Realistic Illustration Made Easy: Watercolor Lion Portrait with Florals

1. Introduction: Have you ever gone on a jungle safari? In those fleeting moments, do you try to capture the trees, skies, or the main protagonists, the big cats? Now, imagine capturing the gorgeous majestic lion, with brushes, and strokes inside of your camera. Dreamy? Welcome all. I'm Ezhil Aparajit, an artist, an art educator from India and your teacher for this class. Welcome back everyone to another edition of my second Skillshare class, on realistic illustration made easy, but this time, with watercolor animals and florals. If you're my existing student, you would have known about my methodology, my process, and also the step-by-step approach, that we have followed in our earlier course, my first Skillshare class on realistic illustration made easy with birds, and florals. In this current new class, we're going to focus on the portrait of an animal, along with the simplified, beautiful, gorgeous florals accessorizing it. Though, I have a masters in computers, I graduated with a zoology major and I have this natural tendency to lean towards fauna, flora, and anything that revolves around science. You will learn how to compose, sketch animal portrait parts, choose the color palette, first watercolor wash, middle layer, adding details along with florals. Also this time, let's play with the floral relaxants, level up from loose style, to render with some more details to get a beautiful, and dreamy effect. So keep learning, and keep creating, and let's get started. 2. Class Project: We're going to create realistic animal illustration with dreamy florals. [MUSIC] In the end, you will be able to come up with your creative ideas and create them using techniques learned in today's process. In this class, we'll be choosing a subject that's inspired by nature. We will study and create realistic portrait of an animal accessorizing with loose florals. As this object, all my paintings have been inspired by nature; whether it is pure botanicals or birds or animals, landscapes, they are my main inspiration for all my paintings. The mammals express themselves in a much better way than any other species. Of course, apart from human being. Animals can emote and express themselves well, especially through their eyes and other gestures, as you would have noticed. There is essentially some difference between the way you depict a bird or an animal. This class is relevant for all beginners, intermediate, and advanced level. Though I would suggest you to view my first Skillshare course on Realistic Illustration Made Easy watercolor birds and florals, where I have covered many important features on choosing a subject, sketching, watercolor technique, many other features which we won't be covering here. Here we will move forward in focusing more on the composition and expression of the mammal. Ain't you excited to get started? Then next, let's discuss the supplies you will need to get started. 3. Supplies: Here we are at the most interesting and important phase : Getting ready with the supplies. All of us loves a great supply of art materials which can aid and influence our creative process to huge extent. Let's see, what do we need. Now I have categorized all of these supplies into four categories: Paper, pigments, brushes, and the other accessories. Now the order of importance, again, it falls like this in the same order. Paper being the most important one. We'll be using the arches cold pressed paper. This is an A31. I'll be using half of this, which will become the A4. You can use Arches or Canson, Strathmore, many other good brands are there. Ensure that you use 300 GSM and good quality or pure cotton, 100 percent cotton paper. Even for practice, I would recommend this. Next comes the pigment. Here I have arranged these pigments from the cool to warm colors. I'll tell you all the necessary pigments for our painting shortly. You can see that you need to have a good working space in your palette again. For the pigment, you can use any good brands like Daniel Smith, Winsor, and Newton, Mijello and many other brands are there. You can use my most favorite being the Daniel Smith. Now comes the brushes. You can see all these brushes. These brushes that I've used are from silver brush. You can see this is the silver black velvet and you can use any round brush, any brand for that matter. This one the size will be from 8, 6 then you have 4. These other ones, these three brushes are the one that I'll be mostly using. I'll be using this silver black velvet script liner brushes for all the hair and the fur that you see on the body. Optionally, we can also use these two. This is not mandatory, but I really like this brush. This is a scrub brush. You can use any synthetic slightly stiff brush for this. I've used this type of a filbert brush, so this is predominantly for lifting so I have two. You can use any flat brush also. After the brushes, other accessories, everything falls into this category. If you want, you can use a kitchen towel or any cloth and two jars of water, of course. But instead of these jars of water, I usually prefer this type of water pot which has a groove where I can clean that in there. Here's some pencil. I use this mechanical pencil and I also use this two more of this mono eraser and of course to sketch we can go on for a basic sketch book of some 130 or 150 GSM to just practice the sketches. This would be all. Coming to the pigment so we will be requiring these pigments. I have actually labeled here that you can see it. Some testing also have done over here. You would be requiring this Payne's gray, Naples yellow, Raw sienna, Burnt sienna so these four you would be requiring. This is predominantly for the line's mane and then for the florals, we will be using this deep red. You can use an orange also. We'll use this serpentine or you can use a sap green or undersea green, then yes, we'll also be using this quin gold and then lemon yellow. A little bit of darker yellow if you require some Gamboge, but these two should be sufficient so this would be it. We won't be using a lot of blue maybe for little brush shadows. I'll be using this Payne's gray while at here but otherwise this would be our palette. We will also be using this Dr. PH Martin's bleed proof white. This is not mandatory, but still if you want to go in for the whiskers, like if you can't really leave the paper white, we'll be using this one and of course, this masking tape again, so this is again optional so if you don't want to use it, that's your choice. We're just going to do the lines portrait along with the florals. Again, I'm going to have any particular background assets so if you want to have this, you can use it, but I'll be using this masking tape. That's it. Let's get started. 4. Composition: [MUSIC] Composition plays a very important aspect of any painting. A successful masterpiece of painting involves good planning and composition. Composition simply means arranging various elements of your art in an interesting and intriguing way, as we have chosen lion as our primary subject here. Who doesn't love this majestic beast? We can try to finalize the different ways in which the Panthera leo, that's the scientific name, can be portrayed. We can offer various angles of its portrait; a front view, a close-up view, or a side profile view. In this case, where I have drawn a lioness, you can see that it's a portrait of a front view with its cub. Let's see what are we going to decide on the angle and view of the lion. I wanted this painting to portray a gentleness, not the usual majestic, fierce nature of the king of the forest. Also, I wanted it to be big enough friendly. For the sake of simplicity, let's choose a side profile view of the lion. So in this case, I liked this particular lion where again, so it's a side profile. As you can see, the eyes are so beautiful, so it's gazing into something, not a very fierce look. It's quiet, peaceful, relaxed, but a beautiful gaze look. Again, the color seems to be really good. You can see the mane, which forms different varieties, tonal values of this; yellows and knockers and browns, I really loved this. It's a pretty simple, easy composition. Here, it's really nice where you have a beautiful long main that is moving gently in the breeze, and it has a beautiful eye. You can see a very expressive eye, and you can see the highlight in the eye, mix-and-match here and there for the composition. So we're also going to include some florals. This, they call it as Japanese Quince. It's a beautiful red and green combination. I've saved a couple of them. As you can see, I wanted something like a branch which is not out of the place. It's like sitting in a journal, maybe this is from a tree, so right next to where this line is sitting. I want that to be part and parcel of that composition, but I really don't want the line to be overpowered with this one. It should complement it, it should not overpower the line. I'm going to derive my inspiration from several reference pictures. Maybe the bud from here, sleeves from one of the things. That's a very good way of working. What I have done for this composition, I have gone ahead and used this Procreate here. In this Procreate, I've used this line, but as I told you, I've shown a couple of lines there. I'll be maybe getting the mane from one of them and the eye from one. But I like this eye, this is pretty good. The eye of this line is really good. This layer is this flower. I have extracted the flower, so it's pretty easy. You can just go here add and insert a photo, so you can just copy your photo and insert it here. I've just tried tweak [LAUGHTER] this one because I wanted this branch to be coming over here. If you want to flip it over or change it, or you want this one to be here, so you can just go ahead and do that. Whether you want the flower to be coming over here, or this runs with this, maybe the tree is here and the branch is here, so you want to do that or you want to do something from here and then do it. Here, I have tweaked it. I want to use this flower. Maybe I will reduce the intensity of this red. I don't want it to be very striking. Overall, if you see, it's a very muted color scheme. This line has got this creamish-yellow, brownish, dark features. It's like a culmination of different yellows and browns and reds. Let's define these flowers. We might not go into a very realistic botanical one. Our focus is always the line, so let's get started with the combination so that both balance each other well, these botanicals. Let's start sketching them. 5. Sketching: In this session, we'll start with a quick sketching. I've already shown you the various sketching methods in my first Skillshare Course, Realistic Illustration made Easy. All the sketching techniques are listed there, so I won't be going in-depth into the sketching. But from this composition, so I'll explain here. In this one, we're going to do it in a portrait one. I'm going to use a freehand sketch. But I would really advise you to go to the previous course, the Skillshare Course, which is this one, realistic illustration made easy watercolor birds and florals. This is my first course, and in this, I have explained in depth about the sketching. You can see the various ways by which I have explained these sketching process here. You can use a grid method or this divider method, or the pencil method by which you can assess the proportions and you can relate the same type in your composition. I've explained in depth about this one here in this course. I would really suggest you go through all of these, especially all these watercolor techniques. Again, I have covered over here. Now let's continue with this composition of the line here. The portrait mode. I'm just going to roughly check the negative space that I've got. Let me just clear this. Here I've got this negative space, and you can see this negative space is nothing but the free space that you have here so from here to this. I'm just going to approximately check that fang. I need some negative. I don't want to fill the entire paper with this object. It's always good to leave a lot of negative space or free space. If you look at the feature of the lion. It has a box-like structure. The face you can see it's like a typical rectangular box. If you can just imagine. Just add it again. This is what I'm saying. You can see that it looks like that. Always imagine or visualize whatever complex subject that you have in the form of basic shapes. I have this and this entire thing is like a semicircle stuff. Of course, right from the mean, I have to do. The skull of the line just goes inside so it's like this as a typical box phase and it has a very strong jaw as you can see. This is my entire structure of the line. I'm going to speed it up a little bit because we're not going to focus on the sketching here. But I can say that focus on the placement of each parts. [MUSIC] Here I can see that where this is, so here, the mouth is ending here. [MUSIC] 6. Watercolor Techniques: We're here at the most important phase learning watercolor techniques. Watercolor is a very tricky medium. I have already covered the details of the watercolor techniques in our earlier course, which is realistic illustration made easy with a bad portrait, where we have seen about how to create a beautiful Himalayan Monad. Try to practice and explore more various combinations and get comfortable using watercolors. Don't forget to use 300 GSM cotton paper even when you practice, which will help you to boost your confidence with greater output. We are here at this most important phase, learning watercolor techniques and watercolor assets it's a slightly tricky medium. I have covered most of the generic, commonly used watercolor techniques in our earlier course, I will be covering most of the specific techniques that's relevant to this particular painting of line portrait. Let's get started. Let me take this size eight brush. We'll start off with wet and wet, so the first technique I'll be using will be the blending. We're going to wet the surface, nothing but plain water. I'm using a 300 GSM, 100% cotton paper so let's use this orange here you can see how nicely it spreads. This is typically the vetting wet. Now what I want you to do is just drop the top of this, then remove all the paint, so double off all those excess water also. Now go on top of the last layer and just drag that color down. Now you can see that blending, so how you can achieve it, but this one, this technique is called as you're blending, where you start with a saturated one and then it becomes more transparent. Now we have one more interesting technique. I'm using tallow blue. I'm using this wet on dry. I'm taking a very wet paint on a dry surface. This is especially useful, when you're creating skin for the animal portrayed with fur or feather. This is wet on dry, wet, single color so I've used this tallow blue. Now you can see the edges are quite hardier. So what we're going to use in this particular technique is we're going to blend it with the paper. You can also blend it with the next color that you have. So I'm just going to remove my brush. I've removed all the paint from my brush. Now, just take a damp brush. By the way, I'm using a size eight brush and just wiggle here so that it creates a nice softened structure here. You can just repeat the process until you get the desired effect so that you have a very nice soft edge instead of a hard edge there. You can use this technique not just for wet pigments, even for the dry pigments, because you're activating that with the water again. This is your blending the gradient, but this is the hard edges we are softening it, so we'll call this as softening. Another very important technique that we will be using throughout line portrait is hatching. This is a thick brush, you can use the another one. When you apply lines in one direction this is called as hatching. We're going to use this technique for the parts of the face. You can vary the thickness of the line, reduce the space between the lines if you want to depict darker area so you can see that it is lighter because it has more space, so reduce this one. Now you can see that it has become more darker. You can also increase the pigment, you can change the color, you can add more darker color and when you come near the lighter zone, you can make it more lighter, diluted and you can add more layers on top. Once it is dry, you can add furthermore in all layers on top. This one in one direction, it's called as hatching. Now, if you want to give it in different directions, so let me just take a smaller size brush for this so I'll use this liner brush. This is your hatching. Now if you're using it in different direction. You can use different colors also, this will be like cross hatching more than the cross hatching we'll be using hatching a lot but there is another variant of hatching that we are going to use predominantly for the mean, which is contour hatching. If you are having a mean like this, so mostly like this curvy shape mean so we're going to use the contour hatching. Contour hatching is again using the lines, but we are going to define the line according to the shape of the object. Now, the object that we have here is our line. According to the shape of the lines phase, when the lines flow with the shape of the object, now this is called as the contour. Here again, you can depict all the darker and the lighter ones, so say for example, so you can get a textured one like this or if you have more water, you can get a smoother wound like this. Reduce the gap and assume that this is continued like this. I can apply more layers here, or I can also mix it with a darker layer so I'm mixing it with paints gray here. Now automatically you can see that there is shimmer between this and that the darker area. Can you see that? Now you can see that they're taking the shape of a three dimensional one, because we're able to define the dark and the light. We can also do this with lifting so that is also possible. But you can also alter the space between the lines. We're going to use this technique a lot and one more other technique that we are going to use over here is lifting. I'm going to use the scrubber brush here, water's brush, so I'm just showing my water. I'm just like dipping the brush and taking off the excess. What you have to do is just lightly dampen it there and you can use a kitchen towel. You have to do it little gently this is a very stiff brush. Lifting you're going to do on dry one. This is your lifting, so we'll be using a lot of lifting. Here also you can see that so if I want to lift this one, so I'm just going you have to work little patiently. You can see that the thing has been lifted. Lifting sometimes damages the paper also so you have to be little careful. Once you have done this lifting, you can also use some pebble like stone after you're done to just go over the surface so that your paper fibers are intact. Now, we can also do the lifting more effectively with wet surface. Will be using this blending for the florals. A lot of blending we're going to use this type of blending and softening will be using. The damp area so fast we can use this one to lift it. This is lifting, so we'll be using a lot of lifting. Now the last thing that I wanted to discuss here is about the water and pigment ratio, so whatever initial wash that we use over here, so we can have it like really diluted. Here the water is more and the pigment is really less, so the pigment will be very less here. Now as and when we proceed, we can take more pigment, so now you can see that the, it doesn't just like dissolve in water. This one, the pigment is more, water is less, so this especially it will be really useful if you're working on these type of means or high details or any other details, pigment, which is high and the water will be very less. This one is your water pigment ratio that you have to keep in mind. Now that you have seen all of these techniques, try to practice and explore more various combinations and get comfortable with using watercolors. Let's get started with the first wash next. 7. First Wash: Yes. Wow, we have come to this face at last. We have been waiting to get started with the animal portrait. Now you can finally do that. Grid that we have started. That's the most important step, initiating and starting a creative project. Let's see what we will do in this first wash. Let's get started with the first layer of watercolor wash. In this one, we're just going to fill our sketch that we have already composed with the initial wash of water. Before we get started with this, I would advise you to just likely to take off those pencil marks so that it won't be much visible. You can use a kneaded eraser like this one, or you can use any other things so just to minimize those pencil strokes. Here as you can see, I have marked all the areas where darker tones for the shadows would be there with these hatching strokes. But still, it's up to you. I normally reduce the intensity of these pencil marks so that if you are applying some lighter colors, the pencil marks won't be visible much through that. You can gently erase it. You don't have to completely take it off. I still want to know those important markings and also where those dark and light areas are there. That's how I feel like use this hatching so don't completely erase it off. I have my water here, I just use this one. You can use two glass bottles. I just use this one with some grooves, which helps me in cleaning. We'll start with this basic water wash, which is the clean wash for a very lighter tone. I want you to just apply the water here. Here we are just applying this water. Now, if you see this face of the lion and the main. They all have this neutral earthy tone, brown ocher. We're going to get those tones. I wouldn't be getting inside the flavor right now. You can apply this water until here. Through these gaps, I want that yellow color to be seen. Maybe we can apply this. You have to just give it a few seconds or minutes for it to absorb completely and then apply the first layer of pigment. We'll get started with the pigment mix. For this, I'm going to use the raw sienna here. You can see that I'm mixing. The water pigment ratio is pretty important for any watercolor painting. What's most important is the water and the color ratio. For the initial wash, I want you to apply a lot of water and very little amount of pigment there. I'm going to mix a little bit of Gamboge yellow here. It's very watery. We have several types of consistency, like honey consistency or milk or tea consistency. This I would say like a tea decoction, those type of consistency. It's pretty loose and light because I want to get that nice mix. I want to capture that light definitely. I'm adding a little bit of Naples yellow here. This has to be very light. The water has been absorbed in. We have given some few seconds now. Just lightly, very mildly, apply that first layer. Here, this area is completely dark. That's the shadow. I'm going to first cover it for the full main. The main near the face, it's pretty much lighter because the sunlight is coming from this side. Let me just get through this one. You can see the consistency here as I'm mixing. That's another reason why I'm showing the pallet. I wanted to show the palette how I mix here. It's okay, for what is going so maybe you can award those flowers, but the branches and other things are okay. Now next is after I have applied this one, I want to apply the same thing for the face. The face has a little bit of a lowish. Oh my God, [LAUGHTER] that became the Gamboge, became soilish. Let me just drag it here. Be very careful about certain pigments. They're very deeply pigmented there. Even a little bit of quantity, it becomes very saturated. That's what, so be very careful. Especially I would say this carbon is all violet, so it's so deeply pigmented. Just a little bit of a [inaudible], so it becomes so deep violet. Now coming back here, there are certain sections which is quite white. I want to maintain that white. You can use the white acrylic one, but still, it's best to leave that paper white. Please do it quickly. I can see that the paper is getting dry and try to wiggle it, swirl it [LAUGHTER] while you do so it doesn't settle with some cauliflower effect. Here it is quite light and this has to be white. This is also white, but still, you can see the hard edges, so I want to soften it a little bit. Here also. You can just clean your brush. I'm just going to soften it a little bit. I don't want to have some hard edges there. That should be fine. Here also, I'm just dragging it so I don't want the white to be striking. I'm making it neutral there. Next one before I go to the other thing is, so until it is wet, you can still apply different other tone. I have the darker tones here. What I'm going to do is, onto the same mix, I'm going to have a slightly deeper mix to depict the shadows. This is Paynes Grey and this is burnt sienna. These both. Wherever I have applied this hatching, those are the darker segment. It's okay if it is spreading. You have to be little careful so I don't want it to be so watery. Then you have the shadow beneath this jaw. It has a very strong, powerful jaw. Beneath that, it has some shadow. Now where the hair is. [MUSIC] This is fine for now. It has settle down quite on a nice soft note. At this point, if you've missed anything, if you want to lift it out, you can lift it. Definitely, you can do that. Maybe I'm just thinking I want to have some white here. I'm using a flat brush here. Wherever you want to preserve that white, we can of course, add some gouache. I'm softening this place also a little bit so that it nicely gently blends with the white there. Here also maybe a little cleanup. This is the white patch right beneath the eye. It has a white patch. The same thing goes for tiger also. It has a white patch there. Right beneath the eye, they have some marking. The same thing. They have a darker, something like a teardrop type of hair pattern there. So far, it looks good for me. I guess we are done with this stage. Let's move on to the mid-layers next. 8. Mid Layers: We are at the mid layer right now, we just finished our first wash, which looks quite 2D and flat but we want to make it like a three-dimensional one and how are we going to do that at this stage, is by adding contrast, by adding dark and light layers. For a portrait of the lion on top of the skin would have to add some darker layers. We're going to use a similar mixture that we have already used but more pigment and less water this time, maybe like a milky consistency. For the face you have some darker layers I've indicated with the help of the hatching here, so I'm using this raw umber a little burnt sienna here. I'll also want to add some shadow here so we'll use this violet. I'll show you the violet how it is. These are really good for the shadows. I'm going to slightly wet the face here. The pigment as you can notice it's spreading pretty fast. It means that there's more water on the sheet. We can wait it out a little bit. Something that you have to keep in mind is that you should not overbrush or add a lot of pigments on top of the other. Layers are fine but still if you keep trying to apply these neutral layers over and over again and keep brushing it one is you tend to get a muddy mix so always keep it light and fresh. I'm adding this brownish layer here but it also has some yellow on the tones so I guess I have to use that. Now you can see that it has dried so I'll have to wet the surface again or will have to work quickly. I'm going to apply this layer again quite gently. Next we'll add some yellow tones. This is the Quin gold, and this is gamboge, I'm going to dilute it a little bit and use it for this space [MUSIC] I'm going to soften this. I have removed the pigment in my brush so you can see it and also remove the excess water here. Without overbrushing gently soften this layer [MUSIC] Now we're going to add some hair or the fur which is on the face so of course it has a beautiful mane. For the face if you look at, so let me just show this to you. You can see it has a very fine hatching maybe I'll show some other picture closer. You can see the direction of the fur and you can see that it looks like a very short stroke of hatching. It's like some series of hatching which changes the direction. You can see that it changes the direction here and then it goes off here. We are going to indicate this fur, so of course we're not going to draw everything or paint fur by fur, that's hyper-realistic so that's not my style. I try to combine this realism with very less or minimal effort and you have seen in my previous Skillshare course itself how you can achieve the realistic effect. The secret to that is to identify and apply the contrast and light tonal values. Also especially this fur and feather, we have to watch out for the direction, so where this fur or the feather of a bird it changes. Those places we can give indicative hatching. That's what we're going to do right now. We can see that it has such a thick noted messy mane I guess it differs from line to line. This has quite a clean face. Again everywhere that you can see these darker tones here and all this fur is going away in this different directions. Let's finish off this face now. I'm going to use multitude of images so not one particular image as such but this is the main reference but I'm going to combine lot of other reference pictures as well. I'm using a small size brush here, and so this should be fine. I've mixed a little bit of burnt sienna and a touch of Payne's gray. You can add this dash off purple also or these carbazole violet so this gives a nice darker tone. Again, you can see this consistency it's like a milk consistency here. As I was telling you I'm not going to fill the entire thing with these hatching or hair or fur. It's indicator so then we'll do a little glaze on top. Now the tip is if you want to find these type of fur or feather defined I want this brush to be pointed, so just roll it over on your palette so that you have a nice point, so this is fine. Let's quickly do this hatching. Wherever I have marked these darker areas, so that's a place where I'm going to do this one [MUSIC] This is nothing but some series of contour hatching which is hatching according to the edge of the shape. [MUSIC] What I'm trying to do is mark the individual darker areas to get that contrast and eventually I will be mixing all of these together with the wash which is called as glazing. We have already discussed about the glazing. At some point please remember that your piece or your artwork whichever that you're doing especially the portraits, human portraits, the animal or bird, it will go through a phase which is called as this ugly face. I'm sure most of you are familiar with that and something that even the professionals would dread because it's a very natural thing during the painting process so l've also discussed this in my social media channels how to get over this frustration of this ugly face. We are currently somewhere around that so it's not done yet but it's also not going according to your expectations maybe. It's very natural with the human portrait and the animal portrait especially when you have the contrast not defined, the eyes is not defined especially. How do you get over this? One thing is that you try to finish this in one sitting so that you don't have to come back and look at this again so that's one. Another one is add those contrast or maybe do something that's pleasant. Maybe I want to do the eyes so that it's comfortable for me to work with. Do something that gives life to this portraits. [MUSIC] I'm adding little darker tones here above the eye. Now what I want to do is, so I've added all of these separately I just want to bring all of these together with a little glaze. All of these are looking separate. Don't disturb the layer underneath. [MUSIC] Now I'm taking off the water, removing the water then I'm going to soften it. Remove the excess water, now I'm going to soften this here. I want to preserve this white here, so if you're missing out anything maybe later you can always add the gouache or any other opaque white. I'm blending all the colors. [MUSIC] I can see this layer which looks separate, so this should blend in with the rest of the tip of the nose. I'm just using the same mixture which is the burnt sienna Payne's gray. I'm going to take some extra quantity of paint so you can have a dry paint. Dry in the sense I don't want that to be too much loaded with water. For all the details always please remember the water and pigment ratio is very less water, a lot of pigment. As I told earlier just watch out for the direction changes and you can do all of these hatching accordingly. Again it depends upon you how much you want to hatch. Do you want to just do it only for some important areas and leave the rest just for the blending? That again works well. This is the area near the eye which has a distinctive dark shadow. Please mind that these colors which appears pretty dark now when it's wet, this gets lighter. One shade or two shade lighter when it completely dries. That's the inherent nature of watercolor. This portion where I've given slight violetish brown, this is the shadow of this upper jaw. The sunlight is hitting here and so that's the reason so you are getting this shadow behind. We'll have to slightly blend it and this slight shadow near this cheek also so I'm just giving these slides hatching marks there. Once we're done with this, we'll move over to the hair main or the actual fur. The fur that you see here on the face is very short not much but the fur that you see on the hair, it's typically like a human hair I would say, so long but of course it has a very rough and tough hair so we have to depict that one here. 9. Adding the Mane: [MUSIC] Let's move on to the fur now. I'm switching to bigger size brush. I'm using size 8 here. For this, first we're going to define the darker areas where you have shadow, so beneath this here. Here I'm applying the wet brush or the wet pigment on a dry surface, so this is wet on dry. What I'm going to do is once I've marked all the darker areas, I'm just mixing burnt sienna and the Payne's gray here. [MUSIC] I'm going to continuously do these patterns and identify the darker areas. [MUSIC] Let's do the blending. Now for the blending, we'll use the same hatching motion. I'm going to get that similar yellowish peach color for what we have done for the hair and also this and the darker shade. I'm using Naples yellow, tiny bit amount of gamboge. I want the hair to be light, those lighter areas. That's a lot of yellow, let me just dilute it a little bit. That's what Isaac told earlier, some colors are more deeply pigmented than the others, so you have to watch out. I'm defining these mid-tones segment here, something which is not so dark and some that's not so very light also. These mid-tones segments are here. Don't completely cover everything, so we need these highlights. [MUSIC] I'm continuing with the hatching pattern here, and at some point if you want to lift out something. Of course, this blending has to be done, so we'll do the blending soon. It's just typical contour hatching and ensure you leave those highlights because if you cover up everything in the same tone it'll look flat. [MUSIC] I'm defining the head here. We added a little bit of darker shade. [MUSIC] I'm taking a darker shade of black here to define these areas, so it's going to be pretty much dark. I would really advise you all to keep changing the surface and the direction. If it's a sketchbook or if it's a slightly bigger paper block, so keep changing the direction. I use to change the direction continuously because especially for hatching or the dot work, the stapling, it's always best to work in a comfortable angle. This is definitely not comfortable for me but this is, I guess, the perfect angle for the video. This might not be my optimal angle, but I really encourage all of you to keep changing the direction. Now at this stage, I'm not really looking at the reference picture, so I have a rough idea about where these dark shadow or the dark strands of hair is. I'm just continuing with that. Wherever these dark shapes are abruptly appearing, so I'm trying to use this blending, same hatching tone to define the hair as well as the blending or softening. You can really get super realistic, so checking each and every hair or the fur, but somehow I don't work like that because photo realism is fine for some section of artist who love doing that, but my perspective is if the photographers can click and capture those shade and light and if you're just copying cell by cell, what's the difference between an artist and a photographer? I don't really like to copy exactly. This is my interpretation, my style. I would say pick your style so you don't have to get into this hyper-realistic or photo-realistic effect if that's not your cup of tea. But if you really like those and love spending endless hours, photo-realism or hyper-realism takes months to finish a small piece. I feel practically that's a high price to pay for. Being a corporate person and a hands-on mom for two grown-up kids, I don't have the time. I strike a balance between that realism, not exactly like hyper photo-realism, some loose style and I want people to look at it as a painting not like a photo and understand my view. Here I'm going to take a little bit of Naples yellow. This Naples yellow is of course a watercolor but it's not so transparent. I'm trying to highlight those lighter segments here. [MUSIC] Where you feel that some of the hair sections it's not blended well, you can always lift it off. Here I'm using a flat brush, so you can also use this technique where if you feel that the dark and the lighter segment it's not jelling or mixing well, so you can just wet the brush and take the excess. Now you have very nice highlights you can see for this portion. If you're not able to soften it properly, you can always lift it. [MUSIC] You can see that lifting. Very nice. This is also what is a scrubber brush, so this is from Princeton, so it's called as a blender brush or scrubber. You can use this or any flat brush should do. You get beautiful highlights like this. You can also add the gouache or the acrylic white. While you're doing all of this lifting, ensure that you don't damage the surface. I've added this Naples yellow. [MUSIC] I'll try to finish up with the ear. [MUSIC] I think this is quite enough. 10. Mane Details: Now we are at this four-stage, exactly the main stage. Certain lifting here and there. I've used some lifting, so you can see some lifting that I've done here. It's the same technique that I've explained earlier. Here I have altered this a little bit because I just noticed that this mane exactly starts a little bit on higher portion from here. You can actually see that altered in the pencil sketch also. I will again go through some of the lifting that I'll show here. You can do so with a flat brush. Or there is also another type of blender or a scrubber brush, something like this that you can see and you get it in various sizes. So these are very helpful if you don't want really damage the surface. But you want to do this lifting. These brushes are synthetic and it's pretty stiff so that you can see. But it's not going to really damage the surface like all other brushes. Dampen the brush. We can see this. Lifting especially works when it's dark area. You can really see the effect. I hope you can see it. Then wipe off the excess or the paint that your brush is lifting on this one. Always your brush has to be clean. That's the whole idea. If you keep scrubbing and not cleaning your brush, then the purpose is lost. You will be lifting and you won't be getting the proper desired output. Keep doing it. [MUSIC] Try to keep the brush as vertical as possible. I'm actually dipping on clean water. Try to change the water also when possible. Now you can see how thin and nice lifting that you can do. It's not completely white. You get that underlying lighter tone of the hair. [MUSIC] Before we move on to the face with the other finer details, the answer, we have these three things to finish, and also here. What I'll do is I'm just going to use this Ph Martin's. This is one of my favorite opaque white. It's a bleed proof white. I have mentioned this in the supplies list also. What we can do is we can mix this white with the little bit of whatever main color that we have already used. We can mix this one. It need not be exactly that white. We can mix this color. You can dilute it also. This one, I'm going to make it like a milk consistency. Little bit of that gold. What you can do here is you can take the thinnest brush. You can use this thin brush to just depict that strands of air that's coming through like this. You have that nice highlighted hair. [MUSIC] I'm really not looking at the reference picture now. Now, this is all my own. Of course each animal will be different. Their hair will be different, so it doesn't really matter. As I told earlier, hair by hair or cell by cell, don't do that. This portion when I felt that it is like an overload of that white, you can also just dilute it with a brown color. It'll be fine. If you feel that it's all extending out, you can again give the deglaze as I told gently on the top so that everything gets unified together. Continue to add these fur. I guess with this our mid layer is done. Let's move on to the final details. 11. Final Details - Eyes and Snout: [MUSIC] Here we are at the final stage of adding the details to the portrait and making it come alive. What are we going to do here? Is to increase the pigment to water ratio where the pigment will be more and water would be less. We're going to have the concentrated pigment which will help us to refine the details in a much better way. Let's do all with this ear first. For that I want to denote a little bit more dark, so rendering here so that it can see these far too. We're just defining this section. [MUSIC] I'm trying to create those grooves, that's here. [MUSIC] As if now this is fine, it looks good. Now let's come to the face so we are done with this. Now for this face, I want to lift out a little here near the upper jaw. This will be the space where you will have the jaw. This is the jaw, so I'm just indicating it. This is the jaw. The opening of the jaw so it is black in color and the space surrounding that so that is completely light up. I'm just gently lifting it, so I'm using this scrubber brush again. [MUSIC] Now we have defined, so this jaw. This area is little darker, so I'm softening the edge here. This tip of the nose is somewhat pinkish. For the tiger the pink is more visible, but for the lion it is not. It has a more of a dark grayish, pinkish, black sort, but in some young lion you can see it as pink. I'm just adding pink. [MUSIC] Let me just define the shape. Now as I'm just filling just this nose you can see here is your line. Slowly, it's becoming a line. [MUSIC] I've just done it with pink, but in general most of this line match big lines. It has a lot of texture, some broken texture here and there. I'm just going to mix this little purple or the violet here. [MUSIC] I'm just trying to create some texture there. Again, I'm lifting some of the color here. Now the next thing that I want to do is I want to smudge it out. There are some hair follicles and other textures starting from here. I'm going to smudge it a little bit, so lower the intensity of that black. [MUSIC] Since it has the background but this one I have to draw the other side. It's like a three foot view, not exactly like that side profile. I'm very lightly drawing this one. [MUSIC] Something like stippling the side to create the texture about that nostril. I'm merging this hatching, which is there on the face with this. [MUSIC] I'll do a little bit of that gray here then later we can do that white also. Now for this [inaudible] I'm just going to the brownish black order. [MUSIC] I'm doing these different texture and the shadows that is present here. We can also do it below this jaw line, so it's vertical as well as the slanting hairs. Some hair I'll define it in that black or the gray color. [MUSIC] I'm continuing with that hatching, so I'm using the darker shades, whatever shades that is there on my palette whichever that we have already used. [MUSIC] We're done with this. I'm going to add a slightly darker black to that nose, the nostril again,. I'm just going to define it a little bit more darker so this portion. [MUSIC] The last one that we have is the eye. The eye, I'm just going to redefine this line. This particular line that comes from this eye also will be slightly different here. The eyeball. It has a very small pupil, the eyeball or the iris. Where the iris is, so it has a mix of some gold color. Let's dilute the Quin gold and then try to add it. We are finally in the final touch with the eye, so I'm so excited actually to finish up and be done with the line. Here we go. Let's first add this one. I have to give that the white highlight, so you can just lift it off. I'm going to add a little bit of burnt sienna and I'm going to slightly blend it. Ensure that you have this shape not just look around. It has a triangle shape here. If you have any doubt you can always use the sketch, outline that I've given it in the reference. This is the shape of the eye. We can show some value difference here. I'm going to blend it out a little bit. [MUSIC] The pupil is the central part. This is typically a hole through which the light enters so that we can see. I'm going to add a little bit more highlight. We can slowly darken this layer. Basically what I'm going to do is I want to have this eye to have a very soft look. Maybe the line looks like it's more relaxed. Maybe it's with the family taking care of the kids are just playing with his kids and partner. I want you to convey that emotion so that this painting should not look like a mere drawing or sketch, but has to tell stories through these brush strokes and colors. I'm just going to define this layer a little bit. Slowly it is coming to life. It has this eyelids here actually. I'm just going to darken this a little bit while it is wet. I want to get it like a rounded shape here. Actually in this picture, reference picture is completely black. I'm trying to create some variation so that it doesn't look very flat. Now here it becomes like brownish black. I add some structure, some fur hair. It has an angle to that lion eye, so it's not just rounded. I'm going to dilute this brush a little bit dip and let [inaudible] now and will continue to from here. Take off the excess water. Pure gently pull it down so that it blends. I don't want this to look like brown and black hair. Just pull that black down. Then from here. Then gently it gets blended here. I'm just going to use that hatching to show that variation. [MUSIC] A little bit of dots and dashes here and there. I can see a little bit of shadow or something here. I've just given it there. I'm going to add deeper black, to this space. This has to be very dark. [MUSIC] While you're doing the eye, give your utmost attention, 100 percent attention, so that you can correct mistakes in watercolor, not a big deal, but something to do with the eye. You can't really salvage it if some color is completely different or something. Give you 100 percent when you're doing the eye. I have some white here, so lightly I'll just blend it with this one. I don't want to completely cover that. Very likely. I guess our lion has become really alive lion. Let me just zoom out a bit. With just the addition of the eye, now, you can see that how these small, small details are so important, the final details. Look at your results, just these small details that make the painting come alive. We have to add this viscous, just the last one. We are completely done with everything, so only this viscous up ending. What I'm going to do is, use the same thing. Add your white. Some of this white is pure white. You can take your smallest brush that you have. You can also use some Jelly Roll pens or something that you have. [MUSIC] This is done. Now for the viscous. This line does not have a lot of scar. Keep it just perpendicular, the brush. From the hair follicle take it down. [MUSIC] Finally in this last final layer of the lion, we saw how we brought this nose and the nostrils. That radius textures over here. Also you can see that the mouth, we got those, again, darker tone for the art and for the eye especially. I want to take care of these angles, the eyes and also this line. Get this line. Each and every line will have this one. It might be different. I'm quite happy with the eye. The eye has made the painting really three-dimensional and it has really come out alive. You will see that the lines expression is so soft and gentle and relaxing and calm. We can now relax a little bit and finish up with this floral-s. We'll have our completed painting in a bit. 12. Adding Florals: Wonderful, we made it to the florals. This means that we're finally done with the main subject successfully. Let's see which floral are we going to choose and how is it going to complement the majestic Lion King. So for this last session, very last module. We have to choose the color palette for the florals. We have already seen how we had composed these florals. I had already shown in this procreate. We're almost getting close to this. This is actually this picture. This was this picture. What I have done is I've flipped and to it so that we have arranged this floral like this. I have also added my own elements, so it is not exactly like how it is given there. Please feel free to experiment and explore your imagination. For this particular florals, so what we had finalized is, this one, this bright red ones. Now these are actually called as the Japanese Queens. What we will first do is let's start with the branches and then proceed with the leaves, and then do with the flowers. But one thing to notice in my last session, while we were doing the Himalayan monal, we had done the sunflowers in a loose way. We'll add a little extra touch so we can add the light and shadow. We can add some stamens and little details inside so that it's not exactly like a botanical detailed illustration, but somewhere in the middle. Let's get started. First thing, we'll get started with this stem, as I told. I'll keep referring to different images or I'll just give my own imagination also. If you can see the stem is dark at the bottom and top it has those light getting reflected, so we'll follow the same. First layer you can give it, but we're not going to do a very detailed illustration of the stem here. This is again in quiet matching with the lion's mane, is not too watery, but somewhere in between. First you give, I guess there is some stem coming in from here. [MUSIC] What you can do now is, so this is we're almost done. We can lift the top one to reflect that light layer. Otherwise, we can make the bottom little bit more darker. You keep varying according to your space. Just go with the flow. It will be nice if this color can blend. The color is looking, because it's almost dried now. What we will slightly do is make it a little wet because I want the color to blend naturally. You can also blend it. You can go ahead and blend. But it'll look more natural if the blending is happening by itself. I'm just going to wet this one. Now see it spreads nicely. We can create those texture and all if you want. All the bottom portion, which is away from the sunlight and making it dark. I'm dropping, so let me again wet the surface. [MUSIC] I'm just going to quickly use my loyal scrubber brush so you don't have to scrub bit totally. I'm just going to little bit of a highlight on top here and there. It becomes more three-dimensional. You don't have to do for all. I'm fine with the branches. Now next, let's get on with the leaves. This is closest to the sap green. This is undersea green. This is also a beautiful green that I have. We'll mix this, this is the lemon yellow. I'm going to mix this lemon yellow and this. You can see this one now. This is again, like a milk consistency. Here there is no any particular order. I'm just going to go ahead and quickly fill it up. [MUSIC] A little bit of brown. I'm going to take the same brown that I had for the branch. I'm going to slightly add it to create that shadow with this one. I'm continuing with the leaves here. Since we have already given that peach for the background, so obviously it will have that vintage look, I would say. You won't get that bright as green because already that peach color is there. But I love that. I'm just going to continue like that. Now I'm going to add a little brown here. You can add this brown, or you can add a little bit more darker green also. Not in any particular order. I'm just adding this brown randomly. Let's add these stems of the leaves. I'm going to take more or less a greenish brown, more green, and less brown. [MUSIC] We're done with this. Now next what we will do is we'll switch over to our flower. 13. Floral Details: [MUSIC] For the flavors, we are going to go for a nice, beautiful red so you can make so little beach or orange, crimson, or pink shades. This is crimson. I'm going to pour some deep red. I think this is deep red. This is the red I want. Any bright red that you have, you can go. Here you can see these are the colors. You can have any mix of these colors, even this Naples yellow with the beach so your line is predominantly these colors. You can see that. This one will look really nice. Even this opposite, which is your blues will be really good. Either you can go for this blues or purples, and use pinks and orange. That's your choice. Play with that. It has a lot of stamens in the middle. Then it has some deeper shadow here, then it becomes quiet light outside. As I told earlier, this is not a botanical illustration. I'm just going to go in the freestyle way only. I will be adding a little bit of details later. I'm going to leave the middle one light. I have to give that darker shadow there, but I have to leave that space for the stamen because it's yellow. What happens with that yellow is that it becomes very dull if you have any background color. I need to preserve that white. Or you have to use your bleed proof white or any opaque white. [MUSIC] More pigment. I'm removing the excess. I'm trying to blend it. Again, remove the excess and blend it. [MUSIC] I'm trying to get those details for the middle. Now we'll go to the next one here. For this one, I'm just going to fill it. [MUSIC] I have to add the shadow on the burnt sienna and a little black. Only at the bottom I'm going to drop. [MUSIC] I'm going to add a little darker shadow to the bottom as usual. I'm going to make it slightly lighter onto the top. It has to be wet. If it is not wet, you can use that lifting technique that I taught earlier. We are done with this, so it looks pretty good. The last one, we're going to use this yellow, so it should be pure yellow. I'm mixing this light and dark yellow. [MUSIC] [inaudible] this white. Now you can see it appears a little bright. The stamen is dots and dash. I'm also going to add a little bit of dark red here in the middle. [MUSIC] For this flower, I'm going to add a little bit of the darker shadow here. [MUSIC] I'm very gently giving some outline here for this one. I don't have to give it fully, very gently. You can give maybe on one side. I feel this color has a vintage look on the line color as well as these floral colors. You can just maintain that too. [MUSIC] I guess we are done. I like how this red hue of the florals is really elevating the main subject. I mean subjective, the majestic, Panthera leo or lion. I know this is little bit darker than the very neutral tone of the lion, but still this complements the lion really well. It gives the focus back to the lion. That's what I feel. Florals are adding the charm, making it more calming and relaxing. This exercise is to relax and let down your guard, especially this floral exercise, I'm saying, overcome the inhibition of painting. This can make us loosen up and enjoy the flow of watercolor. Just let go and flow with the process. One last time. Let's see this fully. So I'm just going to zoom out a little bit. Now the last thing that is pending for us is to remove the tape. I love this composition; don't you? 14. Final Thoughts: [MUSIC] All right, we made it. Let's pat ourselves on the back. You just created the king of the jungle with some gorgeous dreamy florals. We learned how to do the realistic illustration and techniques, how to create it in considerably less time and effort. We learn how to compose these sketch, work with color palettes and use several washes and layers to get a satisfying output. I showed you my process, approach and methodology of doing more smart work rather than the hard work to create compelling illustrations. Excited to see what you come up with so please make sure you share the results of the scores in the projects. I'll be extremely happy if you could submit your beautiful projects in the project section. That means a lot to me and I'll be so glad to give my personalized feedback and suggestions to each one of you who submit to make your art work much better. I hope you enjoyed this class. If you did, please make sure to leave a constructive review. This is my second Skillshare class, and I created this class with a support I got from all of your overwhelming response for my first bad portrait course. If you haven't taken that, do check out that course. I'm sure you will find it interesting and engaging. I had so much fun creating this class, and I hope to see you in some of my other classes soon. Happy creating folks until I see you again. This is a real project signing off.