Watercolor Hands With Botanical Elements

1. Introduction: Hi, and welcome to This house. My name is Nadia, and I'm a professional artist living and working in Berlin. I love painting with watercolor, but I have to admit it did take me quite a while to pick it up because it is quite a difficult technique, and I also like to draw and paint hands, but I feel like that is also quite a difficult element. So I've put together this class for you to take you through all the steps to make an expressive watercolor painting of hands with a botanical element. First, let's start by looking at the materials that we're going to need. Then I will take you through the process of looking for your reference image and showing you how I edit it for my painting, using my phone software. Once you've chosen your reference image, I will walk you through how to get your image onto your paper using a light source. And I will take you through the colors we will use and how to mix them. For the project, we will be making one watercolor painting of a hand and a botanical element. Once we have a sketch on the paper, we will see how to start painting by applying the first layers and building up our painting slowly layer by layer. I've included a lesson to talk about the basic notions of watercolor as well as how to get your sketch on paper in a really simple way. So I think that this class can really be for all levels of skills from beginner to professional. If you've always wanted to paint hands and you love watercolor, I hope you join me in this class, and I will see you in the next listen. 2. Project, Materials & Finding Your Image: In this lesson, let's have a look at the project for this class, at the materials that we need, and at how to find our image, and then edit it for our painting. For the project, we will be making one watercolor painting of a hand and a botanical element. So I've created a materials list, which I will also be uploading to the resources section, and let's just go through that for a moment. So firstly, we're going to need water colors. I like to use these tubes, but you can also use pans or liquid water colors, whatever's best for you. What is important is that we need a palette because we will be mixing our colors. We will also be needing brushes, and I'm going to be using three. I recommend you have three to five brushes of different sizes. I'll be using a one, ten, and a 16. Next, we'll need some watercolor paper, and the important thing is that it's minimum 300 GSM. I like to use fine grain, but it's up to you. Really important two containers for water. One is to clean your brushes with, and the other one is to make up fresh colors for which we will want really fresh water. We don't want to be making dirty colors, and we will also be needing masking tape to tape down our paper so that it doesn't buckle. And for this, I will also have a wooden board, but you could also tape your paper down to the table. We will also be needing graphite pencils as we will be doing some details with pencils, and you'll want to probably have an eraser handy as well. If you're going to be using a light source for transferring your image onto your paper, you also need a light table or a window. You could also transfer your image via grid method or free hand. I like to use a hair dryer to dry off my paintings in between layers so that it goes a little bit faster. So if you want to speed up the process, I suggest you also have a hair dryer on hand. So let's have a look at where we can find some reference images for our hands. This, for example, is pixels. I really like the site because they have a lot of variety of nice photographs. There are also some other sites like Nsplash where you can find some really high quality images that you can use for your artwork. So when you're ready to download, I would recommend always downloading in the original size because that way you get the most resolution. And then just go ahead and save it in a folder that you have maybe created, especially for your project. And then you can always easily find the reference images that you've chosen for your project. Okay, so I found this image here, I splash. I like the variety and tones on the hand. We've got some nice light shades. We've got some reds. We've got some greens. We've got some nice shadows. And I also like the variety of greens in the plant, so I'm just going to go ahead and download that in the original size. Next, let's take a look at how to edit our image so that it's perfect for our purposes to paint. And I'm just using my program on my iPhone, just the normal photo editing software. And I'm just playing around with the brilliance here. So I'm trying to get a nice contrast. Also upping the highlights maybe a little bit, maybe taking down the shadows a little bit, or rather making them more intense so that I've got a really nice, clear contrast. Also playing around with taking up the contrast, taking it back down. Just play around with it. All we want to really see is a really clear, nice, dramatic, contrasting image so that it's easier for us to find the highlights and the shadows. And then I'm also going to adjust the format so that it is 30 by 40 or three to four. So that's perfect because it's exactly the size of paper I'm going to be using. And then I'm just going to save that. Once you're done editing your chosen image, ready to paint, let's revisit some basic watercolor techniques in the next lesson. 3. Transferring Your Image: Okay, so as you already know, I've chosen this image and I've gone ahead and printed it out, and now I'm going to show you how to transfer this image onto your paper using a light table. And for that, we're going to need a dark environment so that we can actually see the image really well. I'm just going to go ahead and make it dark in here and then I'll see you back in just a second. All right, here we have the light table and the image, and I'm just going to go ahead and turn that on and you can see I can raise the intensity and I want to have it as high as I can so that I can see as much as possible. I'm going to want to fix the image on two sides so that while I'm drawing it doesn't shift that I'm going to ta masking tape. Just fix it. To the table and then making sure I have the right side of my paper. I just place that on top and you can see how wonderfully you can see the image shining through. I also fix that on two sides. Then I will get my HB pencil, which I've sharpened. I'm just going to lightly trace the image onto the paper. I'm wanting to capture the outlines, obviously. But also, I'm going to mark in a moment for myself some darker areas where the shadows are and then maybe some highlights that I want to reserve. If you're holding the paper to the light table, then make sure your hands are clean. You want to keep tabs on which parts you've drawn and which parts you have not. Worst case scenario, you can just turn on the light and then you'll be able to see your drawing better than the image underneath. You can always correct the drawing afterwards when you can see your reference image properly if you've made a mistake or missed a part. You can say I don't really have a set system for doing this. I'm just following the image. It doesn't really matter as long as you have an overview. I like to be pretty precise about the drawing part because it just helps you later really discern where you're going to paint. The better your sketches, the easier it'll be for you to know where the colors go. Some parts you won't be able to see so well, like here in the shadows, I can't really make out much. I'm also just going to finish this part here, the thumb nail. I also want to be quite precise about that because the thing about hands is that you don't really have any clear planes and the transitions are really smooth. What we're really just working with is the transition of color from shadow to light. Really? It's harder to see because it's very light. You don't want to be pressing too hard, so that you're making indentations in the paper, but hard enough so that you can see what you've drawn. You can always erase your pencil marks afterwards if you don't want to see them anymore, but just make sure you don't make marks on the paper because then the paint is just going to go right in there. Also marking in here where there's the shadows on the leaves. Okay. I'm just going to turn on the light to see how far along I am. Just got an extra image printed out here, which I'm checking it against. Yeah, I'm missing a little bit of drawing over here, a bit of drawing over here. That's it. Looks good. Well, let's remove that from the light table and then tape it onto the board. This is what my finished pencil drawing looks like, and I'm going to go ahead and tape it to the board now. We do that because if we don't, then because of all the water we'll be using, the paper is going to buckle and we just really don't want that. Make sure I've drawn ice and taped down. Then I'm going to erase my drawing just a little bit. Just with my putty eraser, I'm just going to go over and take out some of the intensity. When you're done erasing your drawing a little bit, I will see you in the next lesson. 4. Colours: Okay, so these are the colors that we are going to be mixing today. This is skin tone one. We've got skin tone two, purple shadow, coffee brown, the green ochre, and the blue black. And for that, we will need yellow ochre, burnt sienna, crimson, ultramarine blue, Prussian blue, and ivory black. We want to be taking a medium size or larger brush so that we can transport a little more water and pigment to the compartments. I'm going to start by mixing up a little bit more skin tone one. Already have some here. I'm just going to add to it. I can always cat that on a test strip. But I already know I need to add a little more crimson and a tiny bit with the ultramarine blue. You just clean your brush, take some water, take some pigment. Don't put in too much blue, otherwise it'll get too brown. Skin tone one in this exercise is only going to serve us for making the first layer and that is just to indicate to ourselves to give us a base, see where we're going to paint later. I'm going to move on to skin tone two, pretty much the same mixture, the colors are in different quantities and different relation. Caso sometimes it takes a little minute if your pigments already dried. What's the great thing about watercolor though. You can always just revive it by adding some clean water. Every time you take a new pigment, you want to make sure that your brush is clean. My add a little bit more of the yellow ochre. I think I want a little bit more red, so more crimson. That would be a skin tone to. Then I'm going to make some coffee brout. I'll start with the sienna. We always want to be starting with the lighter colors and then adding the dark colors afterwards. That's sienna. So I'm just rehydrating this pigment from underneath as well. I'm going to put some ivory black in there. Remember this is one of our shadow colors, a tone that we'll be using for making the shadows on our work. Still light, so I'm going to add a little bit more ivory black. I think it's a little bit too dark, we'll just go ahead and add a little more sienna in there. Yeah, they're quite like that. All right. Now I'm going to move on to making my purple shadow. For that, I'll take plenty of the crimson, add some water, some clean water. We don't want to go over the top and dilute the pigment too much because then we just have a very light wash. We can always dilute it later when we bring it over to this part of the palate. Then we're going to add some ultramarine blue. It's very purple. If you know a little something about color theory, you know that we use the opposites on the color wheel to tone down colors. In this case, this is purple, the opposite would be a yellow or an orange. I'm going to take a little bit of the bird sienna, put that in there. Still a little bit more. So it's a little bit more organic, a little bit more earthy. Actually, I think I want a little bit more red, so I'm going to put in a little bit more of the crimson. I like that. Next up is the blue black. I think we'll be mainly using that on our botanical element. Starting with the Prussian blue. The Prussian blue is a little bit more towards green on the scale. You can see it's a different tint to the ultramarine blue. No, it's way too blue still, so keep adding some ivory black. The Prussian Blue is also really dominant. Well, maybe a little bit more blue. We can always make it more fluid, as I said on these when we bring it over to the other part. That's good. Then I'm also going to make the green ochre. That's going to serve us for the hand and the botanical element and we can mix that later with the blue black for the plant as well to get a little bit of variety in there. I'm going to take the prussian blue again. Add that in there, it's a little too dark. We cannot use that for a skin color. Put in some greenish tones in the skin tone, back to the ochre. I'm going to need to add quite a lot of yellow ocha still in here. Looks like quite an intense wash. Let's just get rid of the excess water and pigment there, dab it on the towel, and I like that. I do like that. I've mixed my colors for the session. I suggest you go ahead and do the same and then I will see you back here and then Listen. 5. Basic Watercolour Techniques: Before we begin, let's just revisit a couple of basics of watercolor techniques. I'm going to use some crimson just as my first color and I'm just going to use the wet on dry technique, which basically means I am painting with wet paint until a dry surface, which is my paper. Let's let it dry. In the meantime, let's have a look at the wet on wet technique. I'm just wetting my paper and then I'm getting my pigment I am just working that into the wet area of the paper. Now, the wet on dry technique is much easier to control than the wet on wet technique. Let's have a look at fading out a brush stroke. I'm going to work with some ultramarine blue now. I'm just making a brush stroke. I'm going to clean my brush, dry my brush on the paper a little bit, and then I'm just going to pack up a little bit of pigment here. Now my brush is not entirely dry. Still a little wet so that the watercolor will expand into this brush stroke here. You can just remove the pigment, moving your brush carefully over the paper. Don't go too hard on it because otherwise you perhaps also damage the paper. Now, should we have a look at injecting some pigment into a wet area. I'm wetting the paper, going to dry my brush and I'm going to get some more crimson and I'm just going to inject that into these areas. You can see it's not wet there. Maybe I'll just get a little bit more pigment so it's a little bit more evident. You can see and imagine that you can get some really cool effects with this. Because once you inject the pigment, it does its own thing. Now what happens if you make a mistake? Let's have a look at that. Again with the crimson, I'm just going to apply some to my paper. And I've realized I've made a mistake. What do I do? I just get my tissue paper and I just pick that up and then I can go ahead and just wet it again a little bit with some clean water. Then I just with a clean bit of tissue paper, I can just go over it again. And pick up as much as possible. Now, as you can see, it hasn't picked up all of the pigment. You could insist if you wanted to, but usually it's so faint, especially if you're going to be painting over it, that it doesn't really matter. So you can see that these are all translucent because we don't want to start going opaque with our paint. The reason for that is it gets harder and harder to layer the brush strokes on top of each other, the more opaque the paint is. The beauty of watercolor really is that it's so nice and translucent and it lets through the light of the paper. Now I want to to try layering with you guys as well. Let's just make a brushstroke here with the crimson. We'll just wait for that to dry. In the meantime, we can try to mix two colors together directly and see what happens. We've got the crimson and I'm going to get the ultramarine blue and see what happens when I mix them directly. We'll have to wait for that to dry as well to see exactly what happens. And while we're waiting for that to dry, maybe we can just have a look at smoothing out edges because sometimes we want to have crisp brush strokes like this and other times we might just want to have them a little bit smoother. Let's just have a look at that. I inject a little pigment there, but I want it to be a little bit smoother on one side. I've just gone ahead and clean my brush. I'm just drying that off a little bit, and I'm just going to smooth this edge out. You can see that the watercolor is expanding a little bit into the still wet area. It's more damp, but it is very smooth. You can always do this to get a variety in your painting. I am going to actually try layering some yellow ochre on top of the first. The very first brushstroke that we made a top here can say it's definitely dry now. You always want to be making sure that the last layer that you've used is dry if you're going to be adding another color and if you don't want the colors to be mixing with each other like these two, Now, you can move the brush a little bit over this area, but if you move it too much, you'll actually end up packing up the pigment from underneath because the watercolor is still water soluble. You don't want to be doing that necessarily. Now we've gone over some of the basics again of watercolor. I suggest we start painting in the next lesson. 6. Painting the First Layer: All right. Let's just have a look at my workspace setup. I have my drawing in the middle. I've got my brushes and my tissue paper to wipe off any excess water or pigment from my brushes, but also if I make a mistake to correct that quickly from my paper. I've got my test strip where I'll be testing all my colors, and again, before I put them on the paper, and then I have my palette with all my mixed colors here and two jars of water. One will be for cleaning the brushes and one will be for clean water. When I put more water into my already mixed colors, that they don't get dirty. I think we are ready to start. In the first layer, we're going to be painting with the skin tone one. Let's just have a look. I have my reference image and I'm going to reserve some areas where I'm not going to paint, probably this part here, that's where the lightest part is, maybe also a little bit of this area here. I do need to paint the edge of this, this is otherwise won't be able to see where the hand ends. Obviously, if we're looking at light and shadow, the lightest area is here on this side and also this, and then the darkest areas on the inside of the hand, where the plant also covers it and here the shadows underneath. Obviously also the plant. In the first layer, it doesn't matter if you make a mistake and we're not going to be doing any smoothing out or anything because we're going to be working with a really light watch, that really doesn't need to be modified in this first layer. We're just going to start by getting ourselves a little base. Let's start and I'm going to use my n six brush and I'm working with my skin tone one, just bringing it over here. Trying it out on my test paper to make it really light. I'm always referencing my reference image as well. I'm going to start at the top here. If there's any highlights you want to reserve. Now, because the branches also really dark, it doesn't matter if you go over them. You can see I've played myself a little highlight up there that I want to reserve. I don't really want to go over the leaves. I'm just picking up that pigment with my paintbrush. I'm just going to take it part by part. You can see the first philande stops here. I'm going to do that and then I'm going to move on to the next part and wait for that to dry first. We're really just going from the most general to the most specific. That means we're not going to be looking at details right now, just covering everything that is going to be not the white of the paper. I think they could actually be a little bit lighter still that wash. Now if this happens that you have an excess of water, no matter, get your brush, take off the excess water on your tissue paper, and then you can just pick it up. What we're also trying to do is just get these nice smooth movements with your paint brush. We don't want to be going staccato. We want to be making really nice smooth strokes, trying to keep inside the lines. I'm just working on these parts as one because it's really quite hard to just differentiate between phalanges here. What I'm going to do is just reserve this nail here. Now I'll take a little more of my skin tone one, dilute that with a little bit of clean water, bring it back to my test sheet, and then I am going to continue here. You can see that just by having waited for that to dry already you can see there's a little difference. It's what we want. We don't want it to all bend into one. In this first step, it's not as important as it is later. I'm just going to make it slightly lighter around here. Then I said I don't want to paint necessarily on all of the hand. I'm going to reserve some areas of this fingernail so I'm going to see where the shadows and just already apply a little bit of color there. If you have excess pigment or what, you can just pick that up with your brush by drying off your brush on your tissue paper and then just picking it up. Seem to put too much pigment there, so you can always just go and smooth it out a little bit, even though on this first layer, we really just don't need to worry about that. We're getting into this shady area back here. Let's just let that dry first before we continue there, right next to it, and we can just hang this part here and maybe just smooth this out. Maybe you want to make some circular movements. You can also emulate the shape of the hands and it'll be like this. Well, that's dry before I continue with this. I'm just going to go and start on the plant. After that, I'm going to take my green ochre, bring that over here onto my mixing palate and I'm going to do the same thing. Just go over the plant with a light wash. Could be lighter even. I'm just going to cover most of it really because I'm going to be adding depth and volume to it with some more intense washers and also a little bit of the blue black later. But what I don't want to do is just treat everything as one leaf. I just made a mistake here, this is two leaves. I'm going to try and work as I am on the hand by leaving adjacent areas to dry first and then come back to them. By leaving adjacent areas to dry first and then working on them separately, we're just going to get a little bit more definition, and it's not just going to look like one big mass, but rather different separate elements, which is what I want. So yeah, I'm just working on the separate elements and trying to work one leaf at a time and leaving the adjacent leaves for now until the leaves that I'm working on right now are dry to get that definition. And then I'm also going to try to work on the darker areas of the leaves first and then move on to cover the lighter parts later. So the hand should be dry by now. I'm not too worried about that spreading in there. Just make sure you don't go over the edges onto the hand. We don't want that. I'm still just using that one color, the green ochre, and this is just a really general wash. It's our first wash, so you don't have to really go over the top. We're not trying to put in any details or anything. But there is quite a bit of plant to cover, that might take a while, but I'm just working steadily here with the one tone and just reserving the highlights where I need to and just covering the general base as I go. Leaves like this, I'm trying to do this part later so that you can really see that there's a spatial difference. Okay, so remember if you have excess pigment or water, you can just pick that up with your paint brush. If you have a highlight, like, for example, this little line here, I'm just going to reserve that might be quite nice later. Carry on now that the skin here will be dry, I'm just going to take my skin tone one again. And just go over this part here. Then I am going to start again at the top of the leaves and work on the ones that were adjacent to other leaves that I've already worked on. I really feel like you can tell that it just makes a difference straightaway. I like to wait for this one to grow before I work on that one. So yes, I'm just going to go over the rest of the leaves now with the same tom evenly to finish this first layer, and then we will have covered the areas that don't want to be left white. And so that will give us a better indication of where to go from there. But as I say, it doesn't have to be detailed, as you can see, I'm just filling in the leaves really evenly with my green ocho. Then the last parts up here. It's a little too much. Should make it a habit to always test your colors out on your test strip first. That way, you'll have a lot less mistakes. Now I'm going to work just on the stalks, on the branch here. Try not to lean your finger on your painting if you can. That would be our first layer. Now we've got to either wait for that to dry or we can blow dry it, and then we will continue. 7. Starting on the Second Layer : All right. In this lesson, we're going to look at working with skin tone two. But we're going to start really defining some volume by applying the paint and then smoothing it out in the direction of the hand. We can use circular brush strokes for this or we can use the strokes that go in the direction of the fingers. Make sure you do this while the paints still wet. So we're trying to put down a base and start to focus on a little bit more of the shadows on the fingers and the hands so that we can see a little bit of contrast, little bit of depth, and a little bit of volume build up. We're going to paint the same way as we did in the last lesson, we're going to start one part and then leave the adjacent part. Open, move on to the next part, and then the next part, and so on, and then return to the parts that we worked on first when they're dry. Okay. Another thing to note is that we're not going to draw the lines of the knuckles on the inside of the hand just because it's not going to look organic, but I'll show you what we'll do when we get to that. Getting askin tone to, adding a little water because it's really quite a lot. Pigment. I'm going to start on this finger up here. You've got too much water or pigment on your brush, you can just dab it off on your tissue paper. All right, so just finding that shadow in there. All right, so now I'm smoothing that out and moving on to the next finger. You can see it's darker on the inside and less dark at the top, so just smoothing that out as well. Actually just going to remove a little pigment from here. So while it is true that painting and drawing hands is quite difficult because the planes just all kind of blend into each other and there's no clear lines really, O task is to look for the highlights and the shadows as we would in any other painting and just focus on that for now. So remember, you want to be working quite fast so that it doesn't dry. So what I'm doing now is just looking for the shadows and reserving the highlights and just applying my color to the areas that are in shadow. In that way, I'm just building up my layers. Remember that you can always correct mistakes by picking up the pigment with your clean wet brush. Okay, so continuing with the finger down here. Then just smoothing it out. The pinky. It's really quite hard to see where the phalanges start and end down here. I'm just going to paint all of this for now. Smoothing out the pigment. If you feel like you've got a little bit too much, don't worry about it. You can just get a piece of tissue paper and add that on there and then continue smoothing. As I said, it's quite important to smooth these brush strokes out. The transition of the plans on the hand are very smooth and you can only see them because of the light and shadow and the contrast. So there's no cut lines is what I want to say. We've got to try to make these transitions very smooth. I'm going to go on the inside of the hand. Always cleaning and drying off your brush when you're about to smooth. I'm not going to smooth out on this side because that is actually quite a clean cut from this part here to this part here. We don't need to smooth that out. Now I think I can probably start on this part here. This is the darkest part and I'm going to smooth it out to both sides. Try not to go over the leaves too much. You just smoothing that out if you want by a circular motion or also in the direction of the finger. Then I'm going to move on to the thumb. I'm not painting really intense shadows just yet, but that's what I'm looking for so that I can start to indicate to myself where the shadows are and then I'm just going to smooth them back out so that it's very subtle at the moment. You can see I've marked myself this beautiful shadow here. And I'm going to start up again here just to leave that metal part until the other part that I've just worked on is dry. Nice, smooth brush strokes. And again, trying to smooth that out while the paint is still wet, so we have to work a little bit fast. And also, on the other side, I don't really know what happened here. Just going to correct that. I think I probably dropped some water on it unintentionally. Don't worry about it. We'll just mop up a little bit of the pigment and we'll go back to it in a minute. Take away a little bit of that still it over. And going to start again on the thumb now. Just trying to find the form here now. Okay, so you can see I'm trying to emulate that shape that is in the shadow there. Okay. Smooth it out. And then I'm also going to go over this part here. Same thing. Smooth out. Now that is still wet. In the meantime, I'll be going over my plant again. I'm going to focus more on the darker leaves. And I'm going to start from the top here. Got a little too much pigment on my brush there. You can also smooth these brush strokes out a little bit. So yeah, as you can see, I'm not really focusing on any details here. I'm just covering the darker areas of the leaves. Remember Testra. What I'm trying to do is start to build up some of this contrast so that it really starts to come out of the paper and you can really start to see some depth by just using the green ochre to put a uniform layer on top of the leaves. But again, I'm trying to work on areas that are not adjacent to each other, so I'm working on this part of the leaf. I will not be working on this part directly afterwards. I'm going to smooth it out a little bit. I feel like on the leaves, it doesn't matter if the brush strokes aren't as smooth. It might be nice contrast as well. If they're a little bit crisper than the hand. It's a nice contrast anyway because of the reddish tones of the hand and then we've got greenish tones of the plant. Not working on that it's too close to the other part of plant. I can always go ahead and inject a little pigment as well. That might be quite nice here and there, see what happens. I just focusing on not covering the entire plant now, just some areas that I feel like a little bit darker, a little bit more contrast. Then smoothing out some parts. Adding a little detail, but not too much because what we like to do is go from the general to the particular from the very general picture to the details and we're not there yet. So you can see this part of the plants a little bit lighter. There's a couple of highlights on there. What I'm going to do is just fill up this part and then the hand, just smooth it out a little bit. Here this is similar to what we're going to do in the hand as well. Just outlining these highlights and then I'm going to smooth it out a little bit. That way we'll get the feeling of this texture. Wrinkles candles, I guess. Remember, you always want to have your tissue paper directly by your drawing so that you can dad any excess pigment or water off your paper brush and also if you make a mistake or a drop of water falls on your paper and makes a weird mark, but you can just lift it up straight away. And then I'm smoothing this part up too. Remembering that we're not working on adjacent leaves at one time, waiting for them to dry first. I'm here being very careful that I don't go over the thumb. I'm going to go over this, but only because the outline has a highlight on it, so I'm not going to be touching my leaf that I've just worked on. I really like to start seeing this contrast. Feel like it's starting to come along? I feel like even though we're going over the darker areas just with one color in a really kind of uniform fashion, you can already see this contrast kind of building up and the drawing or the painting really starting to come out of the paper. Just go over some of these areas that I haven't gone over yet. Now, if you got over an area like I just have that you've already gone over a leaf that's adjacent to another one, you will see that it just gets a little bit darker, so it doesn't really matter, especially if it is a little bit darker and you reference so much. Try not to get your hand on any damp or wet areas that you've got going on. I am working on adjacent leaves here, but only because I've already gone over this one before. Hopefully that will just look a little darker now. I'm just working my way across the entire painting until I have covered all the areas, and again, trying not to work on adjacent leaves or adjacent areas so that it doesn't look like one big mass, but rather many different elements. Go over the stalk here as well a little bit. I'm being quite liberal here with my brush strokes. I think that'll probably be interesting in the end in the plant. I'm starting to add a little bit of texture here, adding a little bit of shadow where there may be a crease in the leaf. Okay. Now I am going to touch up the part of this finger here that had the water drap on it. So that and then smooth that out. I'm going to remove a little bit of pigment from here. It's a little bit excessive. So that I think I need a really dry brush, so just drying that off a little bit. Then I'm going to take the green again and go over these parts of the stem of the plant. Careful not to touch this part that I've just gone over because otherwise the green is just going to spread into the hand. I have to wait for it to dry. Try not to rest your finger on any wet areas on your painting. It's really easy to then drag the paint to another part of the painting. I just gets a little messy. Okay. I also have to go over this left here, which I didn't go over before. I'm going to just dry that off, and I think I'll give it another little coat of the skin too because I feel like it's still a little bit too general. Actually, just realized that I haven't done this part here yet. I'm just going to go ahead and do that. Dry off the paint brush and then just smoothing it out. Okay. Now I am going to go in here just one more time. I've actually managed to miss out one part completely, and I'm just going to do that. Let's this part here. I'm just going to smooth that out as well. I'm not going to smooth it out over the thumb. That's fine. If there's crisp line there just here. It did go over the line tiny bit. I'm just gonna remove that and dry it off with a little tissue paper. So it doesn't expand into the thumb. Okay, so I'm going to dry that off now. And I will see you in the next lesson where we will continue to heighten the contrast and work with some purple shadow. 8. Adding Shadow: In this lesson, let's start adding some shadows. Let's just see where the shadows are. In the. We've got this part here over here, under here, obviously it's a lot in shadow and here. And the inside of the hand and then this pinky finger as well, and also here. There's also other mid tone shadows that we also want to be using the purple shadow on. We're just going to go again, general to specific and we're just going to start marking the mid tones with the purple shadow with a slightly lighter wash and then afterwards, we'll go over it again with a little bit more of a wash. I'm going to use my number six brush again for this taking some purple shadow. Gonna bring it over to the compartment here. Add a little water. Try it on my test strop. A little more water, then I'm just gonna start. Same as I did before. It's not enough pigment. That is not enough. And I'm just getting into this shadow here in the finger under the leaves. Same as before, we're smoothing it out. As you probably know from your own experience, it isn't really that easy to draw and paint hands because of the difference in the planes and the lack of the clear lines. This is where we really need to start focusing on finding the shadows, the mid tones, and the highlights so that we can really start generating those planes and give it volume and make it look organic. If you feel like you've got a little bit too much pigment in some areas, we'd actually like to reserve a little bit of highlight, remember, you can always just get your tissue paper and just dab it in there. Lift up some of that pigment and if you want to go back and smooth it out afterwards, And we're still not working on areas adjacent to the ones we've just worked on so that it really starts to become different elements and not just one big mass. Smoothing only the bottom line, and here, I'm going to smooth it into the fingernail. So I'm also trying to look for the shapes of the shadows on the fingers. So I'm going to start on this mid tone shadow here on the thumb. And again, I am going to smooth that shadow out because there aren't any hard lines there, and so I don't want my shadow to have any hard lines. Okay. That's looking good. Go to continue here. I feel like it's hard not to work on this part together because it is so connected. Now, you can see I'm applying quite a lot of pigment, but then I'm going to smooth it out so that it really is just a mid tone shadow because as you can see in the reference image, it isn't as dark as I've made it here to begin with. You can see that's taking shape already. It's pretty nice. Okay, so I'm working wet on wet here. Just injecting a little pigment because that seems to be a little bit darker there. Okay, so how do we get these wrinkles? I'm going to instead of outlining them one by one, I'm going to make these squiggly lines. I'm going to start off by doing that, and then I'm going to smooth them out. So I've got some shadows and I've got some light areas, but they're not like, really drawn. They're not really defined. So they're just kind of insinuating these wrinkles. Don't use too much water here. I think I'm just going to change to my number ten brush for this part. Testing my purple shadow on the test rah. And then I'm going to do the same with the wrinkles down here, just going to create some squiggly lines, and then I am going to change to my number six brush, and I'm going to smooth those out just to insinuate those wrinkles. I'm also going to smooth out this part here. I don't want that to have too hard of an edge. I don't want to make this one too prominent, but there is a definite line there, I put it there and I'm taking it away a little bit. This part is a lot darker, so I'm just going to inject some pigment in here. This part is also a lot darker, but it's already dryer. I'll just add that smooth it out, and here Just remove a little pigment from there. Then I'm going to move on to this part down here, just going down into the palm of the hand. I'm going to finish this part of the handm switching back to my number ten brush. If you feel like you've added too much pigment at some point, you can just go ahead and remove a little pigment with a wet and clean brush. I'm also going to smooth that out. Now, you can see why it's so complicated paint hands because it really is just this balance between light and shadow, and there's hardly any drawing on there. Now I'm going to do move on to this finger here again. You can see it's just like painting any other painting. I'm adding the pigment, then I'm smoothing it out or removing it, building up the layers little by little. I'm just going over the shadows again on the index finger, just working my way across the painting. Now I'm going to go on to the middle finger. And again, you can see I'm trying to find the shape of those shadows that are going on there on the middle finger. If you're having trouble seeing the difference between light and shadow, you can always squint your eyes, and that way, it's easier to see because it just simplifies the contrast for us. Don't forget to smooth out. Going on to the inside of the hand. And then the next finger. Also smoothing that out. This very dark shadow on you. Once again, you can observe in the reference image that there is a shape to the shadow. So that's what I'm trying to find right now. Once again, smoothing out. Try not to have too much water on your brush. Moving on to the next figure. And again, you can observe that there is a shadow with the shape that I'm trying to emulate here. Again, smoothing that out. So smoothing out these shadows will just make it look a little more organic and the planes kind of start to blend into one another. So we want these smooth transitions, so we really need to remember to smooth out our brush strokes. Going on the inside of the hand here. And you can observe that the inside of the hand and the thumb are actually quite different planes, so it's right to have a bit of a crisper edge there. And still continuing with the shadow. And I'm just going to get them here now. So when you're painting hands, it does become important just to be observant of the planes of the hands and which ones have a very smooth transition. Like, for example, where there's curvature on the hand, here, for example, and on the other hand, where you've got more defined transitions that aren't that smooth, and then to make a decision about which brush strokes to smooth out and which ones to leave a little more crisp. And I'm going to make a few changes here. For example, here, this nail. I'm not very happy with that, so I'm just going to keep working on that for a minute. Going to take away a little pigment here too. Then I am going to go over the plant with some coffee brown now. Namely the stalks first, then we'll see about the contrast. We're really also looking for whether there's a light to the stalk. But as we already discovered, most of it is actually in shadow. But for a example here, we have a bit of light on the stalk on the left hand side. I'm going to get some blue black and just really go over some of the darkest areas of the leaves. Going to smooth these areas out. Leave some a little bit crisper. So if you want to make it a little more varied, you can also not cover the entire shaded area. You can see I've left a couple of kind of highlights or, you know, uncovered areas so that there will be variations to the green and the shadow and the contrast within the shadow of the leaves. And when you're working close to the hand, just remember to be careful not to go over any of the skin tone areas with your green or your blue. So my aim isn't to make a hyper realistic painting that looks exactly like the photograph or anything. I'm trying to make an expressive painting. So right now I'm just trying to get a little bit more drama in these leaves by heightening the contrast, adding a bit of shadow, leaving some highlights. And yeah, just also with the blue black getting a little bit of tonal variety in there. So you can see, I'm just making some expressive brush strokes here, and we'll see how that turns out once it's dried. So just be free also with your brush strokes and let watercolor surprise us. And we can also get some really nice variety in here if we're a little bit loose with our brush, and then we choose some areas that we're just going to smooth out, and others, we're just going to leave a bit crisper. What you can also do, of course, while the paint is still wet on your leaves is just go ahead and inject a little pigment here and there, and that will also make for a bit of variety and an interesting contrast in brush strokes. Again, remember to be a little bit careful when you're working around the hand area so that you don't get any of the blue or green onto the skin tone areas. And if you do accidentally go over a part, just quickly lift it up with your tissue paper and you can smooth it out with your wet brush. So I feel like this is really the darkest part underneath in this part of the inside of the hand. So don't be shy with your color here and just make sure you get a really nice contrast. So also remember that we're trying to avoid working on two leaves that are directly next to each other so that each element is defined and it doesn't blend into one. And I'm going to go over all of these leaves down the bottom here, but still remembering to reserve the highlights. I'm going to dry that off and then let's go over some shadows once more with a little purple shadow, then we'll probably use a little bit of the coffee brown and then we'll see what else needs to be done. 9. Intensifying Contrast: Now I'm going to use a little bit of the green ochre. I'm just going to apply it to some areas of the hand where I feel like there's still a little bit of shadow needed and it's just a little bit too red for me at the moment. I'm going to start with the thumb. I'm using my number ten brush. Applying a thin layer of greens just going to neutralize that red tone. Again, I don't want to make really crisp lines. Especially down here, you can see that there's a little bit of a greenish tinge. And I don't want to go overboard, so I don't want this to be completely green. I just want to take a little bit of that red, like, really, really red tone off the hand. So I'm just making sure my wash is nice and light. I'm also going to get into the inside of the hand. Doesn't matter if I go over the leaves because they're green anywhere, and they're in shadow back here. Going to also take a little bit on the side of the thumb. So as you can see, I'm also not covering the entire area that I've already painted, just some areas. Not quite happy with this part here yet. Especially because there's a wrinkle and I don't want to accentuate it too much, so I'm just insinuating that it's there. Really faint lines. Probably need to go over that in a moment. It's a little bit too green, go over that with some more skin toes. Moving on to this part. So, as I said, I don't want to cover all of the skin tone, some areas, but definitely in here and also up here. I'm really just looking for some shaded areas mainly just applying a little bit of that green. Also a little bit here. Not really happy with how they dried. Applying the paint. And smoothing it out. I'm really happy with this either, so I'm just going to smooth it out a little bit more. You can always work on the watercolor paint even if it's dry. Just be careful not to do too much because you don't want to lift up your paper. I'm going to get a little bit more of the green ochre and also get pinky here. I really use some and smooth it out. Have your son here? Yes, I'm just reiterating the shape of this shadow with my green ochre, but again, just making sure it's very light. Them here. Okay. I'm going to try that off again. I'm making sure that that's completely dry. I'm going to get my eraser. I'm just going to erase a couple of these lines and really do make sure that it's completely dry because otherwise you're going to rule on your paper. I just erasing this line here. It's really annoying. I'm going to erase a couple of these. So just really carefully, I'm erasing these because I feel like they're really just disturbing the subtlety of the painting, and I'm using a putty rubber, so that's quite good for erasing pencil and also charcoal because it doesn't really leave those smudgy lines. I feel like that's already better, and now I'm just going to go over some of the darkest shadows here in the hand with the coffee brown, making sure it's not too dark. For example, this line here and also a membrane to smooth it out. Then I'll leave that for when that's dry. Accentuate this line of the thumbnail here as well. With the coffee brown right now, I'm just focusing on some of the darker areas. These really dark areas, we're not going to get them as dark as they are unless we use blue black. I'm really not a fan of using blue black on the skin because it just makes it look a little inorganic. I'm just focusing on some of these darker areas. I'm trying to put in these creases a little bit without making them too dramatic. Again, plot them out. And moving on up to the pinky again, to this shadow up here, which is quite prominent. I'm also trying not to go over the top, though, because then it starts to look a little bit unnatural. So it's about finding that balance between dramatic and also natural. Okay, so I know this looks like a very deep shadow, but I hope that, you know, after I smooth it out and then once it's dried, that it makes sense, really starting to get into the details here now. Go to the finger here as well. Remember that the contrast that we can achieve with watercolor is not the same as we will achieve oils or gouache or any more solid paints. But it's fine because it's actually what we love about watercolors, this whole translucent thing. We just trying to get as much drama in here as possible without taking it over the top. Taste a little bit more skin tone, too. Just get there a little bit, it mixes. Now, if you feel like it's looking a little bit too brown, you can always go and give the whole thing a little wash with the skin tone to again, and I'm going to go into the pinky finger again and emulate the shape of the shadow. Okay, so we're almost through with the copy. So sometimes because of the perspective and also, you know, what we talked about before, the difficulty of painting hands because of the planes of the hand and the smooth transitions, don't focus so much on the drawing of the hand to orientate yourself. Rather look at the shadows and the highlights. If you're finding it hard to see the shape of a shadow, just squint your eyes that really helps just simplify that. Then also going to get into just a couple of these darker areas here. I can see one just down here. This one, this area here. I'm just insinuating this wrinkle one here. You don't want to leave it very crisp because then it just doesn't look organic and we'd like it to look organic, really lightly here as well, a couple of creases. And I'm going to just insinuate this crease in here just really, really, really lightly. So really just insinuating it so that it looks really natural. And if I don't like it, I can always just take it away again. And then I'm going to work on this part over here again. Yeah. And I'm here. Now I feel like I need to add a little more shadow on here as well and insinuate that crease. Now it's gone again. So use too much water. Okay, so I'm going to dry that off again, and then in the next lesson, let's have a look at putting on some finishing details. 10. Finishing Touches & Final Thoughts: Interesting. In this lesson, let's just put on some finishing touches to our work, and I would like a little bit more blue in the hand because it's just a little bit too red for me at this point. So I'm just going to take some ultramarine blue straight out of the tube, so unmixed with anything. And I'm going to make a really light wash, like, very, very light wash. And I'm just going to go over some of the areas and shadow with this light wash so that it just kind of tones down the redness, maybe even make it look a little bit purple, but not like the purple shadow, more of a blue tinge to it. And I'm just going to work my way across the hand, adding the blue two areas here and there. I don't want to be covering everything necessarily, but yeah, I just really want to tone down that red tone. I can also make some shadows a little more intense like this one down here, for example, and adding some blue to the wrinkles. That's one thing and I'm going to have to dry that off again. Now I'm just going to go back to my skin tone one and see that there's a light wash there and I'm just going to go over this area here. It's a little bit too intense. And I'm going to smooth that in as well. So with a clean and damp brush, I am just going over this part here to make a nice smooth transition on the back of the hand. Maybe use the slightly larger brush for that. Number ten, for example, then again, skin tone one. I'm just going to go some of these areas too. Giving it a little bit more life, I feel. And I'm not going to go over everything. I'm just going to touch on some areas, and I'm alternating between colors to give it a little bit more variety and volume. So this is not all white. Don't forget to smooth out your brush strokes. I don't want any sharp edges on the soft surfaces of the hand where there aren't any sharp edges. And I'm just going to work my way around the hand covering the areas where I feel like it needs a little bit more color to have a little bit more vibrancy. And I'm just still doing that with my skin tone one. I really like how bright these highlights are under the fingertips here in the reference photo, and I feel like in my painting, currently, they're just a little bit colorless. I'm just going to go over those as well with my skin tone one. And remember, if you make a mistake or you go over the lines, you can pick it up with some tissue paper. And I'm just going to take my skin tone to that I've still got here on my palette I'm just going to cut over this part again. Well, I feel like it needs a little more intensity. Again, I'm still building up those shadows and heightening the contrast, and then I'm going to smooth it out a little bit, trying to avoid sharp edges or crisp edges. I want it to be very smooth. Insinuating some little bones here as well. You can always smooth it out. I put a little color in this line here. You can see there's a little bit of a highlight next to it, which accentuates that too. Maybe you can use slightly smaller brush for that. I'm not liking how that has dried. You can always just go and correct stuff as you notice it. I can in pigment. Over some of these brush strokes that are already there, I'm just insinuating now these lines. But you don't want to go over the top. I'm just putting on some finishing touches here and there. Just going to go over the thumb a little bit more. I think I've left it a little bit too light. It's a little bit more in shadow, so I really want to just up that contrast a bit. Okay, I think I'm actually quite happy with the hand at this point, and I'm just going to go and grab a little bit of my coffee brown and start adding that to the leaves to give it a little bit more contrast. And I think also because the leaves are green and there's a bit of a red tone to the brown, that will also give it a nice kind of variety. And also make it more vibrant because you probably know that if you put two colors next to each other that are opposite on the color wheel, they actually make each other more vibrant. I really like to add different colors to an element that you may think is just one color. So, for example, the leaves, you might think it's mainly just, you know, green. But if you just add a little touch of something else, it just really makes it pop and it just really makes it a little bit more dramatic. So one of your challenges is to start looking at your reference image and really start to see the different colors in the different elements. And if you can't see them, you can start to imagine them and just start working them into your painting. Hook, that's a little bit too much, so I'm just going to remove that and move it around a little bit. And then I'm going to smooth that out, as well. I don't want the brown to start overtaking the leaves, the overall color of the leaves. So if I feel like that's starting to happen, I really need to stop. And I can also just go ahead and remove some of the pigment. Maybe here I could add a little bit more of the blue black, as well. And I'm just switching between colors, going back to my coffee brown. I think right here, I need to add a little bit more of the green. And back to coffee brown. I'm just being pretty liberal with my brush strokes in here. All I want to get is a visual effect. I don't need to be very detailed with the actual leaves or what they look like or anything like that. Maybe last but not least. I'm going to take some purple shadow and a little bit of blue. Not that much. Oh. And just put in some really fine details. Just the finishing touches here. Sometimes just a very small spot of color will help make everything else stand out. So you don't want to be going over the top. You really just want to be focusing on small, small details and just accentuating them. Going over the shape of these shadows on the inside of the hand again in the fingers. Just heightening those shadows that contrast. I was looking for the darkest areas, as well. And I'm just going to remove a little bit of pigment from here where I feel like I've used a little bit too much. And on this highlight here, I'm going to apply a little bit of the skin tone one. When you're removing pigment with your brush, just remember to be careful so that you don't end up lifting up the paper. I think I'm pretty much done. If you do want to add in these wrinkles and accentuate them, make sure you do it really subtly. Smoothing out after you've edited them. And so there's part here that needs to go. Just looking for those final small details like on the thumbnail. Maybe there's a little real contrast that you want to heighten with a line or put in a wrinkle. I'm going to dry that off and then maybe I will give just a little bit of yellow ochre to some areas. Okay. I'm going to get my number ten brush. I'm just going to grab some yellow ochre just straight from the tube, pretty much. Just make a light wash. You always get a new test strip if you need one. Then I'm just going to go over some of the areas here. Some yellow ochre. And I want to use the yellow ochre just to balance out the red tones and the brown tones again, give it a little bit more life, add a little bit of variety, really lightly, though, and I don't want to be covering the whole thing, so just some touches. Maybe I'll just go over the plant as well with a little bit of a yellow ochre wash. You don't necessarily have to stick to the colors that you can observe in your reference image. So I feel like the yellow ochre is not really visible on the plant, but I can definitely see some yellow ochre on the hand and the arm, and I think it really works. Okay. One thing that I just noticed that I don't like at all, is this here? I'm not loving how this fingernail has turned out, so I'm just going to remove some pigment and try and make it a little bit more smooth. Maybe leave this up to the imagination a little bit more. And to remove the pigment, again, I'm just going to dab some clean tissue paper onto the area I want to remove and continuing to remove some pigment to try and get the shape of the fingernail right. And then I'm going to take some skin tone to and just add a little bit more pigment in there again, trying to get the shape of the shadows right. I feel like the shape of this shadow here isn't quite right, either, so I'm just going to have another look at that and try and get the shape of this shadow right. And also the shadow up here. I feel like I need to do a little bit of work on that as well. Going back to the pinky finger. Another thing I'm not too happy with is these creases. I'm just going to go over them with my skin tone, one again, and then I'm just going to blend them in a little bit. Again, I am going to switch colors and I'm going to go in here with the purple shadow a little bit. I feel like I could keep going for hours, but I'm actually quite happy with it. I feel like I'm going to leave it there and let's take it off the board once it's dry. Now that it's dry, we are ready to remove the paper from the board. When we remove the masking tape from the paper, we just roll it out like this so as to not damage the paper too much. And that is the finished work. Thank you again for joining me today. I can't wait to see all your awesome projects, so please remember to upload them to the project section of this class. Also, make sure to stop by my profile to see what else I'm teaching. And you can do that just by clicking on my name. If you love watercolor and you've always wanted to paint a portrait with watercolor, check out my class watercolor portrait from a photo, where we start from the very beginning and go through all the basics, and by the end of the class, you will have all the tools to paint a wonderful expressive portrait with watercolor. Alternatively, you might want to check out my class watercolor portrait from a photo using three tones in which we paint a portrait using only three tones. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to post them in the discussion section of this class. I hope you've enjoyed this class, and if you have, then I would love it if you could leave me a review in the review section. I read every single review, and they always motivate me to keep making these classes, things that I have learned on my creative journey, and it also assists other students in deciding which classes might be right for them. You can find me on Instagram under Nadia Underscore Underscore Valska. If these walls underscore Kid Talk or night project, where I share some different angles of my creative work with the world. Of course, you can also follow me here on Skill Share just by clicking on this button. That way, you're always in the loop about new classes and other things that I've got going on here. Thanks again for joining me today. It has been a pleasure having you, and I can't wait to see all your wonderful projects. I hope to see you again soon in one of my other classes.