Paint a Tree Frog from My Book in Watercolor

1. Welcome to the Class!: Thank thank you Hi, everyone. I'm astasia and I'm a watercolor artist, traveler and nature lover. And in today's class, I want to show you how to paint a beautiful red eyed frog that is on the cover on my book Capture the Natural World in Watercolor published by Page Street Publishing. So I just got this book today, and I'm so, so, so excited to show you how to paint one of the tutorials from the book. So inside, you will find almost 40 tutorials, 39. Tutorials on how to paint different natural subjects with watercolor with step by step instructions. And today, I want to paint together this tree frog with you. Today's class is going to be perfect for beginners or intermediates and basically for everyone who loves nature and wants to improve their watercolor skills. We will need just a basic supply kit. Actually, we don't need a lot of colors to paint today's frog. So I will be walking you through every single step of the process from how to make a pencil sketch to how to start coloring it. I'm also going to provide you an alternative way on how to directly transfer the drawing on your watercolor painting in case you want to skip the drawing part for speeding up the process, or if you don't feel quite comfortable of sketching yet, no problem. I will tell you how you can get the drawing directly on paper quickly. This illustration was inspired by my trip in Costa Rica this year, where I had a privilege of seeing local flora and fauna. And it's just an incredible country full of nature treasures, and I really want to share it with you. So, of course, having a book is amazing. You have all the steps here, all the color mixes, all the process explained in great detail. But for those of you guys who are more visual and want to learn with a video tutorial, this class is perfect for you and it will be a perfect match for those of you guys who already got the book. So let's get started. 2. What You'll Learn: Hi, friends. Today, we're painting this tree frog together that is actually on the cover of my tutorial book Capture the Natural World in Watercolor. That features 39 simple tutorials for painting animals, botanicals, and more. I'm going to open the page with the tutorial. So that you know exactly what kind of steps we are going to be making today. So this tutorial is from the first chapter of the book which is dedicated to South American. So this book is a visual trip through seven countries of our beautiful seven continents of our beautiful planet. And we're starting with South American. This is a picture of the final tutorial. So the book is full of these pictures that you can flip through and quickly choose which tutorials to engage with and which ones inspire you the most. Personally, this was one of my favorite tutorials from the book. That's why I'm showing it to you today. And this is how everything starts. So we have a material list and all the steps explained. But for the visual learners out here, today, I'm going to show you these exact steps in real time through a video tutorial. So you're going to see that this process is going to be simple and smooth and you will be able to complete this beautiful frog painting. So I will see you really soon to show you all the art supplies that we will be using today. 3. Art Supplies: Let's talk about the art supplies. So the first one is a really simple one, and it's a regular graphite pencil. So you can go from anything between HB and two B. I think B is a perfect option because it's not too soft but not too hard, either. So I'm going to go with this. We will need an eraser. I love using a kneadable eraser that comes in these boxes, usually in this square form, and you can actually shape it into any shape. I usually create a little roll out of mine, and I will tell you exactly why in doing the drawing part of this util. This is all we need for creating the drawing. Now, when we will pass to watercolor, of course, we will need colors. So you are free to pick watercolors in tubes or watercolors in pants. Let me show you the difference. So watercolor in pants usually look like this. So these are little pants filled with colors. I'm going to reveal a secret, though, that the colors inside are from tubes. So this is how the tubes of watercolor look like. I'm going to say upfront that no matter if you purchase tubes or pants, the quality of the watercolor is usually quite similar. I'm going to tell you why I use tubes. So because I use these travel color palettes, so in the studio work is not that important. In the studio, you can use just your regular watercolor set, but I kind of got used to using those for everything. So travel palette means you can close it and you see it transformed into this little square so that you can throw it in your bag and travel with it easily. It's super lightweight, and it contains 15 colors. I think 15, yes. And it's more than enough for traveling. And this is how it looks like when you open it, it's magnetic, so it kind of holds in place easily. And then you can also clip it on your sketchbook with a clip, again, if you want to use it for travel sketching. But it's also really handy for studio work as well. So the only thing you need to know about these palettes, you can order one on Amazon or any stores like Etsy. It comes empty with empty pans, usually. So it means you need to fill them with your own colors, which is actually amazing because it allows you to create your own color palette that is going to be unique to your needs with only the colors you know you will be using. Honestly, I find it amazing. So this is how you feel your palette really simple. You just take a watercolor from tubes. I just recently got myself this beautiful set from Santer. It's a French brand that contains 12 colors and in tubes. In a studio setup, I sometimes use just the lid of my set if I want some space for mixing colors. But during my trips, oftentimes I just use this portion of the palette that is actually the place for mixing colors. So if you don't feel comfortable, though, you can just mix your colors on the lid of your palette. Or get yourself a separate palette. I'm going to show you one I have in my studio. I don't travel with this palette, though, because it's ceramic, so it's quite fragile. I just use this for my studio work. But again, you see, the area at your disposal is quite similar that on this lid. So for traveling, if you don't mind carrying more stuff and get it a little bit more heavy, this is probably the most, you know, comfortable version. But if you got used to the small one, to the small palette, I oftentimes, again, travel only with this little guy here. So how do you actually fill your palettes with colors? So all you need is just to open the tube and squeeze some color in the palette, and it's ready to use. So this is probably it. Today, we are going to use a limited color palette, so we don't need a lot of colors. We will need a yellow. You can use lemon yellow or cadmium yellow, just a basic yellow that you probably already have in your set. This is what we need today. We also need a green. I use color called green from white Knights, but it's the same color as sap green or hookers green, so just a basic green color. We will also need turquoise blue or emerald green for this belly of the frog. But if you don't have it, I will show you how you can mix something similar. And we will need a red color. So for this frog, I would suggest you cadmium red. This is what we will use both for the eyes but also for the feet. So you see the feet are orange, but actually, you can obtain orange very easily by just combining yellow and red. For the rest, we will need something dark. So I usually don't carry black color in my watercolor set. And today, I'm going to show you what you can use instead. So for dark colors, I always recommend having sepia and indigo. These are my two favorite dark colors that mix together create almost black colors. So that's why I'm revealing you the secret. That's why I necessarily carry black color with me. Or if you do want to use ready mixed black, you can use Pains gray instead. It's not a pure black color. It's a much more interesting subtle color. So pains gray is a great alternative to black. We will also need, I just told you about indigo. That's probably it. You can use cobalt as well for adding some depth to these blue spots, and I guess that's it. I'm also checking with the colors in the tutorial book. So this is the exact list. Cadmium yellow, but you can use cadmium lemon or cadmium yellow, cadmium red, green, cobalt, blue, or ultramarine, turquoise blue, or emerald green, carmine and indigo. That's it for the colors. For other art supplies, we will need brushes, of course. So we are painting with watercolor. So we need brushes that are suitable for this kind of work. I'm going to use my brushes from my custom set created in collaboration with craft Tamo. This is how the set looks like. It contains eight brushes, eight cruelty free brushes. Perfect both for studio work and for your travel adventures, because they feature two travel brushes. Two travel brushes mean that the lid the handle of the brush transforms into the lid. And you see that you can easily bring this brush with you without being afraid for the bristles of getting damaged or bended. So this is my favorite travel companion. There are two sizes for these brushes, number ten and number six, and those are universal. Actually, you can paint anything with just these two brushes. But for your convenience, there are, of course, other sizes. The biggest one is number 14. It's a mop brush. And we also have one flat brush there, especially handy for travel sketches of architecture. Or something similar. And then the other brushes are all round. So the smallest one is number two. The biggest one is number 14. I'm going to see what I'm going to use today probably number 12 and six. But, um Again, don't get too carried away by the numbers of the brushes, also because if you use a different brush set, your numbers may be a little bit different. So that's why I suggest you having a big medium to small brush. For example, in my case, it's number six, and then something bigger. So, for example, in my case, that's going to be number ten or number 12. So you see the difference. One is, um, smaller or other is bigger. The very important thing is that the brush should be round synthetic brush with a pointy tip. So you see the tip of these brushes is really pointy. Even the big one has a really pointy tip. So this is really important for painting the small details. For example, you see this outline on the feet of the frog on the eyes, on the mouth was created using the tip of this brush. So you actually don't even need, you know, a whole lot of brushes. Again, two carefully selected brushes are enough. As for paper. So actually, paper is probably the most important thing in watercolor painting, and I'm going to tell you why. So for this tutorial, I used 100% cotton paper. This one is from brand called Arches. This is my favorite watercolor paper brand, and this is exactly what I'm going to be using today. It's a cotton paper, hot pressed. So hot pressed means has no texture on it. So it's very smooth, and cotton paper allows to hold layers. So it allows you to add depth and saturation to your subjects without the paper to getting ruined. So it's a perfect paper for any kind of subjects, especially botanicals and animals. Arches is my number one choice in this case. So I think after this, this is really what I had to say. Of course, we need some water. I just have a glass with clear water. We may need some napkins or paper towels. Always have them nearby when you paint, and this is it. Next, we will pass to actually positioning our subject on the paper and starting the drawing. 4. A Method to Skip the Drawing Part: Let's start drawing our frog. I wanted to show you the reference picture we are going to work with first, and we are going to paint this beautiful red eyed frog, and I will walk you from all the steps of the process. So from the very basic scheme to adding some first features of the frog to actually completing the drawing. But again, today is going to be more clear because, of course, there are some in between stages that did not get inside the book. So today, you're going to be able to see the whole process from start to finish. But also, I wanted to mention one important thing. So inside the book, as I said, there's a QR code. You can click on and download the transfer drawings. What are transfer drawings? This is basically what it is. So it's a final drawing. That is featured inside the book. So you see that this is actually the final drawing of the tutorial. And in case you don't feel comfortable sketching from scratch or you just want to jump right into the painting phase and kind of skip all the drawing, you can do so. So let me show you one trick. So after downloading the files, what you can do, you have two options. You can print out your photo. So the drawing we're talking about, in this case, it's the frog, printed on a regular paper, like an A four format. And then you can go to your window during the daytime, place your printed drawing on the window, and then place your paper on top of the drawing and you will be able to see that the drawing starts to get visible. You see here I have my lamp on, but if I covered the light a little bit, you can see that we can see the frog showing through the paper. If I turn off my lights, let me do that quickly. You see, we instantly see the frog really, really clearly. So basically, my iPad right now works like a light box. If you have a light box, it's even better. So it means you can put your printed drawing on the light box. So imagine this is the light box. Put your watercolor paper on top and then trace it. You, you can see everything in great detail. So basically, all you need to do is just to go and draw, so trace what you see on top. On your watercolor sheet of paper. So if you have an iPad, it kind of works like a light box. So if you have an iPad, you don't need to print anything. You can just download the picture on your iPad, just like I'm doing right now and just go and trace it directly on your paper. So I hope these methods are clear, and again, it's perfect if you want to trace your drawing quickly and then go and start painting right away. But I'm also going to show you the drawing process. So for those of you guys who would like to improve their drawing skills, I highly, highly recommend not skipping this step because tracing is an amazing, kind of, you know, cheating technique that allows you to speed up the process, but it's not allowing you to really enhance your drawing skills. And drawing is really important if you want to be able to not only, you know, kind of do step by step tutorials, but also draw or paint your own subjects. That's why if you would like to challenge yourself a little bit and get better at drawing Um, I will see you really soon for the drawing process. 5. Starting the Drawing: Let's start to draw our frog. I've positioned my sheet of paper vertically. This is the paper orientation I suggest for this frog drawing. My format is slightly smaller than A four, but I think like this, you can easily get a good impression of what kind of this size is. So I position it vertically. And I'm ready to draw. I want my subject to be somewhere in the middle. So what I like doing, actually, in order to know that everything fits inside my sheet of paper, I love to outline the area for my drawing. So in this case, I'm creating this oval, and I know that I want my frog to be within this oval. This is really important. From there, we're passing to the step number one inside my book. So I'm going to show you this step really quickly, and this is how it looks like. So after outlining the general space on the sheet of paper, we can start drawing this very basic scheme you see created with this irregular rectangle, and then we can start outlining the body and the head and then even the feet of the frog. So you see all the basic lines. The very important thing about why we start with this and not directly with this with this more detailed drawing is that we always go from basic to detail. So we're not trying to copy the lines. We're trying to understand the structure of this frog, how is it made and see the relationship between different details. So this is exactly how you approach drawing something from scratch. So let's get right into it. So let's complete the step number one. I will make these guiding lines just like in the book that will help me to position the legs of the frog correctly. So I'm creating this kind of a rectangle. This, for example, this line represents this movement here. So you see how these two hands kind of what kind of relationship they have. Same thing here, this line is actually the line of this leg. So you see, these lines are not random. I'm kind of trying to understand how this frog is made. I'm trying to capture the general movement. For example, one more thing, I can capture how these two legs are positioned. So something like this. Again, for now, there are mistakes probably, but I really don't care. My goal is just to capture it about right at this point. Also, I can already add this oval for the body. Don't try to get a perfect C. I'm doing many lines. They're all quite light, though. So that's why I use my B pencil because it's quite soft. I don't need to press hard. And you say I'm not trying to create one perfect line. I'm creating several kind of, you know, okay lines. And then after I can decide which ones to use, I can also erase with my Nable eraser. So let's move forward. I'm going to use one more circle for the head of the frog, and then I'm going to start to outline the lines that will guide me to then draw the hands and the arms of this frog. For example, this one corresponds to this. You see, I'm kind of seeing how much space there are from here to here. So you see I'm kind of trying to figure out the relationships between different parts of my frog. So for example, I know that this is not just straight line. You see there is this break going on, so that's why I'm drawing this small line first and then this line. For the hands, I'm not going to draw any fingers for now. I'm just going to draw ovals these kind of ovals that already kind of point into the direction of where the hands are pointing. But you see it's nothing defined yet. It's just like a basic general scheme. Same for this leg. So I'm going to draw this oval for this back foot. And then I can really start to outline the ankle, for example, see, and so on. So just like this, after the general shapes, I can kind of start to outline all the other details. I'm going to outline this back leg as well with this corresponding oval that is, I think, somewhere here. And I'm going to give this body of the frog a central line. So I think it's facing this direction. You see I kind of trace this line that is in the center of my frog. And this is actually the end of step number one. So we have a really, really basic frog scheme. So this is exactly what we did in step number one in the tutorial. And again, you don't have to make it perfectly. Just try to get it about right. And in the next step, we can start defining the details so we can actually start defining the face and the fingers and all the other elements to make this frog look like a frog. So I will see you there. 6. Capture the Features and Proportions: Let's pass to the step number two and start with the head maybe. Right now, we've just outlined the head with this simple oval. Let's give it some more realism. I would love to outline the line of where the eyes are placed. Before actually drawing the eyes, I'm drawing this line that will then help me to position my eyes correctly. I'm also going to add the Central line that corresponds to this imaginary line here that is helping me to outline the direction of this head and of the mouth. From there, I can define some things. For example, I can start already to kind of simply outlining where these eyes might be. So you see they're positioned on this line, and I'm going to draw something like this. So this is the actual I, and this is this line here. And there may be still mistakes. So I'm just what I'm doing. I'm not trying to get it perfect. You see, I'm just using shorter lines to kind of eyeball these elements. But again, at this stage, nothing is decided yet. So if I realize that something is off or something is not placed correctly, I can always, um move it. So don't be afraid of erasing. And you see, we do all of these lines on purpose so that there is no kind of stress of getting it perfect. So I think this is about correct, then. I think this line here is a little bit funny. So I'm going to do it like this. And if you want, you can give the eye the direction. You can also start outlining this tip of the mouth better and also draw already the mouth line. You want to if you're kind of eager, you can already outline this pupil so that, you know, it starts to look like a frog a little bit. Same with the nose so that you know that the proportions are correct. But I think at this point, I need to make sure that the mouth is positioned correctly. So I think this line here is a bit too close to the nose. I'm going to erase it. So you see sometimes when I see that something is really off, I know it's better to erase it because otherwise, that incorrect line may distract me. So see if the lines are about correct, I'm leaving them. If I see that the line starts to distract me and I see that it's definitely out of place. In this case, I'm just going, erasing it, and creating the new line that I think is closer to the reality. So this is much better right now, I think. And from here, I think we have a nice understanding of how this head structure works. And at this point, I can pass to the legs. So for the legs, again, we're not start to draw the fingers right away. What I propose you to do instead is to work on the structure. Also, I think this portion needs to be a little bit smaller because I see there's this kind of a round area under this leg. You see, I've just outlined it. So right now, I'm not using just simple lines anymore. I'm giving these legs some volume. So you see I'm actually giving them thickness, see, the muscles. One, I'm going to draw the drawing lines for every single finger, a similar way on how we did for the legs themselves. So you see with these lines, I now have a more clear understanding of how to draw the fingers. And then for the fingers, it's really simple. Again, you just need to draw these circles. You see this tree frog has really interesting fingers, like round ones. And I think it's a super interesting, you know, trait of this reptile and really actually making it super easy to draw. That's why I'm just creating these circles, and I will then later transform them into fingers. So before I actually do so, I will do the exact same thing for all the other for all the other fingers. And maybe I'm going to adjust this eye a little bit because I see it's kind of off and it bothers me a little bit. So I'm going to to adjust it a little bit. So, you see, it's never carved in stone. You can always go back and raise things, change things if you realize that. They're not exactly correct. Also, that's why I love working on different parts of the frog. So not just going and creating like a perfect head and nothing else or creating like a perfect leg. I like switching from one to another because it allows my eye to rest and then see the things together, like one frog, not just like separate elements like head, legs, body, because we're painting an animal here. So that's why we don't just want one element to look realistic. We want them all to look realistic together. So that's why you see there was too much space here. I'm going to reduce this line, so already I'm going to draw it and give it. Give the structure a more believable, you see kind of appearance. So now I can give this arm a thickness. And same as before, I'm going to outline the direction of the fingers. With these lines and then finally finish by adding these circles that will represent the fingers. And this is exactly the same that we will do with the body. Also with the body, we can already kind of draw this line that separates the green part of the body from this belly that is really interesting has this really interesting texture. So I already kind of added this line so that, you know, it's clear for me already at this stage that there is this separation between the body and between the belly and the back. And then after this, I can finally go and focus on this back leg. There you go. So see, I'm kind of looking at the reference and trying to capture the form as accurately as possible. Again, I think this is something that looks quite right to me. And from here, I'm going to start defining the fingers. I think there's a little bit less space here between one leg and another than on my reference. But this is actually not that important, so I'm not super obsessed with getting that extra precise, so I think I'm going to leave it. And I'm going to pass to defining the main features of this last leg. And so this is something like this. I already have the main circle. So right now, I can focus on positioning these, there you go. The brit separate fingers. On my reference picture, by the way, the interesting thing is that one of these fingers is kind of bended, but I decided to just make it straight. So this is what I got. And this corresponds. This is actually even slightly more detailed than what we have here in the step number two, but actually really similar as well. So we've done the basic scheme. We've outlined the main elements such as fingers, eyes and gave, you know, the head a more realistic appearance. And in the next step, we will bring it closer to this finished image. And we'll prepare our drawing to painting. You may be wondering what we do with all of these guiding lines, so I will show you exactly what to do with them in the next step. 7. Add Final Details to the Drawing: So let's define the features of the frog even better. So every time I start to work on the next step, it's kind of also the opportunity to check on the previous steps if the elements kind of look right to me, if I want to adjust something. And in my case, I think I would like to make this eye a little bit lower. So that's why I'm going to slightly erase the eye. You see, I'm not erasing it completely. I'm moving the lines and just moving them lower, not necessarily erasing everything, see? I think now my eye, this eye looks more in place. And I also think that this eye right now is too high, so I'm going to do the same thing here, kind of move it a little bit. And this will make my frog look a little bit thinner. I think my frog was a little bit too chubby, a little bit fat. So this kind of I kind of slimmed the head a little bit, and I think it now looks more close to my reference. But again, if you want to just leave yours as is no problem. But I think now you see that you can actually change things a little bit without necessarily erasing everything. There you go. Also, just adjusting this eye a little bit. I think this looks good. So finally, it's time to actually connect the fingers with each other and make them look like fingers because right now they're just like circles. You see very easily with these lines, I am connecting them to the hand, and this is basically the first step. So I'm going to connect them first. Going to do this. And then it's going to help me to actually draw the fingers because you see all I need to do right now is just to add this thickness that actually is already there in some cases, you see, because I draw multiple lines. So I just can go and kind of connect these fingers to the hand. There you go. And I will do the same thing here. There you go. And again, if the circles, if the fingers are just a little bit smaller or just a little bit bigger, I don't think it's such big of a deal. So usually mammals are a little bit less forgiving for these kind of things, especially if you know that a bird has this very peculiar, kind of the beak and if you make the shape of the beak different, the bird is not going to look believable. But I think with reptiles, it's a little bit more forgiving. As far as your illustration looks believable, you're good. That's why as artists, we just need to make things believable, not necessarily exactly like they are in the reality. By believable, I mean, we should recognize the species and, you know, capture the main features correctly. But then if something is slightly off and it's not that important, nobody will probably, you know, realize it. So there you go. In the meantime, I started to give these, these hands even more natural appearance. You see I've made the belly a little bit more round. I think at this stage, I can already start outlining this interesting pattern on the belly of this frog. For this, I'm adding these lines because I see the pattern is composed of lines. Again, you see I'm connecting these lines to this main line, and then I see these smaller lines that go from this lower portion of the belly, and I think this is pretty much it. I'm not going to spend more time on that pattern. I think this is about it. I'm just giving this back portion of the frog a little bit more of a pointy appearance. And now I'm going to add I'm going to make sure that the leg is long enough because I think it was a little bit too short. So I actually saw where this angle of the frog ends, and this allowed me to understand where the leg should end. So again, remember that we don't treat elements separately, like the leg separately, the head separately. We always see what is their relationships with the other elements because, again, maybe the head is perfect, but if it's too big for the body, your frog is not going to look very good, or if it's too small, it's going to look off as well. So proportions are really, really important. That's why you see, it's like doing a little research, so we don't just go and draw the perfect outline. We first define the main elements, then we define you know, the more details, we added more elements such as fingers and so on and so on until we came to this point where we actually added the pattern, and this is where we can really finish to work on the frog. So this is step number three. At the end of this step, you will have a finished drawing that you can then start painting. So in the next lessons, we will actually pass to the painting part of the tutorial, which is really exciting because this frog is really colorful, super vibrant and is just going to be a treat to paint, and you will see that you really don't need a lot of colors to painting even such vibrant subjects as like tropical frogs. So oftentimes you just need to know like the must haves, and then you need to know how to create basically all the colors from the basics, from the mains that you already have at your disposal. And you'll see it's actually quite easy. So this is what I wanted to show you. So this is the last step of the process. Actually, this is how it looks like in the book, and this is almost exactly what we got here. The only thing you may ask what we do with these guiding lines. So you can leave them if they don't bother you. If they do bother you, you can go with your eraser and just gently erase them. That's why I love kneadable eraser because it's really gentle and it allows you to create different shapes out of it. So you can even make it like thin and go in between the fingers, for example. So you see you can really decide on what shape you give it. And the second option that actually is my favorite. This is also why I create this roll out of my razor is that I can roll it like this, and then I can roll it on my sheet of paper, and you see what it does. It kind of lifts off the excess of pencil I had on my drawing. So my eraser is kind of dirty, so you see it also leaves some dirt behind. But if yours is new, you will see that what it does, it actually lifts some color without leaving any of these things you see on mine. So this is actually because my eraser is. Dirty. But again, you see the lines got much softer. You can also do it using this method, just kind of slightly going there and erasing the lines that you don't want or want to make lighter. And the trick is, you see you're don't erasing anything completely. You're just erasing this excess. And then if something needs to be restored, you can then go and kind of restore the final outline with a single line. So you see right now basically what you're doing, you are tracing your own drawings. So just adding these final lines. Again, this is all possible because we made all of this work before. You see, we made all of these lines. We kind of, again, studied the structure of this frog. And now I can go and just trace only those lines that I'm sure in. So you can do it on all lines or you can just simply decide to go with the lines you already had at your disposal. So I think I'm going to restore just some of the lines, not all of them, because anyways, we are going to work on the painting right now, and we can define these things during the painting process. So I'm just going to Make sure that the main lines are in place. There you go. And I will see you soon for the painting. 8. Let's Start to Paint!: Let's pass to the painting process. If you have restored the lines of your drawing, then perfect. Again, before lifting off some of the pencil like I did, just make sure your your kable eraser is clean enough because mine was dirty and created some of this dirt on my sheet of paper, but I think it's going to be fine, and I will still be able to show you painting the drawing process properly. What I'm doing right now is just adding these tiny touches, for example, these highlights on the eye. So really, really the final details or, like, for example, outlining some volume of the fingers. There you go. So you can stop whenever you feel ready. There you go, outlining this line of the mouth a little bit better. And this pattern, just to make sure I, you know, have these guiding lines during the painting process. And I think we can now start to paint. So for painting, I'm going to use my ceramic palette because it's bigger, so I can easily show you the colors we will need to mix, and I think I'm going to place it here so that you can see it. Yes, I think this is perfect. So let's see what kind of colors we are using. In this step number four, we need to create two mixes, very simple. So one is just cadmium lemon or cadmium normal cadmium. So just any yellow color will work fine. And then mix A. Mix A is composed of cadmium lemon or cadmium yellow, plus cadmium red plus water, and it will allow you to create medium orange color. So let's create these two mixes. I'm going to use my medium brush. So this is number eight. You can use number ten. Number six. This is not that important. I have some water nearby, and I have some napkins or paper towels. We always need to have them nearby. And, of course, I have my palette. There you go. So let me just mix. I'm going to use cadmium yellow for the first color. I actually had some green in it. That's why it looks a little bit greenish, but this is not as big of a deal. And then I can mix the orange one. So I'm going to use the same yellow color. So cadmium yellow, plus cadmium red or lemon yellow, plus cadmium red. But you see that I was easily able to create this orange color. And this is what I wanted to say, B you don't need to carry all the colors with you, especially if you're traveling because a lot of colors can be actually created from other colors. Let me explain you why. So I'm going to show you this scheme real quick. So you see, this is the color wheel. Actually, this is exactly what I explained in the beginning of the book in the introduction chapter. When I explain all the techniques and everything, this is actually the exact scheme I'm showing you here right now, and it shows what are the primary colors? What are the secondary colors and tertiary colors. So primary colors are yellow, blue and red. So why they're colored primary because we cannot go and mix a yellow out of two different colors or blue. We cannot go and use two different colors and obtain a blue. So these are pure colors that create all the spectrum of all the other colors. For example, what we just did, we mixed yellow with red, and we obtained orange. This is exactly it. So two primary colors create a secondary color, so orange. Same here. Yellow with blue, two primary colors will create a secondary color green, two primary colors blue and red will create a secondary color purple. This is basically all you need to know. This is why I never carry ready mixed oranges, and I never carry ready mixed purples. Well, purples are a little bit more tricky. Sometimes you need, like, a certain type of purple for, like, flowers or different things like this. But orange is easily mixed. You see, just very simple. For the green, I actually suggest you having a ready mixed green. That's why in this tutorial, I suggest you having a green. And personally, I just think that the green you have in the set, the ready mixed green is slightly brighter than the one you can obtain by mixing blue and yellow. And then it's just very convenient having a ready mixed green because personally, I use green all the time, especially because I paint a lot of natural subjects, and nature has a lot of green in it. Our frog is green, so it's just very convenient to have one already mixed for you. But that said, we now have the two colors we need for this step number four of the tutorial. So let's start painting. We will start with the lightest color. In our case, it's yellow. And what I'm going to do is I'm just going to apply it to some areas of the legs. For example, I see these areas of the legs are lighter. This is where the light hits. So I'm going to paint them. I'm also doing the same thing here. Basically, what I'm doing is I'm looking at the reference picture. I'm analyzing it, and I'm seeing what are the lightest areas on my frog. And I'm just going there and adding my yellow color there. So, see, I'm not caring too much of making it super precise right now because anyways, we're going to add other colors there later on. So my goal now is just to place it about correctly. So I also see that this yellow pattern consists of this yellow color, so I'm just going and adding yellow color there. Also, I see that I can add it to the mouth. There you go. See. Here, I just need to be careful of not going beyond of not going beyond the surface of the frog. I'm going to put some of this on this tip of the head and some around the eye. There you go. And I don't care if it's not perfect because this is exactly what we need right now. After this, I'm switching to my orange color, and I'm going to add it to the orange parts of the frog, so on the hands. And I'm just being a little bit more careful for this because here, you see, I need to stay within the outline of the fingers. So this is the only thing. I'm not I don't want to ruin the outline. For the fingers, I'm being a little bit more cautious, a little bit more careful. And one more thing to know if you've just painted with yellow here and your paint is still wet, you might want to leave a thin white line, an untouched line between this yellow and this orange you're painting right now. Why do we need this line? Because it allows us to prevent these two colors from mixing. In watercolor, color will go exactly where water is. Water, if you're yellow, watercolor is still wet and you touch it with your orange watercolor. The orange watercolor will affect the yellow area, and you will have like it's all mixed up. So this is what we don't want. We want these two colors to be separate. And if they're dry, there's no problem because if the color is dry, it's not going to go anywhere. See, like here, my yellow was already dry. I painted with orange right next to it and nothing happened because yellow was already dry. But if yellow was still wet, I would start to have this blooming effect, typical to the wet in wet technique. So to prevent it, again, you can use this trick of adding this thin white line that will basically keep these two colors from mixing. So this is like a trick for you on how watercolor works. And right now, you see, I'm finishing covering the second hand with this orange color. Again, I'm taking my time because I don't want to go beyond the outline. And for this reason, you say, also switched to a smaller brush. I'm using number four right now. You can also use number six, number two. I think number two is a little bit too small. So I think number four is actually a perfect size for it. Also number six could work well. But just basically anything that will allow you to have a little bit more control over the tip. So thinner brush is more convenient for these kind of this kind of detailed work. So once I have this leg, I'm just going to add the orange to this last one and this is going to bring me to the end of this step number four in the book that consisted of adding this first layer of the lightest color that we see on our frog. The lightest colors are this yellow and this initial orange color. And then don't worry if the colors are not the same as on the final frog yet, but this is the whole point. We are going to use this gradual approach that will allow us to gradually build the shape, the saturation, the realism, without being stressed of needing to do everything at once. So right now, you need to leave this layer dry, and I will see you in the next step when we will start to give our frog a more realistic color and more saturation. 9. Mixing and Applying Two Types of Green: In this step number five, we are going to mix two green colors. So right now, while the other colors are drying, we can use this time to mix the colors. So we need these two greens. One is called mix A, and it's composed of cadmium lemon or cadmium yellow, green plus water. Second one is really similar, but we add a little bit of blue to it. So let's dive right in. Basically, we need to create two greens. Um, let's do it. So I already have some yellow on my palette. I'm just going to add more. And then I'm going to get some green from white knights. Again, it may be called sub green in your set. And this is basically it. You see, I've added a little touch to my yellow. I obtained the green, and this is actually a perfect green for me. The second color. So, um, the second green is a little bit darker. I'm going to use the same yellow. And then I'm adding some cobalt to it or ultramarine. It doesn't really matter. Or you can even add indigo. So any blue would actually work just fine. So I don't have a lot of blue on this palette. Let me see if I have some on my other one, and, yes, I do. I have some cobalt here. So I'm just adding it to my yellow in C, I'm actually creating green. But this green will look darker and more cold. You see, by mixing yellow with blue. I'm obtaining this green color, but that looks a little bit colder. So with this bluish undertone than this one. See that? These are two kind of distinct colors, and right now I can switch to my bigger brush because number four is not enough for these big areas. Number 12, or I can use number ten is going to be more suitable. I actually think I'm going to use number eight. And what we will do is we will start using our mix number A, so the first mix, and we will apply it to this whole top portion of the frog. Actually, I think it was not too green. I just applied a little touch, and I saw it was almost identical to my normal, you know, yellow color. So I just added a little bit more green to it. There you go, right now, I can start adding this color to this whole back of my frog and to these back legs. So you see I'm keeping some of this yellow untouched, especially on these lightest details of the frog, and I'm using my big brush to cover the rest. So again, I'm not touching the area near the eye. I want it to be um I want it to be more yellow, and I'm adding the green colors to the rest or to the eyes, for example. There you go. Actually, I'm going to add it to this whole nose, and I can start adding it to this right side of the hand and to this portion of the hand as well. There you go. I'm not touching the orange at this point. I'm trying to be careful with my orange. And that's it. Right now, I can start adding the darker color. So while my color is still wet, this is quite important. We're going to use the wet and wet technique here. You see, I'm applying some of this green color to some areas. For example, here near the transition from the front portion of the leg to the back portion, near the eye, especially here near the mouth. I see that there is this kind of slightly darker area there, so I'm painting it. Here on this right side of the hand, right here. So basically what I'm doing now is I'm already painting some of these shadows on the frog. So you see, instead of being just flat, we're giving it a more three D kind of appearance. With just two simple colors, again, we just used two different types of green, and then previously, we had some yellow there. So this is the end of step number five inside the book, and we need to let this dry. And in the meantime, we can focus on mixing the colors for that step. So I will see there. 10. Painting the Blue Belly of the Frog: Now let's pass to step number six. In this step, what we are going to do is we're going to add this turquoise blue color to the belly of the frog and to some portions of the legs. So really excited about this step. We just need to mix this really, really simple color. Turquoisblue is basically this aqua kind of looking color. And if you don't have it, you can use something similar. For example, emerald green or just add some blue, more blue to your green mix. So this is, for example, emerald green. This also will work nicely. For example, this looks a little bit too green, and what I can do is I can mix it with some blue, and I will obtain the turquoise blue. This is actually almost identical to turquoise blue. So you see, if you don't have a specific color, there's no problem. You can actually use something different and obtain quite of a similar color. So get intimidated by the fact that you don't have a specific color. Again, your goal is to make it look believable and, you know, get it about right. So this color is different from the green, and this is exactly what we want to know. So for the rest, if it's slightly different hue, it's not a big problem. So let's dive right in. I'm going to start to apply this turquoise blue color on this pattern here, and I don't feel really comfortable with this eight number brush. I'm going to switch to a smaller one in my case number four, and I'm going to continue doing this. And I'm starting from the belly, but you can start from a different part of the frog. I am just adding this color here. I'm making sure I'm not touching the yellow pattern. This is the only thing I'm concerned here. I want the yellow pattern to be untouched. And then there's this interesting thing that once we reach the lower portion of the belly, there is this lighter color. So there's this white spot. And in order for this transition to be more smooth, I'm washing my brush, cleaning it with my paper towel, and kind of smoothing that edge. So you see, I'm creating this smooth transition between the turquoise blue and basically this lighter lower portion. And if I want to, I can add even more turquoise blue top on the top side. There you go. And from there, I can continue doing the same thing here. Actually on the oops, if you made a mistake, by the way, this is what you can do, go and blot that area with your paper towel quickly. That's why we always have paper towel nearby while working with watercolor. It's really convenient, whether you're doing it on a spot or in your studio. This is, you know, a must have tool for correcting mistakes and generally, like for cleaning your brush, for taking away the excessive color or water and so much more. So you see right now, I'm just painting this portion of the frog with this same color, and I'm going to do the same thing here as I did here on the belly, just going to dry my brush with paper towel and smooth that edge for a more seamless transition. And there you go. I'm going to do the same thing on this top hand. Again, using the tip of my brush for not accidentally going beyond the edge. And you see my other colors are already dry, so I'm not risking of making them interact with each other. And basically, what it allows us to do, you see, we're making this frog look colorful without the colors mixing with each other. And what it allows us is to have a nice and vibrant color that is not interfered by other colors. So when colors mixed together, they tend to get more dirty, and we don't want it because we're painting this tropical frog that is super vibrant, super colorful. And one of our main goals here is to preserve this vibrant green color or this vibrant. Just generally the vibrancy of color of colors. That's why using this strategy of painting separate portions of the frog separately without the colors mixing together is what allowing us to maintain this vibrancy. So while I was talking, I actually am actually adding some of this turquoise blue to these shadow areas of the leg and even somewhere in between the two legs, you see, um, so I'm kind of starting to work on the details. And this is also the step, that we can use to add all of the turquoise elements. I think one more is missing here, so I think I'm going to add a touch of this turquoise blue this back leg, and this is probably it for this step. So in the next step, we will start to work on the exciting part of this frog, which is the eyes, so the red eyes, and we're going to give even more saturation to the fingers. So I will see you there. 11. Painting the Eyes and Fingers: Welcome to this step. Here, we will start to add some red to our frog. And to do so we need to mix these two new colors. Cadmium red. This is a simple mix, just cadmium red with water, and then we have a new mix, mix A composed of carmine, indigo, and water. You will obtain this burgundy looking color. Let's start with mixing colors. I'm going to move my palette let's start with the simple mix. Cadmium red with water. Cadmium red is a warm red. It's just the simplest red we have in our sets. So just a basic red. And this is how it looks like. We just need a medium color. So make sure you have enough water but not too much. So we want this color to be quite saturated. As for the second color, we use carmine plus indigo. You can also use cadmium plus indigo, but I think carmine gives it a slightly better color. So carmine alone, I'm going to show you how it looks like. It looks a little bit more like purple, see. So it's a more cold color. So it's colder than this one. You see, it's tending more towards pink, purple. This one tends more towards orange. This is how you know that this is warm, this is cold. And then on top of this, we're adding some indigo to our to our carmine color, indigo is a dark blue color. Let me try to show you how it looks like. There you go. This is how indigo looks like. So it's a deep blue color. Really beautiful. And if you mix it with your carmine, you're going to obtain this kind of deep purple color. I think I need more carmine because now it's too purple. I want it to be more on the red side. So more carmine. And I think this is what I was looking for more or less. Yep, maybe a little more touch of indigo, and that's probably it. And let's start to color. So I prefer starting with the feet. Let's start with the feet. For the feet, we just need this carmine mix this cadmium, sorry mix. I'm going to mix it. I'm going to dilute it with water just a little bit because my room is really dry and the colors get dry quite quickly. So I just added some water to make it more liquid. And you see I'm adding this color to add some vibrancy to the fingers. The only thing I'm avoiding are these circular highlights I've created with my pencil during the drawing step. So see? These highlights will allow me to show that these fingers are not flat, but actually have some dimension to them. So they are round and there's this bumpy little part on them. So by doing this, I am underlying this fact that these fingers are not just straight. This is what I'm doing. At this stage, again, I am trying to be quite careful with my brush. I don't want to go beyond the outlined area of my fingers. I'm working with a small brush. This one is number four. You can use number two if you want to have even more control, but for me, number four works just fine. And you see, I'm also leaving some of the highlights on the fingers themselves. So kind of these long lines, and it allows me to create a more visually interesting look. Also, if I want to make these transitions more smooth, I can go and wash my brush clean with the paper towel and kind of smooth that edge a little bit. So it may be a little bit tricky on a small surface. So if you are a beginner, skip this step, it may be a little bit confusing for you. So if you feel like you're more advanced, then you can go and smooth the edges if you want to. If you want the transitions between this light and shadow area to be even more smooth, But otherwise, I'm going to continue adding this red color. If I need more, just go and add more color. This is a very simple mix, so just carmine sorry cadmium red with water, so nothing really fancy. But generally for this tutorial, you saw we used very simple mixes, so nothing complicated. Actually, we used three colors at maximum for our mixes, and three colors for a mix is actually a perfect number of colors, a perfect amount of colors because if you add more than three, your colors start to look a bit dirty and then like, it's just allowing it to create, yes, maybe a little bit more of color variation, but essentially that just confuses you and makes these mixes more difficult to reproduce in the future. And then, again, it makes your paintings more dirty. So generally, this is one more tip from me to you. Try to maintain your mixes under three colors maximum for cleaner, more vibrant colors, and for less confusion in general, if you want to. To then create more of this color. While I was talking, I actually almost finished to give this red color to the fingers. I'm going to finish with this back leg. There you go. Okay. And we can now pass to the eye, very exciting part. We were all waiting for it. The very important thing though, I want to warn you about is that we're not painting the pupil in this step. So make sure you don't paint the pupil, and I also don't want us to paint this highlight on the left of the eye. So in order to not forget about it, I just outlined it with my pencil. What we need to do next? I'm going to take some of this same cadmium red. There you go. I'm going to add it to everything, all the I, except for the pupil and of the highlight. I just created with my pencil. And you see the tiny highlights are actually inside the pupil, so I'm not mentioning them, but I'm not covering them either because they're on the black side of the eye, so we don't cover them either. And this is, you know, a moment where you want to get a little bit more precise. So the eye is the very important thing of our subject. Generally, animals, human beings, like, if something is wrong with the eye, you instantly notice it. That's why be extra careful during this step. And then same thing on this eye, also, there's one small highlight I would like to keep here as well. It's going to be around here. So maintaining these highlights will allow me to make the eyes look more round and more three dimensional. And even though this is a very small adjustment and, like, a tiny spot of white, it's going to make a difference. So I suggest you to do the same. And once this is done, I can then take my purple color, that dark purple color mix together, and I'm going to add it to the sides of the eye with my small brush. And you see my color is really it's kind of concentrated. It's there's more pigment than water in this color. That's why you see some of the wet in wet technique gets produced. So my goal here is to make this dark purple to mix seamlessly with some of this red. So you see, I have some blooming going on. But because this new color I'm introducing is really dark and because the previous red color, there's no flood of water, it's still wet, but it's not super, super wet. You see I'm getting this blooming, but I can still control it. See? It's not affecting the whole red area. If you're a beginner, this may sound a little bit confusing to you at this stage, but I promise if you start to practice with watercolor, this all will make sense really quickly. So basically, we're talking about the water control here and how much water and how much pigment using in your mixes depending on what you want to do. So again, with a little bit of practice, this will become easy. 12. Adding More Saturation to the Body: In this step, we're going to add some of this green to the frog, and we will need to use the mix from the step number five, so the mix five A, which exactly corresponds to this mix on my palate. Basically, we will need to use the same mix. If you don't have it, you can easily mix it again. So all you need to do, I'm going to add some water to mine, but I think this is to watery now. So as far as I can recall, it was green plus some cobalt, or you can use any kind of other green, sorry, other blue you have at your disposal. You just need to obtain something like a dark bluish green, something like this. I think this is good enough. And this step is pretty short. I just need to make sure I have my napkins nearby, so this might be enough. And all I want to do is I want to add some additional shadow to some portions of my frog. Also, I think I'm going to use some of this color here as well. So basically, I just think I need to add all of this color to the whole body of my frog. This is what I'm doing here, adding it there, doing the same with this back leg. What I'm doing right now is I'm looking at my finished frog. I'm also looking at my reference, and basically, I'm trying to repeat and get what I see as closely as I can. So right now, I'm going to add this shadow near the eye. And as you can see, it's quite the edge is quite clear, so I need to smooth it out a little bit, so it's not that visible. There you go. Then the cool thing of watercolor is that if I want to make this frog a little bit more vibrant, so let's say add like this extra layer of green or this extra layer of bright yellow color. I can always do that. So this is something I can do in the next steps. But for now, I'm just adding, like a combination of these two colors to create these shadows on the head and make the frog look more three dimensional. So I'm just adding this color to some of the areas to make it look better. Also, in this step, I also need to make this belly appear more united. So what I'm doing, I'm just grabbing, you know, some of this color I was using previously. I'm adding it to the belly, so you see I'm uniting it. But once I came close to the yellow pattern, you see I'm kind of using the water now, and same with the belly. So I'm not using the color. What I'm doing, I'm just smoothing out the edge and I'm letting the color sit on the belly. This is it. Then I'm seeing if I want to add any additional color, for example, I think I'm going to add the same green color to the legs and to this portion of the face. Going to add some of this blue here. You see my frog instantly looks more united and more realistic. Also, if we want to continue some of the things we started in the last step, I could add some darker details to the fingers. For example, I could mix that burgundy color, and I can add just a little touch of cadmium red to it, and I can start to add this color to some areas of the fingers. This is a little bit too dark, I think, so I just diluted it with a little bit of color, and you see now it looks lighter. So every time you think your color is a bit too strong, you know that you can easily adjust it, and I'm just going to start to do this. Just outline some of these fingers. But don't worry. We can also add these details in the next step. I'm just going to add some of it right now. I think we can stop here for now. And in the next step, we're going to add even more contrast in saturation to the belly of the frog, so I will see there. 13. Adding Contrast and Details: As a first action in this step, we need to mix a new color. So in the step number nine, we need to create this dark blue mix, which is composed of indigo, turquoise blue, and water to obtain a dark blue color. So let's start with mixing that color. Again, if you don't have these exact colors, you can just mix something similar. So as a base, we need indigo. As I said, indigo is one of my go to choices when it comes to watercolor, so I absolutely suggest you having indigo in your toolbox. Let me use this portion of the palette. And then we can mix turquoise blue. I'm not sure I have turquoise blue on my palette now. I think I have emerald green. But as I said, it doesn't really matter. These two colors will actually make a good match for me. So I'm just mixing indigo with turquoise green. Sorry, with emerald green. But it's quite similar to what I'm suggesting in the book, again. If things are slightly different on your side, it's not of a big deal. And we need to start to add this color to some areas of our frog, especially to the belly and to this pattern on the belly. I'm going to move this sheet and this drawing a little bit so that you can see everything I'm doing here. There you go. I think this is much better. All right. So I'm going to switch brushes. I'm going to take a smaller brush. So in my case, it's number four, because now we're going to work on this pattern, and I want to have a little bit more precision and control. And you see, I'm starting with the tip of my brush and with that freshly mixed color. And I'm adding this color to the top and once I'm getting lower, I'm going to switch to water. So basically, I'm going to dilute this color so that once I come down, I will have a less saturated version of this color there. So see it's getting lighter and lighter. And once I come to the belly, I'm just going to completely switch to water and then just you see kind of smooth that edge even more. I'm going to work on this portion of the pattern as well. I'm going to create a similar effect here as well as near this portion of the frog. I also see that using the same color, I can already start to add some of these darkest elements of my frog, for example, some of these shadows near the legs a little bit here. So we're coming towards the end of the tutorial, and right now, I can really start to add these darkest details that will make my painting pop. And you see just by adding a few of these darker touches, I've managed to make the whole frog look more interesting and realistic. And I still need to add some face features to it. So contrast is really what allows us to make the painting pop. This is a life kind of real life demonstration of it, real time demonstration of it. There you go. So there. And I think at this point, we can This is all we wanted to do in this step. I'm going to add a few more touches here and there, and we can still add more in the next steps if we want to. I've just underlined the head using this color. You see, I never use a uniform outline. Even if right now I'm starting to add some of this outline to my subject, you see I don't use a solid outline. I love to add irregular outline. I'm especially concentrated on these blue areas for now. So here. And I think I need to darken this backside of the leg, even though it's not part of that step, but I think I need to do it. So I'm just grabbing some of this light green color and darkening some of the leg. You see, I'm still keeping some of the highlight, though. So I think this is good. If I need to lift or take away the excess of this water, I'm just, you know, drying my brush and kind of going there and taking away the excessive water. And in the next step, we can start to add some of the final details to the frog, such as the eyes. I'm just going to add a few of these lines right now, and then we can continue in the next step. 14. Final Touches: So in this step, we're going to add the final touches to our frog, such as the eye finally, and we're going to add some last touches to the fingers to the legs as well, and add such details as pupils, the nose hole, and so on. But be but before doing this, I would like to do one thing. So I'm not sure it's part of that step or not, but this is really something I feel I need to do. So this is why I wanted to emphasize if you follow a tutorial, and it does not look the exact same way as on the picture, or you just feel that you need to add more color or make your painting more vibrant than just follow your instinct. For example, now I see that I really need to add some more yellow to my painting. Like I feel that I need more saturation on the frog. And this is what I'm going to do. I'm just going to cover everything with this cadmium yellow color. I just basically grabbed some cadmium yellow from my palette, and I'm going to add it to the whole surface of my frog. This action has two benefits. First of all, you see how it unites everything. You see how it unites the whole surface of my frog. This is the first benefit. Then the second benefit, it makes my frog looks more vibrant, so more colorful. The color looks more juicy. It's a tropical frog. It should be colorful. And I think with this color, it looks much better. Not touching the blue, though, because I think the blue is something that has a different color. So I've just covered this top surface of M frog with this color, and then I'm just smoothing this edge here. And this is the very important step, I think. You see it looks much more cohesive and united. So now, very important thing. I need to let this dry because this is all wet. I need to make sure it gets dry before I add the last touches to my frog. And I can use this time, first of all, to mix that color we were talking about. So it's made of carmine, indigo green. So let me take some carmine. There you go. Carmine is a cold red, if you remember. So carmine indigo, our favorite indigo, so dark blue. There you go. And then a touch of green. So this combination, as you can see, creates us this dark, almost black color. And I think I'm already going to use it on the eye. So actually, before I use it on the eye, I need to unite the surface of the eye. So I will make this highlight a little bit less visible. Don't need to do anything. I'm just going there with slightly wet brush, and you see, I am just covering it a little bit so that the surface gets united with everything else. And this is the only thing I will do for now. So before painting the pupil, I need to let this dry, and I'm going to actually use this time to add some last touches using my previous color that we've used in the last step composed of indigo plus turquoise green. I've just quickly mixed it again. And I would like to add this color to some areas of my frog. So my room is quite warm, so my previous color is getting dry or is almost dry. So you see my color is not going anywhere. There's still some blooming here in this area, but it's getting dry quite quickly. So this is why I'm able to do what I'm doing right now. If your paper is still wet, it's very wet and you see a lot of blooming if you try to do the same thing I'm doing, I suggest you to stop and to wait a little bit. So you're not doing anything wrong. It's just means that the water takes longer to dry in your environment. So it's absolutely fine. You see, in my case, again, my paper is almost dry. So I can go and add these last dark touches on the pattern of my on the belly of the frog. So this is what I'm doing. I'm going there with this same dark blue color. Also going to add it to some of these shadow areas. Right now, it's very important of not ruining what we've created there during the whole tutorial. My goal now is just to underline some of these elements. And I'm doing this with these tiny lines with the outline itself. There you go. So something like this, I think it made our frog look better. At this point, I think that the eye got dry, so that's the time when we can start adding the pupil. But before that, let me add just another layer of cadmium yellow to the feet. I'm not going to re read the step and see if it sets there or not, but I definitely feel that these feet need to be more vibrant. This is exactly what I'm doing. I'm taking some of this cadmium red, and I'm going to paint some of the areas and make sure that the feet the fingers are nice and saturated. Red color is really important on this painting and I want to make sure that the fingers and the eyes of the frog really stand out. So you see just by adding this additional layer, I'm increasing the saturation of the frog, very similar to what we previously did, what we just did with yellow. There you go. Just a little bit more here. And I think we're good to go. Also, you see that I'm kind of a messy painter. So when I paint, especially when I explain, I'm getting a little bit carried away and sometimes I have these splashes on my paper. So what I like doing, again, I'm correcting them with my paper towel. But if you want to get extra assure that your background remains white, you can also protect it with something around. So put some papers around so that you can protect it from accidental splashes, or just try to be a bit more careful than I am right now. So I think this is good, and we use this time to get the eye dry. Before adding that pupil, I'm actually going to use this newly freshly mixed dark color to outline. The nose holes, for example, I'm using a very thin brush here. Actually, not a very thin brush, but the point of the tip of my brush. I'm using number four now, but it's just enough. I'm also outlining these shadows inside the eye, and I'm going to use this color to outline the mouth. Again, you see, I never use just a straight line. I'm always breaking the line even in this case. Finally, these final details the final outline on the back, especially taking care of these angles here. Right now, I'm going to add these final touches to the pattern of the belly. I think right now we have enough contrast there. I can also go and use some of this black color to outline some of the fingers. Very important thing again, see, I'm not using any solid outline. I'm just Adding some of this color to the outline. This is personally how I'm going about it. I don't like to give my subjects a solid outline because I think it makes them look more flat. But, I think this looks nice. These back fingers. Also very important thing to know is that in painting in general, what is in front should be darker in more detail. I'm mainly focusing on the details on the foreground and not as much on the details on the background. I'm going to add some of these details there as well. But still, I'm going to make sure that the majority of them is focused on this front portion of the frog. Finally, this is the time when we can add the pupil. I'm grabbing some of that dark color. Again, if you want to mix it again, it's composed of carmine, indigo, and green. This is a nice alternative to black, by the way. If you want to use something more simple, you can just go and grab some paints black. It's going to give you a similar effect. But even if you don't have it, you know now that you can easily mix your own black. I'm starting to add this dark color to that left eye first. And now I can start adding it to the main eye. Here, the really important thing is just to avoid those three tiny highlights because we kept that pupil white on purpose so that now we can go and paint it, there you go. It instantly changed the look of our frog. That now looks much more alive. And as the last step, it's really about underlining the details. So maybe if I want, I can go and take some carmine or cadmium red, maybe better cadmium red, and just add some extra depth to the eye. I'm just painting this area around the eye with carmine. I'm leaving the highlight untouched, but I'm just underlining that color. And this is probably it. I can go and underline. This area just a bit more, you see right now, you can just basically keep adding layers and layers if you want to. It all depends on how much time you want to spend on your frog. But honestly, I think our frog is looking quite realistic, quite detailed. I would just stop here because the more you and the more risk you have of overworking your painting, oftentimes, less is more. So I think once you're feeling quite satisfied with the painting, this may be a good moment for actually letting go of perfectionism and, um, you know, just stopping where you are. I think I'm reaching this point. Anyways, I think we've done. All the important things on this frog. It looks vibrant. It looks quite realistic. And we did it completely from scratch. This is the thing I wanted to show you. So now you know exactly how not only to paint this frog, but also how to create the drawing for this frog completely from scratch. We added some last details to the frog itself, created these little outlines that really allowed us to underline the contrast, I'm just adding the final touches to the eye now since the eye is an important element of the painting. But again, if you feel satisfied with your painting, I think at a certain point, you need to find that perfect moment to start to stop, sorry. So I think for me, this is it. I'm going to leave my brush, and I hope you enjoyed this tutorial. This is our final red eyed tree frog. 15. Class Project: This is it. We've painted a beautiful frog together from my new book, Capture the Natural World in Watercolor. I'm really hoping that you enjoy this tutorial that you will paint your own frog. Please share your frog painting inside the project section of this class. I'm going to be super happy to have a look at it, and thanks for watching. I will see you in the next class.