Watercolor Portraits for Everyone: Paint a Beautiful Face with 4 Colors

1. Introduction - Watercolor Portraits for Everyone: One can learn to paint watercolor portraits with the right approach and a bit of practice. All you need is four colors, a few court techniques, and a little patience. Hi, I'm Jane-Beata and I'm a watercolor artist from Slovakia. I've been painting with watercolor for over 15 years, creating book covers, illustrations, and exhibiting my work both nationally and internationally. This year at a prestigious Watercolor festival in Cordoba Spain. Though I never went to art I've learned directly from incredible artists through master classes, and I continue growing through events, festivals, and countless hours of painting on my own. I also run my own studio where I regularly teach in person portrait workshops. To me, portraits are more than likeness. They're a form of emotional storytelling. Over time, I've developed a simplified, intuitive process that I love sharing, both here on Skillshare and also on my YouTube channel where I post videos about watercolor and also on Instagram where I share my daily art practice and studio life. This class is natural continuation of my earlier portrait classes, introduction to Watercolor portraits and the seven day Monochrome portrait challenge. If you're just starting out and want a deeper dive into portrait sketching or want to explore painting with a single color, those classes are a great place to begin. In this class, you will learn how to create vibrant watercolor portraits from start to finish, using just four colors and minimal materials. Learn how to sketch with confidence, fix common mistakes. But if you prefer to skip the sketching part, I've also included a downloadable sketch for you. Then we will dive into Watercolor. You will learn four key techniques that I use in all my portraits. They're simple, versatile, and we will practice them together. So you know exactly where and when to use them. Goal is not for you just to copy what I paint, but to give you a clear and practical framework that you can apply to any reference photo. That way you can begin creating portraits that are truly your own. The entire class is filmed in real time, so it feels like we're painting side by side at a relaxed encouraging pace. I would also love to see your project when you're done. You can upload it right here for personal feedback from me, which is one of the best parts of Skillfare creative community. So go ahead and enroll and I can't wait to see you in class. 2. Class orientation: Hello, welcome and thank you for joining this class. We will be creating a Watercolor portrait from start to finish together. And whether this is your first portrait or your tenth, I'm very happy that you are here. So before you start with this class, make sure to check the projects and resources tab. Download this video, you will find everything you need there, a downloadable reference photo, a sketch that you can trace if you'd rather skip the drawing part, a list of all the materials that we'll use in this class, and a step by step overview to help guide you through the process smoothly before we jump into painting the full portrait in this class, we'll first take time to build a strong foundation. We'll start by learning how to mix and combine the four colors that we use in this class. You will see how flexible and powerful the limited palette can be and how to get the most out of it. Next, we'll move on to the sketching of the portrait. I will walk you through my full freehand sketching process and share important tips for drawing faces and also how to correct mistakes. And I will tell you why I believe that freehand sketching is such an empowering skill to develop even if your drawings aren't perfect. That said, if you'd rather skip the drawing part, that's possible because I've included a traceable sketch in the class resources so you can start right from the painting pace if you wish. We will also have a short but valuable lesson on the four essential watercolor techniques that are used in every portrait, not just this one. I strongly encourage you to practice these techniques before moving on to the actual painting. Exercises are very quick and they will help you feel more confident and in control. I will also show you how to set up your watercolor table in a practical, efficient way so that you can focus on painting without distractions or mess. Then finally, we'll paint the portrait together in real time, slowly and intentionally. You will paint right alongside me as if we were working together in the same room. I will guide you through what I'm doing. And more importantly, why so that you not only follow the steps, but also understand the key principles behind each part of the process. By the end of this class, you will not only have a finished portrait, but also a repeatable process you can use in future paintings and the confidence to approach watercolor portraits with more clarity and ease. When you are ready, please take a photo of your finished painting and upload it down below to the project's gallery. As for me, it's best way to stay connected with you. I read and respond to every single project. I try to write small feedbacks to your works. If you decide to include about your experience, going through this class, that's a big, big plus. Do not be shy. I really want to see your project. The next lesson will be an overview of all the materials that we'll be using throughout the entire class. Let's get to it. 3. Materials: In this lesson, we will go over the materials that you'll need for the class. Do not worry about having the exact same brands or tools that I use. Feel free to substitute with whatever you have on hand or something similar. My goal is to work with what's accessible to you, so do not stress about getting everything perfect. For this class, I will be using windraNwton professional watercolor paper. It's 100% cotton and cold pressed. My go to size for portraits like this is 30 by 40 centimeters or 12 by 16 ". I like this size because it gives me enough space to work loosely while still allowing for detail where I need. Color papers, they can vary a lot between brands, but as long as you choose a cold press cadm paper, you'll be in a good spot. It doesn't have to be the exact same brand, aim for similar quality and surface texture. Next up, paints. For this class, we will keep it simple and use only four colors. The first one is cadmium free orange. I use the Windsor Newton version because they offer this cadmium free option which I really like. The second color is cadmium red. Right now I'm using rebrand, but I usually go with the cadmium free version from Windsor Newton as well. Sometimes my local art store runs when that happens, I do not hesitate to use another artist great brand. Most of them use the same pigment and the quality is very comparable. The third color is cobbled blue. This one is essential for shadows, but honestly, it's the color that I run out of the fastest because I use it so much. And finally, the fourth color is bloodstone genuine by Daniel Smith. This is a mineral based pigment, which means it has a beautiful grainy texture. I use it a lot to add natural texture to my work. If you don't have the exact color, look for dark, granulating color from any artist great brand. Even something like paints gray can work as a substitute. Again, do not stress about matching every color or brand. Exactly. The key is to choose similar pigments that behave in a similar way. I will be using three brushes for this class. The first one is large flat watercolor brush with natural bristles. I mainly use it for expressive platters and painting the background, so it doesn't need to be anything fancy. You can easily substitute it with any large watercolor brush, even a round something that holds a good amount of water and lets you work loosely. My main brush and the most important one is this size seven round brush from Windsor Newton. It's from their series seven line. It is made with natural bristles, and I use it for about 80% of the portrait. If you can find a soft round watercolor brush in size seven or eight, it can become your go too as well. It really helps you get the right feel for watercolor techniques like blending, layering. Control. The last brush is for details and refinement. I use a size four brush from lineal. It is natural bristles also, but this one was not expensive. It has a fine chip and handles small details very well. I do not need anything smaller than this for the kind of detailed work that we'll be doing in this class. Sketch, all you really need is a pencil. No need to overthink it. Everyone has their favorite type, but I usually use a to be pencil for the initial sketch. I also like to switch to a mechanical pencil with to be lead when I'm defining details. It gives me a bit more precision. As for the erasers, I use a few different kinds depending on the stage, pencil style eraser from hinor for refining lines, a ktable eraser for gently cleaning up the sketch, and a dust free eraser when I need to remove more or do some heavier corrections. I have been using these erasers for years. They're all quite gentle on watercolor paper, which is important to avoid damaging the surface before painting. You might also want to have a few scrap pieces of watercolor paper on hand for testing colors and making swatches. For mixing your paints, you can use any non absorbent surface. I personally like to use white porcelain plates because they're simple, affordable and very easy to clean. You will also need something to help with rinsing your brush, absorbent sponge or just some tissues or paper towels will work fine. And finally, a hair dryer can be super helpful if you want to speed things up and dry your layers faster. It is not required, but it really comes in handy when you're working in stages or short on time. Go ahead and gather your materials, and once you're ready, I will meet you in the next lesson where we'll learn how to mix our colors and create all the combinations that we need for the portrait. 4. How to Mix Skin Tones With Limited Palette: Lesson, we will explore how to mix colors to create skin tones, shadow colors, and everything that we need for our portrait. I encourage you to follow along with a brush in hand and recreate the color mixes as I demonstrate them. Doing this alongside me will help you get more confident with mixing. So when it's time to paint the actual portrait, you will already feel familiar with how the colors behave. We already talked about the four colors in materials lesson, but let's do a quick recap before we start mixing. The colors we will use are cadmium orange, cadmium red, cobbled blue, and bloodstone genuine. I usually use paints straight from the tubes and squeeze them out onto white porcelain plates for mixing. I keep the darkest color, the blood stone, genuine separate because it can muddy the mixes pretty quickly if it gets into the lighter colors too soon. Alright, let's start by learning how to mix a basic skin tone. So when you mix the orange with the red, and use enough water in the mixture that is where you get clear skin tone. This is like a basic skin tone. Make sure that you look at your skin tone when you mix because sometimes your orange prevails and then it looks like this. Other times, when you get caught up in mixing, your red can prevail and you will end up with a mixture like this one. Which one is correct? None of them. You have to check it with your reference photo. Sometimes you have a skin that leans towards the orange, sometimes it leans towards the red and sometimes you need something in between, something neutral. Make sure that you are working with a skin tone that's closest to what you want. What I do is I take my reference photo. I always have a bunch of these papers on the right side of my table so that I can test the paint and check with the reference photo. So I just use a swatch and compare to my reference. The slide is not so strong, but you can use a little bit of the blue to gray your skin tone slightly. I think if we do that here, but just like very little bit, just like tiny bit of blue. And if we swarch that color, we're going to get closer to the reference photo. When the skin tone dries, it is going to be something very different. I'm going to let it dry now so that you can see the change. This is when it's dry and it is super different from what it was before. And we could this is more Rugi skin tone. We're working with limited palette, so we're not going to get the exact shape, but this skinton I think could work. At this stage, I would want to encourage you to observe your reference photos, especially the subtle shifts in hue across because that's a great way to start training your eye, but also let's not overthink it. There's a reason that I chose to paint this portrait with a limited palette of colors because we all need to start somewhere. The goal here is not to mix the perfect skin tone. It's to start noticing the differences in color and to understand that there is no one universal skin tone. You can just copy and paste into every painting. And the lighting in your reference photo obviously also plays a huge role. If we go back to our reference photo, you'll notice it has very specific lighting, and that influences how we perceive the model's skin tone. So yes, observation is important. I do encourage you to study those subtle shifts in color. But don't stress if your mix does not come out exactly right there's learning curve here, and the goal isn't perfection. It's about developing your eye, gaining confidence, and getting a feel for how color behaves in context. We'll mix color of our shadows from blue and red. Try mixing the colors together and swatch the result on a piece of watercolor paper. The mixture might look a bit strong or dark at first, but that's okay. You can easily dilute it with water to create lighter, more transparent version. We'll actually use both the lighter diluted version for soft areas and the thicker, more saturated mix for deeper shadows in the portrait. In mind, this mixture can vary depending on which color dominates. It might lean more bluish or reddish, depending on your ratios, and that's totally fine. If you're just starting out, I would recommend to keep it simple. Mix one shadow color and use it throughout the portrait. Once you get more comfortable, you can start adjusting your mixes for more variation and realism. So these are the basic colors that we will use for the skin tone. This is how you use a limited palette like this one. Bloodtone genuine, we don't have to really mix. We're going to use it for accents, for the lashes, for the hair, maybe for some stylization. So I'll just keep it ready here. If I was to tell you something about this color, it's a mineral color and it grains beautifully. In watercolor, we texture a lot. All these three pigments are very smooth. We have some texture of the paper, but other than that, this graining texture introduces very interesting element into a watercolor painting and I really love to use it. There's so many shades of granulating colors that you can get, but nowadays, I just use this one. It is darker. If I want some other shade, I'll just mix them up and the granulation appears that you've learned how to combine your four colors and mix both skin tones and shadows, it is time to move on. Join me in the next lesson where we'll create a sketch for our Watercolor portrait. I will see you there. 5. How to Sketch a Portrait: In this lesson, we will start by sketching the portrait. I almost always sketch freehand, even if it means that the proportions are not 100% perfect. I'm okay with that. Maybe if you are working on a commissioned portrait or something that needs to be very accurate, that might be a good time to explore other methods to get closer to the reference. But for the purposes of this class, I would really love us to draw these ourselves as a way to practice and build confidence in your drawing skills. However, there is a template in the resources section with my sketch that you can download and trace if that helps you save time or if you feel less confident with drawing. I will be starting with a two B pencil and later I will switch to mechanical pencil with to be lead just because that's how I usually work, and that's what I'm comfortable with. And remember, our erasers, keep them close. They might come in handy. I actually will not go too much into portrait anatomy in this lesson as it would make it over long. Drawing is such a wide topic. Like I mentioned, in the beginning of this class, I've covered more in depth drawing fundamentals elsewhere. Here, I want to show you how I drew this specific portrait and how I simplify the drawing process. You will also get a few tips on how to sketch on a watercolor paper and how to check your proportions because those are very, very important for a portrait drawing. So I usually start by making a few light marks on the paper, one where I want the chin to begin and one where the hairline will be. These are important two marks. In this reference, the hairline sits quite close to the top of her head, so I do not need to leave much extra space above. These two points basically set the overall height of the portrait. We do not always have the luxury of working from a reference that matches the exact size that we want on paper. That would make measuring a bit easier. But in most cases, I just eyebllt once I have the line for the chin and the hairline, I divide the distance into three roughly equal parts. From this angle, the face can be broken down into three main zones, the forehead, which is the first third of the face, then the area from the eyebrows to the bottom of the nose, and the final third is from the bottom of the nose to the chin. I just lightly mark those divisions on the paper. They help me position the facial features more accurately without having to get too technical. Now it's time to position the nose, since it's the largest facial feature and a great place to start when building out the rest of the face, especially in a three quarters view like this one. The nose becomes really important. One side will often appear more as a clear outline or solid line depending on the light and angle. So I'm going to start by placing that visible edge of the nose on the page. That will help me anchor the rest of the features and get a better sense of the proportions and tilt of the head. I'm going to place the eyebrows on the second guideline, and then find the placement for the eyes. A common rule is that the eyes sit in the middle of the head. So if you measure the distance from the top of the head to the chin and find the midpoint, that's actually where the eyeline will be. I start by sketching the eyes in a very simple shape, loose outlines with a light line for the upper and lower eyelids. Keeping it simple like this helps a lot when you're first constructing the face because it lets you focus on placement and proportions before getting caught up in the detail. Now, let's place the mouth. This goes in the bottom third of the face, and you can divide that whole lower section into three equal parts. The lowest third is the chin space. The line for the first third up is usually where the lips meet between the upper and lower lip. So these are basic measurements that you can use to construct a portrait, even when you don't have a reference photo. They can help you recognize common proportions across different faces that do not always apply perfectly, especially when the face is at an angle, proportions get slightly distorted depending on the pose. But for this demo, the reference is fairly straightforward, so we can still use these guidelines to help place our features accurately. Once the rough features are placed on the paper, I start to define the basic outline of the face. I also try to add a bit of context like the silhouette of her hair and some simple lines for the clothing if needed. This helps me step back and see whether the overall proportions of the portrait are at least close. At this stage, I use a kneadable eraser to gently clean up the sketch. Removes most of the construction lines and any graphite smudges on the page. And from here, I refine my lines using a mechanical pencil, but that is just a personal habit of mine. You can, of course, absolutely continue with your regular pencil. I just recommend giving it a quick sharpen for the step so that your lines stay clean and precise. The process of refining your lines is actually quite straightforward and even a little relaxing. At this point, your proportions are already in place. So the goal is to go over the rough sketch lines and replace them with one clean, confident line. Sometimes I also add a bit of very subtle shading, but not to start painting shadows. It's more to mark shadow areas that I notice in the reference. I will use a light touch to keep track of those spots. This part of the process might take ten to 15 minutes, but I always suggest doing rather less than more because we might still need to adjust the sched later, and it's easier to do that if you haven't overwork it yet. One rule that I like to follow is to take a break after finishing the first sketch. I will usually go make a cup of tea or oftentimes I leave it overnight. Coming back with fresh eyes almost always helps. I tend to notice small proportional mistakes that I just could not see before, and that's so normal because when we star at something for too long, we start to adjust to how it looks and stop seeing it objectively. Let me show you what I noticed after coming back from my break. There is one thing that I like to do to check my proportions, and that is to see the painting on the ground. At have been doing this one more often than not. I just throw it on the ground next to the reference photo and observe. What I'm seeing here, let me show you up close, is that even though my face looks a bit different than the reference photo, I actually pretty much like this face. If I did not see the reference photo, I would want to paint this. But that's just one thing that I think could be improved and that is this eye. I think on the reference photo, the eye is very close to the root of the nose and my eye is not as close. I could try and fix that. Always have a break between when you are first done sketching and painting. Yeah, I just took 30 minutes and had my lunch and had coffee. Then when I come back and look at it, that is when I see what I did not see before. After fixing the eye and adjusting anything else that caught my attention, I kind of went back and emphasized a few key lines like the silhouette of the face and some of the flowing lines of the hair. I also edit subtle hatching in areas where I noticed stronger shadows like under the nose or lips. This part of the process is where I really start to think about the reference photos. So it's important for me. Taking this time helps me get familiar with the face. I'm about to paint. When you skip the drawing process, you're also skipping a lot of the observation and connection that comes with it, and for me, that's a big part of what makes a painting successful. That's also why I include sketching in every painting class that I create for you, it is something that I care about deeply because I believe that this is such an empowering skill to learn. Sketching each portrait freehand, even if it's not perfect is how you train your eye and ultimately how you grow as an artist. And now that we've done just that and have a thoroughly prepared sketch, it is time to move on to the next step. Let's go over the watercolor setup before we start painting. I will see you in the next lesson. 6. How to set up for a painting session: Purpose of this lesson is to show you how to set up your materials and workspace for watercolor painting. Because watercolor tends to dry quickly, especially in lighter washes, it is really important to have everything ready and within reach before you begin. That way you won't have to interrupt your process to go find supplies. A well organized table setup also helps you avoid splatters, spills, and other small accidents which can happen easily when working with water and pigment. So let's go over what you need and how I like to arrange everything for a smooth painting session. When it comes to painting setup, important. I need to have this pad in front of me and I need to create a tilt. For that, I'm using this just a studio basket, very professional empty studio basket. Anything you have, basically, it's not too thick, but it allows me to have a slight tilt. It does not have to be too steep. This is okay. So that the water can descend towards the bottom of the page. It helps to connect the washes, make them cleaner. I'm not going to change it throughout the entire class, I'm going to paint like this. Unless I do effects, I will tell you if I do that and then I will lay it flat for just a little bit. But mostly there's a tilt. My right hand side, I have two jars of water. One is for dirty water. This one is already dirty from the testing of the colors. The other one is with clean water. I make sure that the clean water is harder to reach, so it's farther away because I tend to mix them. Then I have two jars of dirty water. For palette today we have limited palette of colors, so I'm not going to use my regular palette so that we only have these colors here available. These main three colors I have on one porcelain plate, and then this one I'm going to be using it separately on a separate plate, I think, by the time I'm done, everything is everywhere. Maybe at the beginning of the painting process, I try to be a bit cleaner, but I'm not a clean painter. The tubes I will not need because I pushed the paint from them onto my plates, but just in case that I run out, I will keep them very close by. Usually I tend to run out of cobbled blue, and this one, since the painting is pretty dark, we're going to be using more of this one as well. So I'm going to try to paint slowly. I will use three brushes. I will try not to use more than these three brushes. If you want, you can use a sponge. I have a sponge here. This sponge will be sitting on my table, and I will get rid of excess pigment every time that I want to make a stroke like very often. What I do is I load my brush with pigment, but before I paint, I release some of the excess pigment into the sponge. This is how you use the sponge. If you load your brush with too much water and go straight to your paper, that is where the mess happens. That makes it very hard to control watercolor. By the way, you do not need a sponge. I used just tissues for ten years. The sponge I have for a few months, it's supposed to be less wasteful. So that is why I got it. Here is a quick overview of my setup. Keep in mind that I'm right handed, so most of my tools are placed on the right side of the table. If you're left handed, you will want to mirror the setup so that everything stays comfortable and efficient to you. On the left side, I usually keep my reference photo and sometimes some notes or extra inspiration images. That's what I have space for here. And the right side is a bit more crowded with all these essential tools that I use during painting, water jars, test papers, palette brushes, and the sponge or tissue. Go ahead and set up your table now in a way that feels comfortable and easy to work with. In the next lesson, we will explore some of the basic watercolor techniques that you'll need for painting this portrait. I will see you there. 7. 4 Key Watercolor Techniques to Learn : So before we start the actual painting process in a minute, I first want to go over four key basic watercolor techniques that you'll need to paint this portrait. I think it would be helpful if you did this exercise on a one sheet of watercolor paper. Try them out just to get the hang of them before we start applying paint to the actual portrait. It will make your process so much smoother, so much easier. You will have less doubt, more confidence. They're frankly, very simple. You will not need more to create a standard watercolor portrait. So let's go over them one by one. The first technique will be application of the basic watercolor wash. When you lay down watercolor paint, that's what we call a wash. It is usually watery, paint is diluted. There's a specific way how to do it so that the paint is smooth so that you don't have streaks on your paper. I think we can mix a basic skin tone for this exercise. It doesn't have to be specific color. Just create a pool of watercolor that is large enough. There needs to be enough color prepared so that you don't have to mix meat process. Make sure that there are no chunks of pigments. Like here, you don't have to worry that the brush will break, you can mix pretty hard. So once that I have my brush loaded with pigment, this is where I start laying down the wash like this. Usually, I lay down my watercolor washes from top to bottom, and if I can help it, then from the left to right, because I'm right handed. So if I lay my wash here, right side and then go left, then I don't have where to rest my hand. That is one habit that is good to have when painting. If you're left handed, then you do it the other way. You first paint on the right side and then move towards left. I painted this wash. When my watercolor pad is laying flat on the table, here you can see that some excess water has accumulated somewhere here in the middle. That happens because paper starts reacting to water and it forms these bumps that can lead to streaks and watercolor blooms. If we wait for this wash to dry, you will see that there is going to be an irregularity. I'm going to use my hair dryer to speed things up and dry this. We probably can see it could have been worse. This particular wash did not help me make my point, but still you can see some irregularity in color. This is why we use tilt. When I put my basket here and I paint my next wash like this, it will be very, very smooth, more regular. See, this is what happens. You can even go back if you want because when you have a tilt, then the excess water, it accumulates down here, and then I continue, I descend here when we reach the bottom, you can easily just gently get rid of excess watercolor by just tapping your brush and leave it like this. Now when we dry, we will have a very continuous flat wash. So this one is more continuous, there's less streaks, there's less unexpected edges or blooms or effects. Usually, when we paint a portrait, it is good to have a slight tilt like I explained before, which helps you to unify this wash. This does not mean that we do not want the splatters anywhere. We will learn how to do splatters, but you just have now a tool to use whenever you want a smooth wash and then whenever you want the effects, there's a way how to do it, which I will show you right now. Here, I want to show you how to do expressive splatters. For this, I do not have the basket here, and I do not use tilt. Now I want the watercolor to behave more expressively to give me some effects, to give me splatters. Usually, I do it with this large brush. But I will want the expressive splatters to be in different colors and not to create a mud. Always, I load my brush and mix properly so that I don't have chunks in my brush. And then I will splatter. I will even get some water from the jar, like directly from the jar while there's pigment on my brush and I splatter, and then I can do this. Like, I can move the paint different directions. So this is blue. Now I want orange. This is where two jars come in very handy because I want to use the dirty water to get rid of excess pigment, and now I rinse the brush in the clean water jar and then mix that clean brush with new color. Let's say orange. Orange gets super dirty very fast. So now I splatter again. I just pull the brush on the paper, and I even touch the blue paint with my orange paint, but I do not mix them around. Here, there's some mixture. Of course, they will mix in some areas, but I would still like to recognize the orange and the blue in that like expressive wash. I can now grab a little bit of this like blood stone genuine and splat or some more connect connect with the other paints or colors. And. I think this is a very good color combination that we could use as a base for our portrait. Essentially, if I was to recap this technique, it is very spontaneous technique you can really feel like you are free, just expressing yourself on the page. I'm watching a little bit where it lands, but the main purpose is to lay the colors next to each other and not just mix everything together next to each other so that we can identify the orange, the blue, and that the color pops. Best thing is when the color touches the paper for the first time, you can lead the color if you want. But do not try to repaint what you splattered. That's probably the best way to describe this. You also have to get rid of the excess waters. When you look up close, there's pools of water here and here. Everywhere where I see them, same technique like we did here. We get rid of all of these extra pools of water very, very carefully so that I do not push the paint too much on the paper. And that helps us to dry this faster and prevent more effects. I think after you try this one exercise, this technique, you will only want to paint like this because it's so much fun. That's how it should be. Watercolor works should be balanced between expressive and controlled. So there's controlled. Here is expressive. But I will show you two more controlled techniques that we will use for the other parts of the portrait where we need more control. I think most of the water is now out. We move on to the technique number three. I want to show you how to smoothen edges for creating shadows and blending shadows. I will do the third technique with some shading mixture, so I will mix red and blue like we learned in the color mixing lesson, but we'll keep them a little bit more fluid. For the teaching purposes here, you can prepare the paint like this. For this technique, you also want to place a basic wash. Let's say that this is a shadow on the face. You will want to leave one edge sharp like this, but the other one we won't blend it. We want to smoothen it out connected with what we have underneath. For that, we will need a clean brush. I will clean my brush with just clean water. The excess water needs to go in your sponge and then we just clean brush, you brush your paper against this wash and touch lightly touch. This key technique for shading, but it's also very hard. You will have to practice it a couple of times to get the hang of it. The key is not to have too much water on your brush. If you have too much water, if you do not use your sponge, this is what happens. The excess water can just create a weird looking mistake basically in your shadows. I'm not saying this does not happen to me all the time, but during the actual painting process, I will show you how to clean up such mistakes. I'm sure there will be plenty. But this is how you smoothen some of the edges which we definitely will need to it comes to shading of the face, you will see that some shadows will have edges that are a little bit sharper, but most of the edges of the shadows in this specific reference will be smooth. Like, here is a shadow and it has a smooth edge. This shadow also has a smooth edge, so you will have to do this with watercolor. So let's practice this one more time. I will lay down the basic wash. This is my shadow. Let's say I'm painting a shadow. And then clean water just I rinse my brush. So that I do not have pigment here, but I also get rid of the excess. There is a mid level of water on my breash and then I go against I lightly touch. Usually, I leave it be like this. I just let it go. This is a smoothened edge that blends nicely within the previous layer. We have the fourth and final technique, and that is a dry brush technique. The technique that we use to add some textures to the hair most of the time, but sometimes to fabric. In this case, it will be mostly to the hair. Let us use it with the darkest paint. I will load my brush with it. When you load your brush with paint and try to do a stroke, usually it comes out like this. It is a full stroke, but there's nothing in between, so we want to again, use a sponge to get rid of some excess and then gently just go over and over. The texture of the paper will create this nice brush stroke. You can do the same with thicker pigment. And you need to find that sweet spot when your brush does this. It gives more texture to the brush stroke. This is usually what we need to suggest hair, the eyebrows and sometimes even lashes. You can practice this. I want to practice with a bit more thick pigments so that you can see like that. Some brushes will do this more efficiently than other brushes, but you still need to use thicker pigment on your brush, and preferably should be a soft brush to get this effect. This is what we want. These are the basic four techniques that we will use. Now give it some time and practice them for a little bit. And once you are done practicing these techniques, I will meet you in the next lesson where we will start painting the first layer of our portrait. I will see you there. Oh 8. Underpainting (First Layer): In this lesson, we are going to paint the first layer of our portrait, also known as the underpainting. The purpose of this layer is to lay down the basic colors of the entire portrait, a base skin tone, the initial color for the hair, and a loose expressive background wash. Doing all of this in a single light pass will make the later stages of painting much easier and more intuitive. So let's get started. Now, the first painting step is going to be back to pencil. This is going to be weird, but just hear me out. Before we put paint to paper, we need to establish where the highlights are. In watercolor, we do not have white paint. We sometimes cheat and add white gouache or white pencil, but mostly we try to just leave out some of the highlights, some of the white areas. It is sometimes very hard when you are placing your color to find the highlights and paint around these highlights. If I'm worried, I will forget some of these. I will map out some of these highlights with my pencil, but very, very light. Figure out which areas of the face have the lightest value, it helps to take a step back and really observe your reference photo again. In this case, the light is quite soft and diffused, so we do not have any strong or dramatic highlights like we might with a bit harsher lighting. That said, even with soft lighting, we can still identify areas that catch the most light. On this reference, I noticed a few subtle highlights on the nose right here, and other typical areas that catch light and still do here include the part of the forehead, the cheeks, the chin, and often the bottom lip, which tends to reflect light. Sometimes you will also see small reflected highlights in the eyes, but in this reference, they are really not that visible, but I decided to add the subtle highlights in the eyes anyway, just to give them a bit more life and energy. I have lightly marked all of these light areas with my pencil so that I can be mindful of them while painting. This is the map that we will use. Now when we premix the skin tone, we will just avoid all of these highlights. Now let's mix the skin tone. With clean water, I will add a little bit of the orange here, a little bit of the red and I will make sure that this premixed skin tone, that is a large pool of skin tone. We said we need a bit muted, so I'm going to add a little bit of cobbled blue into it. We just want to desaturate with the blue a little bit, like tiny bit. Again, that's just because of the reference photo being less saturated. Yeah, normally I would go with, like, punchy or skin tone, but let's work with reference at least a little bit. I have skin tone here. Can we start? Let's start. Do not be stressed. You can paint over the hair. It doesn't matter. The hair will be dark. So if you cover them, we can cover them. We will put black paint on top of it. Anyway. Now your task is to lay down the watery, make sure it's watery skin tone. You can go through the ice as well, but do not go where you put your highlights. Do not go over your highlights. Now, what are we going to do? You have to go through the eyes because that's not white, what you see there. We just think that the eyes are white. The eyeballs, but that's not quite true. Here on the nose is a little bit trickier, but we can manage. So before I go to the bottom, make sure that this wash is very watery because we want to keep it wet for as long as it's possible. So now I clean my brush, but I get rid of the excess water and I go over the highlights. I just cover them like this. I connect them with the rest of the texture. You don't have to connect these highlights. Maybe this one we can leave out because it's so tiny. But the rest of the highlights, they need clean water. Here as well, clean water because otherwise, we will have very hard edges everywhere. Don't want so many hard edges. So there's one more highlight here. Again, if you're not exactly covering the face and if you're going through the hair like I'm going here, it doesn't matter. We're going to cover that. I actually do not like these edges, so I make sure that this is all just a little bit scattered, or I continue the paint with clean water towards the hair. While it's still wet, we can go in with a little bit of diluted red color and add the red color to the nose, maybe a little bit to the cheek. Here may be a little bit to the lips. You can work it out just a tiny bit. And here, this part got slightly covered. So with clean brush, I'm going to pull the color from the page while I still can like that, and that will lighten this area. If your color covered your highlight in any area, do this, but do it carefully before your wash dries. If it's dry, leave it. You can rub the paint slightly and lift some of the pigment even after your wash is dry but do not enter with damp brush. It is not great to go into semi dry wash because that can create blooms. This is okay for the first pass. I forgot this one. I forgot this one. I would not want to forget because the harta e is not really the style that we're going for here. I would like to continue for the hair and for some stylization, but I need the skin to dry. So if it's too hot in your room and the skin is already dry, you can continue. For me, today is not, and I'm going to grab a hair dryer and just lightly make sure that it is dry. So when the skin is dry, I can continue now adding hair. And that's going to be bloodstone genuine, but for now, we can leave it, dilute it. And with larger brush, we can just lightly add some color to the hair. Like that it's too bad that there's not too much connection with the skin, but it's okay for now. We will add the hair here. This is not about laying it down in a detailed way. We just want to give it some color so that later on when we shade the face, it is easier for us to see the values and establish how dark they are supposed to be. Here, I do not even want to finish placing the color. But here we're going to do some stylization. I lay it flat on the table. This is one exception to my rule to have it tilted up and I will dilute the blood stone like that. We'll probably do this with the larger brush and do splatters like that. I do splatters in an angle. This is what I would like to do. I will try to add some color, even though this is limited color portrait, we can add some color, and I'm adding cobbled bloom to stylize a little bit. Connect with her hair. This is just freestyle. And one color that we could use to stylize and offset is the orange. So I grab some orange on my brush, maybe just incorporate it in there somehow. Even if stuff like that happens, you can save it very fast if you have tissues nearby. Is that good? Is that bad? Let's try to just park it into something nice and abstract. I'm going to add a bit stronger color here. This is stronger blood stone genuine, so you can see granulation. Here. Okay. I'm done having fun. Now, important step. This is why we laid this flat is to remove every excess pool of the water that you see. The water that we used, its purpose was to create these splatters and fun stuff. And now the remaining the excess water needs to go away, and then we take a break, let it dry naturally, hopefully, preferably. And then we can continue with shading of the face because that's the more serious part that we will get a bit more technical. But this is fun. Try to just have fun with it. I know that for some beginners that have never tried painting like this, it could look and feel very scary. But it also is just so free. I don't know, maybe you're the type that like to go in with a small brush and do a lot of details, paint for hours, with a very detailed brush, every single detail, I like to do a lot of splatters and then just emphasize certain parts around the focal point, which is the face that creates impactful painting for a fracture of time. The point is not to only spend a few hours painting and not few days. That's not the point, but I think that can be a benefit. Because a lot of you are very busy, don't have so much time to paint in this detailed way, even though I admitted it can be very relaxing to paint in a very detailed way. We will do that for a little bit. When we get to the face, that's where I get a bit obsessed with details as well. I think for a limited palette of colors, we have nice color there. Maybe I need to see a bit more of the darker color because the color looks very black, but it's not with granulating colors, you can have a hard time. Uh, get in saturation that you want. They were diluted and the pigment. The whole point of granulation is broken layer of pigment, so that's why they don't get so dark. Um, I just want to add a little bit of that. Here. I'm not worried about that. We can fix that. And actually, some of these hairs we could paint now just suggest the direction of the hair. I will leave it now and we'll go take a break. You go take a break and when we come back, we can grab hair dryer, finish this with the hair dryer so that it is completely dry before we attempt another layer. But I think we have, I would say 80% of our painting done within the first 30 minutes. How great is that? I think that's a great advantage. That you're done drying the first layer, I will meet you in the next lesson where we will start painting the shadows of the portrait and also begin building depth with a slightly more controlled approach. I cannot wait to show you how to do this, and I will see you there. 9. Shading (part one): In this lesson, we will learn how to build a depth in the portrait by carefully layering shadows. This is often the part that feels the most intimidating for beginners, but with a focused approach and by taking your time, there's really nothing to worry about. I also want to emphasize there's absolutely no need to get it perfect. If your shadows come out a bit streaky or uneven, that's completely fine. The most important thing is to practice this technique a few times. Once that you understand the process, it becomes much easier and it helps you avoid overthinking. So let's get started. Now that the first crazy part is behind us, let's get to shading the face. The face on this portrait is our focal point, and so we will have to spend a bit more time in this area. Shading is very scary. It doesn't have to be that scary. We just have to know what to place where. First thing that I do after the first layer because the first layer is very messy. There's some splatters all around. I do not mind them. They're part of my style, but some of them, especially like here on the face or cleaning up the silhouette is something that I would like to I do it with a smaller round brush, dampened in clean water. I will just get rid of the excess and then then you can just gently brush the paper like this with clean damp brush. When we are done doing that, we can lift this pigment off with a tissue and that cleans our silhouette. Have to be working on a cuton paper to be able to do this. A cellulose paper allow that also to some degree, but you usually pull all of the pigments away. Just test what your paper does and then you will get used to how your paper reacts. That was just minor cleanup. Now we can focus on the actual shading. I want to explain to you about mid tones and about shadows. Shading is basically what gives the face depth. Here everything is flat. We already work in two tones. We have the highlight, the light area, and This is the basic skin tone. We already have two. We did not paint shadows yet and you already can see some depth in the skin. But here on the reference photo, however different it is from mine, you can see much more depth. You can clearly see on that photo how the face turns towards the light source and away from it in some areas. So because of the lights and the darks, you get the idea of what this form looks like in three D space. What it means for us is that if we can add some of these darker darks to our watercolor painting, that is what will give us the illusion of a three D form on a flat paper. This is what we all want to do when we paint realistically. Besides the basic skin tone, we now have to inspect the reference image and we have to look for areas that are slightly darker than the basic skin tone. I would say the basic skin tone could be this, could be that. There are some areas that are just lightly darker. You will have to train your eyes to see these areas. But what I also do sometimes in Photoshop, you can do it on your phone actually. You can just increase contrast of your reference to better see where the lights and the shadows are. This is the reference photo. I go to contrast and I just pull the contrast a little bit. I can go as contrast as I can go. This is not to paint from necessarily, but you can. This is just to see because contrast will split your light and shadow a bit more. Sometimes you don't see mid tones because of that, but the point is that it is less subtle than on the actual photo here, you can better see where the contrast is. Here is the lighter area. But here, you can clearly see now on this image. While here, it is a bit more subtle. It is very hard to see that if you don't edit your photo. This area is what we call mid tone. This is slightly darker than the basic skin color, but it's not a shadow area yet. Another example of a mid tone is here, like here. Another example is the cheeks, cheeks are around form, so that means that they will have lighter part, and here they will have a mid tone part. This cheek as well here is light. This is basic skin tone, and here is midtone. This is mid tone, and then we have shadow here. You can view the reference image and try to see which areas are your mid tones, and then we will paint it. That's one thing that you need to look for before you go to shed your portrait, midtone. Other thing is the actual shadows and what I mean by that is to look for the dark cast shadows on the face. I do not mean the eyelashes or the brows because these are naturally dark. But what I mean is the form of the face, look for areas of where the actual skin is, but it's not in light, but it's in shadow completely. This area over here, see, this is skin. But it is away from the light source, so it will appear dark. Here it is even more prominent in this area below the eyes as well, a little bit. The entire base of the nose is covered in shadow because that part is just it turns away from the light. Another example of shadow is the upper lip and here below the lower lip. And then we have shadow here on the neck. This entire area is pretty much in shadow. It is not that hard face to shade. So that's why I picked it for you for this demo. Now that we analyze this, we can start painting. Usually, I first paint the mitons and then I paint the shadows just because it is much easier in watercolor first place in the color that is lighter and then cover it up with color that's a bit darker. We will paint something and we will have to check between the painting and reference photo and tweak. I think this is the hardest part of the entire process. We need to practice. We will practice it together. There is no one person on earth that knows how to do this without doing it 100 times, but the hundred times can be 100 fun times. Let's read without stress slowly so that you get used to this entire process. Every cap from the color mixing lesson, we are mixing cadmium red here with blue with cobbled blue. We will mix them. We will mix them together to create a color. Keep these nearby. They come in extremely heavy. This is too dark and it's too blue. So I'm going to have to add more red. This is better, but I need to add more water. Yeah, that's much better. Even more water. Something like this for now to create the meton and I do it with larger brush and tissues. Tissues are my best friends. Sounds weird, but it's just with water color, you always have to have this nearby. Let's add this. I'm going to add this here. This is where the meton is. And by the way, I'm going to add this to the parts that are in shadow as well just because the shadow will need more layers and is going to be darker anyway. And also here, And then with cleaned and brush, we're going to just soften this edge like that. We're going to just lightly touch this edge to create a blended effect. As well as here, I'm going to paint a wash, and I'm going to just gently touch and leave it alone. Do not touch it again, leave it alone. Where else around this eye. Also, definitely, we have to do like a base for the eyebrows. The eyebrows, they cast shadows, so you have to add some tone there. Remember we talked about this. We talked about this cheek, they have this shadow. And then clean damp brush and gently touch and sort of connect this with the rest. The key is not to have too much water on your brush. So the tissue or the sponge, I always forget to use the sponge and use the tissue. I use large brush for now, but then I will switch to a smaller one later on. Here, and, like, here and here I lightly touch. We can slowly build up these layers, we do not have to do it all at once. Here this is going to be the largest area here. And I do not even stress too much if it's not perfectly smooth, there will be maps that will happen like here. It's okay. Well, some will be covered by the details, some will persist, but it's okay. Just want you to know that it happens and that it's part of the process. Here, this one is a bit weird, but this is just how the face is shaped. 10. Shading (part two): Okay. Here comes a little bit darker as well as here. When I need darker color here, down here, I have to mix thicker pigments. I do not add so much water in it, and then I don't have to do so many layers because I get intensity of the tone a bit sooner. This is a little bit weird. Here we should not have so much paint, so I just clean it with damp brush. Here is also highlight. Don't need to go there. I guess, that's fine. Okay, so everything is wet now. I would like to go back to some areas, but it's wet. I'm worried that I will make a mess. That's when I can grab this and just dry it to make sure. When your paper is too hot after the low dry, then wait until it's cold again. I think our face starts to take some shape. There are some edges that I do not like. Like this one. So you can grab the soft brush with just clean water and you can rub on a higher quality paper. Usually, you would be able to connect the wash, make it a bit more smooth, get rid of the weird edges. It should be possible. Okay. I think it's time to switch to a smaller brush, and the shading mixture is always red and blue together. Balance it out so that it's not too blue or too red, something in between. Something like this. And I will start shading a bit darker closer to the ice. So I'm adding those shadows that we talked about that are slightly bit darker, and I will start here. Adding darker paint like this one can be very scary, so you just do it slowly. The paint still has to be bit watery. So even if it's thick like this and if it's darker, it is still a bit watery and I'm adding them to the darkest area. So these are the darkest areas here. And then I go there with clean water on my brush and I connect this. Since everything is wet, it will dilute naturally create a gradient. Here. It looks very scary when it's dark like this, but the portrait needs some contrast. So just trust me, it will be fine. I would add a bit more blue into the mixture, a bit more of the granulating bloodstone genuine just to create the darkness for these eyes here. So I will avoid this area that we set for the highlight and we'll cover it with paint. We have the sketch there already. So we're just coloring areas. We'll add maybe a little bit more darkness here, clean water and rub this. Let's go with a darker color underneath her eyes a little bit. The eyes, they have this thickness that they show. Even if you don't see them on the reference, it's always a good idea to add this to your portraits. The thickness like the lighter part here below the eye, makes the eye a bit more believable. It makes it lighter. I just looks right. So you can do that simply just by leaving this little part not painted. And then I want to paint this shadow, not very dark shadow, but needs to be painted here behind the nose. The nose here is very light. But behind this line, we need to add a little bit more of the tone. There is a little bit more of the shadow here, but I'm using more diluted than here, color. In this area, I'm adding the shadow and then just gently touching the edge so that it dilutes and blends. The base of the nose will be slightly trickier because it's darker. These parts are darker and I'm using water to. This is not like me painting the nostrils yet. I just want to paint the shadow that surrounds them. So it's like this. And it even moves towards this direction here. C. The nose shadow is always very tricky. Here we have a shadow that is here on the nose itself. It is not here on the cheek. The shadow is on the nose there. It goes like this. With cleaned and brush, we will dilute and from the other side as well. This is why soft bristles on your brush are important. With a synthetic brush, you can do, but it's much easier with the soft bristles. I'm going to add a bit more red into my shading mixture just because the tip of the nose, it tends to be a little bit more red, it's the color of the nose here in this part that is mostly red. Again, more red because we are painting lips. Since we're using limited palette, the lips they won't be so rosy. We would need fourth color, different kind of red for that. But if you want to, you can add if you have carmine or Alizarin crimson, you want more rouge color, then you can use that. But I think for the purposes of learning this is fine, just add a bit more red into your shading mixture and then paint. Mostly the upper lip, but here the lower lip, the bottom of the lower lip as well. Okay. Shadow continues here. It always looks a bit weird when it's wet. These parts have already dried, so they have proper color. But the color of watercolor when it's wet, it is just so strong. But after it dries, it gets much more subtle. We oftentimes have to go back and actually add more paint. Let's paint this other eye. This is not the final state of the shadows, but I just want to do a first pass and then add more depth if needed, refine with details. So we paint everything at once, if that's possible. We do not perfectly paint one eye and then move on to the other one. We have to assign values to everything based on all of the things that are around, based on the entire painting context. And here, I'm going to add more shadow here. This is very dark. This part And here is again, what I told you with the other eye we have to do here as well. We have to leave out this part, the larger part. We have to leave it out. This looks very weird, but you have to go back with damp brush not overly soaked with water, and we have to just connect all of these areas. With your brush, you have to gently rub them, hug them with your brush so that it incorporates into your painting. Preferably do it before it dries like this. I'm talking more talking than usually when I'm painting, I get faster with this, and so it does not dry so quickly on me. Here, this part needs some better transition. On a high quality cotton paper, you can add as many layers as you want. It really helps to have cotton paper. I don't even know if I would paint this on a pulp paper, that's very difficult and the eye, just like on the other side, leave out the highlight. I always when I paint eyes, no matter how dark, I let the bottom part of the iris, I let it be lighter. I let it be just transparent. It makes the eye more alive, it makes it look bit glossy it just makes it shine. A 11. Shading (part 3): By the way, you think you would have to be very precise with this process, but you don't need to be roughly in the right ballpark. So you just need to have your values roughly where they belong. And that means if this is light, this is baskin tone, this is shadow, I can't have the shadow here. That is what I mean roughly. But you don't have to copy exactly what you see on the photo. I'm not even I'm not I would just it would be so boring. Me to do that. I do not think that most of you would enjoy a process like that. I'm not even sure if you would enjoy the result like that because we have photos for that exact precision if we want it. This is more like an impression of someone or impression of a portrait that has some level of likeness. So here on the neck, we add very, very dark stuff. This will be dark. I know so many artists who are much more loose in how they paint than me, and they can still get to something that from distance looks like a photo. There is a point when I get so tired of shading that I just call it done and then go have coffee and then come back, check what's most bothering me, fix that, and call it a painting. So even that approach is completely 100% legit. I want to use a little bit more like cobbled blue, and I want to do it here because the eye whites, they're not white. They're far from white. They have some white maybe here in the middle, but we need to also make sure that it is perceived as a ball as a round object, and you can use diluted cobbled blue for that. Maybe with thicker shading color. So that means red with blue very thick. I could use now, I could do the nostrils here. They're a bit darker. Now when we have the base of the nulls shaded, we can add them. Here we could emphasize that middle part and Yep. Add in some accents, but we'll have to add the hair soon so that we know how dark we actually need to go. Good. I'm going to dry this. Have a short break. You take a break too, relieve your eyes of duty for a bit, and then we come back with more fresh perspective and check what's wrong with the piece. Okay. Okay. Once you've had a break and your painting is fully dry, I will meet you in the next lesson where we will add details, textures, and some final touches to the face, hair, and the overall stylization of the portrait. I will see you there. 12. Painting hair: In this lesson, we will paint a hair, one of my favorite parts of the process because it allows us to be a bit more expressive again. We're getting close to finishing our portrait, so let us jump in and start adding those fine layers of character and flow. Let's get started. I would not say that the face is done yet, but at some point, I can't tell if everything will work out together. Before we move on and start tweaking, we need to lay down the color of the hair. I'm going to be using the blood stone genuine. The hair, she's got they're dark but not completely black. So I will add a little bit of the red. Into it so that it's warmer. We've practiced this before, but in some parts, we will lay down color in a regular way. But in some areas, I will dry my brush and I will use the dry brush marks so that I can show some texture. And I think because I just looked at this painting from a distance that she needs a little bit more of that hair up here, so I will go a bit higher than my sketch was. So let's start. I'll just start placing the the paint here, a little bit more of the texture. I'll try to do the drybush if it's possible. But here, maybe we should do just with the small brush. I'll probably be a bit better. Small brush can do the dry brush mark as well. You'll just color the sketch basically here. But something interesting will start to happen as we lay down this from time to time, I'm going to add these, floating hairs with just a tip of my brush like there here. And everything will just start to tie together now. I think I hope the contrast will now work. The contrast of these shadows will now start to work. Here, up here, there's a little bit more texture. And here, things will be a bit more smoother, darker. And here texture again. And a bit of the text more texture will be up here as well. So even hair, even though this tutorial will not focus on the hair all that much. But even hair, they have lighter and darker areas, and we kind of have to notice them. Her hair is lit from above, so in this area, there will be more highlights in the hair. I'll try to use a bit more dry brush in this area. Bit more like leaf stuff behind and also maybe water down the paint a little bit. But then here in this area, we'll start to turn away from the light again. And so will we be darker. We do not have to be literal about the hair. We can just suggest some hair strengths don't have to finish all of the hairs strengths. But I like to add some floating hairs, you know, to just make the hairstyle more interesting and more on the photo because she has a lot of floating hairs. So like, we could do this. Okay. And we're almost done with the hair. It was just some areas. I want to cover just a bit more. That's and here I want to connect the color a bit more. Can add some stylization and splatters. Okay. Now I want to dry and check everything. W 13. Refinements: Well, let me tell you, I do not hate this portrait at all. There's just 100 of tiny little things that I might want to correct, but also don't have to because from distance, this looks very solid. But just above the hair, maybe here, I went a little bit too far with the paint. My go to correction is always damp brush. Just wrap the pigment lift it, and this is how you just erase watercolor on a high quality paper. Of course, if you put too many layers, the damp brush won't do miracles, but it can just do these tiny little corrections. I have a couple of floating hairs that I would love to add, but they're across the face. We'll do that slightly bit later. You can see how much it does to a portrait, before the face was insanely dark. Then we ddt the dark color of the hair, and the face suddenly feels more subtle. I would actually even add some shadows. At first, let me correct the silhouette. This silhouette needs to sometimes tweak. And I do that again, with a damp brush or with just that color that we mixed for shading the red and the blue and just slightly add and correct the shape of the silhouette. Tiny bit. And here, again, like for this part, I need to be a bit, even more precise, even darker here around the neck. So here I'm missing a subtle shadow. This is a subtle shadow that will make this cheek stand out a bit more. The tone here and the tone here is definitely different. It's supposed to be different. So that's what I can fix. I would like to do some work with just plain red, and then I need some more red on the lips, not that much red, but just need some more work with the red on the lips because she just looks like she has face of just one color. So I will just This is glazing. You can add a thin layer of red across the mouth. And then when you dry it, it is going to give it a bit of a pop. And so I will dry enough. There's this shadow over here on the reference photo here that is almost the color of the hair, the hair continues here on the face. And I think without the shadow being painted on the face, we don't see her likeness. At least that's how I feel. So I'm going to add it here, add that shadow here. And your painting always consists of a few fundamentals and maybe 20 of these tiny little tweaks as you notice, but nobody will have to force you to do these tweaks because when you are so engaged with the painting like here, almost at the final stage of your painting process, you will want to, especially if you're proud about your painting, you will want to tweak it and just give it a bit more attention and push it, push it, push it. So if you don't have time, you can call it a day. I could do the lashes, the brows, and call it a day. It will be just fine, and you practice, you learn new things. But if you have some extra time, you want to push it 20 little twigs, tiny little twigs that will make it more clean, more refined, but do not overwork. That's what we do not want to do. I want to tweak the shadow here. Okay. And on the other side kind of as well here. Now I'm working mostly with the bloodstone genuine. I kind of connecting these shadows that I've built with the hair, with the color of the hair. And it is always always the same technique. The shadow on the nose. So here, and like, here and here, here. And it's just Good. Connect. Here there's a bit of watercolor bloom. I can rub it, I can add a new shadow if I don't want it there. It would not be terrible if I left it either I just want to review. I just want to check parts of my painting like that painting now when it's not all that finished yet, it's the eyes are bitraw does not have the eyebrows yet. Sometimes it looks worse when I add all those little details, but I will leave that you to judge. You know what my finished painting looks like because it's on the class cover probably in the reference photos in the resources. At this stage, I do not know what it's going to look like, so I don't know if I will overwork or not, but you can judge, let me know. In the end, even if I did overwork, I'll learn from it and do better in the next piece. After finishing these last shadow tweaks on the face, I will meet you in the next lesson for the final touches and a few important details. We're almost there. Let's finish this portrait together. 14. Final touches: Lesson, we will finish our portrait by adding a few simple details, and I'll also show you how to create beautiful, delicate highlights in the hair without using any paint is a subtle but really effective way to bring your portrait to life. Let's go. Are we ready to add the eyebrows? Usually, I add them with the dry brush technique as well. But sometimes I have to sometimes draw them as I see them. These brows are more unified. You do not see or perceive the individual hair strengths. They're darker. We really need to add that because we do not see her face until we add the dark browse. We do not see the likeness until we add the browse. Hopefully, then we will get some likeness. Here in these parts, I would add and draw some individual individual brows, maybe. And then I want to add here, supposed to be a bit stronger. There are lashes there, and she has profound lashes painted, so we have to literally draw them maybe one by one. Or two by two. I just copy reference for this part. If that doesn't look natural, then with this reference it's not so hard, you can see individual eyelashes. I will add the darker pupil in the eye. And there's some for the bottom lashes, we definitely have to do a trick. I will split my brush like this, split the bristles, and I'll just like I'll just stamp it like I use it like a textured brush for the bottom lashes. Those I would not paint individually. And maybe there's maybe we could also emphasize the center of the lips. Tiny bit with darker paint, and I always dilute. I always kind of, like, try to smudge the line if I do the line so that it does not look like drawn, but it needs to be painted. It needs to look like a painting. We're almost finished. So one last thing is a couple of these floating hair strings around the face. These ones are like going through even around the nose, they connect here. Now we can draw them that has to be the final touch because we did not have the face details finished yet before, and they can be light, it can be like this. So. That one looks weird. If it looks weird on a high quality paper, I'm repeating myself, but seriously, you can just erase. Good. But there's one more trick that I want to show you and that involves the scalpel. To use the scalpel, all of your paper has to be 100% dry because then if it's wet or damp, you can ruin the painting because it can just grab more paint and more of the paper than you would want to. So with scalpel, we work on a dry surface. We use scalpel to create some highlights, especially in the hair. Very little, we do not have to scratch out everything that we painted. I'm saying it more to myself than to you because I tend to do that sometimes. And so I just some of these hair strengths that I want white or lighter, I tend to just literally draw the hair with the scalpel. And here. Sound is terrible, absolutely horrible. But the effects can be very nice. Can I put the reference photo finally aside? I do not think this was like a portrait of this person per se. I do not think that the likeness is there all that much. This part, I'm not sure if I like, but I will leave it like that. If I did a portrait, a commission, I would have been more precise. I would like, measure everything that was not the point. Usually, I abandon the reference image way sooner than here. But since it was tutorial, we were learning from the reference photo, so it served us very well. But at this point, I'm removing it. I like to talk about this because I don't feel like I have obligation to my reference photo as much as I have obligation to my painting. Sometimes I make sure to not copy everything. At some point, I stop looking at reference photo. It serves me well when it comes to applying shadow, something that might be very hard to imagine. At some point, what's important is the paintings. Make the painting your own. Think about your painting. What does it mean? Does it have contrast? Does it look like a person? Is there something off without me, comparing it to reference photo and make the adjustments. It does not have to be that much, but here is what matters. So I'm very happy with my painting, and I will sign it now. Actually, I have another brush. I do not use it for actual painting, but it's so hard to sign your artwork with regular brush, and this one is the brush that allows me to write. This is Princeton Long round Aqua Elite. This small ritual of signing the painting, I'm officially wrapping up our painting session. Thank you so much for your time, focus and patience. It means a lot, I can't wait to see your beautiful work in the project section. Don't be shy about sharing, and I will see you very soon. 15. Final thoughts: And this is it, we've reached the end of this class. I hope that you can see that the portrait painting can be manageable and also fun. If you still haven't, please take a photo of your final painting and upload it down below the class. There is a projects and resources section where you can show us your works, not just to me, but other students. It helps me to provide a short feedback, and I really love to stay connected with you even after you finish the class. If you enjoyed this class, I'd be really grateful if you wrote a review to help your fellow students discover this class and learn from it as well. And finally, to stay connected, you can follow me here on Skillshare. I also share daily works and snippets from the studio on my Instagram and Facebook, and I also have a YouTube channel where you can find a lot of content on watercolor portraits and also drawing. I will see you in the next class. I'm excited to meet you again. Bye.