Watercolor Magic: One Character Five Ways

1. Introduction: Welcome to Watercolor Magic. Now, if you love watercolor and you're still trying to find your style or maybe you're stuck and you just want to try something new, this is the perfect class to do that. Join me as I share with you how I illustrate one character five different ways. With each illustration, we're going to use watercolor as a base, but I'm going to show you different ways of how you can use watercolor, and we're going to mix it up with lime. With illustration number 1, we're going to illustrate using watercolor, and then over the top we're going to use a traditional dip pen and Indian ink. With illustration number 2, we're going to use the micron fineliner and we're going to use a brush line. With illustration number 3, I'll be sharing how I use watercolor and pencil. Illustration number 4 is going to look much more graphic and stylized with a bold use of watercolor, and then we're going to bring in that fineliner micron pen to finish off the illustration. To finish with, we're going to use another illustration technique that I love, and it's watercolor with a charcoal line. Whether you are new to illustration and you're looking to find your illustration style or maybe you're a seasoned artist and you feeling stuck and you just want to try something new, as you go through this process of experimenting, you might come up with your own combinations. Grab your brushes, grab your paints, grab your pens, grab everything that you need, and I'll see you in class. 2. Project • Material List: For this class project, you are going to be working through the five illustrations alongside me. Then you will be uploading them either one at a time or at the end to the project section and we can all share our ideas and get excited and inspired by everybody else. In the attached files, I also have a PDF of the materials listed. I will show you each illustration and what materials are required for each one. We are doing five different illustrations, but I have still tried to keep the materials list minimal. I am now going to run through the list of materials that you will need. You will need some basics like a water container, a paint palette. I am using a porcelain plate. You will need kitchen towel and watercolor paper. I will be using an Arches 300gsm hot press. I recommend the hot press because it has a smooth surface. I have also put in a bonus class explaining watercolor paper in more detailed. You will need a quality round sable watercolor brush. I am using a Number 3 and Number 5, a light brown faber-castell aquarelle pencil and you'll need an eraser and a pencil sharpener. Now, I am using a scalpel blade to sharpen my charcoal pencil, but this is really an option. If you're not comfortable using a scalpel blade then please just use a really sharp pencil sharpener. You will see that I use a large brush to sweep away any debris from the illustration. If you want to use the same character that I'm using just go to my projects and under attached files you will see a PDF that you can print off. I will be using Winsor Newton tube watercolor paints but you are more than welcome to use what you have. I am using a Paynes gray, a lamp black, yellow ocher, cadmium red, cadmium yellow and a mauve. In addition to the watercolors the Illustration Number 1, you will need black Indian ink, a dip pen and a standard metal nib. For illustration Number 2, you will need a micron fine liner and you will also need a watercolor brush pen. I filled mine with the Indian ink. Illustration Number 3, all you will need is a 2B pencil. For illustration Number 4 you will need the micron 0.02 fine liner. Finally for illustration Number 5, you will need your 2B medium generals series charcoal pencil, a smudge stick or a blending stump and an eraser. Please, don't forget to upload. I think it will be really fun to see where you go with this. There comes a point where you are following the guidelines that I am setting pretty closely and then all of a sudden you can break free and maybe even come up with your own way of illustrating. Give yourself that moment to be able to explore, experiment and take it further if you need to. When you finish watching all of the lessons, please recommend this class or even better leave a review if you like the class or found any of the information helpful. This gives the class more visibility on Skillshare so that more people can find it and take part. If you want to be notified for future classes, make sure to follow me and post any new discussions or questions under the community tab. Thanks for joining me and I will see you on the other side. 3. Illustration 1 • Watercolour • Dip-pen: Welcome to Watercolour Magic, where you can explore a number of different watercolor techniques using the same illustration. In this lesson, I'll be showing you how to use watercolor with an ink outline using a traditional dip-pen and Indian ink. I'll be using my circus girl character, but you're more than welcome to use your own character illustration. You can find a PDF outline of the circus girl by clicking on the "Your Projects" tab, which is situated under this video. Once you've clicked on "Your Projects," the PDF of the circus girl outline is on the right hand column under attached files. You can see that I've already drawn a soft outline of my character onto the watercolor paper. I like to use a brown or a light brown Faber-Castell Aquarelle pencil. Now, the reason for this is that when you start using the watercolor, the Aquarelle pencil will dissolve and disappear, so you won't have to rub it out, and it won't mark your illustration as much as, let's say, a lead pencil or a graphite pencil. I trace the outline of my circus girl illustration onto an Arches 300gsm hot press watercolor paper. Now, the reason I really like using the hot press is because the surface of the watercolor paper is really smooth. I also like the fact that it's 300 gsm. That means it's thick and weighty, which means that when you come to use your watercolor, the paper won't buckle, and it will hold the colors, and the pigment of the watercolor really well. It's really worth investing in a really quality watercolor paper. When it comes to illustrating and outlining a work, I always find it easier to start with the larger areas. I would start on the torso, the legs, the arms, that sort of thing, and leave the face and the details to the last minute. Now, my reason for this is, you almost use the larger areas as a warm up. You're getting familiar with the tools and the technique, and by the time you get to the face, and the nose, and the mouth, and all of those tiny details, you'll have a really good feel for this technique. The whole time I'm thinking about the line, I don't want to keep the line exactly the same thickness. The beauty about this nib, and this dip pen technique is that you have a varied line. I can sometimes use it quite light, and just touch the paper, and sometimes even come away from the paper. Then I can press harder and the line becomes thicker. I think this variation in line adds a lot of movement, and interest to the line work. I'm only now working my way around the face, and the edges of the head, and adding in the features. Now, you can see that I'm using a Winsor & Newton Black Indian ink. Now, my reason for this is that, once I've laid down the ink, and it's completely dried, it's there to stay. It's not going to go anywhere. It's not going to wash away when I start adding the watercolors, which is really fantastic when it comes to this style of illustration. Now, I'm applying the ink using a dip pen. My dip pen has a wooden handle, but you can buy the cheap plastic versions, they work just as well. I'm using just a standard metal nib. As you slowly work your way around the illustration, you'll find this rhythm, and you'll find this movement, and you can see even with this arm, you can see how I move from a thicker line to a thinner line. Then when I'm moving around tiny details like the fingertips, I'm lighter. You want to try and stay relaxed, especially in the shoulders and around the hand and wrist area. You don't want to rush either, you just want to get into the nice flow. Here I am just working around the rabbit, and just adding in the eyes, the nose, and a little bit of a smile there. I'm just putting in a bit of shadow on the left-hand side of the girl character, and I'm moving around the arms. I'm just putting it a little bit of detail around the rabbit's hands, now drawing his torso, and his legs. Now, he's a cloth rabbit, I mean, you can put in little stitch marks, whatever you need to do, and that little cotton tail. The whole idea is that this illustration, and this outline isn't perfect. It looks hand-drawn. It looks like it has inconsistencies, and that gives it a bit of a nice flavor. It has this air of authenticity around it. There's something lovely about being able to play around with the strength of the line. You can see how I'm turning the paper. I'm trying to avoid my wrist and my hand from smudging the wet ink, so also, be very careful about that. If you're working fast, just keep swiveling the paper rather than dragging your wrist across the page, and smudging everything. Here I'm placing stripes where I feel that the illustration will be slightly darker. I might use a darker color when I'm using the watercolor. I'm also working my way across the illustration, adding in just a little bit more detail. The stitch marks on the rabbit toy. I'm coming in, and just putting the final touches on my character's face, and eyes, and the smaller details. Once you're ink work has completely dried, like it really must be dry, you'll then be ready to apply some watercolor. Here, I'm mixing cadmium red and yellow, and you can see the consistency is almost like a cross between a milk, and cream texture. I've left it quite wet, and I'm applying the wet watercolor onto a dry paper. It's a wet on dry technique. You can see I'm just using my number three brush, and I'm just moving it quite quickly around the areas where I want the skin tone. Now, if you have some pooling happening, and you can see I've got it under the chin, I'm going to drag that, and use that as paint for another area. So here I'm using it for the face. You don't want too much pooling because when the watercolor dries, it will dry unevenly, and possibly leave even tied marks, and you really don't want that to happen around skin tone. While the paint is still wet, I'm grabbing a little bit of the cadmium red, a little bit of more water down, and I'm placing on the cheeks, the nose, the fingertips, the toes, and just adding a little bit of a rosy hue in these areas. Now, I'm going back to my palette, and I'm mixing a much darker version of the cadmium yellow and cadmium red. I'm using a lot more paint, a lot more pigment. I would say I'm more of a cream texture as opposed to a milk texture. I'm just dragging it onto the dry watercolor paper. Just using the very tip of my number three brush, I'm just filling in the areas that I would like to be red. Just work your way carefully around all the areas that you would like to be this red, and you can see I'm just almost tapping the color in and around the hair. I'm not rushing at this point. I'm methodically moving my way across the area of the hair. You can see there's quite detailed intricate shapes that I'm moving through. I'm just moving my way around from one end to the other, being very careful to stay within that inkline. You can see how the watercolor is still quite wet in some areas, but I'm not going to move it around too much. I'm actually going to place the watercolor where I need it to be, and then I'm going to stop, and let it dry, and do its own thing. Now that I've finished adding the red to the circus girl, I'm going to move across to the torso of the toy rabbit. Again, just using the tip of my number three brush, and just carefully staying within the lines, I'm just filling in that area. Now, that I've finished with this red, I'm going to really clean my brush well, and then I'm going to move on to the next color. In this case, I'm using a Winsor & Newton mauve, but any purple will do the same thing. Again, I'm just mixing almost like a milky consistency of this color. You can see I'm pulling the color towards one of the sides of the hat. I'm pulling it to the right-hand side, and you can see that that's where the shadow side would be. I'm also dragging the same purple, and you can see there's not much paint left on my brush, but just enough to add a shadow on that bottom layer of the ruffle under her costume. Now that I've finished the ruffle, I'm cleaning my brush, and I'm just applying water to the white areas of the costume. I want to do a wet on wet, and I'm using a Payne's gray, and I'm just tapping into that shadow area on the right, just like I did with the hat. I'm just placing, I guess a darker area to the right, but it will bleed and graduate because that whole area is wet. You can see I'm using the Payne's gray as a shadow for the rabbit's foot, and tail, and the back, and just working my way around all the areas of the rabbit that I'd like to be in shadow. I find the Payne's gray, even just a little bit of Payne's gray, really adds depth, and volume to white areas. It's just a really lovely, warm, soft gray. Once I've cleaned my brush thoroughly again, I've gone in, and I've mixed a really lovely cadmium yellow, and I've kept it quite creamy and consistency, and I've left quite a lot of the pigment in there. Now, I'm just working around a couple of the stars, the inside of the hat, and just adding in the yellow details where I want them to be. Once I'm finished with my cadmium yellow, I'm going back in, and I'm mixing a bit of the cadmium yellow in with the red. I want the hair on my circus girl character to be, I guess, more ginger, and sort of just a mixture of, I guess the red and the yellow together, I think it would make a better hair color. Just adding the same orange to the inside of the hat. Once your illustration is dry, just step back and have a look at it. Now, in this case, I think I want the hair to be much brighter and bolder, so I'm coming in when everything is dry. I'm coming back in, and I'm just putting another layer of the cadmium red to the hair, the costume of the circus girl character, the torso, and the ear of the rabbit, and also details like the cheek area. I'm just coming in, and just basically I want to give these areas more depth of color. I'm doing the same with the mauve color, the purple. I'm adding in a second layer of darker color, and all to the right hand side of the illustration. You can see I've even tapped in a bit of that purple in amongst that red that hasn't quite dried yet, and that will add a lovely shadow with a purple tone. Here we have it, the circus girl character using dip pen and water color. For this class project, you're going to be working through the five illustrations alongside me, and then you'll be uploading them either one at a time or at the end to the project section. I look forward to seeing your illustrations posted in the project section of this class, and make sure to join me in lesson number two, where I'll be sharing a wet on wet watercolor technique combined with a tech pen and brush inkline. Lot's to look forward to. 4. Illustration 2 • Watercolor • Fine-liner & Brush: Welcome back to watercolor magic. In this lesson, I'm going to show you how to use watercolor using wet on wet technique, and then I will be using a micron pen and a varied brush outline. Once again, I'll be using my circus girl character, but you're more than welcome to use your own character illustration. You can find a PDF of the circus girl outline under the Projects tab. Here I have an outline of my image traced onto my watercolor paper using a Faber-Castell Aquarelle in a light brown. Here I'm carefully tracing with a 0.2 micron technical pen. It's a really lovely, fine tip, and you can get incredible detail. There's a bit of a neck when using such a fine tip pen. You don't want to press too hard because obviously you'll ruin the tip. But also you want to keep your hand quite relaxed. There's a routine say when you're working with such a fine tip and you're working on detail to tighten your grip and to almost feel like you need to control it with all your effort. If you could try and practice just relaxing into it so having a lighter grip. I'm just moving around the outline and not rushing. I think rushing is a real easy thing to fall into. If you do rush using this technique, you'll end up having the line in the wrong place, and you don't want to have two or three variations of this line. You just want to have a very simple singular line, so really be quite mindful as you move around the illustration. Well, I'm just randomly outlining, but I am turning my paper. You can see I'm swiveling the paper so that my arm and my hand isn't dragging across the ink line. I don't want to smudge anything and I don't want the oils of my hand to be constantly brushing up against that watercolor paper either. I want to keep that clean and as fresh as I possibly can. The trick is to keep your hand slightly raised off the paper and move the paper rather than move your hand across the paper. Here I am adding in the frills of the costume and you can see that I sometimes don't copy the pencil line exactly as I've traced it. My reason for this is that maybe while I was tracing it, I found a better way or I just want to add a bit more detail. There is room for movement with any outline. You don't want to be that rigid that you have to start over because something is slightly different to what it was originally. Just enjoy the freedom of just experimenting and this is really a class on Illustration technique and style, not complete accuracy, so give yourself a little bit of leeway there. Once I finish this fine outline, I now want to lay in a shadow and I want a much thicker, varied line, so I am using a watercolor brush pen filled with Indian ink. When working on strong shadow areas, it's really important to keep in mind where the source of the light is coming from. In this case, the source of light is coming from the top left of the illustration, so the shadow is going to be on the bottom right. Now, a little tip to help. Sometimes I just draw a little sunshine in pencil in the top left corner of my illustration. If it's a larger illustration, I sometimes get a sticky note and just a big marker and I just draw a little sunshine smiley face type thing. It really does help when you're in the flow of your illustration just to refer back to once in awhile. This brush line is quite bold compared to the very fine line that we have underneath it and it might feel a bit overwhelming to be putting on such a strong, heavy dark line. But I think once you step back and view the whole illustration, it makes sense; the contrast of the very fine line and the very thick line as a graphic strength to the line work. The contrast of the weight of the line has a really lovely feel to it. There's a really lovely simplicity about this style of illustration. You might have noticed that I'm swiveling the paper around a lot. I'm doing this because I don't want my hand and my wrist to be running across the page and smudging this brush line. I have to be really aware of it the whole time I'm using this technique. You really need to make sure that the ink is completely dry before you even start adding watercolor. With my ink line completely dry, I'm just laying in very carefully where I want the skin tone. I'm laying in a wash of clear clean water. You want to be quite accurate around the edges just as if you were laying in color. Then I'm going to be adding the yellow ocher mixed with a little bit of the cadmium red. I find that it sometimes helps to have a bit of a scrap piece of paper nearby, and if I'm just testing out skin tone, and you can see I'm just tapping in a bit of that cadmium red and I'm just testing to see how that color looks. Areas that I wet down before are still damp and now I'm adding in the skin tone that I've mixed and you can see how that color and pigment is laying in and moving around that wet area quite quickly and easily. I'm just working my way across the arms and the legs, under the chin and the face and I'm just carefully placing in where I want that skin tone to be. While that skin tone area is still wet, I mix the skin tone with a little bit more red and I'm placing that red like little dabs on the areas that I want to rose up so the knees, the feet, the hands, the elbows, and the cheeks. You can say that I probably put a little bit too much on that knee so I'm just pulling it off while it's still wet. I'm just removing a bit from the feet as well. This is a really lovely way of adding rose hues to your skin tones and I'm just placing a little bit more in the cheek area. Now, I'm going to leave that as is and just let it dry completely on its own, I'm not going to mess around with it too much. The beauty about watercolor, is that it likes to do its own thing and you have to be able to stop, let it dry, and then see what happens. Now I'm moving to the costume of the circus girl and once again, I'm wetting the paper; the area that I want to add color. I'm going to be adding red, so I'm working just with clean water with a number 3 brush and I'm being quite careful about where I place this water because everywhere I add the water is where that hue of cadmium red is going to go. Basically, the watercolor is going to only move in the areas that are wet so it's very easy to lay large washes. You don't normally need to do wet on wet with such small areas but it does help. It helps the color move across and around that area. Here I've washed and I've cleaned my brush off the cadmium red and I've picked up some mauve and I'm dabbing it into the shadow side. If the paint starts to pull, you can just use that kitchen towel and gather the paint. You don't need to do anything more than just pick up the paint with the brush and clean it onto the kitchen towel. Now I'm going to start working on the top hat. You can see I'm just adding in water and wetting the hat, then I'm picking up a lamp black. While my lamp black is still wet, I've come in with that mauve color, that purple color, just to add a bit of shadow. Adding the mauve wet on wet and just coming in with a bit more of the lamp black pigment. You can see I'm just pushing the paint down to one side. When using watercolor, it's really important to work on a tilted surface. My drawing board here is on a constant 20 degree angle, but you can do the same thing using a book propped up or some board popped up and then put your illustration on top of that. Now this allows the wet watercolor, with the help of gravity to fall and pool at the bottom of that wet area. This is really helpful when it comes to doing shading. In the wet areas of the costume you can see that I laid in water to wet the surface and then while it was still wet, I came back in with Payne's gray. Because my illustration is tilted, you can see how the Payne's gray, the pigment is gathering at the base of the wet area with the help of gravity. Now I'm just using that Payne's gray and I'm working my way through the ruffles and the skirt. You can see I'm just using the very tip of my brush and carefully just moving the paint through this area. Now I'm gathering more of lamp black and just placing the final touches to the hat. Here, I'm going to continue with this wet on wet idea. I'm using my number 3 sable round brush. You can see that I'm carefully wetting the area from the hat through the stars, reaching all the way around in an arc shape to the rabbit, so it's almost going to feel like the rabbit is being pulled out of the hat. I want to add some color in and around that background. I've mixed a little bit of the cadmium yellow and you can see that I've got us the milky, creamy texture. I've just dotted the cadmium yellow in and around the stars. I'm not laying a heavy amount of the color and the pigment, I just want to have a very light glow. I'll start off with dots and then I'm pushing it around with my brush and just making sure I get in there. I'm now adding little elements and dots of the cadmium red, placing them in and around the stars and so breaking up the yellow elements a bit. There'll be a nice blend of the cadmium yellow and the cadmium red in with the stars, almost like a wash of magic as the rabbit leaves the hat. With the cadmium red, I'm going to come in and just put a few dashes and lines in and around those dark areas just to give it a bit more energy and movement. Let that dry completely before moving on. Now I'm ready to add in some detail into the rabbit. Everything's completely dry so this will be adding wet paint onto a dry surface. I am just putting it up as a detail around the torso of the toy rabbit. Just like I did with the red panels on the circus girl costume, I'm coming back in with the mauve, the purple, and I'm adding a bit of a shadow also on the rabbits torso, adding some cadmium yellow for the paws of the rabbit toy. Coming in with a bit of Payne's gray and there's a little bit of the purple in there as well, but I'm just putting a bit of that shadow on the shadow side of the circus girl and just adding in a few final touches. Coming in with a bit more of the paint and pigment with the lamp black and you can see that I am just putting a few shines and highlights will actually more like shadows on the hat. To finish off, I'm placing just plain water on the ground underneath the circus girl. I'm just wetting that area and I'm coming in with a lamp black, just a very soft mix of the lamp back and I'm dotting a shadow under the feet, pulling back some areas with a drier brush and just placing in the final touches. Here we have it, a video of watercolor illustration using wet on wet and a micron pin and brush outline. This class gives you a free ticket to explore, experiment, and just play around and have fun. I look forward to seeing what you come up with so, make sure to post your character in the project section of this class. I'll see you for illustration number 3, where I'll take you through how to use watercolor with a carbon pencil outline. 5. Illustration 3 • Watercolour • Carbon Pencil : Welcome back to watercolor magic. In this lesson, I'm going to show you how to use watercolor with a carbon pencil outline. I'll be using my circus girl character, but you're more than welcome to use your own character illustration. It's so versatile and the watercolor really does allow for that spontaneity of the line to sink through. You can see here how I've used the watercolor and the carbon pencil across a wide variety of picture books and characters. After a few trials, I'm laying down my skin tone with a wash, a mix of cadmium red and yellow ocher, and I'm just blending the paint with water and laying it in on the dry watercolor paper. Just finishing off the skin tone and I'm just again moving that paint around. You can see now I'm adding in a bit of cadmium red, and while that skin tone color is still, which I'm now dabbing in some highlights, to rows up those cheeks. Just now painting a wet on wet. If there's too much paint, just use the kitchen towel and drag some of it off while the paint underneath is still in the process of drying. You've got a small window while the skin tone is still damp to move it around. Now I'm getting us a mix of the cadmium red and there's probably a bit of yellow in there as well. Then I've got a quite a light application of this paint, and I'm just placing stripes for the torso of the rabbit , using the tip of my number 3 round sable watercolor brush. I'll use that same color and I will fill in the pause, that's the hand and the feet of the toy rabbit. Picking up a bit more of the red paint, and I'm going to create stripes for the costume on the circus girl, much like I did with the rabbit, just larger, thicker stripes. You can see that I'm painting from top to bottom on all of these stripes. My reason for this is that when you do paint from top to bottom, you can see how it's lighter at the top and darker at the bottom where the paint tends to pull. I use this technique a lot when I'm doing watercolor as it really helps with my highlights and my shadows. Once I finish with the red, I clean my brush thoroughly and I'm picking up a mix of the cadmium yellow, and I'm just going to use the tip of my brush and I'm just going to slowly work my way around the interiors of each of those stars so, every star is getting filled in and I'm using the wet paint on a dry surface, so wet on dry, and you can see that the paint actually stays nicely within the area of the star. Just going through each star carefully, and then I'm just going to let that dry completely. Now I'm taking a really nice creamy mix of the cadmium red pigment, adding a little bit of the yellow, mixing that together, and I'm going to fill in the area for the hair. Just moving my way around, being quite careful actually, I don't want to mess this up because it's quite a lot of paint on the brush, and just moving around and filling up and coloring in essentially around the hair. I wanted this color to be a lot stronger than I did for the costume and the stripes, so much brighter color. Now I'm just picking up the red from the hair, which I can do sometimes if there's too much pigment on an area, I can pick it off and use it somewhere else. Here I have decided to darken the red on the circus girl costume, on the stripes, so I'm just layering it in. That's the lovely thing about watercolor, is that you can lay in a pigment, and if you want to strengthen it, you can just wait for that to dry and then come back in with a deeper color, and you can add in these layers so, it takes the pressure of being perfect the first time around, you can have a go and be quite tentative and see what that looks like when it's dry, and then if you're not happy with it, you can then come back again with another layer. Now I've just cleaned my brush and I'm mixing in a lamp black and I'm sure there's a bit of purple in there as well, but I'm just mixing again that creamy consistency, and I'm just dragging the paint within the area that I want to be dark. I'm just doing the inside of a hat and the outside of that top hat for now. I've got quite a bit of paint on this. So I've just dried my brush using the kitchen towel and I am just pulling away some of that paint. Here I am using a 2B Faber Castile graphite pencil, and I'm going to just work my way around the edges of my circus girl character. Here I'm starting with the edge of the face and I'm just doing the core on her hair and I'm working my way around the ear. Now I'm not pressing too hard, you can see I'm not bringing in a little bit around the edges of the eye. I'm just getting started here and I always start off more tentative than when I finish, and for some reason I'm starting with all the detail in the face. If this is a bit nerve wracking for you, you're more than welcome to start on the larger areas like the limbs and the hands, the arms, the phage, the legs, that sort of thing, and then possibly even leave the face till last. But you can see how I'm just moving around and almost thinking, it's a process of thinking, what does this need? I don't want to add too much, but I'm going to start working around the areas so, it looks like I'm going to work from the top to the bottom of this illustration. You can see I've started with the arm and now I'm moving over to the hair. If there's no rhyme or rhythm in where you begin and where you finish, it's what feels right for you at the time. I'm just working my way from, I guess top to bottom, and you can work from area to area, everyone has their own thing and their own way of approaching an illustration. Now I'm doing the ear of the rabbit and I've just jumped from that to the other arm of the circus girl. You can see the variation in line, I've got the lines slightly thicker at the the edges, at the wrist, the elbows, that sort of thing and then lighter in between. I'm working my way around the top hat, and just playing with the line a little bit, it almost like dancing on the page, I'm not drawing a straight, solid line like I did earlier on with the micron pen, not at all, this is very different, this is more like a, I want to have that sketchy feel for this illustration. I really like how the pencil line, it's a real quality of movement and personality to the illustration. That's where I'm heading with it. I'm coming back in slightly darker with the eyes and the top lid, and just filling my way around. It's a real intuitive process. Everyone would be slightly different, you can see how I'm spending more time, I guess on the bins of the arm, like the elbows, the wrist, that sort of thing. Now I'm doing the androme, and then I'm going to start working on the costumes. It's almost like just creating a solid edge, so the watercolor is quite rough around the edges, especially when it dries and there's a little bit of bleed, it can be quite uneven edge. It's really lovely to come in with either with this pencil line and just tighten up, and get more of a definition around your illustration. I'm thinking I want to have the detail, but I also want to, I guess, shade in a shadow area as well. You can see that I'm working my way around the frill of this character's costume, and you can see that lightness and darkness I'm pressing and pulling away ever so slightly, just applying pressure and then releasing the pressure, and that really helps when it comes to line variation and I think it really adds a lot of movement and a lot of rhythm to that line, and a lot of interest as well. Nothing is finished or complete and it's not perfectly though, it's really quite I guess, I'm just moving around, seeing what needs fixing and seeing what I want to leave, seeing what I want to add, and obviously if you press too hard or you've made a mistake, it's pencil, lead pencil, so you can rub it out, it's a really lovely easy, takes the pressure off instrument to use. Here I'm coming around the edges of the toy rabbit and I'm just putting a little bits of fur texture and I'm just moving around his torso and the cotton tail. Again, I'm playing around with different ideas, because I was quite solid with those micron lines and the brush incline, I now want to play around with this softer, more playful style of line, and I think it just having a different technique, just experimenting with it, just seeing what happens to the character, what does the illustration feel like? How different will this illustration be to the previous illustrations? I think having a whole sort of tool bag of different techniques that you can pull out at any one time is really useful. You can see just with the same character how completely differently they look, because you've used a different line. A lot of people avoid feet and hands when they illustrate a character, and I tend to think that the feet and the hands add so much interest and so much story to your character, just with the gestures that they can offer, so if you struggle with feet, all I can say is that it just takes practice. It's just a matter of getting in there and drawing them more often. The final thing, for the phages, I'm grounding my character, I'm just going to draw a bit of ground underneath that foot there. Now that I finished my circus girl character, I'm going to move across to the stars, and I'm just outlining very simply each individual star. You can see that some of my watercolor isn't as perfect as it could have been, but I quite like those, it makes the illustration look hand done, and it makes it look individual, it's not ever going to be perfect and I think there's something charming about that, so I don't like to fix it. I would never go back in with a white painting and fix the edges at all, I really love the imperfections. I think it gives you more of a hand done feel. Here I'm just putting the final touches to this illustration. I think we're almost there. Here, we have it, the circus girl character in watercolor with a carbon pencil outline. This will be followed by illustration number 4, where I'll be showing you a more graphic block style of watercolor, and we're going to bring in that micron fine line a pin, and I'll just share a few various techniques with that. Now I really can't wait to see what you come up with, so make sure to post your character in the project section of this class. I'll see you soon. 6. Illustration 4 • Watercolor • Fine-liner: Welcome back to Watercolor Magic. In this class, we're going to be exploring a more modern style of illustrating with watercolor using a micron pen line. I'll be using my circus girl character, but again, you can use your own character if you'd like to. Here, I've already prepped my illustration by tracing my Circus Girl character using a brown Faber-Castell Aquarelle Pencil and tracing it onto a sheet of arches hot press watercolor paper. For the outline of this illustration, I'm going to be using a Micron.02 Fine Liner Pen. Now it's a very fine-tipped pen, so you need to be careful about how you use it, how hard you press. Now I've drawn a very simple outline using the Faber-Castell Aquarelle. What I'm doing here is adding in a lot more detail. I'm going to work my way around this character very methodically, and I'm going to just take my time. I don't want to rush this. I want to make sure that I get every single piece of information on there that I want. Working around the hair and every detail counts, I think. This pen is waterproof. Once it's down, I'll be able to then lay the watercolor over the top of it. This is it. This will be the outline. It won't change from this. Really spend time figuring out how you want your character to look. What kind of line do you want? The line is a solid line, and I'm trying to add in more interests, I guess with some textures, with the fur, for instance. Just really knowing what my character is doing. Here I'm just working around the toy rabbit and the arms and making sure I break the line a little bit for that fur effect. Here I'm moving around the leg. I don't want too much fur. I think you can overdo it with fur. I just want to give an indication that it's soft and fluffy. Just be aware of that. Here, you can see I'm swiveling the paper rather than dragging my hand across, and this is a really good technique to use or if you're not using it to just try. It really does help keeping your illustration clean and free from marks and grease in general. Whether you wash your hands before you start an illustration, there's still an opportunity for oils from your hands to enter the watercolor paper, and this can affect your final artwork when it comes to using the watercolor. Try and not touch the watercolor paper around your illustration. You can slide another sheet of paper underneath between yourself and the watercolor paper that sometimes helps. But if you're like me, I just lift my hand, or I swivel the paper and just move around that way. You can see I'm now working my way really from top to bottom and being very methodical around it. I'm now at the torso of my character, and I've just drawn in her costume. I'm just putting in the frill underneath her costume. Just adding every single detail, every crease. Every bit of shading. I'm now going to start work on the foot and working up one of the legs. I have broken the line. The line isn't solid. I want to have it a little bit of interest with that line work. Again, when it comes to drawing feet, it's very easy to rush and mess it up. Do spend the time to go around the foot and the individual toes quite carefully. It's one of those areas that I think would create a lot of attention if it wasn't done correctly. Do spend a bit of time figuring out how you want the feet to look. Now, I'm coming around the other leg and just working up and down that fire area and the calf and joining up with the foot there. Now I'm ready to add some color. Here I'm mixing the skin tone using the yellow ocher and the cadmium red, and I'm mixing a milky skin tone. I filled my brush up with the paint, and now I'm just going to start filling in the skin tone areas. The arms, the face, and the ears. Then I'm working my way down each leg, just making sure that paint's even, and that I have a really good application of that paint. You might want to come in and just tap a few extra bits of paint around a certain area. Here I'm mixing a bit more red in with the original skin tone, and I'm just going to highlight the cheeks, the fingertips, the feet, and knees, elbows, giving a lovely warm rosy highlight to those areas. Now it's just a matter of waiting for that paint to dry completely before moving on to the next stage. Now that my skin tone is completely dry, I'm going to be using my number six brush. It's a much thicker brush. I'm using a mix of the cadmium yellow. I'm going to apply the paint with the intention that I just brush with a very bold line across areas of my illustration. It's not about staying in the lines with this illustration at all. It's being quite bold with the application, but still mindful. You don't want to make a big mess. But again, the idea of just creating chunks of color in areas is the look that I'm after. Just adding a bit more of the yellow around the ears of the rabbit. Then once again, let that completely dry before moving onto the next stage. Here I'm mixing some cadmium red, and I'm working my way around the hair of this character. I am being quite careful here, and I think I'm going to come back in, and now that I've got it quite delicately around the face and those more careful areas I'm coming in, and I'm darkening that red. I just want to come in with that idea of a bold sweep. Blocking in a chunk of color and moving that around the stripes of the costume as well. Now, using the same idea on a couple of the stars, I'm just dragging this bold sweep of color across. What I would like to do is not have it puddle. I'm just coming in and just fixing and touching up areas before the paint completely dries. Finishing off with some bold cheeks. Now I'm mixing mauve and the lampblack, and I'm going to mix a color that I'm going to use for the top hat. I'm just doing a bit of a test, and then I'm going to drag this color. You can see I'm still quite tentative because it is black. I don't want to have a big chunk of Black across my top hat. It still needs to look like a hat. But at the same time, I need to have this idea that it's a bold block of color as well. While I have this sort of gray color, I'm coming in and forming some shadow areas on the toy rabbit. The back limbs, and anywhere that I feel that there will be shadows. I'm just working around the ear, and I might just come in with a bit more. Well, taking a bit of the paint off. It's quite dark, and just moving that around the torso and under the arm area of that toy rabbit. While I'm using this gray, and I don't want to be too dark on the rabbit because it's just a shadow of the white, I'm going to come in, and my red is completely dry, but you can see I've dragged a bold shadow line on the costume of the circus girl and I'm just doing the same on the frills area. Again, it's that idea of not staying within the lines and just adding blocks of color. While I have my gray, I'm just going to tap in some magical bubbles and sparkles around the hash and the rabbit areas. Nothing too much. I don't want to overdo it. Now I'm mixing more of the yellow ocher and the cadmium red and making a slightly deeper skin tone to what I had before. Because I want to bring in a shadow but more of a shadow along the skin tone. I'm just working around the edges of the right-hand face. I guess my light source would be coming from the top left, and so I want to work the shadow in the bottom right. Just constantly thinking, where would the shadows fall if that light source was coming from the top left? Just a gentle shadow line. I am actually staying within the lines with the skin tone. I think I want just the blocks of color everywhere else, but I actually want to keep the skin tone of the character quite tidy. Now I'm working down the other arm, and I might just have a little bit of shadow underneath that curl that crosses the face. I'm going to put a little bit of shadow under the mouth, and I'm also going to use the same color and drag it on the right-hand side of the limb. Under the foot, and you can see now, the foot makes more sense with that shadow, and on the inner thigh of the other leg. The shadow is on the bottom right, and the highlight is on the top left. Once that's dry, I'm now going to come in with a bit more of the lamp black, creating a slightly darker pigment as I want to add in shadow for the hat. Now, I'm going to actually keep within the lines for this shadow otherwise it could get a little bit too messy and just work my way around the frills of the costume as well. Just being quite, mindful about where you do put this shadow in, because it is black and it's quite bold. You don't want to overdo it, but you do want us to also have a bit more of this idea of shutter, a little bit on that right-hand side of that top hat as well. Here I am just putting a little bit of shadow underneath the foot and the second foot is lifted in the air. I do want to show that by placing a little bit of shadow under there also. After stepping back, I've decided that I need a bit more of a solid black for the top hat. I am just coming back in and filling that whole area in. Now that I have my color light and it's completely dry, now it has to be completely dry, I can now come back and add in more detail. You can see I'm putting some swirls where the hair is and I am just working my way around quite slowly and methodically. I'm going to put some stripes and adds texture and a bit more depth to the illustration. I'm putting a little bit of a heavier line, it's more on the shadow side. It's the idea that you've got the source of light in the top left of your illustration and the shadow is going to fall on the bottom right. With that in mind, I'm going to work my way around the edges of this illustration and just add a bit more of a darker line. Here I'm doing around the mouth and the under side of one of the arms and I'm also thinking about where the shadow would be the whole time. I'm moving around the thumb and I'm taking care about how that hand looks holding the top hat and [inaudible] it a shadow around the edges of the hat and just tidy up the edges. Now, you really have to have your watercolor completely leave dry. If you jump in and start using a pen on top of a wet page, it just won't work. You really have to have your watercolor dry as a bone and then you can start thinking about adding more detail and line to this type of illustration. You can see I'm doing the under arm of the other hand, and I'm working my way around the toy rabbit, that bottom right-hand side and just thinking about adding in more detail. If something wasn't quite right or didn't look pleasing to the eye, now's the time to fix it. This is still a point zero two micron pen. It's a very fine tip, but you can see that I'm just building up the [inaudible] thickness of line. I'm not coming in with a thick micron pen, I'm not using a point five or a point seven, I'm actually drawing the thicker line by drawing the line over and over. You can use a thicker micron pen if you feel you want to try it. I quite like the idea of the heavier line, not being so dramatic with the thin and thickness of it all, I wanted to have a bit of movement as well. I'm going to move around the foot. Once again, I mean people tend to ignore feet and hands, but I think the more time you spend on those areas, the better and just work your way around the inner thigh and the curve of that leg that is standing and how does that foot look when it's touching the ground. Just think about those things. This is just me swiveling the paper around as well. If you've noticed, I'm turning the page rather than dragging my hand across the page and here, I'm adding in some shadow to the one side of all of those stars. I'm just working my way very carefully through every single star that I have drawn up with a thinner line and just making sure that works. Putting a bit of an outline on those bubbles and highlights as little magical pops and maybe even adding a few extras in there too. This is the fun type. You've done all that hard work with the watercolor and now you're just adding in those details that will really make your illustration. Here I want to add a bit more interest to the costumes. I'm dragging across a series of horizontal lines and this will add a bit more of depth and so roundness to the torso of this illustration. You might choose as a highlight and I'm just going to use it just to bring more volume to areas of this illustration. I quite like the fact that we have this horizontal line, and I might include it in other areas as well. Here I'm putting in details of the costumes. I'm going to be putting some stitching, such as placing in the final details to the stars and to my second skill character illustration. Here we have it, illustration number four, more graphic style watercolor with a micron pen line. If you want an illustration, that's mapled and graphic, then you may have this idea of where you want to go with the technique and because of this class, I look forward to seeing what you've come up with. Make sure to post your characters in the project section of this class and I'll see you for the final illustration, where I'll be showing you how to use a charcoal line mixed with the watercolor. I'll see you soon. 7. Illustration 5 • Watercolor • Charcoal Pencil: Welcome back. Here we are for the final illustration for this watercolor magic series, illustration number 5. Before we move on, I'd like to take this opportunity to recap on what you've done so far. By now, you would have completed illustration number 1 using watercolor with a deep pin incline. We then moved onto illustration number 2, which was using a wet on wet watercolor technique combined with a micron pen and brush inclined combination. We then did illustration number 3, where we used water color with a carbon pencil line. Following this, we did illustration number 4 using a much more graphic style of watercolor, combining this with a fine micron pen line. Now, for our final illustration, illustration number 5, we're going to explore a final technique which is watercolor using a charcoal line. Now this is an illustration technique that I really wanted to use for the picture book, Good Dog, Hank! by Jackie French. I really like how the charcoal line offers a rougher around the edges quality that would portray the not so perfect side of Hank. I ended up having to choose something less messy. I still use the charcoal line, but with less smudges and mishaps, and I ended up doing this because I had quite a lot of detail in this picture book. Anyway, getting back to this charcoal line, illustration number 5 is quite different to what we've done so far. It's bold, it's expressive, and it's a whole lot of fun. Please join me for the final watercolor magic illustration. For the last time you'll be drawing up the circus Girl character onto, the watercolor paper using a light brown acrylic pencil. Here we are, I'm back for my illustration's skin tone and the hair is dry. Now I'm coming in with a mix of cadmium red. Now it's a milky light cream texture, and you can see I'm just blocking it in. Again, I'm using the wet watercolor onto the dry paper. A wet on dry technique, and I'm being quite careful where I place this, and again, moving the watercolor towards one end, just so I have a bit more dimension. Now I've picked up some lampblack, quite watered down, moving that color across the hat where I'd like the hat to be black. The outside of the hat and the inside of the hat, I'm going to leave the rim as a separate layer of wash, just so that it stands out a little bit more. Once I finished with the black, I'm going to clean my brush with the water, and I'm going to pick up some yellow ocher, and I'm going to start filling in the area for the stars now. Its yellow ocher, but it seems it looks a little bit more orange. I'm sure there's a little bit of the cadmium red in there as well. Just mix a color combination that you're happy with, and yes, it doesn't matter how much. If the colors are mixing and unique, that's fine too. Just use what you have as long as it's not muddy, you don't want to have any of your illustrations to end up with black or browns or very dirty looking. You want to keep it quite clean and fresh. It is important to have clean water and be mindful of the color mixes that you do use. Just adding in the final touches, and I really need to allow this illustration to dry completely before I start adding in any charcoal. If the watercolor hasn't taken away all of the acrylic pencil, you may want to get in there with an eraser and just help out along. So just spend a minute or so just cleaning up the illustration before you start your charcoal. Unlike in incline where you could get in and clean it up at the end, you won't be able to touch this at all once the charcoal line is down. You can see here I'm using a clean makeup brush, just to brush away any remaining eraser bits and pieces and just making sure my illustration's completely clean before I start. I'm using a general's 557 series charcoal pencil and mine is a 2-B, which is a medium, that's not too soft and it's not too hard, and the thing about the charcoal pencil, you'll notice the line is very different to what we've used before. It feels so much bolder, and I'm feeling more tentative at the moment, just laying down my first lines, but I'll slowly get used to the feel of it and how soft it is, and then I'll end up working with it. So just give it a little bit of time and enjoy the fact that it's going to be messy. Charcoal pencils of any kind are really extremely brittle. They break easily. What I've done with my pencil is I've used a scalpel blade, and I've sharpened the tip of my charcoal pencil using this scalpel blade. If you do use a sharp knife, you have to make sure it's super sharp. So even those little tiny metal pencil sharpeners, just make sure that you've bought a brand new one and you know it's sharp and just use it specifically for your charcoal pencils. You can see here I'm coming in with a smudge stick. Some people call them pestle blending stumps. They're made of paper. Paper that's rolled up really tightly. It's almost like a pencil, and they've got a really fine tip, and they're super handy when you're using things like charcoal, they're much more accurate than like your fingertips, and they keep your hands clean. You can just come in and be quite accurate with where and how you want to smudge the line. Here I am just working my way around the illustration. I'm just outlining all the areas. Here I am around the top hatch, the arm, the torso, and my line's becoming more confident. The more I'm working on this, more confident I'm getting as far as the placement of line and you can see I'm pressing quite hard, but I'm also lifting, so it's the same idea that we did with the carbon pencil illustration. Thinking about variation and variety and relaxing into the idea of just being a bit more playful as well. We've got quite a chunky bold tool, so let's have a little bit of fun with it. So just placing a few final details around the feet, the cheeks, and the eyes, and then I'm going to swap over with my smudge stick. Just like I did with the charcoal pencil, I've now got my smudge stick, and I'm going to work my way around all of that charcoal line and basically blend it and press it and move it, and almost think of it as, another mark making tool. However, I'm picking up the carbon and the charcoal from underneath and just dragging it, lifting it and make sure not to get too over excited. It's very easy to overdo this type of thing. It's a lot of fun. Also think about even though it can be quite messy and you can see I'm moving it around with a lot of energy. I still want to maintain control, so I still need to not overdo it. Here I'm using the smudge stick and I'm just moving around all the outline, the areas that I want to and shadow and the areas that I want to blend. I'm alternating between the charcoal pencil and the smudge sticks. Where I want to make the line more defined, I'll come back in with the charcoal. If it becomes too dark, too heavy or I want to soften it up somehow, I'll then swap over and I'll use the smudge stick once again. It's finding that balance between how much, I guess depth of color and darkness that you want to bring in with the charcoal and then being able to smooth it out and use that more of a shadowy type of feel with this much stick. You can see I'm actually bringing in larger chunks around the hat. I'm adding more depth and shadow underneath the feel of the skirt. I'm just moving across quite quickly and rhythmically. I still want to have a that feel of energy and movement from my hand all the way through to the paper. I'm just moving around and placing those final touches and those final bits of detail. Really be careful about dragging your hand across this illustration. It's very volatile. You can smudge it easily. Rather than drag your hand across, make sure that you swivel the paper and do it that way. Now I'm working on the rabbit. I've actually turn my paper around so that my hand is sits underneath and away from the illustration. You can see I've just put in the details of the rabbit and here I'm swinging the paper around as I add in some more movement in line on each star. This style, I guess is more haphazard. It's not as accurate as what we did with them micron pen. You can see that I'm even twisting the pencil just trying to get a sharp align or a varied lines. Just play around with what line quality that you can manage to get out of your charcoal pencil. Just putting it a bit a shadow in and around the stars and try and get that movement of the stars flying out of the hat. I'm just blending that across as well. I'm moving back in to the face and just doing those final adjustments with the pupils and you can see now I'm going to come back in with the charcoal pencil. The whole time I'm thinking about a variety of the quality of the lines. I'm going to have some quite heavy dark areas, but I'm also going to have some light, playful, energetic areas. It's about just exploring, experimenting, and seeing where you go with it. The only thing you need to be mindful of is to not overdo it. This type of illustration style can get very muddy very quickly as you can imagine, the charcoal could go everywhere. So just be aware of that. You can see here that I'm erasing some of the line away. I'm using a tiny shaved piece from a larger eraser. I've just sliced a pace off with a scalpel blade and it helps me get into the more of delicate areas. I'm just using that for the highlights and I'm moving my way around the face, the hands, the top of the hat and I quite like the way that the eraser is leaving a bit of a smudged to the illustration as well. So if you've ever done the charcoal, which is it's very likely I think I have to. You can just come in and just brighten it up by using the eraser. Think about where your light source is coming from, and think about where you'd prefer to have your shadows. The whole time you're pulling away with the eraser, just do that on the highlighted areas. This process actually feels like I'm drawing. I'm thinking about where the highlight should go. I'm thinking about where the shadows need to remain. I'm just moving around the legs and now the costume of the character and because I've got such a sharp tip on my eraser, I can get into the tiniest detail. Here I'm coming in with my large brush and you can use any clean large brush. This helps get rid of the eraser debris without smudging the charcoal. That's a really handy tool to have while you're using this technique. What I've done here is I've actually gone away and I've sharpened my charcoal pencil. You can see the tip is much sharper than it used to be. I'm going to do one final sweep through my illustration. I'm going to come in with a much finer line where I want to place the shadow. I'm just going to go through the entire illustration and get this overall effect using the point here tip of the charcoal pencil and just working around the detail that I may have rubbed off. It is this process of going backward and fourth, adding charcoal, getting rid of the charcoal with the eraser then coming back in with more charcoal, but maybe more detail with that charcoal. So it's just getting a real feeling and a real sense for what needs to stay and what needs to go and if you take away too much, then you can just simply add back, coming through across the hand, the fingers. These are details that are really worth spending time with. Then moving my way around the toy rabbit and the edges of the further torso and the cotton tail and just moving around the edges of the arm over here. Once again with that really fine sharpened tip coming back in and I'm putting more shadow on that rabbit. You can see the back limbs and ears now working on the feet and the toes and just defining the edges of the leg and the costume and just spending time placing in that detail. Here we have at the circus girl using watercolor with charcoal outline. Don't forget to upload. I think it'll be really fun to see where you go with this. There comes a point where you're following the guidelines that I'm setting pretty closely. Then all of a sudden you can break free and maybe even come up with your own way of illustrating. Give yourself that moment to be able to explore, experiment and take it further if you need to. When you finish watching all of the lessons, please recommend this class or even better leave a review if you like the class or found any of the information helpful. This gives the class more visibility on skill share so that more people can find it and take part. If you want to be notified for future classes, make sure to follow me and post any discussions or questions and other community tab. Thanks for joining me and I look forward to seeing some of your watercolor magic very sing. 8. BONUS • Watercolor Paper Basics: Now I'm going to talk a little bit about watercolor paper. I've got three types of paper here and I guess three different grades of paper. I have the fabriano 300GSM hot press. Hot press means that it's going to be smooth, just think of it as being ironed. The fabriano that I bought comes in a sheet that is 500 by 700, I think that's millimeters. I like the 300GSM. That's the weight of the paper. I like it because it doesn't buckle and you don't need to stretch the paper. Unless you've got a really large water color where you're going to be doing lots of layers in it and you're really going to put a lot of paint on it. The fabriano is probably bottom of the range. In New Zealand, it comes in at $5.95. The prices vary from country to country. You're just going to have to a look and see what your art shop sales. The second one, which actually I have never painted on it before, but it got a little bit more of a bite to it. It's not a hot press. A clairefontaine comes in a size 560 millimeters by 760 millimeters so it's exactly the same size as the arches that I'd like to use. In New Zealand , it's $10.95. I'd say this is middle of the range, it's not as smooth as I'd like it, but I'm going to try it out and see the results that I get from it. This also doesn't have any watermarks, which is quite interesting. I'm going to be using the arches hot press it's 300GSM, but it's much more expensive than the other two. The arches hot press in New Zealand $15.95 a sheet. The sheet is the 560 millimeters by 760 millimeters. It does have a watermark in the corner. You won't be able to see it, but the watermarks quite large on the arches, it comes in around here. When I'm illustrating I normally have a blade, most of the time it doesn't really matter. When you're using any watercolor paper is you want to mark and shake the front of the paper. There have been times where I have actually painted on the back of the page and the color is slightly different. It has a slightly different texture and you'll get a slightly different results so make sure that before you do any painting on the watercolor paper, make sure that you look through the window and you see the watermark. Then you can actually see it's much smoother on the front than it is on the back. This is what I'm going to be illustrating on. Now that you have your watercolor paper sorted, come and join me for illustration number 1.