Watercolor Birds: Paint Realistic Birds Using Just One Color

1. Intro - Monochrome Birds: Ever tried painting birds with watercolors, but something fell like it was off. The feathers were overworked. There was not enough contrast or there were too many hard edges. Are you struggling with color values? Don't worry. I know exactly what to do. Today I'll be teaching you how to create smooth layers and a nice contrast using only one color. The reason this class focuses only on using one color is because you can better concentrate on color values, contrast, and then the balance between life and shadows. The key in creating a good contrast is knowing where to place the shadows. But also how to balance it out with the light so you don't lose the light. So what will help is using that one color and determine first what are the values of that one color. And what makes it easier with watercolors is that all we need is to add water to that one color. My name is Maria Raczynska I'm a watercolor artist and teacher, and I have been teaching how to paint with watercolors for almost ten years now. I have taught thousands of students across the globe how to paint with watercolors. I have a lot of experience as a watercolor teacher especially with the techniques such as wet-on-wet, lifting colors. One of the keys in my teaching is also teaching how to layer an object using undertones. I will teach you how to create a good contrast in your painting, how to discover the color values of that color that you'll be using or any color, how to layer feathers, wet-on-wet without overworking the areas. So where you don't need to focus on every single hair or every single feather, how to net work on so many details, and how to capture the overall look on your object. Oh 2. What is This Class About?: There are three different projects in this course, three different birds, and each is unique in its own way with distinct feathers and overall build. However, the idea is the same to avoid overworking those feathers, layering them wet on wet and using proper color values to create the right contrast. I always try to simplify things and put myself in the shoes of a beginner because I once was a beginner, too, and I did not know the difference between wet and wet and wet and dry. I will teach you how to create stunning lifelike birds using just one color. So let's do it. 3. Art Supplies: For the art materials. I recommend using 100% cotton, watercolor paper. Your best bet at this point will be arches. I used to paint with honeymle decollection, but the collection was changed. So now the paper is a little too smooth. However, if you have that paper, I suggest you flip the paper and paint on the back side where you have way more texture. Way, the paper won't dry as fast, and you have a texture that you need to create a nice texture over your subject. As far as watercolors, you don't need to use the same brand as I paint with. I do recommend hobein because those are the paints that I've learned how to paint with watercolors, and I absolutely love them and recommend them. But you can use any colors you want. We're going to use here Indigo, neutral tint, and and brown, but feel free to use any other colors. You can go with the red. You can go with the blue, different blue, fallow blue, red sheet, for example, another great color to lift colors. Just make sure you can lift colors, test it out on the side. Also, we'll be creating color values of each color so you know the lightest values, the mid tones, and then the darkest values of that color. As far as other materials, I recommend a small towel to wipe your brush on, which is essential. A paper towel for additional lifting, three smaller jars to dip your brush in water to clean the brush, just so you have three right there and you don't have to step away from the paper. A plastic palette but if you don't have it, don't worry about it. You can just use regular dish plate. A good light with a day light. So the idea is to have light coming from here and here plus the lights in your ceiling. For the brushes, try using softer brushes because whenever we paint with stiffer brushes, it's very easy to lift colors as you're applying the colors, the layering. So with softer brushes, it's just more delicate, in a way. Now, stiffer brushes are good for details and then lifting colors. 4. White Kookaburra - Intro, Masking Fluid/Wax Stick: Hi friends. Welcome to this class. We're going to paint this bird in monochrome. I did a test piece, and I'll show you in a second what it looks like. First things first, I have a loose sheet here a watercolor paper. It's 11 by 11 and the reason I removed it actually from my journal. This is actually the journal. This is the test piece. I removed it because I want to show you how you can gain more time to apply colors wet-on-wet when you wet the backside of the P for two and that's what we're going to do in this class. Whether you have that sheet in the pad or a block or journal, try to remove it, then what this is right here is a plastic sheet. I took it out of a frame basically. So whenever you buy a frame for your painting and I suggest not to buy with the glass, but this is the plastic PVC sheet. You can use this sheet for painting, and it's really so useful. It just gives you so much more time to apply. Colors wet-on-wet. So you wet the back side of the paper too, and you do it first for 2 minutes, and then you flip the paper, and then we wet the front side, but we'll get to that in a second. We are going to paint this bird in monochrome. What does it mean is that we're going to use only one color. I choose Indigo just because it's the most common color, I'd say, it's a darker blue. It is dark blue. But you could go with fontak brown if you want to or some other shade of blue, but I want Indigo just because it lifts easily too. It's a very rich color. Again, it's a very common color, most likely you have it. What we're going to do is again, wet the backside first and wet the front side of the paper. And when we wet the bird, we're also going to wet the background. At this point, we don't need to worry about colors bleeding toward the background from the bird because the background is darker than the bird, maybe except for the eye, but the eye is going to be painted later. We're going to paint it later. But first thing I suggest doing is actually using masking fluid for watercolors. I didn't use it here in my test piece. This was painted super fast. I should have added in another layer, maybe. But it's just the idea just to show you what we're going for. To use masking fluid, I suggest to apply it, let me grab a brush. Like, somewhere here, I didn't use masking here, but I think it would be nice to have finer lines for the hair over here, maybe over here. So we'll get to that in a second. If you prefer, you can use a wax stick, but it wouldn't work well for the hair. I did use a wax stick. Over here, over the beak. I generally prefer actually wax stick for areas like you see over the beak where it's much lighter. I'm going to use a little bit of a wax stick just to show you if you have a wax stick, and I'm just going to apply it, right here. And I just press slightly harder on the paper to apply this wax stick. So one more time I'm going through here, and you want to have a point on this wax stick. So you might have to sharpen it or something sometimes. This one I bought it from Hobby Lobby in the US. I'm not sure if you can find something like this in Europe. But it's really fun to have it. I use it for seascapes too, by the way. I think that's all I'm going to use it for this part. Now, again, if you don't have it, that's okay. You can just use a brush. Brush you don't care about because masking fluid will damage your brush. I dip the brush in water, and then I just grab a little bit of wax. I'm sorry, the masking fluid, and I'm going to press it like this against the neck of the bottle just so it's a flight of brush. If you didn't use a wax stick, then you would apply it right here. Otherwise, for the hair. So like right here, just to go over the background now, this is a little too thick, so I'm wiping my brush on the toe actually. I want it to be fineer then over here. So it's like I'm barely touching the paper when I apply it. This is a rigger brush, but a rigger brush I really don't care about. And it's because masking fluid will damage your brush eventually, if not the first time, maybe the second time. The key is to really clean your brush, right away as soon as you're done. So let's say I want to apply maybe a little bit here, whatever you say, like the brightest, whitest hair, single pieces or just the hair. Let me see here maybe. Oh, you know what? Why we apply a little bit of masking over the eye just because we see a little bit, like tiny highlights there, the highlights. I'll make it easier. And then back to here maybe a little bit. Not too much. Next thing, I actually need to clean the brush and I suggest you clean it too, and then we can start wetting the vapor. Coming back to this test piece. So what happens is we wet the paper, backside, front side, everything, and then we start applying colors toward the bird. We start with the latest colors I mean colors, the tone of value of Indigo. So we go like here, a little bit here, just very little of the paint and we let that to bleed. This is a water to milk like ratio at first. Then we go for the mid tones and the darkest tones, basically, and it's all about the beak and applying colors toward the feathers. What will happen is everything Well, some paint will just bleed toward the background, but it's okay because we will add the background later. So that will be our second layer, technically. And then when we add the background, you will see how were you create right away, this nice contrast. Now, what happened here is I also wedded the bird, just so this would be like a softer edge. I added way more color, ended up adding way more color here. Actually, I the reference image through Photoshop, and that's when I was playing with the colors to create that monochromatic version. And the first one was really highlighted. That's why it's so light here. But for this one, I just basically left it black and white, and I added like a blue tint to it. So that's the correct version that we're using in this class. Anyway, when we add the background, so here we have a hard edge, but then if you don't want a hard edge, then you have to wet a little bit of the bird too, but we'll get to that in the class. First thing is to wet the paper. 5. White Kookaburra - Wetting the Paper: Try to use a larger brush right away because you'll have more coverage. You can see the full sheet of a paper right now, but that's because the bird is just here. So as long as you can see the bird, that's wet the paper. I am using a large brush. This is a 50 flat wash brush by Casaneo. At first, like, you might as well just have a lot of water. And the back side is just the backside. So now, if you've never used a sheet like this before, the plastic, the PVC, and you're using it the first time for the first time, you'll see how nicely like the paper just sticks to the sheet, and you are not dealing with any buckling. So that's why it's just going to be really awesome experience for you. And I've been doing this, like, sometimes, using this method of wetting the backside of the paper. But it's just I don't know. I became super fast at painting, but then I have to remind myself that it is easier for you this way. And no matter what, I have more time too. To apply all these colors. It's just something that we can use in landscape paintings or overall like animals. We're going to wet this for another minute. I'm just going to keep the camera going, recording just so you can see everything in real time. What will happen is your paper now will start buckling a little bit. That's a good thing because now you know that you have enough of that water into your paper. Now you're going to flip the paper and basically, it's a glue almost right there. Perfect. Now we're going to start wetting the front side, and then everything will become nice and flat just because of that water and setting the backside. So we're going to wet this side for two more minutes 2 minutes backside, 2 minutes or 3 minutes the front side. You just want that paper to be nicely and shiny wet. Now, in the meantime as we're wedding, we might as well dilute some of this indigo with water and I'm just placing a little more of it and there's my Indigo. It's just one color. It's thicker, creamy paint, and then something that's more diluted with water. Even if you pick up other colors for me, that's okay too. I'm pretty good here, pretty ready. Just one more time. What I'm going to do actually is grab a paper towel. Just to get rid of the water from around the paper. All this. I don't need that much water around. I want more time just going through just to make it flat. Now, I'm going to grab, let's see. Coal brush, I guess. I like to work with a flat brush or coal brush. You know what, flatbush? This is my flat 24 Songbird. You want to have a soflater flat brush, not oval or anything like that. Actually, a soft flat brush like this. We're going to go for a water milk like ratio, and this is my Indigo. So just something like this that's pretty nicely diluted. I'm so used to mixing colors on the paper, but now I'm just using one color. I'm going to grab a little more water so it's more like water like rate. We're going to go for the mid tones. I want you to squint your eyes when you look at the reference because when you squint your eyes, you see a larger contrast, actually, what you see is less details. That's what I want. Somewhere here, we have some color, go for the lightest tones that you see, just a little bit of a color here, here, the darkest parts are on this side, basically. But squinting your eyes will help to overdo it. We don't see the bottom here. It's just a sketch. We can add a little bit here, here, and let that pay to bleed right now to spread. I'm actually going to grab a little more water. So more water even more water. I want this to be way more diluted with water on this part. If it's too much on your brush, wipe your brush on the towel because that can happen too. Suddenly you have too much of that paint with the water on your brush and it's harder to control things. This is I'm going for the lightest areas first, and it's a line here in a way the feathers are divided. But this side right here is the darkest part. Don't worry if the colors bleed toward the outside again because we're going to have the background anyway that's darker. So I'm going to clean my brush, actually. This is just a clean wet brush, and let's play with what we have spread it. This is a clean brush. And in the second, we're going to start working with the mid tones. This is like the lightest tones you can see for now. And you don't need to have, color everywhere, okay? So remember that. And then clean your brush the flat breast. Grabbing my oncol says four. So something softer. If you don't have a quill, maybe like a round 14 because you want to have a larger brat. And let's do the same thing, but milk like ratio for the beak, let's go over the beak. So somewhere here, this is the bottom. So I just don't have much paint on my breast. That's why the paint is not spreading as much. But what we should do is grab a little bit more of the paint, actually, to make it more like water milk like ratio. And that's what it is now. And just go with a lighter value first. And at first I grab way too much, that's fine. But what I want you to do is just grab a little less, okay? So something like this, now grab with that same brush, thicker paint. Wipe your brush on your toe a little bit if it's too much water. Something that feels more like half and half and just go toward the top or the bottom of the top part of the beak, just to add more color there. This is all darker on the bottom, if that makes sense. Then let's grab a milk cristia say at first of this Indigo, and I wipe my brush on top because I feel like I have too much on my brush over and I want a little feel a bit damp brush a little bit on the brush feels a little more damp. This is why I have a little more control. Now, be careful with making it too damp because as soon as your brush feels damp, then you are actually going to start removing water from your paper. You dry out the paper and you don't want to do it too fast. It is a good thing, the damp brush technique. I just depends at what stage that all the stages are good for that. During the process of painting, right? So here we go. Now, I do want to keep this light as light as possible. So what I'm going to do is grab some of this heavy cream like ratio of this Indigo because this is all the same color. So we're not using any other color, Indigo. And then let's go for these darkest spots. But you know what? I need way more and I actually want this to be still a milk like ratio over here. All this because it should be darker, right this. The left side is darker. Then we have this part, but it's mostly this. Just go for the midtones. Whenever you see the mid tones, that's where you want to add it and like 6. White Kookaburra - Layering Part I: With your eyes, when you're looking at the reference, kind of like designate an area actually on your paper that's going to be the side that's going to be lighter and should be the right side. So again, coming back here, here and then all this is darker. When you travel around, you're not just focusing on one area of the bird, it's actually good because you keep your paper wet longer. Now, this is a little too much here. What I'm going to quickly do, and this can happen to you too. What I suggest doing is cleaning your brush, wiping on a towel well, and just spread it a little bit with it. But you don't want too much water on your brush. Use that paint from here and just spread it. In the second, we're going to start using more a heavy cream top only, and we're going to play with that to add the darkest tones. And that's pretty good already. I just don't need them much. So this is a damp brush. To make a damp brush, just squeeze it between pieces of a towel. This is a paper towel so it's not my favorite, but it's probably the easiest to show now. It's just a damp brush, and you just going to pull from the areas where you already added some color. And when you pull, you are drying the paper to a Y. It's not a surprise. So you want to do it more toward the end before you're going to apply the darkest tones. This is a damp brush. I'm just pulling over the areas where I already added colors. Now I'm going to grab that same brush, it's a damp brush. On the tip of my brush, there's creamy Indigo, and I'm going to go right here. It's like I squished it and now I have a point here and just some areas. This actually should be done with a smaller brush just a y. Grab a smaller brush around two maybe. To have the most control. Now I have trash outside my window. Maybe a little loud for a second. But I can't stop recording this because now we're wet paper and everything. This is a creamy paint and I'm just going to add it some areas here that I see the mid tones still in the darkest tones. This is where I added actually mask and I can see that. And then again, this is a squished brush, so it's a dam brush and I'm just adding more color toward these darkest parts that I can see. And keeping the left side as light as possible. You got to ask yourself question too in between, do I have enough? Because it's very easy to overdo this. It's fun to apply colors. Sometimes we keep going and keep going, but like, Okay, I already have enough, so I don't need more. Then the beak, definitely more over the beak, a dam brush with that Indigo, and then the bottom. Because the bottom needs to be way darker. Then right before here just to pull it. Again, you can grab a smaller brush and be much easier, I promise you that. I'm going to clean this brush and I am going to grab a smaller brush. That's going to be a let's see what I have and here. Round three Songbird. What you're going to do is grab creamy paint from here. This is what I call cream top ratio between water and paint. Creamy paint on the tip of your smaller brush. We have areas around the eye. It's like the the lids or just the shadowy parts. You want that creamy paint because that will give you the most control. The paint won't spread, but also gives you nice contrast. Now, we don't need to go for the eye yet, but we could add a little bit of that creamy paint since it's not spreading anyway that much, just in some areas. Then grab again that creamy paint because you might have to refill your price and then just grab it on the bottom of the nostril there. Then just like we added masking here and it will be really nice once we remove masking because if we add a little bit of that creamy paint here, that'll give us really nice contrast. Then actually, I'm going to go in between here because I didn't add enough of the color. Then there's lines when you look at the reference over the beak. Then this is still wet and if it's still wet, it should be wet if you wet at the back side too. Just go again on the bottom of it. I'm going to grab more of that creamy paint, just to add more paint on the bottom of the beak. I don't have to do much later. We do have to lift too, or we don't have to. This is a choice, it would be nice to lift color as well. The Indigo. Now with that creamy paint just continue adding it toward the darkest ears that you can see, which would be here, something like that. You can of course, go over here as well because we do see some darker spots. With that same brush, it's like you're mimicking the shape of the hair, basically, just loins. Just a little bit, stick to the left side, so it's not too much on the right side. We're trying to keep the left I'm sorry, the right side as light as possible. And just add a little bit of the hair because we don't need to show ever all the detail. Whenever we paint something, it's not that important. You want to capture the overall of your object. You don't need to make it unless you're going for super realism, you want everything to look super realistic. Okay, that's different. But if you're like me, you want it to have that feel of a watercolor. Still that watercolor and you don't need that much realism, basically, everything line to line, dot to a dot, then you just capturing the overall of your object. So I'm tempted to go back here. Now I still have that Indigo on my brush, but it's less of that and it's a damp brush. Now I can go underneath the areas where I applied the wax stick, it's underneath those areas just because I don't want the top of the beak to be too light. Although the contrast would be nice to have any. 7. White Kookaburra - Layering and Lifting Color: A little more of that creamy paint. And right underneath where we see that line between the top and the bottom part of the beak. That's where we can apply it a little bit of that creamy paint. So now we have a larger contrast, just like that. And then we can use some of that paint to go down a little bit because we have, almost like a cheek, right? Something like that. Might as well add that. We're just working with the color values here. That's what it's all about when you paint something. Well, in general, with everything. But now, especially we're painting a monochrome, it's different. It's easier actually because again, we're not thinking about mixing other colors. I'm cleaning my brush. What we could do is grab some of this a heavy cream of the Indigo and maybe because this is still wet, just add a little bit of that blue so we have a first layer. Toward the eye, just a little bit toward the iris and pupil. But there's a lot of, like, lighter areas. That's why it has to be like the paint needs to basically spread. But we have a little might as well add a little bit of a color. With that cream top, go toward, like, the inside of the eye a little bit just to separate it. It's just such a perfect timing now to do this because the paper feels damp. To me, it feels damp and it's perfect timing to separate some of these parts of the eye. We're not going for the whole thing yet, but it's just easier, and this is going to be our pupil. What we need to do is lift colors. Again, it's an option. You don't have to lift colors if you don't feel comfortable yet. But you would grab a rigger brush. This is my rigger Songbird. And when the paper feels damp, like here, that's the perfect timing to lift the colors. So I'm going to show you other areas. So I chose Indigo because it really is an easier color overall to lift. Not all colors lift easily. Now, I don't have enough almost color here, right to lift. But here, you can still lift, and it's about timing. The best timing to lift colors is when the paper start to lose that shine. At first, the paper is shiny wet, you see all the colors, right? But then the shine goes away, and that's when you want to kind of start lifting, but the best timing is actually when the paper feels damp. And I'll make close ups and all that. And I just pull it. I pull the brush. Rigger brush is my favorite to lift with, which is why I created this brush overall. But it's just pulling, and it's like you're pressing and you're pulling it up. And you want to do it with a tip of your brush, but sometimes I use the full head of the brush too when I want to create like longer strokes like here, for example. I press a little harder to lift. But you always want to clean your brush first, wipe it on a towel, and then you lift. If you don't wipe your brush on a towel, you will create a bloom. That's just a guarantee. So here, I'm just going lift a little bit. Now, I don't want to do too much lifting, and that can easily take away from your painting because then it just looks overworked. But this is a little bit of a creamy paint on the tip of my brush, and actually, it's too much. I wanted to add a little bit more here, but I don't know if I'm okay with it. Maybe I'll think about it. A little bit of that creamy paint but very little and it's the brush is not even perfect anymore. Let's see. Let's add a little bit tuple hair if you want to. Maybe just like this. If you want to add some hair, individual hair, brush strokes. But very little and with the tip of your breast, it's almost like you don't have much paint on your breast. Now wiping my brush on the towel again because I want to lift a little more, wiping it again or dipping it in, dipping it in water first, wiping it on a towel next and then lift colors. Now, you can also do the same thing with the beak. Let's say something got covered too much. I'm just going to create a couple lines. So for example, a lot of times I don't use masking, I don't use wax stick. I lift colors. That's all. That's all I do. And you can do it. That's the thing. For example, over here, there are these scratches over the beak. Again, I don't have to always use the masking or wax stick. I can just lift colors like this. Once you master the lifting, everything just makes sense. It's like, I really don't need wax stick or masking fluid in a lot of situations, not all. Because again, you can create these lines, the wider lines that we see just by lifting colors. Lift a little bit here, and then lifting of course is helpful whenever we add too much pain. Here I should have this area lighter. I'm just going to l I relift again. I clean my brush, wipe it on a towel, and I go back to relift it. And what else? Maybe here. I'll relift this part. You can basically do so much when you lift. It changes the whole outcome of your painting. And once we have the eye, also everything will just kind of pop. It will look so pretty. We're going to leave it. Just from time to time, make sure this doesn't get completely glued onto the board. So just come back to it and make sure it's, you know, not glued one time, one time ago, actually, not one time, a couple of times. I was using a 90 pound watercolor paper and it completely glued itself to my glass top table. So that can happen. Okay? So this is a thicker watercolor paper. I've never had a problem with this. Alright, let's walk away from it and let it dry. 8. White Kookaburra - Wetting Paper/Background: All right, friends, let's add the background. I'm going to show you again my test piece, what it looks like. It it pre wedded some parts of the background because that gives me more time to apply colors wet-on-wet. Now, the most important thing to mention is, I have a hard edge here, I only wetted the background here, the background here, but here I also wetted the birds some colors would be toward the feathers. Did the same thing here. So here I stayed on the outside of the beak, but here I went over the bird. So you can decide which areas like feathers you want to keep soft, or if you just want to have full control 100%, you just don't wet the bird, but only wet the background, and then just apply colors toward the background only wet-on-wet. If you do want the soft edge, I'm going to show you actually in this video. So what you do is wet the background, but then you go now let's say wet this area too. But then when you apply colors toward the background, you want to stay away from the bird, I'd say, like this much. So basically, if you see the line here, that's the bird, you would apply colors up to here, but heavy cream or even cream top like ratio and you would wait until the paint settles. I'm sorry, the water gets absorbed deeper into the paper. So the paper feels almost like damp, and that's when you would add the color here. Because otherwise, too much pain will bleed toward the bird, but you know what? It's easier to explain while I'm demonstrating than when you just see this. The first thing, please have your colors ready to go. Actually it's just one color, right? So Indigo. Let's dilute some of the indigo with water. There's my Indigo. Actually, I want more of the Indigo. That's not enough. And I do want this to be heavy cream, cream top, like ratio between wood and paint. I don't want the paint to feel like water like ratio or something like that. That's way too diluted paint with water. So again, this is a thicker paint now, and that's what you want on your palette. Okay? I'm just going to clean the breast on need this. Next step is to wet the background. I'm just going to use this flat brush, da Vinci casinel because that's the well, not the whitest one I have, but it's a soft brush. When you wet now, you don't need to wet ten times or anything like that or going over it multiple times because it's basically, we're not going to spend that much time painting the background. It's just so you have some water in the background and that's just to give you more time to apply colors before there's some blooms. Because if one area of the paper dries faster than super easy to create a bloom. Here I'm just going to with the background first, and then I'm going to show you in what areas I'm also wetting the bird. But here, I got to be careful because I don't want to go over the beak. We do want that hard edge here, and I do want hard edges here where we have the fur, and I'm going to go in with a brush to make it easier later. So I'm not going super close yet toward the bird. And then let's see. The reference shows like this kind of but this will be the area where will go in a little bit, not as much probably as in my test piece, although the test piece, why too much pain bled toward the bird is my fault. Hundred percent. I just added the color in this area too fast, so the colors started bleeding too fast. So you have to wait until the paper feels like it's about to lose that shine I want to say, because right now, when you wet it, the paper is nice and shiny wet, right? And that shine slowly starts to go away. When that shine starts to go away, actually, it's perfect timing to live colors, as a matter of fact. But that's when you want to get closer. Here, this is going to be area where I do want some of that bird to be wetted too. But for now, I'm going to go one more time. Now, if you want flat paper, add some water on the bottom there, so the paper sticks. I'm going to do it one more time. I just want some water there, so it's flat. Otherwise, it's buckling too much and I don't want that. As a matter of fact, you can also wet the backside. I'm doing this to flatten my paper. It's nice and flat so it's easy to add that background. Now it's flatter than before and that's what I want. Going to go one more time over here. Oops, I just scratch the paper a little bit. I don't like that. This happens every time with this brush. It's because it has, like, this metal parts the hair, the fibers are thinner than this part, and I have this problem every time, and I want to, like, remind myself, but then I forget and I see the scratch here. It's okay. You see it too. It's like I love the brush, but gosh, every time I just have the same problem over and over, just scratching my paper. Anyway, I'm just going to wet a little bit here. Because you can see those scratches for sure. It's like a dent on the paper. I've wetted enough. Now I'm going to show you. I'm going to go inside the bird here because that's the area where I want the paint or I want to have a soft edge. That's what I want. Softer edge right here, and then the same thing here. No everywhere. Now, when you go over the painted areas, you have to be very gentle and you need to use a softer brush so you don't reactivate the colors very gently, very softly with a softer brush only when you go over. I don't want this part here. Again, it's buckling. So again, if it buckles, just wet the backside, make sure it all stays nice and flat. So the paint doesn't flow in a weird way. I should have just done this from the beginning, but I didn't think it was going to be buckling as much. Alright. 9. White Kookaburra - Background Applying Color: I'm ready to start applying colors. So what I'm going to do is grab my flat 24 songbird, and then I'll work with my quill, as well. My lung quill says four. So I actually want a thicker paint, like a heavy cream ratio between water and paint. I do like how dark the background is. Now, this is a little too thick because you also want some flow. So I'm not looking for chunks at this moment. Paint. I do want heavy cream. It's just that if I just go with a cream top, it's a little too much. I do want the paint to still spread. Here I have to be super focused because this is my beak. But now you can see what a beautiful contrast because we kept the beak on top lighter. And we can see that pretty contrast right away. Now, I also have these feathers there, and I'll get to that in a second. First action, I'm going to just add color here. And I'm following with my eyes like, Okay, the beak is like this, and then it kind of cuts through. Like this. I'm not going to go here yet. That's because the color would just bleed too much toward my bird. I'll push it through here. Now, what I can also do, what would help is just get rid of some of that water now from the board or the sheet because that'll come back toward my peeper and create blob. Just a little bit, basically the outside water. What I want to do is grab my long size four. It's a long cool size four. I'm going to grab the same paint, so heavy cream. This is where you begin shaping the hair. You go and you want to have a fine point. That's important too. You can actually switch between brushes and you can see that that's my masking fluid. That's my masking. I'll keep going and just watching looking at the reference constantly and looking at the hair and just figuring this out, how I want that. And following, of course, the sketch. I have a nice shape of the bird, more of that heavy cream ratio and just keep moving. You see, I stopped right there, so I can use my softer pointier brush so I can shape the hair. And of course, I need thicker paint here too. So this will give you the most contrast where you have the white feathers of the bird, and you just keep moving. And then up to here because then I'm going to be very close to the area where I also whited the bird, which actually does feel like it's the amp already. But then I want to come back here and you can see the scratch right there. My goodness. It's just so annoying because it happens every time I can't tell you how many scratches I have on papers just because of that. I love the brush and I use it because it's a softer brush, but every time I scratch the paper. Anyway, so this is the area that again, I wetted the bird as well. Now, before I go here again, I'm just going to go back here to make this a little more even. I do need a little more water because the paint on my palette feels too thick and then just to fill the background again. Now, sometimes it does feel like we need to add second layer toward the background and if you do, that's fine. But here's the thing about adding second layer because I should say that about indigo. Indigo, it's a stainy color. The problem with adding second layers, you would literally reactivate everything you added here. I actually don't recommend it because it's not a light background. It's indigo. With indigo again, it's just too lifty the collar just lifts too much. Now I'm going to squeeze more indigo because I just ran out. I'm going to get closer toward the feathers probably here, the areas where I also wetted the bird. So I am in a hurry a little bit. This is heavy cream actually cream top, more like a cream top. And you can see the paint is not really spreading as much. So use a creamy paint at this point, and get closer, feel it out. So as you see the paint is not moving as much. The key is to wait. So you wait to add this paint a little later now I made a mistake here. I went too close. This was the area, so I'm just going to have to lift a little bit. But here, I'm okay. So as you see this cut through a little bit, so, yes, I do have to. I'll take care of that in a second by lifting. I didn't want to lift, but now I'll have to lift because otherwise it kind of looks weird. And then grabbing more of this creamy paint. So this is my indigo, just creamy color. And then this is still wet. So I'm just going to go through with this creamy paint very gently, very gently. It doesn't have to be like, you know, perfectly covered and stuff like that. So it makes kind of sense that if it's darker here, then I will add a little more color that indigo. But here, I'm going to have a soft edge, right? And another thing you can do is use a dim brush. So first of all, before I show you, I have to clean this brush because otherwise, I'm just going to have that indigo. 10. White Kookaburra - Adding Background/Lifting Color: So you would grab. In this case, you would grab like this is a mop brush. It's a dry brush, and you would just go along, but you have to kind of get rid of that water if you feel like there's any water on that brush. So normally, I show like a damp brush technique, but in this case, because the color is so intense, I prefer to use a dryer brush like this over here. For this area right in here, I do need to use a stiffer brush. This is my round eight. I'm just going to basically lift. I'm cleaning the brush, wiping on a towel. And I'll keep lifting, but the brush has to be you just have to make sure it's a damp brush. Wipe it on a towel. That's why it's better to use a towel than just some paper towel, what I mean. So I'm just using my regular towel here. I'm going to keep lifting. Because otherwise, it just makes no sense. I want to make sure my bird has a nice shape. And to prevent the paint from bleeding back here, I can also add a little more water, which can cause a bloom this way, so you have to be careful too. But now I got the shape back here. When you paint the bird, when you add a background, just be careful when you shape it, look at the reference because here I cut down a little bit. Stuff like that, it's no big deal. It doesn't matter that much. But proportions are correct and things like that. I think that's enough of this lifting colors and it's nice that we have the masking because that shows there. Now, the background is going to dry uneven just like here unless you add second layer. But again, I do not recommend adding second layer with indigo in the background. I don't because it lifts so easily, you're basically going to make mess. It's going to be very messy. So it would work maybe with some untick brown if you just used a different color in general for painting this bird. So I'm just wiping it, so no paint water bleeds back toward the edges, but you know what? It doesn't matter again if there's a bloom. It's okay. This for now is done. We could paint the eye now, but I'm just going to stay away from it since it's so wet. One more thing actually you could do is grab a rigger brush, just FYI. And with the rigger brush, you could lift toward the background. So, of course, the paper has to feel like it's almost like damp, like almost blast the shine. And these are the areas that do feel like it, right immediately next to that the edge here. So you could lift a little bit just to add the hair, the touch, the soft touch or the soft touch, the soft hair. That's what I mean. So you just lift, but you have to keep cleaning that brush because, again, you're picking up such an intense color. It's a great color to work with, but again, very easy to lift, very messy can get messy too. So that's why I don't recommend re wedding and adding that second layer. Not with this in this situation, painting a monochrome like this. So yeah, you can just lift if you want to, like, a little bit, keep cleaning your breast, wiping on a towel. Until you feel like, that's good. The same thing here although I added such here's the thing. If you also add a heavy cream cream top, which is right here, that makes it harder to lift too because you have to press harder with a brush and it just can get really messy. This is a little easier. Whenever you lift with this color, particularly especially with this color, it's easier if the layer is lighter. The value is a light to mid value. This is dark value, so it's harder to lift. We use heavy cream cream top like ratio. I think for the background, this is great. It works. Of course, it's not going to be even and I'm okay with it just by looking like this. I actually like how this is unfinished here. You might want something like this, too, it's up to you. The next step is going to be painting the eye and then darkening the beak. Let's walk away from this and let it dry. 11. White Kookaburra - Second Layer Beak: I friends, so I would like to add another layer toward the bottom of the beak. What I want to do is actually wet very gently because again, it's indigo, but it's not that dark of a value compared to this. I'll still love the colors when I rewet this very quickly, but it won't be as bad as if I was rewetting the background. I am holding a round two, I'm sorry, eight brush, golden tube, which is a softer brush and I do recommend having a softer brush very gently with a softer brush. Well, that's way too much water. You just want to go in. That was too much water, by the way. A now, it's better. And just like we see going in, but we don't need to add up everywhere because we have some veins or veins, not veins, scratches. So something like this, again, you don't need to do it like a couple of times. Just one time basically would be probably enough if you got that ratio, right, that water on your brush. Now I'm going to grab cream top. So it has to be creamed up like ratio between water and heat of the same color, indigo, and we're going to apply it mostly toward the bottom. Because it's a creamy paint, thick paint, cream top, you see it's not spreading as much, creating that nice darker contrast here. A little more of that color on the tip of my breast. I just want to keep going. Whenever I see those darks, it is right underneath here, this area, actually, it should be lighter. I guess this part is the lighter part. I can go right underneath here. Make it a little darker, not everywhere. I went a little too far here, but this is the most important part right here to make it darker. That's the contrast. Now I have a nice fine point, so I'm going to come back here. There you go. I'm going to clean this brush. So one thing you can do is use that DM brush just to go through because this is still nicely wet. And you can still wait and lift it, by the way, if you need to grade those lines. Now here, do I really want that line? Not as white as it is. So I'm just going to use my DM brush. The tip of my DM brush just to go all the way to the bottom, just to push it down a little bit. I just don't need it to be as white. I do want that lightness because I want to contrast between this and this darkest part. I'm actually going to exaggerate it compared to the reference image. By the way you can see that scratch here from the flat brush. Next step, let's do the same thing with the top. I'm looking here. I'm going to wet it here very gently with a softer brush. Avoid this little area it looks like a scratch over the beak. A natural scratch, not me from using a brush. Like here. And the same thing, I'm going to grab this creamy paint. And what is or where is that darkest part? It's right in here. So creamy paint so you have the most control on the tip of your brush. You can also grab around two or three brush. And as close as I can get but not too close, I want to leave that area later overall. I'm going to get to this scratchy part here. I'm just looking to create a contrast. The rest will be done with a damp brush. Just want to spread a little more here. All right now I'm going to clean this brush, clean it, clean water. It's just a damp brush. I'm just going to go next to it and smooth it. So here is that little scratch. Well, I could have done a better job here, but well, it is what it is. And then just a clean brush and soften this from the top. If you feel like this is too much white, then you just use that damp brush to pull it down a little more. With that dam brush. But make sure you don't lose that light here on top. All this is a beautiful light. We need to keep it the way it is. This is a little too too white, is, I'm just using a damp brush. Let's move on toward the eye. 12. White Kookaburra - Eye Painting: For the eye let's grab smaller brush. What we're going to do surprise you actually, we're going to wet the whole thing. We did use masking fluid. We're going to wet the whole thing we're only going to well first, we're going to work with a milk like ratio to let some of that indigo to spread. But then we're going to jump to a milk I'm sorry, cream top like ratio, the heaviest ratio, just so we have the most control. First, you just want a little color overall so the eye is not so light. I do watch first, I'd say, because you want to know exactly what you're going to be doing and what could happen if there's too much color, bleeding and so on. So for this part, I'm just grabbing a little bit of milk like ratio. I just want a little color so it's not so light. And just dropping it, letting it bleed here and there, because the white doesn't work here as much because we can see like shadows. Something like this, I just dropped a little bit of color. Now, this could be you might be already okay with it, having the light values from the first layer, but mine was a little too light. The next step will be to grab this creamy paint. It literally is a creamy paint. There's a little bit of water. I'm not grabbing indiga straight out of a tube. This really is a creamy paint, but with a little bit of water. The first thing is not the pupil, but it's actually the area here, which is the iris, because we have this part. You're using creamy paint, so you have the most control. Now, I have to go back and grab more creamy paint because as I'm touching the paper, I'm actually picking up water. That can quickly become more a half and half ratio, which would be too diluted with water to paint. Then I can go here too. That's the pupil. Again, I have to pick more paint, pick up more paint with my brush to make sure it's all creamy paint. The paint does not spread as much and then I'm hoping I do have these areas from the masking still there. Then this part, it looks like it should be a little darker. I'm going to get closer here. Then we do have the masking there. Some areas like I do need to make it a little darker. Let's see, over here, for example, and then I'll use a damp brush as well. I just looking for the darker spots. And I'm going to clean this brush. And this is just going to be a damp brush, right? So that means I'm just going to let some of the color to bleed. But it's a damp brush. I'm wiping it on a towel. It's just that I want the color to bleed in some of these areas. Like, for example, over here, this is too dark. I'm sorry, too dark. It is darker in the reference, not dark enough in my painting, on my painting here. So I'm just letting the color to bleed a little bit. And let's see over here, And it looks like the pupil could be slightly bigger. I'm going to add a little more color. The paper still feels damp. That's why I can do this. But now it feels more closer to what I see in the reference. And another thing is this should be darker. So this was creamy paint, right? Might feel strange, but you just want to use a damp brush and let that to bleed a little bit toward the middle toward the inside. Now after this, if you feel like this is a dam brush, if you feel like things are still there's too much contrast or you can add more color and just let the color to bleed too. Again, for example, I'm going to give you an example. I'm grabbing more of the cream top. I do feel like this should be a little bigger. Some of these eyes can be really complicated just a little bit. And here, this is just a damp brush. I added color and then I'm just leaving a little lighter area. 13. White Kookaburra - Removing Masking Fluid: The last thing technically would be to remove the masking fluid and I can't do that because I just finished painting the eye. I love this part. I do like those hard edges here, and then I do like how it's softer. In this particular painting, I feel like we would be okay even if we had hard edges all the way through. But that gave me an opportunity to share with you how you can go about keeping soft edges, creating soft edges instead of having hard edges here everywhere. This is exactly how I go about in most of my paintings, whenever I paint something furry and a lot of times bird feathers. This where you see two different techniques. First, we're painting the bird, we're adding the color, starting with the latest areas. We're building it by adding more dark darks, but darker values, same color. Creating more contrast. So we're working with light and shadow. And then we're adding that background. And when we add the background, everything changes, right? Suddenly we have this painting of a bird, like it's there. So here again is my test piece. It's very similar. I'll tell you again, honestly, that I prefer this version because of the background. It's so unfinished. It's so watercolor like. So if you like something like this, then don't go all the way to the edges because I think it's kind of nice that we have a little bit of white here. And then there's the white bird, which creates a contrast again. I feel like the last step again is to remove the masking fluid. I'm sorry, masking fluid. I do have this pickup cement eraser, and even though I can't touch this, I can touch this area. Now, be careful when you remove the masking from such a dark area overall. This is indigo. Again, my experience with these colors, it can easily smudge. You might you just have to be careful so it doesn't smear anywhere that paint when you remove it. I just removed it from here. I think I place some of it here. Maybe over here. But again, remind yourself where did you What area you just finished painting? Because next thing you're going to go over the eye and it's like, no, I just smeared it. I have a little bit here. The thing is that I finished adding the background yesterday. That's why I'm confident with removing masking from these areas. I have to stay away from the big here, and then the eye, of course. But other than that, that is pretty finished. I love how we have the white from the masking, single hair pieces, and you can also remove sketch lines. I do that very often with this eraser. So it's Sedler It's like a pencil version. And here, I just simply remove the sketch lines. Sometimes it's easy, sometimes it's not. It depends what paper I'm using. But generally, this one is okay. Thank you so much for your time. And, of course, let me know if you have any questions. I'm always curious to know if you like the class and if I was able to teach you something new and if you feel more comfortable with wet on wet. 14. Flamingo- Intro/Applying Masking Fluid: Hi, friends. Welcome to this class. So we're going to paint a flamingo, and we're going to do it in monochrome with one color. I'm choosing neutral tint. Another choice, great choice would be indigo, but I'm going to go with neutral tint since my other class is already with Indigo. So neutral tint is kind of like a I don't want to say gray, but it's kind of like indigo, but more toward black color, but with a tinto of purple, if that makes sense. This is a color I used to use all the time, and then I phased out as I basically started using more and more of the indigo and then ante brown. Also what I was trying to do is limit my color palette so it's easier for you. So how we're going to paint it. The first thing is to apply actually masking fluid for water colors. Let's do this because then we have to wait for the masking to dry anyway, so we might as well start with this process right away. So this is my rigor brush. I use rigor brushes to apply masking, and this is just a brush I don't care about, but you want to have synthetic brush, whether it's a small round brush or a rigor brush. What I like to do is dip brush in water and then I just dip it in the jar and I use the neck of the bottle just to flatten my breast. It would be better to have a smaller size, but this is fine too. We do I want to apply it? Actually, over the feathers like the single hair, what would help is here. This is the area, so that's where the flamingo is buried in there. So be nice to have this little touch here. This, by the way, is the Arches watercolor paper. I did apply some washi tape. It's only because when I wet it, I don't want to go over because this is my watercolor journal. It's one thing, but also I want to have a sharp edge here, like a hard edge, straight line basically. I don't want the paint to go over underneath the sheet. What else? Maybe a little spot for the highlight inside the eye, maybe right side and maybe over the lid just a little bit because that will give us something right away. Then you want to look at the reference and just basically over, you see the lightest single hair, maybe here. In this one, right now, I don't feel like I want to add a background. I feel like we should just do the flamingo and that'll be fun to do it like this since the other classes with the background, of course, feel free to add the background and if you want to add the background, I suggest to do it the same way as I showed you in the other class. The only thing is you would have to keep the flamingo over lighter. When you add the darker background, you see the contrast. Because if we go too dark with the flamingo, then we have to keep working on that background to create that contrast. On the right side, it's darker here, for example, that would be a nice contrast, but we have to make sure that we leave enough light on this side, for example. I'm just going to pick couple other areas where I want to add this he detail, maybe, let's see, there's some more highlighted parts over this part here, the skin, maybe a little bit here. And then let's see the beak alone, there's a nice highlighted line here. I generally don't really apply it to areas like this. It's more about this fuzzy here. I'm going to clean the breast and when we come back, we can talk about the process. 15. Flamingo - Wetting Paper: So the first part is about wetting the flamingo and also, we're going to designate an area in the background where we're okay with the color to bleed toward the background. Now, if you're painting the background too, if you're adding the background, the process is going to be in the other class. You're just going to add the entire page, the paper, and then you're just going to focus on applying colors only inside of the flamingo and it's okay if the colors bleed. But specifically in this class, I'm teaching you how to just apply the colors inside the flamingo. And then let some of these colors to bleed toward the background. Let's just pick a spot. Let's say I want the color from the flamingo to bleed, maybe not here because this is a nice highlight. But let's say like COVA here. I'll wet this part of the background too, and this is a darker area anyway, so some color will bleed out there. This way, it's just going to give it a nice look to a painting, and you can decide, too. You can just focus on wetting only the inside too if you want to. So Grammar clean brush. This is my flight 24 songbird. And I'm just wetting it. As for the eye, I'd actually suggest to not wet the eye and the beak just because they are lighter, this part is lighter and then the eye is lighter. And that's because we want that contrast and we are going to be working with this one color. But still, we just want to make sure that not too much color from here, which is a dark area bleeds over toward the lighter part of the beak. We're just going to stay away from the beak, which is pretty much how I paint the flamingos in general. But yes, you could wet everything too if you want to. It's just there's always options, and I feel like it would not be fair if I didn't tell you, like, Okay, you can also do this or you can do that because we decide, it's your artwork, so you decide, on the splutters and this and that. So for here on this area, for example, I can go inside the beak too because I'm going to be painting this part of the feathers. That's because this part of the beak is black. So I don't care if any color from the neck goes over toward the beak, that part. The part that's black. And then here very gently. Now, I do suggest using a softer brush, flat brush too, it's just so much easier to apply colors. Another thing is when you use a stiffer brush, you might find yourself picking up colors from the paper as you're applying the colors so that can happen very easily. I haven't started wetting the background yet, whatever I want the color to bleed toward the background too. And I decided to stay away from here only because this area is so much lighter, so it's not like much color would bleed there anyway. This is a different paper that I painted the bird. This is arches. The other one was on the old version of the I believe it was the Hyme lady collection. Paper with texture. So here, I'm just going to wet a little more. I don't want to go over. Actually, this is the area that I am going to go over. So I'm just going to let some water here in the background. And I do need to grab actually a different brush. My long coil size four, just so I can go, like, closer toward the beak like this so I don't go over with a flat brush. Because when you have a point, it's just you have so much more control, right? So might as well use my long quill. So right now you see the everything. I'm not zooming in until we are painting the Big or the eye. I just want you to see the everything, not just like a one part. Because when you apply colors, it's so easy to get you focus just on one spot, and you have to travel around the whole thing. Like, you can't just focus on applying colors in one area. That's my philosophy. Like you have to move around because number one, you keep the paper wet longer. In number two, you kind of see the whole thing, like the contrast in a better way, the light shadows is so important. Oh, another thing is, so make sure you wet the backside of the paper too if you need more time to apply colors because that will help you. That will give you twice as much time. So if I'm going to do this, let's say, in 25 minutes, and then the paper will be too dry to continue applying colors. If you wet the backside, you're going to have 35 minutes, so it's worth doing it. I'm just not doing it because it's I'm painting in the journal right now and I'm just used to it, I guess. I do feel like I have a tint of a color and that's because I was painting this other bird. I thought I had clean water, but now I'm confused. It doesn't matter because I'm going to be using neutral tint. Now, please take a moment to dilute your color with water so this is my neutral tint. This is the neutral tint. One of my favorite colors, but I don't use it as much. I'm going to go one more time. Just one more time. One more time. I'm actually pushing the water over here in case I have too much and I do have a little too much here. Just going to grab it in a way. Actually, I'm going to stick with my long well for this one. 16. Flamingo- Layering P1: What I want you to do is really look at the reference image and see where you see the lightest values, the value of that shade, the gray. Let's grab a little bit of a water milk like ratio. You want this to be really watered down actually at first because you do want the paint to spread. So overall, like I'm going to go over here, for example, add some color here. And if it doesn't feel right to use something like round brush, you might want to go, you know, for the flat brush, that's fine, too. So this needs to be more diluted with water, and that's like the overall, like, where do I want that color, right? So here, this is for sure, like the darker area here. Might as well just add some color to keep things wet longer. But I got to be careful how the paint spreads and all doesn't become too dark. Also thinking like, I am making it a little darker just because I'm not planning to add the background. That makes a difference too. Here I have these feathers and then again letting here to go in a little bit. You don't want to place this color of your choice anywhere everywhere I'm sorry, I meant everywhere because if you place the color everywhere, then it's just going to become too dark. You want to think about it, lightest areas, the darkest areas. I'm going to grab a little more water and I'm going to come back here, but I'm trying to still keep it lighter, but doesn't mean that it has to be super light. That's because I'm not adding the background. I feel like I didn't dilute it properly. See chunks. This head area is for sure shadowed. I'm using the tip of my brush, the edge of the brush to go closer toward this edge here in a second, I'm going to grab a heavier ratio of water and paint. So even though I wetted the background, not much is bleeding out. We can always add more water toward the background. If you want to. Then this is milk like ratio. Here's the thing, something that sometimes it's hard to understand. The longer you paint, it's been a couple minutes. Now I have to start adjusting the ratio between water and paint because the paper is not as wet as it was a couple of minutes ago. It's not just the same. It is still wet, but it's not the same. Slowly, I'll have to start decreasing the amount of water in my brush. So it's going to become more like a heavy cream in a second and cream top and stuff like that. We'll get to that. First, I'm just going to release a little more. Now, let's remember, too, that with watercolors, they always dry more pale. Then when we first see everything, it's a little darker, but everything will just dry more pale. Like not as dark unless I go creamy paint. So now what I really want to do is actually switch to a smaller brush. I'm going to try to add more color here and wait till the very end that's important too. Don't give up too early or never because you have to wait once the beak is there and everything just won't make sense. So now I'm going to grab something that feels like a heavy cream. That heavy cream maybe half and half. Something between. A little heavier ratio and I want to go here. This is not working, so I need heavy cream because I don't want the pain to spread as much as it was just a couple of minutes ago. Now I'm looking to have more and more control. Now, when I apply this heavy cream, I don't want it everywhere, right? So basically with my eyes, I'm scanning the areas in the reference, like, Okay, what is where do I see the darkest tones? And that's where I'm going for. That's what I'm going for, to add these colors. I need the contrast, and I'm using a quill brush, but it has a fine point. So try to have some foam like this. Round brush to is fine, of course, softer brush, ideally. So ideally a softer brush and you're just going for these mid to darkest tones basically. I will have less time than somebody. If you wetted the backside of the paper to just FYI. That's just the choice because you can always wet the backside first. It's not something that you can't do. You can decide if you need more time, go for it because I'm going to be done very quickly with applying colors. Another thing what helps me in general is squinting my eyes, actually. So when I feel like I'm adding, I'm focusing on too many little areas, and I'm not capturing the overall. Then I need to squint my eyes, so it's kind of like I see less of the details and more of the overall contrast. That makes sense. Something my mom has taught me. She's an oil artist, but the same principle applies to any painting or drawing or crayons, whatever you're using. So I feel like this is good, and I want to show you a little trick. It's called the damp brush technique. So if you've been for a while, then you know it already. But it's such a great technique because you can make things so much smoother. Okay, so I'm going to clean the brush. I'm going to show this to you quickly. There's two things I'm going to be doing with you. One is that damp brush technique. So what you do is squish this brush between two pieces of a towel, basically. So it looks like this. Now, you can just go into pool, but here's the tricky part. It doesn't work if your paper feels damp already, it's not going to work. You're just going to start lifting colors. You have to do this when the paper feels nice and wet, still shiny wet. I call these the stages. First, you see that the paper is nice shiny, wet and then that shine slowly starts to go away. That's the time to lift colors, and it's too late to do this damp brush technique. When do you do that damp brush technique, when the paper feels shiny wet? Now, this paper, this is Arches, is not as amazing as that old version of the collection. That was my most favorite. It's just different. This one is gelatin. The other one was plan face. But it does make a difference. It makes for sure a difference, smell for sure, but performance. So I do feel like I just don't have the same feel, but it's still okay. It's still doable. So whether you're painting on arches or some other paper, you'll be okay. 17. Flamingo - Lifting Color: They say, as long as you have this 100% cotton, but not all 100% cotton are good too. That's the thing. But I'm sure you're used to certain paper as long as it's not cellulose. This is a rigor precise two songbird. What you want to do next is actually lift the colors. Lifting colors helps a lot because we create even more like it's just when you lift colors versus adding masking, with masking, you remove the masking and then you have hard edges and bright white paper. But with lifting, everything looks more delicate. So as I'm talking, I actually need to look for the areas where I can lift. This is all too early. The best time I get to lift colors is when the paper loses that shine. So it feels kind of, like, damp. And this is a little still shiny wet. I just have to wait probably a minute. What I could do in the meantime is grab like a creamy paint on the tip of my brush and go right above the eye and just have some more shadows. I actually should have maybe wetted this part too, but I didn't. F Y, you could wet part of the skin here too. Then by the way, just keep adding maybe more darks closer toward the beak because that's our contrast right there. And you can also add some hair detail through the neck area not too much because something like this can be easily overdone and it doesn't look as natural if you add too much of that the single do hair detail, in any case, too much is too much. This works because the paper still feels wet and what I'm doing is I'm just using creamy paint and looking for the areas that are for sure wet and I'm just adding the quick hair line here and there. I don't want too much again because it doesn't look good if it's too much, but just a little bit. You can tell where I had more a creamy paint and the paper was a little dryer. A little bit here. Doesn't actually look as good, so I'm going to move on to another area here. Then have less paint on my brush now. Maybe I can go to a couple areas, but be your own judge if it's too much, it's too much. The most important thing is to actually lift I do feel it's a little too early, but what you want to do with lifting. You're going to clean your rigor brush, you're going to wipe it very well on a towel and once you wipe it, you're going to start lifting, but you just have to make sure there's no extra water on the brush because that will create a bloom. With lifting, it's all about timing. So it's that moment when the papers start to feel damp. When it's damp, that's perfect time, but a lot of time it's too late. We don't have enough time because our painting is large or we have so much to lift. Another thing is, consider the color you're using. This is Holbein, so I know Holbein very well. I've been painting with this brand for eight years. I know very well the colors and I know that indigo is very good for lifting and neutral tint too, but not all colors are good to lift. All colors are easy to lift. And also it depends from the paper. It really depends because some papers will sell those papers, in general, they live very easily, but they live too easily, and it just doesn't look soft. I got to hurry up actually as I'm talking because I won't lift anything. So I'm just choosing areas that are a little darker, for example, here, and I'm doing this also on purpose so you can see it. I might not look as pretty in my painting, but that's because I want you to see where I lifted and how successful I was in some of these areas with lifting because of the timing and the color I chose and the paper I chose. Here is a little too late. I'm still lifting a little bit. The most successful, I'd say was here, I think here because that's where I started. So if you go to darker areas, you're going to see the lifting very easily. And obviously, if I lift here, you won't see anything because this is all white. So that's the thing. Now, another thing. If you're adding the background, again, keep this lighter overall, just so you don't struggle with, like, contrast when you add the background. So I feel like I'm almost done here because for this part, because I just don't have enough areas to lift anymore. And I don't want to over lift either. So here's another thing. If you lift too much, then just the painting looks overworked. It doesn't look good. And I've done this before. Like, I have lifted too much, and it just did not look. 18. Flamingo - Creating Fine Lines: Another thing what you can do is you can grab a very diluted paint. We're only working with neutral tint. You dilute the paint with water when you flatten your brush, so it's very thin. What you can do is since I'm not adding the background here, you can add a little hair detail with something that I call this water like ratio, the paint is really watered down. Then you can go out here to so you can also wipe your brush if you feel like you have too much paint, let's say, and you can go back and just add it, not everywhere again because it just doesn't work well. But for example, the areas where you didn't like, let much paint to go in, like, next to these edges, so you can go out a little bit, especially if you've used masking. So I use masking here. Now, if I remove the the mask oops I went too far. If I remove masking from here, you just won't see anything because it's white paper there. But if I go over the masking area and you remove masking, you will see it, and then you want to pick some of these spots that are going to be much lighter. It's just a small detail. I like this moment when I apply the little hair, especially when I not just flaming those other birds, too. It's just fun, the fuzziness. But you have to be comfortable with the rigor brush. So if you've never used the rigger brush before, it's possible. Especially if you're new, that's okay. You just want to practice on the spare sheet of a watercolor paper. Just say if you're really comfortable with these little brush strokes because with a rigor brush, like, you really, you're barely touching the paper very gently. Everything is super gentle. Like, so like here, you can barely see that I'm leaving any marks. It's just a little bit. I do want that hair because I don't have background here. I just want to make it look more natural, the hair, the neck, all that, just a little bit. And it's very light, so it's not going to really do any bad. I'm not going to do any bad to my painting. This first part is completed. The next step is to work. On the beak, what we're going to do is wet the entire beak, and then we're just going to focus actually on the lightest part. So we don't have to technically wet the entire beak, but we still want to go in toward the black areas because it doesn't matter. They're black anyway, this part of the beak. And so we're just going to focus on this first part and then the skin, and then we can paint either, we can paint the eye, and then we'll come back for the third part, which is just adding the black part of the beak, and that will be it. All right, so let's walk away from this and letter dry. 19. Flamingo - Painting the Beak: So now we're going to work on the beak and all the skin part, okay? What I want you to do is have two brushes handy. This is my round threesome bird. It's a smaller stiffer brush and something softer with a fine point. Okay. Smaller brush because it's kind of like a smaller area, although I could probably use my long quill as well, just for quicker water application, my work as well. So something like this, something like this, and a smaller brush would be ideal right now. So I'm going to try, actually, with this brush. But let's talk about how we're going to paint it. So what we're going to do is wet all of this. Including the black parts. Actually have a tinted water, but you know what? That's okay because I didn't get new water. That's what I'm trying to say. But it's okay because all of this is going to be darker with this one color anyway. But what you want to do is wet the beak, but we're only going to focus on the plant colors toward the whiter parts and then that skin. We're going to add the black parts later so we don't have to worry about it. We can go all the way actually to here, We always want to we more than we need if we can, of course, because you never know how far you're going to go. I was saying about the smaller brush. I'm probably going to use the smaller brush to apply colors by round eight golden two, softer brush with a fine points or something like that. If you can use for the next part. And now we're just going to apply colors toward the whiter parts. We're going to apply lighter values first, something that's more like water milk like ratio, very small amount on your brush so you have the most control. And then for the shadows, we're going to use heavy cream to cream top like ratio. But the paper can't be too wet, so we just have to be careful. It's all about the ratios between water and paint. Now, make sure that you're not neutral tint is diluted with water already, but not to the excess, you don't want it just to be runny. It needs to have a thicker paint here and then something that's more diluted with water. So you always want to make sure that you can grab this heavy cream or cream tub like ratio between water and paint. So almost there. Alright, push the water a little bit away. I don't want too much water. Now I'm going to grab my round eight gold two, dipping it in water. And at first, I'm going to grab something that feels a little more water, actually. More like water, milk. This is more like milk. Milk like ratio. So it is all of this is darker overall, but we can't make it too dark, right? You kind of have to squint your eyes and see what is darker? Like, these feathers here or this part. So this is lighter. Then if you need to have something thicker than go for, like, a half and half like creation. This feels like a half and half what I have now on my breast. But I do want to add a little more color here. What you want to do is actually not have too much paint on your breast and water just a little bit. So the milk like ratio or half and half. And actually here in this area, this is nostril, But above the nostril, I should have a highlight and I already went too far. That's okay. I'm just going to lift the color. I just have to remind myself that I need to lift the color. Now I want to go back to this milk like ratio because this is a little darker, not that arc. Again, I'm diluting color with water. I wipe it on a towel if I have too much on my brush because I don't want that much paint. Again, the reason we wet it this so we don't have to try to stay away from it and everything. We actually don't want hard edge here. We want to create a hard edge when we add the black part of the beak. So you can use a smaller brush, too, of course, if you feel comfortable, but with a larger brush, you have more coverage. And it's not like, Oh, we have so much time to apply colors, right? Wet on wet. This will dry pretty quickly because we're not wetting right now the backside of the paper. It's a little more color on the top here. Maybe this part, and we have the wrinkly parts. We can do a lot actually when we lift the colors, too, for these parts. Something like that, it's a little different than the reference, but it's okay as long as I have contrast, light shadows. So those are the darks and then a little bit here. And then I just have to keep an eye on how the paint is spreading overall. I can just drop a little bit of a color here, leave it. Okay. Watch how the paint spreads, and then right away, think about the areas you're going to lift. This is a damp brush. I wiped it on a towel very well. I'm just going to smooth this. Smooth it around a little bit. And then I'm going to grab actually my smaller brush, the round three, just to add a little thicker paint toward a couple areas. So this is my round three songbird, and I'm dipping it in water again. And this time, I'm going to grab like a creamy paint. So creamy is like right here. That's the creamier, even if I want creamier. There you go. Just on the tip of my brush. I'm not painting the black part again. I'm just going for these darker parts, which is like, for example, the nostril. So for sure, it needs to be creamy paint so the paint does not spread as much. So that's the nostril. Now, if I want somewhere else, I wipe my brush on my toe because I feel like I have too much paint, even too much paint now. It is still creamy paint, but I'm going to go for this area right here, which is darker. And actually, this part, right underneath the feathers should be darker, too. And then I can't forget this, but this is already a little too dry, this top part. So I will have to do something like this, add color, then I'm going to grab my other round brush. This is round two, and just use a damp brush to let that to bleed down. So just water. I have a shadow. Now let's continue. What else would I add some shadows, between the wrinkly parts, and this should be a little darker too, right there. Overall, we have shadows, we do need to add some dark. This is the cream top ratio. And what you see is the paint is not spreading much, and that's because again, I'm using this creamy paint on the tip of my brush. The paper is not as wet anymore. So everything is like, okay, I just have way more control, basically. Then just to divide these lines. This is complicated for me whenever I sketch things like that, which line is here, which line? Okay. So the overall, always think just overall don't stress to have everything exactly on the reference. So here, just adding those shadows, then there should be a little darker. It looks like. This really is the time that I should be lifting. If I can drop this, I'm going to drop it, but I want to play some spots. It does look like there's spots. I should have a little more of these wrinkly lines like here. Flamingos are so much fun to paint. Like every time I work on the beak, I feel like it just makes me so happy because it's just so fun to, like, lift and do these wrinkles and stuff like that. It's just something about flamingos. Course, I'm not gonna paint them all the time because you're gonna be so bored by it and subject. I'm going to clean the brush. This was a little too late just have y. That's why it's kind of like on the border of being, like, wet on wet and wet on dry. But I'm going to actually use the same brush around three to lift the colors. And one of the areas I was talking about is this one here, left of the nostril. And it's actually not bad at all. But if you need to lift and go for it, I actually want a little more of the color because this does look darker. It should be darker. And actually, it's a little late because the papers too dry, but it's going to use a damp brush to spread it. And then I do need to work a little bit here on the cleaner line. So I'm lifting colors with my round three brush, and the reason that works is because the paper feels damp. So the paper feels damp and that's the best time to lift the colors. Again, depends on the color you use, not all pigments left equally and as well like a indiga or neutrotin I'm grabbing a little color, more color actually just to place it there. Just keep that in mind, so you don't get frustrated. Because it'll be fun to do a flamingo with pink colors or pink color only like red. But maybe the brand that you use does not lift as well. I chose like something that should work for everyone. I don't want to do too much. I think this is pretty good. We're going to leave it and then we're going to come back for the black part of the beak. Now let's focus on the eye because eye is important too. 20. Flamingo - Eye Painting: What I want you to do is grab maybe slightly smaller brush. This is my Round two songbird as well, and you're going to wet inside the entire ball here of the eye. We're going to apply colors wet on wet, of course. But I want you to start with a very tiny amount of paint on the tip of your brush, maybe even heavy cream because it is a small area and you have the most control. What you will do is apply that color away from the pupil area, and then there's the lighter parts. We're going to apply color away from the pupil. And then once this settles a little bit, we're going to grab cream top like ratio on the tip of our brushes and you're going to apply that creamy paint only along these edges here around the eye. I think I aplied mask. That'll be our highlight. First of all, you don't want pattles of water. Nicely Shiny wet paper. Perfect. Then let's grab heavy cream of this neutral tint. If it feels too thick, grab half and half a small amount of paint. You might experiment also with the milk like ratio to start something lighter maybe because I wipe my brush on a towel and it does feel more like a milk like ratio. Again, you're staying away from the center. Overall, clean your brush, wipe it on a towel. Make sure you leave plenty of light there. You can use a damp brush now to move it around a little bit. But then you're going to grab this creamy paint on the tip of your brush, cream top like ratio. You're just going to apply very quickly before this dries. So around this so the shadow for the iris. And let that color to spread. You want that color to spread toward the center. So you do need to do this fairly quickly. And if you feel like you won't have enough time, then just wet the paper longer. This is a damp brush, and I'm just helping you to spread a little more. And that's pretty much it for this part, but we do need to add the pupil. Now, if for some reason, you added too much paint, just lift the center like this, you're going to rub rub toward the pupil area around it, and it's going to lift the colors. Okay. Next step once this dries will be to paint the wrinkly part around the lids. And yeah, we're just going to do that, but we have to wait for this to dry first. All right my friends, let's finish the eye. I am zooming it onto the reference, I can see it up close. I'm holding my around two sb details. It's a smaller brush with a fine point. First thing I want to do is actually just wet the lid. I'll probably reactivate color next to it too, which is okay. It's just the lid should not be this white, so paper white. Then just a little bit on the tip of my brush that same color, so the neutral tint we're working with and apply it but not everywhere. Just pick couple spots. Then if you can wipe your brush very well on a towel. And grab the creamy paint just on the tip of your brush and just add it maybe on top a little bit. Whatever you can spot the darker areas, that's where you want a little bit of that, but it needs to be applied while this paper is still wet, like this area, and it should be maybe over the lid the wrinkly parts. It's too late for me. I definitely didn't wet it long enough. But I'm okay with it. I don't like these lines here, so I'm just going to soften them with a dam brush. Now, let's grab something that feels like milk like ratio, but on the tip of your brush, we're going to paint the pupil. So steady hand, place your hand, your wrist on the paper, and then just work with your fingers in a way like you're holding the brush, right? And then you're just going to go in a circle. And add it very quickly. You don't want the paint to be too thick. That's why more like a milk like ratio. It's even better just to start with a water like ratio, and then you just add later even more paint. Like a heavier paint, to fill it up. It's just a little dot. And that's it for the eye. So now we can do the rest of the beak. 21. Flamingo - Finishing the Beak: So now we're going to finish the beak. What we're going to do is wet this part, the black part. And now we're going to apply colors without wet. And then we're also going to wet a little bit of this part two here because this is the part of the beak that's black. We're going to apply colors like a heavy cream like ratio, water and paint, and we're going to try to keep these areas later kind of staying away from them and just watching how the paint bleeds over. So this is my round eight golden one, so it's a stiffer brush than the other one I was using. I'm using this one because I feel like I'll have a little more control in a way going here. Says water. So water water. Then all this way more water just to wet it. I don't want puddles of water again. I just want nicely wetted paper and pay attention to, like, all these little shapes. Now, when it comes to hair, all this hair, we're actually going to leave this up to here, and then when we start applying colors, we're going to go in a little bit, just so we can create that fuzziness there. Otherwise, we can't really tell where we go with just water. So one more time going through, I don't want this to dry too quickly on me. Like this is already dry. So I got to go back, revisit. Go. All right. I'm going to grab this heavy cream and start right here and just let you see how the paint is spreading. Slit that to spread here, just like that. These are the darker areas. You can go in a little bit because it's not perfect. It's nothing it's like sharp. It's like you have these parts going in a little bit. It's only this is like the smoothest all this. So let that color to bleed. Watch how it's spreading, how everything is spreading and just use the tip of your brush as if it's like a pencil in a way. That's why it's important to have a fine point. And then let's pull it all the way which I press harder with the brush. Now, this part should be a little lighter, so I'm just going to place color here next to it because this is the part that's between the two pieces of a beak. More paint. This is the darkest. Now I'm going to grab like a heavy cream just to place it like right here. And as you see, I'm not placing it like everywhere. Again, I need different tonal values. I wipe my brush on a towel. This is when I have to hurry up a little bit because the paper will dry fast, and I do want to go in here. So I'm kind of going in like this because of the hair, the fuzziness. Just go in the bird is digging into the feather, something like this. Now, I'm wiping my breast on a towel. What I'm going to do is actually squish it between pieces of a towel. This is just a damp brush and wiping it again. I'm not cleaning it, just wiping it, just a damp brush to go through it. Then if I want to go a little more here, but I think it looks pretty good. The next step is if I need to lift colors, then I will be. I'll just stand guard here. Well, what I could do is add a little more color here and just pull a little bit. Pull it away a little bit. Like you have paint on your brush, but it's heavy cream, not much. The brush feels pretty damp, and then you're just kind of pulling. Just as you see, nothing's perfect here. And then maybe over here too, actually. This should be like a harder edge. Oops I went a little too far, and it's okay. I'll leave it as if it was supposed to be there. Same thing here. Some hard edges are definitely needed for this. Well, let's see. Be a little bit, like a duct here. This shouldn't be like perfect, so I'm just going off a little bit. And I think that's pretty good. Next step will be to grab creamy paint on the tip of my brush, the same brush. And just like we see there's lines. So we're going to add these lines as well. A little heavier. So we're creating different values of this neutral tint, basically. There you go. And then, of course, we can also lift colors, which is like in between the top and bottom part of the beak. Something like that. I'm going to clean my brush and I'm going to wait a second to show you in case I have to lift. But it is pretty dark to beak and doesn't seem like I need to do much more, but I will watch just because I could definitely lift a little bit, maybe just a little bit here, but it's just a little too wet. In this area, let's see another area. For example, maybe here, you would press really hard with a damp brush. And then over here, just pressing a little harder then those areas next to that line that goes in between the top and bottom part, just to lift tiny bit more right here. That's it. Then we just have to remove masking. 22. Flamingo - Removing Masking Fluid: All right, friends, first, I'm going to actually remove the washi tape. You have an idea why I placed the washi tape. Well, number one, I didn't want the paint to bleed to wear the inside of my sheets, right? And it gives it a nice finish in a way, but I'll see if I have an example to show you what it would look like if you didn't do that. I guess it's not in this journal. But next thing is to remove the masking fluid. I can't remove it here yet because I just painted it. But here, here, maybe here. Just whatever I applied it except for here because it's still too wet. And then, of course, we have the eye. So I'll get back to this part later. Maybe I can do a little bit here. But don't chance it because you can easily smear the paint. One more thing I like to do is use eraser. This is like I use like a pencil eraser, but I like to remove some of the sketch lines. It just makes it a little cleaner in a way, the whole painting. So you just have to make sure the paper is 100% dry. So if you feel like it's still wet, don't even bother because you will destroy your painting very quickly. It just makes it cleaner. I just like the way it looks. I do have This is neutro tint from this color. It's kind of like a line just the way I wetted it. But, for example, I didn't need any of the sketch lines here, right? So now we here too. All right, friends, so our piece is finished. Here's a couple more notes. Like, let's say you don't like these white areas after you remove the masking. One thing I do is I use a wet brush, so you don't want too much water, just a little bit of water. You can go over it. What this will do is reactivate colors next to it. You can go through it a little bit and see what happens. If you have enough color, great coming off from the other side, or you can grab a little color and just go over it and it's not as paper white anymore. That's it for this one. Of course, let me know if you have any questions and feel free to comment. I'm looking forward to seeing your work. Thank you so much. 23. Owl - Applying Masking Fluid: Hi, friends. Welcome to this class. We're going to paint an owl in monochrome. I am going to use one color, which is untak brown. What we're going to do first before we talk about the process is we're going to use masking fluid for watercolors. I'm going to use this one, Sine blue bottle or blue masking fluid. I'm going to apply the masking fluid toward the most highlighted hair. So this is my brick or brush the brush I don't care about anymore. It's just damaged enough that I'm just going to use it to apply masking fluid. I dip the brush in water, and then I go for the masking and then I kind of go against the neck of the bottle just so I don't have too much. I really don't want to have a lot of the masking, just a little bit. I kind of squish the brush too in a way. Although I have a lot of chunks here. There you go. So for example, I want to add it here, this feels like rough actually watercolor paper. I thought it was cold pressed. Well, when you have rough, that means you're going to have more texture, more bumps. You might want to have tiny bit more of the masking if you're using a rough. I do suggest using a cold pressed, which is the easiest to work on the paper. I'm just going to add a little bit of that here. It's definitely a rough watercolor paper. For some reason, I thought I grabbed cold press. You want to go toward the background here just because we are going to add background, and it would be nice to have that hair already. We are going to create the hair, single hair anyway when we add the background, but this way, we're on the safe side. We have extra individual hair pieces just in case we lose too much light, let's say. So you just want to go very quickly. The way I apply the masking, I try to barely touch the paper very gently, very quick strokes. So for example, here, this is right above the eye. So yes, if you're using a cold press, you're just going to have easier it's going to be much easier for you to apply masking because you won't get stuck in it's almost like dry brushing when we do. Apply the masking over rag paper. Let's see. I see highlights here and from here. So whatever you feel like you want to add some highlights. And when you look at the reference, compare the reference, I guess, or just look at the reference. I do have a test piece. It's just I use a different color. But you see there's chunks that look so much lighter, which is the cheek areas, I'd say. This is where we could definitely use some of the masking. Don't want to go crazy with it because it just doesn't look as natural. But just enough, maybe here. Let's see. We can go a little lower too, whatever you see the highlights, maybe some dots and more here. I feel like I need more water, but I think maybe I'll be okay for this part. Here, this is all highlighted. Of course here as well. Grab tiny bit on the tip of your brush too, and maybe over the lids, maybe a couple of dots we can leave there because that's highlighted as well. Same thing here. I would be just nice to have highlights. Now when we wet theowl, we are going to wet the entire howl basically. We're not going to skip the I or anything like that or the eyes. We're going to wet the whole thing, start with the lightest tones for the color value you can think of that color that you're using after creating the swatches, you will see the lightest values of the color, and I'll explain everything, of course, in an additional PDF file. So you'll see everything. So by now, you would already see it as we're doing this. So we would be using the lightest color value to start with, which means you would dilute your color with a lot of water. Well, I can't say it this way because then you think it's going to be puddle of water. It's going to be something that feels like water to milk like ratio. At first, you want the paint to spread. But let's focus on this because I don't want to jump around too much because that's too confusing when we're applying just the masking. A couple more areas. I actually pressed a little harder with a brush like this so I have a little more whites. This is a little maybe too much, but okay. As you see, I'm not too bothered about it. I worst comes to worst, let's say I apply too much, all I have to do is just wait til it dries and I have to wait for this to dry anyway before I start painting. Then I can just remove the masking if I felt like I goofed up a little bit. All right. I feel like this is good. Next thing for you is to clean your brush. You never want to let that masking to dry unless you're ready to say bye to that brush and throw it away. This is just the masking fluid. I'm going to clean it. 24. Owl - Wetting Paper: The next step will be to squeeze color onto your palette. I have my butcher palette here. This is just the Vandek brown that's all I'm going to use for this class. The next step will be to wet the paper. How are we going to wet it? First of all, you're going to flip your paper. You're going to the backside of the paper for 2 minutes. This will help you you have more time to apply colors wet on wet because by wetting the backside of the paper, you will keep your paper wet longer and that's very important. Especially that you're learning and you really need that extra time to apply colors. You're going to wet the backside and I'm going to show you in a second. And then we wet the front side for like two, 3 minutes. Make sure it's all nice and wet. Of course, you might ask questions like, Okay, can I just submerge in water? Go for it if you want to go for it. The thing is, if you submerge in water, it's a little becomes more difficult. You have all that water, right? With the brush, it's easy to control it, and then I can just wipe with a paper towel like the sides of my board. This is a PVC plastic board, and in the PDF file, you can see all the details about it. Because you do want to have either something plastic or you want to have a glass top table. Next step is once this is all dry and this is pretty dry, I'm going to flip the paper like this and I'm going to wet the backside. At first, I am going to use a lot of water, don't be shy with water. Just add the water. This is my flat 650. The bench casino brig. You want to wet the back side. So wetting it. For 2 minutes. I'd say 2 minutes is good. Once you feel that paper starts to buckle a little bit, that actually tells you that the paper is pretty wet so you can flip it. Like this. Okay, and then you're going to start wetting the front side. So again, lots of water. Wet it for two, 3 minutes. And this will give you twice as much time to apply colors wet on wet. Now, I can tell something's wrong with my watercolor paper. This was an older sheet. If you ever see clear here, that means it's lacking on a sizing. So I'm just hoping that the middle is okay, but it should be fine. But I can tell this paper is bad. This is honeymal. Decollection rough and unfortunately, it's already spoiled. Something happened to it, I guess. Find out once I apply colors, but all I care about is to have nice flow here. Water water. In the meantime, what you can do is dilute your Vandek brown or whatever color you chose for this part for this painting. You just dilute it with water. You want something that's something that's more diluted with water and then less diluted with water, something like heavy cream to cream top. Now back to wetting again, a little more. This paper stays wet longer. That's from my jar. So softer brush, and we will begin with a softer brush as well, painting, applying the color. I'm going to place this on the side and I'm actually get rid of some of this water. Although it's not that important because I'm only going to at first focus on the bird, not the background. One more time, I'm going through. No padles of water, absolutely no paddles. Everything needs to be nice shiny, wet. Nicely wet paper, but no paddles anywhere. 25. Owl - Layering: Now, grab a flat brush. This is my 24 song bird. What are you want to grab is something well, first of all, dip your brush with water so it's not dry. Something that feels like water to something water like Rs, I'd say. Start with that. Grab a little more of that. Now, focus on the lightest values that you see, which is, for example, around the eye on top of the eye there. We are going to work on the darks later. We don't need to do this right now, go for the darks. I'm grabbing a little more water. I do want this to be more I'm sorry, water like ratio. Again, I'm grabbing the paint, moving it around here, water like ratio. Here is a good example. This is a very light area, lighter values, looking for the lightest values and overall a base. Be first of all, you do want in this first part you do want the paint to spread. Now, too much spreading is not good. If it's spreading too much, your papers too wet, like you have ptles of water. Number two, too much water. Be careful with that. Number three, you don't want overly loaded brush either. Be careful with that. Now, around the eye again because that's where I see the lighter values and then this little thing, the feathers, it's around the face, we want some of that here. Now in this class, we will be also lifting polars, and we use masking fluid. With a masking fluid, great. We will for sure have some highlights. But with lifting, it's nice to it's just like you're creating softer softness, by your lift colors to add more hair detail, but it's like that softness that you can't achieve with masking fluid because we all know when we remove the masking, what happens? Everything kind of just becomes like a hard edge. So I'm just going to make sure I have focus here. So yes, you create hard edges just by removing masking fluid. Not your fault, it's just the nature of masking. So I want to add more color around the beak here. I feel like it's a little darker. And I was trying my test pieces on a completely different paper. I've never actually painted on that paper before. It's the meten paper, and it's promising but not for something like this. I'd say maybe I'll try like a landscape or something. It's a stiffer paper, stiffer than arches, reminds me of the Bahong watercolor paper. Very similar. Just too stiff for my techniques. Overall. Everything I'm doing is kind of soft, softer, softer this, softer that. So here, a little more water or paint. But now I'm going to go for the midtones. Now, do I want to continue with this brush? Not really. I'm actually going to switch to my quill brush because of the shape of the strokes that I want to see. So here I'm cleaning the flat brush. This is my long quill sized fbush song bird. What you want to do at this stage, we've been painting for probably 5 minutes. You want to start grabbing heavier ratio. I'd say a heavy cream is good, but feel it out. It all depends how wet your paper is. Where do you see the mid tones? Well, for sure here, let's add this heavy cream. This is a heavier area overall. We can start shaping the face more. Now, heavy cream, you don't need to go for cream top yet. Cream top is great. Heavier ratio when you want to have a lot more control. The problem with the cream top is that it will dry your paper out too fast, just not having enough water in that paint, and then you start rushing, right? So you want to go with something a little lighter heavy cream. I call it heavy cream. I'm referring to dairy. I'm going for literally the darkest, but also mostly focusing on the midtones. I I'm still having enough water where this will spread, will continue spreading. So the darks. Actually I'm running out of my Vanda brown. It's one of my top colors, and yeah, I always somehow run out of it on my palette doesn't matter what I'm painting. Here, the midtones and then of course, we have the darks, but we are not going for the darkest values. We are not going for that yet. So let's just focus here. We can still add color in those darkest areas. It's just we're not adding this creamy paint. That's a transition, right, part of that transition because you start with something that feels water milk like ratio. And then gradually you decrease the amount of water in your paint on your breast. So this is a little more paint because I ran out of it. I do want more water. Overall. This is maybe too much water, actually. Let's know this is definitely too much water. See, I can tell just by feeling it so this is better. That's the wing here, and then we're separating the body here. All this from this wing. So I do need heavier. So what I need to do is squeeze more paint and keep it not too creamy, but heavy cream. This is perfect. So why I have this palette is this huge pale. This is one of the reasons why it's because I test the ratio actually here a lot on the palette. And you know what? If you ever consider buying the butcher palette, I think it's one of the best investments like long term. Like, I've had this one for years. So here's the sad news. Big pump, so hobn owns these palettes. But the person that was making these palettes for Hobein unfortunately doesn't do them anymore, basically, the production stopped and there's only 200 of them left, these palettes. If you can still get hold of one, oh my gosh, that would be the best thing. There's no palette like this one on the market, and I'm telling you truthfully because I've tested dozens of them. What's significant about this one is that it's plastic. And the paint doesn't beat up. It's very nice and smooth. It's the same as if you squeeze it directly from your tube, it doesn't change. Anyway, these are mid to darkest tones. Now, I did wet the backside, but paper is still drying, no matter what. Now this is between heavy cream to cream top. This is where you will find yourself having the most control actually, because the paper is still shiny wet on my end. This is losing the shine, but it's okay. It's still wet enough, but it's about to become damp almost, not there yet. But this is when you start to feel like, Hey, I'm really having like a lot of control now, the paint is spreading but not as much as before. So go back toward your darkest areas. Start using this creamy paint. If you've achieved enough of that contrast. Contrast is between light and shadows. You want to make sure that you leave enough later areas, just like we see in the reference in the cheeks and overall feathers here and there. We started with the watermlk like ratio because we want the paint to spread because we don't want the paint to sit in one place either. But then you decrease that amount of water in your paint, it becomes more like a heavy cream. Now this is creamy paint. These are the feathers of the wing. I do want to show. I want to show they're definitely darker. Here, for example, this is on the tip of my breast, this creamy paint. I'm just going to keep adding it because I'm creating a darker value just by using this creamy paint on the tip of my brush. I went from water to milk like ratio I skipped the half and half. I went to heavy cream and then cream top. Now it's cream top. You can tell the paper start to feel really damp. I still have time. Only because I wetted the backside. That's why it's important to wet it so we have more time overall. Now I'm going to switch in the second to a rigger brush just to show you you can do so much more with the rigger actually. I just want to add enough. This is a faulty paper. I don't know if you can see this part, but it looks clear, translucent. It should not be like this. Fortunately, the middle section is fine, but something happened to the edges. If you ever see that, just throw the paper away or you know what? Complain to the company where you bought it from because they should give you a replacement. I don't know what happened to this one. I have so many papers. I can't recall. So I can't really point point to that, like, Okay, what really happened here? Did I get it like that? But if you ever see that, yeah, you don't want to paint on that paper because it's like all this effort of sketching and everything, and then next thing, it's just not even your painting is just it's not going to be your fault, and you might blame yourself, but I don't want that to happen to you because it's not you, it's the paper. So a little more of that cream top 26. Owl - Adding Details: You go. And sometimes it happens. Like, I used to think that honey Mele, because they're plant based, right, they would never have, like, a faulty paper because I used to find faulty papers with arches a lot. But then Honey Mule also has faulty papers. Yes, something happens to the sizing. Either they didn't add enough or I don't know, something happened to it during the production. But anyway, I'm just going for these a little I'm going back here actually because these are the mid tones. I feel like I didn't add enough. In the second, we're going to use a rigor brush. If you don't have a rigor brush, don't stress over that. You can use a small brush, for example. I'm cleaning the brush. This is my favorite brush. This is my rigor size too. I use this brush to lift colors but also add details. I actually have to squeeze more paint. There's one more thing you keep doing. Actually, I should show this to you first. You would squize your brush between pieces of a towel like this. You want to create a damp brush like this. Now, I'm sorry, damp brush technique only works if the paper is still shiny wet and I want to show it to you before this is too dry. What you want to do is pull on the areas to create softness to add softness. Let's say here the paint spread too much. I'm just pulling it gently. To redirect the stroke sometimes and just pull it so it's softer. And this is a magical technique that really works very well when you paint birds because of the feathers, right? Well, not just birds, okay? That's not true. Also cats, dogs, whatever you have fur, that's just the feathers. But as you see, I was able to soften things. And kind of control it more and pull it even too more because maybe some areas are too light, right? I do like the contrast, but I don't want it to be too light in a way. It's a little more here, maybe. I can just borrow some paint from here and just keep pulling. But this is what will actually speed up the drying process. So you want to time it well when you're done kind of with the first part. So this is my regular brush again my favorite brush. I'm going to grab this creamy paint. So as you see, this is literally cream top, but it's too creamy, so I need a lott of water. So cream top like ras. Now, whatever you see, you could add individual darker brush strokes. That's the timing because the paper is almost damp and also the areas where paper feels damp, add it to. Now, we have an al with these little dots. Well, let's add those dots as well, let's not forget about this around the face, how nice this looks and let's add some thicker paint. This is something that I call cream top, cream top ratio between water and paint and pull it too to create these nice brush strokes. Go back here. Even though you see white, mostly white, you still want maybe a little bit of that because that will look nice. And remember this is an artwork, so it doesn't have to be exactly as we see in the reference unless you're going for this hyperrealism. That's different different style, and yeah I don't do that. I just do the realistic enough but lose looser style, something that's not overwhelming, so I don't have to do all the details. I have to hurry up. I definitely don't have enough time to do all the little areas. This is when I'm going to close my eyes for a second. And look at the whole thing again. What's missing is these little dots again. I want those dots, but I also want to pull away from this because of those nice feathers. I just want to make sure you can see it. There you go. All here. And here. I'm just going to ignore the problem with the paper. I think the painting will be okay because again, my issues around the edges and overall, I don't see problem here. It's just something happened over the edges there. Here, cream top like ratio. From now on, remember, all you use is creamy paint, cream top like ratio between water and paint. When you grab that thicker paint cream top on the tip of your brush, you pull it to mimic the brush or the feathers, the single hair strokes. This is your chance if you're missing the contrast, that's it. This is when you would add more paint. For example, a missing contrast here and a missing contrast here, creamy paint goes here. And then a little bit here. But I can play more with it. I do have time just to add more paint. Now, you don't want to just leave a chunk of paint there either. That doesn't work well. You want to That's why even though I say cream top, you still grab a little bit of water and very gently just go around and add a little more color where needed. Last thing is to lift colors. I do forget sometimes I get sidetracked with something like this. Next thing is like, Oh, I didn't lift, and then I don't have that softness, right that I really was looking forward to. Well, we have to remind ourselves there's no way back, once you once the paper is too dry, you can't lift anymore. Unless you're using a cellulose paper, and you would not achieve the same effect if it's a cellulose paper. So yes, it's easier to lift, but the lifting is not as soft. So here, I'm just going to add a little more hair. A little here and maybe here and I literally start lift thing. So we are going to add background anyway. And you don't have to add background, you don't want to. That's another thing. I do want a little more color here. So this is cream top, just to separate all this wing, it needs to be like a darker value, so creamy paint. Cream top. Okay. Now, let's focus on left, okay? 27. Owl - Lifting: Clean your brush, the regular brush. Now, with lifting, it can be tricky. First of all, not all colors lift easily. Ante brown is okay. Whenever you see the paper feels damp, that's actually very good timing to lift. I see some areas that I can lift here. I think you can see, but not areas dry the same as fast or the same speed, I should say. I actually want a little more paint here. It should be a little darker around the eye. Once we add the eyes, everything you notice, everything just pops. Like, it looks so pretty. But you have to be patient and don't give up until you're done with the eyes. Means you have to wait till the very end. Cleaning my breast again, this is the trouble area here of the papers just bad. But I'll still try my best to lift. Best time I need to lift colors is when the paper feels like it's damp. Here's what always helps to understand the process. First, you see shiny wet paper because you tied it, you painting, you adding colors, all shiny wet. Then that shine slowly starts to go away. Sometimes that's when I start to lift colors because I have a lot of lifting to do, right? The best timing is actually when that shiness just disappeared and that's when you start lifting over here, for example, you start lifting. A lot of times lifting doesn't work. First of all, if we do it too early and then if we do it too late. Actually, it's the same timing as when you apply salt for that best effect, although we add salt at different time because we can also add salt when things are really wet. It's just the effect is different. Maybe it's not as comparable. But you really want to first of all, I suggest practicing on the side first because with lifting, you really want to know that timing. You don't want to practice on your painting, especially if you already like it so much and next thing, the lifting doesn't work out. You don't want to get frustrated. Practice beforehand. The best color to practice I always say is indigo. It's a good pigment. What I was talking about what timing doesn't work. Also, it depends on the pigment. Some colors do not lift well at all. Of course, it depends on a watercolor paper. Some papers are very hard to lift. And on some papers, you lift almost like too much, it'll be too easy. Cellulose papers, great for some subjects to paint. But the lifting is just different. Okay, here, for example, what I'm trying to do is actually lift the wing areas. I'm pressing harder. I'm actually flattening my brush. Another thing is, if I haven't mentioned, lifting. You always want to clean your brush, but also wipe another tol. What I'm trying to do is round eight. I didn't do a good job shaping the wing. What I need to do is actually lift here. This is my round eight, golden one brush. It's a stiffer brush. I'm using my stiffer brush to reshape by lifting my wing because I didn't do so good. Here it goes, I clean my brush, I wipe hotel and I lift the wing. Now, is there another area where I missed on that over here, maybe a little bit. Then back to my rigor brush, lifting again, maybe here. Again, different timing, because I started with the face first. So these areas are almost like too damp, some areas, but this is still shiny wet there. A little bit. I might have to wait a minute or two because this is still a little too wet. Pro sometimes you walk away and you get really sidetracked and then you forget to lift. So we just lift a little bit. I wonder if you can see this how different this is. Well, anyway, that's the faulty paper. That's okay. It will still look good because I can tell, like, the way colors absorbed here. Like, the paper absorbed the colors here, not so good, but you know what? It's fine. Unless I said something, it's hard to really notice. But anytime something feels off, like, you're used to the paper, you know the paper by heart and something feels off, then yeah, just basically I would ask for replacement of a block or pad. And you're doing them a favor at a company because, you know, maybe it's a whole batch that something happened to the paper. So they need to know right away. So I'm just going to lift a little more. Again, wiping my brush on a towel and lifting. I don't need to, like, lift everywhere. Just to add a little bit of softness. This is a good area here, but it's a little too dry or not too dry too damp. Alright, you know what? I'm just gonna leave it. Alright. When we come back, we're going to focus on the face. So let's walk away from it and let it dry. 28. Owl - Eyes P1: Hi, friends. Now let's take care of the eye. What I'm thinking is when I look at the eye, first of all, we see the highlight, highlight here and highlight there. So right away, that tells me, okay, I am going to at least have two layers. The first layer is going to be all about that light highlight, the colors of light value that we see in the highlight when you look at the reference, right? Now, there are also lighter values when you see the iris. So let's say this is the iris. I guess that would be the iris, wouldn't it be? It's hard to tell. It's all dark. But let's just say this is the iris. There's also this part is much lighter. So with this first layer, let's focus on the values, the color values that we see over here and the highlight and then over here. And then we're only going to wet the entire eyeball. So no lids here that we see on the outside, only the eyeball. So actually, the best way to explain is by doing it. So here's my round three brush songbird details. I'm actually going to switch to size two. I like the size two better for this one. I'm just going to wet it. Now, whether you wet the entire paper or you wet a smaller area, you actually do want to spend some time wetting it. You don't want to do it for let's say 30 seconds because the paper will dry too fast. Now, it is summertime when I'm recording summertime in California. Well, it's hot, just like normal, but it's a little hotter. The windows open. If you feel like you need more time to apply colors, just close the window, for example, make sure you don't have AC going and stuff like that because that will dry your paper faster. So just FYI. I always have to think about it, how hot is it outside? Of course, it's going to get hot here in the studio, but is it worth keeping the window open with that fresh air coming in here and just drying my paper actually went too far here. You need to think about all of that, and what I do is just basically spend more time wetting it. It's been a minute. Now I'm looking at the eye again. I do feel like I should use a larger brush. I'm actually going to go back to my round three. Just more coverage this way. Because it is drying as I'm watching this, it's drying pretty fast. All right. Now, I'm going to grab something that feels like milk ratio, and I'm just going to go actually away from the highlight might be surprising. I just want the paint to bleed over there. I just want to go close, but see what happens. I don't want to make it completely dark, this highlight. I just wanted to have a light value, but also placing color around it, maybe leave a little bit of paint in there just so you don't lose that highlight. Now, don't worry too much about it because first of all, if it feels too dark, everything will dry more pale. Number two, we will be adding all these darks. Now I'm actually going to grab the darker values. We're going to be adding darker values, so everything there'll be a nice contrast. It's just you don't want this part to be too dark. Now, I have on my brush heavy cream. I'm actually going to go with a heavy cream just to go closer toward the edges because all this will bleed toward the meadow anyway. I'm going to wipe the brush because I also was talking about this highlight here. I do want some color in there. I don't want this to be completely paper white. That's not what I want because then it doesn't look natural. Here's the idea what helps to think when you think this way. When you apply this color, you don't want to just cover the whole thing with even tone. You never want to do that. You want different values through the eyeball or anything you're painting. You don't want perfectly covered area, you would do with a pencil, for example. No, you just drop the paint here and there. You watch how things are spreading. This is the heavy cream and I'm just going towards these darker areas. I'm not trying to create the darker layer that we see the dark values. I'm not going for that yet. I just keep adding. I know this is going to be two layers at least, but at least we see the different values here and everything will start coming along much quicker with the second layer actually because of this. Now let's look again at the highlight. Is there enough color? This is still wet? Maybe I can slightly add a little bit here, but that's it. Now with that same brush, grab milk like ratio of that Von Dike brown, and this is what you're going to do. You're going to go on the outside. This is the lid. You're going on the outside, you're adding the color. We're going to do this. Then grab quickly a different brush because it'll be faster. This is just a clean brush and you're just going to let that color to bleed toward the feathers on the outside. We're going to do the same thing here. This is the milk like crisio I actually need more. You have to do it fast because you don't want this to dry before you're done. This is the wet brush, my size too. I'm just adding darker values here. I do see the same thing should be done actually here. Just a little bit, and then the darks or I'm sorry, the water on the brush. Just water. All right. We're going to move on toward the other eye right here. Same thing. We're going to wet it first, my round three, looking at the reference, wetting the eyeball only, not the lids. I have a drop of water, that's okay. I'm just going to quickly pick it up. It was on the outside. Now, wetting the inside. So wet it for a minute. It's the same thing. It's we see the same highlight there. Maybe it's a little lighter on this side. Wet it well. No puddles of water, same thing, because then you lose control. I do sometimes paintings where I do leave those bottles of water like the loose paintings, for example, flowers or I painted the seahorse or humming birds, that's on Patrin if you're interested. But it's just different. Right away from the start, you decide, I'm going to paint it differently, different style, different technique. That's different. But if you want to this is my regular style of painting. If you go in for syphon like this, more control, softness, smooth layers, no blooms, then you really want to pay attention to how to wet the paper and I went on the outside, how long to wet it, how it is and no bottles of water. All right. Then the same thing of milk high ratio, Bang Brown, of course. I'm going to start right here. Again, I'm going to hug the highlight, go around it and see how the paint bleeds over there, maybe a little bit there and a little more paint on my brush, whenever I see the darker areas, but I'm going on the outside of the highlights. Just watching how things are going to take over around those highlights. Because if you're using small brush, smaller amount of paint on the tip of your brush, you have more control too. If you feel like you're losing control, and you need to adjust the ratio. You need to go a little heavier. Heavy cream is fine too. I have too much pain on my breast, so I wipe my brush on a towel and I'm going back here actually. Now, heavy cream only if I want to add some darks, but only the closest toward the outside there. I do want this highlight to be pretty light but not too light. I still will be light enough. This is heavy cream. Heavy cream, just on the outside. I'm building it up already like this, but there will be another layer. The and just remember, it depends what paper you're using too. The effect will be different, right? It all it means what paper. Now, let's grab some of this milk like ratium, let's go on the outside. So this one looks like it's way darker here. I actually touched this. That's fine. This is still wet. Super easy though to create a bloom just FYI. So cleaning my brush, and I'm going to have to keep an eye on it because this will dry faster. What I can do to make sure I don't get the bloom is grab creamed up raiumJ place it right here, that paint will stop it from blooming. Just continue. And then more of that milk like ratio. Just keep going upward like this. Just like I see the darks, clean the brush or use different brush and then let that bleed when you add that clean water. Alright. 29. Owl - Beak P1: With the beak, we're also going to wet it just like we wetted the eye. Again, if you're using a cold breast, which I really recommend cold fast watercolor paper, it's going to be so much easier for you because you won't have as much texture with a rough watercolor paper. First of all, I'm using a granulated color. Vanda brown by hobn is granulated. And so it kind of shows more and paint spreads more anyway. So it's kind of like you're dealing with these two things, right? So if you want to have an easy way of applying colors and everything, not to worry about the paint spreading more and not see the granulation as much, I do suggest using cold press because you will see more of the granulation on a rough watercolor paper. So it's good and bad, right? It just depends what we're painting, what we want. I would totally go for cold press, but somehow I grabbed this sheet and I didn't look that much at it, I guess, when I started sketching, and I'm like, Oh, I guess it is a rough watercolor paper. Anyway, I'm going to wet it up to these feathers, hair, the single hair, we have used the masking, so we're going to have some over as well. Guess what? After we paint the eyes, the finish painting the eyes, and then we finish working on the beak, then we're going to add the background and that'll be it for the owl. All right. I feel like this is good. Now, here this is very important. What we're going to do is use a little bit of a milk like ratio to keep it all nice and wet. But we're going to right after use creamy paint, so we have the most control because we're going to use the dark value, well, or I should say it's heavy cream to cream top like ratio, only in the darkest areas that you see the values that you see in the reference of that peak, right? That's where you're going to apply the next wash. So I'm going to show this to you. Please watch this first. So I'm going to grab quickly milk like ratio. Just going to drop the paint. Areas. So we have some shade of that brown in there. So it's not just like paper white. Now, this is important. You're going to grab cream top like ratio between water and paint of that Vandek brown or whatever color you're using. And you're just going to apply it toward the darkest areas, which is right underneath the hair, but you're going to follow that pattern. So it kind of looks like this. But you know what? You might have to keep grabbing the paint because as you touch the wet paper, the paint dilutes with water. It gets diluted with water and becomes more heavy cream, then I'm sorry, heavy cream and even goes down to half and half. So keep grabbing that fresh paint, cream top. And go for the darkest areas that you can see. This actually should be much later. I went too far here. I'm okay with it, but just a Y. You want to stick closer to what you see in the reference. So this is all later and then goes like this. The reason you see the paint is not spreading and I have a lot of control is again because I'm using this creamy paint, right? It's called I call it cream top like ratio between what and paint. And you can go I guess this way too, because it's kind of rounded, so we want to show that as well. So again, if I'm going to add any more pink, it's only creamy paint on the tip of my brush. Just creamy paint. Here. It's going to look this. All this is darker overall. Alright, I don't want to do too much. Now, if you do feel like you maybe lost control, you lost some lights. Then you're going to lift colors. So it's a little early, but I'm going to lift a little bit here and wiping my brush on a towel a clean brush and just lifting it over there. And the same thing, great in here, just to lift tiny bit and then maybe lift it here. You shouldn't have to wait as long to lift because, again, this area is so small and I'm actually going to grab a little more of this creamy paint. Even too creamy. But I just want to make sure this is dark. Yeah, that last stroke is a little too strong. So this is a damp brush. Just go to kind of dissolve it a little bit, not dissolve it, but, like, spread the paint. There you go. Alright. I feel like I do have to wait for that eye to dry. So what we could do is actually at the background. 30. Owl - Background P1: Number one thing I want you to do is have your color. So I'm gonna squeeze my andike brown onto my palette. I want you to squeeze it. It's probably not enough, actually. I feel like I always use more than actually squeeze of this specific color. Then I want you to dilute it with water. I have some already here. You want to have, like, something that feels like heavy cream in a way, and then we're going to dilute it a little more. Now, there's two ways you can add the background, of course. You can do it wet on wet or wet on dry. I'm going to show you like wet on wet. But partily wet on dry, I should say, partially wet on wet wet on dry. Why is that? First of all, we're going to create hard edges in some of these areas because that will look nice to have the hard edges around these feathers. A friend of mine, Eugenia, you might know her. She's a watercolor teacher artist. She gifted me this brush. If you have a Chinese calligraphy brush, actually, it's pretty good to use it. I'm going to use my other brush. But this would be a good brush to create that hair, basically not go all the way in. I'm not used to this brush. I do think it's great though. That's why I'm just going to use my quilt brush overall, and I'm going to use my flat brush. There are areas that we can keep soft and smooth. The feathers, the fur there's no fur but the feathers, right? So for example, if we want this side to have softness, now we're going to also wet the awl. But when we apply color next to the owl like here, we're going to have to be very careful and do maybe heavy cream cream top like ratio, right here. We have to be very careful. Now, I would love to have a highlight here. So when you look at the wing here, it's highlighted and I kind of lost the highlight. What will help is actually staying away more and just pretend like there's no sketch line and I'm just going to make it a little bigger or wider the wing. This way I can have a nice contrast. So that will be a hard edge here. But here, I'm going to show you how you can just I'm actually going to do it now. Going to wet this part of the background and then you're going to wet part of the out. You know what? Once I'm done with the overall wetting a little bit, then I'll show you more of how I go inside. The reason I'm not going inside again, I don't want to reactivate the color right away because then I just kind of like I don't want to go over it again if I need to rewet it. That's the point. Now here, I'm just going to wet this part. The background here. I remember, I have the problem with this paper, so it's not going to look as pretty as on your paper, for example. I do have some kind of faulty paper here. Anyway. Just going a little closer, but then I'm going to get really close once I have paint on my brush. You're pre wedding it. You don't have to do too long. You're doing it so you have more time to apply colors so there's no blooms in the background. Now, I was talking about wedding part of the owl here. So we're going to go on the inside, and this is the part I was talking about to keep soft, for example, to create softness. So I'm going in a little bit, just a little bit. But when I apply color, I'm going to be away. Now, this is my flat brush 24 Sobird. Please pay attention to values. The background is darker. What makes it darker is because let's say these parts are lighter and so we're going to make the background next to the hair. I'm just going to do it, I guess with a my flat brush. Is the value of the background is going to be darker next to the hair and that will make it or help to create a contrast. That's how we're going to create a contrast. But whatever we have water here because this is wet on dry the closest I get toward the feathers. But here, this is all wet on wet. I'm going to have lighter values. You can do circles for the bouquet as well if you want to. Then here, I actually should make it all darker here, I should grab creamy paint right here just to create a larger contrast. So you just following like this around the owl. And then, again, for the nice feather, you can grab a record brush or that calligraphy brush if you might have it. Usually people that follow me on Instagram also follow Eugenia, and she's amazing. She's an amazing watercolor artist, and I admire her work and what she does, mostly see scapes. So here we go inside a little bit. It's dry brushing almost. If you don't like it, then you wet part of the Al too, which I'll show you here just to have softness everywhere there. Now I'm going to dilute a little more color with water because this is too heavy. I'm going to go here. Just to continue with the background here. Again, the same thing going in and you don't want to cut down on the awls, you have to be very careful how close you get. But here, this is the area I was talking about. We wetted part of the owl, you're going to have creamy paint on the tip of your brush just so the paint doesn't spread too much, and that's how you're going to create that softness. Then here, I'm going to go stay away a little farther. 31. Owl - Background P2: I'm talking about how I lost the highlight here. So that's my chance to stay away a little bit, like this. And this way, I have a highlight, right? So you can do it this way. Now again, you want some bouquet, you can go in circles. My paper again, is faulty here. I don't know what the effect is going to be like once it dries, but it's not going to be as pretty as if the paper was okay. So more of the color here on the top. I actually need to dilute it with water. Again, going in, dry brushing almost. What is dry brushing partially. Then that fuzzy hair, I'm using my uncal site too, just going in inside toward the inside. That looks fuzzy, It's not like this everywhere though. But I want to have the same kind of shape of the owl. I don't want to lose that. Once we add the eyes, everything will look so much prettier. So wait till the very end because I can see that with my students like halfway down, I don't like the painting, there but then because you force yourself to finish it, you're like, Oh, that's what was missing. The contrast. Or when the eyes come in, that's when everything pops. Like, it looks beautiful. So you got to be patient with yourself when you paint. Okay, so here it goes a little more of that heavy cream. I like this to be a little darker, for sure. You can always add a second layer to the background if you feel like you must do it, but as long as we have the contrast, for example, this part needs to be darker. Contrast the biggest contrast you create is when the area of the Owl here is so much lighter, and then you add something so much darker. That's the value that you need a darker value next to something that's highlighted, right? And that's how you create a contrast. So you can keep working on it, keep adding the color. I'm going to grab a little more. I'm actually going to create that little Bouquet ish effect if I can. So I'm scooping out like leftovers on my color. Which is again, the Vandyke Brown. The reason I chose actually this color is because I did a monochrome course in my old teachable school. I used to have a different school and then I started Maria's watercolor Academy. The other one, the other one. I basically gave up on it because of the platform, so Teachable is just not a good platform for teachers. And I closed that one because they just made some rules and they start charging a lot. It just made no sense to keep it. So I kept my Maria's watercolor Academy, which is more important valuable anyway, because those are the newest courses and stuff like that. The other one had courses from 2017 and 2018, and my techniques changed because you know, I'm all about wet-on-wet and lifting colors. So more creamy paint, and I'm actually scooping leftover because I think it could look really nice if we add some of that low ke, go and circle circular motion and just keep working on that contrast. So, one other thing you could do is actually lift colors toward the background for the hair. Let's see if I can show you first, I'm going to clean the brush, both of these brushes. So basically, if you want to keep if you need to add more contrast, if you need to create more contrast, what you need to do is keep adding that creamy paint while the paper is still wet, even when the paper still feels like damp but still damp, you can still do that. So this is too dry, but I could definitely add more color here, but I feel like it's okay. Like, I balanced it out already, so I'm not going to worry too much about adding or creating more contrast by adding more and more color. Now, this is my record to Songbird, and what I was talking about is you can still go toward the outside, but the paper needs to feel damp. So I'm just going to have to take some close up photos. But you can go out to add some hair, and I have a class, actually, it's on Petrian. It's a dog. I think it was, a lab. I was painting a lab, and I think what I did. I remember it. That's a class from 2021 maybe. But it's one of my popular ones and I love it. I think that's what we're doing. We're adding the hair like this, going into the background and lifting colors. It's a little hard. Again, it depends what color you're using. I have a hard time lifting here. I was able to lift on the inside, but it's a granulated color. I'd say if you do it with India, you'll be fine. You'll be fine. Because here I have a hard time lifting. Another thing is it's actually hard to lift colors whenever you add it cream top ratio between water and paint. Because you have this thick layer of paint. That's why. So here, I'm able to lift a little bit. But other than that, this is how we create that softness, and the paper is not that good, but I'll show you in my other examples from this course and you'll see that softness. It's the bird with the blue background with the Indigo. So for now, we're going to walk away from this, let it dry, and then we're going to finish the ice and maybe we need to add some more toward the beak. I feel like I could have another layer. 32. Owl - Eyes P2: I my friends. Let's finish the left eye. What I want you to do is look at the reference, and you can see it on a computer screen now as you're watching the class. But I really want you to if you can zoom in separately on a device, just so you can see really up close the eye. We're going to focus on a highlight. What we're going to do is grab a water actually milk like ratio of that color, and we're going to add it around that highlight. Then more water or we can just pre wet a little bit just so we have a flow. But the idea is to avoid this highlight. So we're just going to have a hard edge, and everything will be kept with a light value at first, and then we're going to start adding like a heavy cream to cream top just to darken it up. So first thing is to have your color ready to go and I don't have it ready to go. So I'm just going to typically dilute it with water. So here it is. I wanted to maybe have a little flow but have a thicker paint right there. From my heavy cream to cream top. Now, I am actually going to pre wet a little bit just so I have a flow, away from the highlight and this is only the inside of the eye, eyeball, the entire eyeball. Even the highlight here on the left side, just pre wet it a little bit just so you have a flow. But don't get too close toward the highlight. But now with that milk like ratio, you are going to start getting really close, and this is how you're going to shape that highlight. It's not exactly what I see in the reference, I guess. I was a little too fast, but you know what? It does not need to be exactly the same. You can shape it however you want. Just make sure it's big enough. Simple like this, there's a highlight, more of that milk like ratio. Let that spread. This way you going all the way around. Then I'm wiping my brush on my towel so I don't have too much of that water here. Then we're going to start adding, let's say, even creamy paint, cream top right away so we make it darker. I'm going to grab this creamy paint. There's still a little bit of water so it's not like it's paint straight out of a tube. I'm going to go to the top right away. It does feel pretty thick, that's okay. Just keep applying it and let that spread to spread. Don't go next to these highlights yet, wait till this settles a bit, so it becomes a little more damp. You don't want to cover just before the whole thing entirely with that same value, right? So let's just move slowly and I guess we have the iris somewhere there or there is, but it's so hard to separate it all because it's just so dark. But somewhere here, we have a highlight and might actually have to lift. I already can't tell because I'm losing the light over there. But here, I want to go with this heavy cream cream top right in there. Now I have the iris separated and then this is all darker. We don't have a ton of time, so we have to just work it around a little bit faster. But here, this is the darker line. Again, I have a highlight here, I'm going to do a better close with the I just FYI, so you can see everything better. Just going around. Like this. Then we see something, it's not just plain black or we are creating values on the inside. So, I'm going to wait here and I'm going to lift a little bit right here because right here, it should be a nice highlight and I lost it. There you go. Now, if I want to make it darker on the outside, I'm going to grab a milk like ratio. I do want it to be a little darker. I'm going to apply it and then quickly go back with the water. Cleaning my brush, and this is just the clean water oops. I apologize for that. I hit the camera. Here it goes. This is just water. I'm letting it to spread toward the outside. What I can also do is grab very tiny amount of that milk like ratio. I just connect, just like we see the wrinkly parts. Just so it's not so white. Go through. As long as you have a small amount of paint on your brush, you'll be okay. No poles of water. So you don't want a milk or I'm sorry, water like ratio. Milk like ratio is okay. So here's our eye. I do have to keep an eye here because I do want to lifting it. Now, it's a little too early to lift. I'm going to pause for a second the video, and then I'm going to come back in like a minute to show you that I'm going to be lifting. Alright. About a minute went by. I'm going to so I dipped this brush in water, but I wiped it very well on a towel. And this is where I want to lift it. It will take me a couple of times to do this. Wipe my brush on a towel, lift. But I do want that highlight just like I see it in the reference. And you can see it, too. So lifting. So again, cleaning my brush, wiping it on a towel, and then lifting. And I'd say, like, even here. Little highlight there. And then yeah, we have a highlight here, but I already have enough of that light. Now, we're going to go work on the other eye now. Same thing. So we're going to just pre wet a little bit away from that highlight, only the inside of the eyeball. We're going to pre lifting it I'm sorry, pre pre weed. Pre weed, a little bit, so we have a flow, but don't get too close to the highlight yet. Now grab this milkoration pretty good actually and then start going really close toward the highlights. Again, just like before, you're going to shape it now as you're getting closer. You see a hard edge here. Then here we go. It's looking the same as the other highlight. Same shape. Then I'm releasing more of that Bond brown, the paint. There you go. Now I want creamy paint. So again, it's not like a paint straight out of a tube. I still want water in it when I say cream top. I'm starting from the top, just like before. This is like the darkest area. If you need more in depth, just eye course, like I have very, very in depth, specific just about painting animals eyes, not just the bird, but the dog and there's I think a tiger, a cat. So we have all that. It's in my other school. It's Maria's watercolor Academy. It's not on Patron, although on Patron, I do have a couple of classes, too, but the one at Maria's watercolor Academy, that one is like six classes inside of one course. So if you're my student here and you're not on Patrin, then just email me and I'll share a promo code with you for half off because all my patrons do get half off any course you see there. But if you're a student here on Skillshare, I'm happy to give you promo code too, so you can take that course. So, okay, so I lost the highlight here. Same thing. I'm just going to lift it. So again, you're not applying this heavy cream, like everywhere just to cover it up because you want to create different values. So this is pretty dark. I'm going to grab a little more of this creamy paint just from the top here. Not too thick, because I don't want, like, creamy paint. Like, not creamy. I do want cream top like ratio, but I don't want, like, paint to sit on top of it. I want it to be diluted with water. Still diluted with water. I just have to make sure this is darker overall. There's going to be my highlight. I'm just going to have to lift those areas. Now, grabbing some of this milk like ratio and just going to go around the eye, just like before, basically. Then we're going to clean brushes and this is just water. Let that to bleed. I did grab a lot of water. That's okay. I just want this paint to spread. Just to make sure I don't reactivate too much. If I want to make it darker on the outside, then I'm grabbing creamy paint again because this should be a little bit darker, let's say, more contrast. Let's say, add it here. It's much darker. I actually like it. Maybe I'll have to go back to the other eye and do the same thing. I don't know yet. But we'll see when I zoom out, you see the overall and it's important to always step back, and this is just a clean brush. Step back just so you can see the overall. Actually, I forgot. I want to also add on the tip of my brush just a heavy cream ratio just to pull through. We have these lines just like we see over the lids wrinkly parts. So might as well do that now while we waiting to lift if you need to lift. Waiting to lift now. 33. Owl - Eyes P3: I wait a minute. I'm going to start lifting just a little bit here. It's a little early because it's still shiny wet. But there's also a lot of paint, so that's why it looks shiny. So that's what I'm going to start now. So just a clean brush. And lifting mostly this is the important one, actually, all of it. All of it. So around. So this is the highlight I missed. This should be a little bit lighter on this side, too. But overall, as long as I have different values here, and there's some highlights that we can clearly see. I'm okay. So this is just a backup. If you lost the highlights, you can always lift, but you just have to pay attention to, like, how the papers dry so you don't miss out on that timing. Now, with a clean brush, I'm actually going to go with a super clean brush in through here because this is a little too white. So just a damp brush, reactivating colors next door, basically, just because it was too light and I didn't think it looks that good when it's that light. Just a damp brush. Alright, let's work a little more on the nose. 34. Owl - Beak P2: Problem is it's not dark enough. So what I have to do is rewet it very gently. Normally, I say rewet with a softer brush, but it's a small area. So naturally, I would use a smaller brush. So this is still my round two. I just have to be careful. When you have a stiffer brush, it's easy to reactivate colors. So just be careful. And when you wet, don't do it too long because you don't want to reactivate colors. And we don't want that much time anyway because we just want to add paint with this creamy paint. Or the cream top like ratio. Gosh, I guess I'm having a hard time talking today. Well, this is my second day recording. So yesterday, I did most of it, but now I'm coming back to finish it. So it's like a happy feeling like, Oh, I'm almost done with this class. So I can start recording something else. So I'm just adding creamy paint toward the darkest areas that I can see. Actually, I'm going to go on the outside here too. I feel like it needs to be a little darker. You know what? I like it, but I need to soften it a little bit with a dam brush. I feel like this might be it. Well, let's zoom out. I'm going to zoom out and we do need to remove masking anyway. 35. Owl - Removing Masking Fluid: So now that you see the whole thing, I hope it makes more sense when you see your whole painting instead of just focusing on feathers, once we have the eyes and we work a little more on the beak, then everything makes sense. Now, sometimes there's not enough contrast, so what you want to do is rewet the areas and just add another layer. I'm okay with this. I have bright lights just FYI just because I'm recording classes. So everything looks always brighter. The paper is super bright white, and sometimes it doesn't show, true values. But here's my a pickup cement eraser. This is what I use to remove the masking fluid. Now, if you're ready to remove the masking, well, double make sure the paper is 100% dry. If it feels damp, you're going to rip the paper. Basically you're just going to damage your painting so it's not worth it. Stay away from the beak, the ice. We just finished painting it unless you're doing this part the next day, then you're okay. Now, when you remove the masking, sometimes the areas from the masking, once you remove it, they look too bright white. This is when I use a softer brush and I kind of go over to reactivate colors next to it, and that kind of leads some of the color over, and then it's not so bright white. Other times, what I would do is yes, re wet those areas and if not enough color gets reactivated. I basically use a little bit of a color on the brush and just go over, but I always wet more than I need just so there's no hard edges. If there's area, I can show you and I almost went over here, and I was just talking about not to touch it. I can't touch the beak, it's freshly painted, and I also can't touch the eyes because we just finished painting it too. But again, we move this masking from other areas over the body here. Then we have some feathers. Was there interesting painting on this paper? Actually, there is a paper, meten Medan watercolor paper. It's a stiffer paper. I'm gonna show you my test piece. I'm not, like, excited about it that much, but it's so much better than, like, Canson Excel or anything like that, better than some of the other papers. This is not, like, perfect. Like, I can see a huge difference, right, in performance, but it's still better if you're looking for something more affordable. Because papers are very expensive. Another thing is, go for a pad. Don't go for the block if you want to save money because pads are always cheaper. So that's it for this class. And as usual, please let me know if you have any questions, leave a comment, post your paintings. Love to see it. So thank you so much for your time. And yeah, let me know if you have any questions. 36. Conclusion: You have just completed this course and you have learned so many new techniques. Let's summarize this. You not only learn how to properly wet the paper and apply colors without wet, but also how to use proper color values to create a contrast. You learned how to paint with just one color. Congratulations. Please don't forget to share your beautiful paintings in our community, and please keep an eye out on upcoming classes. The best way is to subscribe to my newsletter on my website. Also, I have another school on Patriot If you would like to join me there. I post a new class every Friday. And don't forget to follow me on Instagram and then on YouTube. Thank you so much.