Watercolor Pet Portraits: American Staffordshire Terrier (Pitbull Breeds)

1. Intro: Painting an American Staffordshire Terrier with Watercolors: [MUSIC] Hello and welcome. My name is Emily. I'm an artist and owner of Emily Marie Watercolors. In today's class, we're going to look at painting Hercules, an American Staffordshire Terrier. Pit Bull breeds are some of my personal favorite breeds of dogs to paint. If you are a beginner that has some experience with watercolors and would like to explore the possibilities of pet portraits, pit bull breeds are great dogs to start your journey. This is because they have short, straight hair that's a little bit easier to paint than some of the curly, long-haired breeds. But first a little about me. As a watercolor artist, my goal is to convey the emotion and personality of the dogs that I paint. This means that I focus more on painting eyes, noses, and mouths, and I'm less focused on painting individual hairs. You'll notice that I talk a lot about painting an illusion of hair instead of spending hours replicating my reference photos. I'm also known for adding a bright splash of color behind my portraits, which I'll also teach in this video. We'll start by talking through the supplies needed. I'll share with you the supplies that I use to create my professional portraits, as well as the special color palette I found gives me the best results. Then we'll dive into tracing your pet and preparing your paper using masking fluid and painter's tape. Next, we'll start painting Hercules layer by layer. I'll show you a combination of real-time video with time lapses so you can see the whole process from start to finish. We'll end with adding a colorful splash behind our dogs and finish our piece by using a black micron pen. You are welcome to use the same reference photo that I used in order to create Hercules. The reference photo is located just below this video in the Projects and Resources tab. Or you're also welcome to use your own reference photo of your own American Staffordshire Terrier. Either way, I'd love to see your finished projects and answer any questions you have along the way. Let's get started. [NOISE] 2. Supplies: Let's start by talking about supplies, and studio setup. The one thing that I love about painting with watercolors is that it doesn't require a whole lot of space. As you can see, my studio consists of a student's eyes desk in the corner of a spare bedroom. We'll go over all the supplies needed, and then we'll get started. Let's talk supplies. You can find a detailed list of all the supplies that we'll talk about during this segment in the projects and resources tab just under this video. Let's start by talking about paper. For this class, I'm going to be using an eight by 10 sized paper. The watercolor paper that I choose to use with my pet portraits is the brand called Arches. It's a £140 paper, and I prefer a hot pressed paper when I'm working with pet portraits. A hot press paper tends to be smoother, it doesn't have any rigid bumps on the paper. However, there are some artists who are not big fans of hot press paper. If you are one of those people, feel free to try this with cold pressed. The one suggestion I do have is whatever paper you are using, try to get a 100 percent cotton. This is just going to allow your watercolors to correctly seep into the paper instead of sitting on top. You'll notice that this is a nine by 12 pad of paper, so I did have to cut this paper down. Next, let's talk about our paints. The palette that I'm using has a few different wells in order for mixing colors, and of course, I am going to be using a very limited color palette. Most of the paints that I use are Daniel Smith. Let's talk about the specific colors. For the majority of my pet portraits, I use a combination of these 14 colors. I say 14 because although I use Art Philosophy's maple, you can switch it out with Daniel Smith's Quinacridone Burnt Orange. A printable copy of this color palette can be found in the resources tab below this video. I personally love to use granulating colors when painting pets. I find that the separating of pigments nicely mimics fur which is a great benefit when we don't want to paint every single hair. That is why I always use a combination of either shadow violet or a moon glow, and lunar black in my pet portraits. For this specific class on painting an American Staffordshire Terrier, the colors that I used are Art Philosophy number 132 Sassafras, Art Philosophy number 130 Maple, Daniel Smith Piemontite Genuine, Daniel Smith Moonglow, Lunar Black, Quinacridone, Magenta, and Phthalo Blue. Let's move on to the rest of the supplies that we'll need. You'll need some masking tape in order to tape your paper down to a table. I will be using some masking fluid. This is to keep the white of the whiskers and the white of the eyes clean of paint. In order to apply my masking fluid, I use an old small brush, and this is a size 0 brush, and I also use a pen that has a small nib on it. This pen I use solely for applying masking fluid for the whisker areas. I find that it allows for a finer, thinner line of masking fluid as compared to my brush that tends to be a little bit thicker. For the brushes that I'm using for this project, I tend to not use a different brush for details, but you are more than welcome to use a different brush. The brush that I use for the entirety of my piece is a silver limited black velvet round size 6. I find that this brush holds enough water for some of my larger layers, and it also has a fine enough point that I can use for details. For the color splash in the background, I need a brush that can hold a little bit more water. And so I'm using this brush by Polina Bright, she's another Instagram artist. It is a size 0, but you can use any brush that has a higher capacity of holding water. We'll also of course need a pencil and a kneaded eraser to sketch out our pet. At the very end of today's class, I'm going to be using a Micron Pigma black pen size 03, in order to add a few details around my pet portrait. I like adding this black to my watercolor paintings because I feel that it adds a crispiness to some of my edges. If you are a watercolor purist that likes to only use watercolor, feel free, there's no need to add this black pen at the end. I always use an old towel when I'm painting in order to tap my brush on it if I need to lift any colors. I have gotten in the habit of using two glasses of water. The reason being is that at the end when I add my color splash, I always need to use fresh clean water so that I don't dirty up my color, and I usually use one cup of water while I'm painting the actual dog itself. A detailed list of all the watercolor supplies that I use can be found at my website, emilymariewatercolors.com. You can scroll through all the supplies that I use according to category, and also click on any of the links. When you click on a purchase here link, it'll bring you to an affiliate link through **** Blick Art Supplies. Now that we have our supplies together, we're ready to paint. 3. Tracing and Using Masking Fluid : The first step to creating any pet portrait is to correctly transfer the image that you have from your client to your watercolor paper. There are many different ways to do this. The simplest way is to just freehand your sketch. But in order to save time, I like to use an app called Da Vinci Eye, in order to help me trace my pet portrait onto the watercolor paper. After I've correctly adjusted the size of my head onto the sheet of paper, I'm going to use this app to start tracing the outline of just the pet's head. I'm going to start to trace partially down the neck, but I'm not going to add any of the little details such as the bow tie or the collar. When I'm done drawing, I'm going to use some white masking fluid by Winsor and Newton to keep the highlights of the eye white before I add my watercolor paint. Make sure you use an old brush for this, as it's very difficult to clean your brush once you use masking fluid. Next, I'm going to use the same masking fluid, but this time with a calligraphy pen and a small nib in order to paint the white whiskers that you see on the right side of the muzzle. Make sure to dab off any excess masking fluid before you add the whiskers. I would strongly suggest to practice this skill before you attempt to mask your whiskers on your final paper. Now we're ready to tape our watercolor paper onto our desk or a different artboard. I am using blue painters tape. I'm going to tape on all four sides of my paper. I like to remove some of the stickiness from the tape by placing it first on my pants and then onto the paper, I find that it doesn't peel off any of the paper if I do that, step first. I have all of my supplies setup and ready to go. Let's start looking at our first layer of painting the eyes. 4. Painting the Lightest Colors First: Whenever I start my pet portraits, I tend to always start by painting the iris of the eye, that's the colored area. Right now, I'm mixing a golden color to match the color of my American Staffordshire Terriers eyes. I'm mixing some art philosophy maple along with Sassafras to get that golden color. I also find that if I start with the eyes, it gives them enough time to dry before I move on to the area around the eye. After I finish painting the iris, I'm going to check my reference photo to see if there are any pink areas in my pet. You might find some pink under the ears, or in this case, there is some pink in the muzzle area of my Staffordshire Terrier. I am using a quinacridone magenta mixed with a lot of water to paint the pink area around the muzzle. [MUSIC] 5. The First Layer of Fur: After I finish with the iris of the eye and the pink of the muzzle, I'm going to start with the first layer of fur. I'm going to mix a Piemontite Genuine which is a reddish brown, along with a little bit of sassafras and maple that I used for the iris of the eye. I'll add quite a bit of water for this first wash because I want my first wash to be very transparent. [MUSIC] I'm going to start painting the upper left ear. This way when I rest my hand on the painting, I'm going to avoid messing up any of the fur that I already painted. I'll start with a light wash in the whole ear and then I'm going to drop a little bit of Piemontite Genuine which is my reddish brown into that tip of my ear. I also noticed a bit of a shadow creeping up the ear, so I'm going to use some more concentrated Piemontite Genuine, while my first layer is still wet to create that shadow. Next, I'm going to use the same light-colored wash to apply one solid layer. I'm only going to paint the left side of the face because I don't want this layer to dry before I have a chance to add in some darker colors. I found that if I do half of a face at a time, my first layer will be wet enough to work with. While it's still wet, I'm going to dry my brush and I'm going to lift some of the color out of the areas that are highlighted in my reference photo. If you notice in my reference photo, there are some strong highlights in the top of the head and around the muzzle area, so I'm cleaning my brush off with my towel and lifting that color up. When you lift color, you have to make sure that you're using a dry brush to do this. If you use a wet brush, you're going to create some unwanted blooms. Next, I'm going to mix some more concentrated Piemontite Genuine, that's the brown I'm using and I'm going to drop in some of these browns. You'll notice that my first layer; that lightest tan is still wet, it's still damp. I am not able to drop in any of these colors if that first layer has already dried, so this first step I do have to move quite quickly in order to drop these colors. I'm going to clean off my brush and dry it on my towel, and now I'm starting to blend these colors that I dropped into the first layer. I'm cleaning my brush off every single time I touch the paper in my paper towel, and I'm just softening the edges so that this brown doesn't have a very rough edge. I'm going to continue to add the shadows that I see on the left side of the face. I'm using barely any liquid on my brush at all. If I use too much liquid on my brush, I'm going to create some unwanted blooms. Our paper towel is an invaluable tool. As you notice, I continue to blot off some of the excess color that I have on my brush because I do want to lay down color, but I just don't want it to be that dense, so I'm going to use my paper towel to soak in some of that color to control the amount of color I have on my brush. I think that will do for now. I'm not looking to add the darkest colors, I'm only wanting to add the beginnings of the shadows. Now I'm going to do the same process that I did on the left side, but now on the right side of the fur. Right now I'm only focusing on the brown areas of the fur, so I'm going to speed up this video a little bit so that we can get through this section a little faster. I'm doing the same steps that I did on the opposite side, so I'm going to start with that lightest tan colored wash and while it's still wet, I'm going to do two things. First, I'm going to lift any color in the areas that there are highlights. I'm using a dry brush for this. Then I'm going to drop in any darker shadows using a Piemontite Genuine, and I'm going to then dry my brush and blend any of those areas with a dry brush. You'll notice that the darkest areas are the ears; the part that's on the underneath side. I'm not going to add a Layer 2 because that is using a very dark brown so I'm going to come in and do that later. Right now I'm just focusing on these middle tones. The last little bit of fur that we have left to paint is the area of brown fur on the neck. I'm going to do the same technique of painting a light wash of brown first, then dropping in some of my more concentrated browns on top. It can be difficult to know where exactly to stop painting. I usually do not continue my pet portraits to the bottom of the paper, I like to leave some white area, but it's tricky to know exactly how far down to paint. I like to think about an imaginary oval that covers the entire face of my pets that I'm painting and that oval line will guide me to only continue the neck to the end of this oval. We're all done with the fur, now for the first layer of the nose and muzzle. 6. Painting the Nose and Mouth: We are now ready to paint the first layer of the nose and mouth of Hercules. The paint that I'm using is a combination of Piemontite Genuine with just a touch of lunar black. I'm still adding quite a bit of water to my colors because I want this layer to still be transparent. In the nose area, I'm going to paint a uniform layer of color that covers the entire nose, except for the two little slivers of white that you see underneath the nostrils. I'm going to try my best to keep that part of the paper clean. Pit bull breeds tend to have a unique facial feature underneath the nose and above the mouth. If you can tell from the reference photo, Hercules has more of a splotchy brown that is below the lip and above the lip. We're going to try to mimic this facial feature in watercolors by using a lot of liquid and allowing the liquid to pool in the area below the nose and above the lip. What this will do is that that pooling liquid will start to dry and the edges of this splotch are going to be very delineated with a hard line. It's going to give a very similar effect to this splotchy coloring below the nose. These brown splotches also continue up to the left side of the nose. I'm going to continue with the same technique on the left side of the nostril, where I add a larger amount of liquid. I'm not going to have quite as much liquid as underneath the nose because I do notice that it is a lighter shade of brown. Before my paint dries, I'm going to dry off my brush and use a dry brush to lift some of that color from around the mouth area. I noticed that there is a highlight that is just to the right side of that line marker that connects the nose to the mouth. To the left of the mouth, I'm going to use the same colors that I used for the nose and the muzzle to paint some area, some darker dots of brown to represent where the hair follicles of the whiskers are coming out of the muzzle area. I'm going to start with quite a bit of liquid on my paintbrush. Now I'm going to clean my brush off and dry it using my paper towel and then I'm going to lift some of the color from these hair follicles because I noticed that it's a little too dark for what my reference photo is showing. I'm going to add a little bit more brown to the lower jowl. I think I'm ready for a second layer now on the nose. I'm using the same mixture of Piemontite Genuine with a little bit of lunar black that I used for the first layer of the nose and the mouth. But it looks a little bit darker now coming in for this second layer on my nose, simply because I'm adding a second layer on top, so it's going to look a little darker. I'm using my reference photo to see where the shadows on the nose are and making sure to leave that brighter highlight that you see on the top of the nose with only one layer of paint instead of two. I'm going to make sure to delineate a little bit better the mouth. I'm also going to add another layer of brown to the lower lip, this little triangle in between the cheeks. That's all I see for the dark brown on the nose, we're going to continue to add another layer of dark brown to the face and body before we come back to the nose and add black. 7. Adding a Darker Brown Layer: So far, we've done one light wash on the face of Hercules, and dropped in some darker colors. We waited for that to dry, and went back with a slightly darker brown. Now, before we add our black details, we're going to add just one more layer of a deeper, darker brown. The brown that I'm using that I mixed up is a combination of [inaudible] genuine with Lunar Black. I'm adding just a little bit less water than I did for my second layer. After I paint a uniform layer under the ear, I'm going to dry my brush off with my towel. I'm going to start to lift up some of the color from underneath the ear to show those highlights in the underside of the ear. I need to make sure to clean my brush off every single time I lift up color, and make sure you're not using a wet brush for this or you will create blooms. [MUSIC]. All right. I'm just going to add a little bit darker brown pigment to this edge of the ear. I noticed that that's the darkest area. I want to make sure that it's reflected in my painting. [MUSIC]. I'm going to do the same thing for the right ear. I'm going to speed this video up just a little bit for time. But remember that we're using the same technique of first laying down that layer of brown. Then I'm going to clean my brush off, make sure it's very dry before I lift up some of that pigment from the areas that are highlighted on the underside of the ear. Next, I'm going to grab more pigment, and drop in some darker pigment wherever I see those dark shadows. [MUSIC]. Using that same brown pigment that I just used for under the ears, I'm going to look at my reference photo, and paint wherever there is the darkest brown on the face. I noticed that there are some darker tones on the left side of the face. I'm going to start there so that I don't smudge any of the work with my hand. I'm going to wash my brush, dry it, and use a dry brush to blend these hard edges. [MUSIC]. Now, I'm going to start working on the eye area. I always want to have at least a few different layers of dark color in the eyes before I add black on top. That way the colors underneath are going to shine through when I add black. I'm going to start by outlining the eye shape, the upper eyelid, and the lower eyelid with my brown paint. I'm going to also add some brown to the pupil of the eye. Then clean my brush, and blend that hard edge so it's not so crisp of an edge in the pupil. [MUSIC]. When I'm painting brown in the face area, I need to control the amount of liquid that's on my brush. I'm going to tap my brush on my towel to take away some of that liquid before I start painting. This is going to allow me to have less dark areas, and a little bit more control with my brush. Now, that I've added brown to all of the shadows to the right of the eye. I'm going to dry my brush off, and blend those edges. Blending is a great tool to help create a soft look in the fur especially when we have short-haired dogs. Most of the time we don't want these hard edges. Every time I lay down some darker color, I'm going to come back, dry my brush off on my paper towel, and blend those hard edges. [MUSIC]. Once again, clean my brush off. I'm going to use a clean, not fully dry brush to drag some of that extra pigment that's on my brush, and create more of a gradient tone on this left side of the face. While the area that I just painted is still wet, I'm going to drop in a little bit darker, more concentrated pigment into some of the areas that I noticed still aren't dark enough. Now, for the second eye, I'm going to show you a little closer up how I first paint the darker section of the eye, the upper eyelid, and the lower eyelid. Then I move to the iris in the center of the eye. As soon as I have all the paint down, I'm going to clean my brush. With a clean dry brush, I'm going to soften some of those edges. I'm going to speed up this section of the videos so you can still see what I'm doing up close, but not have to watch it in real-time. All right. Now, that I've laid down color, I'm going to dry my brush off, and blend those edges. Remember that this is all a combination of laying down darker color, then cleaning your brush, drying it, and blending. [MUSIC] 8. White Fur Shadows: Painting the white fur can always be very challenging. I like to paint white fur using a very watered-down wash of moon glow. I've added quite a bit of water to moon glow. Moon glow is a combination of some purples and blues and grays. I love the way that it looks on my paper. It granulates in a way that it looks like fur without you having to do much. What I'm doing now is I'm adding, dropping in some moon glow in the areas of the white fur that have the strongest shadows. I'm cleaning my brush and drying it to create a softer edge. I know it's difficult looking at the reference photo because of the tie that Hercules is wearing. But I'm going to do my best to guess on where these shadows are going. [MUSIC] I do want to leave some of the white paper shining through, for the white fur. I'm not going to completely cover every single section of his white fur with moon glow. [MUSIC] I'm going to move on to the muzzle area. I do notice some shadows on the very left side of this muzzle. It's mimicking the same curve as the smile here, as the mouth. Then I'm going to move on to where the dots of the hair follicles are. I'm going to add a little bit of depth with my light wash of moon glow. Occasionally, you'll see me drying off my brush and then blending those harder edges. I'm relying a lot on this technique of drying my brush and blending out my edges, especially for the white fur. We can't forget about this little triangular area underneath the mouth, the lower lip. This is going to be a little bit darker of moon glow. I'm dropping just a little bit more liquid underneath this area. At this time, I'm also going to mix a little more magenta, the quinacridone magenta with quite a bit of water. I noticed that the left of the mouth. I see a little bit darker of pinks than what my first layer is showing. I'm going to add just a little bit darker pigment to the left of the mouth. [MUSIC]. Now the last area of white that we have not added shadows to is this white in-between the eyes. Once again, I want to leave some of that white of the paper to shine through. But I do notice a slightly darker shadow on the bridge of the nose, right in-between the eyes, and another little tiny shadow at the very top of that triangle. [MUSIC] 9. The Last Layer: Adding Black: The very last layer of paint that I'm going to add to my Staffordshire Terrier is black. The color of black that I'm using is called lunar black. It's a color by Daniel Smith and it's a granulating color meaning that when I paint on top of colors I've already painted, the granulation will allow for those colors underneath to shine through. Looking at my reference photo, I notice that the area underneath the ears is very dark, so I'm going to add a light wash of lunar black to that area. If you notice, I'm not going to completely cover every single part of the area underneath the ears, I'm only focusing on the darkest shadows. [MUSIC] [NOISE] With every pet portrait that I paint, I always add lunar black to the eyes. Right now I'm adding a layer of black to the upper eyelid and the lower eyelid. I'm going to be very careful to not get any of this black into the colored iris of the eye. In the pupil of the eye, I'm going to be very careful to only add black to the darkest area of the pupil. If you notice from my reference photo, the pupil is not a complete circle of black. There are highlights in the pupil itself, and so I'm only going to be painting this lower arc of black in the pupil. I've dried my brush off, and now I'm blending some of the harder edges around the eye area. [MUSIC] Now that the eye on the left side is complete, now I'm going to work on adding black to the right eye. Once again, I'm going to paint a line on the upper eyelid and lower eyelid, and then I'm going to paint a section of the pupil, the black part in the center of the eye; but I'm not going to paint a complete circle of the pupil because there are highlights that break up that full circle. I am still using my black velvet round size 6 brush for all of these details but if you need to switch to a smaller size brush, that is totally up to you. Now that the ears and eyes have a layer of black, I'm going to add some black details into the nose and mouth area. I'm going to start with the creases of the nostrils, that's where the nostril connects to the nose, and I'm going to make sure that the nostril part is completely filled in with black. [MUSIC] Now I'm going to rely heavily on my reference photo to paint the darkest shadows of the nose and muzzle area. I noticed from my reference photo that the area just below the nose is actually a touch darker than the nose itself. I'm going to add some lunar black below the nose and continue it through the creases of the mouth. [MUSIC] I'm just going to add a few extra black details around the side of the nose and the top of the nose. [MUSIC] I don't want to forget this little chunk of black where the edge of the mouth ends. But I don't want to connect the mouth to this corner of the mouth with a black line; if I do that, it's going to make it look a little too cartoonish. Right here I'm adding a lighter wash of lunar black. So I added a little bit more water to my lunar black to add the darkest shadows to the fur directly underneath the head. Remember that when I paint lunar black onto the brown fur, as you can notice from the video, the granulation of the colors allows for the brown to still shine through. 10. Adding a Splash of Color: After you finish painting your pet, an optional step is to add a splash of color behind the head. You'll want your color to be focused wherever you add a masking fluid, so I added masking fluid over the whiskers. The top of the head is quite light as well. I'm going to add some color to make those areas really pop. I'm going to start by painting clean water in the areas that I want to add color. This is known as a wet-on-wet technique. Before I add the color, I need to fully wet that area of paper. I tend to work on one side of the splash of color at a time. That's because I find the water tends to dry faster, and so it's usually a good idea to do half at a time. You'll want to be very meticulous during this step, because remember that wherever you wet the paper, the color will run to that area. You'll want to make sure to have clean edges all around your pet. For this color splash, I'm using a phthalo turquoise mixed with some water. I will eventually drop in a little bit more dense pigment. But the first layer of color that I'm adding wet to wet is needing to be mixed with some water. I'm going to get very close to the edge of my dog, making sure to not paint over the far that I've already painted. [MUSIC] Now I'm going to dry off my brush so that I have a completely dry brush to lift off some of the color around the edges. By lifting some of the color around the edge of this color splash, I'm going to soften the edge so that it's not so hard of an edge around this color splash. I'll then drop in a little bit more color towards the base of the color splash to have it a little bit more dense and grounded, and in a few other areas such as around the ear and behind the whiskers. I'm going to do the same thing on the upper section of my splash. First, I'm going to wet the area that I want to add the color to. I'm going to speed up this section of the video to save time. Now that the area that I want to paint is wet with clean water, I'm going to drop in my phthalo turquoise. Whenever I am creating a splash behind my pets, I don't want to make the splash a perfect circle. Here in the upper section, I'm going to extend it slightly in the upper left corner. That's just going to create some interest for the eye. Once again, I'm cleaning off my brush, so I have a dry brush and I'm going to blend the edges so that I don't have that hard of an edge. [MUSIC] Moving on to the last segment and my color splash on this left side. Once again, I'm going to wet it first and then drop my color in. I need to mix a little bit more phthalo turquoise with water before I drop it in on this left-hand side. If you are mixing your own color using multiple colors from your wells, make sure that you mix enough color to completely cover the splash around your dog. [MUSIC] While the area is still wet, I'm going to drop in a little bit more pigment around the edges of the head just to create a little bit more interest in this color splash, so that there are areas of higher density and areas of lower density. 11. Finishing your Painting: Once my painting is completely dry, I remove the painter's tape from around the edges and using kneaded eraser to erase the masking fluid from the whiskers, the highlights of the eye, and any pencil marks that I can still see from tracing my pet portrait. After I erase the masking fluid from the highlight of the eye, I always go back with some lunar black paint to touch up those highlights. I find that the liquid masking fluid tends to create some rough edges and a lot of times the highlight is a lot larger than what it is in the reference photo. I'm using black to clean up that eye area a little bit. I also had added a very small line of masking fluid underneath the eye on the highlight of that lower eyelid, and so I'm going to go back with some brown; a very, very light wash of brown and just cover that white so it's not so bright. Last, I'm going to add a little bit more brown to the iris of the eye. Usually, the iris dries a lot lighter than what you expect when you put your first layer of paint down. I'm just going to add a few darker areas into the colored part of the eye. Lately with my pet portraits, I enjoy drawing with a micron pen, this is a permanent felt tip pen around the edge of my dog's face, and also using it on the inside to add some very, very crisp details. When I'm drawing an outline around my watercolor portrait, I'm going to be very, very careful to not have a thick line around the entire portrait. Right now I'm focusing on the inside of the ear and around the bottom area of the ear. I'm going to have a darker line on the tip of the lower ear and I'm going to continue this line down the edge of the body. The size of pen that I'm using here is a Micron Pigma Size 03. I wouldn't suggest anything larger than a 03. When I'm ready to outline the areas that are the brightest highlights of the head, I'm going to vary the pressure that I'm using with my pen. I'm going to press a little bit harder around the corners of the ear, but around the top of the head where the highlight is the brightest. I'm actually not going to completely draw that edge, I'm going to leave it free from micron pen. I'm going to do the same thing, outlining the right side of the head, making sure that the areas that are the darkest in color I'm pressing a little bit harder with my micron pen and I'm lightening up my touch with areas that are highlighted. [MUSIC] I also am going to add a little bit of micron pen to the eye area. I want to focus on where is the crispest area of my eye. I will draw over the eyelid, especially the upper eyelid and then I'm going to only add a little bit of micron pen in the darkest area of the pupil which is the black center. [MUSIC] I need to be very careful when I'm adding an outline around the whisker area. I'm actually going to avoid it entirely because I don't want to very clearly separate those white hairs. I will come to the bottom of the mouth and outline that jaw as well as the side of the body. I'm going to add a little bit of pen to the center of the mouth where the lips meet and just a very, very light touch under the chin. I'll outline the nostrils. [MUSIC] I'll add just a hint of black pen to the farthest corner of the mouth. My very last step is to sign my piece. I like to sign using a pencil to not detract away from the painting itself. That's it. Once again, I'd like to re-emphasize that the micron pen at the very end is optional. But I do find that adding a very, very light outline and details with the black pen do help your pet portrait to really pop. 12. Final Thoughts: That's it. Congratulations. You've now finished your painting of an American Staffordshire Terrier. Make sure to upload a picture or a scan of your painting that you created using this tutorial. There is a green rectangle below this video that says Create Project. There it will give you instructions on how to upload a picture of your pet portrait. Make sure to follow me as an artist and teacher here on Skillshare by clicking the green "Follow" button above this video. You can also find more of my pet portrait paintings and some of my botanical watercolor art by visiting my website, that's emilymariewatercolors.com. Make sure to leave me a comment below if there's a certain breed of dog that you'd like to learn about next, and we'll see you in the next Skillshare class.