Procreate Watercolor Masterclass: Elevate Your Digital Painting Skills

1. Introduction: Have you gotten started painting digital watercolor and have an understanding of the basics, but feel stuck or like you're not improving? We'll get ready to take a deeper dive into digital watercolor with my new intermediate level course. Hey, I'm Nathan Brown. I've been a professional artist and illustrator for 25 years, and I'm absolutely in love with digital watercolor. I'm the creator of the top selling Master watercolor brush set, along with the Procreate Watercolor master class, both of which were created to share my experience and love of this medium. I developed this course to take your watercolor skills even further. We'll cover everything from finding inspiration and how to include it in your work. Look at how to develop ideas and concepts and turn them into paintable drawings. We'll cover all of the watercolor techniques that you need to remember along with what brushes and methods are best suited for creating them. We'll also look at composition, values, and color harmony from a slightly different approach to help you cement them into your process. After a couple of practice paintings, we'll tackle the final course project broken into multiple easy to follow steps. I'll be using the iPad and Procreate for this course and will include the brushes and canvas that I'm using. I'll also provide my sketches for you to paint from, along with instructions and insight for you to create your own sketch if you prefer. So join me in my studio for this unique course on watercolor. I filmed it in a one on one super relaxed style. This creates a freer, more light hearted experience helping to immerse you in the creative process and reduce the pressure you might feel from other courses. So grab your iPad and get ready to dive deeper into the world of digital watercolor. 2. Finding Inspiration: Hello, and welcome to this brand new course. I am so excited that you're here and I can't wait for us to dig in. Now, if you're familiar with some of my previous courses, this one is going to be a little bit different because I'm shooting it in a way that there will be less intercut footage and there's going to be less scripted dialogue. I've just got the cameras, and I'm hoping that it will create more of an atmosphere as if you were maybe coming into the studio and we were just hanging out together and having a conversation, doing some art and learning. Now, if you've taken my previous Procreate Watercolor master class, you'll know that that course started with more like beginner and fundamental concepts and then gradually move to some more advanced level stuff. But it really only touched on that area. So in this course, we're going to spend more time talking about more intermediate concepts more in depth. Okay? So in this first lesson, we're going to take a look at finding inspiration and then how to apply it into our own work. Now, finding inspiration is one thing, but then actually applying it on our own work is another. So I've got some examples laid out, and we're going to take a look at them. But first, I wanted to talk about there's really two sources, in my opinion. There's two sources of inspiration. There's inspiration that we might find from other artists' work, and that could be artist of the past. It could be 100-years-old. It could be something that was just posted yesterday, an artist that you admire and that you love their work. And the second source is just the world around us, inspiration that we would pull from a walk in a park or a walk in the city or maybe just something around the house, the way the light comes in through a window or something like that. So again, I've got examples laid out of both, and we're going to take a look at them and see what we can find. Alright, my first example is from an artbok by artist Bob Peak. Now, Bob Peak is one of those illustrators that I really love and admire. He did a lot of work in the 60s and 70s and 80s, and it was just really a prime time for artists that did a lot of commercial illustration and traditional style artwork. Now, the first piece that I marked in here that I wanted us to take a look at was this one here because it's I think that this is a fashion illustration because the hat has the most detail. But what really struck me about this one is this just solid green background, which also provides the color for the model's face. What really caught my eye was this bright red, complimentary colored highlight here. So, green and red are complimentary colors opposite each other on the color wheel, and this red really stands out as the highlight. So seeing something like this, you know, how would I incorporate this into my own work? Well, maybe maybe I do an illustration. Maybe it's an animal portrait or a portrait of a person, and I just fill the entire image with some solid color. Maybe it's a cool color, like blue or purple or green like this. And I use a bright highlight like this. The complimentary creates a really incredible color contrast. So with purple, maybe it would be a bright yellow in the highlight or something like that. I also really like how this less important detail is just kind of scribbled in. Like, it's just done really fast, and it's just this sort of scribble that creates a really nice texture. So multiple aspects of this image to pull inspiration from. Taking a look at another now, this one stood out to me and caught my eye because of the splatters or the way that they're being incorporated into the composition, and they sort of look like dots of light, which I really, really like. And I think that's a really incredible use of splatters. Now, I also think that these were individually painted in. Like, this is not an actual splatter. This is, like, intentionally painted in dot by dot. The reason I say that is because it's just so perfectly in line with the composition, and it really just adds to the lighting of the piece and it just seems very, very intentional versus randomly tapping splatters into the piece, which is what I often do. So how would I incorporate this kind of inspiration into my own work would be to try to paint some individual splatters in and just make them very intentional and very directional to see if I could incorporate them more into the overall composition of my piece. So taking another look at Bob Peak's work, this one also stood out to me because of the primarily solid black and red, which really frames up the point of interest here, the focal point in this image. I also love these just sort of, like, scribbly lines because it creates some motion in the piece. I think is really cool because the characters got like maybe he's diving. I think this is maybe oh seven, and he's maybe diving or dodging something, and it's just creating this nice motion in what would otherwise be a static image. So I just love these lines and what they create. Now, how would I use this? Well, maybe I'm going to incorporate some sort of scribbly type lines or waves in my next piece that really tries to incorporate some movement like that. So as we're going through and we are looking at other artists' work, I want you to notice and to understand that I am not comparing my own work to these artists. I'm not saying that they're better than me, and they're at a level that I will never reach because that is a very unhealthy way to look at other artists' work. You want to take the approach with a learning mindset. So you want to look at someone's work and think, What can I learn from this? What can I understand about what the artist was thinking? What is it about this work that appeals to me? What can I take to my own work? Keeping that sort of a mindset is a healthy way to use other artists work as inspiration versus, like, a source of comparison. Okay? So let's take a look at another example. You know, this is a comic book cover by artist Bilsonkevich. Now, this one uses a lot of really great really great colors, but what I'm noticing the most about this one is the compositional elements, the way that the focal point is sort of in this square frame, and there's these lines that are coming through and the lines coming in. These ships are actually going out. But what's happening is the lines are coming in and pointing at the focal point or the main subject. Now, something that I do often do in my work is to frame the main subject in a box like this. And something that's also really cool about this is breaking the edge of that frame or that box. And this is actually happening a couple times because there's this inner box with other characters that are breaking the frame. I think breaking the frame like that is just a really nice compositional trick that you can always apply in your own work. Taking a look at one more. This one is a TV guide, and it is from June 4 through the tenth of 1983. Now, again, this is sort of like this Golden Age kind of of the like, commercial illustration because this is a TV guide cover. This would have been on a newsstand at the grocery checkout. And it's just this beautiful piece of art that was just there almost as something that you would buy and then eventually throw away. And that's just incredible to me that art like this was just so just everywhere and so common. So the artist on this, his last name, his signature is Dudash. I'm a little bit less familiar with this artist, but this particular work is just incredible to me. I think this might be a water based media, possibly. This could be maybe guash. But it's what really catches my eye is how the figures are outlined with this sort of loose, multi colored thick outline. And I think possibly what has happened here or part of the process for the artist might have been to take some of this color beyond the edge of these figures and then to come back over that color with this white or sort of cream color. And it creates this bit of an abstract edge of color that is slightly bleeding beyond the border. I also love how this blue in his hat is going into the shadow there, and it's also coming into his eye a little bit. Also the dark outlines of this helicopter and car. Instead of that being black, it's the same blue again, and I think that's a really cool little aspect. The orange of the warm skin tones against the blues is just a really nice, really nice color contrast. Now, if I were to try and incorporate something like this into my own work, I might try that letting paint bleed be on the border and then coming back in with white and just filling it in to see what sort of edges that would create. Alright, so that is taking a look at other artists' work and viewing it as a source of inspiration and pulling out some items or some things, some of the process that we might incorporate into our own. Now, in my studio, it is full of artwork and artists work that I admire and that pull inspiration from from time to time. For example, if I'm stuck on something, I might pull one of those covers or one of those books or a poster or a film poster and just study it and think, you know, what was this artist thinking when he did this thing or that thing, and then just try to let that absorb and apply into my own work. Let's take a look at some examples of finding some inspiration in the world around us or in our house or on a walk or while we're out in the city or whatever it might be and how we might apply that into our own work. Alright, taking a look at this photo, which is easily something that we might have taken while just out walking on the street and taking inspiration or maybe what caught our eye was the way that the sunlight hits this wall and sort of goes across the scene like that. Now, if we notice here, this wall is sort of a neutral, kind of a beige kind of color. So down here is in shadow, and then up here is where the sunlight is hitting. So if we look the color here is very warm. It's sort of this warm beige color. And then sampling down here in the shadow, look how it jumps all the way to, like, this bluish gray. Now, looking at it, we know that it's the same color. This wall is the same color. But just sampling those two, we can see just what kind of a jump is happening in the shadow and into the light. So how might we take inspiration from that and use that in our work? So if we take a look at maybe we've got a sketch of a bird. Now, this could be anything that is a solid color, maybe the tone of someone's skin or a brick wall, like we have in the photo or really anything. But we're going to use the same concept to help us in our color selection. So maybe this bird is maybe he is primarily orange. In tone, and then the light where the light hits, he's going to be this sort of orange color. And then what falls into shadow is all blue. Just taking a simple concept like that, and maybe the light kind of breaks up, and it's making like a pattern onto his chest there. Just something as simple as that, which is inspiration that we pulled from this photo. Now, maybe we come off the street and we're in a park and we just snap this simple photo of a bird on a branch. Now, the colors are all very neutral in this image. Now, I do like this sort of brownish, sort of bird sienna kind of tone against all these neutrals. But overall, though, the entire image, even the bird itself is just kind of this neutral tone. But what we can take from this, which I think is really interesting is all of these is all of these branches make my brush smaller. All of these branches that are sort of just going all over the place in the image, just making this sort of nice um aspect to the image. It could be used, I think, as a compositional element. Now, what if we were to draw or paint a bird and we would use the branches to potentially frame the subject in an interesting way, something that just might incorporate and draw the viewer's eye in and frame our focal point. So something like that we might draw inspiration from just to help us in developing an interesting composition. Right? So now maybe we are back home. Maybe it's raining outside, we're stuck indoors, and we've got the windows or just interesting ways that the lighting is coming into the room from outside that we might pull some inspiration from. So looking at this window, we can see it's really the image itself is framed up kind of nicely because we've got these plants that sort of make this diagonal view here. But what I think is most interesting about this image is the color scheme. So if we were to pull some of these colors out and maybe there's some nice cool colors. But then we've got this really great sort of warm brown down here in the bottom that are coming in. Now, if we take a look at this, you might think that this is black, but it's actually not. It's just this really sort of deep deep orangish yellow color, almost black but not quite. Same thing with this. In the image, you might think that this gets lighter, this light color gets lighter than it does, but it's actually not. We still have a lot of room here before we get to pure white. There's a lot of room there for highlights. So just pulling the color scheme from this image, just taking inspiration from the colors found in this image just really sort of ignites a lot of just some creative ideas or ways to use this sort of cool green color scheme against these warm browns. So that is just amazing to me that inspiration is all over the place. It's everywhere all the time. It's all around us. And it is creative fuel, knowing that. It's creative fuel for my brain, knowing that I can just find something that sparks some creativity just from anywhere. And I want you to try a three part assignment for this lesson. I want you to, number one, find an artist that you really admire, that you really love and take a look at their work and I don't mean compare it to yours. I just mean find some aspect that you like and see if you can pull something and maybe incorporate it into your own process, something just really that you find interesting. And I'm also not talking about copying either. I want to be very specific about this because it's not copying someone's work if you are just taking some sort of process or some sort of little piece that you can bring in, and then you can possibly make it your own that you can add your own flair to it. And then the second thing is to find some inspiration around you, like in your home or out on a walk in your neighborhood. Maybe, again, it's the light coming through the window. Maybe it's the colors in a brick wall or maybe it's a bookcver that you have on the coffee table, just anything like that around you that you can pull some inspiration from. And the third part is, from this point forward, never leave your home without either a phone with a good camera or a small portable camera that you can take with you, or if you're old school, maybe it's a notepad or a sketchbook, a small sketchbook that you can jot some ideas or some quick sketches in. Just something that you can record some ideas that you see in the moment that you can remember to help you remember and use later in your work. So these are all things that are going to fuel your creativity and help you to spark ideas and bring some inspiration into your work. So in the next one, we're going to take a look at combining some elements. So bringing multiple reference images in and combining those elements to create a single image or idea for a piece of art. Alright, so I'll see you there. 3. Creating Concepts from Reference: Okay, so we just took a look at how to find inspiration, where to find it, and kind of how to incorporate it into our own work and just how to process it in our artistic brains, right? So now in this one, we're going to take a look at how to gather some different references and really kind of how to just generate some ideas for potential paintings. So we can put that inspiration to use, and we can maybe have a backlog of different ideas, different concepts for future work. So what I've done here is I've gathered some references, some reference images of just all different kinds, and we're going to take a look at them together and see what we can do to just make them more interesting, to add some interest to them to create a real appealing image. Okay? So let's go ahead and take a look at the references that I've found here. So I've got lots of cats. I've got a dog, a rabbit, a couple of portraits. Flower. Now, lots of cats because I'm a cat person. So if you're a dog person, be cool, right? So I've got a dog here, too. I love doing pet portraits. If you follow any of my work before, you've seen lots of pet portraits, so they're just really fun to do. And I think we can actually take these and maybe spice them up a little bit beyond the regular pet portrait. Now, one thing about pet portraits, though, that I want to mention here is that if, for example, if this is our cat, if this is my cat, it has emotional appeal to me because it's my pet, or if it's a commissioned pet portrait, it's going to have emotional appeal to the client or whoever it is you're painting it for. But to a general audience, we probably need to do something to it to just make it a bit more interesting, to give it a little bit of a universal flare so that someone viewing it might might want it. This is maybe a painting or a print that we're selling, they might want it, even though it's not their cat, but it has something sort of just generally fun and appealing about the painting. Alright? So let's take a look at how we might do something like that. So I found this reference image of this cat. Now, what stuck out to me about this one, of course, was the the blue eyes. Okay, so those really stood out against all these sort of monotone whites and grays in the image. So I save that one along with this one here with the butterfly because though, Oh, wow, there's a cat with a butterfly on his nose. I mean, it's incredibly cute. And that's kind of what I mean when I say a more universal appeal because there's actually something happening here that is going to make everyone go, Oh, um, oh, that's so cute. You know, I have to have this image and, you know, hanging on my wall or, you know, someplace where I can see it often. Also, the colors are really great. I like the blues and the oranges in this one, too. So that really stuck out to me. So seeing both of these cat images together, I thought, you know, what can I do with both of these to make them a little bit more interesting? Now, I love the concept of the butterfly on his nose, but it's kind of obstructing part of the cat's face. So I thought, Well, what can we do on this one Because we're seeing more of the front of his face here. So I feel like a butterfly on his nose, you know, is going to obstruct a lot of his face here. So I didn't want to do that. And I also thought, I like the angle that the cat is kind of looking. So I'm thinking, Alright, well, maybe we could do kind of this rectangle sort of composition. You know, where the cat is maybe kind of in a scene but is partially, like, breaking the frame, his ears, or his head or breaking the frame. And maybe there's maybe it's a grassy field, you know, maybe there's some flowers that are maybe breaking the frame a little bit here, something like that. And then we could probably drop that butterfly here, and he's about to land on his nose. It hasn't happened yet. So he's looking at the butterfly. And what we've done here is we've sort of created this interesting scene. Now, this has more universal appeal to me than just a portrait of a cat. Alright. Now let's take a look at one more cat this one stuck out to me, too, because of the ears. The ears are just really big and that reflection in the eyes there this is a great cat portrait with really great lighting. But now, what could we do to this one that might give it some of that universal appeal? So one thing I was thinking would be to maybe add maybe add some headphones. Maybe he's listening to music, and that's what's giving him this expression. Now we would probably have to do something with the ears because the top portion of the headphones might be a little bit obstructing might obstruct the ears a little bit. But that could be really fun because it's like, Well, I love music. I love cats. I need this image. This really appeals to me because it's a cat wide eyed, ears pert listening to music. But another let's try one more because I really like this one, and I think something else that could work for this one would be maybe a fun be a fun hat of some kind. Maybe it's a winter hat. Now, this would probably this would probably just we would remove the ears completely because they would be tucked into the hat. And maybe he's got this big scarf on. You know, something like that could be really fun to do, fun to paint. And again, it gives it kind of that just fun and universal appeal. I live in a cold climate, or it's Christmastime. It's the holidays, whatever it is, you know, like, maybe the hat could be red and the scarf could be green, something like that that just gives it kind of an appeal, like, Oh, I I want this image. I love this I love this painting. So this rabbit really stuck out to me, and mainly I love the shape, right? That's such a great just full full bodied image of this rabbit. And I think that also what caught my eye, too was this expression. And I just think, I'm giving personality. My imagination is giving personality to this rabbit that probably, you know, it doesn't exist, of course. But I can't help but just imagine these whiskers. I mean, it's it's such a great such a great image. So I'm thinking to myself, you know, what could we do to this rabbit that would just punch it up a little bit beyond the portrait of a really cute rabbit. So the cause the eyes are on the side of the head here. I can't help but think, like, he's got these big glasses, you know, something that a rabbit would never I mean, I can already tell. I'm probably gonna have to paint this because it's just so fun. And maybe the frames or the sides of the glasses would have to go behind his head there. It's eraser. Something kind of like that, I think would be would just be really, really fun. Okay, looking at our dog here, that's our last animal. So, this one, I think that the overall shape is great. And I think we could probably add a frame to this one as well because I'm just kind of my imagination just kind of sees it there. And I see multiple opportunities to sort of break the edge of the frame. You know, maybe it's kind of thin like this. And then, you know, we probably want to have a good shape. For the head. So you can kind of see I mean, this probably needs to be painted, too, because I just think that this is such a great image. You know, something kind of like that where we've got a nice frame, so the composition is taller than it is wide. And so we've got this nice composition that would make a great portrait of this dog. But now, what could we do to this one that might just punch it up a little bit beyond just a simple portrait? So let me switch over to a red color here. You know, glasses would be great, but we just did that on the bunnies. So maybe he's got, you know, a big scarf or a big collar or something would be cool. But I think that would kind of break our composition a little bit. Maybe he's got maybe he's got, like, old style motorcycle goggles, you know, something It's just he's really large. Like, maybe this dog maybe he rides in our side car to our motorcycle. And then he's got strap for the It's kind of a rough sketch, but hopefully you can see that where I'm kind of going with it. Like, he rides in the side car of our motorcycle, so he occasionally needs goggles, and something about that just makes me really want to paint it. Just that whole concept we might even have to do a version where he's actually in the side car, that would be incredibly fun. Okay, so now we've got a portrait. So this is a little bit different here because now we're looking at a portrait image of this woman. So now I'm thinking about composition, okay? So, like, what portion of this portrait? Because this is something like, you know, maybe she's at lunch or something, and, you know, somebody grabbed a phone and took this really, just a real simple portrait. The lighting is very even. You know, this isn't like, not lit like fashion photography. It's got very even lighting. So what I'm noticing here right off the bat is her gaze is off in this direction, and it's kind of making me feel like we could do some things over here with her hair and possibly add some elements up here around her head. But just starting off, though, I want to grab something some portion of her that would add to the composition or sort of create the composition. So I'm thinking about something kind of like this where we're not going to get all of her arms, but we are going to get her hair into the composition. Maybe something like that. Now, she could be some kind of maybe she's like maybe a fantasy type character. So she's got maybe these florals, maybe she's got big flowers here in her hair, different size flowers. And maybe there's some, like, floral pieces. Like there's maybe some like stems that kind of look like ferns coming off here, something like that. And maybe because of the florals in her hair, maybe there are it's attracting some butterflies. Maybe there's one there. Maybe there's a couple over here that are different sizes. And maybe maybe she's some kind of, like, a floral goddess kind of character, and maybe she's got a necklace here that could be really kind of ornate. Maybe she's got, like, a little bit of a facial tattoo or something like that, that's something about who she is, maybe. Something kind of like that. I mean, that could make a really cool, really interesting character to paint. I moving over here to our flower. Now, this kind of looks like it's a setting that's like aquatic that looks like water back there in the background. And I'm already seeing like a vertical type composition, kind of like what we had up here with the dog. So maybe the flower creates the base for our overall composition. So it's taller than it is wide, and it gives us some room to maybe create something up into this area. So maybe there is maybe we probably have a wash of some kind, and maybe we've already done butterflies, so maybe this one because it's a water type setting, maybe there's a drag Whoops. Maybe there is a dragonfly. You can see how rough my sketches are, and it's just so that we can get an idea. It's just to quickly generate ideas that could potentially become something. So you don't have to spend a ton of time on these. You don't have to put, like, a ton of effort to just generate a quick idea. Just think of this almost like a sketchbook. Now, looking at this last portrait, I see there's a couple things here that this is a really interesting looking portrait. Now, my first thought was because we had talked about what we had seen Bob Peak do with the overall color, and then the highlights were this real, just bright, complimentary color. And I thought, Oh, you know, what if we were to take something that was just, like, maybe an aqua sort of color that just feels Let me get Well, I need something more transparent so we can see I something like that. If the whole base color was this aqua green, aqua blue, and we had, like, this yellow that we could use to maybe outline all of the highlights. This was my initial thought, you know, just doing something kind of like this. So all these highlight areas would be this, like, yellow, bright yellow. Kind of like that. But then I thought, Well, but we're doing all this other really cool stuff. So what could we do to make this a bit more interesting? What kind of element could we add? Because the expression here is just one that is kind of I don't know. Kind of it's interesting. It's peculiar. Like, there's just something about it that's kind of I don't know. It's just interesting to me. So what if we added something where I don't know, just a feeling of kind of like a fantasy type, something to add to this expression and just give the overall painting more interest. I'm thinking, what if we were to add a fish here? It's maybe swimming around coming around the neck So what would that look like? And maybe since there is a fish in this scene here, what if there were bubbles? So now, something about that is just really it's really it just feels like it just has this level of interest that was already kind of there in the portrait itself, but it's almost like it's enhanced now because there's just this cool visual aspect or potentially cool visual aspect. Okay, so what we've done here is we've taken all of these reference images, and we have added a concept to them. We've added, again, this level of interest that could push these beyond just simple just simple reinterpretations of the reference as it is, you know, without adding any sort of elements. And I think, again, this does create a bit of just fun visual interest. So as an assignment for this one, I'd like you to gather at least three reference images like these, and they can just be something random that catches your eye, something that just has a little bit of interest off the bat, and I want you to add some kind of cool element to the images that you find so that you are adding overall visual appeal so that you're creating this backlog of concepts that you can use for future paintings. Now, if you have trouble thinking of something, try to to visualize, like, two unrelated things. Like, we had cat and snow. We had rabbit with glasses. We had Potrit and fish. So you might have, like, dog in space. You might have cat on the beach or butterfly in snow or just anything like that, just two unrelated things or two things that you normally wouldn't associate together because that can add that appeal and make for an interesting image. Okay, so give that assignment a try, and in the next one, we're going to start doing some composition sketches to further these concepts along to sort of test them out to see if we want to make future paintings with them. So I'll be there, and I'll be ready when you are. 4. Turning an Idea into a Sketch: All right. In this lesson, we're going to take a look at taking a few of our concepts from the previous lesson and then refining them into more of a completed sketch that we can then use in our final paintings. So I have I consider there to be really three different methods to create our sketches, and they are the same in terms of you are using some sort of a guide to create the final sketch from. But each method really kind of has its own advantages and its own drawbacks. So we're going to go ahead and take a look at that now. So I've pulled three of the concepts from the previous lesson that I felt the most strongly about that I thought might make some interesting sketches or good examples to do our sketches from and maybe even our final painting. So first up, I have this rabbit here, and these I've got the sketches or I'm sorry, the concepts open in an app called VizRf. So it's an app that I use to manage and keep track of all my reference images for individual projects. And the way that you can open a split screen like that is to just drag up from the bottom. And then when this little menu pops up, you can take Viz Rf and just drag it over until you see the split screen, and then you can adjust the width of the screen that it takes up. So back to those three methods for creating our sketches. The first one I want to take a look at is just simply the free hand method. And this involves just taking and eyeballing all of the shapes and the forms that you see and creating a rough sketch from that. So as you can see here, I have use basic shapes and forms to sort of generate a rough to work from. So I'm just taking something that's maybe maybe three circles here. Just sort of create the face from, and then like an overall shape here. Just studying the reference and just really roughing in. And you can tell by looking at it that I mean, it's really super rough, and I'm going to go in and refine it. I'm going to use the rough as a guide for a more refined sketch. Okay? Now, the main drawback of this method is it's going to take the most time. And it's probably going to utilize your drawing skills to the fullest because you are relying on your own perception of the shapes and forms from the reference. But I think that the benefit is sort of it gives you the most freedom to create your own interpretation, meaning that, like, there's going to be it's not going to be an exact representation of the reference. It's going to be more like your take on what you see. So to give you an example, I have Whoops. So my bunny is sort of looking more at the viewer. And then if we look at the reference, I think he's probably looking a little more off to the side, kind of like that. Okay? So it's not an exact representation. Now, again, I'm going to take this rough and I'm going to take the opacity back. And then I'm going to use I'm gonna use the rough as a guide here and create a more refined sketch. I'm basically going to create linework that is refined enough that if I wanted to use it and leave it visible in the final painting, I could do that. Because right now this rough is probably just a little too scratchy and scribbly and rough. So I want something that's a bit more refined that I'm paying attention to, maybe accounting for some of the fur, creating some texture with my linework, that sort of thing. So if I were to go along and trace the entire rough I might end up with something more like this. So if I turn the rough off, you can see that the line work is just a bit cleaner. It's still sketchy looking, and it still has a lot of room that gives it like that sort of a free hand look. But it's clean enough that I could definitely leave it in the painting, I think. Again, because watercolors transparent, you would still see portions of the sketch that are view are visible. So I also created another layer here with the whiskers and one more layer for the glasses. So in order to create the glasses, because if you'll notice this is really super clean line work, going to show you real quick. When you create a line and hold it, it gives you this little editing ability here in Procreate so you can kind of refine that line. Because you're probably not going to make a curve this perfect. So when you hold it, almost you can almost edit it like a vector line. So now, if we duplicate that and then flip it horizontal, we can use that to create the other side of the glasses. So just a little quick trick to get more refined shape in your sketches. Okay. Now let's look at the grid method. So this grid is on a separate layer and it's transparent. So you can bring it in. It's a transparent ping file, and I'm going to include it in the course resources, and you can bring it into Vizref if you want. And since it's transparent, you can overlay grid on top of your reference image. Now, for this, this method, I think probably the drawback for this one is that it's going to take you a little bit more time as well. But this one does allow for a more accurate representation of the reference versus just eyeball and freehand, just the free hand method. But it does allow for a little bit of room for your own interpretation because you're still making lines based on what you're seeing. So there's going to be a little bit of wiggle room here. So let's just say, for example, this is where I'm going to start looking at these four squares. I'm going to start with this one here at the tip of the ear. So I'm going to choose four squares here and just draw the same line here, just draw what I see there in the reference. And what's cool about this and you just follow along, and a lot of times, I'm just going to leave my finger over the reference to kind of guide my eye as to where I am. And I think that this method is kind of cool because it does it's giving me some freedom to sort of make my own interpretation for the line, meaning I can make some curves sharper, but it also allows me to be pretty accurate as far as the reference goes. And I'm just making shapes for what I see. And the reference, darker fur, I'm just turning into shapes. And just looking back and forth at the reference. So we would go along and just do the whole sketch using this method. And if we did so, we might end up with something more like this. Let me turn the grid off. So the resulting linework, I think, is probably good enough to use this as a guide for the painting or just paint from this sketch. But if you wanted to, of course, you could go ahead and take the opacity back and then on a new layer, start to create your own more refined sketch. If you wanted cleaner linework, you could certainly do that. Now, in order to complete this, we would need to add the glasses and the whiskers on a separate layer. Now, looking at the final method is just to create a trace of the reference. Let me clarify a few, I guess, maybe myths about a couple of these methods here. Now, I've seen comments and people saying that using the grid or even tracing is considered to be cheating. And I can tell you that nothing can be further from the truth because part of being an artist is being resourceful. And if you want to use a guide, a grid or trace an image to create your final piece, Your process is your own business, and how you create an image is completely up to you. There is no such thing as cheating. As long as you are putting your own creative input, your own creative thought, your own creative imagination into whatever it is that you're making. I've followed Illustrators of the past and many of them, especially in a production environment, would trace a reference. And because it is faster and you are essentially using that reference image as the guide, like we did with the rough in the first example, you're just using it as a guide to create your final sketch. Now, I think that there is also still some room to play within your linework, your shapes, and your forms while tracing. I'm going to show you how to do that. But I just wanted to kind of dispel some of the maybe negative connotation that tends to follow tracing around. So looking back, we're going to use the image itself as a rough. So Again, if I were to just follow these lines exactly as they are, then we might have an image that is a little bit more static that has a little bit less life to it because we're just tracing a photo. So we want to be able to add our own creative spin. So I tend to want to do this exactly the same way as I would draw. So that means give you an example. This is not my line. Instead, it's made up of a couple of different angles, a couple of different lines to create that interest, that flare to the illustration, and that will translate through to the painting. Okay, so I don't want to just go like that and drag the perfect or drag a just curve line. I want to add some shape to it, add some dynamicism. I want to make it more dynamic. So as you can see here, we're going to end up with something that's going to look a little bit different than our two previous examples. And again, I want to state that whatever method that you use and maybe you use a combination of these methods to create your final sketch, it's completely up to you, and I don't want you to consider tracing as having a negative connotation because there's absolutely nothing wrong with it. I tend to mostly use a free hand method for most of my sketches, but I do measure and I do take the time to try and get accurate proportions, especially if I am trying to be very true to the reference. And I will sometimes even open the reference underneath like this and just measure what I've done to see how accurate I was. I also think that's a great way to learn drawing, too, because if you're drawing from a reference, you can just take that reference, open it up underneath on a layer and see how close you got. Okay, so now we can see that we end up with something that's closer to the reference and that has a little bit of a has more of a dynamic linework than just being just making these, like, straight and precise lines over the image. So let's compare it here to our free hand method. And we can see by comparing these two that the tracing method it's very much it's more photorealistic. It's it's more true to the subject. But then the free hand method, while it does take a lot longer, has a bit more of personality as far as the artist goes. I'm probably adding a little bit more of my own again, my own interpretation of the reference. So while both of these have merit, both of these have benefits, I think it is 100% completely up to you to decide what you use in your own process. So as an assignment for this one, I'd like you to take one or two of the concepts from the previous lesson and make some more finalized sketches. Because we're going to take those sketches into the next video and explore some different options for compositions and making a finalized plan for our paintings. Now, don't be in a hurry to make these sketches. Don't rush. Take your time because I'll be here when you get back, ready to go. 5. The Secrets of Composition: So at this point, you may be thinking, Man, Nathan, when are we going to get to some painting? When are we going to put down some watercolor? Well, there are steps that we use like this to build up a plan before we start laying down paint because a lot of times maybe 80 to 90% of the painting is in the planning process because we don't want to take the effort of just of painting and going through the motions of building an image without these planning stages because it's sort of like we're setting ourselves up for failure because that painting may not turn out like we imagined in our heads. So this is like a way of just confirming the idea, what we see in our head, and to get as close to that as possible before we start the painting. So in this lesson, I want to look at some compositional elements that we need to consider because we've got our idea, we've got our sketches, but now we need to decide kind of how to place that subject on the page and some other aspects of that before we start painting. So I've got some examples here that we can take a look at. Now, first up, I've got this just quick sketch of a bird in flight. Now, I paint a lot of birds, and it's a really simple subject. It's a great way to illustrate the point of this composition, these compositional elements I want you to remember. So now, looking at this, we might just think, well, let's just place them right in the center of the page, which actually really is fine because it still feels pretty balanced as far as the negative space goes above and below. Like that just feels pretty balanced and pretty nice. So there's really nothing wrong with just placing him right in the center. But if we move him down closer to the edge, it tells a little bit of a different story from a compositional perspective because now it seems to me like he is flying in this direction, and the composition is giving him room to do so. But we can do just the opposite, move him up here. Now it feels a little different because now it feels like maybe we're on the ground and we're looking up at the bird. And this space represents the distance from us to the bird. So it's a very different painting just from moving him around within the space that we have on the page. Now, what we want to avoid, though, is something like this. Because now this feels really uncomfortable. And the reason is because of this really close edge, like, the subject just doesn't have room to move, it doesn't have room to breathe. So it just feels it looks and feels uncomfortable to our eye just because of the positioning. It's the exact same sketch. It's the exact same page size, but just the positioning of the subject on the page has that kind of effect. So another thing to consider, too, is how we fill this negative space, because we could take the negative space and we could fill it with a wash, something like this, or we could do something where we just kind of have a wash that surrounds the bird like that. Or we could fill the entire thing, the entire page around the bird with maybe, like, a light blue that kind of represents the sky or something like that. But one thing to consider, though, is a border option. And the reason I say that is because a traditional watercolor, oftentimes the paper is stretched and taped to a board. And that's so that the page itself won't buckle and bend as it gets wet and dries. So when you remove that tape, it creates this white border around the painting. And I think that border it helps the composition. It helps to free up some space and give the painting some room to breed. It's it's a watercolor technique that actually ends up lending to the actual look of the final painting, giving it that white border or white edge. But another thing to consider, though, is the size of that edge. Now the taped border becomes more of a compositional element because we could take that border and we could fill that with a wash or we could fill it with just a solid blue, kind of like if we were to fill the whole page, and that kind of represents the sky. But what's really great about this from a compositional standpoint is how some elements of the subject are breaking the frame. And I think that just makes it interesting to look at. It just makes it more of an interesting composition, and just something about it just kind of draws in the eye. Now, another thing to consider too is the overall page size. So maybe we don't want to do that standard portrait orientation where it was taller than it was wide. Maybe just a square like this might work for this particular subject because we can see here that it's still the same positive, negative space. It still fills that very nicely and still feels very balanced. And if we view it here and just fill in that negative space, and you can see still feels balanced, but another thing to consider too is the silhouette. Now, the thing about the silhouette is it does help us to make sure that the subject is readable. So if we zoom way out, we can still tell that that's a bird. And that helps to just sort of cement the whole composition and to make sure that our subject is a good readable representation. So that is also important as well. Now, if we also take a look at our sketches. I went ahead and I did a cat sketch based on the concept that we had, and I like how this one is coming together from a compositional standpoint. I think that this overall rectangle really lends well to the landscape orientation of the page. And I think there's some opportunity there to we've got some edge breaking happening here with the ears and the cat's chest down here. And the whole thing just feels really nice to me and really balanced. And I think that we'll probably do something like this or tackle this one for our final project. Looking back at the rabbit, though, the sketch from the last video. Now, this is kind of like the bird. I mean, it's pretty simple as far as the subject goes and the overall shape. Now, I do think that there's a couple things that we could probably do here. I think that we could anchor him with a shadow down here. And then I think we could probably see if we wanted to move him further down the page might give us some opportunity to do something up here to make it taller, to fill the space. You know, this could be filled with, like, a wash or a gradient or something like that. Or we might we might even try maybe adding a wash that is sort of shaped like this, maybe, where it sort of comes down and just kind of it fills in the top half of the rabbit. And maybe we even leave this area unpainted, or, you know, just let the sketch fill in the rest. Or maybe if it is painted, it's a very neutral, very light light gray or just very neutral color. So if all the color was here and the majority of the paint values were up here, it would kind of reinforce that focal point, which is the glasses. Now, of course, we could do some splatters, too, you know, something that kind of extends the wash a little bit, something like that. So this is a pretty simple subject and a pretty simple layout, but there's still some important decisions to consider from a composition standpoint. And hopefully this demo helps you to understand that that's really there's things here that you may not have even thought about, but there are actually important decisions towards creating a successful painting. So as an assignment for this one, I want you to take your sketches from the previous lesson and lay them out in a composition on the page that we're going to be painting on. Now, I want you to keep in mind the page size and the orientation. So is it landscape? Is it portrait? Is it square or something else? Make sure that you think about the borders and the edges. Is it a taped border? If it is, what size is that taped border? Also, consider the positive and negative space. So make sure that everything feels balanced and that the subject has room to breathe. Also check your subject's silhouette and make sure that the subject is readable from a distance. All right, so give those things a try, and then let's head over to the next lesson where we're going to be talking about how to simulate some realistic watercolor techniques. 6. Watercolor Techniques to Remember: Alright, here we are back again, ready for another lesson. And this one, we're going to be taking a look at how to simulate some real traditional watercolor techniques in a digital environment. And I'm going to reiterate some concepts that you may already be familiar with, but I want to sort of make sure that these concepts are cemented in your brain because sometimes you need to hear things multiple times, or maybe you need to hear it a slightly different way to have sort of that aha moment like, Oh, wow, this makes sense. I could commit this to memory and begin to apply it. So we're going to go over the we're going to go over the brushes that we have that are included in the course. And I want them to I want you to understand what they are used for, the different brush types and the traditional technique that they are assimilating. All right, so let's go ahead and let's look at some of the brushes that we have. Now, the first is the sketch kit pencil, which is just a pencil that you've seen me use in the previous lessons just to draw and sketch with. But our first watercolor brush is the sharp sable brush. Now, this one is used specifically to create hard edges in our painting. Now, if you'll remember, the concept maybe from if you've seen previous videos of mine or you've been through my previous courses, the concept of different edge types, and there are three. So there's hard, soft and completely lost edges. Now, this brush is specifically made to create a hard edge. Now, this is good for creating focus in the painting, creating details that are sharp and in focus mainly in the focal point where we want the viewer's eye, we want them to see that first because our eye is automatically drawn to sharp edges in a painting. Now, this is also assimilating a traditional technique called wet into dry, where the brush is wet with water and paint, and the paper is dry. Now, because the paper is dry, the water is not going to flow beyond the wet edges of the brush stroke, okay? So the result is this very hard edge stroke. Now let's say we want to add color in this an additional color into this stroke. So if we choose, let's get an orange and we paint with the same brush into this wet area, we're going to get some blending of the color, and we're going to get some blurring or softening of the initial layers edges. So we're going to see that that blue is now mixing in to the orange. Okay? The reason that's happening is because we didn't let or we didn't wait for that initial layer to dry. Now, that's what would happen in a traditional painting as well. The two colors would begin to mix. We would be creating a larger area of water or wet paint for the two colors to flow into. Now, let's say we want this initial area of color to stay intact. We want to keep all those hard edges. We want to add an additional color. So in traditional, in a traditional sense, we would have to wait for that layer to dry in order for the above layer to not affect the edge. So now, when we paint onto a new layer, we're still getting that color mix because watercolor is transparent, but we're not losing the initial layer's edge. So that's an important concept to remember because sometimes we want those hard edges. Sometimes we want two colors to blend. We want to lose those hard edges or soften them. And this is a way this is a concept to remember so that we know how to do that. We either want to let that layer dry or paint into the wet area. And the way to do that from a traditional standpoint is to paint within the same layer or a layer on top. The next brush that I want to take a look at is the super wet into wet. Now, this brush is simulating a technique where the paper is not completely dry. It's maybe a little bit damp. So the edge of the stroke is going to bleed a little bit. So it's got a defined edge, but it's just a little bit softer overall. So this brush also similar in the way that you can stack or layer the colors. Now, if we if we paint directly over it with another color, essentially not allowing the initial stroke to dry, again, we're going to lose or continue to soften the edges of the initial stroke. But if we are painting onto a new layer, same way as before, there is less effect on the initial strokes edges. So we still have some defined edges, but overall, they are a little bit softer. Now, the next brush is similar in that it creates a softer edge. So it's kind of a wet into wet technique. But this brush is different because it will continue to build value. The more layers I apply, it will just get darker and darker and darker, whereas the previous brush will only get so dark before it hits like a max level of value. Like, it's just not going to get as dark as the pressure wash brush or the pressure painter. Now let's take a look at how the pressure painter will build values. Now, I'm applying and I'm applying more pressure towards the left and then getting lighter towards the right, and it will go with no pressure, it will just completely blend out to just completely transparent. Now, if we want to apply another color over this one, we're going to run into a similar similar look as before, where the orange is really blending with the blue almost to the point where you can't detect. I'll go outside the edge here so you can see that there is some orange, but it's really picking up a lot of the blue. So if we're on a new layer and we're again, letting this layer completely dry, we have more of a glazing effect. Now the underlying blue is having a lot of effect from the orange because that layer is dry. So this orange is just glazing over the top of the blue. Okay, so same brush, but two very different effects by just understanding the concept of mixing the colors wet into wet or allowing that first layer to dry being wet into dry. Now, this next brush loaded into wet creates a very soft edge as well. What I like to primarily use this one for is with the smudge tool. So let's just say we have an area of paint that has a very hard edge, and we want to soften some but not all of that edge. So this is a great way to really fine tune and control. So this would be like we've got an area of paint here. Our stroke is still wet and we're taking clear water and we're painting into that area of wet paint, allowing some of the paint to flow out into the water. So this is a good way to really control what areas or what edges are kept and what edges are lost or softened. So the next brush is a wet edges wash. Now, there is a concept in watercolor where you are spreading clear water onto the paper. And then when you drop in the paint, it just allow that paint to just spread into the water, let it do its own thing, and it creates this these nice blooms and watercolor textures. And it's a favorite technique. It's part of what makes watercolor appealing, in my opinion is would you let some of these areas paint themselves. So with this one, you can just apply bits of different pressure soft pressure hard pressure to get some varied or a varied wash within the area you're painting. Now, another way to create a watercolor wash is through these effects or stamp brushes where a wash is applied with just one tap of the brush or the pin. Now, this is created from a photograph of an actual watercolor wash. So it has more of a varied, more organic look to it. And what's great about these is how can we can move these around and position them in the painting exactly like we want. Like, say, for example, if we just wanted this area here that has a bit of splatter, we might just leave that area in the painting, position it exactly where we want, and then we can blur out the rest, or we can erase the rest or blend it into the painting, however we want. So there's a lot of full control over exactly where these washes are placed, and it does provide a very organic look. Now, this last brush here that I want to go over, there is an aspect of or a technique in watercolor that I really like where you splatter alcohol into a paint area that is not completely dry. And so what it does this alcohol mix brush here, what it does is sort of creates like a reverse splatter. And I'm gonna first apply it with a brush to show you what's happening here. So this would be like this is almost like just adding texture to this area of paint. But if we use it with the eraser brush, it's almost like it's simulating what it really does to a traditional painting, which is just to create these reverse splatters because the alcohol will act as a resist and will push paint out towards the edges of the splatter. So this is just a really fun, really creative technique that I like to use occasionally in some of my digital paintings. So another aspect of traditional watercolor that I want to make sure you understand is the role that texture plays, specifically the texture of the paper. Watercolor paper has a very rough coarse texture to it so that it holds paint in a specific way. And if we take a look at our file here that we're painting on, and this file is included with the course, it's actually from the wet media set of the Ultimate Canvas creator. And if I compare it here to some actual watercolor paper, you can see that the texture is the same, and specifically because I use this paper to create this texture. Now, this is a cold press texture that is common to it's probably the most common watercolor paper. And you can see here that it is built up or built up of several different paper texture layers and a few paint effects layers. So if we go ahead and we add a stroke here, let's get a couple brushes in here. And if we turn this group of layers off, you can see the difference that it makes turning the texture on and off. It just suddenly gives it this very realistic texture. Now, here are the paper texture set, and here's the paint effects set. Now, we probably can just leave the paper texture layers alone. But these, if we swipe left and unlock them, we can change the opacity of the paint textures and it gives a very different look to the paint. So I wanted to make sure that we went over these texture layers so that you understand the role that they're playing in the overall painting. Now, I don't really have a specific assignment for this lesson, other than, I want you to install the coarse brush set and just play with the brushes like we have in this lesson and make sure that you understand kind of how they work, try different levels of pressure, try layering them on top of each other within the same layer and on a new layer just so that you have some familiarity with how they work and the different marks that they make. So in the next lesson, we're going to take these brushes and these techniques, and we're going to put together a one colour demo painting from one of our previous sketches. So meet me there and get ready to sling a little paint. 7. Sneaking Up on a Painting: Alright, so we have found some inspiration. We've gathered some references. We've built some concepts. We've done some sketches. We've studied our brushes and the edges, the marks that they make. Now we are ready to do a practice painting with one color. Now, if you are going to use your own sketch or you're going to follow along with me with the rabbit sketch that I provided and the resources, either way, the process is the same. We're going to be studying values and just building up contrasts, building up values. Now, before we get started on it, there is a concept that I want to introduce to you that I think is super helpful for reminding you how to get started on a painting. So with a traditional painting a traditional watercolor, you oftentimes are building towards dark. So you are starting very light, and because the watercolors transparent, you're building layer upon layer, and there's areas that are getting darker and darker with each layer. So the idea here is that you want to sneak up on a painting. So you don't want to go in, for example, you don't want to go in with your darkest color and heaviest pressure and most opaque. Instead, you would want to start very light so that you can essentially sneak up. Layer by layer. Getting darker as you go. Okay, because this method right here, this gives you room to make decisions as you go. Was this method here, it's like the final decision has already been made. We've gone in, bam, with our heaviest color. It's as dark as it's going to get. We really don't have any room to do anything else. So this is the method we want to use to start. Okay? Okay, so taking a look at our sketch. I've got the reference open over here to the left in Isref, and a lot of times I will just kind of use my finger to keep track of kind of where I'm at, what I'm looking at. Now, again, my sketch is not exactly the same as the reference, so I won't be able to match it perfectly, but I can use it just kind of as a loose guide for values. Like, here's this dark shape here. Here's this dark shape, here. This is a little darker than the top of his nose here, things like that that I'm just using as a general guide as to where my values are going to go. So I'm going to start off with a light blue color. And I think I'm going to lay in a wash just to kind of put in a large area of just light color, and then we're going to build up on that. I'm going to grab this wash brush, and I'm going to just lay down a very light blue wash underneath the sketch. Again, just we're sneaking up on this painting. So this is just a really, really light, very transparent blue wash that I'm just laying in just to give us kind of a starting point, very, very, very simple, very, very quick. Now I'm going to add a new layer above my sketch layers, and I'm going to get a little bit darker blue, a little bit deeper, a little bit more saturated. And I'm going to use the sharp sable brush. Now, again, I'm just going in here and I'm looking for the places that I see dark or darker values, and I'm going to start to paint some of those values in. And these initial strokes are they're going to have hard edges, and we will blend a few here and there where needed. Okay? We're going to keep this really simple and just go along and add in some value. And if you're following along with me on the rabbit sketch, don't feel obligated to make the exact same strokes that I'm making because let it be your own interpretation. You know, you're not going to be able to make the exact same size and exact same placement of your strokes. So there's no need to worry about that. Just evaluate the reference and just where you see darker shapes in the fur. Make some little loose strokes to represent those areas. Also, don't worry about painting as fast as I am if you want to pause and catch up. Feel free to do that at any point. And don't worry about being super precise. You know, this is watercolor, so it's going to be it's going to be loose anyway. And this brush, you know, at this size is not going to allow us to be super precise anyway. So there's no need to worry about that. And, of course, let this be fun, right? Don't get super worried about how it looks. You know, they're going to trust this process of just going through and filling in, building up these values layer by layer. So we're not going to be super worried about what it looks like in the meantime. The last thing we want to do is get stressed out about what is potentially an ugly stage of the painting because they all go through that. They all go through this ugly stage where it's, you know, not looking quite right just yet, and you just kind of have to see it through to the point of it being finished. Alright, so I'm almost there on this second layer. Now, I'm not sure yet if I want to leave in the sketch. So we're just going to kind of have to see when we get there. You know, we're going to possibly turn the sketch off or possibly leave it in, but I'm going to go ahead and kind of roughly outline some of these squiggly sketch marks so that there's something there if we decide we want to turn the sketch off. So in the fur, it's perfectly okay to be kind of abstract, especially down in this area. Like this is our focal point up here. This is probably where we're going to have the most values and the most hard edges. But once we start getting down here, it's kind of like, Well, there's just some abstract marks. Like I'm seeing kind of where some of these darker fur shapes just kind of connect a little bit. So I'm going to make kind of some abstract shapes here, just little puddles of color. Of course, this area here is darker, which we're going to hit again with another layer to bring up the value. So this second layer blue, you can kind of think of it as, like, the middle tone values. So this is probably pretty good. A little bit more right there. I think looking around, I'm just studying just a little bit to see if there's any areas that need. We can always come back to this layer, but I just want to try and get the value in. No, that's probably. Maybe something like that. No. So you just kind of have to experiment. Don't feel bad about hitting the undo. That's what it's there for. Laying a value, but doesn't quite work. Always undo. Okay, let's go ahead and let's move on to a new layer. And let's go even darker here, maybe somewhere right in there. And I'm going to keep the same sharp sable brush, and we're probably going to combine these layers and maybe smudge some edges in a little bit. But for now, let's just go in with our darker blue. This is just working pretty good. I like that it's getting quite a bit darker. This is a pretty simple sketch, I wanted to keep it simple because I wanted these concepts to be easy to apply. The more complicated the sketch becomes, the more complicated it becomes to lay in the values. So this is just a really simple sketch that is perfect for what we're doing here because it's very easy to see where the values are. Okay, now, zooming in on the face here, this is pretty dark here here size my brush down just a little bit to get in. And you can see that I'm definitely not worried about being super precise. Again, I'm tracing a little bit of these outlines in case we want to remove the sketch layer, which I think we might try. So that means I'm going to need to go over the Is because sketch is where a lot of the value is in the I. All right. This is looking pretty good. You can see how kind of fast and loose this is. Like, we're not You know, we're not spending a ton of time. This painting is not going to take us a real long time to do, so that makes it great for a practice study. Oh, I can see I did not I didn't do any kind of outline on the ears, so the edges of the ears are gonna disappear if we turn the sketch off. So we're probably going to have to come back and add those in. And I might might want to, like, let's just add a couple of splatters outside. Do that with a different color too. Do a couple that. I'm gonna go back to this layer and just see if I can just get a lighter blue just to go over the ears here with some sort of a stroke so they won't just so the edges won't disappear if we turn off that sketch layer. We're also going to need to do a layer and darken in the glasses. I'm gonna go ahead and add a little bit more value here with this sort of medium blue because we kind of have a little bit of a It's just there's too much too much there's too much contrast happening right there between light and dark. There's not enough middle value in there, I think. Maybe right here. Okay. Yeah, maybe something like that. Add a little bit right there. Okay. So now let's go ahead and let's add a new layer. Let's go back to that darker blue. And let's just add in the shape for the glasses. I'm going to use the sharp sable brush for. This is well here. I'm going to need to size it down because I want the glasses to be pretty dark. And I also kind of want to stay in the line on this one because I don't want the shape to be super loose initially. We might blur a little bit or soften the edges a little bit, but initially, I want to have a pretty good shape on the glasses. I don't want that to get too lost because it's such a focal point. I think this is going to look great. Here in just a minute when we turn this sketch off. Oh, we got to do the this part of the glasses here almost missed. Alright, I'm going to go ahead and turn off the glasses sketch. So we can see a couple of areas. Let's go ahead and clean up the edge. Here. Maybe about it 'cause I like how we've still got some sharp edges in there. I'm going to darken it right here. Yeah, it kind of looks like Is it looks like real watercolor, how I could still see some of the edges within the stroke. Okay, if we were to turn off the sketch at this point here, I can see that we don't have enough we don't have enough detail to do that, and it still read really well, so leave the sketch on for now, let's go back to the dark layer. Let's size my brush down a little bit and just get in some of these detailed areas to define it things a little bit more so we can turn the sketch off. We want to do that. My end up leaving it on. But overlapping these strokes like this, it just really really gives it the look and these overlapping hard edges like both of these strokes have a hard edge. Both of these strokes have a hard edge, but when they overlap, it kind of it visually softens. And we're actually going to soften it even more here in just a little bit to see if we can maybe lose a few edges here and there. All right. So again, this is a great study, especially we're doing it in one color. It's a great value study. But in the next lesson, when we do the same sketch in color, it's really going to be a different kind of experience, but we're going to be utilizing what we already know about the subject from this one color study. All right. I really want to get some detail in around the eye because I noticed that it was kind of lost. And Then this one as well. And it's still loose and quick. Like, don't worry about getting too detailed. Alright, let's see kind of where we are with no sketch here. Yeah, I think that that's starting to work, let's zoom in on the eye. Let it go maybe a little touch darker here just to get in because this is the eye is important, especially in an animal painting. Really got to make sure that we have that detail in. And we could probably darken the glasses a bit, too, but I mean, we may try a trick for that just to see Probably going to need to erase that highlight back in. Okay, let's go ahead and let's merge down these two layers. Now we can take the smudge tool and we can blend together just a little bit. We can kind of change the shape. I'll show you here. We can just kind of change the shape of some of these marks. Now, we want to keep a lot of the hard edges. I'm just blending a little bit here and there. Don't want to blend out every hard edge because it's going to make everything look real soft and out of focus. And we really want to avoid that because it's just not how watercolor looks. You know, there are some of these hard edges are going to remain, and they have to in order for it to look in focus. Can I go back to the sharp sable, and I'm going to define this area of the nose a little bit better. And we'll soften a little bit of that. We take the smudge tool. You have to adjust the size of the smudge tool some as you work to get. Sometimes you want just a little bit of a detail smudge versus a really large one. Okay. And for those glasses, let's go ahead and just duplicate the layer, and they instantly get darker just by duplicating the layer. So I'm going to merge those down because they become more of a focal point. I'm not sure what that little stray mark is, I'm going to get rid of that. See where that's at. All right. Now, looking at the painting as a whole, let's go ahead and add let's take the super wet into wet, and let's add a shadow down here at the bottom. Let's do it on a new layer, and let's get kind of a darker blue. And let's just paint in size my brush up just a little bit. And we just kind of paint in a shadow here. I think we're going to need to add a little dark to his feet as well. So I'm going to erase some of that. And I'm going to use the wet into wet to soften the edge just a little bit too. Now let's take a darker blue and use the sharp sable, and we'll just darken in Okay, so now I think let's go ahead and let's take I'm going to move this shadow layer up and just combine it with the rabbit. And then I'm going to take the Smudge tool, and I'm just going to soften some of these edges that are here just in this area. So there's less less focus, less sharp edges. And I think also we might go ahead. Let me add take the sharp sable again and just add a little bit an outline here and over here. And then I'm going to go ahead and just soften some of this outer edge, too. Some of these areas. So we're going to kind of lose some of the edges that are down here because this area down here, we're softening it because it's just less of a focal point, and I'm just kind of making some turning some of these into more abstract type areas. And you can see how I'm working the brush just loosely over everything just kind of softens these edges. There's still some hard edges there, so we can we still know what it is. But overall, it's just a little bit softer than up here. Okay, so we're almost there. Let's go ahead so see this is our glasses layer. Let's just soften a little bit, just for fun. Let's see if we can just maybe size this down some soften the edge of the glasses in a couple of areas, so that it looks like it's blended with the painting. Like it's not sitting on top. And you can kind of see what I'm doing here, which is just sizing the brush and just kind of working it back and forth over an edge to just soften it, reshape it just a little bit. It's just a adding a very subtle effect. And it just makes the glasses look more, again, they're just part of the painting. Okay, super subtle, but it does does make a difference. Okay. All right. So what else can we do to finish this guy up? Let's go ahead maybe just adds maybe deepen our wash in the background just a little bit. Try that. Add a new layer above that first wash. Let's get kind of a medium blue. Go back to our wet edges, and let's just see about just throwing it's maybe too dark, a little bit more wash there and on the edge. That's too much. Something kind of like that because now we're going to have the opportunity. Let's create a new layer on top of everything else. Let's grab white or shift the color to white and the sharp sable brush. And now we can go in as if this were white guash. Like, if you've taken my traditional watercolor course, you will have seen or how I use white gouache to get a highlight back over watercolor that has dried. So we can do the same thing here. We can mimic that same technique with digital. And this sharp sable brush really, really looks like real white guash. So just a couple places. Maybe we'll throw in a highlight up here for the glasses. Maybe something kind of like that. And let's let's maybe soften a little bit of the edge here. We'll just soften that. I'm using this smudge tool to just soften some of the edges of my white guash. Oh, and we can also add that little highlight back into the eye. Something kind of like that. Now, we could also take the eraser tool and erase these highlights. But I think this is just a different way of doing. It produces a little bit of a different look. Okay, last couple of items here, let's go back to that additional wash layer, and let's let's take the eraser tool and the alcohol mix and just do a swipe or two, just to lighten that wash a bit. I felt like it might have gotten a little too dark. Let's go ahead and create a new layer above our highlight layer. And let's use the wet splatter. Stamp here, stamp effect. And let's just got that kind of medium blue again. Let's just drop it right here. I'll show you Right about here, let's just move it over a little bit and just add some little bit of splatter, additional splatter. And then I think that's a good stopping point for this one. It's not too complicated. Again, we've got a good level of values here, and I'll show you real quick how we can test that out. If we do a copy all, and again, we're on the topmost layer three finger swipe down and paste. Now if we take this and we go to hue saturation adjustments, hue saturation, take the saturation all the way down. Now we can kind of see here. That's about our darkest dark right there. Let me use this brush. Darkest dark. We've got kind of a middle value here, or we'll say probably maybe that's the next to darkest here. And then maybe here. And then, of course, we've got the white of the paper. So we've got this this nice range in values right here. So we've got this dark and a few middle tones and all the way to the lightest light. And watercolor, the lightest light is usually the white of the paper. Okay? So that's just a good way to convert to black and white and see if we have enough value range. Now, if we didn't see if we did this test and we didn't see this and this, you know, if all we saw was just somewhere right in the middle here, all we saw was the middle without this dark and this light, then we would know there's probably some room for us to go darker with our values or bring back our highlights if needed. Like, if we don't see enough highlight in there, we're going to have to go back in and find some highlights. Okay, so that's just a quick way to test your values. So back to our rabbit, I think we can call this one done. So as an assignment for this one, I would like for you to take another sketch and try another one color practice painting because as you can see, this doesn't have to be complicated. It doesn't have to take you an incredible amount of time. And that's the beauty of watercolor, is it can be simple but still be really beautiful. And it's oftentimes, the more simple it is, the better. So give another one a try. Choose one color. Remember to build your values and test your values when you're done to make sure that you have a range from dark all the way to a light value. Okay, so in the next one, we're going to take this same sketch again, but this time, we're going to paint it full color, and we're going to talk about some color theory and color harmony along the way. 8. Finding Color Harmony Part 1: Alright, I'm excited about this one because we're going to be talking about color. Now, that's my favorite aspect of watercolor because of its transparency and the way that colors stack and layer upon one another, creating new colors. It's just a lot of fun. And if you have taken one of my previous courses or maybe you've followed me on a live stream, you'll know that I talk about color theory like the color wheel, complimentary colors, triadic schemes and things like that. And that's a great method for choosing your initial colors to start out with but because digital painting is more fluid, meaning that colors can be changed and edited at any point along the way in the process. Now, I think that maybe a little bit more of an intuitive approach works really well here, and that's kind of what I want to do in this practice painting is just show you some ways that we can work with color and adjust color to find a harmony as we go. Now, I also want to introduce to you a concept of being willing to lose the painting and then find it again. And what I mean by that is to always be willing to experiment, to try things along the way that just might kind of upset where you are or just kind of shake up your process a little bit, and you might lose the painting, but you can always find it again and bring it back. And I think that in the end, that allows for a more interesting painting. Alright, so let's go ahead and let's take a look at our sketch again and get started. Alright, so as we're working through this, let's try and keep the inspiration pieces that we had from Video one. Let's keep those in mind as we work, and there may be some opportunities to incorporate some of those things. Now, right off the bat, I'm thinking about that box from the comic book cover that was kind of like a square frame, and I'm wondering if maybe we could incorporate something like that into the bunny here. So I'm going to make a new layer and I'm going to move it below everything else. And let's just see if we can make a rectangle selection. Let me start it maybe right here and we'll position it here so that his ears will break the frame and a few whiskers there. And we could just fill it with a really light gray just so we can see it. I'm going to undo the selection. Let's create a new layer, and I'm going to use the sketch pencil. And if we if we drag a line here or draw a line and hold the pencil tip to the screen, the line will straighten and we can kind of adjust it there. So let's do that for the sides, too. I'm gonna bring it all the way down to where it meets his leg there. Both sides. Whoops. Didn't get the first one. Yeah, something like that. I'll turn this layer off. So now we have that additional compositional element there. I think that that just looks a little bit more interesting or adds a little bit of interest. I'm going to use the sharp Sabal and race where his ears are breaking the frame. Okay, cool. So we've incorporated a little bit of that inspiration into this piece, and I think it just kind of added at a little bit of interest to the composition. Let's talk about some initial colors for this one because I'm also remembering that Bob Peak piece where he had, like, the cool green color in the background, and then there was the highlight color was this complimentary red, and it was really striking. And I'm wondering if maybe if we were to fill our background rectangle with maybe purple or blue, then we do if we do blue, we could maybe do orange, some orange in the bunny. So there's like a nice complimentary color scheme going on. And if those colors overlap, it'll create a little bit of a neutral gray. So let's just start maybe with let's go ahead and fill some of the background rectangle. So I'm going to create another new layer down here. And I'm going to go ahead and use that rectangle as a selection. So I'm going to select that. So we're going to be painting inside the rectangle on this new layer. And let's just grab kind of not super saturated. Let's just go somewhere in the middle, kind of a light blue. And let's use the wet edges wash. And let's just go ahead and fill in. Let's size this brush up just a little bit there. Let's go ahead and just fill in some of that rectangle there. I think I'm going to do one more pass. Real light pressure. Now, I'm going to use the eraser tool here. I'm going to need the wet edge wash again, and I'm just going to erase back some of what is within the bunny illustration just to kind of take some of that back out. Okay, so we have a little bit of the blue that Oops. I got a little bit of a blue that it's bleeding over the edge of the bunny, and I think that's perfectly fine. So just as a reminder too, if you want to take your time here, and if I'm ever going too fast, just pause the video. Also remember to take breaks, get some coffee, get some tea. Stay super relaxed as you're following along. Don't worry about making the exact same marks that I make. Don't let it stress you out. Again, if I'm moving too fast, slow me down, pause it. It's all available to you. So stay relaxed and have fun as you follow along because that is super important aspect of painting. It's just just to stay relaxed and have a good time. Okay. So now let's see if we could add a new layer here. And I think I'm going to keep the wet edges wash. And let's get an orange, which would be a complimentary of blue. And maybe something kind of not too super saturated just yet. And let's just do a real light wash over the bunny. And again, if it bleeds over the edge, that's totally fine. So this would be a situation where the paper is still wet, and we're adding a wash in that is just going to freely flow wherever it wants, basically. I'm gonna take the eraser and just knock back a little bit of that. Again, the eraser was set to the wet edges brush as well, the wet edges wash. Okay, I think something like that is a pretty good start for us. Now let's do a new layer because we're essentially by creating a new layer, we're basically saying that this paint, this initial wash has dried. And I'm going to bump my orange just a little bit more towards red. And we're going to get the let's get the pressure painter this time because I want this these initial shapes here to have a little bit softer edge. And again, I'm going to be using just like before, I'm going to be using this bunny reference to just kind of inform where my dark shapes are where we need to start adding value, even though my sketch is not exactly like this bunny, but it's still going to inform the shapes that we are painting. Okay, so here we go. Starting in, make sure. Yes, I'm on a new layer and go to start to fill in some of the darker shapes areas that I see in the reference And we're just subtly sneaking up on the painting. We're not going in too heavy with anything just yet. And again, sneaking up like this, like I mentioned before, is also a way to stay very relaxed about your approach and your process because it's almost like at this stage, nothing is a really super strong commitment. I mean, nothing in digital is ever really a super strong commitment, but it just sort of gives you room to make decisions as you're working. Okay, moving up around the eye here. Okay, go ahead and go back over some of these areas as other areas are getting darker. Some of my first pass needs some adjustment. Alright, up in the ear. And I want you to see, too, also how I'm moving the pen around once again, and I'm just kind of being real sort of loose with it. Like, I'm not really just finely noodling. You know, I'm trying to be kind of loose and expressive with how I'm working in the color. And these brushes are great for that because it's kind of like it's giving me a good mix of hard and soft edges, and it's a good This brush has a good amount of blending. So it blends with colors that are already in place or strokes that are already in place. Okay, I'm going to use the smudge tool and just knock back a little bit here. Make sure that some of that's just going to kind of lead into the blue some. And, okay. So now let's go ahead and let's add another new layer. And let's adjust our orange a little bit to maybe I'm tempted to just see if go a little bit more yellow with it. I don't know if this will show up well enough. Let's just try it. Let's just see what happens. So the sharp sable brush is the one we're going to use for this layer. And actually, I'm going to add that back onto this layer because I really want there to be a little bit more color variation here. So let's go ahead. I'm going to go over some of this with that yellow just to add in a bit. If you can see, it's really super subtle, but there's just a little bit of a color variation in a few spots. Which is another trait of watercolor. Just adding just so that that entire layer is not one color. Okay. Now, let's go back to our new layer, which is going to be darker. So let's push it back towards red some. Go in a little bit darker. We're gonna go down this way, maybe a little bit more red. Something like that. Let's try that and see what it looks like. Alright, so because we're using the sharp Sable now, we're going to have a little bit more a little bit more sharper edges and some opportunity to create a little bit more focus some of these shapes. Stray mark there. Whoops. S here. Get the sable brush on the eraser and get rid of that. Okay, so now going around making some of these darker shapes. And we've got some different colors in here that we can play with here in a sec and see kind of what we have to work with. Okay, I'm using the sharp sable to paint with, and in the smudge tool, I'm using loaded it to wet. So I'm going to switch back and forth as I'm going here and just kind of smooth out some of these. I want to get rid of all of the hard edges. I'm just smoothing out some as I'm working along, and it's also kind of reshaping some of these strokes. So again, don't want to get rid of all Of my hard edges. Okay, that's looking cool. All right, so now let me go up into this ear. Kept that shape in there. And work a little bit, move it around. So this would be like, you know, we're putting in some paint and the paper is dry, so it's wet into dry, and then we are going back with some clear water and a brush and moving that pigment around or creating some areas for the pigment to flow into. No, not that you have to know that, but I think it's important to kind of understand the techniques of traditional watercolor, just so you know what it is that you're emulating here, just so you kind of have an understanding of what the technique is. It's just it's really fun and just satisfying to watch a painting like this come together. I mean, this is not a super complex subject, but it's fun, and it's just a good time to sort of watch as it builds up and the layers begin to meld together. And let's go ahead and real quick. Well, before we change anything else, let's just add a few more here. Let's go back in and just continue to use the Sharpsable to just add a little bit more a little bit more into our darker shapes. Building up value, building up the painting. I kind of think for this version, we're going to probably keep the sketch intact. Like, we're probably going to not turn it off, let it become part of the painting. Now, also, when I am using the Smudge tool, I'm also kind of doing a similar, you know, technique where I'm just working it back and forth and not removing all of the hard edges. But I'm not being so you know, I'm not getting in and really trying to, you know, I'm just kind of working it over something and then just letting that be, you know, making the stroke and then letting it be part of the painting instead of really trying to control every aspect of what's happening. I hope that makes sense, because that's also another really good aspect of watercolor is a traditional painting, you're not really ever in full control of wet areas or wet paper. Okay, so real quick, I want to just add a bit of color variation into this layer as well. And there's a couple ways we could do that, but let's just go ahead and just try to paint in a lighter yellow over some of this and just see if it will add a little variation because this brush will allow for a little bit of opaque style painting. This is such a fun brush to use because it just really adds such a cool effect and adds such because it blends over itself so well. Alright, I'm going to leave this yellow variation just maybe towards the top, not really carry it down. Into the feet. So let's go with that for right now. And let's see if we can manipulate these colors just a little bit, see what kind of harmonies we can find here. Okay, in order to do that, let's go back to this layer here, where we started initially building up our tone. And let's just go ahead and do a hue saturation adjustment. And I'm going to start with the hue and just slide it back and forth. Green is interesting. But I tend to like the more kind of red. It's kind of a coral kind of color there. Let's see about maybe making it a little bit darker or lighter. Lighter is interesting. We push it a little bit. Actually, I'm going to leave it at 50%. I think that feels about right. Saturation maybe just a touch. And let's try adjusting the last layer two and just see kind of what we come up with. So pushing things a little bit more red really kind of creates an interesting look. I don't think I want to overly saturate anything at this point. Then if we go darker, that's kind of cool. About 48%, 49, just barely nudging it. Yeah, I kind of I kind of like that. Let's see about maybe doing the same thing with the background layer. So I went down to that initial layer that we put the wash in the rectangle shape. And let's do the same thing there. Let's just see Yeah, see, that's going a little bit more aqua with it is kind of cool. So probably don't need more saturation. I'm gonna leave that alone. If we make it darker, I don't really think you really dark with it. That's kind of cool. I'm gonna bump it back up, though, to about 47% there. And then let's see kind of how we feel about that. 9. Finding Color Harmony Part 2: O Okay, I'm really I'm liking where this is going because on these colors here, like this orange and sort of coral color, like, I wouldn't have chosen that initially. So this is something that we've kind of stumbled into by just being flexible with our colors and just making some adjustments as we go and looking for that color harmony. So let's go ahead and let's just try to see if we can let's add a new layer above the rectangle wash and let's just sample this sort of orangy color that I've got. And let's try adding in there's a soft wash one stamp effect down here. Let's just go ahead and drop that in and see if we can kind of incorporate this into the painting. And I'm going to move it around a little bit. See that feels like it's because it's flowing down into his leg here, and it's also flowing out this way. And it's just got kind of a nice just adds a nice unifying effect to the whole thing. So let's work with this and see kind of what we can come up with now. I feel like we need to go ahead and fill in the glasses, the shape for the glasses. So let's do that, too. And I'm gonna's I'm thinking of, like, a dark blue, something kind of darker than the background, of course. I'm going to use the sharp sable brush, and I'm going to fill that shape in. If it goes a little outside the line, I think that's perfectly fine. That's what watercolor tends to do. Alright, so this is looking pretty good and coming together. But remember how I talked about willingness to lose a painting and then find it again. So we may have to give that a little bit of a shot here before we call it done. And let's say, let's try like maybe a really light blue, like really light. And I'm on a new layer here. It's below the glasses, and let's see if we can maybe paint some sort of slightly different color or something that's going to appear like lenses, maybe, so what's behind the glasses would be a slightly different color. Oh, that's funny. Okay, so I'm going to take the opacity down probably to, like, 50% just so that it's there and it's shifting the color a little bit, but it's not crazy. You know, it's not too much. So, yeah, that's pretty fun. Okay, so now let's go ahead and let's just take this layer, which is the darkest value that we have so far, all the way down to that wash layer, and let's just combine those. And before we do any more color editing, let's talk about we talked about maybe including the sketch as part of the final painting. So in order to do that, let's let's take all of our layers here, including the outline for the rectangle and Whoops. I'll show you in order to combine layers, you probably know this, but just in case you just pinch them down, pinch them together like that to combine. Okay, so now we have all of our sketch on one layer. And I'm going to name that sketch so we don't lose it or squitch Okay. So now let's try something else here. Let's go ahead and let's do let's tap the thumbnail and choose Alpha lock. And let's get it's going to have to be a big brush. Maybe the sharp Sabo will do it. But let's go ahead and I'm just going to select a light blue here and let's just color the entire having that alpha lock on, you can just paint within the confines of whatever is in that layer. So we just shifted our sketch to blue, and I'm going to turn off Alpha lock. And now let's do a huge saturation adjustment there. Now, this is just another method for us to play with color and to try to incorporate some color variations into our piece. Because when we do this, it's it flows with the painting better because it's not stark black, and it seems like it's more part of the piece versus just being this dark black line. I think I'm going to try that. I'm gonna put the hue back on 50. I like the it's kind of a deep blue now, and I think that just works better for the piece. Okay, just a reminder here that this is a good time to stop and take a break, pause the video, get up, stretch, get coffee, tea, water. And then when you come back, we'll be finishing this piece up. But I just wanted to remind you to relax and get that break in because this is a good spot. Okay, now, I mentioned before that we're changing the color line or we're changing the color of the lines so that it would become more part of the painting. Now, to further that idea, we go to our sketch line here. And we take the smudge tool with the loaded into wet brush, and we can just kind of smooth out some, not all, but just a little bit here and there. We especially don't want to get rid of the whiskers, but we can just create the look of kind of watercolor. Maybe this was water soluble graphite or colored pencil or something like that, and we're just kind of incorporating that look I'm going to scale my brush up just a little bit. So we're going to go around. Again, we definitely don't want to get rid of all of these lines. We just want to do a little bit of blending here and there and definitely don't want to get rid of the whiskers. Those are super important. I'm just going around the piece, and it's also a good opportunity to lose a few edges, create a little bit more interest. And some of the edges, some of the lines are just kind of blurred. They're not gone. And now the piece looks a little bit more has a little bit more of that watercolor sort of look and doesn't have all of those hard edge pencil lines, sketch lines. Alright, so now I'm looking at it, and I can tell. I mean, the bunny is so dark. I think I want the background to be just a little bit darker, that blue in the background, and we still have it on a separate layer, and we can darken it very easily by just duplicating it. And you can see I mean, you can duplicate it a couple times, and you can see that it just really deepens. And I'm gonna go ahead and combine those. Now we've got a little bit more color saturation in the background to work with. And I'm also noticing that I did not color in those glasses, the rims on the glasses, the part that goes over the ear. Okay, so it's right there. I just sampled I'm going to sample this color here and just paint that in very quickly. Just an oversight. And then this one And, right, so now thinking back to our reference, you remember the 1983 TV guide that we were looking at that had, like, some blue that was, like, incorporated into, like, the shadows and stuff, it was in some of the blacker areas of the painting. I'm wondering if we could just use that as a way to try and, Try and see if we can use that. Let's just make a new layer above everything else. Let's use the sharp sable brush and just see if we can paint some of this lighter blue into some of our darker areas. Yeah, I already I can already tell. That's going to brighten up the piece, and it's going to be kind of interesting, I think. So you're just using the same technique as before, painting into some of the darks. And what's interesting here, too, is there actually is a sort of a turquoise watercolor and traditional paint that is very opaque and paint we'll paint over similar to this. We'll paint over existing color. Yeah, this is adding a nice effect that I like. And we'll do one more step here to this to sort of blend it in, I think, Blend in some of the edges, put some down here around the legs. Alright, I'm gonna take the smudge tool, and I'm just sort of softening some of these edges, but not very much. Don't need a lot of it. Okay. Yeah, that's pretty interesting. Okay, so I think our whiskers are a little bit lost in here, so I'm going to go ahead with maybe a really light yellow, almost white, but not quite. We can take the sharp sable brush, but scale it way down since it's a good brush for details. And let's make sure we're on a new layer, and we can just kind of follow a quick that's too small. Brush is too small. Just follow a quick. I'll show you real fast, a very fast. Doesn't have to be perfect. Just follow along those existing whisker lines. I'm definitely going to want to soften a couple of I want to soften the where it meets the nose just a little bit so that kind of doesn't stand out too much. I still something like that's probably pretty good. Now, I think that one thing that I hear a lot is people feel like maybe their colors are a little bit muddy. And one way to fix there's a couple of ways, actually, to fix that, but I'm going to show you we're maybe we'll take a look at both here is to go ahead and do. Let's do a new layer, and let's use maybe let's try the pressure painter, and we'll use that same sort of light yellow color. I'm steering away from white just because I think it will be too stark. And we can paint back in some of these highlight areas to just bring back a little bit of the light. In fact, I might even use, let's try the wet into wet, bring back some softer areas. And I'll use the sharp sb, as well for a couple of I got to scale it up. A couple of spots that might need a little bit harder edge like this ear. Right here on his nose, underneath right there on his nose, that little space. Just these little areas of highlight, I just somehow it gets rid of that muddiness because it's adding back 'cause sometimes the muddiness is just a lack of contrast and values. Like it's too it's too close to the middle tones. I think we're almost there. I'm going to add a little bit of maybe a reflection there in the glasses, soften a couple of spots here. My highlight. And I think that's going to be real close here. Maybe we should throw a little splatter on it and just kind of see what that looks like. Oh, and I wanted to show you one other way to adjust the what might feel like it's too muddy. If we turn the paper textures off and we do a three finger swipe and copy and then three finger swipe again and paste. Whoops. Sorry, not copy. Copy all. And then paste. So now we have a layer with the flattened image on it. We can turn the paper texture back on and we can do a curves adjustment, but we want to do it a certain way here. We want to pull down right here on this line and then push up a little bit right here on this line, and you just get a little bit of that contrast back if it's just real slight adjustment. You don't want to go too hard with it. If you go too hard, weird things start to happen. So we stay real subtle and soft with these adjustments. Something kind of like that. We'll bring back some of that color. And for mine, I don't think that's something I want to keep. Yeah, I think I'm going to leave mine as it was, but I just wanted you to be aware of that little adjustment. And so our last little step here, let's get blue sampled, and I'm going to go a little bit lighter with it. I just sampled it right out of this area here. And I'm going to throw this on a new layer. And let's just use let's use the wet splatter five. And here, it might need to be a little lighter, but I actually I kind of like that. So let's try another one. Now, when you use the same splatter effects or the same washes, you definitely want to be aware of repeating patterns like here and here. So just as Any kind of repeating pattern that you see. Okay, I do want a little bit of a lighter splatter, too, so I'm gonna create another layer, push it a little bit more towards white and maybe make it a little bit bigger. See here. Yeah, something like that, but I'm going to erase a lot of this because I only want a little bit of it. Again, watching out for any patterns that look like they're repeating because I'm using the same stamp. In fact, I might just Whoops. I might just paint a couple here. And remember our inspiration again, we had some patterns of splatter that were painted in possibly painted in manually, and they were all kind of going in the same direction. So that's kind of what I'm trying to keep in mind here. But I think that's probably enough to call it done. Alright, so now that we have completed this one, I mean, how do you feel about it? How do you feel about selecting colors this way and allowing it to be a little bit more fluid? I think that it gives you opportunities to kind of make discoveries with your colors because if you start from a good fundamental perspective, as far as color theory goes, like maybe with just simple complimentary colors or maybe even a triadic scheme. And as you're starting to build those neutral colors and you're kind of sticking in those middle range colors, not going too saturated or too light, you've got room to adjust and play just like we did here. We ended up discovering some, like, coral orange, and we've kind of got a deep red in there. We ended up with kind of an aqua blue as well that we painted back into the shadows. And overall, the piece feels very, uh, unified, and it feels like there's harmonious colors happening, as well as, like, some neutral colors that are going on. So I hope that you found this to be enlightening as far as selecting color and color theory goes and working with color. So as an assignment for this one, I would love for you to take one of your sketches from the previous lessons and give this a try again. Start with complimentary. Make adjustments as you go. And once you get into a scheme that feels good, you can just begin to sample colors right out of the painting to make adjustments here and there. All right, give that a try, and in the next one, we're going to start laying the initial groundwork for our final project painting. 10. Project Painting 1 Getting Started: Okay, here we are ready to get started on the final project painting for this course. And I'm excited about this one because the subject is a little bit it's a little bit more complex than our practice painting because we're dealing with multiple subjects in the composition. But I think that you're going to find, maybe you're going to be surprised at just how easy it is because we're going to take the same relaxed and simple approach as we did before. Now, I am going to split up this project into multiple videos just to make it easier to access and just keep track of the steps. So if we go ahead and we take a look at my sketch, now, I'm going to include this sketch in the course resources if you want to use the same sketch to follow along, or, of course, you are welcome to create your own. Now, before we jump in with our initial washes, let's go ahead and just kind of talk about a real basic plan for a color scheme. And what I was thinking for this one is to just use maybe just warm against cool colors, complimentary color scheme, something really simple to start with. And my thought was because within that rectangle background, we've got some sky and some grass, just maybe this blue green over here against complimentary colors, this red, orange sort of area, maybe some yellows. I think the worms against the cool background will play nicely together. So for our cat and our butterfly, they'll be the more warm colors, and then the background will stay cool. Right. Looking back at our sketch here, over on the left, I have the original concept image or the reference photo that we drew the little concept image on just for reference because same as we did before with the bunny, I kind of wanted to use the image of the cat just to inform our decisions on where to place details in the cat's face and then where to place our lights and darks. But the rest is just from imagination. So we'll just kind of fill in the background, maybe a little bit abstract with the grass, and we'll just kind of pull some colors for the butterfly just from imagination. All right, with all of that squared away, let's see if we can go ahead and lay in some initial washes of color. So let's create a new layer, and let's put it below the sketch layer. And let's get a good blue for the sky. Maybe just something a light blue that's not too overly saturated. And let's get the Let's use the super wet and to wet brush. So let's just go ahead and lay in some blue. Don't worry if it goes outside the lines. That's perfectly fine. Also going to vary it up just a little bit by making my blue slightly darker, doing an additional pass here. Now, let's go ahead and get a green. But let's do this on different layer. Let's do it on a layer below the blue. And let's get blue use the same brush, but this time, let's get a green for the grass, which would be get kind of I want the green to be more yellow than blue. So let's do something like this. Maybe right here. And we'll just paint in a loose wash to kind of represent our grass area. So we're going to need to paint a little bit of a little bit of abstract sort of detail, I think for the grass because just a wash, it's going to need a little bit more detail than that. So let's just try Let's add a new layer, and let's go a little bit Let's go a little bit darker and maybe a little bit warmer. Right now, let's switch over to the sharp sable brush. I think this will be better at painting blades of grass. And double check, make sure we're on a new layer. Let's just start to paint in. So strokes to represent blades of grass here. Don't worry about them being perfect. We just want to make sure that they're not too repetitive. We also kind of want to fill in this entire area down here. I think I'm going to do maybe one more. I'm going to go a little darker, do one more pass. A Now, we can also take the eraser brush, make sure it is set to the sharp sable as well here, and then we can sort of bring back in I sort of adds to the randomness of the grass. Alright, let's see. Let me do a couple more adjustments here. Okay, I think now let's see about maybe let's go ahead and combine both of these green layers. Now, remember our inspiration piece, the TV guide that had the borders that sort of had the bleeding edge. Let's see if we can kind of recreate something like that down here because I really liked that effect, and I don't know if it'll work or not, but we might give it a try just to experiment. So we've got our green layer here and the smudge tool with loaded into wet. Let's just kind of fill this in down here. Just so that it sort of bleeds over the edge just a little bit. I actually paint. Let's see. Maybe if I painted with the loaded into wet just a little bit here to give us a little bit more more outside the lines to Okay, back to the smudge tool just to come back towards the border. Something like that might look pretty cool later. We'll just leave it at this for now. It's maybe we can always adjust it later. We can always come back to it. And the grass looks kind of cool, too. I think it's definitely reads as grass. Okay. Now let's take a look at doing Let's go ahead and do some orange behind the portion of the sketch that's the butterfly. So let's go with maybe an orange that's not super saturated and maybe it's a little bit more towards red. Let's try something like that. Let's get the Let's keep it soft right now and subtle with the wet into wet brush again here. Oh, and we are. Let's get on a new layer above the blue. We'll keep some separate layers for now so we can make adjustments if we need to. And I think I want to do, like, a little bit of variation in this color here. So let's maybe shift it a little bit back towards yellow just to give us a little bit of difference in color. Let's go back to this orange and go even darker, maybe a little bit more red. And then out towards the end of the wings, maybe have the color be a little more saturated. All right. Something like that is probably going to work for now. But wondering if I a little bit more saturation. Alright, so now. Alright, let's go ahead and let's do some orange washes into the cat's faces actually, we can just keep it on the same layer as the butterfly because they're already separated. So let's go back to a little bit more yellow in the orange. And let's use This is a bigger area, so let's use the wet edges wash see how that works for us. Okay, so remember also that I am looking at this reference to just kind of inform me where the lighter colors are versus the darker tones. So his nose is the darkest, around his eyes is the darkest. Hi ears are darker, but then we have this sort of gray or more neutral tones out around the edges of the face. So let's keep that in mind and use that reference as we work here. Okay. Going in pretty subtle here with this first pass. And I'm going to go ahead and get more of a yellow, too, because I think towards the light, the yellow might actually work a bit better here. I'll also kind of blend in nice. I'm gonna bleed a little bit over into that green from the grass. I'm just kind of stacking these colors here. So you can see what I'm doing. I'm just sort of Let me go back to this orange we had initially. Make it a little bit more saturated. Go a little bit bigger and a little bit take the opacity down just a little bit and come across the bottom. Oh, let's go ahead and this first pass too, let's go ahead and make the I want the eyes to be that bright blue that we kind of see in the sky. So in order to do that, we're going to have to erase we're gonna have to erase the orange bit that's over his eyes. Otherwise, it'll be too much of a neutral tone. So we've already got the sharp sable brush for the eraser, and let's just erase the orange wash that has gone over the eyes here. So now you're going to see in that layer that we've erased a bit of that orange wash. Now, let's get blue. Let's get a similar blue that we had in the sky, maybe a little bit brighter. And let's drop that in. I'm going to do it with a sharp sable brush just so we have a good sharp edge. And it's okay, too, if it goes a little outside the lines. Again, don't worry about being too perfect with it. And I think for now, let's go ahead and let's stop right here, this is our first pass, our first initial wash. Let's let it rest for a little bit. Let's take a little break, and then we're going to come back in the next video and we'll continue to build some darker values on a new layer. Alright? I'll see you in a bit. 11. Project Painting 2 Building Values: So now we're about to jump in and start adding some values into our painting and bring in the darks and create some depth. But before we do that, somebody heard. Somebody heard that we were painting an orange cat, and unfortunately, Roscoe has decided to join us. So he's probably not going to let me focus on this painting, but we'll see how it goes. Okay, taking a look at where we are at our painting, let's go ahead and start to bring in some of the darker values. Now, again, I'm going to be using the reference over here and just looking at all the dark places around the eyes, the darker fur, and the ears, the nose, that sort of thing. I feel like I want to use blue. A dark blue to start bringing in these values. And let's just see kind of how that works to start out with. So let's make sure that we are on a new layer to do this. And let's use a blue that's just kind of in the middle here, and it's not too that's like an ultramarine, but then this gets too green. So somewhere kind of in the middle there. And I'm going to use the super wet and to wet again because I want these edges to be soft starting out. And again, we're sneaking up, so I also don't want to go in too dark at first. I'm just going to kind of build it and make decisions based on that. So I'm going to going around the eye and the nose. I love it when this orange and blue overlap, and it creates that sort of neutral tone, neutral, grayish. They kind of cancel each other out because they're complimentary. So up in the ear, et's go. Let's make one more pass on this layer, and then we're probably going to need to create a new layer, maybe use the sharp sable and a little darker blue to bring out the values more or make them even deeper. Darker. All right, so moving my blue a little bit darker. And then on a new layer, let's try the sharp sable brush. See. Let's go ahead and zoom in here and really start to get darker on this pass. And this is probably dark enough, I think. Like, I don't think we're gonna need to go darker than this. I'm gonna switch back over to the wet into wet just to kind of make some as though this darker layer maybe had a little bit of bleed into to the orange paint. I also feel like we probably have an opportunity here to try to add a little color variation at this stage into what we're what we've added, maybe a little bit of experimental color. I'm going to take the smudge tool, and I've got the loaded into wet brush selected, and I'm just going to soften a couple of these edges here right here in the eye. Very important detail. And over here in this other eye, show you what I'm doing here. I'm just looking for a few edges here or there that I want to soften just a little. I think that's pretty good. Let me check the ear for Okay. Let's see about let's see about maybe a little experiment just to see what happens. I'm going to create a new layer, and I'm going to use let's just get let's start with an orange color, and let's do just a pass maybe with the wet into wet kind of over this area, this area where a lot of his face is this kind of neutral gray, and we want to add to that value. So if I take this orange, see, I already kind of like I already kind of like that. I don't know if that's going to need a lot of color adjustment, but we'll try it and see. You never know what's going to happen. And that's kind of part of the fun of it, too, because, well, you know, let's just see what happens. Let's Let's be curious artists and see what happens here. Okay, so this layer is that orange we just painted, and let's do an adjustment and hue saturation. And let's see about just moving the saturation a bit. I think this would actually help us more, though, if we had some variation of color within that wash that we just painted. So let's do Alpha lock. Let's just shift this color over to yellow a little bit and just run that over just creating some variation within that wash. Now let's do a hue saturation adjustment. Green is interesting. Blue is interesting. I think pushing that color slightly I almost kind of want to try that purple. I wonder what would happen if we took the saturation down. Oh, that's kind of getting to be a little bit more and took the brightness down. That's kind of getting to be a little bit more of what I was thinking. Now that we kind of have this, like, neutral sort of purple color that that's kind of what I was hoping for. Okay, that's pretty interesting. I'm going to go ahead and leave it there. I've got the hue is at 39%, saturation is 18 and brightness is at 43. But those same settings, it's not going to give you the exact same effect in your painting unless you chose the exact same color idea. So you might have to make an adjustment just to what fits or what works to your eye. Now, I've got a couple of hard edges like right there on the nose that I'm just going to soften that just a little bit there and then maybe push that a little bit there. Okay, that's pretty good. I think that's gonna work. Alright, I find that color adjustment to be really cool and exciting. I think this one's gonna come out really nice. Okay, so now let's do the same thing to the butterfly here, and we can do it. We can do it on the same layer, nothing's really touching. And I'm going to go ahead and let's combine these. We can have all of our darks on the same layer, and we can paint the butterfly there as well. So let's just add some value. Let's just got this bright orangish red. And let's drop that in a little bit towards the edge of the wings just to add some saturation or like a little injection of color to the butterfly. In a couple spots. And now let's go let's just take the same orange, but let's just go way darker here and paint the edge. Of the wings. And don't worry about being super perfect. You know, I mean, you can see as I'm going along here that my colors or my strokes are not always absolutely perfect. And that's part of the fun of watercolor. So it definitely doesn't have to be Perfect all the time. So I'm going to add a little bit here to the back wing. This may be all we need for the butterfly. I probably doesn't need a huge amount of detail. Okay, looking at it and comparing to our reference, I'm seeing that there is a separation here on the edge of his face, the cat's face, where it's darker behind him. And looking at our painting where it is, and since we're adding darker values, it's making me feel like I need to make the top of the sky a little darker here. So let's just give that a try with maybe a a little bit darker blue. And I'm just going to use the sharp sable, and I'm going to do this on a new layer just in case we don't like it. Make the brush larger and just drop a little bit more deeper value in here, just at the top. Might be a little bit over here. Then let's just go to blend the edge a little there. Now, it's going to give us some room, I think, to bring back a highlight on the cat's face, the edge of his face there, and it'll work nicely with that darker blue sky. Okay, so now we have added some additional values to our painting. And I think now we are going to need to take a look at just adjusting some highlights and maybe doing some more experiments in the next video. So let's take a break. Again, let's get up and let's walk around, and let's let this painting soak in just a little bit before we continue on. 12. Project Painting 3 Adding Highlights: Okay, we've reached a point in our painting where we have added in some darker value, and we're at a spot where we probably need to evaluate where we are. And I think there's some opportunities to add some lighter values to bring back some highlights. This would be like adding a bit of white guash to a traditional painting. And I think there's some opportunities, too, to go darker in a few places, especially in the details. And let's go ahead and see if we can make those adjustments. Now, before we dive into more values, let's go ahead and address this dark pencil sketch line that we have because right now it's affecting the way that we're viewing the painting. So let's see if we can get it to blend in a bit with the colors that we have. So on the original sketch layer, let's just go ahead and duplicate it to create a backup. And I'm going to turn the bottom one off. And on the new one, let's tap the thumbnail and choose Alpha lock. Now I'm going to get the use the sharp sable brush, and I'm going to get Oh, let's start with an orange, maybe. Let's just try. And we're probably going to need to keep the line color over the eyes and nose and mouth a dark, maybe a dark blue. But you can see as I'm painting over some of these lines are blending or disappearing a bit. Let's get a dark blue. Go ahead and So you can see when I go over these lines, they just sort of blend. I'm going to go over the entire face here. And then I'm going to choose a darker color to come back. I'm going to get a darker blue for the eyes. You can see where I'm painting here. Probably go even a little bit darker for the eyes here. And maybe over here on the edge, maybe even move towards purple. Just to throw in, like, just a off the wall choice to see how it works. It actually looks kind of actually kind of works. And on the grass, I think I'm going to do dark green. Maybe. It's funny how the sketch lines just tend to they just sort of disappear into the painting. They're dark blue again for up here on the butterfly. They get everything just sort of melts together. Okay, I think that's pretty good for our sketch lines. And let's see about maybe I feel like in the background here in this area, like, we need to maybe create something that just makes the butterflies stand out just a little bit from the background. And I kind of wonder if maybe a wash can do that for us. Let's go with a let's do a layer underneath the sketch, and let's choose, white color. And then let's get I've added some more washes and splatters to the brush set that we could use in this painting. And let's do soft wash one. And I'm just going to place it right here and then we can move it around and adjust it. I kind of want this highlight to be underneath the butterfly. In fact, we may have to drag it underneath that layer. Well, it doesn't have as much effect if we do that. It doesn't stand out as much. Let me pull that back up. Oh, it's that additional layer that we Let's move it back to the top. I'm just going to erase some of what's over the butterfly. Now let's do just a white splatter, I think, over that same area. La use wet splatter five. Just move it. Maybe right there. Okay, now let's go ahead and address some of our values that we have. I'm going to do this, I'm just going to create another layer maybe above the sketch. Let's try that. And let's just look at our reference here. Now, what I'm talking about is these areas like the nose is not as dark as it could be. And then this area of the mouth here, the edge of the eye, there's just some opportunities for us to go a little bit darker, I think in those areas. So let's get Well, let's not use black. Let's just get a really super dark blue. And I'm going to use the sharp sable brush, and I'm going to start in here with the nose, and I'm just going to kind of size it down. I'm going to define it a little bit better. These dark shapes. Then that kind of carries down to the mouth. There's this nostril shape here, and this whole side of the nose is a little bit darker. This area of the mouth is darker coming all the way down here and down here. Up here to the edge of the eye is darker right here in the corner. And then the pupil in the eye is darker. Here. And let's look at this eye. It should be just a little bit darker, especially on the pupil. And then I'm going to use the smudge tool and just kind of smooth that edge just a little. Same for the nose here. Get that. Looking at these shapes and just seeing how they could be a bit darker in value. And I think it's got to probably make a pretty big difference as to where we are in the painting and the progress. Especially when we come back and we add these highlights, too, it's just really going to make a big difference. Okay, there's probably some dark in the ears. Or this ear, at least. Okay, sharp sable brush. Just a little into the corner here. And soften that edge. Okay, now I feel like we are probably a little bit more in line with our darks. Et's take a look now at seeing this little spot here on the nose that needs to just darken a little bit. All right, so back to highlights. Let's just start by adding these highlights to the eye. I'm seeing here that this sort of blends up that dark. But then it's very very light down here. And I'm just doing this all on the same layer for right now. Because I'm gonna need to switch. That needs to be a little darker. The eyes are just really important, you know, so I just I want to get that part that part right because the eyes are just generally a good focal point. We're going to need to go a little bit darker there into the blue The blue comes up. It was basically too white. I just create a little bit of a transition there. See about. That's probably better. It's still probably a little too white. You know, it's taking the time to get the eyes right like this is really sometimes that's the main aspect of whether a wildlife portrait turns out is how well you got the eyes right. Getting that shine and the different colors go less intense on the white here. A Okay. That's pretty good, I think. Okay, while we're here, let's go ahead and address some highlights. Actually, I'm going to use a yellow, really light yellow and not completely white for this. But this line here that's underneath his eye where there's just some really light fur and then right above the eye, let's just go ahead and get those two spots in and maybe a couple of others before we move on. So let's just just paint this onto let's go ahead and do this on new layer. And it's just this area. This is back to, like, white guash again. Where else? Maybe right here. I'm going to soften a couple of these edges. Can I see where that gets us? Yeah, that's pretty good. I think let me just add that line back. And I do I'm looking at this white fur here along the edge of the nose and then right here along the edge of this eye. I'm going to add that in real quick before we move on. Is up here. A and where else do we need a little touch of highlight at this point. Now, this is probably not the only adjustment we'll make to values. We'll probably might have to come back in a couple of times and make some adjustments if we need to. Okay, one spot here that we might address right now is the hair that's going over the ears. And I don't know if we can maybe recreate that a little bit and just try to see If that's something that we want to add. I'm going to blend a little bit of the edge. Okay, I think we're at a pretty good spot to take another break and then we will come back, and we're going to begin to add a few what I would call, special effects. Maybe we're going to add some drips and maybe a few splatters and we might do a little bit of experimenting with our colors. And then I think we're going to be really close on getting this one to a point of being wrapped up. 13. Project Painting 4 Pushing It Further: Alright, here we are again, ready to continue our painting, and we have reached a point where we're kind of at an interesting spot because we could call this painting done, and I think I would consider it a success because we've got good values. We've got good colors that are working nicely together, and it's a nice composition. We could stop right here. But we have an opportunity to go ahead and push things a little further and to experiment. Now, I introduced the concept earlier of being willing to lose a painting and then find it again. And basically, what that means is to be willing to experiment. Now, I say lose a painting because with a traditional painting, there is always the risk of just ruining it because you've gone too far and you can't recover it. And that's largely due to watercolors transparency because you can't just paint over mistakes because you're always going to see them. But with traditional, we have the safety net of the undo button. We can always take away what we don't like. So we can just experiment and experiment, and it really just opens the door for just all kinds of opportunities because you're not really going to lose it. So let's go ahead and let's make a few more modifications, and let's try a few experiments just to see how far we can push it and see if we can go from good where we are now to great. Alright, so let's try some things and see what happens. Okay, the first thing I want us to take a look at is based on my original doodle sketch here, it looks like I might have wanted to or had the intention to put some flowers in, which I think is a really great idea, just given the fact that we've got this orange here and some orange here, and it might be nice to kind of carry that over with some flowers and some splatters and maybe even over here or down here, just some opportunities there that I think we could add some more interest. So in order to do that, let's go ahead and I've got a new layer here above everything else. And so if we use the sharp sable brush, it's going to give us some pretty sharp edges, which I think is probably fine, given we've got some sharp edges in our grass down there, and it seems to work pretty well for that. So let's try that with the flowers. But the problem that we're going to run into is that let's get a little bit more yellow. Is it's going to be kind of this drab yellow because it's mixing over the blue. So first, let's paint some white in for that brighter color to go over. And I think that's going to help the flour to stand out. And let's add a few kind of random. Maybe one down here. Maybe here. Here. Maybe up here, maybe we'll turn this splatter into a flower. Maybe this one too. Something kind of like that. Then let's grab that yellow color. Maybe something kind of right in here, a real bright yellow. My go a little bit more orange. Let's try. Let's try that. Maybe we'll add yellow and orange to the flowers. So if we go over, now we've got a much brighter. There's less mixing with the blue, so that's good. My go a little bit more orange. Let's see. Yeah, I think that blends Blends with the cat and the butterfly a little better. And these are very, these are very abstract flowers. They don't need to be super precise or be identifiable as a particular or a specific flower. Something kind of like that I think will work. Let's go ahead and let's throw a couple off to the to the right over here. And don't worry if there's no stem. Because this is kind of an abstract representation. So every flower doesn't need to have stem. Let's get a bright orange and maybe just kind of shade the bottom portion of each one and I'm going to take the smudge tool, and I've got loaded loaded into wet, size it down, though, and just kind of blend a little bit of the edge or soften the transition between the yellow and the orange. Alright. Now, it looks like early on we had some white splatters that we dropped in, and I think there's probably a good opportunity to add some additional splatters and just maybe around just in various spots. Let's see about we might paint a few in, but I've got a couple splatter brushes here. I added this additional heavy splatter, and I'm almost wondering if we could create a little bit more of an illusion of flowers of different sizes with a splatter. So let's just experiment with that idea and see. I'm going to sample this yellow color. I'm going to drop this on a layer above the flower layer, and let's just see. I'm going to put it maybe right in here. And I may want it to be a little bit more yellow, just a little brighter. But I think that's going to work. I'm going to size it down just a little bit because it's just kind of making it look like there's just maybe a few more flowers or smaller flowers. And I'm going to erase some of these. I've got the sharp sable brush as the eraser, and let's just get rid of some of these so that it's not so heavy. One thing I do like about using a splatter brush like this that's got a lot of splatters. It gives me room to remove some because it added a lot, so there's plenty of space to remove and sort of make it a custom splatter, because if we use this splatter brush again in a couple of other spots, we don't want to have a repeating pattern of splatters. Okay. So now I like that pretty well, and I like the addition of the flowers. I'm wondering if the size of the flowers is competing a little bit with the size of our white splatter. So let's see if we can find that. It's on this layer here. I wonder if we size that down maybe so that it's a little bit less prominent. And I'm going to go ahead and race. A couple of those. And then, now I'm looking for other spots for some potential splatters. Let's see about maybe just adding a little bit of green. So let's go back up here. I'm going to eventually put all the splatters on one layer. But for now, let's add a new layer just so that we can move them around. Let's do the heavy splatter six again, and let's just put it right here. This time, I'm going to rotate it a little bit. And again, I want to remove a lot of this that we don't need, so it's not quite so heavy. Removing the splatters is just kind of at your own discretion because we don't want them to be distracting in any way. And sometimes that can happen with splatters. Let's add up one more layer. This time, I've still got the green, but I'm going to use the wet splatter five brush, and I'm going to drop it in here these splatters are a little bit more transparent, so it's giving us some variety. And again, I want to remove a lot of that. I really want I wanted this part down here just because it's adding a little bit of splatter beyond the border or beyond our pencil line border. Okay, so now I'm going to go ahead. I like these, so I'm going to go ahead and combine. Let's see what we've got. I'm gonna go ahead and combine the splatter layers. So we've got all of those on one layer. Now let's see about maybe a few around the cat. So I'm going to sample sample this kind of pinkish orange sort of color. And let's get the heavy splatter brush, and let's just drop it maybe right here over the cat's face. Actually, I'm going to sample the colors a little dark. I'm gonna sample a little bit lighter color. A even lighter than that. Let's try something like that. Okay, that's good. I got, like, a really light orange whoops, but I do want to put it on a new layer. Alright, so I don't want any splatters to be over the cat's eye or really over its nose. And some of this down here. I'm going to remove that's that's pretty good. See how that just feels it feels more balanced as far as nothing is really, like, heavily splattered. You know, it's not distracting. It feels like it's a natural part of the painting. So let's get like one more, maybe. Let's get maybe some of this blue color from the ear. And I'm gonna go lighter with it. And I'm going to get the drop it on a new layer and I'm going to get the wet splatter five. Add it up by the ear. See about just moving it around to some different positions. So I'm going to get rid of a couple of bits from that one. And I think that's pretty good for now. We can always come back and add some more if we decide we want to do that. And so I'm going to go ahead and combine all of my splatter layers right here by pinching those layers together. Let's see about maybe I thought about doing some drips as well, because right here, this edge, I think we can probably remove this part of the sketch, those sketch lines that are just they're not doing a lot. I mean, they're adding a little bit of shape down here to the composition, but I think it would be a little bit more interesting to do some drips or add some drips here to essentially do the same thing that these sketch lines are doing. So let's remove I think it's on this layer. I'll go ahead and turn off Alpha lock, and I'm just going to take the eraser and just erase these sketch lines down here. And let's add let's add another new layer up here. And I've added some drip brushes to the brush set as well. So I've got these two paint runs down here at the bottom. So let's get the first one and maybe just sample a color. Since the paint's going to be running from this part of the cat, let's just sample a color there. Add that first one. And then let's create a new layer to add the second one so that we can move it around. Maybe sample a slightly different color. Let's move that one around. I'm gonna combine those layers. And I'm I'm going to smudge this hard edge right here just a little bit. But this feels like a pretty natural part of the painting because the colors match pretty well and they're slightly different from each other. And I also like, like I said before, it's serving the purpose that those scribbly lines were doing for the composition because it adds something down here to this shape. And you really kind of you want to consider that when you're adding effects like this, when you're adding a splatter, does it feel like it's a natural part of the painting, and does it feel like it's adding to the composition? It's not serving as a distraction? Okay, so we added some splatters. We added some flowers. We've added some paint drips. Now, what about if we were to just add some experimental colors? If we were to just just throw caution to the wind and just really experiment and see what just shakes out. And again, if we don't like it, we can just simply remove it. So how do we do that? Well, let's add a new layer on top of all the others. And let's just get, like, a wild color at this point. Let's just try I always tend to like purple. I think purples kind of a good starting point. And let's take something real soft like this wet edges wash. And let's just paint a wash right over the cat's face here. Make my brush a little bigger. And let's let's try maybe a green, something really kind of off the wall. And maybe let's leave it. Let's just leave it like this for a minute and see. I kind of want to kind of want to smudge my purple around just so it's a little softer. Maybe something like that. Maybe I'll smudge those in together. So that's terrible. But maybe hold on. Maybe it's going to get better. Let's see. Let's see what happens. I'm continuing to kind of smear these washes around. Okay, so let's give it a shot here. Let's see what happens when we take this layer. Smooth it over so we can see it. If we take this layer and we just try maybe color burn, that's probably a little strong. Let's try yeah, those are too strong. Usually overlay is pretty nice, which I can already see that's that's pretty nice. Let's try soft light. Now, see, now, soft light it's kind of similar to overlay, but it's just a little bit more subtle. I just feels a little bit more natural and somehow that purple and that green is kind of itme's more natural looking like these colors mixed to form those colors versus it being like, it's not standing out as hard or as obvious. So hard light is also not bad. See Vivid light's getting a little bit. I mean, it's cool. It's a cool effect, but it's starting to look a little unnatural as far as a watercolor goes. Same with linear light. It's got a nice look, but it almost starts to take away from the natural watercolor type look. And then as we go further down, I think it's going to continue to give us less desirable results. So overlay is nice. Soft light is nice. I think we're going to go with soft light for now, let's just see about maybe painting within that layer with some additional colors. So let's just try to go a little bit more pink. And we've still got that soft wash, the wet edges wash. So if I add a little pink here, on the nose. So let me show you I'm just going around and just kind of adding a little touch here and there. And it just has this very nice, subtle effect of these colors just kind of blending together. Add a little bit to the butterfly up here. I mean, it feels like we mixed these colors in a way. I'm gonna try a yellow as well. Get back to, like, a brighter yellow. It just has a really nice effect of this blended watercolor. Part of me wants to try a darker. Let's maybe get the purplish pink back and go a little bit darker, maybe just right in here below the eye. I just want to see what happens. And again, I'm just kind of going around and making just real subtle shifts of color. Of course, if you don't like it, you just hit the undo and it's like it never happened. Alright, I can keep doing this for a little while. Let's see here. It's just fun. It's fun to see kind of what happens, you know, I just starts to take on this sort of life of its own. And you're just kind of a viewer, you know, like we're just sitting back and watching it come alive. I'm gonna go with a little bit darker green over here on my grass. So, one last thing. I just want to see what a bright red would do over this area. Or maybe a real light pink. I don't know. It really doesn't have an effect. It's really the darker colors. Okay. I think right there, I'm going to leave it. So this is where I'm at. Alright, at this point, I want us to take another break. But let's make it an extended break this time. So a few hours or maybe even overnight because what's going to happen is we need to see it with new eyes, so we need to walk away from it for a little while. When we come back, we're going to notice things in the reference and little things about the painting that we can maybe adjust and fine tune to complete the painting. So it's hard for us to see those things right now because we've been looking at it for so long. All right, so let's take that break and let's meet back here a little bit later to wrap it up. 14. Project Painting 5 Finishing Touches: Alright, here we are ready to wrap up our final project painting. Hopefully, it's been a little bit of time since you've looked at it. You're coming back. You're seeing it with those new eyes, and maybe noticing a few things that you didn't see before. Now, for me, that's definitely the case. I'm looking at the reference, and I'm just seeing a few little areas that we can probably adjust a little bit before we call it done. So let's take a quick look at what I'm seeing here. Now, if we look at the reference, there are there's some highlights right here on the cat's chin, which I really don't have. There's a little bit of lighter fur in between the whiskers here, which we can probably bring out a little bit and maybe even lighten the edge here to separate the cat from the background, but just a little bit, not too strong. And then a little bit of highlight around the eyes here. And just kind of right here, the fur is probably a little bit lighter than what I have. I can probably adjust that a little bit. And then also in my sketch, I feel like this line, this sketch line is a little strong, so I can probably soften that, maybe this one here. Maybe a little bit of this down here as well, kind of just to kind of soften some of those lines because the cat's face is very soft, and then I've got this very hard sketch line, and I think we can just kind of cover it up a little bit with some white guash. We're going to use our sharp sable brush again to do this. But we're going to imagine that it is white guash. Alright, so let's take a look here. Let's do this all on a layer above everything else, which I think I've already got there. Yeah, a new layer above everything else and sharp sable brush. And I'm going to start with maybe a real light yellow here, maybe not go full white with it. Something right there. Okay, so going in here, I'm going to start with just this area here next to the nose and just lighten that. Come down in between these the whiskers, maybe a little bit, just looking back and forth at the reference just to make sure I kind of oh and right here. Now, we'll probably soften some of these edges as well. Now coming underneath the eye. And then right here, above the eye. Okay, now coming up to the top of the head, I want to soften this line just a little bit. I'll still be there. It will just be softened. I'm going to go ahead and sample a dark color. Maybe go over that. That may not work, actually. Okay, to soften that one, I'm gonna have to go down to the original sketch because I don't want to add a lot of highlight right there. I just gonna do that. Come back up to my highlight layer. Make sure I've got my light Yellow. All right. So coming over the top of the nose over the top of this eye. Okay, now I am looking at this edge here, right here. Maybe just come in, probably go full white for this. Just come in here and just soften those lines. Kind of add that little bit of a rim light, kind of sort of rim light. And lose these gribble lines. Knock those back some. We'll get this area here. I may switch back to my yellow for that. So it's not so bright white. All right, blending out some of those new highlights. Okay, now I am looking at the ear, these lighter colored lighter colour fur in front of the ear. I'm going to add or soften what I have. Go ahead and paint over that splatter. And that might be a pretty good adjustment right between the eyes, softening that. Okay, that probably Let's take the smudge tool, and it's still got the loaded wet into wet. Size it down some and just soften some of these new edges. Not so much, though, that we lose that we lose the edges or that we completely smudge out what we've added. Okay, that's pretty good. Let's let's turn it on and off here and see what we've got. Okay. So looking here, yeah. So overall, the face is just softer. And I like that way better. It's just a little thing that was needed. Okay. Now, let's go ahead and look at some final detail here. And I think we can do this with the pencil. So if we go up and let's get white and let's get our sketch pencil, now, there is some really fine detail here in the reference, like the whiskers. But here's the thing with the whiskers that I want you to notice. These are not just lines that are going out from the edge of the face. The lines they vary in thickness, they vary in direction, and they also overlap each other. So when you are doing whiskers, we don't want to do something where it's just everything is very uniform like this. We want there to be a change or a difference in length. So some of them are shorter, some are longer, some are going to overlap and change direction. Something kind of like that, and it doesn't have to be. Okay, so right here, if I were to do a mark like this, maybe those two right there are too close to the same. So that's just the kind of thing that you want to watch out for. They're just going to look more natural if we try to avoid those things there that I just mentioned, just the overlap or non overlapping and same length, things like that. Okay, so I'm going to add a few lighter hairs up here around the ear. Real soft up here above the eye. And then if we see in the reference, we've got some up here, these that are up here in front of the ear. And then on the side of the face? Make sure that I have enough. That's pretty good. Make sure I've got a couple above the eye here. And then if I wanted to thicken them up, if I duplicate that layer. That's probably pretty good. Just makes them stand out a little bit more. I'm going to do that. And then I'm also going to just where they meet the face, I'm going to just smudge a little bit there. So you can see what I'm doing here, blending a little bit of that so that it's not just a stark line that ends right at the face. Okay, so now we can take this. Now, I consider that to be a color pencil. If this were a traditional painting, that would definitely be done with a colored pencil. And there's probably an opportunity just to touch up a few really small details. I'm going to do it on a new layer. Just like right here at the eye, take my colored pencil and just get in that sharper edge. The edge that I'm looking at is right here. And just some of these details right around the eye just to make sure that we've got that. We were accounting for some of these details and some of this fur. And when it comes to stuff like this, this fur detail less is more. You know, we wouldn't want to just do this all over the cat's face because it would just become a distraction. It wouldn't it would be a lot of work for wouldn't be very effective. Okay, some of that little bit there in front of the nose. And then I'm just right here in front of the next between the eye and the nose there. Just double checking some shapes. Reinforcing some edges. All right. Now, I'm just searching here. Is there anything else? Anything else I want to add? And I really think that we're we're there. Really not seeing a whole lot. I've got this little this little highlight right there. Maybe we can get that just a tiny little detail, but sometimes it's those little details that push it over the top. Alright, I think I think that's it. So I found this painting to be a lot of fun to do, and it just came together so well from the initial concept, all the way through the sketch and the layout and then throughout the painting process. And I hope that you found it just as easy and enjoyable as I did because it's such a great way to work like this to base our decisions on our knowledge of the fundamentals, but leaving room to experiment with values and color and effects like splatters and drips and things and then incorporate that into our process. So hang with me for one more video. We're going to talk about moving forward and ways to get better, and then we're going to wrap things up from there. 15. The Key Ingredient for Improvement: Before we end the course, I wanted to share with you what I consider to be the secret sauce for continued improvement. And that is simply curiosity to be curious as you work, and what I mean by that is to simply ask yourself while you're painting, what would happen if? What would happen if I add this splatter? What would happen if I add this colored wash, if I put a squiggly line here, if I make this shadow blue instead of red, if I just fill the whole thing with a solid color and change the layer blend mode, things like that that are just it's where you're going to find the most growth, simply just because you were curious and you wanted to see what would shake out, what would happen if you did an experiment. And you happen to be working in the perfect medium for that because you really aren't going to mess it up, so why be afraid? All right? I also want to say thank you so much for being here. Thank you for coming and hanging out and painting with me and learning along the way. It truly means the world to me. I want to leave you with a quote from legendary teacher Bob Ross. He said, I believe every day is a good day when you paint. All right. See you next time. 16. BONUS Finding Your Own Style: Okay, wait, before you go, I want to include this bonus video and talk about how to develop your own style and process. Now, I receive a lot of questions and feedback about developing your own style, so I know that it is a stress point for some. The first thing I want to say about it, though, is don't stress. Don't let this be something that worries you because it's actually not as hard as you might think to obtain what you would call your style of painting. Now, I'm going to give you a couple of actionable items to begin a process of finding and developing your style. Okay. The first is to go back and watch the first video in this course on finding inspiration. And I want you to find a list of inspirations from other artists and inspirations from the world around you and incorporate those into a series of 12 paintings. That's right. 12 paintings. That's a lot, but give yourself time. Don't rush. Just give yourself months if you need to. But here's the key. At the end of each painting, I want you to take notes on what you liked about the process and what you like about the end result. So over the course of doing these 12 paintings, your style will begin to develop out of what you like to see and what inspires you. And when you let that soak in and you acknowledge it through your own notes, again, your own feedback, then your style and your process will begin to develop through that self reflection. So now, when you approach a painting, you're going to have an idea of your general process and what you like to see in your own work. So remember, to be patient with yourself and have fun in the process. I