Watercolor - Let's Paint a Dog: Lemon Beagle Edition!

1. Watercolor - Let's Paint a Dog: Lemon Beagle Edition!: Hi, I am Mary Evelyn and in today's skill share class, we are going to learn how to paint a lemon beagle. Very excited to show you some of these techniques that we're going to be using for the back lighting, some of the highlights, all these fun little nuances we're going to learn. This girl right here is named Lu Lu. And my dear friend Vicki Lu allowed me to paint her. So with this class, we are going to explore the fundamentals needed to create an eight by ten water color of a lemon beagle. This class is a great starting point for those wanting to explore a lighting effect with fur. During this class, we will go over wet on wet, wet on dry, as well as using mark making to refine the fur. And we will be using a white gel pen to create those brighter bits of fur. And I'm going to show you how to use those to achieve the little tiny furs that seem to sit atop the gray patches. So we're going to bring those to life. Just bring you one more step further if you're not super confident with pet portraiture to further your watercolor journey. So let's just jump right in. 2. Supplies: We are going to go over our supplies needed for this tutorial. All right, we're going to start off with, I've got my water over here to the side. I've got some paper towels. I've got my palette ready to go with paint. We are going to use a number 12 and a number four brush. We've our block. I've decided I'm going to do this on a block pad. This is Killman Jaro. I have taped off the edges. So I have a nice eight by ten section and I have white borders on here. Got me masking tape. You're going to need a white gel pin. A pin so we can do our transferring. I've printed out the outline, I've got my graphite paper. Our quick guide, if you've got everything or something even similar to the colors, brushes that you know you like, paper that you like does not have to be any of these particular things. But this is just what I'm using for this class. Without further ado, let's jump right in. 3. Transfer: Okay. I'm just going to tape down my print out here to my lovely watercolor paper. Tape it down with some masking tape. I've got my graphite paper here. We are going to put that dark side down. There is a shiny side and there is a dark side. I have done it the opposite before. I got my whole piece transferred and for nothing. So just make sure that's up underneath there. If you need to add an additional piece of tape. If you feel like your paper is going to teeter, totter, go ahead and add another piece. If not, let's just jump right in. I'm going to follow my lines and get this transferred onto our watercolor paper. 4. Background: Okay, we are going to work on filling in our background. We're going to use wet on wet to create lightness from left to right. We're going to have our light area to the left. We're going to deepen that to the right and we are going to use our pains gray to achieve this. I thought a darker background would be really nice for this one, just to really accent the highlights that are going to be on that nose and the little lip area here. All right. Wet on wet. Very exciting stuff. We're just going to put water straight down onto our paper. Feel free to be liberal with that water because we are going to go from one side to the other. So we want it nice and moist, or damp or whatever word you want to use to say that the paper has a nice sheen to it. Before we start adding the color in, you could go about this adding the color straight on the background. But I found that getting a wet on wet, you've got a little bit more of a ease of color. Gradiation is what I'm thinking. Okay, keep on adding that water. See this nice sheen right here? That's what we're looking for. Okay, so just work on filling the rest of that little area in water does have skin. You've heard me say this before. Your paint cannot go where your water is not. So keep that in mind when you're going around the edges of your pet portraits or whatever piece you're painting on. It could be a floral piece, a portrait of someone. Yeah. Just remember that's how that works. We create a little barrier with our water. If you notice some places starting to get a little dry, just go back over it with your brush. Now, we're going to come over here and work our Pines gray. Probably a good thought would be to add some water to this. Then go over here, get all your water on the paper. Then come bring your pigment. Because the longer that water sits on this pigment, the more reconstituted it's going to be. So you're going to have a darker pigment. But for the first side, it kind of works out because we don't really want a whole lot of darkness. So we're just going to start just pick a spot. It doesn't have to be in this exact area. Just be bountiful with the water. See up here. It's already starting to get a little bit dry, so we're just going to we're just going to add more more to that area. Okay. Your paper will most likely start to buckle which is okay if you've done the taped down method. You should be fine. I should be fine. My block is holding this paper down. Once it dries, it's going to get flat again. I have followed some people that like to put their water colors in between books or something heavy. They splits the back of the paper and then put it in a book or something. I just like to tape down the paper. I think that's a wise thing to do now with a little more pigment. And depending on which paint you're using, again, you don't have to use the exact same thing I am. You're just going to want to come over here and be even more generous with your pigments. Okay. I just like to guide my paint around the edges just to make sure I'm good and then I can bring that color out. You're always welcome to tip your paper. If you feel like your pigments aren't quite going where you want them to go, just tip your paper out. See where those paints are going to fall. I'm going to turn this and we're going to get the side angle here. If you tip this, we're going upside down for this angle here, you can see that paint move. If you're looking for a little bit more of a gradient, you can tip, tip. It's always the really fun part about water color is just going along, adding that color in, letting it do its thing, and you can come down with that and you're going to see all sorts of lovely things happening. Okay? You can always take a tissue or a little piece of paper towel. I'm going to grab one of my tissues. The Dollar Tree is a great place to get tissue that doesn't have any extra lint or fuzz or lot, a scent, or perfume or anything on it. They're just plain paper, which is what you want. You don't want anything to mix with your paint. When it comes to pulling up pigments from your paper, if you feel like you've gotten some areas that you're like, I don't know, it's a little blotchy. It is going to come with a bit of practice, but you can always go over pieces. If you feel like like this isn't particularly dark enough, you can always go back in and add another layer. And might do a little more tipping here just to get a little more Even as now where the buckling of the paper is, I have noticed the pigment likes to settle in those little the valleys of the paper because it is doing its own thing. Come under here, underneath that little ear flat there. The cool thing about this too, you can always adjust your outlining. If for some reason you felt like you drew it and it wasn't quite where you wanted to land it, you can always adjust it as you're adding in this background. Okay. Now we're just going to tip a little bit. See where we can go with this. Give you all that side angle here. See that paint move. See how wet that paper is. But if we want a smoother gradiation, and as you can see, there's a little bit of a pooling here. You can just tip it a little bit more. You can really see where that color is bumped up along the edge here. Just let it move back out. I think that is a nice tone for our background. I like the depth. You could always let this dry, come back on top of it, do it again, deepen it, or pick an entirely different color. My first round than I did the first background, it was with Davy's gray, has a little bit of a green undertone to the back. So you can definitely pick and choose which one. I just thought this would be a nice contrast. Let's move on to painting the chest and the chin shadows. 5. Shadows: Okay, we are going to work on giving the shading into the chest and the chin area. It is going to taper up a little bit into this top face area, but we are going to use wet on wet, create those big areas of shading. Then we're going to move on to some mark making, and then we're going to use a light wash of the ivory black. Again, just a black is fine or even a gray because you're going to use a very watered down version of that black ivory, very water down. And then we're going to use some of the white gel pen to create really bright areas of the whiskers that are underneath the chin and up here into the edge. So without further ado, let's go. I'm just going to wet this entire area First, note to self, allow your background to have a chance to dry reasonably well. Mine isn't completely dry. Still got some buckles here and there, but it's not to the point where my colors will bleed into the background. That's we want to avoid that. I mean, you don't have to avoid it, but if you want to avoid it, I would say probably better safe than sorry on that one. Super exciting painting water on paper, if y'all can tell. I'm going to tip the board here in just a minute so we can see what kind of a sheen I've got going on here. All right, let's see what we got. Okay, see that Nice she, the water. If I was to tip this all the way up, it would pool just a little bit. But for now I think I'm pretty happy with that. You can continue up in here, but we could connect that when we get ready to paint this area here. So we're just going to focus on the chest and up this direction here. Okay, I'm going to try to take very light wash here. We're going to go into this area, again, referencing our photo and those dark areas. The idea is that we've got a, a pretty good shadow casting from underneath the ear because our light source, I think I added the arrows. Now that I'm thinking through this, the arrows, we're coming this way, but really your light source is almost from here and back. You're creating a shadow. There's a shadow underneath that ear. So probably from the snout area, but we can go a little darker underneath the ear area. Then we've got a little dip underneath the chin. We come over here, there's like a line that pulls here my water is the paper soaked up, that water right there pretty quickly. Then we're this little round area here we're going to go, we're just going to bring some shading up here, connect to that ear a little bit. And now you're probably thinking, wow, this looks really muddy, really dirty. It'll pull together. It always does. It pulls together. We're really just wanting those soft base shadows before we go in and do mark making. That's the idea. Anyway, and we're even going to go in and add some more depth. Once this part dries, we're going to dry and then we're going to come back in and do some mark making. But right now you're just kind of hopping around. You've got that nice shiny paper. I'm going to show you all this again, to the side here, show all what kind of a sheen we have going on. The best way I know to do it without anyone being here in person to show you how it looks. It's really something you get the hang of with practice, even if you want to practice this type of thing off to the side before diving into the portrait, that is totally up to you. Okay, I'm feeling pretty good about these soft, deep areas. Again, we can go a little darker under the ear, however, to actually pull that down just a little bit, I'm going to add that drop shadow. Once this is dry, if you ever feel like something's too dark, you can always come take your brush, pat it on your paper towel, and you can come along and pick up a little bit of the pigment from the paper. Always remember that's an option depending on your paper and the staining properties of the paint that you're using. That's the other thing. If you want to create little striations, a brush is pretty dry. I don't really have anything but you can go across your dark areas. You can create little lines. Just an option, something to create motion and flow with your fur texture. Okay, we are going to allow this part to dry before I come in with a mark making. And then I will show you how we're going to punch the shadows. We're going to get them even deeper. 6. Mark Making: Okay, we've got our paper dry for the most part. Maybe a little damp here and there. You want to make sure it's fairly dry before moving on to mark making. I am also going to be using this number four to create those thinner lines. We are still working with our black mixture here. Just very faint, could even be lighter than this. All you're going to do, feel free to use your palette. However, whichever palette you have and really get in there and mix. I'm going to bring this over just a little bit so you all can kind of see what I'm doing here with this water and paint just the lightest tones here. What I'm going to do is I've got a little bit of paper towel past my palette that I'm going to use. Okay, here we go. So those lines that we created when we did our outlining, I'm just going to follow those a little bit, create some strations here and a fun secret, I think you'll know. I have a heat gen, that's typically what I do with these. I just take a little bit of heat when I'm trying to get this to dry a little quicker. You will notice your colors do some funny things when you apply heat to it, but that's okay. All right. We have talked about this, if you've ever done my classes before about how don't do a line. Line, line typically some like a curve a little bit to these lines, each one you could paint this three times and it probably would turn out three slightly different versions. Just because you're going to learn something each round, you do again. Instead of allowing my fingers to move my brush, I typically move it with my wrist. I don't know if that's a help to anyone, but just thought I would mention it, since it's something that I do in my mind with my hand. I'm typically thinking of a slight curve like flow. I like motion. We're just curving, curving, curving. I like to try to make these fairly simple. Not too simple. We need to challenge ourselves. We do, But at the same time, give yourself some wiggle room to really hone in on what you're wanting to achieve with this. See this little area here. I got a little bit more water pooling there. So what I can do is I can just bring my brush, I can pull that color away. I'm dabbing my paint brush onto the paper towel. I'm actually going to move my palette back so I can use the inside one, just so you'll see my work flow here. You can always control how much paint you have on your brush. Okay, what this is coming down to is I'm looking at the general shadows on that little quick guide, there's a black and white version that might help you understand the depth of some of these shadows that are underneath her chest and chin area. Okay, here we're going to go up, tend to jump around. If I were left to my own devices, I would be all over the place with this piece. But I want to break it down so that you understand how the brush strokes work. Okay, again, strokes that we made when we first did our transfer. I'm just simply following those lines, that's the idea here. All right, And we're just going to do strokes here, come down this way, add some deeper ones here. Kind of swing those up to fit into that groove there. And we're just following those lines again, just depending on how much you want this to pop, we can really lean in on that shadow underneath the ear. Feel pretty good about that anyway. And then I'm going to add some more. Lines here. I think we've got a little edging of fur right in this area here. Okay. And then just depending on how much of that curve you want to take, go up, up, up, up. There's a deep area here in this little area. I added a little more water and what I'm going to do is taper that out. A taper or feather, I think I've used that term before. Feather it out, get underneath the edge here. If you feel like those lines are still too dark, you can always go even further with that and just create lots of depth. Now, this area does connect as well. I think I almost forgot about that one. That is part of Nick. Nick flaps as we will refer to them. So you can just add a little bit there. And if you need to pull up any of your gray, you can just use a tissue. Okay? And there is a little bit of a shadow here around this jowl area here. Okay. And then we're just looking over just to see what else we may need to adds a little bit of a darker area here. If you've done my classes before, you know you can always go back in with a gray watercolor pencil and really punch up those fur lines. If you like to try that. There are some illustrations I do. I really like to outline with that watercolor pencil just at. Alright, deepening up that area. Now this is up to you as far as how much of the fur texture you really want to indicate. You can either do that dark area and go back over it with the white gel pen or go in and create the little tiny lines with your color. Couple ways you can do it new, right or wrong way. Really punch that up and then if you need to bring it out, you can always bring it out. Okay, we've gotten our shadows done here. We're going to move on to the next one where we're actually going to paint the jowl area and the nose. So we'll get in those pinks and a little bit more of the pains gray. And I'll show you how to deepen some of those areas. So that's what we'll move on to next. 7. Jowl & Nose Part 1: Okay, we are ready to move on to our jowl and nose area. So we're going to start underneath this area, We're going to add that little bits of pink. We're going to add the pinks over here and a little bit up underneath the nose area. We are going to do a wet on wet to create the soft pink areas around the jowl. And then we're going to allow that to dry and move on to the darker areas. Let's jump in. I am going to need to reconstitute this potter's pink. You also can just use a pink in general, or even a red and just the smallest amount of pigments possible. I'm going to rinse out my brush. Come back over here. I'm just going to add a little bit just around the edges here. She really has the most up underneath here and around that edge. And then you can allow this one to blend. We talked about the two colors going up against each other. But we can blend here. We can go up, up, up, up. And then we can come around to this side here as well. Okay, I'm going to grab that pink and dab, dab, dab. And I'm going to grab a little pink and put it over here, and it should just fuzz away from where the water is. And we can even go over, we're going to have a dark patch over here, but we can go down with that pink. That's perfectly okay, not any big deal. Okay. If you feel like it needs to be a little darker over here, just tap, tap with that brush. Rinse off that brush and come back over. We're going to go up and under that nose just a little bit in same over here, the tippy top. I'm going to come to this other camera angle, to the tippy top of this area here. And we're just going to dab, dab, dab, all the way up. Dab, dab, dab. It's pretty straightforward. There's not really a right or wrong way to do this. The potter's pink, what I like about it, it is a Daniel Smith color, It's very granulating. It has that tendency to spread apart and create a little bit of that texture. Pant in over here, give a little bit and show you how shiny little bit of that sheen. But it is very granulating. Okay, we are going to allow this area to dry and then we'll go over it with darker pigments. 8. Jowl & Nose Part 2: Okay. We're going to jump in and work on a little bit of areas here. On these areas, I do use a little bit of the pines gray as well as the ivory black. I just go back and forth, make a little mixture of that ivory black and then bring some of that navy or the pains gray. I just view it as like a pain, like a Navy, almost an indigo in my brain. Then we are going to do wet on dry. I'm just going to come over here to this area here. It's a little darker towards the edge of that separation of the lip. Rinse my brush off, dab, dab, dab, and I'm going to pull that color out. This is how I tend to get gradients when I'm working on a dark to a lighter section. Then you can go in and tap along the edge and it will slowly fade into that other section. Same thing up here, we can start that. Just think about where the lip curves under, how I tend to look at these things. I have to think of them in three D form. So that my brain can understand where shadows and colors go apart from just looking at the picture. You can think about something in three D. I do think it will help. Okay, we're in dab, dab. Dab do its own thing. I've got a little bit of texture going on here. I'm going to come over here, hold up if you feel like you have too hard of a line, if it needs to be a little softer. You know, just to rinse your brush off and just follow along the edge there. That brings us into the area where we're going to do a, a few more first strokes. A little bit of toning up here. We want some shading and some depth. We do need to address that. The lip area is going to be a little darker and that's going to get really dark when we paint that in. But right now, I'm just creating some depth. I'm just going along the edge here, a little bit of that darker pigment. I'm just barely touching the tip of my brush in that little carbs are and she has a swoop down on the tip there. Again, if you want to pull some of that color, it fades this direction. That might be the way to think of it in terms of tones and colors. Okay, so I've got just this really light mixture over here. And we're going to go ahead and follow some of those fur strokes we made earlier. So we're just going along. We're tapping the brush and we're kind of fading out that little area, tap, tap, tap. And if you need a little area darker and it's kind of damp in here, you can kind of tap the color off there. And then we're just taking little little lines. Do experiment with different brushes. Your four round might be a little different than the one I have. If it's an older brush, the tips do get worn down. Just experiment with how much of a brush stroke you want on this particular port. And then right here, if I feel like this is not really working for me, just almost like scrub it a little bit so it blends in. I could go back in and add a little of that pink just to tie it together because we are going to go over that with some white pin markings. Pull it out so the darker you have your base, the brighter those whites are going to stand out. Once we go back over M. All right. Lulu does have this little patch you go to go about right here. You can do this one wet on wet or you can put that patch on there wet on dry. Not a big deal. Either way you go, I think will be great. Come over here and we're just going to add a few, a little extra strokes. Again, looking at your reference photo. Throw it on your TV, your monitor, your laptop in front of you, and just have it sitting there. Okay, I'm going to get the bottom of this chin. Damp with a little bit of water. Okay, and bring it down. I'll show you where that moisture level is at here. Let's see. Not a ton of moisture actually, it soaked pretty quickly into that area. I'm going to get it a little more saturated. Here we go. Res, or saturation. Grab a little bit of that black and then we're just going to tap. I'm just going to tap in there. This is how I end up doing blending or gradients. A, I will just tap in some color and let it do its thing. That's the cool thing about water color. Part of what I really like about water color in general is how well you can just layer in colors. Okay, got that little lip area there. It's dark and we can bring that line all the way up connects. I'm going to do a little mixture of this black here where that lip under lip, it's pretty dark. We can actually go under here, create even a darker line. Okay, following edge there can go a little darker here. Then we're going to go ahead and fill in this area. Get some more black mix mix. That is actually a pretty dark area. If you want to get a really nice saturated mixture of your black and some water, we're just going to fill in that area. It does get a little lighter out towards the edge because we don't want just this black pit for the mouth area. Wash my brush off just a little bit. I'm pulling that color out. It's got a little bit of a transparency to it. Hopefully that explanation makes sense. It's not just a completely solid black area. We've got a little bit of gradiation happening. Since I am using a gas, it does move around pretty easily. That is something to think about depending on which paint choice you go with. You can go with a simple black for this, it's not a big deal. I just like the guash for nostrils and eyes, it really creates a lot of depth. Okay. And speaking of that, I'm going to go ahead and jump to the nose Nostril. Since I'm working on this color here, we'll go ahead and fill in those little circle areas or oval areas or however you want to call them. They're nostrils. That's just what they are. They're not necessarily a particular shape. All right, so we've got a curve there were that little nostril, we've got a little bit of a curve area there. And then we're going to take this, go ahead and shape up that nose a bit. We do have a big highlight on this side, I don't want to go too with that side of it. The nose does have some potters pink in it. It's got the little brown edging, so we can mix some of our potters pink and go around to this little edge here. Swing around, bring it to here. Just fill that in. And then I'm going to grab some of that guash and go around the edge, creates a little bit of depth. I'll bring this into camera view here. We've got a nice shiny nose here. Just rinse my brush off. Did a little bit of dabbing just to give that nose. It is a pretty dark nose that does angle in so we can fix that with a little bit of the white angles here. So yeah, put the darks where the darks go and the lights where the lights go and you'll be great. All right, I'm going to come in here and reconstitute some of this permanent white that I've added to the palette. And I'm going to add a rim edging onto the nose area here. We're going to just outline that. Seeing, we can make that little line that I put on the outside of there disappear. To me that's still, there we go see. That's what I like to see when I'm working with some highlights. I want to see it because it will fade. It's not a super opaque white. Again, what you have, you do not have to use the exact colors that I have. We are going to use our gel pen on top of that as well to really stand out. But again, just following your reference pictures, looking at where those lights, the high lights hit, like underneath the little nose. You could really get into it and add, there's almost some creasing that happens from the inside of the nostril to the outside, if that makes sense. Hopefully that makes sense. Like these little creases, what we call what I've come to know with noses, as nose leather. So that's what I mean by like the little crinkle. It's really like a nose leather. Okay, we got that part done. Would you need to swing over and get a little bit more of this area? Refined, again, just glancing back and forth. What's like, what do you want to show up and see? This mixture is pretty dark. So if you feel like you've gotten to that point, you're like, oh man, that's really dark. Just grab a paper towel or tissue and dab it up. A few more areas here indicate those little whisker, whisker areas. We will add the whiskers. I'll add that with the pen. And then up under here, and again, if I feel like it's too dark, just take your tissue and just dab off what you think. See, I can go in here and do this a little darker and then take my paper towel and dab it off just a little bit. Also a good way to do it. Okay. And then you're just scanning over, you're deciding, okay, have I got it dark enough? Have we got all the depths we want? I feel like the chin can be a little darker, so I'm going to add that a little bit. That was wet on dry. And then I'm just going to feather it out a little bit more. I feel like I had a hard water line right there. And then if you want to continue to add more of those little highlights, I think that would be great. I'm going to swing up here and just soften that line, the edge from the background to Lulu here. Okay? All right. So we are going to go ahead and add, since we've gotten our shadows and our depth, we're going to go ahead and add those white highlights on here. Before we move on to the ears, I want to start down here in the chest area and show y'all on top of let's see, on top of this gray area. You're just going to take just a line at a time and you'll notice newer pins. The ink will work better. That's how we want to word it to make sure you can see this. Okay? Just adding little tiny first strokes on top of this dark gray. It shows up better on the dark gray. And like I said, sometimes you will notice your pin working better or worse. Sometimes a good tap or two helps the ink get going. Again, it just depends on how far you want to go with this. And I'm going to come up here and give you all a little look as to some of that. We're going to come over here. Really short little strokes are fine. Those work, you're going to give it that little punch that this portrait is needed to indicate that. Fuzziness, That's the words we want to use. Fuzziness, whatever terminology you would like to use. I just think it helps highlight things a little easier. I like to, when it comes to this darker area, outlining with the white, I feel like helps a little bit. It'll take a little bit of time and you can add as many of these little markings that you want to really create the look that you're after. You could also use a frisket or a miscuit on top of this to preserve the white of the paper. And you can use it like this, but I like to go this direction with it. Sometimes faster little strokes get the inking. My favorite part of doing this chin area is going to be the actual little b, stubby chin. I love all these little fur strokes. This can also be achieved with some guash, white quash. Just tap, tap, tap. Show you close what we're looking at here. See these lovely little little fur markings. I'll come up here and we'll show you a little, just almost want to pull down, just depending on how you like to hold a pin. Like I said, if you buy these pins and they're a little bit newer, they tend to work a little bit better. These can always be softened with a damp brush. If you feel like you overdid it in one area, you can certainly take a brush and tone it down. I always think that's a good idea. If you're not sure how much of that you want to include, then just working with the direction of the fur, like she's technically got this really lighter area that kind of sticks out. I probably want a to overboard with this shadow right there. She's got like this kind of pulls out here and then goes back in. And then same thing here, she's, this little jowl area goes up. And those little fur marks, they, they go up everywhere. But look at your reference photos and find a direction you can kind of follow, should help guide you a little bit. And then up here towards the top lip, I like to have them come over the top here just a little bit. And then take these areas here and just follow your directional fur patterns here. A white colored pencil also achieves a similar, really soft for, especially around this like little nose area here. If you were to use a white watercolor pencil, it would create a very soft look. This is a part where we can go along the edge here, because there is a quite the bright highlight here then if you like that look, go for it. If you want to add a few dots, go for that too. I really did leave this area pretty bright. I could add a little bit of shading there, but I don't think I will. This is a part where you can have some fun, can bring those little wisps out. Bring it over here. Show you what I'm talking about. Just keep those curves going. Sometimes your pen will do some crazy things here. You get all those little little peach fuzz fluffs, okay? And then you just decide how far to take those white lines underneath the chin. Just adding the last little, a few areas here. Okay. And if you feel like bringing that pink out a little bit on this side, feel free to do that. If you're just looking at it, there's always, you can always go back in and add to what you're doing. If you feel like, oh, I'm not sure if I quite got that. The dark, you know the depths that I want. Feel free to just go back over it, just experiment with it, see what works. Okay, let's move on to the ears. 9. TheEars: Okay, let's pink the ears. We're going to be using wet on dry to create a gradient effect from the dark to the light towards the end of the ears, especially this ear here. And we're going to use that Van **** and raw sienna to complete this step. And then we're going to use the white pen to create some edging and get that nice little fur texture that we're wanting to achieve. All right, let's dive in, I'm going to reconstitute my Van **** and my raw sienna. Now, if you have a palette that looks similar to this, feel free just to dip your tissue or paper towel and give it a nice wiped down. I do really love porcelain palettes for this or ceramic. I just go, you know, TG, Max Ross or like home goods or something, they have the really great trays. Okay. So we're going to take some of that Van **** Brown, and I'm going to start under the ear and work my way down. I'm going to go ahead and do this ear, probably sensibly, starting on this ear so that your hand is not in it. Makes more sense. Just paint how you'd like. Y'all probably know me well enough to know how my style is. Okay, so I want a good, a decent amount of pigment there. I'm going to come down here and I'm also going to add more pigment there. We have a nice sheen. And then I'm going to take just some water from my container and I'm going to pull that color down. See how we've maintained, we've got this dark underside and then we're just pulling that color out. Then if you want to add a little bit of light color here, add a little bit of that Raciana down towards the end. The Rawiana has a more yellow tone to it versus the Van ****, so you decide on which tone you prefer to go after, but for her, since she is a lemon beagle, we can add a little bit more of that raw scan in there, won't hurt anything. Okay. And solely up to you, I would say her furs tends to be a little more velvety, but if you want to add some texture in there, you could go in and do some water blooms, do some lifting with your paper towel. Okay. I decide on her ear. I think originally I might have added a little pink, but I think it just is pulling these little strokes and I'll show you up close. See we've got a nice sheen on that ear. But we're just going to pull little strokes up just to blend in that area. Then you can take a little bit of that gray mixture we had up there, create a few lines to blend the direction, basically like directional fur, if that makes sense. Okay. If you feel like you need to go a little darker underneath that ear, get a little bit of that Van **** or whatever brown you're using. Just come under the edge. If you will notice, I know we're into this project quite a ways. But if you'll notice the way I've been holding my brush, when I tend to fan out colors, I hold it to the side. I don't hold it straight up. We go to the side, it creates a nicer line. Okay, I'm going to swing over while that's, I'm going to swing over here. Work on that ear. I'm actually going to start up here in the top area. Work my way down like I did here. We'll just come in, this little swoopy area here, make a nice mark. Then she's got a pretty dark area here, which I'm actually just going to do wet on dry ink. I'm going to just leave it. That one I'm going to leave. Okay. We can bring this color down. Her ear has got some patches on it. I feel like there's definitely some white that comes through on those. So we can go back in with that pin or a little bit of our white, which I think I'll do just to soften the ear again, I kind of want that area to be dark. So as you can tell, it's definitely it pulls out as I go. Okay. So here now, as far as that guideline okay, here we go. Make yourself a little guideline. I'm going to grab some of that. Rosana, for the edge here. Okay. We're going to pull that color up up. And then she's just got some bits that come again. Just be observational. Observe your image, your reference image, and pull from that as far as color tones and where to add some of that mark making that comes into play with this ear. She's got this little swoop that comes down, okay. Then I'm going to come in and add a little bit of gray around the bottom here, create some fur texture. Okay, so I'm just adding a little, little bitty areas of directional fur. So we've got two little dots over here. She's got two little little colored dots and a little bit of edging here on her ear. And as I was looking at that, I realized over here, she's got a little small patch that just needs to be filled in with some of that raw Sienna that she just Just a little patch. Just wipe your brush off. And then if you want to pull some of those edges down so that it looks like it blends a little bit more. Same thing over here. If you feel like that line is a little too harsh, just flick and swish just sometimes. Sometimes I feel like that's how this works. All right. Let's add a little color to the top of her head, just looking a little ghosty up there. Okay. Same thing here. You're you're just going to gently pull your brush in that direction, towards the right. Unless you're left handed, then you might go towards the left. That makes sense to me. I am directionally challenged. I teach Zumba on the regular. There are definitely many days where I shout out some direction and I am definitely not going in that direction. Okay. And then we've got that fur band that sticks straight up that way. Okay. I think all of our little colored fur areas are accounted for. You can go in and mix a little bit of ivory black with some of your Van **** Brown. Create a little bit of a darker brown if you want to go in to dab this brush off Ababa. If you want to go in and create a few mark making areas to indicate some fur direction. If you like to leave it solid and soft, that is totally up to you and it's a great look. Just always want to offer all options. It's my goals. Options. Options, Okay. And I'm going to take a little bit more of that Van ****, I really want this little crease to show. And then same thing here, give that pop that it needs. And then I notice she's got a little bit of, I think a little bit of the brown over here in this corner. Okay, same thing here. If you want to use a little bit of that, make sure and go through here and add a few lines to indicate that direction. Fur direction. Blend some of it from the edge into that white. I think that would be great. Okay, I think we've got the ears filled in. We can do a little bit of mark making one. You can do a soft cast with some of this white. I really digging into this white when I reconstitute pat. Get in there and get the paint that I need. Not shy about it. You can go in with that, create a soft look because it will be soft, it will not be as opaque what it's showing right now. It will fade quite a bit as it dries. Which can be really beneficial if you're trying to create a really nice soft effect on this ear. Which I mean, who wouldn't want to make a nice soft effect on a cute puppy dog ear? That's for sure. And then you can always blend. Always blend out if you feel like, okay, that was a little too much chunk, you can go that route too. Same thing if you want to create a little little areas. Yeah. And that'll just create a really nice soft little section. And same thing over here, if you want to bring any of that, create some lines. All right. I'm going to take a handy dandy. Sorry. Any of y'all that have watched blues clues knows about the handy dandy things? Oh my goodness. When I'm trying to get in a bold line and my pin is not cooperating, I'll tend to go in little tiny zig zag motions, as it were, to get to the effect that I want. You can, for the most part, draw on fairly damp paper with this pin. It works pretty well. Not all the time, but pretty well. Okay, and then I feel like with this area here, I'm just going to add a few lines here and there just to bring it all together, like the ear goes together. We don't want the ear to feel like it's too choppy. Hopefully that makes sense. And then I like using this for outlining. I really think it helps make things pop. And then the same thing here, we can just make that part pop. And then if you want to add some little fur as if it was coming down, that is a great idea too. Now I'm realizing with this adding in a little bit more of the shadow or the lines, this area is pretty solid. I'm just going to add a little shade and a little shade there. Okay, I think our last and final step with this one is going to be the eye. And then we'll do some final details. 10. Eye and Final Details: Okay, we're going to tackle this. I'm going to dig into some ivory black. I'm going to do the outline first. If you've done any of my classes, you know, I like to do out, for the most part, I like to do outlines first. Not always the case. You may notice with this particular angle, you might be feeling a little intimidated by the. Because I feel like there is a balance at which the way it's supposed to and then where it looks a little crazy. We're going to try to avoid the crazy look we're going to do. We did the outline, but in the pupil, the pupil is sitting towards the right, that left area. I'm going to add some Van **** too. It's really all going to come together with those highlights. I think based on I might have made this a little taller. Again, if you feel like that eye is not quite working for you, change shape a little bit. Okay, I'm going to leave a couple little highlights here. Going over here to see what I can do here. Add some of those. Might go like a really light mixture, almost not quite like eyelashes, but there's like a deeper brown around the eye. Like I said, I might have made this a little more. That top lid is pretty thick, I might have done that just a little bit, as she does have some eyelashes. So you can always pull that uh, a little bit, you don't want to get away from you either. Can always leave it. Grab some of this white and see if we can go in and add some highlights to indicate she direction that thing. It's really all that comes down to with eyes is the highlights. The highlights make or break, okay? And if you want to get some raw Sienna in there too, try to lighten up that one side of the eye. Just kind of play around with it. We will add that really bright highlight with the white pin, which is going to give it a lot of shape. That here will bring bring this in for a closer look, but we've got a little bit of the highlight here, but we're going to bring it even further with the pin as long as we've got our pupil really muddied up the eye line like the top of the lids. So I'm just going to take a little bit more black and I'm just going to follow. I'm not going to make it any bigger, I'm just going to follow what I have and then try to connect that. I'm going to take this pen and add a couple of highlights here. I'm going to go up and over here. Yeah, this n can get away from you if you're not careful. Okay. And then if you need a smaller brush for this eye area, I totally get it. It's a pretty small, pretty small little area. I like to fuzz out the highlights when I have them in pet eyes. And then go back in with that white and really establish the high light so it has a soft effect to it. Hopefully that makes sense. Might not. Try to explain things multiple ways. I am going to add just a little bit of shading under here. Try to indicate that lidded area. Does that make sense? Where it comes, the snout comes and you've got this socket for the eye. That's what I'm right now trying to achieve. And then again, if you feel like it's too dark but like where the snout goes and then it's going off into the eye area. And I'm actually going to lower this brown just a little bit. This is how I work with pet portraits too. If I feel like I've either overdone something or underdone something, I just tweak it a little bit until it feels right. That's process guess is what I want to say. That's part of the process. Okay. Feeling better about that? Better, yeah. Like I said, this was a little bit of a challenge. I did it once through, definitely learn from it. And I will show you all that different color background too. We've got this one here, we've got the highlight, there's a little bit of the brown here. And then we've got the pin up underneath the edge of the eye. So that's what we're trying to achieve, just trying to make sure we've got the darks, where the darks go and the lights, where the lights go. And even if that means tweaking things just a little bit, we will do it, add that highlight in. Sometimes I just like to tap towards a circle. Hey, I think that looks good. You're just looking for the shape that's really your indicator of being completed or not, is just that shape. Okay, then as far as final touches go, you're just going to want to look over your portrait, see if there's any areas where maybe you want to add some more white lines. We haven't really added the whiskers per se, we've added this side whiskers. But as far as the big ones, I like to do those last because one of them, they come from underneath that chin and they go over the top of this ear. Things like that. You want to wait until the very end to accomplish because they just go over everything. Yeah, she's got a little whiskers that protrude from the sides and we've got those side ones, maybe a few that are longer. Like I said, if you wanted to go through here and do some work and add those little lines, be my guest. And then you can take a brush and make it soft. You can do that. That's totally up to you. Okay. I think I am pretty happy with the way she turned out and I think that'll do it for our painting. You did it. 11. Post Your Painting!: Congratulations, you just finished your lemon beagle painting. I would love to see your results. Please feel free to share them. Ask questions. I'm here to help. I'll give you a little bit of feedback. Please let me know if you need further feedback or if you would like a critique. They're all my favorites, just because I think you'll do such a great job. So I hope this gives you some things to think about and give yourself grace to grow, and let's get painting.