Vibrant Watercolors: Learn to Create Contrast and Paint a Starfish

1. Introduction: Watercolor painting has a breathtaking ability to create contrast in artistic works. The interplay of light and shadow is captured by watercolors with a subtlety that is unique to this medium. Hi, everyone. I'm Cheryl, a self taught watercolor artist from India. Before I discovered a crucial ingredient in painting, my watercolor artworks often appeared flat and dull. In this class, I will share everything I have learned over the years about capturing light to create vibrant watercolor artwork. We will use this knowledge to paint a starfish using a limited watercolor palette of four colors and white guash. I will guide you through all the materials needed for this project, as well as discuss principles, techniques, and tips that will help you generate excitement and interest in your painting. We will paint the starfish together step by step, but remember that these methods are general and can be applied to any painting you create. This class is perfect for late beginners and intermediate watercolor learners. If you are ready to elevate your watercolor skills, let's dive right in. 2. Class Project: In the lessons that follow, the goal is to master a wide range of watercolor techniques by working on a specific project. For your class project, use the methods discussed in the lessons to create your vibrant starfish painting. The goal is to use a wide range of tonal values to capture the lights and shadows in your artwork. Do take snapshots of your work in progress and your final painting to upload to the project's gallery. I'm always happy to provide feedback. Please don't hesitate to ask in the class discussions below. Remember that all the methods discussed herein are general and will find application in other watercolor projects as well. If any technique is new or difficult for you, I invite you to practice it repeatedly on a scrap piece of paper until you have perfected it, and you will leave this class with many new skills under your belt. I put forth the following challenge to you as you work through the painting. Create an inventory of all the different techniques used in this class. Label each method with its name. This will help a lot as you progress through your watercolor journey. Feel free to include your techniques inventory to your project submission, along with the starfish painting. Now, without further delay, let's get started. 3. Materials: So these are all the supplies that we need for our artwork. We need a mixing palette. The one that I'm using is a white ceramic palette, but you could replace it with a plastic one, or instead of a palette, you could use a white ceramic dinner plate or any other utensil that you have available with you onto which you can squeeze out some paint and mix colors. The specific shades of watercolors that I'll be using today are cadmium yellow medium, golden, ruby, and turquoise. You do not need to have the same watercolors, but it's preferable if you have something that's similar looking. So a shade of yellow, a shade of orange, a red and a blue will suffice for our purposes. The ones that I'm specifically using and the names of these pigments are also available in the resources tab down below, and I'm using watercolor pans, but if you have tubes, you could use those for this artwork, too, squeeze out some paints onto your palette and then mix the colors from there. I also have white gauche, and we need white gauche so we can add some highlights towards the end of the painting. This helps with the details that really stand out and make the painting pop. I have three paint brushes with me, a large flat brush and two round brushes. So the large flat brush helps you cover large areas and paint big washes quickly and efficiently, whereas the smallest one is preferable for doing details. The one which is intermediate between these two, this is a size A round brush with a pointed tip, holstering paint intermediate areas. This is not important for you to have three paint brushes. I have chosen three just for convenience. It is sufficient. You have just one brush with a good pointed tip, which you can use for details and a large belly which you can use for larger areas. So having three brushes is convenient, but it's optional. Next, I have my drawing supplies, which I'll require before I start painting. I have an eraser, and it's better to use an erb eraser if you have one available because this helps pick the graphite marks gently from the paper if you want to make any corrections, as opposed to scrubbing the paper too hard with a regular eraser, which may ruin the watercolor sheet. I also have a pencil with me for drawing. Next, there is paper that we need to talk about. The watercolor paper on which I'll be painting is 100% cotton, cold pressed paper by Saunders. You don't need to have the same brand, but it is very important to have 100% cotton paper without which the artwork won't be able to hold as many layers or absorb the layers well that we will be laying down. Most of the techniques that we do today require 100% cotton paper. The size I'm using is 12 " by 9 ", but you don't need to have the same size. If you prefer to create a smaller or larger artwork, you could adjust the size accordingly. Watercolor papers come in two formats, either in blocks like this one, which is glued at the borders. So this prevents the paper from buckling when you apply water. But you could also use loose sheets which are not glued like the one here. And what you need to do in this case is that you need to secure the edges with a masking tape. I will discuss later in my lessons how to secure the paper if you're using loose sheets. If you're using a block, you do not need to worry about this. Next, I have a jar of clear water, and this is useful for rinsing of my paint brushes as I work. I also have a rag piece of cloth. You could replace it with tissue papers, but this is useful to tap off excess water from the paintbrush or absorb excess water off the paper directly. So these are all the supplies, and a complete list is also available in the resources tab down below, which you may download for your convenience. That's it for the supplies, and I will see you in the lessons. 4. Preparation for Painting: Now that we have our supplies with us, we are ready to start painting. To start, if you are using loose sheets of paper like me, we need to secure all the borders of the paper to a hard surface. For this, we use the masking tape. We would like to leave an equal margin on all four edges. And for this, I use a rough estimate. But if you prefer to be precise, you could use a ruler. To hold the paper to a solid surface like the table here, oh I put my masking tape such that a part of it is on the paper and the rest of it sticks to the table. This prevents the paper from buckling when we apply water. Once we have secured our paper, let's start drawing. Where I want the center of my starfish to be, I draw a small circle. And from that, I pull out five lines at equal spacing, like you can see me do here. I use my pencil to measure equal lengths on each arm of the starfish. So these five lines that I pulled out from the center are going to become the arms of the starfish. We will have five of those. And you can see how I'm using my pencil here for measurement. I wanted to one side of the paper. But at the same time, I don't want it to be protruding out of the paper. The arms of the starfish need to be contained within my space, and for this, I use the measurement using my pencil. I measure one of the arms and make sure that all of them, all the four arms are the same length. I then join my markings on the central line to the edges in marking to draw a star shape like you can see me do here. My first sketch is just a rough outline, which I clean up with my eraser. At this stage, my drawing is nearly complete. All that's left is for me to refine my sketch. So to recap, the process of drawing is the following. First, we draw the central circle, then we pull out five lines because this gives us an idea of where to draw the arms. And once we have these central lines that run along the arms, we draw the arms around them. Drawing in this particular sequence makes it easy to get the shape correct. My drawing once it's complete, I create some broad areas near the body of the starfish where I would like the area to be illuminated by my painting. And next, I place some rocks on the sand on which the starfish is laying. I vary the sizes of the rocks and also their placement on paper. So they are not uniformly laid at equal spacing and equal size throughout my chart, but rather things are non uniform because this helps with the composition. I also draw some natural looking organic curves where I would like the highlights on the sand to be. With this, our drawing is complete. And as a final step, I darken my drawing of the starfish because I would like to be able to see it clearly over my layers of painting, and it's fine to do this to have dark pencil lines on the starfish because we'll have a lot of contrast in this area, which will hide the pencil lines. So there's no concern of pencil lines showing over the artwork. And with this, we are ready to move to the next stage where we paint our starfish, see you there. 5. Sandy Background (First Layer): In this lesson, we are going to paint the region around the starfish using wet on wet. Before you start working on your starfish painting, I suggest that you watch the entire lesson so that you know what to expect. I begin by coating the area around the starfish with clear water. I dip my largest paintbrush into my water container and transfer a generous amount of water onto my sheet. I'm careful to go around the starfish like so, because I would like to keep the region of the starfish dry. It is okay to use a lot of water at this stage because the excess water would just seep into the fibers of the cotton paper. This allows us a lot of working time on our wet on wet layer. Using my largest paintbrush allows me to wet the paper quickly. But if you only have a smaller brush available, you may use it for this, though it will take more time. I'm most careful to keep the region around the boundary of the starfish, as well as the border of the paper wet. And the reason is that these are the regions that dry first. So it's important to put a generous amount of water and uniformly apply it so that the borders stay wet for a long time as well. To ensure that you have laid down a uniform coat, you could view your paper against a source of light, and you should see a soft sheen. And what we do not want to see is a puddle of water. Allow your paper time to absorb all the excess water or any puddles. However, if even later you observe that any region of the paper has too much water, then spread it out using your paintbrush. Or you could dab the excess water off onto your cloth via your paintbrush, like so. Take your time to wet the paper. And once the paper is ready, we can start to apply our lightest shades. In watercolors, we work from the lightest to the darkest color. So I mix some of my lightest yellow color, and I began to lay down where I want the shadows to be on my background. The areas where I need the highlights to be are where I have drawn my organic curves using pencil, and I keep these regions white. Remember that in watercolors, the only white that we have is the white of the paper. So it's important to leave certain areas white where we want our highlights to be. And only apply paints where we want our shadows to reside. In this painting, I envision my starfish to be illuminated from the top left corner. So I have the largest amount of shadows at the bottom right. The areas that I have left white form these wavy patterns on my paper, and this gives the impression of crests and troughs on my sandy background. Once we have laid down our initial light coat of color, it's time to intensify the shades. For this, we began to mix a little bit of orange. This color, though it's called golden by white knights, is not really a metallic watercolor. It's just a shade of orange. So I begin with a very light coat of orange in the areas where I've already laid down my colors. I do not want to go over my highlights with this color, where I've already laid down the yellows is where I now lay down a little bit of orange in a graded fashion. So I don't cover all of my yellow with the orange, but rather I allow the colors to mix on paper and create some areas which are darker and others which are lighter. This kind of graded wash technique is very important for creating contrast in the painting. We watch our colors go from the lighter shade of yellow to a darker shade of orange from where it will progress to a shade of red and to blue ultimately, which is the darkest tone that we have. It is important to pre plan the areas where you'll have the lightest versus the darkest shades in a painting with contrast. This is the reason that we blocked out the curved lines on our sand when we were drawing because these actors guide lines at this point and tell me where to lay down the darker versus the lighter shades. The highlights in my painting still have a curvy structure, so they retain the impression of sand. We deepen the contrast now by going in with red. Red is a color that has the ability to overpower the painting very quickly, so I apply only a little bit of it at certain places and where I have a darker coat of red, I keep those areas small. At this stage, we essentially just repeat the exercise that we already did with orange on top of yellow. Now we lay down red on top of the orange at certain places and in a graded fashion. To figure out where you need to lay down the lightest versus the darkest color, it's important to keep looking at the reference image. In the resources tab down below, I have provided the final artwork and you may use this as your reference as you paint along. It's going to be very helpful in figuring out where to lay down the colors. Once I have satisfactorily laid down the reds on the sand around my starfish, we have finished painting the first layer of sand. In the next lesson, we'll paint the second layer, but before you proceed to that part, it's important to let your paper dry completely. You could use a hair dryer to blow dryer your painting, and I will see you in the next lesson. 6. Sandy Background (Second Layer): So now that we have laid down our very first layer of paint, we are ready to proceed to the next part where we'll build depth. We do this by layering with a second layer. This layer is also going to be wet on wet. I coat my background with clear water once again after it has dried. And while I apply this clear water on my paper, I can be confident that it won't lift off the previous layer of paint since my paper is 100% cotton. This is the primary advantage of this kind of paper that you can lay down many layers without the fear of muddying up your painting. And watercolors really need a lot of layers in order to build a sense of depth. With just one layer, you have a pretty faded look. Since my entire background has already been wet once, the paper is no longer raw and it absorbs the water more quickly on the second layer. I don't have to put in as much effort or wait as long when I brush my water onto the paper the second time. This part is just a repetition of what you have already done because without the layers, you really can't build contrast or vibrancy into your painting. Make sure that the layer is uniform this time too. Once I've done that, I began once again with my lighter shade of yellow and I laid down right where I had laid down yellow the first time around. But this time, I just intensify the colors at each of these places. I'm careful to leave the highlights white because we want to keep that contrast. Mixing a little bit more yellow and placing it at certain places. You might have noticed that once my paper dried, my paints looked far less vibrant and this is a characteristic of watercolors that you'll experience every time you paint using wet on wet. This is because the paints soak into the paper and the cotton fibers of the paper just really absorb that color into it. And we have that beautiful watercolor transparency when we lay down the second layers. Watercolors have very fine pigments, especially the professial brands. The proficial gray pigments are much smaller, and this helps with preserving the vibrancy of the painting over the years when the watercolor pigments are very fine and they really soak into the page. Furthermore, having these fine pigments help with transparency. You can see the previous layer of orange even over the intense yellow that I laid down on the second layer. Now to intensify the orange, I'm laying down more orange at those places where it already was there. Now I have proceeded to the red. It's easier for me to work this time around because I know where each of my colors go. So I'm much more confident and bold with the decisions that I make about the intensity of the color. I just have to lay down the reds and oranges and the yellows where they already were, and I have to preserve the highlights. So the regions that are white stay white this time too. I built some contrast around the starfish because this helps the starfish stand out and pop from the page. More dilute red. And now at the bottom, I'm actually trying to go around the region where I place the rocks. This is because I would like the rocks to look illuminated. And now I'm going in with the blue. I mix some of the turquoise that I have and began to lay down where I have the deepest shadows. Usually, these are places where I had intense red early on that I place these blues. I'm also placing them around the starfish once again to make the starfish pop from the page. We haven't started to paint the starfish yet, this looks very strong as of now, but once the starfish has its colors, it would all look united. Layering with some red over the blue to give the look of purple. And right where I had the reds to the left of my page, I laid down some more color, and you can see those small segments that I've left without any blue on them. Those are the segments where I want my rocks to be. I'm almost working dry and wet at this stage by which I mean that my pigments that I have on my brush have very little water now, so they don't spread as much on the paper. My paper is still wet. The way to create a dry brush with a very dilute mix of the pigment is that you first dip your paintbrush into the pigment, then dab off the excess water onto your cloth. This way, you have a dilute mix on your paintbrush, but you also do not have excess water. This is it for the shadows. You could selectively lay down some more blues and reds where you would like to intensify the colors, but we are nearly done with our second layer. In the next part, we will start to paint the starfish, where we will use the layering technique once again. I'm still trying to capture some more highlights on the sand by using my darkest shade of blue around it. Be careful not to overdo your painting at this stage. But when I feel like it's just right, the amount of colours that I've got down, I stop working. I also stop working if my paper starts to dry. Then I let it dry completely. I wet it again and work. Now that we are done, I will see you in the next. 7. Starfish (First Layer): So now we are ready to start painting the starfish. My background layer is completely dry now, and I use the same brush now to coat the starfish with clear water. I rinse my paintbrush off thoroughly because it seems like a bit of blue was still there on my brush. I clean it thoroughly in my water container. I began to lay down a clear coat of water while making sure that I do not go past the boundaries of the starfish. I use a lot of water initially because the excess will just seep into the cotton paper. And I don't worry about any puddles and I'm initially laying down the water. I can lift off any excess water later on using my cloth. So careful to stay within the lines, and I coat it with clear water, making sure that it's thoroughly sowed. And all five arms, especially the borders of the arms stay wet because those are the areas that will dry up first. We might have lines that are not very clean at this stage. It's okay because we will clean up the lines when we are laying down our final details. Right now, the first layer that we paint on the starfish is going to be wet on wet. And we'll also use the dry on wet technique where the water in our brush is very little compared to the water on the paper. I use my smallest brush to lay down some initial colors. Since I envision the light to be coming from the top left, I keep that area lightest with white highlights. That just means that I'm not laying any color on certain areas on the starfish where I want it to stay white, and the white of the paper is what helps me achieve this. The places that will be in shadow are blocked in using orange at this time. So I lay that orange towards the bottom right like so. You can see how little the paint moves as of now, and this is because the amount of paint or rather the amount of water on my brush is very less compared to the amount of water on the paper. So my pigment is very highly concentrated and this helps the paint stay where it is while not creating harsh edges that you'll have if you work dry on dry. Next, I began to lay down some reds near the bottom right once again. Also somewhere near the top the paths that will be in shadow, I would like to block them in with a red color. Whenever painting on a wet sheet of paper, it's important to ensure that the amount of water on your brush is either equal to or less than the amount of water on the paper. Because if you have more water on the brush than on paper, it will create undesirable blooms or cauliflowers. So what I'm doing right now is that I'm coating one part of each arm with a darker shade. And the other part stays light with either white or yellow. And this creates the impression of lights and shadows on the starfish. Intensifying the reds more to the bottom right once again. And I'm placing these lines right now that help me distinguish the shape of the starfish on my painting. Lifting off some color where I want my highlight to be by dabbing a clear brush on my cloth, I remove the excess water, and then I use this dam brush to lift off the color. Once you have done this part, you need to wait for the starfish to dry completely, after which we'll proceed to the next lesson. 8. Starfish (Second Layer): The first layer on my starfish has dried and we are ready to lay down some shadows in this lesson. We'll do this using the wet on dry technique. As well as we'll blend the edges later on. To start, the regions that are away from light like this right side of the top arm is where I place my dilute mix of blue to block in the shadows at that part. Let's make that darker and move to the next arm. On the bottom left arm, I again lay down some dilute blue and you can see on white how light it looks. That's how you know how much to dilute your pigment on your mixing palette. Just a little bit of color here and there, and it brings the Safish to life. And we are painting wet on dry right now. I place some shadow there. This is a dilute orange at this place, not the dilute blue because this area is in the light or closer to the light, so it will look illuminated. Whereas the region farther away from light will appear darker. To blend the edges at certain places, you certainly do not want to blend all the edges, but where you want to do it, what I do is I create a dam brush, and the way to do that is that you rinse off your brush thoroughly in clear water and you dab the excess water onto your cloth. You have a dam brush with which you can blend the edges just like that. Et's put some blue near the bottom of the starfish. And create some darker regions. You could look to your reference photo to find out where the darker regions have to be making it an intense blue now. Just like that. And blending the edges using a dam brush. Again, blending those edges. The blended edges look more like a smooth transition that you would have on wet on wet as opposed to hard lines on wet on dry. So once again, blending the edges with a dam brush, which I create by cleaning off my brush and dabbing the excess water on the cloth. Then I have the dam brush with which I blend the edges. Let this dry completely, and I'll meet you in the next lesson. 9. Rocks (Negative Painting): The shadow layer on my starfish is now completely dry. And in this class, you'll paint around the rocks and the main subject, which is my starfish using negative painting. So the idea is that you go around the regions that you want to leave lighter with a darker color. So I just lay down my blue and I go around the rocks. I'll make each of my rocks trn out using this method. I also blend the edges, and we have to be a bit quick with blending the edges to make sure we don't leave any hard lines. Once again, to blend the edges, you need a dam brush. So I dip my brush in clear water and dab off the excess water on my cloth. By doing so, I have a dam brush and I use it to blend the hard edges where I want it blended. So let's see what we are going to do here. I'm going to go around the rocks like so. And these are rocks which I had made with my pencil marks earlier. They are almost invisible now because my pencil marks were very light for the rocks. But I know approximately where they are supposed to be situated. So I go around the rocks with a blue color to make the rocks stand out, and I blend the edges. So this is the blending part. I have clear water on my brush with which I first run across the boundaries of my region, and then I create a dam brush which I run over the boundaries once again. And this is called negative painting, like I mentioned earlier, this process of negative painting using wet on dry as well as blending the edges is something we'll repeat throughout our painting. You have to be a bit fast when you blend the edges because otherwise it would leave a hard line. But even if you are left with a few hard lines, there's nothing to worry about because I'll show a trick in the next class that fixes any such mistake. Uh huh. I've noticed that the darker you go with your colors, the more difficult it becomes to blend the edges. But if you have a hard line somewhere, just try to blend it and use a bit of pigment. So I use a bit of blue in my blending to remove the hardline, and this seems to lift the hardline off. For somebody who's blending edges for the first time, this might be a difficult step, but it's okay. You'll get there at practice. Don't hesitate to share your project in the project gallery below. Once you're done with this course, even if you don't personally think that your artwork is very good. The reason I say that is that we all start somewhere. I was a beginner once too, and I can understand that negative painting and blending, these are techniques that are a bit advanced. Take a bit of practice to get used to it. But we were all there sometime. So please don't hesitate or feel demotivated if you find this part very hard. Once again, leaned on blue right where the shadow from the starfish would be. This creates the impression of shadow already and we can see the painting come alive, blending the edges around the rocks that are adjacent to the starfish, just continuing the process until I have enough variety in my painting. It helps every now and then. Once we start getting into the details like we are now, we are focused on the details on the rocks, and it helps in this stage of painting to take a step back and look at your painting as a whole. This way, you'll find out when the details are getting too much or whether they are too little and you need to add more. It always helps to take a step back. Adding some shadows where I already had blue, which I laid down wet on wet. Now I'm laying it down wet on dry and blending the edges like so. If you notice carefully, you'll find that even my painting has hard lines at certain places. So even I'm not perfect, I make mistakes too, and it's okay. It's about enjoying the process first and second. We'll learn how to correct those mistakes anyway. So nothing to worry about here. Even though I have some hard lines. Once again repeating the process where I'm going around the starfish and around the rocks as well. So I had some rock to the top right here where I'm painting right now, and I've made it sand out with negative painting. A little bit more pigment where I want to increase the contrast. Here I am layering negatively painted layers one over the other. Making the rock up there stand out more and blending the edges just like that. As a final step, now that my subjects are blogged in, I decide to go in with my kneadable eraser and remove some of the pencil lines that are still visible. This helps me clean up my sketch. So now I can't see any pencil lines on here. Okay, well, I can see a few, but I can take care of those later with white gouah. When we are done for this part, I'll see you in the next lesson. 10. Glazing: So now the negatively painted layer is completely dry, and I proceed to the final layer of painting that we lay on our starfish, as well as our sand. This is also going to be wet on wet. And this is the layer where we will lay down the most colors to build contrast in our painting. This is also a very bold step in our painting because as you can see here, I'm quoting both the starfish as well as my entire background in clear water. And none of the color lifts off my starfish when I do this because my paper once again was 100% cotton. Once my paper is soaked with water, I build up the colours step by step, first on the background like you can see here. At the end of this stage, you'll see that the painting looks very, very vibrant, but as it will dry out, it'll become less intense, just like our previous wet on wet layers. So to start, I'm laying down the yellow next I'm going to proceed with orange. Once again, laying down the colors at the same place where they were laid down in the previous layer. The transparency of the watercolors let us look through it. You can see the first and second layers even now over our painting. I especially write down shades of orange and red where I have my rocks. Just like that. Since my paper and starfish are both wet, some color will flow from the sand onto the starfish. But this is okay. It's nothing to worry about. And if you notice too much color going in, you could always lift it off with a dam brush like so. Once again, laying down the colors where I already had them. And finally, intensifying with the blue. Now, with the blue, when I lay the paint near the rocks, I am careful not to go over the rocks. So how's the soft edges near the rocks in this layer? Locking in some shadows around the starfish, just like that. We are being pretty bold with our colors at this stage. But careful not to overdo it nevertheless. Once again repeating with the reds. Lifting off some colors. And I also intensify the shadows inside the starfish, for which I'm working dry on wet. So the pigment on my brush is very, very dry, but the paper is wet. I'm also lifting off the colors that flow into my rocks so that my rocks continue to stand out. So lifting that blue off of my rocks with a damp brush. I'm doing this for each of the rocks. I'll creating a dam brush first, then lifting off any excess colors off of these rocks. And it is this layer where we get to hide any hard lines that we might have left behind in the negatively painted layer. So like you can see in my painting, I had some hard lines earlier, but now everything looks smooth now that I have laid down an intense color. So we have corrected those mistakes now. You should also lift off any paint that flows into the starfish from the borders if it's flowing too much especially. Here I don't want to lose my impression of the starfish, so I'm lifting off some of those colors. The process demonstrated here is also sometimes referred to as glazing, where we coat the entire surface with clear water. In the lessons to follow, we will add details that will make the painting pop. See 11. Details on Starfish: So once my glaze is completely dry, I proceed to adding details to my starfish. In the first step, when adding details, we will use white wash. I squeezed out a little bit of white wash from my tube onto my pallet and I've dipped my paintbrush into it with a little bit of water. After that, I use my smallest paintbrush to lay down these spots along all the fire arms of the starfish, like you can see here. There's no hurry anymore. You can take your time to lay all of this down because our paper is no longer wet. We are not working with wet techniques. Everything is dry and everything is already in its place. So we can do this really slow and enjoy the process. We do not need to worry about the paint drying or the paper drying or anything of that sort. I'll also add some spots near the place where the arm connects to the body, so you can see me do this right now. I do this on all sides. Do look at your reference photo to make sure that you're laying down the details at the right place. These white dots that we are adding are supposed to be small protrusions from the surface of the starfish, and we'll give it a three d appearance later on by adding a bit of shadow beneath these small circles. We don't have to add the shadow to each circle, but we can add them to a few to give a feeling of realism. Where the arms of the starfish end, I try to give it a corrugated end because this I feel helps with realism. So I have these spots very close to where the arms of the starfish and notice how bright these white dots are and how much they stand out against the blue. This helps with the contrast, but something to be mindful of is that when guash dries, it dries darker than it is. And that's true for all light colored guash that light colors dry darker than they look when they are wet. So when we are mixing guh, we want very little water if the white has to be very strong. But if we want a more transparent white, which is not so intense, then we should use lots of water. Just like for watercolors, except that wash is opaque and watercolor is not. That's actually one of the reasons why we use wash for these kinds of details because the white watercolor is useless. It doesn't give us the opacity that is necessary to make the white stand out. I already love how this painting looks now, and I mix some orange to give variety on the starfish surface. Adding orange dots where the shadows are supposed to be and slowly diluting the orange with water to give a lighter and lighter color at certain places. Once again, very intense orange dots on this arm, dilute it with water and add a few more. You just have to continue this process for as long as it feels right. And the way to know that you have enough details is to take a step back and look at the painting as a whole. This gives you a bird's eye view, which tells you whether you have put down enough details. Next, I'm laying down the shadows that I spoke about earlier. This little semicircle that go around the white spots just like that. Once the details are down on the starfish, we can proceed to the next lesson. There we will see how to paint the rocks so that they stand out even more and how to add more details to the sand to give it a grainy look. See you in the next lesson. 12. Finishing Touches: So to add details to my sand now, I splatter some white wash onto my paper like so. So I just load my brush with a bit of white wash, and I tap the paintbrush against my finger. So some of that paint gets off the brush and creates a granulated texture on the sand. Next, I intensify the colors of some of my rocks. I do this, especially using red and orange because these are colors that really stand out. So doing that for each of the rocks, not completely coating them with a specific color but laying a few colors that are bright towards the center of the rock and darker colors towards the edges. So once that's done, I also lay down some more rocks with migh. I dilute my mix of white and use them to draw some circles where there are shadows. I also play some of these white highlights on the rocks that I already have, and this makes it look like the rock is glowing, which I really like. So many of these details are optional, and if you feel like your painting is complete, you could stop working anytime. It's not necessary to add all of them. It depends on your taste. I also add some very dark rocks, not very dark, but these are blue in color towards the top. And as a final step, I add shadows beneath the rocks. So I take some of my blue mix, and I make these semicircles underneath the rocks. So they look three dimensional and pop from the page, like you can see here. This detail is a really nice one, I feel because it helps so much in adding realism to this painting. Once you've done this for all the rocks, the final step is to peel off the masking tape once your paper is dry. So wait for your details to dry and for your entire paper to be bone dry before you take the tape off. This way, you can ensure that your paper stays flat after all the layers have been laid down. Now to remove the masking tape, you can see how I'm pulling it off off the table. I am removing it along an oblique direction like so. It's a good idea to remove it this way because it prevents the paper from tearing. Now we are done with our final step, and I'll see you in the conclusion. 13. Outro: Congratulations on completing the starfish painting. By exploring the power of contrast and mastering key watercolor techniques, you have taken a significant step in elevating your artistic skills. Whether it was experimenting with tonal values, practicing brush control or balancing light and shadow, you have gained tools that can transform not only this painting, but all your future watercolor works. Remember, every stroke you make is part of your creative journey. Don't hesitate to revisit the lessons, refine your techniques, and apply them to new projects. Practice is the bridge between learning and mastery. I'd love to see how you apply what you have learned, whether it's through starfish paintings or your own unique creations. Be sure to submit your projects to the gallery below. I can't wait to celebrate your work and provide feedback to support your growth. Thank you for trusting me to guide you through this lesson. Your creativity and dedication inspire me. Until next time, keep painting and letting your artwork shine. Happy watercoloring.