Transcripts
1. Introduction: Hi, I'm Rosanne of RosanneCreates and welcome to my
third Skillshare class. I'm a watercolor
and digital artist and all round creative person. My work includes
colorful night skies digital illustrations, and realistic style watercolors. In this class we're tackling one of the most difficult
things to paint. Hands, hands are especially difficult to paint
because of the depth, because of skin color which
most people find difficult to paint And because there are
many wrinkles in the hands. But don't worry. I know this process
might sound daunting, but I'll be sure to
take you with me through my process step-by-step. This class is meant for
experienced watercolorists I'm not spending too
much time on explaining techniques like wet in wet, wet in
dry or blending. However, if you are
a beginner or a, pre-intermediate watercolorist, I suggest you start with one of my other Skillshare classes. I have a Skillshare class, which is an introduction
to realistic painting, which is very suitable
for beginners as it has very clear steps and
clear straight lines. My second Skillshare
class is about painting a Watercolor eucalyptus
branch, which is more free-flowing and suitable for
intermediate watercolorists. But if you're ready
for a challenge, you chose the right course. Are you ready? Let's go.
2. Materials: Alright, let's go through the. materials of this class. I'm using Arches,
watercolor paper which is cold pressed, 300 gsm. This is block, a
watercolor block, which means that the pages are glued on all four sides. Then you don't have to
stretch your paper. You can just paint
straight on it and it will keep
quite flat. Of course any decent
watercolor paper will do. But I would suggest
to use something, a 100% cotton cold pressed
and at least 300 gsm. Moving on to brushes, I'm using my silver black
velvet brushes. This is a number ten. I also have a number six round. Both come to a really
nice fine point and the number ten is
good for larger areas. Then I sometimes use my Rosemary
and Co eradicator brush, which has nice stiff bristles which can help you
lift some color. Here and there. Again, you can use any brushes that
you have in your stash. Just look for something
with a fine point. And one bigger and
one smaller brush. For watercolors, I'm
using three colors and I'll go over that more in detail in the color
mixing class. But I'm using a red,
yellow, and a blue. The red is alizarin
crimson by Sennelier. The yellow isn't a yellow ochre by Winsor and Newton
professional. And then I use indigo by Van Gogh. I will discuss this further
in the color mixing video, but you can use any
red, yellow, and blue. To transfer my drawing,
onto my watercolor paper. I'm using graphite
transfer paper, a plain pencil, and then I lighten my lines,
with a kneadable eraser. In one of the lessons, I will tell you everything I
know about masking fluid But this is the brand I use, which is Royal Talens,
a Dutch brand. I use this rubber shaping
tool to apply it, but you can also use just a, just an old brush that you don't mind getting ruined by
the masking fluid, which is quite sticky. Then when I make any mistakes, I'll use a tiny piece of magic eraser to help
me get rid of it. I'll show you that of
course later as well. I like to blot my brushes
on an actual towel, which is better for
the environment. And then sometimes I need to do actual blotting and then
I use a paper towel. That's it. Get ready to paint!
3. Transferring the outlines: All right, let's get
this party started. The first thing we want to do is transfer our line drawing
onto our watercolor paper. I'm not good at drawing, so I'm gonna need to help of
some graphite paper for this. I printed my picture on
some plain copy paper, and I adhere to my
watercolor paper. Now you see me sliding
the graphite paper with dark side down
underneath my copy paper. Then I take a sharp pencil. Any pencil will do here. And I'll start tracing the
outlines of the hands. I'm going slow and
make sure to trace all outer lines and also the creases I see in the
fingers and the hands. Don't be afraid to really
take your time here. This is both an easy but
equally important step. If you do this correctly, your hands will have the
right proportions and will look like hands no matter
what color you smear on them. I'll speed the video
up a little bit here, so you don't have to watch me trace this all in real-time. Please notice though, that I keep lifting my work to see if my lines are dark enough and if I've transferred,
everything, because Once you remove
the graphite paper and your reference picture, it will be very difficult
to align them up correctly. Again, it's easier to get
it right the first-time. I spent a little bit more time so you don't have to go back. After I've removed my reference picture
and graphite paper. I take a good look at my drawing and I'll
see where it can lighten some areas or where
I should erase some lines, darken them or forgot to pencil someting in or
anything like that. I realise that you can't see my pencil drawing as
well as I can here. So I'll overlay them
with a digital drawing. This drawing will
also be available in the class resources. You can download it and
trace it for yourself. That's it for this lesson. See you in the next one.
4. Masking: All right, moving on
to the next step. In some paintings you have some areas that you
want to keep white. In order to do that you
can use masking fluid. This is my favorite brand. It's Royal talens and it's gray, which I like because
then it stands out from your paper and you can't get confused on where there's masking fluid
and where there's not. Don't ask me why, but I have this habit of
pouring a little masking fluid on to an upside
down glass jar. I don't know why I'd like it, but I like it this way. Make sure to clean the edge of your masking fluid jar so the lid doesn't stick to it When you close it. You can apply masking fluid
with an old brush, but it can damage your brushes. I like to use this
rubber Sculpting Tool. I'm not sure what it is, its easy to clean and it doesn't get ruined by the
masking fluids. We'll just dip the
corner of my tool in the masking fluids and carefully paint it onto the
nails in my painting. I'm not sure yet if I
want to keep them white. But in any case, I don't
want to have to worry about painting over them
when I paint the skin. This is just a
precaution just to make painting easier on myself. But you can feel free to attempt to paint around
the nails, of course, or paint them a very dark color, In the end so you don't have
to worry about it at all. Let's speed this process
up a little, shall we? Alright, so when
you're finished, please make sure to
clean your brush or the tool you're using to
paint on the masking fluid. Then we're done. Please let dry thoroughly before
painting over it. See you in the next class!
5. Mixing the colors: All right, Let's start with the fun part! Let me get a
it a sip of my tea and move some things into frame because we're gonna
do some color mixing. Number one question I get asked when painting stuff
like hands is, how do you mix this
caucasian skin color? Well, I'm going to show you! The recipe is,
drumroll, please. Any red, blue, and yellow. These three colors
will always make a brown, and that's what's skin colors are. Brown in various lightness
and darknesses, excuse me, while I take some cat
hair out of my paint, my favorite combination
is yellow ochre, which I'm using here, Alizarin crimson, and indigo. These are the brands I'm using, but you definitely can use
your own colors or opt for a different combination of
the three primary colors. Another one of my
favorites is Carmine, Indian yellow, and indigo. Here you see me grabbing
quite a lot of yellow ochre. Because this skin tone
I'm trying to paint is predominantly yellow and mixing in a little
Alizarin crimson and a tiny bit of indigo. You have to balance
the colors out, because if you have
too little yellow, you get purple, if you
don't have enough blue, you'll get a more
of a peachy color. If you don't have any red, you'll have green
and so on and so on. You'll just keep
mixing and adjusting. Then adding lots and
lots and lots of water until you have a
very pale skin tone. You want to start as
light as possible. I keep trying out the color I get, on a scrap
piece of paper. And I'll just continue doing this until I'm completely happy. Remember, we want to go as light as possible for
this first layer. Yes, happy with that Time to move everything back
in place and get ready for the next lesson.
See you there!
6. Painting the first layer : Okay, It's finally
time to paint. Are you ready?
So I always get a little bit of
anxiety when I start painting on this
is Arches paper, so it's very expensive. So my trick for that is this. You wet everything you
want to paint and paint a very light layer of your
lightest color on everything. In this case, we're gonna
be painting both hands in this same very light color
of Caucasian skin tone. I call this breaking
the white of the paper. So after you've done this, you've started the painting. There's nothing to be
scared about anymore. And you can go ahead and refine. This first layer is
intentionally very light because that
means that if I make any mistakes
or anything weird, I can just paint over
it with a darker color. I'm quite careful to stay inside the lines in
this first step. This will be the blueprint
for the rest of my painting. so I want to be careful here. The further I get
into the painting, the more confident I become and themore carefree I can paint. As you can see on screen, I wet the first, hand entirely with
clear water and then dropped in the
light skin color. I do this So the whole hand will
be the same color. There will be no or
almost no difference between parts of the hands. It won't be any lighter
or darker anywhere. Where the hand
runs off the page. Do a sort of a feathered edge. I'll just, uh, no
straight edge, I'll just feather that out
with clean water in the end. You might notice
me coming in with some paper towel
every now and then. This is because I
want to keep my edges nice and crisp where I go over the line
I'll just dab it up. And since the color
is so light, I don't have any
problem with that. Also sometimes I drop some paint on the paper
where it shouldn't be. So I'll just dab that
up with my paper towel. I've painted everything I wanted to paint and I'm just
refining the edges here with the sharp tip of
my watercolor paintbrush. You can see I'm still thinking
about if I need to refine anymore or if
there's any edges I need to make more crisp. So I'm taking my
smaller brush and going in here to refine the
edges of even more. I keep fiddling with
it, even more, but uhm. Let's go ahead and
close this class and get ready for our next
one, painting the shadows. See you there.
7. Painting the light shadows : Okay, Are you ready
for this class? Before we start here, it's important to make sure
your work is completely dry. Because we are going to
be layering here. And for your layers to work you want your underneath work to be dry or the layers will
run into each other. What you see me do here is wet the pinky finger off the
top hand with clear water. Then I'll come in
with a little bit of the same color
that I've used so far to make a start with
the lighter shadows, around the knuckle, and around
to fingernail of this finger. I work wet in wet
because I want the paint to spread and don't
have any harsh edges. But you can see me here
you're struggling with keeping the paint in the places where I've
put his because my painting is a
little bit too wet. So be aware of that.
When you do this, make sure you have
a very close look at your reference picture. Before you paint in
the lighter shadows, you can see the color is
centering around the knuckle and a little bit around the rim of the nail here I'm struggling a
little bit more with my too wet painting here. Then I move onto the next one. This is just a second layer, so it doesn't matter if the paint is spreading out
a little bit too much, but try to keep it around
areas that you want it. You can see I'm being
careful where I place my water
here because I don't want to go outside of the edges of my already paints hands. And now just do the
same as the first time. You can see here the paint is staying more or less in the
place I want it to. So its more a case
of softening the edges, then controlling the paint. I continue on like this very carefully looking at my reference picture
all the while, making sure I put the
shadows in the right places. Don't be scared to
go a little bit darker here than you
think you shoot. Because watercolor
always dries lighter. So if you think you need
a little bit more color, like you see me doing
here, please go ahead. I'm satisfied with the
shadows on the knuckles. I separate the
fingers by drawing a very Thin line over my
pencil markings there. There you go. Those look like
separate fingers. Then I go in and take a thin line and
take it all the way down the fingers to make them stand out from the
background even more. Here I take a damp brush and try to fade out those
lines there at the top. I'm also fading out
the lines of the fingers a little
bit more so that they don't stand out too much. Realistic watercolors
like this is all about finding the balance between
enough contrast but not, but not too much. So that it looks cartoonish. Little bit more fine tuning. Before we move on
to the next hand. For this hand, I want to start with that finger that is
poking off the top. It's quite dark in color
compared to the rest. I'm going quite heavy
with my color here. I'm taking my time
staying inside the lines and I use clean
water to blend the color out. Here, I'm moving onto the most shadowed part
of the painting. I'm carefully wetting
the entire area and then coming
in with my color. I'm taking care to also paint the creases
here in the palm of the hand and fading out the shadow as it goes
further into the palm. Now the fingers are a
little bit defined. There's also a shadow
on the arms and the wrists of thee
two hands I'm portraying. You see me using a big brush to wet it the wrist
of the firs thand. I'm coming in with
still the same color. And I'm painting the color where I see the shadows on the wrist. I'm taking care to stay light
still in this phase. And because I've
wet the area first, my colors will blend out nicely into the rest
of the skincolor. I'm also looking at my reference picture
closely and I see that the shadow goes onto the hand very
thinly at the top. So that's what I'm painting. And don't forget to blend
out the color on the edge of the hand. where it trails off the paper. so I get a
nice feathered edge. Finishing off by going into
some of the areas I already painted to intensify the shadows where I think I didn't do
enough in the first place. I worked on the thumb of the
bottom hand a little bit. Then I continued on to the pinky
finger of the first, hand. Taking all thefingers
of the firsthand. And adding some color
to the rim of the nails Still not satisfied. I'm adding some color to
the palm of the hand, the second hand here, and blending it out
with clean water. That's it for this lesson. Make sure you let everything dry completely before moving
on to the next one. See you there!
8. Painting the medium shadows: All right. I think we've made a
very strong basis here. There's already a
little bit of depth in our painting and all
we have to do now is make the contrast even bigger and then it will
become more lifelike. I left the painting to
dry overnight and I'm now coming back to
it with fresh eyes. And this is always a good
thing because now you can see those little
things that you're tired eyes couldn't see
anymore last time. I'll make a start by trying
to soften that edge where the wrist of the top hand
trails off the paper. And I'm also trying to lighten some areas in the bottom
hand by wetting it with clean water
and you'll see me trying to blot off the color
with some paper towel. Because like I said, we
need more contrasts. To achieve that we need
the darks to be more darker. But here in this phase I can still quickly lighten
some areas as well, something you usually
can't do with watercolors. I'm taking this opportunity. I want to go ahead now and add
some shadows on the wrists. At the reference picture, you can see those shadows
being quite grayish, even a little greenish. Maybe. I'm taking the same
three colors that I used for the mix
of the skin tone. But I'm adding less of the red. The yellow and blue make
more of a greenish tint. You can see me mixing it on
the side of the screen here. When done mixing, I'll
clean my brush and use clean water to paint on the area of the hands
where wants the gray, greenish blue to go. And then I'll drop
in that color. I'm doing this quite
carefully because I don't want that color to
go over the whole hand. I'm being careful and looking at my reference picture of where
I won't call them to go. And that's where I
paint my water. For example, on the bottom there where I put
the color first. I don't want that
color to go behind the bend of the hand. looking at my
reference picture. The darker color stops right
there where the creases are. And that's where I painted it this color will look
very dark right now. But don't worry because
I'll blend it out with clean water
and when it dries, it will become lighter too. But we'd need that contrast. So some time in this painting, and it might as well be now, we need to go darker
to get that contrast. I'll speed the video up here now But essentially
what we see me do is refining where I
want the shadows to go. So I'm playing with my color, trying to push it
where I want it, stay where I want it. And also use that
same color to define the lines between the
fingers a little bit more because there's quite
a bit of shadow there. I'll even go back in and
add a little bit of more of that color at the top there
at the wrist of this hands. Okay. Moving on to the second hand. I'm using the same tactics as
with the first hand here. So I'll wet the sides of the
handsand wrists and I'll drop in that same green,
gray bluish color. I'll leave the
middle of the wrist That's turns upward
towards us, lighter. This will give the wrist form. Shadows are at the sides
and the middle is lighter. This will make it look round. I finish up by drawing
that line there. I see in the middle. the paper is still a
little bit damp. So the line won't be too stark. Moving on with the
rest of the shadows. Here in the middle
of the second hand, there's quite a bit
of shadow and I'll use the same shadow color
to make it even darker. Because it's a
cooler shadow with less red in it, so more
blue, greenish. It will automatically push it
back a little bit in space. That's a neat trick you can use. Cooler colors tend to push
an object back in space, and warmer colors tend to bring
it forward a little bit. This part of the hand
is turned away from us and it's going,
how do you say that? It's going in a little bit, It's deep like a crater. This cool color helps
with that illusion. Okay, let's speed up this video and finish
up with this color. All right, So while we
wait for that to dry, we'll start mixing up a
little darker skin tone. So it's the same recipe as what I showed you at the
beginning of the course. But you just mix in a little less water so that
the color is little darker. Always test your color out on your swatch card
so you can adjust it a little before
you start painting with its on your final piece. You can see me trying out a few swatches before
I'm completely happy. Because my painting
is completely dry. I can go over the shadows and darken them even
more with this color. This time, I'm not
using water first. I'll just go in straight
with my color and then quickly clean my brush
and soften those edges. This way the color
won't lose too much of its darkness because it's not
mixed with that much water. Switching to my smaller
brush, my number six, I'll go to work on dividing those fingers there
of the second hand, using clean water here
and then dropping in the color to make sure that you can see that it's
different fingers, not just a clump of skin color. Using that same darker shadow. I go back again to the
fingers of the first hand, darkening around
those knuckles and around those nails
rim of the nails. We just need more contrast. So I'm using this darker color, blending it out a little so
we don't get any harsh lines. And just doing that whole
process again. This is usually how
it goes from me when painting realistically
with watercolors. Because you need to
build that contrast. And you also need to
go back and forth. When you add some darker shadows somewhere on the painting, you need to go back to
the shadows you did before on other parts as
well and darken them too. Because I need to be, they
need to relate to each other. You have to look closely at your reference picture and see which shadows are about the same darkness
or the same depth. And make sure you get that
right in your painting. After darkening the shadows on the knuckles and around
the fingernails, we'll go in and separate those
fingers out even more with this darker color and also painting the shadow on
the sides of the fingers. I'm painting them in quite
dark and then cleaning my brush and using clean
water to soften them out. You can really see how a
little bit of contrast, a little bit of darker color, really makes the painting pop. It really makes the hands
come alife. I think. I move on to painting
those ridges on the hands with the
same darker color. And now that I look at this, I feel that I need to darken
the shadows on the wrist. They need to be darker
in relation to the rest to look real. So this is how I go back and forth and I don't I'm not afraid to take
my time and look at my painting for a while
before I take my next step. I hope you're still
with me because this lesson is taking a while. These shadows just
take a little bit of work. I hope you're still
with me here. We're close to the
end of the class. Moving on, I take
the darker color and paint the shadows on the
fingers of the second hand. And also taken care to separate those fingers again
with this darker color. I'm using the same color
to draw the lines and the separation between
the fingers there in the dark shadowed area. And also the creases. I'm painting them
in with full color. And I'll clean my brush
and dry it off a little bit and use my damp brush to
soften those lines a little. We'll keep adding shadows
and softening them out until we're happy with this
layer of shadows altogether. One last thought before
we leave this class, I was looking at
my painting here and comparing it to my
reference picture on the right. And then I decided it was too
yellow, not, pink enough. So I decided to quickly dry my painting using a heat
gun and mix up a very, very light pinkish color. So more of the same skin color, but more of the pink or red. And then I just decided to
paint it over everything very quickly with lots of water
to avoid getting hard lines. It's completely
possible that you're painting doesn't
need this at all. You can be the judge of that. It's your painting. You should be happy with it. But if your painting
does look a little dull and a little bit
of yellow Then don't be afraid to
go ahead and do this. Only be sure that your
painting is completely dry or you'll ruin the shadow
layers that we just painted. That's it for this class. See you in the next one!
9. Painting the dark shadows: Hey there, welcome back. I'm glad you made it this far. We're getting very
close to the end of the project now, in this class, the only thing we'll do is add some more darker shadows on
the places that need it. After that, we only have
one more class where we work on the details
such as the nails. Then there's one more with final thoughts and
then we're finished. So keep on going
and stay strong. We're almost there. So far you've seen me refine the top edge there
of the top hand. Just make that line a
little bit sharper. Now, I'll go in and again, same thing we've done a
couple of times now add more dark color between the fingers to separate
them even more. I still wasn't happy.
So there we go again Good. Then here we have the very first
appearance of my rosemary & co
Eradicator brush. This is a brush with very stiff, short bristles and I
use it to softly, try to scrub back
a little bit of the color and create
a highlight there. I think have a little
bit too much color. And also the lines
from the between the fingers are a
little bit too long. So I'm using the brush
and I'm dabbing with my paper towel to
create a highlight. Then I take my number
six black velvet brush and with a little bit of
color right on the tip. I paint in those
wrinkles in the fingers. So they're at the knuckles. And I just follow the reference picture
here very closely. When I've drawn in
all those lines, I clean my brush, dab off the excess
water and then use the damp brush to soften
those lines a little bit. I don't want them
to be too harsh. I'll speed the next bit of
the video up. And you'll see me working a little bit more
on the shadows, on this top hand. So on the wrist, on the fingers. And then I'll meet
you back here when I'm ready to start working
on the bottom hand. I'm quite happy now
with the top hand. So let's do the same with
the bottom hand. And I'll start with that finger again that's poking out there. Adding another layer
of shadow there. Then I'll move on to
the rest of the hand. The palm of the hands here, we do need to pay some extra attention. It needs to get way, way darker. To look the same as the
reference picture. I'll start by making those separation of
the fingers again. And then I'll just go in with a very dark mix
of my skin color, especially around the edges. Then I'll blend it out. After that, we'll need
some more shadow on the two fingers on
above the palm there. When I'm done, I'll turn
my attention back to the thumb and also to the
shadows on the wrist. I'm just realizing here that
I didn't paint the folds, and creases there at wrist bend
of the first sense. I'm taking my smaller
brush and some darker color and painting them in just like I did
with the others. I paint them in
with dark color, clean my brush, dab off my brush, and use the damp brush to
soften those harsh lines. I then sat a while
and looked at painting and compared it
to my reference picture. Thinking they're
still something that doesn't really feel right. I decided that I needed
some more pinkish color here in the palm of the hands and the fingers there
that are in the shadow. I went in with a lighter
mix of just my red, my Alizarin crimson and
darken that part up. Then I dried my work with my heat tool and went
in, back with that darker brown color really separatng those fingers,
therey in the shadow. Now I'm doing this
really cool thing. In the materials video
I showed you that I like to use that magic eraser I snip off just a tiny
bit and dip it in my water. And then I'll use the edge or corner of this little piece
of foam to clean up my edges. You probably can't
see it that well, but there are some parts
where I went outside the lines. And I'll use this
little eraser to scrub it away and then
use my paper towel, to dab up the color. I'll do this everywhere
in my painting where I see a little color isn't
supposed to be there. I'll take my time, look closely and
work my way around. And that will be
end of this class. Next classes details, then some final thoughts and then,
you're completely done! See you in the next one.
10. Last touches : All right guys, welcome to
the second to last video. After this video, you'll
finish the project. So I'm really happy you're
still here with me. I know it's been a journey. In this video, the first thing
I do is feel if everything is dry and then remove the
masking fluids of the nails. I just gently rub over it
with my fingertips. There's also special tools for this, but I don't have them. So I just use my fingers. And it works great. I started painting
the fingernails in the same skin color
as I've used so far. Thinking I was going
for au naturelle, like in the reference picture. But then I decided that
I wanted something pop. I want some more contrast because it's all the same color. Then I decided to use my red, the red that I used in
the skin color mix, alizarin crimson, because I didn't want to
use any other colors. I didn't want to bring a new color into the
painting at this stage. But I could use
red and just paint some nice red nail polish. Why not? Right. After giving these nails
the base layer, so to say, I just went in and just
intensified those lines. of the fingers there with a
little bit of dark skin color. Then I went in with bright red just my Alizarin crimson, and I made sure to
leave highlights. The left little areas open
with lighter skin tone below, just so you could see
that they're shiny. It's important to note, thatI left all
those highlights on the nails on the left
side of the nails. It looks like the light is coming from the same direction. The last part of this video
is only a few minutes. But in reality, I took a good half hour
to sit and look at my painting and see if there's anything
I needed to improve. If there's any lines, I need to sharpen, sit back and look at it. And the highlights to
recreate, sit back, look at it, and so
on and so further. Thank you very much for
watching and I'll see you in the last class where I give you my most important
tips and tricks!
11. Final thoughts: Congratulations, you did it. You've finished an
entire painting and a difficult one at that. I'm really happy. You got this far.
I want to close off this Skillshare class with a few final thoughts, a few tips and tricks that
I want you to keep in mind. When you're painting
something like this. Next time. My first tip is to break the white of the
paper as soon as possible. Don't wait too long and get scared and get anxiety
about your precious paper. Just go and paint a very, very light layer and
you can't go wrong. I promise. My next tip is to use a
limited color palette. Just choose three colors,
three primary colors. And go ahead and
paint with dose. As soon as you go in
with other colors, it will get muddy very easily. My third tip is
about colors too. Don't be scared to mix a skin color because it's
just a shade of brown. You have lighter shades and
darker shades but its all brown. And you can easily
mix it from the three primary colors. Painting in watercolors means usually painting in layers. And that's especially true
for paintings like this. Trust the process, work
layer by layer by layer, don't give up and
you'll get there. There's always room
to make mistakes. Just purchase some magic eraser, work with it very gently and you can get
rid of most of them. My last and most important
tip is keep going. Paintings like this take time. You just need to put in
the time, put in the effort. Don't give up half way
through and you'll get there. And I'm sure you'll
be very happy with the end result.
And that's it! I hope you enjoyed your time with me and I hope I'll see you back
in one of my other Skillshare classes. Keep painting and see you later. Bye.
RosanneCreates, Watercolor and digital artist
