Transcripts
1. Intro: Hello, my name is
Fiona Depinto and I am a Scottish Italian
watercolor artist, and I am based in Rome, Italy. I love painting expressive
watercolor portraits and experimenting with
this wonderful medium. In this class, I am
going to teach you how to paint the
monochromatic portrait. Why is painting
monochromatic so important? Getting rid of all color allows us to
concentrate on value. Value is so important
because it's value that gives shape and depth
to the painting. We always have at least three
values in every painting. A dark value, a mid
value, and a high light. And very often we
have many more. By getting rid of
all the color and concentrating by just using
one color, we can experiment, We can delve into the
shapes, the lights, the shadow, and understand what three dimensionality in
a portrait is all about. We will be painting this
portrait in this class. I used English read for this, and I found it such an interesting and
exciting experiment. Dive right into this class with me and I really
hope you have fun.
2. Materials: What materials are we going
to need for this class? First, I would say three
watercolor brushes. A small one, a medium one. This is a number six and a large one, just
at the beginning. This is a mop number ten, but you can use any
brush that you want. Paper, I'm using a block of Windsor and Newton
Professional paper. It's 100% cotton, 300 GSM, which refers to how
thick the paper is. It needs to be quite thick if you don't have
a block like I do, which means all
the single sheets are glued on four sides. And then unglue them
or peel them off. Then make sure that your piece of paper, your sheet of paper, is taped down on four sides
so that it won't buckle. A jar of water, kitchen paper. You're really going to meet
this or some kind of rag. One watercolor paint. I am using English red. I've put it into this
one ceramic well, because I won't need any
more mixing space than this. But remember, you don't
need to use English Red. You can use any color you want. My only suggestion is that you don't go for a color
that's too light, like pale yellow or
something like that. Or also pay attention to
how staining a color is. Sometimes colors with
neutral tint paints, gray and indigo can be
extremely staining. It can be slightly more
tricky if you're not at an advanced level.
I use a heat tool. You can use a small hair dryer, or you can wait for
your paint to dry. Literally, which is
a little bit boring, but nonetheless, you
can use anything. But this heat tool is small, so I think it's really handy. You will find the
reference image and the sketch outline
attached below. You can trace the drawing if you feel more comfortable
doing that. And always keep your
reference image beside you. Don't make the mistake of putting it to the side and
not looking at it anymore. Just because you're
following a class, you need to have the
reference image beside you to be able to check out
the different values and the lights and shadow.
3. First Layers: I'm slightly pre
wetting my painting just because this
will allow things to flow a little bit more loose, which is the style that
I like to painting. I very often do this. I am not putting too much water on my paper and I am trying to
stay within the sketch lines. But this just helps
me start on a tone, on a looser note, I find it helpful to let go. I'm picking up my English
red from my single. Well, I don't need
much more than this. I'm tapping the
brush on the edge of that just to get rid
of some excess paint. And I'm going to go
straight into this area, which is above the eye and
near the bridge of the nose. Your kitchen paper
handy at all times or a cloth to soap up any excess paint you
might have laid down. I'm working in this area
because it seems to be the darkest area on the
face or one of the darkest. It's easier to start from
those areas because then you can spread the
paint out from there using a clean, damp brush. Usually in water color, we would start from
light to dark. But in this case,
I'm going against the rules a little bit
because I am blocking in the shadow areas just to map out the values of our painting. So I see some darkness
on the tip of the nose, the part of the nose
that curves under. Then of course we have the
shadow in the cheekbones. My paint at this stage, the mixture is quite watery. It's not flowing
all over the place. I would say it's in between a tea and a
coffee consistency, but it's definitely
not thick at all. We're going in very
light to begin with. I'm going to bring
my clean brush. So I'm cleaning my
brush in my water, tapping it on my kitchen paper, and starting to pull out some of those shadow areas
into the mid tones. Make sure your brush is clean. Otherwise, you will not be
getting that different value. You will not be getting
a lighter value as you spread your paint out, I'm bringing it down
from the area above the eye and pulling it
down under the eye. You can go inside the white
of the eyeball as well, the side of the nose. You can see that shadow
going down the bridge of the nose as it joins the
lower part of the nose. Pull it out slightly into
the temple area here. Moving your brush
back and forwards. Ease it up towards the
top of our forehead, over to the left side here. Again, make sure
your brush is clean. Softening the
shadow over here on her cheek a little bit
with my clean, damp brush. And you can see how starting off on a wet surface has
created the softness. This is something we
can also play with, having certain areas where
we have these almost lost edges and having areas
where we have sharper edges. It's almost like something that you can
calculate beforehand. How loose edges do I want in my painting and how much
hard edges do you want? It's nice to create a balance
and it also depends a lot on your mood and how you're feeling and what
you want to convey. I'm checking my reference image. You should always have your
reference image nearby. I'm picking up more
of that paint. I am bringing it into the
lower part of the jaw, over to the other side
on the left hand side, and bringing it up into
the side of the jaw using the tip of my brush
trachel number six, also bringing some
below that lower lip. We always have a shadow under our lower lip because it's
cast by the lip itself. It's quite evident here. She also has a shadow. The top of the lower lip
where it meets the top lip, bringing that right up to
meet the southern shadow. And this is going
to need softening. Of course, I'm going to
clean my brush in my water, tap it on my kitchen paper, and just ease that out with
the side of my bristles using a very delicate circular
motion, like small circles. You can see how dark
it is if you want to pick some of that up,
but I think it's fine. I will also soften
this shadow slightly, especially towards the edges, over to this side and over to this side and in
the lip as well. We're just creating the
foundation for our work. We're just starting with just finding out
where the light and shadow are by using
this one color. Of course, there's
another sharpest shadow just right under her chin. Again, that's another area
where we very often have a shadow that's due to
the fact that our chin, of course, is casting
a shadow on our neck. Be careful when you're
bringing your paint up to areas that are already wet as they can easily spread
and blend into each other. Maybe if your face is still wet, you will want to dry it with a heating tool or a hair dryer. Or just be careful
to leave a bit of a tiny space between the two if you don't want
them to blend too much. I'm bringing this shadow down. You can get expressive with
this as much as you want. We don't have any other colors. Now is definitely the
time to experiment. And if you want to get a bit creative with
platters and drips, that thing, now is definitely
the time to do it. But if you just want to
concentrate on the values, this is an excellent study in
itself and one that I think every watercolor artist should repeat as often as they can. The joy of painting
with only one color is that we don't have to think
about remixing anything. If we step away from
our work space, we can just come back to it and reactivate our paint
with a wet brush. Looking at my painting now, I can tell you I really
love the way it looks. The paint is spread softly. And I think this
really adds a touch of something expressive to the painting, which
I always like. Now I'm going in with my clean, damp brush and I am just teasing the certain areas
that I want to reactivate, like this area of the nose where the edge is slightly
too hard for my tastes. Just by doing this,
I'm smoothing it out ever so slightly. I still want that area to be dark because there
is a shadow there. I'm not going to
lift it completely. I want that darkness
to stay there. Now, we're going to
darken up certain areas that are clearly darker
in the photograph. And I'm just looking at the area on the sides of our
face where the hair begins. There are two almost dark wings coming out from the
side of our face. That is something that is
good to tackle early on because it helps us consider and gauge the values of
the rest of our piece. When we have some very dark
values put into our painting, then it's easier to see if the light values
on the midtones are. If we need to darken everything, I'm darkening those two areas on the side of our forehead. On either side of our forehead. Again, I'm using a coffee, coffee mill key consistency with an almost dry brush. I'm going into the
very ends here. When your brush is dry, you can use it to create
hair texture very easily. You can see right here, I've not filled that whole area in. Also by using the negative
painting technique, Painting around things
like in this case, here I am painting around
a little strand of hair. As I wanted to stand out here, we have this white
space I've left out that is working
as a strand of hair. Again, with my almost dry, I go out and create that hair texture just using whatever is
left of my brush. But with a brush
that basically has no dampness left to
the bristles at all, I think we can go a
little bit darker than this here in the sides, just so far we can go in darkness when we're
using one color. Because at this stage, let's say that the
darker we can get, the darkest value
we can get with one color is just by using
it straight out of the pan, basically with
almost no water or just enough water so that it
will move on our surface. I really picking up a
lot of that for this, as you can see on the
edge of my palette, this is really thick,
I'm dropping it in, and this is going to
be my darkest value. Can't get any darker than this without mixing
anything else in, which is something
that we are not planning on doing
for this piece. Our darkest value
will be created by just picking up a
really thick mixture, a amount of water, very small amount of water. Which is all we will
need to activate the paint and to get it
to budge from the pan. Otherwise, lifting water color with a completely dry brush is an almost impossible
feat, let's say. Okay, I think the dark
is working quite well, I can make do with that. There's some darker areas
up here in the hair line, just above the forehead area. I'm using the tip of
my brush for that. I use this almost like creating an upward motion for the hair line on the
other side is lifted, then allowing it to curve outwards as the hair falls
back into this role. She is a very particular hair
style which I really love. You just keep working with that and spreading it in the areas where you
think it is needed. I also see it here on the
lower half behind the face, and that really frames
the face nicely. Be careful not to
go over the face. This is a technique I like using in all my portraits
because having this shadow around
the face and there's almost always a shadow
around the face, cast by the fact that the hair touches the
face on the edges. It does cast a shadow, really helps frame
the face naturally. You can see what a
huge difference that makes it allows the
face to stand out, to become the
protagonist of our pace. And of course, as always, by leading, by using like the negative
painting techniques. So by painting around things, in this case around
strands of hair, you will automatically get
the hair texture effect. Our brush is almost dry, it has very little water on it. Then we can wet brush, dab it on the edge of
some kitchen paper, and just ease some of that out. Clean your brush every time you see it's getting to loaded with paint from the color
you're reactivating. I'm just easing that out into the section where
we have a lighter value, then we will be able to
add detail on top of that smaller strands
of hair and curls. It's details that we can
go in and add later on and we can get as fastidious
about that as we want, which means we can go
in as much detail as we want or we might not want
to go into too much detail. That's a personal choice. Sometimes I like to leave hair really loose and expressive. Other times I like going
into a lot of detail. Okay, I think I'm going to
let the hair dry or purp, probably use a heat
tool to dry it. Actually, I'm just using what's on my brush to start filling in the ears, which I'm not sure. I think you can only
see one of the ears. I'm not sure whether the
other one is an ear, or it's just here
that looks like ears. But nonetheless, I have ears. In my sketch, I'm just filling them in with
a little bit of color because otherwise
they will stand out too much and we don't want to attract
attention to them. Okay, I'm going to
use my heat tool to dry this and I'll be back.
4. Deepening The Values: Now. I cannot resist
but go into the eyes. The reason why I dried the
hair is because I will be laying my hand down
on the hair area. If that paint has
still been wet, I would have been moving my
hand across my surface and spreading the paint around by pressing this part of my
hand down onto my painting. Make sure your paint is dry. When you take this step, I want to start going
to the eyes just because I really want to
see. I want to see them. I want to get that moment where you just get that sheer enjoyment out
of painting a portrait, which for me is
painting the eyes. I'm just going to darken
up this shadow here, close to the eye a little
bit because it is darker. It goes down into the beginning of the bridge
of the nose a little bit. I already can tell that my paint is a little bit too watery. We'll be lifting it
up a little bit. You can lift with your brush, it's got to be clean,
of course, and damp. Or you can lift with kitchen
paper, which is easier. I'm going around the eye lid, then I'm cleaning off my brush, getting rid of the excess
dampness on my kitchen paper, and lifting some of that out. The alternative is lifting
with kitchen paper, which usually is more
effective as you can see. I'm just smoothing that out. I want to get that
darkness by in steps. I don't want to go
for it all in one go. Remember to always
add that pop of shadow in the corner of
the white of the eye, in the corner of the eyeball. You can see it very
clearly in both her eyes. In the reference image, we have that little
corner of a shadow. It just adds such intensity
and depth to the eye, is something I always do
in every single portrait. You will really notice a
difference when you do this. I'm going under the eye. Not everyone has this
fold under the eye. I think it depends on
where your eyeballs sit, how deep set they are. Sometimes you will see
this fold under the eye, which it's nice to
get it in there. It's nice to show whatever you see in your reference image. Don't skip on it because
you think it might not look nice or maybe it
shouldn't be there. Everything you can see in
your photo should be there. I've just enhanced
that fold under the eye on both sides
and then went above and put some darkness into the crease of the eyelid
on the outer side. My paint was slightly wet over here to my right
side of my painting. I can do some lifting or I
can just leave that little, let's say snowflake effect
over here as it is, and make it part of my
painting or see where it ends up as I go on
in my painting process. And things get wet
and dry and then get wet again of work, as is the case with water color. Now, continuing to
work on the eye, let's add some definition. And I've never changed brushes. I'm still using this
number six brush change what part of the bristles I use. I'm, for example, using
the tip of the bristles. Now, of course, to do this, to have a brush that
comes to a nice tip, bristles are still intact. I'm using the tip of the brush. If you don't have this brush, then you can go for
a smaller brush. In this case, I'm enhancing the root of
the upper eyelashes. Sometimes you don't even
have to paint the eyelashes. All you have to do is enhance
the root of the eyelashes. I'm just starting a bit of
a shadow here because it gives a bit more symmetry
between the two eyes. Symmetry in the
eye is important. This is a step where
you should always be aware of looking out for painting things in a way that would make the
eyes look asymmetrical. And let's start by
going in and adding the circle around the iris, which will help us see where
everything is sitting. Of course, in this case, we see that the circle is cut short at the top. We
don't see the whole of it. It's the eye lid is covering
part of the iris at the top. We have to make sure to have the same thing happening
on the other eye. We won't have the full iris showing If it's not
showing in this eye, of course, make sure they're both sitting at the same height. If the bottom of the iris is touching the lower
rim of the eye, then it should do the
same on both eyes. You wouldn't have
it further up in one and lower down on the other. It may seem like
something simple, but it's a mistake that
one does tend to make. Even when your skills
are quite good, let's say quite developed. Sometimes we lose touch with the basics, okay? By looking at the eyes, I can tell that they
are symmetrical. I'm just adding a
bit more definition. Just above the iris. In this one we have a bit more
shadow over on this side. We've worked the side
a little bit more. So it's normal for it to
look a bit different. But the eyes are sitting
on the same line, they are more or less
the same height. Maybe eyes won't be absolutely identical even in
real life of course. But certain things, of course, we have to look out
for when painting. She's facing forward, so there's the same distance on either
side between the eye, the end of the eye,
and the temple. And I think everything is
perfectly symmetrical, or at least how it should be. I'm just wetting my
brush a little bit and just easing out this
shadow under the eye here in that fold because it
was looking a little bit too sharp and I'm doing the
same on the other side. I am not putting much
pressure on my brush at all. The paint will react at it
and move around on its own. Just as long as
you have patience and you give enough time to do so, it won't take you long. And you can always do this anywhere you want to reactivate that paint and smooth out any harsh lines
while we're at it. I'm going to pick up some of that thick paint and
go into the nostrils. Now make sure your
brush is fully loaded. This means that you are
turning your brush. You're rolling your brush. As you are dipping
it into that paint, I'm going to fill
in the nostrils. Filling in the
nostrils for me always adds depth to the
painting because it is one of the darkest
values what we have in the nostril and then that dip in the
middle and you can see how that has really added that extra
depth to a piece. I'm just enhancing the edge of the nose down here and down here and maybe also beginning to work in the lip going into
the corner of the lip, which is always the darkest
area on both sides. Bringing it in to create
the opening of the mouth. Remember it's never a
perfectly straight line. Usually it goes up in the
middle or down in the middle. It's not going to
go straight across. It's going to be quite rare. Usually the mouth can
be slightly parted. In this case it's
closed, but I don't think she's pressing
her lips down. There is a lot of definition
in the cupid's bow. She has a very
defined cupid's bow. Usually, when that happens, there's also a high
light above it. Why is that? Because
probably she has quite a
protruding upper lip. And the light tends to hit it as almost as if
it were a ledge, a shelf that's coming out and the light sits on it
when it's coming from above. And that's why usually have
a high light above that, which we can go in and add with white acrylical
guash at the end. If we wish to do though
with my clean brush, I'm just easing that
paint down into the lip ever so gently, ever so softly. Bring it down. Bring
it down into the lip. See that transition of color. Don't bring it down
all in one go. Watch the water
color do its magic. And recreate textures that
look organic and alive. If you want, you can go in
and drop some more paint into that and just
let it do its thing. You can see we're getting this really natural
effect around the lip where we don't have
this one block of color. I will also ease
with my clean brush, some of that color
out here at the edge. I like to exaggerate
this feature at times where the redness of the
lip goes beyond the lip. You can do it if you want to. You don't need to do it. Or you can make it as evident or as subtle as you wish to do so. But I just think it makes
everything look more natural. I just like it a lot. Let's fill in the eye again, I'm just dipping into my one. Well, isn't it fabulous to just have to work just neat one? Well, so I'm adding the darkness at the top of that iris with the
tip of my brush. And just look at the
difference between this eye and this eye already. The pupil is more or less there. Okay, Just look at that already. What a huge difference it makes. And then basically,
we clean our brush, tap it on our kitchen
paper and pull that down. You may have to push a little bit harder if
your brush is too dry. But I know my tools, so I know that I just have to
press a little bit harder. But in my case, let's say I didn't need
to add more water, but you might have
to add more water to your brush.
Just look at that. That was one simple, 30 seconds, 1 minute, just pulling that down. And you've already created
that dimension in the eye. And that goes to
show that I need to reinforce that shadow to just get that three dimensionality the shadow in the
corner of our eye. Just look at how that
going into the tear duct, adding that little triangular
shape in the tear duct. Just look at the
difference between the ice to clean my brush, tap it on the kitchen paper and just pull that shadow out. But lighter of course. And do the same thing
over on the other side, filling in the top of
the iris, English red. Of course, this can be
done with any color, any color that floats your boat. And then clean the brush. Bringing it down gently, we want to see a
transition of color. We don't really want it to
be lighter on the bottom. In fact, on this side, it's lighter than on the other one. I'm just going to leave it
like that for the moment. I don't think I'm
going to darken it up because the light can
hit eyes differently. And then just getting
that tear duct in, we'll very often have a high
light in the tear duct too, but we can get to that later. Going over the lower
rim of the eye, you should do this
on the other side as well, very delicately. You don't want anything harsh when it comes to the
lower rim of the eye, like the eyelashes as well. They should never be harsh. It should be barely there if you want to put
them in, otherwise, you can even skip
that step completely and don't put any
bottom eyelashes in. That can be so distracting
and it can get quite a pain to paint
them so delicately. If you're not really into
that, you can skip them altogether to see
how much intensity we've got into the eyes. Just by adding that layer, we can go into the eyebrows
while we're at it. I'm picking up more
paint from my pan. Again, it's got to be pretty
close to being buttery. I'm just using the
very tip of my brush. I always start from the
outer edge of the eye of the eyebrow because
it's one that in a way. I'm about to say less important, but it's not less important. It's just that if we get
too much blockiness in, at the beginning of the eyebrow, it's going to be
less easy to fix. Instead, if we get it
on the outer edge, we're working on a smaller area, the eyebrow is usually
finer there and it can get a bit away with being a little bit more
defined and darker, and more like drawn in in a way. But the front part needs
to be more feathery. I've just clean my brush, tapped it on the
clitchion paper. I haven't added anything to it. And I'm just going to use
whatever paints in the tail of the eyebrow and pull it into the main part of
the body of the eyebrow, especially when I get at the
beginning of the eyebrow. You want to go very delicately
and feather it upwards. You don't want to
have the appearance of two slugs above the eye. Make it delicate is more, you can see that. You can even make it less than this and it will dry lighter, of course, and just painstakingly painting
some hairs if you want. But I really can't be
bothered with that. Very often would be
very sincere here. But very often I cannot be bothered to spend an hour or so using the tip of
my brush to create those single strands of
fine hair in the eyebrows, which would be like
something like this. But of course, with a
much smaller brush, and then waiting
for the layer to dry and going over that
and so on and so forth. I don't have the patience
for that cleaning my brush, tapping it on my kitchen paper, and as I get to the
beginning of the eyebrow, just being very delicate, very soft, hardly
any pressure at all. Now let's go into the
area under the chin and address the shadow stair
because it's really quite sharp and we need to
start getting it in. It's more on the
right side again. Use a pretty thick consistency, Not too thick so that it
doesn't move of course, but thick enough so that we got that darkness
of value in there. It goes all the way across
to the edge of the neck, then it tapers down. It reaches the middle of
the neck of the chin. It goes up a little bit
onto the other side, but it gets shorter and
less harsh on this side. If you notice, you can see that I'm bringing
this down a little bit, cleaning my brush, tapping
on the kitchen paper, and easing that
down a little bit. Sometimes the urge to stick
in a different color, especially when
you're working around the lips and eyes can be strong. I urge you, on the other hand, to resist that urge. I also want to tell you
that once you've got the hang of this and once
you finish this piece, and if you feel like doing that, it is and also nice start off a painting monochromatic and then add a few touches of color. Let's say a pink to the lip, on a touch of green maybe
to the eye very delicately. That is also really
nice effect if you're feeling the
need to add color. That is something that
you can do later on. We won't be doing
this in this class because of course we're tackling the monochromatic painting, but I have done
that in the past. I know that the effect
can be really appealing. Going into the lip, I am again darkening up the outer corners, especially on the right side. We have a lot of darkness on the corner of her
lip, of her upper lip. So I'm going to
get that in there. When we're using dark values. Let's be sure to not
go beyond the line of lip because that can make
the lip look lop sided. Playing my brush and
bringing some of that paint into the
center of the lip.
5. Going into the Details: When we reach this stage, we have our mid tones
more or less established. We have our dark tones
more or less established. Our lightest highlights
are not here yet because unless you
decide to lead the white of the
paper, which is fine, which is what we use as highlights usually
in water color, or else we can go the
mixed media route and add acrylic or acrylic which are my favorite
things to use. I'm adding highlights and
water colors and that's when you will see
the magic happen, that's when you will
get that satisfaction. At least that's
the case with me. I really love the
highlights at the end. Adding the highlights
at the end. Right now I'm going
to go into the lips. As always, I've got
the photograph, the reference image
right next to me, and I see that the lips
are lacking in value. They're a bit too light. And it's a good idea to also
change your kitchen paper. I'm actually keep this
older one to the side. I can dab my paint brush on it, But when it comes to lifting, I've got a new piece of paper. Because if I go down with
this stained one here, then I will be staining my
painting in the process. And that is something
that you don't want. I'm lifting that
up a little bit, going into the
cupid's bow again, really wanting to get because
she has really large lips. We don't want them to
stand out too much, if they're too pale,
if we don't give them enough detail,
enough contrast, then they're going to be a
bit of a punch in the eye, like something that's there
that attracts attention, but it's not supposed to attract attention in that manner. Let's go in and add
some definition to the cupid's bow and then bring that down with
our clean, damp brush. And the same applies
to the bottom half. We can see that in
the bottom lip, we have more darkness
towards the edge of the lip and towards the
opening of the mouth. But then it's lighter in
the center of the lip. We can add some
darkness and deep in the value up closer to
the opening of the mouth. And then darken up the lower
part of the bottom lip. Okay, maybe just a little bit more here on these
outer corners. In the center of the top lip, close to the opening
of the mouth. I'm working wet and wet at the stage because the paper has been pre wet by the paint
that I just put down. I'm adding more on top of that. Technically, this
is a wet and wet. I'm cleaning my brush
and I'm just smoothing the edge of the
shadow out over here. Then we can start adding
some little lines just by pulling the paint down
with the tip of our brush. Make sure the lines are not straight except for the one in the center of the lower lip. The others, as you see them in the picture,
they're not vertical. They're not perfectly vertical. They are slightly rounded. They should be barely there. We don't want
anything distracting. Cleaning my brush
and smoothing out this little area here, maybe darkening up that shadow on the lower part of the nose. On the tip of the nose, it is pretty dark in the
reference photo. Just make sure you don't make
it as dark as the nostril. Anything you feel
needs smoothed out, use the usual
technique. Damp brush. Looking over to this
side of the face, I can see a shadow just
under the cheek bone. That definitely adds this
dimension to the face. I want to subtly get that in. Of course, try not to go in with a mixture that's too thick, keep it quite watery because we don't want any like
harsh mark in that area. And then we want to
smooth it out as we go towards the lower part of
the face, the jaw line. But doing this is
definitely going to add the dimension as the face
is turned backwards here. And also we have the bones. Of the cheeks. We also
have a bit of a shadow up here in the brow bone. We can put that in again using in a mixture
that's quite watery. The shadow on the other
side is not as defined, but we still need to get
that in there softly, bringing our brush towards us, downwards in a sweeping motion. And make sure that it's more or less again symmetrical
so that we have there is the part that goes further
into the face is symmetrical to the part that
goes further into the face. Closer to the nose on this side. Even though the shadows don't
have the same exact shape, then bring it down
into the jaw line. If you need to add a little
bit more water, do that. But it's tricky when you add water to a shadow before
you've let it dry. It's better if you want to
darken it up or you've run out of water on your brush to
dry it with your heat tool, and then to go back in and add a second layer to
deepen your shadow. After we've added those shadows, I'm going in to
darken up the top of the iris because that is where I'm going to
place my highlights. I am darkening up just
the top of the iris. Ma mixture will be quite thick, again enhancing the ring around the iris with the
very point of my brush. Then you can gently tease it downwards
with your clean brush. I'll do the same thing
on the other side, I'm darkening up the
top of that iris. If you have a, B,
I tend to leave a little blank section of paper in the eye. I
don't know why I do that. I think it's just remember where the highlight
is or out of habit, but then I never actually end up using that
as a highlight. I go over it with
the white acrylic. I think that looks much
better and it's more intense. Going into the here,
we start getting those strands of here
loosely with our brush. We have two spirals, one on one side and one or
the other on this side. It's floppier. Now just look at the image and don't worry too much about being precise because
that's not that painting. This is not that
kind of painting. I am just laying down the
shadows and the hair strands. And then using my clean, damp brush and pulling the still wet paint out
to get the second tone, to get more of a mid
tone in the hair. Now let's fill in the
white areas here. And I'm going to try and
do that just by going over that with my clean brush. You will have to be cleaning
the brush every few strokes. Let's say for me, I'm going over this area now and you can see that paint
is reactivating. I'm getting those mid tones
in and I'm cleaning my brush. I'm going over this other
area. I'm cleaning my brush. As soon as the paint
gets a bit too much, you just go in and
clean your brush again. Okay. To me, the hair
probably just needs a little bit more
darker values in there. Again, when we're
painting monochromatic, you get darker values
either by painting with thicker paint or by
adding layer upon layer. That's how we achieve
darkness when we're painting with
monochromatic, in a monochromatic style. And at the same time, how we achieve light
colors is just by adding water and by
painting with a mixture. That's definitely more on
the diluted end of things. I'm also just tapping
some of that water from my jar onto her face and around the painting because I
just like doing that. The splatters you don't like if you decide
to take the step, which you don't have to, can be lifted out with
your kitchen paper if you think they're too large. I just think it adds that
looseness to the painting. You can just go in also and add a few flyaway strands of hair. Using the very tip
of your brush. It doesn't matter if you're not touching the
paper the whole way. As you can see here, I
left the section out. It will just add more dimension. We're barely touching the
paper when we're doing this. Barely, We're almost
hovering above it now. And then the brush is making
contact with the paper. You don't want to have
any thick lines because this hair is supposed to be very fine when it's flying away. The wind or whether it wouldn't be a breathe more than the wind, wouldn't be lifting
huge chunks of hair. Then if you have to go in
and redefine certain areas, you need more
definition around here, a darker value here. Then do so. Use the
tip of your brush. Just take this time to
assess the painting and see where you
need darker values. If things are
looking a bit flat, then probably you do
need some darker values. Have a good look, especially
around the face area. And see if the shadows are
as dark as they should be. Make sure the shadows on
the inner side of the eye, towards the nose are dark. Make sure you have that shadow on the lower part of the nose. Make sure you have
that shadow in the lip area and the lighter shadows on the
sides of her face. Before I go in and
add the high lights, I'm just going to use the wet just in my jar of pain of water, which is pretty dirty by now. You can't really tell
that much in the camera, but I assure you it's
not transparent anymore. Then I'm going to
go in and start painting this shape of a rose. I've set in here, penciled in here at the
bottom, it's very loose. Can just paint a circle
and start from there. I think for the sake of being, making things slightly
easier for myself, I might go in and just pencil
in the idea of a rose. If you break it down
into basic shapes, as with almost everything, it shouldn't be too hard
for you to do this at all. Break it down into shapes
that resemble like triangles and half circles. That's basically what
it is. Forget that. You're painting a ros,
you're drawing a rows, Just okay, so that's enough
because I don't want to get into anything too detailed. I'm going to go in and
like just wet the one of the petals just
because I want to get a nice, soft, smooth effect. But at the same time, again, I don't want to have
to put in too much effort. As you can see, my
brush is full of color. Then I'm going to
go in and just add some more concentrated
color and just drop it in, wet and wet on one side, and then maybe
slightly also closer to the other petal as if
there's a cast shadow there. It will do the work
for us because it will start blending on its own. As everything is wet, we can slightly define
the outer edge of it as well and clean our brush, tap it on our kitchen paper. And smooth things out where the paint just
not moving anymore. You can do some
lifting if you want. We've got our first petal in, we can do the same thing
on the other side. I'm just wetting the petal. Any random petal that you pick, then I'm going in with
more concentrated paint. Well, that is not
paint actually, it's just a dirty water. But anyway, just to
get the idea across, I'm just filling it in and I'm not going over the whole petal. I'm just painting around
the edges a little bit, pulling that in and on
the other side as well, cleaning my brush, tapping
off the Krysten paper, and then just smoothing
things out a little bit. I will consider
that one and then I'll just move on
to the next one. Rose is definitely
nothing fancy, but again, it's a really quick way
of painting the rose, wetting the petals, letting
the color bleed on them. And then some of the petals can have a sharper
edge or look darker, and some of them can
look slightly lighter. Again. It's an
exercise in values. You want to vary the values to give the image more interest. Even when it comes to flowers, of course, even when it
comes to everything. The central part
will be the bud, let's call it, will be darker. I'm just dotting in
some more paint. Maybe just creating
a sharper edge around the center of the bud. You can go in and add a more defined shape
to some of the petals. I wouldn't advise you to do
so for every single petal, or your rows will end up
looking a bit too stiff. I almost forgot. I wanted to add a few eyelashes just to open
up the eye a little bit. Now, be very delicate. When you do this,
the paint is stick. The eyelashes are not twigs, they are small, fine, and more clumps of eye
lashes like clumps of hair, See just that has really helped us really open up
this eye a lot. I'm going to do the
same on the other eye. Don't go over the top. Remember, less is more. When it comes to
bottom eye lashes, again, I'm barely
touching the paper. They're hardly going
to be visible.
6. Highlights and Final Thoughts: We have come to our final
moment in the class and that is adding our beloved
touches of highlights. I use white acrylic gash. For this, I could
use white acrylic. I did use gash in the past. The reason I don't really
use gash anymore is that since it
reactivates with water, sometimes it, if the painting
is not completely dry, it tends to absorb the color that's below it, underneath it. And it's not a stark and the high light
doesn't show up as much. Of course, that could
easily be solved if you just make sure that your
painting is dry. So do that. In any case, again, before you put in
the highlights, do make sure that all
the values are there, that you have your darkest
values in the right place, that nothing needs a
little bit more pushing, let's say sometimes
that can be the case, sometimes the painting
can look too flat. And that is because
your darkest values are not dark enough. Once you've made sure that you've got everything in place. This is how my rose turned out. By the way down here, it's
very soft, not very defined. You can pick up your gash
or a critic of whatever you are going to use or jelly
pens is what I used to use. And pick up a little
brush basically. If yours is not too hard, you will not need to use water. The first place I'm
going to go in is are the eyes just a good position. You see, even if I did have the white from the paper there, adding the white acrylic
does make a difference. Bee, probably the white of the paper by now is
not completely white anymore because I didn't cover it with masking fluid,
which is another option. Something you can do. Of course, I'm not going to
make this enough. I'm going to go around the eye and add some more highlights. I very often add a high
light in the shadow, in the white of
the eye over here, again, show you the
difference between the eye with the highlights
and the eye without. I can also add one in
the tear and maybe just trace a little line in
the lower rim of the eye. You can see just how much
intensity that adds to the eye. We're going to do the same
thing on the other side. Add your little highlight
above that pupil. Another one into the
shadow in the sclera. The white of the
eye, the eyeball, some in the lower
rim or water line I think it's called
in the tear duct. Just look at that. You can go a little bit more intense and sometimes
I like to do this. I've been doing it recently. I just add little dots to create more of
a sparkly effect. You can do that or you
can skip it if you want more realistic look without
any fanciness to it. Let's say I just add
these little highlights. You can hardly see them really, but they do have that effect, which is just a little bit of magic and fun added to painting. Make sure you don't have like snowballs but little tiny dots. And it would also be nice if
they were all the same size. Some could be larger and
some could be smaller, which would add some dimension. Again, let's go into the
nose for that highlight. I'm just going to
create an upside down, a kind of shoehorse, or rather it wouldn't
be upside down, but considering as a
decorative element, then it would be upside down. In this case, I've added
that highlight there, and I'm definitely
going in to add some highlight just
above the cupid's bow. And of course, we
can drop some in the lower lip just to give
that look of something moist. It's always nice to have a
high light in the lip anyway, I should put one in the toplit. I don't really see
one in the top lit in the reference image. But try and stop me. Maybe I will just add some
here a bit light here. And you can use your finger to smooth it out a little bit. Just use your ring
finger as it's one that you naturally tend to put less pressure in your ring finger compared
to other fingers. You'll be forced to
remain delicate and you can also add a flyaway strand
of hair across the face. I would add a
little bit of water to your brush in this case, and be very firm with your hand and bring
it across the face. I'm also going to add
a little highlight down on the roles just to
make it pop a little bit. This is the end of
this skill share class and thank you so
much for joining me. Please remember to
share your work. In the project section, I will give you my
feedback and others will also be able to
see what you've done. It will be really interesting to see everything
you've come up with. And also don't forget how important it is to paint
in the monochromatic way. It really teaches you
so much about values, about mid tones and highlights, and the darkest values, and how we need to have three values in every
painting we do. But of course, there's
a wider range between having only three values and
having many more, of course. But it's a really
important lesson and it's also a really fun
and relaxing one. I think again, don't forget to share your
projects down below. Don't forget to check out my
other Skillshare classes. Also, please, if
you want to connect with me beyond Skillshare, you can look me up
on Instagram at the handle drawings in a
drawer, all in one word. And also I have a
Youtube channel, which is also called
Drawings in a drawer, where I upload every week. And I have tutorials
videos about everything art related and
mostly watercolor related. It's been nice and please leave a review if
you enjoy this class. Thank you and I will see
you very soon Viper now.
Fiona Di Pinto, Watercolour and more
