Watercolor Textures

1. Watercolor Textures Intro: Hi school share students, are you guys ready to take watercolor textures of me? This is actually my third skill shared class. In this third class, is also a very modern approach on how you use your watercolors. We're going to focus on painting an animal as your final project. I'm going to take you through the whole journey practicing different textures we're going to do really cool, what I like to call texture swatches, which is just experimenting and trying out new ideas. I'm also going to take you through my creative process, and we're going to do a little bonus video on how to choose colors for your project. I really want you guys to join me. This is a super fun class. I can't wait to see what everyone comes up with. Please feel free to enroll. We're going to have a lot of fun. So thanks for joining me. 2. Supplies: Hey guys, welcome to watercolor textures. This is my brand new skill tour class. This class is really cool because we really get to work on some new waste user watercolors just like by layering and stuff like that. What I'm going to show you right now is the supplies that I'm going to use for this specific class. If you want to get a really nice insight on different supplies, please go back to my modern watercolor technique class, it's a beginner level one, and we'll talk about a bunch of supplies. This is just what I'm going to use now. We're going to start with paper. This is a Cotman spiral watercolor pad. I like this smaller size because in this class we're going to do a few little experiments. We're going to do these little textures here, like as swatches. So if you guys have one of, let's say one of those watercolor moleskines or just a travel pad or something like that for watercolors, this would be a good opportunity to use that. If not, you can just use your regular watercolor pad that you've used before. This is another brand, this is Canson. This is just called press, this is not spiraled, it's got gummed edges like that, and it's of course acid free and this is nine by 12 inches, which is the paper I'm going to use for the final project. I've just got these two right now, so you can use either just this or you can have a smaller one and a larger one if you want to just play around with that. Next, we have my Schminckle watercolor paints. This is a pan set, you guys know by now that you can mix together your pan sets with your tubes or with your liquid water colors. I'm going to leave my pan set like this instead of cleaning it because I want you guys to see how it usually looks. I mixed together all different paints right here, so everything that you see on this palette isn't necessarily these Schminckle sets, but it's a mix of everything that I use, so it's a mix of all the different paints I use. I might use a little bit of tube, for example, this green that's right here is just a little bit of tube set that I had somewhere and I just left that there. Remember that you can keep hydrating your watercolors over and over and they won't dry up. I'm going to use this as my base. Then I have these new watercolors that I'm really into right now. I'm going to show you what they look like. It's actually Japanese brand, they're called Holbain or Holbein. They are just these little tubes that are really good. This pink is amazing, opera pink. Some of you asked me on Instagram, if you guys were to invest in one of these, what would it be? I'd say, this is a super amazing color that is hard to obtain with your pan sets. I just have a few these, I mean, I don't know if I'll necessarily be using all of them, but just to show you how I would usually just mix some of these up with my pan set, and I can also do that here with this little flower palette. You can see that I have been using this for days and days now and it just keeps growing and growing. What I would usually do is just have my pinks on this side, my different greens here, few blues, some like black, darker mix, just have different areas, and then here's where I use my white. You guys have taken two of my classes by now. If you have not and want to know more about painting with white ink over watercolors, take the mixed media class, I talk a lot about that. But just to let you guys see what it looks like, this is where the white paint would usually be, so that's probably, and I have some brushes here. This is just an eraser that I really like, dust free Faber-Castell, it's really good. They're like super cheap too. Just a pencil, you guys always need a pencil. I'm just going to use these watercolor brushes, they are the Cotman Winsor Newton watercolor brushes, that's just what I've been using a lot lately. I have a few more in here, but this is just a size 10, I believe this is a three, yeah, and this is a one. You can also use a zero because we're going to do a lot of pulse and precision and detail stuff too. Oh, and of course you need water and you're going to need some paper, a paper towel, which I will get in a second. But I just wanted to show you guys what I'm going to be using for this class. You guys have experimented with different stuff like salt and that stuff too. You can use it, but we're going to just focus on our watercolors for this class. So grab your supplies and let's begin. 3. Texture Swatches part 1: So we're going to start with your very first activity. This class is going to consist of two parts. One is going to be our practice section, which is going to be right now, and then we're going to go onto our final project. So this class is a little bit shorter, just because in my in person classes, what I would do is take a whole class to show you what I taught you guys in modern water color techniques, which was the whole gradients and pull some precision. So I would really like for everyone to at least take a look at the first few videos if you haven't taken that class, just know what I'm talking about. It's not to complicated, it's just basically different levels of transparency and just some pulls and precision and just like how concentrated your paint should be sometimes and how thin it will be always. So your first activity is going to end up looking a little bit like this. This is what I like to call a texture or patterns swatch. You're going to make this with water colors. Right here we did 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, different styles of textures. I did one now and I'm going to do one from the beginning to like do it with you guys. I'm going to start with a blank piece of paper. I'm going to show you a slide show after this class right now. What I want you guys to do is take inspiration from nature or from different textiles you might have seen and create these, what I call swatches of textures. What you're going to begin by doing is you're going to paint at least nine or as many as you feel like doing different little squares, or rectangles, or even circles if you want. See I did, I started doing circles. You can seen here these are little circles too and they'd have textures in them. Basically what a texture is going to be is it can be something inspired by nature or it can be something inspired by, for example, I like to talk a lot about this Japanese style texture here, or for example, this one reminds me of a mosaic, this one looks like wood. This is like a more abstract texture. This is a very simple texture. But if we're painting like, let's say a bird or something, this might be a cool texture to have, unlike some of the feather parts. This is like a water texture. This is like an animal. I'd say it's like an animal print. This is like a tribal little pattern, and then these are some leaves. That's just like what I felt up of when I was doing these. But I want you guys to like really explore and just figure out different textures for yourself. But I'm just starting to play around, just get all the creative juices flowing and just start working. Once you start, ideas will just pop into your head. Also, I like to think of color as the way we feel. I'm not really thinking about color that much right now. I'm just concentrating on doing something very simple, which is a few color blocks using very transparent paint. This is very, very soothing too. If you want to play around with some very soft gradients, you can do that too. Here I'm starting with some blue that I had here. I might want to add in some purple. Just like very subtle, very soft, super watery paint, super diluted. This is a very loose activity. It's a practices activity. So you guys can do this a few times or with different shapes or whatever you feel like. But what we're going to do is practice textures. I think you guys are really going to enjoy. I know I do. It's really fun and it's like a nice mind exercise. I'm done painting my first layer. Remember, I think you all know by now that you have to let your first layer dry completely for your next layer to begin, especially with this style of watercolor, which is more like illustration style. We don't want our top layer to bleed into the bottom layer, so we need for paint to dry completely before we start. While these dry, I'm just going to stop the video for a sec and I'll be back with you in about 10 minutes. So by now, all of these transparent blocks have dried. Water color is super cool. As you know, these textures are obviously not intentional, but whenever you leave a little puddle of water, it really does this nice cool texture. So that's not a mistake, that's something that we like in water colors, just like as a sighed note. Right now what I'm going to do is show you one by one what I'm going to do on each of these. These are just examples of what you can do for textures. I really want you guys to either do research or whatever comes to mind, but really flow with this activity. For my first texture right here, I'm going to do something that's Japanese inspired. It's a really cool texture that you can apply to many different ways. I would call it scales. Like if you were to draw like paint of fish, you might use this too or something to do with water, or it can be a textile. Just thinking of different ways that would be used. Might work with some warm tones here. I'm going to have some yellows and some oranges. You can see how I prep my paints a bit. Now I'm going to start painting. We have our super transparent first layer and now maybe we can do a little bit more concentrated, like a level 2, 3, 4 from what we did with the transparencies activity, like half water or half paint. I'm just going to start doing it here. No pencil here, just flowing. Just observe what I do. Feel free to do something just like this if you have no idea what to do, or feel free to just do your own textures. This one here is a really nice way to start. This is super therapeutic tool. Why I like about doing these texture swatches, is that sometimes we want to paint, we feel like painting, but you don't known exactly where to start or what to do. These little swatches are a nice weigh to get ideas flowing as you paint and as we paint because I don't know what I'm going to do yet, like I'm going to do with you. I'm just starting to do textures, however I feel, whatever comes to mind, and as we go along we might discover like, oh, there looks like this or this looks like it would look cool applied to this. I should mention that your final activity is going to be to paint an animal within context, maybe with nature, using different textures, as many textures as you can. I'll show you a little slideshow after this video so you can see what I'm talking about. But for now, what I want you to do is just concentrate on creating these textures. Also, it's fun to start playing around with color. Okay, so I'm finishing up this first texture here. It's cool, it's like very warm colors. I did it without any intention, without thinking of what it could turn into. But now that I look at it, it looks a lot like it could be either fish scales or maybe short bird feathers or something like that. I'm just starting to imagine what it could end up being later. The important thing is that you just start to create right now and start to practice your different color combinations and also just make up these textures here. As you notice with this first guy, what I did was just have some red, and some orange, and a little bit of purple here and just started mixing in different colors. But I always kept it with the same color scheme. That's going to be the first one. I'm going to start with maybe this blue one down here, which can be, I might want to do this one like a water theme. I'm going to do a very simple one. I'm just going to do a lot of different shades of blue with different dots. You'll see when I start to do it. It's like a nice activity to start thinking up of colors. I'm just going to show you real quick here. I just have a few different blues here that I had left over from something else. This is what I'm talking about when I say that you can really use your water colors over and over again. I have this deep blue here. I have this lilac blue here. I have some turquoise. That's really all I'm going to use. You don't really need too many colors. If you have like three base colors, you can mix and match and use a little bit of this in here sometimes and then it'll have a new tone to it so just like nice color practice too. All right, so I'm just going to start with this one. I'm going to contrast. I just did something very warm. I'm going to do something in cool colors now and I'm just thinking of water. Very simple texture, but it's really nice to get some practice and what I'm going to do is start painting little clusters like larger and smaller circles. Mixing, going with some larger ones here. If you guys did your pulse and precision activities in the first-class, this will be good practice for that too because you want to get pretty close to the next circle without having them touch. You can see that here in this area I'm doing pretty large circles and then as I go to another section, I'm going to have them get smaller. I'm not thinking too much about this. This is like super free. It's a super freehand activity. Don't obsess on if you're doing something right or wrong. Just go with the flow and do whatever comes to mind as long as it's a texture. I'm starting to get some smaller circles here. They were smaller here and now I'm just going to start to have them get a little bit bigger. There we go and I'm just going to continue doing this until I fill out the whole texture swatch. Again, this is a super simple texture, but it really looks cool once you finish it. I'll show you in a little slide show this painting I did once of, it's called koi fish. It's basically a bunch of fish and the whole background is just filled with these little circles and it looks really cool. Another thing I was going to say is that sometimes color really gives a painting an intention. What I mean by this is, just because this is in blue and cooler tones, it's making me feel like it's water. But what if we had a circle and we drew like brown and ocher dots like this. It would end up being something like a stone or a rock. Keep that in mind too. Whatever colors we use are going to end up being the intention that we want to give to a specific shape. Those are just side notes, don't think too much about right now. But I'm just saying that you can do so much with very simple shapes, very simple textures and one can get some really cool results. Okay, so I'm finishing up with my water color, I mean, my water texture. Again, this is a little pattern or texture or whatever you want to call it, that can be applied to different stuff, because I had a student once that did this and she applied it to a chameleon and all the little polka dots were different colors, and it looked so amazing. It was just awesome. Each little dot was a different color. It was all very rainbow sort of theme, but it just looked really cool. Just trying to say that doing these little activities can help us come up with new ideas so this is just a sweet little water-color one. It can also be like little stones or whatever you can imagine and now I'm going to start to do this guy over here. Now, I'm just prepping some colors for this next texture swatch. I just have some paints here. I'm just getting ready. I met this Montessori teacher in Miami this past April when I went to teach a workshop there. We were talking about these basic activities that children have with drawing, and he sparked something in me and reminded me of these very simple shapes. I'm going two show you what I'm going to do. It turns out really cool, and it's just basically very short lines. But they're going to give us sum really cool texture that can be applied to a lot of different things, especially if we're working with animals. You'll see what I mean in a sec. But what I'm going to do is just start drawing very, very tiny sticks like this. If you guys remember the pulls and precision activity, if you took the beginner's class, this is going back to that. It's also great practices if you want to work on these finer lines. What I'm going to do here is just grabbing some more color. I'm doing these little rows of sticks. They're super fine lines, very tiny lines. But if you're drawing some painting, I would say, some animal, these simple textures like this really give your painting something special. I would say, if you have a bear, for example, and you're doing fur, and you have a nice, brown background and maybe black lines like this will turn into a really cool texture. I'm just going to keep drawing these little sticks here, straight lines. Again, I can't repeat enough how intention really changes what you're painting. Once you know how to do or have ideas of how to do different textures, whatever shape you apply it to, or whatever colors you use, really change what this is going to be. In the slideshow that I'm going to show you, I'll put up some examples of where I've seen very, very simple textures applied to a cool shape and just turning into an amazing illustration. I think you guys can do you some really cool projects with this. I'm just finishing up the very last section of this pattern here. I think you'll see that it's a texture that can be applied to many different things. It looks really cool when you get close up or when you go far away. It makes it look like something fuzzy. I don't know, maybe thinking of fabric or even looks like a carpet when you look at it from afar like I am now. Just what I want you to do is start to look at all your swatches and start to imagine what it could be if you applied it to a certain shape. What I'm going to do now is little bit different. I'm going to do a Westerner, more like an Aztec pattern. This is going to be a little bit more structured. I'm going to think about it a little bit more. What I'm going to do is just start painting here. You guys remember all the pulls and precision stuff. This is really going to help you out here. There's a lot of triangles in these little patterns here. I call this one a pattern more than a texture, because it could be something that would be more repeat. It's a little bit more structured. But we're not going to get like super technical or anything, just go with your instinct. I might also limit myself to, I think I'm going to go with a red, or a brown, and maybe like ocher or a couple of different reds. As you can tell, this is just way more structured. If you take a look at my palette here, which is my pen set, you can start to see how I really like to mix a bunch of different colors. Sometimes someone will ask me, "What shade the did you use in this painting?" It's never a concrete answer, because I'd like to create my own colors, like my own combinations. I think that makes every painting look more organic. There's nothing like your specific combination. You just made up and you have on your palette. The great thing about watercolor is just keep using and using all of these. Here, I've got browns and here I have these warmer tones, blues, greens, and ends up just being that way. I'm just going to keep on working with this Aztec pattern here. Lot of straight lines and I'm going to do a thicker line here. We'll actually end up having patterns inside the pattern. Because I can take this line here, and then wait for it to dry, then do some little stick stuff here. You'll see as I go along. I just finished painting this little Aztec pattern. You can seen it's a lot more structured than the other ones. You can also use this as a background to something or as maybe part of a fabric or something like that. What I wanted to point out is you can even tell how within the same pattern or texture have more texture. For example, this little line here, it has a background and then another layer with little dots on it and just like fun stuff like that. Now, I'm going to continue and start painting another one. This is going to be more nature, more organic. I'm not really sure what I think it looks like right now, but I can imagine it being like a leaf texture or like maybe a snake. You let me know what you think when I'm done, but I'm not really thinking of a specific animal or object right now. I'm just having fun and that's what I want you guys to do too. Just experiment with different textures. Now, I'm going to use greens and browns, maybe. I'll start painting this guy over here. 4. Texture Swatches part 2: I'm just going to be very free. In case you hadn't noticed, I'm using my super thin brush. It's a one, you can use a zero. All this is for all this tiny texture. If you're using a bigger shape, you can use a bigger brush. I'm also going to show you in a bit how to use a bigger brush for bigger texture but whatever. Right now we are going to start doing this more organic texture. I'm just going to start painting these uneven circles that are going to be stuck next to each other. What I'm going to do is, I'd say they are like clusters. I don't know. This reminds me of either a reptile or those leaves that have a lot bumpy texture on them. You'll see what it starts to look like. What I'm going do is get some ocher green, start painting inside each one of these. I'm going to do this now so that you can see what I had in mind and then I'll continue with the rest of the texture. This is a very simple activity. The base of it is just basically having one layer of super transparent watercolor and then just going with it and painting on top of each one of these little blocks. Again, this is just for fun, just a warm-up exercise for experimenting. Feel free to do as many of these as you want. I'm just finishing up this texture right now. This is a way more organic texture. As we were filming, we started to notice how these look like a couple of different things. I don't know. Apart from that leaf texture I told you, imagine it in different colors without the stuff in the middle. It looks like bubbles that are all clustered together, or it can look like rocks, or some texture from nature. Another example of how when you apply color to something it'll change completely. I think this is a really cool texture and I'd like to apply it to something. I'm going to keep this one in mind for my final project which you will see later what I thought of. Remember, our final project is going to be painting an animal, so this is a cool activity to start figuring out what you're going to do. All right. For this guy here, I'm just going to do something a lot more simple. I'm just going to use some transparencies and this bigger brush. I think this is a number 10. Just go with the shape of the brush. I've got these sideways. I'm just noticing right now that these look like raindrops. Do you see that shape? I can imagine, if you had a larger brush, these could be like peacock feathers or something like that. It's nice to do some simple textures like this too because when you do your final painting, you're going to see how I really want you guys to work really hard on the project and have a bunch of texture everywhere. Sometimes your textures needs to be a little bit more simple and stuff like this calls for a lot. I just wanted to show you guys a really simple and fast texture you can do too. Also, if you had a smaller brush, for example, this is my three brush and just by the shape of the brush how you get a different shape too. This is also interesting to seen how different brushes can give you different shapes. I'm just dabbing my brush here. I don't know, right now that I see this, this is slanted but if you did it more upright like that, you could have a cheetah or something and have this be their own natural texture. Just experiment with the shapes of your brush too. If you guys have weird shaped brushes, try something out with that too. I know in the mixed media class I asked you guys to have a Filbert brush. Even that cloud activity is a texture. If you guys want to practices that, you can do that too. This is a really simple texture. All I did was slant my brush in different directions or hold it even in different angles. This is something very simple but I really like to do these activities too. I think what I'm going do now is, I'm going to go up here. Recently, I've been enjoying these, I think you would call it abstract figures. I started doing this because one day I was just trying out this color swatch that I had in mind, a color combination I was working on and I was just painting some dots and I ended up. I'm just going to show you what I did there. Here, this abstract textures is super free. See, this is that pink I told you that I'm really into, this Opera, Holbein. One of my LA students had this and she was saying how much she loved this color, and I'm, so do I. Just as a side note, this one actually does scan well as opposed to other neon watercolors I've tried. Product placement here is just something that I really like to use. I just have that circle there. Now, I'm going to paint really into these eight point stars right now. It's just fun stuff. Very free, super crazy star here. This texture here is just enjoying using your paints. I'm not even thinking of what's going next. I'm just doing random shapes around my paper here. I think it's pretty cool texture. A lot of lines, a lot of circles, a lot of geometric shapes. I'm just finishing up my abstract little texture here, gets super free, like just not knowing what you're going to paint next. I think it's cool. This is another type of texture. By now, we have this Japanese inspired one. We have these little very simple lines, very repetitive, but looks pretty cool. That's the Montessori one. This is the abstract when I did, this one ended up like sea life, but can be many different things. It's just basically big dots are different sizes of dots. Then here we have my Aztec pattern, and this is a really cool nature this is very simple just using different inclinations with your brushes. There's so much you can do. If you start to observe patterns in nature, there's like an infinite amount of swatches that you can make. For now, I think I'm going to finish this with MIT like an animal print here, something like thicker lines, might end up looking like a tiger or something like that. Then here I'll do mosaic here and then here I'll do the animal print. I'll just do a little mosaic one here with little geometric shapes. Now I'm going to start using different sized brushes too, so I'm going back to some warmer hues here, some warmer colors. I'm going to start to go into like oranges, and just a little bit of brown too. So this is very simple texture, but I think it looks pretty cool too. Remember, I taught you in the mixed media class how you should usually try and have two brushes handy in case you need to switch over, and here is my three and my 10. I'm going to fill up a larger space now, and I'm going to use my larger brush obviously. It's a little too close, but still good. So I just thought of a tiger stripe thing here, but if you think about it, you can use this texture for different stuff like word for example, and it's a nice texture to that stuff too. That's another example of what I was saying about how a color really gives whatever we are doing in intention. Just finished painting this texture here, which I feel it looks like an animal print, or can end up being like what texture, or if you were to do this in, let's say, different shades of blue, it could also work for something under the see or wave textures, I think it's a really pretty in symbol texture, and this can be applied to so many different things. For this last texture here, what I'm going to do is I'm going to paint, I think just a lot of tiny geometric shapes that can look like a mosaic in the end. I'm going to start to paint these, family call it a mosaic, or a tile texture maybe. It's not really anything in particular, but I think a student use this one's for like Aztecs or snake, it looks really cool. Again, as you have noticed, the pattern here is how all these different textures can be applied to different things like depends on what intention you want to give it. I known I'm saying that word a lot, but I really do mean it. Do you guys remember any of pulls and precision class, how we had this activity which was taking painting these little bars and one was like super next to the other, super close without touching? This is what is here, we want to get pretty close. Just finishing up my last facts here, and I just did nine different textures. I really want you guys to practices this a lot. Do nine, do 10, do 20, do as many as you want. This activity here is going to give you guys a lot of confidence to begin your ultimate challenge, or your actual class project, which is going to be painting an animal with textures. This is great practice, we're going to start getting all the ideas flowing. Again, I did here a Japanese inspired one, little tiny lines, I did an abstract one super nature inspired more of a Aztec patterned tiles, this can be zebra, tiger, or anything like that. I think I also did a few before for practice. I want to show you this one here, these can look like leaves write now because it's a green background and stuff. But what if this was placed on a bird? It could be a really cool texture for wings, for a bird, or just like there whole body like using different colors. Again, that this texture is really similar to the one I did here. But I use more like orange tones here, and it looks more like a tiger, and then here are all I did was changed it for browns, and I think it looks more like wood. Again, here's one similar to the little tiles I did there, but this is like warmer hues, here's a wood texture. So just like a bunch of stuff you can do, I think I also have a few little doodles I was doing this morning I'd like to show you. So is like trying out my textures using these looking like egg shapes or something. But I was just like playing around with different textures within one shape. You can do your swatches in whatever shape you want to, you can do like ovals or circles like this or you can do blocks like I did. So just like trying to show you the whole range of textures we can have. Use your imagination, use your creativity, try stuff that you think that will look cool if you stick to it, and the end, it'll look really cool because you're filling a whole section with a repeat move. What's going to happen now is that I want to show you a few images of artists and a couple of my pieces where I've seen textures just used in a very creative way. We're going to talk about that for a bit, and then we're going to just dive into our final project, which is going two be a big project, and it's going to be painting in animal using all the textures, and all this stuff. So practice this and I'll seen you in a bit. 5. Slideshow (Examples by Great Artists!): Hey class. Before we even start painting, I wanted to show you guys just a few artists that I really admire and I think they do a really, really good job at doing this whole watercolor texture thing. I'm going to focus on animals in this class, I think it's a really great way to apply textures. You, as well see, we can also do this in nature too, but animals, is it just a great way to start observing what textures with watercolors can look like. I'm going to show you this slide show. All these artists are amazing. I have some of my work at the end, but I'm going to show you a couple more just so like it's just not my work. I love all these artists, I bought prints from them. I'm going to put the links below so that you can check out there arts or bought stuff with you if you're into great artists. This first one is Michelle Morin.This artist does an amazing job with textures. I think I've never seen anything so detailed like this. If you if you observe her work, you can tell that she leaves no space without texture. Check out this first one with these birds and there's also some nature in here. Every single area is just has some texture to it. Check out these flowers that are all the way to the top left. It's even these really thin lines. You guys know how to do this, especially if you guys have taken the first-class. Remember when we did the pulls and precision exercises, all that stuff that we did is super important for this class too. It's a way to prepare you to be ready to be able to have all these really cool details. Again, just checkout even the flour that's all the way to the top-left, how simple is just these really straight lines? Then we start getting into the birds. Look at those textures on every bird, but every feather is different, see, so she has different rows of feathers and she mixes it up with each one. This is amazing work. I think she does a great job. You guys don't have to go super intense like this. She's a great artist. She's super detailed, but it's just an example of how cool something can look when we start layering our watercolors with textures. This is a great first example. I'm going to show you a couple more pieces. These whales are super cool too. I've always loved see life stuff too. I actually just ordered one of her prints last week. It's wonderful I'll show it on Instagram when it arrives. Check out how cool this painting is. It's a few whales lined up. She also thought of how to place them in a graphic way. They're not necessarily in their environment, but still super cool natural textures on these. The killer whale, even though she's using just black watercolor. I'm pretty sure she uses sum white ink too like we've done in the mixed media class. Again, I usually tend two refer to past classes just because I feel like what we're all working on here is getting collective knowledge together. If you guys want to know exactly about what I'm talking every time I recommend you take the first two classes. This is the third one. Again check it out. Even each barnacle has a separate little texture inside. I think this is just super beautiful work too. The last one I wanted to show you of Michelle's work. This bird here. This is a stork great. I'm pretty sure it's a stork. This guy, if you look closely at all these feathers in here, I love the way that she doesn't just repeat the same style of feathers she like really goes out of her way to think of a different textures. Again, no areas left without texture. I love that. I think she's just like the master at this. You can tell even the legs are super cool, they have those little bumpy texture. These three are Michelle's work. I think she's amazing. Again, the links are going to be below. You guys don't freak out too much. I known her work is super overwhelming because it's just so beautiful and so detailed. But we're going to slowly start to understand how textures work. The next video is going to be just a bunch of practice, so please bear with me don't freak out to much. I know her work seems very detailed. But you guys are going to start to understand textures a bit more as we go along. This next artist, her name is Janine. I discovered she is living in Mexico too, and I found her on Instagram. I really like her work too, because again, it's watercolors. She may use some wash too I'm sure. checked out this first cat hear. Obviously she has a super cool sense of color and also just her drawings are super cool. If you look up close this cat, the thing I love about textures is you can have very simple textures, in this case, it's a bunch of little short lines. But the direction in which the lines are heading really gives it a sense of how the natural fir would go. You can see how a little nose like that area, it's that little straight lines going up. If you take a close look at a cat, that's how it's fur, goes. Again super simple textures, but really committing to something and being like I'm going to really work on this and fill this up with textures. Basically, I see two big textures here. One is the tiger stripes, which is a larger texture and then she filled in all the other areas with the smaller short lines. Janine is great. She's an amazing artist. Here's another example of a cat I thought was really cute. Again, it's the same style, a lot of short lines. We're actually going to practices short lines in the next video, where we're going to start painting, where I learned that trick from a Montessori teacher that I met while teaching in Miami. How all the kids practice with really short lines in different directions. An example of a simple texture that can just look amazing depending on what direction you place your lines. Here's another one of her pieces I think is really cool because this bird is awesome because It's not necessarily the natural texture that a bird would have. It's like a little square, like tile style bird, different colors, you don't necessarily have to stick with the way nature goes. You can venture into more abstract forms or just a different way of looking at things. She does a bit of collage to wood. You can seen here too. Again, take a look at her website, everything's amazing. Her prints are beautiful. I thought that was interesting to look at too. Again, if you take a close look at the black feather for the wing, even that has some nice texture in it, which is more like real life wing feather and the little birdie feet. You guys can also use some of your white ink, if you guys took the mixed media class, you know what I'm talking about. That's a great way to do textures too. A couple of more from Janine, just, I wanted to show you more. I think this bird is pretty magic too. She has one bird inside the next. The reason I wanted to show you this is because not only is their texture within the animal, and I like that little white background, it's beautiful too. But check out the bottom part. We're going to practice this too. It's a reference from Japanese textures. It's very simple to make, and you can make it work on many different scales. If you notice the texture on the bottom. These just black lines over the turquoise is the same as the texture in the little tiny wing inside this purple bird, but it's just on a smaller scale. You guys will start to learn this stuff as we go along. Then this last hummingbird. Oh no, wait, we have one more from Janine. This hummingbird here, I thought was really cool too, I mean, just look at the use of colors, very simple lines. It's just simple textures, but the way you apply it is what really matters like the intention you give these lines and these dots. Again, she is a great artist, you guys would love her prints. This last one, I think this is really cool on these peacocks. I wanted to show you this because I love that texture that she has in the actual like peacock feathers, and I guess birds have tails this is like the cool part of a peacock. Also check out the tree. This is a beautiful texture too, I've never done it like she has here which is quite over black, I usually do a mix of browns when I do trees. But again, I mean, look how beautiful it is. If you guys took the first-class, you practice a lot of polls and precision with your fine lines, and like your straight lines and then your curvy lines. Again, you're going to start to discover how all this practice you guys have been doing is very useful once you apply it to an actual object, you give an intention to whatever you practiced. I say that word a lot, but I really do mean it. Then again, very simple texture in these little leaves, and flowers is just all circles and lines. It all depends on what you're painting. The next artist is Holly word. She has her actual like artist's name is Gally Bird, really cool bird. I discovered her because we have a licensing client in common. That client one time sent me little green card with her work on it, and I thought it was so beautiful I even had it framed and it's up on my wall. Holly is super cool too, I'd like her because she paints a lot of like reptiles, and insects, and that stuff. Take a look at this snakes, they're very cool. It's like that we're looking at these textures again, remember that one that I said that was like the Japanese style one, and it's just a bunch of half circles, one on top of the other. Again, I'm saying intention is the most important thing here. If you place this texture on a fish, it's a whole another thing. But reptiles are great with this texture too. I think this snakes are super cool. Again remember all the links are going to be here, you guys can checked out their websites, there at c shops. I love how she paints insects because I think insects are great subject matter for what we're going to do here with textures. There's just so much going on with insects if you go super close, I mean, even in the wings, check out that super tiny, I mean, you guys need to use a triple zero brush for this. But if you practices enough, you can really start to work with like super detailed lines like this. These butterflies are so cool too, I mean. She plays around with antennas, they look like little plants too. I just think it's very creative. She has a really nice use of color too, a lot of like earthy tones. Again, more examples here, see how the wings, it's again lines, but they're just in different directions. Obviously it's a lot of work, it's a lot of detailed work. But if you really stick to it and commit to a project, you guys are going to end up with something amazing. I thought this bat was very awesome too. Check out the texture in his body, it's more of a realistic like fairy texture, and then the wings have all these like very thin lines. You guys can observe nature and just see what you guys can play off of that. I think she's great too. Everything she paints is super detailed like this, and you guys are really could to enjoy her work. Next we have RiverLuna, you guys have probably seen her before. She is amazing. Hi, Marissa if you're watching, I know you are going to check out one of the classes, although I think you're the master already, you're great watercolor artists of course. RiverLuna, her name is Marisa Redondo. I love her style because she paints these watercolors. She may use wash too, I'm not sure. But look at these textures, they're much more graphic, you could see a little bit more, I don't know if simple, but I think the word would be graphic. Check out, for example this owl here. Even though the little heart in the tiny white, these tiny white feathers here and how she uses triangles around the face. I mean, that's why I say it's a little bit more graphic, they look really cute. I mean everything she does is beautiful, I have a bunch of prints on my wall too. Look at these little triangles here, this bear is amazing. She did this moon in the back which you guys can mix. We known what we did in the very first class, the space that's a texture too. You guys can integrate something with that in some other texture. See how she has that moon, which is more like a real life texture, and then she has much more simple graphic textures on the bear and on the feathers. Again, a lot of lines, a lot of triangles, a lot of simple stuff that really looks cool once we come in to it. One more from RiverLuna here. You guys that did mix media class. If you haven't, I really would like you to because it's great for you guys to have all this background knowledge. Guys, white ink over watercolor is beautiful. I mean look at these beautiful details here. I love what she does around the eyes, these little dots, it's so pretty. Please take a look at her shop too I mean, you guys are going to fall in love with her prints. I already have a bunch of them in my artists wall. Then I'm going to show you a couple ones that I've painted. I chose different styles of paintings that I've done just to show you a variety. This first one, this jellyfish here. First texture is actually the back, so see if you guys have taken my other classes, you know that we can use salt too with watercolors, and it looks super cool. We get these more natural textures, and what I did is just paint the background, and then add a little bit of salt, wait for that two dry, and then I grab my white ink or acrylics and just started painting over that. I really want you guys to look at the bottom part here. See the solar like coral textures in under the see stuff. I mean this rock here on the left it's just a bunch of circles next to each other. But again, I'm going to say this again once you give something intention, it really turns into something different. That's a great example of like simple textures to apply to something specific. This is whiting over watercolor. This is my cat prints. So as you can see, I just did this portrait for fun. I don't usually paint animals like this, but I felt like painting him and see. I used this more natural texture on his little fur. What you would do with if you guys took the mixed media class, you know how did the clouds with that filter brush. But this would be a round brush, so I wouldn't get those necessarily those circle shapes. I just dabbed some watercolor around these brown areas, waited for it to dry. It's just a bunch of layering with transparencies and stuff. His fur is more like a natural texture. Whereas I used a more like a pattern texture in the background with these gray triangles and stuff, a tribal thing here. Also even like the flowers in the wreath have and texture, have some thin lines. Another one I did was this parrot here, I mixed. Here's another example of wood, when I paint wood it's usually a brown. Just had like a very transparent layer of brown you can seen in here that like the little piece of wood where he's standing is a transparent brown, very watered-down, and then you waited for that to dry and add texture later with a lot of lines. Again it's basically just straight lines in just take changing directions. I just did this part with the watercolor and some white ink. Birds are great for this class because I have all the different feathers, and textures, and stuff. Lastly, I painted this coefficient a while ago. It's very different from the stuff I usually paint, but it's a great example of how, like see those big dots in the water, just by making them blue, it just changes the whole thing and it looks like it's underwater. Within each fish, they all have their separate textures too. Again, all I wanted you guys to see is just examples of different stuff we can do, what I mean by textures with watercolor because there's many different types of textures. But in this case, we're going to work on like more control textures. We're going to work on layering. What we're going to do next is we're going to start to practice check textures. I mean, just relax and don't get too overwhelmed with all this different information or visual stuff. You guys can see how you guys will start to develop your very own style. Please I do not encourage copying, so please don't copy anything that you just saw, I just wanted to show you guys references of some super cool artists that are out there. Grab your pens, and let's get started. 6. Choosing Colors for Your Project (BONUS material!): Okay class, we just did a little bit of practice with some watercolor textures. We did this through layering, and a little bit of creativity. Now, before we move on to our final activity which is going to be illustration, I want you guys to do something like an animal with an environment. Think of what I showed you in the slideshow, not necessarily copying that, I don't like anyone copying anyone else's work, but just see how much you can do. You can do something super amazing with all these textures. I already drew out what, my drawing is going to look like, what my illustration is going to look like using very, very soft pencil. I'm using my larger watercolor paper, it's nine by 12 inches, that's the size that I like, and I was going to show you something. I think I could call it a little bonus segment. Before I paint a large illustration like this, I don't want to think of colors first. It's very easy to go into a project, and just be like, 'oh, the rainbow, I will use every single thing I have'. That can be cool, that can be like a specific style, but I like to keep it not controlled, but figure out what kind of colors you want to use too. I'm going to show you quickly what I would usually do before starting a large project like this which is going to be like a full illustration. The reason I have these smaller pads too is to do this kind of stuff like what we did a while back, here's the one we did in the first video. Also, I like these practice watercolor pads to test out colors too, so, this is what I would call my color swatch. I'm going to test out some different color combinations, I'm really into ochres, I really like windsor newton ocher. I have some of that through this tube set here on this palette, and I'm going to start out with that. I'm just going to do little color tests here. When I do this, I always have a few different types or levels of transparency. For example, I have this one which is little more concentrated and then I'm going to use the same color here, and just have a lighter one next to it. Again, I'm just playing around now, but I usually do this automatically, and I thought it might be interesting for you guys to see how I choose colors or what the process is behind, thinking of your final illustration. I really like how this deep turquoise is. Again, I'm just going to use the same one but with more water. These activities are fun too, because you're not really thinking too much. You're just letting what feels natural happen. I'm into this right now. Something that I really like to do too is, let's say I have this ocher as a base, I'm going to use some of this blue that I used for this, and mix a little bit of that ocher into it, and see what color I get here. It's like a dirty layer. There we go. I talk about this a lot in all my classes, and it's like, make up your own colors. Sometimes when I upload something on Instagram, I might get a comment like, "Oh, what color do you use there ''? There's never really a straight forward answer, because you can tell how everything starts to mesh and blend in together. I just mixed these two, and got a really cool olive green here, which is normal because obviously, I know that some yellow and some blue are going to give me some green. When you start mixing all the colors together, you're really going to get a nice color combination, nice cohesive look. I think this one looks cool too. It's more like a brownish, same ocher, but I had some more of paint leftover on my palate, so, I think when you, I would call it like dirty up your paints, you'll get more of a sophisticated look to it. All I'm really doing now is filling the colors, filling what I'm going to be into, as I move forward to my final painting. At this point, it was starting to feel like how maybe the rocks, like these rocks, this starfish, the coral, that kind of stuff is going to be, like these brown's, these ochres. I might use this green for a seaweed background, I'm just filling out the colors right now. For example, I always want to use hot pink, it's something that I'm super obsessed to it, but sometimes it doesn't go with everything, so, I might try it first, like right now I just tried this here, and I'm not too sure if it goes with this whole thing I'm working with, so, I might leave that out. What I'm going to do now is, work towards the bottom here. What I'm noticing now is, these brighter happier colors doesn't go too well with what I had going here first. I'm going to keep it more ocean, earthy, kind of concept. Again, I'm going to grab some purple that I had here, and mix it with some of that turquoise that I used in the beginning, so, I'll get deeper purples like this. I think this goes better with this instead of this pink. So try out your colors first. If you're going to do a complete illustration like this, where we are going to work really hard on a final outcome, I always recommend testing out whatever colors you are going to use first. Let me get some more green here, I'm liking this combination here, I think I'm going to stick with it. My fish might be like these greens, and blues, and then I'll have rocks with these colors, and see what else comes from it. I think I'm going to avoid really bright reds, and stuff. I think I'm just going to go with these tones for now. Maybe this ocher with a little bit of yellow can work. Yeah, that might look good too. This might be a cool color for a starfish. This is something that I would do usually before starting a big project. It's just playing around with color. When I look at this, the pink, I'm not sure I want that in this, so, I might leave that out, and just keep it with other tones. Just a little bonus video for you guys here, you guys can feel free to do this if you want, or you can skip it if you want to. It's not necessary, but it's a nice activity to warm up, and get the feeling of what you're going to paint. Now, we're going to go on to the final project. 7. FInal Project: Final project. You guys have practiced textures, you guys have figured out what kind of colors you want to use, you guys know all about transparencies by now. Make sure your pencil markings aren't too dark because once you paint with watercolor over your pencil it's hard to erase it, so just be mindful of that. Here I have this drawing, I have bigger simple shapes here. I have these big rocks, I have this like coral here, I have this large fish. I wanted to do something like this, I just chose sea life because that's what I felt like doing, but you guys can do anything you want. You can do a tiger, or you can do a bear, whatever you want. Just make sure that you use texture within your animal painting. Our first step here is going to be doing our first layer which is going to be a more watery paint. The same thing we did with the first activity, but we're actually going to apply it to touch or shapes now. I'm going to start by getting my watery ocher paint here and start painting in these shapes here. Remember you need the first layer to be pretty watery, pretty transparent because then you're going to paint over it with all of your cool textures that you guys have already practiced. You can even mix a little within this first shape here. I just grabbed a little bit of some brown that I had, playing around from my color swatches. Basically, this part of our illustration I'd say it's the more simple part, we're just really going to fill in all these shapes with nice transparent watercolors. Those we're a little bit too much paint, but that's okay because it's still wet, so I'm going to grab some water. I'm using my larger brush right now because I have these larger shapes, so I don't really need to get into smaller spaces. I painted this first shape here. If you guys took my watercolor and mixed media class, I spoke a lot about painting in different sections when we do watercolor. Remember you guys, if we want to paint a shape that's next to this one we need to let this guy dry completely before we can even get started with this. Instead of just sitting and waiting around for this one to dry, the obvious move would be to go somewhere else and start painting another shape that's further away, so that we can just keep going. I'm going to do that here, I have a little bit of ocher left here. I'm actually going to mix it with some of this mauve paint that I had around here. I'm into this ocher paint right now like a burnt yellow. I just grab some of that and now I'm mixing it with this mauve paint that I had on my palette. For me, it's really important to make up your own color combinations. I feel like the more you mix, the more you make them your own. I don't want to say sophisticated, but it just looks more unique. Color is super important for me, and from what I have seen with all my other Skillshare students, or if you're one of my repeat Skillshare students I've noticed that you guys are super into color too, so I'm going to talk about that a bit. I have a smaller space to fill in here, I actually messed up a little bit. Remember if you're watercolor paint is still wet, you can just stab it with some paper like that and it'll lift up off your paper, just a little trick we've done a bit here. I'm just using my smaller brush for these tinier areas, I'm going to grab some of this leftover ocher paint. Now I'm going to do something with these little guys here. Again, I'm not trying to reference the beginner's class too much, but it really does have a lot of valuable lessons in it. If you haven't taken it, at least go back and check out the first lessons, because what we're going to do now is what we did with Paulson precision and I'm going to show you guys that here, it's a perfect example of it. A little bit of Paulson precision practice over here. What I'm going to do with these little guys is paint one next to the other, remember leaving a very small gap between each shape. I'm just painting very closely to the next object. These are just tools that I've showed you, and I always remember to point them out whenever they come up. I'm just going to keep continuing with all this first layer which is going to be a lot of different transparencies here. I'm going to use a very watery color, because then I'm going to paint over it with my textures. You do this too, whatever shape you decided to do, whatever animal you decided to do. Make sure your first layer is something like this, where you can do a lot of filling out the shapes with watery paint, so that then you can apply your textures over that. I'll just going to point out that my little color swatches here have started to dry and they look pretty cool. Now that I look back at this pink, I don't dislike it that much. I might add it in a little detail like this little coral or something. All right. I'm just going to keep painting and I'll be back with you when I'm done with this part so that we can start our textures. [MUSIC]. I just finished painting my first layers of this watercolor illustration. As you can see, it's like looking pretty flat right now, like watery layers. I didn't want to go too concentrated because what I'm going to do now is start to paint textures over all of these shapes that I have here. What I was going to say is that right now is a good time to erase any pencil markings you have. It's pretty dry by now. I'm pretty sure it's dry in every section, so you can just go with your eraser and whatever you didn't get in your painting you can still erase, so it look cleaner. I always like to clean up my painting as I go along. I'm done cleaning this up. I'm just going to show you what this looks like compared to the colors I have chosen, so it's pretty much alike. It's just like a nice reference, like what you know what the feeling is going to be like, you don't have two do this, but I enjoy it. Just a tip, if you want to do it, you can do it. If you don't, you don't have to. But what I'm going to show you now is our next step, which is like for me, it's the funnest part and I'm just going to go back to what I did in the first video. These textures, they can really help us out to figure out what we're going to do with these. For example, I can see that this would look cool on one of these rocks with different colors maybe, or even this will look cool on one of these rocks, and I'm really into this texture here. I might do something like this over here. I'm just going to start painting and you guys can seen what happens as I go along. Remember whatever you guys are painting at home the basic thing here to remember is get some textures going, get inspiration, and then draw your animal figure with whatever you want to do around it, you can do it like inside a frame or with its own like little ecosystem here like I did. Then just apply whatever textures. I'm just going to start painting now. I think I'm going to start with this one here like that. What I'm going to do now is just get some paint, but I'm going to have it be a little bit more concentrated this time, just say like I'll get a little bit more contrast. If the paint is too watery when I do my second layer, it'll still work but you won't see it as much, so I want to get some darker paint here. I'm just going to do what I did here and I'm going to do it here right now. It's a great way to show you how something very simple can be very significant once you give it an intention. Again, I'm saying that word intention, but that's what it is. It's just basically figuring out what it can look like and just giving it some life. I'm just going to keep painting this and then we'll move on to a next one. I'm just finishing up this texture here. I'm going to show you this again. I just saw something I'd practice here, and I thought it might look cool on these bigger rocks. I did that and I just did some different colors, and I think it's like what I've been saying since the beginning, like how you can have a texture and it can be very random, not have form, but once you give it a shape and intention, colors, everything together, really makes it be something. I'm going to keep on doing textures here, I'm going to do some more simple ones. For example, for this coral here, I might do like just some little straight lines that will go around it. I might do some polka dots here, something like this maybe. I like this for one of these blocks. So I'm just going to continue with this. Keep watching, keep observing. We'll talk more once I finish these textures hear. As you can see, I've been painting away and all these different rocks, and some coral. I just wanted to point out that I've been doing super simple shapes. If you've noticed this just basically lines and dots. Circles, lines, dots. I'm just doing something super simple, but I've said it a million times, and I think also it again, but once you just give an intention to your lines, your dogs, it turns into something like super cool. Right now, I'm going to keep doing this. What I really want you guys to take away from this class is that I want you to commit to something like have a full illustration in mind, have something that you want to do. In this case, we're trying to focus on painting an animal with its environment. Just because it's like a really great example of where we can have all these different textures, and I wanted to do this one live with you because I wanted you to seen how it's nothing extremely complicated, it's just really adding detail until you're painting looks very complete like it looks like a work of art. On a side note, for those of you who are really into the white ink, and if you took the watercolor and mixed media class, you'll remember the white ink. You guys could also mix in some white ink or white paint with this. For example, this little guy here that turned a little too dark. You can also mix in like painting white ink over these details or you can do maybe like some white ink in here if you're up for it, like if you're into it. It's not necessary. It's just like something that came to mind that I sometimes do too. Feel free to use your wet ink if you're into that too. Again, the starfish is nothing but lines and dots, but it's in a certain shape, it's in a certain context. It really ends up looking cool when it's all together, all these different textures. To fill these little guys out here. I'm going to start with this fish. I'll probably do something like this, maybe a little simpler. Here with the like the fish scales. I might do sum lines for the fins. I'll start to seen what comes to mind. Remember, I'm doing all of this and all this details obviously with my thinner brush. Remember, the larger your space is, the larger your brush can be. In this case, I'm doing tiny details around all of these shapes that already had. I mean, just go back to a while ago when I didn't have all the texture in this, yet. Just how much it's changed with the symbol, dots, and lines and whatever the whole thing had been seeing full-time. I really can't wait to see what you guys come up with. I've had students that have done everything they've done like pet portraits, they've done birds. Birds are big because painting feathers is super fun, like some of the ones that you saw in the slideshow. Those are great examples of how much texture bird can have. But really feel free to do whatever you guys have in mind. I mean the whole objective of this is just do go all out with these textures. If you notice, I'm not leaving won shape without texture. I think I'm going to do something with this and a bit too. Just really commit to your illustration something like this. I'm doing a bit faster write now because we're taping the video. But I wouldn't usually take a couple of days on this and take breaks and come back. They're really fun to do. I'm just going to start with scales on this guy. Then I might do some smaller ones here. Then I think I'll do some lines for these fins. Yeah, stay with me. I think I'm almost done. I'm just going two do these fish and I might do some green seaweed in here and I'll be done. It is fish time. Period. I'm just finishing up the paintings, almost done. I decided to add some last minute seaweed here. Super transparent paint, like a lot of water, not too much paint, just some final details. Again, what I really want to emphasize here is how you can do something that looks super complete, it really looks like a final illustration, like a work of art, like a piece. If you really commit to something and just go for it. Notice how I didn't leave any single space without texture. This stuff really lifts up the whole painting. It really makes it pop. I might keep working on a little bit more of this seaweed here. What I want from you guys is for you to make your own masterpiece. Think up of any animal you like there. I mean, you can do insects, you can do birds, you can do cats. You can do like a bunch of animals and have them be in there natural habitat. You can do like a terrarium and may be link some insects inside, I don't know, whatever you guys feel like doing. But the important thing for me hear is that you guys start doing some textures, practices this. Then eventually whatever you do here, will translate into a final painting like this. Again, this is the same as this, except for here, I had shapes, I had an intention. I wanted it to be in a certain environment. I think you can achieve that with very simple lines, very simple circles. Just using your brain a little bit and thinking of what would look cool. I'm excited to see everyone's projects. This is super fun activity that can work for everything else too. For example, if you're painting cactus or just plants in general, all of this nature stuff has a bunch of texture in it. It's a lot of the times it's just lines and circles and dots. It depends on what direction therein. Where you place them. That'll make it look like something totally different. I'm excited to see everyone's projects and I'll see you next time.