Watercolor Dog Portraits: Golden Retriever

1. Intro: Golden Retriever: Hello and welcome. My name is Emily. I'm an artist and owner of Emily Marie watercolors. In today's class, I will teach you how to paint protein, The Golden Retriever. Using watercolors. Golden retrievers are super playful pups. And so in this tutorial, we will look at how to paint a dog with an open mouth. Smile. As a watercolor artist, I have found a passion for painting pet portraits. You already know the basics of watercolor painting. Pet portraits can be a great way to turn your hobby into a part-time or even full-time career. I have found success with my art business all thanks to custom Pet Portraits. My style is characterized by adding details to the mouth, nose, and eyes, but not getting caught up in painting every single hair or curl. In this tutorial, we'll start by talking through the supplies needed. I'll share with you the supplies that I use to create my professional portraits, as well as the special color palette I found gives me the best results. Then we'll dive into tracing your pet and preparing your paper using masking fluid and painter's tape. If you'd like to trace using a light box or a window. I have also included a black and white traceable outline for you to use. Next, we'll begin painting layer by layer. I'll show you a combination of real-time video with time lapses. So you can see the whole process from start to finish. We'll end with adding a colorful slash behind our dogs and finishing our piece using a black micron pen. You are welcome to use the same reference photo I used for the painting of proxy. It's located in the projects and resources tab just under this video. Or you can use your own photo of your own golden retriever and use the tips and techniques that I teach you in this Skillshare class to paint your own dog. Either way, I'd love to see your final projects. And I'm also here to help answer any questions along the way. So let's get started. 2. Supplies Needed: Alright, let's start by talking about supplies and studio setup. The one thing that I love about painting with watercolors is that it doesn't require a whole lot of space. As you can see, my studio consists of a student's eyes desk in the corner of a spare bedroom. We'll go over all the supplies needed and then we'll get started. All right. Let's talk supplies. You can find a detailed list of all the supplies that we talk about during this segment in the projects and resources tab just under this video. Let's start by talking about paper. For this class, I'm going to be using an eight by ten sized paper. The watercolor paper that I choose to use with my Pet Portraits is the brand called arches. It's a £140 paper, and I prefer a hot pressed paper. I'm working with Pet Portraits. A hot press paper tends to be smoother. It doesn't have as any rigid bumps on the paper. However, there are some artists who are not big fans of hot press paper. If you are one of those people, feel free to try this with cold pressed. The one suggestion I do have is whatever paper you are using trying to get a 100% cotton. This is just going to allow your watercolors to correctly seep into the paper instead of sitting on top. You'll notice that this is a nine by 12 pad of paper. So I did have to cut this paper down. Next, let's talk about our paints. The palette that I'm using has a few different wells in order for mixing colors. And of course I am going to be using a very limited color palette. Most of the paints that I use are Daniel Smith. Let's talk about the specific colors. For the majority of my pet portraits, I use a combination of these 14 colors. I say 14 because although I use art philosophy is maple, you can switch it out with Daniel Smith's quinacridone, burnt orange. A printable copy of this color palette can be found in the resources tab below this video. I personally love to use granulating colors when painting pets. I find that the separating of pigments nicely mimics for which is a great benefit when we don't want to paint every single hair. That is why I always use a combination of either shadow, violet, or moon glow and lunar black in my pet portraits. Alright, let's move on to the rest of the supplies that we'll need. You'll need some masking tape in order to tape your paper down to the table. I will be using some masking fluid. This is to keep the white of the whiskers and the white of the eye is clean of paint. In order to apply my masking fluid, I use an old small brush. This is a size 0 brush. And I also use a pen that has a small nib on it. This pen I use mostly while solely for applying masking fluid. For the whisker areas. I find that it allows for a finer, thinner line of masking fluid as compared to my brush that tends to be a little bit thicker. For the brushes that I'm using for this project. I tend to not use a different brush for details, but you are more than welcome to use a different brush. The brush that I use for the entirety of my piece is a silver limited black velvet, round size six. I find that this brush gives me, it holds enough water for some of my larger layers. And it also has a fine enough point that I can use for details. For the color splash in the background. I need a brush that can hold a little bit more water. I'm using this brush by Paulina bright. She's another Instagram artist. It is a size 0, but you can use any brush that has a higher capacity of holding water. Will also of course, need a pencil and a kneaded eraser to sketch out our, our pet. At the very end of today's class, I'm going to be using a Micron Pigma black pen size 03 in order to add a few details around my pet portrait. I like adding this black to my watercolor paintings because I feel that it adds crispiness to some of my edges. If you are a watercolor purists that likes to only use watercolor, feel free. There's no need to add this black pen at the end. I always use a, an old towel when I'm painting in order to tap my brush on it, if I need to lift any colors. And I have gotten in the habit of using two glasses of water. The reason being is that at the end, when I add my color splash, I always need to use fresh clean water so that I don't dirty up my color. And I usually use one cup of water while I'm painting the actual dog itself. I detailed list of all the watercolor supplies that I use can be found at my website, Emily Marie watercolors.com. You can scroll through all the supplies that I use according to category, and also click on any of the links. When you click on a purchase here link, it'll bring you to an affiliate link through **** Blick Art supplies. Now that we have our supplies together, we're ready to paint. 3. Tracing and Prepping your Watercolor Paper: After you get your supplies together for this tutorial, the next step is to trace your dog and prep your paper for painting. You can find a full color reference photo of property, The Golden Retriever in the Resources tab under this video. You can also find a black and white outline of the golden retriever in case you decide to use a light box or window in order to trace the outline. Personally, I choose to use an app called Da Vinci I, that I downloaded onto my phone that helps me trace my reference photos onto my watercolor paper. You can see that I am looking into my phone as it's held on my phone clip. And I can see my watercolor paper as I'm looking at my reference photo. When I start to size my reference photo on my eight by ten watercolor paper. I'm looking at the distance between the head and the outside of the paper. I want it to be around two inches so that I have space for my colorful splash behind. I'm going to start by tracing the outline of the head. I'm not going to focus on adding every single hair. I'm going to edit it as I trace. So that means that I'm going to only trace the larger hairs that are shown in the reference photo. I'm going to speed up this video slightly, but I still wanted to show you my thought process behind which details I like to add when I'm tracing which details I will leave out. I'm going to edit the amount of white hairs, then I'm going to cover with masking fluid. You'll notice a lot of white hairs here under the nose. I'm not actually going to sketch those out. The reason being is that I find when I do add what masking fluid to those little hairs under the mouth, it tends to look a little too busy. I am going to leave those out the same with the little hairs under the chin. I'm going to leave those hairs out as well. The only Harris I'm going to use masking fluid to preserve the whiteness are about three or four hairs in the corner of the mouth. As I start sketching out the eye area, I'm going to sketch out some of the shadows that are around the eye, some of these darker fur colors. I'm also going to trace the outline of the highlight of the eye so I can use masking fluid there as well. My client decided that she didn't want the bandanna in the final watercolor portrait. So choosing where to end the neck for is a difficult decision to make. I decided to mimic the circular shape of the face and come down on the left-hand side, mimicking the curve of the face as well as on the right side. I'm also mimicking the curve of the face and I'm leaving that little center section open because that is the lightest, brightest part of the fur. You'll notice in my final piece that I also have this circular motion to my painting. I am not painting the for to continue all the way down the paper. I do like to leave some of that white outline of the paper. Now that I have my sketch complete, I'm going to use some Winsor and Newton masking fluid and an old brush to paint the highlights of the eyes so that I can preserve the whiteness of the paper. You'll want to make sure to use an old brush for this as masking fluid tends to ruin brushes. I noticed two highlights in the center of the eye as well as a highlight in the corner of the eye, the inner corner of the eye. So I'm going to use a data of masking fluid to keep that white of the paper white. I'll use a calligraphy pen with a small nib to paint the masking fluid, draw the masking fluid onto the white of the whiskers. This technique is a little challenging at first, so I do recommend that you try this out on a scrap piece of paper first. You do need to remove the excess of the masking fluid from the tip of your pen before you make, before you draw these lines. My next step is to use a Blue painter's tape to tape around all four sides of my eight by ten sheet of paper. And now I'm ready to paint. 4. Painting the Lightest Layers First: The next step is painting the lightest colors. First, I like to start with the iris, the tongue, and the first layer of the nose. The colors I'm using from Daniel Smith, RPM and tight genuine quinacridone, magenta and moon glow. And from Art Philosophy, I'm using Maple. I'm going to start with painting the eyes, the iris or the colored part of the eye. I'm using PM and tight genuine. And now I'm going to just drop in a little bit more concentrated maple into the areas of the eye that I see a little bit more brown. So that's usually the underside of the eye. I'm going to clean my brush and I'm going to lift out any of the color from the area where I got it a little bit too dark. Now I'm going to mix up a little bit of quinacridone magenta with water. And I'm going to paint the very first layer of the tongue. The reason why I'm doing the color of the eye, the tongue and the first layer of the nose first is so that these areas can dry. Before I do the first layer of fur. Obviously, we don't want our brown of our firm to touch against any of the blacks of the nose or the colors of the iris. So doing these areas first is going to allow them to dry. Before I start with the fur, I'm doing one solid layer of wet on dry for the tongue. And now I'm drying off my brush and I'm going to lift any of the highlights that I see in the tongue. I noticed some highlights along the base of the tongue and along the sides. So I'm going to continuously clean my brush and lift those highlights. Now for the base layer of the nose, I'm going to mix a little moon glow from Daniel Smith with water. If you don't have moon glow, you can mix your own by first mixing a black. You can use indigo and dark brown than adding some blue. And lastly, some purple. Moon glow is a really nice neutral tint that has more purple and blue undertones to it. And I find that it adds a little bit of color to my pet portraits. And those colors do tend to shine through in the very end. What I'm doing now is I'm adding my first layer, but I'm going to try to conserve a little bit of the highlight at the top of the nose. And now I am dotting around that highlight. Most noses that you see do have a little bit of some indents in those noses. Almost looks like sandpaper, if you will. And so I sometimes will dot my, my watercolor paint brush on the paper to create these little dots, to make it look a little bit more realistic. Since the base of the nose and right underneath the nostrils is a little bit lighter. I'm also leaving a little bit of a highlight under those nostrils. And now I'm adding a little bit more dense, concentrated moon glow. The very base of the nose. Lift some of the paint from those highlights under the nostrils. Just so that I remember that they're there and that highlight is a little bit more pronounced. Remember that you can only lift paint off of damp surfaces, which is why I tend to stay fairly wet while I paint. If it dries, it becomes more difficult to lift the color. 5. The First Layer of Fur, Part 1: Now I'm ready to start with the first layer of fur. For the majority of this section, I'm going to be painting first wet on dry and then adding in some colors wet on wet. The base layer will be art philosophy, SASA frass, and maypole. I'm using a little bit of Winsor and Newtons raw umber and darkening it up with Daniel Smith PM and tight genuine. So right now I'm mixing up some art philosophy, SASA frass, and adding in just a little bit of the Romberg by Winsor and Newton just to tone down those brighter yellow colors a little bit. And I'm adding in a lot of water because I want my first layer to be very transparent. This first layer, I'm going to start with the ear. I always, usually start with the left ear that way, I'm not going to be worried about ruining my painting because my hand is resting over a part that I just painted. I'm not really going to worry about any sort of hairs, individual hairs at this point. I'm going to fill in whatever I see you with a solid coat of wet on dry. I'm going to dry off my brush and you need to clean up first and I'm going to lift some of that color, the inside part of the ear. If you notice in my reference photo, that part of the ear that's closest to the eyes is actually the lightest. So I'm just lifting a little bit of color from there. Now I'm going to grab some art philosophy maple. And well, the ear is still wet. I'm going to drop in a little bit of that maple color, only in that triangle of darker browns that I see on the outside. Remember, I'm not doing any sort of brushstrokes that mimic the firm at this point. I'm just wanting to get those base colors down. Alright, up until this point, I had been using a round size six brush, and I decided to switch to a slightly larger capacity brush for the rest of the face. So right now I'm using a polynom bright size 0. Even though it's a size 0, it is a larger capacity brush, which means that I can paint slightly larger of a surface without having to consistently add more color to my brush. I'm going to start painting the areas of the firm that I see. I am trying to leave a little bit of white area just around the face that it's where it's the lightest. I do need to work fairly quickly here because I want the paint to stay wet, my paper to stay wet so that I can one, lift some colors up and then drop in some more dense colors before the paint dries. Alright, I will dry off my brush. And now with a dry brush, I am blending those edges that are coming up to the nose and to the edge of the mouth. My colors are gradually fading when I look at the reference photo. And so lifting and blending that color from the edge is going to just help with that gradual gradation. And every once in awhile, if I notice a highlight, I might dry off my brush and lift some of the color from that highlight. Most dogs do tend to have these kind of eyebrow looking features over their eyes. And the eyebrow feature is usually darker and above that eyebrow and below that eyebrow is a little bit lighter. So you can tell if you look closely at the reference photo where these eyebrows are. And so I'm just dotting a little bit more water and color in the eyebrows section. And lifting that weight off from above and below the eyebrow. Now I'm going to use some art philosophy Maple with a little bit of water. And I'm going to look at the areas that are a little bit darker in my reference photo. If you can tell, I am painting wet on wet. My paper is still damp. This is the hardest part of doing this first layer is working quickly. While the first color that you lay down is still damp. If it starts to dry out too much. My suggestion is to take this face layer in sections. So maybe do the first half, drop in your color and then paint your second half and dropping the color. Because I've been doing these pet portraits for awhile. I tend to work a little faster than beginners. And so my paper is still wet enough for me to work. And adding these darker colors that I see. I'm not painting individual hair, but I am painting in the same direction that the hairs are going. Now, if I have a section that's gets a little too dark, I simply dry off my brush and I lift some of that color up and blend in the edges. So right now I'm blending some of those harder edges with a dry brush. When I say dry brush, It's not completely dry. I I just dry it off with my towel that I'm holding on to sit still damp. It's not completely dry. So I'm going to speed up the video just a little bit. I'm doing the exact same thing on this right side where I'm using Maple and a combination of PM and tight genuine to add some of these darker shadows. I'm focusing on the eyebrow area or that area right above the eyes. And I'm also focusing on the bridge of the nose and just adding in some darker colors where I see them. Alright, I'm switching back to my smaller, round size six brush. In order to paint the right ear. I don't need that big of a brush and I need some finer detail for the point of the ear. So that's why I switched back to my black velvet size six brush. Once again, I'm doing the first coat of Art Philosophy, SASA frass mixed with a little raw umber. And then I'm going to go back and drop in some of the darker maple and some of the darker PM and tight genuine, which is that darker brown. 6. The First Layer of Fur, Part 2: Alright, up until now, we haven't had to actually paint specific for brushstrokes. So we're going to use a separate sheet of paper and practice some brushstrokes right now, when I am painting the neck of this golden retriever, I am going to be using some for unrelated brush strokes to show the neck line. So as I start, I'm going to fill in right below the neck. And then I'm going to use the liquid that's already on the paper to pull some brushstrokes outwards before your layer dries. Practice dropping in a little bit of darker, more concentrated pigment. I'm using my art philosophy, maypole. I'm going to drop in that darker pigment to the areas that are presumably a little bit more shadowed. But this step has to happen while my paper is still wet. You can also take this time to try and do an upward and downward brushstroke. If you notice, I'm painting both up and down strokes. And that's creating this for look on both the upper edge and the lower edge. And while it's still wet, I'm going to add in a little bit darker pigment. Lastly, it takes some time to paint some far brush strokes that are separate from the neck. With these that I just painted, I have the downward brushstroke. Now I'm working on the upward brush stroke. Then I'm also going to play around with connecting these two spots of fur. I'm not going to connect it in all areas. If you notice, I'm just connecting on this right-hand side. You can continue to practice these upward and downward brushstrokes until you feel ready and confident to start the neck of the golden retriever. Feel free to fast forward this video a little bit just to see what the end result will look like so that you can practice accordingly. This is going to take time and effort to really master. So please take your time and practice often. Once I've practiced enough now I'm ready to add the neck for details to my golden retriever portrait. I'm using the same first layer of paint that I used on the head. That is the art philosophy is SASA Fraass mixed with a little bit of Winsor and Newton raw umber. I also dilute this with quite a bit of water because as my first layer, I want it to be quite transparent. I'm going to start by wetting the area underneath, painting a wet on dry, and the area underneath the neck. And then I'm using the same technique and brush strokes that we practiced earlier to start painting this edge of the neck. I'm working in small sections so that I can drop in some of that darker maple color gradually before my section dries. So the reference photo that I have of privacy, she's wearing a bandanna in the picture, and the client does not want the bandanna in her portrait. So I'm going to be making up the fur around the neck. I'm making it up based off of the same shape as her mouth. So that diagonal and triangle down of the mouth is what I'm trying to mimic with my firm. So every once in awhile I'm going to clean my brush off and I'm going to use a clean, damp brush to blend these edges. Remember that we can blend with a damp brush, but we should never be blending with a wet brush. Alright, by this point you might be tired of watching me paint the fur around the neck. So I'm going to speed up this section a little bit faster. Alright, the last layer that we need to paint before getting into the darker colors is this area underneath the nose. I mixed a moon glow and added quite a bit of water. It's about the same transparency that I used for the nose, the first layer of the nose. And now I'm going to be dotting all underneath the nose and gradually lightening my dots as I move further away. So once again, closer to the center of the nose is where I'm going to have the most concentration. And towards the edge of the nose, it's getting lighter and lighter. If this gradual lightness is hard for you to achieve, I suggest to tap your brush on a piece of paper towel as you move further out, That's going to take a little bit of that liquid off of your brush so that you don't have quite as much Going on to the paper. It's also worth mentioning that I am using a, the edge of my brush and not the point to make these dots. So they're not exactly circular dots. There are more lines that I'm, that I'm painting that are running vertically. We don't want to have horizontal lines in this area because that's not how the hair follicles are in this part of our dogs. I'm also going to paint a layer of the same moon glow in the uppermost part of the tongue. So I'm starting to create that line between the nose and the tongue. Even though in my reference photo, I can see quite a lot of little white hairs on this line. I'm not actually going to paint those little white hairs. I've found that when I tried to leave spaces open for those white hairs and ends up looking way too busy. I'm using the same water down moon glow to paint a line down the center of the tongue. And I'm also painting some of the shadows that I see on the tongue. 7. The First Layer of Paint on the Eyes and Mouth: Okay, Now that we have all of our lightest layers down first, now we're going to work on a slightly darker layer. And that's going to be the first layer for the eyes and mouth. I have this as a separate video because the moon glow color that I mixed, I added a little bit less water to my mixture of moon glow so that it's a little bit darker. Since the mouth area and around the eyes are extremely dark. I'm going to start with that darker color first, instead of build two to three layers. I'll also use the same mixture of moon glow to paint the slightly darker shadow just at the tip of the mouth, at the top here. Alright, now I'm going to start painting the darkest areas of the left eye. Just so that you have a comparison for the right eye, I am going to zoom in so you can see this process a little closer. I'm going to start outlining the top part of the eyelid. That is always going to be the darkest area of the eye. Then I'm going to come around to the bottom and start filling in the pupil. Since I'm using the moon glow, It's, this isn't going to be the darkest layer. So I'm going to fill in the whole pupil with moon glow. You'll notice that occasionally I will dry my brush off and blend the edges, especially around the bottom eyelid. Because I don't want as harsh of a line. I'll dab my brush on my paper towel to have a little less liquid to paint the inside of the IFR, the little hairs that you see there, as well as some little furs above the eye. I'm using my reference photo to make sure that the hair is going in the right direction. So above the eye, I want to continue making this arched shape with the fur on the inside of the eye. I can see that it's a little bit more vertical. But I'm always looking back at my reference photo to make sure that the hair is going in the right direction. Alright, so now we have a close-up view of painting the right eye using this moon glow as my first layer. I started painting around the upper eyelid and then continued to the lower eyelid. Now I'm filling in the pupil and I'm going to then work on the upper eyelid a little more with a few hair strands that are going in the same direction as the eyelid. Remember that a good way to reduce the opacity of your moon glow is to dab it on a paper towels every time you see my hand flashing down and out of the picture site is because I'm actually tapping it on my paper towel to get some liquid off of the tip of the brush. When I don't have as much liquid on my brush, of course, I'm going to make lines that are more transparent. So I tend to not add more water to my moon glow. I actually will just vary the amount of water that I am holding on my brush by tapping it on the paper towel. I'm going to use the same density of moon glow that I just used for the eyes and the mouth. To paint a second layer on the nose. I'll start by outlining the edge of the nose and then move into painting the nostrils. Most dogs have this vertical line through the center of the nose. That's always the darkest. And it starts at the very top of the nostrils, sometimes in the middle of the nostrils, and runs all the way down the nose, even if you cannot see it in your reference photo, I do suggest adding it to your painting. When I move to paint towards the top of the nose, I'm going to include a stippling technique. Since dogs noses sometimes look bumpy even though they're not, we can replicate that texture by using a stippling technique. Once again, don't forget to touch your brush to your paper towel to get off any excess paint and liquid that's on your brush so that you can blend those edges. So as you're watching me paint the nose, I'm sure you are wondering how exactly I'm figuring out where to add my darkest shadows and where to leave highlights. Of course, I am looking at the reference photo and there are lots and lots of details. I'm trying my best to look at the largest of those details, although I do often get focused on adding lots of detail is probably more than I should at times. For the nose area, the things that you definitely should look out for is the highlight on the very tip of the nose. Also the darkest shadows of the nostrils. The darkest shadow of that center line of the nose. And then there's also going to be highlights underneath the nostrils. So it's a boomerang shape highlight under each nostril. For this painting of privacy, there is also a highlight on the inside of the nostril. I did include that, but only because I decided I wanted to take a long time on the nose. That's not something that I normally add in my other pet portrait paintings. Sometimes when I paint, I record my painting using a time-lapse so that I have to force myself to paint a little bit faster. And sometimes it helps me to not focus so much on those little tiny details and to really focus on the larger overall shadows and highlights. Okay, now that I'm done with the second layer of moon glow on the nose. Finally, I'm going to add a few extra, extra dark hair follicles underneath the nose. Those darkest hair follicles are always towards the center and they lighten as you move outwards. So make sure to concentrate the darkest shadows near that center line. 8. Painting the Darker Shadows of the Fur: Okay, while we're waiting for the moon glow from the nose, mouth, and eyes to dry. Let's do a second layer of brown on the fur and paint some darker shadows. The color I'll use for the shadows is a combination of Maple by art philosophy and a little bit of piano and tight genuine from Daniel Smith. Because we are using watercolors, we do want to add water. This layer should still be transparent. This is the stage in our painting where we can focus on painting individual hair strands. I'm not going to paint every single hair strand that I see in my reference photo. Instead I'm going to look for where are the darkest strands and then paint those. You'll also notice that the largest shadow, so that's that triangular shadow to the left of the ear. I will fill in with this darker color of paint and only leave out a few strands of hair as highlights. Now some artists will paint that entire section using a brushstroke that will mimic the hairs. I have found that when I do that and I tried to paint every single individual hair, my paintings look too busy. And when they look too busy, your eye doesn't know where to look. So instead of your eye focusing on all the individual hairs, I would rather that the viewer focus on the eyes, the nose, and the mouth. So any of the areas that are completely in shadow like this left section of the ear. I will not paint individual hairs. For adding some hair details to the neck line. We will use the same brush strokes that we practiced for the first layer of hair. If you need some time practicing those brushstrokes, please feel free to pause the video and practice now. Now since the bandana is in the way, I am going to use what I know about golden retrievers to paint the hair follicles about the same length as a normal golden retriever. So instead of painting these hair follicles, the full length of the first layer, I'm going to divide it into two. The way that I divide this segment into two layers of hair is by painting the shadows along the center. So at the very tip of the ear, you'll notice I'm painting a layer of shadow running from that center of the ear all the way down to the tip of the tongue. That shadow is going to separate the two layers of fur. As we start to paint the shadows of the face, let's remind ourselves how to blend. First, paint the darker section. Before that section dries tap your brush on your paper towel to release some of that liquid. Then blend the edge. Remember that you cannot blend with a brush full of water. If you try to blend with a brush full of water, you'll create unwanted backwash and blooms. When I compare my reference photo to my painting, I noticed that there are sections under the eyes that are darker than my painting. There's a diagonal line under each eye. So I'll paint that section first, then tap my brush and blend the edges. I'll do the same in the corners of the eyes and also along the top of the head, as well as the eyebrows. Now starting on the second ear, I'm going to use the same techniques of only painting a few strands of hair that I see. These darker strands, the rest of the shadowed areas, I'm going to just keep as a shadow instead of painting individual hairs. I'm speeding up this section so that I don't bore you to death with my explanation. But feel free to pause it at anytime and take a look at where the majority of the shadows are. 9. Adding Depth with Black Details: The very last step before we add the splash of color in the background is to add some depth with black details. I'm using a lunar black. It's a color by Daniel Smith. It is a granulating color. That means that the granules of pigment will separate slightly. To give you a little bit more of a pixelated look. I like that look because it mimics naturally occurring for, which for is not going to be completely solid and black, and then it allows some of the browns behind it to shine through. However, if you're not a fan of granulating colors, you can feel free to use a different black for this step. Or you can mix your own black. You can mix your own black by using a combination of sepia and indigo. I'll start by adding some of the darkest shadows to the eye. I am not covering all of the moon glow that I painted earlier. I am letting some of that moon glow shine through, especially on the edges. I'm going to try my best to add a very, very fine line of black to separate the ear from the face. Then I'll damp off my brush on my paper towel and blend that edge. Here you can see a slightly closer up view of adding that darkest black. I'll start with the upper eyelid. And remember that I need to follow the curve of the eye for any of the hairs that stick out. I will add just a little bit of black around the bottom of the island. But it's going to be a very thin line here. I'm not going to extend that dark, dark black to the bottom shadow. In my experience with painting the pupils, the darkest shadow of the pupil is usually towards the base of the pupil. And as it curves upwards, it is slightly lighter. So that's what I'm going to do for this pupil. I'm going to add some darker and lunar black at the base. But then I'm going to allow that moon, moon glow to shine through at the top. All right, Now onto the infamous nose. So since I spent so much time on that second layer of moon glow, I'm only going to add my lunar black to the darkest areas. So the darkest shadows and the nose, of course, are going to be the nostril. But I'll also use some of that lunar black to trace the outline, at least around the edges, not necessarily around the top. I'll also use the lunar black in that center line, running vertically down the nose. So why don't we speed up this second half of the nose, since you've already watched me for countless minutes painting the nose. Remember to focus on the darkest areas and to use a stippling technique on the top of the nose. Now it's time to add a little darker of depth to the hair underneath the nose. Remember, as you move outwards, the hairs get lighter. So tap your brush on your paper to release some of that liquid and make your strokes a little bit lighter. 10. Optional: A Splash of Color: Alright, this next step is actually an optional step for you. It is adding a splash of color behind your pet portrait and then potentially adding some blooms. You are welcome to choose whatever color you'd like as the background color. I'm mixing a phthalo turquoise along with just a little bit of PM and tight genuine. We'll start with wedding or background. For that you need clean water and a larger capacity brush. Now remember that wherever you paint your water, your pigment will go. So this is not a step that you wanna do quickly. Reminder to you that I did speed this video up. So I do not paint that fast in real life, although I wish I did. But I don't. After you wet the area completely, you can drop in your pigment. And after you drop your pigment in, I usually go back to the edges and make sure that the pigment is completely touching the edges that I'd like. Once I drop in my pigment, I'm going to dry my brush and then I will blend the edges out so I don't add my pigment all the way to the edge of the wet area. I actually let the pigment spread on its own. And then I blend out that end with a dry brush. Once I blend the edge, I'll go back and drop in a little bit more opaque pigment closer to the fur. And now I'll work on the next section. So I need to wet it first in order to drop in my pigment afterwards. This is a wet on wet technique. Remember that wherever you wet your paper, the pigment will run. So if you accidentally paint over a hair, my best suggestion to you is to use a dry paper, dry and clean paper towel to damp off that spot, make sure that it is nice and dry and then re-wet the area that you'd like to paint. To add some blooms. Make sure to clean your brush and use some of your clean water and tap some of your water into the already wet areas of your color splash. Now, it's kind of tricky to really time this well, because your paint cannot be dry, but it also cannot be too wet. It has to be in that in-between drying time. This could be something that you might want to practice on a separate sheet of paper so that you can control the size of your Bloom. 11. The Final Details: You've made it to the very last video of this tutorial. The final details. You'll want to wait until your painting is 100% dry. That usually means leaving it to dry overnight. Then you can peel the tape off and start with our next step. I'm using a kneaded eraser to erase all of the masking fluid that you used to preserve the highlights. You can see after we take off the masking fluid, that there are certain parts that need a little work, such as the highlights in the eyes, the nose, and the whiskers. Let's look at how we can solve these tiny problems. I'm going to mix a little bit of moon glow. And now I'll start working on the highlights and the eyes. Most highlights of eyes, animal eyes, will only have one very strong highlight that should be 100% white. The rest of the highlights, I tend to dim a little bit with some moon glow. You'll want to keep the same highlight in each eye as the bright white highlight. So I'm preserving this center highlight in both eyes. So for the nose, after my painting dried, I decided that I didn't like how busy the nose was. The paint dried, almost speckles near the nostrils. So I'm re-wetting my brush and using a damp brush to lift some of that color just from the edges of the nostrils and the top of the nose. I'm also going to use a damp brush to lift a little bit brighter of a highlight on the inside of the nostril. You'll find that watercolor paints are pretty resilient in the sense that even after it's dried for a day, you can still go back, re-wet and even lift. Now it's time to look at the whiskers. The little whisker hairs are a little too bright white for my preference. So I'm going to wet my brush and clean water. I'll dab off just a little bit of that water and with a damp brush, I'll blend all around the area of the whiskers just to tone down that white color a little bit. The last little addition of paint that I sometimes add is another layer of color to the eyes. When I look back at the reference photo, protease eyes are a little bit darker of a brown. So I'm using my piano and tight, genuine to add one more layer to the iris. To help my pet portraits pop from the background, I like to add a very light micron pen outline. You'll notice that I'm not outlining the entirety of the head. I am leaving certain areas open. The areas that I'm leaving open are those areas that are just slightly lighter. So if you notice under neat the little flecks of hair, I'm not outlining that. I also won't outline any of the hairs along the lower edge of the neck. I also like to add some micron pen to crisp up the details of the black of the mouth, nose, and eyes. I always do be careful though, to not overuse my micron pen. So I am using my reference photo to judge where are the darkest areas and those are the only areas. I will use my micron pen for. 12. Congrats! Last Thoughts: Congratulations, you've finished painting a golden retriever. I hope that you found this class helpful wherever you are in your watercolor journey. And once again, if you feel comfortable, I'd love to see your final projects from this class. You can upload a picture or scan of your work to the project gallery located below. If you have any questions, make sure to leave me a comment in the discussions tab. And I will make sure personally to answer any questions that I can. Make sure to follow me as an artist and teacher here on Skillshare by clicking the green Follow button above this video. You can also find more of my pet portrait paintings and some of my botanical watercolor art by visiting my website. That's Emily Marie watercolors.com. Make sure to leave me a comment below. If there's a certain breed of dog that you'd like to learn about next, and we'll see you in the next Skillshare class.