Painting a Fluffy Robin with Pastels: Techniques for Soft Feathers

1. Intro to Robin Painting: Let's bring a bright little songbird to life with painterly feathers and then details when it counts. I'm Heather Nelson, and in this class, we're going to learn essential skills to paint with pastel, and we're going to go step by step. I'll give you tips to paint in layers that create depth and texture while still preserving vibrant colors. Have you ever been stuck in a mix of muddy colors or not knowing how to layer so that each color you envision shows up, we're going to work on the skills to bring your vision to reality. The good news is soft pastels are a very forgiving medium. You can paint light over dark to create believable texture and even fix your mistakes. We're going to create the illusion of fluffy little feathers with painterly techniques, which means we don't have to paint in every little detail. We can save some time and bring our subject to life with quick strokes and have fun doing it. We'll begin by sketching with basic coordinates to ensure the proportions of our bird are correct and that we're starting with a good foundation. You don't even have to be an awesome sketcher to join this class. Blending colors and smudging will provide that soft blurry background. Then we're going to leave the smudging behind and use our pastels effectively to bring our bird to life. We'll apply our details sparingly where we need them to add the light and shine to the beak and the eye. We'll also learn to choose the correct colors to block in our first base layers to help us build dimension and depth in our subject. We're even going to have some fun with building depth and moss. I'm a professional pet portrait artist on Vancouver Island in Canada, and I love to bring the character from the animals that I paint to life for the people that love them. In my spare time, I love to paint wildlife and anything that's nature inspired. I love spending time in nature. I look forward to you joining this class. 2. Robin materials: We're going to begin with our materials. One of the most important things you need to think about with materials is the paper that you're using when you're working with pastel. My favorite paper is this pastel mat, but it can be hard to come by and it is expensive. So use what you have, but do try to use some sort of sanded paper that's designed specifically for pastels, if you can, or even a mixed media paper, like the Strathmore. And it's ideal to use a toned paper. I used the sienna color, and I cut this paper in half for the size that I wanted. When we're looking at the type of pastels we're going to be using, I like a nice soft pastel. We definitely aren't using an oil pastel, so this is a chalk pastel, and it's good to have an assortment for this project of different golds and browns and some oranges and blues, and then some greens for the moss area. So if we look at our reference photo, we need blues and golds and also some maybe grays or whites, and then some greens for the moss. And, of course, we're going to need our reference photo. You can download the reference photo from the resources or you can get it directly from Pixabay, which is a free resource, and I will have it below in the resources. For our initial sketch, I used a pastel pencil in the class, but you could also use willow charcoal. And the color of pastel pencil is not that critical for the actual sketch, but you probably want a light color for the sketch. I do have a black uh, you know, you may use in the eye. But I also like the new pastels because they go down nice and dark and you can get fairly accurate for detail with something like a new pastel. So I've got a black and a white here. We're not going to do a ton of blending, but we will be doing some blending in the background. If you happen to have one of these pan pastel blenders, that can come in handy. But you can also use a bit of foam, something like a packing peanut or a bit of pool noodle. Even a little bit of paper towel will work just fine. We are going to use a ruler for creating our sketch because we're using the coordinate system. I use painter's tape for taping up both my reference photo and also my paper to my surface just so things don't shift around on me. If you're using pastel mat, you could use packing tape, but that's not always compatible with every kind of paper. I like the painter's tape because it comes on and off easily, but you do want to test that before you get keen with your drawing. Hands are going to get dirty when handling pastels. So I like to have some little wipes, like either baby wipes or makeup removing wipes just to clean my hands. But this isn't essential. You could always just use soap and water. It's also nice to have some form of cloth. I believe this is a microfiber, but we use this for cleaning off of our pastels. And if you don't have a cloth available, you could always use some paper towel, and then that's how we get our pastel nice and clean. So we're not putting things onto our canvas that we don't want to have. That is it for the material 3. The project: Probably guessed by now that our project is this fluffy little Robin, and it would mean so much to me to see your progress through this project. So if you could please share your project, even as you're working on it, share the process and then share your results in the projects and resources section. Who doesn't love looking at art? This way we can all see what we've been working on? I've already dropped my project down in there, and I would so much appreciate seeing yours. You can upload your project at the right side of the page, or you can upload your project down in the bottom. And now, let's say that this particular reference photo isn't a bird that you want to draw. Maybe you've taken a photo yourself. Now, the important part of this class is going to be about learning how to layer with pastel and creating feathers and texture and things like the eye and the beak. Well, that is the case with any bird. So you can choose a different photo to work on if you like. And then, again, please upload it in the Project and resources section. 4. Sketching the robin: So I've got my sheet of pastel mat. It is taped down with my painter's tape, which is removable, and I like to put my reference photo right next to it, and then I can make my comparisons and make sure that I've got the correct proportions. I'm going to use a ruler and a pastel pencil, and I'm just going to mark out the main coordinates of my bird. So starting from the top down, I have 4 centimeters. I like to use the centimeters because they're a little bit more accurate. Got 4 centimeters to say where the top of the head is going to be, and then I'm going to measure from that same dimension, and I'm going to measure where the bottom of the belly is and that's 16 centimeters. I'm just going to go here and I'm going to measure 16 centimeters down. That makes it so that my sketch is actually going to be in the right area. I can already start to kind of sketch in that belly idea. As a big semicircle curve. It goes up a little bit steeper at the end, and then I'm going to measure my side coordinates. So I have a little less than 9 centimeters to this sort of vertical chest. Making sure and measuring from the actual edge of my paper. I've got a little less than 9 centimeters here, and then I can pretty much connect the dots there with my arc. Down. And then I'm going to measure from that same side again to say the back just underneath the tail. And I've got about 22. It's just a little bit less than 22 centimeters for my coordinate behind the tail. So still coming here. And then that tells me I need to make quite a big arced semicircle, just like so. And as for the legs, I'm just going to kind of figure out where that goes on my own. Just go to sketch those in because I don't think that that part's going to be super critical. Same with our background. We can kind of rough in where we think our ground moss is going to be and I know that the top of the head is here, but I might want to know where the start of the beak is. That's about 5.5 centimeters. I'm going to go to the 5.5 centimeter mark, make a little mark there. That's going to give me an idea. I might want to know how long to the actual beak itself. Well, it's 7.5, so I'm going to put 7.5 down, and that's going to give me pretty good idea. Again, I'm going to make a sloping and it's going to, like, flatten out on top of the head and then my beak. So just like a little arc line there, and I can make another little arc down below for my beak, and I'm just going to join these. So it actually swoops down fairly vertical. So there we go. Hoping you can see that sketch, I'm going to make it a little darker just by pressing harder, so I'll make it a little brighter, that that's where my sketch is. I'm certainly going to be measuring to the I. So let's just locate that I. That's a little less than 9.5 centimeters. I do go pretty rough with my dimensions, so I'm not necessarily going perfect, so it's a little less than half. And I do want to know how big the e is. I still always like to measure from the same coordinate. So it's 10.5 centimeters. So 10.5 centimeters to where that I is going to end. And like that might be considered to be bigger than I thought it was going to be. I'm just going to make some semicircles again. Connecting. I can measure the height of that eye, it's about 1 centimeter and I also made mind about 1 centimeter, then I know I'm right and that actually helps me learn how to sketch. That's one of the ways that I taught myself to sketch. I am going to locate the back of the bird. He's about 6 centimeters down, and I'm just going to connect that head there with that bird. I am interested in this coordinate right here. I am using coordinates, it's 19 centimeters over Oops. Can't pick it up. I need bigger nails. And it is about seven down. So I can go about seven down 19 centimeters over. That's about there. So I know that that's going to be my mark right about there. And it's giving a gentle curve here. So there I've added in my gentle curve. And now I'm going to just kind of create a little wedge I know that this is going to come up. I could measure that perfectly if I wanted to, but I think I'm just going to free flow it here that my tail is about like so. Again, I'm going to maybe I will measure where my bird wing ends. That's at 24.5 over and it is a little less than 12 down. 24.5 over, little less than 12 down. It's about there. Wow, that's lower than I thought it would be. There we go. Little less than 12 down. That's where my wing is coming in. And I just kind of free flow sketch that shape in there. You can put in as many coordinates or as few coordinates as you like. That's the beauty of the coordinates sketching system. So I'm thinking it's something like this. I'm just kind of looking for those shapes. It doesn't have to be absolutely perfect. And if you want to know a little bit better where this is, you can measure it if you want to. Like, maybe we'll measure where the height is coming in. Is it about 8.5 centimeters to this little intersection here, 8.5 and a little bit like 11. So at that intersection, we're going to go 8.5, and then we're going to go 11 Right. So that comes in here, right about there. And then I'm going to make that little bib, so to speak. There we go. And I'm just going to think about where his beak might come in. And that is the gist of our little bird. Now, I think I'm coming in a little bit low here. I've made him a little fatter than he needs to be. So I'm going to just kind of change that with my sketch. So you can sort of stand back and just see how your sketch feels, knowing that we can kind of make changes also as we go along with the pastel, we can go over our sketch. But this gives us sort of a hint about what's happening and a base to work from. 5. Painting the background part 1: I have selected a few colors for my background, and if you're wondering what colors should you pick for your background? I was thinking about this brown. I held up some different browns and I'm looking for a tone that's pretty similar. I think this is pretty close. I'm not going to necessarily try for perfect accuracy on the background. I want to simplify it a little bit. Now I'm going to pick my middle of the road blue to begin with, and I'm going to very just quickly lay it on its side and etch in the main components to the background. And I'm just going to put that color everywhere at this point. And then we can decide what other colors we want to bring in. And if you do cover up your sketch a little bit, do not worry about it because like I said, pastels going to go back over so we can figure that out. Nona is going to lay this down everywhere, so putting it on its side, getting all of it in there, giving a good swoop by the bird's body. I'm going to use this little tool, but you could really use any foam sponge or your fingers. I just find having something like a sponge works a little bit faster than using your fingers and you don't have to get your fingers as dirty. This is just my first layer blocking in where my background is going to be. Then we can decide which colors we want to bring in. And yeah, this covers pretty well, makes it so that I don't have to use a ton of pastel to get coverage. You can even use something like a pool noodle. You can use some sort of makeup applicator. This is actually from like a pan pastel set. So if you have pan pastels, you can use that also. Sometimes I'll use pan pastels for my backgrounds. Just getting that in there, getting some good coverage everywhere. Here we go. Now, we can decide what other colors we might want to have. It looks like there's going to be some brown between the legs of our little birdie and I don't know, I might put a little bit of brown. I'm not going to bother with the brown there. I am going to put in some brown at the back of the tail because that's going to give us some nice contrast. Throw in a little brown up here and we'll throw in some of the brown that was down there. Now, this one, I am going to use my fingers because I don't want to muddy up my little foam piece that I had because it's blending with the background, you can give it a little blend there. You can take these light blue color and this brown color and just blend it together with your fingers there. Here it doesn't really matter what we do. So you can blend it a little bit. This is up to our own imagination. Can add a little bit more if you like. Just to give a sense that there's some sort of background there, right? Now, there is a little bit of, like, a darker kind of vibe. So this is a bit of a darker bluey gray that I'm picking, and I'm just going to have it go around the edges of where my brown, and you can even throw it in in some other spots because it looks like it kind of is in other spots. Just throw in a little bit darker of the gray. I might even add some sort of lavenders and that kind of thing. With the background, you can kind of do what you want. That's the nice thing about these types of backgrounds, actually, is it doesn't have to be perfect. It doesn't have to be exactly as per the reference photo. Now, this time, I think it'd be okay to use our little foamy again. And you just want the colors to be blending softly together. You want to create a little bit of interest in this background, but you don't want to mix it up so much that you lose that lighter, so it can come in with a lighter color again. Just a little lighter bit here. Blend that back in a little bit more. I'm using the side of this little blending thing because it won't be as dark like these little edges. And you just want it to look like a natural kind of blending. Here kind of blends in. I'm even going to bring this little pink. There is kind of like a little pink vibe here, a little neapolitan kind of ice cream vibe going on there, and even a little bit here. And I'm just going to gently blend that in, and that's going to give us a little bit of a warmer tone in the background. You don't want everything to get muddy, so be careful that you don't blend absolutely everything together and then just get a big thing of mud. I just want it softly coming together. I'm gonna put a little more pink in there just because I like it. And then I'm going to use one of my cleaner fingers come from the edge because I don't want it to mix too much with the brown. Just let that blend in like so. We can even bring in a little bit more light through here, and then I can come back with my little sponge, and I'm really staying on top of that color so that I don't get into the brown. What you do whereas here, I can just blend really carefully together. Like so. 6. Painting the background part 2: I might bring in even a little bit of a lighter color, little white here, maybe a little white there, little white across there. Gently dust that on. Don't get too crazy with the blending because otherwise, you'll lose your white. So just really gentle. I'm just using very light touch there, and I'm going to do that same thing over here while I still have a little bit of white on my sponge. Just on the white itself. Then it can come into that darker gray, give that a little bit of scrub around, I don't want to blend too much with the white. Like I said, you can be a little creative here. It doesn't have to be exactly the picture. I'm actually wanting to simplify mine a little bit just so it doesn't take too long. But I don't want hard edges, so I do rough up the hoops, wrong hand. If you do that, just come back in with the lighter color and dust over top, creating that little bit of a bouquet in effect there, that blurred out. A little darker line here. And then I don't want to get into that brown with this sponge because then I would be kind of wrecking it. So I'm gonna grab my pink finger, the one I used to blend last time. I'm gonna get to give that a little blend there. And this background is really one of the only things we're gonna be blending. And then I've got my brown brown finger. I actually kind of want to bring in a little bit more of like almost a purple. I just think it would be fun. You don't have to if you don't want to. Just because there was this little kind of purpling edge in the drawing, we're still a little You can decide how much you want to blend those two together. And whether you might want to bring that purple in somewhere else, I think I do. I'm going to bring it in a little bit at the back of the legs here, maybe even a little bit up here and I'm going to mix that with my darker gray. Really gentle Gen gentle. So I don't muddy up my colors. You can add light where you feel like you want a little bit more light, dark, where you want a little bit more dark. I am going to bring this color in a little bit again at the legs. Using my brown blender. And it's okay if I blend out the legs because I can always put them back in again. I'm the one who decided where they were going. Or you could always take another measurement, too. And I'm going to add a little purple feeling to that. And remember, we can always make changes to the background later. So don't feel like it has to be absolutely perfect. We can decide whether we want to bring in that little mustard color. I think we'll bring in a little bit of it here. It's kind of fun 'cause it goes with the bird. Like so. I need a new finger for that one. Just blurring out the edge a little This time, I want it to mix a little bit that pink. Let it dip down into where the tail was going because it does on the reference photo and it actually looks pretty good. Okay, so for now, that's what I'm going to do with the background. Probably going to just leave it at that for now and then if I want to add some more depth to it later, I will. 7. Foundations of beak and eye: Let's get the basics of the beak and the eye in here. I'm going to take a little bit of black new pastel. It goes down just a little bit harder than a pencil does. And I'm going to just sketch in the boundaries of the eye. It can be hard to do with a new pastel. And if you just kind of scrub it in there, you can either leave it blank where the highlight is going to be, or you can fill that in because we can go light over dark, so don't worry about it. Scribed a little line there. I'm actually surprised that it stayed where I wanted it to go. It doesn't usually when I'm working with New Pastel, get that off there. And now I'm going to come in with that lower part of my beak. And I'm going to use black here, even though it's probably more of a navy blue. So I'm going to just kind of This is going to be like my underpainting for it. Then I can come in with my blues. I'm finding a really dark blue. I got this guy, he's super dark, he's got these edges. So I can take this edge and I can use it like a pencil. Gently just kind of scrub it in there. This is where it's hard when you're trying to do some detail and you're working with soft pastel. There we go. It's okay that it's coming up a little bit over the edge there. I can make a little bit his nostril. And then we need to get in a little bit of a lighter color. Smoky blue. Again, it's going to be my base. I'm going to put some lighter things down. So I can just glaze it on. Again, I'm just using the edge, so I'm just using it like a pencil. And yes, there's definitely going to be some lighter things going on top of this, but we're just using our base right now. And the more we put some form of base on The easier that's gonna be I'm actually going to use my pastel pencil that I used to, and I'm just going to use it as a little bit of a blender on the edge here. And it gives me a little bit of the highlight that I need to. But I'm mostly using it very softly because it kind of blends and gives me a little bit of color all at the same time. I've grabbed my sky blue pencil. Now, you could use a soft pastel, but I'm just going to use this sky blue to bring some light into our beak. I'm rolling the pastel pencil just to kind of keep its edge sharp, to the end where the beak is. My cat's making really weird noises. So if you hear those, Okay. For now, that's where that's going to be at. Then I'm going to get a lighter color, and I actually have a white new pastel, and it's got this nice little edge here, and I can use it to get in some of those, like, highlights. So just sort of scrape it really light in the direction of the beak to go with your highlights. For now. And I tend to, like, come back to these things, so it's not that I'm completely done. Can try with this black just to get in a little bit more of a line there. I'm pinning my pinky down to give me some stability for this nostril. And I can always come over that with my pastel pencil. And we can also bring in a lighter color. This is not white. It's just close to white. I'm going to use it also kind of blend in that beak. And it can come in again a little bit later. Blue. It's almost like a periwinkle. Again, I have a little bit of a sharp edge on it. So I'm going to use that. I'm going to try to just gently dust that over the edge here. To bring that color, it's a little more playful into the body of that beak and then bring that dark navy back in. Actually going left handed here, so we'll see how well that is. I'm just going to kind of scrape it in almost as if it's a pencil. And you can also use your background colors to help you too. That for now will be our beak. 8. Robin eye and head: I wanted the chance to just not have to be so careful. I'm going to put my dark brown that we had. We used it in the background. I'm going to use it as my under painting behind the eye here, maybe even a little bit into the throat and also over top because this is one of our lower layers. I like to start with my darker layers first. I also want to get more just going to put that in there, but I also want a little bit reddish brown. I'm going to go looking for one. Just making this little C shape here. One's quite reddish brown, and it's also going to be my under painting. So I'm just going to I'm using this little vibrating kind of technique vibrating over the top, just glazing in where I see that there are some dark feathers under. So I'm looking for those areas where I want to create depth. I know I can put light over top, so I'm just looking for areas where I can see darker feathers coming underneath. Like where these feathers are going to do their little little thing here. And every time we do this, it starts to put starts to put texture on. And you might look at it and think, Well, that's crazy, Heather, like, I don't see that color, but this is the base color. And actually, this color here is even in the eye. So I'm going to while I'm here, I'm just going to make a little half moon here with this color. And I can always come back in with my black bring back the pupil. And while I'm here, I might bring in a little bit of my sky blue. There's almost always sky blue in an eye. So it's going to start to be where my highlight is. And I can also bring that in along the edges of the eye we see where there's, like, these little highlights even over top, actually. And then while I'm here, I'm going to bring in my little white for my new pastel and get to pin my finger, find the edge, and make a little Oops, little arc. So my arc ended up being a little low from what I wanted it to be, but that's okay. I can bring in my black. Cover that right up. That's something I love about pastel. It's just so forgiving. I used to be colored pencil artist and you have to have a little bit more of a plan when you're doing colored pencil, not that I never do color pencil anymore, but I mostly do pastel and I just love how I can have fun with it. I even like to bring in a little bit of the lighter color in the eye. I'm going to find the edge of this mustard color, but I'm just touching it to the eye. I'm not actually making any big marks. It's just going to help it to blow later on. And W, we're talking mustard. Now that we've got those lighter or the darker colors, I should say, down, we can start to come over top and just lightly glaze. So I'm using about, I don't know, quarter inch or maybe you want to call it a centimeter. And I'm doing these little like rubs, these little vibrations, these little glazy vibrations, because I don't want to cover all the dark that I put down. And this is just the next layer with the mustard color. You can scrub that in. Anywhere, you see that lighter color. Like up over here, he almost has, like, a little eyebrow highlight, you know, so we're just going to put that up in there, whereas I see more of a peach on top of his head, and we're going to use this right up to the beak. And even in his eye, we have to be really careful when we're around the eye. You want to kind of fluff it and scrub it in the directions that you see feathers. I mean, this is going to be kind of paintrily so it's not going to be perfect for our feathers. And if you do get into the eye, like, it kind of just got a little bit into the eye there. So don't worry about it. We can come back over that. So we're not going to get ourselves in a state over that. And then just kind of rubbing and scumbling this backup over here. I'm going to be on the hunt for a more vibrant orange. This one's particularly vibrant, we're just going to rub it a little bit over here, again, I don't want it to cover everything. And you don't want to use it everywhere, either and use it in the direction of the feathers. Just put it on, like, a little gentle kind of rub like this. Then you're not gonna cover everything. You're just going to get a little bit in there. And you want to watch for where this color actually is. You don't want to put it everywhere because then you're gonna kind of, like, wreck the effect that you're going for because it will not appear absolutely everywhere. It's only going to appear some places. I want even a very bright yellow. So I've got this one. I do need to just give it a little clean. And we're going to go where we see those brighter yellower lights and just make some little vibrations in those spots. Again, not covering absolutely everything, just covering certain bits where you just look for little bit lighter yellow. There's almost little lines of it coming up to his little chin, where his little feathers are. So we especially want to leave those areas. So that's why we kind of create just little lines back here. We've just rub and vibrated over. And again, it kind of comes up in a little arc like little eyebrow. To create the shape of his head. Notice I'm not rubbing anything in. I'm just creating these little lines here, do, do, do, where his feathers are. And I want, like, a peachy color on top of his head. This is why you always want to have all the colors of the rainbow because you end up using them if you've got them. If you don't got them, then you got to kind of blend like we could have even used the pink. Again, I'm just kind of doing a little bit of vibration up over the top. I kind of want some of those dark bits to show through that we already had. I don't want all of those to get covered up because they're the undersides of the feathers. I like this peachy color. I'm going to add it in a little bit around the eye, maybe back here. Again, don't get too carried away, but there's some little spots in here. I'm going to create little lines to again create that depth. I see we have a little bit brightness again in here over top of the eye. I'm just going to rub that in there and even around the eye. But be careful. I've already going to have to clean up that eye. Always harder to come back in on the eye and get the perfect line down. But you can do it. Here we go. For now. 9. Head and belly: I want my vibrant orange to come into the conversation a little bit more. So I'm going to make these little lines where it kind of starts to blend into his beak where those little feathers are. I'm just making these little lines because I can see that his feathers are doing that. Then a little bit of vibration again. I really like this effect that he has here where it's like, kind of swirling in. Put this bright color down here. We're also going to need some lighter colors. Now, you can kind of blend a little bit with your pastel without getting your fingers in there, just by rubbing it over top of other layers. Like, even there, I just kind of, like, blended it in with the blue. Mm hmm a little bit of yellow. Again, rubbing over top, creating those highlight feathers. Not everywhere, but just a little bit less through here, a little bit more through here. And you decide how much you want to make of that. We'll probably come back in later with some other things. But I do like to jump around to painting that might not be your scene. You can not do that if that's not something you like to do, but I like to kind of move all over. So for now, I'm going to get down into the belly, and I'm going to use this dark blue as my underpainting, so I can put it on its full side and just make a C shape, just kind of make my wrist a little bit rigid, block that in. Anywhere where, again, I see a dark color underneath. I'm just going to kind of rub this in just because I don't want a really clean line there because he's got feathers. I could even throw this in at the back here because I can see some shadow under the wing, and I might just put a little bit of this through the top, but not through the bottom. Through the bottom, I'm not really seeing this bluy kind of color. And there's a little shadow right there. For the bottom, if anything, it's more like a brown, even towards a green. So I'm just going to use this brown and I'm just going to swoop it up. And then as I swoop it up, I go lighter, lighter, lighter. So as I'm glazing, I just end up glazing over top of that blue. Like so. And I can use the edge of it, then, just a teeny little edge kind of like a pencil to cut in some of these other feathers here. Again, I'm just blocking in at this point. We're probably going to need some darker colors for this. This is just one of the browns that we're going to be dealing with on these wings. Just throw that in there. And I can see that I also have this, like, reddish, reddish color. I'm going to use it at that shadow area. I can mix with the blue that I've got. Same here. I'm putting this on its side, but making swipes and lines with it because I can see it's one of the undercolors that I'm going to be contending with. I'm letting it mix and I'm even using it as an undercolor on the bird's back. Swooping it in line with where his feathers are. So I'm going making these kind of sweeps like that. And actually, this color is even where his legs are. So if I look kind of where his leg is underneath his I'm gonna move it a little forward compared to where I had it before. I'm just going to use that to mark in his leg and even back here. There we go. And I see that there's some blue there, too. So I can create a little bit of a shadow with the blue that I already have. Just glaze it in. Do do, vibrate it in underneath the feather, mark it in at the top here. So then we're just kind of sketching in a way. So here we have our little light blue, and we're going to bring it, and we're going to vibrate it over. Just quickly glaze and move it around. So it sort of jump your pastel around. To create that next layer. And I'm just going to jump that around. Probably going to add even more of the dark, actually. And you can vary how hard you're pushing. So sometimes push really light, sometimes push really hard, and then just vibrate it around. And that's what creates texture. But, yeah, I want it even darker through here. So I'm going to come back in with this darker blue. And I'm going to rub it around not everywhere. Look where the darker color actually shows up. And then you can come back in again with that lighter color. Do do. And again, hop it around, make a little mark, little vibration, push it a little hard, lift it a little lighter. And every time we do that, we create the illusion of these little feathers that are overlapping. If your pastel seems to get dirty, it seems to be just putting down blue, you can give it a little wipe. And then remember to change direction wherever you see the feathers change direction. So I had to rotate my hand because these feathers are coming out more this way. Whereas these other feathers, they point more down. There's a little more of an angle to them. And there's even, like, kind of purple vibe. So we can just throw in a little purple here and there, which will add a little bit of dimension and life to our bird, as well. Kind of runs along this side here. 10. Adjusting features: One thing I cannot stress enough is how important it is to stand back and really study your drawing every now and again and just see if you are on the right track. I'm going to slope this head a little bit more so I can do that by adding to the outside here. And also the beak, I want to just streamline it a little bit more. I think I'm going to get the darker color here. And it's okay if you maybe streamline it a little more than you even want to. We can use any colour. We won't. Could even come in with a little bit of a darker brown. This might be. Might be crazy. You might think I'm nuts, but I'm gonna bring this in, and then I'm gonna blend it up. To that. And we're just gonna see how that works out. I just gonna use this little guy to blend it in. And then bring my finger in here. Just make sure you blend it, and then it will look natural. It'll start looking like you planned it all along. There is this kind of strong blue here, and I just want to sort of play with it a little. Created a little highlight just by bringing that end in there. And I will have to go darker. You can use a dark dark blue coming in here, create a little line. Oops. And if it goes somewhere, you don't want it to remember you have the power to fix it because it's your drawing. So I just played with that darker color there, and then I can even come in with, say, a pencil if I've got one and just smooth the edge a little. And if you're like, Well, Heather, that didn't work so hot. Then clean off the end because I think that's what happened there. So, good for you to see that sometimes we need to clean the end of our pencil before we bring it in. The rag here. And, of course, I can also still bring in a little more of my. Just go real gentle when you're doing that. And then as long as you blend it very carefully. Then it'll be just fine. It does take some careful handling, though. I still want a little more highlights also in the beak. So that's where actually, I'll clean this off too. Bring in my little new pastel and just make little lines kind of give little highlight feels to this. And because it is paintly there, that just brings it a little bit more life. And I actually find that with the eye, I want it to be a little bit smaller. So I'm going to come in with my yellowy color. Just bring in the edge a little bit. And then there's a little bit reddish brown on this part of the eye. So I'm just gonna bring that in. Having a little trouble getting my line there. Remember that you can come in with that because you can always come in again, then with some other colors. I kind of want to go my orange. Scrub that in. A little vibrancy. And he's got sort of these little hairs that create this sloping through here. So I'm bringing that in. And yeah, I want a little more color. So I'm scrubbing this more vibrant orange. And I'm making these little because it's feathers, I'm kind of making these little little ohs. And scrubbing it around down here. If you don't completely scrub and cover, you'll always be able to keep all the different layers of colors that you have, and that's the real key to creating some depth. I'm not going to go super orange in under, though. I wanted to keep that more in our golden kind of vibe. And I might even take that up a little bit. One more value, I'm going to go with an even lighter, kind of more sunshine yellow, and I'm just going to pop in some highlights here. Scrub those in. You can see that they're kind of coming in here, and that's also going to give you a little bit more depth to our chest feathers, too, when we bring in this kind of lighter color, make sure again, you don't cover all of it. Can do a little touch if you find anything looks a little bit rough. And, you know, we can maybe bring there's a little bit of that at the back of the eye. Feel free to throw it around a little, but don't don't get too crazy with it because you have different color profiles on this bird, and you don't want to miss those out. The interesting thing is, as it blends, it won't be as bright as long as you don't put it on too light, it'll blend a little bit with the other colors. And then there's kind of these fun he's got these fun little tuffs underneath the eye, and so I'm going to take this darker color and kind of scrub it around here. And then I can take like my peach and make those little little dabs dot, dot, dot, dot, dot. And a little up here. And then I can come back in with my black. I know Ed this a couple of times. That sort of rich reddish color. Can I also take a pastel pencil, but the interesting thing about pencils is they're not as vibrant, so I kind of use them a little bit sparingly. Here we go. And we can bring in our highlights for that, too, 'cause he's got little little highlights in the mouth. Here we go. So I just drew that in. And then, yeah, still, we need a little bit. If we can some highlights along the edge of the eye. I'm using my pencil for that just because I can be a little bit more accurate. Sometimes you can't get the pencil to go down over the color. See how that actually dulled that out. Again, good to see that it happened. And I'm just going to bring it back in with the new pastel. Because the new pastel is brighter. There we go. Yeah, a little more highlight there. 11. Belly details: All right. I lost some of my flat top head, so bringing that back. Good. And I'm kind of in the mood to work a little bit on this little chest again, trying to kind of make it dark, so I'm gonna bring in my dark blue again. I'm putting it in kind of like sections, so I'm not completely covering absolutely everything, right? Because I want I want the yellows and the oranges to look like they're feathering over top of it. Like so. I'm actually putting the whole thing on its side and just really light touch dragging it over. Okay, we can still add a little bit more of that depth and that dark. You know, you got a little if you covered it up a little too much before, well, then just bring it back in again. That's the thing. You don't ever have to worry that you've screwed anything up because with Pastel, you always have the opportunity to bring it back in again. That's the fun of Pastel. But then we can still come back. And I'm thinking that there might be another color that I want to use more. I'm just gonna see maybe like a lavender, maybe. Might be cheating a little because I got this lavender from the unisons. I'm just going to kind of.it in every now and again. And then I'm going to bring in a nice light blue. And I'm actually putting this one down kind of harder, just the edge, but I'm sort of dabbing, kind of going dab dab, to do these sections. And you definitely don't want to make it in rows because that's not how feathers lie, but you want to be able to see that there's still some dark underneath. Just kind of whisk this and scrub this over here, and then we have quite a little bit lighter through here. So as I dab on I can even really kind of streak it into this back area, and we can actually carry that up through the tail. That really light blue. There's even a little bit of a streak there. I'm just kind of covering over this little tail section that comes up here. And there's also some little highlights on the legs. So I know I'm jumping around a little bit. When you want to put those highlights in, try to make one line, and then where's under here, it's more of like a darker gray that we're going to just kind of scrub on, making sure that we still have that brown underneath. And that we don't come too much up into here. And then I'm going to bring in this sort of like medium blue. Just scrub that over. Actually, I kind of like that blue, so I'm just going to dab and.it over here, too. It's even a little bit in this tailback here. We'll blend and mix that in later, don't worry. There's a little bit of a green tinge that reflects up off of the moss, but it is in itself a mossy color, mossy glow. You want to go sparingly with this. Don't go too crazy with it. But it shows where the reflection is. And then we can kind of go glower with it underneath the feathers, these parts. And again, with these And again, I'm just dabbing and scrubbing, dabbing and scrubbing, just to kind of rough that area up. But then I can see it's quite actually light through this section on the reference photo. So I'm going to bring in a little bit of light because by bringing in this white color, I can create more contrast with my bird. Just by bringing that lighter color in. You never quite know what you're going to want to do with your background. It's nice to know that you can play with it after the fact. A tool like this really does help because I find it a little hard to be accurate with my fingers. Without scrubbing into the color. There we go. I want to make that sort of a believable transition. Picking up my light blue again, making these little dabs. I'm kind of pressing harder this time I'm figuring kind of need it to go down a little bit more. And I want to carry that through right through back under this wing and occasionally under here. 12. Wing and tail: Go quite dark in here because we've got this, like shadow happening, but also these wings, they've got shadows, too, so we're going to have to have some dark colors. So I'm just putting this on its edge, and I know that I'll have some areas here that will be the shadow because I'm seeing these shadowy parts to the wing, and I want to leave space for that to happen. And I realized that before, you know what? I didn't give enough space to the darkness. It's actually blending a little bit with the brown. Now, I don't need it so much in here. So in this region, I think that we could be fine to create more of a base that's like a reddish brown. Sometimes the pastels here that, like hard scratch. They don't always if the pastel itself is more of a hard pastel and not as soft as it should be, then it'll do that. It'll make this hard sound and it won't really go down as well as it should. Now I can still make these little feather streaks. Just making that arc up over there, 'cause this is our base. I don't know that we really need that much of a base back in this tail over here. As a matter of fact, in that tail, the base is probably more just like a dark orange. That's probably too dark, even. Just a rusty color. Could be our base for the tail. Just put it on its side and draw your lines. Again, nobody knows precisely how long this bird's tail is, and then we can come back in here, use the same color and just kind of scrub in these feathers, maybe draw some lines or some of these feathers. Just vibrate it in there. And that's giving us our base. Anytime you want to draw a line, just try to quickly move your hand. Might even add a little bit of this down here. Now we can come back in with some of our gold tones. These feathers, they dab down. You can put this on its side and just dab down, make little sea swirls where those feathers overlap the big wing and then just vibrate those in There's some gold tones back in here, but they kind of come in in lines, so we're just going to shake that in. Like so make an actual line because we kind of have a line streak there. And we have that peachy color. There's a very peachy pink peachy pink in the tail here, too. So again, put it on edge. Line, use it more like a pencil. Can glaze it in. And then I want something even a little bit more orange for this back portion. So I'm glazing that in, and then it'll mix. Give us that. Lovely fiery tail. You can drag your finger over it if you would like to just do a little blending. Nothing wrong with that. I'm going to have a little bit of orange here in some of these feathers, give it a little swoop. Now, there's definitely some golds in along here, but we have to be careful about how those go in. Putting it on its edge line. Putting on its edge, line. This one I can do a little vibration line. And down here, line line line. You still want to leave some space for those dark bits to show. And I can do that same thing with, like, a peach color, or I can put it on its edge like I'm about to do. I just be like, Oops. Okay. That one was not great. I'm probably going to have to fix that one. But we are going painfully. So we're giving the sense of wing. And I'm just carrying that peach into here, and then I'm actually going to I'll be overlapping that with my little feathers later. Now, there is some little bit of a grayish grayish color in here where the feathers start to overlaps, I'm just going to add that in. As my cat hops around the counters, there we go. I'm just going to blend that here too, and I see a little bit of it up here, where the light and you can just pull and drag that down a little bit. That's where the feathers real meeting, and we have a little bit through here as well. A little bit of light. We are going to change that area up. Oh, and I'm going to just kind of draw a little line in here for a little highlight. And then I did say I was gonna fix that up, so what should we fix that up with? Let's Let's just come in here with this color. And maybe we'll need some sort of contrasting color. There isn't a lot of contrast in the actual reference photo, but that doesn't mean that we can't add some in. If you're not funny, it's blending amazingly well, bring in more color to fix that area. And then playfully, gently, gently touch that in so that it seems like it belongs. 13. Adjusting the background: Got a darker brown. I just want to create a little bit more contrast. I'm going to go and it is closer to the actual brown that's there. I'm just going to get into that area that was by the tail from the background. I'm going to add that color to anywhere that I just want it. I don't want a ton of it. I'm not looking to do anything too much with it. We're just going to just toss it in here a little bit. And I'm not going to bother with it over here. I might make one little dot of it there. Then I'm actually just going to blend that in with my fingers. My fingers are nice and clean right now. It's a new day for me. Just blend that. Get really careful as I get into the actual area by the bird. And just blendy, blend, blendy. Like so. Same with this area by the legs. Just wanted to see a little more color. I am going to throw a little bit of that in here, too, make it a little bit more accurate. And then bring a little reddish brown in there as well. Actually gonna use that on the leg as well. Go. So I'm only wanting to blend the part that is the background. I don't want to blend the legs. Just kind of carefully blur it in there. Little mixer u up here, little mixer o there. Just adds a little bit more color contrast and a little bit more depth, which I like. 14. Add vibrant colour: I keep coming back to the chest. I think I keep making it not as dark as I would like. I'm going to see if I can find a darker purple color. I'm going to bring that in a little bit too. Maybe even just, it's funny. It looks dark when you hold it up, but then when you actually put it on, this color isn't as dark as what I might like, but I'm still going to just scrub it in a little few places here. I definitely do not want to cover up all my pretty little white and gray areas, but I like this color, so I'm just going to bring it in a little. Just a little little dabbled here and a little underneath this wing. There's a little bit of a shadow there and coming through here just for fun, I decided to bring in more of a royal blue. You don't have to do this. But sometimes it's fun to bring in a little bit more color and just see what it does. I'm just darkening up the actual chest a little bit here. The little royal blue, which I think might kind of contrast neatly with the orange. And sometimes it's fun to do that kind dab it around and even a little bit back in here. I like to sometimes bring in vibrant colors. I'm even going to put it a little bit into this little dip in shadow back here. So If you want to play it safer with your colors, that is your prerogative. I'm going to come back to This is the color we were using originally just again to kind of get in there. And I know I'm, like, probably just over doing this area. But I kind of like that darkness and depth there. There we go. Adding a little more shadow here. Even under a little sculp of a wing, we can draw a little bit of a line under those wings and even bring in some of our shadow here. For these wings, nice line just like you're drawing. And a few back there. I feel like this is supposed to be fleshed out a little bit more. Maybe yours isn't. Maybe maybe you didn't cover up your sketch as much as I did, but I feel like I lost some of the swoop there. I'm laying in my first dark color, and then I can start bringing in my little rusts and oranges, just like we did before, little vibrations, little dabs here and there. Don't cover up all your dark. I like the shadow I'm getting from that. Then I can also come back in with some of my more mustard colors. Again, I don't want to cover up all the dark, so make sure I just dab it into some, and then I can come in with my next layer, which is I don't know. This one's almost like a tumeric, little tumeric color. I'm sure that's not what it's called. And if you get a little too carried away here, which can happen. Although I'm going to back off and just see if I think it is too carried away. Like this little piece right here. I can always blend that out, bring in my little tool again. Go left handed. Bold. There we go. I want to blow that too. Okay. And then I still want a little more of my vibrant. Just make some little ridges through there. Not too much because there's not only so much light that's gonna be hitting there. Play it around the eye a little. Now, I think there's a little bit in here, so I'm going to use that again, on a line, streak down bringing it into there. Kind like that. There's actually a lighter gold on these feathers, and I can use a really light color because I think if I just glaze it in, then it'll just blend. It's possible that I need a little bit more of a different color underneath to do that, but I'm just going to see Same within here. And I do also want to change a little bit this. I want this to blend in a little bit more like less distinctly. I kind of want it to just go a little smoother there. So. And again, we're just going to layer so we don't have to worry about anything. I feel like we did too much taking my next color in And in this case, we actually have quite a bit lighter colors. So I'm going to be bringing in my, like, peach. Like so. And there's even a lighter color still. I think it's like the pinky color. Go to go careful with that one. And it's kind of interesting. Provides a little interest, a little light up on the top. We can even do that a little in the tail. To imply a little bit of light hitting up there. Now, I've got a little bit of, like, a greenish, kind of shady vibe down here. I think I actually could use this sort of gray. Let's just see if we just kind of scrub that in. We want that little bit of a highlight, but we don't want to go crazy with that highlight. So we're going to kind of build up something a little bit similar. Put them in little swoops here, and then we can bring in some little blues there. 15. Robin legs and highlights: Little bit of a sage color, which I can even bring into my bottom, but I'm just going to use it here sparingly because our moss is reflecting up on the bottom of our bird, which is always an interesting lighting thing that you can take into account. Then I'm going to use my let's see, I've got this lighter, I need to clean it off. It's a bit of something I used on the background really light lavender. Scrubbing it in, create some feathers here and some little dips and lines. Don't go all the way underneath with it, though. Maybe even a little bit of this, like, slate whoop. That was a little bit. If you do that, don't worry about it. I just kind of put it down a little too much. R. Could bring a little bit darker brown very carefully. Into the bottom of the bird. So don't put this on very dark, a little just to add our kind of shadow feathers underneath there. And I might even bring this a little bit on the leg of my bird. The leg looks a little bit like kind of mess, which is supposed to. So don't get too into there, but I'm going to kind of just dot and fleck this one around. And then I want to create this highlight that's going down the leg. I got to think about where that's going to go. Put just the tip of my pastel on there and draw a line. Looks like we could get away with a couple more. And same thing here, putting on. That's my highlight. Now I don't and I'm going to take it and pull it a little bit at the bottom, but I don't want to do that through the rest. And then I'm going to do something similar with my like a purple lavender color. To make that transition between my darker and my lighter so that it looks like it's cylindrical and it's rolling around. And same here. I'm gonna throw that down in the middle. And then actually at the back, I'm gonna bring out my pink and whoops, put my pink along the back there. And if it gets a little bit, just go to blend right out the edge of it. There we go. I don't think that that color is so much in here. Yeah. Okay. Even a little bit at the back just to add interest. Now, I can see some areas here where the feathers, they come over top, so we're going to bring in our really light color and just create some of those whisky little feathers that just go Whew. You can create these little lines. I find it's useful to make the sound effects. Makes it fun. Not too many. I'm going to do something similar back in here. Whisk whisk whisk. So and kind of cleaning up that background again. Bringing my little tool. Make sure there's no residual stuff there. Do. You're really careful about this, then nobody ever notices what you're up to. So it is time to stand back again and just have a look see here. I want a little bit more highlight, maybe on the very back of the bum. I'm actually gonna bring in this really I think this is actually white, but once you glaze it over all this other stuff, it doesn't really appear white. And we're just going to dab it a little bit in here at the butt, add a little bit of light that's coming in back there. I want a little bit more gold in the wing just because so I'm going to take the areas. Oh, okay, that was a little extreme. But I'm going to think about whether I want to be concerned about it or whether I want to embrace it. Sometimes I embrace the extreme putting this on its side, these sides. Because it can make it a little bit painfully. Or you can take your finger and just like, Wait, like that. And then just tones it down so that it's a little bit more of a line. But don't go crazy with your blending because then that'll rum like your more natural painted look. I'm going to just go up here with that little crown eyebrow again. 16. Painting moss: So getting into our moss, again, we need to go dark dark dark. I'm picking actually my darkest brown or you could even do a dark purple, whatever you like. I'm just going to scrub it into areas where I see some dark underneath the moss. Careful around the leg because you don't want to wreck that leg that you created. But yeah, there's some dark there. There's some little weird funky points back here. They're kind of more burgundy, but just put in some dark in air in areas where I think the dark is going to want to show through. And then I'm going to grab a dark green so this is quite a dark green, and I'm going to do something with the rest. I'm just going to layer that in. I find you never really regret having dark underneath that you can layer over, even if you don't see a lot of dark. It's good to make it a little darker than what you see in the photo because you're going to be able to layer and work with it. There it is. Not going to really blend it in, just putting that dark green in there and now I can come in with a little bit lighter green. I kind with more of a sage green. I'm just going to go over. Actually, I might looking at this, I think I am going to blend like I did the very background. I'm just going to blend all this stuff together because I don't actually want the orange to come through from the paper, the sienna, I should say. I'm just going to do this. Then I just don't have to contend with it coming through in places that I don't want it to. Sometimes you can work with it, you can let it come through. There's areas on the bird that I just let it come through and do its thing, but here, I'm just going to blend it. Okay, now I can come in with my sage color and just kind of scrabble and.it all over. It's interesting because in my if I look at my computer screen, it's a bit greener. And when I print the photo, it's more of a yellow moss, but, you know, it's your moss. So do whatever you like with it. You're just going to kind of scrub random. Just scrub random all over the place. And then we actually do have some kind of like little mustard areas, but where there just gonna be lines. So you're going to put the edge of your the very edge of your pastel and just kind of twirl it ing it in there. Make it really random. Like just go to town here because, you know what? Moss can look like anything you want it to be as long as it's got a bit of a grassy vibe. So we're just going to kind of make it a little bit of a mustard colored party in here. Anywhere you see a little bit of that and then we're just going to do something very similar with other colors. We can even do that with that sage green that we already used, throw it in there, curl it, run it in there, and then I'm going to pick out different kind of green, something a little bit dare I say mossy? This one is like a yellow green, which is what I'm seeing everywhere. Again, I'm rolling it in. See how I'm just taking it, twisting it, twisting it. Make sure sometimes you twist it on arcs in different directions, let it twist up. You can't let it come into the edges of our screen as well. Sometimes dab it on, sometimes twist and roll it. Don't worry if you get some of them a little bit higher than what you dreamed about or that you see in the picture. Make sure that some are overlapping. The key here is random, really, really random. It's going to look weird at first, and I don't want you to get too worried about that. Some areas you can scrub it in a little bit more like we did with the bird's feathers. But most of the time, I want you just to keep rolling up. We're just going to keep adding different colors and different layers to this random roll until something interesting starts to happen. Going to bring in my lavender color here. Same thing because it looks a little bit frosty. So we're just going to try to throw this one in very close to your other ones, even rolling it along the tops of other strokes that you've made because this is our frost. We can make our frost this lavender color. I'm also going to bring in some blue, keep rolling, keep randomizing. Scrub at some plots spots, but don't scrub too much or you'll lose all the layering and the texture that we've been creating. Do it more in some spots, leave it in other spots. Scrub along the bottom here, vibrating it up. Go on. Roll in different directions, even. Roll, dance, roll, dance, scrub. This is a very random thing we're doing. Then I see some reddish browns, same story. You know the drill by now, throw it in there, get random. Let it curve, let it curl. Give it a little scrub in certain spots. Almost looks like these little berries, duck them around. If you hate your bird legs, you can always get more of this stuff in there. Now let's go even lighter, so we're going to come in with more mustard gold gain. I'm only going to put this sparingly into some areas. Actually feel like I want to bring in a lighter green. So I'm just throwing in that gold, and that's actually going to echo certain aspects of our bird. Green is so we've had this kind of sagier green, and then we had this more mustard kind of green. Now I'm coming in with this one, which I do think I need to clean it. So you can see it a little bit better. I'm just going to throw it in here because moss is also green. Use it sparingly. It's only believable that this is moss. It does not have to be the exact moss that you see in the picture. I'm going to come back in now with one of my light blues that I already used a lot in this project. Using colors that you've already used keeps things really cohesive. This one, I'm going to use a little bit more because I can see that I've got some light, a lot of light frosty areas. I want to roll that on top of my randoms that I already did, going with the direction, always, though, with the moss. I'm not going straight horizontal, obviously. I'm always curling up or arcing over to get some on your painter's tape. No big deal. Always doing a curly curly twist. If you get too much other color on your thing, just wipe it off. You want to still make sure that you've got some of your layers and some of your colors working for you below. You can even do a little dot, dot, dot, pretend you're getting into some pointillism. I'm actually going to highlight a little bit more of that leg I just want to. And then you can decide. Does it look mossy enough for you? Do you want other colors in there? It is up to you. It's your moss. But notice I don't blend. I do a little scrubby scrubby. Then I'm going to stand back and ask myself if it's mossy enough. I actually even want a little bit of pink in there, I think. So I'm going to come in with my pink. Now, this is going to be sparing, I think. I'm going to just kind of throw it in. And again, like I said, by throwing this in, it's going to be very random. It's kind of taking on a Jackson pob now, and they're going to just roll it into certain points, and it's going to echo what we've got going on in the bird. So then you know it's going to go. It's kind of like wearing clothing the same. Okay. Matchy matchy. I think I want some yellow. Okay, that's maybe two yellow. I'm gonna come in with my green mossy color again. Don't have the yellow, I think that I would like in this drawing. You can decide if you have a color that works for you, maybe this here's a yellow that could be okay. I mean, you could just leave it the way it is too. You don't have to get the yellow in there. It's up to you. I don't want you to feel like you have to use all the exact same colors I do. I want you to think about what colors do you have and how could you incorporate them and make things believable, just with what you've got in your selection. Maybe you just make it all green. That would be okay. Okay. 17. Finishing touches: Thing I'm going to add is just these little wing segments that come in here. I just made those little horizontal wheels. Then I'm going to take a goldish color and make little lines also on that. Maybe clean up a little bit of this here. I can partly do that with my colors as well. Can kind of take my brown and just make more of a definitive line there. Carefully layer. Make sure your fingers clean if you're going to do this. Oops. See, that's what happens when you don't use a tool. Okay. I'm gonna leave it at that. I'm going to give it the old signature. So I bring in my I'm gonna bring in a black new pastel. And I'm gonna pick somewhere to sign. In my case, I kind of like it to be down low. And it can look like anything. There we go. 18. Closing thoughts: You so much for joining this class on how to create a fluffy little Robin. I hope you've enjoyed it. Please leave a review with feedback for me so that I can make better classes in the future. Give me a follow so that you're notified when I do create future classes. And remember to upload your project so that we can all see what you've been working on the process and also the results. I would just love to see it. I've already uploaded my project, and if there's something that you would like me to make a class on in the future, then let me know. I would really appreciate it.