Procreate Watercolor Masterclass: Learn Digital Watercolor Painting on Your iPad

1. Introduction: My name is Nathan Brown. I've been a professional artist for a little over two decades now. But I've been creating art since I was a kid. It's a lifelong love and passion for me, and it's a subject that I love to teach. I paint with traditional and digital media and try to incorporate them both as much as possible. I'm the author of the Ultimate Bush toolbox and the Master watercolor brush sets, which were both created with a love of traditional painting and realism in mind. I've created this course for anyone who wants to learn digital watercolor using traditional techniques on the iPad and Procreate. We'll start from scratch and cover the basics all the way through to more advanced topics. So whether you're brand new to digital painting or you have some experience with the medium, this course has something for you. I'll be sharing my thoughts and techniques for finding the right artistic mindset, how to sketch for watercolor, how to plan and compose, how to choose the right brush, and all the tricks and techniques that I use to achieve realism in watercolor. By the end of this course, you'll have confidence and you'll have learned every step of a watercolor painting from beginning to final printing. The course is structured to include both theory and practical examples so you can watch along or you can jump right in with project assignments as you progress. I've also included a set of custom brushes for Procreate specifically made for this course. So you'll have everything you need to follow along. There's also layered artwork and examples so that you can study and review as we work. I'm so excited for you to take this course, so grab your iPad and get ready to explore watercolor painting with a whole new perspective. 2. Artistic Mindset: Over the years that I've spent creating art, I've come to realize that there are several key concepts that I have to keep in mind in order to maintain what I call an artistic mindset. These are things that I need to remember in order to create and be creative. I wanted to include them in this video because I think that your state of mind and how you view your own art are key elements in the creative process and need to be in the right place before you even put pencil to paper. You may not realize it yet, but you create best under certain types of conditions. And I think these conditions have to be met in order for your creative self to wake up and take over. I began to realize this just a few years ago. I started to notice that I was thinking and drawing and painting better when certain conditions were met in my environment. I believe these conditions are unique to each artist. So, for example, someone might work best in their favorite coffee shop with headphones in their ears and a fresh cup of coffee. But for another artist, this may be stress inducing because they fear that someone might be looking over their shoulder. I'm fortunate enough to have a studio space in my home, which I call the lab. It's filled with things that I enjoy and take inspiration from like books, toys, comics, and art. Just walking in the door fires my creativity so much so that I really don't want to draw or paint in any other place. Now, it's okay if you don't know what you need in your environment to feature creativity. Just being aware that you might require certain conditions is a step in the right direction. So I suggest that you start with a dedicated space for art, a place that's separate from everything else that might distract you. So, for example, you may not want to paint at the same desk that you use to pay the bills. Your brain already associates this space with an activity that may be distracting. If you only have one desk to work at, try changing the lighting or the music to set a different tone for the space. As you spend more time with your art, be sure to pay attention to what feeds your creativity. Be intentional about creating the right type of environment that is unique to you and your creative self. Do you ever spend time admiring other artists on social media and maybe thinking, Why is my art not at that level? My advice is stop doing that. I don't mean stop looking at art. I mean stop comparing it to yours. You have to realize and be content with the fact that art is a journey. You don't always know what another artist's experience has been or what they had to sacrifice to get to the level they're at. Maybe it's years of practice and study that involved hundreds or maybe thousands of paintings. Instead of comparing your art, try looking at your next piece with contentment and the understanding that you are where you are in your artistic journey and you're continually improving. Each time you draw or paint is one more step to becoming better. Keeping this frame of mind will keep you excited and always hungry to create that next painting and continue down the artistic path. As I continue to talk with new artists that are just starting out, I've realized that stress is a major struggle for most. I'm referring to an artist who might sit down to work on a piece and they become stressed about making the right choices. I believe that this stress comes directly from lack of experience that comes from experimenting. The only way to become confident in your art is to make lots and lots of tiny successes and failures through experimentation. Later in this course, you'll see me doing this by placing elements in a painting and then immediately removing them. I'm experimenting with placement, and then my confidence and previous experience tells me whether I like that placement or not. I found over the years that I love lots of splatters and abstract elements in my art. The only way that I discovered that was through experimentation. I made a lot of awful mistakes during this time, but I ultimately landed on results and techniques that I rely on in my work. Had I been afraid to experiment in this way, I would have never made these discoveries. Have you ever purchased a new brush set and felt like you weren't sure how to use it? As a result, you felt like you were using them improperly. Next time you load up some new brushes, try this. Experiment with each brush, see what type of marks they make, and then ask yourself, how can I incorporate this into the art that I like to create? Or how does this brush work for me? Just shifting your mindset from uncertainty to certainty will give you confidence, and that confidence will lead to bold steps and improvement in your art. The question of style and how to achieve it is an age old question and one that I've seen even seasoned artists ask. I've always believed that it's a question not even worth an artist's concern because I believe style is what naturally occurs for every artist through the combination of experience and confidence. Style is what you begin to naturally do the more you progress in your art. As you gain artistic experience, you'll find there are more and more things that you do that feel natural and look right to your eye. These things aren't the same for every artist. You may render shadows and highlights a certain way or you may draw hard angles in your shapes because you like them. These types of choices come through the experience you've obtained and knowing what you like and what you don't. For example, I mentioned before that I like splatters and abstract effects in my art. I came to this conclusion through lots and lots of paintings, not because there was a specific style I wanted to emulate. So when it comes to style, I recommend that you not be concerned with it and start by painting what you like in a way that feels right to your eye. The more you paint, the more you'll know what that is. I've always preferred stories that are open ended, ones that leave you with a phrase like, and the adventure continues. It captures my imagination, knowing that there's more to be experienced. And that's actually my favorite aspect of art is knowing that I'll never know at all. There's always something new, whether it's a new medium, a new subject, or a new concept. Each time you sit down to create, it's a learning experience, even if you've done it a 1,000 times before. So always be willing to keep this in mind and be content with the fact that you will always be on this artistic journey. I don't think there's an end to that road, and I find that to be incredibly exciting and humbling. As an assignment, I'd like you to write down these five keys to an artistic mindset and display it somewhere in your art space so that you don't forget them. Be sure to share a photo of it on social media and tell me how these keys have helped to unlock your creative mindset and how that's affected your art. Alright, now let's break out some paint and make a mess. 3. Characteristics of Real Watercolor: All right, guys, before we get cracking on digital watercolor, I want to spend a few minutes taking a look at traditional watercolor so that we're familiar with paint on paper, we'll know what the characteristics are, and we'll know what to look for when working on the iPad. The first technique I want to show you is referred to as wet into wet painting. It starts by coating the paper with clean water. The brush is also wet and full of paint. This creates a really soft edge stroke. In this trout painting, you can see examples of soft edge strokes on the jaw line here and around the eye. Softer edges like these can suggest roundness and subtle transitions. We'll be recreating this type of look with soft edge brushes and procreate. In this example, I'm using soft edge wash brushes to create a subtle transition between shadows and the fur of this fox. Soft edges appear a little more recessed and are not as immediately noticeable to the viewer's eye. The next technique is called wet into dry. This time, the paper is dry, but the brush is still wet and full of paint. This creates a hard edge stroke. In the same trout painting, you can see some examples of hard edged strokes in the upper jaw here in the eye and this line forming the gill. We'll be recreating these types of strokes with hard edge brushes and procreate. In this example, I'm using hard edge brushes for details in the fox's face like the eye and nose. Hard edges are especially useful for creating a sharp focus in these areas. We'll be talking even more about edges in a later video. Another really important aspect of watercolor is transparency. It's not opaque like oil or acrylic. So when you paint over an existing layer, what's underneath will always show through. And typically, a new color is created as a result. Most all of the brushes that we'll be using in Procreate were made with this type of transparency in mind. As you paint, the brush strokes will appear over each other recreating the layered look of real watercolor. Transparency is also directly affected by the amount of water versus paint in the brush. This stroke is mostly water, and as you can see, it's very transparent. This stroke has more paint than water and appears much darker as a result, but it's still transparent. This is the same as adjusting the opacity slider on your brush to control the transparency and procreate. It's also important to note that colors will blend wet into wet, meaning that when the paper is still wet, colors will bleed together. We'll recreate this type of effect and procreate using smudge brushes and the blender tool. These two colors can be easily blended as if we were painting into a wet area of paper. This is a great aspect of digital painting because our paper never really dries. So colors can be blended together at any point during the painting process. There are some good examples of blended colors in this chia painting. For example, this red and yellow have run together, creating a lost edge and orange hue. The blender brush was also used to create these runs as though water was running down the paper. Watercolor is oftentimes abstract. It's a little bit loose, and there's typically lots of textures and splatters as a result. Happy accidents can occur when you keep these things in mind and you allow watercolor to essentially paint itself. I'm really excited to show you guys how to recreate these types of effects and procreate as we move through this course. So now that we're familiar with traditional paint on paper and some of the ways that it behaves, let's wash our hands and go break out the iPad. 4. Sketching for Watercolor: One aspect of painting that is often overlooked is drawing. Part of us always wants to skip to the fun part of laying down paint, but learning the fundamentals of drawing teaches you to see like an artist and to truly understand your subject. Spending the time to learn to draw makes you a better painter. I highly recommend that you spend as much time drawing and sketching as you possibly can. Let's take a look at sketching as it pertains to watercolor. When I'm working on an initial sketch for a painting, I try to visualize shapes as much as possible. I do this because it's easier to wrap your head around simple shapes than it is complex forms. Even something as simple as a bird can be hard to draw without visualizing the forms as shapes first. I try to think of shapes in two ways. The first is basic shape structure, or breaking a subject down into the most simple shapes as possible as you begin to draw. Let's take a look at this reference photo of a chickadee and see if we can find some basic shapes. When it comes to birds, I like to use mostly circles. So I'll create a circle for the head and a larger one for the body. I'll add one more here where the tail and wing come together. Now I'll add a few guidelines, one for the tail, for the legs, and for the branch that the bird's sitting on. I think I'll add one more to represent the direction of the beak, and this line will help me with eye placement as well. Okay, so now we have our bird reduced down to simple shapes. Now, it's a lot easier to understand the proportions of this bird based on these three circles. Now let's try sketching this chickadee together with the basic shapes that we just found in the reference. But before we get started, let's go over a couple of basics. For all of my sketches and paintings, I typically work on a canvas set to 5,000 by 4,000 pixels at 300 DPI. This is a really large scale at about 16 by 13 ". You certainly don't have to work at this size. Even half this size is sufficient. I do this because I like to scale my work down to a smaller size from the original, but we'll talk more about that in a later video. I'm also using the pencil brush from the course brush set for all of my sketches in this course. When sketching, I hold my pencil a couple of different ways. You may or may not want to do this, but I find that it helps me in making different types of lines, which adds some variety to my sketches. For initial shapes, I hold my pencil with this type of grip because I'm mostly drawing broad strokes with my arm at the beginning of a sketch. For smaller shapes, I tend to hold the pencil from the end because I find that it helps me to be more loose. Then finally, for details, I hold the pencil closer to the tip. This type of grip helps me to be more accurate with my lines. Alright, let's get started. Same as before, I'm going to draw a series of circles starting with the head. Then I'm gonna add that larger circle for the body. Then I'll add that smaller shape for the wing and tail coming together, and I'll put a guideline in for the tail. Now I'll build the shape of the bird by adding some lines in using the circles as a guide. I'm not going to change the grip on my pencil yet because I still want to stay loose at this stage. I'm going to go ahead and put in a line here for the beak and eye placement. Now I'm going to switch up my grip because I want to start to zero in a little bit on these lines. Basically, I'm making more finalized decisions about my line placement. As I'm putting lines down, I'm always using my previous marks as a guide, so it makes each successive step easier. Okay. Alright, so now I'm going to go ahead and add some detail for the beak, and I'm glancing at the reference to help me with the correct size and proportion to the head. I tend to use straight lines even around curves. Now, this is just a style choice. It's an aesthetic that I like in my sketches. For me, it just tends to make curves a little more interesting. So let's put in a shape for the tail, but I'm going to go ahead and scale my sketch down a bit. I think I'm drawing a little bit too large for the canvas size. So now that I've got more room for the tail, I'm looking at the reference to get the length of it in relation to the body. I kind of want the body to come to more of a point here just because I feel like the shape needs it. Alright, so I'm adding some lines for the legs here. And I'm gonna put in a branch for the bird to stand on. I think I'm just gonna add some marks to represent the feet wrapping around the branch. To wrap it up, I'll drop in a little circle here for the eye too. Alright, so now here's our initial rough sketch using basic shapes as a guide. The second way that I visualize shapes is through shape design, building out the details of the subject using as interesting shapes as possible. This can apply to light and shadows and even fur and hair. This time we're looking for shapes in the bird's feather groups and wing. I'm tracing the shapes that I see so that you can get an idea of what we're looking for. Our goal is to recognize these shapes and maybe add some interest to them by exaggerating the design of the curves and angles. Now let's finish out our sketch using the shape design that we just found in the reference. I'm going to be working on a separate layer above our rough sketch. Alright, let's start out by taking a closer look at the beak. Now, again, I usually add more straight lines than curved ones, but that's something I do by choice just because I like it. Don't feel like you have to do the same thing. We just want to focus on well designed shapes at this stage. We want to draw good ones because these shapes will eventually act as a guide for the painting. So I'd like to zoom in just a little bit so that I can make larger strokes with the pen. I find that easier, and it makes my lines a little cleaner, as well. I also tend to rotate the canvas a lot because I like to pull lines towards me versus pushing them away, and that's just because it's more comfortable for me in the way I draw. So a bird's eye isn't usually round because of the skin that overlaps it. So I'm defining a different shape here other than a circle to reflect that. I think I'm going to remove some of these lines and redraw them so that they meet up a little better. Okay, looking at these feather groups for the wing now, looks like there's a smaller grouping right here. So the wing turns up and wraps over the body in this spot. Okay, let's see. What else is needed. I'll go ahead and define the legs a bit more, and we really only need a line to represent them. But I'll go ahead and define better shapes for the feet here. And I also need a little bit more definition for the branch. So let's go ahead and do that, too. On second look, I think the tail should be slightly longer in relation to the body. And I'll go ahead and scale down the drawing again because I think it's still a bit large for the canvas size. Oh, let's go ahead and turn off the rough sketch layer. Now we can scale it down. And it looks like I missed a couple of lines here around the beak now that we turn that layer off. Okay, now we've completed our sketch based on good shaped structure and finished it out with good shape design. Now let's take a look at what a completed painting might look like based on a sketch like this. Even though some of the shapes have soft edges in the painting, you can still see that the shape design from the sketch is still present and comes through in the final piece. Bye. Alright, let's talk about loose versus tight sketches and where to apply detail. As artists, it's our job to guide the viewer's eye in our paintings to essentially create a focal point. An excellent way to accomplish this is through placement of details. In this fox sketch, I want the viewer to focus mainly on the eyes and the center of the face. Everything else is less important and requires less detail as a result. I've placed some squiggly lines for where the fur stops or changes colors, but the details of the fur around the head is less important as the details around the eye and nose. You can see this come through in the final painting. The eyes and nose are the sharpest and most detailed. Let's take a look at another example. This sparrow sketch is completely rendered in pencil. There's nothing wrong with this, but it does have a lot of detail. Too much detail in all areas doesn't allow for the viewer's eye to rest. You can see what the painting looks like as a result. I basically toned the pencil light brown and added some watercolor washes to the background. There's more pencil rendering than paint. Again, there's nothing wrong with this outcome, but I want you to understand how much a sketch affects a painting, and as a result, you'll hopefully be aware and a bit more strategic with your sketches. Now let's take a look at this same sparrow sketch with far less rendering. This sketch will basically serve as a guide for the painting with more details towards the head and some lines to suggest where the feathers, wings, and tails should be. Looking at the final painting, you can see how much different this version is and how much the underlying drawing can have an effect on the final outcome. Here there is more focus on the bird's eye and beak because of the contrast of sharp edges and details compared to the rest of the painting. That's intentional because I want the bird's head to be the main focal point. As an assignment, try sketching something simple like a bird or maybe a piece of fruit. Remember to look for basic shapes in the structure and the design of your drawing. Feel free to share your sketches with me on social media. I'd love to know if basic shapes have made an impact on how you draw. Okay, now that we have a good grasp on sketching for watercolor, let's move on. I'll see you in the next video. 5. Working from Reference: Before we talk about using reference, I want to dispel certain thoughts or ideas that you may have about the need for reference. Just because you need visual aid to produce a drawing or painting doesn't make you less of an artist. In fact, it makes you a better one. To give an example, if you're painting an animal, there's absolutely no way that your memory contains the information that it needs to accurately portray the anatomy and characteristics of that animal unless you've painted it a dozen, two dozen or maybe even 100 times before. However many times it takes you to retain the information needed on the subject. And even still, you may need reference for different angles or poses. Master artists throughout history have relied on reference to produce their art. So don't feel like reference is cheating. It's actually an essential tool in any artist's toolbox. So now that we know that reference is a good thing, let's talk about different types of uses for reference. This is probably the way I use reference the most. It consists of gathering images of the subject at different angles and different lighting. I like to have this type of reference open while I'm drawing and painting. Having multiple images helps me to understand the forms of the subject. I use an app called Vizaf to keep multiple images open at a time. It also allows me to save multiple collections of reference photos for later use. When I'm working from reference like this, I'm producing a drawing that is similar to what I see but not an exact match. This allows for a bit of creative freedom in positioning and proportions for the subject. But I still do a visual measurement as I'm working. I usually do this by finding a landmark in my drawing and comparing that landmark to the same one in the reference photo. Then I visually measure portions of the subject using that landmark. For example, this bird's eye is one eye length from its beak and about three eye lengths from the back of its head. I typically do this in my head as I'm looking for a roundabout measurement. I find that I'm usually pretty close as I'm so used to measuring this way. You see traditional artists do this by holding up their thumb or brush and closing one eye while looking at the subject. They're using the size of their thumb to get the height of a subject's head, for example, and then using that measurement to determine the length of other parts of the body. Reference can also inform the decisions you make while painting as well. For an example, my sketch is closer to this photo, but I like the lighting much better in this photo. So as I begin to lay down paint, I'll use this photo to inform my lightened shadow. So as I begin to darken the shadows, I'll use this photo as reference for placement around the beak and eyes. Reference can also be used as the subject for your painting. In other words, you're making an exact copy or painting what you see either from a photo or still live. For this type of painting, I would recommend measuring precisely, especially if you're painting a portrait. If you're looking to capture a likeness and the eyes of your subject or even off a little bit, I promise it will be noticeable. To measure precisely, we'll use the same landmark method as before, but this time, instead of eyeballing it, we'll actually make our measurement and copy and paste it around the face. I'll use Luke's eye as the landmark. Oh, no. Copy three finger swipe to copy and paste. And it looks like between his eyes are about one eye length. And we'll also look at the length of his nose from the bridge of his nose to the tip is also about one eye length. So to his cheek is about one eye length plus a quarter. To the other side of his face is about two eye lengths and a quarter. You can continue to make this measurement all around the face to get precise placement of each feature. All professional artists take the time to measure. It's something that you'll get used to doing, and the more you do it, the faster and more proficient you'll become at it. Take the time to measure accurately and see how well it improves your work. When it comes to art, there's often more than one way of doing things. A really useful method for copying a reference that you might find a bit easier is the grid system. For this method, you place a grid on your reference and place the same grid on your canvas. Now you have a constant measurement to work from. Simply sketch what you see in each of the squares of the grid. This helps you to produce your subject to exact scale. I set up this grid by opening my source photo and Procreate first. Tap the tool icon and turn on drawing guide. Then tap Edit Drawing Guide. From here, you can adjust the grid size and change the color. Next, I take a screenshot and crop it in and around the photo. Then I copy it to the clipboard and paste it into Vizraf. From here, I can delete the photo and procreate and start my drawing. I also want to mention tracing. Of course, it's possible to trace your subject, but I caution you on this method. Unless you understand the forms you are tracing and you can add a bit of flavor and personality to the trace as you go, the result can be somewhat lifeless. If you do choose to trace your subject, I recommend looking for areas that you can exaggerate or find shapes that you can add a bit more design to. In other words, use the trace to get basic proportions, then fill in the blanks with your own personal style and design tastes. As important as reference is, I don't want you to feel constricted by it. As I mentioned before, use it to help you understand your subject, but always be looking for areas to add design, shape, and form into your drawings. This will help you to infuse your own personal touch on your work, and that will definitely show through in your paintings. As an assignment, I'd like you to pick three subjects that you like to paint and gather a collection of five to ten good reference photos to keep on hand to use this reference for future work. Keep them in a photo gallery, on your iPad, on Dropbox, or in an app like Vsref. In your sketches, practice visual measurement and then actual measurements to see how close you got. Be sure to post the comparison to social media. I'd love to know how measuring has made an impact on your art. 6. Composition: Every time you begin a sketch or a painting, you're composing. You're placing elements on the canvas in a way that you feel is aesthetically pleasing. I think composition is often thought of in relation to landscapes where you're placing elements like horizon, trees, and clouds. Now that certainly is composition, but it actually applies to every type of painting no matter what the subject is. Even with single subjects because you're also composing with values, posing the subject, and even placement on the canvas is a factor. I also want to point out that composition and design go hand in hand. So when you're composing your art, what you're really doing is designing, and good design and art can overcome all other pitfalls. I'd go so far as to say that design is the number one most important element in your art. If your painting is well designed, then almost everything else falls into place, and the remaining choices that you have have far less importance and become easier to make. Simply planning a composition goes an incredibly long way in producing a successful painting. You wouldn't start building a house by nailing some boards together and seeing what shakes out. Same goes for a painting. The best way to plan out a composition is by thumbnail sketching. I never start a painting without a thumbnail to give myself an idea of what I'm creating. I recommend that you do three to five quick thumbnail sketches for all the paintings that you do because it gives you the opportunity to explore and experiment with little to no commitment. You can try out value placement and layout in several different ways, and you'll often find that you end up going with something completely different than what you initially had in mind for the piece. There's a ton of theories when it comes to design and composition, so much so that it can be a bit daunting to wrap your head around. But I've narrowed them down to five simple tricks that I consider to be the most common when I'm working on a watercolor. And the good news is there isn't a lot of guesswork involved. These are pretty set rules and ideas that you can apply directly to whatever you're painting. When starting a composition, I like to boil it down to the base level shapes or the overall silhouette shape of the subject. It helps to view the piece this way so that you can compose without the distraction of details. It's so much easier to make design choices when viewing the simple shapes versus trying to make those decisions once you are already underway on a painting. For example, in this floral layout, I'm using simple shapes to determine the arrangement before drawing or painting any detail. But not only am I arranging simple shapes here, I'm also using a simple shape to guide my placement. You can also let simple shapes inform your decision on angles and placement of your subject on the canvas. In this angel fish painting, the fish's silhouette is pretty strong and well defined with crisp edges all the way around the fish, setting it apart from the background wash. This fox painting, on the other hand, has lots of lost edges that blend with washes, but the silhouette of the fox is still visible in all the important areas. In both of these paintings, a well designed silhouette helps define the subject. Even viewed at a smaller size, you can still clearly see what the subject is. The rule of thirds consists of breaking down your canvas into three sections vertically and horizontally. The resulting grid gives you a general guideline for placement. For example, it can be a bit more visually interesting to place your subject a bit off center versus directly in the middle of your canvas. In this example illustration, you can see that the rule of thirds grid is being used to help guide the placement of multiple subjects in a way that is pleasing to the eye. And also notice that a triangle shape is being used to place the characters as well. I to create a rule of thirds grid and procreate, turn on drawing guide and tap edit drawing guide. Divide the pixel height by three and set the grid size to that number. My Canvas is 4,000 pixels high, so I'm using 13 33. Then drag the blue dot to the upper corner and tap done. Now tap a layer thumbnail and shoes drawing assist. Draw two horizontal lines to divide the canvas. Follow the exact same step for the vertical lines, but this time divide the width by three. My Canvas is 5,000 pixels wide, so I'm using 16 67. The same layer draw the vertical lines. Now you can turn off the drawing guide and you're left with a grid that divides your canvas into thirds. You should always take into consideration the number of elements you place in a composition. The human brain, for whatever reason, seems to find a balance with odd numbers. The easiest to compose being the number three. If you want to include more than three elements, I would recommend 5/4, not to say that you can't have an even number, but an even number of elements in a scene tend to compete for space a bit. Let's take a quick look at this painting by NC Wyeth. You might think that this is a single subject painting, and you wouldn't be wrong, but odd numbers are being used here with focal points. We're also seeing that familiar triangle shape again. I think part of why the human brain finds balance in the number three relates directly to the triangle. Back to our floral layout, I'm using three in this composition to create a balance with odd numbers. They vary in size, placing the focus on the largest flower. We've touched on this one a little bit in previous videos. Movement refers to how the viewer's eye interacts and moves through the piece. It can be accomplished through leading lines or shapes that directly point to the subject, placement of details or even something more subtle like contrasting values, which will cover more in the next video. It's important to consider how the viewer will see and interact with your work, and if you can be purposeful about that interaction, it can make your art more interesting. In the chickadee painting from earlier, the viewer's eye is being drawn to the bird's head by contrasting value or the darkest part of the painting. But we could further reinforce the focal point by framing it with leaves, for example. Notice that the leaves are also serving as leading lines directly pointing and leading the eye to the focal point. Positive space refers to areas of the painting that include the subject or areas of importance. Whereas negative space is just the opposite with areas of less focus that surround the subject. Oftentimes, watercolor has exposed white paper as an element in the painting. This area is typically thought of as negative space. So it's important to consider how we deal with this negative space. I oftentimes use washes to fill these areas around my subject as it's an aspect of watercolor that I enjoy. Oftentimes negative space is affected the most in how we crop our painting. How the painting is cropped can really change the dynamics of the finished piece. As an example, I'm placing this bird off center and cropping the canvas, taking the amount of negative space in the upper portion into consideration. Using the rule of thirds also helps me with placement. Notice how changing the position affects the piece. Being too close to the edge gives us an off balance feeling. You can always think of negative space as giving the subject some room to breathe. Another good example is this fish pining. The original is not necessarily cropped with a good balance of positive and negative space. So I created a new version and used the rule of thirds grid to create a tighter crop. The focal point of the piece is the fish's face, which I kept in the lower bottom third. There's also a nice balance of negative space all the way around. I wanted the fish to appear that he was turning and swimming away very fast. That movement is suggested by the fins and the splatters that move to the upper right. Using the rule of thirds, keeping in mind movement and a good balance of negative space, I think this is a much better representation for this piece. Now that we've explored some ideas behind composition, I hope you now feel equipped with some newfound confidence when it comes to planning out your paintings. I think you'll find that with these simple tricks in mind, that the rules of composition can be easily added to your artistic toolbox. As an assignment, I'd like you to pick a subject and do three to five thumbnail sketches, keeping in mind silhouette, the rule of thirds, odd numbers, movement, and positive versus negative space. Each thumbnail doesn't have to contain all of these elements, but if you can include one or two, then you're on your way to a fantastic composition. Be sure to post your results to social media and tag me. I'd love to hear how you've planned out your painting. Alright, we're moving right along, and I'll see you in the next video. 7. Understanding Value Contrast: Contrast in art can refer to a lot of things like texture versus smooth strokes or small versus large shapes or straight versus jagged lines. But when it comes to watercolor, I believe the most important contrast is in values. You need good contrasting values in your paintings to create a level of realism and depth. If you ever painted something and wondered why it seems flat or it doesn't pop, the likely culprit is a lack of value contrast. So in this video, we'll dive deeper into value, and afterwards, you'll see your work with new eyes. You're going to know what to look for as you're painting and how to check your work for good value range. And I guarantee that these skills alone will make an incredible difference in how you view your. Value refers to how light or how dark a color is. For example, looking at this scale, we see a range of grays from pure black or 100% value to white or 0% value. Your painting should always include values across this scale, meaning that your lightest tone should be found here, your middle tones here, and your darkest tones somewhere in here. If your painting only includes middle tones, then you end up with a flat look, making it harder for the eye to discern different shapes. Notice in this cat painting viewed in black and white how all the tones used are found in the middle range of our scale. The result is flat and it definitely is harder for our eyes to pick out any real depth in shadows or highlights. I think a lot of beginner artists paint in mid range values because it feels safer. Making extreme contrast shifts might seem intimidating at first, like you're going too far. It's also possible that your eyes are just not used to looking for value range in this way. When we view the original painting in black and white, we can see that the full range in the value scale is present. It's very clear where the darkest shadows are and where the brightest highlights are. The result is more depth than more realism. Depth in a painting is created by separation of these values. The painting looks more real because this is the value range that we see in the real world all the time. Also note that value is relative to its surrounding values, meaning a value will appear darker surrounded by a lighter value and lighter when surrounded by a darker one. This makes more sense when we view it on the value scale. You can see that the same middle tone appears lighter at one end and darker at the other, even though it's the same gray tone all the way across. Let's look at an example of this. This is a painting for a T shirt design that I did for a client a few years back. When we view it in black and white, can you pick out the lightest value? It looks like the small fish are the lite, but you can find the same value in the speckle trout below the eye. The small fish actually appear brighter because the surrounding value is so much darker. This creates more separation, depth, and contrast around these small fish, making them a focal point as a result. You see the same value scale in colors as well. Adding more white to a color moves it up the scale creating a tint of the base color, while adding black moves it down the scale creating a shade of the base color. Some colors have a lighter base value while others are darker. Color is what we tend to notice the most in a painting, but really value is what's doing all the work. In fact, I believe that the color you pick is less important than its value. I'll show you what I mean. We talked before about the focal point of this fox painting being the center of its face because the most detail is placed there. But it also draws the viewer's eye because it has the most value separation from the rest of the painting as well. Even if we change the color of the painting, it still works because the value separations are still there. Oftentimes, you are composing with a range of values in a painting. A painting may be dark, light or mid value dominant. In this example, we can see that the focal point is created with a dark value object and a mid value dominant composition, or it can be the opposite with a light value and a dark value dominant scene. It's important to think about the value placement in your composition because focal points are often created by this contrast. Taking another look at this angelfish painting, this time in black and white, gives us roughly three values. The white of the paper is our lightest with the middle value making up the background wash. The focal point is created by contrasting light and dark values in the head, not to mention a little help from some leading lines. At this point, I've shown you several paintings in black and white. That's actually the perfect way to check your work as you paint. Simply three finger swipe and procreate and select copy all and three finger swipe again to paste your painting on a layer above everything else. And then drop the saturation. Look at your current value range and see where you need adjustment. Compare it to a value scale to see where you need more of a certain value. Do this multiple times if needed as you work on a piece. Pretty soon you'll train your eyes to see colors as values, and you'll see where good value contrast is needed as you work. From this point forward, I'd like for you to think about values in your paintings, be aware of them, and how they are used to create contrast, composition, depth, and realism in your work. As an assignment, I'd like you to create a value scale. Use nine squares to create the range from black to white. Compare it to your latest work and see if you can find a good range of light, middle, and dark value. This will likely give you an idea of where you are currently when it comes to painting with good value contrast. Now that we've got some good painting theory under our belts from the last few videos, let's go take a look at some brushes. 8. Brush Selection: Let's take a few minutes to talk about brushes. Brushes are essential to creating the watercolor effect that I look for in my digital paintings. My background is in traditional art, so I tend to look for certain elements in my brushes that are important to me, like textures, soft and hard edges, and certain types of splatters and wash effects. I've included a basic set of 14 brushes along with this course. We'll be using this set to paint with in all of the upcoming videos. Let's take a look at the brushes in this set so that you can become familiar with them and you'll know which type of brush to use for different areas of a painting. First brush in this set is a pencil. This one is probably pretty obvious as it's intended to be used for your sketches. The brush creates a thin line when held normally or creates a thicker shading line when tilted to the side. I like to use a dark gray color most of the time with this brush, unless I'm using it as a colored pencil, creating a tone sketch. Next is the watercolor detailer. This brush is intended for smaller detail work. It would be close to a small round when compared to a traditional brush. The brush is transparent and creates a hard edge. Even though the brush is intended for detail work, you can certainly scale it up and paint larger areas with it if you like. The water brush is another hard edge round brush, but this one is more transparent as though it contains more water than paint. It's pressure sensitive, so the lighter you press, the more water enters the brush. The brush also has a nice texture that becomes more visible with pressure. The opaque brush is equivalent to a traditional brush filled with paint and no water. I know that I mentioned before that watercolor is always transparent. But the more paint you layer, the more opaque it begins to appear. You can do the same with a transparent brush like the ones we just looked at, but this brush will act as a time saver, allowing you to lay down more opaque areas quickly. This one will become a regular in your brush selection as you will use it to create value contrast faster than layering. The flat brush mimics a traditional brush that has a whiter tip. You'll use this one to shade larger areas or to create variation in your strokes as strokes are not always visible with round brushes. The soft wash and softer wash brushes create soft edge strokes, similar to what we created in the look at traditional watercolor video. These are excellent for painting washes or adding subtle edges in your paintings. The alcohol and salt effect brushes are for creating certain types of special effects that will cover more in a later video. The water blender is intended specifically for the blender tool, but understand that you can certainly paint with it just like you could also use other brushes in this set with the blender tool. This brush is full of water and will blend out any stroke as though you are painting wet into wet. The two wash stamp brushes are for creating large washes quickly, but have several other uses as well, which will cover more in a later video. The drip and splatter brushes are among my favorites. I almost always finish off all of my paintings with a few splatters. The drip brush will add a few single dots while the splatter brush will go crazy slinging paint all over the surface. Let's paint a quick feather to give you an idea of what these brushes can do and feel free to paint along with me if you like. I'm going to sketch this feather from memory because I want it to be a quick brush demo, and I think the shape is simple enough that I can do it without reference. As I work, I'm going to try to keep in mind a strong silhouette and avoid any repeating patterns in the feather. I'm also going to keep the sketch pretty loose because I know in a few minutes I'll tighten it up in the next step. Okay, I'm tapping the transform tool, and I'm going to scale it down just a little bit, and then I'm going to tilt it slightly. So now I'm creating a new layer and moving it below the sketch layer. I'm using the opaque brush in a dark blue color to outline the silhouette of the feather, using the sketch as a guide. I'm not really following the sketch lines exactly here as I want to continue to add variation and visual interest as I work. That's something that I really try to stay continuously aware of, especially early on in the painting. The shape that I'm creating here will serve as a base for our feather selection that we'll paint with on other layers. It won't actually be part of the final painting. Now I'm filling the outline and I'm going to create some more wispy feather pieces with single strokes, and I'm doing this purely to add some more visual interest to the shape. So I'm using the same opaque brush, but this time with the eraser tool to knock out some areas of the feather silhouette. In a traditional painting, these areas are created from spaces between brush strokes that didn't get wet. 'Cause watercolor won't flow into these small dry areas unless you push it there with a brush. So by erasing these spaces, it's like I'm mimicking that look of traditional watercolor. Now that we have a feather shape, I'm going to rename this layer base. I'll make a selection from this layer and turn the visibility off. Then I'm going to create a new layer and fill it with a large stroke from the soft wash brush. And now we have this nice texture base to work from. Now I'm going to choos a purple color to paint in some color variation. Then using the same soft wash brush with the blurtl, I'll blend the blue and purple together. I I'm gonna go ahead and create another new layer and I'll sample a purple color from the feather and make it a bit darker. Using that same soft wash brush again, I'll paint outside the selection, allowing just the edge of the brush to bleed over onto the feather shape. This will darken the edge of our feather, which will mimic behavior of traditional watercolor again as paint tends to run towards the edge of a shape as it dries. I'll use the blentol again to blur a few areas around the edges as well. And on the same layer, I'm choosing a wash brush and we'll stamp some darker purple to the base of the feather. And because of our selection, the stamp is confined to our feather shape. Now on another layer using the water brush this time, let's detail the edges again. Actually, let's use the watercolor detailer brush instead. I'm going to paint a fine detail line around the feather, reinforcing that darkened edge effect from earlier. As I work around the feather, I'll darken some edges and leave some out as I want the effect to be kind of varied. Now I'm creating a new layer and moving it below our detailed edge layer. I'm selecting a wash damp brush again and this time using a blue color and stamping the other portion of the feather just to add a little bit more texture. On another new layer, I'm going to go ahead and add some more variation by selecting a light blue and painting some texture in using the alcohol effect brush. To finish off this piece, I'll add a few splatters within the feather selection using a light blue color again. Now I'm going to undo the selection and add a few more splatters around the feather using a dark blue. Okay, as a final adjustment, I'm gonna combine all of the layers and increase the saturation and vary the hue slightly. And I think that'll just about do it for this one. The question that I receive the most often about my brush sets is, how do I know what brush to use? The answer to that question is, what are you painting? If you're creating a hard edge, then grab one of the rounds. If you need a soft edge or something with more texture, grab a soft wash brush. If you're detailing a small area, then use the detailer or even the pencil brush. I really think that brush selection comes down to experience because with experience comes confidence and knowing what you're doing and knowing what you're looking for, and you're painting. If you feel like you're not there yet, it's okay. We've got a lot more to cover in this course, and you'll be there before you know it. 9. Creating Edge Variety: We've touched a little bit on the concept of edge variety, but I wanted to create a video specifically on the topic because I believe it to be an essential part of a painting. It's important to me that you have a solid grasp on this topic and you know how to apply it in your own art. I believe there are three types of edges in a painting, hard or sharp edges, soft edges, and lost edges. These three edge types play a role in visual hierarchy. This means that we tend to see certain edges in order of importance or visual clarity. Hard edges are the highest in this ranking. Since they have the most clarity, it's what our eyes tend to notice first. Focal points in detail areas tend to have the most hard edges in a watercolor. Soft edges are typically secondary and contain some importance, but less so than hard edges. Fur is a good example of soft edges. Sometimes I'll paint fur very softly with little to no detail. Your eye sees that it's there and registers it as fur, but it doesn't necessarily dwell or rest on these areas of the painting. Lost edges are sort of this magic space where we are implying that something is there without actually showing it. It's like your brain fills in the space without actually seeing. That's actually a really good takeaway and something to keep in mind. In a painting, we don't always have to show everything. In doing so, we actually create more interest because your brain enjoys the mystery of filling in the blanks with imagination. Lost edges can also be used to add a bit of abstract quality to a painting. And that's something that I personally find very appealing about these areas in deciding where they should be. Et's take a look at how brushes were used to create edge variety in this floral painting to give it a good balance and visual hierarchy. The overall shape of the flower silhouette was painted with a hard edged brush like the watercolor detailer or the opaque brush. Then the interior colors on the inside of the petals were painted using the flat brush. And then the edges were softened using the flat brush again with the smudge tool. I chose to lose some of the edges of the flower shape as though the paint ran away from the silhouette. I did this toward the back of the flower to set a bit of depth and combine the shape with the background a bit. I also did this a little in the front just to suggest a bit of depth of field. Depth of field refers to the distance between the closest and furthest elements in a photo or painting in this case, that appear sharp and in focus. So looking at this painting, we can clearly see all three edges at work. Hard edges give focus and visual priority to the flower silhouette. They're also used in the details found in the center of the flower. Soft edges are used to paint the color within the flower petals, and lost edges are being used to set a bit of depth and interest to the background and a little to the foreground. A question that I often receive is, how do I avoid blurring my painting? The most likely cause is that you don't have enough edge variety, specifically hard edges. You need the sharpness of hard edges and your focal points so that your eye is guided there and watch out for over use of the smudge tool. If your painting appears too blurry, it's likely that you're just missing that sharpness. So I recommend that you be intentional about edges and make sure that your painting has a balance of edge types in order to avoid that blurry look. As an assignment, I'd like you to try a simple painting of a fruit, something easy like an orange slice, an apple, or a strawberry like I'm doing here. I want you to keep in mind edge variety. Be strategic about where you place these three edge types. If the painting begins to look blurry, then start looking for those hard edges to bring it back into focus. In my strawberry painting, I'm using softer edges in the lighting of the strawberry to suggest roundness. The edges of the strawberry and the small seeds have harder edges to give it focus and sharpness. I even have a slightly lost edge at the base where the shadow begins because no light is landing there. Give this a try and be sure to share and tag me on social media and let me know how you used edges to give more dimension and focus in your painting. 10. What is a Watercolor Wash?: The term wash refers to a technique where you paint a very thin layer of watercolor into a large area of water. This results in the paint moving around the pool of water, creating swirls and blooms and all sorts of random effects. Once again, this is a technique that allows watercolor to paint itself, since you're giving up control in a sense and letting the paint take over. Once the paint dries, you're left with areas of the painting that really have a life all their own. The resulting textures left by the mix of water and paint breathe life into the painting. I personally love this aspect of watercolor, and I use it all the time in both traditional and digital work. There are two ways that I like to create washes and procreate, and oftentimes I use these two methods together so that I can have full flexibility and control over how the washes look. The first method is to paint them using soft wash brushes. Here I'm using the soft washed brushes from the coarse brush set. Painting washes like this allows a level of freedom in the shape and areas of light and dark because you're painting it from scratch. I'll often use the smudge tool with the same brush selected to spread the wash or faded out along the edges. The other technique I use to create washes is using stamp brushes. Here I'm using the two stamp brushes from the course brush set. These brushes were created using high risk photos or scans of actual washes created with traditional paint on paper. So the result is as realistic as you can get. These brushes are fast and easy and often create randomness and happy accidents, which I find to be a lot of fun. Washes can be used to build and blend shapes, and they can also be used to create abstract backgrounds. Let's try painting a shape first, and feel free to paint along if you like. We'll start out by drawing a leaf with the pencil sketch brush. Next, we'll want to create an area of confinement for the paint. In a traditional watercolor, this will be equivalent to a wet area of the paper. Paint will stay within the bounds of the wet space and won't run or move onto dry paper. In Procreate, we'll create the same confined area with a selection. So let's go ahead and outline our leaf shape with the selection tool. This gives us the equivalent of a wet area of paper. Then we can stamp or paint a couple of washes in to give us our painted shape. This is so easy to do, and it can be the beginning step in so many paintings. I love the randomness of building shapes this way versus painting in solid areas of color. Watercolor paintings don't typically have a solid area of opaque color, like il paintings might. There's usually some degree of texture. So these wash damps are also perfect for breaking up those areas of solid color with a bit of randomness. Okay, let's try another one. This time we're going to use the soft wash brushes. Action is already made, and I'm going to paint around the edge of the leaf without lifting my pencil tip until I'm ready to start a new layer of wash. I'm also painting around the edge, the outside of the leaf to darken the edges. Let's grab the softer wash brush and scale it up a little. Let's paint in another layer of wash. I'm using very light pressure here as well. So darkening the edges like this will help create the look of real paint because it tends to move towards the edge as it begins to dry. Okay. There we have it. There's our second leaf this time painted with wash brushes. When using washes as backgrounds, I think of it as blending out areas that add to or enhance the composition. With that concept in mind, you don't want to stamp just any wash anywhere. I'll show you what I mean in this example. Let's finish out the background of this fox. I've included this painting in the course resources in case you want to follow along, but don't feel obligated to place washes in the same areas that I do. Feel free to experiment and see what you can create. Okay, we're gonna be using the wash damp brushes from the coarse brush set. I'm going to start with wash damp two. Our file is layered, and we want to place a new layer below all the others. That's where we're going to put our initial washes. I'm gonna sample a color from the back of the fox's head, and I think I'm going to place my first wash in this area. Size the brush down a little bit. Okay, that looks pretty good. Drop another one here. Okay, I already like this. I'm going to sample a darker orange, place one lower. Okay, I like that pretty well. I'm gonna get wash damp one. I'm gonna drop another one in the middle. That works out pretty good. I like the natural flow that this has. I already it's adding to the fox's shape, and it feels like a natural extension of the painting. If I were to throw another one up here, see how it kind of throws it off balance a little bit? It doesn't feel as natural. I'm going to go with a cool blue now or a cool gray. I'm gonna get wash damp two again, and I'm going to start a background for the fox's face. Okay? Again, I'm looking for a natural extension of the painting. As I'm placing these washes, my eye is in search of a balanced composition. Okay, that's a bit too low. I'm gonna get the blur tool. I'm gonna blur out some of these repeating elements. The blur tools already set to the water blender. I have just some of these repeating splatters that I just kind of want to get rid of. The wash damp turns each time you place it, but occasionally, you still get some of these repeating elements. It's quick and easy to just erase or blend them in. Okay let's create a new layer above all the others this time? This is going to be for some highlights. I want to break up some of these areas of color that I'm seeing Besize the brush down smaller this time, I want to break up this area right here. Let's make it a little larger. Okay. I've got another area here that I want to break up. That's pretty good. I also have this harsh line that I'm seeing in the face, and I want to break that area up, as well. It's pretty good, but maybe it's a little much. Let's try another one. That's a little more subtle. I like that better. Now let's use the soft wash brushes to enhance the washes we've already laid down. I'm going to create a new layer below the highlights layer, and I'm going to choose the soft wash brush. So I'm looking for these areas in the washes where it looks like paint may have flowed in the water before it dried. And I want to sort of enhance or darken these areas. Every time I pick up and put down the tip of the pencil with this brush, it'll darken the stroke, but that's okay because I'll blend those in in just a little bit. So I see another area here that I want to add a little bit of flow too. And another one up here as well. Now I'm going to use blender tool with the same soft wash brush selected, and I'm just going to blend out some of these harder edges. But I don't want to blend them all out because I still want to have some of that edge variety in the wash. I'm basically just trying to imagine where the paint would have flowed and where it would have spread out. It's so easy to overdo the blur tool with something like this. But the edges of our wash stamps on another layer are helping to keep things from looking too blurry. Okay, I think that looks pretty good. Couple more touch ups. Okay, let's take a look at what we've done by turning on and off the layer. What we did was pretty subtle, but it created some nice dark areas in the washes and it added some variation to the fur. I think I'm pretty happy with this fox for now. See how easy painting with washes can be? We went from this to this in about 5 minutes. That's pretty cool. I hope the concept of using washes in the ways that I've described has opened up some new ideas for your paintings and inspired you to paint more abstract elements in your art. And now that we've looked at some watercolor washes, let's move on to some more special effects. Oh 11. Watercolor Special Effects: A really cool aspect of watercolor is how it interacts with things like water, alcohol, and salt when they're introduced just as the paint begins to dry. Also, the type of paper used and the surface of that paper play a role in the final outcome. These effects can give a watercolor painting a very unique texture. We can apply these special effects to our digital paintings as well to create more depth and realism. Let's take a closer look at these effects and how they're created. Water is definitely the number one influencer in how a watercolor painting comes together. It takes water to activate the pigment in order to start a painting, but it also can be used to create special effects once the paint is on the paper. For example, a wet brush can be used to spread or move paint around or blended out completely. We can use the water blender brush to do the same thing and procreate. Here I have the smudge tool with the water blender brush selected. I'm starting the brush outside of the wash and moving the stroke into it. This is like moving clear water into the paint, whereas starting the stroke in the wash and moving it outwards is the opposite, like moving the paint into water. Another water effect can occur when water is introduced to paint as it begins to dry on the paper. The water causes the paint to spread back onto itself, and the result is referred to as a bloom. I think blooms are a nice effect to break up solid areas of color in a digital painting. We can create blooms using the wash damp brushes with the eraser tool or by painting them manually using a wash brush and the eraser tool. Salt and alcohol are two methods for creating really unique textures in a painting. When salt or alcohol are introduced to paint before it dries, it creates a resistance in the paint. The results create a rough and random texture. In a traditional painting, you can sprinkle alcohol to create sort of a reverse splatter effect in a large area of paint. We can do the same in Procreate by using the alcohol effect brush with the eraser tool. You can also use it with the paint brush tool to spread a wash giving it a rougher textured edge. When using salt on a traditional painting, it's typically sprinkled into wet paint and then allowed to dry before removing. This results in a fine, gritty texture. We can create this look and procreate using the salt effect brush and a lighter colour paint than the one we are painting over. This is an excellent way to add texture to a smoother area of a painting. Splatters are a personal favorite of mine. There's an aspect to them in a traditional painting that requires you to surrender the control you have over what's happening. You can do a few things to aim the direction of the splatters, but not much. In our digital paintings, we have a little more control over where our splatters land. I've included two splatter brushes in the coarse brush set. The drip painter will apply one splatter at a time, and the splatter brush will apply lots of splatter at once with pen pressure controlling the size. I love to apply splatters to further render the painting in a way because splatters have a hard edge. It can bring areas of the painting into focus, meaning that our eye will see them first versus a softer area of the piece. I also love them as a compositional element because they can provide subtle shape or direction as well. Paper types have a big impact on traditional water colors. There are basically three kinds of paper regardless of quality or brand. The three types are cold press, cold press rough, and hot press. Cold Press is probably the most common with a semi rough texture. Applying paper texture and procreate is pretty easy, but it has a big impact on the painting. I've included a basic cold press paper texture in the course resources. The simplest way to apply this paper texture is to place it on a layer above all others and set that layer's blend mode to multiply. The resulting texture will give a digital painting and much more realistic look and feel. Now, let's take all of these special effects and use them to finish out our fox painting from the previous video. Once again, don't feel like you need to play splatters and effects in all the same places that I do. The goal is to become familiar with how these brushes work and how these effects can be used to complete a painting. I'm going to start with a new layer above all the others, and I have wash damp two selected as my brush. I'm gonna sample this light fur color, and I want to create a little bit of a bloom here in this area and maybe have it flow down just a bit. So I'm tapping in the bloom with the wash damp, and I'm going to use the softer wash brush to paint a little bit more as if the bloom spread. Alright, I think that looks pretty good. Now I'm going to grab the wash damp two brush again, and I want to add another small bloom where this white transitions to dark below the nose here. Alright, now let's create a new layer again, and I want to use the salt effect brush this time. We're gonna use this brush to break up some smoother areas of color like the one below the eye. I'm sampling this sort of burnt sienna color, and I'm gonna make it lighter. That's gonna need lighter pressure. Alright, I'm going to do the same thing here, so I'm gonna sample this dark orange, but I'm gonna make it a little bit lighter. Okay, I'm just gonna look around and I'm going to place a few more where I just think a little bit of color needs to be broken up. Use a little bit down here at the gray area. Alright, that's pretty subtle. I think the color needs to be lighter. Alright, that's better. I'm gonna look around. It feels pretty balanced so far. I think I'm gonna go ahead and add a new layer, and let's try some darker ones. So I'm gonna do the opposite. I'm gonna sample this dark fur color, but I'm gonna make the color darker. Okay, that's too much. I'm gonna I made the brush bigger, and I'm gonna try just a few taps instead of brush strokes, taps of the pin. Okay, that's good. I like how that breaks up that white. I'm gonna add a little bit in the head with real light pressure, just a little bit. Okay, it's looking good. I like how this salt texture is it's breaking up the paint, and it's a really good match texture wise for this painting. It's too much. Okay, I like that. A little more. This feels pretty good. I'm gonna try white again just to see if I can just add a little bit more variation in some spots. Going back to that light color. So I'm using the opaque brush with the eraser tool to get rid of some of those little spots. Alright, so now this is full experiment mode, just seeing if some of these white salt splatters will work in different areas. Alright, looking around, I think that'll do it for the salt effect. So let's add another new layer for some splatters. I usually start with darker splatters first, so I'll select the darker fur color again and make it even darker. So I'm gonna use the splatter brush. It's already set to a pretty large size. Let's just drop in a few and see what happens. And I'm just tapping the pin to place these. I want to keep in mind this sort of directional flow in the fur and kind of want to maintain that with the splatters if I can. Might try a few around the head. I'm gonna go a little smaller on the brush size. Remember the brush is pressure sensitive, so light taps will make small splatters and hard taps will make bigger ones. I'm gonna try some dark ones, some dark gray ones down here. And maybe a few up top, as well. Alright, so let's go ahead and try some light splatters on a new layer and see how well things balance. I'm using the splatter brush again for these lighter splatters. Okay, same process as before. I'm going to sample light colors this time and just tap the splatters in. Okay, so very light and small for some of these, you may not even be able to see them in the video. Okay, I'm taking a look now, and things feel pretty good and balanced. I think that's really something you have to decide for yourself. If everything looks right to your eye, you'll definitely know it. You want these effects to feel like a natural part of the painting, enhancing what's there and not distracting from it. As a last step, let's add a quick paper texture. I'm gonna go out to the gallery and grab the paper texture from the course resources. I'll three finger swipe to copy it and head back over to the painting. Now, I'll swipe again to paste it and set the layers blend mode to multiply. Okay, I think this completes our fox painting. I hope this video helps you to see how easy and fun it is to add special effects and how they can be used to further render and enhance your paintings. 12. Intro to Color Theory: Oh. Color can be intimidating at first, but with some basic understanding and the aid of a color wheel, it's really easy to get a handle on color theory basics. There are a few color schemes that I use the most. The first being the most simple. A monochromatic color scheme is just one color. This scheme is great practice in understanding value because when you're painting with one color, you're forced to use various tints and shades of that color to get all the values that you need in your painting. Complementary color schemes are an easy way to start planning color for a painting. The idea is to use a color along with its opposite on the color wheel. These two colors will always have good color contrast. For example, you could start with warm colors as your lights and the complimentary cool colors as your shadows. Now let's take it a step further with another type of color scheme called triatic. A triangle is used on the color wheel to locate two complimentary colors from the first color chosen. I often work with a variation on this triatic scheme. I choose a color and find its complimentary color plus its triatic scheme and consider all colors within the bottom of the triangle to be usable. But understand that colors in a digital painting can be fluid. The idea of a color scheme like this is a solid start, but once a painting gets underway, a color scheme can be experimented with and possibly changed along the way. Let's take a look at an example by finishing out our chickadee sketch from earlier. Grab your sketch and feel free to paint along if you'd like. Okay, so I want this to be a colorful painting. But this particular bird doesn't have a lot of color. So let's talk about a plan for choosing the colors to represent the values of this bird. So I'm going to select this from isra I'm like the top image, and I'm going to move it over let's take a look at it. Let's take a look at it in black and white. Okay, so you can see the different values. The darks are here, the lights are here, and then there's some mid tone grays. So we need to choose colors to represent these different values. Alright? So let's get rid of that. Let's talk about a plan for color. I know that I want the darks for the bird in the head and in the feathers to fall somewhere in here in this purple blue range. So the complimentary would be here in this yellow orange range. But using that triatic scheme that we just talked about, I know that all of these colors are fair game for this particular scheme. So to represent some of my mid tones, I may go orange or green, and my lights will probably be yellow or off white yellow. All right. So let's get started. First thing I'm going to do is I'm going to change the opacity, take down the opacity of my bird. I'm going to create a new layer on top of the sketch. I want to start painting in some of those mid tone values. So we know from our color wheel example, that's probably going to fall somewhere in this yellow orange range here. I'm going to use the water brush, and I'm going to begin to paint in some of those values that I see from my reference. Now, in a traditional watercolor, you are painting light to dark. We're doing the same thing here, but since this is digital, we'll probably be going and revisiting the lightest lights in a later step. Also, I'm painting this light color under some of these dark areas where I know the bluish purple will go later, but I'm doing that because I want to create that layered look since most of these brushes are transparent. Okay, I'm gonna go with a little bit darker orange now. And I'm gonna use the watercolor detailer just because this brush is a little bit more opaque than the water brush. We, we'll go a little bit bigger. H now I'm going to use the water brush with the smudge tool, and I'm just going to blend out some of these harder edges. Okay, now, this shadow area underneath, it gets a little I feel like it gets a little darker than what I have, so I'm going to go even more orange for this area just because there's a nice shadow underneath there. A lot of times shadows can be a lot of times shadows can be cool colors, but for this particular painting, I think I want to try it with just a darker orange, see how it works out. We can always change. Okay, I'm going to blur the edges on that as well, just a little bit, on the inside of the bird. Gonna make that leg a little thinner, too. I'm gonna use the water brush to just kind of spread it out a little bit more cause this brush will also blur a bit. I think that looks pretty good so far. Okay, referring back to our color wheel, we know that we want to use a bluish purple for the darks. So I'm gonna try something like that, maybe go a little more blue, something right in there. And I'm going to use I'm going to use the watercolor detailer again because that's a pretty opaque brush. I'm gonna be using the exact same process as I did with the lighter tone, so I'm going to speed up the time just a little bit. I think I want to try a bit of a pink color to sort of bridge the gap between this dark and light tone. Now, it's deviating a little bit from our color wheel choices. That's okay. It's just for the sake of experimentation. And if we don't like it, we can always remove it. So I'm gonna go ahead and add a new layer to try this on. And I'm going to go with kind of a purply pink. Something maybe right in there. And I think I'm going to try a soft wash brush for this. I also have the brush set at about half opacity. Okay, I like that pretty well, and I think I'm going to go ahead and merge those layers. Oh. Let's had some washes. I like to use washes and splatters and bird paintings because birds have a lot of movement and energy, and they hop around and fly around real fast. And I think that adding washes to the background really represents that movement and energy. Okay, so I'm going to use the wash damp two brush. I've got it set pretty high. I go full opacity. And remember that remember our color wheel. Example, we had some yellow green over on this side, so I want to start with that yellow green color, see how that works out. Make it pretty light. And I want to add a new layer below our paint. Okay, again, this is experimentation, so I'm going to click and remove until I just like the look until I think the wash adds to the shape and the painting. Okay, I think I want to go with an orange as well, but I want to push it a little bit more red, a little bit more saturated. Let's try that. Okay, that's pretty cool. I'm going to drop the opacity a bit and maybe try one over here. Okay, that looks pretty cool. I'm going to try I'm gonna try a purple around the head, since the head is already purple, I'm gonna drop the opacity a bit more and see how that works. Looks pretty good. I think I'm gonna get one with a little bit more opacity. Oh, I think I'm gonna scale that down a little bit. Try that. Mm. Let's add one more. I'm going to go one more with that red orange again, right here. There we go. Okay, while we're here, let's go ahead and just throw a little bit of alcohol into this wash. We're going to do that with the eraser tool and the alcohol effect brush, and I've got it on a little bit lowered opacity. We've got the size set pretty high. And I just want to just with light pressure, I'm just going to bring it across and just kind of bring back that highlight a little bit in the bird by erasing some of that wash in the background. Okay let's also go ahead and add a layer on top of our initial paint layer, and let's throw some washes on top. Okay? I want to see if I can get this light purple color. And let's go back to wash damp two. And let's see I want to make it a little smaller. Right there. That's pretty good. Now, let's see. Maybe change the purple just a little bit. I'm going to go a little bit more blue with it. Okay, right there. Take the opacity down a bit. I'm going to go back to my green. Okay, let's go ahead and bring back some of our highlights. Let's create a new layer. I want to choose a color that is a little bit yellow, almost white, not quite fully white, but just with a hint of yellow. I want to use the Oh, let's probably use let's try the watercolor detailer again. The idea here is to bring back some of these highlights, and we want to have some of them blend out as though we were using guash in a traditional painting and using lots of water so that the guash spreads and blends with the underlying color. Okay. I'm also going to throw in a little bit of salt using the same light yellow color. I'm going to do this on a new layer, and I just want to add a little bit of texture over our existing paint. Using very light pressure here, you may not be able to see what's happening. It's just throwing a little bit of texture in. Now it's just a matter of adding some details. I'm going to start by adding some dark details around the head and the wing. I'll be using the opaque brush to do this. I've got it set to a pretty small size. I'll be blurring a few of the details with the blur tool using the water brush. I'm going to select a dark purple and I'm going to be working on a new layer. I'm adding these darker darks to add more value contrast in the painting. So I'm looking for the deepest blacks in the reference photo. I'm blending out some of the harder edges so that it appears that the paint ran together. And this will also create a bit of edge variety. Now I'm going to do the same thing again for the light details. This time, I'm going to be using pure white. And I'll be painting on another new layer. As I mentioned before, we would use squash in a traditional watercolor to paint white over other colors. Guash is watercolor, but it's just opaque. Since it is watercolor, I'm blending out the edges of the white details to make it appear as though the paint spread into other colors. Now I want to finish up the painting with a little bit of splatters. And I'm gonna go ahead and close out my reference for this. Okay, my philosophy with adding splatters is to just add some outward direction to the piece and just give it a little bit more movement and energy. And I think I want to go ahead and turn off the sketch now, as well. And I'm gonna add these splatters on a new layer above everything else. And I'm gonna get the splatters brush. And I'm going to start by adding a few of the orange ones over here. Now, this brush is pressure sensitive, so the harder I tap, the bigger the splatters are, and light taps will make small ones. Tim to get some of this green, but I'm gonna make it a little bit darker just so we can see the splatters. Okay. I think I'm going to add some orange ones down here. I'm just sampling colors around the bird near where I'm putting the splatters. Get some purple ones over here and maybe some really dark ones right up here. Some real small ones. Okay, I also want to add a few white ones. Okay, I like that. I like that. It feels real balanced. Let me see about maybe just Yeah, there we go. Okay. Yeah, it just feels really balanced and feels like it's just a natural part of the painting. Nothing is real distracting. You know, you don't want any splatters to land over the eye or the beak, just because those are real prominent features, and a splatter over that area would be distracting in the focal point. I want to try something else really quick. I want to flatten everything down to one layer, except for the splatters. Discovered this technique just a few days ago by accident. But if I use the smudge tool and the salt effect, so I'm basically smudging with the salt effect. I can add some really random just splatters and things that just look like they happened in the paint, just some real random effects, and it creates a really neat sort of sort of a texture splatter hybrid. It's real random effects, and I think it's just kind of neat to just tap in just a few. It's very subtle in a few places, but it creates a really neat effect. Now I want to paste in our paper texture from the course resources, and I'm going to go ahead and get rid of our color wheel and set the paper layer, the blend mode I'm to set it to multiply to add in the paper texture. Now, remember I said that color can be kind of a fluid thing. Just because you have an initial color scheme that you use as your base doesn't necessarily mean you have to stick with that. And I'll show you what I mean. I usually do a couple of little color adjustments to finish up a painting. And to do that, I will three finger swipe and select copy all and we need to be on the top layer, and three finger swipe to paste. So now we have the entire painting flattened on the top layer. And I usually do a curves adjustment. And I put multiple points on on the curve line. And I will just move these around, and it really creates a really nice random color adjustment. And it also generally creates a bit more contrast more value contrast, as well. And I just make really slight adjustments on these curves. Okay, that's pretty nice. And one other adjustment I like to make is a color balance. I usually start with the mid tones, and I think I want to try to push the mid tones maybe a little bit towards red. Yellow. And then I want to push the shadows a little bit towards blue. A lot of experimentation can be done with color adjustment, but I'm pretty happy with this, and I believe that completes our painting. I hope that by painting this bird together, you've discovered how easy it is to build a plan for color in your paintings and also how fun it can be to keep that plan flexible and experiment with color as you work. H 13. Project Painting Part 1: As a final painting for a class project, I thought it would be fun to do a sea turtle. I've never painted a sea turtle before, and I thought it would be a great opportunity for some variation. We've looked at fur and feathers and some previous subjects, and this is a nice contrast with more hard surfaces. Plus, I thought it would be fun to do an underwater scene to paint with washes and various effects. These are the reference photos that I gathered, and they're all beautiful. I think the lighting is spectacular in all of them. I especially like this one because I like the pretentious look of the nose in the air and he's sort of looking down at us. Plus the lighting effects of the surface of the water breaking up the sunlight is really cool and will be fun to paint. Also, the color variation in this one, I thought was fantastic. It's got some purples and some light yellow green and some blues against the water. It's a great it's got great color contrast. The poses in all of these are great, too, because in some of them, it appears that he's flying, and I really like that because his fins reminded me of wings, and I think that's just an interesting shot, especially this one where he's turning and he's kind of got that same pretentious look on his face, which I really, really love. Including links to similar reference photos in the course resources, but feel free to gather your own photos if you'd like. Now let's take a look at some thumbnail sketches that I did based on these reference photos. I tried to keep composition in mind as much as possible while sketching these, and I also used a rule of Thirds grid to help guide my layout. And in my first thumbnail, I wanted to try and recreate these two poses. Now, I like the way that the fin is extending forward in these, but in this one, it gets cut off. So I wanted to make sure that in my sketch, you could see the entire fin. I also think there's a nice balance of negative space above and below the turtle. The whole thing feels very balanced. Also by adding the surface of the water and the ocean floor, plus the fins, it kind of gives a nice leading line back to our focal point, which is the head. So I feel like this one is a strong possibility for the painting. Now, on my second thumbnail, I wanted to recreate this pose. I like how you can see the entire turtle. I also feel like there's a good balance in this composition as well. And again, we've got those nice leading lines. My third thumbnail, I wanted to re create one of these flying poses where the turtle is coming at us. Overall, I think that this pose is a little bit awkward just because I can't see as much of the turtle. Based on that, I feel like these two are probably my strongest contenders for the painting. Now at this stage, I recommend that you do a series of thumbnails as well. That way, you'll be laying the groundwork and making a solid plan for your painting. Next up, I began some full size sketches based on my thumbnails. And I'm working on a 5,000 by 4,000 pixel Canvas at 300 DPI. Now, this is a really large scale, and you certainly don't have to work this big. 3,000 by 2000 pixels would be fine. I work this large because I like to scale down my final piece because it makes a sharper image. But we'll talk some more about that in our final steps for this painting in just a bit. The first sketch that I did was based on thumbnail two, and I did this one because I was so drawn to the initial reference photo of this pose. I think this sketch has a lot of good opportunity for value contrast, and I think it's really well balanced on the canvas. But once I viewed it at this size, I felt that there was a lack of visual interest, and I think that is mostly due to the shape of the fins and the head. If we just look at the basic shapes, we can see that they're very similar in shape and size, and I think that they will compete a little bit for the viewers attention. So I decided to do a sketch based on my first thumbnail. Looking at this one, it has good balance as well, but there's more variation in shapes. Looking at this one as basic shapes, you can see that there is more size and shape variation. I also think that the arrangement of these shapes is just more visually interesting. I also decided to flip the turtle horizontally. This is the direction that he's facing in the reference photo, and I think it feels a little bit better because we read from left to right. So putting the focal point on the left, my eye sees it first and then naturally moves to the right. I recommend that you do a full size sketch like this based on one of your thumbnail drawings. It'll allow you to make some bigger design decisions like I just did before you started painting. And the more planning you do like this, the better your painting will be. Before we jump into the painting, let's make a little bit of a plan for a color scheme. Now, I'm seeing some of these gold, sort of yellow orange colors on the turtle, so I know that I want that to be my base color for my turtle. So that color probably falls right in here somewhere. So the complimentary or the opposite color on the color wheel will be here in this sort of blue purple, which I'm already seeing some of that purple in the turtle, as well. Now, based on our triatic scheme, we know that these colors will be fair game. So same as I did before in the previous video, I'll consider these colors to be fair game as well. Now, I might push this blue a little bit towards green because I'm seeing sort of this aqua color, this aqua blue green in the background, the color of the water. So looking at this plan, I think I may start referring to this as the sailboat scheme. Okay, so now that we have a good design and a good sketch to work from and an idea of what colors we want, let's get started on the painting. I've got my reference open here to the left in Isref and I've got my sketch here in Procreate. I'm going to reduce the opacity of this sketch down around 30%, and I'm going to create a new layer below the sketch layer. Now, I want to start by adding in some blue washes in the background to get started on the water. And I want to choose a blue that's somewhere between blue and green, a nice aqua blue color. And I'm going to use the softer wash brush to paint these in. And I want to vary the pressure up just a little bit, and also pick the tip of my pin up to create some darker areas. Now, I know that my light source will be coming from up here and coming in diagonal, similar to the reference photos. I want to keep this area up here a little bit lighter for now. Okay, this already is starting to look like water to me. Alright? Now, let's create a new layer and I'm going to choose white for the color. And I want to use the opaque brush. What I'm going to do is create a mask for the turtle. The reason I'm doing this is because in a traditional watercolor painting, we would have avoided painting in the turtle shape because if we did, our turtle would be toned blue because watercolor is transparent, so that blue would be showing up underneath. All right, let's go ahead and add some of that yellow gold base tone that we found in the reference photo, and that was the basis for our color scheme. So I'm going to choose a yellow, but I'm going. I'm going to push it a little more towards orange. It's a very light orange. I'm going to create a new layer above the white mask layer. I'm going to use the soft wash brush, let's go ahead and select make a selection from our white mask. That way we can just paint it in real quick. And I'm going to use the water brush, I think, to just darken in some of the areas that are in shadow. It's just a little bit, make it a little bit darker orange. So there's a little bit adding a little bit of tone. Can let's paint in some of the darker tone that we see. And to do that, we're going to choose a purple color, and we don't want to go real saturated, kind of somewhere in the middle, a little bit darker and a little bit more towards red than blue. And we're going to paint on a new layer. I'll be using the watercolor detailer at a little bit larger size. Now, I'm going to speed up the time as I paint this. But when you're painting, take your time on this step and be sure to notice all of these areas in the reference photos that have this darker purple. And also note, as I paint areas like this, I tend to try and keep the shape in mind. So I'll paint my strokes in the same direction that the shape or the form, rather. And I try to incorporate the form, the shape of the form into my strokes. Now I'm going to use the blur tool, along with the water blender to just blend out some of these harder edges, but not all of them, just a few. Now, let's take the eraser tool with the opaque brush selected, and let's erase out some of the pattern that we see in the fin. And keep in mind that there is form here. So we want these lines to represent that form and turn over and go back to represent the shape of the fin. Alright, I'm gonna take the blur tool, and I'm just going to blur a couple of these lines or just in a few areas just because it's watercolor and lines are not always quite that sharp. So I'm just gonna blur a few out, but not I don't want to overdo it. Just so the lines are not quite as sharp as they are now. Looking at our reference, we see this little bit of a rust color, let's see if we can add a little bit of that using the soft wash brush. Let's do this on a new layer. Let's select an orange color. It's maybe a little bit more saturated and a little bit more red. It's more right there. Now, let's just add it in a few areas that we see. I'm seeing it in the face a little bit. So I'm going to add some there. I see it over here in the fin and maybe a little bit there in the neck on the shell. And along the fin there. Go ahead and add some more under the neck. Okay, this is real subtle, so we don't want to overdo it. I think that'll work. Let's create another new layer and this time we're going to be adding some of these really light highlights. We can see them, especially here in this turtle in his face, around his eye, and back of his shell here. Let's look for these really light highlights. Now, I want to use a yellow, but I want it to be almost white but not quite fully white. I'm going to use the opaque brush for this. Okay, again, this is a step where you want to take your time and really look for these areas of light and just be slow and take your time as you do it. Okay, now I'm going to take the blur tool and with the water blender selected, and I'm just going to blend some of these edges. Okay, because we want a lot of good value contrast in our turtle, let's add another new layer. But this time, we're going to go back to darks, and we want to add these darkest darks that you see, like right here in this area underneath the turtle in the eye and in the face here. And some here in the edge of the fin, these just really dark darks. Now, it appears like it's black, but we don't want to use black because black can be a little bit too harsh. So we want this color to blend. So what we're going to do is we're going to go back to our purple. In fact, I'll just sample our purple from the painting. And let's just make it a bit darker and a bit more saturated. But I'm not going full black here. Okay? We've got our new layer, and I'm going to be using the opaque brush again. And same as before. I'm going to paint in the details, and then I'm going to blur the edges a little bit just so that everything blends together real nicely. Now, again, take your time. A Let's go ahead and turn off our sketch layer because I think we have enough in place that we can see what we're doing without the aid of the sketch. So I'm noticing that there are a couple of places that my tone is too light, and I want to just adjust that a little bit. I also want to blur this line right here, this purple line. It's just a little bit too strong, so I'm just going to kind of blend it down a little bit over the shape of the shell, just so there's not such a harsh line. And I think I want to I'm going to sample a little bit of this orange again. I'm gonna go to my orange layer, and I think we use the soft wash brush. I just want some of that orange to come over the head here just to kind of reinforce that shape a little bit, a little just a little, and I'm going to blend that in just so that we have a little bit more tone on the head. Maybe I'll add just a little bit more on the shell as well and blend that. Okay, I think this would be a good place to stop and take a break and maybe go get a cup of coffee. We'll continue the painting in the next video, and I'll see you there. 14. Project Painting Part 2: Okay, next up, I want to bring back some of this light texture that's created by these bumps in the turtle's skin. And I want to do that on a new layer. And I want to select a yellow yellowy gold color, not as light as our highlight was something somewhere in between. Probably right in there. Now, you'll notice that we're alternating between light and dark. We're doing a layer of light, a layer of dark, a layer of light, a layer of dark. And we're doing that to just build up that value contrast. We're taking it a step at a time so that it's easier for us to process. We're not trying to do it all in one layer, we're going back and forth. And we're going to test our value contrast in just a little bit to make sure we're in the right range. Okay, so we're looking at these highlight texture this highlight texture bumps that are in the turtle's skin. Oh, also, I want you to notice that the light is going to be coming in from this direction, and it's going to hit the ocean floor and it's going to bounce back up towards the turtle. So our highlights are going to be up here on top of the turtle's head and its neck and the shell. But these highlights underneath, it needs to be it needs to be not as light as these highlights. So right now, this highlight is almost the same as it is up here. So we want to also take that down to that more yellowy gold color that we had selected. So let's get that back. And we are on a new layer. And we want to use let's use the opaque brush again and we'll blur out some of the edges if needed. Well, that seems a little too gold. Okay, that's better. Blends a little better. You know, let's use let's use the watercolor detailer because it's not quite as opaque. Okay, that's better. One thing I like to do at this stage is to create a new layer and set that layer to overlay. This is just purely for experimentation and to add a little bit of variation in our lighting. I'm going to select a lighter yellow, and I want let's try the soft wash brush. I just want to paint in just some areas in that overlay and it creates some variation. It's real subtle, it creates some variation in the lighting. Look, I made this area a little bit hotter the head and on the shell here and a little bit on the fin. While we're at it, let's try another layer, and let's do that gold color again, just backing off the white of this, just the tint here. And let's try let's try to add a little bit of a salt effect, just to create a little bit of texture because this turtle has so much texture. I don't want to miss any opportunities to add some. Add some variation and cool textures. Okay, that's gonna be real subtle pressure. Yeah, I think I'm going to sample a darker maybe purple color. Is a real muted purple, and I'm going to do the same thing just with real light pressure. And I'll zoom in so you can see it here. This is just super subtle. If you can see that, it's just adding this very subtle texture. But this turtle has so much, you can see here. There's so much texture going on. It's a great opportunity to add some of this cool variation. Okay, before we start in on our background, let's check our turtle for some good value contrast. I'm going to paste in the scale that we created from a previous video, and I want to three finger swipe and copy all and then paste. Now, let's take the saturation down. I think this is a good range of value contrast for our turtle. I'm seeing all of the scale. I'm seeing the darkest darks and the lightest lights. I'm seeing some good mid tone grays. I think we've got value contrast covered for our turtle. Now let's move on to the background. Okay, to start our background, let's go down to the bottom and create a new layer. And let's sample some of this aqua blue color and make it a little bit darker. Okay, so what we want to do is we're going to be using this reference photo primarily because it's the only one with the water reflection and the ocean floor viewable. So what we want to do is create this sort of a horizon line in the back where the water changes color as it goes further into the distance. We also want to include the ocean floor here and the water surface at the top and how it all kind of goes towards a point, towards the horizon. Okay, so to do that, let's try the soft wash brush, and let's just paint in some of that darker distant water. And I'm going to start kind of a general direction for the ocean floor and the reflective water at the top or the water surface. I'm gonna make my color a little lighter. Okay, now on a new layer, I'm going to sample some of this yellow gold from the turtle. And I'm going to use the watercolor detailer, and I want to paint in start painting in some of this reflective area where his shell is there's a reflection in the surface of the water. Now, you don't have to be super precise with this because this is just a reflection and it's in the water and it's very wavy. We just want something to start us out. And I think I'm going to use the blur tool with the water brush to just blur some of the edges just a little bit. Now, we've got to have you can see here, there are some sharp edges in this reflection, so we don't want to blur everything. We want to keep some of that. Okay. We can also see that there's some variation. See how there's a mid tone blue, there's a light blue, and there is a dark blue in there. So we want to get that as well. I'm going to use watercolor detailer again. This time we want to sample this blue, and let's get this darker blue. I'm going to tilt mine to the side because it's easier for me to draw some of these lines from that angle. Okay, we want to keep it in perspective where things are fading off in the distance. Okay, I'm going to grab sort of a lighter blue. And let's get a light, as well, a light blue. All right. I'm going to blur a few of those edges as well. Okay, we want to do the same thing in the gold area. There's also a bit of lighter yellow. Actually, I'll grab I'll sample it off of the turtle. And we're still working on the same layer, same brush. Well, let's make it a little lighter. Let me blur that edge a little bit. Okay, and let's grab sort of this purple color because you can see it reflecting a little bit up here. Let's get a really dark for some detail because if you look really close, you can see that as well. There's some really dark areas in this reflection. Okay, let's grab this blue again. And let's add, let's see. Let's make it a little darker. Let's sample from down here. Let's see if we can add a little bit of this surface, these lines that are moving out from underneath. Make the brush a little larger. And I think I'm going to grab the soft wash brush. There's an area over here that's maybe a little bit too light. I'm going to go to the bottom layer or the layer underneath, and I'm just going to add a little bit more wash there back here. Okay, we also see in our reference that there's this little bit of sort of a yellowy blue or yellowy green highlight on the ocean floor and a little bit in the water. So let's see if we can sample a yellow off of our turtle and maybe push it a little more towards green, I think, maybe a little bit lighter. Okay, let's let's try the soft wash brush or maybe the softer wash brush and just paint in a little bit of that highlight. And let's do this on a new layer as well. We're going to do it above all of our water layers. Oops. Let's make it a little smaller. Make it a little bit smaller still. Okay, that's really bringing in some good light. Okay, that looks pretty good. Okay, now I want to sort of blend everything together with some washes, and I'm going to do that by creating a new layer above the other water layers. And I'm going to sample a blue here, but I think I'm going to make it a little bit more blue and a little bit lighter, a little bit more away from green. Okay. And we're going to use let's use the wash stamp to brush, and push the opacity up. I've got it set really large. I'm gonna bring that down just a bit. And let's just see if we can blend. I'm just stamping in a few areas just to see if I can blend some of this together a little bit. I'm going to sample this blue. And I'm just tapping around a few areas just to sort of blend things. Okay, that's pretty good. I think because I want everything to be lighter in the middle, I'm going to sample I see this really light highlight color. And I'm going to try this on a new layer, just so in case I want to undo it. I'm just going to try and add some highlight to the middle with this lighter wash. Can I make it just a little bigger? There are light sources coming from up in this direction. Look, I think that's looking pretty good. I'm gonna take the opacity down. Okay. I like that. I want to add some of that purple back into the reflection. I'm starting to lose a little bit of that. So I'm going to sample this purple again, and let's get let's go back to let's go back to the watercolor detailer and just see if we can actually, you know what? Let's try it with a wash. Let's see what that does. Let's run the opacity up. Okay, that may work. Yeah, I think I like that pretty well. I'm actually going to blur a few of these little bits, so they're blended in a little better. All right, now let's create a new layer above all the others. And let's add a few splatters. And I believe these splatters are going to appear like bubbles because this is an underwater scene, and splatters are just naturally going to look as though they're bubbles. So let's start with some blue ones. I just sampled a blue from our background, and I'm going to use the splatter brush. And let's see, we're set to a pretty large size, and I'm just going to tap in a few to see what it looks like, go a little larger. Okay, that's looking pretty cool. Okay, now, I've got one that landed right over the eye and the nose. That's definitely distracting. So I'm gonna remove that one. Alright, now let's sample one of these darker purple colors size down just a little bit. Okay. I'm also going to get a yellow color. All right this is looking pretty good, and I think we're really close to wrapping this one up. But before we do so, let's take the eraser tool and let's use the softer wash brush. And let's go to our original mask layer. And let's erase back a little bit of that to blend our turtle into the background a little more. It's just going to get rid of some of that hard edge that's being created by that white mask. I just want to do this in a couple of places. It's just to help our turtle blend a little bit. I've been asked before, how do you know when you're done with a painting? I think the best answer to that is when the changes that you're making have little to no effect. So, for example, we could come in and we could add some more splatters, or we could add some more detail or some highlights. But at this point, it's really not doing anything. It's not having a major effect on the painting. So when you start to make these little fine tuning adjustments that aren't having much of an overall impact on the piece, I think that's your best answer. That's your best indicator as to when the painting is completed. Okay. Let's do a couple of things to finish this one up. One thing that I always like to do is some final color adjustments. To do that, I three finger swipe and select copy all. Then I make sure that I'm on the topmost layer, three finger swipe again to paste. I'd like to do some color adjustments through curves and color balance. Let's take a look at curves first. The first thing I do is create a lot of little points on the curve line. And then I just fine tune those. I just make little slight adjustments. And when I do this, it tends to add a lot of value contrast. It just really punches the values. I'm pretty happy with that. Now let's take a look at a color balance. Start with midtones. And I want to push the mid tones maybe a little bit warmer. So I'm going to push towards red and yellow. Oh, actually, I think I'm going to go I'm going to go towards blue. I think I like that a little better. And let's try taking the shadows a little bit towards blue. Nope, I like the shadows better towards yellow. I think I'll keep Magenta green where it is. Let's look at highlights. I tend to keep the highlights where they are because it'll throw a cast over the whole thing. Maybe push towards red just a little bit. Alright, I think that gives a nice adjustment. Okay, one thing I'm also noticing is that in my painting, compared to my reference, his head is a little taller, and you can see it in these two, especially. His head is my head is a little bit squished, so I'm going to make an adjustment on that. To do that, I'm going to liquefy. Let's see how it's set. That's big enough, I think. The brush's size is big enough. I'm just going to stretch his head to just be a little taller. This is the beauty of digital painting. Okay, I think that looks better. I'm also going to paste in the paper texture from the course resources. And I want to set that paper texture to multiply. Now, oftentimes in a traditional watercolor, when you have a painting that takes up the entire paper, you often have a white border that's created from where the paper was taped to a board. So let's recreate that look by adding a white border around the whole piece. I'm going to create a new layer. And I'm going to create a rectangle selection. And I want to start close to the edge, but not all the way. I'm going to leave a little bit of space here around the whole thing. And I'm going to invert the selection, and then I'm going to select white and fill it. Now, we want to make sure that it's below our paper texture. Okay, for our last step, all that is left to do is sign it. Alright, guys, I hope you had as much fun painting this turtle as I did. This was my first sea turtle. I'm really happy with the result. I think it's a lot of fun. We have a really cool selection of colors and some nice textures, and I'm really happy with how this one turned out. Be sure to share your painting with me on the design cuts community and feel free to ask any questions that you may have. I'm always around, and I'm always happy to help. And 15. Preparing for Print: I wanted to take a few minutes to walk through some preparations for printing. I've mentioned a couple of times that I typically work on a large 5,000 by 4,000 pixel Canvas. This is so that I can scale down to a smaller size for printing. Scaling down is an older printing practice, and the idea is that the image will appear sharper when scaled down. It works for an on screen presentation as well. Imagine that you're sharing an image that is 2000 by 2000 pixels. If you painted the original at 4,000 by 4,000, then it would leave more room for greater detail to be created at that larger size. Another item to consider is DPI or dots per inch. Most often, I paint at 300 DPIs. That is the most widely accepted among printing houses and has been for years. I also work in RGB over CMYK color mode. I do this because RGB is the medium that we're painting with since it relies on light to produce color on screen. Most of the printing that we'll be dealing with will be digital printing and not offset, so RGB color mode will work just fine. When I'm preparing a painting to be printed, I'll remove any paper texture that was added because the texture will be created by the physical paper that the painting will be printed on. Then I'll flatten the layers and do a final sharpening of the piece by tapping adjustments and sharpen. I do this to just add a bit more clarity and sharpness to the final painting before printing. As a final step, I'll export the file in TIF format. This format uses less file compression than a JPEG file. The result will be a much larger file size, but the quality will be higher. When printing a painting, it's also good to be familiar with the term Z clay. Z clay printing refers to pigment based versus the usual dye based inks. The result is sharper details in a much larger color spectrum. And if printed on archival paper, the print can last for decades, maybe even hundreds of years without fading. You can easily find affordable Z clay or fine art printing services online. With a little knowledge and preparation, achieving amazing print results is easy. It's also incredibly satisfying to hold a final printed painting in your hands. 16. A Final Word: I can't thank you enough for taking this course with me. We've covered a lot of topics from traditional watercolor, the basics of sketching, design theory and composition, all the way to creating and printing a final painting. I hope you come away from this course with so much new knowledge and confidence that you can't wait to tackle your next piece. I'm going to end this course with a few words from one of my favorite artists. Drew Strzen said that art is necessary. It's for truth, it's for kindness, it's for goodness, it's for love. It keeps the world happy, good, and healthy, it's what we need. I can't wait to see your paintings and how you've incorporated the ideas from this course into your work. If you're interested in doing a follow up, more advanced course, do get in touch with me and let me know your thoughts by reaching out to me on the design cuts community. Also remember to share your art with me there and feel free to ask any questions that you may have. I'm looking forward to it, and I'll see you there. 17. BONUS Brush Strategy: This course includes a set of watercolor brushes that I use throughout the lessons, but you can certainly use any other watercolor brush set that you own. In this video, I'll walk you through my brush strategy so that you can see how I categorize and manage my brushes and the benefits of doing so. This method can be applied to any brush set, but I'll be using my own sets in the following examples. One common thread in my brush sets is that they typically contain a large number of brushes, but there's a good reason for that. The digital brush strategy that I've developed for my own work relies on having a variety of brushes of certain brush types. For example, the master watercolor set includes five detail brushes instead of just one. These brushes all serve the same purpose, but provide a nice variety in brush selection for that purpose. That doesn't mean that I use that many brushes in one painting. I typically use around six to ten brushes of different types, but I switch them out occasionally between paintings to create a variety in marks and textures. I'll show you what I mean. In a traditional painting, I may use only these brushes, but they each have their own purpose. There's no need to ever really swap them out because each brush is capable of making a variety of marks or strokes. Digital brushes, on the other hand, usually have a set texture or type of mark that they make. So if we look at our course brush set as our core brush types, we have one or two brushes for all the marks that we may need to make detailers, an opaque brush, a flat brush, some washes, and various effects. You'll find the same brush types plus a few more in my other sets as well. In the ultimate brush toolbox watercolor set, you'll see brushes organized from small detail to larger wash brushes, special effects, and smudge brushes as you scroll further down the list. For the master watercolor set, you'll find them broken up into categories separated by these dash lines, detailed brushes, textured rounds, flat brushes, et cetera. To use a larger brush set with the course or any future paintings, you'll only need to keep these brush types or categories in mind versus the individual brushes. That way you won't become overwhelmed with all of the choices. For example, if you have the master set, just use one of the brushes from each category while working through the course. Keeping my brushes organized into categories of brush types and sticking to one or two brushes from those categories for each painting helps to keep things simple, but allows for an incredible amount of mark making variety between paintings. This type of strategy keeps my work fresh in the process of painting fun and exciting. Similar to what I would experience with a traditional painting. And speaking of traditional painting, remember how I mentioned that there's no real need to swap out the brushes? Well, that doesn't stop me. Sometimes new brushes will push you to do new things. Sometimes it just gives you that extra bit of confidence for that little push towards experimentation. The same thing can happen with digital work as well, and that's always a good thing. Oh