Soft Edges in Watercolor: Paint a Watercolor Okapi

1. Introduction: While the unpredictable nature of watercolors is one of the best things about it, sometimes we artists want a little more control over our paints. Still too many hard edges can be harsh. Is there a happy medium? Yes, softening edges is the answer. Hi, I'm Lindsay Newton, a watercolor artist specializing in animal art. In this class, you'll learn how to create soft edges while painting wet on dry. I'll cover a couple of other techniques and we'll combine them all to paint a lovely copy. As I began my watercolor journey, I struggled for years to learn how to paint with watercolors. I know it can be a challenging medium to learn. That's why my goal as the watercolor teacher is to provide clear instruction, opportunities for practice and a project that is fun and enjoyable. Knowing how to soften edges when painting wet on dry is a vital skill in watercolor painting. Soft edges can be made using wet on wet techniques. But there is little ability for the artist to control the shape and location of the edge. Softening an edge painted wet on dry allows artists to control where they place the edge while not limiting themselves to hard edges. This class is best suited for intermediate students. However, I encourage advanced beginners to be adventuresome and give this class a shot. Before taking this class, you should have some degree of comfort with water control and an understanding of how your brushes interact with water. We will also be using wet on wet in some areas of this painting. You may prefer to review my class on wet on wet painting before tackling this class. To get started, we'll review the supplies needed to complete this class. We'll learn how to soften edges and I'll provide suggestions for exercises to develop your softening skills. We'll cover two other techniques, lifting paint and dry brushing. Finally, you'll put together everything you've learned in your class project in which you'll paint a watercolor copy. I'll provide a detailed tutorial to help you every step of the way. If you're ready to add soft edges to your watercolor repertoire, then let's get started. 2. Class Project: At the end of this class, you'll apply everything you've learned by painting and a copy in water colors. This relative of the giraffe has multiple colors on its face, allowing ample opportunity to practice making soft edges. Before beginning this project, you'll want to learn about and practice the three new techniques we will use in this class. Soft edges, lifting and dry brush. For each technique, I will explain what it is, how to use it, and give some suggestions for practicing the technique. I encourage you to practice the technique on practice paper before attempting it on your class project. That way you can make your mistakes in practice and not on your painting. Once you finish your technique exercises, you can move on to the tutorial section of the class. This tutorial is split into bite sized segments, so you can tackle this painting in easy steps. Feel free to follow the tutorial exactly or take what you like from it and modify it to suit your art style. When you're finished, remember to upload your artwork to the project gallery so we can all enjoy your wonderful creation. It's time to get started. Meet me in the next lesson where we will discuss the supplies you will need for this class. I'll see you there. 3. Supplies: For this class, you'll need your basic watercolor supplies plus a few things specific to the copy project. Let's start by talking about paper. If you are using tube or pan paints, I strongly recommend using 100% cotton watercolor paper. Cotton paper is particularly important for creating soft edges in this project. However, if you use liquid paints, they might perform better on wood pulp paper. Keep that in mind. I also recommend you use cold press paper as it provides more texture for our dry brush technique. Finally, because we will be using wet on wet, I recommend at least a 140 pound or 300 GSM paper, as lighter papers will buckle badly. My favorite brands are Bao Hung Academy and you will want at least two pieces of paper, one for painting exercises and one for your project. You can choose whatever size you like. I personally like to take a piece of paper that is nine x 12 " or larger and cut it in half. Next up, let's discuss paints. You will need five paints for this project. I will be using burnt sienna by Daniel Smith, buff titanium by Daniel Smith, Sepia by Daniel Smith, Danthrine blue by Da Vinci, and Quinacrdone rose by Daniel Smith. We will also mix four colors from these paints. The first is a Earth. This will be a mixture of burnt sienna and quinacdonero, mostly burnt sienna, and just enough quinacdone rose to make it look a little bit roy. The next color we want is purple, gray. That will be three colors, burnt sienna, danthrine blue, and acron rose. You'll have a mostly equal mixture of burnt sienna and dentthrine blue, but you want it to be slightly cool. Then you'll add just a touch of the in acrodone rose to make that cool blue gray turn into a cool purple gray. You'll also want to mix up a lot of this paint because we're going to be using it to paint the background. Our third mix is a neutral gray color. For this, we will be mixing burnt sienna and dentthrine blue. You'll want to mix the burnt sienna and dentthrine blue pretty equally. And you'll want to try to get a neutral gray rather than leaning warm or cool. However, if you have a strong preference for warm or cool, go ahead and do as you like. It's your painting. The fourth and final color that will mix is a cool black. This will be made from Pa and danthrine blue. In this case, you'll mostly use CPA with just a little bit of dentthrine blue. Since the Pia is already pretty cool, it doesn't need much blue to get the color that we want. A final note on these mixes. The gray and the black are pretty similar colors. Feel free to use just one if you like. Keep in mind that if you stick with the gray, you'll have a harder time getting a deep black pupil in the eye. If you stick with the black, your gray areas will look a little more bluish than a neutral gray. But again, it's your painting. Your choice. Do whatever feels most comfortable for you. One thing to keep in mind is you do not have to use the exact same paints that I'm using. Let's talk about which paints are vital and what paints you can substitute. If you don't have some of these paints, for the burnt sienna, you will need an orange leaning earth red. However, burnt sienna is such a useful paint, I recommend adding it to your collection if you can. For buff titanium, there is no similar color. However, you can use an earth yellow, such as yellow ochre. Instead, Earth yellows are light colors that will go well with the other colors we are using. For the sepia, you can use any cool dark brown. For the dentthrine blue, you can use any warm blue, ultramarine blue, or thalo blue. Red shade are good options. If you want to add dentthrine blue to your collection, look for a paint with pigment PB 60 as different brands can have very different names for this paint. For the Quinacrodone Rose, you can use any cool red. Now that we've covered our paints, let's move on to brushes. Personally, I like to paint with a lot of brushes. I'm going to be using seven brushes in the tutorial. You don't need seven brushes though. I do recommend that you have at least three or four. The first three brushes that you'll want are going to be round brushes. You're going to want a large round brush that is a size ten or larger. Then you'll want a medium brush that is a size six or maybe a size four or eight. Then you'll want a small brush, think size two or a little bit smaller. Now the fourth brush that I would recommend is a stiffer brush for lifting paint. I am going to be using a cheap brush that was actually made for acrylic paint. It has synthetic bristles that aren't completely stiff, but they are stiffer than your typical watercolor brush. The seven brushes that I'm going to be using are going to be a Neptune three, four inch oval wash. This is a synthetic scroll brush. It holds a ton of water and it's super soft. I then have three silver brush, black velvet brushes, they're all rounds and they are size 12, eight and six. They're a mixture of synthetic squirrel and natural squirrel. They also hold a lot of water. They're pretty soft, but they also have a good point for precision painting, even in those larger sizes. My next two brushes are Princeton Heritage in two sizes, round two and round zero. This brush is synthetic sable. It has stiffer bristles, which is great for details. I also like to use it for lifting in certain circumstances. The last brush that I have is the acrylic brush for lifting paint. Now, this is a mostly random choice on my part. I don't even know the bristle material of this brush. I do know that it's a royal lang, nickel ten. It has nice stiff bristles to wipe away paint with our main supplies out of the way. Let's cover what else you might need. I am providing a list of all the watercolor supplies you will need, including the ones reviewed above. Outlines of the copy scaled for both six by nine inch paper and 7.5 by ten inch paper and a picture of my final painting. Next up, let's take a look at the main subject of this course that is soft edges. I'll see you in the next lesson. 4. Soft Edges: Let's start with the main technique in this class making soft edges. First of all, let's consider what soft edges are when you're painting in watercolor. Edges can be hard or soft. A hard edge has a precise line, a soft edge has a diffuse line. There are multiple ways to make a soft edge. The easiest is painting wet on wet. When you add paint to wet paper, it will naturally diffuse. As long as the water extends past where the paint diffuses to, you will end up with a soft edge. Unfortunately, when you do this, it will diffuse unpredictably and you won't get a very precise result. For this class, we'll use a method that will provide you more control over your soft edges. This is called softening off. In this case, you put down the paint wet on dry. Then once the paint is down, use a damp brush to lightly wet the area. This will allow for a little bit of diffusion into the newly wet area. When you do this, you will barely rub your brush up against the edge of the paint. You should see that the paint flows into the newly damp area rather than being pushed into it. Some things to keep in mind when you are softening off the wetter, the paint and the brush, the more it will flow. First, let's take a look at these examples where the paint is very wet. Adding a very wet brush to this very wet paint results in complete flow, and you don't actually get a soft edge at all. We don't get much better results if we use a slightly damp brush. If the paint is still very wet. Compare that to having damp paint with a wet brush, then damp paint with a damp brush. This damp damp combination is what you are looking for when you are trying to soften off your edges. When softening edges, it is best to soften a little early rather than a little late. If you soften too early, it will bleed farther than you want, but you can pick up that excess paint and water with a brush and still control your edge. On the other hand, if you're too late, it will either leave a partially hard edge as you can see here. You can see where it started to dry before I soften this edge. Or if you let it dry all the way, it won't soften off at all. Let's take a moment to try and exercise. What you'll do is take some scrap paper and paint, some strokes of paint. When the paint is damp, come back and soften off the edges. Repeat this until you are comfortable with softening off edges. Experiment with different levels of wetness of the paint and wetness of the brush. You can also experiment with different types of paint. You can see here that I'm pretty experienced getting a good soft edge on burnt sienna. But I could use a little more practice with Slo Green. Once you've done these exercises, come join me in the next lesson where we'll look at two more techniques that we'll use in our final project. I'll see you there. 5. Lifting and Dry Brush: Before we get started on our class project, let's look at two other techniques we will be using in this class. Lift and dry brush. For lifting paint, the technique is as follows. Lay down some paint on your paper and then let it dry completely. Once it's fully, you can wipe the area with a lightly damp brush. You can also dad this area with a cloth to lift more paint. When lifting paint, it's easier to do with stiffer brushes. You can see me lifting paint with my acrylic brush, with my synthetic sable. The sable is pretty stiff, but not quite as stiff as my acrylic brush. You can see here where I'm lifting with my squirrel brush. It's a lot harder to do and it's hard on this brush. This is not something that you want to do. If you have a soft brush like squirrel brushes, save it just for painting, not for lifting. If you're going to use the lifting technique, keep in mind that it works better with non staining paints. You can compare the result here with the burnt sienna, which is not staining, to thalo blue, which is a staining paint. Also keep in mind that if you're lifting a large area, you'll want to wipe and rinse your brush periodically. You can see here that some paint comes off of the brush when I wipe it on the cloth. If you don't get rid of this paint, you'll just end up pushing it around and you won't get very good results. The other technique we'll use is dry brushing. When dry brushing, the brush is dry enough that the paint does not come off easily. The paint skips on the page. This is easier to do when working with thicker, less wet paint. You can see here that I start off with too much paint. As the paint comes off my brush, I finally reach an area where I get some skips, but I also get plenty of paint still coming off the brush and representing the color that I want. As I get rid of too much paint, it skips too much and I don't get enough color on my paper to practice this. You'll want to practice with a small brush and you'll want to practice the swipes we'll make in the O copy ear here I am practicing getting different amounts of paint. I finally see here that this is the look that I want for my copy ear. For both of these techniques, I recommend you practice them on scrap paper before moving to the class project. That completes the techniques that you'll want to be familiar with for this class. As mentioned earlier, we will also be using wet on wet techniques. For some of the O copy, these techniques are covered in my class on wet on wet painting. If you feel you need some more practice with that technique, you can review that class and then come back here to try the O copy. With that, let's get started with our class project. Come join me in the next lesson where we will take a look at preparing the outline and painting the background. I'll see you there. 6. Outline and Background: Before we lay paint to paper, let's point out a couple of things about preparing the outline for this painting. As with most watercolor paintings, you're going to want to keep most of the lines light. One thing I want to point out especially is don't assume that you can go dark at the edge of the. And the reason for this is when you soften the edge, it makes it easier for a dark line to show through that softened area. Similarly, while you can put dark lines to separate the lighter brown from the darker brown on the muzzle, as well as where the jaw line is in the dark brown of the muzzle. You need to make sure that you don't take the dark line all the way to the end. Notice that I have a light pencil line where you see the pink in this image to keep the dark line from coming through. When I soften that edge, now you can have dark lines around the eye, in the nostril, for the mouth with the back of the brow behind the eye right there. It's going to be a hard line so it will stay hidden when you paint it. You can also do around the edge of the muzzle as well as the spa stripe at top as those are also going to be hard edges and it'll hide your pencil mark. I didn't do it just because I was trying to keep my pencil lines light, but you can do whatever makes you happy. Before we start painting, I just want to make a note about what you'll see in the tutorial as you watch it. I will make notes as to what technique we are using, as well as what paint or pink mix and what brush I am using. Again, you don't have to use the same paints or brushes as me, but I hope that knowing my choices will be helpful to you. Let's get started with the background. We're going to do this in two sections. The first one will be at the top. For the background, we will be painting wet on wet. We want the paint to do its own thing and create something unique. Lay down water in the corner and extend it over a large area because we will be adding a large amount of water to our paper. Use your largest brush. You want this area to be very wet almost, but not quite sopping wet. You don't want puddles though. At the end, we'll mop up some of those excess puddles do make sure that your water extends far beyond where you want your paint to go so that you don't accidentally get hard edges. You're going to want to pull the water right up to the edge of the copy because it's hard for me to see what I'm doing while I'm on camera. I'm going to pull it up to the edges off screen so that I can better see where my water is going. Once your water is on your paper, you're going to add the paint again. We're going to be painting wet on wet. The paint that we're going to use is the purple gray mix. You're either going to want to use your second largest brush or you can use your largest brush. But you're going to have to go back and forth between using it for paint and water. I recommend a second brush if you have one. You're going to want to add that paint very dark to the corner. Keep in mind, because you're using burnt sienna as part of this mix. It is granulating, It might settle out a little bit, but that's okay. I think that it adds some wonderful beauty and unpredictability to the background as you're putting down this paint. Don't aim for an even wash again, you want that randomness and creativity. The unevenness of the paint will help to create a more interesting look. Once your paint is, do you want to tilt the paper? Tilting helps the paint to flow and reach more areas of the painting. Now, with as wet as our area is, it will cause puddles. Be prepared to mop them up with your water brush. If you're painting this area with only one brush, you're going to want to rinse it out so that it's ready to mop up puddles and not add paint to those areas where you're mopping. I'll continue to make adjustments as needed. As you continue to work on your painting, keep an eye out for more excess paint and water that you need to mop up. Mop it up on both the paper and the tape. Water and paint on the tape can accidentally be bumped onto the paper and then cause blooms or other unwanted patterns. I've laid down my paint, so most of the paint is off my brush. I can now use it to help even up the paint around the outline of the copy. Once things are how you like it, you can let your painting dry now. Because we're putting down water over so much of this painting, we do want this area to be completely dry before we do our next section. If we paint too soon, we might have water accidentally flow into the areas where we've already laid down our paint, already gotten the patterns that we want. Then that water will disturb that paint and patterns, and it won't look as nice as what we already have. Once that paper is thoroughly dry, we're just going to repeat what we've already done. What the bottom corner thoroughly bringing the water up to the edge of the outline. I've turned my painting upside down. As a right handed painter, I find it easier to paint in the top right corner rather than the bottom left corner. You can do whatever works for you, add purple gray to the corner, getting it as dark as you can, avoid painting evenly to create a more interesting background. Once my paint is down, I tilt and mop up puddles as needed. And that's all for our background. Allow this area to dry completely, and then we'll get started on our first layers. I'll see you in the next lesson. 7. First Layers Part 1: Now that the background is prepared and dry, it's time to get started on the O copy. We will start by painting wet on dry using our lights paint, which is the buff titanium. And use your large brush paint up to the lines around the nose and the forehead. You want to apply this paint so that it's moderately thick. Neither light on the right side paint more or less along the angle of the outer ear edge. Now this is further than we're actually going to let the buff titanium show. But it will make it easier to paint the neck wet on wet without accidentally having the white paper show through. Because we're going to be painting up against the buff titanium, We need this area to dry completely before we move on to our next step. The next area that we will paint is the forehead and outside of the front ear. When the buff titanium is dry, paint this area wet on dry using burnt sienna and your medium brush. I'm avoiding the bottom of this area because I want the burnt sienna to become lighter as it approaches the buff titanium. So I'll paint this area after some of the paint is out of my brush. Here on the ear, I'm painting a thin strip of burnt sienna along the top. Now, I'm going to lift off most of this paint later, but I want it there now so that when I lift it, the area will be tinged with burnt sienna. Now that some of the paint is out of my brush, I can start painting the lower areas of the forehead and that'll keep it just a touch lighter than the top. I come back and I add a little more burnt sienna to darken the top of the forehead. I've been putting down the paint fairly dry. It's a good time to soften the edge before it dries too much. I'm turning the painting because it's easier for me to soften the painting going up to down rather than left to right. I wipe this area with my damp brush. I'm only softening the forehead area. I don't soften where the burnt sienna is on the ear. Next it's time to paint the muzzle of the O copy. We will paint this wet on dry and we'll use our Spa paint. I recommend using a round eight or larger. For this layer, we'll want to aim for a moderate tone, neither light nor dark. I'm leaving the right edge for last because I don't want it to dry before I can soften the edge. When I'm finished laying down my paint, I come back and I soften the edge with the three biggest layers of the head done. It's time to move on to some smaller areas. Come join me in the next lesson where we'll add our first layers to the inner ear and top of the forehead. I'll see you there. 8. First Layers Part 2: Let's get started by adding some color to the top of the inner ear. We will paint this section wet on dry. We will use our rosy earth mix for this upper part, use your medium brush. Bring this color about one, three to one, two of the way down in the inner ear. You want to keep the tone light to moderate. In this part of the painting, lighter is better than darker, but don't let it be pale. The reason why we want to keep this area pretty light is because we're going to be adding shadows to it later. We want that lighter area to contrast with the dark of the shadows. Keep in mind your paint will dry lighter than it looks while wet. Once you've added your rosy earth, it's time to continue painting wet on dry using your purple gray mix. Continue with your medium brush for this paint will start at the bottom. As we work our way up, we'll overlap with the rosy earth and we'll let those two paints mix wet on wet. Keep the tone light to moderate, but not pale. In this particular painting, my result for the inner ear, both top and bottom, is a little bit darker than ideal, but it's not too dark. Take a good look at what this looks like while wet. And aim to get yours just a little lighter than what I have. I got a bit carried away with the purple gray here. I'll dab the spot up, but do nothing else as we will paint over it later. When we paint the neck, let's move on to the side of the face. We're going to add some interest to this area by dabbing in pia, wet on, wet. First, check to make sure that the pia on the muzzle is dry. Next, add water over the side of the face using your large brush. Take the water up top to the edge of the burnt sienna and left to the edge of the sepia. Don't add water below the jaw line. At the bottom on the right, take the water just past the jaw line. As with the background, I will pick up the painting after most of the water is done, so I can better see where the water is and make adjustments as needed. My water is where I want it, so I will start painting wet on wet. I'll use my spa paint and I'll continue to use my large brush. My strategy is to add a little spa, then push it around if it still looks like it needs more sepia. I'll add a little bit more in another small batch. Be careful not to pull the Pa too close to the jaw line. You want it to form a soft edge naturally. We'll now paint the top of the forehead. On the copy, we will paint this area wet on dry. We'll use sepia in this area. I suggest starting with your medium brush. You'll want to keep the paint as dark as possible for this area, use just a little water, but don't use so little water that you end up dry brushing and getting those textures with bits of white. You want the brush to be wet enough to cover all of the paper. I've turned the painting because I find it easier to paint in this direction. You can do as you like. At the end, I turn the painting back and I finish smoothing out the edges with my small brush. And that finishes up our first layers. Come join me in the next lesson where we'll continue to work on our ear and our muzzle. I'll see you there. 9. Darken Layers: Let's start our next lesson by painting the shadows in the ear. We will paint wet on dry using our purple gray mix and a medium brush. Start at the bottom, as you paint, connect the shadows using a line of paint on the left. Start with a small loop at the bottom of the ear, going only about halfway across the ear. Next, add a thin loop in the middle with a bulb at the end of the loop. Add a big loop at the top, and then continue by pulling the shadow up to the top. When you've put down your paint, go ahead and soften the edges around those shadows. Moving from the ear to the muzzle. The muzzle of the copy is darker on the lower section, so we're going to deepen that color. Now, I've turned the painting to paint more easily. I'm painting wet on, dry using and a medium brush. When I'm finished painting, I turn the painting and soften the edges on both the side and the top. I think the tone is too light in this area, so I in a touch more, while it's still wet. Let's add some highlights to the forehead. We'll add a reflected area at the top and then where the bump is on the forehead. We'll lighten that area to represent a whirl of hair. Lift the paint from these areas using a stiff small brush. Either your lifting brush or a small round. Lift the paint from these highlights and use your cloth to pick up the excess paint. This is a lot of lifting. Don't forget to clean your brush as needed when lifting the high light of reflected light on the forehead. Keep it thin towards the left and thicken it up a little as you move to the right. When lifting the highlight at the hair whirl, be careful not to make a perfect circle because that will cause it to look unnatural. It's time to move on to the next lesson, where we'll paint our back, ear and neck. I'll see you there. 10. Back Ear and Neck: Let's start this lesson by painting our back ear. We'll paint this area wet on wet. So cover the entire area of white in the ear with water using your medium brush. After a quick check to make sure the water is where I want it, I begin painting wet on wet. I start with purple gray at the top and I keep this fairly light and paint just a thin strip. Next I paint with burnt sienna. I'm trying to keep this color darkest in the middle of the strip of burnt sienna. And I make sure that it overlaps the purple gray a little bit at the end. I add again keeping it in the center of this area where we want at the darkest. And I paint it from the far left corner across the middle to the other side while our ear dries, we'll move on to the neck. As with the back ear, we'll also blend the colors on the neck. Wet on wet. Add water using your large brush. Make sure your water overlaps the buff titanium significantly. You want more than an inch of water overlapping the buff titanium. That's also about 3 centimeters. If you have any excess water after you've placed it down, go ahead and mop up the excess. Before you start adding paint. We'll start painting wet on wet using burnt sienna. And continuing with our large brush, we'll paint the top two thirds of the neck. Keep the paint darkest in the middle of the neck. While you want it light along that top edge, you don't want it to be too pale. As I'm painting, you'll see me mopping up excess paint and water. If you have excess, be sure to mop it up as you see it with our burnt sienna down. We'll now add Pia using our large brush. Now we're going to paint the bottom two thirds of the neck. Aim to keep your colors darkest at the bottom edge of the neck. Blend the pa, wet on, wet with the burnt sienna. Now that I've added my sepia, I notice that the burnt CNA at the top looks a little too pale. So I add just a bit more paint to this area to get the tone right. It's time to further develop the ears of the Come. Join me in the next lesson, or we'll add more depth and texture to the ears. I'll see you there. 11. Ear Layers and Edges: Let's start in the outside of the front ear. We will paint wet on dry using sepia and our medium brush paint over most of the outer ear and a little in front of it. Avoid the strip of burnt sienna where we will lift a high light later. When your paint is dry enough, soften the area on the head. While your paint is still a little bit wet, lift a high light in the sepia. We're lifting now while it's wet, because we want a subtle high light, but because it's still wet, we might need to lift a few times. Lastly, touch up the softened edges on the head if they're not exactly to your liking. Now we'll lift that high light on the ear. Before you lift, make sure the area you've just painted with sepia is dry, otherwise it will bleed into the area where you are lifting. Lift a thin strip of high light along the edge of the ear using your stiff lifting brush. This is a lot of lifting, clean the brush as needed and blot the area with a cloth to pick up excess paint and water. O copies have dark, fuzzy edges on their ears. We'll add those now. Starting with the back ear, we will paint wet on dry using Pia and our medium brush as you're painting pupa a short distance into the center of the ear. Now it's time to make the edge look fuzzy. We will dry brush using sepia and our medium brush. Be careful not to make every brush mark the same length and same distance apart. Using dry brush helps to break up our strokes and leaves it looking less repetitive. You want to change the angle as well. We'll aim to have our strokes angle towards an imaginary point, about one third of the way down the ear. When your pain is down, come back and soften the edges. Now we'll move to the front year, and this time we'll start with the fuzzy edge. Again, dry brush using Pia and your medium brush. When you're finished painting, your fuzzy edge will darken the edge of the air. We will paint wet on dry using sepia and our medium brush, this dark edge will be a little bit thinner at the bottom and thicker along the side. Make sure that this thickness is not consistent so it'll have a more natural look. When you've painted this dark edge, come back and soften the edge on the inside of the ear. Now let's add an outline to the top of the ear edge. We'll put a thin strip along the back of the ear, and the tip will be a thicker, dark brown. We will paint using and our medium brush. Now that I've painted everything and softened my edges, I can go back and add some more swipes to the ear tip using my round six. It looks a little more random and more natural. Let's take a brief break from the ears in the next lesson. We'll let them dry while we work on the neck, then come back to the ears to finish up the shadows. I'll see you there. 12. Neck and Ear Shadows: While we let our ears dry. Let's move on to the neck. We're going to repeat what we did earlier. To darken the tone on the neck. First, lay down some water using your large brush. And you'll want to go an inch or two to 3 centimeters beyond the edge of those neck colors at the top. With our water down, it's time to paint wet on wet, starting with our burnt sienna. And using our large brush as before, paint about two thirds of the way down the neck. Continuing to paint wet on wet, add sepia. We hear a large brush and again go about two thirds of the way up the neck. Before we move on to our ear shadows, let's go back to the high light on the edge of the ear. When we added sepia to the tip, we lost some of that high light. Take a quick moment to lift a thin line at the tip. Use your lifting brush and as before, the area with a cloth With that adjustment finished, let's move back to those ear shadows. We'll deepen the shadows in the ear by painting wet on dry. Using our purple gray mix and a medium brush, Add paint to the areas where you already have the shadow. Soften the edges as needed. Now that we've darkened our neck and finished our ears, let's continue by adding shadows to the rest of the copy. I'll see you in the next lesson. 13. Shadows: Let's add some shadows to the copy. Starting with those that accentuate the structure of the face. First let's work on the jaw ridge at the back of the jaw and the ridge around the eye. We will add the shadows in wet. On wet, add some water using your medium brush. Add the water above the ridge, behind the eye, below the ridge behind the eye. And then follow that ridge to add shadow in front of the ridge at the back of the jaw. Make sure that the water extends more than half an inch, or more than 1.5 centimeters from the outlines of these areas. That way you'll avoid hard edges when you lay down your shadow. Next, it's time to paint wet on wet using your gray mix and a medium or small brush. I recommend starting in this corner where the two shadows meet. Because it'll be darkest here, most of the paint can come off there and then you can drag it away from that corner. When most of the paint is off of my brush, I add some shadow above the ridge behind the eye. In this case, more paint was gone than I realized. It didn't get as dark as I wanted it. I picked up a little more gray to add to this shadow. The next area that will paint is the eyebrow of the copy. We will paint this area wet on dry using Pia and a medium brush. We'll start painting at the line just above the eye. This line is the only part of this area that will be a hard edge. Extend the Pa past the eye. It should run parallel to the top and bottom of your paper. Once your paint is down, you will soften all of the edges but that one edge of sepia that's closest to the eye. Let's now add some shadows under the jaw. We'll paint this wet on wet again. So start with your water and a medium brush go along the length of the jaw, including in the muzzle area. Once your water is down, it's time to paint wet on wet. Using gray and your medium brush, drag the gray along the outline at the jaw line, Let the gray bleed into the area below the jaw line. And use your brush to blend the paint as needed. Next, let's add shadows under the neck of the copy. We will do this by painting wet on wet, starting with water and using our large brush paint, this area from the top of the throat to the bottom. And make sure you provide some extra area so that the paint can flow without forming hard edges. When your water is down, come back and paint. Wet, wet, using your black mix and continuing with your large brush. The next area we will paint is the nostril. If your muzzle is super dark, then this is optional because you might not be able to see the shadow of the nostril. Otherwise, stick with me and let's get it painted. If you can still see the pencil marks that outline the nostril on your paper, that's great. Otherwise, take a look at a picture of the outline to estimate where to put this nostril. We will paint wet on dry using black. And we'll continue with our medium brush at the back part of the nostril, paint a triangle. Once that's down, clean your brush and wet the end of the triangle in a semicircle around the end of the nostril, allowing the paint to bleed forward softly. You will have a dry edge at the edge of the semicircle, but you should see a little bit of softening between the darkest part of the triangle and that semicircle you've just painted. It's time to get the last bits of our copy painted. Come join me in the next lesson where we will work on the eye and finish up the shadows. I'll see you there. 14. Muzzle and Eye: Let's start this lesson by working on the copy's muzzle. Let's add the mouth to the copy. We will do this by lifting, grab your lifting brush. And start by making a thin line where you want the mouth to go. Once you've laid down where your mouth is now you can go back and change the line thickness. I suggest making it a little thicker at the front of the mouth and add some thickness just behind the halfway point. As you get to the far end of the mouth, leave the line as thin as you can. Next, let's create some highlights in the nostrils. To do this, we will lift using a thin, stiff brush To keep these highlights thinner than the mouth, I'm going to use my round zero rather than my acrylic brush. If you painted the nostrils and can see them, start by making a line underneath that area. Otherwise, use your outline to estimate where you want to put your highlight. When you've created your highlight underneath the bottom of the nostril, use your brush to create a second highlight inside the nostril that will be shorter and thinner than your previous highlight. Let's take a break from our muzzle and move over to the eye. We'll start by painting around the eye. We will paint wet on dry using our gray mix and a medium brush. As we paint this, we're going to overlap it with the eye itself. You can get close to the high lights in the eye, but it doesn't have to be perfect. When we paint this eye, we're going to paint dark enough that we won't be able to see the hard edge where the gray was painted in the eye. We want this gray to be moderately light. Paint it so that it's just a touch too dark. While wet that way when it dries, it should be the right color. Once you've laid down your paint, come back and soften the outer edge. We have just a few more steps left in our O copy. Come join me in the next lesson. We'll add some skin folds to the O copy's neck. I'll see you there. 15. Neck Folds: In this lesson, we'll add several folds of skin to the copy's neck. Let's get started. The areas that we're painting are going to be the shadows of the neck folds. We're going to be painting wet on dry with sepia. Either your medium or small brush as you paint them, vary the direction, length, and thickness of each fold. As you add each section, soften the edge where you're not going to later lift and create a high light. You don't need to soften where you'll be lifting, because the process of lifting will create a soft edge on its own. There's not a lot of paint used in these folds. They'll dry quickly and you'll want to work quickly. That's why I recommend you have two brushes, one for painting the sepia and one for softening off immediately once the paint is laid down, let's get started. We'll start our first fold near the top of the neck. This fold will be fairly short. We'll put our highlight on the left. We'll soften this area on the right. For our second fold, we'll paint a longer fold. We'll also add some interest by changing our direction. Midfold once again we will soften on the right. Our next fold will be long and simple. We'll lift a highlight in the middle. So for this, we'll soften both edges. For our fourth fold, we'll keep it short, but we'll also be careful not to make this fold parallel with the previous fold. Soften this fold on the left. Our next fold will be longer than our previous fold. We will also make sure that it is not parallel to our third fold. For this fold we will soften on the left. Our sixth fold will be short. We'll also make sure that it's not going to be parallel to our previous two folds. We'll soften this on the left. Finally, we'll put a thick fold at the bottom of the neck, since we'll put a high light in the middle here, we'll once again soften both edges. Once all of your painted folds are dry, you can go back and lift highlights. Be sure to overlap the hard edge that you left. If you're lifting on one side of the fold again, that's so you can create that soft edge on the other side where your highlight is. Also be sure to vary the thickness of the lifted area. Make some folds with thin highlights and some with thicker highlights. With our neck done, we have just the eye of the O copy left. Come join me in the next lesson where we'll add those finishing details to our project. I'll see you there. 16. Finish the Eye: It's time to wrap up RO copy project. Let's get started on the inner circle of the eye for this area. We're going to paint wet on dry using our black mix and a small brush go right up to the outline of the eye highlights being sure to overlap the pencil marks so that they can't be seen. Once your paint is down dab in a little extra paint at the bottom of the eye. Now that the gray around this eye is dry, I realize that it's still a little bit lighter than I would like. I want to darken it. Before I do that, I must make sure that this inner eye area that I've recently painted is dry. Otherwise, the black from the inner eye will bleed into the gray and both areas of the eye will be off in coloration. To paint this, I'm going to paint wet on dry using my gray mix and my small brush. Once that layer of paint is down, I soften the edge with my medium brush. The last thing we will do is create an outline around the eye. You can see in my final painting where the outline is. I don't have a video of me painting this because I need to look closely to paint it. So I had to paint off camera. Fortunately, the painting process is very simple. Paint this area wet on dry using black and your smallest brush. Notice that when I placed this outline, I left a thin sliver of the light gray in the front bottom corner between the outline and the center of the eye. This will add some interest and life to the look of your eye. There you have it. Your copy project is finished. Come join me in the next lesson where we'll wrap up everything you've learned in this scale shark class. I'll see you there. 17. Wrap Up: With that, you've completed another skill share class. Congratulations. You've learned how to create soft edges, lift high lights, and dry brush. You've practiced these new techniques and you've put them together to create a beautiful watercolor copy. I am grateful that you chose this class to develop your watercolor skills. I hope that you enjoyed learning these new techniques and that you've grown as a watercolor artist. I'd love to see a photo of the copy that you painted, and I'm sure your fellow students would love to see it as well. When you have a moment, take a picture of your final artwork and upload it to your project gallery. As always, I would appreciate an honest review of this class. I take the feedback from my skillshare students to heart and use it to make sure that my next class is even better. If you enjoy this class, be sure to check out the other offerings that I have on Skillshare and follow me, so you'll know when my next class is coming out. Thank you again for joining me, and I look forward to seeing you in another skill share class.