, and I'll get a piece of scrap paper just so that I can check the color and I give them a little squirt of water. Then I use my brush to mix them together. Before I use it, I'll just try it out on the scrap paper just to see what color's like. You get a nice gray. I generally like it a little bit bluer than that. I'm just going to put a little bit more blue into it. If you're a bit heavy handed with the blue, you can always put a little bit more of the burnt sienna back into it. That's looking okay. Just make sure that your pigment's all mixed up really well in the water. I think that will be good. I also want a little bit of Windsor Violet. I place that at the top of the well as well and I give it a squirt of water. Just make sure the pink feathers are dry before you do this. I'm just washing in with my big Casaneo brush to some water onto the wing, all over. But notice, I'm not taking it right to the edges of the wing. I'm just doing the main body part of the wing. What I'll do in a moment is, I'll get my smaller brush, and I'll use that to take the water right to the edges. If I switch down to my smaller Casaneo brush, then I can take the water right the way to the edge of the feathers. That's all covered evenly now. If you find that you can't paint as quickly as I can, just wash the wing in sections. Paint the top half first and then the bottom half. I'm picking up some of the watery gray with my brush and that goes onto the wet paper. I'm just using my smaller round brush to paint this on. This is just a watery paint. It's not too dark at this stage, it's just nice and light. Now, we can come back in with my liner brush and I can just pull that paint over to the edge of the fears. The other brush was just a little bit too big for this. Now, for some of the watery Windsor Violet and I just use that to drop onto the damp gray paint and it just blends nicely with it, just wherever I feel like dropping it. That's how it's looking at the moment. Now, I've just painted in this area here on the other shoulder just with the gray mix. I also do this little feather down here under the branch just with the gray mix. I'm just going to give that a few minutes just to dry a little bit so that I can paint some watercolor blooms onto the wing. The sheen on the paper isn't quite as glossy as it was, and I'm just dropping some water on now just to create those blooms. That'll give me a bit of texture on the wing as well. I'll just give that some time to dry now.
8. Washing in the White Head Feathers: In this video, I'm washing the white feathers on the top of his head, I work wet on wet to prevent any hard paint ages from forming. That's how my wing dried. Now I want to start working on the head. We have a look at the reference photo. The head is mainly white, but at the front here, there's a purpley gray color, which I want to bring in. I've done that on this first painting that I did and then I brought the color around the back of the head and I just let it bleed into the center. That's what I want to do now. I wet the whole head with this smaller Casanova brush. The only thing I have to avoid is the eye area. Here you can see the water on the paper. I'm just going to use my liner brush just to run the gray mix along the outer edge. The water on the paper [inaudible] my paint edge is soft and this paint will just bleed into the head slightly. I'm not really concerning myself with what's happening on the inside part of the head, I'm just looking at the outer edge and then I can put some of that pain over the top of the beak. I'm dropping in some winsor violet and I'll put a little bit about winsor violet behind the eye as well and the main thing I want do is just make sure the center part of the head just has the white paper showing and I might put a few little flicks just coming out of the head as well This is some [inaudible] red then I'm putting on the front of the head.
9. Painting the Eye: It's time to paint the eye now. You'll need two new colors on your pellet, Van Dyke brown and lamp black. But you'll only need a tiny little bit of each. If you don't have Van Dyke brown, you can use Sepia, or just any dark brown. I use my liner brush to paint in the pupil with lamp black. But as an alternative, if you don't want to do that, you could use a waterproof archival black ink pen. I'm just using my pencil, so I've just drawn the eye back in so that I can see what I'm doing better. I need some brown for the eye, so I'm just going to give myself a little squirt of Van Dyke brown. You could also use Sepia or burnt amber if you want to, and you need a tiny little bit. I also need just a small amount of the lamp black for the pupil, I'll just put these in the small circular wells, because I don't need a lot of paint. I just want a bit of the Van Dyke brown first, I want some watery paint, but I want it to be fairly dark, so I'm just mixing a dark mix. When you pick it up, just make sure you dump off your excess paint onto a cloth, so then, I just use that paint just to paint in the iris. Just be careful that you haven't got too much paint on your brush, I'm just painting on dry paper here as well. Just trying to get a nice shape around the pupil, nice round shape, so I need to dry this off with my hair dryer. I just want to leave a tiny little white highlight on the pupil, so I won't touch that with the paint, and then, you just do the same thing with the black, just pick up the watery paint but dump your brush off before you use it, and just paint on the dry paper. If you find this difficult to do, you can use a black fine tip archival pen. I sometimes use the pigment pins, they are waterproof and they archival ink. They are always handy to have in your watercolor kit. I'm also going to put a little bit of that black just around the top of the iris, so I'm just painting on the dry paper, trying to be as careful as I can. This is the pen that I like to use sometimes, it's just called a pigma micron pen. I want some of the watery winsor violet with my liner brush, and I'm going paint that area around that outside edge of the eye, you can just paint this on dry paper, and I'm careful to leave a white space around the iris and pupil, just to form the eye. The eye is dry, because I dried it with a hairdryer, now, I'm just using my trusty damp bristle brush just to remove a little bit of paint that's underneath the eye, I neglected to leave this area a bit larger in color. Now, I want to come back and add a small amount of detail on the purple part of the eye, just the outside area. I've mixed a small amount of the winsor violet into the watery mix just to make it slightly darker, I'm painting on dry paper now. Just with my liner brush, so just paint around the outside edge, and I can actually take a little bit of that paint up onto the white part of the eye. Now, I've got even more pigment mixed into the paint, so it's even darker, I just run it on the outer edge. Now, I dried it off, and I'm coming back with even darker paint now, just painting on the dry paper. Now, I've got some more of the Van Dyke brown on my brush, and I'm just deepening the brown area around the eye, but I'm going leave it lighter at the top there so it's just darker around the bottom. I'm just drawing around the edge with my pencil just to define it further. In the next video, I'll be working on the beak.
10. The Beak: I paint the beak in this video. It's quite simple to do. I just wash it in first and then I add some darker pigment to it while the wash is damp. It's time for the beak now. I'm going to use my da Vinci master brush. This is a number two. This is slightly smaller than the caisson brush that I've been using, and I'm just mixing up some Grey now from the French ultramarine and the burnt sienna. It's a new day and I just need a new batch of paint. So then I just use that Grey just to paint the beak in, just painting on dry paper, and now I'm going to switch to my liner brush and I need slightly darker pigment. So I'll just mix a little bit up here at the top of the well, and then I can use that to darken the beak, and then I'll just paint down to the wet paint, just mainly on the tip of the beak, and then I pick up some wings of violet from the top of the palate, and I paint that up on the top of the beak. So the paper's still damp from when I painted it with the first Grey wash.
11. Adding Detail to the Head: I'm going to add some data onto the head now with a new color, a dark and underneath those feathers where I lifted the color at and underneath the eye, and I put a small amount of color on the top of his head. Now I want to bring out the detail on these feathers that are around the beak here. Such as looking at the finished piece. This is the area here that we'll be working on now. You can still see those highlighted areas that I removed with my brush when I painted the cheek wash. Now I'm going to use my Da Vinci Maestro brush, the number 2, because it's got a nice fine point on it, such as working on that middle feather first. This is just a little bit of watery quinacridone red and I've just painted it along underneath my highlight and besides the beak. Then I can man it down along that front feather. Just keep the paint, really pale in color. You don't want it too dark, and then switch to my liner brush and I can use some of that watery paint just to create those feather separations. As a trick to this is to just not do too many. Otherwise it looks a bit strange. I'm just painting a little bit of water under this third highlight. There's probably a tiny little bit of paint still on my brush, so it looks a bit pink. But I just want the water there just to help me. Then I pick up some of the watery quinacridone red again and I drop it onto the water. I can pull up some tiny little separations onto the dry paper and then I'm just trying to soften the edge here. A little bit too much water there so just use my other brush to soak it up. Now I just want to bring out the wide highlight under his eye. You might remember, I removed it with my bristle brush in one of the previous videos because I forgot to leave it when I was washing in the pink. I'm just putting in a water underneath it, and then I can use the quinacridone red again just to bring that out. It's dry here on the white part but I've just wet underneath it. A little bit of quinacridone red, just with my liner brush, will bring that back here. I've just dropped it onto the damp paper and then anything you don't like, you can just use a bigger brush just to remove it. Seemed happy with that little area there. I'm just going to soften it with the damp brush and that just brings out that highlight a little bit more. I'm just going to put a tiny little bit more up here with my liner brush. Now I just want tiny little amount of water here and I'm just going to put some Winsor violet. Just a tiny little bit. Now I'm going to put some permanent magenta onto the top of my pellet. I'll use this color as the darkest color on all of the pink for this. I'm just using my pencil just to draw into little feathers that I want to leave as the light pink. There's one layer and there's another one just here. I'll just paint around those when I paint. Such as using my moisture brush, which is when a small amount of water on this area so that my ages will stay soft. Matter have to worry about the pine drawing too quickly, and I'm just going to turn my board because it's just easier for me this way, and then I pick up some of the permanent magenta from the top of the palate, and the I just start to painted onto the damn paper. Just run it along the check line. I'm just going to switch to my smaller liner brush now, and I can take it out to the edges. Then probably painter feeling extra flux as well. I'm just going to drop just a little bit of water to dilute their pain slowly to so it's not quite so dark, and just said that I get some interesting textures there. Suggest using Malana ambrosia can pull some of that color just up onto the dry paint day to create those feather separations. This edge here, I think it looks a bit hard. I'm just going to softener just with a damp brush. I'll just pull up paint down slightly and then I'll just take it around that highlighted feather and then I can put a little tiny bit more paint there. That is took away that adage that we say. Now I just want to run a little bit of the permanent magenta along under the cheek line. I'm just going to place just a small amount of water along where I want the paint to go and then using my liner brush and some of the watery permanent magenta, I can just place it on that water visits and underneath that line. Just lay down, and then I'll pull up a few feather separations here as well, and I've picked up some of the pain from the top of the pellet here since quite a bit darker. But I just want to soften and again with my moisture rush because there's a little bit too much paint a so, I you spread it out to sweep the underbrush. There is also a hard line here that are not liking, sorry, forget my damn branch. I can just run it along the and not just soften CAG repeat. Just a damn brush will do that for you and back to this point, there was a big dark. I'm just spreading it out with the liner brush now. Over here, I want to put just a small amount of permanent magenta. There was just a tiny bit of water and then some of the permanent magenta from the top of the palate with Malana brush. Now this will put a small amount of color up here on the top of their head so they deepen the color slightly. I've just taken some of the permanent Magenta from the top of the palate and I'm just painting this really small amount here in the corner, and I'll just pull it up onto those little flicks that I painted earlier. I'm going to do the same along this line here in front of the eye. Tiny bit of water first and then the permanent magenta again from the top of the pellet with malana brush and I just let it play it up onto the surface. As long as your plane stamp, you should be able to remove any marks you might eat on like this with a damp brush and small amount of water here at the back of the RNA. But this time I'm going to use Winsor violet instead of the permanent magenta. Again, I'll just let it bleed onto the surface. If you put anything on this too heavy, too dark tissues you brush to clean it off. I've included this image for you to download. It's called adding details to the head.
12. Adding Feather Detail to the Body: I'm going to start to bring all the data onto the pink body face now. I dampen the paper underneath the feathers and I'll paint negatively. That just means that I paint around the feathers to define them, rather than putting the paint directly on them. There's a progress photo of mine that corresponds with where I get to at the end of this video, and you can download that. It's called adding feather detail to the body. I'm just using my pencil just to draw in a few feather lines. The way I'm going to paint these feathers is I'm going to put some water underneath my pencil line here, and then I'm going to put some paint on the pencil line and I'm going to let it bleed down onto the paper. I'm going to use my smaller castlevania brush. Just to paint some water underneath my pencil line here. I don't want it to be something wet. I just want to dampen the paper. Then I'll use my liner brush to pick up some of the quinacridone red from the top of the palette. Then I'll run that directly underneath the line. Hopefully that will bleed down onto the surface of the paper. Now I might have put it on a little bit too dark here. If I go back with my castlevania brush, I can just pull some of it down just to soften the color. Just a little bit more paint now. If you put it on too heavy, just take a damp brush and just pull it down further and dilute it. Now, I'm using my liner brush just to pull some of that color up onto the dry part of the feather. Just to create the feather separations. You don't want to do too many of these otherwise it starts to look like fur rather than feathers. Again, I paint some water underneath my pencil line. You can see the water here. It's just dampening the paper. Then I take some paint and I just touch it underneath my pencil line where the water is. Then the water should make it bleed onto the surface of the paper. Again, I can pull a few little feathers separations up onto the dry paper. Just hear and there. Wet down here again, underneath my pencil line. Pick up the quinacridone red from the top of the palette here, where there's a little bit more pigment. Then on it goes directly underneath my line. Wet underneath the feather again, just like I did. Just take the water straight underneath my pencil line. I don't want it to be sopping wet, so I sop up some of the water with my brush. Then I use my liner brush to paint the quinacridone red onto the damp paper. I've got a fair amount of pigment on my brush. We've picked it up from the top of the palette. Again, I pull this feather separations up onto the dry paper. Now, I've got some watery quinacridone red. I'm just using my larger brush now. I'm just filling in a bigger area with the watery paint. I'm actually painting on dry paper here. Now, with a damp brush, I can just run it along that edge just to soften it. It wasn't quite so hard. Then I can continue along underneath the feather line here with a liner brush. Before the paint dries, I run some permanent magenta underneath as well. The paint's still damp from when I first painted it. I'm just painting this over the top. If you find yours starts to dry before you can do this, then dry it off completely with a hair dryer and re-water it with some water. I'm just deepening the color underneath that feather and on the left side in the wing. Now, I have a damp brush and I'm just softening the edges. I'm just coming back in here with a tiny bit more paint. This is the permanent magenta. Then I can just paint a few feather separations by just pulling up that paint up onto the dry paper here. Now, I'm wetting the paper back down here, just with some water. Then back to the quinacridone red now. I'll just paint that onto the damp paper and underneath my pencil line just to start forming that feather there. Now, I've just got a damp brush and I can move the paint that's there. I just move it around where I want it. This is enough paint on the paper and now I don't need anymore. Then I drop in some permanent magenta, more like quinacridone red is still wet. I can pull that paint up onto the dry part of the feather and just create those feather separations. When you do this, you don't want to overdo it. You don't want to do too many feather separations, because it'll look strange if you do. Now, I'm just wetting underneath my pencil line again. I've got some of the quinacridone red again. Pulling up the feather separations on the dry paper. This is fairly large in color here. There's not a lot of pigment in my paint. Here I'm on dry paper, and over here as well, the paper is dry. Now, I've got the touch of the permanent magenta. I'm just going to wet the paper here and some more of the permanent magenta. Just high up against the wing. Then I can use the damp brush just to pull it down and soften it slightly. It does need a small amount of moisture on my brush. That's what we're up to so far. In a moment when it's dry, I'm going to rub over this with my eraser, just to remove any pencil lines that I can still see. So I have an image that you can download. This one is called adding feather detail to the body, and use one just to get you up to this stage of the painting.
13. Adding Detail to the Top of the Wing: Now I'm going to start adding detail to the wing. I've got to have a look at the reference photo and try to make sense of where all the feathers sit. I use some Payne's gray to start darkening the feathers. The underside of the feathers right up on the top of the wing, and there's a few that you can see on his back that I'm painting as well. Sometimes I get asked what an eraser I use. This is just a normal Staedtler Mars Plastic Eraser that I bought at the newsagent and I'm just going to use it to remove some of the pencil lines that I can still see. I've just drawn back some of the feather detail on the wing so that I can see where I'm going with it. A new color for my palette. This is Payne's gray and I use these to paint all the dark areas on the wing. Put it at the top of the palette and then I give it a squirt of water, and then I mix some of that pigment down into the water. Looking at my reference photo, I'm going to be working on this group of feathers just here. Before I start to use the Payne's gray, I want to use this gray that I mixed earlier for the wing. I'm just mixing up a dark mix just with the ultramarine blue and the burnt sienna. I'll just start up the top here and I'll move in a bit closer. I'm painting on dry paper now, just with my liner brush. Here I'm just painting the underside of the feather and I leave the top of the feather untouched. This is just the gray that I mixed to wash the winging earlier. It's the burnt sienna mixed with the ultramarine blue. I'm painting all of this on dry paper and I'm just trying to make sense of the reference photo as I paint. Now I want some darker colors so I'm picking up some Payne's gray and I make sure that I dab it on my towel before I use it just to get rid of the excess paint, and then I just fill in the dark area. Just take your time when you're doing this because you don't want to lose all those light edges on the feathers. Now, I've gone back to the original gray, the one that I mixed, just painting on the dry paper still. There's a slightly bigger shape here and I've gone back to the Payne's gray now because I want this to be fairly dark. I'm still using the Payne's gray here and I just want to paint in nice feather separations. You looking underneath the feathers here. The light gray part is the top of the feather. The dark gray is the underneath part of the feather. As I said, just take your time with this and just use your small liner brush and work on dry paper. It's not difficult. It's just time consuming. Some more Payne's gray on the dark underside of this feather. Keeping the paint fairly dark. I've mixed bit more pigment into the watery mix. I'm just painting carefully so that I keep the light side of the feather showing. I'm just going to paint some of the light gray mix over the top of this one just to create the top of this feather.
14. Simple Detail on the Wing: Now, I've got a short video with some really simple painting for you. Basically, all I'm going to do in this video is use my line and brush to paint directly onto the pencil lines on some of the wing feathers. Easy. Now, for a very easy part of the wing, I'm just going to use the gray mix that I washed the wing in with. That's the burnt sienna mixed with the ultramarine blue. I'm just going to paint over the top of the pencil lines that I've made. The only thing to be careful with this is just make sure that you color is not too dark. It needs to be large in value and you just want to paint straight over the top of the pencil line. You need to be careful when you do this so take your time don't rush. I'm just going to speed this area up so that you don't have to keep watching me. But just be careful as I say, don't try and paint it this fast. Just take your time with it. Just use that gray mix of paint that you used to wash the wing in. It's the burnt sienna mixed with the ultramarine blue just on the dry paper. Here, I'm filling underneath the feather again, just with the gray mix, just painting it on dry paper and then I start to paint over those pencil lines again. I'm going to speed this next section up. Remember, just light paint on dry paper. I'll come over to the front of the wing now. I'll just paint over the lines down this front section. That was nice and easy. I've included this image for you to download just so you can see where you're going with it. This one's called simple detail on the wing.
15. Adding Colour & Shadows on the Wing Feathers: I'm going to start painting some of the larger feathers on the wing now. I dampen the paper with water and I drop other colors onto the feathers. I also paint a shadow down a group of feathers at the front of the wing. I'm going to start working on this big feather here. I'm just going to lightly draw in the center part of the feather. Now I'm just using my Casaneo brush just to paint a layer of water over the top of the feather. I'm just moving closer here so you can see the water on the paper. I always try and paint my water on carefully, and I try to get even coverage on the paper just so that there's no puddles forming in the water. I talked about how much water to use in the technique video. I want my paper to be damp, but I don't want it to be too wet. Sooner I'll pick out some of the watery Winsor violet and I just tapped the excess paint off my brush and then I just painted onto the damp paper. I painted underneath the feather that's on top of this one, and then I'll just pull it slightly down the feather a little way. Now while that paint's still damp, I pick up some of the ultramarine blue, and I dab off the excess paint and then I just drop that on as well. I'm just washing my brush, so there's nothing on my brush other than just a small amount of moisture and I can just move that paint around. Now I've got my liner brush and I'm tidying up the edges. The bulk of the color is up here and I've pretty much left this part of the feather here untouched. I'm just going to leave that feather for a second and I'm just painting some color onto the feather above. This is just the gray mix and I'm painting on dry paper here. I'm just painting just as a shadow in there. Now I want to go back to that other feather that I just painted and I just want to deepen the color slightly with some more Winsor violet. I just pat that onto the damp paint and that just deepens the color there. Here I'm painting on dry paper again, and I'm just using the gray mix and my liner brush and I'm just painting that paint just underneath the feather just to create just a deeper shadow there. I do the same thing on this feather, so again, I'm just painting on the dry paper here, just with the gray that I mixed up. Just here, there seem to be an extra feather, so I'm just putting that in there with the gray and liner brush painting on dry paper. Over here, on this feather I'm painting with the watery Payne's gray. Again I'm painting on the dry paper, just to create a shadow here as well. Now I want to add some more color to this one here so I'm just painting some water on first, just with my Casaneo, smaller brush. Now I've got some Winsor violet and I've wiped my damp brush over the hard paint at the top of the palette and I just painted up hard against sienna feathers and it just blades down. Now I'm just wiping off the excess paint and then I can just use the paint that's already on the paper and I can just pull it down a bit further wherever I want it. Now I'm going to switch to my liner brush and I'm just going to deepen the color right up high under this other feather here. Again, I've wiped my wet brush over the paint at the top of the palette, so it's fairly dark. That just deepens the color up there. just while all of the paint was still wet. Now I just want to show you how my paints drying here. It's the middle of summer and the paper's drying really quickly on the heat. If I just take a damp brush, I can just soften that edge here. It's really, really hot today, we're on my mom painting, so that just softens away that hard edge that was forming. Here I'm just painting over some of the flight feathers here, the little tiny ones, just painting straight over my pencil line with the gray that I've mixed, so that was the burnt sienna mixed with the ultramarine blue. Now I want to put some water on this larger feather here, because I'm going to paint some of the gray mix onto this one as well and I just want my edges to be soft. This is the gray that I mixed up, it's slightly darker than the original gray that I mixed up, so I've put a tiny bit more pigment into it. Now I can come in with my liner brush and just tidy up the edges of the feathers that are above it. Now I'm dropping in some of the ultramarine blue on the paint's still damp. Now what I want to do is run a shadow down this group of feathers here, you can see it on the reference photo and you can see it here on my finished painting. So I'm going to show you how I painted that. I just want to run some water down this edge, and then I'm going to use my liner brush to run some of the gray mix paint down the soft little feathers here that I'm painting on now they're tucked behind those larger flight feathers. This just pushes them back further onto the wing and it just lifts those of the larger feathers over the top of these ones. Now I'm just painting on dry paper again. I'm just creating some more shadows just with my liner brush. I'm using Payne's gray, but you could also use the gray mix if you just make it slightly darker, so I'm just painting on the dry paper here. That's how far we've come. The wing has got quite a bit of detail on it, that's why I've left the chest area or the pink part of the bird as simple as I can, because I just wanted to keep the detail mainly on the wing there.
16. Adding Colour & Shadows on the Wing Feathers Part 2: There's more of the same in this video. I'm just working on damp paper, and I'm adding more color and definition to those larger wing feathers. Now I'm going to paint this big feather here, which is underneath the one that we just painted in the last video. The first thing I want to do is use my master brush just to put some water on the feather. I just paint that water on carefully. I make sure I get a nice even coverage. Then, while that is still damp, so there's still a sheen on the surface of the paper, I've got some of the gray mix. Remember this is the ultramarine blue mixed with the Burnt Sienna. I just painted on to that damp area. What I have to do now is soften the edge of the paint. Because it's so hot here, the paper is drying really quickly and I've just got to keep softening edges. Now I've switched to my liner brush and I've got some Payne's gray. I'm going to use that color get run up underneath those other failures just to deepen the color up here. So I paint this onto the damp paper as well. If you find your feather starts to dry, dry it off completely with a hair dryer and re-wet it with some water to continue on. Now I'm dropping in some Winsor violet onto that damp paper as well. You can push it down further along the feather if you want to. Then, just soften any edges that you need to soften with a damp brush. Now I'm going to work on this feather here. I'll leave a feather gap between the one that I just painted and this one so that I don't disturb the one that I just painted. I'll paint some water on it, just like the other one. Then, I'm going to use some of the gray mix again. Just make sure your brush isn't too wet when you pick the painter because the paint is watery and because the paper is damp, you don't need your brush to be sopping wet as well, so just dab off the excess water onto a cloth before you pick up the paint. Now I'm just softening the edge again just with a damp brush. I've switched my liner brush, and I've add some Winsor violet here. I'm just dropping them onto the area that I just painted. Now, I've got a touch of Payne's gray. I'll put that right up underneath the other feathers just to deepen the color up there. This gives me an opportunity just to tidy up the edges of those other feathers as well. They're both dry now, which means I can do this one in the middle. Again, some water on the paper. Careful where I place the water, I don't want to get it all over the other feathers. I want there to still be a shade on the surface when I put my paint on. Now I've got the gray mix. This gray mix is darker than that first initial mix that we put on when we first washed the wing on. So it is more pigment mixed into the watery paint. Again, I need to soften this edge with a damp brush. Always make sure your brush is only damp and not sopping wet. Switch to the liner brush and some Winsor violet. Then again, I can come with the Payne's gray right at the top, underneath those other feathers. All of this is damp. All the paper is damp, it hasn't dried in between. But as I said, if you're a bit slower at painting and you find that your paper is drying, you need to dry it off completely and re-wet it with water. Now I'm wetting this one up here with some water. I'm just going to repeat the process. This time I'm using my smaller brush to put the gray on because this is a smaller feather. This is the ultramarine blue mix with the Burnt Sienna. I can soften the edge with a smaller brush as well. Here, I can paint on dry paper because it's just a tiny little feather. I just need a shadow up underneath where it touches here on the feathers. This is just the gray mix again. I soften the edge with my brush. Same thing here on this one, just some of that gray mix. Keep painting onto the feather. You can damp in the feather here if you want to or you can paint it on dry paper. It doesn't really matter. That's how far we've come. I still got just a bit more work to do on this wing.
17. Adding Colour & Shadows on the Wing Feathers Part 3: I'm just continuing to add detail to some of those wing feathers in this video. I also start to add a bit of color to the flight feathers. Continuing on with the wing, I'm just wetting these further here with a touch of water, and now I'm going to paint some of that gray paint just onto the damp part. I'm just using my liner brush because it's a fairly small feather. Then I just soften the edge just with the damp brush. Now I'm going to drop some ultramarine blue onto that damp gray paint just to add some interest to the gray. Then I can just tidy up pages with the same brush. Now I'm just running over my pencil line again, just with the gray mix, and I do this on the dry paper. Just a touch of water on this one here now, and then before the water dries, I just draw upon some of the watery Windsor of violet just underneath that on the feather where it touches the one I'm working on. Then I just use the other brush just to soften the edges. Now I'm just dropping in some of the French ultramarine blue, and that just blends with the other paint. A bit of water on this one down here. Now we've got some of the gray mix, it's just watery paint but I've mixed a bit more of the pavement into it so it's a bit darker. Then I drop in some Windsor violet before it dries. Now just a touch of water on this one, switch brushes and some more of the watery gray mix. Now I've got my liner brush and a touch of paint gray, and I'm just deepening the color. I'll just use the paints on my brush and I'm just going to run it down the edge of these ones as well. Now I'm going to start painting the larger feathers down this side, just some water on this one, and then I'll use my smaller brush, the liner brush, just to paint the gray just down the left side, where it touches the feather on the left-hand side, and then the ones underneath as well, just gives it a bit of color there. Then I'll take my larger Maestro brush and are just soften the edge feather just by running it down the edge of the paint. Then I can drop in just a touch of the Windsor violet just onto that damp paint. We're just going to skip a feather, just so I don't disturb the one that I just worked on, and I'll do the same thing on this one here. A bit of water first, and then the gray paint on the left-hand side where it touches the other feather, and also underneath where it touches the one above. Skip a feather and I'll do the same thing on this one, a bit of water first, it's not a lot of water, just the paper is just damp. Then I use my gray mix again, this time I'm going to put it all over the feather then we'll just dip in the color all over it. Now I'm dropping in some of the French ultramarine blue just before that gray paint starts to dry. That just blends with the gray and just adds interest to the painting. I'm doing the same thing on this one, it's still migraine mix but it looks like I've mixed just a touch more of the ultramarine blue into it, so it's a bit bluer, and then I drop in some Windsor violet again, just add interest. Before all that dries I'll just run, some Payne's gray, down this right-hand edge. That just blades onto the surface of the feather. Now I've just come down below the branch, and I'm painting some of the watery gray mix over the top. Then before that dries, I drop in some more of the Payne's gray and then the Windsor violet. Then I use my damp moisture brush just to move the paint around, just so it blends better. Just tidying up the edges now and I'll just tidy up the edges up here as well. In the next video, I'll paint the rest of these feathers.
18. Adding Colour & Shadows on the Wing Feathers Part 4: We're getting to the end of the wing feathers now. I finish off those flight feathers and then I paint a shadow along the top of them where the other feathers rests on them. That just helps to lift the top group of feathers off the flight feathers. My paper is also starting to bow as well. I type it onto a board to keep it flat, which I should have done at the start. Here I'm painting on dry paper because when I look at this one on my reference photo, it's just a dark shaped on the side of the feather and it's got hard edges and they're just straight. I can do this one just on the dry paper. This is just the gray mix and now I'm dropping in some Windsor violet before that gray paint dries. This one here, I'm going to wet with some water because I'm going to darken the color, but I want that paint edges to be soft. Just a bit of water and then the gray mix. I Just run it on the left-hand side of the feather and then I just place it across the surface. Then again, I'm just dropping the Windsor violet and if I get any hard edges that I don't particularly like, I could just use a damp brush just to soften them. With this one too, with just a bit water and then the gray mix again, this gray mix is quite a bit larger than the gray mix that I used in the previous video on the feather next to this one. This time I'm dropping in some ultramarine blue. I just vary the color. Sometimes I'll drop in the ultramarine blue and other times I'll drop in the Windsor violet. There's no real rhyme or reason to it. I just do whatever I feel like doing at the time. This little feather up here I'm painting on dry paper. This is just the gray mix, keeping it to the left and the top of the feather and I keep the right side untouched, and then I just use a damp brush just to soften that age. I've drawn everything off and now I'm rubbing out my pencil lines. What I want to do is lift these feathers here, the ones above the flight feathers, I want to lift them off the flight feathers with a shadow that runs along the bottom of them. The shadow will lifts those ones off this lower flight feathers. If I paint some water along the bottom of them and over the top of the flight feathers, and then I'll paint the dark gray paint along the edge. The water will keep the paint edges soft and hopefully it'll just lift up those feathers off those other ones. My paper is drawing really fast because it's just so hot and I've got a feign going above me. This is the gray mix, but I've mixed some more pigment into the ordering mix and just run that among the damp paper. It's just running along the bottom of those other feathers. I can use the liner brush just to deepen my color right up underneath the feathers just with some Payne's gray well, that gray paint just still damp. Just watch the heat and get a hard edge forming and if you do just take a damp brush and just wipe it along. I've actually got some ultramarine blue here then I'm just dropping on. That's lifted those feathers there of the flight feathers down here. Can you see how my paper is bowing here? It's got a bit of a bend in it. What I'm going to do is type it to a board. I should have done this through out at the start. This will just keep it flat while I'm working on it. That's better. Here I'm using watery paint gray on dry paper. I'm just painting in the underside of these feathers. I want to leave a tiny little edge of the larger paint showing among the left-hand side of the feather. When I do the next one, you see what I'm talking about. Here you can see I've left just a tiny little edge along the one in front and an edge on this one that I'm painting now, and that looks like we're looking at the underside of the feathers. Bit of water on this one and then I use my liner brush and some paints gray just to run it down along where the two feathers touch one another. It just creates a shadow there. Then again, I can soften my edge with a damp brush and if I need to, and I found I do because the weather is so hot here. A bit of water on this one and then the Payne's gray up here as well. If you don't want to use Payne's gray, you can just deepen your gray mix make it a bit darker. Again, softening the edges of the paint here with the damp brush, and then just a touch of Windsor violet before it all dries. Just got some of the gray mixes there on dry paper. Now a bit of water and some Payne's gray here as well. Then I just quickly use my liner brushes just to tidy any edges that need tidying up. A bit of water here as well, and then some Windsor violet. Now what I have to do is just work on this area here in the next video and I also want to bring in the center lines down some of the larger feathers.
19. Finishing the Wing: [MUSIC] I finished a wing in this video, I paint a few last minute details on the feathers, and I paint in a group of wing feathers underneath the branch. I've just noticed a little feather here that I need to separate from the other feathers. So I'm going to wet it with a small amount of water and then I'll use my gray mix just to run it along the edge where the water was, where it touches the other feather. I just use my liner brush and the gray mix, and I run it along the edge where the other feather touches it. Now what I'm going to do is bringing those lines down the center of these larger feathers. I'm going to wet it with some water because I want fuzzy lines. I don't want a hard sharp line. It's just a small amount of water on the paper, it's not sopping wet. Now I've got the Grey mix, and I just run it down the center of the feather. So hopefully that'll give you a fuzzy line rather than a hard sharp line. So little bit of water on this one and then the Grey mix again, make sure you brush isn't too wet. So dub it on a cloth before you pick up the paint or after you pick up the paint, doesn't matter. If you find that it just goes everywhere, then you've got too much water on your paper and you need to wait a few minutes. I'm coming back in just after I've done them the first time and I'm just going back over their top, paper is still slightly damp, but I'm just defining them a little bit further. Some of these smaller feathers, you might be able to paint the line on, on dry paper. So that's what I'm doing at the moment. But it says larger ones all at the line to be fuzzy. So that's why I damped the paper. Now what I'm doing is I'm just painting some water along that shadow line that I've got there. I just want to make the shadow a bit more pronounced. I'm going to pick up some of the paint gray. I'm going to run that along that damp paper. So just be careful you don't get hard edges forming here. You just want nice soft, fuzzy edges along the edge of the paint there where the shadow ends. If you find your paint is forming a hard edge, just get a damp brush and run it along the edge of the paint to soften it. Now I'm going to do the same thing here. I just wet the area where I want the shadow to sit. I'm wetting right up hard against those other feathers, the ones that are touching these ones. Then I pick up some paint gray, and then because the paper is damp, it makes the paint bleed on the surface of the feather, and if it doesn't bleed like that, it means you haven't got enough water on your paper. You need to put a bit more water there. Now as I said, because it's so hot here, I'm finding the waters drying really fast, so I'm going to take my damp brush and I'm just going to run it along the edge of the paint there just to soften that edge. So there is not such a hard line here. Just coming in with my liner brush and just tidying up the edges of those other feathers. So these feathers up here, I just want to push them back into shadow mode. I'm just washing over some watery wings of violet to start at the top of them on the dry paper. And that'll just pushed them back into shadow. Now this shadow down here, it's dried larger than I'd hoped. So I just want to do it a second time. I'm just going to wet the paper, down the edge where I want the shadow to sit. In this tunnel might use some paint gray just to deepen the color. So the water down the edge. Then I'm picking up some paint Grey with my liner brush this just makes it darker. Just wasn't quite as pronounced as I'd hoped it would be. Just pushes these feathers back below those are the ones. So now I'm just using the paint that's on my brush and I'm just running them along the edge of some of the feathers, just to define them more on the dry paper. Okay, so that's the wing, the top half of the wing pretty much done. Now what I have to do is work on the feathers that are below the branch. Just this little group here. I'm just going to wash, a wash off the gray mixed paints so that I don't see any mixed with the ultra-marine blue on the dry paper. Then that has to dry and I'm going to come in with my liner brush and just add a bit of definition. That's dry now. I've dried it with my hairdryer. These feathers down below the branch also extend there's a little tiny section of them just above the branch here that I need to bring in as well. Now I've got my liner brush and some watery paint gray. I'm going to paint the first feather here. I take the paint right up hard against my pencil line, but I leave a little gap at the front of the feather of the light gray paper showing. I take it right against the pencil line. But I don't take it all the way across the feather or just want a little light section along the front of it. So if you watch the next filler, I take it right to the pencil line, then I stop it short of the one that I've just painted, so that I get that little light strip of gray down there. So right against the pencil line, and then I stop it short. That gives me a tiny little edge on each of those feathers, separates them from one another. You can just do this on the dry paper, just with the watery paint's gray. Right against the pencil edge. Then leave a little gap between each feather. Now to stop them from all looking exactly the same, I've got some more paint's gray, so I've picked this up from the top of the palette and I'm just going to darken this one here. This just various them so that they don't all look the same. I'll put a bit of color down in here as well.
20. Beginning the Tail Feathers: There's a group of gray feathers on its tummy, done in a branch, just above its feet that are washing in this video. Then I get all of the tail feathers washed in as well. Before I start painting the tail feathers, I just want to get some color on to these gray feathers in either feet. I'm just going to wash on some of the gray mix over the top, just onto the dry paper and then I'll come back later and just add a bit of detail to them when they dry. This is just the ultramarine blue mixed with the burnt sienna. I'll leave those ones to dry and then come down here and I've got some gray on this large tail feather here. Now I'm dropping in some wings of violet, just to add interest to the gray. This is such a big feather. Just so that it's interesting to look at, I've dropped in that violet and I'm also dropping in some clear water just to disturb the pigment as it's drying. I'll just give it a bit of texture. That's what it looks like when it's dry. Now I'm going to do the rest of the feathers here. I'm going to paint them on dry paper with the gray mix again and I'm going to drop in some of the violet as well as its drawing, just to mix with the gray. I'm going to paint them all separately. I've left a gap between them so they've got a chance to dry. I'm just going to drop some water into this one now just to disturb the pigment and create some texture. Now I can come back into this one because those other two that surrounded have dried. Dropping some violet again and we come back down here because this one is dried, it's next to this one. Then I drop in the violet again to center the damp gray paint. Don't wait until the gray paint is dry before you do that. I'm dropping in the violet now with my liner brush. Everything is dry now. I've dried it all off with the hairdryer just so that I can work on these remaining feathers. These ones, I'm going to wet with a bit of water. This is a fairly large feather and because it's so hot here, the paint dries really quickly as I said. This will just help me paint it easier. Here I'm using Payne's gray with some water mixed into it, just so that it's not quite so dark. This is darker than the other feathers that I've just painted but it's not full strength Payne's gray. It's been lined with water. Now I'm disturbing the pigment with some water. I'm just dropping some more water onto it as it dries and that creates those watercolor blooms that just gives the feathers some texture. With this one too, with some water and now I'm coming in with the Payne's gray again. This is a bit darker here at the top and now I've washed the paint out of my brush. I'm just using the paint that's there just pulling it down further so that it's darker at the top of the feather, and then it will get lighter as it moves its way down. I just picked up some more of the watery Payne's gray. It's dark up the top and then as you move down the feather, it gets a bit lighter. You got to add more water to your paint. Now I'm just putting a bit more Payne's gray up near this other feather, just to deepen that area slightly. I've switched to my liner brush so that I've got more control and then I can also just tidy up the edges of the feathers if I need to. I'm just going to put that aside for a little while and let the watercolor blooms dry, and then I'll come back in and I'll do these last remaining feathers. These feathers are dry now. I didn't dry them straight away with the hairdryer. I waited until it was almost dry and then I finished the drying with the hair dryer. If you try and dry too quickly, you risk pushing the paint all over the paper and you don't want to do that. Now I can paint some Payne's gray on this feather down the side. I'm just doing this on dry paper and then before this one dries, I'll drop in some more of the wings of violet as well. Here I've got some of the gray mix, so the ultramarine blue mixed with the [inaudible] and I'll just paint this on the dry paper. You could also use watery Payne's gray here, it doesn't matter. I'll just drop some of the wings of violet onto that. I'll finish off the tail in the next video.
21. Finishing the Tail Feathers: Let's finish off the tail now. I paint the shadow along the tile underneath the branch, and I add a bit of detail to some of the feathers. That's how it looks after it's dried. Now, what I want to do is bring a center line down this large feather here. Again, I just wet it, and then I run the gray mix down on the damp paper. Then I can just add a bit more water and soften the edge if I need to. Just putting a touch more paint here. Now, I want to bring a shadowing on this father underneath the branch. This is just the gray mix. The ultramarine blue mixed with the burnt sienna, and I'm just painting it onto the damp paper and that will keep my edges soft. It needs to come over here as well on these feathers. I'll wet them with some water, and then I'll just drop that gray mix there as well. This just creates a shadow where the branch is. Down here, there's a casted shadow as well, but this one I can paint on dry paper because it has hard edges. This is just the watery Payne's gray on the dry paper. Bit of water here on this feather, and now, I'm running the Payne's gray down the edge. I just found this feather dried with jagged edges that I didn't particularly like. I'm just trying to straighten those edges up a bit, and tidy them. If I just run some Payne's gray down there, that should hopefully tidy up the edge more. Here, I've got some watery Winsor Violet that I'm painting onto the dry paper, and I can just use that gray mix just to paint the middle section there. Here's some more watery Winsor Violet on the dry paper. Now, I'm wetting the left side of this feather with some water. I'm continuing the shadow along this part of the feather, just with the gray mix. Now, I've got some Winsor Violet that I'm running down the edge, and I just want to pull some of that color in. Winsor Violet, pulling it in towards the center line on a diagonal. Now, I'm coming back in. The pipe has dried just a little bit. It's still slightly damp, but it's not as wet as it was. I've got a bit more control now. I'm just redoing what I did before when it was on really damp paper, and now, I can come in again when it's completely dry, just to define it further. If you make a mark you don't like, just use a damp brush to remove it.
22. Finishing the Flight Feathers: In this short video, I'm going to paint the last remaining flying feathers. I dropped some water onto one of them before it dries just to create some texture. I'm just painting some water over the right side of this feather. I just make sure I've got good even coverage and that there's no paddles anyway. Then I'm going to pick up some of the Payne's gray at the top of the pallet here and just dub off the excess, and then I start painting on the right side of the feather here just on the damp paper. It's fairly dark, that's why I took it from the top of the pellet the way the paint was. Now before that paint dries, I'm going to drop in some water just to disturb the pavement as it's drying. I just dropped that water onto the damp paint, and that just creates a watercolor bloom, which gives this feather a bit of texture. Now I've got some more Payne's gray, and I'm just deepening up the top here, just making it just slightly darker. I've got a bit of Windsor violet here and I've just dropped it on top of this feather, and I'm just going to pull it back into this one here, where I did that work in the earlier video. While that one dries, I'm just going to let it dry just a bit more. I just want to tidy up the edge of this one. I've just wet it with water, and now I've got some Payne's gray, and I'm just going to run it down the edge. I've just got a damp brush now I'm just softening it further. Back up to this one. That right side is still slightly damp so the paint is just running into this side a little bit, but that doesn't matter. Now I've got Windsor violet. I'm going to paint that on down the bottom of this feather and on the top half of this feather I'm going to paint Payne's gray. It'll have the two colors on it. It doesn't matter if they bleed into one another here slightly. This is the Payne's gray, just pull it down the feather until it meets up with the Windsor violet. Now I want some more Payne's gray from the top of the pallet, this time with my liner brush. I'm just going to run it down the edge and just deepen the color of the top here. Just tidy up the edges with it. Now it's dry, and I want some paint on this area here that's left. This is my gray mix that I mixed up, so the ultramarine blue and the burnt sienna, and I'm going to drop some Windsor violet onto this as well. I'll just pick up the watery Windsor violet this time and drop that onto the damp paint. We've come a long way. This is what it's looking like at the moment. Now what I've got to do is work on these gray patches here. I could do the branch and the feet.
23. The Grey Feathers over the Feet: I'm going to put some data on those two little patches of gray feathers above the feet in this video. I'm just going to start adding some definition to these feathers here. I've got my gray mix here that I'm just painting underneath one and on top of the other one. I'm just taking a damp brush now just to soften the edge of the paint. Here on this feather, I damp and dip it with some water and now I'm painting the wings of violet over the top. But I think I've got just a little bit too dark. I'm just going to take a bit of it off now with a bigger brush. Just soft some of it out and spread it out a bit with the bigger brush. In this feather here, I'm painting on damp paper. I did put a bit of water on it and I'll just run the gray mix along the feather where they touch one another. Now I'm just going to take my bigger brush and just soft some of that up as well. Over here I want to make it look like there's more than one feather. I've just got some watery Payne's gray here, just painting on the dry paper and over here as well, some more of the watery Payne's gray just on the dry paper. Now, I've got some more Payne's gray, it's taken from the top of the palette here to be darker, just with my liner brush and then just finishes off those gray feathers there.
24. Painting the Branch: It's time to paint the branch and I'm working on damp paper for the whole of the branch. I use the colors that I've used on the [inaudible] just to keep everything harmonious. It's time to start the branch now. What I want do is have the darkest color where the bird is. I want to place all my emphasis here and I want it to fade away so I would move out further along the branch. The darkest color will go here. I'm just making sure I've got some gray mixed up because I'm going to need these for the branch. This is the burnt sienna mixed with the ultramarine blue. I'm just going to start on this outer edge. I wet it with water first. I won't wet the whole branch at once so I'll just do it in sections because it'll dry too quickly if I do. I wet it here so now I'm dropping in some of the watery gray mix. It's quite light, so don't make yours too dark. I want to leave some white paper showing so I don't want to completely cover the area with the paint. Now I've got some more water and I'm taking it further along the branch to touch the edge of the foot here. I don't want puddles anywhere so soap up any excess moisture that you have. Now I've switched down to my liner brush because I want a bit more control here around the foot. This is still the gray mix, still fairly light in color. I'm still trying to leave some white paper showing. Just let the paint do what it wants to do, try not to fuss with it too much. Just run it down carefully along the edge of the foot. Pull a little bit more out there. Now I'm going to get just a small amount of ultramarine blue on my brush. I'm going to run it on this bottom edge, needs a bit more paint. This is the ultramarine blue. I just took it from the top of the palate there where the blue was squirted out. Run it along this edge as well. Now I'm getting some Payne's gray and I'm just dropping that in next to the foot. Because the paper is wet it just blades softly across the surface of the branch, just dropping it in here and there. Now I have some Windsor violet. I'm just using the colors that I used on the bird itself. I'm not introducing any new colors. You can see I'm trying to put most of the color here where the bird is sitting, so not paying much attention to the outer edges of the branch. Now I've got some of the quinacridone red. Such as using this bird colors again. I'm going to wet in between the feet now. Just with some water and when I've covered that nicely with some water, I'm just going to drop in some of the gray mix. I switch to my liner brush so that I've got more control around the feet again. This is just the gray mix. Run it around the edges of the feet and then it just blades up into the branch. While its wet I drop in some other colors so some Payne's gray against the foot. A bit more over here, the Payne's gray you can take from the top of the palate because it's fairly dark. Now some windsor violet. Still trying to leave just a touch of that paper showing through so I'm not completely covering it. Now I wet this outer edge with water and then on with the gray again. You can use the liner for the whole branch if you want or you can switch to your bigger brush so this is just the gray mix. You can see again I'm trying to leave just a touch of that white paper showing here and there. I'm just trying to drop the paint in and let it do what it wants to do basically. I don't want to fiddle with it too much. This is Payne's gray again. I took it from the top of the pallor, just trying to make sure that the branch is the same thickness all the way along there. Now I'm dropping some Payne's gray into the body of the branch. The middle part of the branch. A bit more ultramarine blue out here now and some of the quinacridone red. If you put it on a bit dark and you think all that doesn't ride, just take your bigger brush and just move it and move it around a little bit. Just try not to fiddle too much. Now I'm just dropping in some extra water just to disturb that pigment and try and create a few watercolor blooms. I'll just see how that dries now.
25. Painting the Feet: Let's get those feet painted in now. I don't put a lot of detail on the feet, I try to keep them simple and I let the dampness of the paper move the pigment around as much as possible. So the branch is dry now, and I'm going to start to paint the feet. So I just want to bring in this claw here that I've lost, and all the areas that I need to draw in before I start. So I'm going to wash in some of the gray mix just onto the dry paper, all over the feet except for the claws. Then while that's wet, I'll drop in the Winsor violet. So I'll just put the gray on that toe, and now I'm dropping in the Winsor violet while the gray is still wet. This area down here, I'm just using my liner brush to fill in with some watery Payne's gray. Now I've got some Payne's gray again, and I'm just running it along the left-hand side of this foot. So the paint is damp, it hasn't dried yet. I'm just working on the damp paint. Back over to these claw, I'm just going to fill it in with some Payne's gray. Okay, I've just painted the gray mix on this toe and now I'm going to run some Payne's gray on the left-hand side, just like I did on the other toe. Because the paint is damp, that just bleeds across this surface, so I'm just trying to let it do its own thing. So back to this toenail, I'm just wetting it with some water, and I'm going to separate the toes from each other with some Payne's gray again so that it just bleeds across. Filling in the claw down here with some Payne's gray just on the dry paper. Now I just want to get my larger brush and take just a little bit of that paint off just with a damp brush just to lighten it slightly. Then I'm going to get my liner brush and just darken along one edge with some more Payne's gray. Payne's gray again. Now I'm wetting this toe with some water, and I will run the Payne's gray along the left edge again. This [inaudible] paper is damp, to start getting down one side here. So everything is dry, now I'm just rubbing out my pencil lines to see what else I need to do, and I can see that I've left off a little tiny bit of branch between the toes. So I just paint that in with the gray mix. Okay. So we're just about finished. I just want to put just a small amount of color back here because the water has moved the pigment, and I've lost a bit of it. So darken that area up, and I think I want to put a bit more color up here. So I'll do all that in the next video.
26. Last Minute Details and Thanks: I'm more or less finished now, but after I cast an eye over everything, there are a few places where I want to darken the paint slightly and then it's time for the big reveal. So just to deepen the color on the branch here, I want to work wet on wet again, so I'm just painting some water where I'm going to be working and then I'm going to switch to my liner brush because I want to have control of where the paint goes and I don't want to completely cover the lighter areas. This is the gray mix that I'm using at the moment, just dropping it in. It seems to have a bit more burnt sienna mixed into a big brown [inaudible] So I'm just dropping that in here and there. I've got some wins violent male doing the same thing. Taking it out a bit further, just on the dry paper here. So I'm just scribbling with the side of my brush here on the dry paper and I think that, that should probably be enough work there. So just see how it is when it dries but I think I'll leave it there. So moving up onto this area now where I want to darken it, I'm just wetting the area where I want it to be a bit darker with some water. Now I've got some of the permanent magenta and it's just darker than it was before. So we can take it from the top of the pallet where the paint is rather than watery. Then I've just got a damp brush now and I'm just moving it around. So then now, I will paint on my brushes which is damp to soften the edges. I'm just going to separate that little highlighted area there and down here, I want to do the same sort of thing, I just want to deepen the color. Whenever it dries, it never dries quite as dark as what you think it's going to be. So just put some more permanent magenta in here as well. That area is quite dark on the reference photo if you have a look, so just a bit more of the permanent magenta along there as well. Again, if you make a mark that you don't particularly like, just take a damp brush to remove it. So down here I've got some Payne's gray again and I'm just deepening the color here and now I want to deepen the color along underneath the branch. It's just not quite dark enough, so I wet it with the water first and then I use the gray mix just to add a bit more color. So it's just giving it a second layer of paint. I'm just using the paint that is on my brush just to define the edge of these feathers more and am deepening some areas up in the wing further, just with a bit more Payne's gray, just on the dry paper. Painting over top of areas that aren't quite dark enough. So I'm just darkening in here again with more of the Payne's gray just on the dry paper. A little bit in there and now I want to shadow along here as well. So just a bit of the Payne's gray on the damp paper. I think that should just about do it. So I think I'm happy with that. Now, I just have to take the tape off the edges and there we go. There's my finished painting. Thank you for following along, I really hope you enjoyed the class and I'm looking forward to seeing all your beautiful galore paintings. I'll see you in the next class.
Louise De Masi, Artist - capturing beauty with watercolour
