Watercolor Mastery: Paint a Realistic Horse w/ Wet-on-Wet & Lifting Techniques

1. Introduction Horse in Watercolor: Have you ever tried to paint a horse only to find that regardless of the techniques you use and how many times you gave it a shot, something just didn't seem right. Perhaps there were too many hard edges, a lack of softness in the man, or the horse appeared flat, lacking dimension. My name is Maria henska and I'm a watercolor artist and teacher, and I've been teaching how to paint with watercolors for almost a decade. I know how to paint realistic animals in watercolor. And in this class, I'll teach you how to layer a horse and make it look realistic. One of the biggest mistakes I see among my students is number one, leaving too much water after wetting the paper. And number two mistake is using incorrect ratios between water and paint. I have a lot of experience as a watercolor teacher, especially with the two main techniques, which is wet on wet and then lifting colors. And I have helped thousands of students across the globe to achieve their watercolor dreams. 2. What is this class about: In this class, you will discover how to create soft edges and how to create depth in your painting. You will master the most important technique in watercolor, which is wet on wet. You'll learn about the proper water to paint ratios and find out how to wet the paper before applying colors wet on wet. I will guide you through painting a horse, realistically, equipping you with the confidence and skills you need to paint a horse or any other animal on your own. I'll also challenge you to paint a horse after this class on your own. In this class, I'll teach you how to wet the paper. Apply colors wet on wet, how to use the correct ratios between water and paint, how to look for the shadows and preserve light for highlights, how to apply masking fluid to create fine lines, how to blend colors, and how to use a brush to create specific brush strokes. I always simplify things and imagine myself as a beginner because I used to be that person. I didn't know anything about wet and wet or lifting columns. So I'd like to invite you to learn with me and experience a new way of learning. Let's jump into art supplies and start with a watercolor paper. 3. Art Supplies: In this class, you will need a few colors and a high quality watercolor paper. I recommend using 100% cotton watercolor paper in a larger size, such as this one. This is 14 by 19 ". It's important to paint on a high quality watercolor paper, 100% cotton, so you don't lift the colors where you're applying more colors to the first layer. Or so you don't lift the colors when you try to add the second layer. Also, a larger sheet allows more space for the colors to blend and that flow, giving you the freedom of broader brush strokes. You will need a few brushes, such as a larger flat brush to wet the paper and then apply the first colors. Then a rigger brush for the finest and longest strokes, you will need a smaller brush for painting the eyes and then medium size brushes for all other areas, I suggest using either a softer round brush or a quill brush. The color palette in this class will include raw sienna, raw umber, burnt sienna anda brown. But please do not worry about trying to match every color because just like with any other painting, the most important are light and shadows. Try to have a couple of jars with water, a regular, like, bath towel smaller size to wipe your brush. It cannot be replaced with a paper towel. Cow is great for, like, lifting or getting rid of acinal water on your paper, but not really to write your brush. And make sure you have a nice slide so you can see true colors on your paper. When you're ready, you want to start working on your sketch. You can either print the sketch I provide in this class, or you can try to create one on your own, which I highly encourage. If you do, I recommend you first trace the overall shape of the horse and then start working on detail. The next step is to apply masking fluid. So let's do it. 4. Part 1 About the process: Hey, everyone. Welcome to this class. So we're going to paint this white gray horse. So it's kind of like off white. It has some shades of brown like here. I say it's like a raw sienna raw umber all here over the neck, maybe here the gel line. So my approach with pretty much all animals is wet on wet. I wet the object, sometimes parts of the background and painted wet on wet. So apply colors toward the wet paper. What is the key here to have the most control? Well, first of all, you want to start with a good watercolor paper. You want to have 100% cotton watercolor paper. This is a little thicker. What you could have is arches paper, for example, these are great. You can go with Saunders Waterford. For example, just make sure your cold press has texture because that will help us with dry brushing or overall just to create achieve the texture. When we paint on a larger sheet, this is 14 by 19, and I do recommend painting on a larger sheet because you have more room for the color blending for that flow to happen. You want to sometimes divide your object into parts. For example, with horse, it's easier in a way because we have the head and then we have the neck area. We would paint the neck or I'm sorry, the head first, including the ears, and we wouldn't really layer completely the muzzle, but we would add some maybe colors there. We would focus mostly on this area. We wouldn't paint the eye yet. We would add colors over all but we would leave ourselves room to add that second layer for the muscle to make it darker, and then of course, separately we'll paint the eye, but we can also add right away some blues around it. Once this dries, then we wet the neck plus parts of the head and then apply colors only toward the neck area. Now you might have questions like, how do I do it, that I create soft hair, the main, for example. If it's over the horse, then I just add the hair right away wet and wet. If it's outside, and I'm either adding the background or not adding the background. But in this case, let's say I'm wetting the entire head plus a little bit of the neck, always wet more than you need. And then I would also wet part of the background here, and I will do that. I will show you how to do this. Because then when you apply colors wet on wet here, you have soft hair. So no hard edges. We do want some hard edges because it's pretty clear, like the horse isn't focus. Like we don't need to have everything, blurred out and soft, so we can paint some of the hair wet on dry as well. But what would help is make it softer by wetting the background here as well and letting some colors from the hair bleed over toward the back. So we are going to paint this wet on wet. We are going to focus first on the head. We're still going to wet more than we need because you never know how far you're going to go. But focus on these areas. Now, these are the colors I chose, but please don't worry about matching or anything like that, right? So I'm going to use basically, these are three blues, indigo, couple blue, fallow blue. I kind of go in between these two all the time. So it's just a matter of liking it or not. This is osiena do umber. You can just go with one like asiena and then cuacorno red to change the shed of our yellow and blue. Then Bondik browns in the category of red, actually. But I do see that shade in some of these areas here. Plus, it's a very good Bandk brown indigo, if you want to create almost like a shade of black, I'd say, because you don't want to use black straight out of a two or even white. These are the two colors I don't use and I don't teach anything painting with those two. So another option is whenever you see highlighted hair, for example, over the main, you could use masking fluid for watercolors, and we're going to start with that. This is optional if you want to because at the end, it's kind of nice to have a little backup in a way, okay, I lost some highlights, but then you have masking fluid, you apply some masking fluid, especially like toward the lashes. So that's where I was thinking like, you know what? The lashes are so highlighted there. We might as well add some masking. 5. Part 2 Applying masking: Now, when you use masking fluid, I suggest using an old brush you don't care about. Oh my old rigor brush, and I do dip it in water first, and then I just apply it. This is just a masking fluid water base, and you just want to use a little bit of that over the hair, you would hold the brush toward the end of the handle, so you have a nice longer stroke nuts because you don't want something stick straight. If I want something like really straight and I want to have a lot of control, I'm going to hold the brush closer to it over the feral part. So then it's going to be straight. But I want a random shapes, lines. They're not really lines, just the hair. Make sure you don't leave this masking for a long time on the paper. Like I'm saying like, weeks because the chances are it will not come off. So I'm going to zoom in on my end, like on the computer screen so I can see the highlighted parts. I'm going to start here with the lashes. So it will be hard for you to see it because it's masking fluid, but very basically very thin lines. And there's a little line like over the lid, I'd say, it would be nice to use masking right there. Can't even tell if I applied it. There you go. Now I can see it. Then for the hair over the may, right. So looking at the computer screen, I would love to have a little more water. I'm using my jar just to clean the brush quickly, and then I'm going to apply some of that gray hair. What's the highlights, the most highlighted hair. So as you see, I'm not holding the brush over the feral part instead, like more toward the end of the brush. I was literally just teaching my daughter how to hold the breast or a pen because she's holding it, so far away, but I was telling her, if you want to write something, you need to have a closer, but for more like random strokes, hold it toward the end. So then I was teaching her how to paint some hair over like a dolly. So whatever you want some highlights, that's where you want to add it. And you can travel through the horse. You can add it toward other areas as well. Just look for, like, the most highlighted parts. One of the other areas I'm going to add, all the highlights are like here and go with the shape of the hair, the man, just like you see it. If you need to I'm basically diluting this with water because I keep dipping this brush in the water jar. Just to have thin hair. We're not going to add the background here, but it's more like for this part, just to have some highlights. Maybe over here. And then the same thing I'd say here for the whiskers. So something it would be there's like whiskers and hair coming out of the nostrils, for example. Super thin. So it's like you're barely touching the paper when you do this. It doesn't matter in the background. It's just to have some over here because we do have hair over here over the background, but we're not any background, it doesn't matter. All right. So this has to dry, and then we can start wetting the paper. 6. Part 3 Wetting, color palette: The next step is to wet the horse. I'm going to use my flat 40 Da vinci casin brush, and then from my own line, this is a flat 24. So first, dipping my brush in water. I am going to wet the inside of the horse, even though I'm not planning to really work on the muzzle. I raised a little bit of that line here, so it's more pale because this side of the horse is much lighter. Now, you can wet the eye. We're not painting the eye yet. This is going to be done later. So we are wetting the horse, but we don't have to wet it entirely. We can go over the neck. We're just not going to add colors here yet, but we want to have a nice flow. And here, this is when you can decide if you want the hair to be fluffy here, nice and soft, so that's why I'm wetting the background too. But I'm going to stay on the inside of the ears because I want to have control here, for example, the same thing with this here. And then for the man, can do the same thing. I can make it soft, and then I can add some hard edge lines. We're wetting the background here too. We have nice soft hair. But it's more about the head, so I'm going to spend more time wetting the head. You want to wet the paper for 4 minutes, maybe five. It really depends how large your painting is. For this, I am definitely going to wet it for 4 minutes. Now you know the side what areas I am going to wet. It's just a matter of going over the same areas few times inside of the ears. And then here where I have the main, I'm going toward the background as well. As I'm went in the background, I'm actually going to take a break for a moment and start diluting my colors with water. It's a good moment to take a break because then you can start winning it a little longer, and then the colors I'm sorry, the paper will stay wet longer. This is my raw sienna, one of my favorite yellows. I actually squeezed in a little bit of gold by whole wine. It's basically like gold shimmer with gum Arabic. And this is my raw umber. I want to have thicker paint, mostly. This is too much like a milky paint. But by the time I try to splatter a little bit, it will be probably dry the paint. This is my quinaqudon red. Let's see, clean my brush more. This is cobalt blue. Follow blue red shade. This is my Vande brown, and then I'll go for indigo, and that's because I'm going for indigo last because it's the darkest color. It makes water much darker. Everything else feels pretty clean, actually. So this is my Vande brown. And there's the indigo. It dilutes very easily with water. If you ever need to practice lifting colors, use the indigo color. Super easy. Okay. Now, I'll continue wetting for one more minute. So more water on my brush. 7. Part 4 Applying colors: I'm switching now to my smaller brush. This is my flat 24 songbird, a different collar handle. Pushing the water over, like, whatever I don't need or I don't care if there's too much water, which means the background. The longer you wet your paper, the more time you're going to have to apply colors. As I'm wetting, I'm studying the reference. I'm looking at the reference and trying to think of all the colors that I can see like these undertones. So those would be blue in this case. There's some yellow, lots of yellow actually in the neck area. The head part is more bluish, but you can see yellow here, for example, you can see all the yellows here. So we're going to start with the yellows first. Here's the e and then water in the background. And I keep going until I feel like I have enough of that water everywhere. You don't want puddles of water. Podles of water means paint will spread. You want to have nice control. So nicely shiny wet paper. Sometimes when the brushes feels too damp, you actually start removing the water from the paper. So you don't want that. I'm going to add a little more water here. Look at the paper from every angle if you have the lights. Just like I have lights above me and next to me and all that. So it's kind of easier to see what's shiny, what's not. You definitely want to take your time wetting the paper. It's not something that should be done quickly, like in a minute or two. You want to spend some time wetting, especially that you're leaving some areas paper dry, like in the background, for example. All right. I want to start actually with the ears. I'm going to grab my long cool sized breast. We're going to start with the ears and add a little bit of that yellowish tone. You want to have something that feels more like a water to milk like ratio because if you start right away with something that feels heavy cream or cream top, the paper will dry too fast. So you do want to create that flow. Find the most yellowish parts, you can see. Of course, it's all here and there. But let's start focusing first on the head part. Here it goes, maybe a little too much. That's okay. Wait, see how things are settling because with watercolors, everything dries more pale anyway. So what else do I see a little bit of that yellow tone? Let's focus on the head. So I see a little bit here. Actually, I'm tempted to switch to my flat brush right away because this does not give me enough of the coverage. Like having this cool brush. It's a smaller brush overall. But I just want to spread enough of that here. A little more. This is the yellow. So the Russian raw umber and tiny bit of queen red. You can go over the hair as well because we're going to finish it up anyway with blue tones, right? Wherever you can see, some of that yellow tone, try to search for it. A little more. This is more like a water to milk lay ratio, so I have a little bit of that yellow undertone, a little more red. I'm going to show this to you what it looks like. It's like this. I'm going to go here because this lip area, it looks like it does have a little bit of that yellow or something warmer, I want to say. Or sometimes, I don't see that color. I just want it there anyway. So keep adding whatever you feel like there's some of that yellow tone. Don't worry about the neck area. I'm just going to grab a little more of that color anyways, so I have a right here. We're going to paint the neck later, but as we just add a little bit of it here. It's kind of connect all connected anyway, right? And then back toward the main this area. Now, every time you grab this rosianRhmbg, queen red, you're changing the ratio between the colors alone. So this area feels like there's something, right, like a little yellowish. I mean, at least to me, it looks like it. So I'm going to clean the brush. I'm going to start working on the blues, but I need to go back toward the ears. Why is that? Because the ears will drive the fastest. This is my cobalt blue. Some of the avante I'm sorry, the fallow blue, cobalt blue indigo. I want this to be more like indigo though. I grabbed a little more of the indigo. You're mixing colors on the paper. I had to wipe my brush on the towel because this water to milk feels a little too diluted with water. Then on the inside, it should be darker. I'll work on that later, but for now, just a little bit of that blue tone. 8. Part 5 Painting the head: Now, I do want to continue, but I have to readjust it, and sometimes it just feels like another color is needed. And how about grabbing a little bit of that raw sienna? Because that blue is not like a perfect shade of, like, indigo or something else. And then go over some of the hair as well just a little bit. And then find the shadowy parts. Now we have the blues plus a little bit of raw sienna, right? And I don't want to go with this brush only, so I'm just going to add a little more color here. Remember this is first, like a water to milk like ratio, water to milk like ratio. If you start grabbing too early, like the heavy cream cream top, something heavier, you will dry your paper too fast. I'm going to clean this brush, and I'm going to grab my flat 24. So I've been painting for a few minutes now, right? So I need to adjust the ratio between water and paint. This needs to feel more like a half and half, I'd say. I want a little bit of bread to change the shade of my blue. And where do I see those bluish tones, right? For sure here. Now, you can see, it's not as flowy. Why is that? Because the paper is drying. So I grab more water just so there's a flow in this. I do want to show that there is that blue tone in my horse. So I'm grabbing more like a milky paint now, milk like ratio. And maybe the flat brush is not the right one for you. So you might want to go back to, like, a quilt brush or a round brush. I'm going to go over some of these areas. You can see I I had yellow there. It's not green, yellow plus blue is green. But because I'm mixing colors on the paper, it's different. I am avoiding that muddiness of colors. I don't need to completely go over the muzzle to paint the muzzle yet. I just want some color. It will help me basically to visualize it later. It's more about the skin color overall, just in general. And then some shadow here, looking for the most bluish parts. I don't want to make it too dark and it's very easy to make it too dark. So you have to be careful. Search for these mid tones, I'd say, and then we're going to focus on the darkest tones. And now where we have the veins, this is actually fun to do. I'm going to grab a little more of the Masiena where you have the veins, you actually want color. What will create those veins? How are we going to create those veins by lifting colors. So here, along this line, the nose bridge here, Oops, I went too far out. But the nose bridge part, we need a color actually. I actually went way too far over the sketch line. Where I'm going to have to do is lift the color later. Just this is just my long coil because that misshapes the horse. I'm just going to go along and then I'm going to lift the color on the outside later. That's my mistake. But don't let little mistakes to, like, confuse you or, like, you lose the, you know, motivation to paint and so on. So don't do that. I add a little more color here, and I'm just going to use brush to pull it up underneath the main just so I have a shadow there. But I also need to control it better to push it out there. I'm going to go back to my long co size four brush. And I want to actually add more of the yellowish colors to tones, raw sienna, raw umber and add it right in here because this is the one of the most yellowish parts. So right here, all this part. I just want a little more yellow here, and then I'm going to clean the brush. And go back for the blues, the blue tones. Plus a little bit of and brown this time. I just want to change the shade of it. Now, I don't want to paint too much of this the muzzle. I just want to focus here. Just to add a little more darks, maybe a little more of the Vande brown because I'm going to lift these areas. I also need to work on a contrast. That's why I'm adding a little more color and watching how everything settles. So Vanda brown, some of the indigo, and looking for the shadowy parts that we see. So it's like here, this part is shadowed. Now, that I have to fix later and I am going to fix. I'm going to show you how to fix it. The reason I wasn't lifting right away because it makes no sense to lift when that happens. If I start lifting right away, what's going to happen is just the paint will keep going that way anyway. So just no point to lift at this stage. A little bit of red with the blues this needs to be much, much darker. We go and then all this, and then we're going to lift the colors, and I'm going to show you how we can create these wrinkles to recreate the wrinkles. For now just focusing on those darkest parts. And then we splatter the paint, too. A little more of the indigo and some of that onda brown. I'm going to come back here anyway later. Make sure you don't misshape it like me. Oops, I keep mis shaping, but you know what? That's okay, actually. Kind of looks like it anyway in the reference. So I'll paint that later and then shadows, adding colors wherever you see shadows. Again, don't worry about the muzzle. Muzzle will be painted later. Let's just focus on the biggest shadows and then we now also lift the colors. So now I need to grab more like a heavy cream to cream top. It's more like a heavy cream, I'd say, because this is also a quilt brush. With a quilt brush, it's a little harder to have a creamier paint. But you're just adding more color toward these veiny areas and I'm going to show you how we're going to lift. This is a little too dry. Actually, I can't add any more color. I do want a little darker tone here overall and I wipe my brush on the towel because I want a little bit of a shadow right here. This is a damp brush and I still have a little bit of a color there. Now, that creamy paint. Indigo now, Vande brown, I want to go back here because this is my chance now. The paper feels damp. At different stage, you're going to do different things. For example, this is when the papers start to feel damp. This is when I can paint some of that main. And here, so creamy paint, show this to you. This is my creamy vantic brown, indigo. I want to go on the inside of the ear, but needs to have more vantic brown, maybe some queen red too. And then try to shape miss shape fresh, but just adding the darks on the inside of the ear, maybe on the outside here too. Then we can lift the colors as well. So you can tell the papers feel so much drier. And then use that paint the darks to add some more shadows whenever you feel like you need some shadows. For sure here, we're going to use a rigor brush for this as well. But if you still have this creamier paint, you must and then the brush is kind of flattened. You can pull through. Now, this is not something super easy to do, like all of these techniques together, right? Paint a horse, right, in general. But it's something that the more you practice, the better you get, just like with everything else. And it's just a matter actually of figuring out the ratios between water and paint. That's the key. So here, this feels damp. I can't go back here with a creamy sorry, with a water to milk accretion. It has to be a creamy paint, so cream top, and I'm actually going to make these lines a little darker now. These are the veins. The veiny parts and then lots of shadows here as well, right there, and then looks like there's a shadow here too. I don't want to make it too dark here. And then around below and above the eye, also have the darks. So all that should be a little darker overall. And then we have the eye. So with the tip of my brush very carefully, I just went in there and that it's a more of that. And this is like you can tell this is so dry. I shouldn't really mess with it. But there's a couple of things I need to do add more hair toward the man, lift the colors, and then maybe splitter some paint. I just have this cream top, and I feel like I just want to keep going. But, you know, sometimes I just have to tell myself, you got to stop because there's other things that we need to do that are more important. So I'm cleaning this brush. 9. Part 6 Lifting, splattering : We want to splatter paint a little bit here. So what I suggest is using well, any brush you can comfortable, I just use this one, which is my mini boob brush. This is old brush I've had for a long time by Sprinston basically. I need to grab a milky paint, indigo, I'm sorry, the Vandik brown, some of the racina. And you're going to use your finger. So you're kind of, like, rubbing it off your finger, if that makes sense. And you're just going to splatter. But we don't need to splatter everywhere because well, first of all, we're going to paint this part later. It's more about the face, the head. Grab some more of the Vandek brown, you want to make it darker and even indigo. So just to make this a little dirty, in a way. So whatever the area especially the areas where you're not going to go back to re wet, like all this part, for example, we're just going to lift colors after this, and we're going to add more color toward the main. I want this to be a little darker, so I should have some more of the indigo with my raw umber raw sienna. And because it's papers wet, this will spread anyway. A lot of it is just knowing what's going to happen next. That comes, of course, with the experience, but the thing is now the more you paint wet on wet, then the more you're going to know all this. That's why you just don't give up. You keep going and keep experimenting. The most you ever experiment is actually when you are starting out. That's I think something I noticed with my students overall in general. Like, we experiment the most when we're new to anything, basically. We're not afraid to, you know, add colors or do stuff like that. But I want to quickly test it if I can lift. This is one of the most important areas. So to lift colors, the paper needs to feel damp. For example, you tested. The main is perfect to lift, and you're going to use a damp brush. This is my record brush says two, which is what I use for lifting colors in general. But we have to pick because sometimes we don't have time to do every lifting everywhere. So for example, this is the most important because I want to show there's vein. So right above the dark part that we painted those lines, that's where you go into lift colors. Now, for me, I'm actually running out of time. I should have done it earlier, probably the time when I was spluttering paint. So I have to keep trying to lift as much as I can. And it's either the left side, as you see, there's a highlight next to that wrinkly part, which is shadowed. And that's where you're going to lift colors. Look for the veins. Again, this should be actually lifted, those wrinkles. But this is the most important, I think, right now, to lift this part because that's how I can show this is a vein. I can come back and try to lift more, but this is the time. Kind of missed it a little bit. So how do you find that perfect timing to lift colors? You can go back to my other courses. So there's apples and so on, where I explain a lot more how to lift and so on. But the best timing in general is when the papers start to feel damp. So for example, here, I'm going to go back here because this is the ear this part of the ear should be lifted. That's how I can create that softness and lift here. Now, it depends on the paper you're using. It depends also on the colors you use. Not all colors lift easily. Okay, this is the last minute for me to lift the main. Actually, it's a little too late. What I'm going to do is grab some of the, like, a milk paint, I guess, maybe half and half. Van **** brown, indigo. And you know what it should be more bluish. So I'm going to grab also fallow blue. And you can see, like, it's becoming like hard edges. It looks more like hard edge. It's like half and half of it. Parts look hard edged, parts softer. You know, I can always rewet this. This is wet and try to add more. So if you're creating hard edges, then obviously you have, what's more like what we see, but we also want to create softness. So I hope you're watching this before painting with me. Try to add more colors wet on wet before it's too dry. More blue. I'm going to come back here, and this is too dry anyway. So this should be re wedded a little bit, and I need to add more. Because if I just continue adding painting this individual hair, it's not going to look as natural. I have some, but it's not enough and try not hold the brush like close toward the furrow. You want to create random like the hair. Not too controlled. You can use a different brush too. You can use different brushes. You can use a quill brush too and just flatten it. Is there any area where I need to lift colors more? I didn't really get to the nostril. I didn't paint that the nostril because that would be the side. It's more about these wrinkly parts. Again, what is the best timing to lift the colors? The best timing to lift colors is when the paper loses its shine. Let's talk from the beginning. At the beginning, the paper feels like it's what it looks shiny, wet. That's not the best timing to lift because if you start lifting then, then everything will just start flowing, you just adding more water to your paper, and all the colors become more diluted with water. So once that shine starts to go away, that's actually that's the time when you start lifting. A lot of times I start lifting early because I know I'm going to run out of that time. But the perfect timing is once that shine is pretty much gone, it just happened, and then you start lifting. That's the prettiest lifting because it looks nice and soft and natural. And it depends on the paper because if you're using cellulose paper, your lifting is not going to look as soft. So I'm trying to find some more veins, but I think that was it pretty much. This should be a little lifted. Just to show the highlights more in this one. So this is the only part, and I'm going to show you what I'm going to do with it. I just need to switch to a quick clean water because I just definitely need clean water here. And I'm going to rewet this to add more hair because this is not enough of that may in there. And I don't want to continue with the rigor brush because I'm just going to end up with, like, hard edge lines, which, you know, again, it could be okay. Like, it just depends on the look you're looking for to see in your painting. It depends on the style. But for me, it should be softer. So my idea is wet on wet. Make it wet on wet. I'm just lifting a little more and I should have lifted here by the way, if you can lift over the ears, all that fluff. So it depends again on the paper on some papers, the cotton papers, it's easier to lift than the other ones. Okay, so that will be rewetted, so that will be softened anyway. And then we have all this, and then we're going to paint the eye. When we paint the eye, we're going to wet more than we need. And then for the nostril, we're going to paint it separately. It's actually almost dry. And then we're going to work on the neck area, the man again. So for now, let's walk away from it and let it dry. 10. Part 7 Painting the muzzle: Alright, friends, welcome back. So now we can focus on something else, and I think it's a great idea to work on the muzzle. So we do have nice little pretty pink parts over the skin. So I suggest you grab a pencil and basically mark this for yourself. So one is like right here. Now, you can completely ignore this and just pretend like they're not there at all and just focus on applying the darks overall. But why not to make it a little more pinkish here. So this already have it sketched here, this is the area. So you can use masking fluid for watercolors. To cover to mask this area, the little spots, or you can just avoid wetting these areas right now. What we're going to do is wet more than we need. Basically, except for these little marks. So it's going to go inside and I do have to remind myself that I'm not wetting those areas. If we added way more color and use a heavy cream and cream top like ratio with the previous layer, then we would be at risk of reactivating the colors now maybe just a little bit just because we use some indigo. But I'm not worried about it at all. Just go gently overall and try to use a softer brush when you re wet the areas here and then again, try to avoid wetting these marks to the pink parts that we see or just forget about it at all, completely don't worry about it. A lot of times I just ignore it. Here I'm just going to wet the muzzle. You can also use masking fluid if you want to wet more than you need because you never know how far you're going to go with applying all the colors. So very gently, I'm going right here because I use a heavier ratios between water and paint, but I want clean water here to make sure you're using clean water. One more time here. This is my long cool sized toothbrush, songbird. Right here, you need to go a little farer. Just clean water. And you don't want puddles of water. Make sure it's all nice shiny wet, but no puddles cause otherwise everything will spread too much. But let's grab some of the blues. It's a cop blue, Palo blue, indiga. But this needs to feel more like milk like ratio, and I have way too much water. I'm going to grub. I guess for now, this is okay. Just the blues. And start applying it towards the mid tone areas. The reason you don't want to use right away like a heavy cream top is because the paper will just dry too fast and it'll be too heavy and you want to have a flow. At the beginning, you want to have that flow. You can go around these marks because when you do, you create a hard edge and you know, right away where it is and you won't miss it just in case you go fast like me sometimes and it's easy to cover those areas that we want to actually preserve. I'm going to mix the colors as I go. So I just grabbed a little more of the indigo, I'm sorry, the fallow blue. And right now, it's more like a milk creation. I'm gonna grab a little bit of Vande Brom too. This is much darker now. I want more blues. I'm just going back toward this area here. Wherever I can feel the shade of blue. With a little too low here, that's okay. I'm actually going to mark this part again basically with the color now before it was a sketch. Just add some color, let know that color bleed there. What we could have done also is just divide the lower lip and the bottom lip. That's something that you might want to do because it's actually easier when we divide the lips. Otherwise, we have to wait to add more color once this settles a little bit, so it's not so wet. But here, whatever you feel like you need to add more of that blue shade, go for it now because in a second, this is going to be too dry. I'm actually going to use a different quill, so my long il says four. Just to soften this part a little bit. And it's basically grabbing the colors again. This time, it's going to be half and half ratio and just adding these colors again and again toward the same areas. But you're adjusting the ratio between one and paint. So now I'm grabbing a heavier ratio and looking for all the darkest parts where I want to apply this shade. If it feels too bluish, then you just need to grab a little bit, let's say, the Vantage brown. And then I wipe my brush on the towel so it feels more like a damp brush. I'm going to come back here to add more, but not yet because otherwise, I will lose the highlights here over the lips. So I just need to give it a moment for it to settle. And using basically, it feels like a damp brush. Not quite, but I have definitely less water in there. Just want to add more color. Trying to figure out the nostril. 11. Part 8 Adding more darks muzzle: And then this is like a heavy cream of the indigo, palo blue, and Vanda brown. And then the darkest parts. So as you see, the longer I paint, the more I adjust the ratio, and I remove that water from the paint more and more. I do want to make sure like this part here is darker than other parts. I'm going to be also lifting, so we're going to lift colors. And you could switch to a different brush. I'm thinking now, maybe I want the round heat, my medium stiff brush for this especially for that part. So a little more I'm not cleaning the brush. I just grabbed some fallow blue indigo to add it, right here. And just kind of like cruising around basically and feeling it out where do I need to add color? This is definitely it needs to be darker and I will lift as well. This is the spot there. Very gently adding colors and even deepening this part right here just to make it slightly darker. I'm going to wipe the brush and use like a damp brush. So it feels like this. I'm going to go with it. To soften some of these strokes. So DM brush technique, just to soften this. And then I'm going to grab my round eight and add even more darks in a second. I don't want to make it too dark because that's important too. What I need to clean this brush, actually, squish it between the pieces of a towel, so it feels like this flat, and I'm going to soften this. As you see, when the brush feels damp, you can do actually more with your painting in general. But this is I'm going to show you my round eight, golden one. And first of all, you need to squish it also underneath the towel so there's not much moisture in the brush. Lift this part right away, the nostril. Otherwise, it's so easy just to lose it. I don't want to lift too much, but just this area right here. This is all lighter, that's fine. Maybe lift a little bit here. It's not actually the brush that I like to use for lifting. I'm going to wait for the lifting and probably a couple more minutes. I'm just going to grab Vande brown cream top like ratio indigo and go here. Now this is actually pretty late for me. I have to be careful because I don't want to leave chunks of paint. I just saw the moment this is really late. But I need to add the darks especially to separate the top lip from the bottom lip. I lost my sketch I can't see exactly but something like this. And the darks go like this, and then this is a little dark for this part. And then I got to go here again because we need to shade it. You want to do all of this when this is still wet, that's the goal. And also, like if we're going to lift, well, we got to hurry up. I got to hurry up. So talking and talking, but I'm running out of time. So I really need to hurry up and then see some spots. You don't need to, like, work on every detail, like, wrinkle and so on. So that's not that important. But let me quickly grab my round three. So this is important. Clean your brush, wipe it on a towel, and let's begin lifting because for example, there's all these wrinkly parts, and how do you create these wrinkles by lifting colors actually help go here a little bit and go out like this to paint the shadows. But then we're going to lift. I'm going to wait a second until this settles and look maybe for another area that I need to lift, maybe here. Or let's see over here. So clean your brush, wipe it on a towel, and then you begin lifting. So for example, maybe it should be a little later. I'm actually pulling the paint from the left side a little bit. So all this is about, is basically just working with the wet on wet, right? But practicing the technique you use that technique all the time, basically, because it's wet on wet wet on wet and then we're doing lifting. Once you figure out the ratios, like when you paint wet on wet or water and paint, then you see how much easier it becomes, and then it's all that planning that comes along. I feel like maybe this is too wrinkly. I made it maybe too wrinkly, but we'll find out later, I guess. Just lifting a little more just to create these ring clip parts. So yeah, it's just like everything else, it really becomes so much easier because literally, it's just a matter of putting it all together, like the play and the steps. Because once you know how to do wet and wet well and lifting, it's really sometimes I have a hard time actually with some subjects, and I'm thinking like, Well I know all the techniques help to use the techniques. I already know wet and wet lifting and dry resting and so on. Some other techniques like salt and this and that. And then it's just a matter of, like, Well, but how do I break it down into stages of painting, and that's all it is later on. Once you master the wet and wet and lifting, it really is just about the stages. Like, what do you do first? What do you paint first? What do you leave dry, for example, and so on. Now, I don't want to get caught in, like, lifting and lifting too much. I just want to show that there is that nostril, and there's actually something that should be a little lighter here, too. Now I'm pretty late for lifting at this moment. Actually, as a matter of fact, there should be a little spots here. Grab a creamy paint. If you need to still add color, it has to be cream top like ratio. These are little tiny spots over the nose, I can see and if you can go back here too, if you can because again, this is all almost too dry for me at least. I want to make sure this is dark enough, the slip, the bottom here, this should be darker, so creamy paint. So at this stage, I cannot go with anything more diluted with water because then it's just a bloom and it's just not going to look pretty if I'm trying to paint something more defined, more detailed. Let's see. Maybe I'll lift a little bit tiny here. So it depends what paper you're using with the lifting, right? All depends. Maybe this part, the bottom part of the lip should be a little lifted. Right there. Sometimes it's just easy to paint something, and sometimes it's like it just depends how complex something is. Like, if I didn't have maybe these wrinkles, maybe I would have time to do something else. So it really depends because at some point I choose, like, Okay, what's more important lifting here or there, where I know if I'm going back somewhere else, I'm not going to be able to lift, right? So I think this is good. If I want to add maybe some spots, it's the only thing. Let's see here. This is dry, actually, too dry. This is too dry. So it's like I'm, you know, trying to test it out. This is a little dry, but I still want that shadow here. So I just added a little shadow. But I'm going to leave it just the way it is now. So we can move on to do something else, and we'll come back. We can paint that little mark there, too. 12. Part 9 Mane 2nd Layer: If you feel the same way as I do, I feel like there's just not enough maybe of the color in the main, then this is the time to do it before you paint the eye. Because once we paint the eye, then we really don't want to, like, re wet the section, right? So let's grab a clean brush. Clean brush, make sure it's clean, clean water. And what we're going to do is wet. So this part, we're just going to add colors in the same areas. And actually, here's the thing which you could do. You don't have to wet the outside, for example, because you can have a hard edge now because we already have softness. So it's like you choose if you want that softness again in the background because maybe you already have enough and I feel like I have enough. I just want to add some more of the hair, like, more depth to it. So wet always more than you need again, right? Careful with this part because we just rewetted section of the muzzle. So you don't want to go over that. Here we go. Carefully going here. And then for that, I'm going to grab my larger long quill brush size four this time. I'm going to start with like a Vandek brown here, some blue, fallow blue, for example, and look for the most shadowed areas. So I'd say like this side because you want to keep parts much later. And then grab indigo and fallow blue, for example, I'm sorry, fallow blue anda brown, but a creamy paint. I'm not adding it everywhere. I just want it in some places because the man is darker in a lot of these areas. In the minute, I'll grab my rigor brush too. I just want to make it again darker in some of these areas, but I don't want to lose the highlights. That's why I'm not adding it everywhere. It's just some areas just so it looks more natural. It'll be a little more blue here. I want to use my finger. I don't want to bigger. I'm just going to squeeze the same brush between pieces of a towel. So it's just a damp brush, and I'm going to soften this. So this is a damp brush technique, and I'm just softening it. Here I have to be careful because this is not wet, but I could pull the paint a little bit. And just to soften this and then clean the brush again. And then I can grab my rigor brush, say it's too sunburn. I'm basically making it fuller. If you like the previous version, then just stick with it one layer. So I'm grabbing creamy paint, and this is bundant brown, indigo, cream top. And just adding a little more of that hair, creamy paint. I do have masking fluid, so that's my nice back up there in case I lose the highlights, too much. But don't be afraid to re wet sections if you need to add more color. This is more like a milk like cree I want to add some hair, like individual hair because this is all dry brush that you can tell, but it doesn't bother me. It's just that different look. I wanted to add some softer, and then this is Vandek brown indigo. Whatever areas need more shadows, I'm gonna go for it. Creamy paint. So I feel like now it's just a little better than it was. And I can add little shadows later too. A little more cream top like ratio of the Advantage brown that S Digo. And just closer here toward the hair or the eye, I'm sorry, the eye. I just feel like this works better than before. It feels so much fuller. Now, this is part of the head, too, so I just going to have to make sure there's enough of the shadow. So I can walk away from this part for now. What we could do is paint the rest of the horse. Okay? So let's do that. 13. Part 10 Painting the neck: All right, so how are we going to paint it. So we're going to wet the horse with the man. This is the thing you can also wet the outside. We can have a hard edge. Maybe in some areas we will let the color bleed. It's up to you, up to us, how we want to go about the man, but it's better to make that plan ahead of time, so you already know what you're doing. We're going to start with the same colors we did before, umber, raw sienna and start with those. We're going to keep the neck area or maybe this part. A little lighter than this all here. We're also going to wet only. I'm going to show you up to here, but then we're going to go inside here. That's because we want to have a hard edge here, a darker shadow right here. So underneath the jaw line. And for the main, again, we're going to wet all this, but you can decide if you want to go on the outside a little bit by wetting the paper because this way you create softness. So I'm going to show this to you right away. The best way is basically by doing it by showing it too. You. I'm just going to wet it. Go wedding the man. So what area would I want to keep softer? How about here? I'm just going to go on the outside. And then up until the ear, as you see I'm going this pattern. Just wet this background. It's so much easier to actually wet the background and then just apply colors toward the main. But a lot of times we do want some hard edges. So all here, and then we're going to wet it for 3 minutes. So about 3 minutes. So wetting up until here, but I got to go inside a little bit and be careful because we just wet it the main part. Don't want to go too far. We just want the colors from here to bleed a little bit. So wet it. Go up until the ear. And then re wetting the background section. A little more water here. And very gently where you already painted. Nop until here, because we want to have a hard edge. So I'm going to wet it for another minute. One more minute wedding. And we're going to start with the sienna same colors. Basically, you can stick with a thicker, whiter brush. This is my size 40, or you can grab something smaller. It's up to you, but I think it's a little easier to at this point, just to cover the areas. So I'm going to grab this raw sienna here, umber and gold. I'm going to start right here next to the neck. So this for sure, is going to be a hard edge. And then here where I have the main, I do want that color to show through. There's the main color and I do want color over over the horse. I don't want it to be white, white, even if it's white. All this, just like we see the muscles, grab a little more. And along the line all the way here, just like we see it in the reference. There's also a muscle here. We can see a little bit of that. Now again, I'm keeping this part. I'm going to keep it much lighter for the balance. In one word two, I'm going to go here for that main. And we can also splutter color just like before. But we want to show there's that muscle tone. That's why we're separating sections and leaving some parts much lighter. I'm going to now clean this brush. When I grab some of the same brush, this is my fallow blue indigo, cold blue, maybe some red, actually, would be nice. That's in ante brown. I think this is a better mix now. And then just to show that shade of blue here, Sometimes it's easier to actually stand up to see the whole thing, but make sure that this doesn't dry too fast because we need to add a little more color. And then we have actually a darker area here too. A little uso. All this, for sure. We're going to come back to this part to add the main, more color. And so here, I want this to be more bluish. Go and then all this, actually. There you go. I went a little over the line. That's okay. One more thing I like to do. Sometimes it's easy, sometimes it's not is actually removing sketch lines. So that you might have tried to do that. Sometimes it works, sometimes. It depends how much color went in there in the area overall. So I want to make sure that I'm not making it too dark. And I want to come back here one more time to add the darks. I'm gonna clean this white brush, clean it. Actually, before that, you know, I feel like this should have a little more of that raw sienna here, raw umber. To quickly grab it before it's too late. I don't want to make it too dark. I have to stop myself because I was already getting a little too dark here. And for the main, we're going to use, like, a heavier ratios. This was all milk like ratio. Milk like ratio. Between water and paint. Clean this brush. Grab I'm grabbing actually my round eight, golden one, and I'm going to grab this heavy cream or cream cream top, ndakown, maybe some event of this raw sienna, if I can. It's actually gold that I grabbed with creamy paint and then some of this indigo. Let's go here. Careful with your hand so you don't touch the other parts, we want this to be really dark. I'm using creamy paint on the tip of my brush. I'm going to try to actually divide this part. Let up. It's a little darker, but you know what? It doesn't look right because it needs indigo. I don't have enough blue. So now it makes more sense. The shadow. I should go a little lower. All that shadow. Now, let's find another area which is here, let's say. So it's like my painting is so much larger than what I see in the computer screen. So I just have to keep scanning both and like, Okay, am I going okay with the proportions and so on, because super easy to get, like, kind of lost almost. So I have to keep looking at both. This is still my round eight golden one brush. So it's a medium, stiff brush. So anything like medium stiff. Try to have a fine point. I'm going to grab a little more blues with it. I'm not cleaning my brush to see FYI, and try to match the color, of course, of the main to the colors that we see here. 14. Part 11 The mane and neck: It's just right now, it's a little more bluish, so I'm grabbing more brown. For now, I just want to kind of, like, mark for myself where I see this man, 'cause it's kind of like this, but it should have a little more blue, for example, here. At some point you find yourself kind of rushing through. That's because the paper is dry, right? So tricky, but we can still do it. It's still easier than painting something wet on dry. I strongly believe that because when you paint wet on dry, how much time do you really have? Once you apply color, it's going to dry so much faster. So wet on dry technique works, like when you paint, like, maybe one of those style like when you paint florals, for example, this one petal, quickly applying colors. Here, I don't really like this. I just need to soften this part. I don't want to go over the ear because that's definitely not the area. So I'm just going to quickly grab my round the brush and just soften this because the hair, the man would go behind the ear. I have a shadow. I feel like it's a little strong, stronger than I should have it, but, you know, I can always adjust the other parts. And then some spots. We're going to splatter paint, too. Let's focus first on what's the most important, which is the main. So this is the creamy paint on the tip of my brush. And I should really switch to my trigger brush at this point. Something like that. I feel like I cut down a little bit on the jaw line, so I might just have to fix it a little bit, maybe lifting. But I won't worry about it yet. This is good actually for splitter. I'm going to grab my mini mop brush. So the mini mop and let's see, grab some of this asienabnde brown, milk like crista mostly and splatter the paint. But mostly here for now, just because this area here settled and this didn't. This is still super wet. If I start adding here, then it will just kind of spread the paint will spread a lot unless I'm using, heavier ratios. So I'm just going to focus on applying it here mostly. Well, I still went in here, but I'm going to have to probably fix it a little bit. So some of that paint, Okay. For now, that's okay. Even if I forgot or if I forget to do that, I'll still have enough of this splatter initially. Now, I was talking about, I went a little I cut down a little bit on the jaw line. I don't like that. That's because I waited too far. So my best bet would be to lift here a little bit. But not too early. If you're going to lift, you have to wait a little bit until this settles. So I really wanted to have a hard edge line, but I'm going to have to. I'm going to end up with a self line. Because I need to lift more of this so it feels rounded, like round. Alright, this is my rigor, too. Songbird creamed up like ratio of the indigo and Vande Brown. More of the din digo. So this is what's going to happen because we wetted the background. So then you have a comparison now. What happens if you wet the background too, like how soft the main will look? Now, the best time to start adding these lines is like when the paper almost feels damp, like over here, actually, show example. I'm adding a little bit of a color because it's not going to spread much. You don't want to do this, completely wet on dry because we could also add some of that hair wet on dry. But that's because we want to do it now because we want to make it look soft. Cream top, I'm going to show you what this looks like. I grab this creamy paint from here and then I grab quickly indigo. I never try to mix these colors completely on my palette because that's not the gold. That's not what I'm going for. I want the colors to mix on the paper. Not the palette. And that's something that is one of the keys is to basically avoid the muddiness of colors and all the blends look natural versus if I want to create a new color, like a brand new color, then yeah, I'm just going to keep blending these two colors on the palette before I bring them over here. But that's not what I want. So I'm going over the background too just to recreate some of this part. It's like I'm turning right away just to show that there is that here on the other side, more of this creamy paint. Then I'm going to lift too. So go back toward the top. Maybe you want to add more before everything is just too dry. Too dry to add more. Set should start from the top and go down a little bit. That makes more sense. Also, what you could do is just grab a more diluted paint a water milk, and then you can add the hair above. I say even more diluted paint. Less of everything let me show you. Trying to get rid of as much as I can. I just have it on the tip of my breast and let's say you want to add some hair in the back. Same thing here, but we'll come back there, actually. Right in here. I was thinking, I just want to make sure you can see it. Okay, I have to literally change the position of my hand or turn the paper so I can do it. Now, I was talking about the two things. I was talking about lifting colors and then splattering. So if we want to splatter more, this is the timing to splatter paint here. If you want to splatter more. Back to my minimum brush. An brush will work. It's just as long as you get the feel of it, like how to splatter paint. And just here, for example. So you're rubbing it off your finger. Also, when you splatter, tiny little granules or grenels the paint, actually you can also shade it with this. So, for example, here I just added more and I kind of shaded it this way, too, right? Now, careful so that splatter doesn't go over the background, but you can also use a paper towel or something. Then I like to have more control when I do that part just so I don't have too much splatter. I like to grab let's see rigor brass two, and I will grab, let's say, the same consistency cream top. No, this is not the same consistency as when I was splattering. This is more like a cream top of the This is actually now a Fonda brown raw sienna. Then if I want to add let's say some more, not just the hair. I'm getting sidetracked here. It's like, Wait, this looks good. Let's add some more brown hair. But anyway, grab this creamy paint, and then if you want, larger chunks. Well, that's not so pretty actually, because this is too dry, the paper is too dry, but I'm going to keep it that way. If I really don't like it, I'm just gonna grab a paper towel and press a little bit so it's more pale. And then this is too dry, actually. This is too dry. I'm just going to some more. But to change the shade of the brown, just add more the indigo and this way, you have different shade of that. This tells me it's so dry. I need to do the lifting if I want to do lifting and it's actually a little late. Let's see if I can still do it. Yeah, it's pretty late. Maybe here. Here I can still lift a little bit, but you can't see it. What I'm going to do is add the close ups of my painting so you can examine it. Ideally you want to lift in between. We do have masking, so the masking fluid will help, of course. It's just it would be nice to also lift. So I do miss out on that timing a lot, even though it doesn't seem like it, I do. I do miss out a lot on lifting colors because a lot of times it just get sidetracked and I simply forget. But I was able to lift here enough to recreate that gel line, and this could be a little darker just FYI. You're still working on your painting.nther thing what we could do is add a little shadow right there. I'm gonna show this too. 15. Part 12 Shadows and lifting: So right here, you would grab that brown, some blue. I need a cream top and I keep grabbing dry paint because everything is so dry already. And you would go this is how you can create a shadow, more dimension. So this was a little too heavy cream. And then you use a clean brush and you let that to spread. But this right here, it should have a little more brown just FYI. I just grabbing I'm adding more of that land brown. You can create a shadow like this under some of the hair. What you can also do, you can splatter water here. Like, you could. You could literally do that. That's an option. Just little tiny granols I guess, I want to say, you would use a small brush and just like we splatter the paint. Now you can also use a rigor brush to lift because we do see like individual hair you don't want to here's the thing about the detail. You don't want to sit on the painting and lift every little area, because if you do that, if you focus on every inch of your painting and you lift every area, it's not going to look natural. Just pick like the most like, whatever you see the most of that the hair, let's say over here only. And I still can't really see it, but if you really study my painting, you see maybe some lifted lines. The areas where I really wanted to live were, like, right here where the main is, but it's a little too late, so that's okay. Well, I have them asking. So maybe over here, and that's it. I don't want to do more than this. That's all I wanted to do. One of the things my mom has always taught me is take a break and take a look at your painting from a different perspective. So put it somewhere else. When you walk into the room again, you will see that horse and you see right away what's missing. Maybe you missed out on a shadow somewhere or something. That's something you can add later over here, we add a little shadow there. Now look at the overall reference, how is that light affecting the horse? Because the shadow as on the right side, that means the light is coming from the left side right here, it's hitting it this way. That's why we have a shadow here. That's why we have a shadow inside, we can actually add more color inside the ear. Or we have the shadow, let's see. We have it here, and I was talking about here. Those are the areas, so it would be on this side. That's why we have shadows here so we can deepen the shadows. I'm not going to add any more shadows here over the muzzle. I just like the way it is. I also need to remember to show you how to remove this. I'm just going to scrub it basically to create a softer line here so I don't have that color. But it doesn't bother me. It's just that it would be nice if I had it like this, basically. For now, we're going to walk away from this, let it dry, and then when we come back, we can work on the eye. 16. Part 13 Eye painting: Alright, my friends, let's take care of this eye. And my approach is pretty much always wet on wet. So we will wet more than just the eye. We'll wet also parts of the skin, the lids, and so on. But we're going to wet only up until, for example, like here because we want to have a hard edge to show there's hair, and the hair is actually much lighter. So I'm going to show this to you right away. And I'm just going to wet all of this except for where we have the hair. I actually have a masking fluid there. I could go a little in since I do have masking. So something like this, you wet more than you need because you never know how far you're going to go with the color, how much you want to add in there. It gives you a chance to actually shape some of the hair. So right now, it's hard to see because it's just water. Have your colors ready to go because this will happen pretty quickly since this isn't a large area, we're not going to sit on it for too long to keep wetting it because we don't want to reactivate the colors. It's best if you watch first, and then you paint your horse. So I'm going to start with the lighter colors. So my Panta brown, and brown sienna. This is the area where we have the lashes. As you see, I just added on the bottom of the lashes. This is how far I went with the water. So you can see that as well. To hear the overall. I'm looking at the reference image the whole time, just kind of trying to capture the latest tones first, but this is just the raw sienna and fandak brown and now I'm going to grab this fallow blue indigo, maybe tiny bit of andake brown too. And this is more like that was milkiRa more and this is more like a heavy cream, but I need more of it. So I'm going to map this area so I don't get lost here. Again, I'm not going to have too much time, so it's not like I can just keep working it for a long time. I don't want to wet it too long because again, this is a second layer, technically. But I do need the arcs. So more of this heavy cream of the Banjek brown and indigo. And I can't forget about all these parts. This, by the way, is a softer brush, what I'm using. It's my round eight golden two. So it's a softer one than the golden one. A little bit more of the This is palo blue. That's what it is. I do have this part like this. So the lids. It's harder to paint the eye that we can't really see much on the inside. So it's kind of like all these tones, right? A lot of times when I can't see enough, I will actually put the photo reference through Photoshop to second enhance things. So there's a light here. So as you see, I'm kind of coming closer and closer toward the middle section. And that technically should go in here too, because it makes no sense if it's like too light here actually. So I'm going to go in a little bit. The lid part. And then I'll just have the hair. But I do need to soften it on this side, because then it makes more sense. And continue with this heavy cream. It's almost like a cream top, what it feels like it. It's kind of like this. I feel like my sketch wasn't that great. So now I'm kind of lost a little bit. It's kind of like this. This is the darkest part. So I'm going to go in a little bit in these lashes. And I can always lift, so that's another thing. I'm not worried too much. It's just so I don't lose too many highlights overall. There's lashes, actually, or lashes. Yeah, lashes coming out from there. Now, this is drying pretty quickly. So if I want to add any more color, I'm just going to go in here, but then use a dam brush to soften this. And that makes more sense now because we can see the hair through right and then dam brush on top to soften it. So I'm okay with this, but I need to soften it a little bit, too. And overall, so I have this masking, but I also want to show there's like a eyeball in there. It's really hard to see it. It's all black, basically. So more of that creamy panda brown and indigo and just go in between the lashes. I think that's what I want to do. But I'm going to have to lift a little bit because I lost a little bit of it. And then we have these wrinkly parts. The smaller detail, but not really, like, working on it all the way. Now, you can tell my masking the way my masking is. Kind of, it's okay. The way I have this line. This is the darkest part right under the lashes, it seems like. And then right there. All right. So what else I can do is grab wicker brush and add some of the lashes. So this is going to be also like a heavy cream to cream top on the tip of my brush. I want to pull it from here. Why cream top? Because this is still slightly wet. And I know that the bottom there is not as wet, but I just want this to have that softness to it. And then we have also dots and stuff like that. Maybe a little more of this creamy paint here. And there's maybe one more like lash or something. It looks almost like maybe that's too much. Well, I can also grab my brush so my round three to soften it. With a damn brush, you can do so much if you don't like something. Just soften it basically. So I feel like that's good, although maybe I could grab a tiny more of the paint. Just go here. Just to shape it better. So this is your moment here. If something went too dark, like you painted it too dark or something, this is your moment when you can lift the colors. I'm just going right next to the the hair, the man. I want to make sure that it makes sense that the man goes over here. So I think that's pretty much it for the eye, except I'll be removing the masking fluid. Let me zoom out. 17. Part 14 Spots and whiskers: What we could do is paint the pinky skin. I'm going to grab my round to brush, Sober details. What you could do is just wet it but add a little more color, which is, I would say, like a cuna cudon red, some row sienna, mostly on bottom because we need to shade it. The part is a little darker on the bottom. Then you can add a little bit of blue again to shade it more right there. And then we can do the same thing with this skin here, so you wet it, look for the shadows. And then quinacrido add some raw sienna. I don't think I don't think there's that much cheddar, but we can add a little bit maybe the grade here or something. I go. Since we're here, let's add some whiskers. That's a great idea. I'm going to grab my record size two brush and I'm going to zoom out a little bit from the reference on my computer screen because I don't want to see things too close up close. This is a blend of indigo and some fandak brown. I don't want it to be too mixed, but as you can see my brush is almost flat. I'm going to use the flat side of it. Now this should be really thin. I even want to grab even more of the water with it, make it even thinner. More thin down, like a water ratio. You're going to keep grabbing the colors you have, it can be a little more blue, less blue with it. So vandak brown, maybe raw sienna. Just to add some of the whiskers. Again, you can keep changing the colors. This is a little too purple. Now I grab more of the Vandyk brown. And whenever you see some of that hair. Same thing on this side. Very quick stroke. It's almost you're not touching the fever, that makes sense. Let's see what else we can add it. Looking at the overall, I think I have enough, but just in case you wanted to start grabbing more of that. This is a milk like ratio, I'd say, but only on the tip of my breast whatever I want to show some more of that hair. Yes. Maybe you want to go over the main. I feel like I'm okay, but just in case you feel like adding some more, remember, less is better overall. Less is always better. You can add some coming out of the hair as well. I'm sorry, the ear coming out of the ear, maybe some more whiskers here. Maybe something more diluted, even more diluted with water. And that's pretty much it. So we have to wait for this to dry. And once this is dry, then we can remove the masking fluid, and that'll be it for the horse painting. No 18. Part 15 Final details, removing masking: Alright, so I started removing masking fluid. There's a little left here where I have the eye. I have to be very careful. I want to make sure this is all dry right away. So this line on top of the lid is a little too dark. So I'm using a damp brush and I'm just reactivating colors next to it, basically. So it's much better now. I do want it to be visible, just not that visible. So whatever you have masking, just remove the masking fluid, and the painting is fished. So please let me know if you have any questions. Actually, I forgot one thing. I want to show you how you can remove something that you don't like as much. So this is my chisel blender brush. I'm actually going to see if I can still do it. So I can still lift it. So you just want to lift the color, basically, to soften the edge that went over the line. And then perhaps use a paper towel. It's a little more staining, but I'm still okay with it the way it turned out. So thank you so much for your time, and let me know if you have any questions. 19. Conclusion: Congratulations. You have just completed this class, and I can't wait to see your horse paintings. Please share them with me and others under this post. And if you ever have any questions, you can also comment right below this class. If you're looking for more classes with me, you can find me on Patron where I have over 800 classes. Those are real time recorded classes, including voiceovers and then real time videos from the past. I'm also on social media, and it's very easy to find me. Thank you so much for taking this class with me.