Mastering Expressive Animal and Bird Eyes in Watercolor

1. Introduction: Hello and welcome. I'm thrilled to have you in this exciting, artistic journey. I'm Ezhil, an artist and educator from India. Your instructor for the course Mastering animal and bird eyes with expression and emotion. I'm a master in computers and graduate in zoology. Science is what made me fall in love with animals, birds, and all things. Nature studying zoology really helped me in observing the anatomy and features of the animals, birds, in a more accurate, scientific way. I've been teaching art close to two decades in various mediums through my weekend art school, where I focus more on nature oriented subjects. In this course, we'll be focusing on a specific aspect that brings animals to life. Their eyes, animal eyes are truly captivating, are in there. They have this incredible ability to convey emotions, tell stories, and create a strong connection. There is a saying that eyes or windows to the soul, and who can deny that, whether it's human portrait, animal, bird portrait, or a portrait, or any living thing, eyes gets all the attention. We all know there is a reason to that. Just imagine a portrait without an eye. There's no soul, no life, no purpose. On the other hand, just capturing only the eye makes it a holistic unique piece of you might be having a lot of classes about creating eyes and skillshare, but this class you'll get a distinctive value of creating with emotion and expression for the emotion is what brings life to the eye. Throughout the demo, I will be highlighting where and how you can bring that expression to our painting. Whatever that emotion may be, it might be anger, fear, happiness, or any other emotion. This course is designed with absolute beginners in mind. In this class, we'll explore the eyes anatomy, shapes, colors and texture, and discover the techniques required to capture their essence. We will learn how to sketch the eye using pencil, understanding various tones, and then how to translate it into a painting with our pigments. Along the way, I will be teaching you how to infuse the eye with emotions and expression. Remember, this course is not just about technical skills, it's about embracing your creativity, developing your observation skills, and finding joy in the process of painting. Let go of any self doubt and fear of making mistakes. Are you ready to immerse in the mesmerizing world of watercolor animal? Yes, come on, let's dive in. 2. Class Project: For the class project we'll be doing, four eyes, two birds and two animals. And I have categorized them as prey and predator animals. Prey and predator birds. Selecting the prey and predator gives a wide array of emotions that we can capture in our paintings. I have upplouded all the step by step demo pics, reference images in the project resource section for the final project. In this course, you can apply all the techniques and skills you have learned throughout the course and create a captivating watercolor painting of an animal or bird eye of your choice. You can choose to do the eye that are taught in the demos or choose an animal eye that inspires you apply the techniques learned throughout the course, such as layering, blending wet on wet, and creating highlights and shadows to showcase your understanding. Once your artwork is completed, take a high resolution photograph or scan it to ensure clarity and accuracy. Submit your final project along with your artwork. Briefly describe your inspiration or challenges that you faced or any insights that you gained during the process. You can choose to submit one or all the four project. You can also submit one single pencil sketch. If you wish to just make an attempt with NEI. Your initiative is what is important. Upon submission, I will review your artwork and provide personalized feedback and guidance to help you further refine your technique and artistic skills. Please submit your project. Your attempt to start creating is what is very important. 3. Supplies: Now to the interesting phase art supplies. Let's take a closer look at the essential materials needed, which are paper, pigments, brushes, and extras. Paper, we will be using high quality cotton paper with a weight of 300 GSM. Coal press paper is recommended and reputable brands such as Ash, Strathmore, Anson offer excellent choices. We will be cutting this four sheet into four pieces. For each I brushes, we will require round brushes of different sizes. Here I have 864.2 of silver brush, black velvet. Additionally, a small sized scrubber or flat brush will be handy for lifting paint extras. You can have one or two jars of water, kitchen towel masking tape for securing your paper. A palette for mixing colors, pencil and eraser pigments. Here I have my ceramic palette with a mix of blues, yellows, reds, along with some neutral colors of browns and blacks. Brands include mostly Daniel Smith, my favorite one, and also White Knights, Winsor and Newton. You can also have a standard set of six or 12 colors like we have in this white knights box. We will see the exact pigment needed for each eye demo as we go with it. Having said this, it's important to understand that getting a perfect supplies list should not stop you from painting. A very basic set, like a sketchbook. One or two brushes may be size 4.0 or 2.0 A basic set of colors should help you do this project. 4. Anatomy of the Eyes: In this chapter, we will explore the captivating anatomy and features of animal and bird eyes. Understanding the intricate details of animal eyes is crucial for portraying their expressions and capturing their essence and paintings through observation. We will get to understand different animal species eyes and learn how to depict them well parts of the eye. Almost all animals and birds have some basic features which are common to all, including our human species. Here we have a deer eye and an out lie, depicting almost similar paths. Eyelids, eyelashes, iris, pupil, sclera, tear line and ducks. Let's take the example of a favorite pet, the dog, and see the anatomy of the eye. We have two eyelids here, upper and lower eyelid, which are used for protection. The center hole through which the light passes and reaches the retina, which changes in size depending upon the iris. This is the colored opaque part of the eye which contracts and expands. This is the iris that you can see. This brown part, the pupil is actually a hole. It's just not a spot. We have the tier line and ducks. These help in clearing the excess fluid secreted by the lachrymal gland or the tier gland which is present on top of the eyeball? Yes, it is present here. We have the sclera, which is the outer white layer of the eyeball which helps maintain your eyeballs in shape and protects them from injury. Now, apart from these, there are some other important internal parts. It's good to know about these organs, though we can focus and be content with these basic parts for the eye illustration. Let's translate all of these parts into the painting sections. Here I have given the various tonal value terms so that we can use this as a guide when we paint. Here are the mid tones. Shadows are denoted by the dark tones. Then we have the reflected light, which is not as bright as the high light, which is the brightest, lightest one. I've also added this segment, which is the moisture highlight, which is the light areas due to the moisture found in most of the eyes. Depicting this moisture on the eyelid is essential to make it close to the real reference. Now let's switch over to the bird eye, the interesting ostrich eye here, which has the biggest eye amidst the land mammals, measuring at 5 centimeters in diameter. The ostrich eye is five times bigger than the human eye. Did you know that its eye is bigger than its brain? Yes, it is like the dog eye. We can see similar structure here along with the eyelids. They have long eyelashes to prevent sand from entering. They have the pupil and the brown iris. In this picture, the iris is not so much differentiated from the pupil as it's not lit. They also have the tiarductin line along with another feature which is called as the nictitating membrane. This is also called as the third eyelid, moving like a windscreen viper, which is usually translucent to keep the eye clean and moist. It is also present in mammals, but it's more active in birds and reptiles then yes, as I told, it has such big eyelashes. Now let's again match this with the different tonal values as with the previous example. We can also see the midtone darnes and also the reflected light here at the bottom, The highlight in the middle, and yes, some moisture highlight. Also, please note that there would be several tonal gradations between the dark tone and the lighter tone, and these could be present in different parts of the eye also. 5. Eye Expression Examples: Now let's see some interesting features of the eye in different mammals and birds. This huge creature has such a gorgeous eye. Elephants have long eyelashes to help cover sand, dirt from the eyes. Some elephants develop a white ring that encircles the, when the eyes are placed on the sides, it means that it's a pre animal. And when both the eyes are in the front, it means a predator. But there are exceptions to this rule. Elephant is one such example which has no predator once it reaches the adulthood horse's eye. This quin eye is one of the largest of any land mammal next to the ostrich. It is active during both the day and night, and it's a prey animal. The iris is usually brown in color, but they also have different other colors, like blue, amber, and green. The horse also has a rectangular horizontal pupil shape, which extends the area of visual perception, which is very similar to the sheep. Now here comes one of the most interesting bird species, the American Woodcock. I selected this due to its special placement of the eye, peculiar placement of the eye on its head. Unlike all other animals and birds which have their eyes centrally placed on its head, Look at this one. Does it seem oddly placed on the far back, on high on the head? It might make it look funny or silly, but there's a reason for this. This arrangement allows them to have 360 degrees field of vision in the horizontal plane and 180 degrees in the vertical plane. This unusual visual field is extraordinary, which gives almost full vision on all angles. Just check in this, pick how at it can see the back view, also a trivia. These cute creatures are also popular for its funny bobbing dance. Just Google and have some laugh. Then we have such a big piercing eye of an owl totally forward facing on the front, just like human or any other predatory animal. You can see the lovely orange iris and also a big pupil to allow as much light as possible for them to be active in night. It's a typical nocturnal feature. The placement of the eye denote that they are predatory birds. An interesting fact with owl eye is that due to its structure, owls can't move their eyeballs, but they can rotate their necks to 270 degrees to compensate this. Now let's explore some eye emotions and expressions. Animals express emotions through a variety of ways, including eye size, gaze, facial expression, vocalization and behaviors. Eye form a major part to channelize their expression. Although the size of the pupil and contraction by the iris depends on the amount of light. And it also, depending on their emotions, widening and narrowing of their eyes are also common among the pets and wild animals. Dogs use their eyes to communicate with their owners, the famous puppy dog eyes. It's a facial expression that shows innocence. Look at the excited minocular vision of this hawk. The sheep, like the horse has a typical rectangular pupil for a wide vision. The majestic eagle expression says it all. This cat as the typical narrowing of the eye to express its displeasure. And yes, we have another puppy dog eye with such innocent expression. And this Maca is giving us a piercing stare. Now all of the mammals went their feelings and emotions through eyes. Primarily, we are going to focus on capturing this expression via our paintings. This is something that adds life to our portraits, whether it's animal, bird, or human. 6. Deer Sketch: To start with we'll be using this reference image of the tear so you can see like how beautifully lit this brown iris. And also the rectangular or horizontal pupil is for the tear tide has got such a beautiful shape. And you can see the tear duct passing here, which is like a darker brown. And then it also has some tuft of eyelashes here. Adding its charm and beauty. We are trying to capture this R here. You can also notice this moisture highlight and also the actual highlight. The highlight is pretty less here. If you want, you can alter that. You can add more highlights to bring more life to the animal eye. Let's begin sketching the R. Let's start with this overall shape of the DRI, which is like a semicircle. The overall shape of the eyeball is like this. Almost all the animals, they have the circular shape. I won't be getting too much into the shading and other details because we will be focusing on the painting here. But definitely we will be denoting some of the darker shadows. Begin by lightly sketching the basic outline. Try to focus on capturing the overall shape, size, and also the placement of the eye. We see that it's almost like a egg shape. Deer is one of the animal which has such a beautiful eye. Apart from the horse and other animals, it has beautiful eye actually the upper eyelid that you see, this, this comes on top, the curves, a bit like this. Now I'm using a freehand sketch. If you want to practice with tracing or using grid, you can do that. But I would suggest really do a freehand one because it's just like one part. And with freehand you will improve coordination and getting the structure and shape right much better than the other methods. My way of doing is I tried to combine multiple reference photos. I tried to bring in some of the detail. Maybe if I like the eye lid, the eyelashes so you can see the eyelashes here. If I like these eyelashes, the structure of the pupil or the highlights from another eye, maybe we can bring that. But try to pay attention to the overall structure and proportion. You have to go by that one. This is the white patch that I have here. This goes like this. I guess. This shape is right. As when you're progressing, you try to the proportion. Yeah, the shape, the overall form. You keep checking. It's absolutely fine to keep adjusting and checking. I'm just going to quickly denote with hatching, the darker areas that we have to focus for the shadows or the dark. I'm just indicating some hatching here. All the rest you can slightly erase it before your painting. I'm making the highlight slightly bigger one. All right, so let's proceed to the painting now. 7. Deer Painting: So let's paint the Ryes now. Through understanding their anatomy, we will learn how to portray the depth, warmth, and grace of the R. That is what I wanted to portray here, especially for this course. What I want to focus more on is the emotion and the expression of the eye. Now, the colors used for this painting, some different flavors of brown we will be using. So I'm having burn Siena here. Raw sienna. This is sepia from nsoron Newton. So you can also go for burned timber. Then we have generous amount of paints, gray that we will be using. You can also use any other shades of gray or black. I will be using gray here. First, I'm mixing this burn senna and raw sena. Now this is for the skin that is surrounded here. I'm not using the wet in wet here, I'm just using the ton dry directly. The pigment is mostly diluted. You can see the pigment. I'm mixing it here on the palette, it's quite diluted. First, we'll finish off with this one. We won't be focusing so much on the fur texture and also the skin. Now I want to get that same lighter tone. This is almost like a white. I'm just dragging the surrounding skin color, we'll try to include you get this darker tone. I'm just going to give that color while it is still wet. Wash your brush like this, dab it and then lift it here. When it is wet, it is easier to lift. Now let's get inside the eye. I'm taking Burn Siena, here we are right now, coloring the iris, which is this big oval thing with a lot of texture there. It's absolutely up to you if you want to change slightly the color and shape the highlights, anything that you want to change, it's up to you. You can change it to make it more appealing. I'm making a darker mix of this burn Siena and paints gray. I'm just filling the space. If you want, you can just leave some gap and there is some highlights. The lighter tone there, you can just leave the gap there. You can blend it by dragging the surrounding color. The deer eyes are located on either side of the head, which gives the animal a wide field of view almost. It allows them to monitor complete circle. I'm going to slightly lift it off while it is wet. Now I'm going to mix more black. Little bit of burn, Sana, this is what we are going to use it for, the eyelid, this is the lower eyelid here. By adding this darker tone, we are giving the contrast required to bring the animal portrait or eye sketch or painting like this to life. I'm trying to get the texture of the fur here, which is surrounding the lower eyelid. There are many layers to the eyelids here. The lower eyelid especially, we have to define that to get the realistic look. I'm just going to such this section here. If you have missed this section, you have completely covered it. You don't have to worry. You can always use this acrylic white to bring these highlights here. This is the moisture highlight that you see on the eyelids. Now we'll fill this iris here with some textures. So these are some random strokes that is present in the iris, which is the opaque part. Now we'll try to fill the pupil. I'm going to fill it with that dark black color. Yes, we have to add the eyelashes also. It has to come. So we are going to get the help of this bleedproof white. You can use it as or you can mix it with color. You can change the transparency. It's pretty versatile, It's not exactly like the reference. I'm having my own highlight because that highlight is just like a very small dot. So I'm just going to include a little bit more here like this. Now I'm going to continue here with a darker color. So we'll define this, you know, the edge where it has a thick dark color here and some texture for this corner, which is the tier or the tier line. I'm just doing some hatching here. I'm just slightly going to lift off this color from here to give a little bit more lighter tone. Now I'm going to finish the upper eyelight here. See the highlight is just not white, the brightest white, it comes in various shades of gray. I'm also going to give the overall upper shadow, this one little dark because there's the shadow of upper eyelashes. Now I'm trying to draw the upper eyelid texture. We'll do some glazing on top, which is applying a light layer of water to just bring everything together. I'm doing the glazing here to just bind everything together. If you want to know more about the watercolor techniques, you can take my previous skill share course on realistic illustration, watercolor, birds, and realistic illustration made watercolor, animal portrait. Both these courses are already present in the skill share portal. You can always take that course. Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to take this page. Martin bleed proof white. I'm taking a thinner brush here. This is the mix for the eyelashes. These eyelashes are nothing but something lines that you have to pull it down. It's in different direction. There is a tuft of hair, the eyelashes like a triangle shape on top, and then it comes down as a thin eyelash. As it goes to this edge, you can change the direction. This is what I said, like a triangle, you see then it comes down as a thin segment. So your bleed proof white will be helpful. In such a situation where you'll have to draw these type of thin structure that is kind of opaque and the transparency of the water color might not help. In those situations, I'm going to keep adding more eyelashes in different directions. This one it gets the upper eyelid. As you can see, this gets extended slightly here. This will be the eyelid which joins with the fur. In this section, I'm using the same mixture again to slightly give the fur texture below the eye. Now I'm going to finally give the moisture highlight which is there here. We have already left this white space, but to give more spots, we can always use this white. This moisture is something that denotes life on the animal or bird. Don't forget to give this moisture highlights. Yeah, you can also just smudge it with your finger to blend it with the background layer. A little bit more highlight on top. I've added a little bit more highlights there. Okay. So you can keep adding the texture and layer Yeah. Over and over again until you're satisfied. But I guess this is a good study for the eye anatomy. So what I would suggest is to focus on capturing the gentle and soulful expression of the eye So you can see that the deer, essentially, maybe it is quite soft or maybe it is like excited or it is seeing an approaching predator. So that it has like a dilated pupil as you see over here. Pay attention to the shape and position of the pupil as well as the eyelashes and the surrounding structure. So adding these details and highlights, it brings life to the y. And also it creates a sense of realism. I've removed the tape now here. And you can see how beautiful it looks like, a polaroid photo or painting. You can also write its name, a scientific name. You can sign it and make it like a mini painting. We are done with the lovely soft look of the dear, let's move on to its predator, the tiger. 8. Tiger Sketch: Here we are at the lesson of predator and the animal that we have chosen is the tiger. I've got a couple of tiger pictures here. You can see the expression in the eye. It depends upon the structure and dilation of the pupil and also the contraction by the iris. If you see the eye, the reflection is at the bottom of the eye and it looks really menacing and fierceful. It might be slightly tricky to, to paint these white fur and also to include this one. I have also done this and checked it here. Yes, I do practice and check which are the feasible options that all the beginners also can try. I have finalized one more thing. It looks really fierceful, very intense gaze that it is giving. But it is also pretty much straightforward here. And you can see that it has the darker tones which is clean. Also, it has a bluish green eye, which is really attractive. We'll continue to do this for our tiger eye illustration. Let's start with a sketch of this. Tiger eye is almost at the center here. It has a typical round and semicircle shape. The eye of the tiger usually comes in gold, amber, brown, or sometimes blue and some greenish blue. This particular tiger, it has a very nice greenish blue here. Now it's up to us if you want to change the expression of the eyes, making it more fierceful. If you want to make it more fierceful, you can reduce the size of the pupil. Here the pupil constriction. It's usually done when the tiger is about to pounce or hunt. Now there is a tuft of this white layer here, the white fur. Let's draw these segments here, which is darker in tone. Folks, it's up to you if you want to give some of the highlights I have already mentioned. If you want to change something slightly, you can refer to multiple reference pictures. That's what I do. Just check on the source of light. Otherwise, you're good to go. It's because none of the two animals or any two species are same. It's all different. Right? It's absolutely fine if it is not like a photocopy of the reference that you're doing. I think I'm just like seeing via the camera. I think the pupil is not centrally located. Right. So let me just change that, Trying to get the pupils. So it has to be in the center. Sit in the center now. Yeah. But I guess it's a little smaller. So I want to make it kind of smaller to con, constrict the size of the pupil. And it has this highlight here. This is the highlight. Now, let's do the marking on top. As I told, I won't be focusing more on the fur, but the fur placement and the contrast and the color definitely affects the I also we will just do the basic few layers of the not too much in depth. If you want to know about the fur or the feather details that we will be seeing in the birds later, I would suggest you can take up my previous two courses. That's on a bird portrait, which is monel and lion portrait. For the animal I have dealt with the fur texture there. This, I'm doing it really, really rough. We'll do it later. Also from here, from the, there is like one portion that goes on here just to denote which is black and which is the rest. So I'm just going to do this cross hatching. The hatching on the black fur so that we know what to do. So there is a little t, black hair which is next to the white. I think this is a little bit more curved. Let me adjust that. Yes, Yeah, you don't need to really get it exactly like how you see it. But I'm trying to adjust something here so that it looks a little bit more cohesive. Okay, I'm trying to get that stripe. Black stripe. I guess I got that one. So these are the black stripes. Anyway, if you start with the painting, you can also like alter it later. Okay, I'm done with sketching, so where I've denoted the darker tones. Let's move on to the painting. 9. Tiger Painting: Now let's begin with the painting of the tiger. The colors that I will be using. Quin, gold, burn, Siena, rosana, sepia paints gray for the iris. For this particular tiger example, it is slightly greenish. You can use a direct green pigment like Dan or sap green. I will be using a combination of lemon ello and with my ultram and blue here. A very, very light version of greenish blue is what I'm trying to do over here. So let's start with the skin color now. Skin texture and color. I'm using a mix of Burn Siena and a little bit of quin gold ear and a lot of water. It's absolutely okay if some of this brown or this orangish one, it goes inside the black. You have to take a little care so that it doesn't go inside the white section of the fur. I'm add a little bit of orange here or you can also use the quin gold here. This section is actually white, but I'm just giving it with this orange. The white is present. But just to have a proper square finish, I'm giving it with the cow. It'll look empty there. So I'm just giving it with orange. So it's up to you. If you don't use this masking tape, you're just like using the three hand painting. You can just follow the same pattern there. There's a very slight mixture of this orange and white here. Okay. What I'm going to do now is take off my color completely from the brush, dab it in a kitchen towel. And I want to blend all these edges here. I'm just using the circular motion to blend it. I'm going to, again, lay this color slightly to make it little intense. Next, I'm going to fill all the blacks here. All the fur first, I'm just going to fill it with that basic black color. Tigers are in general, they are known for intensity, power, and striking beauty. Tigers, usually they have a really good eyesight, especially at night. Tiger has forward facing eyes. This gives them the binocular vision. Binocular vision enables them to accurately assess the distance and also the depth, which is extremely useful for hunting. This is still not completely, but I will try to define the stripes here, spreading too much. If the paint is spreading really too much, then you can wait it out a little bit and then you can continue. Otherwise, at this particular dampness, it's pretty right and it also blends. Well, first let's paint the iris here and then we'll get on with the black pupil and also the black eyelid. For this I'm going to, you can use green directly, but I'm just going to first make it a little yellowish because the amber eyes are the commonly seen one. It has yellow undertone and then it has that greenish blue layer. We'll try to bring that, don't worry if this yellow is really bright. We'll always tone it down. I'm using this burn Siena, which is surrounding the pupil. You can give it on this ton wet, while the yellow is still wet. You can use ultramarine or cobol blue. I'm slightly mixing with this yellow here, while it is still wet. I'm going to slightly lift it here so that it blends and it creates a nice reflected light there. I'm lifting it out there. Do this while it is wet, so that the lifting becomes to that same mix. I'm giving a pain. I'm trying to give this one underneath. We'll start with our black or the pain, gray. First I'm going to give a lighter version. The position of the eyelid, also it contributes to the emotion of the tiger when it is almost on top of the pupil. So you will see that fierce thing if you want to make it more fierceful reduce or you can bring this one like a slanting line on top of this iris that it, the pupil becomes more constricted here. I'm just like filling the color. Now we are done with this base layer. If you see the actual image here of the tiger, you can see that the eyelid, the lower eyelid, it has a mid tone, but it also has the dark tone here. The same thing with the upper eyelid. It has the dark tone here, which is almost equivalent to the iris. Then it also has this mid tone here. Let's try to capture the varying gray tones, black and gray tones of the eyelids. This first layer is completely dry. This is like ton dry technique. Now this continues to the inner corner where you have the line or the tear duct. Now one interesting part of the tiger eye is that the tiger has more rod cells, which is responsible for detecting the shapes in low light, than their cone cells, which is responsible for color vision. This is basically to assist them in their night vision. The increased number of rod cells allows them to detect movement of prey in darkness where color vision would not be of much use. I'm just going to fill it with the dark tone. Now, the placement of the eyelid, what I mean, like the expansion and the contraction, that also plays a major role in conveying the emotion. I'm trying to create surrogatedlokre texture here. It's mostly even, but it has some texture. Now the same thing goes here. This is the white fur. To indicate that it's a fur, we're giving that hatching effect here. Okay. Now, for this lower section of the lower eyelid, I'm giving this surrogated look again because this is the starting of the white fur beneath here. There should have been a gap there. I just filled that gap. So we'll have to lift it there. Now, I'm going to lift it out a little bit while it is wet. To create this mid tone, I'm continuing to add the darker tone here, trying to create texture here. You can also use the acrylic white to create a Texture in this one. Let me fill the dark tome for the eyelid, the upper eyelid, and also this side corner of the eye where both the eyelid converges. I'm giving some fur texture here because this interfaces with the white fur. Now another interesting trivia is the tiger and many other vertebrates. They have a structure at the back of the eye, behind the retina called tapetum lucidum. I guess I'm pronouncing that correctly, tau. That enables them to have a better night vision. Now this mirror like structure reflects the light back into the eye a second time to help produce a brighter image. So this layer is the one that causes their eyes to glow at night when a light is shown on them. You would have seen this happening to your pet dog or cat? Yeah, this Taptum lucidum is the reason behind this. I'm going to fill this section. You can fill it fully with the black for the pupil hole, or if you want, you can also leave some spaces for the highlights. If it's all getting mixed up, don't worry, you can always have this acrylic, a white savior to do the magic. Now there's some life here because we just finished with the pupil. Now there are some structure that we have to define some more details for the iris. What we will do is I guess I'm going to a little bit extend it here. More narrow the pupil, the fierce I will look like. There is a constriction of the pupil. Also. This is the actual size. It's not the fully dilated pupil. It means that the tiger is getting ready for an attack or it's fierce, ful size of the pupil. It conveys all of this emotion. Let's get on with defining more structure for the iris. Actually you can also stop with this one. If you feel that the I is done with this basic feature, this is fine. But if you want to get on with a little bit more features like some details on the texture of the iris and some midtone shadows near this highlights maybe a little bit of details also we can see. Okay, so first let's do the cross lines that you see on the iris. I'm using burn sena here. I'm just using the pigment that is there here. Don't take a lot of water here. I need a lot of pigment with less water. Just keep drawing those lines now. As and when this line goes, it becomes slightly greenish. So I'm just taking this mix that is there some structure that you see here? I'm going to add a little bit of this darker layer to this highlight. Underneath this highlight, this looks like the shadow of the upper eyelid. Now what we can do is wipe off all the pigments from your brush. Now take clean water and we can do a little bit of glazing here to just combine all of this together and blend it with the background. You don't have to disturb the entire layer, but just very gentle glazing to blend all of this together. Now there are some little bit of details to the highlight here. Now, for the fur, I'm not going to get into too much of a detail as I told earlier, if you're interested in knowing more about the fur and feather, you can check out my earlier classes. Or if you would like me to create, dedicate a class just for the fur, you can let me know. I'll gladly do that too. Here, I'll speed this process a bit. I'm just going to do the same hatching that we have done for the deer. It'll be the hatching throughout just to define this fur, especially I'm just going to do only for the, um, for here. I'm slightly going to blend the bit. So here again, I'm blending the black with the orange. All right. I guess we are done with this, the last the layer, so I will use this Martin again. I'm going to take my smallest, so there are the moisture highlights here, so I'm going to apply that one. So it's like some series of dots put together and you can reduce the intensity. Also, I'm just doing this for this side. You can also mix this, this acrylic white with different color to get that opaque one here. Maybe you can mix it slightly with blue or gray to get that cool thing. You can do that, let me just mix it here. So a little bit of this blue and this acrylic white, you get a very cool mixture. So that you can use it to define some of this highlight. Now onto the pupil. So it has some highlights here. This, I wanted to be a brightest highlight. All the fur near the eye. Let me define it. Vienna Dunk with his majestic eye of a tiger. Now let's move on to the bird eye. We'll start with a beautiful parrot. 10. Parrot Sketch: Now let's move on to the bird eyes. Let's paint the soft and expressive eyes of the parrot using watercolor. The parrots, if you see, they have gentle and speaking eyes that conveys emotions and captures our attention. I have actually taken this eye from this parrot, so you can see that it has a beautiful gesture here. Maybe it is just like done with a meal and just having a conversation with its pet parent. Or maybe it's out in the wild. It's thinking of something and it's conversing with its partner. Look at the eyes, so how beautiful it is. I'm planning to capture this emotion, but we will be using these two. Yeah, we'll be using this one. But you can see that the highlight is not so clear in this picture. So I'm going to use this one where I'm just going to capture only the highlight, nothing else from this one. But this particular eyelid, if you see it, has a beautiful purple tinge. And it also has a gorgeous eyelashes that you can see here, an upper eyelid with these eyelashes. And there's also eyelashes that you can see it here. And it has beautiful iris structure with the sparkling red and yellow. I guess we'll use the color theme from this one, and just for the highlights, we'll try to use this. The angle is also slightly different because it has tilting its head to the side. It's not exactly the side view, so it might be a little tilted view over here as usual. So let's try to start off with a sketch of the parati by defining this outer layer. Now this varies from part to part. I'm talking about this white color skin that is surrounding the purple eyelid. That's completely fine if it is slightly different in its shape. Now I'm defining this almost oval type of shape since it's like tilted its head. So this circle should be this way. The iris is this one. And it has the be the nictitating membrande, which is here is the third. Yet we already saw about the paths. Now I'm going to use this highlight here instead of this blurred highlight, I'll just use this one. If we are done with the sketching of the paradie, let's move on to the painting face. 11. Parrot Painting: So let's begin the painting now. Since this parrot, it has a lighter tone, I'm just going to slightly erase it here. Now, you can also see that this parrot tie is so colorful. And you can see that I've cleaned my palette now. I didn't want this browns and blacks and grays to mix up and mess up with this beautiful, gorgeous color combination of parrot. So let's begin with the yellow. So we'll quickly do the yellow. This is the gamboge yellow here. I'm going to use it outside this one. Yeah, I'm just filling the space surrounding this. Now, when it comes here, it becomes slightly light. I'm diluting this. I'm making it a little lighter here. Same thing I'm doing here. Then we are going to apply that blues and greens. This has a beautiful sap green here. So I can mix it and get this from this glue. You can also use your did sap green. Since this is a very small portion, I'll just use this mixture. Now, this green at the bottom, this is more of a teal. I'm going to use the cobalt teal here, which is from Daniel Smith. So it's a beautiful color. Okay, so we have defined all the colors. Now let's get inside the eye. You can see that the white layer is almost a neutral color here. Same thing. So it's almost like white or cream color. So we have to define that. So how do we do that? We can use this raw sienna color here or the burn sienna. So nicely wash your brush. It's very, very diluted here. I'm diluting it. A, This is the raw Sienna. I'm just going to gently go over this. I don't want this bright paper white, so I'm making it creamier, which is nothing but the diluted version of the brown. I'm using raw sienna here. You can also use burn sienna. We'll define those folds later. First, you just like fill that space with the color. I'm just giving a little bit of more color to these corners. So far, what are the colors that we have used? We have used the lemon ello, we have used gamboge, then we have used cobalt teal, and then raw sienna. We will also be using the purple U. I'll be using Corbasol violet from Daniel Smith again, and then I'll be using the red pret. We will also be using orange. And then finally some burn sienna and paint scrap, lot of colors for this parrot. Okay, let's go on with the carbasol violet. So this carbsol violet is a very, very depigmented one, so you have to be really, really careful. So I'm diluting it a little bit. So this is for this layer. Okay, so now let's fill the inner circle here so it has this burn sienna. Now, for some trivia, if you're interested of all the five senses, parrots, eyesight is its most acute sense. They have petrochromatic vision, which means they can see four colors, which is red, blue, green, and ultra violet. Yes, they can see ultra violet. Many of the birds and mammals can see that, which human cannot see. We have added a little bit of this barn Siena here, and there is a layer of yellow. I'm going to use this darker yellow, or we can also use this quin gold. This will become like a golden yellow. I'm going to switch to a smaller brush, filling the space next to that brown. Now lastly we have the red. I'm going to mix it with this orange, red and orange. It's completely okay. If this is mixing with that yellow layer, that is what we want. So this red layer becomes a little narrower. This side, a little bit of yellow. Again, I'm just going to use the Burn Siena again here to define this and to create some pattern. I'm using this wet in wet technique to create that pattern. Let it not be so much filled with water so it'll completely mix with that yellow. Maybe you can wait it out a bit that the structure that you're trying to create, the pattern that stays there. Otherwise, what happens when it is totally wet? It just like mixes with the layer. So that is what has happened right now. What I'm going to do, it has to be a little bit brighter. So I'm going to lift this color, so you can see that bright yellow. So that gorgeous yellow here. So when you lift it, that's what I'm going to do now. This parrot, it has a monocular vision, which refers to the fact that each eye is placed on the side and it focuses on one object at a time. Both the eyes are not dependent on each other, Whereas human beings and many other predator animals, we have binocular vision where both the eye, we focus on one object to create the three dimensional one. Now these parts, so their eyes are located on the sides, right? So which provides them with nearly 300 degree of, you know, the field of vision. I'm just darkening this layer, I think. Let's use more of this orange. It doesn't have that even structure. It has the seregated something like a pattern. Okay, I'm again coming to the burn sienna to define something like a box or some stripes. This is nothing but the iris we are working on. This beautiful iris, it has that stripes there. We'll have to wait a little bit till it dries. What we will do is we'll try to refine this particular white skin which is outside. We'll try to get the folds here. I'm going to, you can use either the raw sienna diluted or the burn Siena if you want. You can define all of this using your pencil. And then start with these structures. So it has a kind of a circular structure here with, you know, some wavy patterns. Okay, Now let's define this purple, the carbasol violet. It's waiting for us here. Let's finish off this first. I'm just like filling the space here. This portion is a little bit bigger. There is this inner layer which is also like purple. So I've just like merged those two. We can segregate it like once we are defining the other structures. We'll define the pupil now. So it'll become more defined. I'm going to use this one, you know, for this definition. So this has a very dilated pupil here. I'm just using the paper white here. If you want, you can completely color the pupil with black. And then, yeah, so use the acrylic white. Okay, so we are done with a pupil, so it gives some definition now. Now let's do the other texture, this purple one. If you see it has this particular layer, it has a lot of texture. So we'll try to bring in the texture and then as usual I'll try to bring in some feather texture. Using hatching, I'm going to use a smaller brush, now I'm using the paints gray, you can mix it slightly with violet. This one, again, what you can do is you can first use a pencil to define those structure and then come back to using your paint. Or you can directly use your brush to define those structure. I'm not really getting too much into that structure there. It has like a T like structure. There is the vertical lines going and then some rounded structure on top. I'm using these, you know, by lines here. Now on top it goes a little deep. The structures now on to the inside. I'm using the burn for this particular thing. It's like filled with this color. I'm going to add more contrast now. And I'm lifting this side, I want to make this side a little light. So what is pending now is the cute eyelashes on the upper eyelid and maybe some few in the lower eyelid. You can also use your micro tip pen or pencil to do that. Otherwise you can use a thin brush. I'm using a size zero brush. Use the tip of the brush and just gently extend that. You can do it fast if you want some straight line. Now the lower eyelashes are still more lighter. I'm just using a very, very diluted the remaining paint that I have in the brush with this, we are done. We can do a little bit of glazing on top of this outer skin. A little bit more definition. I'm mixing Barn Siena and paints gray. And there is some shadow here in the lower eyelid. The eye is completely done. Yeah, if you want, you can keep adding some more details. But yeah, this one is fine. Now what's pending and what you can do is just define the structure. I have just given the color the basic color layer. What I'll do is I'll quickly give this feather texture. I'm just going to use the hatching that we have seen in the texture of the tiger as well as the tear. I would be speeding up this process. We're done with the eye, but yes, a little bit of hatching texture for the feather. So that would complete this one. Now these are some of the texture that you can see near that white skin. I'm just doing this one. Okay, We are done with this feather texture also. So finally we'll use the trusted bleed proof white for some of the highlights. Again, some moisture highlights, I see some here. So let's dilute this, altering this pupil a little bit more. I'm going to define a little bit this underneath this layer, I'll just remove the tape and look how gorgeous is this. We are now done with a soft and soulful expression of the parrot. Now let's move on to the majestic expression of the bird of prey, the predatory bird. The majestic eagle. 12. Eagle Sketch: Let's get to the last eye in the series, the eye of an eagle. Look at this beauty. Look at this gorgeous, beautiful, majestic eye. Of all the eyes nature has ever produced, those of the eagle may be the most extraordinary. If you're an eagle, you could see a rabbit running from 3 miles away. While most humans have 2020 vision, eagles are blessed with an astounding 25 vision. What is that 25 vision? What looks sharp and clear to us at five feet, just as clear to an eagle from 20 feet away. No wonder we use the term eagle eyes to describe superb vision. The eagles eyes are more to the sides of the head, but though not so lateral and centrally placed as the other birds. So it has the advantage of both the binocular and monocular vision. So we're going to use this reference picture for our painting demo. So if you look at this, the expression is so piercing, so fierce, full, and majestic, I would say. And you can see it has a beautiful outer eyelid which is yellow colors, and it also has a pale iris. When you compare to the darker pupil inside this particular picture, I have selected because I really, really love the reflection, the highlight that you see here. So let's zoom it out. And I'm zooming it now. Can you see the beautiful scene there with humans standing? Yeah, people are standing there. I can see 1234 or five people standing there. And I could see a railing and sky with a lot of clouds. Look at this beautiful, a soulful image, you know, which is captured with such a clarity where you can see the entire reflection. So this forms a painting inside the eagle's eye itself. So I love this. So it's like telling a story here. So we need not capture exactly, you know, like all of this scenery inside this eagle eye. But yes, to some extent like this, this is pretty interesting. I like this reflection a lot, so. So let's go ahead and do this one. I'm going to focus completely on the eyes. I'm going to draw the eye pretty huge. So yes, as usual. So let's start with the rounded eye structure. So now this is almost like fading inside here. So this is kind of like an oval here. Yeah, so there's a tear drop here. Now. This iris is almost circular. Completely circular. So this is the pupil center pupil. Now this is the big reflection. It's like a cross. It's like curvy thing, the feather or the eyelid of the eagle that is giving that image. This is actually continuing till this layer. This is the dark brown layer and it is continuing here. I'm trying to draw the human. You can completely skip this one. You just give that highlight with white and just be done with that. So that's totally fine. That's up to you. I found this reflection. So when I was searching for this image for the skill share, cos I used like a couple of sites for copyright free images. One is the splash. If you would have taken up my previous lesson, I would have given all the details. One is the splash, another one is pixels. Another one is Piap. I stumbled upon this one and I really didn't see the reflection, I didn't zoom it. But after I have downloaded, I really like this brown and yellow combination. Um, but once I've downloaded that, then when I zoomed in and saw that I was completely taken aback, I was totally surprised by the clarity. I think the photographer all credit goes to the photographer who has done a beautiful job of capturing it all. This feather, it's all like converging. So I don't have like Mupasi, so I'm not going to do much on this one. But yes, this is the corner where all the feathers are converging and you have the, you know, the yellow color one here. Like if you see the feather of this eagle. So you can see it has some tiny triangle type of segments here. So you're not getting too much into the details. But yes, to an extent, we'll see how we can use this triangle shape here. So we have done that. We have finished this brief sketch. So this will be the darker layer? Yes. And here again, the shadow would be there. All right, we have finished with a sketching face. Let's move on to the paint. 13. Eagle Painting: So let's begin with the last painting demo, The Eye of an Eagle. We will be using mostly, very, very limited color palette here. We're going to use the burn sienna and paint spray as usual. And we will also be using a little bit of the raw sienna here and the quin cool. So all the colors are located here itself. Yeah, and as usual we'll be using a little bit of the bleed proof white. So this is actually this piece of pigment, sepia. You can also use the burnt umber if you, if you don't have that, you can mix the burn sienna and pain skray. So I'm just like filling this space here. I think I have slightly gone over the yellow one. I'll try to lift this one here again. I'm just trying to fill the space with this brown and black mix. In this portion, the feather is coming here on top. Now what I'm going to do is there's some shades of brown here while it is still wet. I'm just going to add that, oh my God, this has become too dark. Okay. Let me correct that sometimes these type of happy accidents do happen. That's totally okay. And something that you have to remember is the type of, even if it is very, very dark, the watercolor tends to dry a little lighter. That should be completely okay. Now, towards this corner, I'm just going to blend a little bit because this yellow is going to come, that's the start of their beak. We will be using for the outer eyelid, so I'll be using this gamboge. You can also use the quin gold or the Indian yellow. I'm just blending it in now. There's again a deep brown here. Okay, now first we will finish off with the iris coloring of the iris. Then we'll do the pupil and also the outer eyelet I'm using here and you can mix it with a little bit of burn. So now I'm going to continue here. I'm leaving the space for the highlight here. Okay, let me just switch over to a smaller brush. Now I'm using a darker mix because this particular section, it's under the shadow. I just using the brush and just trying to create some texture here. Now, next is, let's finish off with the eyelid. I'm going to use the same yellow. We can use the same yellow or the quin gold also will be good. You can see how bright that quin gold is. I'm just filling that outer eyelid, now I'm going to slightly lift this one here so that it becomes much more brighter. Now a little bit of darker tone. I'm using the quin gold, which has golden hue. Maybe you can mix it with little Ban Siena so there are some texture, some trivia related to eagles vision is the colors eagle can see are much more vivid than the human eye can see. They can see multiple shades where we might be only seeing one. It has been found out that eagles can distinguish between five differently colored squirrels like shades of similar color. Yes, like ferrets and other bird, they can also see ultra violet light in different ranges. Here I'm using the burn sienna and pains gray. This one, this layer, there's one more darker layer here. I'm using the same color mix, burn sienna and pains gray. I'm leaving a tiny bit of white here. You can also use acrylic white as usual. I'm diluting that a little bit. We are defining this layer, then we have this darker layer here. According to the reflection, there is an object like this. This is coming from here. I'm defining that one if you want, you just like continue creating this one, Leave some space for the high light, and then again you continue to the top. I'm using paints gray here to darken that a little bit and there are some textures and some lines here that I'm trying to do. So you can do this, you can just like use some glazing to slightly settle that and blend it. Now I'm just like filling this layer. So there is this border, this is the lower eyelid. Let's do the pupil. Now while I'm doing the pupil, I'm just going to try to define the figures that I see here. Again, I'm saying you don't need to necessarily do this figure and also the clouds and other things. Yes, it's completely like up to you. What I'm going to do is I'm just going to slightly fill this lower portion of pupil now. Then first I'll fill that with the highlight with some half tones because I can see some clouds there. Sky, it has some shades of gray and blue. We'll try to fill that first and then do those objects. And human, if you want to completely leave that as a patch of some rectangle or some other shape, please feel free to do so. This is done, let's do the highlight. Now I'm taking a little bit of this, paints gray and the blue together. There is literally some clouds that I can see. Yeah, we're not doing a landscape. No, yeah, definitely not doing a landscape. But yeah, I see a whole new world inside the eagles, I, some cloud, I see some purple shades. I'll lose a little bit of this. Carbosole violet, Purple can mix it with blue also. Maybe it's like a cloudy day. We have defined some gray shades here, denoting that it's a sky that it is looking at. We are done with this little background. We can also alter it later with the. White. So let's do this. The human here, Okay. So I would say that it's out of syllabus here. I see one human. Sometimes it's crazy to look at. I also wanted to show right now it's not there in my ipad, maybe I'll show it. I saw a Jeep inside A Yeah. I was also like searching for the S. When I saw the iris, then it looks really beautiful. It had this deep black eyes. So when I just zoomed in again, I saw a P, I saw a white Jeep. Not with some people, but yeah, I saw the Jeep. And maybe some trees and road and pathway that's like, oh my God. Yeah. This is not the class for human figure and portrait. That's what I'm seeing right now. If you see this shade is becoming slightly lighter here. We will also be removing the darker one. I'll use this shade. This merges with the iris here. The color of the iris gets continued here. Now, there's a railing that's present here. Maybe this is some watch tower or something. Again, this railing becomes lighter, comes here. So this is not exactly like how it is given in this reference image due to the space constraints. I have given it in a different way. I guess this is fine. Too much of details. Now, I'm going to make this portion a little bit more darker because this is under the shadow. Slightly blending it here. Okay. I guess like we are done with the eye. If you want to do any more other details or you want to do the pupil and the highlights on the reflection in a different way. Please go ahead. Each eye is different and each eagle is different. I it's not there in the picture, but still I feel it would be slightly better if you have a reflected light here. Slightly gently, I'm going to lift it here. Now you can see that glassy three D appearance. Okay, now we are done. So the last thing is with the feather. So I'm not going to go too much in depth into the feather. So I'm just going to use that same burn sienna or the sepia we can use. I'm going to use the same hatching feature here, so I'm making long strokes for the hair near the beak. I'm blending this layer here. Now, I told about the shadow. I'm slightly blending this one also so that it depicts that shadow there. Okay, so now I'll give a final glazing on top of these in that same wet surface, just keeping the feather texture. Okay, we are done with this. Now one final code. Do we really need this bleedproof white? Because I really like the way this highlight has come. So I can also, I guess we can zoom in in our painting and see like how the scenery unfolds. But I guess like maybe to the eyelid and maybe to the feather I'll try to keep. So I'm going to mix this one with Brown. I guess I can go on and on with this feather. Another thing, perfecting it. But let's stop with this one. So this looks really beautiful the way it is. We'll stop with this maybe before stopping final details. I'll just yeah, make it a little bit so you don't have to do all of this tiny details. Perfection, there's nothing called us. This perfection is just our own satisfaction. So if you're satisfied with the output at any particular stage, you can definitely stop with that one. We have now painted the fears and captivating eyes of an eagle in watercolor. Look at the power and intensity of the eyes that we have captured. So with this, we have wrapped up all the four birds and animal eyes, which are predator and prey. 14. Conclusion: Congratulations, you have completed the course Mastering Watercolor, Animal, Bird Eyes with Expression and Emotion. Let's recap what we have covered in each of the lessons In the first lesson, Anatomy of animal and bird eyes. We saw the different paths of the eyes, the intricate details and unique features of animal eyes. Understanding their anatomy and how it influences their expression and emotions. We then practice catching animal and bird eyes, where we learn how to observe and sketch the different paths, capturing their proportions, shapes, and other intricate details and highlights. We practiced sketching different types of animal and bird eyes, including prey and predator categories. Then we explored the process of painting specific animal eyes. We started with the deer eyes, where we focused on capturing the soft gentleness of the deer's eye by adding contrast and blending various dark tones and with a dilated and beautiful pupil. Next in the tiger eyes, we captured the menacing, ferocious, majestic look of the tiger. Next, we moved on to the birds, embrace the vibrant and playful nature of Paradise. Learning to depict their vivid colors, intricate patterns, and expressive eye emotion. Lastly, in painting the eagle eyes, we tackle the fierce and piercing gaze of eagle eyes. By completing these lessons, you have gained valuable knowledge and hands on experience in depicting a variety of animal eyes using watercolor. You have honed your observational skills. Color mixing techniques and brush work to bring life expression and emotion to your paintings. Painting animal eyes not just about replicating their physical appearances. It is about capturing their essence, their stories, and the emotions that they convey. Thank you for joining this course and embracing the beauty and intricacy of watercolor animal. Yes. Please post your projects in the project section with your animal of your choice or from the demos that I have shown. Also, don't forget to leave a constructive review once you're done with a course, wishing you all the best on your artistic journey, keep planning, keep creating.