Traditional Watercolor for Beginners

1. Introduction: My name is Nathan Brown. I've been a professional artist for over 20 years now. Traditional watercolor painting is a lifelong love for me, and it's a subject that I love to teach. I've put together this course to share my passion for this medium and to show you how easy it is to get started. This course is designed for anyone who has wanted to give watercolor a try but hasn't found the motivation. Or maybe you've dabbled in the medium, but were unable to find your footing to progress. Using my years of experience and helped by real life artists, I've developed a fun, simple process to support whatever your skill level. It will give you confidence and help you tackle subjects you never thought possible. In the course, we'll talk about all of the supplies you'll need, including pricing options to make it more affordable to get started. We'll cover setting up a workspace, the characteristics of watercolor, and what to look for, different brush techniques, how to select paint colors, how to avoid overworking and muddy paintings, sketching for watercolor, and how to study and practice. We'll also walk through a final project painting together so that you can clearly see every step in the process. I believe you'll be amazed at how far you can progress in such a short amount of time. And as a bonus, I've included several PDF guides, printable aids, and even some of my own sketches that you can paint. By the end of the course, you'll not only have the basic skills and understanding that you need to paint watercolor, but you'll also have the right mindset and goals to keep progressing and learning beyond the course. I'm so excited for you to get started with watercolor, and I can't wait to see your paintings, so I'll see you in Lesson one. 2. Supplies for Getting Started: In this first lesson, let's go over the basic supplies that you need to get started painting along with some different price levels. As a beginner, it's easy to get confused over the different options among brushes, papers, and paints. So I want to make sure that you end this video with an understanding of these options. That way, you can make an informed decision on exactly what you need when you head to the art store. I'll also include a PDF guide in the course resources folder that breaks down the different supplies and their pricing options. So let's take a look at everything you'll need to get going. First up, let's talk about paper. I recommend having two different types of paper, a good quality paper for final paintings, and a less expensive lower grade paper for studies and practice. The paper that I use for my final paintings is r Cold Press. This company has been around for over 500 years, and their paper is a quality standard for watercolor artists. This is a nine by 12 pad of 12 sheets and runs about $20. Now, this paper is 100% cotton, which is what makes it more expensive, but it does make a huge difference in the final outcome of your work. The paint interacts with cotton paper differently than it does with student grade papers that aren't cotton. Colors are richer and lines will be sharper. Now, for studies and practice, I recommend a lower grade paper. Lots of brands make this type. They will have a surface texture similar to cold press but will not be cotton. The cost is a lot less. This particular pad is 20 sheets for around five to $7. These are the two papers that I recommend for this course. We'll be keeping the size of our painting small, so these nine by 12 pads will work great. Now let's go over the paint that I'll be using in this course. This is the Windsor Newton Cotman watercolor sketchers Pocket set. This is a great set for beginners. It runs around $18, and it comes in a small palette with more than enough colors to get started with. A couple of other brands that I use and can recommend are Daniel Smith and M Graham. But these are tube paints and are much more expensive. Some of these tubes can cost ten to $20 each, but they do last a really long time. Some of them I've had for years, and there's still color left in the tube. Now, I recommend that you add these a little bit as you go. It's far more cost effective to get a starter pack like the Cotman set when you're just starting out than to purchase all of these colors in individual tubes. As far as what to avoid, I would recommend against these sets of round palette paints. These fall into the realm of paints for kids. The paints are a powder based pigment and would be very hard to build up a level of color contrast that quality artists paints will provide. This is my daughter's set from when she was younger, and you can see that pink was the most used color. In the Cotman set, again, we get more than enough colors to start out with and this nice little mixing area. So we get colors and a palette in one, and it's nice and compact and easy to store away when we're not painting. You can see in this sample sheet that I painted, there's a good variety of colors. They are very rich and vibrant, and that's exactly what we want to see in a quality set of paints. I also like to have a bit of white guash or white acrylic on hand to sometimes add small pits of highlight to a watercolor once it's dry. The brand isn't as important here. I can recommend this liquitex basics tube. The cost will be around $5, and it will last you forever since you'll use such a small amount. Now let's talk about brushes. When it comes to watercolor, I mostly use round brushes in various sizes. These brushes can be made of several different materials from animal hair, synthetic blend, and fully synthetic. These brushes are by Rosemary and Company. They're a Series 33 and our Kalinsky Sable, so they're 100% animal hair. These can cost from around eight on up to $50 or more depending on the size. These are silver black velvet brushes, and are a blend of squirrel hair and synthetic fibers. These have a similar price around ten to $20 each, again, depending on the size. These types of brushes are more expensive because of the animal hair. If you're just starting out and on a budget, I recommend going with fully synthetic brushes. This is a Windsor Newton cotton brush and has fully synthetic fibers. These brushes can be purchased in a set of several sizes for less than $25. These are Spirofarbon brushes and are also fully synthetic. These are far cheaper and can be purchased in a set as well for around $10, which is less than one of what these animal hair brushes might cost. I recommend these for beginners because you can get a full set of brushes without a lot of investment. Now, I've painted with both, and the main difference is that the animal hair brushes will have a finer point at the tip of the brush. They'll hold their shape longer, and they'll also hold more water and paint so that you won't have to reload the brushes often. But that's not to say that you can't create some amazing paintings with these synthetic brushes. I used brushes like these for a long time before ever upgrading. And if you take good care of these, they will last. For example, make sure that you clean them out thoroughly and reshape the tip with your fingers when you're done painting. If you're not going to be painting for a while, you can even use a little bit of dish soap to help them keep their shape over time. Just make sure that you rinse out the soap before starting your next painting. Alright, now we've got the essential supplies, paper, paint and brushes. Now let's take a look at a few more items that we'll need. Some of them you might even have lying around the house. Okay, now we're going to need a few drawing tools. I have two pencils here. This first one is a six H hard lead pencil from the Prismacolor turquoise pencil set. These sets cost around $15 and include a variety of soft to hard leads. The hard lead is good for our drawings because the lead doesn't smear much on the paper. It's also lighter and easier to hide with transparent watercolor if we want to. Now, a cheaper alternative is a regular number two pencil, which I use all the time and can be purchased in bulk for very little. The only difference when using this pencil would be that you'd want to use very light pressure so that your line stays light and we don't get a ton of smearing on the paper. I also like to use a micron pen for small dark lines and details. This is an ink pen that produces a steady line that doesn't change with pressure. These pens can be purchased individually for a couple of dollars or in a set for around 15. If you get a single pen, I recommend a size two or a size three. Those are both good sizes for small details. A cheaper alternative to a micron pen would be a standard ballpoint pen. The difference with these is that they are affected by pressure, almost like a pencil. So the harder you press, the darker the line becomes. Another great drawing tool to have on hand is a white gel pen. This is a Nibal Cigna. This is a fine point white gel ink that works great over watercolor once it's dry. We'll use this pen to create small white highlights in details in our final painting. We're also going to need some paper towels. I like to have these on hand to soak up moisture from my brushes or to use for cleaning up when needed. We'll need a couple of water containers. This is just a plastic container that you can get at any hardware store. I have these in various sizes, but the smaller the container you use, the more often you might have to clean out your water as you paint. So I recommend a bit larger size if your workspace allows for it. I also like to have a spray bottle on hand. I recommend the trigger kind over the pump kind because this one will allow you to just partially squeeze the trigger, which just releases a bit of water splatter. We'll use this to create some nice effects and textures in the paint. Also, grab an old toothbrush if you have one lying around. This is great for making small splatter effects, which I really love to do. I hope that gives you an idea of everything that you need to get started painting watercolor. Man, I love sorting through supplies because it always gets me excited to start painting, and I hope it does the same for you because it won't be long before we'll start putting all of these items to use. But before we do, let's take some time to set up our work area in the next video. 3. Setting Up a Workspace: In this video, I want to give you a few tips on setting up a workspace. It's essential that we have a good area to work in, one that is free of distraction or anything that might get in the way of our painting. My work area consists of a good sized table with tons of lighting and all of my art supplies at hand. I also like to fill this space with things that I love and that inspire me. So if I do get stuck, I can typically just look around the room for some creative inspiration. As I mentioned before, though, you don't need a space this large to paint in. A good tabletop next to a kitchen window with good light is enough space for watercolor painting. We'll need room to have two water containers close by. There are two because one is used to clean paint from the brush and one is used for clean water. I keep these to my right above the palette. We'll also need all of the brushes and drawing supplies within reach, and be sure to grab that roll of paper towels and have it on the table, as well. I like to keep a sheet in my left hand while painting to dab water from the brush when it's too soaked after cleaning. We'll also need a bit of space for an iPad or a printed sheet containing our reference photos so that we can study them as we work. If you don't have the space to dedicate an area for painting, you can always pack these supplies up and store them away. But I do recommend that you keep your studies or paintings in progress where you can see them. This helps to keep the work fresh in your mind and will also spark ideas when you least expect it. As an assignment for this lesson, I encourage you to plan and set up your own workspace. Take into consideration the lighting, whether it be a lamp or a window, does the time of day you'll typically be working have an effect on the space? Try to see yourself painting in the space and notice whether or not it's quiet and free from distraction. I've included a couple of easy diagrams to follow in the course resources folder in case you need some reference. Once you've got your painting space set up, it's time to break everything out and get to work. 4. Characteristics of Watercolor: In this lesson, we're going to talk about the characteristics of watercolor and the role that water plays. Your approach to a painting needs to be a little bit different versus oil or acrylic because of the paint's transparency. One key factor to keep in mind when you're starting out is how to maintain control over the amount of water versus pigment in your brush. Let's take a closer look. The amount of water to paint mixture will affect the intensity and transparency of the stroke you're laying down. Typically, at the beginning of a painting, you'll want to start very transparent with more water in the brush over paint because you want to build up the opacity and contrast going from lights to darks. The way I like to think of this is sneaking up on the final painting. This helps me to remember that I don't want to go in heavy with the darkest, most intense version of a color. Instead, we want to build towards it slowly so that we can maintain better control over what's happening. I'm going to demonstrate this by taking a scrap piece of practice paper and a small number four round brush. We're going to add some clean water to the palette and then just add a very small amount of paint. This mixture is now mostly water. When I add this stroke to the paper, you can see that it's very transparent. Now, if I go back and add a bit more paint to that same mixture and apply it to a new stroke, we've got more of an even amount of paint and water. This is going to result in a slightly more intense color. Now going back again and loading straight from the paint versus the mixture this time, we're going to have more paint than water in the brush, and this will result in the most intense version of the color. Now you can see that we have three versions of the same color, going from very transparent to more opaque just by controlling the amount of water in our strokes. We can also achieve a similar result by layering. If we maintain a consistent mixture of water and paint in our brush and allow each layer to dry completely before applying the next, we can build up the intensity of the color with each layer. As an assignment, I want you to give this a try. This is such a key factor to watercolor painting, and taking the time to practice this will give you the essential skill that you need to maintain the right water to paint ratio for future paintings. Feel free to do this same approach with maybe three different colors, but remember to clean out your brush before switching to a new color. Be sure to try both methods by adjusting the amount of water to paint ratio in your brush and by layering color. Once you're done, I'll see you in the next lesson, where we'll be looking at when to use each brush along with various types of strokes and techniques. 5. Brush Techniques: As I mentioned before, I mostly use round brushes in various sizes for watercolor, and it's very easy to know which brush you use where. As we sneak up or zero in on the various steps to completing a painting, I start with big broad strokes first, using a large size eight or ten brush. And then step down to a four or six for smaller details before finally switching to a very small two or zero for the tiny details that usually fall around the main focal point of the painting, which is usually the eyes of the subject, if it's a portrait. These round brushes can make very thick or very thin strokes, depending on the pressure and angle of the brush. But no matter the size of the brush or the pressure, there are various techniques that rely once again on water. Let's take a closer look at them. To demonstrate these techniques, I'm going to paint a series of bluebirds on these small square pieces of watercolor paper that I've cut out. So I've drawn a beak and an eye and some legs, and the rest is going to be a watercolor stroke. The first technique that I want to demonstrate is called wet into dry, and the brush is full of water and paint, and the paper is dry. Let's see if I can draw or paint the shape of my bird. This technique creates a very even stroke and a very hard edge. So this is really good for when you want something to appear very sharp and in focus with a nice crisp, clean edge. The next technique is called wet into wet. For this one, we'll need to pre wet the paper with some clear water. I'm going to give this a minute to dry so that it's a little less soaked. Okay, the paper has dried just a little bit, but still has a nice sheen on the surface. So this is going to be a bird with very soft wispy feathers. This is a great technique for creating soft blended edges. And this is probably the one where you have the least control. You just kind of have to let the paint and water do its thing. Now, this is going to continue to spread a bit as it dries. Now, this next technique is called glazing. And this one we will have a thin layer of paint over another. So the paper is dry and we have a wet brush that is mostly water over paint. Okay. Now I'm going to let this completely dry before applying the next layer. Okay? This first layer is completely dry, and now I'm going to glaze a second layer on top to create a wing. As we saw in a previous lesson, this is a great technique to build up the intensity of a color. Or if you're layering one color on top of another, it's a great way to create a third color in the process. All the next technique is called charging, and I have a dry piece of paper, and my brush is mostly water. So there's a very small amount of paint in the brush, and it's going to result in a very thin layer of paint. I'm going to add some more paint to the brush. And while the area is still wet, I'm going to drop in some additional color. This color that I just dropped in is going to run down and blend a bit with this first layer that's still wet. So this is a great way to create a gradient or just to intensify color in some areas and still have a soft edge between the transition. Okay, the next one is called pulling or dragging. And the paper is dry, and I've got a brush that is loaded with paint. There's a bit more paint than water this time, and I'm going to start by just creating a line across the bird's back. Now I'm going to take a brush that is full of clean water, and I'm going to run the clean water up to meet the line that I just painted. This is a great technique to use when you want the color to be heavier on one side of the shape. It also creates a nice soft edge between the dark color, and the clear water. All right, the next technique is called drybushing. I'm going to start by painting in the body of the bird, and we're going to drybush the tail. Alright, so I have a brush that is mostly paint, has very little water in it. Creates a nice broken texture. So this is great for creating maybe the feathers on a bird or the bark of a tree or maybe a textured stone. The next technique is called scumbling, and it involves tapping the brush back and forth to create a broken up texture. So I'm gonna get the head painted in here as a solid shape. Then as we come down the neck, I'm going to begin to tap the brush to create a broken up texture. This is a great way to leave a bit of the white of the paper exposed. And it's a good way to get some texture into your stroke. Which works really nice for this bird. For the next technique, I already have a bird painted and it's completely dry. I'm going to take a brush with clean water, and I'm going to lift out a section to create a highlight for the wing. So, again, this brush has no paint, just clean water. And I'm going to begin to scrub out a section of paint, creating a highlight for the wing. Can I take a paper towel and soak up the excess moisture? So lifting is a great way to create a soft and subtle highlight in paint that is already dry. Also note that some colors will lift better than others. Now let's take a quick look at some splattering techniques. There's three easy methods that you can use. The first is just simply painting them in with the tip of the brush. This is the most controlled method, but might not look random enough. You can use this one sparingly just to apply dots where you feel they may be needed in the composition. The second method is to load the brush with lots of water and paint and tap it onto your finger. This gives a good bit of randomness to the splatter. And the third technique uses a bristle brush like a toothbrush. Once dipped into paint, you can flick the bristles with your thumb to create a nice directional splatter. As an assignment for this lesson, I'd like you to paint your own set of birds, giving each one of these techniques a try. Feel free to go back and watch the video again pausing when you need to, and try each one multiple times until you feel comfortable with the technique. We're already well on our way to understanding how watercolor works. In the next lesson, we'll talk about some basic color theory, how to select colors for our paintings, and how to mix them. 6. Color Theory: I like to keep color theory very easy, and I typically rely on one key element when picking colors, and that is making a conscious decision on my colors beforehand. You want to avoid choosing colors randomly once you've started, because that can often turn into a muddy mess. I think the best way to create color harmony in a painting is to simply plan for it. We often make the best decisions before getting started and our brains become caught up in the activity of putting paint to paper. For digital painting, it's much easier to experiment because we can always work on a new layer and undo anything we don't like. But for traditional painting, there's no undo. And because watercolor is transparent, it's very hard to hide any experiments gone wrong. Planning can be as simple as taking a scrap piece of paper and testing our colors and color mixtures to make sure that they all work together before committing them to a painting. So let's take a look at some methods that you can use in picking and planning your color scheme before you start a painting. I've made this color wheel and printed it out to give us a visual reference for color picking. You can find the same color wheel in the course resources folder so that you can print your own. The most basic color scheme, in my opinion, is complimentary colors. This is just a matter of choosing a color along with its opposite on the color wheel. So red and green, blue and orange, purple and yellow, et cetera. One variation that I use is a triadic color scheme. This uses a simple triangle to choose the colors, so red, yellow, and blue or purple, orange and green, for example. You can also use a monochromatic scheme, which uses various tones of the same color or an analogous theme which are colors side by side on the wheel. It really doesn't matter the scheme you choose. The most important aspect is that you plan your colors ahead so that you aren't having to make these important color decisions on the fly. Of course, there's also nothing wrong with reproducing the colors that you see in your reference image, especially if it was the colors in the photo that drew you to it in the first place. The choice is always up to us as the artists. So whether we're creating our own color scheme or relying on the colors in our reference, we'll need to know how to mix them. Remember that the primary colors which are red, yellow, and blue mix together to form the secondary colors which are orange, green and purple. When complimentary colors mix, they form a neutral tone, which is some shade of gray. Let's create our own color wheel of primary and secondary colors and try our hand a mixing some neutral tones as an assignment for this lesson. And let's do this one together so that I can talk you through it as we work. Feel free to pause the video when you need more time to complete each step. First up, let's draw a circle on a sheet of watercolor paper. Now, split that circle into six equal parts. For the first color, I'm going to mix Alizarin crimson and cadmium red to get our primary red. Now, let's paint a light mixture of this color into a portion of the wheel. Let's use lemon yellow as our primary yellow and paint that color into another section of the wheel skipping a space from red. Now we can use serlem blue for our primary blue. Skip one more space from yellow and paint that section in. Take your time on these sections and try to get a nice even coat of color. Okay, we've got our three primary colors in place. Now let's concentrate on the secondary colors to fill in the rest of the wheel. Let's take a bit of lemon yellow and mix that into our primary red to get an orange. And we'll paint this one into a section between red and yellow. For green, let's take lemon yellow again and this time mix it with erleim blue and fill in the next section. Now I'm going to clean my palette with a paper towel to make room to mix the last color. We'll need a little bit of a lizard crimson and serleim blue to get a purple. Let's drop that into the last section. Now we've got our complete color wheel, and we know how to mix secondary colors when we need them. Alright, now let's give the neutral tones a try. Let's start by drawing three sets of three squares. We're going to be mixing the complimentary colors that are opposite on the color wheel. So red and green, purple and yellow, and blue and orange. When mixed, you'll see that the colors will desaturate each other. If mixed in equal portion, they'll make more of a gray. Let's start with a little bit of our purple mixture into lemon yellow. This is going to create a desaturated yellow or sort of a mustard color. Now, if we mix a more equal portion of the purple into the yellow, the result will be more of a warm gray. Now going back and adding more purple to the mix will result in a desaturated purple. Alright, let's move on to red and green. In our first square, we have more red than green, resulting in a desaturated red. Adding a bit of red to mostly green will give us a desaturated olive green color. An even mixture will create a warm brownish gray. And onto blue and orange, we get the same results, a desaturated orange, then a desaturated blue, and finally, a more neutral gray. Given just our three primary colors, we've now mixed 12 more colors. I hope this exercise helps you to understand how colors interact and how we can really mix any color that we want or see in our reference. In the next lesson, we'll take a look at value contrast, how to measure it in your work, and how to know when your painting is complete before you even get started. 7. Understanding Value Contrast: In this lesson, we're going to learn the importance of value contrast in our work. Value in art refers to the degree of difference between pure white and pure black and the range of grays that fall in between. Value contrast is important in our paintings because it plays a big role in creating visual interest and depth in a composition. By properly conveying light and shadow, we can create the illusion of form making our paintings appear more realistic, essentially giving a sense of three dimensionality to a two dimensional work. One method that we can use to measure values for paintings in progress is to take a photo with a phone and convert it to black and white so that we can view all of the colors as a range of gray tones. If all we see are middle tones, our piece might appear muddy and not yet have enough depth. If we can see a full range of tones with good contrast, meaning that our darks are dark enough and our lights are light enough, then we know that we're likely nearing the end of the piece. At that point, there's probably no need to push it further and overstay our welcome. Doing so often ends up with overworking the painting and risk muddying our colors. I want to do a quick demonstration on identifying and measuring tones in our reference. Then show you how to define them as shapes in a drawing or painting. This is a gray scale chart that I made and printed for reference. I'll include this one in the course resources folder as well so that you can print it out too. I'm going to cut the scale out using a ruler and a razor. Now, I'm also going to cut a strip out of the center so that we can lay this over our reference and use it to identify and measure different tonal values. For example, in this reference photo, we might think that the fur on top of the cat's head is darker than the fur underneath its chin because it's brown versus white. But when we check the values, we can see that the fur under the chin is actually darker. This is a perfect example of painting what we actually see in a reference versus what we think we see. I want to show you an example in pencil first because I want you to see how it's really the same process no matter the medium. I think it's an easier introduction using the simplicity of pencil before we move on to our assignment with paint. So I've printed out our reference image in black and white. I printed it in black and white because I think it's easier to see the different values in shades of gray versus maybe being distracted by the colors. Plus, we can use our value scale that we printed to check and measure the different levels of grays. So we've already talked about how this area of brown fur above the eye is a little bit lighter than the white fur below the chin. So we can test that with our value scale, and we can see that it falls into this range, and then it also falls a bit into this range a little bit higher. Now, if we go below the chin, we can see that it falls more into this range, and then closer to the mouth, it gets a little darker into that range. Now, another area that we might want to measure is this white fur here above the nose because it looks like it's pure white, but it's really only pure white right at the very edge. As it rounds the edge of the nose, it's actually a very subtle shade of gray. Same with the fur down here. You might think that this is pure white, but it's actually only pure white right at the very edge where the light is hitting the fur, and as we move further in, it becomes that very light shade of gray. Another area to take a look at would be this fur back here below the ear. Now, this is white fur again, and we might think that it's the same shade of gray as it is down here, but it's actually a little bit darker. Falling into this range here, that's probably due to most of the light falling from this direction, and as it rounds the head, the fur becomes a little bit darker. Now, my sketch here is just a line drawing of all the different shapes that I see where the values change. So for example, this shape right here is this brown fur that we see here. So this shape here above the eye is this darker tone shape that we see here. These shapes here around the ear are the darkest fur that we see here. And this area here is broken up into all these very subtle shades of light gray. This is how we want to try and see our reference as just different shapes of values. Now, if we were to take this same sketch and render it with pencil, you can see that our darkest areas are here where I applied the most pressure with the pencil to try and get the darkest values that I could. And then we've got darker values here, here and here, and then in the eye, those are the darkest values. And then we've got our sort of mid tone grays throughout the face here before we come down to our lightest grays and pure white. Okay, so these are the stages that I want us to think about while working through our assignment, evaluating our reference, defining values as shapes and rendering those values into different tones. Let's take a look at how to do that with paint. All right. Before we begin our painting, we're going to need to transfer the sketch onto watercolor paper, and this is a printout of the sketch that I provided in the course resources folder. It's been cut to about six by nine, which is the same size as one sheet of our watercolor paper that has been cut in half. So before we can transfer this sketch to here, we're going to need to apply some graphite to the back. And I'm going to take my number two pencil, and I'm just going to shade the entire backside of the printout. If you happen to have a pencil set that includes a four B or six B or maybe an eight B pencil, I would use that instead of the number two because it will make it a bit faster and a bit easier to get a really dark graphite shade. Okay, now we need to lay this on top of our watercolor paper. And I'm going to tape it down on one side to hold it in place. And I'm only going to tape it down on one side so that I can periodically check to see how well it's transferring. So I'm gonna take a ballpoint pen, and I'm going to trace over the sketch, and I want to apply a little bit of pressure, not too much pressure that it might indent the paper underneath, but just enough that it's getting a nice transfer. You might not be able to see that on camera, but it's enough that I can see to go over lightly in pencil again to darken some of the lines. Okay, so I'm going to go over this entire sketch with the ballpoint pen. Okay, so that's enough of the sketch transferred that I can now take a number two pencil and just go over a few lines just to darken some of the details so that I don't lose it under the paint. Alright, I've got my sketch darkened a little bit by tracing over the transfer with the number two pencil just to darken the lines a bit. And I've got my paint palette open here, and we're going to be using one color for this assignment. We're going to be using the burnt umber. So I've got a number eight or size eight brush. I've got my water containers just off to the right here, and over to the left, I've got my reference image here, as well as a scrap piece of paper to just test out some color mixtures or paint mixtures on. And I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to add a little bit of water to the burnt umber and add some to the mixing area. And I want to add quite a bit of water. I want this mixture to be mostly water with just a bit of paint. So we're going to be focusing on first are the really light gray areas because we can be pretty loose and just get a lot of the gray in one go, one pass. And once that dries, we can then begin to layer the darker tones, the darker values that we see, like some of the darker grays here above the eye, and then it will take a couple, maybe two or three layers to get into our darkest values that we have here. So we're going to start with the very light grays that we see. I'm going to start by just testing this mixture a little bit, just to see kind of how dark it is. It's actually really, really light, and that's probably about what we want to get our lightest values in first. So I'm going to rinse out my brush and I'm going to add some clean water to the painting just to get some areas wet. And basically, I'm going to wet the entire painting, but I'm going to leave out the whitest whites or the pure white areas, which would be along the edge of the nose here and I guess the forehead of the cat there. And then this fur along this edge here, where the lights hitting, maybe a little bit back here, maybe, and then maybe right here under the eye. Just looking at the reference, you can see that those are probably the whitest areas of the painting. So again, with clean water just coming in, And just wetting the areas that we're going to be painting into. And I also want to go ahead and wet some outside the lines here because in order for this to be pure white, white of the paper, we need to have some values next to it. So if I leave this outside area white as well, it's not going to have the same impact if it's just white next to white. So we're going to come along and add a little bit of water outside the edge. Oh, now it's a good time to mention, too that I also have a paper towel in my left hand that I just occasionally will soak some of the moisture from the brush if I need to. And the reason I'm pre wetting some of the paper here is just so the paint will spread a bit and we'll have some real soft edges. And you can always tilt the paper, if you angle it in the light and you can see the sheen of the water on the paper, that's a good way to tell where you have added water to the paper and how wet it is. Whether it's pooling or it's just starting to dry and there's a little shen left. All right, so I'm going to begin dropping in some paint. I think I'm going to start right up here on the forehead. This is a very wet mixture because we want this stuff to spread around a bit and create some real soft edges and just give us our initial base tone. And this is probably loose. The most loose will be the loosest that will be in this stage because we just want to get that base tone in, and we're not too terribly worried about staying in the lines just yet. Okay, remember we want to have some outside the edge here. Mm hmm. I'm going to add a little bit more water just to spread. Spread that out just a bit. Some more back here. And then spread it with some clean water. Okay, now let's take a look and kind of see if there's anything major that we missed. We've kept our white here. We kept white up here. Kind of a hard edge right there that I'm just going to soften. Okay, I think that's pretty good for a first pass. It's very light, very loose, and I think I'm going to soften that edge a bit more with some clean water. And then we're going to let this dry. Okay. Now that our first layer is completely dry, let's take a look at the next pass, which will be focused mostly on these mid tone grays. So this area below the chin here, around the eye, around the ears, we're going to make a pass there and this area behind the neck and maybe a little bit of these a bit darker grays below the head here on the neck. Okay, I've got a number four round this time, and I wanted to go with a little bit smaller brush on this next pass because we're going to get a little bit more detailed and we'll need to pay attention to our edges a little bit more closely this time. Alright, so I also want to make a mixture that is maybe an even amount of paint and water. So the first pass was more water than paint. This is going to be probably more of an even mixture. We're gonna want to go a little darker this time. I'm going to just test that out on my scrap paper. Probably looks pretty good. Add a little bit more paint. This time, I'm gonna be painting wet onto dry, so I'm not going to pre wet the paper, but I will be adding some clean water to soften a few edges as I go. Okay, I'm going to start below the mouth here and the china add a little bit of paint here, and then I'm going to pull it down with some clear water. So that it starts dark and then kind of gets lighter as it comes down underneath the chin. Okay, I'm going to do the same thing this time above the mouth. I'm just going to add some clean water to just sort of pull some of that color up. Now I'm going to add some color in this direction, and again, use clean water to pull it down into this neck area. And I'm going to use a little bit of sort of scumbling to account for some of this texture in the fur that's in the neck here. Okay, so now I'm going to do the same thing here. I'm going to add a little bit of color to this darker area and the fur here. It's defined by this shape, pencil drawing. And then again, use some water to pull that out. And I've drawn my pencil sketch with some pretty dark lines so that you could see it on camera. You don't necessarily have to make your pencil drawings with this dark of pencil if you don't want to. It doesn't really bother me to see a pencil drawing below the paint. So I'm never too particular about that. But if you are, you can certainly use a lighter pencil line. Okay, I used a little bit more paint in that spot just because I know that's gonna be a darker area. And same goes for this spot right up here above the eye. Use a little bit of clean water to pull that out just a bit. So when I add the clean water like that, it really softens the edge of the shape. So we want hard edges in some places and soft edges in others. And I'll show you a quick example of that. Right here. So for example, this might be a little bit more of a hard edge here and then right here at the eye or right here underneath the eye. But then up here might be a softer edge. This right here might be a softer edge, where the colors, the values are real close together in range, so the edge appears a little bit softer. This gets to almost white right here or really, really light gray, and then it gets a little darker here. So it's okay to have a little bit of a harder edge there or there or right here at the edge of the ear. So those are some of the edges that we want to look out for. All right, I'm going to go ahead and add some color pure. And I'm going to see if maybe just do a little bit of scumbling here to leave some of that first layer visible. This is where the fur overlaps gets a little bit darker. And I'm going to go ahead and darkening the eye, as well. We'll come back on another pass to get that even darker. I'm gonna add some paint to the ears here to get these get these shapes in. We'll be making another pass here to make some of these shapes even darker. So I'm just gonna combine this all into one big shape. I. Okay. And this area below the ear here needs to be a little bit darker. I'm going to pull that out with some clean water. And then we need to get this area here and some lighter gray in here as well. So probably going to add a little bit more water to my mixture, and then we're just going to kind of do a little bit of scumbling here and then pull it out with fresh water so that it blends. I actually think I want a little bit more variation right there, so I'm going to I'm gonna soak a little bit of that up with my paper towel and just get a little right there in that shape. And I think we're going to leave this up here white. Oh, we need to also darken this area. I'm going to add some paint to the mixture, a little bit of water. We'll go ahead and make a pass on this area. Just a little bit of water to blend that out or pull that out just a bit. Okay, we'll go ahead and let this layer dry completely before moving on to the next. Okay, now that our second layer is completely dry, we want to get started on our third and final layer. This time we're going to be focused on all of the darks that we see in the reference. So this little bit on the nose here, the eye, this bit of fur right here, and then all of this dark fur that we see around the ears and this bit on the back of the neck. I'm going to be starting with a size tube brush to get the detail in the nose and the small bits around the eye. Then I'll be switching back to the number four to get the larger bits around the ears. We want a mixture of paint and water this time that is mostly paint because we want the most intense version of this color that we can get. That way, it'll be dark enough on the first pass. So I'm going to test this mixture here on the scrap paper, and we can see that it is already pretty dark. It's probably about as dark as this burnt umber is going to get. I'm going to get just a little bit more of the mixture on the palette. And I'm going to get started on the nose first. Okay. I've got my paint in there. Rinse the brush out real quick. And with a clean brush, I'm just going to blend some of that into the nose or the upper part of the nose. Alright I want to get a little bit around the eye. And as you're working on this assignment, take your time. You don't have to go as fast as I am because you want your brush strokes to be clean and confident and take the amount of time that you need to do that. Don't feel that you need to keep up with the pace that I'm going and pause the video if you need to. There's a little bit of reflection in the eye, and I'm going to try and leave that bit. It's right at the top here, but I want to blend this area here from this dark to dark just because it's a little bit darker in the front and lighter towards the back. I'm just going to add a bit of water in there to see if I can get that part of the eye to be a bit darker. I'm gonna let that dry and come back and probably get one more pass at some of the darks in the eye. Okay, now I'm gonna get this dark bit of fur here below the eye. I rinsing the brush. Coming back with a clean brush. I soaked some of the moisture out with the paper towel, and I'm just going to blend a little bit of that dark edge. Okay, there's also a little bit of darker shadow underneath the mouth here. See if we can get that as well. Again, taking a clean brush to pull some of the paint down. So there's not such a hard edge. Okay, now I'm gonna switch back to the number four, and we're going to work this area up here around the ear. I'm trying to pull my brush direct in the direction of the fur. So the fur changes directions a bit here around the ear. So my hope is that these short little brush strokes will sort of capture the texture of the fur. Okay, so there's this little bit of a transitional area from here to here that's this shape, and it's not quite as dark as this, but darker than this area. So I've got a little bit more water into my mixture here. Let's see if we can get that to blend. All right now, I'm going to get more paint back into my mixture, darken it back up. We don't want to completely cover this up because there is a bit of transition from white fur to dark. So I just want to just try and get the dark area, but then leave some of that transitional value that's already there. So I don't want to completely cover that up. And then let's get up here behind the ear. Alright, I'm gonna switch back to my number two and just get the center of the eye one more time. Just adding a little bit more fur texture with the smaller brush. Alright, now taking a look at where we are. I think there's a couple of final adjustments that we could make. I think that if we look at our reference and compare that this area under the chin and just right here around the mouth could be a little bit darker. Maybe just go a touch darker here. And then the outer portion around the cat is a much darker tone than what we have here. But I think if we try to darken this outer edge a little bit, it's going to wind up maybe muddying or killing our light source a little bit. So what we might do is just add a little bit of dark detail around the fur up here by the ear and maybe the head and the chest here on the cat. So let's give that a try. I've switched back to my number four, a little bit bigger brush, and I want to get probably a mixture that is not too much paint this time because we don't want to go completely. We don't want to go as dark as we have with the ear. So we want to add a little bit of water to our mixture. I'm just going to add a little bit at the edge, and then we're going to pull we're gonna pull it down some with clean water, just like we did before. And I want to add it up here. Alright, so taking clean water again. Is Okay, I've added a bit more value and then smoothed out some of the edges using clean water. Now let's see if we can add a little bit of dark right at the very edge to bring out the white edge, like we talked about. Adding a bit more paint to the mixture. And actually, I think I'm going to do this with the size, too, because this is really fine little bits of hair. So let's try it with a smaller brush. I'm just going to do just a few little just a few little flicks of the tip of the brush. And I don't want to do this everywhere. I think I want to skip around a little bit just because I think it would be a little too much. And All right. I think this is a pretty good stopping point. And at this stage, we have a good representation of the values in our reference. So our lights are present, our darkest values are there, and then all of the values that we see in between. So I hope this assignment has helped you to see how important it is to recognize and to measure value contrast in our work. Okay, now we have a good understanding of the basics. And the next lesson, we'll talk about sketching for watercolor and lay some groundwork for getting started on a painting. 8. Preparing a Sketch: And now that we have learned some of the basic skills we need, it's time to start looking at doing some sketches that might eventually become paintings. The first step is to choose a subject. Of course, the subject can be anything you want, but for beginners, I recommend starting with some simple wildlife portraits. The reason is because these can be produced easily with good reference and use of basic shapes. There's also more room for inaccuracies versus human portraits, which require a bit more anatomy study or maybe landscapes which would require knowledge of perspective. Not to say that you can't try these subjects, but I want your main focus to be on the process of watercolor for now, allowing you to build confidence in your painting ability. Let's start by gathering some good reference. An excellent source is unsplash.com, which is a royalty free photography site. It's a great place for finding really good quality photos. When I'm looking for an image to paint, I try to find something that resonates with me on an emotional level. I know if it stands out in that way to me, that it likely will to someone else as well. Images of birds, dogs, cats, foxes, and owls are among my favorite animal subjects. It's essential that we look for good quality photos with good lighting and a good angle of the subject. I've seen beginners try to paint from a bad reference photo, and it makes it a nearly impossible task. You can't make a good painting from a bad reference. To help us in our search for good reference, I've created five questions that we can ask ourselves when viewing images. First up, is this an interesting or flattering angle of the subject? Number two, is the image in focus with good lighting? Number three, can you visualize this subject in a good composition for the painting? Number four, can you clearly see a good range of values in the image? Number five, does this image invoke any sort of emotional response from the viewer? Let's have a look at a couple of examples and see if we can determine if these might be considered good or bad reference. In this first image of a cat, is this angle particularly interesting? I'd say no, because this is just a downward shot, which is how we view cats most of the time. So there's nothing really unique there. Also, the lighting isn't very good, and it's slightly out of focus, which would make it harder for us to pick out details. Could we potentially visualize this image in a good composition for a painting? Maybe, but it might be tough. Most of what we're seeing here is the top of her head and her body, which doesn't give us much to work with. If we view the image in black and white, we don't see much of a value range. There are some darks and midtones, but the lights aren't very light. We'd have to invent some lighting on the image in order to get a nice range. There's really not anything special about this image that would make a viewer stop and go, Wow. So not much emotional response from this one. Taking a look at the next image, I think this one is at a much more interesting angle because the camera is at eye level with the cat. So unless we're on the floor, we're not typically viewing a cat from this angle. This image also has much better lighting and focus. Seeing the cat's white chest and the shape that adds below the head, we can visualize a possible composition for this one. If we try this one in black and white, we can also see a nice range of values from the lightest highlight shapes, all the way to the darkest tone. As far as an emotional response, I think the alert nature of the cat and how wide her eyes are make me think she's at full alert or maybe there's some energy building. We might enhance that feeling with a bit of splatter or directional washes. So I think overall, this image would be a better choice over the first. As we scroll through some possible images to sketch, let's keep in mind those five questions to ask ourselves. After a bit of searching, I think I've landed on this photo of a puppy. I really like how soft and cute looks, but I think the two different eye colors are really interesting. I can also visualize this one in a simple composition for a painting. So I think this would make a great subject for a quick study. Now I've downloaded and saved the photo to my iPad, and I want to walk you through my thoughts on the overall composition and how I've set up the layered file for you in the course resources folder. So first up, let's take a look at our reference photo on a nine by 12 Canvas in Procreate. It's nine by 12 because that matches our paper size. Now, if you don't have access to Procreate, you can always print the reference photo and cut it out and position it over the paper to help you plan a composition. This method in Procreate just saves us a little bit of time. So I've divided the canvas up into thirds, which is a compositional tool to help us create a possible layout for the painting. For some paintings, it's more interesting to line up a point of focus along these grid lines or these intersections. So, for example, the puppy's eyes line up nicely along this grid line. As I mentioned before, it's important that we can visualize our reference in a possible composition for the painting. So let's take a look at how to do that. Now, one possibility that I'm seeing is just a simple rectangle shape that includes the puppy's head and his feet in the center of our page. Now, it does include a nice balance of positive and negative space, and it's just a very simple shape that we could base our composition around. Now, another possibility might be to turn our paper to a landscape view, which would allow us to zoom in more on the puppy's face. Now, looking at this one as an overall shape, we might have something like this. And again, this has a nice balance of positive and negative space. There's plenty of room for it to breathe with the exception of this area up here, so we might have to move this shape down just a little bit just so that it's not so close to the edge. But giving us a nice room or a nice breathing room for the shape would give us the potential to maybe have a little bit of wash and a little bit of splatter, maybe that comes away from the head or outside of the main shape of the composition. Now, one thing that stood out to me when I first found this photo was this bit of fur below his head that sort of comes down into a point. And I thought it would be nice to include that as a compositional element. So, along with the shape of his head here, we get this nice sort of maybe ice cream cone shape that just I think would make a more interesting composition because we want the focal point to be his eyes. And I think if we were to include the feet, it might distract a bit from his eyes. So let's try this as our overall composition. But let's take a closer look at it in the layered file in the course resources folder. Alright, I've included this layered PSD file, which can be opened in Procreate, Photoshop or affinity. I've also included JPEGs of each individual layer. Now, you can see we have a bit more of a detailed shape that I've created from my sketch. Looking at our shape, we can see that it is weighted more towards the top, but it's balanced with this nice bit of negative space towards the bottom. You can also see that we have plenty of space around the shape, giving it room to breathe on the page, meaning that it's not too close to the edge. I've also included a layer of all the value shapes that I see in the reference. Now this is similar to what we did in the previous lesson where we're just identifying all of these light and dark shapes. So I've got the lightest light, which is the white of the paper. I've got the darkest dark and then a couple of values in between. So this will be used as reference, maybe if we get into the painting and we want to snap a photo with our phone and convert it to black and white, and then maybe compare it to these values just to see if we have a nice range and we're conveying all the values that we see in the reference. Now, taking a look at the sketch layer, you can see that I've focused on the value shapes that we just looked at on the previous layer. I think when it comes to fur and hair, it's much more effective to convey the various shapes of values over individual hairs. For example, you might be tempted to draw each strand of hair as individual lines, but all that's really needed is to simplify that area into one shape. Now, I did try to convey the direction of the fur with a few jagged lines along the edges. I also think it's interesting to note that the direction of the fur spins outwards from the face creating some directional lines that point back to our focal point. As an assignment for this lesson, I'd like you to go ahead and print this sketch and follow along with me in the next few steps to transfer it to watercolor paper and begin preparing it for paint. If you feel comfortable enough with your drawing ability, feel free to sketch your own version of the puppy on plain paper that you can then transfer using the same process. So we've got our printout, and now we want to begin adding a bit of graphite to the back of the sheet, so we can do a transfer just like we did in the previous lesson. So if you have a piece of paper underneath and looking at it from the backside, the paper underneath kind of helps us to see some of the lines that are coming through on the paper. So that way, instead of filling the entire backside of the sheet with graphite, we can just go along and just fill or just go over the lines that we see that we want to transfer. I bringing in our sheet of watercolor paper. I want to position this the printout paper is a little bit of a different size from the watercolor sheet. My paper is 8.5 by 11. The watercolor sheet is nine by 12, so I'm just going to kind of line it up so that it's got a little bit more space at the bottom than it does at the top, just so that it matches the composition we had in Procreate a little bit better or a little bit more closely. And I'm going to tape two top corners A And again, I'm taping these top corners so that I can periodically lift up and check my transfer. So I'm going to take the ballpoint pen and I'm going to go over the entire sketch to transfer it onto the watercolor paper. One good thing about this process is you can do multiple paintings from the same sketch. So this transfer will work several times before having to add more graphite to the back. So you could transfer it onto multiple sheets of paper and do two or three practice paintings from this same sketch. Remember to periodically check your transfer just to make sure that everything's coming through and that you don't leave out any lines. Also remember to press down enough to make the transfer underneath, but don't press down so hard that you might dent the paper underneath. Just want a good graphite transfer. Okay, I believe I've got everything now. So I'm going to go ahead. I'm going to remove the printout. Okay, looking at our transfer, I'm going to want to add a little bit more detail around the eyes, just darkening some of those lines a little bit so that I don't lose them underneath the paint. Because once we start painting, I want some lines to still be visible so that I can add more paint with layers and not lose some of my sketch underneath. So some of these outer lines and the stuff down here, it may not be as important, but just the stuff here on the face, the nose, the mouth, the eyes, those are very important lines, and I just want to make sure that those are dark enough that we don't lose them. I've got the number two pencil, and I'm just going very, very lightly. I'm not using a ton of pressure because I don't need the lines to be so dark, dark enough that they don't get lost. Now, you might be wondering what to leave out and what to keep in the sketch. I think that most everything that we have in our sketch here, we want to keep because it's important shapes of values and details that we want to include. Now, around the edges, I'm not going to go over them really dark because I might want to lose some of the edges. You know, we might want to make this line up here because this is white fur. Maybe we'll erase a little bit of that just so it's not so strong because maybe we'll want to lose some of that edge in the painting. But it's there enough that we can see if we want to keep it if we decide to keep it. I've darkened the details around the eyes a bit, around the nose, the mouth, again, leaving the outer edge so that we can lose some of that detail if we decide to do that. I think this sketch is ready to go into the next lesson. Let's get our brushes and paints out and I'll see you there. 9. Practice Painting: Alright. You should now have your sketch ready to paint. In this lesson, we'll be taking our work from the previous video and producing a quick practice painting. But first, let's talk about the value of doing simple practice paintings like these. I wanted to include a video on this topic in a beginner course because I want you to understand that not every painting that you do has to be something that you've spent hours on. In fact, most of us don't have hours to spend on one painting, and that's okay, because a lot of times the best watercolor is quick, simple, and loose. Alright. Before we get started on our painting, let's take a look at the colors that we see in the reference and make a general plan for our color scheme. We see a lot of warm colors in his face like this light brown, and testing a couple of colors on a scrap piece of paper, we can see that a pretty good match on our palette is burnt sienna. Also, a mixture of yellow ochre and cadmium red light is a pretty good variation of a similar color. Now, looking around his nose and just below his eyes, we can see a little bit of a pink. I think we can use a little bit of a sarin crimson to get a similar pink color. Now, if you're using a palette of colors that are different than mine, I would recommend doing some color swatches like these on a scrap piece of paper to give you an idea of potential colors. I think most of the colors that I'll be using from this selection are the ones on this side of our palette, these warmer colors here along with these cooler blues. In regards to our values, I think the whites that we want to preserve are here in the forehead and here on the right side of his nose. Now, this whole area is white fur, but this is another situation where we want to paint what we see and not what we think we see. If we look a bit closer, this area here and this area here are just a little bit darker than pure white. So if we were to view this in black and white, it would be a very light shade of gray. There's even a touch of blue up here along the top of his head. Also note that we don't have anything equivalent to black in our palette. So to get these really dark values where the fur is almost black, we can mix ultramarine blue and burnt humber. We can also use the same mixture with mostly water to get some shades of gray. Now we have an idea of the colors we see in the reference, but part of what gives watercolor its luminescence and abstract quality is the variation of colors in washes. So as we lay down our first layer of thin wash, we might try and mix in different colors to get a more random result to start us out. So I've got my painting set up here. I've got the palette here to the right, and then just off camera, there's a couple containers of clean water. I've also got a couple brushes over here just off camera, and then to the left, I have some paper towels. I'm gonna be using a larger size 14 brush for this initial layer. But just use the largest brush you have. If that's a size eight or a ten, that's perfectly fine. We're just going to be moving a lot of water around in this first step. So the larger brush size makes that a little bit quicker. Okay, so I'm going to add a little bit of clean water to the puppy's face, just so our initial layer will have some areas to spread and the paint will move around a bit. And I'm going to use the spray bottle to spray a little bit of water into the paint palette just to activate the paint. I'm going to mix a bit of burnt sienna and ultramarine blue. Now, as you're applying this initial bit of color, just be really loose and just let the paint flow a bit and don't worry too much about staying in your sketch lines. We just want this initial layer to just flow and be very loose and abstract. The only thing we really need to be concerned about is just protecting those bit of white areas that we want to keep for high light. Now, because we have a mixture of the burnt sienna and ultramarine blue, it's giving us this nice, warm, middle or light tone. So now I'm going to take some of the burnt sienna by itself, and I'm going to drop it into a few areas where the brown fur is very light or saturated in color. Now when we apply this one, because the surface is already wet, we're going to see some of this color bleed into our gray tone that we've already started with, and that's perfectly fine. We actually want that to happen so that some of our colors just bleed together, and it gives us this nice sort of light or middle tone that we're going to be working from. This is really one of my favorite stages in the process because it's almost like anything goes. I mean, we can just apply these colors and then just kind of let them flow together, and it's going to change a bit as it dries, and we're just going to let the paint do its thing, and then once it dries, we'll see what happens and see what we have to work with. Okay, so I'm going to add a little bit more ultramarine blue. And I'm just going to apply it up here towards the top, maybe where we saw that bit of blue at the top of his head. But. Mix in just a little bit of the serlem blue just to make it maybe a little bit brighter. Again, these colors they're running together, and it creates just such a nice flow and nice bit abstractness to the initial layer. Remember to keep your colors really light, so don't go too heavy with the paint. Keep mostly water in the brush. Adding a bit more of the serlem blue down here below his chin to the neck area. So sometimes you see me just kind of tap the tip of the brush and I'm just adding just abstract little bits, tap here, tap there, let the colors bleed together. Okay, so now I'm mixing a little bit of ultramarine blue and burnt umber. This is a very light mixture that I'm adding to the left side of his nose because there's just a little bit of shadow on this side. It's not pure white. So some of the painting is starting to dry at this point. We have a little bit that's wet, a little bit that's dry, so we kind of have to be aware of what is still wet. And if we drop paint into certain areas right now, we're going to have, like, a backflow or a bloom. So we kind of have to be aware of that. I've got a very, very light mixture here that I'm just putting between the eyes just to represent that really light fur that's almost white but not quite. It's little details like this that we see in the painting that give it a real more realistic look when you convey these values, these really dark values, but also just as important are those really light ones like these. I've got a little bit of a azarin crimson that I'm going to drop just below the nose here we can see in the reference photo that there's some pink around his nose and mouth. And just like we spotted before, it seems like maybe there's a little bit of pink around the eyes, and I'm going to just kind of drop that in and just let that flow and mix together with what's already there. This is that drop in technique that we looked at in a previous lesson where the paper is already wet and we're just kind of tapping in little areas of color and allowing it to flow. Now, as I'm working here, I'm constantly looking back and forth at the reference because I'm trying to remember all the little things that I see, and the reference is just off camera here so that I can use it as I'm going to make sure that I don't miss anything. I'm going to use a paper towel just to tap out a little bit of the areas that I see that are maybe bleeding a little too far into maybe some of the white that I don't want. Paper towel is a very important tool. Okay, so I'm using the spray bottle and some of these areas that are almost dry but not complete. There's a little bit of a sheen still on the page, but it's not super soaked. So when we spray it with a spray bottle, it gives us this nice modeled sort of texture where you get these water droplets that just create this nice bit of abstract texture that I really like. Okay, so we're going to let this initial layer completely dry before we move on to the next. Okay, now that our first layer is completely dry, the paint has gotten a little bit lighter than it was when it was first laid down. Looking at what we have to work with, I'm seeing some really nice just sort of blooms and some places where colors ran together, and there's this really nice just mixture of different colors in this overall wash that I really like. Now we're going to concentrate on these darker areas, like in the ears. The fur in the ears is a lot darker. So I'm going to mix a bit of ultramarine blue, burnt umber, and I'm gonna throw in just a little bit of a sarin crimson just to give it maybe a slightly warmer tone. Now, we want this paint mixture to be a bit heavier than what was in our first layer because we're starting from this point on, we're starting to build up values. I'm going to test this mixture on a scrap piece of paper, and it looks pretty good. I've still got my size 14 brush, and I'm going to just start to apply some of these darker areas, some of this darker fur, and I'm being a little bit more precise with my brush strokes. This is wet into dry, so the paint's not going to move or flow until we add water to the edges. So I'm trying to keep in mind the direction the direction of the fur, because I don't want this ear to look flat. So I'm looking back at the reference and just trying to get the initial direction of most of the hair. So all of these shapes have a really hard edge that I just added, but we're going to apply a little bit of clean water to blend out some of those hard edges. This is a bit of that pull technique that we looked at in a previous lesson. So we're just taking some clean water and running it to the edge of our strokes just to create more of a gradient or softer edges. All right, so just looking at how this hair flows. The fur flows around the face. So now I'm moving around the eye, and you can see that I've combined most of all of these initial strokes into one shape. So looking at the reference, you can see that the hair just kind of flows away from the center of the face. So I'm trying to keep that in mind as I go. That's why I'm being a little bit more precise here than I was in the first initial wash. With each layer that we add, we're going to get a little bit more precise each time. So most of this eyes and shadows, so I'm just going to go ahead and paint the whole thing in, and it will take care of that midtone. So we started very loose, and this layer is relatively loose. But as we add more and more, it's like we're zooming in. We're getting finer and finer with our details. So if the first stage was the loosest stage, then the last stage will be the most detailed. Dropping a little bit of ultramarine blue into this area because I'm seeing a little bit of blue and a little bit of purple. Plus, it's just giving a little bit of color variation into this shape. So as you're following along, don't worry about doing exactly what I do. Just try and interpret all of these shapes from the sketch as best as you can, because the further we go into this, the more we're going to start to lose these sketch lines, and it will just be more about your interpretation of the overall value shapes. Since this is a practice painting or what I'm calling a practice painting, we can kind of experiment a little bit with the color. And if we do a second version of this, we might try a different approach with color. Maybe we would use more reds than oranges or more purples than blue, just to experiment and see what happens. So much of watercolor is just experience and experimentation. The more of these practice paintings that you do, the more comfortable you're going to get, the more you're going to be willing to let watercolor do its thing and just apply your paint loosely. You'll know where you want to be loose and you'll know where you want to be detailed, the more paintings that you do. So I need to get in some of these darks in the nose and on the right side here. All right, I'm going to switch to a little bit smaller brush. This is a size eight. If you're already using a size eight, you could probably just keep the brush you have. I feel like this area here needs to be a bit darker, the side of his face. I'm going to add a little bit of burnt sienna, burnt umber, a little bit of lizard crimson and our ultramarne blue again, just to create that sort of dark purple that we were using. Now, I've got more water in this mixture, so it's gonna be a bit lighter than before. Test it out and see that we kind of have that nice purplish color. Now, you can see at this stage, I've started to slow down. Again, I'm being a bit more precise with the shapes that I'm making and the color that I'm applying. The beginning stage, again, it's very loose and a little bit faster. So this has gotten a little bit more tight and slow. Okay, I'm taking the same mixture here. Just getting that little shape in at the edge of the mouth. Okay, so I'm getting a good mixture of ultramarine blue and burnt umber. And it's a much cooler gray. It's a darker gray. And I'm going to start in on the nose here. Now, I feel like looking at the reference, the nose is probably going to take at least two layers. So this will be our first. The second layer will be a bit darker, so we'll get the really black areas of the nose on a second bass. So don't worry about painting in the nose as a solid shape. Try to leave a little bit of little white dots, little white spaces, because if you go fully black or fully darkened shape, it's going to stand out. It's not going to look as realistic. Now, I'm taking a little bit of clean water around the edge of the nose just to allow some of the paint to flow out because if you look at the reference, there's actually a bit of a light light tone or light value around his nose. Basically, we don't want the nose to be such a hard edge shape all the way around. 'cause I'm just getting in the shape of the mouth here. And I'm just using the very, very tip of the brush to get these tiny, little directional strokes for the mouth. Now, leave a little bit of spaces in between these tiny strokes because he's got these little white hairs that come over the edge of his mouth that it's not a solid shape. I'm mix a little bit more alzarin crimson into this mixture. I'm going to get a little bit more of this pink that's in the nose here and around the edge. Adding these small details of color like this, to me, it really starts to come alive because it's just these tiny little details and little color shifts that we see in the reference really give this painting a realistic look. So I'm going back to my larger brush, my size 14. And this is a really dark area. This is really dark fur around both eyes and the nose. So let's tackle these darks, which is going to require a bit thicker paint. And when I say thicker, I mean that there's more paint in the brush over water. Testing my mixture here, you can see that it's a little bit warmer than it was previously. Okay, so again, I'm trying to take into consideration the direction of the fur with these strokes, which is kind of going outward. Okay, so once again, I'm going to be bringing in some clean water just to soften some of the edges of these strokes. By doing this, it sort of creates the illusion of that lighter colored fur that darkens towards the edge of the ear. Okay, just like we did on the other side of the face, we're combining a lot of these darker shapes that we see. So all these fur strokes that I'm making, I'm connecting into one shape. Okay, so I'm adding in some of the darks that I see in the eye, but I don't want to paint over the entire eye because this is the one that will be blue, so I want to make sure that I leave some light space for that blue area. If we look at the reference, we can see that this brown fur here needs to be a little bit darker, but I don't want to use the dark mixture that I've been painting with. Instead, I think I'd rather come back with the Burt Sienna on this one. And then clear water again just to soften the edge. You can also think of adding water like this as creating a fade out or feathering. Okay, seeing this burnt sienna, I think we can add it to a couple more areas, maybe right here and possibly over here on the left side. Adding a little bit more paint to my mixture. Applying a stroke and then adding clear water is really helpful on this one because there's just so many soft edges in this puppy's fur. It just really helps to apply some paint, wet into dry, and then soften or blend the edge. Getting into a painting like this, you can really see that water is just as an important element as paint. Now, adding the burnt sienna like this and then moving it around to different areas, that's something that I would do quite a bit because once you add a color in one spot, it's almost like you need to add it around to some different areas to sort of balance it because we're working with several different colors, and I wouldn't want a color to just maybe be in one spot because it becomes a distraction. So if we add a little burnt sienna, then we're going to maybe go around and just add it to a few other areas just to balance it out. And I hope that you can see at this stage that it's really all about building up our values. We're at a stage right now where we've got a good foundation, but we haven't gotten dark enough with our darks. And I believe we're at a stage now where we really need to focus in on those darks. So I've got a good mixture of burnt umber and ultramarine blue again to get almost a black or a really super dark gray. So I'm taking the size eight brush here and I'm really focused in on the details. Where are the darkest values? Trying to get these details around the eye and some of these different directions of fur that I'm seeing. And at this stage, even though it's slower because we're really focused on details, when we start to add in these really dark values, it really starts to come together because we've already got all of our light values and probably most all of our middle tones. So the majority of the painting at this point is just bringing in those darks and it really starts to come together. So, take your time with this stage and really refer to the reference so that you're getting in these smaller shapes and these really dark values. Okay, right up here, again, I added a really wet mixture of the burnt sienna into this area, and it created sort of a bloom effect. Now, I could dab this out with a paper towel and start over again with this area. But instead, I think I'm just going to let it dry and just see what happens and see what it gives me to work with. And when stuff like this happens, you don't panic. Take a breath, let it dry because sometimes mistakes like this can turn into something really interesting. So much of a painting like this is just evaluating your values and just taking an assessment, how dark does this need to be? How light does this need to be and planning accordingly, especially with watercolor because we can't go light again in large areas. So when we plan for these lights like we did with the nose and the forehead, just makes it a matter of building up the values towards dark. Continuing on with my darks, I'm letting a lot of these darker strokes sort of blend together, adding a bit of water, softening some of those edges. And I think this area of the ear here, now that I've got some darks in, I think it's maybe a little bit too light. So I'm probably going to spread a couple of light washes over it just to darken the value a bit. All right. Like I mentioned before, I'm making another pass here at the nose with our burnt umber and ultramarne blue mixture. And I'm not going to go over the entire nose, just the very blackest blacks that I see in the reference. I think leaving the top of the nose that grayish blue color is really going to give it some three dimensionality. A so as I'm building up more and more of the darks, you can kind of skip around because you might make an adjustment on the right side and then see that there's something on the left side that you need to adjust as well. I've switched to a smaller brush. This is a size four that I'm going to get some of these smaller smaller hair details or fur details, especially around the eye where we're really getting into some fine detailed work. Right now taking a look at the overall values, I can tell that this area needs to go much darker and probably this side of the face, as well. We need something under the chin that will make the chin stand out, meaning the chin is a lighter color than what's underneath. So we're probably going to have to darken it just a bit to make it stand out. So again, taking my ultramarine blue and burnt umber, I'm making a very thick mixture. This is going to be more paint than water so we can get the super darks that we need. And as you can see, this is super dark, and this is exactly what we need to get in our darkest values. With watercolor, it's often a battle to get your darkest darks because it's so light and it's so transparent. You really have to have these darker values in the few places that need them to make the lighter values stand out. I can already tell this is much better. This is really the dark value that we needed. Y So now I want to enhance that blue that we saw at the top of the head and the reference. I'm going to take a bit of serlem blue and just take a light mixture and just add those blue highlights. And this will also help to define a little bit of that white fur at the top of the head. And then I'm just going to again, spread this out just a bit with some clear water. Know I've said it before, but I'm going to go ahead and say it again adding the clear water is like magic because it really just blend shapes and blends colors together in this perfect way that is really uniquely watercolor. Okay, so we've got to address this light value below the chin because it's just a little bit too light. So I'm going to take some burnt sienna and a little bit of the serlem blue and just add some of this color below his chin here. But this is an area that's really not a focal point. We're just adding value. So it's okay to use some really loose strokes and just try to make this kind of an abstract area. Sometimes just quick flicks with the brush like this just creates some nice variation and some nice abstract strokes. It looks like it was done really fast. So in that way, it kind of gives movement to the painting as well. I just charging in a little bit more of the burnt sienna. I really love doing this kind of thing in a painting because it adds to the abstractness of the watercolor. And this is an area that I think watercolor just it really shines. At this stage, I think we're getting really close here. Okay, now, seeing that value added below the chin here, I feel like I want to add maybe just a little bit of tone below the mouth. There's that little bit of pink that needs to stand out. All right. Now, let's address this one of my favorite elements about this reference was this blue eye. Let's add some paint there. Taking a little bit of the serlem blue. Now, to do this, I'm using the smaller size four brush. And so I'm cleaning out the brush with a paper towel, and I just want to soak up a little bit of that paint through the center here to bring back a bit of the light blue highlight. That adds a whole that adds a lot to the painting, just filling in that blue eye. Okay, I'm charging in just a little bitty bit of ultramarine blue around the edge just 'cause I know that the edge or I can see in the reference that the edge of the eye is a little bit darker. It's also a bit darker here around the pupil. Okay, I'm taking my larger size 14 brush now because I want to add a few splatters to finish out this painting, and I don't want to get a lot of splatter on the nose or the forehead. So I'm going to cover those areas up with some scrap or torn pieces of paper towel. So keep a paper towel handy because if some splatters happen to land in an area that you don't want or that you feel might be distracting, you can quickly dab them out before they dry. Okay, so I want some of these splatters to be directional and going away from the face. So I'm going to turn my paper, and I'm going to try to tap some of these into a directional splatter, if I can. In order for the splatters to be large enough, you need quite a bit of water in the brush. The more water you have, the larger the splatters will be. Okay, so I don't want those there. So I'm gonna dab them out with a paper towel. I think I'm gonna add some blue ones down here below. I'm gonna take some serlem blue and a little ultramarine blue and quite a bit of water in the brush again. It needs to be a really wet mixture. Okay, so I'm going to dab a few of these out with a paper towel like right here. I feel like too much. Too many splatters that are the same size might be a bit distracting. I'm just going to dab a few of these away. If they don't come up, you can also wet the paper towel and scrub them out just lightly. The quicker you do it, the easier it is because if they dry, they are probably there permanently. As a last step, I want to take a little bit of white guash and bring back a few of the highlights that are in the eye and around the mouth. I'm just going to dip the brush into the end of the guash tube, and I'm going to mix it with a little bit of water on a clean space in my palette. This is a last little step that also really brings the painting to life to bring back in those highlights that you see in the eyes and just some of the white bits that are in the reference. I There's also a few white highlights that are here on his lower jaw. So I'm going to bring those back in with just a few small paint strokes. And gouache is like watercolor in that it's water activated. So you can always soften the edge of your strokes with a little bit of water, and you can also scrub and dab them out if you decide that you don't want them, but you have to be careful because if you scrub it too hard, you'll start to activate the paint or the watercolor paint underneath. Adding these white highlights is also something that you can very easily overdo. So it's very easy to get carried away because it's a lot of fun. So I recommend that you just add a few and then take a look and make an assessment whether more are needed or not. I'm also going to take the white gelpin and I'm going to add some of the whiskers that we see, just real light, real quick strokes to add these whiskers. Again, with the whiskers, you don't want to overdo it. We just want a few light lines to just hint at some of the whiskers. We don't necessarily have to draw every single one, and you also don't want to make slow strokes here. You want these to be quick, just real light lines. Alright, with that last bit of detail, I think that we can consider this one complete. As an assignment, I encourage you to try this painting again. Painting the same subject more than once is a great learning exercise. On subsequent attempts, you might even be more experimental. On my second painting, I used more purple because I like the way it interacted with Burnt Sienna, but I may have liked it a bit too much as I was more heavy handed with my layers. As a result, I believe I prefer my first try more as it feels lighter overall. This practice work is a great way to obtain the experience we need for our final project, which we'll begin preparing for in the next video. 10. Mindset and Positivity: And before we get started on our final project, I wanted to discuss mindset. Up to this point, we've talked mostly about skills which are easy to understand and easy to practice. But as artists, we also have to understand our own state of mind how it affects our ability to paint and be creative. So first up, as you learn watercolor, the number one thing to keep in mind is to not get frustrated. Frustration is just our brains trying to resist something new. Our mind naturally wants to keep us inside of our own comfort zone. So when frustration arises, we have to have the patience to see it through, because it likely just means that we're about to level up with a new skill. And secondly, before you end this video, I want you to promise yourself that you don't have to be a perfect painter, and it's more than okay to make mistakes. In fact, mistakes are the best place for learning. Most of the time, what you might consider to be a mistake can turn into the most interesting part of a piece for someone viewing it. And last of all, take a deep breath and relax. You now have the skill and basic knowledge that you need to produce a watercolor painting. Now it's just a matter of a little bit of planning, taking the right approach, and being patient with yourself as you work. Alright, grab your paints and brushes, in the next video, we're going to begin tackling our final project painting for this course. 11. Course Project Part 1: Okay. For a final project for this course, I want us to paint a colorful bird. I wanted to choose a bird because it's very different from the cat and the puppy that we painted in previous lessons. This time, we'll be dealing with feathers instead of fur, and there's lots more finer detail that we'll have to pay attention to. But I wanted to show you a fun way to deal with this type of detail that makes it less intimidating. For our subject, I chose a Kingfisher because this is one of my favorite birds to paint. This bird has great colors, and I think he really has an interesting shape. He has a larger head than most birds do, and he kind of looks like a jet fighter in a way, which is just a really unique look. First up, let's take a peek at a couple of possible choices for reference photos. I found this first one on unsplash.com, and I really like how close up the image is. It allows us to see a lot of the detail in the bird. But I don't really like how he is looking in a downward direction. I think I'd rather his head be more level, so maybe more like this. And we could correct this in the sketch, but I think that it adds a little bit more complexity than what I want for this painting. And in some of the other images that I found, these blue feathers are a bit more of an aqua blue. This is more of a cobalt or an ultramarine, and I think I like the aqua blue a little bit better. Now, this photo does have more of the aqua color that we're looking for. It also looks like he's lit by the sun, so his colors are extra bright. I do think this one would make a nice painting, but he's kind of leaning forward a little bit on the branch, which makes him feel a little bit off balance to me. That's sort of nitpicking, but it's just enough to make me keep searching. This is an image that I found on Eyes Stock Photo, and this is the one I think we should go with because ultimately, it has everything that we're looking for. I think the bird feels a bit more balanced, and that's probably due to his eye being directly over his feet. And then his head is also more level. I also think it's interesting because he's looking in this direction, but his body is facing this direction, which just adds an element of interest. And even though he feels more balanced, his body still has a slight tilt, which is just another aspect that I like about the image. This is a nine by 12 canvas which matches the paper that we'll be using. If we look at a thirds grid, we could line him up along this grid line. Now, we could also move him to the center, which I think would work just fine. But because he's looking in this direction, I think it's more interesting to shift him over to give him some room or some negative space to look into. Switching our canvas to a portrait orientation, I think this could also work as a good composition. He does line up nicely with the grid, and we have a little bit more room for the branch that he's sitting on. For our painting, let's go with the landscape view because it allows for the bird to be a little bit bigger on the page, and that will give us some more room to work in all the details. Let's also take a quick look at some of the values that we see in this image. If we convert it to black and white, we can see that it doesn't have a lot of contrast in the values. We can bring that contrast out with a curves adjustment, making them easier for us to see. So we can push our darks a little darker and our lights a little bit lighter. Now we can see more separation in the values like the lightest lights here on his chest and these wispy feathers here on the side. Then we have the really dark darks around these blue feathers, his eye, and his beak. For the background, we may not go this dark, but maybe we'll leave it lighter and really focus in on the darkest dark so that they stand out. Now, taking a look at my rough sketch, you can kind of see the general idea of the shapes that make up the bird. I started with just an oval for the head and then chiseled in some straight lines around to get the silhouette. His body is just made up of some angled lines that meet up at the tip of his tail. Turning on the final sketch, you can see the details laid in over the rough. I tried to exaggerate a few of the angles here just to make the overall design of the bird a little bit more interesting. So this is the sketch that we'll be printing and transferring to watercolor paper. You can find the same sketch and the resources folder. Now, again, if you feel comfortable with your drawing ability, you're certainly welcome to work from your own sketch. All right, I'm going to go ahead and print this one out and move on to the next step. All right, I've just completed the graphite transfer just like we've done in previous lessons. I've also got my reference image printed here as well. So if we take a closer look at the image, we can see that there is all kinds of detail happening around the eye, lots of tiny feathers, this eye reflection, and so on. So in order to preserve all of this detail in our sketch, we're first going to outline most of our sketch with a micron pen. But remember, if you don't have a micron pen, you can always use a ballpoint pen. As long as the ink is waterproof, it'll work just fine. So I'm going to start with the detail around the eye, and I'm going to work my way out from there. We really want to take our time here and use a very light touch with our lines. So we want to pay close attention to the reference and notice the direction of these tiny feathers as we draw. Even though we can see a lot of detail in the bird's head like the striped feathers above the eye, we don't necessarily have to capture all of it. We can simplify it to some degree, and it will still read well and be effective. Now, as you're drawing these lines, try not to draw really long strokes. Instead, try to keep dash lines with occasional space to represent the texture of the feathers. Even short and quick dash lines will work in places, and the texture of the paper does help to break up the lines as well. What this pin work will allow us to do is get really loose and crazy with our first layer or two of paint without worrying about losing all of the tiny detail. The pin marks will still be clearly visible and they'll become a permanent part of the paint. I think this will help you feel more confident starting the painting stage because it's almost like you can do anything with the paint and not really lose the drawing. So as I move down the body of the bird with the pen, some of my strokes are getting lighter because the details are less important. You want to remember to use quick and confident strokes on some of these feather areas. As long as you have the general direction right, you really won't mess it up. Now, in this area of the chest that is orange feathers, I'm going to switch to a pencil because I don't necessarily want black pen lines in the slider area. So same as our other sketches, I just want to darken some of these lines just a little bit from the transfer. All right, bringing our reference back in. We've got the general direction of the feathers and most of our value shapes blocked in. Now, let's take a little bit of time to plan and test our colors. I've got a strip of watercolor paper here to test on and a size eight brush. So I'm going to go ahead and wet the palette with a spray bottle just to get some water mixed into the paints. Now, I'm thinking that we'll use these greens and yellows to get our overall background color, plus a little bit of serlem blue and ultramarine mixed in for the blue feather color. I think a mixture of cadmium yellow and cadmium red light will be a good orange for the feathers on the bird's chest. So I'm going to start by mixing a bit of viridian and cerrilliu blue to test out. So this might be too much viridian, so I'm going to drop in some more blue just to see what happens when it dries. I so I like that for the background color, but let's try adding in a little bit of sap green just to see what it does. That's probably actually closer to what's in the reference, but really it doesn't have to be an exact match. So I'm trying now to get a good orange for the chest feathers. And I think just using a variation of cad yellow and cad red to get different intensities of orange is going to work. I don't think we'll need yellow ochre at all. It's just not as bright as cad yellow. So taking a quick look at lemon yellow, I really think that this is too cool, and I prefer the warmer tone of the cadmium yellow better for this painting. Now, if you don't have these colors on your palette, it's perfectly fine to use similar colors and just make comparison to the reference. Again, it doesn't have to be an exact match. We're really just using a complimentary color scheme of blue and orange with a bit of green mixed in. Alright, I believe we're ready to get started with the painting. So I've got my palette open here. I've got two water containers off to the right. I'm going to be starting out with a size 14 brush, and I've got a paper towel in my left hand. Now, I've got my reference photo here as well. And if we take a look, we can see that the whitest whites are these feathers here and a couple of these highlights in the chest. Now, we want to try to preserve these areas in our first initial layers so that they will stay white. So I've got that viridian sap green and Cirillm blue mixture here, and that's going to be our primary background color. And I'm going to try to keep my strokes very loose and kind of in a diagonal direction towards the top right. I'm going to start by adding a little bit of water onto the paper. Now, this is just loose water strokes. There's nothing really here that you can mess up on, so don't worry about doing exactly what I do. We just want to get our paper wet to start out so that our initial layer will have some abstract areas to run and the paint will spread a bit. All right, so this is not an even coat of water across the whole drawing. It's broken up a bit, and you may not be able to see it on camera, but there's still some dry areas, and there's some areas where the water's pooling and some where there's just a nice sheen. All right, I'm going to start adding this blue green mixture into our background wash. And I want you to go inside and outside of the lines and not worry about perfection. Just let the paint drop in here and there using light strokes and quick flicks with the brush. We're sort of letting it dance across the paper. So go ahead and allow the color into the head and the blue feather shapes because we want the background color to blend with those areas. And again, we're kind of going in a diagonal direction because the bird is leaning that way, and it just feels like a natural extension of the composition to me. Now, again, I want you to feel confident in this stage. So let this background wash be loose and abstract. You're not going to mess it up at all. Remember, we've got our details in place with the ink lines, and those aren't going anywhere. Okay, now I'm making another pass here with more intense color, meaning there's a little more paint in the brush than water. And this is just to vary the color intensity in the wash. It's still going to spread and blend because the paper is still wet. So go ahead and load the brush with water and paint and give it a few taps with your finger to add some splatters into and around the wash. Some of these will land into the wet areas and create some soft edge dots. And all of this really just adds to the abstract background and makes the painting feel more loose. Can Allie take some serlem blue, and while the paper is still wet, let's add some color into those blue feather areas. This works great over that background color, and it's totally fine if it gets out of the lines a little bit. It's going to spread some because of the wet paper. Now, if paint starts to spread too much, like, into the orange areas, you can always soak it up with a paper towel. All right, so now I'm just stopping to take a look at what we've got so far and see what else might be needed. Alright, obviously, some more splatters are in order. It's really amazing to me just how adding them to a painting makes it feel so quick and loose like paint was just being slung around. The viewers never gonna know if we were a little particular about where our splatters landed. Now, while the paper is still wet, let's move on to the orange feathers. I've also switched to a size eight brush because we probably need to be just a little more precise working in these areas, but not much more. So I'm adding some of these first strokes in the direction of the feathers. Still being quick and letting the brush flick and dance a little. Also, don't forget about these small little highlights that we want to try and leave. Also, don't worry if the orange begins to bleed over into the background color because we actually want that to happen in a few places. All right, a few orange splatters here and there isn't going to hurt anything. So I'm going to make this orange a little bit more intense with some cad red light. This is going to give us some good color variation in the orange. I'm going to have to be a little bit more precise up here around the head. And remember to take a look at the reference image to see the direction of some of the feathers. Really trying to break up some of my strokes to leave some white spaces and also protect those little highlight areas. Alright, let's go ahead and punch up the orange even more by adding in some really strong cad red light. Really just charging it into a few spots on the chest. Okay, now I'm going to take a paper towel and twist it into a point. We can use it here and there to soak up some of the paint to bring back a few highlights while the paint is still wet. I'm just tapping the paper towel back and forth and not scrubbing too hard. Right now we need to let this initial layer completely dry before moving on to the next. So as my paper was drying, I couldn't resist hitting it with a light mist from the spray bottle. The water droplets add a great texture into the wash. Now, it's best to do this when there's just a little sheen on the paper and not when the water is pooled. Adding it too early really has no effect. Alright, so my paper has dried a little further, and a good way to test if it's dry enough is to lay your hand on it, and if it feels cool to the touch, it probably isn't dry enough just yet. Alright, everything has completely dried now, and just taking a look at it, we've really got a great initial wash. I think these colors look good together and they have a nice variation. And I think I did a pretty good job reserving some of the white areas. So we've really got a good starting point. Now, taking another look at our reference, I think it would be a good idea to tackle the next layer in sections. So we'll start with the beak and then go on to the head, then to the blue feathers in the wing, and then the orange feathers on his chest. So taking a closer look at the beak, you can see that there's a bit of a warm tone closest to his eye before it gets to the darker black. So let's see if we can mix this warmer color first. So I'm going to mix some burnt sienna into the Cirillm blue, and I'll add some burnt umber, as well, and maybe a bit of a azarin crimson to warm it up some more. Testing this mixture out real quick on some scrap paper to see what we've got. I think I'm going to mix in a bit more just to get the color a little darker and maybe a bit more purple. So I'm taking my size eight brush and I'm going to start painting in the beak. Now, with this second layer, we're going to begin to get more precise and pay close attention to the values that we see in the reference. To get the darker tone on the beak, I'll mix in some burnt umber and ultramarine blue to get a black. So I'm going to allow this color to mix in with that warmer tone to get a transition across the beak. I might try to leave some of these little white shapes that are made with the gaps in the strokes, but most likely we'll have to come back with white guash to get all the highlights in the beak. So while we have this darker mixture, let's go ahead and add some of the detail around the eye. And if using a larger brush like this feels uncomfortable to you, you can certainly grab a smaller one to get this job done. This is another instance where we want to pay close attention to the reference to get all of these small shapes right. So I'm going to add some more serian blue back into the mixture and start hinting at some of the striped feathers. Now, I mentioned before while inking the sketch that it's better for us to simplify some of the complex detail, and that ultimately reads better in a painting than trying to capture each and every little line. I'm gonna go ahead and use this darker color to fill in the eye below the highlight here. So I'm going to grab some more of the serle and blue to darken the edges of these feather areas that happen here around the eye. As we begin to layer in the values on the head, I'm going to start with really light mixtures of paint, meaning there's going to be probably an even amount of water and paint in the brush because I want to build up these values slowly layer over layer. Can Alice take our orange mixture and get some of this orange detail in in a couple of these little spots? So we want to be careful here because at this stage, we don't necessarily want our orange to flow into those blue areas. So if you feel more comfortable, you can certainly let the blue dry first before adding any orange. I'm going to use some clear water here and I'm going to blend the edge out. I think we actually do need a little bit of yellow ochre after all. Looking at the reference, there's a bit of light cream colored feathers under the beak. So I'm going to add a bit with a pretty wet mix. I think a really light burnt sienna would probably work here, too, but this is certainly close enough. Now I'm just blending it with a little bit of water before I soak some of it up with a paper towel. This is going to give us kind of that cream color. Okay, let's go ahead and start building up some of the values in the head with a thicker mixture of serlem blue and ultramarine. As we start to build up these values, it's going to bring some three dimensionality into the painting. We will have to come back, most likely, and just bring in some more darks once this layer dries. As you add these smaller details, it's a good idea to periodically come back with clean water and blend any hard edges that you don't want before they dry. Because these are smaller little areas, they tend to dry a little bit quicker. Okay, moving the brush around, working some paint into the edges of these blue feather areas because if you'll notice in the reference, some of the darker darks happen at the edges. I'm probably not going to time lapse this section because I want you to see how slow I'm actually going and how I'm just being real methodical with my stroke placement. And I want you to do the same. I want you to study the reference and really take your time. We're not in any kind of rush to complete this painting. So again, just continuing to drop in color here and there. Okay, so now that the beak is completely dry, let's go in with our dark mixture, some of our black mixture and see if we can darken up the beak quite a bit. Now, it's our darkest dark in the reference. So once we have it established in the painting, we can kind of use it to measure all the other values as we go. Now, I can tell from this first bit here that I've probably got a little bit too much water versus paint in the brush. So we'll probably have to come back in a bit and charge in a little bit thicker paint. And as I'm working to the right here, I don't want to completely cover up that warmer tone that we established in the first layer. And that's actually a really important aspect of watercolor is to try and preserve the layers that you've already created. So as we continue to work, we want to keep that in mind and not try to completely cover some of the layers we've already established. I'm just kind of trying to blend in some of these edges on the beak with some clean water. Just trying to get a smooth transition. Okay, this finer detail work, just remember to take your time. You'll notice that I'm going pretty slow here and trying to be real methodical and just getting this detail right. Okay, so like I mentioned before, I'm now charging in a thicker paint mixture, so I've got more paint in the brush than water this time. And when I drop it into this area that's already wet, it's going to spread out and darken the whole beak. I've got a few of these little white spaces in the beak that really aren't in the reference photo, but they do create a nice little area of highlight. Okay, again, just taking my time with the beak, just trying to get it right. I'm gonna go ahead and add this dark mixture into the eye, as well, because his eyes pretty dark in the reference, dark enough that we really can't see the pupil. I'm just kind of kind of move the brush around in these other little areas to darken them as well. I've just got clean water in the brush now, and I'm just smoothing out this transition in the beak. I just don't want this additional painted area to dry with a real hard edge. So a way to prevent that is too smooth out the edges with clear water. Okay, there's some darker darks here around the beak that I'm just going to kind of touch on a little bit with some of this black mixture. So I'm going to clean out my brush, and I'm gonna get a little bit of this orange, the cat orange and cad yellow and mix this together just to add a little bit of darker orange below the eye here. And I'm gonna clean this out of my brush and come back with some clear water to just blend that edge out. Let's take a look at the stripe detail in the bird's head before we move on down into the wing. I'm going to go ahead and clean out this darker mixture that we have on the palette, and I'm going to start over with some serleu blue and ultramarne blue. Now, as I mentioned before, we really want to try and simplify these stripes. We don't want to try to paint in every single little feather because they're so tiny and they're so detailed. It would actually make the painting a little bit too complex. So we just want to hint at their existence, and it will give the opportunity for the viewer's eye to sort of fill in the blanks, because they're simplified and they're less detailed, it actually makes the painting a bit more interesting to look at. A lot of times with a painting like this, it's just as important to determine what to leave out as what to include. So I'm using the size four brush here just to hint at these stripes, and I'm using the ink lines as a guide, but you don't have to paint them in exactly. We're going to use a little bit of water here to blend a few of them together. Now, just by darkening these ink lines a little bit, you can already see that the stripes are there, even though they're not perfectly detailed, but our eye is sort of filling in the rest. So I'm taking clean water now just to reduce some of the intensity. So the majority of the blue feather areas are wet now, and I'm just kind of charging in a little bit of darker blue here and there, just adding to the overall darks that I see where the feathers turn under and away from the light. And this is just a matter of looking at it and then studying the reference a bit and just adding just a touch here and a touch there where you feel like it's needed. Again, we'll probably spend the most time on the head and the feathers around the head in this particular painting because this is where most of the detail is, and this is where the viewer's eye is going to look first. Now, as we move down into the blue feathers on the wings, we have some inclines that are kind of giving us a hint as to the direction of the feathers. So we really want to pay attention to that, and we really want to look at the reference so that we can try to get some of our strokes in the same direction. So as we look at the reference here, we can see that as the bird's body rounds, it changes the direction of these feathers. Okay, so taking a look at it, I think we should probably tackle the orange feathers on the chest first because I think that would help us to determine how dark we should go with the values on the blue wing. But before we do that, let's take a break, grab a cup of tea or a cup of coffee, and let's come back and pick up our progress in the next video. 12. Course Project Part 2: All right, as we get started on the orange feathers in the chest here, we want to mix up quite a bit of our orange mixture, which is cad red light and cad yellow. I want to make sure I have enough here to work in this larger area. So I've got the size eight brush, but I'm just using the tip of the brush in these smaller feathers here, just below the head. So these are very small, very quick strokes. And I want to make sure that I leave space in between these strokes and these shapes so that some of that underlying layer, that lighter highlight layer will show through. Now, it's better to use these broken up strokes so that we have the option to show that layer underneath because we can always combine these strokes or combine these shapes. If we just do an initial large shape to begin with, then we don't have that option. So as I move lower on the bird's chest, I'm going to start to use a little bit larger strokes, but I still want to make sure that I'm leaving space. Sometimes you'll see me sort of, like, make the motion with my hand before I actually place the brush to the paper, and that's just to sort of set in my mind what I'm about to do before I do it. Okay, so moving further down the chest here towards the feet, I'm leaving a lot of space here to again give me that option to leave that underlying layer and using much larger quicker strokes. I'm also varying my mixture of the orange. Sometimes there's a little bit more cad red, sometimes there's a little bit more of the yellow because I want there to be a little bit of color variation or intensity of orange in these strokes. There's more water in the brush than paint, and I'm just softening some of these edges. Now, the reason that I am softening these edges is because I want this new layer of more intense color to blend with the layer underneath. So there's this sort of weaving in and out of color intensity on the bird's chest. Now, there's more water in the brush than paint, and I'm also adding some of these really light strokes to just add a little bit more variation. Now, picking up a little bit more yellow into the brush, I'm just going to add a few more little spots here and I think this looks pretty good for now on the chest feathers. Right now, we're going to start working in this blue wing area, and I want to try to preserve some of this highlight that I see that was kind of naturally created by the wash. So I don't want to just fill in a large blue shape here. So I'm mixing in a little bit of burnt umber, ultramarne blue, and serlem blue to get a nice, darker, rich blue. And again, here, I'm going to use the tip of the brush and just kind of draw in some of these feather shapes in the direction that I see them going in the reference. Now, I'm just letting the brush sort of dance around again and just leaving spaces so that the wash underneath can still show through and be part of the painting. So this is kind of the scumbling technique that we learned in a previous video. Okay, so as I move down into the tail here, you can really see that I'm trying to leave those spaces and just trying to be really light because that's really the beauty of watercolor is that it's not like oil paint. You know, we're not just putting in really thick colour. We're trying to always preserve what we've done in a previous step. As I move down into the tail here, I'm trying to use a little bit longer strokes. I've got a little bit more paint in the brush, and I'm just charging in a few areas that I want to be a little bit darker, a little bit varied. Okay, so now we're looking at these two darker areas in the tail. Alright, mixed a little bit darker paint to try and get this dark in the tail, and I'm using a little bit longer strokes here. They're quick, and maybe there's a little bit of a dry brush effect happening, too, which I kind of like. I've cleaned out my brush, and I'm going to mix in a little bit of burnt sienna with our orange color here and see if we can get that darker orange that we see in the tail, that sort of sort of a burnt orange color. Same as before, tip of the brush, really light strokes, leaving some spaces where I can. And this dark actually goes up a little bit into the bird's body, so I'm just going to extend that. And I think this darker color will also help the bird look a little bit more three dimensional. You know, it's tough to try and not overdo these shapes and these strokes. It's always kind of a challenge with watercolor to fight the urge to go in really heavy with a lot of color and a lot of paint. So just keep a mindset of having a very light touch and letting the watercolor sort of speak for itself and do most of the work like we did in that initial stage. Now, birds kind of have what I would call sort of ugly feet. So I never want to draw a lot of attention to their feet because it pulls away from the focal point, which is usually the beak and the eyes. So I try to just add a little bit of just color and try not to get really, really detailed on the feet. I'm going to do a little bit of dry brushing here on the branch that he's sitting on because I just want to add a little bit of texture, maybe, and not be real heavy with it. And so I've got some water in the brush now, and I'm just going to blend a lot of these shapes together. I don't think I want the orange in the feet to stand out a lot, like I said, so just mixing that in a bit with the color in the branch. Essentially just toning down the orange. So I'm adding just a little bit of clear water here to these feather strokes and just a little bit more orange color just so that they blend a little bit. I'm charging in just a little bit more paint so that this area just darkens some, but through a wash and not so much through strokes. And now that the tail has dried just a little bit, I'm going to add some darks here with dry brush just to get some texture in. Now, again, on all of this, I want you to get the idea of what I'm doing, but don't feel like you have to do all of the exact same motions. This is a loose and abstract painting, so it would be impossible for you to do exactly what I'm doing. Instead, I want you to have an understanding of the technique and use those techniques to do a version of this bird that's your own. I'm gonna soak up a little bit of this dark. I feel like it's maybe a bit too distracting. So I just I just soaked the moisture out of the brush with a paper towel and used it to absorb some of the paint there. I'm just going to add a few more darker strokes to the head. As these feathers turn under and away from the light, they get just a little bit darker. At this point, I'm just looking around and I'm seeing where maybe a touch is needed here, a touch is needed there with these darker blue colors. I tend to do that at this stage with a painting, so I'm just kind of moving around and saying, Okay, this is needed here, maybe a little bit of that there. It's really just what looks right to your eye. Okay. At this stage, we've built up a nice level of contrast, and I really like how the painting is coming together. At this point, it's just a matter of not overdoing it and not overworking it. So it's just little touches here, little touches there. I hope that you can see how the ink strokes, the ink lines have really helped us in this painting to make it easier and to preserve all these little things that we wanted to stay throughout to the final painting. Okay, so now we're going to intensify the wash a little bit with more of this blue green color. And so I'm gonna mix some serlem blue and that viridian and some more sap green to get our background color again. And I've got the larger size 14 brush. So I'm gonna clean the paint out of the brush and just add some clear water so that the paint will have some areas to flow into. I'm gonna add this water here behind the head and then along these lighter colored feathers here. And another area beside the tail here where there is already some darker color. Add a little bit more paint to the mixture just to intensify a little more. Okay, so I've got the brush loaded with paint again, and I'm going to begin to just drop it in to these wet areas. And it's okay if it goes over the lines just a little bit, just like it did in the first layer. Try to preserve these little fine feathers here and keep the lights in that area. Alright, I've cleaned out the brush. I've got clear water again, and I'm just going to add some clear water around the edge just to help the paint spread so that there won't be a hard edge when it dries. Got some more paint in the brush and just adding a few more splatters. Alright, and just looking for just some areas to blend here just because I don't want this additional wash to have, like, a really hard edge. I want it to blend with the background. Okay, I'm going to add a little bit below the beak here, but I want to be really careful and I don't want to lose that highlight that's there on the wings. Being a little bit more precise here and just dropping in a really small amount of color. Alright, I've got a little bit more Cerlean blue in the brush, and I'm gonna drop in a little bit of that blue just to add some color variations to what we just added. Okay. Now that that additional wash has completely dried, we're going to add a few splatters around the orange chest area. So I've got the size 14 brush again, and I'm mixing quite a bit of the cadmium red light, and the brush is very soaked with water and paint. You need a lot of water in the brush in order for there to be enough splatters. And don't be nervous about adding these splatters because any that we don't like, we can always soak up. We'll put down a paper towel here just to mask off the face and the blue feathers. I'm going to tap this pretty hard to get larger splatters. If there's not enough water and paint in the brush and you don't tap it hard enough, the splatters will be very fine and very small. Okay, so taking a look, pretty happy with how these landed. I think I will soak up this one right here just because it's kind of a cluster. And I think I'm going to leave the rest alone. Okay, now that our splatters are dry, I'm going to take a little bit of white guache and I've already added some highlight to the beak and a little bit around the eye. And now I'm going to focus on some of these lighter highlight feathers around the head and some of the feathers on his right side. Now, guash is just like watercolor, so it will look a little bit darker or maybe a little more opaque when it first goes down. But as it dries, it will lighten and it will blend a bit more with the painting. If you're using acrylic for this step, you'll just want to thin the acrylic down to the consistency of watercolor, so some of that transparency will be maintained. Also, guash will reactivate with water, but acrylic won't. So if you are unhappy with the placement of the guash, you can always wet it and then soak it up. But acrylic is going to be a little bit more permanent. Are you doing this with a size two brush just because these are really fine feather details or feather highlights? Alright, so I mentioned before that I don't like to detail the feet a whole lot, but I feel like just looking at it, that these could stand for a little bit of an orange shadow as the edge of the feet rounds to the branch, and I think that it just will help the feet stand out a little bit from the branch. This is probably not entirely necessary, but it was just a little touch that I felt like I needed to add. Now that I look at this area again, I'm noticing that this tail here could probably be a little bit darker in value. I'm going to take a little bit of the burnt umber and mixing that into our orange color again, just to darken it. Let me move it over a little bit so you can see it. So I'm just taking some burnt umber, mixing it in. And I'm just going to add some light strokes here just to make this area have a little bit more contrast, a little bit darker value. It's little touches like these and value that will really enhance the painting. And sometimes you don't notice them at first, you kind of have to let the paint dry and then walk away and maybe come back, and then you'll see it again and realize, Okay, this needs to be a little bit darker here or there. I really didn't notice it until I was looking at the feet again. Okay, we're going to take our micron pen again and just draw in some of these little tiny dark areas around the head. Now, we could probably do this with a smaller brush and some watercolor. But because these areas are so tiny, I think it's probably just more efficient to do it with a pin, especially since we have some ink lines in our painting anyway. Now, I'm only going to do this around the head and not the entire body because this is where most of our detail is. And again, I'm trying to pay attention to the direction of the feathers, just like we did in the initial drawing. Okay. I'm also going to draw in some just tiny little splatters, little dots with the pen. And this is a really great way to control where your splatters land. And the viewers never gonna know that these were drawn in instead of splattered with a paintbrush. This is a great way to get really detailed with your splatters and really get them to land where you want. So I'm just going to add a few dots here and there, mainly around the head. Okay, now we're going to take our toothbrush and some white guash again, and we're going to add some really loose splatters. And this might be a little bit scary at first, but I want you to not be scared of it, not be nervous because we're going to put the paint down and we're going to be very loose with it. So in this stage, we'll really be reacting to the paint versus the paint reacting to us. And I'm going to start by flicking it with my thumb and trying to get some directional splatter off the side of the head here. So the toothbrush probably has more paint than water, so we're getting a lot of little tiny specks, which is just fine. The harder you flick it with your thumb, the more directional the splatters are going to be. Okay, so I'm just spinning the paper around and just trying to add these white specks here and there. There's something about these white splatters that really pulls everything together. Okay, so now I'm going to take a size eight brush, and this time, I've got a lot of water mixed in to the guash. So it's going to be much more wet and the splatters are gonna be much larger. Okay, so right off the bat, I've got a huge splatter here, but don't be afraid if something like that happens. It might seem scary at first, but this is going to become a great part of the painting. Okay, so again, this large bit here may seem scary, but it's okay because we can soak a little bit of it up and then leave most of it there and let it dry and see what happens. I'm gonna soak up a few more random splatters here in just areas where I feel like maybe they're just too clustered or there's a bit that seems distracting. Okay, again, this is a situation kind of like our first layered wash, where we are letting watercolor do its thing, and then we are reacting to it. We're reacting to what it gives us to work with when it dries. I'm going to take the Sis ight brush again. This time, it has more guash in it than water, so the splatters are going to be a little bit more opaque this time. I'm tapping it pretty hard onto my hand and trying to get larger splatters. You can see I've already got some more off the edge of the head there. Okay, I really like what these splatters have done here because suddenly it feels like there's a bit of motion in the painting or there's a bit of energy. So at this stage, it might look a little bit crazy, and some of these splatters may be standing out too much, but you're really going to see as the guash dries that it'll have this matte finish just like the rest of the painting, and it won't be standing out as much. Okay, so now that the guash has dried, you can see that it really looks like a natural part of the painting. And there's areas here that I would have never thought to paint with the brush, like that large splatter that landed on the chest. It really looks great and looks like a highlight, but I would have never thought to paint that. It's something that happened by accident, but instead of soaking it up, I decided to let it dry and become part of the painting. Now, another area that I didn't really plan for was losing the edge at this highlight on the wing. Now, it's something that I noticed early on, but I didn't really think about really brightening it with guashe until I saw this final layer. So I'm gonna take some guash right out of the tube and see if I can completely lose this edge or this incline. So it's going to look like this really bright, really intense highlight. Now, again, this is something that I didn't really plan for, but as I'm finishing up this painting, it's really become my favorite part. Now, as I'm looking at this, I'm seeing areas of the painting that were intentional and areas that were unintentional that just happened naturally by watercolor doing its thing. And if we were too scared to embrace that, if we were too scared to let that happen, we would be missing out on some of the greatest aspects of this medium. I'm going to go ahead and stop right here because I don't really see anything else that I should add at this point. I think the painting looks pretty balanced and has a good range of values. But let's take a look at one final step that may be needed. Because we used a lot of water on this one, it may have caused our paper to buckle a little bit. But it's really easy to flatten it back out by just taking the water bottle and wetting the back of the paper. Then place it on a flat surface between two sheets of parchment paper. Then place a book or something heavy on top. Let this dry for at least 24 hours. And once it's dry, the paper will be completely flat again. I hope this project has shown you how to build up a watercolor painting in stages using all the techniques that we've learned in a way that is both easy and accessible. I want you to come away from this one, feeling inspired and confident in starting your own loose watercolor paintings. So in the next video, let's review some of the key takeaways that we've learned in this course. 13. Key Takeaways: Oh. As we wind down the course, I wanted to take a minute to review a few of the key takeaways that I want you to keep in mind as you continue to practice and progress. Remember to plan your paintings. We're always in a hurry to get to the fun part, which is putting paint to paper, but the final results are so much better when we show up with a well thought out plan. So that includes gathering good quality reference photos, a solid sketch based on good shape design and composition, and an idea for our color scheme based on our knowledge of easy color theory. All of this combines to make the overall process easier and more enjoyable, and that results in a better painting. Also remember our mindset tips. Don't get frustrated, but if you do, take a breath and recognize it for what it is. Just an opportunity to level up and learn something new. Also remember to check your need for perfection at the door. Embrace mistakes, learn from them, and let them be a part of the painting. You never know when your latest mistake will take your art in a brand new direction. You've come such a long way throughout the course. I also want to leave you with some daily practice tips to keep your momentum going. So, number one, whether it's 15 minutes a day or 1 hour, twice a week. Try to carve out the same time frame for practice or to work on a painting. Being consistent will build an artistic habit. Number two, if you can't keep your workspace set up all the time, place your latest painting in progress or quick study someplace that you can always see it, maybe on the refrigerator or kitchen table so that it calls back to you and stays in the forefront of your mind. Number three, challenge yourself. Once you've got experience with one subject over several studies and paintings, try something new, maybe a little bit more difficult. Remember that you've got the skills. Tackling a new subject is simply a matter of mindset, patience, and planning. 14. A Final Word: Thank you so much for taking this course with me. We've covered so much everything from basic supplies and setup to watercolor characteristics and brush techniques, color theory and value contrast, how to find the right reference and the basics of sketching all the way to producing a final watercolor piece. I'm going to leave you with this quote from teaching legend Bob Ross. He once said, I can't think of anything more rewarding than being able to express yourself to others through painting. Exercising the imagination, experimenting with talents, being creative. These things to me are truly the windows to your soul. You now have everything you need to get started on your journey painting watercolor. If you have any questions or want to share your work with me, please do reach out through email or on Instagram. I'm looking forward to it, and I'll see you there.