Watercolour Portrait From A Photo Using 3 Tones

1. Introduction: Hi, welcome to my studio. My name is Nadia and I'm a professional analysts living and working in Berlin. In this class, we're going to create an expressive portrait in watercolor based on a photograph using only three tones. Using a very limited palette simplifies the painting process, which is great for those just starting out. But for experienced painters at coarser leaves the possibility of getting super creative with it and seeing how much you can do with just three tons. The more elements there are to keep in mind, the more challenging the painting process. So working with more cows means it's more complex to figure out how and where to use them. This is why I've simplified the step and this class by using only three tones, which we will mix before painting. My main area of work is in portraiture. And even though I had painted for years, it was always usually an oil. And I loved the technique of watercolor, but it took me some time to really get a grip on it. I think it really clicked for me when I stopped worrying about how it was going to turn out and enjoy the process. I will take you through the materials, will need show you how I set up my workspace and how to choose and edit your image. Then I'll talk to you about the colors we will use and how to mix them. We'll also look at one very simple way to transfer you image onto paper using a light source. But if you prefer, you can also use the grid method or sketch freehand. If you want to learn more about the grid method, you can check out the lesson on transferring the image of my class watercolor portrait from a photo for my class painting expressive eyes with watercolor of 30 day challenge. Once we have our sketch on the paper, we will see how to start painting by applying the first layers, also looking at the various elements of the face and building up a painting slowly, layer by layer. Among other things, you will need paper, paint, brushes, watercolors, graphite pencils, and the pellet. I've included a lesson to talk about the basic notions of watercolor, as well as how to get your sketch on paper in a really simple way. So I think that this class can really be for all levels of skills from beginner to professional. You don't have to have any experience with portraiture or watercolor. If you're just starting out, working with a very limited palette is perfect because it means less focus on which color goes where. More focused on how to actually paint the portrait. By the end of this class, you will have at least one watercolor portrait and three tones. And maybe have surprised yourself at your results and how fun it can be. I really hope you join me for this class. And I would love to see your projects comments and reviews. 2. The Project & Materials: Hi and welcome. In this lesson, I'm going to be telling you about what we're going to be doing in this class. And also about the materials that we're gonna be using will be making a watercolor portray using a photograph as a reference, and using only three tons. And we will mix these before we begin painting. We'll also be using graphite pencil as a tool to help us get expression and contrast and they're painting, but not too much. The aim of this class really is more to create an expressive portray rather than a hyper-realistic one. I find expression to be much more important than getting a likeness of the photo, the stage, and not worrying about this would definitely make for a more relaxed experience. It's also important to have fun and enjoy the process. I'll be showing you how to build up the facial structures, volume, and contrast by working in layers, making sure we're always working with translucent washes. Painting with watercolor for me has a lot to do with using brushstrokes and colors intuitively. But I do realize that this may be hard to do when you're just starting out. So that's why I suggest as a good way to practice to work on two or more paintings at one time. Said that you don't feel the pressure of having to get a good result. Maybe have one that you treat with more precision while the other one you work on more freely and playfully. You can even use the drying times for this, so it doesn't necessarily have to take double the time to paint two. Okay, So let's have a look at the materials we're going to need. First of all, when need watercolors, I'll be using tubes, but you can use whichever form you prefer. The talus, we'll need our burnt sienna, crimson, red, ultramarine blue, Prussian blue, and ivory black. Then we'll also need watercolor paper, at least 300 GSM, so that it doesn't buckle. And I like to use fine-grain and will need watercolor brushes. I usually like to have three on hand once more, one midsize and one large one. We'll also need a pallet to mix that callosum. As I said, we'll be using graphite pencil for some details. So make sure you have one. Hb is the one I'll be using. And also make sure you have an eraser will need masking tape to tape the paper to the table or the board against that doesn't walk, will also need two containers with water. One is for cleaning the brushes and ones for adding water to our colors so that the colors don't end up getting dirty. And then we'll also need kitchen roll or tissue paper to absorb extra pigment or water from my brushes or from our paper if we make a mistake. Alright, so once you have your materials together, come join me in the next lesson where we will have a look at how to find your image 3. Finding & Editing Your Reference Image: Hello and welcome. In this lesson, let's have a look at how to find an image for our portrait. There are a couple of free to use image sites that I like to use, my favorites or an splash and pixels. But you can also take a look at free book or any other sites that you may discover. Of course, you can also source your image from your own archives. And I'll be commenting on what to look out for when choosing your image and just a moment. So first let's have a look at pixels. You can see I've typed in portrait photography and the search box, and it gives me some nice high-quality images here. It's a pretty easy interface, so maybe you'll find a picture here that inspires you. I like to make a folder on my desktop and collect images that inspire me before I make a definitive choice. And flesh is much the same. You can access the site via browser or also by downloading the app. I really liked the site and I found many inspiring images to use as a reference here when searching, I recommend using portray photography or photographic portrait because I've found that this renders more professional looking images with nice and light conditions. Then if you just type in portray or nice, things I recommend avoiding for this class would be photos in which hair or other objects cover the face. Glasses, sunglasses, strong shadows are unnatural lighting, closed eyes and hands, open mouths and open mouth smiles where you can see the teeth. And here are the things we do want. Clear front-facing or mainly front-facing images with a good light and shadow balance, panel variety and a quiet background. If you do want to paint a portrait that tends towards being an profile, I recommend you choose when we're both sides of the face and still visible. If you choose an image of a torso which needs to be cropped, remember to maintain the ratio of your paintings. So say you want to paint 30 by 40 cm, the image ratio for cropping should be three to four. Also makes sure that image has a high enough resolution so that you can still clearly see the features in terms of the phase once it's cropped. Okay, so say you've decided on an image, you click on it and you can see here the Download Free button. And it gives you the option of which size you can download them. I recommend always going for the original size because it tends to have the highest resolution, then you can save it to your desktop or designated folder. And I recommend giving it a name that you'll remember so you can find that easily when you need it. So this is the reference image that I've chosen. And as you can see, it's a torso that will need to be cropped. Also, as I'm going to work with only three tones, I'm going to work from a black and white reference because that way I am looking more for the toner varieties and colors and net will simplify the process for me to work with my tones. For the editing, I'm just going to be using the editing functions of my iPhone today. So no need to use any other software than the one on your phone. First I go to saturation and adjusted to -100 so that the image becomes a black and white image. Then I use the crop tool to adjust the size. Then I'm just going to adjust, brighten the shadow contrast and highlights to make the image a little more high in contrast. And I recommend that you adjust it so that the contrast is high enough to make it very clear where the highlights and shadows or without going over the top. I'm pretty sure most phones have photo editing options these days. So even if you don't have an iPhone, this shouldn't be a problem. And this is my final edited image to give you an idea. If you want, you can also have a color image on hand while painting. It might inspire you, but if you feel like it confuses you and makes things more complicated, just work with the edited monochrome photo. You have several options of getting your sketch onto your paper. One being the grid method, sketching freehand or using a light source. And we will be covering how to use a light source and the next lesson. Just a couple of comments for the sketch, you'll see that I've done my drawing in pencil and it's really important to mark and obviously the features like the eyes, the nose and the mouth, and the hair, but also mark for ourselves the areas where you want to reserve some lights, for example, here on the cheek or here on the nose, and also indicate where the dark areas are going to go. So that would be over here. I've pressed down quite hard with my pencil so that you can see it properly. But I suggest that when you do this, you just try and keep it quite light so you don't have to erase the pencil marks afterwards. Once you're ready, let's move on to the next lesson to look at the workspace setup and the colors 4. Sketch & Basic Notions of Watercolour: Alright, so I'm going to show you one way of getting your sketch onto paper, which is using a light source. So that would be anything like a light table or you can even try it on your window or on a glass table with light underneath. Basically you're going to see the image shining through from underneath your paper. So I'll show you how that works. Okay, so here we have our light source and I'm just going to switch that on now. Alright, because you can see can make it more or less luminous. I'm going to try and get the maximum light going so that I can see my image quite well. Then the first thing you need to do is place your reference image on the light source. And I'm just going to fix it down with some masking tape just at two ends so that it doesn't move while I'm sketching. And I'm going to place my paper over the top. And as you can see, you can see the image underneath really well. So depending on how thick your papers, this is going to vary, but usually it really does work quite well. I'm also going to fix my paper on top of the reference image again with masking tape. And then I'm just going to start sketching. So I'm trying to indicate to myself what I'm going to paint later. The more information I give myself in the sketch, the easier it's going to be for me when I start to paint. I'm trying to get in the features like the eyes, the nose, and the mouth. And I'm also trying to get in the highlights and the darker areas, shadows. I'm outlining these areas for myself. As you can see. Obviously there are a few different ways in which you can get your image onto your paper, such as the grid method that I referred to in the intro or sketching freehand. But I find that using a light source is by far the simplest way to get your image onto your paper. And then it ends up looking a little something like this. Now, let's just have a look at some very basic notions of watercolor. And for that, we're just gonna do a couple of exercises. And the first one we will do is just painting wet and dry. So that means wet paint on dry paper. So basically we're always working with translucent layers because if we make the layer of pack, It's really hard to work on it afterwards. And you can see this would be too much pigment. You can see that the water doesn't really shine through anymore. And so none of the other colors will shine through in the end, we don't want that. We want all the colors to start shining through as we build our layers. Now let's try painting wet on wet. So I'm just going to wet my paper with some clean water and then I will get my pigment. I'm using yellow ocher here. And I will just start painting. And you can already see how the paint behaves a lot differently to painting on dry paper. So you always have more control painting wet on dry and wet on wet. But I find that wet on wet gives you a little bit more creative freedom because you relinquish control to some degree. So I, I quite enjoy painting wet on wet sometimes. Now let's try, let's see what happens when we just inject a little pigment. And for that, I'm just going to use a little bit of crimson. And I'm just wetting my paper and I'm just going to inject a little bit in here and you can see how the paint just kinda starts to expand. That can be really effective when you use it in your painting. I'm gonna put down a layer of yellow ocher. I want to see what an overlay looks like and you can see that's a little too much pigment. I'm just going to add a little more water and spread the pigment around. And I'm just going to let that dry and then I'm going to try and overlay the meantime, let's go back to the Kremlin. And I'm just going to try smoothing out some edges. So I'm going to apply my paint. And then you clean your brush, dry it on some tissue paper. And then with the kind of moist brush, you can just go over those edges and just smooth them out. Don't dry your brush too much. So you can see how you can just have really crisp edges like these ones or you can have really smooth edges. Now let's try removing some pigment. So again, I'm going to use my crimson and I'm just going to make a little bit of a circle like this. And then cleaning and drying my brush, I can just lift up pigment. As you can see in-between lifting up pigment, I'm just cleaning and drying my brush again. Another way to lift up pigment. So for example, if you make a mistake or you want to lift up all the pigment is with your tissue paper. Again, I'm applying some paint here and then I'm just going to lift it up with my tissue paper. You can see it hasn't lifted at completely. But if you would apply a little more water, then it doesn't always remove the pigment in its entirety. But there's quite effective if you make a mistake and you notice right away, often you can control the damage before it gets too out of hand. Now one thing about your brushes, never put them face down into your water. I've ruined a couple of brushes that way because then the bristles will just separate and then you can't really use your brush anymore. Let's try a graded wash. For that. I'm going to use my crimson again. And graded wash means just basically that there's more pigment in one area than another. So I've added some pigment here. I'm can inject a little more. And then with a clean, not completely dry brush but dryer brush, I'm just going to start fading it out towards the bottom and just add a little water to the bottom here. And then we'll see how that expands and gradually fades out. Can remove a little water here so that it doesn't expand too much. Now that the yellow ocher as dry at the top here, I'm going to try and overlay. I'm going to just put a circle next to it and be careful not to move your brush too much over this part here, because otherwise, you'll just lift up the pigment of the yellow ocher underneath. So that's another really important thing to remember when you're layering different colors on top of each other, the first layer should always be dry before you start on the second one because otherwise it's just going to mix. Another important thing is when you're painting, you want to be making these kinds of movements if possible. So long controlled, calm movements. You want to avoid making kind of staccato brushstrokes, wispy brushstrokes. Sometimes it's appropriate. But the reason you want to focus more on the long controlled brushstrokes is that they give you more control over your paint. So when possible, just remember that long controlled brushstrokes will make it easier for you. Okay, so I recommend you have a play around with those heavily practice at all the different techniques. Get acquainted with your brush and paint. And when you're done, Let's move on to the next lesson and see how we set up our workspace 5. Workspace Set Up & Colours: Now that we have the drawing on the paper, Let's take it down to the board or the surface that we're working on. What the taking down of the drawing is going to do is when we are working with watercolor, the paper as likely to buckle as it's not taped down. So that's what we're trying to prevent. Just make sure that's all nice and tight. Okay. So before we begin, I just wanted to quickly look again at how we set up the workspace. So you can see I've got my work type down here. I've got my palate to the riot. I've already put in my colors. In the second. I've got my test strip. This is always good to just test out colors on. I have my clean water. I've got two jars and one I will be cleaning my brushes and the other one that I'll be using to wet the color. Then I've got my brushes over here. I have one very large 11 lead 1.151. And then obviously I have my reference image, but she wouldn't be saying, but it's always to the left here. So let's go into the colors. The colors I will be mixing today. People shadow, coffee, brown, and blue. Luck. Okay, so let's start by just mixing those colors. So I'm going to make my coffee brand. That's looking pretty good. We can always just test it on the test strip. That's looking good. I'm just going to change brushes. I'm mixing my crimson. And then I'm going to put the ultramarine blue. That's very powerful. And if you want, you can add in a little bit of the bent Sienna. Let's see. I think it's a little bit too blue for me. I'm just going to add a little bit more. The chromosomes. Make sure your brush is clean before you dive into a different color. Okay, let's just test it on the test strip. Quite like the color, but I feel like it's not intense enough. So I'm just going to add more pigment to this because I can always delete it later. But it's just annoying when it's just very, very light wash and let's try that again. Yeah, it's a little more intense. Okay. So now for the last color that the blue black. So I'm starting with a blue. It's getting a little bit of that pigment in this compartment. It a little bit of water in the brush and add a little bit of ivory black. There's gonna be a little bit more. That's looking pretty good. Okay, so I'm happy with those kalos. So when you're ready, come and join me in the next lesson where we will stop putting on the first layer 6. Working on the First Layer: Hello and welcome. In this lesson we are going to be starting to work on the first layers. And I am going to start with my medium brush, that's in my case number ten. I am going to start by outlining and identifying areas such as the eyes, the nose, the lips. And then we'll go on to identify an outlining the contours of the face and the hair and later on the quotes. And I'm going to start with the coffee brown, and I'm just going to start with a light wash. We always want to be starting from a light wash and working our way up to making more intense washes because afterwards it becomes more and more difficult to build on the washers. If we go to concentrated at the very beginning, you can see outlining this ion and make sure you reserve the areas that you want to highlight is the inside of the eye, for example. Just really also look at your reference image. Keep looking back and forth. Yeah, The first part is really just a general getting to know where everything is that you're going to go over and mistake and I'm good to go on the crease here, but I identify that a lot of the pupil making sure I leave a little bit of white of the paper with the highlights. The nose contour of the non, see that there's a shadow here on the side here. Quite a lot of shadow over here. Eyebrow that need to be exact, exact, hundred percent precise. But we want to start seeing what we're going to go into afterwards. Then I'm going to move on to the left. If you can. You want to be making decided strokes from start to finish. And if you do happen to go over a line that you don't want to go over, you can clean your brush. Just go over that again. And if it's intense, you can also use tissue paper just to lift that up. So we'll just continue. Always a bit darker on the inside of the loop. The line and the bottom lip as well. See the shadow is there. While that's drying, I'm just going to go into this crease up here and then start to go shadow here. So we're just trying to define general areas. As I said at the moment, can already see here it's dried. So as I'm going over, it leaves the new Mac. That's what's going to happen really. We want to be kind of smoothing out some brushstrokes and leaving out the brushstrokes as they are. Because that variety is just really going to give a bit of richness to the end painting. I'm just going to give a light wash here. You can see there's a light pad to the left of the nose. Then also just here. So I want to leave that as the white of the paper for now. It's not going to stay as the white of the paper, but it's going to help me define where I need to intensify afterwards. And then just going to inject a little bit of color in here. A lot darker and smooth it out a little bit. Fairly wet brush so it starts to expand. Not going to go either this part down here. And now with a slightly lighter wash and tested on your test strip again, he's going to define a little bit over here. I, here we've got a bit of a shadow. Just going to make sure I leave these lightweight areas you can see up here just under the eyebrows, a little lighter, and also just above the eyelid. Then we've got the temples, which are a little bit concave. So there's always a bit of shadow on there. And lively cheapens. Going to injected them with a color. And then also make a wash, a little bit lighter part here because you can see this a little bit in shadow. The ridge of the nose is also a little bit of shadow, even that's much lighter than this very intense shadow, but it's still not as light as for example, this path here. Just keep building up layer and just let your eye kind of guide you. You will have probably defined quite wealthy yourself. Some areas of shadow and light just build on that. More used to find the easier it'll be for you. Sometimes it's a little bit overwhelming to identify where the shadows and the light side. And if that is the case, you can always just go ahead and squint your eyes and then it becomes apparent a lot easier. Just make sure not too much of a contrast there. And I'm gonna go back to the lips now and just define them here a little bit. Just lift up a little bit of pigment here. If you want to do that and you can just dry off your brush and then go over the wet area of paint. Moving on. Now, still with the coffee brand new, I am going to start to find in the neck a little bit. Just gone to the shadow under here. I want to be working quite quickly because the watercolor dries really quickly. And I'm just gonna get some clean water and just go over this. So it kind of expands into the lighter area. I'm working wet on wet, but mainly wet on dry. I just want to kind of insinuate these areas here, not defined them too much. Given a little bit of shadow. And let that dry while it's drying, I am going to be really careful so that I don't touch any of the wet areas. And I am just going to start putting a little bit of a shadow on the hair. Once you've got the darkest area which will be the hair, everything kind of comes into focus a little bit more. You can see it's pretty much myself with a light areas are in the hand here. Go into the details Towards the end. So if you can and if you remember, try to use CAM, long brush strokes whenever possible. Even though sometimes you may feel like it's more appropriate to use wispy brush strokes like for example, in the hair. I know that I'm not constantly using the cam long brush strokes. But the more calm and long your brush stroke is, the easier it is to control the watercolor. Because I'm going to use example. Let's be brushstrokes because of big here is wispy. I think the neck areas still dry. I'm going to get onto the close later. First, I'm going to just focus on the face and the hair. But we haven't done the ears, so let's just do the ear. Usually when you're working on a portray, the paint will dry quite quickly, shouldn't have an issue. But if you do notice that your paint is still wet because I can go and dry it with a hairdryer. Depending on how fast you work, really. Okay. I think I'm just going to give that a quick dry with a hairdryer and then I will continue in the next lesson with the second layer in coffee brown 7. Continuing With the Second Layer: Hey, and welcome back. In this lesson, we are going to be seeing in detail how to build up the first layers with the coffee brown. So several light washes and we'll also get into the details with pencil and then with more coffee brown. So now that we're sure it's dry, if you're not sure, you can just kind of carefully touch it or was the back of your head. We are going to move on and go over some details. Still going to work with the coffee brown, also with my number ten brush. And I'm just going to go into the eyes are going to start to much pigment. You can just get rid of your tissue paper and then come over to this side here. And then literally the highlights you want to reserve. Remember that even if you see really dramatic shadows, but just trying to work them up little by little so that there's really the feeling of volume. Highlight. Crazy up here a little bit more. This one over here. Then I'm going to move on to the nose and the nostrils. And I'm going to get into this part of the mouth here. I'm trying to remember my calm, smooth brush strokes here. And then I'm just going to smooth that out a little bit. And I'm just going to move on to the bottom lip here. There's a part of the lip that's a little bit lighter. And then I'm going to return to the shadow under the lip. I'm not forgetting about my reference photo. I keep referring to it as a means to see where the lights and shadows are and then using that information to create my painting. But it's not important for me to make this hyper-realistic or even that there's a lightness to the photo. The photograph really just serves as a reference so that we can create this painting more than it to look like a photograph, I'd rather have it looking like a really expressive painting. And I'm just going to go over the eye again here and then the other eyebrow. And I'm just trying to really heighten the contrast here all over and also starting to get into some of those details. So I'm really focusing on those. I'm just going to dry that off again because next I am going to do a little bit of work with my pencil. Said before we continue, we want to make sure it's completely dry because otherwise we're totally going to ruin the entire painting. I've just dried it off with my hairdryer. So what I'm going to start doing is just going over some of these details here. A little bit of shading. I don't want to make it too much about pencil drawing, so I'm just going to lightly couple of eyelashes here. Then the iris and the pupil area. To intensify that shadow under the idea. Just shading a tiny bit. That's all. See, there's a highlight here that I'm trying to preserve. And I'm going to move on to the spine now. Let's try it a little bit. A couple of details, eyebrows. Not too much. I can do that with a brush later as well. Then just move on to the nostrils. And then the lips. Find them a little bit more. Then come over to this corner here, it's quite dark. I actually think I'm going to leave it there with the pencil and I'm going to continue painting. And I'm just going to get my small brush, the number one brush, to just go over these details again. Remember we want a lot of drama, a lot of expression in here. So just really heightening the contrast. Just going to put a couple of details and the eyebrows Okay, This always trying to go from the general to the particular. Right now, we are getting into the details, but we have got the general just down already. Putting a nice details up here as well. The nostrils with a little bit of paint lips. And then I'm just going to go over some of the areas of the face ago to heighten the contrast. For example, this contour here. Then the middle here, recursion here. So there's more light on this part. It's very faint, so just really affect it too much. Little pigment. It expands a little bit. Now still got a lot of white of the paper leftover that I'm going to leave it for a while yet, and I'm gonna eliminate that later because it just helps me see a little bit more contrast. Then there's contrast here. Again, we're just looking right now for the general areas, mainly for the shadows. Just going to do the smoothing out around here. And also here. You can see it's just kind of it's not a very defined the area. Just it kind of just transitions from light to shadow and vice versa. Trying to mimic the lines of directions of the face with my brush. So it is all about heightening that contrast, building up those layers. And as you can see, I'm just really slowly building it up with my coffee brown in this second stage of the first stage. So we'll just keep going like that. You can always remove pigment if you've used too much, that's absolutely not a problem. You just wait your brush, dry it off a little bit on your tissue paper and then just move it over your brush stroke. I've made a little mistake up here, so I'm just going to remove a little pigment from this part above the eyebrow. So you can see what I'm doing. I'm just getting my light wash of coffee brown, just heightening their contrast and all the parts of the face, the nose, the lips, above the mouth and the cheek. So before I move on to the next color, I really wanted to have this one layer down. I'm just gonna go over the neck now as well and just heighten the contrast there as well. Remember the flowing movements and just the detail and the year. I'm also going to put a little defining line under here, under the jaw. Okay. So I'm going to dry that off now with my hairdryer and then I hope to see you in the next lesson to start working with the purple shadow 8. Starting With Purple Shadow: Okay, so now that that's all dry, again, you can check with your hand. I am going to start using my pixel shader to keep heightening the contrast. And same thing again, just going over some of the darker areas. And I I am brown eye. So it's always good to remember that when we're working in pairs, for example, eyes, eyebrows, that we always do those at the same time. Now the white of the eye is never completely white. I just don't want to go over the top yet with adding too much color. We just continue the nostrils. Again. I'm just looking for the darkest areas first and then going on to the other areas. So going to take this shadow over here. If you want, you can always smooth at your brushstrokes a little bit with a wet brush. Just like this. Don't use too much water though. I feel like the combination of smooth that brush strokes and lift brushstrokes really works in a watercolor painting. Straight onto the contour of the face here. You can build it up really slowly. You're a little bit afraid to use too much color all at once, that's fine. Don't worry about it. You can just do a few layers. You can work a little wet on wet if you like. Can see we're just building up as contrast here. Some color in there so that it expands. Just dabbing some color and the iris and the eyebrow. And then moving on to the lips again. And then let's go into the shadow under the lip again and unite that with the shadow of the contour of the face here. And let's continue that shadow. And also the shadow of the jaw line there. And then going onto the bottom lip, which is not as much in shadow as the top lobe as you can see. And you can always reference my reference image, of course, and the resources. Also just remembering that I'm trying to limit the forms of the face as much as I can here. Now with a lighter wash, also use yellow strip as a pellet. Just kinda go on some of these areas that are in shadow but not as much. Smoothing out. I'm also trying to define this hairline up here without defining it too much so that it doesn't look like a helmet, solid but smoothly. Areas, eyes actually in shadow. Eyes usually are because it's concave area. It's going to lift up a little bit of pigment here. Don't need it to be the white of the paper, but I do want it to him bit of a highlight. If you like, you can really start to see the face shapes of the face I'm merging. And I just continued to build up this layer here. I'm trying to define the cheekbones, the chin area under the mouth, and just really adding more and more depths. So every time I add shadow, the highlights start to stand out more. So remembering this might be really helpful for you. For a highlight. To be a highlight, it needs to stand next to shadow. And I'm just going to smooth out this part here too. And I feel like I've ever done this part a little bit. So smoothing that out to in a minute, I'm gonna give the hair a bit of a purple shadow wash too. But first, I'm going to focus again on these shadows and the neck. You can see we're just really slowly, slowly, slowly building up those layers. Some artists prefer to work with less layers, but I feel like the more layers, the more volume, you know, you really have a depth to the painting. So I really like working slowly to get the hand wash now. Maybe quite intensely, you ideally the contour of the face as dry. Otherwise it's going to start expanding until you just really touching that a little bit. Quiet. Clearly the hairs, the darkest thing of this painting, the hair in the clouds Feel like if that is lighter than the face at the moment, it's just going to distract from the contrast, really. Trying to get a bit of overview. My lights and shadows, making couple of wispy marks. And then going back to the long from start to finish, brushstrokes, wispy. See I'm just continuing really to heighten the contrast in these areas here. And hopefully by the time I'm done, the rest of the face will be dry and I can give it another wash Quickly going to do the ear as well. Okay. So now that I'm sure that the face is dry where I wanted to paint mixed just again, the features. I am going to go over some of the shadows again, like this one here. I'm trying to be very precise. Here in the eye and the eye eyebrow. I'm going to start going over some lighter areas now that aren't actually the light. So that the lightest areas that I actually that really start to pop. Like I said, for a painting to have dramatic contrast, the lightest light and the darkest dark have to be very differentiated. And I need to limit the areas of lightest light and data stack to a few. So in this case, the lightest light would be the white of the paper. So that would be highlights that I leave that I've marked myself. And then the darkest dark I think would be the clothes and the hair. And then obviously I'm also working on the mid tones. There's quite a variety of mid tones here, of shadows. What can also be really effective as just put little accents of the darkest dark in some places, for example, in the corners of the mouth or in the pupil, which is very dark as well, really get into this shadow under the lip here again. So even without looking at a face, you can probably guess a little bit with the highlights and shadows are going to be things that come out of the fairs like the nose and the chin and usually a bit lighter while things that kinda go into the face, like underneath the lip that's usually a little bit darker and cheddar. You can always maneuver the paint around the paper if you feel like a brush strokes not quite right, or you just have too much pigment. It's going to smooth that out and into the inside of the face here. Now I've covered a lot puck, but it wasn't supposed to be that much. So I'm just removing some pigment again with my tissue paper. And then continuing. I just keep going over those darkness barriers, really. Just some great things, some pigment into there. So I'm really trying to work all over my painting. I'm focusing on the details and kind of jumping from one to another and remembering if I'm working in a pair, to work in the pair. But yeah, just really heartening the contrast and relation to each other. Okay, and I'm just going to add a little bit more shadow on here. Keep looking for the darkest areas and heightening the contrast and just keep wiping away until you are happy with using purple shadow. It's really a question of when you're satisfied with this layer using purple shadow, you can always come back to the color. So if you feel like you're ready, that's totally fine. You don't have to go on forever. I'm a bit of a perfectionist, so I like to work really slowly and really intricately, but that's not for everyone. Also sometimes less is more so it's kind of a feeling thing. So you can see I'm just kind of working the elements while I'm heightening the contrast. So usually I start with the eyes and I got into the eyebrows, the nose, the lips, then undo the contour of the face. At some point I retouch here the ear. So I'm just working my way around the face really. The final details will come at the very end. We don't need to go and define the teeth. Just going to go back to the neck. I'm just going to dry that off and then I am going to start on the hair 9. Starting on the Hair: Okay, so now that we've dried it off, just make sure it's dry. I am going to start defining a little bit of the hair. You will see that towards the roots and towards the end, it's always going to be a little bit darker. This is in front, this part here, and then this part here is behind. So that's also gonna be Dhaka. And here we've got this posits come over the shoulder and the wispy parts of the front also going to be lighter. So I'm just going to define a little bit of here. And I'm just going to do that by pressing harder towards the root and then just making these strokes in the direction of the hair. We're going to go over it anyway with the color with watercolor. But this is just gonna be a nice background. The hair comes out in this way. I'm just going to divide it into some sections. The section I have over here. Then this other section that comes over, this incorporates itself. And then there's this section here, here. One more section, this part of the head and then this strand of hair that just comes out of nowhere. So I am just working with strikes and I'm just trying to get the very dark areas and fist. So the roots here and make very few months on the wrist here where it gets tucked behind the ear. I'm going to stop the ear and work outwards with divided into sections so that it doesn't look like a helmet. And this thread here, she comes across in the kit there. Then I imagine what their hair, what direction the hair is going is coming from underneath here and it's kind of curling around. So then this hair, obviously it's going straight down. And then this hair that is coming from behind, the other hair is just divide that up into sections as well. I feel like there's two sections that come across and one that goes behind. So that's one section and I'm just going to divide them again. Okay, and then I'm just going to start making masks. Obviously at the top, you can hardly see a dark. We have this one strand of hair coming down here. Let's actually lighter. We want to reserve. That. Said, trying to get some shadows in there really doesn't need to be life-like. I'm just trying to get an impression of here. Like some flowy here. Okay? So now I'm going to grab my number ten brush and I'm going to go back to the coffee brown. Again. We can check that from a tester. It's looking good. I'm just going to occur the sum of these sections of hair, just trying to really get it to go a little bit darker so the contrast is better. And then I'm going to start working section by section. So one section. Again, I'm doing that so that it does not look like a helmet. And the end one section. Then I'm going to work on a section that's not directly adjacent to the first section. Otherwise they'll just blend into each other and it wouldn't make a difference that we worked on them separately. Okay. Come down here. I'm down here. So I'm still trying to keep it varied. See, I'm not using the same intensity here. I'm trying to lift up a little bit here so that it's a little bit more interesting. Then I'm gonna come over to this section here. And same thing. I'm going to apply the pigment and then I'm going to lift up a little bit to have a little bit of variety. And now that I think the top sections are probably dry, I'm going to come to this section right here that was adjacent to one that I already worked on Pinterest little bit. And then I'm gonna come down, work on this section here. And I'm going to cover all of it. Now. Clean my brush. Just recap some highlights on them. Now while I'm working with the coffee brown, I'm just going to go over with a light wash, just going to go over some of the areas on the face that I'm supposed to be completely white of the paper. So for example here, just going to give a general wash, actually, just a really light one. Just to unify a little bit. Move your brush too much while it's wet, because otherwise you're going to start just manipulating and looping around brushstrokes on the needs that you might not want to lose. It's going to look a little bit of this nightclub dance really annoyed me. So as you can see, you can also lift up pigment once it's already dry. I'm just saying there's a slightly lighter there. My goal here. So I'm just going to give that a quick dry and then I'm going to move onto the next lesson and start working with the blue black 10. Adding More Contrast With Blueblack: Right, so I am going to start working with the blue black now. The first thing I'm going to do is just give the hair a little coat of this. Because that is going to be the darkest part of the whole painting. And I feel like it's irritating my capacity to see where the light and shadows are that I still need to heighten when the thing that is going to be the most and shed a light lighter than it's supposed to be. Okay. I'm just going to lift up a little bit of pigment here. Then I'm going to continue this path here. As you remember, we want to work on parts of the hair that are not adjacent to each other so that it doesn't look like a helmet. So this is all very much in shadow. Anyway. Excuse you imagination. They don't need to tell it like it is exactly in the order. Okay. Moving on back up to the top of the head. Smooth it out. Trying to preserve some highlights here so that the hand really comes to life. Not too many though. We can add some more details on the head, the very end. This part here. Starting over here with a very wet brush because it's lighter. And then just finishing up here. Okay, and now we are going to add some details with the blue black as well, the details of the face. Actually, first, let's try this off. Now that it's dry. Let's go over some details. Starting with the eyes, make sure it's not too intense. Let's really get into some details here as well. I was like not making the iris and the pupil exactly uniform. So I tried to have some turnover varieties and they're always, It's trying to smooth that out a little bit. It's really getting into these details now. You don't want to make a uniform line across the bottom there because then it just looks not real when not going photo realistic, but we also don't want to make a comic. Okay, and I'm looking for darker areas, trying to preserve the highlights, untitled varieties in there. The excess pigment, you can just get rid of that tissue paper. I'm just working with my fine brush so that I can really get into these details. So usually I use blue black very sparingly in the shadows of the face and on the features of the face when I'm working with more than three times. Because it does sometimes have the potential to be a little bit overpowering or make the painting a little bit too dramatic. I'm a little bit comic like I think in this case because we're only working with three times, it's really going to work. Because moving on to the eyebrows, still just working on the general eyebrows. I can give some proper detail in a moment. Once I'm happy with the overall tone. And now with a slightly lighter wash, I'm just going to go into this shader here. Still working with my small brush to define the shadow over here a little bit more rigid, the nose and the nostrils. Just really looking for these dark areas so I can define them better. Make it look more dramatic, more expensive. Still trying to kind of mimic the lines of the face here. My paintbrush And the smoother the brushstrokes when I find that too intense, a little bit of pigment and the areas where I want it more intense. So I'm trying to focus on one area at a time. But if I feel like I see something that's bothering me, I try and do that straight away because otherwise later I may forget getting into the shadow under the bottom lip here. Now, it's really quite dramatic as this shadow here. So I don't want to make it to light. See if the size of the paint brush that you're using is working for you. I feel like I'm going to interchange to the larger paintbrush in a moment. I'm just trying to still get into these details and I find that this brush is better for that. But once I've finished with the details, are there back to my number ten brush and just work on some general areas with a light wash. But you don't have to get too detailed in the air, for example. It's just not that important. So I'm switching brushes now. I'm just going to take a light wash. Just got some of these areas to light and back down to the contours of the face. And I'm really thinking about those long brush strokes here. They really make it a lot easier to control the paint. Especially in these areas here it's important to mimic the movement of the last phase with the paintbrush going straight down under the neck line here. Just so I'm just doing what I did in the layers before. Now with the blue black, just adding where I think there needs to be more contrast. Feel like it's really coming together. Again, a lighter wash, the right side of the face. Going to have to go over the left side again. I feel like the contrast isn't quite right yet. So I'm being careful to heighten the contrast slowly build up the layers slowly, evenly. So once I have an overall coverage of this first light wash of blue black, I'll be going back over to the other side to heighten a little bit more over there and then coming back over this side. So I really just step-by-step getting to a place where it's really nice and contrasted. The top, this one to heighten the contrast, not change the entire painting. Really got to pay attention to where these shadows are and where they're most prominent. I guess that's part of the challenge to not go over the top, but still have this really nice dramatic contrasting image that you end up with. Amaze, you can see I'm still over the side of the face applying pigment and then taking it away if I think it's too much. And basically just working my way through all the features of the face until this layer is finished. We don't want to get rid of all of these light areas here. I also would like to raise salvage this area here and this area here. So I'm just kind of rubbing the pigment off. Well, the claim paintbrush and then dabbing my tissue paper on the top. Also, like these kind of highlights here are really important for the shape of the face. Look correct. Riverside. Bit of a perfectionist. If you're happy with how it's going, you don't need to do this. I'm quite happy with how it's going to continue. I'm just going to give the eyeballs very, very light wash because as I say, white of the eye is never completely white. Again, I'm going to give to take a bit of a wash. This document over here a little bit like very dark. I'm going to give the hair another wash and I'm just going to go over all of it this time to unify it. Starting at the top. Well, I do want to unify it. I don't want it to look completely flat, so I do want to preserve some of the highlights. So if I've used too much pigment, I can just lift some app with my paintbrush or with some tissue paper. Um, that's just what I'm gonna do here. I'm just going to lift up a little bit of pigment. Areas that I want, a little bit lighter, highlights that I've saved. It's going to find this a little bit more of a couple of strokes and they're wispy movements because again, we're working with the hair. The other side. This detail here again. Alright, We're making great progress. I'm going to dry that off now. And then in the next lesson, I am going to continue adding some more contrast and also starting on the close. I'll see you there. 11. Heightening the Contrast & Starting on the Clothes: Okay, so in this lesson, let's just have a look at what needs to be heightened in contrast and then let's start working on the clouds. What I'm saying is, I feel like I need a little more shadow over this part here. So I'm going to grab the blue black again. And I'm just going to put another wash over this area here. So I'm going to do the same for the shadow under the nose. **** on here, a little bit. On the lip. And the shadow here feel like it's really mixed. Come down here as well. I'm just looking for the last kind of shadows that I need to cover generally. And then I'm going to cover the close. Not quite happy with this part here. Maybe I'll just go back to the peripheral shader for a minute. Just click on this variant here. Just going to smooth that out. And then come in here a little bit of the back. I feel like that's a little bit too harsh. Maybe. See if we can turn it down so it looks more slender rather than puffy here on the cheek area. Kevin got a laugh. I feel like shadows up here is still too large because if you look at the picture, it's actually not that much of a difference. You can see where the hair begins, but it's not that clear. It's going to take my little one here. I feel like here you can see with the face becomes happy with it. Just kind of let that dry and while that dries, I will go back and just some details with some blue black. Again, I hear a couple of lectures at the top. So I'm just going back over some details which I feel like the little motor findings example, these diagrams. I'm just going to put a few wispy here and here. Just going to smooth it out a lot, but I really want you to start. And then some of the the I opened up a little bit more down there and I'm not going to damage the top. Usually there's a little bit of shadow over the eye ball because of the eyelid. Just defining this here to put in there those creases, minimum, some eyebrows and here as well. The width of it doesn't really matter. It's nice if it expands a little bit, a little bit to file vibrant. I'm just going to take some away by going over this with a clean brush. Pulling them the shadow again, I feel like it's been lost a little bit. Then maybe another little detail on the lip here. It's really putting them last finishing touches on the face. A little bit darker to do that enough You can keep going and keep going, but soon I'm going to move on to the clothes. Just insinuating that these teeth there, I'm not gonna go into detail or anything. Tooth or another matter and move on to some other point. Now I just want to focus on the lips. Really don't really like what I did there, But wait for it to dry now. And I can I wasn't going to take away all of the pigment. I don't want it. Remember if you move your brush too much, you take away the thing when you just need to wait till it's dry if you want to make some major changes. One line here, another. Beautiful cheekbones. I'm going to do the clothes now and then I'm also going to use blue black. And I'm going to do the wet on wet so I get my large brush, makes sure that the board is still tied down. So I get my large brush and I'm just going to wet this paper. Okay, Then I will go over the wet paper with the blue black. Just creep into the neck here a little bit. Like working wet on wet. Sometimes it lets you be a little more free because you have very little control over the paint. I'm just going for the whole area of care as well. Just noticing that I need to work a little bit more on the neck area. That's okay. I'm just injecting some pigment here. Some areas of the clouds. While I've got my large brush, I might as well just go over the hair one more time. Some areas. The neck, I'm just going to also work a little bit wet on wet with coffee brown. And I'm going to be careful that the neck area is not touching the clubs area because otherwise I'm just going to get a big mixture of color and I'd really like to just keep it a little bit separated. This happens to you. Easy way to do it is you just get your tissue paper and just dab it on the area that you want to remove the pigment from. And I get a little bit of shadow work. I don't really want to give too much detail because next, quite difficult. I find. Don't really have any lines to work with. It's all just the shading. Okay. So I before I continue, I'm just going to dry that off with my hairdryer quickly and then I will see you in the next lesson to put on the finishing touches 12. Finishing Touches: Okay, I actually quite like this. What I'd like to do is make the clothes DACA, and also put a little bit of detail into the hair and pulling these little wispy parts of here. And then I think I'm done. It's quite intense. It's kinda how I want it. So what I'm gonna do is I'm just going to go under the clouds. Tends wash. I'm just going to use water to kind of make it expand a little bit, make it a little more organic. While that's drying. Time to get a little more black. Step here. Then I'm going to move on to these darker areas and just really make sure I have that contrast. Remember that it's watercolors, so you're not gonna get the same results from watercolor as you will with gouache or acrylic paints, oil paints, that's always going to be a little bit translucent and that's exactly what we want. We don't want to have Pat colors, but I still want to have this kind of drama. I'm really looking for those high, high contrast. No, wanna to touch this up as well. Maybe put a little bit more purple shadow on there too. A little more contrast in here. And now I'm just going to work on details. I'm working with my number one brush again. I'm really just trying to focus on the details of the hair. Small details. Yeah. Just my wispy movements imitating the hair. Can be as detailed or not detailed as you like. We're first gonna do the wispy hairs. I need to treat them with a coffee brown status, just traumatic where it doesn't need to be. Alright, and what I wanted, wow, it's whisker over here. Slightly larger brush. Don't really want too much detail in this kind of fade into the background. I'm just being very liberal here. Some of these details as well. Try and keep it varied. Not making the same brushstrokes. I remember again, doesn't really look organic. Kind of loosens the whole thing up. We have a couple of striving to my floating around, just make sure next to something. Just putting the finishing touches on while both Dr. while it's still wet. I'm just going over this path here as well, some coffee brown stray press frogs here. Okay, Last but not least, I am actually going to do what I don't usually do. But I have not managed very well to preserve highlights on the eye. So I've thought of white. I'm just going to do the following. I'm just getting some of this on my very fine brush. I'm not even going to dilute it. And I'm just going to dab that. I can paint over it if you don't get it right. Just putting a little bit of white highlights are supposed to be in Mountain them very well. Just from the hair. Just going to take away a little bit here. And little bit of black. Also. I forgot to do this with a little bit of purple shadow. Can very light wash. I'm just going to fill in some of these lines and the lips. Careful not to get your hands on. The wet paint. Can also see this pattern slightly darker. You want to put a little more detail on the lips. Go ahead. Just putting a little bit more here at the top. Otherwise it's just going to look silly. Chest insinuated that their lines. Alright, I'm actually really happy with it. So I'm going to leave it here and let it dry. And now that we've finished, why don't you join me in the next lesson for some final thoughts while the paintings drying? 13. Final Thoughts: Okay, so now remember when you finished and it's dry, remember to peel off the masking tape. In this way. You're rolling it outwards so that you don't damage your paper too much. And that's it. Congratulations, you have just completed and watercolor portray him three times. Now I want to encourage you to share your finished project and the project gallery because it's always so great to see your projects and that gives us a chance to exchange ideas and feedback. You can upload a cover image, but also don't forget, upload an image into your project. If you've made more than one painting, feel free to share them all. You can do so by simply updating your project and adding more images and texts as you need. I'll be happy to give you feedback. And you can always write me with questions. If you've enjoyed the class and painting with watercolor and make sure to check out my other classes and watercolor portrait from a photo, we paint a portrait using more colors and tones. It's also a really fun class and there are some lessons to cover the basics as well. I also show you which colors to use and we mix them together ourselves before we start painting. If you like, a challenge, can join me in my class painting expressive eyes with watercolor. A 30-day challenge. If you're like me and what you love as portrays, maybe you also want to check out my liner class in which I take you through how to make an easy portray with lineup cut, a printing technique which has a ton of creative possibilities. And of course, if you want to frame or your great creations, you can also visit my easy DIY framing class where I show you how to make a passport to so you can easily and beautifully frame your own works on paper. Feel free to ask questions and the discussion section. And if you enjoyed my class today, please leave me a review. And the reviews section, I read every review I receive. And they always motivate me to keep creating and sharing my knowledge and love for creativity with you all. And that also help other students get motivated. If you want to keep in touch, make sure to follow me on Instagram and Nadia underscore underscore of Alaska. It's these walls underscore. Underscore could talk. If you decide to upload your projects to Instagram, make sure to tag me so that I can also share them. You can also follow me on Skillshare and that way you always know when I launch a new class or make a new announcement, make sure to upload your projects to the project section. And I can't wait to see them. Thank you again so much for joining me today. It's been a real pleasure having you and I hope to see you again really soon.