Transcripts
1. Introduction: Hello. Welcome to this intermediate watercolor class, where we will be painting this beautiful black raven. We are going to tackle together the tricky subject of painting black animals. If you're just starting out in your water color journey and haven't done my beginner classes, I suggest going back and looking at those first. These will break you in a little more gently to my techniques before you take the plunge and paint these beautiful black raven. I'm Jane Davis. I live, paint, teach, and walk my lovely spaniel in the beautiful South Downs National Park, England. Over the last ten years, I've taught myself the watercolor technique that you see today. Not having been to art school, finding my own way has been fun though sometime daunting. But it's allowed me to develop my own style. This has led me to teaching others, either on a one-to-one basis or as part of a group in a wonderful studio in the heart of the South Downs. I also run a successful commission-based business, painting pet portraits and wildlife art in my own home studio. In all my classes, you will follow along in real-time. Or I can guide you to keeping your work loose and fresh without ever fussing. I'll be sharing lots of tips and tricks along the way too. I provided you with a template and a beautiful reference photo of the raven in the resources pages. The template will give you the right shape so you can just enjoy painting him. We will be exploring many techniques in the class, such as an exciting bold method using plenty of paint, water, and gravity. I'll be showing you some interesting ways to add texture to your raven, including using water droplets just at the right time. I'll be sharing with you some of my thoughts, tips, and tricks on taking the time at the end to bring this wonderful raven to life. If you'd like to learn more about me or my work, please pop over to my website at janedavieswatercolors.co.uk. This can be found on my profile along with links to my Instagram and Facebook pages. I'm very active on my social media pages, where I love sharing my art, especially on stories with many ideas, works in progress and tales of studio life. I really hope you will share all your paintings on the project pages as I love seeing your masterpieces. Don't forget, I'm here to help if you get stuck or have any questions. I want you to experience that buzz of painting in this liberating wet on wet, loose style so come and join me.
2. Materials: Welcome along to this rather beautiful and handsome raven. He's beautiful, isn't he? He's one of those tricky black subjects. What we're going to try and do is do it one big old bold layer. So it's going to be a fun class for sure. So I should run for the material. Firstly, as I'm hovering this in the air already, there's a stent. So in the resources pages, I would definitely copy him out because you want the shape to be really accurate because this is also loose. His outline needs to be the spot on, so definitely grab him out of resources pages. There's also a lovely reference photo, so have that opened on your iPad or iPhone or however you'd like to use. I will pop up a photo of my finished raven or one of my many finished ravens. I've done many practicing for this, which you may have seen if you follow me on social media. Open that up as well, because that's quite nice to be able to see my finished piece in front of you. So I shall go through the materials. Again, we have a nice selection of Daniel Smith paints. Now, I do appreciate you may not have the shades. These are big old bold colors and no granulate going on here today. So if you've got indigo, indigo will be perfect, you want something that's really nice and punchy and bold. So, I've chosen for this one, I've got the Payne's gray. I've got ultramarine turquoise. I don't use it a lot actually, it's only just a little hint here and there, but you may like the color and choose to do it. So there's no right or wrong on your color choices really, when we go through this. I've got a carbazole violet. Hopefully, I haven't butchered the name too much, but again, these are all listed in the resource's pages if that pronunciation hasn't made sense to you. I've got a phthalo blue. It's this lovely, yummy blue, and it's beautiful. I've got just a white gouache. That's just to do his bill because we actually go over and paint it over. It gives you a nice Billy look somehow. Just for the eyes. Now, the paper I'm using, I've actually got a change today. I've got a [inaudible]. If you can see that, it's actually on a gummed pad. So the advantage of it almost being stretched is not quite as good. So if you are pondering whether to stretch your paper, I would. It stops any sort of buckling. If you're not sure on stretching paper, I will suggest is you tubing it. There'll be lots and lots of examples on how to do that. But if you can't stretch paper or you haven't got a gummed piece of paper, go as heavy as you possibly can. I would suggest over 200 pounds. It will stop any warping otherwise you're going to get all these buckles, that's going to be really hard. I've got myself some salt because we're going to play with some salt today. If I just put that down there, you can see I've had some sea salt and I've crushed it up. You can see there's different sized pieces in there, and that will give you slightly different texture and slightly different sizes. Once we pop that down, that will make sense. Obviously, pot of water. Got myself my little trusty love heart. That's about an inch high. So find something that's about an inch high. All we're going to use it for is to pop-up our pieces of work so we can allow paint to run in various directions. I got a little bit of kitchen roll or paper towel. Little putty rubber just to take any pencil marks out. Obviously, I then have my pencil and I'll have cooked today four brushes. If I wet it down, you will see. It was a lovely rigger. It's slightly lost some of its bristles these days, but it's absolutely brilliant for doing these little fluffy bits just round his head. So I will use that only for that and maybe a little bit for his eye. I've got a slightly more complete rigger. Again, that's for doing these fluffy bits down the bottom there. I've got a size ten. I've also got my little chiseled brush. If I wet that down, you'll be able to see. It's got a nice edge to it. That's just taking little bits of color out here and there. Really you could probably just get away if you haven't got all the little riggers. Big size brushes definitely, definitely need that. Don't necessarily need a chisel. Just any small brush you feel you can do some little flicks out would be absolutely perfect. A hair dryer, that's the other thing I haven't mentioned. That is handy, but not essential. That's for just drawing layers in between so we can just work on rather than waiting for certain bits to dry. But it's not essential if you haven't got a hair dryer. I think that's it. So I think we are going to sketch him out.
3. Sketching Out: I've taken the opportunity to sketch him out, so you don't have to watch me paint [inaudible] go around my stencil better, definitely use your stencil. Let me give you a few little pointers that I found helpful when I was sketching him out. Really, I can't emphasize enough, try and get a really lovely, good shape. The only thing with this stencil, if you do use one, is it gives you rather rounded edges. Once you draw all around him, take him away, look at your reference photo nice and close, and go round. Just check that you've got everything really nice. This is a nice line here. Just have that slightly rounded. Actually, these tail feathers are a nice shape. Don't worry too much about the [inaudible] we do that with a brush. There's no point sketching those out because it makes it become a bit rigid. If you've already drawn little fluffy bits, then you feel you have to then follow those lines. I wouldn't do the fluffy bits. I'm just going to rub this out and I'm trying to follow them. His feet. I'm not very good at feet. I've already done one, you may be bolder and do two that you can see on the photo better. Try and get it at the right angle, I find am not great with angles and perspective, but I do find a clock. If you can imagine the clock hand, that's about five o'clock so try and get his leg just at a right angle. That makes a big difference. His bill. Try and make sure again, you got a good shape. It's got a nice little point there. It is really worth taking the time to get these right. He's eye, make sure that's again, in the right place. I kept making it when I was doing my practice pieces. Just putting it too low. When I was finishing him [inaudible]. Not quite right. You need to be higher. The only good thing about doing a very dark subject is, worse comes to worse and what I did, you can shift them up. It's worth getting it right in the first place. These lines, there's several different layers here. This one here I'm still sketching out in front of you, that's just one wet layer we do right at the very end. It gives an illusion of another layer of feathers. It's worth sketching that in. We're sketching his winging. This little line, although you can't see that on your reference photo, it's one of the layers, the very first one we do. We run all the way down here and we end that layer there and then we go on to do this underneath. It is worth just to put that little line there gently. You don't want to have any of these too bold. I've done this so you can see what I've drawn out, but ideally, you don't want to have very strong pencil marks because when you are finished, you don't want [inaudible] to see any of those. I think that's all the tips you need ready for drawing them out. I think we should go and [inaudible] .
4. Head and Chest: Are you ready to paint? I'm just going to get rid of my pencil, my rubber, you don't need those now. I'm going to get my little love heart. I'm going to put that underneath. I'm just allowing that board now to be tilted and the paint's going to run. There's nothing to stop you picking up any ideas and letting it tilting around better. Pop underneath there for starters. Then I'm going to use my rigger, a longer rigger. It's just I find it easy to scoop out the paints. If you haven't come across my work to date, I tend to work straight out a tube. I find I can get, especially with this object, I can get a good old scoop and pop this down. If you're using pens, it won't be as easy this because you need, as I will show you now, you need to be able to scoop out paint. We are putting quite a lot down there because it's got to come all the way down here to the bottom. Be generous with it. That was my Payne's gray, I'll pop that down there. Put it down. Try and clean your brushes in-between picking up your tubes, helps to keep things a bit cleaner. I've got the violet, I'm going to do exactly the same. This is a really punchy color so I don't want too much violet, I probably want more Payne's gray. I'm going to use Payne's gray in every layer. I may switch up these colors, but I would always try and keep that Payne's gray in it. It just helps to keep a bit of continuity. Putting a bit down there again. It doesn't matter where you put it, because it's going to run all the way down, so don't worry about where you place these spots. I might do a little bit of turquoise, why not? Now, a trick with lids, a few people start commented about lids and me taking the lids off. What was quite handy is I quite often scribble the names of the paints on a piece of paper, then put the lid on top of that name so it saves you putting the wrong lids on the wrong paint. Because when you open it up again, you've got a different colored top. I think I've fiddled enough, what I'm going to do is go quite carefully around his eye. Because we are going to leave the eye out mainly so we can see where it is when we finish up. I'm just going to make sure I have neatened under here. Make sure that's nice to the edges. I'll explain later. Our aim is to do this almost in one hit. I'm going to put my little rigger down, I'm going to pick up my bigger brush, spill a little water on it, and take a little bit of the excess off. We're just going to rustle some of these up. Look at that, that's lovely. Just very gently, don't worry too much and get too stressed about it. Just enjoy watching those colors. Sometimes it's almost easy not to imagine this is an animal but just shapes. Just putting color down on shapes. Just look at that. Take your time, just observe it, and enjoy watching it. On your reference photo, he has a nice lump of light right above his eyes. It's worth just bearing in mind where that is. I can already see, although I thought I'd put quite a lot of paint probably not enough. Just trying to open my reference photo here again. Just a minute. Then what we're going to do clean your brush off. Just going to let that run. Just let it follow your brush all the way down and we are going to come to an end right there. If you put your little sketch mark, you can just see where you've got to end. It is all about allowing, try not to over-fiddle. It's so easy to just fiddle. I think once, it's not all the time, you just enjoy it, and you want to carry on fiddling and playing around. I can see that I've got a bit of a blop still with that Payne's gray there. I'm just rustling it up and waking it up so that it moves. If yours hasn't moved like that, I'm just going to remove this here. Beware, you will get a little puddle of water down here if you've added enough water. I'm just going to try and demonstrate. If that hasn't run, you haven't added enough water, so just drop some more water just like that, watch it run. If you've done some of my other previous classes, you've probably come across all this. A simple trick which is my very first one. We went through just dropping water and then just letting that run. Just watch it, you've got no hurry. As long as this is wet, you've got lots of time. That's got quite weak now because I've dropped more water in there, so I've just picked up the Payne's gray. I wasn't so keen on the turquoise in this. I'm going to go back with this Payne's gray, and say look at your own piece because you've probably got different colors. You may well not have these exact colors I'm using so you have to be a little bit your own judge on what colors look right to you. What looks right to me and what I like to see is not necessarily what you'd like to see, so be your own judge. Just going to put a little bit. There's a dark area here, I don't know if you could make that out in your photo. Just going to add a little bit darker there. I'm going to make sure I've gone right up against those wings. Just put a dark color underneath there. A slight idea that there's a shadow there, like that. I have to keep an eye on this because I really want that running down. Clean your brush, take any excess moisture off and you can just drop your brush in there and it sucks it up. Now, at this stage, we need to be aware that before this dries we need to do these flicks. I've got my medium rigger. Just going to do some flicks. Try to hold your brush right at the end so everything's nice and loose. I'm just starting here, I'm just putting some of those out. Try not to start at the end, what is so easy to do is to start there and go too far and you've got a raven with a very big rough. Start somewhere sort of there and just pull that color out. You can work a little bit of down-ish. Don't go all the way down, you don't want to wreck it up. This hasn't got much fluff anywhere else as the feathers. I'm not going to do these very fine, I'm going to do that a little bit further along. I'm going to use my smaller rigger. I'm not going to do this very fine hair at the top, so don't worry about that. I'll put some salt in there in a minute. I'm going to put a little bit more violet. A trick I like to do is to use two colors at the same time. I want to keep that lovely and dark. Let's say if it's just one layer so you need to be quite punchy. Sometimes it's quite nice, I like my rigger brushes. Let's keep him whiter, hold it right to the end to keep everything up and loose. I'll put this down to try and keep some sort of order. Clean my brush, I just want to get rid of that. Now, before this dries I need to get that salt on, because this is a problem I have. I leave it to dry for too long and then put the salt on. Pick up a good whole pinch of salt and we're going to put that somewhere along that line. That should give us a really lovely bit of texture. Just dropped a little bit too many there, I'll try and pick up a couple of those if I can. I think it's going to have to stay there. We're going to leave that to dry.
5. Tail: We're going to do this a little bit. We're going to leave it. Don't take your little tilty thing, whatever you used to tilt your paper. We're going to do exactly the same. Just we did here, we're going to put that here. We're going to scoop up a lot of paint again. Now, I'm going to use mainly the paint gray. I don't want to add too much variation on color down on this bit. Again, I'll put a nice lump. I'm just going to touch that little line. I've actually touched into the wet of that very first layer, I go around that little wing over there just to give it a nice shape. I'm going to clean my brush. I hope I put good enough there. Now, I'm going to do just to wake it up, and then we're going to put all the way out to the tail. It should follow all along. It takes you time, so don't panic just because you haven't got much going on there in the moment, it will travel. If it doesn't, we can always give it a little tilt. Just going to try and rustle that because that's not diluted enough, it's not. If you bubble your head up and down, you'll be able to see where your got the paint sitting there still. Another thing that's going to want me to move. I'm going to give a tilt, I think, just move my little heart, that will allow it to move there. If we add a little bit of water, and I'm going to have the confidence that will slowly eek its way down. Now, what we need to do, I'm going to drop a little bit of water, a little droplet of water down in here, getting that will give you some little more texture. Now, each paper will act slightly differently. I found me this hem earlier, it needs to dry a little bit more than my [inaudible] I used to use. I'm going to wait a little bit longer. It is just gaining your confidence, your knowledge of your own paper which is hard for me to help you with, but it's just something you gain over time. I'm just bubbling my head up and down, that will give me an idea where I am. This seems to dry a little bit quicker. Get my brush, got a little bit of wash on there. I'm just going to touch that and it will give us some marks. A lot of people will frown upon these watermarks, but it gives that lovely little bit of texture of feathers. A little bit more. We've done this a little bit too soon for this paper but hopefully, you can see what I mean. Just want a couple, don't get too mad. You can see, this has moved on its own and done a lovely job for us. I'm just going to [inaudible] up a little bit, and then I might lay it flat now. I'm going to get rid of my heart for a minute, extract it from underneath. What we're going to do, we're going to take out some of these little fluffy bits. I've got that slightly larger, longer rigor. Little like what we did with here, we're just going to pull out some of those. You can even do this slightly larger brush. Clean this off, take any excess moisture. You don't want to add too much water at this stage but you can do some. Just lay your brush down and that will give you some more wing shape because some of those are quite little more chunkier than these fluffy ones here. Just by doing that, you're getting a little bit more of a wing shape. I won't do any more of those. Paint that little rigor again, just pull out maybe a couple more ink. Not even a little wet, as long as this is still a little bit damp. Just going to pull out a few more there. You can see this color here has started to move up a little bit, you can still think. As I said, as long as this is still is lovely wet, you can carry on adding some color. Don't be afraid, just make sure this is wet still, you get a really tricky in between stage where one bit is drawing, one bit isn't, and that's where it can get a little bit messy. But just keep everything light, try not to let things panic you. Easier said than done, I know. This is take 2, [inaudible] because I was getting get a bit worried about you. I know what it feels like. I'm going to drop just like we did with these marks here. I'm just going to drop a little bit water in there, I just want something different, I want a different texture. As this is beginning to dry, probably it's going to suit this paper a little bit more, I'm just going to pop out couple more of those water droplets in there. Let's see how that turns out. You just never quite know of watercolor, you just have to do it and learn from your experiences, I think. I'm going to stop thinking there. What we need to do is to let this layer dry. Now, you can even step away and then go make yourself a cup of tea, a bit of a breather, or you can use your hair dryer and get that dry. But a little word of caution is keep the hair drier up really high, you don't want to hold it down really close because you'll blow that lovely pigment in there, especially if you put water droplets in there, it will just go a little bit pear shaped. Keep the hair driers nice and high. Once that's dry, we will do this nice wing using that color blue.
6. Lower Wing: That's probably dry enough. What we're going to do, we're going to do this lovely big blue wing. Pick up your big brush, and we're going to pick up that Phthalo blue and Payne's gray. Actually, I'm going to use that weaker brush because I find it easier to scoop out the paint. What we're going to do, put that right at the end of that tail feather. Let me in showing you, want to make sure you get that nice point don't be afraid as we need quite a good amount of paint. Again, put that down because mainly I want to use this color blue. You can see it's going to be good owe splotch. That's a very technical term. A nice amount there. I can thin that off and I Pick up my big brush just to make sure that it's nice and clean. I've got a fair amount which is not running on there, but it's quite soaked I don't know if you can probably say how it's quite laden with water. Before I start, I think I'm going to put a slight tilt up here, so I'm just going to put my; it's actually [inaudible] hard. You've got a slight tilt. We may drop it quite quickly again, but I just want to make sure this runs exactly like we did with all these other ones layers. [inaudible] just be careful because the tail is very thin so it doesn't give you a lot of wiggle room to verso those colors up. Might be easier to be clinical. Brush very straight is it? Penelope complaining how I haven't got things nice, and straight, and my husband, who does all my editing. Just trying to even out that tail. I'm trying to keeping it on that reference photo is wearing in front of me so I can see that. So it's not [inaudible] this time it's not going anywhere. Just nice, and you must need to be ready for it so you don't hurry yourself. We're going to draw that lovely color out. It's going to covering the whole of this, not into there, into this line here, so if I put in a line there you can see. I'm going to go in and there is this little feather back there. It just helps to break this back-line up but going into that. This stage, if I take a little bit of extra excess moisture of brushing is dry-ish now. Sometimes you can get some line, just not that, it's just not touching. You're going to destroy paper there, so the brushes are still dry-ish. You just getting this to draw a [inaudible] , I'll just do that again. You don't have to. This doesn't matter. You can just let it run all the way down just like we did with the other lead levelized but sometimes that's quite nice. It just a little bit a license just because my brush has been drier, and it's still gone across the top of that paper, missed him some bits out. At this stage. I'm just going to let that be as much as I can. So I can go over that in a minute, and that's just starting to dry a little bit more. Sometimes the where we've put a lot of paint layers, sometimes it sits still, so the lump. So I'm just making sure that no lumps there. I'm just going to let that flash in a can, just be for a minute. It's not so easy, is it? These is where I can bore you with some raven facts. Do you know ravens actually pair up for life lesson? They're really playful birds always doing quite a lot of research on them. When I was looking for reference photos and just trying to learn a little bit about them before I started painting him, and there, yeah, they're very interesting birds. I think they have a mental age of a seven-year-old so they are really talkative. They are like parrots. They will pick up many phrases, and catchphrases, and actually [inaudible] senses together. They are clever little chat. I think that one of the things they like to do is pull tails. We'll pull each other's tails or other creature's tails. I would ask if I can put a link in the resources pages is a lovely raven blog or am not sure if it's a blog, it's a diary, I think. He goes into the ravens quite a lot and explains about them. They're comical little things I think that's almost as dry. So if I bubble my head up and down, this is beginning to drive it. With a theme of brush-off, paint the excess moisture off. I'm just going to drag some of these very carefully. It's all done so lightly, and so you may have let the color run all over, but would have been absolutely fine. Under this that would've been similar to what we did here, and down here. I'm almost there. I quite like that. [inaudible] She says fate words, isn't it? I add a little bit more strength because I don't want to do anymore layer over here. I'm not going to do multiple layers but be careful because if this [inaudible] It's a lovely, lovely strong color. But it's easy to see these and mark up. Just take your time. I'll just add a touch to blue for me, for my liking, so much again to do. I'm going to drop it on the tip of this tail. Almost waking this up again. I'm going to drop it out draw a bit more, just a little bit more dark, and let that run again. So I've just woken all this up again despite changing my wind halfway to [inaudible] I think I would have been better just to let the whole owl lean like I did before now, a little bit soaked. When you get bits like this, we like, oh God I'm not sure if I have done this right, just take your time don't panic, as long as it's all lovely wet, you'll probably end up with some interesting marks, and things. Will is where you can still carry on tinkering. Just adding some darker color here, just want to that little bit more stronger, and to also, if you can see the color line over here isn't it? Just dropping, just very carefully tapping some color in there. Look at your own reference photo. Pick up a little bit of that. Turquoise tap, some of that in as well. We see if we can get some different color going on there. I'm just going to have to watch out because I can see there's is a big old bubble going on here. I've gone slightly unnerving. See here, have gone over. Well, I should have done. Just going to pull that out a little bit more to make the wing a little wider. I think that's coming on, I'm going to leave it at that. So what we're going to do is pop some more salt in. So grab your salt, I'll probably got this perfect [inaudible] It's a lovely wet. I'm going to drop some salt on that area there. It's running almost where we put that little bit of dark. You can pop it anyway, you fancy wherever you feel you want a little bit of texture. I just want to keep an eye on that and what I might do is to take my little upside down now I think I'll let that run and let it settle on its own. Put back to one side. Very carefully, we're going to do this little area up here in a minute, so I'm just going to let that dry a little bit more before I do that.
7. Upper Wing: I've just let this dry, just a fraction. I've also taken the opportunity to clean my water. It's quite nice to get your water as clean as you can because these paints are quite stainy and intent. So try and keep your water nice and clean as well. I'm going to pick up a little of that [inaudible] violet. I'm going to scoop a bit, and we're going to put this right in this corner here. Again, a nice amount. I'm just going to use the violet. When I did one of my ravens, I quite liked just the violet. I think I'm just going to put violet and again trying to keep it a little bit of continuity, I'm going to pop in a little bit of Payne's gray as well. It just helps to tie the whole bird together or it'll look a little bit disjointed. I'm going to do exactly the same. Pick a brush, take the excess moisture off. It's not a very big area, so you don't want your brush too soaking wet. Very carefully just tee that out. You can touch. Just look at your own piece of work. It's all right if it's just a little bit tacky because that would just run in and give you another interesting mop. But if it's very soaking wet, just hang on a minute. You just want to catch it at the right stage and be carefully [inaudible]. His body is flat at the moment. My painting is flat at the moment, there's no tilt. This is really going to just allow. Just touching that. You can just see it now, can't you? Bleeding in. Just getting a little bit of a [inaudible]. I'm just going to wait for it to gently do it's thing and tidy up. This is where you can just take a little bit time to tidy up those nice lines, which really is the lines that make this raven, so make sure they're nice and tidy. If this is still damp, you can go around and tidy anything up, but just be careful, don't add too much water in at this stage. You just want the brush almost to be the same. What [inaudible] here. Here you're painting or your paint, just tidying up a little bit. I think that's looking nice, and that's almost spreading too much. It's really interesting, if you put a time lapse on your work, you see how your watercolor spreads without you realizing it. I'm just going to put a tiny little bit of whirlwind slightly over here. I'm just going to put a little bit of, I picked up a Payne's gray. This is me just correcting my own mistakes here. I'm just going to tidy that feather up a bit to make it more of a feather. So I've gone over outside my wind area there. I need to put that down and stop. All right. Doing the bill now. If you're confident you're not going to put your hand in it, you can carry on or you can let this dry, so you know you're not going to be doing any of that, but I think that should be okay. I'm a little bit aware that's moving a little bit too much. What I'm going to do, before I start that bill, I'm going to just pop that weight underneath, and that will hopefully just allow that to move back down there. Just very gradually because I don't want that to be mono-colored. I want it to be a little bit of variation. I want that to be really heavy here and a lot lighter hair. Just by giving it a slight tilt, and what I might do is actually just to drop a tiny little bit of water in to see if we can kosher back down again. That will also give us a little bit of different texture again. Still sort of learning my way with this paper because definitely hand was different than my other paper. I think I will leave that to dry, actually before I start that bill. If you're confident, and that's just tacky as it should have been probably with mine, then you can carry on and do the bill or you can let this dry. I'm going to let that dry completely actually, before I do bill. I'm also not going to put my hand in it, so let that dry and we'll do the bill next.
8. Bill and Head: I've given that a little bit of time to dry, so that's lovely and dried. I've also taken my little weight from behind here, so it will work lovely and flat now. Excuse me. Let's get on to do the bill, so what we're going to do, we are going to very carefully wet the bill down. What we're doing is using some of this color because that was really quite strong up here. We're using that just to pull that bill down. What we would try and do is leave a tiny little white line there, so a little dry line should I say. I'm going to put that bigger brush down, pick up this. Here we go. Let's see, left color on my brush, bad Jane. Clean it off again. We're just rustling and we're going right down the bill and keep this as a real point, so be really careful. Don't try and go over your lines and keep that lovely pointness, [inaudible] that there, work my way gently down. If you decided to stand, you could be sitting at this stage because then it gets you a little bit closer. I'm doing exactly the same. This little bill, just [inaudible] it down and were using that color. Get as close as you can to the top of the bill with that white line. I can't quite get that close or else you're going to see my big old head. I think that's close enough. We're actually going to do another layer over here as it were, so back around the eye, around here. Get rid of some of that. If you still got your salt there, just scrape some of that away. Well, it actually hasn't worked very well. I hope yours has worked a little bit better the mine. I think this paper, I just have to learn this paper a little bit more, I think. Brush a little bit, [inaudible] I should have done this beforehand, really. That's going to [inaudible] brush onto the floor, pop it there. We're just going to wet this area down again, just so we could [inaudible] out the head again and take some color out. We're going to go [inaudible] around the wing is would be ideal if your wing is wet. Sorry, it's dry. If it is still wet. Just leave a tiny little dry line and that's absolutely fine, down to that [inaudible]. You can see where he's rough is, we're just all going down to that. Just because I wet this area down doesn't mean I'm going to work on it, so don't worry. I can see that's all nice and wet. If you pop your head up and down, you want it all nice and wet. Now I'm going to pick out, mainly going to use my paint gray on top of his head. Now, bottom of his his bill. I should mention that bill [inaudible] not beaks. He's quite dark, so I'll just popped it a little bit of color, just allowing it to run in. Take your time. I'm working at the point because it's dark with the point if you can see in your reference photo I'm just allowing that to run back down towards the body. I'm going to also strengthen up that funny old fluffy [inaudible]. His bill is going to go around his eye because he's got really quite dark eyes, isn't he? Around his eye. You look at your own piece and strength away where you need it. If you want to add a little bit more color, we could do some turquoise. You can do that. If we didn't get that enough on the first layer. Now we could go around the whole bird and do exactly the same with this and wet everything down to strengthen, but I think what you do, you lose some of this lovely freshness, especially if you've done this with watermarks and your salt work has worked better than mine. If you do another layer, you then go back over that and it doesn't become as obvious. It becomes too well-worked then. It's nice to try and do it in one layer. Do him again, go over him and do two layers and see what you think. I did try experimenting with one layer. We're just being bold enough at the beginning to get those layers down. Big and bold. Before this dries too much. What I'm trying to do, I'm not going into that light as much as I can. I'm just working on a dark areas and leaving the light. You can do some little flicks down here or you can just blend it out. Better with a big brush, lets get the big brush, clean that. Take the water off and just blending it down gently. Don't really want to make a big statement, there's a line here. I'm trying to softening out with a very damp brush and keeping an eye on it. I've picked up my little [inaudible] damp it down again, I'm just going to keep some of this color, so keeps a little light. I'm just very carefully taking it out now, taking paint off the painting. All done very lightly there, don't need a scrub. If it's damp, you don't need to scrub. [inaudible] under that needed, just very gently. He's got a lovely line here. We may notice doing other ones, it really made a difference. Take that. It's almost attached to his bill, just try and take that out. Just taking your time, taking little bits of color out. If you take too much out, you can just add it back in again. I need to keep an eye on this bill, add a little bit of color there, that's not gone down as far as I'd hoped, so I'm going add it a little bit more color. We do go back over this with that white [inaudible] gives a little good beaky look. But be really careful, I can't quite get close to it because of camera angle. I would definitely like to be sitting now and making sure I get that point really nice and neat, so I can't quite get that close to it. I'm sure you don't need to see my curly head. I think this is going quite nicely now. Still going around the eye at the moment. We could've painted over it and you could then refined it by going around it with a little bit of white [inaudible] , but it's easier if you actually go around it, you can keep an eye on it. You know where it is. All I'm doing, I'm just carrying on, keeping light out, taking light out, watching it. That line there has disappeared again, isn't it? As it dries, as it moves around, it closes up a little on this light you've take out. It's a matter of being with it really and enjoying it. It's moving down a bit too much now. I'm just going to push that back up and again. We can do while this is still damp, I'm going to get that tiny [inaudible]. We got a little one, this lost too many bristles will be these days. Were going to be very carefully going to go around his head and just pick up a little bit of that fluff again, try not to go to the edge. Try and work a little bit in pulling that color out. If you've got a fine marker pen, they're quite good to do this with. If you haven't got a very tiny little brush eyes or pin head with like a cocktail sticks and something like that. You can just drag out, it's almost better than a brush. Because what the brush does, it soaks up the paint as well instead of just moving out. I'm losing some of the color, [inaudible] you're going to do. Put a little bit on my brush. Be careful because you can suddenly start making his head a little bit too big, so be very, very mindful that shape again. Take a look back here. If you are sitting, stand up and have a look. See what you think. Back down there. Well, I've started softening that earlier, it's just still creeping down there, so I'm just going to clean the brush, take the excess moisture off, going to push that back up very carefully because I don't want to [inaudible] with that layer, that very first layer. What you can do, you want it to stop it moving down. Just pop that down there for a minute, just stop that creeping. My color is definitely creeping on his bill. It's looking to be a little bit like a seagull. That's better. I think we will let that dry, you just have to monitor it, you have to be present and just monitor sometimes. You're not painting here, you're watching and observing all the time. Just tweaking, put a little bit of fluffiness out there, too much. I'm going to let that be for minutes and we'll do this this foot next.
9. Leg: Let's have a go at doing this little foot. That's just dried just a little bit. I'm going to take that down, put that up there. Now, just while I was off camera, I was able to get a little bit closer to it and just neatened up that bill a little bit more, so you can see it's a slightly better shape. It was starting to traumatize me. Get your bigger brush, grab your Payne's gray, and we're going to do that foot. This is not too tricky, so we're going to do, little bit the same, we're going to pop a little bit of color right at the very top. Then we're going to damp the brush down and just very carefully run down. Swap brushes again, I'm going to pick up my middle-sized [inaudible] there, put a little bit more color on there and allow that again to run. They have some good old funny old clawy feet, don't they? Don't get too worried about all the little bits of nails and pads because what we're going to do, we're going to do shadow anyway along here so that disguises anything if you're a bit like me and not very confident at doing feet. He's a lovely chap. You may come across him. He called Carl Martin. I'll try and remember to put a link in the resources pages, but he does exquisite birds, but he never puts feet on them. I feel his pain with them. I also have a friend who's amazing with feet, and she does the most quirky, big, old, chunky feet and I love them, but that's not too bad. I think I will leave it at that before I go and ruin it anymore. So that's the foot really.
10. Eye: That's lovely and dry. [inaudible] , isn't it? When I start a chapter, but yeah. Make sure this is nice and dry because we're going to do his little eye better. You want to make sure that's dry. What we're going to do, put out your paint gray. We're not going to do any particular color in there. We're just going to go. Now, if you can be really careful, start in the middle, go round and round. If you can leave a tiny, little, white line, that would save you having to use the white gouache to align it with. I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do it because I'm not drawing it quite close enough to the eye. Let's see what I'm doing. If you can, that's even better. Let's see if I can do it from a distance. You could, if you've got brown, you can add a little touch of brown in there, just to warm the eye up better. Dark eyes, quite nice. Just trying to work my way. You don't want that white line all the way around, so I'm going to try and mess up the top. I can just keep dabbing very gently to see how do I go. We may well have to end up putting a little bit in because that's probably gone a little bit too far. Now, he's looking like he's backwards. That is sort of the eye. Now, what I'm going to do, I'm going to just paint it in. I can show you what I would do if I couldn't be successful and keep some of that white. I've just got a black dot now. We really need to let that completely dry, and then we can go round out with a ring. You can either give it a blast of the hairdryer, which I will probably do, or you can just let that dry on its own, and then, we can do a little ring and it'll catch light. That is dry. I wouldn't say it's lovely and dry. It's dry. Get your tiny, whatever little brush you've got, as small as you can. I've got this. There we go. Pick up the white gouache now, and then, just try to wake you up. Then, we're going to go very, very carefully. This is the way you want to get probably be sitting and looking nice and getting nice and close to it. Go carefully around. It's pointing around nice, real sharp point. If you haven't managed this, keep that white, going round and round. Good. Yeah. Just fiddling up. Oh, like that. That's almost what we have to do. Then, a little catch light right at the very top. You can see the little raven up here, haven't you? Now, if you haven't been as fine as you'd like with that circle of white, you can then pick up the paint gray and backfill it if that makes sense. You go inside the eye and just make that white line even smaller. See? That's it. That is your eye. If you wanted to do a little bit of browns quite nice, and that it just warms it up better. I've just done it with the paint gray today.
11. Finishing Off: Then what we're going to do now is just to finish him off, really. I think we're going to do this bill first and get that sorted. I've got my medium sized brush and pickup that white gush. I'm actually going to just paint it in, particularly the top one. We're just going to paint. Try not to use it very much, this, but I found it gave a really good kind of nice bill effect. Let's say it's got a very dark hair on top of his bills. I'm not going to go right over to that, we'll paint that in in a minute. I'm going to put a little bit here. This always dries a lot lighter. If it looks like you've painted in completely white, then it's going to look disastrous. It dries very, very pale. I think I will leave that although it looks too white at the moment. Once it dries, it won't do. Going to make that really nice and pointy at the end. These tiny little bits at the end that really do finish any painting off but particularly this chap. I'm not sure he's a chap, but he is. While I was researching my raven, there was a lovely lady on Instagram who does [inaudible] but she's also got a pet raven called, I don't know, I got a blank on the name, Fable. Fable was beautiful, she was lovely. I'm going to do a little bit of fluff on his beak. I'm getting tired. We had to switch the heating off, it's cold here in the UK at the moment when I'm filming this. Because the heater makes up awful [inaudible] and it pick up on the camera, but now, it's starting to get cold and my feet getting colder. I'm painting this in at the moment. I'm just flicking those little fluffy bits on his bill, just coming down here, not touching, just attaching it to that dark color around the eye. If you feel like it's got a little bit of a hard edge, you can just soften this far edge with little bit of water, and just gently pull it out. It's all tiny little tweaks that really finish this off. I need to let that dry. I think I'm going to put a little dark line there but that needs to dry, otherwise, it will be bleeding out to making a bit of a mess. What I'm going to do, put that down in that, and we're going to take little bits of cover out where it's needed. I'm going to get rid of this salt. Let's get that. Dry my hands first and just scrape away that salt. It don't work as well, I have to be honest as I'd hoped this paper, let's say, you don't need excuses, but I'm not as familiar with this. Right now, I will show you the end, there's some broken feather here, the effects I got, and I was hoping for this one. Just going to knock that out. Looks flat again. Let's get rid of that. But it's given us another texture, hasn't it? Let's see, it's still nice, I'm still pleased with it. But I got a little bit messy here with that wing when we decided to rechange my plan halfway through. I'm just going to try and very carefully, I've got a cleaner brush to make sure it's nice and clean. Just take an excess moisture off. I just want it damp. Just going to go very carefully, I just want this bit of a hard line going on here. I'm just going to soften some of it. I need a bit of clean kitchen roll. [inaudible] I'm just going to very carefully take some of that out, very, very gently. You don't want to say depending on your paper, you don't want to be taking the white line out and taking too much out. Soften out a little bit. I've got a little bit heavier and got a little bit too much paint in there, just these tiny bits at the end. They are not very exciting to watch, I can understand, but they are little bits of finishing them off. I'll just try to take a tiny bit out there. I'm actually not going to blop that with the kitchen roll, I'm just going to let that be. Kitchen roll can sometimes take too much paint out and then you're left with quite a nasty, ugly mark. We're actually going to now put that watermarking that I spoke about, and now, I'm going to go right up to his back because I wanted to follow that wing line. But I have a practice bit is you actually have gone a little bit lower down, and have a look at your template. I'm going to wet my Brush down. I'm not going put any more paint on this. It's just going to be a watermark. Just when it's dry, we'll give the illusion there's another layer of feathers. We could go careful, we don't want to wash all that lovely underlayer, looks nice salt marks. Go very carefully, really light, and just letting the brush fall. I'm actually going to pull it out this top of this tail as well, the top of that underneath tail feather. Hopefully, you can see that clearly enough. [inaudible] the camera. I don't want to put any more paint, I'm happy with what's going on here. But if you felt maybe your tail feather got a little bit weak, you can do little tiny touches of color, but I won't do too much. While this is damp, I'm going to take a little bit of color out at the top. I'm going to put that one down for my little chisel brush, better for taking color out. I'm going to go very carefully. You don't want to take too much color out and then leave the very strong colors. Actually, go over, you'll finally may stain your paper. This paper is exquisite, I actually adore using it, but it doesn't lift color quite as well. Just give a slight illusion with a bit more light on top of this tail feather there. I think that's enough. Don't take too much of that color out. Enough. I going to go back over to the head and try and take a little bit more. I'm quite happy with mine, actually I've manage to keep quite a nicer matching. Let me take a softer brush. If you don't want too much taken out, a softer natural fiber brush is better. But if you want to scrub then I find synthetic brushes are better, so I'm just doing a little bit of dabbing here. I just want to take a little bit of color out there. You look at your own piece, you may have left enough light so you may be absolutely fine, you don't need to take it out. This is really looking at your own piece now and seeing where you need to take any color out if need be. Still that nice line there, I've lost that again, so I'm just trying to relocate that. You can see it in the photo, can't you? In the reference photo. It's a really lovely line there. I think I'm happy with him, actually. I can't take too much more out, I'm just going to ruin him. Scroll in if you've got your iPad and you're pulling your photo and have good overlook. He's looking right and I'm not sure if there's much more I want to do to him actually. But I've done what I haven't done. Actually I'm going to pick up my tiny little brush, I haven't done any of these fluffiness under here, have I? I'm just going to do some of that, I try not to put my hand in the wing feather. I'm just drag a little bit out like a sea. I think you could do that more elegantly I'm sure if you hoped to get a bit closer to yours. That's why I'm completely obscuring the painting now. Let's do that little line down his bill. You want to go careful with this because it's easy to make the line too prominent and too bold. You don't have to do more, then actually you don't have to go all the way down. Do just a little bit like lost and found, little bit here, little bit there. Almost might be enough actually. If it's gone a little bit hard, a bit harsh you can just soften it again and run into the hit, lower bill. It really changed the character of him. It's amazing. His tie is a little touchy. Really, really take your time or step away from it today. You've had enough of it. Look at it tomorrow with fresh pair of eyes. It's really interesting the difference it makes coming back and looking at them, I quite often go for dog walk, come back and go, "I see. I can see where I've gone wrong, or I need to correct." Taking a break from it is helpful. I think he's pretty much there, I just want to do that shadow underneath his foot. Pick up your big brush, pick up your Payne's gray, pop it underneath his feet. You're following that line of where his foot is. We paint his footing lower foot. If it helps, what you want might do is to pop your board, pop it right underneath. Pop your tilty thing and wait. Then very big wet brush lots of water, I'm just going to run that out. It's very easy to get carried away with this. You don't want a lot, is just enough, just an idea. Then you can run just to wet the leg down again and let the color run up so you may not left with any sort of hard marks. I wouldn't do anymore on that. I've made a bit of mess. You could take all these little dots out even with a very stiff synthetic brush. That should take those little marks out better. I won't make you watch me do that but that would be nice. He's about there. I think we are done. I can see this more clearly now, where I've worked I just want to neaten up a little line there that makes you look at a feather all over then [inaudible] look like is not. Quite right. I was going to show you one of my practice pieces in the salt and what that look like, so I'm just going to do that quickly now. Can we confine this again? This was one of my many practice pieces. But you can see the salt is a little bit more obvious there and that's some of the effect you can get, but probably different paper. Now, when I looked at this again in the next day, I thought that that line between the low wing and the upper wing was a bit harsh. Right back again, re-wet them both, at least they allow that line to soften. I also added a little touch of violet to the upper wing to give me the finished piece. It's a great lesson to always step away and look at it the next day with a fresh pair of eyes. It's amazing how you see things differently that just need that little tweak. I hope you enjoyed painting him and I really, really look forward to seeing them on the resources pages. Please do share them because it's a lot of work to put these classes together and it really makes my day when I see these projects pop-up. I'm happy to help if you've got stuck on any problem or anything you're unsure and I didn't make clear then shout and I'd like to think I'm pretty good at replying to people, so yeah, I look forward to seeing them. Thank you for joining me.
12. Final Thoughts: I hope you enjoy painting this beautiful raven, aren't they amazing birds and really intriguing to learn about? Did you enjoy painting him using those bold techniques of putting color out with that lovely wet brush? How did adding the salt go? Did you get a better effect than me? It's a great way to add texture though. I hope my tips and tricks helped. It really is the smallest of gestures and the time just observing your work at the end that really makes your painting come to life. Sometimes it helps to look at your painting the next day with a fresh pair of eyes. We look forward to seeing you in the next class.