Watercolour Portrait - Integrating Lifelike Teeth

1. Introduction: Are you excited about watercolor portraits, but not really sure how to tackle the tricky issue of painting teeth? Hi, and welcome to this class. My name is Nadia and I am professional artists. In this class, let's dive deep into capturing the difficult element of teeth in your watercolor portrays. I will walk you through my entire process step by step, sharing my personal tricks to help you master this challenging aspect and bring your portrays to life with vibrant expressive details. Today, we will paint the watercolor portrait putting special focus on practical techniques that make painting teeth easier and more effective. First, let's go over the materials we will need for this class, and then let's take a look at how and where to find a suitable image for your project. Next, we will practice drawing teeth, and I will try to address some of the common challenges artists face when incorporating teeth into their portrays and show you my strategy for overcoming them. I'll share some of my favorite tips for simplifying the process, such as how to suggest teeth without getting into too much detail and how to use contrast and where to emphasize this to give the illusion of depth and dimension. I will take you through my process as we paint a watercolor portray showing you exactly how to apply these techniques to achieve a natural and cohesive look. You will see how to layer colors, add subtle highlights, and create teeth that look integrated and lifelike. Ughout this class, I encourage you to paint along with me and you can always hit pause or rewatch any parts if you want to dive in a little deeper. And don't worry if your first attempt isn't perfect. That's part of the learning process. The goal is to practice and to become more comfortable with these techniques. I would recommend this class to those who already have some basic watercolor and portraiture experience. But if you really want to take this class and you're just starting out and you feel a little bit overwhelmed, don't worry. I recommend checking out my watercolor portrait from a photo class first, which is perfect for beginmers as we cover all the basics. For example, we explore fundamental drawing techniques and watercolor techniques and various methods for transferring your image onto paper. For those of you who already have some basic skills, but you're looking to refine your technique before diving into the difficult elements. I recommend watercolor portray from a photo in three tones. This class really takes things back a step because we simplify our palette to just a few colors allowing you to focus and hone your skills, developing a deeper understanding of color dynamics and portraiture. Remember that watercolor is a medium that thrives on practice and experimentation, so expect the unexpected outcomes and use them to enhance your work. By the end of this class, you will have a set of practical skills for painting watercolor portrays featuring teeth, and the confidence to incorporate them into your own work. Let us you really join me, and let's get started. 2. Materials, Colours & Project: O. In this lesson, let's have a look at the materials and colors that we're going to need, and then also look at the project for this class. So I've created a materials list, which I will also be uploading to the resources section, and let's just go through that for a moment. So firstly, we're going to need water colors. I like to use these tubes, but you can also use pans or liquid water colors, whatever is best for you. What is important is that we need a palette because we will be mixing our colors. Next, we'll need some watercolor paper, and the important thing is that it's minimum 300 GSM. I like to use fine grain, but it's up to you. We will also be needing brushes, and I'm going to be using three. I recommend you have three to five brushes of different sizes. I'll be using a one, ten, and a 16. And we will also be needing masking tape to tape down our paper so that it doesn't buckle. And for this, I will also have a wooden board, but you could also tape your paper down to the table. We will also be needing graphite pencils as we will be doing some details with pencils, and you'll want to probably have an eraser handy as well. Really important. Two containers for water. One is to clean your brushes with, and the other one is to make up fresh colors for which we will want really fresh water. We don't want to be making dirty colors. If you're going to be using a light source for transferring your image onto your paper, you also need a light table or a window. You could also transfer your image via grid method or free hand. I like to use a hair dryer to dry off my paintings in between layers so that it goes a little bit faster. So if you want to speed up the process, I suggest you also have a hair dryer on hand. Okay. Next, let's have a look at the colors that I'm going to be using, and I like to mix my own colors and they are staple colors that I like to use every time I paint portrays. So they are skin tone one, two, and three, purple, shadow, blue, black, coffee brown and green ochre. So let's have a look at those mixes. For skin tone one, I use yellow ochre, crimson red, and ultramarine blue. Skin tone two is using the same colors, but using more red and blue when you're mixing the color in relation to the yellow ochre. So it's a little more on the intense side than the skin tone one. Skin tone three also uses yellow cha and ultramarine blue, but in this case, the red is cadmium red and not crimson red, which gives it a more orange tinge. Purple shadow is made up of crimson red and ultramarine blue and optionally some burnt sienna. The blue black is made of Prussian blue and ivory black. For the coffee brown, I use burnt sienna and ivory black. And the green cha is made up of yellow ochre mixed with the Prussian blue. Now, this might be a lot of information to take in, so don't worry. I will be uploading all of these color mixes to the resources section of the class. And obviously, there are many, many ways to mix colors and many, many colors to mix. So if you're working with different tones in your portray, you can go ahead and mix your own staple colors or you can use some of these other colors. I'm going to leave you a few mixes that I've tried in other portrays in the resource section as well. Now, when you're mixing your colors, make sure to start from lightest to darkest, so adding the lightest color in your color mix first. So, for example, in the coffee brown, it would be first, the burnt sienna and then the ivory black. Or in the skin tone one, you would have first the yellow ochre, then the crimson red, and then you would have the ultramarine blue. Okay, so now for the project, the aim of this class is to practice and improve our watercolor skills and the portraiture skills by building up the painting through many translucent layers and incorporating a difficult element which are the teeth. So at this point, my goal is not to achieve a hyper realistic result. It's not important if the painting doesn't look like the reference image. To me, it's much more important that the painting is expressive, that we have contrast, that we build up a depth in volume through the use of layers and colors and really practice integrating teeth into our portray painting practice so that if we have a portray, we want to paint and it has teeth that's not going to hold us back. In this class, we will be working with a reference image. So in the next lesson, let's have a look at how and where to find that image. 3. Finding & Transferring Your Image: 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 are Unsplash and Pixels. Of course, you can also just source your image from your own archives or go out and take your own photos. But let's have a look at pixels. This is where I'm going to go to source my image right now. And I've put in photographic portrait smile so that the search engine returns images with teeth for me. And I found that using photographic portrait or portrait photography usually renders higher quality images than just putting in portrays. So I recommend using some kind of version of that. And then you will see that it just comes up with a whole bunch of images, and you can start to choose things that are interesting to you for your project. I'd just like to have a scroll through these images and then start to download a few and make a kind of library for myself, a pre selection from which I then go on to make a final selection later on. So once I found an image that could work from my project, I can just click on the image and then go to free download. And I like to download the images in the original format because that is usually the highest resolution. So I recommend making yourself a little library of images that you found interesting for your project so that you can make a final choice out of these pre selected images a little bit later. Once you've collected, say, 10-15 images minimum. The best images will be with kind of a clear background, not too many elements, clear contrast and clear facial features, and hopefully, also a little bit of interesting tonal varieties. So this is the image that I'm going to choose in the end. I'm going to completely ignore the hand, and I will touch on that in another class in the future. And what I've done is just edited the photo on my phone and heightened the contrast and up the highlights and taken down the shadows a little bit. Having a stronger contrast just really helps me to identify where the lights and shadows are and also where the stronger colors are so that I can then go and translate that into watercolor. All right. And now that I've found my image, I'm going to transfer it to my paper using a light table. And for that, I'm going to get my printed image. I've turned that into black and white so that I can see the contrast more clearly, and I'm going to tape it down to the light table with some masking tape just in the middle here and also at the top. And I'm going to get my watercolor paper and place that on top and turn on my light source. And you can already see it coming through here. I'm going to tape down my watercolor paper as well so that it doesn't move while I'm sketching. Now, this works best in a dark environment because then you will see the image coming through more clearly. If it's really light, you will not be able to see the image. Okay, now with the pencil, I'm just going to start lightly tracing around the contours. I don't want it to be too dark. I want to be able to erase it without leaving any marks on the paper, and I'm just outlining the features of the face and the shadows and highlights. I'm really just trying to make a roadmap for myself so I know where to place color and shadow and features later. So it's really just the rough outlines. I don't want to be going too detailed and I don't want to start shading or anything. So, for example, I want to preserve this highlight in the pupil here. So I'm just going to outline that very delicately. You don't have to be too detailed. I still want to have freedom. I just want to get everything into place. You can see there's also a bit of a highlight there. I want to reserve that, and then there's a bit of a shaded area right next to it, and I'm just going to outline that, and that is also a little bit of a highlight on the top of the eyelid there. And this is what I'm going to do around the entire face and the neck. And also, I'm going to outline the clothes for myself, but I'm not getting into all the very intricate details. I'm just giving myself indications of areas that I want to focus on later. I'm also going to put in place for myself the teeth. I'm just going to insinuate where they are going to go. Outline the shape a little bit, but not too much. We will talk more in detail about how to sketch the teeth in the next lesson, and then we can go over them again, if need be. Okay, so just leave the teeth quite lightly, and then I am going to continue outlining my features, my shadows, and my highlights. And once I have my entire drawing on my paper, I will see you in the next lesson. 4. Practice Drawing Teeth: In this lesson, let's have a look at some pointers about drawing teeth and also then go ahead and start practicing drawing some teeth. Okay, so to begin with, let's have a look at what we don't want to do. And what we don't want to do is this. So we do not want to be outlining the teeth with the same intensity all the way around because as you can see, it just does not end up looking like well integrated teeth. Using the same intensity lines to outline teeth makes them look a little uncard for. So let's just practice drawing some teeth, and for that, I have made myself a printout, which I'll also upload to the resources, and of course, you can make your own to practice. I've selected six different smiles or mouth where you can see teeth. So from very wide smiles to just seeing the teeth a little bit, and I'm going to practice using a pencil. And as you can see, I've already sketched my mouth onto paper, and you can do this as well, either by drawing free hand or using the grid method or using a light table or other light source. You can see I've outlined the teeth here, but very lightly, and I'm using this to start shading in the darker areas because obviously the teeth are going to be the lightest part of these mouths. We're going to be working with shadow and light and making different intensities in our pencil strokes. So I'm going to start by shading in the gums and the lips to bring the teeth out, and you will see that my strategy is to insinuate the teeth rather than explicitly draw them. I'm going to be focusing on the darkest parts between the teeth and in the gums and here underneath. And what happens then is usually the teeth up standing out as the lightest part instead of being outlined. Okay, so I'm going to start with this one up here. I'm just going to start by shading in the darker areas. Really simply, this is just for practice. When you squint your eyes, you can see it's mostly dark in the corners of the mouth and the top lip isn't that much lighter. I'm going to shade that in really roughly as well. And then I'm going to start with the top part of the gums. I'm just going to put a little emphasis here between the teeth. And also here between the teeth. Under the lip is going to be a little dark as well. I'm just going to put a little line in there. We can always use an eraser to fix things. I'm just going to shade in the gums quite uniformly, and then I'm going to accentuate some of the darker parts. Also, you can see this tooth here goes up quite a bit. And it's clear that there's a lot of shade over here, and I'm going to put accents in where the teeth overlap and meet. I'll put a little line here, but I'm not going to make it go all the way through. I'm going to put a line up here and then down the bottom as well. If you feel like you've overdone it, like I just have, you can always erase and correct. Remember this is practice. But you can see, I'm just kind of insinuating the top and insinuating the bottom just by heightening the contrast in selected spots, and I'm going to make this part here darker as well. So I put an accent there where the teeth kind of meet. If you want you can also put the highlights on the teeth where there's reflections. I'm going to try to keep it fairly general for now. But in the painting, I will definitely be paying close attention to the highlights. That needs a bit of a shade. Okay. So you can see this tooth also in the back here is a little bit darker because it starts to disappear into the background just like this one over here. Compared to the overall picture, I feel like my accents in between the teeth are a little bit too intense, so I'm just going to take a little bit of that intensity away with my eraser. And then maybe I'll just do some really very fine lines, really super light and super fine and accentuate a little bit more down the bottom. Just adjusting this tooth here a little bit. Go over the shadow under the top lip again. Maybe you want to give the teeth a little bit of shading because there are some highlights on there. Okay. Now, if you feel like it's a little too intense, you can always use your eraser just to smooth things out a little bit, tone down the contrast. I want to smooth this out a little bit. The top lip is quite dark. Okay. And I think I'm just going to leave the first one here for now, and I'm going to move on to the second one. Again, I'm going to start by shading in the darkest parts, and I'm going to quickly draw this a little bit clearer for myself here, where the lip goes and lightly outline where the teeth end here. I'm going to try and find the different tones, at least the lightest mid tone and darkest so that the teeth really start to come out as the lightest part. So, as you can see, even though I have a light outline of the teeth, this starts to fade away as I start to add more depth and tones. So it's okay to use the outlines as a guide, but in the end, there should be no continuous lines with the same intensity outlining the teeth. I feel like you can almost leave them like this if you wanted to. Just really insinuated. Maybe I would just shade in the gums a little bit. You know, it's kind of like a photograph that's been overexposed, where the whites are very white. That would be an option. In this practice session, I am not necessarily looking for a likeness, but if that was important, I would need to pay very close attention to the exact shape of the teeth. But as I say, it isn't a priority right now. And you can see again, this one at the back here kind of gets lost in the shadows. This one's also shaded on one side at least. And there's a highlight here. I feel like this is too much. You can hardly see where these teeth meet. So imagine if you put a lot of emphasis on that outline, it would look very strange because that is not what it looks like in nature. Just really lightly, you can suggest this part. Okay, I'm going to just shade them a little bit because we have a highlight that's kind of over here. Okay. Now I'm going to leave the second one there as well. Obviously, you could keep heightening the contrast by increasing the shadow so that the highlights will come out more, but this is a practice exercise, so I'm going to move on to the next one. Again, I'm just going to see where I have outlined my teeth for myself and my sketch and to make that a little bit more clear for now and tone that down with my eraser in a moment, if need be. Again, if it helps you outline your teeth for the beginning, then tone it down with your eraser as you go, or if it's light enough, it just disappears as you increase the contrast, that's totally okay. That's why we're doing this practice exercise to find out what works best for you and to show you how I usually do it. I know that drawing teeth can be quite daunting because it's one of those harder elements of the portrait. But I feel like it's something you can learn by just using a few tricks and knowing what to avoid, like, for example, the monotonous outlines. Okay, so I'm just shading in the darkest areas again, trying to make those teeth stand out first and put them in context. So shading on the lips a little bit loosely, deepening the contrast. And I'm just going to make that a little darker still. Pretty much all of these teeth are a little bit in shadow. I'm going to shade in the gums for a moment. At first, I'm going to look for the darkest areas, which is still the lips and here the corners of the mouth, and I'm just going to shade in the lips a little bit. And then go onto the gums. As of here, it's much all in darkness. You can hardly separate the lips from the gums anymore. Then I'm going to start shading in the gums a bit, not too intense. Then I'm going to put these teeth in the shadow. These ones are a little bit in the shadow two. And if you feel like it's a little too intense again, you can always use your eraser to bring out some of those highlights. Now I am going to make this a little more clear down the bottom here, just by outlining a little bit where these teeth end. Again, notice that I haven't got any lines going right through at the same intensity. As I said before, I feel like that's usually where it starts to look a little bit strange. I'm going to leave that here and have it go at the next smile. Again, I'm just going to outline my teeth a little bit more at the bottom where they go into the shadow, and as soon as I shade this in the teeth really start to come out. Sometimes I will just leave it like this, very, very faint and leave it up to the imagination, what the teeth look like just by hinting at them. For me, the most important part is this part up here where the teeth meet and at the bottom where the teeth meet. Usually it is at underneath because it's inside the mouth as opposed to the part under the top lip that's just in the slight shadow of the top lip. So this is just a matter of observation. Again, these teeth back here are in the shadow a little bit, and the further away from the front you go, the more in the shadow, they will be usually under natural light circumstances. Then maybe you want to shade in a couple of teeth, they are around right, so the lights coming from the front, and there will usually be a little bit of shade on the sides. Or if the tooth is in front of another one, it's a little bit shaded on that side too. Wait. I'm going to shade a little more on the top left here and I'm going to leave that there and start on the next one. I am going to define the single teeth again, which I will later tone down. Also observe that the teeth aren't perfectly identical or symmetrical. This tooth, for example, taking note of the difference in the shapes of teeth will also give you drawing or painting a little bit more of a natural note. We have the tongue disappearing into the darkness. Again, where's the darkest part that will be under the teeth here. I'm going to start by shading and trying to preserve the shapes of my teeth here. And this is very dark. We need to have a distinction between the darkest part, which is inside here and the lip, which is still pretty dark, but it's not as dark. So we need to distinguish between those two parts, definitely. And here, where you compare the tongue to the lip, the lip is a lot. Okay? Now I'm going to go on to the gums, but first, I need to make this darker so that I can put a darker shade on the gums that are still lighter than my lip. We can use the eraser to pull that highlights from here in a moment if we want, but I'm going to shade it all in for now. And that's already looking pretty good. Making the lip a little darker now. And it looks like they might have used a flash. And so these teeth aren't that much more in shadow, even though they are further back. Try not to put too much detail into it again. If I want to accentuate something, I'm just going to do that from the bottom and cut out the shape of the teeth from the bottom. The gums, however, are darker in the back here. I'm going to shade that a little bit. And that's too intense. I feel like it's always better just to focus on the inside of the mouth and the gums rather than actually focusing on the teeth in that way the teeth will come out looking like good teeth. So I'm just focusing on where the darker parts are in the gums and the mouth. Working with the sharp pencil is easier. Again, you can heighten the contrast as much as you want, and I'm going to leave it here in a minute. Again, we're just trying to practice a little bit. It doesn't have to be perfect. Okay, I'm going to go on to the last practice exercise, which is this almost closed mouth that you can see some teeth shining through. I wouldn't really even call it a smile. It's kind of a half smile, so I'm going to start by shading in the lips a little bit. Now, we don't have a bottom and a top to focus on with these teeth. I'm just going to focus on the spaces in between the teeth instead of focusing on the teeth again, making sure we know where the bottom and top ends. This is quite a large gap. We're looking for gaps. Again, I don't want to follow it right through to the top and one continuous line with the same intensity. But here, I can also see that it's not a straight line. It's a little wider at the top than it is at the bottom. Also with this tooth, let's have a look at that. It's not a completely straight line, it's a little bit round. The next tooth is a little bit round. So we have a shadow on most of the teeth. Here we can really look into reserving some highlights to make it look a little bit more like teeth and a little bit more lifelike. So this one over here, there's a highlight here and a little highlight here, one here and there. Then I'm just going to shade in the teeth, preserving these highlights. So if you squint your eyes, the lips and the teeth aren't really that much difference. The bottom lip is a little bit darker where it meets the teeth, and then again down here, and the top lip is darker over this side. And then once we've shaded in the teeth a little bit, we can go and look for some more shadows if we want. This is a lot darker now, so I'll accentuate that as well. And if you accidentally go over any highlights, you can always use your eraser to bring them back. Okay, so just because teeth are white does not mean that they're necessarily the white of the paper. And I feel like I've gone a little over the top here, maybe. So I'm just going to shade this in a little bit. Okay, so takeaways from this lesson, I would think would be focus on these areas of the gums and where the teeth meet at the top and the bottom and the inside of the mouth, more than outlining each tooth, which you can do at the beginning to guide yourself when you're just starting out, and then you can erase the lines if that helps you. Okay. And obviously, you can continue working on this as long as you want. You can keep practicing. You can do as many practice mouths as you want with pencil. And when you feel like you're ready, join me in the next lesson and we'll dive right into painting the watercolor portrait. 5. Starting the Painting: Now, as you can see, I have sketched my drawing onto my paper, and I just want to recap on what we talked about when it comes to drawing teeth. So you can see I have lightly sketched them. And what I don't want to be doing is the sketching in every tooth with a lot of definition outlining every one. My strategy is just to insinuate where the teeth are. Look at the spaces in between the teeth and the contrast at the bottom and the top of where they meet, because you can see that the contrast is big between the lips and the teeth and between the inside of the mouth and the teeth. But in comparison between the teeth, it's not that big and it's not a line that goes all the way through. And in my opinion, one common mistake is to have one continuous line going from top to bottom to describe the teeth, but that is not what I observe here. If you squint your eyes, you'll be able to see that, yes. You can see a definition between the teeth, but it's not a continuous line with equal intensity and it's rather faint compared to the other contrasts. In fact, I'm just going to go ahead and erase a little bit of that so that there's even less contrast, and I'm just going to have an inkling of where I'm going to put the teeth, and now I'm going to set up my workspace. I'll see you when you have your sketch on your paper. Okay. So once you've got your sketch on your paper, I'll just remind you of how I set up my workspace. So you can see I've got my drawing here in the middle and it's taped down with masking tape so that it doesn't buckle. I've got my brushes. I've got my tissue paper or kitchen roll to absorb any excess water or pigment. Then I've got my test strips so that I can test the colors before I use them on the paper. I have my very clean water for when I use new colors and another jar of water which I used to clean my brushes with. Then I have my palette, and I've already mixed my colors. As I said, I'm going to be using skin tone one, two, and three today plus coffee brown, purple shadow, green ochre and blue black. So once you're all set up, let's start just one more thing about the teeth and my drawing. You can see that I've really just defined a little more clearly now here underneath because that is quite dark, the gap between the teeth and the bottom lip and defining that a little bit more is going to help me later. I'm going to use my number ten brush to begin with, and I'm going to start with skin tone one. I'm just going to bring that over here onto my palette and try it out. We want to light wash again to begin with. The beginning is always really the same. Just looking for some darker areas so I can start to see where I want to go over later, and I'm going to start on the eye. I've got this area here, and if I squint my eyes, I can see that it's darker than this part up here. I also have a highlight here that I want to reserve. Remembering we're trying to make long brush strokes. Be careful here with the high lights. There's often quite a few in the eye, and you will want to reserve those as much as possible. Now with the slightly lighter wash, I'm just going to get this area in here as well. And I'm going to go over the other eye now. If I squint my eyes, I can actually see it's ball and shadow over here. This part here is not quite the white of the paper, but I'm just going to leave it a little bit lighter for now so that I know that it is lighter when I circle background in a future layer, when I start with the darker colors and when I start building up the contrast. In this first layer, I'm looking for and going over the darker areas, and I'm not going to fill the entire paper with the paint. I've just gone over my highlight here in the eye. I'm quickly removing that with some tissue paper and moving onto the nose now and defining this line here. Okay. My eyes are constantly scanning my reference image to find the dark areas I want to focus on in this first layer. And don't worry if at the beginning, it doesn't look like much that will change quite quickly as we go building up the layers. Okay. Okay, so I'm moving onto the lips now, I'm going to give them a light wash. And remember that in watercolor, we try to preserve the white of the paper for the lightest parts of our image. So I'm going to try and preserve this for the teeth for now. But they're not going to stay completely white because as you can observe, there's also highlights on the teeth. And if the highlight is the white of the paper, it needs to stand out, which means there needs to be a color next to it, even if it is very subtle because there can be no highlight if there's no shadow or color to contrast it against. And I'm moving on to the check bone here now and just trying to mimit the shape of the face with my brush strokes a little bit, and I'm not going for hyper realism. If you mark to areas where your shadows and lights are going to be, then this will be easier. I'm moving on to the eyebrows now and going to give them a little bit of a background so that they don't stay as the weight of the paper. Okay. Then I'm going to move on to the foreheads. I can see that all of this is in shadow more or less, and then it gets lighter over here. I've just got some clean water and I'm going to go over the lighter areas with a lighter wash then go back to my normal wash and continuing here. This will probably expand a little bit and look quite organic. Also going to go into the temple here with the light wash and then also touch on the side of the nose. And now I'm going to continue with the air. Just give that a general wash and then go on to the neck. Step by step, I'm going over all the features of the face and the neck, looking for the dark areas to get my foundation in the first layer. And then I am going to start on my second layer now, still with my skin tone one, making sure that the first layer is dry. And in the second light, I'm going to go over some areas with a slightly more intense wash, like for example here. Remember to dab off excess pigment when you notice that you have it. And I'm not getting into the very small details yet. I'm just going to go over all the features again one by one and trying to reinforce those darker areas. We're still in the very first layers, so it's not as dark or as much contrast as it will be, but I don't want to go over the top at this stage. I like to build up the drama layer by layer, so don't worry. We'll be getting to that. You can see this part here is still way too light. And I really want to start building up that contrast so that you can start to see the planes of the face emerge. And usually it's best to work in pairs when you've got them. I'm going to go over to the other eye. Okay. And I'm going to go back over this side of the face with a bit of a lighter wash, and you can see that this building on where I went over with the first wash layer by layer. The contrast is going to grow. And you can see here I've made a bit of a mistake, but not to worry. I just clean my brush, dry it off, and then I just absorb this pigment here with an almost dry brush, and then I continue. This part here is darker I'm just going to leave the lips like this for now, and we'll come back to that. I'm going over the features of the face again with the second layer with a little more intense wash just to start heightening that contrast, and we will start to see the face coming out of the paper. I'm going to go back to the neck now and give that another wash as well. Just a really light one. I don't want to go into too many details in the neck. Once this layer is dry, I'll probably have to erase some pencil lines as well. I went a little bit over the top in the neck with the pencil. Back to the air, I'm going to give that a general wash to. Moving to the cheek bone here. I want this to be a smooth transition. I'm smoothing out the brush strokes with a clean damp brush. And now I'm going to give the nose a bit of a wash as well because we have one little highlight here, and I really want that to stand out. So as I've already said for highlights to stand out, I need the white of the paper to be just in some selected areas. And I can see I've gone a little over the top here. So I'm just erasing that a little bit with a slightly wet and clean brush. And also, this is not as light as the white of the paper. So I'm going to go over this area with a very light wash as well. Okay. I think I'm going to dry that off, and then I will continue with the next layer and the next lesson. 6. Next Layers: I have dried off the first layer, and I've also gone ahead and just made a couple of the pencil lines a little bit fainter with my eraser. For that, I made sure that the drawing was completely dry because otherwise, I would just ruin the paper. You can't start erasing when the paper is wet. Okay, so I'm going to continue now and I'm going to get my smaller brush, which is, I think, number one, and I'm going to continue with skin tone two. I'm going to bring that over onto my palette and mix it up a little bit. Yeah, I like that a lot. Now I'm going to start defining some of these details a little bit more starting with this part of the eye. Remember that when we're working in pairs, for example, the eyes, we want to start work on one eye, and then we want to go pretty much directly over to the next eye because otherwise they might just look very different and it may look very strange in the end. I'm going to smooth that out a little bit. I still don't want to go too much into the details. Now I'm going to go into this line here. Once the eyes start coming out, the whole thing just starts coming out. In this layer, I'm doing the same thing as in the previous layers, building up the contrast, going over the features. Then I'm going to start on the line of the nose here. I want to smooth that onto the face. Moving on to the nostrils, we can only see one. Now I'm going to dilute the wash a little bit and also touch on this part of the nose here. And this curve that comes across and down. Now I'm going to change to my larger brush and add some shadows to this part of the nose here, remembering the highlight. I'm going to go back to the small brush and start on the lips and the mouth. Continuing with skin tone to. I'm just going to start to define a little bit of the inside of the mouth after I've done the top lip here. If you're going to rest your hand on your paper, just make sure where you're resting your hand is actually dry. Otherwise, you're going to take away some of that paint. I just gave the top lip an all over coat and now I'm moving on down to the bottom lip. And I'm just going to mark and where the teeth end at the bottom here so that they start coming out a little bit. I'm going to go back to my number ten brush and work on this bottom lip here. Now you might want to reserve some highlights down here as well. But I feel like it's looking pretty good already. I'm just going to touch on this bottom part here and hope that it expands a bit to this lip here. I'm also going to inject the bit of pigment at the top part of the bottom lip. And into here as well. Remember that we always want to be working with translucent layers. I mean, it doesn't matter how dramatic we get. We're always going to be working with translucent layers as opposed to a park layers. Okay. Now I'm going to try to get some of these highlights back in the lip, and I'm just going to use a little bit of tissue paper and just dab it on here and remove some of the pigment. Actually looks quite organic. I'm just continuing to lift up a little bit more and inject a little more pigment into this area here. Just heightening the contrast, bottom of the top lip here and smoothing that out a little bit. It's a little too intense, I find. Let's leave that to dry. In the meantime, I'm going to go over to the air to find just a couple of lines. I don't want to pay too much attention to it because it's not the most important part of the portray. You can't ignore it entirely because then it also looks strange, but I don't want to make it a protagonist. I'm just going to touch on it a bit. Then I'm going to take my larger brush. I'm going to define a little bit more of this cheek bone here, still continuing with skin tone to. You can see there's a little light just at the bottom here of the jaw. Then you've got this very dark area and also this dark area underneath. So I'm just using a bit of a lighter wash in these areas here around the bottom of the eye and within the cheek. But I want to start getting these areas just a little bit to find the planes of the face. I'm going to take away a little bit of this lifting up some pigment with my clean damp brush. So I'm going back to the neck and I'm trying to get it to go a little bit in the background to start adding some volume, get this three dimensionality going. Really start to bring out these planes, the foreground and the background in the mid grounds. But I feel like I need to just lift up a little bit of this and I can continue in a minute when it's dry. Okay. You can see I've completely ignored the hand because I don't want to talk about hands today. We'll do that another day. I'm just trying to focus on one thing at a time, which today is a portrait incorporating teeth. Now I'm going to move on to the left side of the face and just give that another wash with the skin tone to. Just a general wash. Again, trying to build up those layers, and also the eyebrows. Okay. And the more you practice with watercolor, the more you get a hang of how many layers, how much to charge your brush with pigment and water and all of those things. Okay. You just start to get a natural feeling for it. So I encourage you to just keep practicing, and I'm sure you're doing great. But most importantly, I hope you're having fun because sometimes we try to do things well, so we forget to have fun, and I have to say that happens to me quite a lot. So you can see I'm just trying to get this shape of the nose. But again, it does not need to look like the photo. Getting a likeness is not my priority in the end. That's not my end goal. I'm just trying to paint an expressive portrait. And, as I've already said, the point of this class is to see if we can incorporate t, which is quite a difficult element, but we're still practicing the portrait painting. So when you observe the reference image, you can see there are areas of the face that kind of go inwards, and they usually in shadow, and there are features of the face that go outwards, that are usually the lighter parts. So, for example, the chin will be a bit lighter because it's outwards, the tip of the nose will be lighter. Above the lips, it'll be lighter, the forehead will be lighter, the cheekbone will be lighter. And for those lighter parts that come out of the face to be lighter, we also need to consider the areas that go into the face that are concave. And those areas are usually in shadow, like the eye sockets, like underneath the cheekbone, like between the lip and the chin, And I'm going over this part of the neck, again, the jaw line. Now, you might think this is looking pretty rosy, and I'm not going to lie. It is, but we're going to incorporate some brown tones soon and some purple tones and also a little bit of green. So don't worry. We're going to tone it down. It's going to look right in the end. I'm going to use a faint wash of the skin tone to and my very small brush. Now to just start defining up here a little bit, this area where the teeth are under the lip and where they are meeting. And I'm just looking for those gaps. Also, the space between the teeth and the inside of the mouth. Once it's completely dry, I'm going to start on the next layer and I'm going to use a little bit of the blue black. Make sure it's not too charged. I'm just going to go over the iris and the pupil. See this little highlight in the middle and the highlight at the top and also the bottom of the eyelid. Make sure you reserve a few highlights in the s and the pupil. And I'm going over to the other side and doing the same thing. You can see I've already got a layer of skin tone two on here. But it's not too dramatic because it's just going to fade in the background once I start adding more layers, and you're not going to see it shining through. While that's drying, I'm going to get the purple shadow, and I'm going to start going over this part of the eye again, the lash line, and if the pupil and the iris is still wet, it really doesn't matter because then it might expand nicely into that part. You can see it's much darker than I've got it right now, but we're still working with transparencies building up the layers. So just don't go over the top. I'm going to go over this crease up here. And since we're working in pairs, I'm going over to the next eye. Doing the same as I've done on the first eye, going over the lash line in the crease. Maybe adding in a little bit of detail with the eyelashes, but not too much. I'm going to start with the nostril down here and then go on the other side. You can hardly see it, but you can a little bit. And I'm going to draw in this line of the nose a little bit. And then it stops right here. I a bit of a shadow there, and I'm going to fade it out into the side of the face a little bit. Smooth it out a little bit of a curve there and going back to the mouth. Going to work a little bit on this corner here. It's kind of bothering me and then the space between the teeth and the bottom lip. And going over this part one more time. Now I'm going to take my slightly larger brush and give the eyebrows a bit of a layer of purple shadow. Not too intense. I just want to give them a bit of a background because you can see they're quite dark. So essentially what I'm always doing is working all over the face on the features of the face. I usually like to start with the eyes. It's my favorite part, and then I work my way around to the different elements, nose, mouth. Usually the eyebrows, contours of the face, ear, neck. I'm going to leave the hair and the clothes until a bit later. I'm going to take a little bit of purple shadow and run it over here as well. And go under the eye with a little bit more. Maybe a little bit more over here by the nose as well. And the part under the nose, I feel like comes down in a shadow, and the corner of the mouth is a bit. I'm going to come back to the other eye and also give it a bit of a layer over the top and also down the bottom. I come through here, have another look at the nose. I feel like I went a little over the top here. But there is a slightly darker line, and I'm just going to smooth it out. It was a little bit too much. But I'm also going to come over this side of the nose and I'm going to wait for that side to dry. That comes down and goes across comes over here and up a bit. Now I'm going to go back to skin tone too because this area here is starting to bother me. It is the white of the paper and it's not supposed to be. So it's a little bit irritating. It's just too light. There are some highlights around here that I would like to stand out and they are not because I haven't been using the color where it's supposed to go by leaving too much white of the paper at this stage. I'm going to lift up a little bit of pigment from here and come in with a very, very light wash of purple shadow to define some areas that are slightly in shadow like here and put on a bit of a shadow over here. Now that the pupils and irises are dry, I'm going to get my pencil, and I'm just going to define a little bit around here. Not too much. I'm just going to lightly lightly sketch. There's the pupil here, and I'm just going to shade it in a tiny bit. I don't want this to be too much about the pencil, but I do enjoy using a bit of pencil in watercolor. I feel like it really makes it stand out. I'm just going to heighten the contrast here in the mouth a little bit with the pencil as well and define it a little bit. Okay, so one thing when working with pencil and watercolor is that you need to make sure that your layer of watercolor is absolutely dry before you start working with the pencil. Otherwise, you're totally going to ruin your work. So I think that was a little bit too much. So I'm just going to race a little bit of that, and I'm also going to define this jaw line a little bit more. I feel like it's got a little bit lost here. Maybe also around this part of the nose, shading so blightly. I don't know if you can see this, but I'm literally just touching the pencil to the paper. I'm not applying any pressure or anything. Okay, so let's move on to using a little coffee brown in the next layer. I'll see you in the next lesson. 7. Intensifying Contrast: Okay, so once that layer is dry, I'm going to do one thing to begin with before I move on to the coffee brown. I'm going to wet my brush, get a very light wash, the blue black, very light because as I've mentioned in other classes before, it's really important. The eyeball is never completely white. So what I want to do is just give the eyeball a really light wash of the blue black. So look out for any highlights and remember to reserve those as much as you possibly can. I'm also going to give the teeth a very light wash. Remember that there are highlights on the teeth. So I'm trying to reserve those as well. I've already marked them in for myself. So obviously, if there are highlights, there has to be a color next to it so that the highlights can stand out. If I make it too dark, it's not going to look very good. And if you do lose some of your highlights, don't worry, you can always reapply them with some white paint at the end. Okay, so now I'm going to move on to the coffee brown. And again, I'm going to start with a light wash, and I'm actually going to start with the eyebrows this time. And I'm just going to give them a bit of a background here and move on to the other side. I'm going to dab a little bit of pigment in there. It means it's going to look a little bit more organic because it's going to expand. Now I'm going to get my fine brush again and just touch on some of those details in the face with the coffee brown. So again, I'm going to start with the eyelash line. So just like in the previous layers, I'm going to work my way across the features of the face with the coffee brown. I'm also going to go over the s and the pupil with the coffee brown. So I can do the details of the eyelashes a bit later if I want. Right now, I'm just trying to focus on getting the contrast out. So while you're painting, you'll notice a few areas here and there that you want to go over to fix them and you can do that as you go. I usually do that moving over the face, and then one area will strike me, and I'll just want to go and fix it right away. And I'm going to move on to the next side, making sure I don't put my hand on any of the wet part of the paper. So I'm going to give the ris and the pupil another wash of this. So the more you practice with watercolor, it's just going to heighten your intuition with what feels good, what looks good. It might open you up to be a little bit more experimental in your practice. So if you feel like you shouldn't be using coffee brown right now, you should be using a different color. Obviously, you can just go and do that. I'm just sharing my process with you, which you can follow along, but you're obviously also always free to follow your own creative intuition. And I'm just going to go back into the shadow here a little bit with the coffee brown. I don't want to overdo it. I'm going to go back to the mouth and just darkening in here a little bit. The space between the teeth and the bottom lip. With my number ten brush, I'm going to go back into the air a little bit. And then have a look at this neck line again as well, trying to follow the lines of the body of the face of the neck so that it looks like my brush strokes are organic. They mimic the movement of the body. And I'm going to adjust that a little bit. You can always go and smooth out your lines if you feel like they're too dramatic. And I'm going to use my green tone now, the green cha. And you can see there's a bit of a green shimmer on the forehead here. I'm going to put that there and then smooth it out. Bring a bit over this part here as well over to the temple that line is a bit too crisp, so I'm going to smooth that out as well. And then I'm moving on to the contours of the face, the cheek bone. I feel like there's a little bit of that in there too. And also placing a little green next to this red on the highlight of the cheek bone is really going to make that stand out and get in under the lip over the top part of the chin, the part that's in shadow, and under the no over the top lip. I feel like there's a bit of green in there. You don't have to do it exactly how it is in your reference image, remember. But it is quite interesting to observe what you see in your reference image and then apply that to your watercolor painting. Also on the side here. In the neck, I can also see quite a bit of the green tone. So I am going to apply some of that over here. So I'm still trying to work loosely on the neck. I don't want to define it too much because it's quite hard, actually. There's not that many lines that you can follow to draw. So it's more about the volume. So what I'm trying to do is build up this volume using shade and light using my colors and not describing it too definitely. So I'm going to go back to the nose now, and I'm applying a little bit of the green tone here as well. I'm going to lift up a little bit of pigment here. I feel like it's a little bit too dark. That's better. Okay, I think I'm going to let this dry now, and I'm going to prepare some more purple shadow for my next layer, and I want that one to be a little more blue. So I'm going to add a little more of the blue to my purple shadow mix, and then I will see you in the next lesson to continue painting. 8. Details, Adding Hair & Clothes: In this lesson, I'm going to start putting in the details and also starting on the hair in the clothes. And I'm going to be changing a lot between different colors, shades and brushes in this process. So just bear with me, this is not a linear process. This is a bit of back and forth and putting in details as you see them. So I hope you can follow along and let's start. Okay, so now that that's all dry, I'm going to start with my purple shadow, and I feel like it's still quite rosy, so I'm just going to go over some of the areas that I find darker again. I wanted to have a bit of a blue tinge and I already mixed the new shade of purple shadow in preparation for this in the last lesson. As you can observe, I am continuing to build up my layers to achieve a watercolor painting with volume and depth by alternating between my different colors and shades. I have to admit that this is something that's intuitive, but if you're just starting out, you may not have developed this as much. If you want, you can follow my steps as they progress. And I'm going to go over this side now just to heighten the contrast here as well, by applying the purple shadow on top of my previous layers. And I'm just saying that this is a little bit too far, so I'm going to lift up some pigment here. And I also feel like this is a bit too intense, so I'm also going to lift up some of this pigment and just correct some mistakes as I go. And then I'm going to go on with skin tone too. That's a little too intense as well. I'm just going to smooth that out, and I'm also going to tone this part down here as well. If you're going to lift up pigment, be careful not to move your brush around too much because otherwise you might lift up some paper as well, and we want to avoid doing that. I'm also going to lift up a little bit from here. And I'm going to go back to purple shadow now. So as I said, if at any point you find yourself noticing things you dislike, you can always switch colors, brushes, and just correct and then continue. See, I'm just not enjoying this so much, so I'm going to lift up some of this pigment here. Sometimes it just also looks different once it's dry, remember that and continuing still with the purple shadow now. Moving into the temple area and the cheek bone. I'm just going to smooth that out at the top here. And also go over this side with a bit of purple shadow. And also this side here. So we have the most control over our brush and the pigment when we move the brush with these smooth movements. So seeing as we haven't added the hair yet, it's not exactly how it's going to look. So I think that's probably what I'll do next. But I'm just going to go quickly back to skin to two and just apply a really light wash over some of these areas that I've left out before so that I don't see too many whites of the paper. So, for example, this area on the forehead right here, under the eye, a little bit on the cheek bone, this area down here by the chin and the jaw. Remember trying to mimic the lines of the face, the movement of the face, and the muscles. And I'm going to come here and just put on a few touches on the nose with my skin tone to still. And if you spot any areas where you feel like a little more color needs to go here, not necessarily to make it dark, just to add a little touch of color. So you don't have the white of the paper. Just go ahead and do that. So that's what I'm doing right now. I'm also just going to go over the entire neck with the skin tone to the really light wash. And I just want to go and tidy up this area of the neck, as well, lift up a little bit of pigment so that it's a little bit lighter. Smoothing it out. Also over here. So I'm not going to do a lot of detail in the hair because as you can see in the reference photo, there isn't actually a lot of detail. I'm going to start by covering the hair area with the coffee brown, so just carefully where the face area ends and the hair begins. I'm just going to do this roughly right now, and then I will go and tidy up the hair line in a minute. And I will be using some pencil here as well to add some details. Sometimes I do this before I put on the pigment, but I have decided to do it the other way around today. I really feel like the painting does come together a little more once the hair is on, especially because this is very dark hair. The contrast just heightens instantly. And I'm going to dab a little bit of pigment in these wet areas, and I love how that expands. Okay, so that's the first layer. And while that's drying, I'm going to smooth this part out into the hair line. And as I said, I usually draw the hair before I give it a coat. But today, I'm going to do it a bit differently. I'm going to divide it into some hair sections. And for now, I've just got the top of the head, and then I will have the hair do. And actually, I'm just going to let that dry before I do the hair do. In the meantime, I am going to go back to my blue black, and I'm just going to work on some of these details. So as per usual, I'm starting with the lash line, and then going into the iris and the pupil again. So as I've said many times, we're not so concerned about likeness, about hyper realism or anything. I really just want to get some expressions, and contrasts, some interesting depth in here. So keep that in mind when you're painting so that you don't feel like you need to make a lot of changes because it doesn't look exactly like your reference. And remember what I said about the eyeball. So while that's still wet, I'm actually going to apply a little bit of water and blue paint in there, and I hope that it expands a bit. Also on the side. I'm also going to go over this crease here. I'm going to go over to the side here now. Just going to go over this part around the highlights and the pupil and continue on the side. I'm just going to smooth this part out here a little bit. It's too crisp for me. I don't want it to look like a helmet. And now I'm going to take my coffee brown again to do the eyebrows to begin with. Really put some detailed eyebrows and just whisk the brush across there with these wispy movements. Give it a bit of an organic feeling. Oh, and I have not put the wash over the left eyeball here, so I'm going to just quickly do that. I forgot to do that before. And I'm just going to lighten a bit of this in the is so that I have a little bit of tonal variety. So I'm just lifting up a little bit of pigment. And continuing with the blue Black now. I'm just going to go over the nostril. I'm not going to use the blue black on the skin. I'm just going over some of the shadows like in the nostril and also in the inside of the mouth. I wouldn't usually recommend using blue black on the skin because it's just a little too drastic. You can do that when you're working with monochrome or a limited palette. I just wouldn't recommend it if you're working with these kinds of tones. Okay. And while the hair is drying, I'm going to get a little bit of coffee brown and go into the neck a little bit more tightening the contrast in some of these shadows here. Okay. And there's also a little section of hair just behind the ear here, which I left out earlier. I'm going to cover that with a little bit of coffee brown as well. Now that the hair is completely dry. But you have to make sure it's completely dry. Remember, we cannot work with pencil on wet paint. I'm going to start sectioning the hair off into different sections. And I want to do that so that I can work on different sections at different times and that it doesn't end up looking like a helmet, and this is going to be the third section and another section here, and another section here, and of course, this little section here behind the ear. Make sure your pencil stays sharp. And now I'm going to start making these marks of hair, and usually it's darker towards the root and lighter out here. And often there's some highlights in the middle section, but it's quite dark. So you can't really see that much detail. I'll have a look how I work that in later, but you can just do your own hair from your imagination. You don't need to go on what the photo looks like. So you can see I'm making these long pencil strokes across the hair. So varying intensities from where it's darker to where it's lighter, you know, a firmer pencil stroke to a lighter pencil stroke. I'm trying to imitate or suggest hair without it being hyper realistic. Okay. And back here, I'm also going to divide this into two sections. There might be a couple of highlights here. Okay, so now that I've divided the hair into sections, I'm going to go over the hair with some coffee brown, and I'm going to start with this first section here, and I don't want to be working on two adjacent sections at a time so that they don't end up looking the same and looking like a helmet. That one is done and I'm starting on this section over here. Maybe there's a little bit of detail coming in here and the line. Maybe I'll leave it a little bit lighter towards here so that you can see the detail of the pencil. Okay, so I've worked on those two sections, and then I'm going to start again on this section here. That's not adjacent to the other ones. While the other ones are drying, and then the section here behind the ear. Next, I'm going to go up to the hair do and do one of these sections. And then this section here while that is drying Now, I'm actually going to start on the clothes. What I usually like to do is work those in wet on wet technique. I wet the paper, and then I'm going to work on that with some blue black. I just dab the pigment into the wet area of the paper. It's going to expand super nice. I'll do the same on the other side. So now I'm just going to smooth that out towards the neck line a little bit towards where the skin is. I don't want this very intense edge. And for this part of the clothes. I am going to use a little bit of the green color that I made up. I like that it is leaking in there. I want it to be organic, and I'm going to invent this part because I can't see it. And now I'm going to wet the rest of this paper so that paint kind expands into there. So if you're working with wet brushes, they might drip onto your paper accidentally and we want to avoid that, so just be aware. While that's drying, I am going to go back to the hair with the coffee brown and work on these sections that I couldn't cover before. This one here. And then this one here. I actually have some highlights in this bun here, but I'm going to just cover all of it for now and then I'm just going to lift up some pigment in a moment. Now with the piece of tissue paper, I'm just removing some of these highlights in the top of the hair do. And I'm going to smooth this out a little bit. Once we've finished with the hair, let's that then in the next lesson, let's have a look at how to heighten the contrast even more and add some more intensity. 9. More Contrast, More Details: Okay, so let's continue. I'm going to give the face another wash with the green cha. Just a light wash, and I'm going to start on this side here. I just want to add a little bit more blue to that. I'd like it to have more of a bluish tinge. I'm just trying to tone down these red tones a little bit. And I'm trying not to go over the top here, I can always go over these areas again and give them another coat that's better than going over the top in one coat. Watercolor, as I've said, is all about building up your layers little by little, just transparent layer on top of transparent layer gives it a bit more depth volume. You can always smooth out your brush strokes. For example, here in the temple around the cheek bone. Around the eye here as well. I want a few red tones to stand out, so I'm toning down the rest of the red tones with the green ocher I also want to go over this jaw line a little bit more under the chin get in this shadow here a little bit more and try to get the face to come out of the paper a little bit more going over some areas where I feel like I need to give it a bit of a wash. I'm going to go back to the teeth now, and I'm going to use my tiny brush, making sure that the area of the clothes is not wet anymore because that's where I'm going to be resting my hand. Using the blue black, I'm going to squint my eyes and I'm going to start heightening this contrast here. You can see I'm making just the faintest of lines. They're still very light. What I really want to focus on is not the lines between the teeth, which is what we usually do, but it's the shadows on the teeth that I want to focus on. Especially the highlights will tell you where does one tooth begin, where does another one end. I'm just going to go back up to the nostril and go over that a little bit again, change in color to coffee brown now. I'm going to get into a couple of details here like this one, this part here, for example, if the nose. I feel like I've made this gap between the lip and the teeth too large. I'm going to take a little bit of pigment away from here with my little brush. It's just clean and damp. Then with the coffee brown, I'm going to go over a couple of lines up here too with the go over the crease, for example, and changing back to blue black. I'm going to give this part here a bit more of a wash. Then at the same time with my clean damp brush, I'm going to pull out a little bit of a highlight over here. I just removing some pigment. Then I'm going to take a look at this detail in the corner of the eye, which I haven't done yet. I'm doing it with some skin tone to. I'm just getting in there because there's a little bit of red, and I'm also going over the bottom lid here, and then I'm going over the other side also with some skin tone to. Now with my skin tone three, which is a little bit orange, I just want to have this orange going on here on the cheekbone a little bit that she has some rouge on Now, with a little skin tone one, I'm also just going to give the cheek a little bit of a layer. So as you can see, I'm constantly trying to balance the skin tones and the cooler tones and the warmer tones so that it's not too rosy but also not too gray. I'm constantly making adjustments and figuring it out as I go along by observing my painting and also my reference image. Now what I want to do with some skin tone to Kind of work a little bit more on these lips again, so I'm just going to go over them entirely, and then I will go on to pull out some highlights by removing some pigment. And I feel like the highlights are mainly down here, and that's not really working so much with the brush, the pulling out of the highlights. It's a little bit too wet, so I'm going to get some tissue paper just like before. Just dab it on there and also going to remove a little bit of pigment from the top, cleaning my brush, and then with my damp brush, going over there and cleaning that up. I've come over the line here. Okay, I'm going to go over this with some purple shadow again afterwards. But for now, I'm just going to soften this line down here, and the hair should be dry by now, so I'm going to get some blue black. Hair is very dark. I'm going to start working on these sections again. Again, I'm trying to make it smooth around the hair line so that we don't have this weird helmet effect going on. Then I'm going to move on to this next section here. Same as before, tidying it up a little bit around the hair line. And it looks a little strange right now, but it's going to look just fine once we've finished. I'm going to move on to this section back here. And I'm just going to wait for the hair to dry and in the meantime, give a little bit of detail to the eyebrows with my small brush, also with the blue black. Okay. So the eyebrows go in different directions. The hairs sometimes will come from the top and some will come from the bottom, and just varying a little bit with the direction of the hair is really going to help your work look a little more organic. Now I'm going to go back to skin tone one for a moment and I'm going to go over the air. As I said, I don't want this to be a protagonist, so I'm just going to give it one more coat and also one more coat of the skin tone one on the neck. Just really getting that volume and that depth in there. Now I'm going to do one more thing on the side here. It's really annoying me. I need to adjust this hair on the side. It just doesn't look right to me. I'm just going to do that quickly with the blue black, and then I'm going to go over the eyelashes again on this side. Maybe now I will add a little bit of detail. Again, I'm just kind of making wispy movements, flicking the brush really finely to get these eyelashes. And I will do the same on the other side. Now, the reason you want to do the details at the end is because if you go over these with another coat or a few other coats, they will just start to disappear and you'll be covering up your details. So you don't really want to spend heaps of time making all these little eyelash marks and then covering them up. I want to try and keep it organic. So I'm going to try and make them go in different directions. And I think I need another coat of purple shadow. I really don't want to overdo it, but I feel like this side still has too much light. So it always does dry lighter anyway than what you paint. So you need to wait for your coat to finish drying before you can really evaluate how much more shadow it needs, but I do think that another wash of the purple shadow on the side will do it some good. So I'm just going over some brush strokes that I already made in previous layers. And I feel like that's a little more like it. I've actually got a big highlight here. I'm just going to remove some pigment. But, again, you can't get all the highlights out until you have the shadows. Everything's relative to one another. Just tiding up a few details around here, trying to lift up a few of these highlights. Okay, I think the hair is dry now, so I'm going to give a coat to the other sections that I didn't get to cover before. I'm moving on to the other section at the back. And again, I'm smoothing out the edges of the hair line. I'm going to go back to my green cha, and I'm going to cover this part here again. Now, I really like to use the green cha in the shadows of the face because it also makes the red times really stand out. And now changing to skin tone one, I'm getting a light wash. And I want to add a few more warm areas to the face. So for example, around here, just a bit and also under the eye, just a little touch of the skin tone one. And here in the cheek, I feel like it needs a little bit more rosiness now that I've added so many different shades of green and purple. Right. A little bit more on the forehead as well. I feel like I'm getting towards the end and just really light washes now though, also across the tempo area. Careful not to touch any of the weight hair because otherwise it's going to start expanding onto the face, and I really don't want that. I'm going to get some more of the green ochre and put that around the jaw area here and also a tiny bit in here for the shadow. Just putting on some light light touches here and there. I want to go into this beautiful cheekbone once more. Well, that's all drying, I'm going to get my purple shadow, and I'm going to mix it with a little bit of skin tone too so that I've got a little bit more of an intense color, not too purple, not too light red, and then I'm just going to give the lips another go. And I'm just going to fade it out at the top here a little bit. Leave those highlights, getting into underneath the eyes here as well and just tightening that shadow a little bit more. Maybe just with some skin tone to give a couple of details to the ear here. Now I'm going to take my coffee brown and just give the hair a complete coating so that it unifies the hair. Obviously, the layer underneath has to be dry before we apply this coffee brown. If you prefer to use your larger brush for this, that's fine. I'm just using my number ten brush. H. And I'm going to smooth it out again towards the hair line. And I'm going to lift up the few of these highlights at the top with my tissue paper. Then quickly just going into the mouth again with some purple shadow. I don't usually like to use ivory black out of the tube, except for in this one instance where it's about the pupil. I really like to use pure out of the tube, ivory black for that because that is really the darkest point of the whole painting, and you really get that point in there with ivory black. I'm going to go back to my purple shadow, and I'm just going to give a little bit of detail to the lips. I'm looking for the darkest areas and really just trying to accentuate them, also just get into that gap between the teeth and the bottom lip again, just make that a little darker. Maybe I can give the eye a little bit more darkness around here too. I'm just going to smooth that out with my other brush and same over here, then one more time over the s while the hair is still drying, just going to go over the clothes once more, but I really like how they're just very loose, and I want to leave that looseness. I'm just applying a little bit of diluted paint just to give it a little more intensity, and then I'm just going to inject more pigment in there just like before and let that expand. Just making sure that the hair line doesn't get too messy now. Okay, I'm going to dry this off, and then in the next lesson, I'm just going to finish the details on the hair and get into all the last details and finishing touches. 10. Finishing Touches: Okay, so in this lesson, let's have a look at where to put the finishing touches on the painting. And I can see that up here, this part has expanded too much into the eyelids. So I'm just going to lift up some pigment here. And also in here. Okay, let's return to the teeth for a moment. They're not that defined, and I actually quite like it this way, but if we wanted to give them more definition, we would give them another coat. I'm going to do that now with some green ochre really lightly, I'm going to go over this part and these parts that are in the shadow. If you don't know where they are, remember, you can just squint your eyes and they shod become apparent. So the highlights of the teeth really stand out more now. Okay, so I'm going to work on the details of the hair now. And for that, I've got my coffee brown and my tiny brush, and I'm just going to start coming into this hair line here with these wispy movements, just flicking my brush and trying to keep it organic and not all the hair is going to come from the same direction. So I'm just kind of working away here, flicking the brush, and if you feel like it's too detail, or the brush strokes are too dark, you can always go ahead and remove them. And then you wait till it's dry and you can give it another go. And remember, it always dries a little bit lighter anyway? Okay. So just a couple of strokes going over the ear here. I went a little bit over the top. So I'm just going to correct that. And let's go back up here and work on some of these highlights. I'm just going to give them a little bit of detail. Maybe in a moment I can cover them with some yellow ocher just straight from the tube. You can see she's got these baby hes here. I really just want to put some in really lightly because I think it's going to add to the whole picture. I'm still using the coffee brown. And I'm just going to go in here behind the ear as well, put in some of these little hairs coming down. So if you're always making the same kind of brush strokes, it's not going to look very real, not very organic. So in nature, things are always a little bit different. And I'm moving on to blue black now to give a little more detail to this hair line. It's a bit tedious, but I think it's going to look really good. Okay. So as I said, I'm just going to give the hair do a bit of a coat of yellow ocher just straight from the tube. But of course, mixed with water so that it looks like there's some highlights going on here. Just in some of these areas here. Now that I'm looking more closely at these baby hairs, I can see that there's a little bit of a red tone. I'm just going to give it a tiny bit of skin tone one and smooth that out. And I'm just going to put a couple more strokes around the ear with the blue black tidying up some details that are bothering me. Overall, I'm pretty happy to be honest. I'm just going to put the finishing details of the hair up here with some blue black and the very small brush. Just putting in the last bit of contrast here, to really make it pop. Then just touch up on some eye lashes. Now I'm going to use a little bit of white out of the tube just to recover some of the highlights that I've lost in the eye a couple, subtle dots that I'm putting in. Also in the teeth. And then one more thing that's been bothering me a little bit. The highlight on the pupil is actually a little bit too large. So I'm just going to make that a little bit smaller and also on the other side. Okay, I could go on for hours, probably, still, but I'm going to leave it here. And I hope you join me in the next lesson for a couple of final thoughts. 11. Final Thoughts: Thank you so much for joining me today. It's been a pleasure sharing my techniques and tips with you, and I'm excited to see how you apply them in your own work. Seeing your progress and the unique touch that you bring to your portraits is incredibly rewarding and also provides valuable inspiration to other students. So don't be shy. Go ahead and share your masterpieces and any insights or challenges in the project section of this class. Also make sure to stop by my profile to see what else I'm teaching. And you can do that just by clicking on my name. And if you're looking to continue your watercolor journey and further refine your skills, make sure to check out the 30 day watercolor painting challenge of painting one eye per day for 30 days. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to post them in the discussion section of this class. If you want, you can also follow me social media. You can find me on Instagram under Nadia underscore underscore Alaska. If these walls underscore, underscore id talk or night project, where I share some different angles of my creative work with the world. I hope you've enjoyed this class, and if you have, then I would love it if you could leave me a review in the review section. I read every single review, and they always motivate me to keep making these classes to share the things that I have learned on my creative journey, and it also assists other students in deciding which classes might be right for them. Of course, you can also follow me here on Skillshare just by clicking on this button. That way, you're always in the loop about new classes and other things that I've got going on here. Thank you again for joining me today. I hope you've enjoyed this class, and I hope to see you again really soon.