Monster in Minutes - Watercolor Warm Up

1. Class Intro: Hello. I'm Daniella Melon and author and artist. Here in skill share, I teach many watercolor painting classes, from landscapes to botanicals, animals and even abstract fast food. Today's class is a bit unusual as its focus is on warming up your painting process well. Exercise your painting techniques with a light and somewhat silly project called monsters. In minutes in today's class will take away the pressure of painting and replace it with rounded shapes, bold colors and uncomplicated expressions. We'll create a single monster image on six by nine paper. This exercise will draw your attention to the process of moving paint in pleasing shapes, creating a beautiful color blend using two shades of red and creating a painting in three steps. This class is a way to take a break from serious painting and a way to practice your skills While focusing on the process of painting. We'll start with a brief overview of basic class materials review using the template and finally paint our image in three steps, letting the painting dry between each layer. Try your hand in a monster in minutes and post your work in the project section. Be sure to follow me here on skill share to get notified of future classes and please consider leaving a review. Now let's get started. 2. Class Supplies: for a monster in minutes class will need our class template, which you can find in the project section. Just downloaded and printed onto a piece of copy paper since six by nine watercolor paper, our water color pigments. And you could find a list of the colors that I use in the project section in the class supply list and a pencil and eraser in some water color paint brushes. 3. Using the Template: to create your sketch. You can freehand it by just referencing the sketch. You can put it on a light source either a window or even a light pad. Put the light behind it and then trace over it this way, or you can cut out your template and trace around it. Either way, just put it on your paper with a light pencil sketch. 4. Step 1: start my painting. I'm gonna mix two colors of red. I'll start here with a little bit of water on my palette and some of this carmine, It's just a red right from the tube. Makes a nice rich color and then next to it, I'll put a little down and I'll mix some of this Crimson Lake to get a darker color. Drop my brush in the water. I'll pick up some more of this car. My mix it here with a sharp point of my brush. I'm gonna just go down on the left hand side. Since that's the side, I want to be darkest in color and I'm gonna create the outline of my body, do the same thing here on the arm. Then I'm gonna rinse my brush and switched to a smaller brush and number one brush. Dip it in the crimson again and continue. And I'm trying to avoid the eyes. So I'm gonna go right around the eye making that shape. I'll come back in and connected to the area we already wet. Go around the horn here, dip in my brush and water to make a lighter version pulling away from the area we just put down. I'll go back to the car mine, and I'm gonna outline this tooth here and somewhat the mouth, I mean, all connected to the area. We already wet just by wedding, my brush yet again with water from the tub. Now keep doing the water from the tub just so that I can get the torso and the body here since there one in the same, Um oh, wet on the paper that's worried about the color. But I'm keeping in mind that I want the deepest part of the color to be in the left hand side of my image. So I'll just continually going around wedding my image, keeping my paint moving and wet so I don't get any harsh lines dipping it in my color again and again. As I move away from the left hand side, I'll dip it in my water instead of my pigment, go around being very generous with the water, but still controlling it. It's my brush. I wanted to be nice and wet. You can see it's coming very light pink on this side. That's okay. And I'm gonna come here at the base of my leg where I wanted to be that red. I'll wet it and dropping the color and then in between the stripes on the leg, whether it be in athletics, sock or a tattoo, I want to make that skin color and that skin colors red for today. Come in with my brush. Create this arm on this side. Have a good shape here, continued a wet my piece. Switch to my larger brush. Now that my pieces wet, we'll pick up this carmine again and drop it in. They're going to pick up some of this crimson, this dark color, and drop it in over here on the left hand side. What that color to bleed nicely. Then I'll go back and pick up this carmine, helping it to move together with the deeper red going over about 3/4 of the body, dipping my brush in water, continuing to help that color move and blend, dipping my brush and water again and we'll let this layer completely dry. 5. 5 Part 2: So now that are red layers dry will stop, are working on the hornet will start at the top because I want this to be a great and I'm gonna have it go yellow, yellow, orange and then orange. So I'll take some Clearwater and color each section of this horn, leaving a good, generous space of dry paper in between. Then I'll start out with the yellow and at the base of that section, I'll put in some yellow right from the two there, outline it and then just put in abundance of color the base. I'll do the same thing with this deep yellow, yellow, orange, Really. Or are outlined. The section put in abundance at the base and let the color kind of bleed drop in a little more color at the base. And then for the last one, I want to mix in a little bit of this vermillion with some of that deep yellow. And once again, I'm gonna paint that section. I'll take a damp brush, bleed that color somewhat as it gets higher up, and then take a little more pure color. That vermillion and just dropping into the base here shows a nice little radiant color lightning as we get further north there for the stripe here, I'm going to just take my clear water on my brush and just paint over that Clearwater on the stripe. And then I'm gonna make some of this purple here, and I want to take enough purple on my brush where I can control the brush. But I want to add it to the edges here, so I'll start with a little here and here. Middle outlined, this site pulling in a little color as well. Rinse off my brush. Give it so it's a damp. Then I'm pulling my colors. I want to make sure that it's darkest most dark on the exterior sides. So just dropping a little bit of that color as well. A little bit more to get that look. Dampen my brush. And if there were any dry spots or any harsh edges, I'll blend those out right now that I'm gonna flip my paper to the side and I don't want to use black, but I'm gonna use a sepia, which is very dark brown, with a very sharp point of my brush and very small strokes. Get a careful not to touch the wet horn, but I'm gonna create paint those eyeballs, get those nice, round shapes, and then I'll take that same color on my brush. Get a nice sharp point and I'll make small little strokes just a section of the time to get the shape of that mouth. Go back over, thicken it, turn it to the side, make sure the edges air nice and round. Then I'm gonna take a sharp, sharp point of my brush and very with a very light hand, just outlined the eyes barely touching the paper. And depending on the thickness that you outlined the eyes, you can get a different expression on your monster again. I'll take a sharp, sharp point of my brush, an outline, the entire body. I'm not gonna outline the horn just yet because I know it's wet. Flip it around. Could be careful around the stripe. Here is Well, I'll just avoid it for now and I'll let this layer dry. We'll come back and finish up 6. Step 3: now that our horn is dry and so are stripes here gonna go in with my smallest brush My number one brush getting a sharp point, sepia, and just finish that outline, Barely touching the brush to the paper. How outline each section with a thin little stroke. And there we have our completed piece. 7. Class Wrap Up: So here we have our completed painting. We have our radiant on the horn, are brilliant colors throughout and are fun expression. It was a simple painting, but it was really fun to achieve this simple yet brilliant results. You can modify it, of course, outlining the eyes thicker, creating a little shadow with some cast color, and that creates another image as well. And it's just another experience, a way to play while you're working on your process of painting. From here, you could take your image, scan it into your computer and use it many ways. I wanted to show you a couple of variations. So here's the 1st 1 I have where I've created a postcard using the same image, and I just created multiples of it and put it together in an image. And here I did the same thing, and I just changed it around a little. So I took a fun, non threatening process and created many results with it. I hope youll try your hand at one of these monster in minutes and post your work in the project section. Be sure to follow me here on skill share to get notified of future classes, and please consider leaving a review. Thanks for watching