Ready, Wet, Paint! Learn to paint a Black and White Cat in Watercolour

1. Class trailer & Introduction: My name is Mara, and I've been fascinated by water colors my entire life. I love the translucent Hughes blurs and blooms that creates have been painting with it ever since I was introduced to deny school my favorite subjects to paint our pets, horses, plants and flowers. And I've been teaching myself how to bring the subject's life of watercolor for years. Now, I'm applying my teaching experience to help others master this beautiful, delicate and sometimes difficult medium. I hope that by demonstrating some of the core techniques and my own tips and tricks in these classes, I can help you to improve your water color work. If you've enjoyed the course or have any questions, please let me know in the discussion below. Let's get painting. Hello, everyone. Welcome to ready watch paint in this class. I'll be taking you through the process of going from picture to finish watercolor painting , so I'll be showing you how I transferred my drawing onto my watercolor paper. How you use different techniques such as working wet on wet, wet on dry, using blooms and other useful techniques with water colors. How I used them to create this painting here and I'll be taking you by the hand. I'm showing it to step by step. In this video, we'll be painting Mr Mittens, my lovely black and white cat. He's a little camera shy, but he does have beautiful futures with very pink nose, white and black. For now, white fur is very difficult to painting watercolor, and through that, the coming videos. I'll show you how I do my best to try to represent it and capture it without having the painting look too messy. I do that mostly by painting with the ultra marine blue color that I describe in the materials video and I walking through step by step. How do now? Obviously, if you want to paint your own cat, you're welcome to do that. I just thought that for those of you who would like to paint step by step along with me, it would be convenient to have a picture and a line dry so that you can join in if you would like to paint your own cap. But you are unsure about how to do so, I would recommend to follow the class and then once you've picked up the techniques and you're in a bit of a flow with it, you can take a nice picture of your own cat and then apply the techniques that you learned in this course to your own preference picture. Now, to help you work through this painting, I've provided several resource is down below. Do you make sure that you are locked in to scale share on the computer or laptop so that you're able to access them? I provided for you my original picture that I took myself, my line drawing so that you can use it yourself and transfer it. And I've provided many programs, pictures that you can use toe orange yourself as you're going through the process of creating the painting. In addition to that, you also confined a complete list of all the materials that I used, and I'll be explaining them unless one of the course so stay tuned 2. Lesson 1A: Supplies: Let's go over the supplies that I used to paint the cat. Now, obviously, you don't have to use exactly what I'm using. Just use what you have at home. I'm starting off with my paper. Here are used arches called Press watercolor paper. It's 640 grams and weight, which meant that I did not need to stretch it. Now. If yours is thinner, please do stretch it before we start. This is just a towel that I wiped my wet brushes on, and I also use a paper towel or a kitchen tell. Just wipe some excess paint on, and it's really convenient to have just a spare piece of watercolor paper on hand to test the colors that you're mixing on just to make sure that they are exactly how you want them to be when you go to paint and this is my palate, it's a ceramic palette, which is my favorite, and I placed my colors quite specifically at the top of the well so that watery pain collects at the bottom of the well. But I also have the option to take very concentrated rich pigment from the top of the palette with a damp brush, and I'll talk more about this in the coming lessons. This is just a water spritzer that I used to wet my palate with. So you can see here, you just give it escort and your pains will be ready to go. This is tracing paper. You can also use baking paper if you don't have specifically tracing paper at home, and we use that to transfer the drawing. I also make use of quite a bit of masking tape to keep things in place, to tape off my address and to transfer the drawing to give myself a straight line at the bottom of the painting. I just use a regular old ruler, and I used an eraser. So here you see 21 of which is an artist, eraser on the left and just a regular one. The artist A razor is gentler but doesn't always get the job done. Else have two pencils, both of which are HB, which is quite important because it won't smudge so much on your paper, and I use a fine liner. This is just a 0.5 stetler fine liner to transfer the drawing with, and I keep a hair dryer handy by my work station just to dry off washes so that I can continue working. And I don't have to wait for too long between layers moving on to the brushes that I use these air some of my favorites. This is a medium sized around Russia DaVinci casino number six, and I also have the same brush slightly smaller. This is number four, both of which are really great watercolor brushes. Then I also have a, um, a cosmic top spin liner, or sometimes also called a rigger in size. Too great for getting into nooks and crannies. A little small around brush individually, cousin topspin and size one and another rigor this one slightly smaller. I use it for the whiskers on the hairs towards the end of the painting. This is a size one and a teeny tiny detail brush. This is a DaVinci Nova. I believe it's that yeah, of $5 0 really small and find to get into all of the little nooks and crannies at the end. Moving on to paints. I'm a big fan of thesis Minka Watercolor paints there beautifully transparent and easy to use. This is lamp black. This is transparent sienna, a beautiful, rich, transparent, blowing sienna color. This is ultra marine finest, which is a non granulated, um, ultra marine, which is quite rare to find this is shrinking violet, similar to Winsor Newton's violet on the nose of the cattle use. Quinn Ecuador magenta and Ruby Red Ruby red is similar to permanent rose from other brands . I also use a little bit of connected on gold hue and permanent sap green sap. Green is from Winsor Newton. I used both of these colors on the eyes, and lastly, we make use of titanium white, which is an opaque white, uh, on the whiskers and the hairs. Now, to give you a better idea of what these colors look like, um, I drew out a bit of a grid so that we can swatch them, and you can have a look if you have similar things in your collection. Or alternatively, it might give you some inspiration for what to pick up next time you're at an art supply store, so this is the permanent Sepp Green, and as you can see, it's a fairly yellow toned medium green, really beautiful color. Um, it's important to note that sap cream varies. Sap green varies quite a bit across brands. Um, for example, there's making one's quite a bit more cool tone than this one. So do make sure that you have a warm toned green. Alternatively, makes a little bit of a warm yellow into whichever green you have already. This is Thekla, naked on gold hue, a beautiful, warm, glowing gold. This is Thedc parents Sienna, that I mentioned earlier a very warm, rich, glowing Sienna tone. I really like this particular version of it from shrinking up. Next, we have ruby red, which, as you can see, is quite a rosy tone. As I said, Um, it's same pigment that is also often used by brands and a color called permanent Rose. So if you have that on hand, um, that's perfect. Here you can see I'm just watching it a little thicker. We make yourself this for the nose of the cat and also a little bit on the ears. This now is Thekla Naqura don magenta, which is quite a bit more cool tone and purple, and if you share it out, it'll leave you with this beautiful slightly violet tinted, uh, glowing wash of color. The next painting 1,000,000 with Here is shrinking Violet, A very cool toned violet tone. Um, it's the same pigment that's also used by Winsor Newton in Winter Newton. Violet. Yeah, I'm just applying a little more paint. And this is the ultra marine finest. And as you'll notice, it's transparent and non granulated in, and most ultra Marines are granulated, which is not a problem. If you're going to use that, just note that it will look slightly different on paper versus the asheninka Ultramarine violet Uh, Schmidt, go ultra marine blue, finest. And last but not least, we have lamp black, which is just a regular old flat black. Now, in a moment, I'm going to be demonstrating how we makes our own black. And so obviously we have black from the tube, but it can look fairly flat. And to give more interest of the painting and to create more luminosity, I mix my own grays and blacks using, um, ultra Marine blue, the transparent Sienna and a little bit of violent here and there. I'm just going to be demonstrating how I do that. So here I've just wet the paper a little had just a bit of blue left on my brush. That doesn't matter. And now I'm coming in with more off the ultra marine blue and a little bit of that, um, transparent Sienna here. I'm applying a little more, and you can see that as these two colors mix, they, um, come together to form this grayish dark color. Now, obviously, when you apply them simply like I'm doing here, it'll give you a gray wash. But in a minute, I'll just show you what they look like. If you combine richer versions of the color so more pigmented paint to the paper here, I'm dropping in a little bit of violet. And, um, I must say that this combination of colors is one of my favorites for creating grays and blacks. And if you compare it to that black up there, you can see just how much more interesting this mixed color is to look at and how much more variation you can achieve with it versus using lamp black out of the tube. So in a minute I'll apply, um, the same colors, but, uh, not watered down. So in this square here we worked wet on wet, so my paper was wet. And then I applied wet paint in the next square. I'm going to be applying, um, the paper, the paint directly to the paper, and it's dry. And as you can see, I've used quite a bit less water in the paint here, and you'll see that it turns into this almost black inky color. And that's the color will be using for, um, the dark for on the cat just to create more interest and to give more life and luminosity to the painting here. I'm just applying a little more now. I've mixed on more of that transparency. NSO. It's a little less blue looking and just a little more blue. I must say that I do prefer using more blue rather than Sienna because I'm a fan of the cool toned, um, gray black that you get with that. But how much you mix is up to you, and in a minute I'll come in with a little more paint there, just a little more off the blue. As you can see, I'm just building it up, letting the colors mingle on the paper, letting the water move thumb, and now I'm dropping in a little more violet again, and you can see that where that Yankee blue here and that corner meets the violet. It's getting really dark and rich without looking flat. So if you compared again to the lamp black, that ice watched on the left. There another look cube in the little rectangle. You can see that there's quite a difference, and I much prefer this kind of method to achieving in a black color or on almost black color. All right, that wraps it up. For now, Don't forget that you can find a full list and details of the supplies that I use down below to download, so long as you're logged into a computer or a laptop on skill share, I hope you enjoyed. And I hope this you in the next lesson, where we tackle some of the techniques that will be using to pay the cat. See you there 3. Lesson 1B: Techniques: in the session. I'll walk you through some of the techniques that I'll be using when we get to painting the cat. So here we have the watercolor paper that will be working on the exact same kind. And I am wedding, the first part of the grid here. This is just with clean water and my medium sized round brush. I'm just dampening the paper, and if we have a closer look in a minute, you'll see that the paper is a little bit shiny, but it's not really sopping wet. So here you can just see a little bit that there's a little bit of machine there, Um, but it's not too wet to the point where the water runs everywhere. And now I'm dropping in, which paint onto the wet paper. Which is why this technique is called wet on wet, and you can see that it's fairly translucent and soft and color. And I'm just kind of moving the paint across here, letting it mingle a little bit, not fussing too much with it. I'm just moving around to fill up that area, and here I'm rinsing up my brush a little bit, and you can see that the era there on the corner, it's soft. And here I'm just using a wet brush now to soften those edges and to feather that paint out and you can see that it really makes just a soft edge, nothing hard. And it shows one continues wash into white. Now, here I am now working what on dry. So I'm using the same pain from the watery well of my palette. But I did not Prewett the paper, and you can see that there are hard edges here, forming harsh lines that sometimes we want, but not always. So if you do have a harsh edge, you can simply soften it with a clean, damp brush like this to get rid of the edge. And true. Just let the pain to move a little more freely over the paper. And here I've dabbed off my rush again, and I'm just moving it out into letting it fade into nothing. And now I'm coming in with paint that is fairly drying, concentrated from the top, where of squirted it out on my palette, and I'm letting that now move across the damp water so you can see that it feathers in towards the rectangular shape that I've painted, and it's creating a, um, very noticeable edge towards the right of the rectangle. And this lets you achieve quite a bit of control over your watercolor paints and will be using this quite a bit throughout the cat painting so you can see that it's really feathering in nicely towards the middle. And I didn't touch the middle at all. I've just let the water on the paper. Take care of that for me now. I'm coming in pretty heavy with the ultra Marine here just painting the wet paint on to try paper, and I'll show you a little bit. What I mean when I say that I let colors makes on paper because I'm going to be dropping in a bit of the Sienna, but I'm letting the colors blend on the paper. I'm not mixing anything myself here in the palate. I'm just letting them come together in the middle to for my soft gray color. That is the same great as I have shown you in the previous lesson, when I covered the pains that will be using for the class, he armed a stabbing in a little more paint and letting the colors mix on the paper. Now I'm coming in with very watery violet. You're add a little more pigment. I move it, and I'm going to be using a technique called blooming. Or call a firing, which basically involves letting your damp wash of color dry just a little bit and dropping in water, which then this largest some of the pigment and pushes it outwards. So you see that in just a minute here, I'm letting it dry a little so you can see that the paper still shiny and a little damp. And if we just give it a few seconds, we can pick up clean water and drop it on as you see here now and boom, there it goes. And I think I'll drop in a few more here just so you can see how the pigment gets dislodged across the paper. And this works best with translucent colors that don't stain. So there you can see how the areas where I did at the water. The paper is much lighter, and it created this interesting texture across the purple paint, and, um, I used us throughout the for of the cat just to add a little more interest and to also move pigment away from areas that I want a little lighter here. I've wet. Um, here. I did not let the paper. I'm just applying a wash of the ultra Marine, and I am just taking back a little bit off that water, cause it was just a little too wet for my liking. And now I'm coming in with, um, pretty concentrated lamp black. And what I'm doing here is I'm just creating more, um, contrast on the edge of the color. So I'm deepening the edge, and I'm just kind of letting the paper move. Sorry, letting thebe pain to move across the paper on its own with just a little bit of water. Um, that's keeping the paper wet. And here I am now adding some blooms that will push the pigment more towards the edge. And this is a very nice way to create More contrast, especially if you're dark. Colors have moved too far across the area that you're painting, and they're blending too much for your liking. And I do this quite a bit on the edges of the dark for of the captain. And here I'll demonstrate this again, just a little bit more realistically on, Let's say the edge of the for. So I'm painting in with, um, and painting in Some of the ultra Marine I've done it went on dry here. Now I'm using the technique a shirt earlier softening the edges and you can see there's more paint on the edge of that round shape that I painted in. Now I'm going to be coming in with my, um, small around brush the Cosmo topspin in size one, and I'm dropping in dark paint, and I'm taking it just a little beyond the area that I've wet previously with the blue paint. That gives me a lot of control over the shape that I achieve. And I can flick out these little hairs and, uh, um, pains just blend themselves on the damn paper. I don't have to worry about that. I'm just concerned with painting in these little hairs and adding these little flicks for texture and letting the dark paint blend into the damp blue color on its own. Um, another important thing here is that I've wet my paper quite a lot beyond where my paint is , and this really prevents any hard edges in unwanted places. Here, I've been dropping in a little more of the ultra Marine to create a fuzzy for look, and you can see that the edges blend into almost nothing. It's very airy and wispy, and this is how I paint the belly of the cat, where his first white and I want to show and create the illusion of for. But I can't paint individual hairs, and I can't use a lot of color to do so because it is a white that the cat is white. So you, um, have to work with the paper, and the paper needs to shine through to create the illusion off those white fur. And I'll talk you through those quite a bit more in detail in the coming lessons as we get to painting the cat. This is just a glimpse at how I used water watery paint and were concentrated pain from the top of palate to create both harsh, detailed, um, rich in contrast edges or lines and how I let them blend quite, you know, seamlessly into the rest of the paint that's already on the paper. Here I am just deepening that edge and adding more pigment and letting it mingle further down into the blue. Do you create a morgue radiant effect that wraps it up for this lesson on? I'm looking forward to getting started on the actual cap in the next one. 4. Lesson 2: Transferring the drawing to watercolour paper: and this. Listen, I'll be showing you how I transferred my drawing from my picture to my watercolor paper. So here you just see my work surface, and I have with me some tracing paper, my pencil, my fine liner and my tape. And I've printed off my picture, Um, just on to a four so that it's large enough and, um, the size that I wanted to be. And I start off with my tracing paper, and I just flip the first part of my image down onto the tracing paper, and I make sure that it'll fit right. So here I'm just holding down the second part of the picture just to make sure that I can all fit it onto one sheet of tracing paper. And I'm grabbing a little bit of my tape. And I'm just going to secure the first, um, print off of my picture in place here, so I'll just beat this up a little bit. I'm just taping it down so that it won't move while I start tracing over it with my fine liner. And here, if we just, um well, coming closer, just in a little bit. But I'm tracing all the important parts. Everything that I want to have traced out on my watercolor paper. So the irises, the eyes, the nose, the mouth and I tend to start with these kind of anchoring points so that if it any point, I need to take a break and come back to this. It's easy to line it up again. I'm just taking the nostrils, the mouth, and I'm taking my time with this because it is quite important for your end result later and everything that you managed to trace. Now you will not have to, um, add with pencil later on here I'm adding here off screen. I just added the points on which the whiskers end. Now I'm coming in to draw the outline of the body and there are made a little mistake and the way that I kind of mark that office with a little dash of the end, which just told me that when I transfer the drawing, I should ignore that little part of the line. Harris outlining the ear, taking my time with it and all the little hairs at the top of his little head. And the other year, and I'm always pushing my transfer paper. Or I should say my, um, tracing paper flat against the picture so that it doesn't move on me here. I'm just going around the body and the tail. So I'm speeding this up a little bit here now, and I just keep going and I take all the details that I can see through the tracing paper. So everything that involves a contrast of color or value Now I'm finished without first sheet, and I'm just going to line up the second half of his body so that I can complete the first trace. I'm just lining it up so that I can continue my trace Speed this up again a little bit for you. And now I'm continuing again with my pen going around all of his little dark spots the shadows, the legs and where the dark firm meets the white for here. I'm just having a little look if I've got everything and I think I do so if I hold it against the table here now, you can just see that I have Ah, a rough trace of his features and his outline. And I think here I missed a little detail on the ear. So the little line where here's dark for kind of ends on the inside of the air starts. So I'm just adding that in now. And here I missed a little corner of his eye. So his ear. And here I'm showing again that I also include the points at which the whiskers end, which was quite important so that later on we make sure that our whiskers go in the right direction and we know where they need to end. Right, So that's this the trace. But how do we get it onto paper now? While the easiest way to do this is to push graphite or pencil through your sketch onto your watercolor paper, now is really important that here you're using a HB pencil because harder pencils will tend to either not transfer very well or create dense on your watercolor paper. So I've now flipped it upside down. Or let's say inside out. And I'm retracing the trace on the flip side of this tracing paper with my HB pencil. And later, when we lay this on to our watercolor paper, we're going to trace over it one last time to push this pencil that you're seeing now on this flip side onto our watercolor paper. So this is essentially the same thing as you would do with several paper or transfer paper , which I'll show you in just a minute. But this is just a way in which you can transfer your drawing even if you don't have this surround paper or transfer paper. So this is what transfer paper looks like And you lay it between your trace and you, her watercolor paper or any other paper, and then you would trace over it again to push the graphite from that transfer paper through onto your final piece of paper. So that's an that's an option that you can use also for this painting. I'm just showing you an alternative that does not require you to purchase this specific kind of transfer paper. So I'm doing with my HB pencil. But feel free to continue with the swell paper if you have it, and you would like to make use of it, right? So here I've now stuck my, um ah, trace, which I have retraced on the flip side with my HB pencil right side up onto my watercolor paper, and I'm going to secure it in place with some masking tape. But before I stick the tape down, I'm just going to stick it once onto my, um, tracing paper to remove a little bit of the sticky power that the tape house because a consent on for up your paper a little bit when you go to remove it another way around this is to warm it up with a hair dryer when you want to remove the masking tape from your watercolor paper. Um, I don't really recommend sticking it straight on just because it can tear your paper or lift some with the texture of the paper off when you go to remove it. I'm securing my, um, my trace on to my final piece of watercolor paper, my arches 640 GSM paper. And I'm just making sure that it's in the position that I wanted to be and that the feature of the cat lineup with, um, a straight line that I ruled myself on my paper. And I'll show you this in just a minute when I go to zoom out a little. But for now, we're just going to be pushing our trays through our transfer paper onto our paper. So I'm just taking a mechanical pencil here because I find that the point is a little better at pushing graphite through the paper. And here, if you lived off your trace, you can see that are HB pencils being pushed through an onto our watercolor paper. So I'm just going to retrace everything one last time. I promise. This is the last time, and in this way we get a stencil that we can use for our painting. You can also do this with a regular pencil. I just find that the mechanical one is a little better at pushing the, um graph right through. Alternatively, you can also just use a, um, skewer or a toothpick, even or a stylus because we're not actually looking to draw anything. Were literally just pushing the graph, right. That's on the back side of this piece of tracing paper on to our final paper. And one advantage that this myth it has over using the servile paper or the transfer paper that I showed you earlier is that it actually doesn't cause any kind of smudging and other places where your hand might be resting. So if you are using the Cyril paper, just make sure to raise any smudges that you might have before you. Um, start painting on your paper because pencil marks and smudge marks are more difficult to remove once you've added a layer of paint. So here I'm just making sure that I am tracing over the entire cat, going around all the lines that we've already added, pushing through the pencil from the flipside onto our watercolor paper. And I'll just be things up a little bit here so that you don't have to watch the entire procedure. But I do go over the entire cat, and in just a minute we'll have a check that it's actually working here. I'm lifting it up real quick just to have a look. If I've got everything and you can see that we're getting a soft trace of our drawing on our watercolor paper. So I saw that I missed something on the ear there, lifting it up again, and now I see that I have everything that I need. So I'm carefully removing my masking tape and again, if you're masking tape is difficult to remove. Just pretty. Warm it a little bit with your hair dryer. Don't tear it it if it's really stuck. There we go. Our traces on our paper and you can see all the details air there. And if I zoom out just a little bit, you also see, um, how I've spaced it out on the paper here. I see that once again, I've just missed one little detail on the ear, so I'm just quickly drawing that in myself. And if we zoom out, you can see that I've kind of made sure that my, um, sketch is in the middle of my paper with equal spacing on the back. And I gave myself a straight line on the bottom there where I want the painting to end. And that wraps it up for this lesson. See you in the next one. 5. Lesson 3A: Initial washes of the face: everyone more here. So in the coming few videos, I'll be starting on the initial washes of the body and the's just provide a base of color that will shine through even through the other ladies that we will add later on. Enjoy. So in this lesson, we're going to set up our workspace, and we'll also get started on the initial washes on the face. So here, you see that I'm just adding in a few more details that I missed in my, um, sketch originally to make sure that I know where I'm going with my paint. So here I'm really paying attention to the area where his nose starts and ends. Um, where the white for meets the black for at the top of the face. So I know where I need to end the little dots that go into the whiskers, the separation of his dark fur from his ears on both sides there. And I'm also making sure that I have a nice clean edge with for on the side of his face there. And that again also applies to the right side and similarly that I know where his body starts and ends from the dark for to the white fur. And I'm double checking once more that I know where the whiskers started End. So here, you see, now that I'm, um, grabbing a little bit of my sap green and I'm placing it at the top of my palette so that my water can pool at the bottom. And here I'm just getting started on the, uh, Iris was some watery sap green. So if we have a close look at his face here, you can see that there is, ah greater concentration of green towards the iris and also the edge of the eye with a little bit of yellow. So that's what I'm Greek creating here with just a wash off the cream that is more concentrated where the line meets the iris. And here you can see that from another angle. Now I'm going in with some quinacrine own gold hue on dry paper. I've dried it off. Once I finished with the green, and now I'm washing my brush, and I am just using some water to let that green slowly creep up on to the rest of the green so that most of the yellow is concentrated on the outer edge of his iris, just like we saw in the picture. And here I'm just moving that around, and there are no edges of any kind within the iris in here. Now I'm waiting the other iris with a little bit of water with my number one round brush, just making sure that's damp because again, I tried it with a hair dryer. And once I know that the areas damp, I'll go on with the quinacrine own gold hue, and this is taken from the top of the palate. It's fairly gones and traded, and I'm just pushing it around the edge of his iris so that some of the yellow drops and moves over the green. But most of the yellow is cost traded towards the edge. Here, I'm just washing my brush, and I'm going back in with a little more green this time towards his iris to deepen the, um, edge there so that some of the green creeps over into the yellow and so that I have a great and effect. Like I also discussed in the technique video here. I've got a little more green again, and I'm seeing that on the other edge. I also need a little more green, and it's slightly drier at this point. Still, the paint will move a little less than it moved before. And I'm just making sure that most of my color is on the outer edge, so towards the iris and towards the edge of the high ball, and that I have a lighter area towards the bottom of that iris. Because on the picture you saw, there was a little bit of a highlight there. And here I've just got a wet brush, just damp nots, hoping what, and just moving the paint away from where I want to highlight a little bit. So while that dries, I'm mixing up a dark grey or black, using the, um, transparent Sienna and the ultra Marine blue, as we discussed in the class about the materials were using. And I'm doing it once at the top off that little Ying Yang sign. Just ah, very concentrated in dark and in the second well, that you see below here that I'm mixing now it is more watery, and I'm using my little spare piece of watercolor paper just to make sure that it's blue enough and not too warm because I do prefer a more blue grey, and then we're ready to go with the Great. So here, have just check touch. My, um, eyes have dried because now I'm painting in the iris. Here you can see I've completed one. And again I'm taking my detail brush and I'm pushing the water Agree all across the iris where I want the dark color and I'm sparing the little highlights. So if you look at the picture again, he's got little reflective highlights, and I'm making sure to preserve those because with water colors, the way that you create white or light is by, um, not painting rights over painting negatively. Here we're sparing the areas that we want light and pale, and we apply pains to the areas that are darker. And here you see that I've now added more pigment because I was happy with the placement of the water, and the pigment will go wherever your paper is wet. So I always start with a more, um, thin wash of color first. And when I'm happy and I just need to increase the human any to add more depth to the color . I common with more pigment. So now the second time better grab paint. I grabbed it from the more concentrated well of paint. Where is my original? Um, layer of paint that I started with was from the watery paint, and here I'm just making sure that I have nice, smooth edges, and then I cover the entire area with one wash off the dark gray black color. Here I've gone in for more pigment again, and once again I'm just deepening that color and sparing those highlights. And because we have dried off the iris before we did this, not off the paid none off. The paint is bleeding, and that's really important. So do make sure that you either give your paint enough time to dry or use a hair dryer. It's a little hard to see here because of the sun, but I am wetting the side of his face here because I'm going to be dropping in gray to paint the side the right side of his further. So I just grabbed watery paint and all I'm doing is dropping it in along the edges. I'm not fussing with it on the inside. I just keep dropping in my bluey grey that I mix from the ultra Marine and the transparency enough and a little bit of violet, as I've shown in the, um, class, in which I show you my paints and I just go all around the area, concentrating on the interests and just making sure that there is color moving across the paper. So here you concede from another ankle. It's a little better to see here, and you can see where my water ends, right? So I've kept the water far away from the paint. Or rather, I should say, I've kept my pain far away from my water line that I've indicated and red here. And I'm just pushing the paint out into those little hairs where I want a hard line where I want the edge to be very noticeable, invisible right, because those are little hairs and we want those to be defined. But we don't want splotchy edges in the middle of the for. So I'm just working my way up, making sure that my painters, far away from my water's edge and here I'm dropping and more paint again, coming up closer to the edge up to the point where of what? The paper and I'm just moving more paint all across, and I'm alternating between the blue grey, adding a little more of the Sienna and adding some of the violet tone. And in this way we get a really interesting textured effect on the dark for and in the end it will still be recognizable as a black and white cat. But this way you can incorporate more color and texture and depth. So here I'm dropping in, um, a little bit of that very concentrated gray that we mixed from the ultra Marine and the transparent Sienna. And I'm also just darkening the area around the eye and you can see that the paper still wet because the pain just just moving across and doing its own thing. Well, I'm focusing on those edges that I want to be crisp and clear again. I'm just adding a bit more color here to build up the depth, and now I have picked up a bit more of thieves, Violet, and here I am, moving more off the violet around the eye and the edge of the for and again the I that we just painted is completely dry, so there's no chance of these colors bleeding into each other. So if I zoom out again and speed this up a little bit here, you can see that I'm applying the same technique on the top of his head here. So I'm starting with quite a watery grey just to map out where I want the water to be, and to make sure that my paper stays wet enough long enough for the paints to move. And you'll see that I'm becoming more concentrating color hair dropping in more of the concentrated gray that we mixed, and pushing that into all of those little hairs that we took care to sketch out first and to transfer onto our watercolor paper. So we know exactly where the paint is going and where we want those little clean, harsh edges to be right, because we're effectively trying to create the illusion of for here. I'm just using a clean, damp brush to blend out and soften that edge there so that it will bleed out into nothing. And this is just important because as time goes by, your paper will dry. So if you'll notice I've placed a piece of tracing paper between the during and my palate and water just to protect the paper there because I want the background to remain white and crisp, and I don't want to accidentally splatter it with any paint on the right side of his face. I've just added a quick watercolor bloom just to give that side of his face a little bit of interest and to make it a little more textured more. And here have just spent this up, and I've just completed this side of the face in the exact same way as I did the first half of the face. 6. Lesson 3B: Initial washes of the body: now in this lesson, we're going to be covering the initial washes off the body, so that includes the middle of his body and also his tail and the little dark spot on his leg. And what you're seeing me do here is just wet the main part of his body with my medium round brush. And I'm just wetting it with clean water. And I'm being careful to Onley place the water where I want the pain to go and to take the paint a little to take the water a little further than I will paint originally. So here you've seen his body just now, and we can see that we're just going to paint that middle section of for I'm just beating this up a little on all that I'm doing is taking the concentrated gray and I'm dropping it along the edges of the area that I went here. You can see I've grabbed a little bit more transparent sienna to create more interest like we did on the face. And I've also been dropping in a little bit of the violet here and there. And all I'm doing is, um, covering the entire area and great making sure that I don't get any edges where I don't want TEM and concentrating the most on the edges where his black firm meets as white for because we want the most contrast to be there. And we're going to be working on those edges a lot more in the later lessons to create a furry look or the illusion of a furry body. Now here I'm just gradually deepening the color like we did in our techniques video, and I just keep dropping in concentrated color here and there towards the edges of the paint, and I keep looking at my reference picture to just make sure that I, um, concentrate most of the color where most off the depth is. And, of course, the picture shows a black and white cat. But again, I am kind of interpreting that a little loosely with these colors, and as we build up the value, they do ultimately approximate a black color. But it's just a lot more interesting to look at then, rather than just using a flat black like we discussed already. And here I am just taking more of that concentrated gray mix that we made really going along the address and building it up. You can do this as quickly or as slowly as you like. Just make sure that your paper is wet and that you don't get any edges where you don't want them. So here I noticed that my paint was starting to dry just a little bit. So I'm moving across, um, up until the next hard edge that I want to create the next abrupt ending off the for there so that I don't get and he marks anywhere where I don't want them. And I'm just filling out that error with my water re gray. And now I've grabbed some of the violet and I'm just dropping it in along the edges again, just like we've done before. Here, you can see I'm just deepening up the color. And there I noticed it was drying lighter than I wanted it to which, um, watercolor will. The darker colors will dry paler than you expect them to, and the pale colors tend to dry a little deeper than you expect them to as a rule of thumb . So it may be that you have to repeat this a few times to get the desired opacity and depth of color that you would like here. I'm just going across the top of his body, taking my time, dropping in concentrator paint, and I'm not really fussing to too much with it here. You can see that I'm moving a bit more towards the inner portion of that shape. But up until this point of mostly concentrated on placing most off the color and the pigment on the edge so that I get a nice, crisp line and that I create a lot of contrast between the white of the paper there where his white for will be and his dark for here. I'm just building up some more. Here, you can see how the paint is still moving across. The papers showed still fairly dump. And there I'm just washing my brush. Now I have a little bit more of that transparent sienna because it was getting a little too violet and blue for my taste, and I wanted to be just a little bit more great and ultra marine blue, and the Sienna will always end up creating some form of a grey. So if you notice its little too brown for your taste. You should add a little more blue and violet and have so little to cool tone for your taste at a little more off the rich, warm transparency, Anna. So here I've just zoomed us out again, and I am making a start on his tail. So I'm just sketching in my first little line there. And now I've just washed my brush and grab quite a bit of water. So here I'm just drying it off a little. And I am stretching that water all over the tail to the very top so so that I can paint in the tail and I've just gone ahead and done that in the same way as it did the body. So I focused most of my paint on the edge there, and I'm just dropping in more and more paint until I am happy with the A pass ity. And here now, I'm just pushing up that pain right until my right up to my pencil itch to get a nice, crisp line there and here I'm just drying off my brush, and there you can see what the tail looks like. And I've left just a little edge of white between his body and his tail. Because if you look closely, the white of his for goes all the way up around his backside. So to show that I've just left little white there and I've also dropped in a little bit of water to create a few blooms, mainly here on the body, which you can see me do here while the paper is damp but not wet. So this was after I've painted in the tail, and I also dropped in a few earlier on the tail itself, and you could just see how the paint is moving across the paper there. Once again, you can see me drop in a bit of water just with the tip of my brush on damp. But not very which paper and I don't really have too much rhyme or reason. When I do this, I mostly look at the painting and I think about where I would maybe wanted to be a little paler in color and where I would have a nice large area to showcase such a collie flower bloom. So, uh, you can use your artistic license here as much as you like or you can leave them away altogether. And, um, hero now picking up a little more water again because I decided, Well, that's not quite yet enough for me. And I'm just waiting. So this isn't really time. I'm just waiting to see how the water reacts and whether I'm happy with the results or not . So here I've assumed us out of it again because I just want to finish up that little patch of dark for on his leg there and you'll notice that I'm, um, painting this in a little paler and a little less defined than the rest of his for on his body. And that is because the lake is further away from the camera and, um, the I will go where you see the most contrast in your painting. So, um, by keeping this area a little less defined and a little blurry almost, it kind of pushes three I more towards his face and his eyes and the main body of the cat. And, um, in keeping this area fairly light and a little almost bake, we just make sure that the eye goes where we wanted to go, which will be the area with the most contrast and interest. And in this case for this painting, I wanted that to be the face and also somewhat the body of the cat. So here you see that I've just grabbed a damp, clean brush, and I'm taking it along the edges to blur them a little, um, similarly to how I showed this technique and the materials video earlier in the class. And I'm just blurring that edge and picking up a little bit of the color from the edge there and wiping it off, picking up a little more and wiping it off again, and in this way I can keep those edges softer and less defined. 7. Lesson 3C: Initial washes of the ears and nose: All right, so in this, listen, we're going to complete the initial washes off the ears and the nose. So where we left off was the body of the cat. And now I'm going to make progress on the nose. And here I'm just grabbing some of the, um, ruby red paint because that's what we're going to be using to apply the very first wash of color to the nose. So I'm just putting it at the top of my palette. There is. You can see so that once again, I can have a pool of the more watery paint at the bottom of that well and more concentrated deep pigment at the top. Um, so here I'm just grabbing some water. Let me get a knock a little closer. I've crapped some water, and I'm just wetting the nose and you can see that my pencil line is still there. I know exactly where the pain needs to go. And I've now dampened the entire knows and now picking up a little bit of that, um, ruby red paint. And I'm going to come in with fairly watery, um, layer of that paint and I'm moving it all around the nose just bearing the nostrils. And as we've done before, I'm focusing most of my attention to the edges, the edges where I'm painting so you can see I've kind of left that middle area, uh, white right now. And I'm just giving that paint a little trance to sit. And now I'm coming in with more if that ruby red still watery. And I'm just taking it across the mouth because he has a lot of rosy color in his mouth. And I want that to peek through when I later add other darker colors to add definition there. So we want a rosy glow, Let's say to show through around his mouth and nose and I'm taking my time with us, making sure it's not too wet, not try. And here I'm coming in Waas, the kree that we mixed on my small detail round brush, and I'm just pushing that along the upper edge of his mouth so that it feathers all by itself towards the bottom half of that pink that we painted. And you can see that happening now as I continue painting. Now I'm taking that up towards the nose, and I am painting in that line that you see on the middle of his nose and it's still damp. So the painters, you know, it's leaving us. Ah, straight mark. But it's feathering out all by itself. And I'm also taking that gray along the edge where the nostril will be to add some definition there. Once again, I take it around the nostril, still on that damn pinky color with my little size one round brush. Now I just feel in the nostril, Andi, I also feeling the other side, and you can already kind of see the nose coming together here because thes nostrils give it a lot of definition and shape. And by focusing my paint on the edge of the nose, I'm also able to create somewhat of an illusion of depth. So shadow and everything that's not in shadow comes forward more so. Pay their areas come forward and the dark areas get pushed back, and the feathering of the paint on the damn paper does that for me. I don't have to mess with it too much here. I'm now adding a bit more pink, and now I've picked up a bit of Thekla Nakata magenta. That's more of Ah, Pinky Hue and I'm dropping it in. It's still damp. And I focused that on that middle line of the knows where I want a bit more color concentrated. And I'm just letting that feather out while I take care of that top edge of the nose. And I'm looking at my reference picture all whilst I'm painting this to make sure that I get enough detail and that I remain true to the image. Right? So I'm giving the nose arrest and I'm re watching the mouth and dropping in Some of us that quinacrine are magenta because it wasn't quite pink enough for me. The ruby red gave us a nice initial wash of color, and now I'm not covering it completely with the magenta. I'm just focusing the magenta more towards the bottom edge of his mouth again to create some definition there, and I'm just letting it feather up into that gray that we placed earlier here. I now grab my, um, slightly larger round brush and it's damp clean, and I just run it across the nose so that some of the color kin move up a little bit. There and I am now wetting the areas where the whiskers will be now to paint thes I what? The entire area. And then I drop in small amounts of pigment onto those pencil marks that I created earlier . And this lets the paint really fade across those spots, and it keeps them fairly soft. And I'm able to, um, add a fair amount of definition without, um, you know, messing with a too much and overworking it. So here I am now coming in on that small brush again. So I switched again. I picked a watery grey, and I'm just dotting it on, letting the water move the pigment around for me. And if you look at the picture, you can see that they are faint little dots. Rather, whiskers grow out off, and they just cast a little shadows. And in doing this, I can approximate this kind of effect, and I could just let the paper and the paint to do most of the work for me. So I did that on the other, has half a swell, and I'm giving the arrest. Now I'm letting it dry, and in the meantime, I'm going to look at the upper right here to start filling that in with one wash of color. So here I'm just wetting the area. And with my little brush, don't worry. I'll come in closer in just a bit. With my little wash little brush. I'm, um, just filling in that area. It's a dark spot on his ear, and it kind of shines through. So his fur on the back of his ear there is dark, almost black, and that's what kind of shines through the translucent skin that makes up his ear. So I'm just painting in that little spot now, and I'm wedding that area just behind his dark for their because I'm going to be placing a little bit of the, um, Violet there. And I'm just wetting that area because I'm just going to be placing a little bit of the ruby red there because I want a little bit of pink kind of shining through I before e ad darker colors at a later stage. Now, if you look closely, he has this kind of vein in his ear, and that's quite visible here, and I've just painted that in, and now I'm shading in the rest of that year with transparency, Anna and a little bit of the ruby red. I'm quite far away here. So in a minute, all coming closer on the other ear to show you this in detail. And now I'm switching over to the other ear. Um, I'm adding in a thin layer of the transparency and a here because it's a slightly warmer area and light is shining through it. And I just want a warm, um, huge kind of glow through through the shadow that I'm going to be placing in the Leijer. So for now, I'm just being careful in one clean wash to apply in, even layer off the watery transparency. Enough on here. I'm coming in with a little bit of the ruby red because he has a lot of pink tones in this year. And I'm not covering up all of the sienna. I'm letting it shine through. And I'm just placing the, um, ruby red wear seat pink tones in his ear more. And here now I've switched to my rigor, my size to Kozma topspin rigor, and I'm dropping in very rich pigment of the viol atone, and I'm letting it bleed in by itself to kind of make that shadow that is cast, um, under the for. So the white area that you see now is white hair that, uh comes in from the inside of his ear. And I'm creating the illusion that there is a shadow behind that because if you look at his ear, even see a little bit of a shadow behind the white hair. So I'm just letting the violet bleed across the paper to evenly great age from the violet into that sienna and a little bit of that red that we painted here. I'm just filling in the kind of, um a little edge, that little shape that I can see next to his ear that comes from his ear, curving around his face after sun that with the gray that we mixed earlier. And I'm also defining a little bit that pale area that you can see that just caught the light in the picture Now because it's for here is white. It's a little difficult to paint. So what I'm doing is I'm using a pale grey, the same great that we mixed to create a little bit of an edge there. Where his ear ends now his ear there is white, but obviously because we want to define it from the background, which I'm leaving white in this case, I do have to paint something in. And I'm just doing the same thing at the tip of his ear there as well, just with the gray that we mixed just to give that a little bit of definition and to push it forward off off the white background that we have. So if we take a step back, this is progress picture one that you can download. And this is where we're at so far. So now we've complete that the initial washes of his nose and his ears, and by now we have all washes complete of the body of the cat, so we're ready to move on. 8. Lesson 4A: Details in the eyes, nose and tail: right, so we've made it through the initial phases of washing in the body and head. Now I have ABS, detail and the upcoming videos. You'll see me at quite a bit of detailed by adding for marks along his face, his body. You'll see me a place in a couple of watercolor blooms, especially through the body here, and you'll see me add little bits and pieces that after the realism, but also let the watercolor shine on, provide luminosity to catch. All right. And this lesson we're moving on from the initial washes, and we're going to be adding more detail to the eyes, nose and tail. So by this point, my initial washes air dry. It's a new day, and I've set up again to continue painting and notice. I have the tracing paper between the cat and my pal with my water again just to keep protecting Thebe paper from any accidental splatters. Now I'm going to be starting on the eyes again because they just don't quite have enough, um, gradation and color for my liking. So I've grabbed more of a, um, rich version of that sub green. So have quite a bit of pigment, and I want to make more those dark green edges around his iris and the yellow around the edge of his eye. So I want to try to, um, achieve a little more of thatch by just layering up. So here I am, applying a ring of that rich, highly pigmented sap green to the edge of that I And here I have just put it up a little, and I'm doing the same on the other. I you can see it a little better in this light here, So I've just added more green. I'm checking out my reference picture again, and now I'm doing the same as we did on the initial wash where I went to this area of the paint and I drop in more of that quinacrine gold hue, and I've kept it quite concentrated on my little size one brush. I keep tracking the picture, and now that that paint has had a chance to sit a little, I'm just blending it with my damn clean brush, making sure there's more yellow towards the edge of the I and a lot of green concentrated around the iris. So I'm happy with that for now, and I've now taken a bit of that gray again just over the nose again to add more definition around the edge of the nose. And now I've quit it, and I'm adding more of that Conakry tone magenta to the center line off the nose because it just wasn't quite pink enough. It tried lighter than I wanted to be. And if you have a look at the victory here, it's actually quite a pronounced pinkish line. And I'm also adding a little more definition to the upper edges of those nostrils there because they're further back right, because his nose is sticking forward out a little bit. And I'm mimicking and kind of attempting to create a bit of a shadow and a bit more of, um, depth of field there by adding more color. So I'm doing this with watery Conakry doma Gento on my little size one round brush, and I'm just making sure that edge is well defined. The edge of the nostril is well defined, and I'm just pushing more pain to that edge and making sure that the edges of the noser darker and deeper than the centre right because they go back further here have picked up very pigmented Conacher doma gentle and I'm just dropping it in on the damn paper. So it's more of the same technique as we used for the initial wash, and we're just building up the color here. Now I'm checking that the eyes air dry. So they did indeed, try while I worked on the nose and I'm deepening the iris here. And this is now with lamp black and it's, um, fairly rich. You can see there I've happened it Now I've dropped in more pigment again on I'm just filling out all the way. And as the creen was dry, nothing is bleeding. So while that dries are moving back to the mouth as the nose has had a chance to dry up a little, I'm wetting the mouth with my size one round brush just with clean paper with clean water, and I'm dropping in a little more of that corn acrid or magenta? Is this the same technique as I used on the nose? I've dampened it, and I've just run the paint across the top line off the mouth, and here now I'm washing my brush off camera and I've picked up a bit of that, um, violet color just in deep in that edge, some more. And if you look carefully, you can see that it's kind of bleeding down to the mouth somewhere. And I picked up a little bit too much pigment there, so I'm just using a little piece of tissue to blot it off as long as your papers dry. If you make a mistake like that, you can always take a little bit of your tissue where your kitchen roll and just plot the pigment off. Here. I'm deepening again with more of the violent tone, and I'm also taking that up a little around the edge of the nose, dressed to keep building that depth and the shadow and to, ah, give the nose more shape and form by pushing the edge is backwards and keeping the tip of the nose lighter so that it appears as though it's kind of coming out forwards from the painting. Now I'm watching that center line again because it is still dried paler than I wanted to be , and I'm going to be dropping in more of the, um, magenta tone here just to repeat and to let that color bleed out again from that center line. So if we take a step back, this is what it's looking like so far. And now I'm giving the face a chance to dry, and I'm going to begin adding furry texture to the tail. So the first step in doing this is to dampen the tail, the area that we want to work on. And I'm taking the water all the way up to the edge because the edge of the tail is really what we're going to be focusing on and adding, um, little flicks of hair to to create the illusion of for so here I'm just taking my, um, Casoni a brush. This is the smaller of the two. I've dumping the entire tail and now I'm picking up lamp black. So so far, we haven't really used much of this color on the for, and now I'm using it to deepen up the tail. Deep in, up all around the edge of the tail. I keep dropping in the paint to create the illusion of around a tale, right? So the center is still paler, especially where we've placed those blooms earlier that have tried and I'm just running the dark color all the way around the edge of his tail. Here, you can see after, is coming with a clean, damp brush kind of connect those two damp areas from the edges and hear of picked up really strong pigmented lamp black. And I'm just running around the edges and I'm letting the paint sort itself out in the middle. I'm not fussing with it in the middle, just letting it bleed. Now I'm switching to some off that violet fairly watery Violet. And I'm using that to blend the, um, pigmented lamp black into the rest of the tail just to create a bit more rig radiant there and to make a smoother transition. So here, you see, have picked up more of my watery violet from the bottom of my palate from the well where it's watery. And now I'm going in at the top of the pallet where there is pigmented strong lamp black, and I'm dropping it in and you can just see it shoot across the paper. Now my paper here is not sopping wet there, no puddles on it. But it is dap enough for the pain to travel on its own. So if at any point your paper gets to dry to continue working on it, the best you can do is to just let it dry completely and then re went it. So this is why a hairdryer comes in. Really you? Well, um, is really convenient here because it lets you, um, dry your layers faster. And I could be quite impatient when I paint on Guy found that it's much more productive to paint with a hair dryer rather than to take breaks every five minutes to let your paint dry . But that's all up to you. You should just paint at the pace that you're comfortable with, and you can see I haven't spent this up because I want to give you a realistic idea of how long the stakes. So I keep adding and adding, and now I've switched to my size one detail brush, and I've picked up very pigmented lamp like and that area along the edge where the papers dump. I am dragging the lamp black out into little flicks of hair onto the dry paper, so this lets me get a lot of definition in the hair and at the same time the dampness off the tail bleeds lets the black bleed by itself. So my paper and my water on my paper are doing most of the blending for me. And all that I'm worried about is creating those little flicks of hair because he has a very furry, fluffy tail. And I really wanted to try to capture that in this painting. So again, this isn't a real time. I'm just dropping in little hairs along the edge, and I'm just making sure that I paint them in the direction that they go. So they're all going outwards towards the tip of his tail. And some of them are a little curved around, which I kind of tried to imitate. And that wraps up this lesson. So we've learned to add free detail to his tail, and we were quite a bit on the face. I'm excited to keep going 9. Lesson 4B: Details and depth in the fur: All right, everyone, welcome back. And this lesson, we're going to continue more of what we didn't The previous one were adding more detailed by adding depth to the for of the cat. Now, um, this is pretty much the same technique as we used on the tail just now, but we're doing it on the rest of the body. So here you can see at a slight angle his body. And I've just went the, um, paper already. And I'm just dropping in more of that lamp black to deepen up the edges there of his for so I'm just using my smaller of the two Casoni oppressions to drop in lamp black and too deep enough that edge of the for And I've spent this up. So I go around the entire edge and I add little flicks like it did with the tail to all of the edges where his dark for meets his white for and I'm just going around during that all over with lamp black and a little bit of thieve Iowa tone to blend the black into the rest of the body. And I'm taking great care not to cover up any of the, um, lovely blooms that we created on the body. Once that's had a little bit of a chance to dry. I do the same to the face. Now you want the water to be dry, and I use the hair dryer in this case so that nothing bleeds too much. Um, and here now, in real time, you can see me, What? The side of his face. I'm dropping in a bit of the violet. And now I go in with the lamp black from the top of the palette there. Right, So you can see that it's pigmented deep rich color, and I'm dropping it in, and I'm watching a little bit to see how far it spreads. And I'm concentrating more more off the pigment, most of the pigment on the edge there and especially around the eye, because I want the I to be very noticeable and full of contrast care of switched to my smaller size one Kozma topspin brush, and I am dragging in little bits of hair. So I'm leaving the damp area that I've painted previously, and I'm just pulling out the paint a little further to create the illusion of little hairs because ultimately what's happening here is that he has white for that kind of blends into the dark for where his dark Patrick start. And to create the illusion of that, we have to paint negatively around the white hair, which we do with a shadow. And the shadow will be the remaining space that is, you know, not covered by the white hair. And that's what we're doing here. So this was more of the same technique as we used just now on the tail and body, and you can see that I'm only concerning myself with the hair, and I don't first much with the middle of that section. I'm just letting it bleed because it's wet and the pain will spread itself eventually. Here you can see it a real time. I'm really taking care to paint little individual hairs, and I'm keeping them fairly short. Um, because he is more fluffy than he is long haired. It's not a long haired cat, and so I really want to make him look fluffy rather than, um, you know, one of those long haired cats because that's ultimately not what he is. So here I'm just having another look at my picture picking up more paint but more water. And I was switching over toothy violet to just blend all of that a little bit under his eye and back in with black to create more of those hair details just in accordance of what I see on the picture going all the way around the eye. And I've switch back to a slightly larger brush here to pick up on water and to be able to spread the water quicker and more evenly and now should back to the little brush. And I'm just doing more of the same, and you can see, as I add more depth to the eye and really starts to pop out a little more. So here from another angle, you can see the right side of his face and progress, and I'm just pulling out with my little size one Kozma top round brush the little hairs. And this is where it also comes useful that we've left a little bit of white space there because it just means that the hair's a little more visible and were able to add more detail to his cheek there. And you could also see how I added the texture to the body here and a shot dressed little little marks that bleed into the rest of the body seamlessly and were able to achieve that by working on down paper hereafter switched to a slightly larger brush because I want to make the transition a little smoother. So I'm going in with watery, watery violet just to blend this a little more. And just like that, I keep going. Now I've noticed that some of the hairs are actually paler than the edge of the further we painted originally, and that can happen. Um, here, I'm just using a somewhat wet let's say, medium What? Um, the's smaller Cassin airbrush. And I'm just pushing more off that pigment out into the tips off the hair because we really want the tip of that hair to be the darkest place. That's where we want most of the saturated color so that we can achieve quite a bit of detail and more contrast. So here again, I'm just kind of moving along the edge, pushing the paint onto the damp little flicks that I created because the paint will go wherever it's damp. So If you push it like this, it will move out towards the very that's a edge off that damn space that you created. No, I'm trying to create more rig radiant again with more of the violet color, and here I've got a clean brush under is blending it out. I do the same thing on the year here, dampening the year, because ultimately I want to add a bit more depth here. I switched over to my small size one brush, picking up concentrated black on black, dropping it in along the edge, letting it bleed into that shape that I've went. So I've really zoomed in here. It's a little blurry, but I do think that you can still see what I'm doing. I'm just pushing that out, adding more pigment and pushing it all the way to the tip of the hair and really taking my time with it. And as I do this, I'm always looking at the reference picture I took now here on the edge of the year. I also added some for, and I'm now deepening the edge on that left cheek, and I've also deepened a little bit the color on those hairs that kind of, um, stick out where his ear is. The dark cares. - Here . I'm just going up the other side of the year during the same as we did on the right side, adding little indications of for with the lamp black and of what, the area. So again, the lamp black is just bleeding into the shape of little to create a nice Grady in for me, and I don't have to fuss with it too much here. I'm just blending it out to tiny bitch, pushing it into the damp area. And here I'm also creating little for indications with the ultra marine blue. And that brings up brings us to this current progress picture, which you can also download if you like. Just make sure that your, um logged into skill share on a computer or laptop because you won't be able to find these files. If you're just in the mobile app, Um, that wraps up this lesson. Thank you for watching. And I'll see you in the next one 10. Lesson 4C: Details in the ears, nose & shadows: All right. Welcome back, everyone. In this lesson, we're going to be adding a bit more in detail to the ears and the nose, and we will ultimately complete the second layer of paint. So that's exciting. We're making progress. So here you are, seeing me just add a little bit more contrast to this edge of the face. So before I move on to the features off the face, I'm just quickly doing this. I'm running, um, my size one brush just with some water along this area to dampen it. And you'll see me drop in just a little bit more pigment here because I felt like it was just a little too pale in comparison with, um, the rest of the face and the rest of the for. So if we zoom in here to this year now, um, the area between the edifice here, there and that, um, darker area where the hair comes through was just a little, um, to washed out for me. So I've dampened it, and I'm dropping in a bit more of that transparency enough to deepen the edges off that shape, and it'll make the little vein that we added pop a little more, and I'll give a little a little more roundness through that shape of the year here. I'm just blending it a little with the damn clean brush, and I'm going in with just a little bit of watery violet. It's a little hard to see here because it's a little blurry, but it will get better in just a minute. Don't worry here. I've zoomed out of it so that you can see how I'm finishing off the shape of the ear there . This is just with the, um, Ruby red tome, and I'm deepening up the reddish tone that's tucked there behind the hair. And I'm just beating this up a little because I'm just painting what's on the picture, and I'm just deepening up the color until I'm happy with the value and I make sure that that little vein pops and that it's visible and noticeable. There. You can see it from a different angle. It's a little clear on, and I'm going to be working on these little Tufts at the top of this ear now. His ear here is white, Um, but obviously I want to stand out against the white background. So I'm doing this with a watery version of, um, the ultra Marine finest. So the blue color that we're using and even though his first obviously not blue, this is the most effective way I've found personally to paint white for that needs definition. Um, here I'm just adding a little more color to the shape. And I'm outlining this little white area that we've kept free to give it a little more of, ah, three dimensional look and to, um, create a little more shape. Andi contrast there and if I had a bit too much pain. So what I'm doing here is I've just taken a tiny bit of the tissue, a clean, damp brush. I'm picking up some of the color where I want to highlight, and I'm just lifting it off and wiping it on the tissue. And in this way you can lighten areas that maybe you've added just a little too much pigment to I'm really pushing. It's a synthetic hair brush, so it will pick up color like this for you quite easily, and it can take a little bit of a beating in terms of pressure from your hand. There I'm just picked it up, and now I'm a little happier with it here. I'm just connecting that up to the dark shape that we've painted earlier with the little bits of for. And I'm just using the gray that we've mixed here, adding a little more hair and blue and a little more definition towards the inside of that area, where we can see through his slightly translucent skin there because this little lip of his ear as further forward than the inner portion of the year here I have what, that inside portion of the year, and I'm just deepening and with a little bit of the grey we've mixed and a small brush because I felt like it needed a little more shadow. And if you look at the picture, you can see that the shadow kind of gray dates from darker to paler as you go up the year. And that's what I'm doing now on both ears. Here, I'm using the violet. Take a little closer, making sure it's really crisp on that edge, and then, using a clean, damp brush dressed to soften any edges, keep everything smooth right now. I'm suspect, for with the here for now. We're moving on to them knows because I want to add some of that shadow that I can see around his nose that's cast from his nostrils. So what I'm doing here is I'm dampening a line dressed around the outside of his two sides of his nose, and I'm also deepening. I'm also wetting the middle portion of the nose, and I'm going to be using a I'm very pale water down, um, version of that gray. We have mixed, So I've just taken some of what I've mixed and I've watered it down a little more, and I'm placing in shadows with that. So if what? That area buff the nose. And now I'm dropping in a bit of that gray mix and that area around the nose here that I have previously what? I've also dropped in a bit of that great, and I'm just fading it out with a clean, damp brush into nothing so that really fades into the white paper and there are no harsh lines or edges. I am during the same here under his snout to give the illusion that the snout is further forwards and that it's casting a shadow onto his neck there. And I'm doing that by wedding the area and then dropping in a little bit of that gray that we've mixed. I'm working with my number one, uh, my size one brush here just because it gives me quite a bit of control. And I really don't want this pain to travel very far. I wanted to fade from a pale color to nothing and a relatively small space of space. So within a relatively small area. And, um, yeah, that's it for this lesson that it brings us to our third progress picture. So we've not completed the second layer of paint, and as usually you can find that download down below, so long as you're logged in on a laptop or a computer and you're able to access to files. If you're on the skills you're up. Just make sure you use a computer to download the files first, because you won't be able to see them. If you're only in the app right, that wraps up. Listen, and I'll see you in the next one 11. Lesson 5: "Painting" white fur & evaluating progress: All right. Welcome back to another lesson. We've made it quite far already. And this? Listen, we're going to be attempting to paint the white for your also evaluate a little bit about how far we've come. Um, now painting white for ca NBI. Fairly tricky. Um, I've switched onto my large Cassin airbrush here, and I'm mixing up just a little bit of the, um the ultra Marine finest on its own pure, ultra mean finest. And the way in which I'm going to approach the white fur is mostly through shadow. Right, Because we can paint white hair because our papers are white with watercolor. We're going to have to, um, create the illusion of white, for we have to paint somewhat negatively. So we have to paint a shadow around the white hair to create the illusion of white for no. I'm starting on his hind leg here. I'm working on dry paper with watery ultra marine finest, and I'm going to be creating your shadow that separates his Billy from his hind leg. And because his belly is kind of fluffy, nibble around, it creates a slight shadow onto the hind leg. And that's what I'm painting here now. And I have a very faint pencil mark here that I've erased a little bit before. He started to guide me along the way. And I'm working with my large Kasimir brush to keep everything soft and washed out because I don't want anything to be too harsh or too pigmented, because in the end, we're painting white fur and we don't want a lot of pigment here. We want to maintain a lot of contrast between the white fur and the dark for that we worked so hard to create in the previous lessons. All right, so here I'm dropping in more, um, of the blue at the Bonners. Like you couldn't quite see that. But here are switch back to the top of the like and I'm just adding a little bit of the, um, transparent Sienna to make a bit more of a grey rather than a pure blue. And I'm dragging in a few marks with my smaller cassini a brush to indicate a little bit that there's for there. So this is a, um, similar technique to what we've done on the dark hair, except I'm working with more watery paint and a larger brush and less definition now again because I want to lift him off of the white background a little and give him more definition. I'm going to be using a very bluey grey. So this is the great we've mixed, except that there is a little more blue in it. It's a little more of the ultra Marine finest, Um, and I'm using that to kind of outline his like there and here and there. I'm flicking out small flicks of for To once again kind of mimics the idea or to kind of capture the idea that his legs are furry and fluffy and white. Now I am just deepening that shadow a little and pushing a little more paint into those flicks that we created. And now I'm going to be working on the underside of his bill. You there? So that's just about out of reach for the camera there. But you can see what I'm doing. This is the front, uh, like and again, I'm just waiting the area dropping in blue and gray to create a soft outline. Now I am waiting this area where I'm going to lift off the fluffy belly that's facing us from the main body that is further away from the camera and, um, the bellies casting a little bit of a shadow. Sorry, the, um so the the belly for that we see straight up, it's casting a little bit of a shadow onto the rest of his body. And that's what I'm creating here to separate the different body parts from another and to create depth. Now you saw here that I added just a little too much of that Sienna, and I'm using my brush just to mop it up and to remove it. And I'm wiping my brush on a tissue in between the shots and there you saw even came in with a tissue. Just lift off a bit of that paint that I added. Too much of now, I've added more gray to increased depths of little here, and I'm dragging that paint up and down, keeping everything soft and flowy. This is now a clean, damp brush that I'm using just to blend that hind like into nothing. And for now I'm happy with that and I'm switching on to the other side of him, and I'm using mostly just the um, ultra Marine blue here, and I'm creating a little bit of a triangular shaped, as you can see, to kind of lift off his head from his body and to kind of capture the illusion that or to create an illusion that his face is more forward facing than the rest of his body and more towards the viewer. They're crazy. But if depth using the blue along the edge here, dropping it in and creating little flicks of for all the way along his body to lift him off off the white background, this is just a clean brush. And I'm just wiping along the edges to clean them up and to fade that color into nothing and hear of such back to my larger brush to do the same thing. Because the large brushes just a little better at, um, blending out the paint. And I'm going to be doing the same. Is it it on the left side, on the right side here? So I'm making a triangular shape with my large Cassin airbrush and some water, and I am just dripping in a little bit of that ultra Marine finest to create a shadow. There I'm also blending over those hairs there because I felt like the white that was visible through those hair marks was just a little too stark at this point. And you can see that it's lifting up some of my lamp black that I placed on earlier not to panic as long as the papers wet. You can just use a little bit of tissue dab at it, dry off the area a little bit and prevent any further bleeding. And there I am, tidying that up a bit, just with my damp, smaller Cassin airbrush. And I want to be dropping in a bit more blue later on when it's dry. Here. I'm working on the left side of his body again because it wasn't quite to find enough for my taste. And I'm just using a bit of the grain mix to define the area further. I've happened the area, and now I'm just dropping on the gray. This was with my large Cassin you and I've just twirled it to make sure that it has a nice point. So when I pick up paint, I kind of rolled the brush so that the point becomes sharp and Now I'm just seeing a clean , damp brush that I've wiped a little bit to blur that edge out that wraps it up for the white fur. And as usually, you can find the progress picture of this down below. Just make sure that you're on a computer or a laptop so that you can download these files. Now, at this point, I just, like, take a minute to evaluate our progress. So far, um, so I always do this when I've covered a couple of the initial layers of a painting, I just take a step back. I have a look at what's happening, and I make a little bit of it to do list of what I still want to do. So if we have a look in our picture here, I can see that I really think that the right eyes just not quite dark enough the area around the right eye and also this kind of operate area over the left eye. So I want to dark in that. Similarly, I'm still missing the white hairs in his right and left ear. Obviously s l need to paint in the whiskers. Um, I'm not quite happy with the definition around the mouth yet, So I think I have a little more work to do there. And, um, I've also noticed that the right nostril, for some reason, dropped down just a little further than the left one. So I'll try and correct that in the upcoming lessons that wraps up this. Listen and we're almost there. I can feel it. We just need to add a few more details and finishing touches, and then our furry black and white cat will be done. 12. Lesson 6A: Finishing touches on the fur: Okay, guys, we only have a few more steps to go in the coming videos. I'll take you through my process of evaluating the purpose of my painting on how I make decisions about what more still needs to be added. Now, in the videos, you'll see me jump from area to area as they try. And I'll mostly be working on improving some of the detail of the for the depth of color, especially around the eyes here. And you'll see me work more than those in the mouth where I think more shadow was needed to help it come to life on to give it a little bit of dimension. All right, we're in the homestretch, guys. Um and this doesn't will be tackling a couple of finishing touches that we already, uh, covered to some extend in the previous lesson. So, um, it will be a little bit of this and that to begin with, I'd like to point out that I've cleaned up my palate a bit. So any paint that was used up, I've cleaned the wells, and I've made sure that none of the remaining pains are kind of, um, you know, dirtied by other paints, so that prevents muddy looking colors. And at this point, if I need any different colors, I will just scored out some new paint. Um, to start up, I'm going to be erasing any visible pencil lines that might still be here. The painting has had a day to dry because I'm filming this on a separate day, and I'm just removing any and all marks or pencil lines that I can still see because, um, it's easier to do that now rather than to try to do that later, especially when at one point we at the whiskers which will be very much the very last step in those painting. So here I am, just going around in erasing any lines that I see. So in the previous video, I said that, um, I thought that the right I was just not quite dark enough towards the upper right corner there. So I'm just wetting the area and dropping in more of my lab black from my palate. I'm using a rich pigment in paint, and I'm making sure that, um, the area sufficiently dam so that I don't get any hard edges anywhere, so everything blends seamlessly and smoothly. I am adding a little bit of the violet tone just to blend that a little more smoothly and again, A little more dump, uh, a little more lamp like and notice here where my water starts, an end starts and ends. So I really make sure that there are no hard edges. And I'm using a clean down brush just to blend everything out here here. Switched to my smaller brush just to push that paint up the ear to deepen and dark in that a little more. And to push that paint with my rigor once again into those little hairs just to make sure that those hairs are really at the very darkest points with the most contrast. I'm doing the same with the little, um, Tufts of hair on his ear. And I'm just deepening that area because I saw in the picture that I've actually left it quite a bit paler than it should be. And it's very much they, uh, continuous dark area up there with my rigor. Now I'm adding little, um, indications of for on the top of his ear, Joe. Still that he looks nice and fluffy. Now, once I'm happy with the ear, I move on. I'm still not quite satisfied with this area down here on the right cheek. So I'm going to be going over it yet again here. I'm using my rigor just to deepen up those Harris because they are still somewhat paler than the edge of that cheek. And I'm just going over them with lamp black straight from the tube. I did not diluted here because I was getting a little frustrated with the fact that the paint was always drying paler than I wanted it to be. So just be patient and layer it up and be bold and brave to use pigmented paint where you need it. I'm just blending it out a little and again notice where my water starts men's. I really make sure that I don't have any harsh lines or edges there. So I've kept that entire area damp with clean water so that I'm able to drop in more of that dark pigment without it causing any splotches or lines where I don't want them. I'm just speeding this up a little bit. I'm adding for to the left here now as well and I'm just darkening that for at the very top of his head, with lamp black and the violet color. I'm deepening that little shape next to his ear because I noticed I was still quite pale, and it's actually quite far back. So I'm just deepening it here. And I'm also going to be darkening the inner side of his ear there that I am now wetting with my rigor because it's just not quite deep enough. Yet I'm using some off the shrinking violet here. The side of his cheek has had a chance to dry little, so I'm just adding a little more pigment and blending once again. And I also noticed that I want just a little more contrast on the Andrew vous for here, his white for so I'm just putting that area. So I'm going in with my rigor with ultra Marine financed straight from the tube, and I'm letting the damn paper carry that paint, and I'm really focusing it on the very edge just to move him out from the background and to lift him forwards. Now that shape that we created and the previous lesson it had had a chance to dry and because we had to intervene a little with our tissue to stop some of that black fading. I didn't manage to get it as dark as I wanted it. So that's what I'm doing here. And now I'm just going to be dropping in more of that, um, ultra Marine finest. And I'm letting the paper carry out that color towards both edges, so it's really damp, and it's just being blurred out softly and gently by the water that's there. And now I've just taken a damn clean brush. And I'm just intervening here a little bit because I saw that there was just a bit of an inch forming that I don't quite want. And now that's a little better. Now, if we look at the underside here, um, that dark shape just wasn't, um, quite deep enough. So I'm adding in a little more blue here. So this is the shadow separating his hind, like from his, uh, belly there and same thing as I did with the for on his belly. I'm just waiting this line, and I'm going to be deepening the color just a little bit with more ultra Marine finest. So this lifts him up from the background just a little further on these points. Um, I wanted a little more spritzes in and contrast, so I'm using my really teeny tiny nova fresh. Um, just a drop in a little bit of the ultimate finest on the very tip of those, um, Fermat for marks. And I'm then using a something larger brush touch damp, clean and tamp to blend that out a little on the bottom of his belly. Here I am deepening thes firm asks that we made at an earlier point in time. The entire area is dump, and I'm just dropping and more of the ultra Marine finest to add a little more pigment and definition on dime. Also lifting his belly forward a little by creating the shadow that lifted from thief Front Lake There. No, I'm just blending it all of further. And now I'm going to be adding a little more for to the dark, um, trying to the shape that you see there that is his dark for coming down towards the bottom of his body. And I'm using my little nova brush to do this. So, um, I had noticed that it was a little too smooth in comparison to the rest of the for, and I wanted to look very harmonious. So I'm just doing what we've done all this time where I dump in the area and I pull little flicks of for outwards onto the white onto the white dry paper to create the illusion of for. And now I'm just deepening the entire area a little bit because it's further back and it's actually, um, catching a little bit of shadow. So it would make sense for to be a little darker. So I'm just deepening it with a little bit of lamp black and a little bit of violet. And that wraps it up for this, um, lesson. So we've done a little bit of this and that some finishing touches and will continue doing a little more up in the next lesson. See you there 13. Lesson 6B: Finishing touches on the face: all right, guys were almost finished. We're so close, I can really feel it. So in this lesson, we're just going to be tackling a few more of those finishing touches, concentrating mainly on the face. So in the previous videos, I mentioned a few things that I was, um, somewhat unhappy with with the painting, and we're just going to be working through that list a little more. And here you can see that I'm starting on the head there, and I'm just deepening up the for I'm using the same technique with Been using all this time just continuing to dark and that color on I'm mostly working with lamp black here, but it's fairly watered down. Um, and we're going to give that a chance to dry. And I'm focusing on the mouth here because, as I said previously, I just felt like it needed a little more contrast. So after stamping the mouth here with a clean, damp brush, and now I'm going to go in with, um, very concentrated, um uh, lamp black on my size to rigor. And I'm just dragging it along the very edge of that mouth, letting it fade and bleed across the paper, thanks to the water that's on there. So that's why it's so important that your paper is damp here. I'm really taking my time with us. This is a real time and ring, really careful to keep my hands steady. I am anchoring it on the paper and I'm just dragging my rigor along the mouth and up the nose there. And this just creates more contrast, especially between the white for onus snout and the rest of the mouth. No, I've come in with my small Casoni a brush in a little more water just to encourage that pain to move a little more because it just wasn't bleeding down as much as I wanted it to. I'm just dabbing it here and there with my damp, clean brush. All right, well, I've let that dry. I've tried it with my hair dryer and I'm going back in to work somewhere on the ear there. So the work we did just a few minutes ago was tried, and it's just not quite dark enough. So if you have a look at the picture there, you can see that the dark color is quite consistent up. That portion of the year, so I'm just dampening the area one more time and I'm going in with more of thelancet black here. I'm noticing that my color just isn't quite pigmented enough. So just to show you what I mean, I'm really going into the dry paint that's kind of dried up at the top of my palette. My pressure's just slightly damp here and in this way you get a very concentrated color, and I'm using my rigor to just keep pushing that into those little fine hair marks that we created at the top of the year. I'm just pushing it into those hair marks. Notice that my wrist is securely anchored on the paper. And yet again, I have tracing paper next to the cat between my, uh, painting and the palette again to prevent splatters and also provides for a good arm rest. Yeah, I'm adding a few more hair marks here. I'm adding a few more here marks here. I'm adding a few more hair marks, gently flicking the pigment in paint out from the wet area onto the dry paper. Now I've switched brush into my larger, um, Kasimir brush. This is the smaller of the two cast news, and I'm drives blending out that a little further, letting it bleed a little more. All right, well, I'm satisfied without for now. So I'm deafening. The little Tufts of fur that, uh, overlap is here, there just to deepen them a little more again with my rigor and, um, lamp black that I've taken from the top of the palette there. - Now , I'm just dragging that paint downwards a little more and back up there, really pushing the pigment up to the tip of that hair because the rigor is quite small. I do have to go infrequently to pick up more paint, especially if you're working with fairly dry paint that is not too diluted by water. Here. I have, um, just went at the mouth again because it's it's dried since the last time we worked on it. And now I'm picking up a little bit of that, um, violet color because I want a little more of that purple tone at the bottom of the mouth. If you look at the picture, it's a very cool toned area, and our violet will help Cooley area down and also add more definition to the bottom of his mouth. And I'm also dragging that just up the nose a little just to add to the shape and shadow There. Now, I've switched onto my very teeny tiny um, DaVinci Nova detail brush. And, um so I mentioned in the previous video that I noticed I had made a bit of a mistake on this nostril because it was just a little too low in comparison to the other one. So with the pence life just giving myself a little bit of a line there to see where the nostril needs to go up towards. And I'm taking my nova brush and lap black, and I'm just going to be lining that upper area of the nostril until the nostril reaches a height that I am satisfied with. It's just Marc by Marc. I inch it up just to align them a little more so that, um, his right nostril looks more in line with this left one. So the nose is at a little bit of an angle, right? It's not, um, uh straight up on his face, obviously. But it just was looking a little too lopsided for me. So, um I'm just evening and out here. And as you can see, I was also adding a little bit of color to the left nostril so that they will remain equally dark because we're adding more lamp black here now, to the right nostril. We're layering up the paint a little more. It, um, could cause the right nostril toe look darker. And we don't really want that. We want both of those areas to have somewhere value so that they look harmonious and so that one nostril does not for some reason, stick out more for the viewer than another one does. I'm just making sure they remain even in value. And I've just add a little marked down the center line of his notes just for a little more definition there. And we can already see that the nostrils are looking a little more even now. Now, if you notice his nose is lightest in the center and darkest towards the edges. So what I'm doing here is I've waited the nose a little bit. It's damp, and I'm just lifting a tiny bit of color here and there around the center of the nose, with my small detail nova brush. So if you just rabbit with the brush and then wipe it on a tissue, you can lift a little bit of pigment. And because thes colors are not very staining, you are able to lift quite a bit of pigment if you wish to do so. Here. I've what the brush. And now I'm working a little on that shadow just above his nose. I'm just dampening the area and will be placing a little bit more of that blue color there , too deep in the shadows? No, here I've actually picked up the gray. I was running it along in the nose and snow out there to make it appear is, though the mouth is coming more for words off the paper to give it a bit more of a dimensional. Look here switched to my slightly larger brush, and I'm watching this area here because I want the center of the snout to appears, though it's coming forward a little more so if you'll notice he has some shatters around his snout, and I want to place those in to do that, I'm just using a very watery version of the ultra Marine blue, all right. That wraps it up for this lesson. We just have one more to go. All that's left to do is to draw in the little hairs around his body, his whiskers and the, uh, whiskers that you see above his eyes. So we're almost there were almost done. Just hold on for one more video, and then you to will be the proud owner of your very own cat painting. See you there. 14. Lesson 6C: Adding whiskers: okay, guys were almost there are nearly finished. So the finishing touches in this video involved painting in the whiskers here. So he has little bits of firms here around his snout. Obviously, his whiskers on. I showed you how you can create more realistic looking for using the titanium white paint that we have to create white for markings. And I go a little bit more in detail about the difficulty of pinking white for all right. We've made it to the last lesson off the course. So I'm taking another step back just to make sure that I'm happy with how it's looking. And I tend to do this by placing at somewhere on a wall or standing far back from the painting because in this lesson will be adding whiskers and hairs, and that really should be the very last step. So make sure that any pencil lines that are still visible, that you do not want visible are erased and that you're happy with all of the colors and the pains, because once you've added the titanium white, um, that really should be the last step. You can paint over it so easily, and the effect gets lost a little bit if you take paint over it, so just make sure you're happy, and all that's left to do is to paint on whiskers and hairs. So as you saw there, I'm just adding a little bit of the titanium white. And this could be a bit of a tricky pain to work with, because it's often not as opaque as you wanted to be. And you do need to add a little bit of water to make it smooth, because we will be using a very small rigor to drag marks across the paper to create the whiskers. So it's a little bit of a trade off if you see here. I've taken quite strong paint, and it's just not quite smooth, and I'm adding some water to it now here so that I can drag a smoother mark across the paper. And so what you'll find is that you'll have to layer it up a bit. Now I'm starting with the whiskers at the um right I there, and I'm making sure that I'm really aware of where I want the whisker to end, because the direction of the whiskers is quite important. So keep looking at the picture and mentally know where you want your whisker to end and drag your brush in that direction, laid fairly flat. And make sure that your paint is damp enough so that you can get a smooth hair. If it's dragging at all, stop what you're doing and add a little more water to your paint just so that it, um, stays a smooth line. You can always layer it up, but it's a little more difficult to remove the opaque white once it's on your paper without disturbing the colors that are underneath it. So do make sure that you are, um, you know, using paint that is easy enough for you to use in the ears here. I'm also adding little drag marks, so little fluffy white hairs, which are quite visible in the picture. I'm not painting as many as I can see. I'm just painting enough to show that there is hair there and that it's quite fluffy and almost a little whimsical looking. So I just keep going, dragging my brush, making little hairs their little difficult to see on camera because they're white, obviously. But here I'm adding a few more, and this time my paints a little more concentrated. If you notice now the whiskers that we drew and above the I r. Almost transparent. So I've just layered thumb up again off camera. Now I'm doing the same with the whiskers. I used the marks that we made in pencil tres to show me where my whisker needs to end. And I alternate between using straight up white titanium white and a very pale blue that I mixed by taking titanium white with just a tiny drop of Thea ultramarine blue. And I do that because a lot of our cat is white and I want the whiskers to still be visible , and the easiest way I found to do that is to use a very, very pale baby blue because it lifts off from the white of the paper. But it's still somehow looks as though it's a white hair and not a blue hair or a dark hair . Here. I'm just finishing off the edges of those whiskers, and you can't quite see them here. But I still have my pencil marks that show me where they need to end so that I don't get the directionality of the hair wrong here. I've taken white again, so I switched from using the pale blue to using straight a voyage. And I'm just layering up a few of those whiskers just to make sure that they're really opaque and that they stand up and are visible to the viewer on the white paper. I'm using my smallest rigor here. Um, this is really the best brush to do this with because it holds a decent amount of water and paint for the size of its took. Because it's that long. If you lay it down flat, you will be able to get hair like marks with it. Here. I'm doing this now again on the other side of his eye. And I'm just mentally picturing where I wanted to end to make sure that the, um, curve and swing of that hair iss how it is in the picture. He has one little stray hair appeared more towards left. So I've just painted that in, and I've moved around my table to drag in the hairs on the other ear because I find it much easier to direct towards me, then to drag away from me So after is gotten up and I'm standing at the side of my table, dragging in the hairs on the ear there, and you can add however many you like. I do like for it to look somewhat fluffy and to break up the white shape that I've left underneath there. But at some point, it can look a little messy. So have a look. Keep going until you're happy and just see what you like. So in this clip, I'm showing you once more how I painted in the whiskers on the left side there, and I'm using those pencil marks to guide me. So I'm going to be dragging from his snout all the way down to the pencil mark. Here you can see it again. And on this side of his face, I'm using more off that very pale blue rather than straight of white, because we're painting over white fur and a white background. Here goes another whisker and another one you can add, however many whiskers you like. I tried to just paint what I see on the picture. So, to the best of my ability, I tried to recreate their shape that I see and I find that this is a little easier and more effective than thinking about, um, what hair looks like or how to paint hair. Because often we have many, um, notions in our mind about what it should look like, and that's when we tend to go a little wrong. So just try to paint what you see in the picture and stop when you're happy with them. - Here . I'm adding more hair to the right ear. It just wasn't quite, um, pigmented enough the paint. So I'm layering up. I'm just going over the marks originally made with stronger white paint. This is just straight up, um, titanium white. I'm showing you this in real time because I think it's important that you see that I'm really taking my time with them. And I also take pauses to think and to reevaluate whether I think, um, the air needs more hair or not, and for me to kind of judge when I should be stopping. And I think at this point in time I'm pretty much happy with the years and adding a few marks that are slightly darker with C, he bluey grey, and then I'll be moving on to adding, um, for to his body, right, Because we've, um, created a little bit of a furry appearance with their dark paint on his body and around his face. I'm going to be adding to that with little flicks of the white paint just straight up white , Um, pretty much from the to buttress, slightly moistened. I'm just going to be dragging little hairs from his belly over the black paint. And we want to do this at the very end, because obviously, these white hairs are in front of the dark hairs, right? So we're trying to layer up in the same way in which we are seeing the image and thes white hairs are the furthers hairs towards the front that we can see on his body. So I'm just going around adding little flicks of the white paint all the way around his dark body. You can see me do it on the belly there as well. And on this side, I'm taking my time with it. And I'm making sure that my wrist is securely anchored on top of that parchment on top of that tracing paper so they don't smudge anything, and I have a really steady hand. I'm not making these hairs too long because he's not a long haired cat. He's just kind of fluffy. So if you were to be painting a long haired cat, you would want to be dragging longer thinner. Whisper your hairs over this portion or any other portion off the cat. Really? Because in that way you create more the look of a long haired cat with very long, thin, wispy, sleek hair. And I'm just doing that on the back there as well. I'm just making my way all around the body, and these finishing touches really do add a lot to your painting. So if you've already been painting cats or other animals and you're just feeling like you're missing some, um, you know, some flair, some realism or, you know, you just you're not quite satisfied with how they're looking. Try adding little details like that at the end to see um, whether maybe then your little happier with the painting our role here. I'm adding a few little hair stress between where the tail starts on the body ends, and I'm also doing the same thing on this face. There is really taking my time, dragging the brush. And with these final images, I'd like to present to you the final cat. We're done now. I hope you enjoyed the class. I really look forward to seeing your projects down below. So please do upload, thumb and share with us your experience of painting either mittens or any other catch it chose to paint. Um, if you enjoyed the course, please do let me know down below by leaving a comment. And if you have any requests for future classes, feel free to reach out and let me know, because I'm already working on my second class. But obviously, I'm eager to hear what you guys think and what you guys would like to see from See you in the next class. 15. Wrap up, class project & thank you: All right, guys. We finished. You've made it to the end of the course on now you're left with the beautiful watercolor painting for you to enjoy. You can gift it to a friend or simply hang it up on your wall. I hope that you learn valuable techniques and skills in this class. If he did, please do let me know in the discussion below, and I really look forward to seeing all of your projects.