painting watercolor resist crystals

1. trailer: Crystals are magical, beautiful, and mysterious, and also fascinating from a scientific perspective. This class will teach you everything you need to know for creating accurate watercolor resist crystals from basic crystal anatomy to step-by-step instructions on illustrating an example from each of the crystal structures, too wet and wet resist techniques and beyond. I'll take you along to see all sorts of real life crystals for inspiration at a New York City crystal shop and army with reference material with scientifically accurate sources to create your own raw resist crystals. So if this sounds interesting to you, enroll now. 2. supplies: Hi there. I'm Arun K. Archer. I'm a watercolor illustrator and welcome to watercolor resist crystals. The most important part about this project is what kind of resist method you'd like to use. So we are going to do that first and go through the supplies you'll need. So let's go right into it. For supplies, you're going to need just a few basic things and then one special thing. We're going to first have paper, and this is called press paper, which I recommend because hard-pressed paper doesn't absorb water quite as well and the techniques we're going to be using for this class, we're going to use a lot of water, so that's important. If you can get at least 140 pounds of paper, that kind of quality will work the best. Then we need paint. I will leave some links to my favorite pellets. This is a pellet by Premium Marketing, it's a watercolor confections. It's really cheap; I think it was $15, maybe not even that, maybe $12. I really like it and it comes in this really nice tin and then have a few different kinds. So be sure to look at that. Water and a brush; this is a size 10 round brush. We need paper towels to mop things up. The last thing you need is masking fluid. Whatever technique you end up using for your masking fluid will work, but this is the one I'm going to be using, which is a masking fluid pen that I got at Blick, I'll be sure to link this as well. Okay. So for this project, we are going to be using a resist technique. Basically, a resist technique is when you have something that covers up your work so that when you paint over it it leaves plain paper. You'll see a lot in watercolor art that people will tape around their paper and then they'll peel it off afterwards and you have nice clean lines; that's basically what we're doing but a little bit more precisely. I've talked about masking fluid before in some of my other classes, but if you're new to classes with me, I'm just going to go over this, and a couple of substitutions if you don't have masking fluid. This is my favorite, it's a masking fluid pen and it basically looks like a bottle of Elmer's glue. You pull it off and it has a really fine tip. There's different types and different sizes, but I like this one the best. I find I can get big and small lines with it and you can just squeeze it and it comes out with a thin line. Once this dries and we can paint over it, and then once it dries too; the paint dries as well, you can peel off this section and only whitepaper will be left underneath so it's a great tool for watercolor artists. I definitely think that this pen is the way to go if you are willing to make the investment, I mean it's only like $10, but if you're not going to be doing a lot, you might not want to. So your next option is to get a little jar of masking fluid. You can buy that at Blick or anything and I will leave, of course, some links to things that I've liked and used before. Just so you know, you need to make sure that you're using a old brush when you're using masking fluid if you're using just the jar type. Because if you are using a nice brush, you can really easily damage it, so I would not recommend doing that. If you are using a jar masking fluid, you can use a calligraphy nib to get a more of a controlled line than you would with a brush. You just want to make sure that you don't use the reservoir, you just use the tip for drawing and then you wipe it off every three to four dips so that the flow doesn't get restricted. You might find that you need to add a tiny bit of water to make sure it's thin enough to spread out. I don't love this method, but I think it's mostly because I don't love my control with a calligraphy nib, I'm more of a regular pen kind of girl or brush kind. But it is an option for you and some people create beautiful lettering with calligraphy nib and masking fluids, so it's always good to try it out. Those are the masking fluid methods you can use. We're going to go over some substitutions in case you don't want to make the investment for masking fluid. One of your options is to use anything wax based. A lot of people use white crayons and just know that you'll have kind of a spotty line rather than a nice clean one and you won't be able to clean it up afterwards, whereas this will come on and be perfectly clean and white, you'll have kind of like a blending of colors there. Another option is to use Elmer's glue or hot glue. With that drying, use it the same way. But the issue is that you can't peel it off so it won't be flat and you don't get the fun part of peeling it away because that's pretty much the best part of making this project. You can do that and it's really up to you. I also find that it's a little bit more difficult to draw with those methods. But if you want to get this project going and you don't have time to wait, those will work too. 3. anatomy, structures, & crystal shop tour: Now we're going to talk a little bit about crystal anatomy and the terminology we're going to be using so that we can all be on the same page. I've done this really quick, a little diagram for you. This section right here, when it comes to a point, is called the termination, which makes sense. We won't be really using it that much because I think it's easier to call it a point, just so we know what everything is called, technically. Then this point right here, this flat area, is called the main face, and that is the largest one. Then these other sections here where they are around the main face, these flat areas are called just the faces. Everything should makes sense so far. Nothing too crazy. Then we have the facets here. Those are the flat bases on each side of the crystal point. Then finally, the last thing we have is the root or the base. This is just where the crystal itself terminates or begins, depending on how you look at it. But you'll see this type of structure a lot in the different types of crystals, not everyone. I'm sure there's more terminology, but as far as illustrating them goes, this should do just fine. Let's go on to the next lesson. Let's go through the reference material I've compiled for you. This is a basic list of the different shapes that crystals take, and there are seven different lattice structures which are the different types of shapes crystals come in plus amorphous, which is obviously not really crystals, but some of my favorite crystals are amorphous shapes. So we're going to go over those two. First one is cubic or isometric, and then I've included some details about each shape as well as some examples. This is the most common shape. It looks basically like a cube, although it could have more than four faces, it can have like eight or 10. A couple of examples of this are salts and fluorite. Those are some good examples of that. Next we have tetragonal, which is very similar to cubic, but it's a longer on one axis and creates that really classic crystal pyramid prism shape. We have here zircon as a example, and according to bestcrystals.com. So take this with a grain of salt. Zircon is supposed to be like a purity stone. You're supposed to get that effect from it, and appetite, which is suppose to give you creativity. Then we have orthorhombic, similar to tetragonal except for it's not square, it's cross-sections and it has more of a rhombic prism. It's more based on diamond shape, and that is topaz, tanzanite, and celestite above. Those are some examples of orthorhombic. Next up we have hexagonal, and the hexagonal crystals are six-sided prisms. One of my favorites of this is aquamarine, which you can see has that cityscape look, it has six sides each of those crystals, and intellect and spiritual awareness is supposed to come from aquamarine, so that's a fun one. We also have emerald and morganite as an example of these. Trigonal is very similar to hexagonal, but it has three folds instead of six. An example of this, which is my favorite, is amethyst, and it has those little points and it can come in clusters like this or singular pieces. Amethyst is supposed to bring peace and strength. Here is a ruby as well, which is also an example of trigonal. Next we have triclinic, and this one is usually not symmetrical. When you think of this it's like turquoise, which can take a bunch of different shapes as well as labradorite, which you can see above, which is actually really cool stone. I hadn't known about it before. It's supposed to give mystical wisdom, and it has a bunch of different rainbow colors very similar to moonstones and opal, we're going to talk about next. Monoclinic is tetragonal crystals that are a little bit more prisms and double pyramids. Example, this is moonstone, you can see how it's straightened on the top and it has those really beautiful crystals and different rainbow effects on the top of it. Then azurite, which is this stone here, and gypsum is another example of that. Then finally, we have amorphous crystals, which are minerals without a crystalline shapes, and an example of this is amber, which is actually fossilized tree resin, or obsidian, which is actually a volcanic glass, but my favorite of this is opal, which is really beautiful stone that can come in a lot of different shapes and has a really amazing colors inside. We're going to go through each of these different lattice structures and pick. I'm going to pick one of each, and we're going to go two at a time, and do it step-by-step of how to make these watercolor resist crystals. Before we get into painting, I want to take you along to show you some actual crystals in real life. Here is a Rock Star Crystals in New York City. It's in Chelsea midtown area. I thought, I'll just take it along so we could observe what we've learned in real life. The first piece I noticed was this gorgeous amethyst cluster. You can see how each of those little tooth pieces are all stuck in there. Then we have a celestite, which is one of the crystals were going to be illustrating today, which is such a gorgeous stone, and they had quite a few of these here. They even have them shaped like eggs, which are amazing dragon egg-like and very magical. I also found this amethyst, which is very similar to the illustration we're going to be doing, but they had so many gorgeous clusters of amethyst around. Then I also noticed some crystals that I never even heard of before, that's called the spirit of fairy quartz, which is really interesting shape. But then my favorite I found later on was this opal aura quartz. Just so gorgeous, I can barely believe it was real. Next up we have some fluorite, which is one of the crystals we're going to be illustrating. Finally, this extra large quartz, which you can really see the different structure that's going to take, and it is very similar to the aquamarine illustration we're going to be doing. Of course, I couldn't leave without buying anything, so I picked up this quartz geode and we're ready to go onto painting. 4. fluorite & apatite : The first thing I'm going to do is grab some extra paper and a pencil to do my sketches so that I can get that muscle memory go in and show you what each on sketch should look like. First, we're going to do the cubic and a tetragonal types of crystals. I've chosen fluorite and apatite to do these two. For fluorite, it has a cubic look to it. We're going to start out like if you're creating different cubes all over here. You want them to be random. You can look at reference pictures if you'd like. From this point, we can turn each of these into their own crystal structure. See no crystals have a split. Then you can have the different facets coming out of that. I'm just adding an extra line through the middle of the square, and then down below. I don't want it to be too perfect, so here I'm just going to create a little rough edge. Because crystals are never perfect, that's why they're so interesting. I'm just connecting here, and then creating the bottom of the crystal. Again, having it be an irregular shape. Here is what fluorite will look like. Then we're going to go ahead with apatite, which is a bit of a simpler shape. We're going to create two parallel lines. Then we are going to create triangles on either side, and then break these triangles up, and then create faces up the apatite here. Nice and simple. Now that we have this, move it away so I have it as a reference. I'm going to recreate them with my masking fluid pen or whatever method you choose to use. I just like this one the most, because I can take it to a lot of different places. I'm just going to do the exact same thing, but without the guides of the square. Here we go with fluorite. You want to make sure your lines are thick enough that it will trap the paint inside. If you have a really thin line, you can go over it again. Remember to give a good base for your crystal to look like it's sitting on. That helps it look more realistic. You can see here where the cubic structure is, and I'm just making those into the nice flat faces of this crystal. Great. While that dries, we're going to go over here and do our apatite. Again, just two parallel lines. A trick for creating straighter lines is to make sure you pull towards you and you don't push it away. This is the simplest way to do it. You can see I didn't really move my hand, I just moved my whole arm with it and that gives gravity a little bit of help. Splitting up these different faces right here and right here. I'm going to let these dry. You could use a hairdryer if you wish. I'll come back to do the painting section. They're both dry now. I don't know if you can tell on camera, but I can tell it's dry when the colors change slightly. It depends on the fluid that you're using, but this particular fluid turns from bluer to greener, and I also just tap these little bubbles. If they are dry, usually, that means the rest of it is dry, too. Now, we're going to go into colors. Fluorite, actually, comes with a bunch of different colors. This one I have used in our reference sheet is golden amber color, but I'm actually going to go with one that is more of a sea green color. Because I think that will go the best with our apatite. In my palette, I'm going to mix together this green with whatever blue that's still left in my palette, and add some blue to that in light blue. I'm liking how this color is looking. Can you see that on screen? How's that? This is the color I'm working with right now, but I'm going to clean most of the paint off of my brush. I've cleaned most of the paint off my brush and I just kept it really wet. I'm just going to soak the inside only of this crystal. I have to keep a tiny bit of paint in the water I'm using because this way I can see where I've painted and where I haven't, so I'm less likely to miss shapes. You can also just use dirty water, which I also use a lot. If you accidentally color outside the lines a little bit, it's okay. You can leave it like that or if it bothers you, you can take a Q-tip or your paper towel, and just soak it up. Now that everything is good there, I'm going to go ahead and take my next mixed-up blue-green, and go into different sections, and just touch my brush down and let the paint spread by itself. If you've taken my Watercolor Moons Class, it's the same exact technique, wet-on-wet. I'm going to let those spread out, and if there are any places that look a little dry or a little too concentrated, I'll just let those blend right out. Next, I'm going to go in with the blue and just dip it a little bit in our green mixture, so you can brighten this up and have a little bit more sea-colored. If you notice your paints aren't spreading very much, you can just add a little bit more water. I'm also going to add a little bit of dark blue in, too with my green mixture to get a little bit more depth of color. With your darker colors hue, you can focus it on some of the smaller facets, and that creates the shadow like they're facing away from the light, and gives it a little bit more of a realistic effect. I'm really liking how this one is looking, so we'll let this guy dry and see if there's any more layers that we need to do. But in the meantime, we'll come over here to apatite, which is actually much more of a yellowy-green. I'm going to clean off this part of my palette, because I want to make sure that I leave this blue-green mixture I've created in case I want to come back into it. These parts that are really green, aren't really sea green. I'm going to dab them away, now that I'm looking at it. Back to the matter at hand, I am going to mix up a yellow-green. Literally, I'm mixing the yellow and the green in my palette. I'm going to focus on the yellow more so, just because green is such a strong color that it overpowers otherwise. I'm actually, going to add a little bit of orange as well to add a little bit of warmth to it. Always, I'm more of the darker color, but you can't take it away. Now that I've got my color here, actually, a tiny bit of blue. There you go. Now that I've got my color, again, I'm going to leave a little bit of paint on my brush and brush it throughout the inside of the crystal. There we go. I'm going to take my color and let this spread out on the lines. When the crystal has a solid look like this one does without as much detail and interest, I like to outline it first. I'm just taking my more saturated color in a really wet brush and drawing along the inside of the crystal and letting the water move it around. It's looking really yellow, so I'm going to go in and add a little bit of this light blue into our paint mixture, and add a little bit of that throughout. This works really well too because then the yellow or green shines through. These crystals are really luminescent. Instead of going along the outline that we've already created, I'm just going right through the middle. Now, I'm going to take my paper towel and just create some texture by wrinkling it up and gently pressing it down. Nice. Now I'm going to mix in our darker colors. I'm adding some dark blue to our yellow mixture, which is going to create some depth with this color. All right. I'll let these both dry and we'll come back for our second layer. Now that these are dry, well, mostly, it doesn't really matter all that much if they're completely dry because we're going to do another layer. This layer is going to darken things up because the nature of watercolor is that it dries lighter than you've done before. We can already see how we're getting some really nice textures, and how the paint spread out here and here. This one could use a little bit more depth, so I'm going to start out with this one and just do another coat of water. I'm going to mix a darker, warm green and I'm going to dot this alongside the outlines. If you see it's not spreading where you'd like it to, you can add another drop of water. Now I'm going to mix up a darker green, blue-green, and just dot that a little bit to create some interest. Sorry for the honking, living in Brooklyn. I've created those dots and I am going to soften them out with just drops of water. We'll let those spread out and then we're going to come back to this one. This one I am going to just wet selective facets of this crystal because I really like how some of them have stayed almost white and have just nice patterns inside of those. I'm just going to go and wet here and there, and go in with the same color and use that to darken up a few areas. The best way to do this is to think about where the light would touch. I'm imagining if the light came from here, then these facets here wouldn't get as much light and they'd probably have a little bit of a different shadow. But you can also, if you don't feel like exerting that mental energy, you can always look at a reference photo and see how the facets are looking. But you can see how this one's really light and that's creating that really nice 3D effect. I'm going to take a little bit more green and blues and mix those together and dot those around. I'm just doting those in those same spots. When I squint my eyes, I can see that it's missing a little bit of darkness up here, so even though this texture is really nice and I'm sad to lose it, I'm going to go over this with a darker color. That's looking much better. I'm going to dot this out a little bit more, and then I'm going to leave these to dry completely at this time. Actually, first, I'm going to dab away some color from our apatite here. Just create a little bit more texture. I'm going to let these guys dry completely. This is important because, at this point, it has to be 100 percent dry or else you will peel off your paper, and peel off your paint, and smudge everything. That just ruins the whole clean magic look we're going for, so I'll come back when this is 100 percent dry. All right. Everything is dry now. I'm going to start taking off the masking fluid, which is the most fun part. I just scratch up a bit of it on the side and I'm just pulling off these little strings to reveal those nice clean edges. If you have trouble doing this, you can also use just a regular eraser to help peel it up. But again, you have to make doubly, triply sure that it's completely dry. You can see how perfect of a nice clean line that is. There's one. It doesn't really matter where you start peeling from, you usually just have to go in pieces anyway. I'm just going to peel all of this off. This part's so exciting, to see the crystal come into shape. You can tell how it's going to look with the masking fluid on it, but there's just something about peeling it off that really makes it come together. There we go. If you are worried that you've missed any, you can just run your hand over and the masking fluid will stay raised so you can pick off any last bits. Now that the masking fluid is all gone and these are looking great, I'm going to just add a little bit of detail with my white pen here. You can also use your gold or any embellishments you want. But for these ones, I'm just going to stick with a little bit of white pen and just add a little bit of shine. We're just keeping it simple and just adding a couple of extra lines throughout each of the facets so it makes it a little bit more three-dimensional. I'm also going to clean up these edges here because of the white pen, it whites them out. Got a little smudge here too. All right. Those are first crystals, here is fluorite and apatite. We'll come back and do our next lattice structures. 5. celestite & aquamarine: For our next crystal structures, we're going to be doing orthorhombic and hexagonal. For these ones I have chosen celestite, which is similar to the one that we have in our reference material here, and then I've also chosen rough aquamarine because it's one of my very favorite. Again, I'm going to start out with the pencil sketches so you can see where you're masking fluid will go. For the celestite, we're going to start out and just create a bumpy circle. This is going to be the outer edge of that geoid shape. Then I'm going to create another edge here, and this one's not going to be solid masking fluid line, it's just going to be a reference. Here we're going to have just some crystals coming up, so I'm just going to create some different shapes throughout. Just create more of a natural look, and you don't want it to be too symmetrical or anything because it just doesn't create the right effect for this work. Okay, we've got that all around. Then I'm going to go in here and you keep in mind that this is going to be inside. We're going to create just some structures here that will be more of our actual crystallites structures. Just keep in mind that it's a diamond shape, so my orthorhombic shapes are similar to the diagonal like we did with the archetype, but it's a little bit more diamond shaped, when you think of a diamond like this. Not an actual, this kind of diamond, so this one. We're just going to be doing that all around, and then I'm going to start getting smaller with my shapes as I get towards that center. Okay. All right, so there is celestite. Then for aquamarine, we're going to also have a base, just like we did with our fluoride. But instead of having just little nubs here and there, we're going to have much taller kind of like skyscraper looking things. I'm just going to start here and outline my basic shape, and then I'm going to create my prisms. You have to remember that hexagonal ones, they have six sides. You're not going to be able to tell from your drawing that it needs to have six sides, but if you are wondering if it's going to look realistic, you might just want to keep that in mind. I've got here, here's one, and you've got 1, 2, 3, 4, maybe 5, 6 is behind there. It doesn't truly matter, but if you're a science nerd, it matters a little bit. I'm just going to go and create some here that are leaning some ways. It's like if you had a really windy city. The skyscrapers are going to tumble a little bit. They can vary in size to and I'm just creating basically hexagon up here, half of one, and then drawing lines down from there. Do some here. Then once I have this part finished, I'm going to create a couple that arc shooting out and break that really perfect cityscape look. Difference between this and the one we did last time with the fluoride, is that we are making sure the tops stay flat. That's how natural aquamarine looks. This is the basic of how your masking fluid will look. I'm going to put this away and use it as a reference for my masking fluid. This is all dried up now. We're going to go in and start mixing our colors for our celestite and our amethyst. I'm just going to clean up my palate. For celestite it's really pale blue, but the first thing we're going to do is mix a stone, gray, brown, blue color for the outer edge. I've got this nice bluish, grayish, brownish color, and I'm just going to run that on the outer side of this entire piece. Then I'm going to take my brush and starting from this middle section here, I'm going to do a wash of color, or of just water, but just a bit of color on it. If it spreads, you color around the edges, that's good, that's what we want. Soft gradient up from the edge. Now it's all filled in, I'm going to go in with our pale blue here. I'm going to add a little bit of the darker blue to give it a little bit of a different tint, and then I'm going to add a tiny drop of purple. This around, excuse me, celestite is very pale, so we're going to not over do it as far as the colors are concerned. I'm just going to dot this into the facets and leaving some spaces white. Again, if you don't feel there's pretty much, you can always add more water to your brush. So far I like how this is turning out, but I'm going to go in with our paper towel and just dab away some of the areas to make it a little bit brighter. I'm going back in with my paint, darken it up a little bit, and add a little bit of a different shade throughout. Another thing I'm going to end up doing is darkening this whole section so that it looks like it's pushed back. I won't worry about making a nice texture there because I'm just going to go over later. I'm going to take this blue again and I'm going to add a little bit of gray paint to it. Just to add a little bit more dimension, another color. Now that I'm looking at this our outer rim area has gone soft, so I'm going to go ahead and add another round of that on here. I'm going to add a little black this time. Again, you can always remember that watercolor's dry, much lighter than they appear when wet. I'm not too worried about that looking pretty dark, I'm actually pretty pleased with how that looks. I'm going to go ahead, and again, go through and just dab away in a few areas. I'm going to mix up a darker blue, just adding a little bit of black to it, and fill in a few areas here. We'll let that one dry and we will work on our aquamarine. I am going to go ahead and wet my brush with clean water and fill in my shape. An aquamarine is very similar color to what we did for the celestite, but it's a little bit more on the green side. This is more of an icy blue. This is more of a sea blue, hence the name aquamarine. This one is actually one of my favorites. I always wear what have been recently, anyway wearing a pendant with an aquamarine on it but I had no idea it grew in these funny cityscape type stocks. When you see a cut gem, it's just not what it's grown up as, along which is always so funny to me. I'm going to clean up any dots that missed their mark. Then I am going to mix up a new color. I'm going to start again with that same light blue and add a touch of green. That's really the perfect color for aquamarine. Maybe a little bit, a touch more blue, but debatable. I'm just going to spot this on areas that would have more shadow. I'm focusing on these areas that are overlapping or behind some crystals. I'm going to go ahead and trace some of the outlines as well. With a very watery brush. I'm going to go ahead and leave some of these spaces pure white just because aquamarine is very transparent looking stone. I will just leave those as is and they'll make it have like more of an airy appearance. Then I'm going to add that dark blue to this, and dot back into those places we were talking about before. Where there's overlaps and where there's going to be more shadow. I'll let both of these guys dry and we'll come back for our second layer. This is dried a little bit now. I'm going to go ahead and go in with another layer. At this time I'm going to take this pure light blue and dot this in. You can see how it's still really spreading because this one hasn't completely dried. It just gotten to the point where it's not so shiny if I turn my head and see it where the light is and this will help me create more concentrated areas of color. I'm going to go over some of our lines, leaving some white spaces and then I'm going to add some darker colors too. Needs a little bit of green. When you're mixing colors for this, you have to think real Caribbean Sea colors, not just like your average Atlantic Ocean. I'm just adding this darker color where their shadows would be and adding some textures on here and making sure that each facet is filled. Because this one right here, even though I like to leave a bit of white, that one wasn't filled up all the way. Then I'm going to take my paper towel and roll it up into a little log and use that to just take out those big puddles and leave more of the white paper underneath. Staying away from these areas that are to remain in shadows. In fact, I got this in a little bit too much here. If you get it too dark of a color like this, you can just go ahead and dab it away. I'm going to take a wet brush, pick it up but I still need that part to be darker, so I'm going to take the dark blue and mix it with some of that green and do a little bit of a lighter color. There we go. That's what I meant to do the first time. Then with citrine, I'm sorry I keep calling it that way, I don't know why, with celestite. We're going to take this dark color here, which is just a black mixed with dark blue and I'm going to fill in this area here because this is like the deep dark depths of it. This is only a few layers to really sink in but that's how it looks so far. Then I'm going to take the same color and really dilute it. Not diluted enough. Basically I'm just going to take water with a touch of this guy and just move it throughout so that doesn't look so stuck in the middle of there. You can start to see now how that darkness really brings your eye in, and it makes it look like you're looking at inside of something, which is really interesting. I'm focusing the darker facets here on this inner part. Remember, when we did our reference sketch, we had it start here and I did a circle before I circle around there, and I'm focusing on those because those pieces will be more facing inwards. I'm also going to add a little bit more color. I'm going to take this pale blue again and just mix it up with a tiny bit of the black and blue, and just add this around as well. I feel this one could be brighter too, so since we're doing another layer, I'm going to take my brush and just add in some of the straight pale blue. This is looking really good. I'm going to go ahead around the outside again with this brown-gray color that we made. You can see how it's really lightened up just like we talked about. Just something you get used to. I'm just going around here. That's looking good. Adding a little bit more blue around. At this point, if you want to add some embellishments, you can. I'm going to add some of the silver from my fine-type palette. I'm just going to wet my brush a lot until I can pick up some of this, and then I'm going to just spark this through, making sure not to touch the black because it will spread around. But this will give it just a little bit of shine, and only when you hold that the right angle. I'm not even sure if you're going to be able to see us on camera, but I'll be sure to show you the finished piece. I will go ahead and let these dry, and we'll come back to peel off the masking fluid. It's all dry or mostly. I'm going to peel this one here. You can just go over this with an eraser, like I said before, but it really does increase your risk of smudging, and since I'm notorious about not waiting long enough for my work to actually dry, I've learned my lesson for using an eraser, at least. That was a good pull right there. This one really comes together once you start to peel it off because you can't really tell if it's successful with the craning. It looking like it's pulling inwards until you pull off the masking fluid, and especially like little speckles we did too. Let's help bring it to life now. It's my dream to pull off one of these and have it come off in one giant spiderweb and not split at all. I don't know if it's possible. Maybe if you had really thick lines. I have to try it out. Although I'm not sure that will create the most beautiful crystal illustrations. I don't know if you can see on camera, but there is the slight silver that we did, is really popping now that we pulled away the masking fluid because it's the most raised thing. Looks really nice. I'll make sure to show it to you after I get the rest of this off. This is the last take here. It's just about done. Nice and shiny. Really subtle shine now. Then aquamarine here. It's going to be a little bit quicker. A bonus of doing things that are lighter color. A little bit quicker. Here is the aquamarine. 6. amethyst & turquoise : Next we're going to do our trigonal and triclinic different crystal shapes. For the trigonal, we're going to do amethyst and just as a reminder, it's really similar to aquamarine, the hexagonal structure but with a threefold axis instead. With amethyst, there's a few ways you can do it. You can either do a cluster of a crystals like we've done before with our fluoride and with our aquamarine. But since we've already done those, I'm going to go ahead and just do with one shard looks like a tooth of these crystals. I'm going to go ahead and do our sketch first just like we spoke of. It just comes up on the top and has this three points maybe like fragment here. It's a little bit rough maybe on one side, maybe it got ground down and then it comes in at this tooth shape. More so than that, I'm going to add in a little bit more texture. There's usually a few more facets that have developed around. The facets aren't usually so stark. That's going to be what our amethyst will look like. Then for our triclinic, we're going to do turquoise, which is a classic and honestly the shape looks like a regular old rock. I'm just going to do a simple blob for lack of a better word and then you want to think about how it's going to be sitting on something so we're going to leave that line straight down right here. This is going to be our bottom and then we're going to have a stone that has a flat face here. Then just some textures here and go through this. I know it's not the most exciting shape but the colors for this one are what's more important. Now, we're going to go ahead and use this as our reference. Before I get started with the colors on this one, we're going to have to do one more step for turquoise so you might have seen this before if you've seen my other classes, but this is my Fang tech pellet, but you can use any gold paint that you have. We are going to create some gold veins. If you've ever seen a raw turquoise, you'd know that they have these beautiful gold veins running through out. If you want a tutorial on how to use this palette, you can take my unusual tools class, which I'll be sure to link in the description. But I'm just going to take my brush and load it up with this beautiful paint and spread it throughout. It doesn't really matter where it goes because we're going to do some masking fluid over it. I'm just adding it here. Just adding it into cracks and if you get any masking fluid on your brush, make sure you get it off right away because that stuff ruins them. Now, we've got some random veins of gold and I'm going to let this dry completely before we do our next round of masking fluid. This is all dry now and we're going to go back in with our masking fluid and just create some lines over top to make these veins really pop out. I'm just doing thin lines over and just if you look at how things crack open, that's how these look. They don't have to be perfect. In fact, they can not be perfect, just little lightening bolts. I'm going to add these dots here and there too. This one I'm filling in a little bit more. Not a solid blob, but more filled in so that you'll see more of the gold when we peel it off. We'll let this dry and we'll come back to do the color. I'm going to go ahead and work on our amethyst. I'm just going to go in, you know the draw right now with a wet brush spread it throughout. An important part about these kinds of amethyst is that the route, if you will, of this arm tooth shape stays a good clear court color. The rest that, we can mix up as we please. I'm going to start out with a blue and a purple, dark blue and purple to create a very cool purple tone. Then add in a tiny bit of red to bring it a little bit more neutral. Then we're going to take this and with a wet brush, start at this very tip and press it down. Wiggle your brush a little bit to disperse a bit more pigment. See already that looks pretty crystalline. I'm going to do this on this section here and my idea is that if I can get this pigment to fade out all the way down to the bottom, then I don't have to worry about dabbing away any of these to keep it clear. I'm adding more water than pigment on this and on my brush and just smoothing it down so that it ends up to be more clear in the end. Now, I'm going to take a little bit more red and add it to my paint. I added too much. A little bit less red until I have a color like this and then I'm going to add just a few specks of this in here for more dimension. Then I'm going to do the same, but with more of a blue. So really cool toned purple. I dab away here, just because it's really wet so I know it's going to take a while to dry. There really wasn't much painting in that. Then I'm also going to take this in some area and make a harsher line for where the crystal part ends. This is looking nice, but I feel like it needs a bit more depth so I'm going to go back in with my purple, my neutral toned purple and add a little bit black to it. I'm just going to dot that there are a few of the sections. Make sure this is dry. Oops it's not. I'll let this dry and make sure the masking fluid is completely dry as well and then come back to do the turquoise. Our masking fluid has dried now so we're going to go in with our turquoise. Turquoise color is rare, that color got its name. It's really nice blue, green color, dark, murky but so bright somehow at the same time. I'm going to mix that up then I'm going to rinse my brush. Go over all this with some water and this one, the color is pretty uniform and not like this one where we want to keep the end of it clear. So I'm not so much worrying about the amount of pigment I have on here. We're only going to do one layer of this because you can see already how the gold is transferring. We're just going to go in here, do some dots. Let them spread out. I have never been much of a turquoise person but man, those gold they're nice. I'm going to darken up this color and just touch this in the corners of our facets here, our rock facets. Don't be shy about going over the gold bits because we're going to peel them off later. Obviously, that's our turquoise. We're going to let this guy dry we might add a little bit more if it is looking a little bit too light and amethyst is looking pretty good too. I'm just going to go and take some of this purple blue color amethyst, if you will, and touch up these areas that have missed color somehow. I'm also going to create stronger lines coming down into the clear part of the teeth. We'll let these dry to peal off the masking fluid. There you go, turquoise. See how beautiful that gold is? It turned out really nice. I like them. 7. moonstone & opal: Next up we have the monoclinic lattice structure, which we're going to do moonstone for, which is one of my very favorites and those are pyramids and prisms and they're kind of skewed off. They a lot of times have a different like straight on the top. Then we're going to do it [inaudible] , which is a mineral that doesn't have a crystalline shape so it includes things like amber and obsidian that we spoke about before and we're going to do opal for this one. To start out with my regular paper and do my outline, so I'm going to do moonstone and opal. For the moonstone, I'm going to keep it really simple and let the colors do the talking. I'm going to make a base like we have done with our other stones and on top, just give it a little bit of texture, let my hand do the looming. Then I'm just going to create little mountain ridges on the top of this. We're going to rely more on our color for these stones. Then for the opal, I'm also going to keep it pretty simple and just do an amorphous shape. I'm going to create a rock shape here and then just create a few different striations throughout this shape here. I'm also going to add a few sections that are all mast out because this opal stone has a real shine to it, so I'll make a few of those so that they stay white. I'm going to use this as my reference. Now that it's dry we're going to go in with our water layer. I'm just going to wet my brush and smooth along the outline of both of the stones. Opal really has rainbow colors, so we'll do rainbow for the opal. But the moonstone, I'm going to stick with more blues and yellows. I actually have moonstone ring that I wear a lot and those are the colors that are most prevalent, maybe a little bit purple as well but keeping this one a little bit more on one side of the color spectrum rather than a rainbow. Although it is really hard to tell the difference when you're just looking at a picture of I'm assuming opal, if you don't really know the difference. But I'll start with my moonstone here, and I've picked up the light blue, and I'm just going to dot this around and let it spread out. Going in with the yellow and making sure that I touch places that don't have blue yet because I don't want a green to happen. The other thing about this yellow is that it's pretty saturated, so I make sure that add a lot of water and maybe dab a little bit away if it's starting to get too saturated. Because at the end of the day the stone still kind of seems white almost. I'm going in with just a little, I'm going to make a puddle of water and just add a dab of pink into that so that I can just tint some of this area here so it's not just clean paper. I'm basically using dirty water. Although I guess slightly pink water, you probably would not consider it dirty. I'm going to add a little bit more blue and I'm going to mix a little bit of the dark blue in but just dilute it a lot into that same pink water so I can get a very faint blue purple. It's looking nice. Now I want to make sure the colors are more balanced. I'm going to add a little bit of yellow where it hasn't made it over to these sections and add a little bit of blue in the yellow sections. It's dried out a little bit now so it's not going to create as much of a green color, but if it's a little bit green it's okay. Let that guy dry and come over to our opal. I'm going to do a really similar technique just with more colors this time. I'm going to start again with the light blue because that's my favorite. This time I'm just going to rag the color so it has a further reach. I've got that blue and I'm going to make a purple color, let that really fade in. Dab in some yellows, some pinks. I'm going to dab this way because again, we want to keep this wiped but still allow that pastel color to come through. The purple is really fallen away so I'm going to add a little bit more of that. It's already starting to get a really nice glow in there, which is great. I'm actually going to add a little bit of red, just very desaturated red so that tint again. I feel like this is a really nice touch. I'm going to dabble a little bit more and I think I'll add a little bit of blue into this corner because it looks a little unbalanced for that color and a little bit of that purple tint too. Then I'm going to let these guys dry completely and come right back. These are dry now, we're ready to go in with their next layer, but we're going to do something a little bit different other than going and doing another tie-dye pastel layer like we've done other previous stones. Were going to go in with just a dark gray, black, purpley mixture and create the shadows of our stones because since these are meant to stay so light, they don't really need another layer of saturation, they just need some more dimensions. I'm going to start out with this guy and I've mixed up a purpley black color and desaturated it a lot with some water. I am going to shade this bottom section here so that it looks more realistic like this part is having a shadow cast over it. I'm leaving some of the color shining through, but going through it all and just leaving a little slivers. You can see already how that's giving it a little bit more of a dimension like that cupcake bottom. Just adding a little bit more, [inaudible]. Now I'm going to go up into our little mountains here and do the same thing. I'm thinking if the light's coming from this direction, then we'll have a little bit shade away from that. With my desaturated colors, I'm just going to create some little divots throughout. The reason I've chosen to mix up a purpley gray rather than just using a black, is because it's so much softer and this stones don't really have hard shadows, it's just slightly less colorful in those areas, which is part of what makes them so beautiful. But in general, when using watercolors, you try to stay away from black when you can, and mix up your own colors because it has a little bit more of dimension. I don't always follow that rule because I feel like it depends on the piece, but in this case, I feel like using a color other than black definitely makes a difference. I'm just going through here and blending things away so they don't look too perfect. Believing so the harsher edges too. I'm going to add a little bit more darkness to my color and just go over these feathers here again for a little bit more depth, and this is the line. Now, I am going to do the same over here with that same purpley gray color, and the light is coming this way, I'm just going to add some shadows to each of the sections and concentrate it on these sections below here. That'll be casts and more shadow. This is one of the beauties of watercolor that they have that transparency. Even though you go over them, you can still see how the different colors peek through. Layering, important for watercolors, and so with the opal, it has a little bit of a smoother texture. I'm going to get rid of all of the harsh edges that have popped up from doing these shadows here. Now that we've done that, you could stop here and just let these dry and peel off your masking fluid, but I'm going to go in with my finite palate. I think for these stones in particular, they're made for painting moon stones and opals. They really make a huge difference for these paintings and I just love the effect they give. I'm going to wet these a little bit and I'm going to go back in, because I'm noticing that this one is dried really by already. I'm going to do a little bit more while I'm waiting for the paint to take. But then I'll be able to use these fine tags to create that really luminescent shine that these stones have naturally. I really think that the natural curve of stones is so beautiful and sometimes I wonder why you cut them because I feel like I would like this just as much as I like this ring, or no. What do you guys think? Do you like stones better or just natural stones? I've given us a chance to set a little bit and I can just rough it up with my brush, and I'm just going to debit along here. I'm starting out with this blue because that's been a real popular color for these stones. I'm going to go over just the high points that will be reflecting light. On this stone is going to be this area if I'm thinking that it's going this way, and on the moonstone, there'll be an each of these sections right here, these little tops of the mountains. Then I'm going to add a little bit of yellow and I'm wetting it down so that it can spread out, because you don't need it to be perfect. I'm adding a little bit more to the moonstone and I'm just going to do that on the bottom portion as well. But then I'm going to step back for this one because they're not quite as luminescent as opal. I'm going to concentrate more on that illustration. Just a few more spots, like it's just peeking through, and then we're going to come back to this one and do a whole rainbow of colors. I'm adding some of the green, some of the pink, some of the purple, and again, I'm layering some of these colors over the color that I painted it like blue on top of blue. But this paint really does work well if you do the offset, like I'm adding this yellow and this purple on top of the blue and you can still see the blue shining through it, which is a really nice effect, especially for these opal, opalescent colors, because it really does shine through the top. I'm not sure if this is picking up on camera, but I'll be sure to show it to you closer. But I am going to let these guys dry and we'll come back to peel away the masking fluid and at our last little effects. Now let's peel it off. Now, I'm gong to go in with our white pen and just intensify our white highlights, and actually I think I'm going to go in with an ink in this space. Just because the way that the highlights look, if you look at a picture of an opal, they shine over each of the different colors. I'm going to take some of my white ink here. Just a little bit of water and deb over this for, well, prefecture shine. I'll do that in a couple of places, but primarily right here and right here where the light would hit. Great. I'm going to do that a little bit too here on the mountain tops, for lack of a better term. If you ever feel like your white pen just isn't doing enough. For here the white ink is always an option and there we have our moonstone and opal, I'll bring up close so see the highlighting effect we got here. The white is still wet but you can still see how gorgeous that is. 8. project !: So you've completed the class at this point. Congratulations. I can't wait to see your work. The class project is to create your own crystal illustration using the methods that we've learned here. You can do the same ones that I've shown you step-by-step or you can go out on a limb and try your own based on the reference materials I've compiled for you or just based on your favorite crystal. So I can't wait to see your work. If you'd like to see some of mine, you can view my blog at www. [inaudible].com or across the Internet at [inaudible]. I'll be in the class description, comments area if you have any questions. So feel free to reach out and see you in the next class.