Watercolor Portrait

1. Welcome to the Class!: Hi, I'm Anastasia. I'm a watercolor artist, travel sketcher, and creator of Travel sketching Academy. My signature course for everyone who wants to capture their travel adventures or daily life on paper. I paint everything that inspires me from everyday moments, architecture, landscapes, nature, human beings and portraits. When I visit a place, one of my favorite things is to see how people live. Getting a sneak peek into their life, their traditions, what they wear, how they speak. And one of my favorite places for observing people is markets. I love wandering the narrow alleys filled with exotic fruits and vegetables, getting carried away by the sounds and smells. It's also a great way to observe people without getting noticed, since vendors are usually busy with customers and just minding their own business. That's when I take lots of reference pictures while staying unnoticed. I often get asked, how do you sketch a person? People move, constantly change positions, and sometimes even walk away if they feel observed. How do you actually capture a portrait on paper? That's exactly why I created this intermediate class to show you how to approach portraits with confidence and zero overwhelm. Go ahead and tell you about the method we'll use. We will work from a reference picture. This is my secret to create realistic and expressive portraits. In this class, I'll walk you through every step of the process from choosing a good reference to creating a pencil sketch completely from scratch and bringing it to life using watercolor. You will learn how to capture the proportions of a human face realistically, express emotions, mix natural looking skin tones, and add an expressive background that complements the whole painting. Human beings and portraits are complex subjects I consider this class to be more suitable to intermediate and advanced students. That said, if you feel that your current level is a bit lower, I still recommend coming and taking a look. With enough ambition, patience, and dedication, everything is possible. By the end of this class, you will have a solid understanding of the algorithm behind creating a realistic watercolor portrait. Are you excited to start? I am, so I will see you inside the class. 2. Art Supplies: Hi, and welcome to this first lesson of our portrait course. I'm so excited to show you the final painting we will create in these lessons. So hope you're excited. I'm really excited. And in this lesson, I'm going to show you what art supplies we will need to create this watercolor portrait, and you will see we really don't need a lot. So let me start with the paper since I have my paper here, you can use Canson Excel paper block or Fabriano paper block. Um, I actually use those one or another. I have my fabriano block here. This is for watercolor. This is quite important. The thickness of this paper is 300 grams. You see it's a four format, so it's 21 by 29.7 centimeters. This is a 25% cotton paper, but you can also use cellulose paper. This is what I have here. I also use a similar block by Canson and it's similar quality, feel free to pick something you have available in your area. As you can see, this paper has a little bit of texture and it's quite thick, it's perfect for watercolor painting. Then before we actually start to paint the portrait, we will need to make a pencil sketch first. This is why we will need a pencil. Any brand will work just fine. I will use a B pencil, so it's a soft pencil. You will need an eraser if you want to sharpen your pencil, but nothing fancy, just a normal um pencil sharpener, sorry, not eraser. Pencil sharpener. We will also need an eraser. I highly recommend you using this kneadable or kneaded eraser. This is how it looks like when it's brand new, it goes in this square format and it's really soft. You can shape it how you want. When you use it, it becomes more something like this. You see mine is a little bit dirty and you can shape it in a roll in a circle and it's a very handy way of how to gently erase pencil from your paper and also really nice way of taking off the excess of pencil before painting. If you don't have an eatable eraser, feel free to use your normal eraser. It's just that I find this eraser much better for watercolor painting again, because it's just more gentle on paper. Then talking about watercolor, we will need some watercolors, of course. For watercolors, I use watercolors in tubes. This is my current set. It's by St. Nodier. It's a French brand, and it goes with this metallic metal box. You see, I have other watercolors here from other brands, by the way, um but yeah, any professional watercolor brand will work just fine. I often use white Knights, Windsor Newton, Daniel Smith. I have some tubes here. But again, my main set right now is by Sinier, but any professional or at least student grade watercolor will work fine. Why Watercolor in tubes and not in pants? This is my personal preference. You can absolutely use watercolors in pants. The reason why I use watercolors in tubes is that I have this travel sketching palette that I use both in my studio and while traveling. When you purchase a palette like this, it comes with empty pans. I need to fill it with my own colors, which is actually amazing because I can build my own custom palette. This is just what I use and the only way of filling those pans with my colors is to use watercolors from tubes because I can easily squeeze some color there. But otherwise, the quality of watercolor in tubes or in pants is really similar. You will need water in any case, feel free to use what you have. This is the reason why I use watercolor in tubes again because I use this travel palette. You can see it's really convenient to travel with. It's really small comparing to my full size set and it's much more lightweight, it's significantly lighter than my full studio set. I use this in my studio and use this during my trips. As for the colors, we really don't need a lot of colors for today's tutorial. We will need some colors for the skin tones. We will need some colors for this colorful background. In terms of skin tones, I will name the colors we will be using right now. But don't worry. I'm also going to be repeating all of this during the painting process. So if you miss something now, no problem. Um, and if you don't have something I will be mentioning, no worries as well because during the painting process, I'll also name a few alternatives, and you can always mix something similar from what you already have. For the skin tones, we will need some browns. For browns, we will need sepia, we will need raw sienna, and we will need burnt sienna. If you don't have those, again, you can mix something similar using different colors. We will need a blue. I have ultramarine. You can also use cobalt or any other blue you have. We will need yellow, we will need cadmium yellow for the background, and we will also need something red. I will be using carmine. Carmine is a color I used for the background here. Yeah. Let me name those again, sepia, raw sienna, burn sienna, cobalt or ultramarine and yellow and carmine. These are six must have colors and then optionally, you can pick another blue. For example, I have something like turquoise blue here, or maybe I use the same cobalt, don't really remember, but anyways, if you have another blue, that's going to be a bonus. Then if you want to here, I used no black paint at all to paint all of these details. I mixed two colors to obtain this purple color. But if you want an even simpler more easy way to create this color, you can use Panes gray. I don't think I mentioned this color in the tutorial, but in any case, Panes gray is a really great color to have in your watercolor set. Very convenient. Yeah, all we need today is just six of these must have colors and the others are optional. Talking about painting, we need some brushes, of course. I suggest you having at least two brushes, one big to medium, and one medium to small to medium. Inside the tutorial, I think my biggest brush was 12 or 14, and the smallest brush I used was four or six. But if you don't have those exact numbers, don't worry. You can use, again, sees what I have here, one big and one small brush. Those are going to be okay and enough for everything. The important thing that your brush should be round and have a pointy tip. You see it's a round brush. It's not a flat brush. And it has this pointy tip. See that? This is the only requirement. I use these synthetic brushes from my own brush set created in collaboration with craft tamo. But again, any other brand will work just fine as far as you have this round brush with a pointy tip of two sizes, one big and one small. Then I spoke about the palette already, but this is what I use in my studio, and this is what I'm going to use for today's demo. It's a porcelain palette. This one is from Zara Home, but I think this collection is sold out. But you can just use a simple ceramic or porceonal plate instead. Um, or another option, you can use a lid of your watercolor set. This is what I also use. This is just for the sake of showing you all the colors I'm going to be using. Again, for my travels, I use this palette here, but as you can see, the size is a little bit small. For studio work, I usually prefer using a full sized palette. And this is probably it. You will need glass with water. You will need some napkins, paper towels, napkins, some paper. This is always handy to have nearby when you paint, and this is basically it. I will see you in the next video where we will start to create this portrait from scratch. I will see you there. 3. How to Choose a Reference: Hi, and welcome to this video. I'm Anastasia, and today I want to show you something that is really dear to me, which is how to transform pictures that are maybe not perfect or complex into simple sketches. For example, I have this picture here I took at a market, and there's lots of things going on here. And if I had to sketch this whole picture, that would be a little bit confusing, and I don't even like some of the elements here. But what really captured my attention in what I was actually photographing on this picture is this man. So I think he looks really cool. So I really love the expression, and I think this portrait here will make a beautiful sketch. So what I take out of a picture like this. So this is my trick. This is what I see, but this is not what I take. This is not what I will sketch. And this is what I would actually sketch. So only this part of that picture, only the portrait. So this will take me much less time than the whole scene. And then I think it's just visually more interesting, because this is exactly what captured my attention on this picture. So let me show you exactly how I go about starting a quick portrait. So first, I kind of frame the portrait, exactly how I want it to be so exactly what I want to take. This is what I want to take. From here, I'm taking my paper. I'm using Kanson paper. Here, it's watercolor paper. You can use any watercolor paper you want. And the first thing I do when I start a portrait is I decide how big it's going to be. So if I don't have a lot of time, I usually don't do big portraits. I'm going to make a small portrait, and this is about the size I will use for the portrait. So human head has this oval shape. So this is exactly what I start my sketch with with a simple oval. Uh, so this tutorial is probably not for the very, very beginners because human beings are more complex than nature animals or still lives. Because, again, proportions are really important here because with, for example, a mushroom or a plant, if you put something, like, for example, a branch in the other place or if you make less gills, then on the picture, it's not a big deal. But if you place the eyes incorrectly or if you make a nose too big, it's going to be funny. So that's why if you're a complete beginner and you will see that it's a little bit more advanced, you can go and watch my other tutorials first. 4. Building Structural Guiding Lines: So this is what I start with. That said. Then next stop, I usually next step I usually do is I add a middle line to the face. So in this case, I see that the man is facing is looking there to the right. So I will add this kind of curved line that will visually allow me to understand where the man is facing. So this is the line that will help you to place the middle of the face. So the middle of the nose, of the mouth of the eyes because human face is symmetrical, so I need to know where the center is. From there, I'm going to start to outline the shoulder line. So this is what I usually like doing, and it allows me to understand, you know, where the neck is going to be, where the shoulders are. So around here, from there, I can connect it with the head. I see this man has this chin. So I'm going to add it somewhere here. And then what I usually like is to give my eyes as much visual references as possible. What I mean by this? I need some guiding lines in order to understand the proportions if I'm placing the proportions correctly. So one of these guiding lines for me is this the shirt, the backside of the shirt. So I'm going to add it here, and this shirt is going to help me to understand if everything is correct. So I'm drawing the shirt. Something like this. So very sketchy. See, it's a sketch, so I'm not trying to make it perfect. There you go, something like this. And from here, I can then define the rest better. For example, now, what I can do is I can see what is the distance between the shirt and the ear? It's something like this. So the ear is going to be about here. Then since ears are symmetrical, I know that both ears will be on the same line. So I'm going to add this line here. That is going to help me to understand where the second ear is going to be. The second ear is a little bit hidden behind the face. So you see we just see a little bit of it. But this line is still very helpful to position that ear. Then I will need to position other important elements. For example, the head is too small, right now, I can definitely see it, so I'm going to make it slightly bigger. And it's not exactly a circle. I see the top portion of the head is quite it's almost flat. So I'm going to add this curved line there. And you see now our head starts to look more like a head, not something abstract. 5. Mapping Features & Proportions: Now, very important thing. You see, we are keeping identifying the main elements of the face. Right now, what usually really helps me is to understand where the hair is going to finish. This is going to help me to place the face features correctly. I see that there is this the hair line ends somewhere here, then we have the ear. The hair ends somewhere here. And from here, I can understand where the eyebrows and the eyes will be. Usually the eyebrows are about on the same level, a little bit below the ears. You can understand those things just by observing them. And then I'm placing these lines for placing the eyebrows. Somewhere here. I'm not going to draw you see I'm not drawing any of these face features in detail just yet. I'm just placing the guiding lines to show where they are, and then later, I'm going to draw them in more detail. I'm also going to draw these kind of lines, the central lines for the eyes. So they're going to be around here, and then I'm going to outline the nose. So for the nose, I usually draw a triangle I add a circle like that will show the tip of the nose. And for now, that's it. I'm not going to draw anything else. I'm going to outline the mouth where I think the mouth is. So somewhere here. See right now, I'm not giving any details. I'm just trying to figure out where those face features are, where the noses, where the eyes are, all of that. By the way, for the eyes, I see the eyes are kind of shut. Like we don't just see a very little bit of the eyes. So with this horizontal line I've outlined where the eyes are going to be then what usually helps me a lot is also to place these circles on the cheek bones. So this is the middle of the cheek bone, and it's a really important element in humans face. So I usually like to identify them. And from this cheekbone, I can see there's this division between where the light hits. So the left side of the face is lighter than the right side because the light comes maybe from here, from the top left corner. So all of this side is going to be lighter. And usually this division happens here. So the cheekbone is going to be the separation between the light and the shadow. 6. Approach to Detailing: Let's identify the chin better. So the chin is also round. We can show it with an oval for now. And then you see right now this person doesn't look there's not much details yet. So right now, what is the typical thing about this man? So he has this kind of double chin, so I'm going to do this. And I'm just trying to capture the features of the neck right now. Then he has a mustache that I think is really cool. So I'm just outlining the nose a little bit better and then for the mustache, I'm going to start to place it here. He's smiling. I'm outlining this smile when a person smiles, we have these smile lines that appear, so I'm going to draw those. And this is usually when I start to check if the proportions are right, if the person is turning out like a person. And usually this is where I try to give some typical details to this person. For example, I see the ear was too small, too kind of small, yeah. So I made it bigger, and I'm starting to outline those details of the ear. Then, I feel like the forehead is too small right now. So since my eyebrows are here, I don't have enough space for the forehead and the wrinkles, so I'm going to erase this and move the hair line slightly. So when you create a portrait, it's all about comparison. So you did one thing, and then you compare. You see, Oh, now the forehead is too short. I'm going to make it bigger. So it's not like you did a perfect eye or a perfect ear, and you're attaching everything else to it. It's a research. You're kind of switching from one part to another. So once I have the forehead, then another thing I also like doing is, I think I need to add more hair to this man. So more hair. And I like to outline the right kind of contour, the right outline of the face. So the eyebrow, this is the eye, this is the cheekbone. It's going to be a little bit bumpy. So naturally, a cheekbone is kind of there's a bone there, right? So this is exactly how I'm showing it, and then it's going to be straight here, and then I have the the chin and so on. So right now, I can start outlining the lips, the nose. So see I'm working on everything at the same time. I'm kind of working on one element, then switching to another and seeing if they look good to me. So if I need to erase something, of course, I go and I erase. And at a certain point, I need to make some of the features really recognizable. So right now, I'm going to add some of this hair here as well. Again, I don't think there was enough. And the capturing the direction of the hair is also an important thing to do. So you see, I've kind of created those strokes like this. It's the same when you draw fur, like fur on the animal. It's kind of the same what I did here with the hair. There you go. Again, if I want, I erase and you see, don't use any kind of single lines. So I use short, small lines to again, to kind of make this research. So I don't take anything for granted. It's not like I put one line. This is it. I put one line, but it doesn't mean that I cannot erase it or move it. If I see that, it's not in the right place. So something like this. And then usually what helps me to really see if I'm going in the right direction or not, it's placing the eyes. I usually place the eyes at the end just because you will place them incorrectly if you don't place everything else before. So before placing the eyes, I add everything else. 7. Capturing Character & Emotion: Then if I want to, if I add some kind of emotion there, I'm going to add those little wrinkles. What is really, really cool about this reference picture is that this man is really expressive, especially, I like drawing and painting faces that are not that young. So I feel like painting an older person is just easier than painting a young person. This is, again, my opinion, but I think older faces are really interesting to paint from the artistic point of view because we have the wrinkles. We have, you know, like, the shape is more interesting, and artistically speaking, there's more material to work with. So this is why I personally, you know, like to meet these kind of characters and, um the markets or I like to notice interesting faces, because I know they will be interesting for drawing or painting. So to me, personally, like, the standard beauty is not that interesting to draw or paint. So yeah, there you go. This is another eyebrow. You see the switching again from one thing to another, from one eyebrow to another. And now you see I'm adding the eyelids, so this is where the eyes will start to look like eyes. I'm adding some wrinkles in the eyes as well. Um, so I'm getting more details to the beard. And probably the eye is too big, so I need to see if I want to make it a little bit smaller. Also, one more tip I want to give you is that sometimes you get tired from one element. For example, now, I've got a little bit tired from the eyes. I think I want to switch to the nose and give some details to the nose before switching to the eyes. You see, I gave the nose this more kind of typical shape. Sometimes I even like to exaggerate the some features, for example, the nose. There you go, or making the eyes slightly bigger. There you go, something like this. Then I see there are also some wrinkles from the mouth. I'm also going to draw those. I'm outlining some of the neck a little bit better. And this shirt that goes behind, something like this. And then, again, I switch from the face to the shirt. Again, if you got a little bit tired of the face, you can go there and focus, for example, on clothes. This is what I'm doing right now. 8. Finalizing Your Pencil Sketch: Now, I've switched to adding some details to the shirt. So sometimes we really need to switch off and our eye needs to get some rest because capturing proportions, capturing all of these things is quite demanding, so we need to really focus. So our eye needs to rest from this complicated activity. So sometimes you need to switch to something easier, for example, a shirt or something else and then get back to the face with a fresher look. So for example, now, when I got back to the face, I see that my ear it is kind of too small, so I'm going to make it longer. So I see it's not it's not long enough. It's really good when you switch back and then you see your kind of mistakes in perfections. Again, it's not about creating something perfect. Absolutely not. It's just about, you know, trying to capture things better. So I think this is better. And I think I'm getting quite satisfied with how this is turning out. I think I need to work a little bit more on this right part of the face and make it just a little bit kind of whiter. I think this is what's wrong. So I think the face should be a little bit whideter. And this is why I will also move the ear. So see I'm always moving things. I'm going to move the ear. Make sure I have enough space for everything. For example, now I see that there should be more space between the hair and the eye, the eyebrow. So see all of these proportions, it's not like they're locked in. It's something that you will move. And now also I see that the ear needs to be moved towards the left side even more. So it's always about comparing things. There you go. Now, I think it looks better. Some details of the ear. And then the head should be even bigger, I think. So going to raise this slightly and make sure the There you go. I think I'm more satisfied with this kind of shape. All right. Kind of restore the texture of the hair. This is something we will also do with watercolor in my next video. So bear with me. Wait for the Part two to actually paint this face. Today, we're going to complete the drawing. And I think we're really close to getting there. So I'm going to refined some of those elements like hair, make sure the wrinkles are in place. Eyelids. Why I also like kable erasers, that you see, I can shape it in and create a pointy tip and use it to erase those smaller details. This is why I love kable erasers. Kaded or kable. Just some more details near the eyes, and then some of this shadow under the eyes. I think this is also quite important. All right. So I think we're getting to a pretty good stage now. Maybe I'm going to move the chin a little bit lower as well. So you see again, I'm erasing if I want to move something. But you see I'm not just erasing and starting over. I'm just moving that line a little bit lower. So it's not that I'm starting from zero every time. I'm using the line that was there previously as a base, and I'm kind of moving it. So just slightly changing the shape of the chin. And I think now it looks better. So I think our man starts to look good. Okay. And you see I've kind of intentionally made the nose a little bit bigger because I mentioned I just love exaggerating some features I like even more. So I'm going to keep it. And then still, it's a sketch. So we're getting to quite of a detailed drawing here. And everything depends on how much time you have, but with portraits, I really don't like to rush myself. And if I'm making a portrait, I'd rather prefer have different several sessions instead of trying to squeeze everything in one. So let's say today I only have like 15 minutes or 20 minutes or 30 minutes, and I only did this. This is good. I'm going to continue the next day. So with portraits, I really like to take my time and without getting obsessed about, you know, the drawing, I just like to enjoy the process and be satisfied with the pencil drawing because if I'm not satisfied with the pencil drawing and I'm starting to paint, and I hope that painting will solve the problems of the drawing, this is never going to happen. So with painting with drawing and painting, if something looks confusing to you on your drawing, it's going to look confusing on your final painting as well. And it can be forgiving if you're drawing, again, a vegetable or a plant or a mushroom. Not a big deal, but if it's a person, all of these mistakes will contribute to the final result and will make it less good. That's why personally, I like to spend a little bit more time on my drawings when it, um when it comes to people, when it comes to sketching people. Okay, so I think now I really got something that I like. Alright. And I think this is probably where I will stop with the drawing phase. If you want to, if your lines are too bold, you can optionally lift off some of the excess with your kneadable Eeaser. This is another um another reason why I like it. See, I my lines are too bold and I think it's disturbing, I can go there and take away some of this graphite with my table eraser without erasing everything completely. So see I can still see the face, can still see the drawing, but my lines are less bold. But generally, if I'm sketching, like I still consider this a sketch, I don't care that lines show through my painting. So I will stop here. 9. Mixing Skin Tones: So let's dive right in. I'm going to show you my set, my watercolor set. I use this travel color palette. This is where I store my colors, and in order to fill color this palette with colors, I use watercolors in tubes. My current set is from Sanier. I really like it. You can use any professional brand you want. In order to fill my palette with colors, I just need to squeeze some colors from the tube and it's good to go. So this color I've squeezed now is sepia. This is one of the main colors we will be using today on top of some other earthy kind of brown tones. So we will need raw sienna and maybe burnt sienna. So before we sketch the portrait, I would like to do some swatches and try to find a good match for the skin tone of this man. So I see the skin of this man is quite dark, so I definitely want to capture the color. And I'm going to usually what I do for skin is that I like to create three tones. So lights, mid tones, and shadows. By doing this, I'm allowing myself basically to have all the colors I need to paint the skin. And instead of going every time and mixing a new color, I already know what I will be adding to the mixes, and if I finish the mix, I can easily recreate it again. So that said. Let's mix the lightest mix first. I usually like to start with lightest mixes first. So I'm just adding some raw sienna to my palate. This is raw sienna, and it looks quite yellowish. I want to add some burnt sienna to it. And this will if I need to make the color lighter, I add some water. And this is probably the color This is one of the colors I'm going to be using. So this is my light brown color. This is going to be the lightest tones of the face. Then if I want to create a darker tone, so mid tone, I'm going to use the same exact colors. So raw sienna plus burned sienna. But this time, I will add more burned sienna, and I will also add a touch of sepia. So Sepia is a dark brown color. And you see it allowed me to create this darker brown color. And actually, that's probably it. I'm not going to create a third color now. I can mix it later because these two colors are enough to start. And now I'm also going to show you one trick. This is something I love using and I feel like it's so effective for portraits. I like to create this reflex tone. What is a reflex? It's a reflected light. We said that the light comes light from the left side, and I see these kind of blue reflections on the cheek, on the slower side of the cheek of the man. And this blue will work super nicely with these warm browns. This will create a really nice contrast. It will give our face a much more three D effect and a much more interesting and alive look. This is something I do often in my portraits. So for our light blue, I'm just going to go really simple. I'm going to use some cobalt or ultramarine, mix it with water, and that's basically it. I want to make sure it's not too vibrant, so I don't want it to be like a crazy blue color, just a light blue. And if I want to make it even more neutral, I can add just a little touch of sepia to it and make it, like, a little bit slightly grayish. So just a little point of that sepia is enough, and this is the color I came up with. 10. First Wash & Establishing Light: So in this case, I usually start with that exact blue. So I'm going to start with the left side of the face because this is where I see those blue reflections. And what I do usually is such a scrab and go and start to paint. That part right away, even the ear and even some of the hair, the hair. I'm just going to leave some of this white here, and I'm also going to add this blue there to the right side of the hair. So this blue has two functions. It allows me to put some shadows and to also put this kind of blue reflection in place. I also see this reflection on the right side of the cheek. I see some of it here on the nose, on the lips and on the chin. And I will leave the left side of the chain untouched for now. Also going to use it for the shirt. So I see some of these blue reflections on the shirt as well. So I'm just going to go there and add them to the shirt. So see this way, I'm not only painting the portrait, I'm also starting to paint these surroundings, and it basically allows me to treat the whole sketch as a whole, not only as a head with a shirt. So I think it's quite important. There you go. And you see, just by adding this one tone, we instantly gave you see kind of a three D appearance to our portrait. Then without waiting too much, I'm going to switch to our light brown color, and I will integrate it with the rest of the face. So what I mean is that I want this light brown to kind of blend with the blue. So that's why I'm going there right now. And while the blue is still wet, I'm introducing this new color. You see I'm not caring that much about the face features now and painting the face features. What I'm doing, though, is I'm avoiding the eyebrows because I see the light. Like the man has gray hair, so the eyebrows are also gray. So they're significantly lighter, so you see I'm not painting them on purpose. But I do paint under the eye. I do paint the skin. I just avoid some of the elements, such as eyebrows. I'm going to paint this under eye area. Oops, accidentally grab some of my darker color, but it doesn't really matter. And see here, for example, my blue got already dry, but it's not a big deal. I'm just going to continue. And if I want this line to be softer later, I can always go and blend it a little bit better. But for now, I don't really care. I'm just going to go and cover this these parts, this and also the chin. And then I'm going to use this same color to paint the um the neck and part of the chest. Something like this. I'm actually quite happy with how this first step is turning out. I'm going to add some of this color to the ear as well. See, I've even gave some details to the ear, even at this point. So I love adding some details on my way. So I see, for example, I just added this darker element there. I'm going to add some dark here. So I just feel like when you start to add lights, midtones and shadows at the same time, it starts to make your portrait look three D, and it kind of guides you during this process. So I will stop here, though, with my lightest brown, and I will switch to the dark or brown, even though I already did it in some areas. So for the dark or brown, I'm going to paint this shadow under the nose. I'm going to paint the eyes, just going there and I'm making sure the eyelids are lighter though, because this is what I see. And this area near the nose is quite dark. I am going to add some shadows there and under the eye as well. This whole left side of the nose is also dark, so I'm going to go there and add it. And just painted gave the nose a certain, some color, but not covering it completely. Then I'm going to take the brown color again and start to outline those shadows in the mouth and some of those shadows on the neck. And near the hair. So you see I'm adding the same color in different parts of my sketch. So this again, allows me to make the sketch look more united and make these different parts of the face and the shirt belong together. This is very important. Um, going to add some of this dark brown he under the eyebrows. And then we will add even more shadow near the nose, but later with a different color. For now, I'm just going to paint the lips, the mouth opening that is quite dark. Then I have this shadow near the chin, I've also painted. And I'm going to outline just a little bit of this. Actually, I'm going to outline this whole underchin kind of area with this color. And this part of the chest as well. By adding this color to several areas of our painting allows me to really keep it united and harmonious. I'm going to cover that right side of the ear and maybe even paint inside the ear. All right, you see, I'm just using the same brush for everything for now. So this, I think is a really nice base for us to work with. Now, what I'm going to do is I'm just going to quickly create a new color by using the same mid tone I was using, just diluting it with water and then adding some sepia to it. And I'm going to get this kind of medium brown color. That is a little bit more gray. You see, it's more gray than this previous color we've used. I'm going to use this color to add some darker details to the face. For example, this right portion of the face going to use it for the wrinkles. I'm just going to use it here as well. If I want to correct something, just go with my paper towel and kind of take away the color I want to take away some of this area under the mouth and this area under the chin. This is not the darkest color we will use. There you go. I've also added it to the lower portion of the face. But you see, I'm still leaving some of that highlight completely untouched. Some of that blue highlight. Um, there you go. 11. Creating an Expressive Background: And what I also like to do. So this is just a personal thing I like doing is to add, like, a background to this portrait. For this purpose, I'm going to take my big brush, like the biggest brush I have. A mop brush, and I'm going to create a color. I'm not sure what kind of background I want to give. So I see some of these colorful bags or something on the background. So I think I want to add kind of a splash of color there because otherwise, our portrait is just composed of grays and browns. So I want to give those this splash of color there. So I'm going to mix yellow color. I'm going to mix this kind of a turquoise color by combining blue and yellow again. So that's kind of a bright green color. And then I'm going to use something like pure blue. Those are just the colors I see on the reference. I think those will give us a really nice kind of contrast. So as a first thing, well, I can go there and erase those arrows. I've added to demonstrate you some things. So I'm just going to erase those a little bit. And then what I will do is I will take my big brush and load it with water. So it's completely loaded with water. And I'm going to create certain like kind of a color before, so something purple. So I see that the wall behind the man is kind of purple. So I'm going to use some carmine and blue, and I will obtain this purple color. So this is what I'm going to use as a base. So I'm going to load my brush with this color. If you want, you can also kind of mix it in a separate like in a little thing like this so that you have a lot of this color in order for you to not remix it while painting. And then I'm going to start just to apply this color. You see, with a big brush, it's super, super easy. It's going to be really quick. And I personally love to give some kind of these round strokes to my sketches. So this is what I'm going to use to frame my sketch. On the right side, I'm going to use some of this blue just to make it a little bit more interesting. And then I'm going to grab more of this blue, and I'm going to add this blue here because I see there's, like, a blue bag or something showing through. So I think a touch of color would be really fun. And then I wanted to add some yellow and green. I'm washing my brush, drying it, and then just going there and adding some of this. Green, I want to add some swirl. So things like this, this is what I love adding to my sketches. You see it kind of blends with the purple, so I think it looks really nice. And then something the same with yellow. I'm going to introduce some yellow there and just make it blend. And again, create a few swirls. So this is what I usually like doing with my sketches. And you see this? I think I instantly made our portrait look more alive. I'm going to go here and make this color, kind of activate this color again. And maybe add even more water and do something like this. This, I think is enough for me. I think I want to add something darker here, so I'm going to use that same purple I've used. But in its darker version, so I'm mixing it again, carmine with water with blue. And I've actually obtained something more blue than purple, but it doesn't really matter. So to me, those backgrounds are I wanted something expressive there, and I think I definitely got it. So something like this is looking good to me. I think I'm also going to add this dark behind the head. I feel like when you have this dark contrast, because the head, you see it's white, right? So the man has gray hair. If I want to make the hand stand out, I usually add something dark behind. Again, I think maybe some swirls and things like this. I'm going to use the same color to underline some of this outline of the face. For example, the ear, the hair, something like this, just to make it belong with the background. Um See, it's completely like I'm changing things, I'm adding more strokes, but there's no one way of doing it. So usually in these cases, what I like doing, I like to relax because if you start to overthink this process of painting the background, it gets really stressful and you are afraid of making a move. You're afraid of every single stroke you're doing, and you're afraid it's going to make portrait look bad. So I went through this, and it's not a really nice feeling because when you do this out of fear, nothing good happens. So I just learned that when I add those backgrounds, I just want to be completely relaxed and the more relaxed I am, the better the result is. So you see now I'm adding those details to the shirt because again, I want all of this belong together. I don't want to paint the face plus the background, plus the shirt. I want it all to look like one portrait. So again, reusing the same colors across several areas of my portrait is really important. So this is what I'm doing now. And you see I'm kind of switching between the body of my brush and the tip of my brush to do so. And I'm using a huge brush, see, you can also do these things with a big brush as far as it has a pointy tip. Now I'm going to add just some of this dark color to the hair, but not that much. I think this is actually enough. Um, and to the ear, maybe to this lower portion of the neck. So right now, what I'm doing is I'm adding the darkest details. I'm now adding the shadows. So the shadows are what will bring our portrait to life. This is what will allow it really to stand out. So at this point, I think I'm done with the background. I think I'm satisfied with how it turned out. 12. Adding a Unifying Wash: And I'm going to focus on the portrait again. So I've switched to a smaller brush. This is number 12 now. This one was like number 20 or something. I don't know what number is this. But, yeah. Those are from my brush set created in collaboration with raft Tamo by the way. These sets are currently sold out, but if you want to get those brushes, this set contains eight brushes plus so eight brushes in total, two of them are travel brushes. They look like this, like little bullets. And then when you open them, it becomes a full size brush. There's number ten and number four inside this set, and this is what I usually use while traveling. And the other brushes are perfect for studio work. So just in case you would like to check those out, and, you know, if you want this set, I suggest you to leave your email in the box, like subscribe to the waiting list. There you go. And you will get a notification when the sets will be available again. So There you go. Just added some shadow to the backside of the shirt. Again, I want to concentrate most of the highlights on the foreground. This is a general rule. So you see kind of I'm kind of hiding the highlights that are on the back in order for us to, like, to not make them interfere with the foreground. Adding some details to the shirt. I'm not going to add a whole lot of details to it, just some. And I'm going to use the same color for the hair. So for the hair, also, I just want to add a few of these strokes using a similar movement, kind of a similar approach that we used here to create the drawing. So kind of these wavy lines. And then I don't want to add a lot because I see the hair is gray, so I want to preserve that white of the hair. Again, what we're creating here is we're adding those details like we're creating these whites without any white paint. This is a very, really cool thing about watercolor. So we're using the natural quality of watercolor. See in watercolor, we don't use white paint. We use the white of the paper instead. So by just painting around the subjects. There you go. Now, I'm using the same dark kind of brown I, What is this, dark gray, dark purple color. And this is going to be my darkest tone on the face. So since my face is quite brown, so I have lots of browns on the face, I think it's going to be good to add something cool. Like, you see this color is quite cold, quite cool. So it has this blue undertone. And this color is going to look nice on the face and create nice contrast with the warm browns. So now I'm working with the tip of my brush because I'm adding the details to the face. So obviously, I want to be a little bit more careful now and just keep adding these details. So the eye holes, the wrinkles. Some shadow under the nose. This is also quite important here, the nostrils, the nose hole, and the mouth opening. Some of the color there is still wet, so I will need to wait a little bit until I can add those final details everywhere. But for now, I'm just going to use that same color to create the outline of the face a little bit better. And just adding a little bit more of this dark gray to the hair. Okay. What I think I'm going to do now is I feel like a lot of the details on the face are kind of separate from one another. So I want to unite the face just a little bit and give it an even darker tone. So I'm going to use my burnt sienna, I already have on my palette. I diluted it with water to make it even lighter, and I'm going to go and add this color to the whole face, except for the blue highlights and I'm gonna add it everywhere else. And I'm also avoiding the eyebrows. There you go. Even a little bit on the highlights. So to kind of calm down them a little bit. I feel like right now, you see, just by adding this tone there, the face look much more united and those different elements kind of belong together. I'm also going to add this tone to the whole under eye. And I really like how this is turning out. So right now, I need the colors on the face to get completely dry. And after this, I will be able to add some final details. 13. Adding Final Details: So let's wait for this color to dry and mix the color for the final details. It's going to be a mix of sepia. Mix of sepia. So let me free some space here. Free up some space. So sepia and a little touch of blue. So it's going to be a dark kind of brown gray color. And I'm almost ready to add these final details. So I will see which areas of my drawing are already dry. So for example, the ear is dry, so I can add those details to the ear. So this is the darkest color we're using, and I want to be a little bit careful with it because it's really dark and I want to make sure it adds I use it as an accent, not as the main color. This color should really underline all the work we just did with other colors without taking away and makes the sketch look too busy or too overworked. I'm also adding this color here in these shadow areas. And then finally, I'm especially interested in adding this color near the eyes. So eye holds. I'm going to be a little bit more careful here again because the eyes are obviously really important. A little bit under the nose. Not too much, though. I think this was a little bit too much. And then the mouth opening. H. Near the eyebrows, this is also the moment where we can add some details to the eyebrows. Just a little bits. I'm just adding a few lines, a few strokes to kind of imitate the beard or the eyebrows, but not that much. Again, with hair and such details like this, we don't want to over add. So this is more. If you want to add more, you can always add more, but I like to go gradually and just adding more details here. Now I'm lifting some of the paint from that left side. Some of this color on the left side to get back some of this reflex that I think was a little bit missing there. This is almost it, I think. I'm going to add some of this dark brown under the chin a little bit more here where I see some of these wrinkles from the mouth and from the nose. A little bit more under the eye, especially here on the left side because I see it's still light. I'm also going to use this color to create these wrinkles in the eyes. And add even more of these darker details here and accentuate the nose even more. So I'm going to make sure I have these details on the nose as well. Kind of make the outline of the nose a little bit better. In some shadow here. Um Just some wrinkles on the nose and some wrinkles on the forehead. I feel like they're darker on the right side. I'm going to add them there. I think wrinkles always add lots of charm, lots of character. I definitely want to add those and now I'm adjusting the eyebrow. You see, I've kind of lifted it a little bit because this is exactly how it is on the picture. So make sure I'm keeping these typical features of that man. Adding just a little bit more shadow here. So this is the area where the cheek bone is quite important. Add extra shadow there. And just going to underline the lip a bit better, a few details on the lip. That's probably it, honestly, so just a few details here on the neck. And also maybe making this right portion of the neck a little bit darker. Adding one more detail here. And I think I'm happy with how this turned out. 14. Final Words: And there you have it. Congratulations. You've created your own watercolor portraits from start to finish. Share your results in the project section of the class. I would love to see your creations, and so would the community. If you found this class valuable, please leave it a review. It will help me so much to create more content like this. You want to stay in touch, I'll share my contacts on screen with you. You can find me on Instagram, Facebook and YouTube, if you want to keep learning from me, check out my other Skillshare classes, or if you're ready to go deeper, pick a structured learning program from my website. Thanks for watching and I will see you next time.