Watercolor Mastery: Paint Realistic BLACK Animals w/Wet on Wet and Lifting

1. Intro: Painting realistic black animals with watercolors can be quite challenging, especially if you are new to it. Trust me, I know from a personal experience. When painting a black animal in watercolor, are you struggling with creating depth in your painting, trying to make the black look natural, creating endless hard edges, and fur that lacks softness and then trying to paint every single hair and adding layer after layer, hoping that it will start to look more natural. And no matter what you do your animals still lacking in depth. And the colors look muddy. Don't worry. I know what to do. I can teach you how to achieve a natural shade of black and add depth to your painting without overworking certain areas and avoid the colors to get muddy. The key to painting animals and watercolors is number one, use the wet on wet technique. Number two, layer the object starting with undertones and number three, to mix colors mostly on the paper, not your palette. The wet on wet technique is very forgiving, allowing you to create a soft smooth layer without having to work on every single hair and making that fur look soft and fluffy. Starting with undertones gives an object more depth, and mixing colors on the paper is the key to avoid muddy colors. But that's also the key to create natural shades of a color. In this course, I'll teach you how to control water and paint on paper from the very beginning and to create your own shade of black. Using colors that will enable you to paint black animals more realistically. My name is Maria A Chinska and I'm a watercolor artist and teacher. I've been teaching watercolors since 2016, and I have taught thousands of people how to paint with watercolors. I am proud to say that I have over half 1 million of followers on all social media platforms. I also run two online schools a part of skill share. As an experienced watercolor artist, I have even developed my own line of watercolor brushes. I have a lot of experience as a watercolor artist, especially with techniques such as wet on wet, lifting, and properly layering an object using undertones. I know how to paint realistic black objects in watercolor. And now I am super excited to share everything I know with you in this course. 2. Class Structure: I will guide you through the process of preting two black dogs and a cat painting using wet on wet and lifting techniques and painting with undertones. Each project is designed to help you get better and better at painting realistic black animals in watercolor. By building on the skills you learned in the previous project, you'll get plenty of practice and gain the confidence you need to create beautiful animal paintings on your own. The first two projects one and two, will focus on exercises. Blending colors on people creating your own shade of black and making swatches so you are familiar with the color values of that blend of black. You'll also paint cats ear and practice lifting colors. In Project three, you'll paint the entire cat wet on wet. And we will use different colors for undertones. You'll practice wet on wet and lifting colors to add more highlights to the fur. Project four and five, you'll paint two different dogs, first, a black lab, and then a bull terrier. Both of these dogs will be painted wet on wet. However, the bull terrier is slightly easier since we won't be wetting the background. This course includes three different black animals to allow for repetitive practice of color blending, mixing your own state of black, layering with undertones first, painting wet on wet and then lifting colors. In this course, I will teach you how to create your own shade of life. You'll learn about undertones. You'll learn how to control the paint and water, how to lift colors, how to layer an object, wet on wet, how to create soft edges. You'll learn how to read a reference image, how to add a background, wet on wet, and when to add a background. I always simplify things and put myself in shoes of a beginner, since I was once that person who didn't know the difference between wet on wet and wet on dry. I would like to invite you to take the class with me and experience a unique way of learning. So get ready to dive into the world of black animals in watercolor. 3. Art Supplies: This course is about watercolor painting of three different animals. Black animals in watercolor, but we don't need that many colors or brushes and just one type of a watercolor paper. Let's start with watercolor paper. I recommend using 100% cotton watercolor paper co pressed hundred and 40 pounds and a paper that's good for layering The paper I recommend the most is arches. But basically, you want a paper that has texture and a paper that is good for layering, since we will be applying a lot of darker tones. For the paints, you don't need to use the same brand of paints I use, which is whole white. You can use the watercolors you already have. For the colors for black animals, I recommend quinaca red, so like a pinkish red, ant brown or sepia, Rcana which is similar to yellow ocher, but rocians a little more orange like. Then burn Siena, which is reddish brown, cobalt blue, you can use ultramarine lights if you don't mind granulation. However, I speak only for Holbeins watercolors. Then fallow blue red shade, which is the primary blue according to Holbeins color chart, Indigo, which is the darkest blue, Io yellow deep, which is like an orange shade of a yellow. And then south green, if you plan to add background. For the brushes. You want to have a flat brush, and I recommend a softer flat brush. This is Da vinci casin one of my favorite brushes. And then a medium sized stiffer brush. I have a round eight here. This is golden one. It's from my own line of brushes, and you can also use size ten or 12. But also, we'll be using a quill brush. This is a long quil size two, and it has a fine point. It's also from my own line called song bird. So for this, you could use a round ten or 12, a softer brush, like a round brush if you don't have a quil. Then the rigger brush or script liner or liner, You want to have a rigger brush for lifting colors, and overall when you want to apply more hair detail to the cat or dog. And then lastly, you want to have smaller round brushes. That's for details. And basically, it's just for the eyes and maybe for the nose. So I'll be using my songbird details line of brushes and sizes zero, two, and three. As far as anything else, you want to use masking fluid for watercolors to mask some of the hair hair detail. And then a brush, an old brush you can use with that masking fluid because other tools just don't give you the same effect. A paper towel for additional lifting, definitely a regular like bath towel to wipe your brush on. And then three small jars of clean water. One jar is basically to dilute your colors with water, and then you have two other jars whenever you paint. And then you need a plastic palette or if you don't have any palette, just use a dinner plate. A good light with a daylight bulb, so you can see nice color or true colors and preferably a head light, and then a picture of a color wheel, that would be nice to have, but you can also find it in the workbook attached to this course. Let's get started. 4. Exercise: Creating Black: Hi, friends. Welcome to this first lesson. Before we begin painting the animal, I need to first talk to you a little bit about how to create that shade of black, a natural shade of black. If you use black straight out of a tube, let's say lamp black, which is a popular shade of black. But the black will not look natural. Because everything, whenever you put it under the light, everything will have a shade to it. Even white, there's no true white in nature. Yes, this paper is white, but it's handmade. It's a somebody made it. It's not something you would find in nature, like a flower. There's no true white in nature. That's because white white petals, white dog, whatever it is, it would be affected by light and shadows. You always see colors and on a side note. Whenever I paint something white, I'll actually refer to a color wheel and I'll use the three colors mainly, which is red, blue and yellow. But let's go back to the black. The same happens. When you see a black cat out there. When the sun is shining on that black, the fur, you'll start seeing colors in that fur. You might start seeing some red, maybe some blue, maybe some brown. You could even see some green. Who knows what colors you would see once that light shines over that fur. That's why you want to use colors to recreate that black. The same thing goes for the shadows. Let's say you see a cast shadow, you're walking in the sunlight and you're looking down at the sidewalk. You have this big cast shadow of yourself. It seems black, but you wouldn't want it to use black. You want to actually use colors and shadows are not just gray or black. Either you were painting, let's say black shadow or gray shadow. You still want to use colors to give life to your painting. It all comes down to really the color wheel because that's where you want to refer to the colors. Then just training your eye to see these colors and undertones, but thinking about how is that light affecting the object. This is like a very basic blend for me. Sometimes I'll add maybe just these colors, sometimes I'll add this color. It really depends what I'm painting because it depends from the reference, what do I see in that cat or dog? Do I see more yellow there or if there is yellow, then I would use maybe Io yellow deep. Do I see more red? I will go with this in red, but I will blend indigo, this is my dark blue. Follow blue, I'm going to show the blue. Then I have band brown burn sienna and red. These would be in the same category since this is my red and that would come off the red burn sienna. But anyway, you don't have to use the same colors. You can use any colors you want to try to have a darker blue, some red. It does help to have a little bit of burnt CNA. Basically just look at the colors, of course, first of the reference. A lot of times I will actually use the blue undertones for an animal. I will see that blue, and then I'll just use different shades of blue. Cobal blue, follow blue indigo. Now, a lot of talking, not enough visual here. I'm going to jump into that process of creating your own black and everything will make more sense once you start doing it. The idea is to squeeze, I guess, the colors onto your palette. First, you have these colors separately on your palette, and then we'll start blending them together. And then we'll create our own shade of black, and then we're going to create different values of that black. You can see what it looks like when it's like milky paint, then watery paint. The thing is you want to see the separation of colors, you want to see a little bit of that blue, a little bit of that red and so on. I'm going to squeeze just these colors onto my palette now. 5. Exercise: Black Color Values: So now, this is my burnt sienna. This is quinacri red. I just want one area to feel more like heavy cream like ratio. So I think dairy, and then some other parts could be more diluted like malf ratio, let's say. This is my vd brown here. I do want more water. Just going to let that water go here so the paint gets diluted with water. Clean my brush. I'm going for this indigo. I have quite a bit of it. I'm going to grab a more water here. Okay. Then this was fallo blue red sheet, I'm and this is the indigo. This is the indigo. That's all I'm going to work with. Now what you want to do is grab some water with your brush. You're going to grab some of this quinacrid. Let's grab some of this fall red shade. This is more like milratio. This is my burnt sienna. You're just placing colors next to it or in this little island. There's my indigo Just because it's a dark color, that doesn't mean I have to have a lot of it. Okay. And then I didn't grab I don't think I grabbed this band brown. Did I well, just in case I have burned and bandage brown too. So you can quickly swirl through this. Feel it out. A lot of it, I feel it out on my palette actually before I go for for the paper. So This is my shade of black. Now this black has a reddish shape to it. If you want this black to be more bluish, grab more of the fallow blue with it. It becomes more like this. Now I can also maybe I want my black to be even darker, grab, let's say in more indigo with it. It's just that you can basically play with the colors. But what do you do to create lighter shades of it, so different values. Grab more water. And just go underneath it. This way you see more of what it looks like. Now keep mixing colors on your paper mostly. But grab different colors or I'm sorry, the mix here. I have this brown here, then I have the blues and so on. You just want to grab all these colors at once to show the separation of colors. You are creating different shade of that black. But I want more water, I want to show you here different value. I'm going to try to go lighter and lighter now. A little more water. These are the lighter values. What if I want lighter, I just have to add more water to it. These are the lighter values of my black, and in a second, you see how different these shades really are. Now let's go with a lighter value. There you go. This is even lighter and lighter. Then if I want to make it super light, that a lot more water with it. This is the lightest value of my black. Now, this is my black, and you can tell from the top here, this is black, and then becomes gray because I add more and more water to that blend. The value becomes lighter and lighter and lighter. Just like when you buy new colors, you want to do swatches. One side is a little thicker of that paint and then it goes into more transparent. You can see different values of that one color. You want to do the same thing when you're creating either a shade of gray or you're going to be practicing painting something white. It's basically the same because I will also use red blue and yellow when I paint something white, and then when I paint something gray. But you want to create different values of that color blend. That also helps visually to see how colors separate because this side is more reddish here, then it becomes more bluish. Then I guess more reddish and this is more yellowish. That's my black. 6. Exercise: Lifting Colors: So now, let's practice a little bit of lifting colors because lifting is very important when you paint an animal. I'm going to do this wet on dry. I'm going to grab this all this black blend. Place it right here. I actually want this to be more bluish. At least one side of it, still not blue enough. This is going to be my area here to practice lifting with you. I want you to do the same thing to scoop all that paint, do it wet on dry. This way, the paper will dry actually faster, so you'll be able to lift faster. I think I scooped all of the paint. I'm going to quickly zoom in so you can see this better. Now what happens here is the paper is drying, first, we see that paper being shiny. Let me just change this up. You can see that shine on the paper. That's not that perfect timing to lift the colors. In fact, now if I started to lift, the colors will separate and it's very easy to create a bloom. I need to wait for that moment when that shine goes away and that's already happening here. Different parts of the paper will dry at different speed. It just depends how much water you added there to that paint. Let's say you were painting wet on wet. That also matters how you wedded it. It all depends like how much paint you placed in there too and maybe what area you worked on last. I'm going to show you this with my rigor two brush. This is my song bird brush. I'll start right here. Once you start lifting, you don't want to stop. It's like a quick line. You just create lines, and I want you to practice. Once that shine starts to slowly go away. That's when you want to start lifting. If nothing happens, let's say the paper is still to we just wait another 30 seconds. On there's no more shine on that paper, it just paper feels damp. That's a very good timing to lift. But if you have a large area to lift, you might not make it from one end to the other. Sometimes I'll start much earlier. You just practice lifting colors. You clean your brush, you wipe your brush on a towel first. It's very important, so it's just a damp brush, a damp brush. You don't have to use a rigger brush. You can use a round two or three. This is my sum ber details. It's a smaller brush, and you can lift two with a smaller brush. Let's say I want to make a heart. I just go back and forth till I have that heart. There you go. I can go and re lift as well. But you keep practicing until you get it right. I'm going to repeat this again. Number one, your brush needs to feel damp. You clean your brush, you clean your brush, you wipe it on a towel very well, and then you lift. You don't stop. You don't go like this and stop because that's how you're going to create a blue right now, no, because the paper is just damp. But you want to go in this continuous stroke. This is actually a good example here because this is still wet. Now what happens if I don't wipe my brush on a towel and I try to lift. This is what happens. I create a bloom, so there is my bloom right there. You always have to wipe your brush on a towel and then you lift the collars. Number two, the paper first is shiny wet from water paint and then that shine slowly starts to go away. W there's still a little bit of shine and the paper is on the verge of it feels damp almost there. That's a very good time to start lifting colors. Then of course it feels damp, that's when you lift. But sometimes we miss that timing because it might be a little too late. You want to start earlier. But here's the bloom. If we bruh, when you don't wipe your brush on a towel, That's what happens. You don't want that when you paint an animal unless intentionally you want this effect, that's fine too, because there's many artists that actually take advantage of the blooms and then they just use those blooms to create some texture, some parts over the animal. Maybe some main over the horse or any other areas they want to show that this effect of a bloom. 7. Exercise: Creating Grays: Hi, friends, welcome to this lesson. I'm going to teach you how to create a natural shade of gray. This combination is very useful whenever you paint some cast shadows. However, most of the time, you want to add complimentary colors anyways. I'll just give you a quick example. Let's say you're painting a red apple. You locate where's that red color on the color wheel, and then what's on the opposite side on the color wheel is a color green. Green is a complimentary color to red and red is a complimentary color to green. So when you paint the apple, that's red, you use some other colors, of course. But to create a natural shadow, you would want to use a shade of green, you would add green to the colors you've used for the apple. That's how you would create a natural shade or shadow for that apple. Now, whenever I paint something white in watercolor, and we will be using actually this blend, the shade of gray for the lab. The black lab because the black lab has some gray hair, for example. But this is also a good combination to use for some shadows. The key is to not mix or overly mix the colors on your palette. Most of that mixing should always happen on the paper with any painting basically. Okay. Unless you're trying to create a brand new color. So then yeah, you just keep mixing and mixing on your palette. Grays are great to know how to create a natural shade of gray because of painting something white in watercolor or you have a gray horse, for example, or or not even gray horse, just a white horse with some spots that are grayish, for example, or some other things. You want to refer to a color wheel and you would think of the primary colors yellow, blue and red. Then you would blend these colors very slightly on your palette. You make sure the colors are not overly mixed together. But based on how much yellow or how much red or blue you add to that blend, it will determine, is it yellow gray or blue gray or red gray. The easiest way to explain it is by showing. I'm going to grab my round eight golden one, we're creating a natural shade of gray. This is my yellow, mng yellow. There's my oracer on red. And then I'm going to grab this fallow blue here. Some red. I usually blend blue and red together first, and then I have yellow and red and then I go like this and there's my gray. Now it's a matter of how much blue I have in that blend or how much red or yellow to determine if it's a yellow gray, blue gray or red gray. We're going to first create a blue gray. Grab the same combo we just created here, the shade of gray, and then just try to have more of the blue in there. There's a little more blue here. Although I could definitely use even more of that blue. This is my blue gray. Now I'm going to quickly clean the breast. I'm going to now make it a yellow gray. A little more of the yellow overall and not to overly mix colors on your palette. This is my yellow gray. Now, I want to make it more of a red gray. All the colors, but mostly it's that red and there. This is my red gray. This is something that we are going to play with when we paint the lab. The next thing I would like you to do is create a circle. I have my stencils here. I'm just going to create a perfect circle with this little tool here. Create a little circle. I want you to grab any brush, I guess. This is my long coal size to a softer brush. We're going to wet it because I have something on my brush. But I'm going to wet it. Make sure you don't have puddles of water. It's not something bad to have too much water. It just depends on the style of painting. What are you trying to achieve. The way I paint, I don't want any puddles. I just want that water to be nicely absorbed inside the paper. Nicely shiny wet paper, but no puddles on top. I'm going to remove a little bit of the water, but I don't want the paper to become. This is good. What I want you to do is apply the grays and you're going to be mixing colors mostly on the paper. I want you to apply the grays mostly closer toward the edges and leave the middle section alone. This is what we're going to do. We're going to grab a little more of the red, more of that blue, and then we have the yellow. Make it more like a blue gray, milk like ratio. Think of milk. You're going to apply this on the inside. On this side, basically, that's our blue gray. Now, you're going to not clean your brush, but you're going to grab more of the yellow with all these colors, and this is our yellow gray, and you're going to apply it on this side. Let these colors to spread, just watch how it spreads. The next blend is going to be our red gray. I need a little more of the blue, the same color, you still want yellow and blue. It's just less of that. This is going to be more of the red gray although this almost feel like a red gray too. I didn't add enough of the blue. I'm going to fix it. How am I going to fix it? Well, as soon as I'm done here. I'm going to grab now more of the blue with my blend because I want this to be like a blue gray right here. I am adding it right here. Now it feels more like a bluish gray. The ratio that I had on my brush between water and paint feels more like milk. Think of milk. That's my blue gray. Okay. Now I have a nice circle at all these grays. That's something you might want to practice until you feel comfortable with these grays overall. I think something like this will basically do. Let's move on to something else. 8. Exercise: Blending Black: Now, for this lesson, I am going to draw two circles, and I want you to do the same. I'm going to have these perfect circles because I'm using stencils. One and two. The second one. Now this is where we're going to practice blending our black black on the paper. But this circle is just going to be for the bluish undertones. You're also mixing colors on the paper. First thing we want to do is wet the paper. We're going to wet the left circle. Wet it wait it for a minute or two, just so you have enough time to play with this. This is my long quo size two brush. It's a softer brush. I mainly use two brushes. My chop two brushes are this one, and then the round eight golden one with a fine point. These are my main brushes. If I had to give all my brushes, for some reason, I would keep the two. Okay. All right. This is good. Now, we're going to start with the blue undertones because most of our paintings in this course the dogs or the cat are going to start with bluish undertones. This is my fallow blue. And this is my inacal red. Don't overly mix those colors. Now, try to not feel everywhere like the circle. Just place it in some areas. Now you're going to go back, grab some of this blue more and then again, the red. You never want to have the same ratio between the colors, you change it all the time. Now this is more like a blue violet almost. There is way more red in it in this blend. That's all you want to do. But what if you want to add more color, maybe more concentrated paint. This was more like a milk like ratio. Let's grab a really thicker paint. More like a heavy cream, there's my blue. This is something that feels like heavy cream. I'm just going to apply it to the left side and you can see how much darker it is. The paint is still spreading nicely because it's wet on wet. The paper is still wet. The paint is spreading. I'm just going to go around right here. Now, what you're doing here, you're creating different shades of that blue violet. You're constantly changing the shade of your blue by adding more or less of the red. The next exercise. We're going to wet it too. But this time we're going to add our shade of black, the black that we created earlier. First, grab some water and wet the paper, first I add a lot more water to my paper. Then I play with it and if I need to remove some, I will wipe my brush on the towel. So you want to feel all of this. Feel it with your hand, not just watching the video. I really want you to do these exercises. I'm removing a little bit of that water because I have way too much. Now. What I need to do because I don't have that black anymore. I'm just going to quickly create some black. There's my Vande brown. There's add, some of this burned sienna. These are the colors vandal blue indigo and brown. These are all the colors that we will be using in this class or in this course. Now, you're just filling, let's say you're just adding this black toward the edges. Watch how the paint spreads. Let's say you want to go through it. Now you see different shades of that black. What if I want this black to be more bluish? I'll grab this black and then grab more of the blue here. I'm going to apply it right here. I see blue, but it's not enough, so I'm going to grab even more of that blue. In the course, actually the lessons, which you will be doing, you're not going to be applying black toward the white paper like this. What you will do and I want you to do is grab thicker amount of that paint, blue, more like a heavy cream, browns, do. There's my black, grab it on the tip of your brush and then go right here, go back to the circle on the left. And try to add some of that over your blue undertones. These are our undertones. Now, when you apply this black, you're changing the ratio between water and paint, so it becomes thicker paint. Otherwise, things will spread too much. That was my finger right here. I've actually smeared it. You don't want to just have something like this. You rather want to have undertones and then apply that black that we created. Now, the circle is drying pretty fast. I can still add the colors. But now you can see what the black looks like over my blue underton versus not having any underton here. It's still pretty, but what looks more natural this one right here? I'm just filling the circle all the way, so I have it closed in here. That's it for this exercise. Almost looks like planets. Let's move on to the next one. 9. Exercise Painting the Ear Part 1: Hi, friends. Welcome to this lesson. I want you to practice with me first layering this ear. Okay? So I want you to get the feel of it working with the undertones first. Plus, we have a nice light area here because it's an ear. I want you to get your palette ready. Fallow blue indigo, darkest blue is digo. Fallow blue red shade that's actually primary blue. Then intact red as the red, med as a long yellow, for the yellow, primary yellow, and then burn sienna brown and then bandic brown plus for the inside of the ear, while we use raw even if you prefer raw umber, that'd be fine. What we're going to do is wet the inside of the ear here. Then we have a little bit of that fur, but we're going to wet the background here too just to let these colors from here to bleed a little bit toward the outside. This is an exercise piece. I want you to be comfortable with starting with the lighter colors first and then applying the darks, your own shade of black toward the darkest parts. This is exercise to get you started to get you ready for this main piece, which is the cat. What I'm going to do is grab my long two brush, this is my long coal size two. I'm going to wet the inside of the cat. Right here. Another thing where we can practice is also creating fine lines using a rigger brush for the whiskers and finest hair that you see. For now just sweat the inside here. Then this is part of the cat. But then we're going to add water also toward the background because we want the paint to spread here as well to create softness. This is technically cold pressed water color paper, but it's not It's this paper feels too smooth. It feels like hot pressed. I just have a lot of sheets left. I'm just reusing it, but it's not something I'd recommend for a beginner. Just in general, it's better, easier to paint on a cold pressed. Hot pressed when you don't have texture like here, it forces you to work a little more on details. Plus, it well you have to spend more time wetting the paper. Otherwise, the paper just dry super fast because there's no texture, and this is almost like hot press. Anyway, I'm going to wet it and I want you to wet your ear, so the ear. For two or 3 minutes. It's important to spend some time wetting it and going over the same areas over and over again just to fill it out how that water gets absorbed inside of the paper. The longer you wet the paper, the more time you're going to have to apply the colors. A little longer. I'm almost ready. We're going to start with this section here. We're going to apply raw sienna, red, some burnt sienna, right in the section. And then we're going to go with the blue blue tones like right here. Technically, this would be the eye right here, but we're not going to do that. We're just going to focus on the fur. Once we have some blue for all that fur, blue as an undertone then these reds and yellows here for the ear, then we're going to start focusing on applying our shade of black. So I'm going to take a pause here, and I want you to follow with me with this or at least watch and then create it on your own. Grab a little bit of red, place it here. Think like heavy cream like ratio. I'm grabbing a little bit of blue, placing it right here, some of the cobalt blue. I'm creating my own sheet of black. There's my Vande brown, placing it here, burn not. Then do, my darkest blue. Then you quickly go through it, but don't do more than that. Just let it be just the way it is. I'm going to clean my brush, go back to the ear, once more, I'll go over it, just to make sure it doesn't dry too fast. Once you're ready, you feel like, this is good, start pushing that water, there's puddles of water away. Just so you don't have puddles of water. Okay. I just want nicely absorb water nicely and shiny paper. A little more what actually remove too much water here because I wipe my brush from a towel and that can happen easily. When you feel like, Oh, I have too much water and you start pushing pushing down the water or wiping your brush from a towel and then you go back to that same spot, you remove that water from the paper and you make it feel like damp. Okay. First, like I said, I'm going to try to show you as much as I can. This is my rash And then there's my acorn all red, and there's burnt a little more of the Russia. That's all I want. I'm going to place it here. Don't over mix the colors. Just watch how it spreads and place it like you do want it in the middle. Actually need this to be more like a milk like ratio, but you want to spread. Now, if you're painting on a hot press, your paint the paint will react a little bit different. If you paint on a cold press, I have hot press again. I already mentioned this. But this is the area where you want the middle to be a little lighter, but you also want to show the color of that skin. I'm going to clean this press very quickly. Now I'm going to grab Some of this blue, maybe cobalt blue here, but it cannot be that wet or this was a water like she I need milk, and then a little bit maybe of the quin red, and then blue and indigo. The three blues basically. Now I'm going to go for these bluish areas that I see over the cat very gently applying the colors. Actually in the main class, I'll be doing this mostly with my flat brush because it's just easier to cover a larger area. But this is going to be the bluish areas. I'm going to grab more of the blue. Place it maybe a little more here and there. You're placing the blue undertones. Now, what I will be also doing is just going around the painting, keeping it wet longer by applying the colors here, for example, I could just go with the darks right away. But I don't want this to dry too fast because I'm not ready to grab that blend of black that I just created. I don't need to go too far here either because I don't have a full cat, but I'm letting the color to bleed over the edge here and here too. Now, this is the moment that I'm going to grab a heavy cream. Feel something like heavy cream of this blend that I created. Don't over mix it, fill it out, and if you need more blue, grab more blue, and then go back toward the edges of the ear. You want to do all of this wet on wet before the paper starts to dry. I actually don't have enough of the black on my palette. Always have more than you need. In my case, what am I going to do? I'm just going to have to spend some time now on duting more of this color together, grabbing the colors and creating more of that black. I just quickly did that. Then I'm am I placing this? I'm looking for the darkest parts, the area is what I can see. The darkest parts, which is above the eye, what do I do about these sketch lines? I don't want to pay to travel too far. You want to actually apply the color right before that sketch lines like somewhere here I want a little further, but you want to go a little before that or apply the darks, so it doesn't bleed too much toward the background. And then here, you can use the tip of your brush to pull the paint a little bit for the whiskers for the hair. Now, this part is a little darker here. It's a little harder, I guess to paint something that you're only painting one, you know, I don't know, tenth of the cats, it's a little different, but the ear for example, is not really that perfect, so we can change it a little bit, so it's not straight line. That's another thing. But that's pretty much it. You have these blackish areas now. I grabbed a little more of the brown and some more of the indigo and going back with the cream top. Now it's cream top like ratio. You're adjusting the ratio between one and paint to have more and more control. Now, I'm fine with what I have now. I want to keep going, but I really don't have the cat actually. This is from my lifting exercise. I don't want to go any farther than that. I'm going to clean the brush instead. 10. Exercise Painting the Ear Part 2: And I'm going to grab a rigger brush. I want to show you now some tricks you could do with a rigger brush. This is my song bird size two. First of all, I want to grab the same paint to my blend of black. I'm going to show this to you what it looks like. Here it is a little chunk of that black. It's a chunk basically because this is creamy paint. I will have the most control if I use this cream top and I can create the hair, but I can also go on the other side like this, pass through. Pull the paint. I still have paint some paint because I just grabbed it. But then I'm also pulling paint from the areas that are already painted there. Yes, we'll have a little hard edge there. You can always soften it if you want to if it bothers you. You use it like a damp brush, you're going to connect the areas a little bit here and there. You can do that, of course. I usually don't bother about it. But here to add some more of the hair, I'll just pull the paint. And pull it, keep pulling it. You have hair everywhere. You can grab more of that cream top, like ratio between water and paint, more and more, just grabbing more of the blues. You can do this whatever you feel like you should add more darks plus that hair detail. I'm just scooping that black that I created leftover of the paint. Because I don't want to waste it, but this is basically what I would do here. I grab a little more maybe here. Whatever I feel like the areas need to be darker, that's where I'm going to apply the hair. The pain spreads because this is wet on wet. It's a good thing because I have more time to apply to collars. This went a little too far up. Next thing, what I would do to control all this. I actually would use the same brush that I was using my long quill says two. I would use damp brush. This is a squished brash, but I'm going to wet it first again. Squish it a little bit, it feels like this. Then I would grab again that black. Then I would go back through these areas and just stop a little earlier, and this is for the fur again. But now I have this creamy paint a cream top like ratio. I'll go only into some areas. I don't have the eye here, but I would stop a little earlier to create more depth, so I would add the darks but also using a damp brush, the paint wouldn't spread that much. But what else we can do? Other than adding more and more of these hair strokes. Let's say I want to add a little more. You can continue doing that. Just make sure you use a cream top like ratio between water and paint. You just keep going, adding some more of depths. I want to make sure you can see it. I don't want to cover it with my hand. What you can do is lift the colors. So for that, we have to wait again, we have to wait for that perfect timing when the paper loses that shine, becomes more damp, more damp. I need to wait. Of course, I could add a little more. I'm tempted to add a little more hair like hair to go through. It has to be a cream top though. That was not a cream top. I have to go back to my palette, grab that thick paint if I can and go through it again and just add creamy paint and creamy brush strokes, just to have a little more of that. Okay. So I don't want to keep correcting myself. It's easy to get lost in it a little bit because we only have this part of the cat. But I want to wait a minute here to show you how to lift the colors. It's very easy to miss out on that timing because we get sidetracked or do something else like painting basically or that we focus on a different area or basically look at the computer screen again, the reference, and they start thinking about it and I forget to lift. Well, I don't want to forget to lift here because I'm going to demonstrate. But this area right here, it is almost ready. So you wipe your brush on a towel. It's a damp brush and then you're going to go for some of these areas to lift. Now, this was a little off camera here, so let me do it again and you pull you don't stop halfway with that stroke. You just keep going. It's very important to keep going. Here, I'm lifting, but where do I really want to lift? You don't want to over over lift because it's black, we're going to create highlights with those undertones and by staying away from some of these areas when we start adding the darks, like the darkest darks. Let's just say the darkest values, the darkest color mixes. But just to show you and you can practice this lifting. You go through the areas that feel damp. Some areas would dry faster because it just depends how much water you applied there in the first place and so on. It looks funny having just the ear here. But you can also lift more the ear area and you can add more hair, more of these whiskers and so on. But that's it for this exercise. Let's get to our main painting now. Okay. 11. Project 1: Applying Masking: Hi, friends. Welcome to this first lesson. We're going to paint this cat. Now, when you look at the reference, I want you to try to find different colors in that for not just black. When you look at the chest like the neck area, you'll see there's a little bit of yellow brown. This to me speaks as okay this is burniena for example, but we can also use Ria I'm going to actually use rota because that color will also look great in the ear here in this ear area. What are the colors. When you look over here, you actually see around the eye, there is a little bit of blue. That's your blue undertones right there. Blue for these brownish areas, not just like let's say burn maybe R but also van brown, we'll play with colors just as we see these colors, we'll apply them with I'd say light to mid tones first, and then you start applying the darks. Before we begin everything, and I'll talk about in a second, how we're going to work it too and how we're going to wet the paper. Let's apply masking fluid for watercolors for the whiskers. Okay. I have a different brush. This is my tester brush. I've been working with Da vinci on developing special brushes for masking fluid. Those would be part of my sum bird line. But try to have a rigger brush that you don't care about and you don't mind if it gets damaged because most likely masking will damage it. This is Shmkas masking fluid. What I do is I grab it on this brush. First, actually, I dip my brush in water, I wipe it, and then I will grab mask and I'll flatten it a little bit. Then I'll look for these whiskers, very gently barely touching the paper. I have created whiskers like this before just by lifting colors, that is another one of your options and option, basically to create whiskers. These whiskers on the left are not as highlighted, let's say, but you still want some whiskers, and this is our backup in case we can't lift. At least we have some whiskers here. Even though I am not planning on painting the background here. I'm still going to go sometimes over toward the background here. This whisker is a little thicker. I really want to keep them as thin as possible. Now, since we already have masking, let's find maybe another area that we could preserve to stay white, maybe just a little touch above the eye. It's so light there. Then maybe how about this little highlight or the highlights are going to be lifted. We're going to lift the highlighted areas anyway. We can also use a little bit here, maybe where we have the brown black feathers, the fur, all that hair. It's like you're barely touching the paper. I almost don't see what I apply masking actually. That's it because all other whiskers are pretty dark so we can use color for that. Now, what I do is I clean my brush regardless, and when we come back, we need to start wetting the paper. 12. Project 1: Wetting: Now, how we're going to wet this cat. To create soft fur. I'm going to show you example here. You want to wet part of the background as well. Here, I decided that I'm going to have a hard edge. I only wet it on the inside of the cat, the same here on the inside of the ear. But here, I wet the top. I didn't mind the colors to bleed toward the background. You want to think of all the steps ahead. This way, there's no surprises and you visualize the process of what happens. This same thing here. Now, when my line, the sketch line is actually here, I should have probably stopped a little earlier. But it's still worked out. The catch just looks puffier than the actual reference. When you apply the colors, you want to be actually stop maybe right here. This is my sketch line. I'm going to do the same thing as I did in that other piece. That's actually for a patron class, but the same situation. When I apply colors, I'm going to stop right here. But I am wetting the background here because I want the color to bleed over toward the background a little bit. I have that soft transition. Are there any areas? I'm not going to wet? Yes. I'm not going to wet the background here around the ears. I'm only going to wet the ears on the inside. Here, I'm going to go for the background, but I'm also going to stay away from the eyes very often. I do wet the eyes too, but not if I'm painting something black and the eyes are so light. That means I don't want that black, the color that I'm going to create to bleed over the eyes because then I'll just end up lifting. I won't be able to create such a nice light shade of these eyes, what is it It's like a yellow gray blue, something like that. That's another clue that tells us about colors, the eyes are yellow, but there is some blue in it. To avoid creating a shade of green because when you mix yellow and blue together, you create a sheet of green. To avoid that, you want to first play with the yellows. Then on top of that add that blue. If you grab the two colors from your palette, then the chances are that you blend them on the palette, the chances are by the time you place it on the paper, you will already have a sheet of green. First, you want to place the yellow shade on the paper. And then follow with the blue. I'm wet in the background here too. So first, I actually add a lot of water. I want that water to get in deep inside the paper, and this is the ear I'm staying on the inside of the ear. There you go. Then here's the fur. In a second, I'm actually going to dilute my colors with water because by the time I'm ready with this paper, the colors will be ready to dry. There you go. As soon as I have it all covered nicely with water, I'm going to take a moment to re dilute my colors with water and then I'll come back to this to keep wetting a little longer. Again, I'm not wetting this background here. I'll just the inside of the ears, so I have a hard edge there. And don't we the eyes. We'll focus painting them later. That will be separate. Now, you actually don't want to I try really hard not to add second layer for the cat because it's very easy to reactivate all these colors because those are the darks like the shade of black that we create. You don't want to do that. I'm going to start diluting my colors with water, again, which is the ant brown. Burn actually I mentioned about using this rai I need water here. This is my raw Until I feel like it's creamy. I'll keep diluting it. Actually, I wouldn't mind using R two. I'm sorry, Rum. Raw umber, which is like here, but this is optional. Don't feel pressure. You have to pull an at a color. The beauty for me about painting any animal is creating different shades on the paper. That's why sometimes I'll have so many colors and in the past, I would really use a lot more colors, but I limited my palette for my students because it seemed like it was a little too complicated. I'm going to dilute the rest of the colors now with water. 13. Project 1: Wetting/Diluting Colors: Okay. I just diluted my colors with water. I haven't prepared the blend yet, the black blend, but I'm going to go one more time through the paper. What I'm going to do is start pushing the water whatever I see too much of the water over like the edges of the paper. This she does not inside the block. I actually pulled it out of a pad. It was moving any way too much. I'm just going to add a little more water here toward the ears. Staying away from the eyes. I have to remind myself because I'm so used to wetting the eyes too, and then pushing that water over the edges. It's not a bad thing actually to have a page out and just place it over the leftover pad. I'm going to start from the top and I'm going to think about the colors I see of the ears. The lightest colors first, which is like a raw Ciena say maybe burnacro red. Definitely Quinacri red. One thing I didn't mention, just make sure that your paper is 100% dry from the masking before you start wetting. Okay. All right. I think that's pretty good. You don't want puddles of water. All needs to be perfectly, like spread. Nicely shiny paper. I'm actually going to stick with this brush, maybe a smaller size fit brush. This is my 20 vice casinel. I have this brush. Actually, never mind. I'm going to also use this one, which is my long quo size four actually start with this for the ears, why is that? It's because it has a nice fine point like this and I can squish it and it will resemble almost the shape of that ear. Before I do anything, I need to create that shade of black. I'm going to grab this red right here. A little more of that red. I need a lot of it. That's my red, cleaning my breasts. There's my brown burnt sienna. I'm actually going to place brown here too. The palate at den is going to be super messy. That's okay. There is my intake brown. Actually I need to dilute it more with water already dried. But it was fine. And brown right here. I'm going to add some more water here because I need more. Then blue fallow blue right here, which is actually I create the shade of blue violet almost or purple. There's my indigo, the darkest shade, and then you go through it and we'll do more of that as we start picking up the colors and cleaning quickly this brush. Because I did this, I can't help myself, but I need to wet this one more time. It's like the moment as soon as I'm done wetting, that's when I want to apply colors, and I need to fill it out and the way I wet it again, I'm feeling it out how wet is it? Where do I need to go over and this started to dry on me a little bit already, which is normal. But I do need water. Just so the paper stays wet long enough for me. Too much water I felt like there was not enough water already. I'm adding a little more. Of course, too much water is not good because then spreads too much. I'm going to have a little more water here because this will be the next or one of the last areas I'm going to get to. But first, my long well, 14. Project 1: Applying Colors: I'm going to grab a little bit of water. So whatever paint I have, it feels more like a milk like ratio I'd say. Raw burns here, aca red, raw umber. This is the ear area, and when a little more of that raw umber, and this is where I feel like it needs to be more reddish. These are the yellows. I want to do the same thing on this side, and you want to have more like a milk ratio because if you start with a heavy cream, then things will dry super fast. A little more of this reddish on this side. Yeah, if you start using right away like this heavy cream, then the chances are the paper will just dry on you too fast because when you use this milk ratio, you keep your paper wet a little longer. I'm going to stop right there because now I need to focus on the blues. Okay. Some of the blue tones and then brown tones. I'm going to put my long t four on the side, and this is my flat 20. I have some water on my brush, but you know what? I want cobal blue to. That's one of the blues to use. I apologize for not mentioning it, I will mention in the list of art supplies, but this is my blue, and I want all of this blend as well. My sheets of blue with other colors. Then here we go. You want these bluish undertones. You can see thicker paint there. I'm actually going to dilute it a little more with water. This is the bluish areas where I want them to be I don't need to necessarily go all the way here yet. But this is where the background is wet. I have to keep reminding myself I can't go too far out there and the same thing here. It is. If it feels like the paint is spreading too much, wipe your brush a little on a towel. At the same time, it's like we see the highlights. Let's try to stay away from the highlights. Just a little bit. I'm grabbing this thicker paint from my palette. It's still say between milk and half and half ratio, ratio between water and paint. Now, this will drive faster unless we go here and add some paint. That's because we started with this area with the ears. Let's just add a little bit of colors so we don't get ourselves trapped in that we can't just add any more color. Here, there's my blues. And they are browns and reds and so on, all these colors, but I want more blue. There's my indigo, follow blue, cobalt blue, and the other colors. Again, the idea is not to mix these colors. On your palette. Try to let these colors to blend on the paper. Now you can see so many different sheets of blue. Don't worry about splatters and stuff. From a brush, that happens to me all the time. Trust me, if anything, it makes it prettier. I don't worry about that. I'm going to get really close to I'm the eye, and the same thing on this side. I have on one side, I have a little more of indigo other side of the brush. There's a little bit of let's say the red, Browns got to be very careful so I don't go over. The nose. It does have some blue and I want some color in there too. Another thing that we're going to do, which we already practiced earlier is lifting the colors, which is very important to lift the colors. When you pay an animal. Let's grab a little more of the brown this time and then place it on this side. Now, we talked about all this fur that was brownish here. Let's keep in mind that we do have to come back here. Let's add before I continue with the browns. Let's add a little more color here. This doesn't dry on us. It's like jumping from one area to another only because you don't want the paper to dry on you too fast. I have a little too much water in the background, so this is what's happening. I have to keep an eye on all this. Now I'm going to clean my brush. Just so now a little more water. I have these shades of the fur is different. It's brown, but we can see the shades of that raw umber and some bunt brown let's say and burn. All of that. That's our key then a little more of the Bncavt brown here, we can do Quin red. All of this is brownish. That's our brownish undertone. More of the roca brown, just overall. We will be also lifting colors. That's another thing we'll be doing. Now, I do want to go back to the ears, make sure that ears are dark enough. But here before I do that. Let's use some of the color I already have on my breast here. And go back here. The paint is spreading more than usual for me because I wear it too much a little bit, the background. It's a little too wet, so just keep that in mind. I have the paint just spreading, but that's okay. One thing when I could do is use a damp brush. I wipe my brush on a towel, actually squish it between the towel pieces and just pull it in a little bit or just brush it, so you have at least control over this. I'm just pulling it a little, but that damp brush, it would dry the area too because you're removing the water from that area at the same time. Just a damp brush. Now with that damp brush, I want you to grab, find brown. Like a damp breast. Red, the blues, all of the colors, and let's go back quickly before it's too dry. Toward the ears, and let's add these darks here. Actually, this is the chance to reshape the cat too. If you're using a creamy paint, cream top like ratio between water and paint. There you go. I'm using this qui breast because I need the point. Keep in mind, something like this. You just need to practice, I wasn't painting like this right away. It took time and it took time and a lot of practice because it's about learning techniques, the main core techniques, which are the wet on wet and lifting. I actually run out of color. I need to squeeze more of the and brown and let me grab some more with my flat brush. This is and brown, not enough water, so more water here to make it more like a half and half ratio. Then brown, I'm sorry, the blues, all of these colors. Let's not overtly mix the colors because then it just becomes muddy. If the brush feels too wet, which it did feel a little bit, then wipe your brush a little on a towel. Now at this point, find the darkest areas that you see over the cat. I'm grabbing more of the darks. What is the darker area? For sure, around the eye here. This is the area that's going to shape the nose, nose bridge area. Let's see, we have this part where we have the whiskers, then we can go around the eye. We're looking for the darkest part. Try to find your sketch lines, not always easy. But if you can, then that's even better. I'm grabbing more of the red with the brown indigo. All of these colors. Now, this fur on the bottom. It's not just brown. I'm going to grab some blues. Cobalt blue too. Let's not forget that we have cobalt blue. Or if you don't, that's okay. You can just grab fallow blue. This is the area where I have this fur. I don't want to cover all of it because I want to show that there is that can raw umber. This is a little harder for me because at the same time, I have to explain all this. It's not a voice over. I'm talking in real time. That's the difference with my classes I do it in real time, which sometimes very challenging actually talking explaining when everything is drawing and I go to move on to this part or this part. Now this is the area that needs to be darker too. Right underneath the eye. I'm going to have to use a different brush for that. But since I have a larger brush, I have more coverage, which is why you want to use a larger brush. Now if we want to lift the areas next to those ears or over the ears, actually, then we need to keep an eye on it. The area doesn't dry on us because if it does, then we can't lift. I'm going to go back here and using the side of my brush to recreate that head there. It's like I'm you're mapping it out. You're traveling through the whole thing, looking for the areas, what else you can reapply colors. You're making sure that there's some light so you can see all that too. Don't want to cover it too much with the darks. I grab more of the blue blue tones. This is all darker actually. 15. Project 1: More Colors + Lifting: This is what my palette looks like. It's not crazy. It's so dirty. But it's okay. I still keep mixing colors on the paper mostly. It's still happening. And as long as the paper is wet, I can continue doing this. So I like the blue shiny, but I don't want it everywhere too much too. I want to shape my cat. The goal is to shape it to give it a nice shape, but also dimension is the key when you want to make something look realistic. This needs to be darker around the nose. Muddying a little more color here using the angle of the brush. These are overall the areas that are a little darker. We see the highlights. But the highlights don't need to be so strong over here. I can go back here. Add a little more color, there is the mouth I don't want to cover it too much, although the mouth is a little covered. Let's keep in mind, we can also lift the colors. Now, we have to also know when to stop because if we continue just adding and aiding, then things can still get muddy even though we are mixing colors on the paper. I'm going to show you thing you can do cleaning my brush first. That's important. I don't grab this brush by accident when it has some color and I don't want that color. I have three jars here with water. I really need to now pay attention to how the paper is drying because if I want to lift, that's it. I'm going to grab actually with that brush, like a creamy paint of the ras and try to lift or lift lift, but apply the hair through the area of the ear here, and then I can live too, but I want a little more yellow. I'm just grabbing thick raw I guess raw umber slash raw and the same thing here, but it has to be creamy paint. Now I'm going to grab that blend of that black. And it has to be creamy paint. Let's find the nose area. Let's try to shape it better. This is just grab a round brush, round two or three is fine. I'm just using my rigger brush, but it would be more comfortable for you for sure, if you were using a smaller round brush. I'm used to using this brush, that's all. Then you go around the nose area just to add the darks. Remember that we're also going to lift. This is your chance also to shape the mouth part. This is creamy paint. Okay. Don't worry if something doesn't just come out right away as you wish because this is practice. A lot of it just requires practice. The more classes you take from me, the more you realize, this makes sense now, this makes sense because when you're new to my classes, it's harder a little bit probably to listen to all these messages about color blending and if you're coming from a different teacher, for example. But I always cover about the fundamentals and refer to the color wheel because it's so important. We need to lay that foundation in you. Just like my mom did it and it helped me, I need to help you. You refer to the color wheel when you need help with colors. Now, we need to lift colors, but we can also use that creamy cream top cratia between water and paint, and we can pull the paint. I changed the view a little bit, so the painting is a little highlighted, I guess. It's not the true colors when I look at the painting in my camera as I'm recording, but I'll show you photos, different photos, I guess of this painting using different light. It's hard to actually take photos of a black painting of a black object. Now, what you're doing, or what I'm doing, I want you to do is pull some of that paint through. I have paint on my breast, but you also at the same time add in hair detail using a gar brush. This is still shiny wet. Now, keep in mind too that sometimes when we use all these colors, so many colors. It's a little harder sometimes to lift too. Just keep that in mind because not all colors lift easily. Not all colors lift easily. You got to keep that in mind. Try to leave as much light as you can over the nose. Nose is always important and the eyes, because you connect with the eyes first when you see the painting. I got to lift colors there. I just want to add a little more here. I have this screen top on my brush, the ratio between water and paint is screen top. But I also pull that paint just to add some more hair Now this area right here, be nice to add the hair, because it's different color. But this is now this cat is reflecting the colors that we see in that reference. Careful when I have to tell myself to be careful. When you have jars of water right next to your painting because I have a little splatter if it went over there, then I would have a little bloom, which is okay. Now, I wipe my brush on a towel just like in the exercise. When that shine is, when that shine is gone from the paper, that's when you want to lift the colors. You don't want to stop when you lift, and then you stop halfway, you go all the way. All the way till you're outside of that ear. Now, I have a hard time a little bit lifting here is okay. Press a little harder and see if that helps if you have a hard time. Again, we're using a lot of colors, not all colors lift easily be nice to lift a little bit here. This area lifts a little too easily. I don't want to make it too light, but I want to show some hair. Now, this should be lifted here actually. I might have to wait for it because it's a little too wet, all of this. 16. Project 1: Lifting Colors: What I could do is grab a cream top creation. I'm going to create this creamy paint of this van brown, cad red. The blue is very creamy paint, cream to creamy paint. The brush is pressed a little bit. I'm going to try to add a little more darks here for these whiskers, but I need do actually for this to, to make it really dark. But I don't want Justin Digo that's the thing. I don't want Justin Digo I want other colors because I don't want just blue. Here, I might as well just add some hair. Go through that and that. A little more of this. Then you can keep pulling on the outside too if you want to. Just to add a little more hair. But this is the area that I do want to lift. We first of all, here, I can tease the areas because this is where we have these whiskers. I want you to notice something at the beginning, I said I had too much water on my paper, right? I had paint spread too much. But then I shaped my cat anyway by later adding the darks here closer toward the cat. That's the thing. Don't panic. If the paint at first spreads a lot. You can see all that by first stroke, but then all that shaped it better. Just continue, don't give up, finish your painting, and then if you want to do it again, do it again, but don't give up, please. Because it's all about practice. You just have to practice. And then you become a pro at painting animals using the wet on wet and lifting. I'm going to grab a little more paint. I'd like to paint or add these whiskers on top. Now, the line is breaking my line because what I should do is grab a little more water with that paint the lines are smoother, something like this. Good enough, but I'm going to create longer strokes. More I'd say like a half and half like ratio between water and paint because you're starting wet wet surface, and then becomes the paper is dry. We're going here so it becomes wet on dry. I'm going to clean the brush because I really wanted to lift some of these areas. Some might be too late, because I don't have to really lift here. With lifting, you don't want to overdo it. If you do, then the area just looks overworked. Just wait for that perfect timing. Of course, you can practice too and test the paper if it's ready. Just don't do too many strokes because it's really easy to make it overwork, basically. I'm going to clean this brush while I'm waiting for the paper to set all a bit, but these are the areas where I'd like to lift a little bit. It's a good excuse because we have the hair there. Now, what I want you to also do, what you can do is lift the colors, let's say too much color bled over here, which in my keys did. I'm going to make that line above the eye a little lighter by lifting colors. I wipe my brush on a towel first, I clean it. I pick up the paint and I clean it again, my brush. What other area. This is good timing for you to lift. Let's say you I lost here, actually part of the mouth. I'm going to lift this. But let's say you lost maybe the nose, lift it, lift a little bit. Wipe your brush on a towel first. This is a good highlight here to keep the right side or it's in the middle there for the nose, but this would be a nice area to lift right here. Now I have a nicely highlighted nose. If I want to let's lift a little more here. I'll press a little harder with my brush. Anything here, I guess it's just the hair. Something like that, let's go back with every group price. I almost forgot. I don't know if I can actually live here, just a little bit. It's very hard. I'll tell you why also. It's because we added cream top ratio. The ratio between water and paint is creamy paint. Now, if everything that you did feels like a lighter values lighter values, you created lighter values, it's not going to be as hard for you to lift, but it will look lighter, which is okay too. Here I'm going to press a little harder with the brush to lift, it's definitely harder. Because again, all these colors, thick paint harder to lift. If you tone it down everything and it becomes much lighter, of course, you will have easier time lifting. But if you want to do this richer make it darker, then you end up with a little difficulties lifting just FYI. I press a little harder with my breasts. Then I got to make sure I wipe my breast on a towel before I lift. Super easy to create a bloom. Sometimes I'll go over the lifted lines a couple of times until I can see a little bit of that lifted area. It would help to have this at lifted here too. But that's pretty much it for this part of the class of the lesson. Because next thing we're going to do is work on the eyes. We don't have to do that much with the nose as we already painted part of it. I press really harder with that brush just to uncover some more areas. I lived a little too much. You know what? I don't mind that little line. It gives it a character, let's say, then maybe here a little bit. Well, I really like the nose now, so I'm going to leave it. If you like certain area on your paper already, leave it, don't do anything with it. It's so tempting, I know plus you're following my class I know it's impossible for you to not compare your work to my work, but please try not to do this because it's discouraging sometimes when you're learning and you want your artwork to look like not even my work, but somebody else's work that you're going to see in the community section. You're starting out and let's say this other student has some experience and painted it much better. Don't worry about things like that. You have your time. Everything takes time to grow and I have been there myself. Just stay focused on your painting and you'll get there. I promise you that. You just have to commit. That's all it takes us commitment. My mom used to say when she was teaching how to paint with oils. She always said, 20% is talent, 80% is hard work, and it's true. I see this over thousands of students. I have thousands of students across all the schools, whatever I teach. Over the years. This is what I've seen. I've seen those that were more talented. But sometimes it took them actually longer because they wouldn't focus as much or they wouldn't spend as much time on painting and practicing and they thought they were already so good that they wouldn't have to practice as much. But the thing is, you still have to practice. All right. Let's leave this, let it to dry, and then when we come back, we are going to work on the ice. 17. Project 1: Painting Eyes: Hi, friends, welcome to this next part. So we need to paint the eyes. And the way I break it down is basically there's always some highlight, right? So I'm going to focus on the highlights first. So I won't go for the darks or anything like that. I just want those highlights to have a color. I don't want the highlights just to be paper white. Although a lot of times it just seems like it like it could be just plain white, and that's fine. But here, the highlights are definitely not got white. So what we're going to do is wet the entire eyeball, and now we're going to apply colors that we see in that highlight. We have four little squares and that looks like a window reflection of a window in there, and I use the same thing in the other eye. We're going to wet it first. I have my round eight golden one brush. Right away, I went over. That's okay. As long as I can white pits to make sure that the color does not get reactivated because these are really dark shades that I used and It's not even that. It's just that I painted it with these heavier ratios. Heavy cream and cream top, that's super easy to reactivate. This is a larger brush. You don't need to go around eight unless you feel comfortable with it. It's just this brush has a nice fine point and that works for me as using a smaller brush because it's a larger brush, I cover the area much faster compared to using a smaller brush around three or two. A little more water. I'm not going to spend too much time on this, but I still want to make sure that this is nice and wet. Now, what colors, I'm going to start with the yellows. I want to use some of this raw sienna since we use raw sienna and then a little bit of me that's a long yellow. Very tiny amount. It's not really yellowish in there, but I do want some of that yellow, and I might as well just add it whatever other places I see the yellow. This highlight needs a little bit of that blue in there. But since I have a color, I'm going to spread it a little more. That was the two yellows. I'm going to grab this cobalt blue here. I'm just going to place it next to it in a way. See, I feel like fallow blue would be actually better one. I'm going to wipe my brush on a to grab a little bit of fallow blue. Yeah, because fallow blue is much cooler. It works better. There you go. I'm placing this fallow blue here. It's a very pale wash, don't work on it too long, leave it as long as you have you created a little bit of a color there or you blended some colors there. I'm going to actually grab with that same brush. Some of the yellow again. Let me see make sure you can see it. It's very hard to actually show it for some reason on the camera. When I'm painting something dark, it's like I have to work with the exposure on the camera because it's super hard to show the true colors. I mean that that pale. I'm going to lift a little bit, and that's it for this eye. Let's do the other eye. So same situation, we're just going to wet it and then apply colors we wet. I'm grabbing water with the tip of my brush here, spreading the water, being careful not to go over the outside the lines, the sketch lines because I don't want to reactivate the darks that I used to create the shade of black. This is my daughter's new favorite painting cat. I painted the other cat two. That's for patron but she likes this one better because she likes the shades of brown actually in the fur. Go. No puddles of water, so I need to make sure there's no puddles, I'm wiping my bon tail and going through it again. Again, I'm not going to spend too much time on it. Grabbing this milk like ratio of the yellow ochre and let's see. Even if I'm sorry, Riana, but you can grab yellow ocher to. And then some of this mi desal yellow and try not to mix the colors on the palette, let this mixing to happen on the paper. We are focusing on painting the highlights, but we might as well add this first player. Since we have all these yellows, I'm going to grab a little more of that rocia maybe a little too much. I want the blue. With the tip of my brush, I'm going to grab this fallow blue because last time I grabbed the Cb blue I didn't like it. I'm going to place it here with the tip of my brush. I wipe my brush on a towel because I had a little too much. If milk like ratio does not work for you, that's okay. Just try to adjust the ratio. Maybe you need something heavier, something that feels like half and half or heavy cream. It's up to whatever you feel needs to be adjusted, just go for it. I'm going to add a little more blue here. Since it's going to be darker anyway, and it's just nice to do a little more with this first layer, since you map it out all these areas. Let me see if I can adjust the light here. I don't like what I see here. It's super hard to show what I'm doing and if it gets too dark, then it's not good either. I'll try to stick with this. Anyways, this is wet. The other one is wet. I have to wait until both of these eyes are dry and then we can add an layer. 18. Project 1: Eyes, 2nd Layer: All right, friends, we're ready to start painting this eye. What I want you to do when you wet the eye, stay away from these little highlights. What I do it as to get lost. Just wet the majority of the eyeball. Then when you have a color in your hand, then it will be easier to stay away from it. I'm just going to wet the most of it, but really staying away from that highlight plus more just to make sure. Then once I have the color on my brush, it will be so much easier to see where I'm placing the colors and the area that I'm preserving to stay paper dry. It's pretty good, I guess. You can use a smaller brush. This is my round eight gold one, and I'm going to grab the same colors as before. With the tip of my brush, I'm grabbing rociana milk like ratio, rociana and some of this ming yellow. Where do I see the most of it here, maybe here, over here, whatever I feel like I'm going to actually with that dirty brush grab some of that cooled blue. I know I was talking about not really using cooled blue, but it does feel okay if I grab it with that yellow that I already had on my brush, so I'm not mixing colors on the palette. I'm not. I am just quickly grab quickly grab that cooled blue. But I'm going to grab now some of this diluted flow blue with water. Now this is what I'm going to mark for myself, where is that little window we see in the eye? Something like this. Now it's much easier. Now I know where it is. I'm going to stay away from that. I have paint on my brush, might as well just place it around. I'm going to wipe my brush on the top, because I have a little too much of the water, grab more of the rust I'm going to travel around, I guess here. Overall. If you look at the eye, this side is lighter, and then I guess that's the lightest part right here. We can also lift it if it gets too dark. You know what, I am going to switch to a smaller brush because with a smaller breast, I'll have less paint or water I'm sorry on my breast. With around eight, I just felt like I had a little too much. I'm going to grab actually raw, some and brown and a little bit of indigo. I'm going to go for these darkest parts now. The ratio in my brush has to be heavier, more like a cream top like ratio because I want to have the most control now. I don't want the paint to spread, especially that I'm adding these darks. I just want a little more of the indigo with the browns. It does feel like I should add a little bit over the edge there because this is shading. I need to create dimension too. Let's see this could be more bluish. How about grabbing a little more of that fallow blue alone. Actually, this is fallow blue indigo. That's way it looks dark. Okay. That works. P blue and indigo works. So I have a little bit of that, but it has to be cream top. Everything at this point has to be a cream top like ratio between water and paint. I'm going to grab a little bit more of the browns together and shed it just like I see it, but it needs to feel more brownish, I guess, not brownish, more dark blue. I'm going to go with this paint here that I have on my brush. Just a little bit this area. It does feel like it needs a little more of the yellow. I'm going to grab more of the yellows. And just apply here and overall here. Now, I don't have much time to apply all these colors, so I have to hurry up. What I need to do is apply a little more of just a blue like a follow blue right in here. I'm going to clean my brush, wipe it on a towel and use just a damp brush to spread what I have to smooth it. I should say smooth it. Move it around it looks soft, if I need to lift, I need to lift here. May I have some lifted areas here too, but I'm going to lift this part. There's that line around right here, that should be much lighter and that helps with the dimension. Now, if you want to make it more greenish like we see in the reference, just let that yellow blend a little bit with the blue on the palette that will help you to get that. I'm going to grab actually a little bit of the yellow with a tiny bit of that blue. Now I have this greenish shade. And you know what, is almost too dry to show you, but maybe I'll do that with the other eye. I'm going to leave this one alone and let that to dry and then we can move on to this right eye. We're going to do the same thing here. We're going to wet it. I guess I'm going to stick with this brush just for that at least. We have a highlight here on this side. Let's just wet it except for that highlight, that makes sense. You know what? We can leave that edge two. There's a a left side of the eye is lighter, so you can just stay away from it as well. I'm going to wet it. The right side is softer, so I'm just going to wet it altogether. So here, Wedding. All right. I'm going to grab this Rosi Amy Del yellow and more of Amy Des yellow. Now, I'm stopping right here. So be a hard edge there. And adding spreading that yellow. If you add more of that yellow, which is the primary yellow, you have more like what we see actually in the reference. I think I added a little too much of the s and the other one, but that's okay. The eyes don't have to actually look exactly the same as a matter of fact. Now I'm going to grab a little bit of the yellow and then grab a little bit of that green, I'm sorry, blue, follow blue. Now this will resemble what we see in the reference, grab a little more of the blue. This is what it looks like. I'm going to let this to spread a bit. You know what? I forgot. I was supposed to stay away from it. That's funny. Well, you know what? Good thing I have a masking there. Masking fluid. Well, I totally got sidetracked. I forgot. Now I'm going to grab a little bit of brown. This is heavy, this is cream top, cream top between one and paint of that and brown. I already know I need to use some of the indigo two. I'm just going to shade it for now with this van **** brown, keeping the paper wet longer a little bit just by going around. Then with that same brush, so I didn't wash it. I have now indigo and Vandy brown, but a little more and creamy paint. It's like little dots because I don't want perfect coverage here. And then go a little lower. To create some more of this texture in the eye we can see all that. Then I'll just lift this area if I don't forget. Then here. This eye seems a little darker over. I'm going to grab a little more blue. Just to add it here. I don't want to do dry brushing, so I have to hurry up before this is too dry. I'm getting there for sure. I grab more of the and brown. I can tell the paper is just about to dry on me, not a good thing, but that's all I can do. I'm just going to very quickly go around one more time. What I want to do is grab a little more of the blues, the blues, I guess, all the blues, add a little more of that fellow blue here before it's too dry, too late. What I want is left the left side. To keep the left side a little lighter, just like I see in a reference. Then let's grab a little more of that follow blue to place it in the middle. So we have a nice color there. If it spreads just a little. Actually I'm using a damp brush just to let it spread a little more. And I'm going to lift the right side, just to make sure this stays lighter. After this, we can move on to do the pupil on the other eye. This is a damp price now. I'm going to lift whatever I need to lift. I like this would be nice to lift. Maybe move this paint around a little bit. Basically, it's this side, this side, and then this little highlight, that I lost. Well, once I remove masking, it'll be very bright actually. There you go. Just lifting. All right. I am going to go back to the other I so we can finish the pupil. 19. Project 1: Finishing the Eyes: So for the pupil, when you look at the reference, I'm going to use my round two brush this time, when you look at the reference, that pupil has some blue in it, right? Let's grab some milky milk like ratio of the fallow blue and let's say indigo, make sure it's dry. And then place it over this, but make sure the paint doesn't dry too fast. So maybe like a water milk like ratio. If you don't see your sketch, try to maybe re sketch it because it's much easier. Now with that same brush, don't clean it just grab and brown and indigo. A little more I need that indigo then find in that pupil the darkest parts. That's all you need to see that's where you want to apply the colors. That's it. You have a little bit of that blue in there too. All right. I have one, that eye, but I can't do the other one because the other one is still too wet. I'm just going to do something else. I'm going to re wet this line here because I have too many areas that are like white dish. I'm just going to use that paint around to reshape the eye. I am reactivating a little bit of the paint. That's okay because I'll she it in a way. I don't want any white spots in there. I'm just waiting for this one to dry. What we could do is remove the masking fluid. Well, friends, let's remove some of the masking. I'm going to use this pickup cement eraser. Let's see, one area here. That's actually the whisker that I thought it was too thick, but maybe it's okay. Now what happens is we're going to have this huge contrast, a big contrast between the light the white and black. Yeah. That's it. Don't panic. If it's too bright, you don't like it, doesn't look natural. Because I'll show you a little trick what you can do. You don't even have to paint these whiskers, paint over them. I think that's all the areas. I guess where I apply the masking. This is what you would do. You would use a smaller brush. This is round two. You would wipe your brush on a towel first and literally you would just go over this whisker and at the same time, you're actually reactivating colors next to it. You can keep going to cover the entire whisker if you want to. But the thing is that that white is not as bright anymore, Now I'm going to do the same thing with the bottom or these whiskers where they start right here. The transition is softer. But you want to clean your brush pretty often because you're picking up all these colors. You don't want to you can touch the outside of the whiskers, which I am anyway, but just keep in mind that you might live too much. Try to focus on just rewetting these whiskers. There you go. Then I can do the same thing on the left side, and just reactivating colors. And covering up my whiskers with the colors that I already have here. I'm very careful. That's how you can minimize that contrast. Maybe a little more here because this is a thicker whisker. I guess it works, but I don't need it to be that dark. Then once you do it, you realize, You know what, the white is not so white anymore and it looks more natural. He got a little more here. Perfect. Let's go back toward the map. All right, my friends, we're going to do the same thing. First, I want you to always zoom in onto the eye so you can see it really well. But I'm going to grab this diluted fallow blue with indigo. I want this to be more like water to milk. It doesn't dry too fast because my intentions are to add indigo with some font brown over it toward the darkest areas that you can see. Use a smaller brush for more control. Then with the same brush, just grab this thicker indigo and band brown. I don't have enough paint, but I'll go with this at first to cover and let some of the paint spread more. I'm grabbing this indigo. This is probably where I have a little more, but you know what? I'm not grabbing enough of the paint because the paint is so dry. I just need to dilute more with water and I got to do it pretty fast. That's why I would say, make sure your palette is ready. So you don't have to spend time on diluting colors with water while the paper is dry. I think that's fine I think it needs to be a little darker. Be here. Just right here in the middle section, and then the top part, tiny darker. There you go. Leave it. Now, what I did actually with the other eye, I went around it and I reactivate a little bit of the color just to make it even the outline. It makes sense, it's not broken. I don't have light coming through. From the areas, I didn't paint all the way. I think I have masking there and I forgot. Let me try to remove it, see what it looks like. I do have masking there and I had masking, not anymore. If it's too bright white, you will do the same thing here. I'm sorry, I didn't show this to you, but you will do the same thing. Just use a damp brush and re wet it. Do we need to do anything with the nose? I really like the nose. If you feel like the nose is not dark enough or it just needs more definition. You can always re wet the area. Which I always say wet more than you need. But I like that the nose is lighter because it gives me a nice contrast. I'm just going to show this to you in case you want to do it. I'm just going to apply a little bit of that color just to make this one nostril a little darker. You can do that. You can just add more color if you need to. Yeah, I think that's it. I was going to re wet the nose, but I really like the way it is now. My friends, our painting is done. This class is done, please let me know if you have any questions and happy painting. 20. Project 2: Intro/Masking Fluid: Hi, friends. Welcome to this new class. In this lesson, we are going to paint this black lab. I chose this one because I really like how it has gray hair. I feel like we can do a lot more with it, we don't have to necessarily just make it paper white. We can use a color to recreate these grays. What I often do whenever I paint white object and watercolors, I will use primary colors, which is red, blue and yellow to recreate that shade of white. So there's something different. I guess about the reference that I did. I put it through photoshop to help me focus less on details. I made it a little bit of focus if it makes sense like this part here. I started recording a class and already went fine until I started lifting and I lifted too much in the effect this dog, it looks puffy. It doesn't look like a typical lab. It feels like I lifted too much. I had to help myself visually and to make it more out of focus. This time, I want basically focus on lifting as much and I'll just work in patches in a way. My mom an oil artist has given me many, many tips, great advices, even though she's an oil artist, and I'm a watercolor artist. One of the things she has taught me is that you see things in patches, and what helps you squint your eyes, so you focus on less detail. I've been doing that since I started. I like the idea of it. I think it's great and I want you to do the same thing. But also what helps us to make part of the reference image out of focus too, and then we see less less of that hair, individual hair, especially the grace. Now, I am holding a rigger brush. This is my test bruh, something I've been working with Devin I'm developing another brush. I'm trying to create a brush that's good for masking fluid. Try to have an old brush you don't care about. I have my old heritage brush, and that's something that I guess I would use for masking. Just right away, wash it off, so maybe we will last you for a few more times. What I want to do is use this masking fluid. To mask some of the whitest hair that I see over the face. Not too much, just a little bit. It's like for example, here, maybe some hair, here, here. There's actually a couple areas that since we're already using mask. You may as well mask this little tiny little hair area and almost the eye, the corner of the eye, and there's another area. You might as well do that. I wouldn't mask the highlights in those eyes because it's the effect is going to be much better if we work from the highlights to the darkest layers, and I'll show you how to do it with a couple of layers. So I don't do that. You could use maski maybe here underneath the non trail because it's a strong highlight and will be easier to preserve that area. Just stay light, white, almost like white. Then we have here a couple here, we can do that here, maybe here, and maybe here. Not too much overall. We are going to add background. The reason I want to add background in disc painting is because the top of the head here is very nicely highlighted. It's a very nice highlight, and when we add a background, darker background here from above it, it will give us a really good contrast. The same thing here with the muzzle, the left side of the muzzle is much lighter. If we add a dark color here, that will be a nice contrast right there. Now, how do I create this soft fluffy fur. We don't have it everywhere, so that's why I don't want to endp with this again, fluffy, too soft. But something in the middle parts are fluffy like the bottom or the bottom, the neck area, chest area. This is a good area to make it fluffier. What I would do is wet the background of the of drawing here as well. The paint from this side bleeds toward the background. I don't have to really preserve the top of the head because I'm going to add the background and when I add the background, what I'm trying to say is I don't have to stay only on the inside of the labs head just to wet it and apply colors. I can lend those colors to bleed toward the background, too. I will just not apply many colors toward this line here, but more away from it. The thing is that the background will help us to create a contrast and to shape the animal. But this fluffy ear here It would be nice to keep it fluffy. That's when I would wet the background here to background here too for this fluff. The same thing here, I can wet this part, but just stay away from these areas when applying colors. Now this ear, it could be fluffy, but I will show you what happens. I wanted to make the ear fluffy and here and here, everywhere around, and then just became a little over fluffed, which is fine. But maybe this side, I just wet only on the inside, just to keep this side section here. All this, I'll just wet on the inside. I won't wet the background, but here I'll wet the background background background. You know what? It's much easier to understand once we do it. Let me do it. But first, masking fluid. What I do is I dip my masking brush in water, and then I go for that masking. This is the Sm'morry blue masking. I flatten the brush like this. And then I find the finest, the whitest hair that I want to accent and I barely touch the paper when I apply it. You can't really see it because it's the masking first of all, it's it's blue, but you can't really see it. It's just so light, and the thing is my lines are very light, fine. They're very thin, so it's hard to see it. Let's just apply color or the masking, I'm sorry, toward the lightest areas just some fine hair strokes. Here maybe some here. Now, I'm grabbing a little more. I actually I'm going to add a little bit over the lip. I like that lip and then I was talking about the nostril here. Then I was talking about the left eye, which we could create a line underneath the eye bowl and then let's see we have this. That's light, and then there's a little hair. Let's see what else. We can add some here here, not too much. But some highlights from the masking, that area will be protected from too much pain to flow in there. Let's see maybe here very tiny hair. We will lift some, but just have to be very careful. It's I'm used to lift thing, but then you can overly lift or you can just lift where you don't need to lift. Then you end up with too fluffy painting. You would think it's not a bad thing, but it's just not right for this kind of a dog. Maybe here a little highlight. I barely have any masking on my brush, and I grab a little more. Let's see, what else would I like to add it? Maybe like here, but just like tiny spots. Okay. Let's see. This is more of an area for the masking, which would be let's see. It would be right this part where I marked it with a pencil. And then these eyebrows, I guess. You can't really see it, but I thought I will still show this part of the video just so you see where I'm applying some of this masking. All right. I'm going to clean the brash now, and then we can start wetting our lab. 21. Project 2: The Process/Wetting: Some friends. This is about the process now, how we're going to layer it. Again, we're going to wet it and paint it wet on wet. I am going to wet the background here as I am wetting the dog, all of this. Then here, I'm going to stay on the inside of the dog and here I'm going to go again toward the background because I want the fluffiness here too, background, background, the dog background here, here, here, here. All this is just going to be wet. This area on this side, I'm going to stay on the inside of the dog. When you wet the paper, do it for 4 minutes maybe 5 minutes, just to keep your paper wet longer. Another idea which works is great. Wet the back side of the paper two, and then don't worry about staying away from not wet the entire paper. Just wet the entire paper from the back and then on the front. Back for 3 minutes and then wet the front side for four or 5 minutes. That will give you plenty of time to apply colors on wet. You might be asking yourself a question thinking like, why isn't just I don't know, stretching the paper or submerging it in the bath tub? Yes, you can submerge it in the bathtub if you want to for a couple of minutes. Why am I not stretching the paper because when you stretch papers and you wait for it to dry and you rewet it or something. The thing is you're removing sizing, the surface sizing. The paper has sizing, internal sizing, and then some papers do some papers don't have surface sizing. Either way, when you stretch the paper, you remove some of that sizing. Now, imagine having a tissue and you decide you're going to paint on a tissue or paper towel. Okay. So you grab the paint without water. What happens? You paint and then the paint spreads uncontrollably because there's no sizing, okay? That's why you want sizing in your paper. And whether you want to stretch it or not, it's totally up to you. This is my take on it, and I just get so many questions why I just don't stretch because I don't want to lose that sizing. The sizing is what helps me to control the paint and water when I apply colors wet on wet. What I'm going to do is start wetting, in the middle of wetting, I am going to jump toward the palette, dilute these colors with water, and then I'll go back to wet it for a little longer to the paper. Here's my flat 40 brush. This is Dacl I'm just going to basically I'm wetting the entire side here. Now, before you wet, just make sure your paper or the masking is 100% dry. All this is fine, at first I grab a lot of water, lots of water. Again, this is the area where I'm also wetting the background background here and then I'm going to stay on the inside. Only to have a little bit of control here, more control. I don't mind the hard edge. It's just that my first version. I start recording a class and I'm happy with it, but then I'm thinking to myself, you know what? This is way too fluffy. That dog does not look like that reference. Of course, I didn't add the eyes yet and I also share the photos that just basically images, close ups because it's not a bad painting. It's just that I made it really fluffy. Yes, there's dogs like that there's just not the dog that I see the reference image. So making it soft and fluffy works, especially when you paint a cat, but maybe not with a black lab that has this smooth short hair on its head. Okay I'll still finish that painting, and then I'll just share images of it so you can see it. I always like finishing my paintings. Probably 1% of my paintings overall. I have not finished all the way. I am wedding, again, if you want to, you can wet the backside of your paper as well. I'm going to add a little more water and I'm going to let it sit like this, and I'm going to start the looting colors with water. I'll tell you now what I have. Why yellow? When you look at the dog, the chin or the chin, the muzzle part, the bottom part of the lip, you can see a little bit of yellow. Why not to show that in our painting. It's a nice little highlight there and it reflects something nice. This is my coin red. Here's my red, and there's raw umber. That's for the yellow blend. What is the consistency that I always say to dilute to is something that I call heavy cream ratio between water and paint, but you also want to have an area that's a little more diluted with water. Now, there's my cobalt blue. You don't have to use two shades of blue. You can just go with the one shade of blue. There's my flow blue shade. Finally, I have the browns. It's like I start with the lighter colors first since my water is getting dirty. It actually doesn't get dirty that much until I touch fallow blue, and then indigo. Everything else I don't know, I don't see that much. What is not that dirty. Here's my vantage brown and there's my indigo. I didn't squeeze new indigo because indigo by whole bin is very easy to reactivate and to get into that milky and then creamy texture or texture It's not as diluted with water the paint. I have vt brown burqa yellow roca blue, fallow blue indigo. Now, When it comes to colors, do not worry about trying to match the color palette as long as you have yellow, blue red, that's more important. With the process of painting, it really you don't have to ever use the same colors, even if you're painting with the same brand, don't worry about using exactly the same colors. It's always all about light and shadows. Of course, it does matter to a certain degree what colors you're using because you don't want to use, for example, opaque colors when you're blending mostly colors on the paper because that opacity of a color, if the color is too opaque, things become too muddy. The idea of blending colors on the paper is to avoid that muddiness of colors. But of course, if you have a muddy or not muddy opaque color, that can get you into that muddiness too. Now I'm almost ready. 22. Project 2: 1st Layer: Okay. But not quite. I want you to grab a brush. So what are you going to do is grab thicker amount of that and brown or some dark brown. Then I'm going to clean my brush. I'm going to grab this burned here. You're creating and she just like before. There's my red, but you're not mixing these colors really. You want to see the separation of colors. There's my fallow blue, a little more. There's some raw umber, let's say, some indigo. This is going to be our black. Don't overly mix the colors here. Because I'm breaking it down like this, I was just diluting colors with water, and then I went back to create the sheet of black. I can go back here and re wet this and I'm pushing the excessive water over the edges of the paper. This paper sheet is not in the block or pad. Actually, I ripped it out of a pad. It's the last sheet I have of the good paper. You see the collection, but the cold press is not the same anymore. Honey mulled collection cold press now resembles hot press. That's a huge difference. I don't recommend it anymore. I still have lots of sheets, so I'm going to use it up, but it's not something I would recommend. Unfortunately, and that was my favorite paper. But anyway, this is my flat 20, Can D vinci. This is my long quill size four, my online song bird. What I'm going to do is first layer it with under. I'm going to dip my breast in water, wipe it on to a little bit. We're going to first create a sheet of that gray. Cobalt blue, some red and a little bit of yellow although that became a too much yellow. Something that feels like in the middle of there. Maybe more of the yellow. Test it out first. I actually test out a lot on my palette. I want a little more of these blues and reds and go for the lighter areas, but not too close toward this part. Now, the consistency, you might be tempted to grab right away more something that feels like a heavy cream or cream top. But don't go for those ratios yet. I'll tell you why because you dry your paper too fast. The paper will dry too fast if you use a heavier ratio. Instead, grab something that feels more like a milk like ratio. And don't overly mix the colors because you don't want that muddy shade. You want the colors first of all to separate on the paper. You see different shades of that gray. I actually want more of the blue and red, more like a blue violet. This is a bluish area, even more of the blue, let's say. We can go here. I'm sorry, water to milk like ratio, yes, it's okay that the paint spreads. This is your undertone. Think of the whites, all the whit areas. Don't go for that water like ratio. I'm sorry. Don't go for that heavy cream or cream top like ratio between water and paint because again, the paper will dry too fast. Then apply it, you don't have to go exactly toward the lightest areas. You can go just next to it. It's just there's some color there now, and it's like you're mapping it out like these areas. Now, this is the area that actually needs more yellow. First, I'll get rid of what I have on my breast here. I'm going to clean this brush. This is my long coal fire. Okay. I'm going to focus on grabbing now the water to milk like ratio a little too much water off just the yellow and red. Let's go here. I'm going to wipe it slightly, I touched my brush over the towel like I wiped it a little bit just because I had too much. I want a little bit of more of the red. I want to change the shade of this yellow. Then this is the area. But again, water to milk like ratio. Nothing too thick when it comes to that ratio. Let's go with those yellow, yellow tones because we're creating different yellows, the yellow tones by constantly grabbing the colors from our palette. You never want to have exactly the same plant of the two colors or three colors. You always want this to be a different shade of that orange or whatever that is. Maybe here's some warmth, we want to add the warmth to our doggy. Here here and there. Now, I want to start going a little darker. I'm going to grab also some of this act red and then there's my cobalt blue, I can grab some fallow blue to. I'm going to go for these bluish areas. It's okay if it's tech to reddish. You can decide how much red you want. I'm going to grab more of these and then plus my dig. So what are the bluish parts? Well, first of all, you can add it toward the darkest parts that you see, but you don't want to just cover the whole thing and think about it. You always want to think about where you're applying colors. Now, I wipe my brush a little bit on a towel because I felt like I had too much water. That can happen. Be careful, though, because it's very easy to dry your paper like fast just by wiping your brush on a towel. You have to be very careful and just watch how the paint spreads. And that will just give you the clues. The worst skin happen is when you're still adding all these colors and the paper just feels too damp to apply colors. Well, what you can do is just basically you will stop right there, let this to dry, and then you can re wet your paper. And then apply the colors once you re wet the paper. But you don't really want to do that, you want to do this all in one go. Because it's easy to get into that moment, you're in it, and you just apply colors. It's just easier to think about the composition over of the colors and to have that blending to happen naturally, very nicely, I'm going to slightly wipe my brush on a to not too much. So I can add a little bit more of that blue here. But yes, at the beginning, more likely you'll have to break it down into parts to come back to it later and it's okay. It's part of the learning process. And there's nothing wrong about painting something over and over. Of course, it gets boring. But the thing is that there's no wasted time because every time you pick up a brush, you're practicing, that's more hours. Imagine when you learn how to drive, try to remember when you were learning how to drive. Nobody can sit for you in that driver's seat. You have to be the one that makes the call when to stop the light, like what to do. Can you go turn on the red light and stuff like that. It's the same kind of thing. You have to experience it for yourself to get better at it. Now, I'm going to go with those shades of blue to all my blues basically. And just add a little bit of that blue here. Now, watch how the paper dries because some areas that you're not touching are going to dry faster. For example, like this I didn't focus on, but I want to add browns. Okay. 23. Project 2: Blue Undertones/Creating Black: I'll be here too. What I'm going to do is start actually decreasing the amount of water on my brush. This is not the black yet. It's like the indigo and andate brown. I am going to go for the black but not quite yet. This is the darker she I need to slightly touch my brush toward to tell us to remove that excessive water even more like that. I'm going to grab a little bit more of that blend. This becomes more like a half and half like ratio now, half let's say just half half and half to heavy cream. You just feeling it out. You don't want the paint at this stage to spread as much as at the beginning, I want to say, you still want to flow because you're not done. Then thing is, I have so much information to share with you and I just don't want to overwhelm me with all this, but there's a lot, but the more you listen to me the more you get used to basically the idea of all this. The thing is that you're mapping this whole thing area, like you're jumping around for a reason. It's to keep the paper wet longer. Keep grabbing this find brown here. We have the blues brown here. It's basically a shade of black but not the actual black that we created. But you're traveling around because you want to keep your paper wet longer. This should be more like a damp brush just to pull the paint at the same time. The same thing here, but we can come back there in a second. And this is where we will have a hard edge, and I need that hard edge because I didn't have that before and it became too fluffy at this stage at this moment when I was doing that. There is a lot of these areas, but I want to show now that I have some of this burned to re burn yellow. Just to add it like here where we have the chest area. My daughter saw the I'm grabbing the black dish that I created. But my daughter saw the painting of a cat and she liked that it had all these brownish tones because more than the one that feel more like a blue undertone only. This is my black. I'm grabbing more like a heavy cream. Okay. Heavy cream and soon I'm going to start grabbing just this creamy paint. But I'm not there yet for that. Because again, if I start grabbing cream top like cratio between water and paint, then I'll dry my paper faster. Now, where do you apply these colors a little more blue with this mix the follow blue? I'm looking for the darkest areas, but I don't want to cover just leave this alone like this. This is too light. I'm just traveling around it. You're looking for these darkest areas. I'm going to grab more of my black that I created, but I'm actually going to create it on the go like this, just grabbing colors. Because I need thick paint thicker for shirt thicker now. This is the chin. As you see, I'm not just covering it completely. I actually prefer to use a larger price. I'm going to grab use my flat 20, all these colors just to create a sheet of black, right? All of them. Now this using a flatter brush like this and the larger brush will give you more coverage. You do want more coverage overall because you don't have these individual brush strokes that don't often look nice. This is a little more of the indigo here, but I want to pull this through this masking because masking sometimes can stop the paint from flowing. And I want some of this as well here and now we have a color, but we don't need to worry about the color right now. This is just to push the paint a little bit too when I'm using this flat brush to spread it, help it to spread. Now, what works is having using a DM brush. So the damp breast technique, I'm just going to release a little more of this paint around the muzzle. The damp breast technique works if your paper is still wet. The paper cannot feel like damp so it's barely wet. Has to feel like they're still shine over that paper. I feel like I'm almost ready for that. Okay. So I need to smooth the layers and then next thing, I'm going to be adding our lifting colors to but just a little bit. Now, first, let's grab some more browns reds just to make this area a little darker. Every one is to be too light. I am avoiding the eye. I wet it too, but it doesn't mean that I have to be paranoid over it. I'm not. I'm just watching it, and then a little more of the darks here because this is the ear and we need shadows and then more of that here. I feel like in a moment that if I don't do this now, I won't be able to do it at all. This is my flat brush, need to clean better. I'm going to leave my paint brush or the long quill that I was using. On the side, I don't have time to clean it, but this is my damp brush. What I'm going to do is just like we see the hair going up. I like to smooth it. We want to do the same thing. We just pull it. Pull it, pull it, you pick up some paint, that's fine. Take advantage of it and just spread it a little bit. But try to brush your dog. It has smooth hair and you can control the direction here too, for example, how it's spreading and so on. Just a damp brush. Second, we need to grab a smaller brush to add a little bit more of the darks. But again, take advantage of it. To brush your doggie in a way. It's like brushing it. Now this needs to stay at light as possible. Might have to lift. Thing you can do is grab this thick paint, something that feels like a cream top. And go back towards some of these areas. I don't really have enough, but I'm going to grab some indigo. Maybe if I do it fast enough, I need the browns. This is creamy paint with it on a damp brush. I just want to show more than just dark layer there. This is the area that needs some of that. I'm going to clean this brush and grab my round eight 24. Project 2: Details/Hair: Golden one. I just have to clean my brush. The one brush that's dirty. I have to remind myself because it's very easy to grab I'm sorry, dirty brush, like you know it's dirty. But then you forget in a moment, like, Oh, shoot. I just grabbed this dirty brush and I was going to go over like a light area, right? So now, this is what my pat looks like, right? It's pretty messy. Then I grab the blues. Some of this rusty and whatever color I still have. Of course, I can squeeze it, but do I have time for that? Probably not with the weight papers drawing right now. This is my shade of black cream top like creation between water and paint. Let's go for even darkest parts. The darkest parts we can see over the dog. Now, again, you can do this as long as your paper is still shiny wet. If you're losing that shine, so the paper becomes too damp, just feels too damp. Don't do it, don't add any more color because you're just going to end up having these hard edges and that's not the look we're going for. This is still wet for me. I'm adding the darks toward the nose, and then I have this line here. Let's see, a little more here, color, and we have the nostrils. It doesn't mean I have to do nostrils now. I can re wet this area later. But if time allows the paper still feels wet, I might as well just add that and that makes it easier later in the process. I don't have to spend as much time on re wetting and adding the colors here. So here is another area where I could easily add the darks. This is on the border, almost like too dry, but I'm still going for it because it feels quite wet, I guess. I want to divide this to show the lip. Keep an eye on how the paper is it still that wet? Can you still keep going? I'm going to grab a little more water a little tiny more water so there's some more flow to it, but feel it out. Just feel it out. This is the gray area, so I don't need that much color, but I'm going to grab a little more. This is the creamy paint. Now, this area right here is not dark enough. This feels them. This technically is not a good spot to work on because it dried too fast. This is too dry. I just tested it. This is ish. I can add a little bit maybe of the color here, and maybe here. Another thing we need to do is lift some areas not to do too much lifting because that doesn't work well. But I grab more paint just so I can separate a little bit the ear. Now, very often when we find a reference of a black cat or a dog, what happens is, the reference is so dark that it's hard to see anything like highlights and stuff like that. That is when you can put your painting, the reference through exposure on your phone or whatever you're using. Maybe you have photoshop. But this is the brown red blues I barely have any color that left that I actually want, but I need creamy paint. This is on my riggar breast sce too. I want to add a little more to my painting. I want to add individual hair strokes. When If the paper still feels damp, then go for it because then you're going to have all of it blended together. If the paper start to feel too damp and you're just creating hard edges, that means it's too late, and it's best to just leave it. You leave it until you can rewet maybe a section. But here's the thing about painting these dark animals when you're trying to make it as realistic as possible, means you're trying to make it dark, not light because you can make a black cat like You can make it easier if you just create it with light values, but it's not going to look as realistic as something like when you use the true tunnel values. You try to match that. When you try to re wet, a dark area, just keep in mind, what's going to happen is that you might reactivate the colors. That's why I train myself to paint these black animals with one layer. I have done those doggies and everything with two layers, but again, you reactivate the colors. It's much easier. By the way, I'm just pulling the paint to create the hair. Okay. So if you're just going for the first I'm sorry, one layer like I am showing it here. The beginning it's okay to make it lighter. Just make it lighter so it's easier for you to lift the colors too because it's hard to lift if you have a lot of these creamy ratios here used. The paint doesn't lift as easily. Now I'm going to lift, but not as much as in my test piece. I want to show this to you again. This is too much. 25. Project 2: Lifting Colors: I need to keep it somewhere in the middle. Now, of course, there are some areas that are a little too light, and I'm just going to have to probably add the second layer. But those are smaller sections I'm talking about, not like rewetting the whole dog. I'm just going to actually lift a couple areas on because I don't want to do the mistake I did earlier when I overly lifted. This is okay here because I'm just going to recreate some of these highlights over the forehead. I'm not going to try to lift too much. However, this needs to be lifted because I need to show that there is this ear. I'm pressing a little harder with my breasts and then over that area where a flight masking to. And then we have this fluffy ear. I am going to lift some here. There you go. Then we do have some of this sleeky hair here, sleek hair. There you go. Some lifted parts, but not too much because again, I overly done it overly did it in my other piece. To be careful and mindful of that as well. What you can also do is work a little bit on the nose, for example. I'm looking at my painting. It's a little too exposed here for you. Let me try to adjust it. As you can see, I'm trying to adjust the exposure on my camera so the colors are not so pales because of all the lights that I have here. But if you need help with the nose, let's say you covered it too much, too much color bled there. You can always lift, you just want to lift the colors. I'm using a smaller brush. This is my round three sober details. We are going to again add background so that will help us. Now, this is the area that I almost missed. This is actually where I do want to live. And create some of these highlights. It's a little too late. If it's not too late for you, try to lift this part because this is the lighter fur, especially here. You clean your brush, wipe it on a towel, and then you clean your brush again. But you need to wipe your brush to make sure you don't have too much water or any water, you just want to have a damp brush because it's very easy to create a bloom. As I showed you in one of the exercise videos about lifting. It's very easy to create a bloom. This is to lift, but this is the area maybe where we can lift for the color. Just to leave a space for that nice orange color. We can add that later. I think that's it for me. I can't really lift anymore. It's a little too late. Overall, take a look at it and just to make sure there's contrast. We have light and shadows. Let's walk away from this for nail and let's let it too dry. 26. Project 2: Wetting Background: Hi, friends. Welcome back. Let's add background. I want to add the background first, instead of working on the eyes or something else, because I want to see that contrast and I want to show you my piece from that class that I started recording, but it didn't go the way I wanted it to go in that direction. I added the background, but I'll tell you what I did wrong here. I added a little too much color over here because here's the thing. When you have a lighter area over the dog, Yes, you add more color in the background because you want that contrast. But this ear here is darker, so I don't need to make it creates such dark values. This is a mid tone, but it should be a little lighter. I want to keep these parts that need to be lighter really much lighter than what you see now. For example, here, all this area is blended too much. That's why because the far here is black. And I should have left it either alone or just make it really light in color. Here, I still have the highlights around the ear, which is fine. I could basically just make the background here a little darker. The most important is here to have a darker value mid tones right here above the head because the head is much lighter. Let's do the same thing. What we're going to do is wet the background plus a little bit of the dog, whatever we want to preserve that soft fur. Before we do that, let's dilute our colors with water. What colors I'm going to use. Actually going to use yellow, oellow, Ss green, vt brown, and maybe a little bit of go and flow. Basic palette. If you've been with me for a while and you see that I always use almost the same colors over and over again, of course, unless I'm painting a seascape, then I will use Manganese blue nova, cobalt turquise light or vidian hue. These are some of my favorite colors. And the reason is because they turn out, they look so pretty and it's easy to blend them and seascapes look really nice and vibrant. These are the colors I'm going to squeeze now onto my palette, and I'm going to dilute them with water to consistency, I like to call heavy cream like ratio, something that feels like heavy cream when you think of dairy. Then we're going to start wetting. The reason we're going to prepare the palette first is because we're not going to spend too much time wetting the background because the areas that we're going to wet over the dog, we don't want to wet too much or spend too much time wetting it because it's easy to reactivate the colors. Let's get to our palettes. So this is my color palette. I have Quinn red. Actually, I don't even know if I'm going to use it, but this is Van brown, a yellow, yellow, Seth green, fallow blue indigo. So I'm going to place this on the side and I'm going to start wetting the background. I'm just making sure it's all on focus, and I'm going to use my flat 24 press. When you wet, I really want you to pay attention to where exactly you are wetting, what parts of the paper? Here, we definitely need that contrast, so we're going to add color right above the head, right above the top of its head. We're going to add some background here as well on the right seg. My paper is it's not flat because it's out of the block. It's been ripped. Basically, it was actually a pad. That's what it was. But it was the last page. Now it's like I have the pad underneath that. Here, because I want to preserve that softness, I'm going over the ear as well. I don't want to spend too much time going over these areas that I want to keep softer because it's very easy to reactivate these colors because I use these heavy cream to cream top like ratios between water and paint plus, I use darker colors. Now here we have this ear. This is your call. If you want to look softer, you can wet part of the ear as well. I'm going to stop here. I'm not going to wet the part of the muzzle. And I'm going to go right here because it's the background. Then what do I do about this? I'm probably not going to add much color here, but I'm going to wet the fur. You can see actually how I'm reactivating the colors because they are darker and I use this heavy cream to cream top like ratio, which is why exactly, I don't want to add another layer here toward my dog. I don't want to re wet it because I will reactivate colors just like you saw. Here, a little more water and I'm pushing the water over the edges. If your paper buckles like this, it's not flat. Well, once you start wetting, you see that it just flattens a little bit. You can also wet the backside too. That would help a ton actually, especially if you are painting on a glass top table. I just have a little piece of hair from the brush, see if I can get rid of it. There you go. If there is hair, I say, leave it if it's too late because you already start applying colors, just leave it. You don't want to mess with the painting. I'm going to go a little further here. Same thing here. There you go. 27. Project 2: Adding Background: I'm going to start with this yellow, I mean, there's a long yellow, some of the eyes are yellow. I could grab I guess a little bit of quin d. Make it really warm. Actually I want mil click ratio. Really warm here. This is the area that I want to create also contrast, but I want to show some of these yellow tones and then right above the head. You don't have to add these colors everywhere. You're choosing areas. You want to choose the areas, and here maybe a little bit. I don't need that background everywhere, some places. Think about it you don't want again that background busy. This is what it's going to look like if you just follow the reference and add the background in all these spaces. Now I'm going to grab a little bit of Sep grain I'm going to add this step grain to some areas too. This is the area that I want contrast. I'm going to go right next to the muzzle. Right there. Then again, this is the area, but I want some fallow blue too. I want to change the sheet of my green, and I quickly just grab another color and I don't try to mix them on the palette. I want these colors to separate and to mix them here on my paper. These are the lighter years. I'm going very close toward the dog because that's where I want the contrast. You can use super values of colors. Because now I'm still using this milk like ratio between water and paint. The paint is spreading. So even if I'm creating these maybe shapes like almost like a bouquet, something like this. It will still spread, so it's not going to look funny like I'll show you an example. Here, I was using heavier ratio between one and paint, so I had a lot more control. It just depends what look you're going for. Okay? What else do I want to add? Maybe a little bit of a color here. But again, I want to leave so much more light here than in my other version just because I feel like it was just too much. I'm going to grab now some of the blue and some of the sub green and some of the van brown. I want to make this a little darker. Just slightly darker, and this is the area that I really need to keep darker overall because this is the contrast that I was talking about right here above the head. I got to go very slowly. This is, of course, drying fast too. I got to be careful. I think this is enough, maybe a little more here. Because again, I don't want this to be too busy. I want the dog to beat the first thing you want to look at, not the background. It's so tempting to keep going. I'm going to clean the brush and basically, I can't do anything until the paper is dry again. I'm just cleaning my brush. This is just a damp brush. One more time. I'm just going to go through, this is a damp brush, I just controlling the paint with a damp brush by moving the paint a little bit, so it doesn't spread too much like this and I have a little more control. But for the steps, you wet the background plus parts of the dog, whatever you want to preserve that softness in the fur. And then you want to make a plan of like, where do you really want to apply these colors? If the area here, the forehead is highlighted. The best way to create a contrast is if you add the mid to darker tones here, on the other side. Whatever you have a darker area, like the ear is darker, I didn't want to add the same values right here. I actually decided to keep it light because that's my contrast there. This side is darker, so this needs to stay lighter. The same thing here. Technically, the ear is highlighted, and I could still lift this part, but I'm going to keep it this way just because in general, the ear is darker anyway. I mean, there's a highlight here. Yes, technically, you could add a darker value right here just to create that contrast, just like we see in the reference. That's pretty much it to add the background. The next thing we could do is focus on painting the e yes. I'm going to start with the undertones for the eyes. When I say it undertones, actually mean the colors I see in those highlights. The colors I see in those highlights. What I do is I zoom in onto the reference image, and I see that that highlight has a little bit of blue. Plus, I will still add the colors of the is, I see maybe a little bit of yellow brown, I'd say. I start with that and later I make sure that I leave the highlights alone with that second layer. 28. Project 2: Details, 1st Layer: Hi, friends. If your painting is already dry, then let's start working on this eye. Why wouldn't you grab a smaller breast, I have my round two somber details. And I want you to wet basically the whole thing or not the whole thing, but the whole eye with all these lids around because it doesn't matter. We're just going to be focusing on the lightest tones. Lightest colors we see first. The highlights. So let's see it for a minute because I know this is smaller area and it's pretty wet already, but you still want to spend some time in applying that water there. It goes inside the paper. Okay. Now, you want to grab a little bit of blue, you can grab fallow blue or cobald blue and tiny bit of red. Go toward the highlight, which is right here. Apply this color, this shade toward the highlight. You need some color inside that highlight. Actually I'd say why won't we grab also a little bit of yellow. This feel like yellow because when you look at the reference or the background, I'm sorry, you will see there's sheets of yellow around the dog in the background. Add a little bit of yellow there as well. I'm actually going to grab even more. Move this yellow. Apply toward the iris at the bottom. But I'm thinking about the highlight the most. This is the highlight here. But if I don't use too much paint and just milky ratio of water and paint, but just on the top of my brush, I just want flot this area. It's not going to be overtly layered with this first wash. I just want the little color there here and there. Just so it's easier for me to later break it down even more into, what's the next step? I'm going to grab a little bit of intake brown just because I wet it this area so I have a little color here as well, and that's all I want. This is the first layer. We keep it simple. Let's wet this eye now for a minute just like before, including the the lids, basically everything. Then we focus on the colors of the highlights, you can go a little bit over because that's the lid part. This is a tiny price, but I can just grab a little more water. Just keep wetting it for a little longer. Make sure it doesn't dry on you too fast. I wipe my brush a little on a tow because I felt like I had too much water. But now I feel like that wiping maybe wasn't good because when you wipe your barshi on a towel and then you go back to the paper, then it's like you're removing the water actually. From the paper too much and you make it more like dam. You don't want to do that. I'm going to grab the same colors, blue plus some of the red and apply it not entirely over the highlight all Amos did, but just around it and just see how it flows over there, how the paint flows because parts of the highlight are a little lighter, you can go a little higher, watch how that paint spreads and what that bottom lit here, could have a little color and this two, maybe a little more bluish, and then let's clean our brushes and grab a little bit of the yellows. And apply it where you see the iris area. So the iris right there. Then just before we add it a little bit toward the highlighted part two. And then with this dirty brush, let's grab a little bit of and brown to and not close to that highlight because it's easy to lose it, but maybe away from it just to have another shape here right away. And this is what I have is very small amount of the paint, and this is more like between maybe milk like ratio and half and half. I know I have a lot of control because I don't have much paint over on my brush. I'm just going to add a little bit here, for example, this is the moment when it's super easy to actually add color without having it spread too much. Okay. Because the paper is almost like it feels damp, there's not that much water left before it just dries completely, and then I have just to paint on the top of my breast. But what we could do is move on toward the nose. Sometimes we can easily just tuckle it basically with that first layer, we do it, great. We don't have to do it. Do anything more to it. We can leave it just the way it is. But in this case, I feel like I was adding the paint and you can see it last minute. It's on the border of having that hard edge to right before. Which actually it doesn't look bad, and when you take a look at the reference, it's pretty much alike that area. It was good timing actually over to add the darks. But the nose is just not finished because I need a smooer transition here where we have the nostrils and the shadows over the nose. I do need to keep the top part of the nose very light and then this area here. When I wet the nose now, I am not going to wet this little highlighted area right there and I'm going to wet more than I need. Also this part. Well, but I have to be very careful because I can easily reactivate these colors and I probably will. This is my round eight golden one brush. Make sure your colors are pre diluted with water, they are not just sitting there like a rock because you have to spend time while this is drying. You have to spend time otherwise to dilute the colors with water and you don't want to do that. I'm going very gently over these darker areas that I already painted. Because it's super easy to reactivate these colors, and I can feel it I'm already reactivating, but that's okay. As long as I don't rub into it too hard in those areas, I'll be just fine, and this is fine because there's not much color on top here anyways. This is all real time, just so you know, I don't do voice overs anymore. That was my first couple of years on patron, and that was it. Because on my other school, I've always done a real time recording. I just noticed that everybody learns faster and everybody enjoys my classes way better versus voiceovers because voiceovers are not how do I say as a teacher. It's just not fair in a way to a student because it's not in real time. There's a lot of cuts and everything out of the video, and I am going to grab cream top like ratio between water and paint of Vandy brown, Quach red, more of the Vandy brown, and indigo. Here's my indigo tiny bit of blue. Follow blue, for example. So I want even more of the indigo that was close, most water ended up on my paper. But I got to go toward the nostrils Actually, this doesn't even have to be painted right away. I can wait for this part to add the color toward the nostrils. What I need is blue, like a shade of blue. I just grabbed a little more blue. I am going to add it here right above the nostrils because that's what I see that shade and all this needs to be darker. Then I have this part, I didn't wet this section here, but I can use the tip of my brush to go over here. Here, this is all drying. I didn't spend too much time wetting it for a reason because I don't want the p to get reactivated from these areas. I'm going to wipe my brush on a towel. I wipe my brush on a towel and I'm going to go with that damp brush for these areas again. I feel like this could be more colored. This is a damp brush. I'm just going to use a damp brush, but I need to squish it more between the towel pieces of my towel and just go above, smooth it. Smooth it with that damp brush, lift, if you have to if you're losing those highlights. For example, this is a nice area that should be highlighted. I don't want to lose it. I'm going to lift it. If it's easier maybe a smaller brush to lift. I wanted to really add color here and I feel like I just run out of time. I'm going to try. One more time, go here, but I think that's pretty much it for me. Unless I want to add a little more color to Vande Browns indigo toward here. This area, but it has to be creamy paint, cream top like ratio between water and paint. There you go. Something like that now, you can see more depth from there. It's better overall better. This looks a little weird. I just need to add a little more color right here. This is much better now. I'm going to clean the brush. 29. Project 2: 2nd Layer Eyes: We're going to go back toward the yes now. I'm my friend, I want you to grab a smaller brush again. This is my round two song bird details. You want to have a nice fine point. What you're going to do, you don't really have to pre wet it, but it will help you because it will stay wet longer in this area. What I want you to do is wet some parts below the highlight, this blue highlight, and then maybe here. Just a little bit. We are going to add color in a second, but you want to have a flow. Otherwise, when you paint wet on dry, things dry super fast right away. Let's quickly grab some of our yellow I'd say, maybe burnt Canavan brown and some of the yellow or mids alone yellow. As long as you have a lighter brown, like a burnt sea, let's say, and then some darker brown, brown and some yellow. I need to grab more water. This was more like a half and half ratio and it's just too thick. It's not even that because I guess control here is not bad, but the paper is just drying too fast. These are my browns, the seeds of brown I have here. Even though the areas are here like darker, I still started with like a lighter tone, my undertones. I want some of this indigo and Vanda brown now, and this is the pupil area, so that's where you want to add color, but I should have wet it a little longer to say YI because this is drawing super fast. So I may have to re wet it. Although here maybe it's okay. So you always want to wet a little longer. I feel like I just goofed up on that part because I should have wet it longer because now I wouldn't have to be so in a hurry to add these darks. I'm going to quickly grab some of the indigo with and brown and this area should be still wet and then add it one more time, not everywhere, just some areas, and then this is the most important part here because we have the pup. The pupil is here, I'm going to clean my brush and I'm going to leave it. I'll tell you why. It's not done. But I have no choice because the paper feels almost like it's too dry. I'm just going to leave it just the way it is. One thing I could do is grab on the tip of my brush like milk like ratio of this van brown indigo, and just like we see lashes, over the highlight, we might as well do that too and I can actually go here too. This is wet on dry. I think that's pretty good. This is wet on dry just so you know now. I'm just going over these areas next to where I have the masking because I added some masking, so I'm going to have a contrast. This time, I'm going to wet a little longer. You're going to see this enlarged on a screen. But if you printed maybe the reference or something, make sure it's all zoomed in so you can see the eye. We're doing the same thing. I'm just going to wet it a little more Right here where I have the darks, like the pu pol and all that, it's just going to be everything basically by the highlight, by the highlight. Above the highlight. The reason I'm doing this is because I want the paper to stay wet longer. Otherwise, if it was just a smaller eye or something, I would have done it like wet on dry and a lot of times I do it wet on dry. If the eye is simple, more simple. It's just blacks and let's say highlight is blue and that's it. Well blacks we would still create our unshade of black. But this eye specifically, we can see that it's brown the eyes are brown. Now I'm going to grab actually milk like ratio of the burnt some yellow. You can grab oellow or mas yellow and just go for the pupil, although it's dark anyway. Just let that paint to spread toward the iris part. The same thing here because you also keep your paper wet longer because you're applying this color. That's one of the reasons why I add colors even in the areas that I don't really need that color. There you go. Now I'm going to grab this creamy paint, which is my van brown and indigo. Mostly, I'm going to tip of my breast trying to see that highlight inside. So it seems like a tiny highlight there, but maybe not. Maybe this is just the main thing. But there's a highlighted part here. What am I going to do continue going with these darks. I feel like the ratio that was like what I had was a cream top like ratio between water and paint, let's say, the lashes. Now it just feels more like a heavy cream. But I got to keep going and add this color toward the darkest areas I can see. Now, I grabbed a little more this time of the indigo and aiming for that middle section or where the pupil is and then this part is important to add the darks. It is pretty dark, but as long as you shade it, you'll be fine. So you have to think about leaving these areas lighter over here. That's why we start with the brown undertones. We can show all of that and then we can also lift colors here if this gets too dark. I'm going to grab more of it in digo just because I want to make this part much darker. Then with that say brash, I didn't do anything. I didn't clean it or anything. I still have digo. I just went back here, what would help is actually go really around this highlight to make it darker. Keep looking at the reference. That's the most important. Actually, I don't want you to look at my painting. I want you to focus on the reference so you can follow what you see with the color wise, light and shadows. Okay. I'm going to leave it and decide later if I want to do any more although when I study the reference, I see way more. Maybe I'll add a little bit more of this creamy paint and just some darker tone here, so van brown. I made is a little bigger in a way. I think that's pretty good overall. I'm going to leave it. I'm just tempted to use a damp brush right here actually over these lashes. But now I lift it too much, and I want to add a little more color so this is my indigo. I just added some indigo on top there. I would like to fix the muzzle. 30. Project 2: Partial 2nd Layer Fur: Okay. As much as I prefer not to re wet the areas. I do need to re wet this section and it's actually pretty light anyway, so I won't reactivate too many colors. So what I'm going to do is grab my long quill size two brush, a softer brush for this. And I'm going to wet all of this. Even the bottom here because you always want to wet more than you need. I'm going to add here quick layer. Just so it's darker because that's why I'm adding this extra layer here. I prefer not to because it's very easy to reactivate the colors. But if I'm just going to do a little bit, I'll be okay and these are lighter areas anyway. I just need a contrast here, and I need to fix the muzzle area. So whatever is lighter, I'm going to keep it lighter, but I'm just going to add a little color to make it to create more contrast. Very gently, that's why you want to use a softer brush. So I'm going to start with the milk like crato of this mas yellow here. Then I have is yellow and inc. This is the bottom here, yellowish, making it yellowish, maybe a little more red with it. This part. Now let's go for the darks because that was the main reason why I'm doing this. There's my and brown and then the blues red as well, sorry, I didn't show this, but here's my indigo to. This part needs to be way darker, which is why I'm coming back here. Here, be careful, so you don't get side tracked, not too much color goes over here because this is supposed to be grayish. I just said wet more than you need and I didn't wet this part. There you go. Then I want a little color here and the creamy paint now, the same colors but creamy Let's go here and add it, although this is a little too blueish for me. I had to grab more of the and brown, some more red. We need to create that contrast and show that this is the muzzle part. Okay. So you're using a creamy maybe like a heavy cream or cream top like crato between water and pain. It really all depends how wet your paper is. That's all depends from from that. I'm going to use my round eight. Okay. Because I need to wet this part. I wasn't planning to go that high and I always say, more than you need. Well, that's a good example, why. I'm going to lift this part a little bit. You can see that part of that muzzle. This needs to be darker, more color here. Actually, this is the area. I was going the wrong direction. This is the part right here, that needs to be lifted. There you go. And all this a little darker because this is part of this. Easy to get confused when you actually paint something black I'd say. There you go. That's much more like what we see in the reference. But to hurry up, if I was going to add color here, I almost missed it. A little more colors or colors that color blend. This is almost all too dry. I need to grab more water, likly re wet all of this. Technically it's easy to just add that next layer. Just have to be careful because the paper will drive faster because we're not spending much time on I'm re wetting the paper because we can't not when we work with these heavier ratios between water and paint. Might as well just add a little more color here. This is where I want it to be with that first layer, but it didn't happen because the paper dried too fast and Overall, you want to have everything planned in your head. This is going to be a little hard edge and I'm okay with it because this way, I have a nice highlight here. Let me move this here you can see better. I'm going to continue adding a little more darks here just layer now, I fix the contrast issue that I had. Just a little bit, not everywhere to re it, just some areas of the painting because then everything will just make more sense. Again, not too much. I want to keep it simple in a way, a little more color, but more lack of the int gods. I do want this to be way darker. I want to show this part is darker too. Whatever I feel like I need to contrast, I'm doing it now. And that will be it for my painting. I'm going to clean the brush. We're not Danny just FYI. We need to do a little more around the ice. What I need to do is zoom in and add one more layer actually toward the ice. Let's grab this indigo and some of the vana brown milk like ratio, so the ratio between wood and paint. Be careful with the area we just paint it just so you don't touch it by accident. This is wet on dry. You're going to layer the part that's really dark. The two colors. I'm going to create a contrast here. I'm going to clean my brush, wipe it, and this is a DM brush, I'm going to let some of that paint to spread. Whatever I feel like I want this to spread, I'm going to touch the outside part. Some of the paint spread, not too much. If it didn't enough, I don't see enough, I'm going to grab a little more paint this time, more like creamy paint and let that spread even more. Now I have better contrast. I have to do the same thing with the audit what I'm going to do is do the same thing, I guess, grab the indigo and bond brown. And then go right above where the darkest parts. I like that the way it is, but there's just not enough contrast. Now I'm going to clean my brush, wipe it on towel and just wet underneath those lines and then above this line, just for that soft transition, but I also want a little more color here. Now I'm going to clean my brush wipe it and then go with a damp brush on the outside, some color will bleed and it will be a softer transition. Now more of the color. Let's go back here because this there needs to be more contrast. I didn't lift that area. Keep in mind that it should be lifted a little bit. Just a little bit. Then here, this is all dark. I should be maybe a little darker, but I don't want to again rewat it because it's very easy to reactivate the colors. Now, one more area. Is above the nose. What do we do about it? The problem is there's a contrast right above the nose. I'm not going to wet the nose, just above the nose. But everything else, yes. More than you need, always wet more than you need. Just be careful with the areas where we already painted with the heavier ratios between water and paint. You go to be careful here because this was still wet. Now, I'm going to grab the same two colors or even follow blue two, Mont brown and go right here with that of heavy cream like ratio. Yeah, heavy cream feels right. Just above the eye, just so we have a little contrast. I'm sorry, above the nose, there's a contrast. There is a contrast because we didn't have enough of that. Actually, there's a little dip there. I need more of the banda brown. Right in here. Let me fix this. There you go. Now, it's much better. Now for the color, what we could do is basically just paint it with dry. We can grab some of this oellow and cinacal that'll give you a brighter orange. Don't mix too much the colors on the palette. Then I'm going to grab some more of the red and just place it, but that's way too much of the red. I grab now red and some of the yellow and just add it on the bottom. But we need shadows too. Some of the blue as well, maybe antic brown even, and just add it a little bit there. We have a little shadow. I don't like it that much because this part of it should be paint wet on wet at the same time with as we were painting like everything else like the dog. But as long as we have shadows will be fine. I'm going to lift this part just so there's more contrast, nice balance. Let's grab group brush, S two. Let's add some whiskers and hair, I guess. We will have some of that from having the masking fluid, but that's not enough. I need to zoom in back onto the head so I can see it not too close, but just so I see some. Then let's grab. This is like a blue, some and brown. Nothing too heavy, more like a milk like crass. Try to flatten your rigor and with very quick strokes, you're going to pull toward the background to add some hair detail. This is water like ratio, and you can just add some hair basically. More detail. You can also do it on the inside of the dog, just go in between. Then the last step will be to remove the masking fluid. I can't wait to do that. 31. Project 2: Removing Masking/Summary: Hi, friends. Welcome back. What's next? We have to remove masking. This is my pick up cement racer. We can get it from Amazon or any local art store. I'm sure they would have it. It's just a rubber eraser. I'm going to remove these? Okay. I'll show you a little trick, what I do if these masking lines stand out too much, which they will because we painted something black. The first thing I would do is grab my rig I'm sorry, not the rigger, but the long coal size brush. What you can do is very gently wet as section, larger than where you have masking. Try to see if you can just right there to way you re wet to reactivate some of the colors. If that doesn't work, grab the same color combination for that black and just add it in a couple of areas. Not everywhere, just a couple of areas to make that white less prominent like so it doesn't stand out so much. This doesn't bother me there, but maybe let's see here. Very gently, that's why I'm using the softer brush. This is my long quill two. You always want to wet more than you need. You have to be careful because this is the black area or the paint, rich. If that doesn't work again, we're just going to grab that blend that we were using to create the black brown, reds, blues, of course. Then you're just going to add it toward these couple areas, not everywhere, it's just so it's not so bright white. Okay. I do have a heavier ratio, by the way, on my paint on my brush. Sorry. And you know what? Everything else is fine. It doesn't bother me, but those are the things I do. So thank you so much for your time and please let me know if you have any questions. 32. Project 3: Intro: Oh. Hi, friends. Welcome to this class. Painting this dog will be a little bit different compared to painting the fluffy cat. With the fluffy cat to create that softness in the fur, we wet the background too and we stop applying colors maybe somewhere here. We have to pay attention to how we wet the paper, the ratios between water and paint. With this painting or when we look at the reference, there's hard edges technically when we look at it, there's just not much fluff in this dog. If we do want to make some parts fluffy with the cat, we can wet a little bit of the background like I'm seeing like, there's a little bit of that softness here on top of its ear, so we could wet a little bit of the background here and let some of the color bleed toward the background. That's optional. The same thing here with the body. Now, I want you to notice something with my sketch. Normally, I don't do so much drawing over the sketch. But it might help you go over the areas with a pencil that are really shadowed. This is shadowed, so you can mask it for yourself or market for yourself. Now, the reason it's okay to do it with a pencil is because the dog is going to be black and you're not really going to see these sketch lines. That's why. You might as well help yourself and let's see the nostril is so dark anyways. This is all dark. Need to move the computer screen a little bit because I have all these lights, and I can't really see as much the shadows, but here we have another one here. For example, this is all shadowed. This is all shadowed. You can go through the sketch and mark some of these areas that are going to be much darker. This way, it might be easier for you to layer it to place these darks. Here, for example, and then all this is going to be darker. That's one way to do it. Now, whether you are using my sketch or you create your own, you always want to spend a few minutes just studying the reference image, no matter what, and think of the layer in process. What really works is planning these steps in your head, like visualizing the process. What colors am I going to start first? Is it going to be blue as an undertone? Is it going to be maybe like a brownish? That's what I'm thinking. This is going to be a combination of blue, like a cold blue, and some banda brown with quint red because I see those reddish areas. Now the ear, I'd say this is more like a quin red, some russian a burnt sienna. Now, when you hear all these colors, you may be like, Way, so many colors. First of all, you don't have to use the same colors. You don't have to mix that many colors, and the most important actually is to mix colors on the paper because that's how you avoid the mightiness of colors. Another thing is when you paint a black object like a dog, cat, or a bird. You really want to try your best to paint it only with one layer. Especially if you're going with this style, the way I teach because we start with water to milk like ratio. We layer it with these bluish or brownish undertones. After that, we start using heavier ratios between water and paint, becomes more like a half and half and heavy cream. I'm referring to dairy. That's the easiest way for me to compare the ratios that I have on my brush to dairy. When I say heavy cream, think of that creamier paint. Then when it's cream top, it's really creamy paint. Once we use the screen top like ratio between water and paint, and the reason we use it is to have the most control. But at the end, we will. Then once you let that to dry, you really don't want to go over the whole thing and re wet it because you will reactivate the colors. When you reactivate the color darks like this, you will more likely get into that muddiness of colors. Now, smaller sections, I'd say is still okay to re wet. Maybe you need to add some more contrast or you didn't manage to add the darks in the ear, for example. And that's okay as long as you don't rewet the whole thing. You really want to spend that time looking at the reference, imagining how you're going to layer it. If you are using my sketch, that's okay, but I want you to go over my sketch lines, and it's as if you were sketching it yourself. Look at that reference. There's some fluff here. You just recreating my sketch lines just so it's like you're pretending as if you are sketching it because when you do that, you get connected with that reference and you pay attention to those lights the highlights, and especially here, we have a nice highlight. Left set of this nostril and then underneath the eye, we got to make sure we capture that. What I do with my computer screen is I enlarge the reference the same size as I see basically on my paper, but a lot of times I'll zoom out just so I don't get caught in smaller details because if you have it zoomed in, you start looking too much in one area, and sometimes you just want to zoom out. And I think we are going to mix colors to create our own sheet of black, which is very important. If you just use black straight out of a tube, let's say lamp black. Um, it will be very hard to create that dimension. It's just that painting will feel flat and won't look as realistic. When you look at black, you see that that black, it has different shades to it. Everything is affected by light and shadows. That's why that black on whether you have a dog or you're looking at the black dog on a computer screen, you'll see it's not like a typical black that we have in a tube. It has shades of a color in it. My suggestion is to never really use a black straight out of B tube instead always create your own shade of black. What makes the painting look natural is if you start painting with these undertones. So I want to say prepare your color palette but we might as well start wetting and then take a break and then dilute colors with water. This way, we'll give ourselves more time to paint or wet. I'm sorry, the dog. Now, I'm going to wet the entire dog. I want you to use a flat brush. If you're not used to painting with a flat brush, then this is a good start, at least even if you're just wetting the paper. When you paint with a flat brush, you have more coverage this way, you don't focus on smaller areas especially with a tiny brush. That's one thing I don't recommend just working with a tiny little brush, a large animal like this. This is a nice size. You have plenty of room to work on the dog. But if you're using a tiny brush, then the paper would dry super fast and you end up like wetting only small sections at a time, which is fine, too, but you really want to work the whole thing at once to let all these colors blend with that first layer together. It's okay if the dog turns out too light. It's okay. But you have practice of blending colors together. Another thing I do and I teach is so you don't focus on one area at a time. But you're focusing on the whole thing. The best way to do it too is when you look at the reference, you squint your eyes, and then you see less details. When you squint your eyes, it's suddenly like, I don't see like so many wrinkles. I don't see so much hair, and that's important. You don't paint every single hair. Of course, it depends from a style. But if you're taking classes from me, then you more likely don't want to paint every single hair because that's not what I do. That's not my style. I'm guessing that you don't want to do that either. I add quite a bit of water. I let that to soak in there. What I'm going to do is focus on my palette. I want you to do the same thing. In the second, you're going to leave this alone. There you go. We're going to dilute colors with water. Indigo. Band brown red Burna Rosa fallow blue. Is there anything else I need? Probably not for now. Co with blue, I want to say. Let's dilute these colors with water to consistency. I'd like to call heavy cream like ratio between water water and paint. It's okay if the areas some areas like more milky, but as long as you don't have just watery paint on your palette. 33. Project 3: Color Palette/Wet Paper: All right, friends. This is my palette, Rosina Quinn red. Berta and Brown, Palo blue, Copal blue, and diga I'm going to grab again the same price. Go through the areas one more time. This time, pushing water over the edges because I don't need that much water. The paper will start buckling a little bit. That's okay. To much buckling is never okay. And you do want to use cotton paper. 100% cotton. Not just 50% cotton, 100% cotton because the paint will be absorbed differently compared to using cellular water color paper. The paper will dry faster, yes, the colors will look more vibrant because the paint settles on top of the paper doesn't get absorbed as much inside as when you paint on cotton. When over here, I don't want to do that. I just suggest using 100% cotton. The results otherwise might be very different compared to what you see here. I just went over so I use paper towel. I just don't want that water there because otherwise, I'm going to change the shape of my dog. If you go over the edges, then the paper I mean the shape will change too because the paper I'm sorry, the paint will bleed over the edges as well. So I'm talking about the edges of your sketch lines. A little more water, then I'm going to start flying colors, but you know what, I'm going to switch to the smaller size flat brush. This is my 20, and this is by the way Csvici brush. These are really fine brushes, and I love this line a lot, other than my own songbird, but I don't have my own line of flat brushes to SFY I do have I guess the golden two, but it's a smaller brush. That one works too, but it's not as white as this one, and I like the wider size. Okay. All right. Again, pushing it down just so the water is nicely absorbed inside the paper. All right. Okay. 34. Project 3: Black + Undertones: Now, quickly, let's grab some of this and brown. We're going to create our own sheet of black. There's my quinacrid. There's my cobalt blue. There is P blue. Burn Indigo. There's my shed of black. Now, it's just a matter of how much red or whatever other colors I have. I do want to have this general mix black here. Because I am going to start with these undertones. But the thing is that a lot of times I just jump in in some areas right away to that too. Now I want to start actually with the smaller area, the ears, that's the lightest. I am grabbing actually different parts is my long two. I'm sorry, four, long cool size four. I'm going to grab a little water here. This is my conoc There is my way too much of the red. And I need more water. Riana I wanted to grab a little bit of burn I use my palette a lot to actually test the ratios. This is a little too red. I'm going to do it again, but I test the ratios, does that work? The ratio is between water and paint. If it does, I just keep going. It's a little more intense, but that's okay because I'm going to start adding the darks anyway and that's going to blend in there. What I want to do is go back to that flat brush, says 20. Now I'm going to grab this quinacrid I want this to be more like a water to milk like ratio, and then grabbing antic brown at the same time. It's like a blue violet and antic brown. I'm going to test it out here a little bit. I want more of that blue violet in here. I here, I'm going to map this area a little bit. These are my undertones. If I want this to be more bluish, I'm going to grab red and a little bit of flow blue here and I'm going to go for these areas right here. I'm not adding the background here. I don't feel like I need the background here. The background changes a lot because then I just need to adjust the ratios, the values, the color values. But I'm not adding the background. So it's okay if the dog is a little lighter. If I was adding the background, then I would more likely have to make it a little darker. Here, more of that quinacral red, but I want more fallow blue. Fallow blue, still grabbing that quinacral red. You can see the separation of colors. I want you to do the same thing. Think about that separation of colors. It's important. This area should have a little bit of pontic brown, let's say, Picn acral red, and fallow blue or cobalt blue. Either way, it's fine. And then I'm going to keep moving, and I don't want to just stop right here because my paper is drying and I will keep my paper wet longer if I move around a lot. Now, I grab again too much of the red. That's okay. I'm going to grab a little bit of the antic brown because what happens is you can adjust the ratios. You're just grabbing more of the other color if it's too reddish, then you're going to grab more blue. Now this is like the edge. I want this to be more bluish again. That's just cobalt blue, but I want this to be more like a fallow blue. It's like a blue violet. If it feels at some point like this is too muddy the colors, there's too much going on, then just clean your brush. Can your brush quickly, wipe it on a towel slightly because you want some water, and then go back to that color blend, blending. I'm going to do that now actually. I feel like maybe there's too many colors. I'm going to grab quickly this cobalt blue and some of this fallow blue. And I'm going to go right here and here. It's like I'm finding the chunks and adding the pay to these areas. Whatever I see the most blue that highlight basically, it's a highlighted area. That's where I'm going to go and add the colors. The fallow blue, cobalt blue, grabbing more of it. This is very bluish. This area could be a little more bluish. Then let's see the nose. I don't want to skip the nose because otherwise it would dry fast. Then this area. We are working with a flat brush. You can of course work with a round brush if you want to have a larger brush. 35. Project 3: Adding Darks: Try your best to have a larger brush. I'm grabbing a little bit of that black mix. I want to actually shape top of the head here and the same thing here. Using that flatness of the brush. Now, I feel like it's time to add start adding the darks. So that's the next step. Question is, do you have enough of these undertones? I'm actually going to grab a little more of the blue just to do it here, add it here. This area is quite dark overall. I want to make sure I show enough of that blue. Here and there. Because I don't need super highlighted areas. I want to show there's some color to that highlight actually. I think this is pretty good now. You're traveling around your painting the whole time to keep your paper wet longer. Now, we wet in the eyes, but we're just staying away from the eyes, you see that much color bled in there anyways. No big deal. Now I'm going to clean this brush. That's my flat 20, I am going to start grabbing this shade of black, but you know it dried on me, so I'm going to quickly grab the colors again. All the colors, every single color I have here, basically, and like a creamy paint a cream top like ratio between water and paint. Trying to make it more on the reddish side. Now, cream top. Make sure that that's okay that works for you because cream top might be too dry of a paint. What's going to happen, what could happen is that you start removing too much of that paint water from your paper. By using creamy paint instead of heavy cream like ratio, it might actually speed up the process of the paper drying on you too fast. I'm going to add it here, whenever I see the darks. You see this is for me too dry, so I have to use more water like ratio. I'm going to grab I'm sorry, heavy heavy cream like ratio. I had to go back and add a little more water. I got to go to the area actually where I started working on first, which is the ear because this area right here will dry faster than anywhere else. I don't want to neglect that part. Then going back here. Now the top of the head is darker. Now what I'm doing is and what you need to do is focus on the darkest parts that you see, and that's where you're applying this shade of black that you created. You created a shade of black. Now you're looking for these darkest spots that you see over the dog, and that's where you're applying this shade of black blued brown, all of these colors. There you go. Just don't over mix the colors here because it's very easy to make this all look muddy and very easy things to start becoming muddy. This is where the darks are, and I'm applying colors toward the darkest areas that I can see. You have to remember to go back toward the spots that you started with because those areas will drive faster than anywhere else. If you're not done, then, you really need to go back there because for example, this spot, I didn't spend much time here. It's already drying pretty quickly. There's an area around the nose. I'm actually going to use a smaller brush in the second to do that. I almost totally decided not to use this reference because I thought, well, maybe people prefer to paint like other dogs, other breeds. But then I thought this one looks so cute. It's actually much easier to paint than a lab, a black lab. I wanted to share this option with you too, to paint something like this, a dog like this. Now, again, I'm focusing on the darkest parts that I see, and there's these folds, the skin folds, and sometimes grab even more of the blue. Mix colors as you go. Sometimes you have more of the blue on yours in the color blend. Sometimes you have more of the red. You're changing the shade of your black. You constantly change the ratios between the colors. That will give you a a natural look of that black. Now, this area, I'm going to have to lift it so I can show, Where is that muzzle? I don't want to lose it. In the second, I'm actually going to grab a smaller brush, so I can control smaller ears because I've been doing this with a large flat brush, which is so much easier than just working with a small brush. With smaller brush, I would have a whole bunch of areas with brush strokes. You could definitely see those brush strokes, and you want to have a nicely covered areas. W a little further here, well, I'll have to probably way nobody will notice that I changed the shape of the side of the face a little bit. I'd like to work on the nose a little bit. Okay. I still have paint. I'm going to wipe my brush and grab a thicker paint. That was cream top I've been working on. I'm sorry, heavy cream like ratio between water and paint that I've been working on. I want more like a cream top now. I can also smooth the areas. If you've taken my bird class, which I do recommend because the areas are overall smaller, but I show how to paint with that damp brush. A damp brush technique, I teach about that, and it's very useful here too, actually, if you have if you get that chance to use your damp brush. What I'm going to do is clean this brush. 36. Project 3: Damp Brush + More Darks: Clean it, I'm going to quickly show you the damp brush technique instead of talking about it. So you squeeze your brush between the pieces of a towel, and what you do is go through the areas on the paper that feel like shiny wet. If your paper feels too damp, don't do it. That's too dry. The paper has to look shiny, still wet, and then you brush through your dog. You're pulling the paint, you're controlling how it's spreading. But again, if it's too dry the area. You're just going to lift the colors and a lot of s. I do have to be careful about that. Here, actually, I'm coming to the nose. What I need to do is focus on the nose. Again, if you want to practice the dam bras technique, I highly recommend going to my birds course because that's where I was demonstrating with the different subjects. I was much easier. What you want to corrkly grab is creamy paint, which is the bond brown, all these blues, Cream top. I call it cream top, creamy paint, way more blue. There you go. On the top of my breast. This is my roundy golden one breast. You want to have a fine point. Now with that creamy paint, you're going to go toward the areas that need that contrast, more contrast over here. I didn't add enough color. I'm going to shape the dog a little bit. Now, this blend was fine, but bad was showing a little too much. Here's the area around the eye. To be careful, first of all. This is where I'm getting closer toward the nose. This is still wet for me, nice and wet. I have that chance to play a little bit more here. If your paper at this stage feels too dry, that's okay. You layered it. We still have chance to work on the muzzle later because that would be a smaller area that we would re wet. Don't worry too much about it. A lot of times, actually, I focus on layering everything else, and then I don't really get to make it to that nose area. That's okay. I just rewet the section because it's a smaller section and I usually leave the nose anyway lighter. It's no big deal. I don't want you to worry about it. Then I'm going to grab more of that creamy paint from my palette. I'm going to look for that muzzle. Okay, where is that are? This is the part of this muzzle. I have to look at the reference. I don't see my sketch lines. This is exactly why it was okay, I said, don't worry about the sketch lines because you won't even see them once you paint this dog because we're painting something black, with all these shades, you won't even see it. Now, I do need to look at the reference because I don't want to add the darks when I don't need to add the darks. This is the muzzle. What will happen too. To bring it all back because now it's hard to separate it all. What will happen is lifting colors too. Somewhere here is where I should have the darks. Then we have this, this part, I will be lifting in just a second because I need to bring back the nose that I almost don't see anymore. We have these folds, as we add a little more of that creamy paint. This exactly I'm just placing a little more color here. But this is exactly why. I don't recommend rewetting this because we're using this creamy paint. At first, again, I know that this is not easy to follow, but you got to start somewhere. The more you practice, the better you get at it. This is just the same black. I'm just grabbing a creamy paint. And that's why it's important to really study the reference before you start painting and overall playing these steps in your head. Okay, this is where I'm going to place the blue undertones. This is where I'm going to start adding more of the brown and here and so on. You just doing it visually at first, and then you jump in and you know exactly how to layer it. I know that it's not easy at the beginning because I was there once before, I was the beginner too, at some point. But the thing is what helped was really studying the reference, creating my sketches, and then just trying to figure this out like, where am I going to layer it with these blue undertones and so on. You really want to practice that. I'm just looking for the darkest parts over the nose. So I can shape the nose as much as I can now. Let's see. Yeah, this is pretty well layered now, so I don't have to continue going. This was like some water drop there. Now this is important too to be careful so you don't have any water dripping down there or something because it's easy to create a bloom. I'm going to clean my breast and going to show you that thing you can do. 37. Project 3: Lifting Colors: I cleaned my breast. I wiped it on a towel. It's a damp breast. I need to lift the areas like here. This is the ear. I'm going to press harder on on my paper. I'm sorry. I forgot actually that I need to lift the ear first because the ear is drying. I'm going to lift whatever I see highlights and that lighter area inside. That's why it's okay to add a little more color because you're going to end up lifting. It's more important about lifting it on time. I almost missed that timing. I press harder on the paper. The most important when you lift though is to wipe your brush on a towel so you don't carry much water, you really just want a damp brush when you lift. Now, I get to quickly go to more important area, which is like the eye. At the bottom lid needs to be lifted. For example, maybe you have other ear then you need to lift. Maybe like here, other eye. Let's go toward the nose and the muzzle part. I'm going to first focus here. I want to make sure you have this nice muzzle here. There you go. And then do this dividing the line here. Here. That's the nose. Now we have a nice highlight here. Now, it might be easier to lift with a smaller brush just FYI. But here, I don't have that fold, and I don't have this fold here. My as well do that before it's too late because at some point you should not be lifting because the lifting is just not soft anymore. It depends. It really depends when you're painting because you can lift a lot of different stages. I shouldn't say that you just have to feel it out and decide how much of that lifting you want to do because you can lift even earlier. Perfect timing to lift colors is when that paper loses the shine and it just starts to feel damp. If you lift earlier than that, you just spread the paint or too early, the paint will just spread too much. There's different stages. It really depends what you're painting. I think with lifting, you just really have to experiment on your own. I just continue lifting because I can, the paper is still wet. But what I have to focus really is just making sure I don't lose that muscle here. That's really important. Because of those blue undertones, our dog looks shiny, as long as we don't cover too much, of course, Okay. Look for the most important highlights. I know there's a highlight here, for example. It's a good highlight and I have the shades of pink there to showing. But maybe another area is more important and the papers drawing, so you're like, word lift. You have to decide what is more important for this dog for the features. Especially if you end up doing commissioned work, then you really want to make sure the dog looks like in the reference. You want to just decide, what's the most important for this dog? I think I feel like what I'm doing here is enough, maybe just a little more of this area, which I'm going to grab a smaller brush. This is my round three so bird details, and I'm using a smaller brush now to lift this nostril. I got to make sure I wipe my brush on a towel. Sometimes the towel becomes wet and we just keep lift or wiping a brush in the same spot, but then we end up like actually not wiping the brush enough and we bring the water to the painting so be careful with that. Okay. This is the highlight that I'm thinking about. Of course, I have smaller areas here. You know what help is grabbing actually a little more of that creamy paint because we have these little tiny spots for the whiskers like here. If we can and this feels damp, just try to add little tiny spots there because that will help down the road with the overall. I'm going to grab a little more of the same blend so the black. This is wet. The only reason is because it's wet and just add colors right away here. This is cream top like ratio between water and paint. It's just creamy paint, and that's why it's not spreading much. That's why the paint is just not spreading much. I'm just looking, this should go all the way here, this little line there. That the reason again, I'm doing this. I continue working on this is because it's still wet the paper is still wet in those areas. What I could do is just add some darker areas here, but I need a little water, even though it's like a creamy paint, you always still need water. Otherwise, it just feels too thick. Then here, this is a good spot to make it look more like to where we see in the reference and then maybe here some spots. Which you also could do, I ran out of time to do it. 38. project 3: Hair & Whiskers: But what you would do is grab a rigger brush. This is if I can find it, my rig song bird. That's the brush I used to lift colors. There's not much to lift. However, you could definitely create small hair detail. This is creamy paint. What I could do is find a couple of areas where I could just create these lines. I don't really have chance here because this is too dry, but it would be nice over to do that. If your paper is still wet, try to create some hair detail to pull the paint through some areas. Because that's something that I normally do, but I run out of time, and this is becoming wet on dry, which I don't want. What I could do instead, I guess, because this is too dry for that. Although maybe here is okay. Nope, too dry. But I could do is now instead of using creamy paint to use water like ratio. Squish your price of little bits, sits flat, so the lines are thin and you barely touch the paper when you do it. Then you just create the whiskers. You want the pat to be quite deluted with water, something that I call milk like ratio. Milk like ratio, and then whatever you feel like it would benefit the dog to have the painting to make it look more natural. To add some hair and the whiskers. Now because I'm going to go over this area, some parts are still wet. I grab more like a half and half ratio, but I should go with a heavy cream or cream top. If I'm going to add some whiskers here. Earlier, the cream top that I had, it's all the same but it was a little too thick. Maybe here. This is all wet on dry now. Not to confuse you. I can't do much wet on wet anymore, but you do need to keep adjusting the ratio between water and paint. Because what works when you paint wet on wet, doesn't necessarily work when you paint wet on dry. So I'm going to leave it, and then when I come back, I'm going to paint the ice. Okay. 39. Project 3: Details Eyes: Hi, friends. Welcome back. So we're going to paint this eye. I'm going to zoom in, and I'll explain further how to approach something like this. What you want to do is actually focus on the lightest colors that you see inside the eye. We have a highlight there, and then we have the sclere the white part of the eye, and then the iris. All these things are actually the lightest, but we would paint this eye and layers. What I want you to do is make sure that your color palette is ready to go, so the colors are diluted with water. This is my round three. I'm going to wet the eye first the entire eye, including the lids, Just wet it. I'm actually going to even go on the outside a little bit, put that part of the lid or skin there and stay on the inside when it comes to here. Just wetting it and I'm going to focus on the colors of the highlight, so the blue. See a little bit of blue. Go. I'm going to grab that blue. I'm actually going to grab a little bit of co blue, some la blue and apply on the lower end of that highlight. See how that spreads. This part of the pupils a little bit bluish there too. We can see some of those tones. I'm going to grab a little more of that. This is like milk ratio, but just a small amount of paint and I'm going here over this part, which is the lid, and I'm going to grab a little bit of rociaron and arid. I'm going to go right here where we have the sclera part. It's not just white, so we have to give it some color. And I'm going to grab some yellow and acral red, yellow, acoronRd maybe burnt sa but try not to mix these colors too much on your palette. Try to apply a little bit of that with the tip of your brush, just a very small male, maybe more of the red and toward the orange areas that you see over the is part. Again, this is just the first layer, so we don't need to do too much to it. This is we're mapping it out like mapping the areas just so we know. This is where we need to place some orange. This is where we're going to add some red and q red with some yellow. I have a little mor qu red here. This is going to place it there. It's just the beginning. What I could do is grab a little bit more of the burnt sienna, maybe some vantage brown. Lots of colors, but I really don't want to do too much, just a little color here and there, just to map it out. The most important is that you actually have paints on the top of your breast. Imagine as if you were drawing with a pencil. And you want to have all of control. The paper can't be too wet. What I'd like to do is add a little more toward the clara area. I'm going to grab some acal some of that raw or raw umber, whichever and just go in the middle of a little bit, add a little more then tiny bit of the brown, just like we see, it's a little darker, but I need to tow it down with the dampers I think that's pretty good for the first layer. Let's move on to the other eye. For the eye, we're going to do the same thing for this one. We're going to wet the whole thing, including these lids. Every e is different. But the idea that steps are very similar overall. Go. Wetting it nicely, and then I'm going to start with the same blues that I used. So follow blue. Although I don't see that much, but I do want it in this highlight area. Then I might as well add it toward the pup then we have these lids. Mapping it out, and then I'm going to grab the same colors, which was my yellow some burn Ciena and place it toward this orange toward the is parts, but maybe wipe my brush on the to a little bit, just because I have a little too much. And see how it spreads. The reason I'm using iso yellow and quint red is because I want more like a richer shade of orange. Io yellow deep by whole wine is already like orange, but with the combination of with a quint red, it just becomes even brighter. Plus, you don't want to mix colors too much on your palette. You're just going to quickly grab the colors and let that blending to happen here actually. On your paper, I'm going to quickly grab some maybe Van Dak Brown a little bit. Paint is quite dry. And I just want to have a sub transition, so I'm actually going to apply this Van Dak brown here. It's mostly Van Dak brown. Okay. Toward the darkest areas, but I have a lot of control because the paint is just on the tip of my brush. You got to stay away for the most part, from the highlight. I don't lose the highlight. Let's see. Closer here because it's all like soft transition if you look at it. That's why wet really works for this. Technically, you can paint everything wet. If you want to give it like that nice and soft look. Let's move on toward the nose. 40. Project 3: Details Nose: I am going to use a round eighth brush, so my main brush, basically. This is my round eighth golden one, and I'm going to wet more than I need. There's my nose. Now, it is a stiffer brush I have to be careful, so I don't like reactivate colors too much. What I want is a little more color and texture here over the nose. But I do need to wet a little more than I need. Never know how far you're going to really go. When you start applying colors, it's like, Oh, maybe, you know what, I should add a little shadow here or there. That's usually how I go about it. Very gently. You don't want to spend too much time rewetting because we reactivate colors. Let's grab this font brown, go some qua cralRd creamy paint, or like a cream top. Let's go right away toward the nostrils. Nostrils. The darkest parts that we can see. I didn't wet this part. I'm going to try not to go there, but this should be darker and then all this area is definitely darker right underneath the nose part. And then we have the spots so I can make it too. Actually, it feels like it should be altogether. That's what I was confused a little bit earlier. Okay. Touching slightly with a brush. I'm going to wipe my brush on a towel, grab a little more of that brown, some qua crit red. I just want a little more color here over the nose. Yes, I want it to be highlighted, but it doesn't have to be that highlighted. I apologize for the noises with a neighbor leaving on a motorcycle. I want to figure this out. I have a highlight here. Actually this part makes no sense. The nose should be like this. In my case, I just have to fix it up a little bit. There you go. Because I have a little spot there right here. That's what it should be like. And then we have the nostrils. Technically, this should be a little darker. Okay. I just need a little more contrast there. Wiping my breast on a towel and I'm going to grab a little more of that band brown, some quinacrid red, make it a little lighter. I am adding more color on top actually. It's just that it's a lighter shade. Then I was using earlier. The last thing I can do is just basically lift the colors if I need to and then go back toward the eyes. It's going to grab a little more color here. To make sure I can show that these are the nostrils. Now the nose is maybe too light let's say. Maybe I will grab a little more of that indigo. So it's not so light in colors. You got to be careful because we're adding these creamy ratios of water and paint. We don't want to go too heavy and then keep playing with it. I know we have this line here. All right. I'm going to leave that 41. Project 3: Details 2nd Layer: I am going to wet the is part, and then except for the highlight. So the is but no highlight wetting. I'm not wetting the highlight. So once I have a color in my breast will be much easier actually to tackle this area. Then it goes all the way to here, There you go. And then I'm going to grab the same colors that I used for that is to some browns. Yellow, I yellow, burnt sienna, corn red. I'll start with these. And I can use the color even though it's not really the color, but to go over the iris, I mean, the pupil, just to mark for myself, how far am I really going to go. This part here where I'm touching, part of the sclera or that scar. This is the iris. That's a, I'm going to grab some and brown red. This is creamy paint. Paint is not spreading as much, so I have more control. Plus the paper is not that wet. More of that and brown, actually grab a little bit of digo because that was pre mixed. And I'm going back here. Cream top, it has to be creamy paint just so I have the most control. I can go here now. This is the puo area inside here, and then some of that blue would be great to grab quickly with that dirty brush to add it right there. I should go around here, add more of that color. I'm going to have to lift a little bit here because it became a little too dark. Just to lift it, and then I'm going to grab cleaner yellow to add that there. Then the vant brown and indigo back to this area here, the pupolight underneath the highlight, and then we have the lashes too. If it dries on you, don't worry about it. You just add this more colors with a second layer. Here you go, and there's way more to it to this eye actually. I'm going to go on the outside and mark for myself here even though it's wet on dry. Just so I know how far I'm going to go with it. I do ideally would like to lift just a little bit here. It does feel like I lost that balance. Wiping my brush on the f and then lifting colors. Okay. I'll have to come back to it again because this is not done. I'm going to focus now on this. I'm going to we pretty much everything, I guess, except for this lids and I just wet it. I'm just going to grab the paper towel and quickly press on it, and now I'm going to wet everything again except for that lid, and except for that tiny little highlight. Okay. A lot of times I'll use paint actually to do this. This marking because then I'll be able to see. I'm going to grab this quinacrid eye yellow. I'll start with that. Not exactly where that highlight is here, but away from it. Then I'm going to grab this inde brown and dig more like a heavy cream just on the tip of my brush. This is where the highlight is. I'm finding the highlight and framing the eye two. Where are the darks here and there. Right here and then above. We also have the darks. I actually quickly need to go back toward the nose. I just got a little too dark. I'm sorry, too dark over here. Let's go back here. This is not really dry yet. I'm going to wait a couple of minutes so I can finish painting these eyes. 42. Project 3: Details/Summary: Now I need to focus on some more details. First of all, I'm going to grab a little combination of blue. Let's say follow blue and indigo. I'm going to mark for myself the darkest lines areas. This part, and then we have a little line here and then this becomes the corner of the eye. Maybe more of the blue. This needs to be darker. I'm working with a size two brush. It's a smaller brush, I have more control. Then I need to do the same thing here, create these darker lines, but thin and transparent. Think of it like we need to be still transparent. Make it darker. The same thing here. Then we have this part. I'm going to grab some fun brown indigo because this area right here, it really needs to be darker to show contrast. I'm going to clean my brush wipe it on top and go with a wet breast just underneath that, so the paint spreads that makes sense. Then I'm going to do the same thing from the top. Make it really darker here. You go clean brush, wipe it on a towel and go with that wet brush from the top to let that color to bleed up there. I grab now creamy pated brown and just to create that one line right on top. This is wet on wet melt because I just wet it. Then let's see, there's a little highlight in there. I got to go back, make some of these lines much, same colors. Same color combinations. I'm going to grab, buriRd Let's start with that and then go right here. Just so it becomes a little more intense. This is wet on dry cleaning my brush wipe and I'm just going to go through the middle. Then I'm going to grab the and ground and the two colors burn sienna. And Brown. Then I'm going to focus on the pupil. This is more like a milk clay ratio of the and brown digo. And then let that color to bleed a little bit. There you go. Then just a dam bleed. Okay and then just lift things just so it doesn't bleed too far. Then I'm going to come back to fix that pupil one more time. The reason I did it is because the lines are not sharp. I want them to be soft. But you can control of this with a deep brush, you can smooth it and go around it. Now actually, we can probably finish this now. We don't need to do much more to it. Let's grab actually, Let's wet it again. Let's rewet it. The reason is because everything is blurred out in a way. You don't need to wet it for a long time. You don't want to spend too much time on wetting it. Let's grab again the same quacRd and iso yellow to make it more intense. Nice yellows and then and brown and indigo. Then this is the area that we didn't do much work earlier because we were focusing on the yellow tones. You start by the area around the pupil. Go and then this is not as vibrant as they wished for. But it's okay. I can add another layer there later. Then I'm going a little higher and I'm going to do the same thing. The brush, clean brush, basically a little bit of water and you're letting that color to spread above there. We should do the same thing on the bottom, let's grab some of this and brown and indie and do the same thing. I'm not going to touch that what I just painted to slightly below it. Clean my brush wipe on tile and just a clean brush, let that paint to spread. The eyes are quite dark anyway, but they do have this nice color. The eyes have nice color. I'm just going to lift a little bit just so it doesn't get too dark. I'm actually going to go back and grab a little more of the van and indigo and layer better here. Just so we see that separation so we can see like, Okay, that's where the pup is. And then I have to come back here later. It's just right now I can't because it's too wet. There's a lot to it, when we paint the eye overall. We have to focus, of course, on the highlights, that's the most important. But overall, the painting is pretty done, pretty finished. We can add more whiskers. We can add some here detail. I'll show this to you with a rigger brush. This is my rigger size two b I'm going to grab a milk ratio between water and milk like ratio of some and brown and indigo, and then you can just go back to a couple areas, not too much, but preferably toward the darkest parts. Then you can just add a little hair detail here and there. Now, I like to add these details while the paper is still wet, but here the paper dried and I don't want to re wet this. I prefer not to re wet it because then I can very easily reactivate the colors. I much prefer just to do it wet on dry like this. Just to add some hair detail. Again, you want a milky paint milk like ratio, something that feels like milk or even water like ratio is fine. You have to feeel it out with your breast. Then you can add some more hair. We have the ear. We can add some hair here maybe here. We do have whiskers over the muzzle part. The only thing I wanted to do is really add another layer toward the pupil and then I'll call it done because I think we're pretty good with this. Okay. This is almost dry there almost dry. I'm going to start getting ready for it. I'm going to grab this milk crecia of indigo and Vandek brown, and I'm going to have it on the top of my round two brush. I'm going to zoom in for myself on the on the reference image just so I can see the eyes and I actually want this to be even more diluted with water. Now I'm going to really focus on adding this darkest layer here. It's actually above or the highlighted part as well because I am missing that contrast in my painting. It definitely needs to be darker, the pupil area. Whenever I feel like I need to make it darker, that's where I'm applying the color. I'm actually going to grab more of the blue just to make this highlight bluish, just the bottom. You want to spend some time actually painting the eye and all the details because it does matter. This is just by D Browning Digo. Whoever is going to look at your painting, they're going to study it, at the eye or both of the eyes and try to connect with the painting. They might even see their own dog in this painting. That's pretty much it. Thank you so much for your time, please let me know if you have any questions, please don't forget that it's all in practice. You have to practice, give some time to train your eye for the colors. The most important is really to master the wet on wet and lifting the two techniques. Then after that, it's just a matter of the steps. Of course, how fast you can layer something because if we want to paint this with one layer, then we have to adjust with the size of the paper and everything and how we're going to wet the object. So thank you so much for your time and please let me know if you have any questions. 43. Conclusion: You have just completed this course, and you learned so many new techniques and tricks to paint a black animal in watercolors. So let's summarize this. You not only learn how to properly wet the paper, apply colors we and wet, but also how to paint with undertones and why undertones are so important. You have learned what is the best timing to colors, but also how to create an even smooer layer using a damp brush. To the already painted area on the paper. Congratulations. Please don't forget to share your beautiful paintings in our community, and please keep an eye out on my future classes. You can also find me on Instagram and YouTube, where I have over 1,000 of, like, free videos. And my other school is on Patrin and then on Teacher all the links are attached under my profile.