Paint Silhouettes of People in Watercolor

1. Welcome: Hi, and welcome to the Skillshare class. My name is Avraham and I'm a professional Illustrator. In this class, I want to show you how much fun we can have creating silhouettes of people walking in watercolor. Even if you feel like a complete beginner with watercolor, I want to show you that when you're doing silhouettes, it's actually very easy because all we're going to focus on are the major shapes, and you don't have to worry about details because they're all dark. It's a silhouette. And you don't need much materials, either. All you need is one brush, one color, and some paper. Also, I'm going to show you resources that I use to get unlimited amounts of reference material to doing silhouettes. So if you're ready to get started and having fun making silhouette suit in watercolor, I'll see you in the next lesson. 2. Class Project: The project for this class is to create your own silhouette of a person in watercolor. Either you can create one following along with me and examples I'll be showing you, or if you have your own example that you want to use, you can draw with that one, too. But the main goal is to have fun using watercolor and just enjoy the experience. 3. Materials: Okay. So what do you need for materials? First off, if you need paper. For that, I recommend getting a sketchbook. This one is about letter size. It's 110 grams of the paper weight, which means it's a little bit thicker than your standard printer paper, which I think is helpful because when you're dealing with watercolor, so you want the paper to have a little bit more resistance and not buckle so much. So when you have paper that's a little bit thicker, it's helpful. If you want a smaller sized sketchbook, that's also definitely possible. They come in all different sizes, and this one is obviously smaller. You can fill it up faster that way, feel more accomplish. Uh, but regarding brushes. So I particularly like I have this Princeton round size ten, which comes to a very nice point, and that makes me get fine details. However, you can use other options as well. This is a basic round by Blick. It doesn't come to as much of a point. And then there's also these flats you can use, right? So I recommend experimenting and having fun and seeing what works for you. It might take some time to get used to a brush as well, so don't give up on the first time if it doesn't work out the way you're looking for. When it comes to inks and what pigments you want to use, so I have here this Paine's gray by Aquarel, which is very nice for neutral silhouettes, like we'll be doing. However, at the same time, I've also been very successful with very simple pans that you get for your kids like this. And, in fact, I'll even just use this one today to show you how easy it is. Now, when you're using a pan in here like this, I find it a little helpful for me that I don't like the full intensity of the color. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to use this mixing palette here or have here's my paints gray over there. And by putting the paint onto the mixing palette, before you start to paint, it'll dilute it a little bit more and give a little it won't have as intense a color. So if you have your materials, let's get started. 4. Getting Ready: So the first thing you're wanting to do is prime your paints, which means taking some little spray bottle and spring the color that you're using, in this case, black, right? Or you could take your brush, dip it into water, and then just also lightly tap it on the color. That way, it just activates it, so it gets a little bit wet and you can start using it much better, okay? So what we're gonna do first, though, is just practice some general strokes to see getting used to your brush and seeing how it reacts on the page. So I'm going to just touch my brush very gently to the paint, right? And I'm testing it. Sort of if I put it down here, I can see. Let's see, if I put it directly on, it'll be very dark, right? And also, it's important to keep in mind how wet your brush, how much water you put and load onto your brush. If I put a lot of water on and then try to pick up some paint, it's going to be very diluted. And if I have very little water on my brush, and then put it on, it'll be much stronger color. And so you're trying to go for, like, a middle ground, sort of like over here. I put some extra water on. I'm just rubbing it off. You can dry your brush also if you like this. I find it's a little too wet. Okay? And then you're looking to see about how wet you can make it. Now, for example, I'll make it much darker by just loading up the brush a lot when it's pretty dry and not touching my mixing tray at all, you'll see how much darker that's going to be. Very solid. All right. Then on the other hand, if I load up with lots of water, and then touch it to here to fill up some water. You'll see it's going to be very runny, actually, because it's going to be over the brush is most saturated with water right now. So it makes it much harder to control, and it's a lot more imprecise. So what I would do in such association is I would soak up the excess water from here, okay? And I can to get a lighter color, like, I would just dab it on my mixing tray, and that mixes it in the brush with the water that's contained in the brush and makes it softer or not as intense. And when I draw, you'll see it's much lighter. I can just keep dabbing it on my mixing tray, and it'll get even lighter. I could potentially even add a little bit more water to my brush. Alright, that's a little bit too light for me, but that's the idea just showing how you can control how light and dark the colors the values are coming out with. 5. Let's Paint!: Where are you going to get our people from to draw? So I happen to like if you search on YouTube for people walking in the street, for example, right? You'll get some videos of people walking around. Stock footage, perhaps, like this. And this is really amazing. I find this even more helpful than going to, we'll say, Pexels or Unsplash to get pictures because here you have an unlimited amount of opportunities to draw from. So let's go into this, for example, which you can see I've been here before. Let me just pause. I get full screen. So you can see things a little bit better. And the idea is that you could just like here, this couple right here, they look pretty cool, and maybe we'll draw them in a moment. But what I'm trying to say is that I just move a little bit, like half a second, and Noise the arms changed. It's a whole different pose right now, right? So I have really an unlimited amount of poses to choose from here, here where his arm is away from his body, and you'll see it swings right next to it, right? And back and forth. And all these her legs, where they are, if she's walking with her left foot forward and right back, and then you weigh a little bit, and bam, now her right leg is forward. And the same thing. All these different you have 1 million poses to pick from here, and each one is different, and you can just go wild and you have an unlimited amount of resources and inspiration for references for your silhouettes. So let's start. Let's go move forward just a little bit more. And here, hold on. Sort of like that one before about this lady over here. I can wait for her arm is separated, right? So when it comes to sillo something that's good to look for is when there is a little bit more separation and um, clarity in the contours of the shape, right? So here, where her arm is her hand is right on top of the body, that might be a little bit more hard to draw. I mean, it's going to be hard to see that it's a hand because it's going to be all one blob of color here. But this hand is distinct as a hand, right? So these are things to think about when you're picking which silhouette to do. Like, here, this lady on this side, her arms are both separate from her torso. And although her legs are overlapping, I think this actually could work out, um, it'll be very understandable. So let's start with this one here. So let me just open up my sketchbook again. Um, let's go add a little bit more water to the black, so it's just activate, right? And so we're going to start with I like to always start with putting in the person's head. And I also recommend to not go too small because it's hard to really see the details when you're painting small like that. So I would recommend maybe this size. We'll see if I can get, you know, something like this. And maybe at the smallest would be, like, maybe to here. But let's go for a little bit larger just so we can see how it's working out here. So I said I start with the head and try to get a size that looks like good This to me is looking a little bit dark. So I'm going to dilute it just a bit. Okay? I'm just keep going, okay? And next thing is the angle of her arms or her shoulders. So it's something like this, right? And coming around, putting in her torso sor looks like here. Okay? And then we have this arm is coming back. So it comes out like this, and then like that. And here arm, her left arm is coming forward. Okay, and put something for rubbers in her hand like that. Her skirt, we got here coming out. I'm trying to gauge the distance between the edge of her skirt and the hand, right? That negative space that's over here. It's not gonna be exact, obviously. But I'm just trying to ballpark it, so it looks sort of reasonable. Okay, and pull this in here. And now we come for her legs, so we have this one thick stroke for her leg coming down, and it comes out to here, tapers, and we have her shoe. Then the other leg is coming in from like that, right? You won't really see it so much. I'm leaving a little space, okay? And then I realized I forgot to put her hand here, so let's put her hand. Okay? Do I want to put in a that she's wearing a purse? No, I don't think so because it'd be very hard. Most of it is just contained inside her body here, so it's hard to see that. But this would be the idea of making a sketch, a silhouette of this person. If we move to the guy over here, right? So we can try doing him. So I'm gonna get a little bit more water on my brush, more black. Dilute it a little bit. Okay? And then we'll try him. His head is a little more angular like this. And then he's got the shoulders coming down. His shorts. So here I'm going to his full main part of his body before I do any appendages. Okay? So let's continue on his legs like this and coming down. See he's a little bit smaller guy here. And then, uh Okay. And for his arm coming like that. And the other coming around. Alright? So we have him. Let's move forward a little bit more in our video and see, Oh, let's just we'll take this lady right here. Looking more black. It's just so easy and relaxing to do this. You don't have to worry about exact details. You know, it's a silhouette, so people aren't going to notice. Anyway, you're not putting in specific details about the person. It's just more following the contours, right? So I don't know, shoulder seems to come up a little bit here. And and find the shape of her body. All right. And then let's go with the arms again here. And her legs. We are. And now it's to that couple that's right next to him. Goal just gonna have some more room. So her, let's say, we got her with the hat. Okay? So draws the line for the hat, and come up on this. Alright. And then her hair. Something like this. Okay. Down to her her skirt is a much larger one this time, and you can get into a lot more details doing this. I'm leaving a little bit of empty space here to sort of show the pattern on her skirt there. And then we'll have to make up what her legs look like cause we don't have all of them, but we can get an idea sort of like this, right? I said, if you're doing with silhouettes, it's not the biggest deal if you don't have all the details and Okay, let's put her some feet here also. And then for her companion, he's a little bit taller, right? He's actually taller than that, but we'll just go with what we have here. Come on here. It's got to try to preserve that little negative space of his arm, how it comes out and back in, right? A little more water on my brush here. Pretty looks pretty wide there. Legs. And try and make up something for his feet again, right? Like this, you can just make up and have so much fun experimenting and playing with all these different people. One thing we can also do is sort of like I was doing with this lady here, if we want to have less go to a full silhouette, we have this space in here. So can also add a little more interest. So let's go move on to another scene, right? Okay, so we have maybe these two ladies over here. Let's see what we do about that. Her head's at an angle. See that? So let's go and put it at an angle. Maybe more dynamic pose here. And so then your body's coming like this. She's got an interesting hand going on here. So let's see if I can represent that. We have another hand coming out here. We're doing hands first this time. And then her body So I'm gonna purposely try to leave more empty space in this picture, not filling all of the silhouette here so much. So Hmm. So that one, I think I got her didn't put her leg forward enough. She'd come out like here or something. But looks maybe not exactly the best here, but we'll just keep going. And, uh, and her friend is looking down at her phone she got some frizzy hair, right? And then her her hands here. She's got her bag, and now filling in her body around the bag. She's got one leg coming out this way. Shoe. And then the other one is sort of hidden behind. That one, I think came out a little nicer. I like that more. So here we are. It's good. I mean, hard to tell exactly what's going on here in this picture because we're trying to read the silhouette, and as I said, we don't have the hand action going on here, so it's a little hard to read that. And let's go while we're Let's do these two guys who are right next to them. Okay? So we have This guy. See how fast this is though? We could just, like, whip off a lot of silhouettes. And, you know, it's, um, just fun. You know, there's no pressure here. It doesn't come out exactly right. You know, let's move on, keep to another one. He's got some hair, right, so let's go like that. And his arm coming out. And then his legs That's a nice leg there. I'm happy with that. And then we got this other leg coming down. Okay, that's a pretty good pose. I think I matched it pretty good. And let's put his buddy in here, right? I'm little nervous about messing things up, but I'm just going to push forward and hopefully it'll work out, right? So let's see his buddies like this. Is it a little wider torso? Okay, leave some space for that hand. And then for shorts, we got here, and then his foot's coming out pretty straight. He's got the shoe like this. Yeah, it's good. Looking good. And then his other leg is coming straight down, isn't it? Yeah, last thing is, we have his package he's carrying. This time I am going to put in the bag like this. And his hand. So there we are. A whole bunch of different sketches. And I hope this shows how easy it is that you can just with a simple one color and a brush and just make silhouettes. 6. Thank you: Thank you so much for joining me in this Skillshare class where I made lovely silhouettes of people walking in watercolor. I hope you had a lot of fun and picked up some new skills and techniques along the way. I would love to see what you made, so please go to the Projects and Resources section to upload your work. And I would be so happy to look at it and provide some encouraging feedback as well. And remember to follow me so you'd be the first to know about new classes that I put out on Skillshare. Thank you so much. I look forward to seeing you in another Skillshare class. O