Panda. A Beginner's Watercolour Class with Jane Davies

1. Introduction: Hello, and welcome to Panda. This is the third and final class in my beginner series. Today, I'll be introducing you to the sectioning areas off. This essential technique helps with both control and timing and makes Panda a perfect first animal for us to paint together. I'm Jane Davis. I live, paint, teach, and walk my lovely spaniels in the beautiful South Downs National Park in England. Over the last 20 years, I've taught myself the free flow technique that you see today. Not having been to art school, finding my own way has been fun and sometimes daunting, but has allowed me to develop my own style. This has led me to teach others either on a one to one basis or as part of a group in a wonderful studio in the heart of the South Downs. I also run a successful art business where two days are never the same from the thrill of exhibiting to painting pet and wildlife commissions in my own home studio. I panda, we're going to combine everything we've already learnt. And I'm going to show you one more important technique, and that sectioning areas off. This allows us to control where that wonderful paint flows to. We're going to keep it nice and straightforward with just one color and add some simple eyes and a mouth for that all important character. I'll also be showing you how to create some simple fur texture so your finished piece really comes to life. Then you'll find dozens of my master classes available, covering a wide range of beautiful subjects. In each one, I share the techniques I use in my own professional work. We'll have a lot of fun together, and you'll gain the understanding and confidence to incorporate everything you learn into your own work. You'll be amazed at how easy watercolor can be. Plus, I share a few of my tips and tricks along the way, too. If you'd like to learn more about me or my work, then please pop over to my website at Jan Davis watercolors.co dot K. This can be found on my profile page, along with the links to my Instagram and Facebook pages. I'm very active on my social media, where I love to share my art, especially on stories with many ideas, works in progress, and tales of studio life. I really hope you will share all your paintings on the projects and resources pages. I love seeing your masterpieces. And don't forget I'm here to help if you get stuck or have any questions. I want you to experience that buzz of painting in this liberating wet on wet loose style. So, come and join me. 2. Materials: So let me run through all the materials you need to paint the third of the beginner classes and your very first animal. Look how cute she is. Right, only one color to show you today, and you only need one color. So I have sol genuine, as it's one of my favorite colors or all time. Obviously, if you haven't got soda like genuine, absolutely fine. You can use colors. I think in my previous filming of this, I used a Pain's gray. You could use Indigo. Bishoul be a bit causier to Indigo. It's quite stainy and quite I always find Indigo quite challenging, but really any darker color, you can do black. Why not? Pandas, black, after all. So, yes, use whichever color you're happy using. I've I've got the bokingfood and that's 200 pound knot, and it's not being stretched. Got a little mount. Again, really not necessary. It's only just it's quite fun to put a little mount round her, but say, not necessary at all. I've also got my little pot of water. I've got just a standard rubber. I've got my little heart, which is about an inch high just again for tilting my paper. Kitchen roll or paper towel, I have a pencil. It doesn't matter what pencil, as long as it can be rubbed out quite easily. I have a number ten brush, but and a number naught. But like I said, in the previous classes, a larger brush, a smaller brush is absolutely fine. And I will introduce you to a hair dryer this time. It's off camera. I don't think you probably need to see it. It's just a hair dryer. But it's quite handy, and I do use it in most of my classes just for finishing off drying. It just speeds the process along a if you're like me, you get a little bit like, I just want to get on. I don't want to wait. So that's a handy tool to have, but again, by no means a necessity. All these projects, sorry, all these materials can be found in the projects and resources pages so that they're all there for you. I will pop a couple of examples of my panda up there. Unfortunately, no reference photo. Very early on, I didn't have reference photos when I started filming these skill share classes. And I can't find the original photo I must have used. So I'm afraid you only have my painting as reference for this class. No reference photo. But there is that template, as well. So use the template, which is downloadable and you can sort of cut out the template just to get the right shape and get those eyes in the right place. So anyway, before I carry on, as I do, chatting away, let's go and sketch her out so we can get painting. 3. Sketching Out: So let me give you a few little tips and tricks on sketching out your very first animal. I hope you're jolly excited. Now, again, don't forget that template in the projects and resources pages. But once you've done that outline, then obviously, you need to fill in the inside. Just take your time at this stage. Obviously, we've got no paint involved, so there's no great hurry. The most important thing with animals, and this particular style is the eyes and the nose. If you can get those in the right place, you're almost three quarters there, the rest of the painting is ever so loose. But as humans, we are drawn to eyes, and getting the nose and little expressions right are quite important. So I would say, take your time, get that shape of that eye right just the tiniest of you get a little little curve up that will give you a completely different character. So it's worth taking your time to get those right. Again, the nose get that in. There's a nice muzzle shape here, so that's worth getting right. And these are just the patches, so not too important because they will just blend. But again, the ears are quite a nice shape. And it's a little chin down here. The rest of the body, I say, it doesn't matter as much. I was looking at my, as I say, because these are being filmed again. I looked at my older piece. Let me show you this. I've got him beside me. I look and see how I've curved it out a lot more, so don't worry too much. I just thought it looked a little bit better like that. But, I say, don't panic too much if that's not quite right. But, I say, I was dressed, get the eyes and the nose right. And again, like I probably repeating myself, but I think it's worth repeating. Make sure your pencil lines are nice and light, especially on the top of the head and down the side, we're going to leave those that lovely loose, lost and found edges like we did with the butterflies. So ideally, we don't want to be seeing these pencil marks. Again, mine are a little probably heavier than I would sketch out normally, but I want you to be able to see what I'm doing. So I don't think there's anything else to help you with. I say, once you got that right, and I often say, actually, when you're doing your animals or it's a little complex, more complex subject. It's worth sketching out and literally just stepping away for 5 minutes, maybe just go down and make yourself a cup of tea, come back, have a look at your sketch, look at your reference photo. I'm afraid there isn't a reference photo with this because I say, very early on, I didn't use reference photos, and I really can't find where I found this lovely panda from. So I'm afraid you've only got my paintings. But in future classes, there's always a reference photo. So it's worth going back and say, if you're doing your own pieces, sketch them out, look at your reference photo, look at your drawing and make sure that's right before you start painting because it's very hard to sort of alter things as you paint personally. I like to get my sketch right before I begin. Then I know I'm safe. I'm good to go. Anyway, get that right, and we'll start some painting. Oh, and actually, before you disappear off, just a little word about I suppose I probably don't rub stuff out too much, but when I was looking back at my old video and the old class of this, I made myself quite a good point. If you do a lot of pencil marks and a lot of rubbing out, that will often affect the quality and the sort of texture surface of your paper. So try your best not to do too much rubbing out because you will destroy the paper, and the paint just won't flow quite as well. So I thought that was a useful tip I mentioned last time around. You can go now. 4. Face First Layer: Okay. Onto the exciting part now. So let's do some painting. So I'm going to get rid of my pencil and my rubber because I don't need that anymore. Pick up my bigger brush, and save just one colour so nice and simple. And we need to get that nice and saturated. Wake it up if you haven't started using it already, and we'll just take the excess Wister off the brush, and we're going to start sectioning areas off. So I will explain, hopefully, as I go through. It's probably the best way. But sectioning off, so I'm wetting down just the ear, not going into the body, I'm just sectioning this part off. And we're going to go on to the other ear. This just obviously allows me just to paint the ears. I don't have to worry about any other aspect to the painting at the moment, the paint will only find wet paper. So as long as I haven't got anything else sort of wet down here, then I'm just on the ears, nothing else. I'm going to pick up my lovely soda like genuine my just absolute favorite. Hang it a little bit of a squig just to make sure it's on the top there, and we're just going to very much like the butterflies. We're just working on the edge and just tapping colour in. Now, don't worry too much. It doesn't go right to the edges. Again, I will say like the butterflies. It does spread, and we are actually doing two layers over these ears. So that's probably just enough. Again, you can give it a little tilt if you feel where you want to it feels better to have it to the edge. You see how that's just gently without me having to do anything, any brush strokes or moving my bush around. It's always my goal is to do as little as I can, and I don't want to disturb the paint. I want the paint to, as I say, do its own thing, that's the magic. It's in the allowing So again, everything's wonderfully light and just tapping. I'm going to This is going to be a slightly lighter side. I always seem to do my lighter size on the left. So I'm going to do she's going to be a little bit more a little darker on the right hand sides. I'm going to apply a little bit more paint. Okay, tapping exactly like we did the butterfly wings. I'm just working on there and you can see that's gently moving over there. Just make sure you get this shape just right. And you stay within those lines. Apart from that, you don't need to worry about anything else. I'm gonna leave it at that. Clean my brush. I really need to because I've only got one color, force of habit. Again, take the excess moisture off. And quite simply, we're going to wet down going to go around the eyes, so we're missing out the eyes, we're just going to wet down this black patches, eye patches. Go over to the second one. Now, if you're working in a really hot place, you can just do one at a time so then they don't dry out on you. And if you gaze up to your ears, and they're doing something really peculiar. I can see I've had, there's probably been quite a lot of water here and it's starting to run. Absolutely leave it. Just let it do all these little patterns and marks and what a lot of watercolor artists may see as mistakes I love. So allow that as say, we are doing another layer, so if there's something horrific, we can always just go over it again and rectify, but honestly, leave it. Okay. And we're going to do pretty much the same. And when you're out, actually, if it doesn't go up right up to the top, I will just make sure all that paint is all the way around those eyes. Again, make sure you get that nice curve of the muzzle going round so you want that curve. I'm just going to touch up there as well, because, again, we're doing another second layer over this where all them blend. So I'm pretty much painting. I could paint this in, but again, it's probably just how I work. I just like to wet and drop. And you can see there's a sense of it's got a little bit dark on the bottom there just 'cause we started on the bottom. I just tap, go to the next one. Make sure, say, make sure you go around those eyes you probably spent a while, as I stressed, making sure you got the shape right, so really take your time. If it helps pick up your little brush, sometimes I find. The smaller brush gives me a little bit more control, so I can make sure I've got really tight up against those eyes. The pandit is quite forgiving because she's got black eyes, and we're just going to paint them black, blue, dark, blue, but, you know, they're very dark. So, you know, we're not having to tackle tackle eye colors and such things. So it's a nice, easy one to start with. Okay, I make sure I got that just right. Okay. You're just going to leave it at that. Nothing more. Pop that little one down. It's just gonna pick up a bigger brush. Clean it off is just, I say, just habit. Probably don't need to worry too much a little bit murky, but Yep, we will clean it off, so we've got nice clean water so stick to a good habit, I suppose Again, nice amount of paint on my brush, and I'm going to just tap at the bottom of that nose and allow that to run up because we want a nice sort of sense of light at the top in the finished piece. So although we could completely paint it in and then just scrub some out, let's try and get it right at the beginning before. It's always easy to get right at the offset rather than correcting your mistakes. So, folks, that has to dry on its own. Because what we're gonna do, we're going to do the body necks, and that needs a little bit of a tilt. You can If you push for time, you can. You can give it a little bit of tilt and just be aware that some of this will run, but ideally just allow that to dry. Now, obviously, we've now introduced a hair dryer. You can pop a little hair dryer over there to speed the process up. Um but a word of caution with hair dryers, especially, I can see this is quite wet. It's almost got a little bit of a puddle there. As you can imagine, if you put something that blows things, you're going to find you just blow the paint off the paper and you'll end up with some sputters you probably don't want. So make sure it's just starting to go off. So it's a little like the butterfly body where we were waiting for that to just get to the right stage. That's almost the drying stage where it's you have a sense that the hair dryer is not going to blow pigment around. So, yes, just just hang fire and be a bit patient and maybe finish a cup of tea that you started when you went away to look at your sketch. 5. Body First Layer: So continuing with sectioning off areas, we're going to section off the body from the head. So again, um let me put this This is literally for you to see where I'm putting my wet brush. I want you to stay with your brush with your water nice and clear so nice clean brush. But this is just so you can see the areas I'm wetting down just to make sure it's nice and clear. So we're going. I've always got underneath the head so we know we've got everything just nice and wet under them. We're nice and crisp up against those lines. Come down the body on the other side. Now, we're going to come cause my original class, I used the little mount like we used in the simple trees, which I will pop a little mount round when she's finished. So I'm going to sort of have that idea in my head that she will be mounted. So this area down here would obviously be covered by the mount. So we're kind of come down to here for the time being. So somewhere like if you can see that somewhere like that. That's already started doing stuff. So you went somewhere like that. Again, make sure your water's nice and clean. You don't want it any color. Same things apply literally, so you tap drop your head up and down, bobble your head, as I like to say. And you can see if you've left any dry patches. You really want it lovely and wet with no dry patches cause again, that paint will just run around that dry patch and give you a rather odd little pattern which we don't really want. Okay, once that's nice and wet, and again, you need to work quite briskly. Once you've got that water down and it's nice and saturated, you don't want to hang around too much, but we are going to use my little heart. Let's pop that up there. That's just again, that's just giving me the ability well, giving the paint the ability, should I say, to run down. Picked up my one color. It's quite fun, using just one colour. A little bit of squeege, make sure I've got plenty of paint to say nice amount. And of course, I'm bearing in mind, this is going to be the lighter side, so I'm going to start on what will be the dark side and just tap. It's a little like simple trees. We're just working the other way around, if you get what I mean. So we're working up against that nice edge so we know we've got that shape right. And say, just keep if it's drying on you a little bit, if it's getting a bit sticky, just add more water. But again, be cautious of that, you know, it collects the water collecting at the bottom there. But yeah, just just tap and allow it to run. Come over here, I've just done what I've said in a few classes just make sure you take the excess moisture off your brush. Let's do that. But at this stage, I'm just wanting things to run, really. I get a little keep it heavy up here. And again, we're doing another layer over here. So if it feels, if you're thinking, Oh, no, I can't quite be that brave, we will do another layer where we add obviously more color. So if you feel a little timid, then just go a little bit gentle on it, see how it feels. I say, any patterning that's sort of running or making some odd marks, I would leave that. I would let that do its thing. Right. Once you've got something like that you're happy with, we're just going to wet this little bubble of water and come down a bit further, and you'll see what will happen because it will pull all this paint down. You do it fairly quickly. I say, this would be the mucky bit that would be underneath your mount. And you can see that paint is now being pulled down, partly by gravity and partly because it's now got some more water to run into. At this stage, I'm going to probably leave it at that stage, actually, that's creating me something nice. I know if I leave on it leave that drawing on a slight quilt that will continue running until it's dried, just gonna suck that up. I don't I don't want to have a big buddle buddle a puddle down there. Because again, like the butterfly wings, if we have a big puddle here, it will stop this paint from running. It will stop somewhere like that and then sometimes it will start working back up again. If you want a little bit more tilt, obviously, the more you tilt things, the more it will be more exaggerated it will become. You can see that's already pulling out. So again, you can sort of create direction of fur and sort of almost length of fur just by how much you tilt it. I don't on the panda, I don't think we want a lot of length, really, or direction in this layer. So I'm just going to I'm going to leave it to dry. At that. Again, trying, especially at the moment, I can see This is just beginning to go off. So if I was going to do the butterfly wings, I'm at that sorry, the butterfly body, I'm at that stage, it's just starting to go off. If I was to add paint now or water, it would get a little sticky. The paint really wouldn't do much. You're likely to sort of make some odd marks. Again, a lot varies on what paint you're using, you know, even exactly the same brand. You know, so light genuine has a character. If you were to use indigo, that has a character, and you get to know what you're using and how it behaves. But yes, I'm going to allow that just to simply draw on its own. 6. Face Second Layer: Once this body layer is nice and dry, we're going to do another layer over this face and we can wet down the eyes, it all starts to blend and look a little more like a watercolor, cause at the moment, you're probably thinking, looks a little odd at the moment, to me, but let's lay this flat, and we'll we'll start doing the fun bits. So pick up your big brush. Again, nice. Get your brush nice and wet. Now, we're going to be wetting the ears down, and we're going to be going to going around on top of the start again. We're going to go over the top of these patches. So like the butterflies, nice and light, so you don't want to push. Your brush. You want it. You want to just literally just let it fall. The water just falls onto the paper as much as you can. Now, it should start bleeding. Don't panic, like exactly what you want. And if it doesn't, don't panic. All be good. Again, round this ear, make sure you stay within your lines and you follow where you've put paint. And again, simply by wetting this down again, this will all soften and, you know, that hasn't gone right to the edges. Again, I'm going to put some more paint on there. That's absolutely fine. It's not a problem. But sometimes just by wetting these down again, depending on your paint, this will blend right to the edge anyway. Okay, and then just carefully go around. How am I going to go over everything. Apart from the eyes, we're going to go around the eyes, so we don't lose them. As we go over them, we'll lose where we've sketched them out. You can see that's starting to blend, and, you know, that paint's just moving. So, some will do this more than others. So hopefully yours is doing this cause that's what you want. We good and wet and we can always soak up if we got too much water, we can always just pop a little bit of kitchen roll, corn all the brush and soak it up, but it's better to have more water than it is to try and upset this layer underneath. So Genuine does like to move quite a lot. Have something like indigo, it sticks a little bit more. Again, you just want it nice and wet, so whatever stays you get to where you are nice, it's all nice and filled in. Say, bobble your head up and down. I've got a big dry patch up here still. Add a little bit more water 'cause I need it nice and wet. Okay. So I'm going to start working on a bits. I want the paint to move as much. Now, I want I'm going to do a little bit more on the ear, but I want this color to sort of blend quiet along way. If I didn't want it to move, I'd leave it to dry a little bit more and then add the colour. Then it wouldn't it wouldn't move as much because there's not as much water for the paint to rush into. It's starting to dry. So when you start doing layers and adding bits when you first wet an area down, try to work out what parts you want the paint to move in the most. I hope that makes sense. Let me start, and then I can hopefully explain as I start painting. So, okay, I'm just dabbing, but you can see how much that's moving. Now, if I left out for a little bit longer, that wouldn't move as much. Just the pure fact that the paper is starting to dry. But just to have a drip that's going to drip in a bad place. And again, I can just tinker with the ear a bit if I wanted a little bit more on the top there, but a little bit more, just touching. Be careful you don't do too much because all of a sudden you find you've filled up the ear, and there's nothing particularly exciting about it. Tiny little bit down there, cause I want the edge of that ear to be seen. I want to bear in mind this. I want this a little bit darker. I just want that a little bit more shadowing down this side. Again, just literally just tapping. And I want to do at some few flicks, and I need to do those while the paper and paint is nice and wet, but not. I can see this is actually sitting in a little bit too much of a bubble of water, so I'm just to suck that up a tiny bit, so I'm not working in puddles. I'm just going to tap. So, yes, I want to do some flicks on it. I need that the paint and paper to be a little bit wet, so we're damp still 'cause if I leave it too long, it won't flick out naturally. It looks like it's been stuck on, so I'm just gonna do that now while I'm thinking of it. So again, exactly like we did with the grass come in a little bit, so your flicks come out. Don't go too far. This is a little bit wet, and it's going to come out in a bit of a blob, if I'm not careful. So It's all about timing. So much of this technique and probably just generally watercolor, it's about timing. Yeah, take brush away. I'm gonna do a few on the ears. They haven't got particularly fluffy ears, but it all adds to the character. So I'm gonna do just a few, making sure my brush isn't too wet. I haven't got too much moisture on it. And then with the flicks, make sure they're going in the direction. Obviously the head coming up this way, you want to be flicking that way. Seems quite obvious, but normally hair doesn't just go out at an angle, so it normally sort of follows the shape of the ear. I'll do a few over here. Well, I think I don't want much more colour over there. So once you know you're done in a certain area and you think you're not going to go back to it. It's a few flicks like that. Okay. Now, if any stage, you think, Oh, goodness, I've been fiddling and bits are starting to dry. So as long thatss going to give you a big sprout de dock. As long as it's damp, parts are damp still, then you can just add a little bit more water, and that will just allow us to play for a bit longer. Again, just really gently. Now, I want this side to be ever so light. I don't want to put too much color. Again, like I said, with the butterflies, um, although I don't want to add color here, I needed to wet this down. One, it just allows all the paint to flow that I am going to add. And two, it just stops any watermarks. If I was to, you know, wet this down here and leave that dry, you would end up with a watermark, and it just would look very odd. Wouldn't sort of flow very well. I'm just gonna pop al a little bit of paint there just to make sure the ears don't look like they're completely stuck on to look like they're joined to it. That's nice. I've got a nice sort of flow around there. I like that. So if you ever get any patterns, think, Oh, I like that, just literally leave it. Now, she has got and let's go down here. Actually, there's a nice what's It's just gonna be the slightly dark side, so let's work on this side. There's a nice sort of cheek marks down there. Cheek sort of muzzle. This is a muzzle, so you're going to get a shadowing down here just to shows where the This is going to be the light area where the mother, so that's going to have a shadow. So we're gonna put that on the other side, just not quite as strong. A little bit lighter. A little less paint on your brush. I always say Take your brush away, see what you think. You'll get used to that little thing. And then we've got a nice shadow on top of the nose with a little distinction on top of the nose. Now, if you ever think, Oh goodness, I've put way too much paint on there, then you can always just clean brush. Don't panic, take the excess moisture off, and you can just gently, tease it out, suck it up, save these. And generally, watercolor will dry a lot lighter, so you don't need to panic too much. That's enough, so that's done. A little bit, I say, watch your own piece. I say, I'd love I'd love to be able to help everybody and sit beside them and guide them. So you do have to be a little bit of a judge of your own piece. So if your colors are blended a little bit too much, if these dark patches have spread right into the muzzle, you can always just say with a damp brush, you want your brush. About the same wetness, roughly as your paper, if that kind of makes sense. You don't want it saturated and you don't want it dry. You just want it sort of damp the same if you sort of gauge the wetness of the paper. So then you're just being ever so soft. So you can just suck up a little bit of color and emphasize this the muzzle. Right. There's another nice line come runs from the top. The two black patches over joined up. Get her little bit of paint on her. Again, just tapping. There's no brush strokes. Not brushing across, but just tapping the color in. Okay? Take your brush away. See what do you think? Well, quite like it. Just a little bit of colour underneath the chin. Just a little bit of shadowing. So you can either add color or you can take colour out. So obviously, we haven't got a huge amount of colour on here at the moment, but, you know, you can always there's sort of two options. You can add it or you can take it away, depending on how delicate and light you want your piece to be. Let's add a little bit more shadowing in there. Yeah, that's looking quite cute. What a bit of a puddle going on here. Maybe it's not too bad. Say, just keep looking at your own piece. Keep looking at my if you can get your um if you can get my piece up on your screen, that's always probably helpful to refer back to. Say, all future other classes, you'll have a lovely reference photo to use, but I'm afraid there isn't one for here. Obviously, you can find yourself a panda. But it can be quite confusing. If you're looking at another reference photo that's not the same shape or light falling, then you got yourself quite a hard job because you're working on two reference photos, as it were, two guides. You know what? I think I'm almost there. Again, you always get this kind of feeling that instinct goes, You know what? I think I've been fiddling enough. I've done enough. If I do too much more, I'm going to ruin it. And of course, you can keep adding water if you want to play a bit longer, but as you get through a sort of a layer where it's almost done, you really don't want to, in theory, start adding more water because you will upset what you've already put in. So it's quite handy when we were back up here and we knew bits were drying here, that was quite a nice day to add more water. But now, it would be better. We aren't doing another layer over this head, but like I said, with the butterflies it would be better to allow it to dry. And then rewet it. So if the areas you wanted stronger and this rather difficult stage, it would be better to do another layer and then add that sort of depth exactly like we're doing. No different. So you're just adding layers. But I'm going to leave her there ca we've got another layer to do of that body, but again, we need that to dry, nice and flat. So while I'm standing here allowing my lovely little lady to dry, I thought I would just mention it might be interesting. I've popped in the projects and resources a picture of my David Shepherd Artist of the Year finalist piece for 2024, depending on your listening to this. And when I started painting, I actually went back to this class and referred back to how I painted this panda, and then used exactly the same techniques and painted that piece. So these little classes are all relevant. They all have the same techniques. I don't use anything different than I'm going to I'm either showing you here today or I will go on in the future and show you. There's no hidden um techniques that I don't don't, I say, don't share with you. So these are all fun classes, and they're all relevant to how I paint, as well, very much to much how I paint. So yes, I thought that might be worth mentioning. So if you're interested, have a little look because it's on there on the projects and resources pages. 7. Body Second Layer: So how is your little Panda doing? I hope she's nice and dry and don't be too freaked out because, obviously, we haven't done the ice. She looks a little odd and funny, I used to send my friend little pictures of my work in progress, and she said, Please don't send me one with the eyes missing. She said it freaks me out. But, um, I always paint my eyes last. Don't ask me why there's no particularly clever reason why, but I always leave them to the end. It's just my personal way of painting. If you know, if you go on, say, and take more of my classes, you prefer to do the eyes first, that's absolutely fine. Right, we are going to do another layer over this body, and we're going to give it a bit of tilt, but we're going to do it on a slight angle. So I'm going to put my little, um, cart into that corner, so I'm going to just very gently allow some of that color to blend into this corner here. So we're gonna pick up the big brush, and same rules apply, go ever so lightly. So just tap that cup but I tap the water in. So, just let that brush. I mean, so light genuine moves quite readily. So I'm going to be extra careful. Other colors don't move quite so much, but so light genuine does. A lovely color. You can see that granulation in there. It's beautiful. Now, a word, if you've hair dried, yours dry like I have just now, your paper will warm up, so your paper will obviously then dry a bit quicker. So bear that in mind. So you may need to add a little bit more water and keep an eye on it. Can I go roughly down to where we wet that down before, maybe a little bit further because I want the paint to move a bit more. I say, in theory, this would have a little frame around it, so it doesn't really matter what goes on down here. Alright. Making sure I got it all nice and wet. We're right up to that top corner. We're gonna be doing some flicks, as well. All exciting stuff. So make sure I got enough water a little bit more again. Be careful of it down here. And, like I said, it wouldn't really matter if that ran off because if we're popping them out around it, it doesn't matter. All depends how you've done your composition, I suppose, with other pieces in time. If you go on and do other paintings of weight, you would then put them out so you can have sort of an untidy part underneath that wouldn't be shown. Right. Before this dries on me, let's add a little bit more paint. So Iganic say, working right at that top again and just dropping the color in Now, if same things applied, the paint won't move as much because we're on a second layer now. So you either have to add a little bit more water just to get it shifting or just add a little bit more paint. Care if we don't make it too dark. We want to keep this side a little bit lighter, so I don't want to put too much on. Just enough to give it a little bit of shadowing. And I say, the minute you have something, it's even if it is just the very first application of paint gives you enough. So I can't see how strong you've made your piece up to now and say, be a judge of your own piece, be brave. Say, 'cause I'm carrying on painting, you may go, I don't want to add any more, so so don't. It's it's a little bit, I say, always, as we work the wave through the classes, we will become each piece will become different. Sometimes it is just one little bit of paint you put down, and you're like, I'm done. Okay, same thing. Take your take your brush away, step away. I say, I'm always standing. I'm standing now, so I can sort of get away from it and see what she looks like from a bit of a distance. If you're sitting, just stand up for a second and just get above it. Just get away from the painting. Don't hold it up, though, obviously for obvious reasons, because the paper is wet, you will upset a lot of that run, and you may even get it running off the paper. I'm quite liking the sweep there. If I didn't, then obviously, I can lay her flat again. Um, see what that looks like a obviously will then push just gently push up again. So I'm going to leave it flat there and see that it looks like. And I do need to bear in mind this 'cause it's quite warm in my studio, and cause we've hair dried that piece. This will starting starting to dry already, so I can always pub a little bit of paint on my brush. And we're just gonna do some flicks. Same thing, like the grass you don't have to go all the way down. You do some longer bits. Shorter bits, some smooth bits. You can at this stage, you could almost, you know, make a little bit more of a conta. Do a few over this side before this dries, as well. A couple on this side to do too many. I want to keep them lighter, as well, because it's going to be the lighter side. Any raggedy bits. Yeah. And then also, you can then pull up a couple of bits into the head. Again keeper, I'm not very good at doing this, but you have to almost see the head and see where the white fur would be. So you're flicking you're wanting to create white fur coming into the dark body. I always struggle with seeing it that way, getting a mind into a different zone. So you so you're in theory, what you're trying to achieve is the white hair going into the body, not black hair going into the head. Same thing. You don't need to have it all way long. You might just do a few bits. Give her a bit of a hairy chin bless her. Sure she would like a hairy chin. What lady doesn't want a hairy chin? Same thing. Take your brush away. Be careful you don't end up doing too much 'cause yeah, even I love doing these. And before you know it, you've you've over eched it. Right, I'm gonna pop that down. And sometimes you just have to put your brush down and watch. You know, because I've laid it flat and I don't like it laying flat now because it's not flowing enough, I can always give it a little bit of tilt. Again, I've got to that sort of tricky stage. I don't want to really add much more paint because it's starting to dry. And I like what I've got if I'm honest, so I don't want to do anything more. Faint things apply. If you feel you haven't done enough, you can go and wet it down and do another layer. But again, like the butterfly, the more you do, the muddier it could become and you lose that sense of light and freedom. So I'm going to be good. I'm going to watch her and see how she dries. And yeah, and we're almost there, guys. 8. Eyes Nose and Mouth Detail: Right there, let's paint let's paint some eyes in. I'm going to lay my paper flat now. And I'm gonna pick up my tiny little brush. This is ever so simple. All we're going to do is paint the eyes in. So yeah, I'm actually going to do a little bit of painting. So we're put more colour on my brush. You want it really dark. Now, you could be if you're feeling very clever, you can leave a tiny little white line at the bottom, like so. Or I will show you that's one way of doing it. We'll show you the other way. I'm just going to bake them completely black. Make sure this is loud and dry before you start and fill my papers just a little bit tacky steel, a little bit damp. I always feels cold. Which means it's not 100% dry. Now, I say, the beauty we panda yes is at this stage. Obviously, we've now colored them, and you can't see them that clearly. So if you could reshape them at this stage. But I was pretty happy with my shape. But if you found, you've gone a little small, there is always a um I think the you don't want to go too cartoony, but the slightly larger the eye, the cuter and more baby like they will appear, but be careful you don't go too big because you can make them look like a cartoon. And now we're going to the same little brush, I'm going to paint in the nose again. So gently, I'd wet down the nose. I'd say it's just how I paint. So we're gonna wet that down again. We're going to do the same thing, rock color at the bottom. But if you found you have you need a little bit of color at the top, you can just very carefully. Just add the tiny little bit, just so you can see the definition where the nose is. You might only need it on one side, so the darker side. And then we're going to the all important little grin, so that's just like we did with the trunks. That's the top of your trees. So we're just pulling the trunk down as it were, and then we're going to make a little grin. Now, I can obviously, because this has been filmed four years ago, I think there's now 200 odd projects up on the project and resources pages. So it's worth having a little look, and every single one has a slightly different character. And a lot of this is dependent on how you do this smile or mouth. Obviously, she's smiling there, so obviously you put her you know, she's now looking a bit questioning. So just the slightest change in how you do the direction you do mouth line is how much character you give her. I'm going to try and trade true to the one I did originally just so then the projects don't look so odd. But she had a little grinterO little cheeky grin, I think. So this is obviously I've drawn or I've painted a quieter or wet. No, I've painted a dry line, so I've let that run down, and that is quite a dry line. So I can get my little brush and just go underneath that line and soften it just so you don't then have a very obvious painted on mouth because it will look a little start, 'cause this is ever so loose. If we have something that's very tight and exact, it's just it's really going to maybe not quite noticeable. So just soften that edge down, and then you can, again, for your finger, if it looks like it's going line you can just give it a little squidg. Same thing. Take your hand away. Take your brush away. If you look a little odd, you've got time at the moment to have a little play and play with how that little mouth line is what that little mouth line is doing what it's what's she saying to you? Okay. Okay, I'm happy with mine, so I'm not going to fiddle anymore. So we want those eyes to be dry. What am I gonna do? I'm just gonna Because these are just wet. There's not lots of paint, you shouldn't have too much sort of any bobble of water. I'm gonna put hair dry over those and make sure they're dry. Once they're dry, hopefully, like mine, I can see them a little more clearer now. So we're going to take just a little bit of color out of the top of the eye. I mean, this is a bit of a panda probably trait, but they have a nice, which give them quite a nice character, actually. And like we did with the light with the butterfly bodies, just very gently, I've got a damp brush, small damp brush. I'm just wiping that color away. Be a guide to how much wiping you need to do obviously, we could be working on different paper and different paints. So that's enough for me. I want I've almost gone down one layer, maybe, so there's still a little tinge of blue there, isn't there? From that previous layer. And Gain do the same here. And you can then reshape eyes. Gains got another chance to reshape your eye. Obviously, that gives her a huge character, depending, like I said earlier on how you tilt that eye, how that eye is positioned. Slight upturn, she look quite inquisitive, downturn, you know, all these all these little tiny. They can be the tiniest of alteration, and it can change the whole look of her. Yeah, I think that's enough. So what we're going to do, say, if you haven't been very clever with doing a little white line, leaving white line. And this is form is what I tend to do a little bit of white gouache. This is a very old tube now. I was looking at the old video, the original one. This was obviously a new tube then. It looked all nice and full and new. It's getting a little long in the tooth, this one, so I'm having to work a little bit to get a nice, creamy consistency. Okay. And what we're going to do go underneath the eye, so you don't want to go inside the eye, you want to go underneath the eye. And it can be a bit clunky at the moment, but we will rectify that in a minute, so we're gonna do a white line, but say make sure that goes underneath. Looks a little weird at the moment. Don't panic because we will, like I said, close it down a bit, so we make it a very thin line. Just like so. A bit brighter. And just allow it looks weird at the moment, just allow that to dry from, isn't it? I'll just pop back to the nose. Now, mine I've got quite a nice bit of light there, actually. But if you haven't managed to keep any light, again, just like we did with the tops of the eyes, you can then take a little bit of color out. I'm not going to with her 'cause I will be left with a very white nose. But, yeah, that's something you can do while you allow that to dry. I just having a bibble my head up up and down, probably about right. Maybe leave it a little bit longer, but should be okay. Picked up my so genuine again, and we're going to go underneath, and we're going to really sort of make lit that white line ever so narrow. It's just the sliny sliver. You see how that's made it less cartoony now. And just do the same on the other side, as well. Again, you can go inside if that white line has gone into the eye too much, and then you obviously do reverse, you could close it down that way. Does that make sense? You can go inside the eye, but ideally, when you put the white line and you want to go underneath. Yeah, I think she's looking all right. She looks like she needs some light taking out, so let's take some light out. So a little damp brush. And this, it's a really lovely thing with eyes. And it's something I pretty much always do with eyes is take so it cast a little bottle of water there. You take a little bit of light out exactly like we did with the top of the eye, and very gently, you're just wiping a little bit away. Take your brush away. You almost don't want to squidgO even squig with your finger. I would just wipe and see what you think. It's only the minute. You only want a minute bit, and it can come out quite easily, depending on how thick you've got this. Just a glint of eye. Don't want it too harsh. But generally, animals, even if some reference don't photos show it so obviously. But if you can have a shadowing underneath the eye and a little bit of light at the bottom, it just makes all the difference to eyes. That's probably enough. I'll see another drip running down my brush. So, this would be a stage when you would be nice to sit down and get really close to it. Yeah, I think that's okay. And to finish off, this is always a pierced to resistance. The little white catch light. So a nice creamy consistency. Now, I tend to do catch lights in the sort of general direction they're looking. So you don't want to go too high because some of this might be an eyelid we're looking at, somewhere in the middle middle to top, somewhere like that. Take your brush away, see what you think. Tada, I just brings them to life. As I say, I tend to always put catch lights on animals very rarely and birds, very rare if I don't. And if you look at it and go, I got that in the wrong place. You can always just paint them out. The very Panda's very forgiving for tinkering with eyed 'cause I can just take that out if I wanted to. I could paint it over and start again. Just allow it to dry first, but if you do paint it over. That is your eyes, really, and your nose and your little mouth. So we've just got a few, what I call finishing off bits to um finish off. Oh 9. Finishing Off: Okay, so these finishing off bits, I think are quite important. This is when you get a chance to sort of look at your piece and just make tiny little alterations. We're going to take a little bit of light out. We're gonna rub those pencil marks out, and we're just going to see what we, see what we need altering. I say We all going to differ at this stage, so I will just guide you through my piece and what I think need altering. So firstly, I'm just rubbing out these pencil marks, but word of caution, make sure everything is nice and dry. I haven't done it recently, but I have done it in the past, and it's quite upsetting when it's not dry. Brushes to one side. Careful over the eye, if your eyes a little bit damp still. Even just taking those pencil marks out, especially around here where we haven't pulled a lot of paint. You can see how that's given that, say, that lobby kind of lost and found look, and that's made Yeah, I think that's made a lot of difference already. So we can now take out little bits of light. So like the butterfly wings, we can just take a little bit out there. I haven't put a lot of paint in, so I've been I would say I've been good, but, I've managed to avoid putting too much paint in here, so I don't really need to take a lot out because there's not a lot to take out. But again, if you've gone a little paint gone a little bit too heavier over there, then obviously, you can just take it out, dab it out. And, um, yeah, have a little look. Nice little bit here. It is to come right up here and just get that line in there. I found that quite a nice thing. All these animals obviously have a certain character and certain markings. So they're quite nice to get in. See, that's made a difference, doesn't it? Again, you can alter your smile if your smile looks mine looks a little inquisitive, a little unsure of herself. There a little bit of light out there. I don't want to take anything out here. Again, if your muzzles got a little mucky, the colors blended a bit too much, and you can take a little bit out of there. Same plie round it. I won't take any out because, you know, I haven't got a lot of paint there already, but again, if your eye patches have moved into the sort of muzzle area, then you can again tidy that up. Carefully going around here and taking too much of these out because they're probably quite strong. So this taking colour out is just really to give you a sense of light quite often, rather than actually sort of altering your painting, it's more just giving light to the painting than it is. Altering things. Take a bit out there. Always take a little bit out of the body. Again, you can do it if your chin got a little bit too heavy. You can take a bit out of the chin. I haven't it's not too bad. Nose if you didn't get around doing your nose, but that looks alright with me. I can pop. You can even see that actually was probably a good point. This didn't actually end up with any color over it, but you can see, even though the pencil marks have been rubbed out just almost probably where the dirty water has been, it's still given light. You can still see the end of the year. So it just it probably emphasizes that you don't need to fill everything in even just by merely wetting areas down, that wet paint will just create you a very very soft, subtle background, just like all the head here. We didn't put any paint here. Around here, but you can still see there's a color difference. So that's what I generally try to do. I will work on the darker areas and allow the light almost to kind of take care of itself. If you carry on working where the dark areas and the shadows are, and don't try and put anything into the light, working this way on wet and wet with the whole area sort of a certain area sort of sectioned off, then that should allow the light to sort of shine through. As long as you're just gentle, everything's just placing the paint and allowing but I think she's done. I don't think there's anything else I would do to her, so I'm just going to grab because I decide I was gonna pop a little mount around her. So you can see what she would look like mounted to get that little rough bit would disappear. So that's just that little I'll put measurements of that, but it's a little ten by ten mounts. It's not a very big mount, but yes, she looks quite cute, doesn't she? So, yes, I hope this last of the beginner classes has given you a good foundation to carry on now to explore other classes that I've got. As of filming, there's over 40 classes there for you to take. So dive in. Whatever takes your fancy, but quite often people go, What do I do next? Where to go? And I like Mr. Fox as the next class 'cause it's nice. It's a nice Transition, I would say, there's a lot of flowing, just like we did with the panda. There's a lot of water added and just allowing paint to run, but we're starting to introduce different colors. So we've only got one eye to worry about. So yeah, we're not tackling two eyes because they can be tricky two eyes sometimes they getting symmetrical, especially if you've got other colors added to it. But yeah, that's probably the next one I would point you to if you're unsure. Other than that, as I always say, pop these in the projects and resource these pages, and if you're stuck, um, and you want some help, then obviously there to discussions, pop any comments in the discussions. Sorry, I'm only poising slightly because I didn't show you, which might be interesting again. It's my little painting I did literally before I started filming this one. You see how different they are. So it probably just really emphasizes they differ so much. All these are, um, Yeah, if you were to go on and paint these paint the panda again, you can see how different they are. But it does. Painting the same subject, I think is a fantastic way to sort of learn a technique because you become familiar with how you did stuff, you can then go, Oh, I didn't do that quite right. What if I did X or what if I put a bit more paint there? And what if I tilted this? So I was saying all these beginner classes. It's worth going over them again. And say, like I said, probably before, just be curious. You may want to paint your panda pink. Why not? So don't let your imagination be free. Don't be hung up on what you should or shouldn't feel like you should do. Like I said, for the butterflies, I'm probably repeating myself, but, you know, these things are probably worth saying. Painting several times. You don't have to show these to anybody. You don't have to put these on social media and go, Look, I've painted this today. They can all be done privately. Um, and that feels a little safer to me. It doesn't feel like I'm having to prove myself. I'm just there on my own, and I'm exploring and having fun. And there's no judgment. Is there then. So, So, yes, yes, I can carry on talking. I'm not sure how I'm going to get going to help you. So thank you very much for taking these three beginner classes. If you've just popped in and done Panda, thank you for joining me equally. And I look forward to seeing all your projects. So I look forward to seeing you in the next class.