Wet on Wet Made Easy: An Introduction to Wet on Wet for Beginners

1. Introduction: Ask almost any watercolor painter, and they will tell you the flow and unpredictability of watercolor is one of its greatest strengths. This flowing random nature is best achieved when using the wet-on-wet technique. If you're a beginner, you may be asking, what is Wet on Wet? When should I use it? How can I use it to achieve beautiful results and avoid a chaotic mess? Hi, I'm Lyndsay Newton, a watercolor artists specializing in animal paintings. In this class, I'll cover the basics of wet on wet technique. Guide you through some exercises that will help you to develop your skills and knowledge. And finally, we'll put all that together to paint a beautiful watercolor toucan. I have a passion for animals, and they have been the inspiration for my artistic endeavors for years. I have explored various mediums in my journey as an artist, but watercolor has captured my heart with its flowing nature. As I hone my skills and expanded my understanding of this medium, I find great joy in sharing the knowledge I've gained with fellow watercolor artists. Like you. Wet on wet is the quintessential watercolor technique. While it may appear simple, mastering this technique requires both knowledge and skill in order to achieve stunning results. This class serves as an introduction to wet on wet painting. What you will learn in these lessons will provide a foundation for you upon which you can build your wet on wet painting skills. This class was made especially with beginners in mind. Although other artists may also find new gems of knowledge in these lessons. If you've never tried wet on wet painting, or if you've only dip your toes into this technique, then this class is perfect for you. We'll start our wet on wet journey by learning what wet on wet is. We'll review the different levels of wet and dry that are paper can be used an exercise to see how those different levels get different results. We'll cover the wet on wet techniques. We'll learn in our project and practice those techniques separately. Before tackling our toucan painting. I'll go over the toucan step-by-step so you can see what I'm doing and what choices I made. That way. You can have competence in creating your own painting. If you're ready to experience the joy of wet on wet painting, than Let's get started. 2. Class Project: In this class, we'll practice our wet on wet skills by painting a watercolor toucan. While most of the toucan has simple Colors and features, there are enough interesting details in our reference photo that we can practice multiple wet on wet techniques and truly explore it with this approach has to offer. Before beginning our project, you'll want to review the five lessons, covering supplies, what is Wet on Wet levels of Wet and Dry? Wet on Wet Techniques and technique Practice. These lessons will provide knowledge on the wet on wet technique. And we'll include two important exercises. The first will help you gain a better understanding of how paint flows on wet paper. And the second, we'll provide an opportunity to practice the techniques before applying them to your project. The last few lessons provide a tutorial for painting the toucan so that you can see how I apply these techniques to our project. We'll start by making sure that are outlined is properly prepared. Next, we'll paint the lightest colors in the toucan. We'll focus on the eye and the Beak. Then finish the hip. Will darken the area of the Wing. Then paint the neck and the chest. We'll review our painting and make any necessary adjustments. When your painting is finished. Be sure to post it in your project gallery. If you're ready to get started, come join me in the next lesson, where I'll cover the supplies you'll need to succeed in this class. I'll see you there. 3. Supplies: To take this class, you'll need some basic watercolor supplies. Let's start by looking at paper. Quality. Watercolor paper is the most important supply a watercolor painter can have. It can be the difference between struggling to achieve a Technique or creating an effect with ease. I recommend 100% cotton, watercolor paper. If you use tube or pan paints. If you use liquid, you may find cellulose paper to work better. When it comes to 100% cotton paper. There are several brands and every watercolor artist has their preferences. My favorites are arche, Winsor and Newton professional. And I've recently come to enjoy bow hang Academy. For this class, you will need two pieces of paper, either 6 " by 9 " or seven-and-a-half inches by 10 ". I recommend you buy a watercolor pad that is either 9 " by 12 " or 10 " by 15 ". The former can be cut in half, four to six by nine pieces, and the latter can be halved into 27.5 by ten pieces. Another option is to buy a full sheet that is 22 " by 30 " and cut the sheet into thirds. Cut each of those thirds again, and you will end up with nine pieces of paper, approximately 7.5 by ten paints. Our next for this class, I will be using five paints. I will use a warm yellow, which is a yellow that leans orange. A warm orange, which is an orange that leans read. A mid-range read that leans, neither warm nor cool. A cool blue, which is a blue that leans green. And finally, a dark brown. Specifically, I will use new gamboge as my warm yellow, transparent pyrrole, orange for my warm orange. Nap fall read for my red, phthalo blue, green shade for my cool blue, and sepia for my dark brown. All of these paints are by Daniel Smith, except for the Nepal red, which is by Da Vinci. In addition to these paints, I will use to More Colors, a cool black and a warm black. Both of these colors will be made by mixing my warm orange with my cool blue. My cool black, we'll lean towards blue. And my warm black, we'll lean towards orange. Make sure to mix up a large amount, especially the cool black. As much of the toucan is black. You'd like to learn more about mixing colors. Feel free to check out my other Skillshare class on the subject. The last major supply you will need is brushes. I recommend having at least three brushes. A large brush, a medium brush, and a small brush. I will be using silver brush, black velvet for my large and medium brushes in size 12.6 round, respectively. Silver brush is a blend of synthetic and natural squirrel hair. These brushes hold a lot of water and have a very pointed tip. So they are great for wet on wet painting. For my small brush, I will use a Princeton heritage round to. This is a synthetic sable brush. It doesn't hold as much water as similar size scroll brushes, but the bristles are stiffer, making details easier. In addition to the Supplies, you will also want cups for water. I like to have one cup for cleaning paint out of brushes and another for final writs, or for picking up clean water. A palette for mixing paint, a pencil, and a kneaded eraser for transferring the Outline. A transfer method, such as a lightbox or graphite paper. Tape, such as washy or artists tape for taping down your paper. A board to tape your paper to use a cut up acrylic sheet. And finally, a rag or paper towels for blotting off paint and water. Lastly, I have several resources provided for your use in this class. They are a list of Supplies, outlines of the toucan scale for both six by nine paper and 7.5 by ten paper. A simplified outline of the Beak for use in lesson seven. A copy of the reference photo, which comes from Shannon Potter on Unsplash. And a photo of my final painting. With our supplies ready to go. It's time to answer the question, what is Wet on Wet? I'll see you in the next lesson. 4. What is Wet on Wet?: Before we can use wet on wet, we need to know what it is. Simply put, wet on wet is when we add wet paint to wet paper. To accomplish this, start by laying down water over the area where you want to paint. Next, pick up some paint with your brush, then add the paint to the area that you have just wet. Because there's water in the area, the paint will start to spread away from the area where you place it. How far it spreads will depend on the brands of paint and paper that you use. How much water is mixed with your paint, and how much water is on the paper. The more water, the further the spread. While you can control how much water you will use and where you put the paint. You cannot control exactly how the paint will spread. And you will end up with a unique look that cannot be replicated. Painting wet on wet is also a great way to get soft edges. That is, edges that have a fuzzy line. This is in contrast to hard edges which have a clearly defined line. Wet on wet is one method of applying paint to our paper. The other two methods are wet on dry and dry on dry. Wet on dry is when you apply wet paint to dry paper. Notice that the paint stays in place and does not flow to other areas of the paper. Dry on dry, also known as dry brushing, is applying Dry paint to dry paper. Of course, the paint isn't actually Dry. Instead, the brush with the paint is blooded onto a paper towel or rag, leaving a damp or mostly dry brush. As a result, when you paint dry paper with a mostly dry brush, the paint only reaches the bumps of texture on the watercolor paper, leaving a broken line effect. In our project. We will use mostly wet on wet, with some wet on dry. In the next lesson, we'll learn about the different levels of wet paper and what effects can be achieved with each. I'll see you there. 5. Levels of Wet and Dry: Though it may seem that paper can be either wet or dry. There are actually different levels of wet and dry that we can achieve. Well, every artist has their own idea of how many levels there are. For the purpose of this class, we're going to examine three levels of Wet. Three levels of Dry. The first-level of wet is sopping wet. This is when an excessive amount of water is on the paper. It's enough water that the texture of the paper cannot be seen when the paper is held flat and water may run off the paper when at an angle. This level of wet is rarely used, if ever. The next level of wet is Wet. In this level, there is a good amount of water, but the texture of the paper can still be seen. This level of wet is good if you have a large area to paint and are concerned about the paper drying too quickly. If you want to make a light wash or if you want a lot of paint flow in your project. The last level of wet is barely wet. This level shows more paper texture than wet, but still has a little sheen to it. This is a good level of wetness. If you want a mild to moderate amount of paint flow. Moving onto the levels of Dry, the wettest level of Dry is damp dry. In this level, you can see that the paper is wet enough that it looks different from dry paper, but the water has mostly dried, leaving a matte look. This level will provide the least flow and most control over the paint, but it will still flow unpredictably. The next level of Dry is dangerously Dry. The paper no longer looks wet. However, if you touch it with sensitive skin, like the inside of your wrist, you will feel that this section of paper is cooler than a dry section of paper. It gets the name dangerously Dry because it's dangerous paint on. Even though it looks dry, you will still get some flow, often irregularly. Also, adding water to a painted area that is dangerously Dry will cause blooms. Once paper reaches this stage of dryness, you need to let it dry it entirely. Even if you want to use more wet on wet technique in this area, it is better to let it completely dry. Then we wet the area. Finally, there is dry paper. This is paper without any water added to it or paper that has been allowed to dry completely after the addition of paint or water. If you paint on dry paper, you're no longer painting wet on wet. Your painting wet on dry. Painting on dry paper gives you control over where the paint goes. It is also what you should use when you want to make hard edges. Now that you know about the six levels of wet and dry, it's time to practice to see how these levels work in action. Start off by laying your paper down in landscape view. Measure to 4.6 " horizontally from left to right. Then make a vertical line across the paper at the six-inch mark. The smaller area to the right. For Lesson seven. Next, add vertical lines at the two-inch and 4-inch marks. Cutting the left side of your paper in thirds. Finally, make a horizontal line in the middle of your paper. Creating six bucks is total for this exercise. Now you can turn your paper and label each box with the different types of wet and dry. I will put sopping wet, wet and barely wet on the left. Then damped Dry, dangerously Dry and Dry on the right. For each section, add enough water to create the wetness level of your label except for Dry. Don't add any water there. For the other two Dry sections. You'll have to wait for the paper to dry a bit before it's the right level of dryness. Once you have the right level of wet or dry, use your medium brush to add three strokes. First, a brushstroke with dry paint. Of course, Dry isn't possible, but add just enough water to your paint that you are able to pick it up with your brush. If your brush seems a little wet, you can debit against a rag at the base of the bristles As this will remove more water than paint. Second, a brushstroke with wet paint. To tell if your paint is wet, it should be able to tilt your palette a little and the paint will slowly flow down the palette. It should not be enough to cause a drop to run down the palette and a gentle tilt. Third, a brushstroke with very wet paint. By very wet paint, I mean, there is enough water in your paint that if you tilt your palate, it will flow easily. It may also result in a drop running down the palette. Lesson at this time to complete the exercise. Once you're finished, returned to this lesson and we'll review the results. Now that you've completed this exercise and everything is dry, take a moment to look at what you've created. Notice that the more wet the paper is, the more flow you see. The same is true for how wet your paint is. You may not even be able to see some of your wet brush strokes on wet paper. Notice also how unpredictable your results are in the dangerously Dry section. A good reason to avoid painting when your paper is dangerously Dry. Use this exercise as a reference to help you predict how much flow you will get at each stage. It can help you decide how what you want your paper to be when using a wet on wet technique. When you're done reviewing your exercise. Meet me in the next lesson where we will talk about the wet on wet techniques we'll use in this class. I'll see you there. 6. Wet on Wet Techniques: In this class, we're going to use five different kinds of techniques while working wet on wet. They are flat wash, charging, pulling paint, color mixing, and soft edge patterns. First, flat wash. A flat washes where you have an even wash that is about the same level of value throughout. You do not need to use wet on wet to make a flat wash. However, wedding your paper first can help you to keep colors light, which is helpful for light areas, and initial washes, which often should be lighter. Working wet on wet can also help to keep the area from drawing before you want it to. And preventing things like hard edges and blooms that will keep the wash from being even. Next charging. I also like to call this dropping paint. Charging is the addition of wet paint to wet paint. By dropping it into the area. When charging, you generally allow the paint to flow as it will. Little to no mixing with a brush occurs. Charging allows for soft edges and interesting textures as the paints naturally mix. Onto pulling paint. When pulling paint, you start by adding a significant amount of paint to one area. Next, removed most of the paint from your brush. And now you can use your brush to pull the paint that is already on the paper. Using this technique can help to create a gradient effect. Up next is color mixing. Colors can be mixed on the palette, but they can also be mixed on the paper. As with charging, wet paint is added to wet paint. But this time, the brushes used to help blend the colors and in some cases, create a gradient between the colors. Finally, we have soft edge patterns. By painting wet on wet, we can add the paint in the general form of a pattern, but the wet paper will cause the edges of the paint to be soft and indistinct. One catch with making lines in wet on wet. Notice that on your exercise in the previous lesson, when you made a line, extra paint came off at the end of the line. We will be using wet on wet to mimic the vertical orange lines on the toucan beak. Since either end of these lines is more narrow than at the center, we don't want that extra paint at the ends. We'll solve this problem by painting the lines halfway down. Then add the bottom half by painting halfway up. Alternatively, you can flip your paper and repeat the downward stroke if that is more comfortable. Either way, the end of each line is in the center of the pattern where it is thickest on our reference photo. This will hide the extra paint that comes off as we pick up our brush. Now that we've covered the techniques we're going to use, Let's practice them by doing an exercise based on our final project. I'll see you in the next lesson. 7. Technique Practice: For this practice, we're going to paint a simplified section of the toucan beak. In our project. The toucan beak uses four of the five techniques mentioned in the previous lesson. Charging, pulling paint, color mixing, and soft edge patterns. Let's get started. In the section of your exercise paper that you left blank. Draw a simplified copy of the beak. You can draw it freehand. Trace it from the PDF I am providing in the resources section. This simplified Beak also has to straight diagonal lines. These will mark where the yellow paint will go in the center, where the yellow paint will be pulled to the top-right corner, and where the orange paint will go in the bottom-left corner. You will not have these diagonal lines in the outline of the toucan. But for this practice, they're helpful. For this exercise. You will need your warm yellow, warm orange, and warm black mix. Make sure you've added a little water to these three colors. Before getting started. We will use all three sizes of brushes for this exercise. I encourage you to watch this entire video once before attempting the exercise. You will want to make sure the paper doesn't dry between the first few steps. So make sure you have in mind what you want to do before getting started. First, wet the entire rectangle with your large brush. Note that you don't have to go all the way to the edges with your water. It is hard to see where the water is. So just get as close as you can. When the paint is down, you'll be able to see better. And you can fill in where you didn't quite make it to the edge. Next, get a large brush full of yellow paint. Yellow is a very light color. So you don't want it to be too pale. Use a small to moderate amount of water with your yellow paint. At the yellow paint to the center of the Beak. Fill the entire rectangle except for the top-right, bottom-left corner with yellow. Take the yellow to the diagonal lines. It will bleed across those lines. And that's okay. The diagonal lines were put in place with that in mind. Once this area is filled with a vibrant yellow wipe off your brush. By this, I mean, wipe it on the rag or towel. But you don't want to clean it at this stage. You just want the worst of the paint to be off of the brush. Next, it's time to pull paint. Take the yellow at the upper right diagonal and pull it into the upper right corner. This will achieve a nice light yellow in the upper right, making it look like the light is shining on that area. Now that we're done with a yellow, it's time to clean your brush. Since we're switching colors, you'll want to make sure your brush is completely clean before picking up the orange with your brush. Start in the bottom-left corner and add the orange up to the diagonal line. The next step is color mixing. While we're going to let the colors mix wet on wet, we're going to help them along a little with the brush. You'll want to wipe off your brush just like you did for pulling paint. Thin stroke the wiped off brush up and down the bottom diagonal line to help the colors mix. Now it's time to switch brushes. Grab your medium brush and pick up some orange paint. Make a few evenly spaced wiggly lines. You can wiggle more at the bottom than at the top. But don't worry if you want to keep the wiggles about the same width. Take the wiggles to the jagged line in the center. When you finish painting the first half of the wiggly lines, you can create matching wiggly lines from the bottom up. If you prefer. You can also flip your paper to repeat the top-down motion, whichever is more comfortable for you. The last thing we will do before letting the paper dry is charged the bottom with some warm black paint. Clean your medium brush and pick up a little warm black paint. Dab the paint into the left corner. Deb further into the orange on the left side than on the right. Allow the black to mix naturally. Although if you see it doing something you don't like, you can always come back with a wiped off brush to make adjustments. Now it's time to let it dry. You'll want to make sure that the paper is fully dry before the next step and not dangerously Dry. In order to avoid watercolor blooms. The last thing we're going to do is re-wet a small area underneath the jagged line to add some shadows. Use your small brush to get the paper barely wet. Wet area to go about half an inch below the jagged line. Maybe a little less. It's just enough so that you don't get hard edges. Add water to the first four points. Now, at a small amount of black paint to your paintbrush and drop a little black into the first three points. If needed, wipe your brush off and then help to blend out the black. Ideally, you will have a slightly black triangle with two hard edges where the jagged line is and a soft edge below the jagged line. Once your first three points are done, clean your brush and finish wedding the remaining triangles. Note that we wet the fourth triangle the first time, but we didn't paint it. This is because we were using it as a buffer so that when we added water to the rest of the paper, it didn't immediately rush into our freshly painted areas, and so it didn't mess up our paint. This is a good tip for working wet on wet. When you have an area larger than you can paint without the area drying, add water beyond your initial stopping point. Then when you're ready to extend your area, your buffer will protect the area you just painted. Here's an example of what happens if you don't have that buffer area. Now that all of the points are wet, add black is before to each point. There you have it. This is the most challenging part of the toucan. It will be a little harder on the toucan itself because there'll be more narrow areas to paint on the full Beak. But this practice under your belt, you'll be ready to tackle the beat and everything else on the toucan. It's time to move on to our project. We'll start by covering how you want to prepare Your Outline before getting ready to paint. I'll see you in the next lesson. 8. Prepare Your Outline: So before you start to paint, you're going to want Your Outline to be just as you want it. By that, I mean, you need to think about how light and how dark your outline is. Watercolor paint is transparent. And that means that if you're painting a light color over a dark outline, that outline is going to show through the light color. Not only that, but once you've painted over it, you cannot erase that pencil line. So you'll need to make sure it looks how you want it before you get started. Now when you're thinking about where you need to lighten your outline, you need to consider where you have a light color, either meeting the paper or meeting another light color. And let me point out what I mean by that. Here on the chest, we're going to have a very light yellow fading into white. And so this is going to be up against the white of the paper. This line right here will want to lighten. The same thing happens here. This is going to be a fairly light yellow in this little triangle. Up on the top of the Beak, we're going to have a light yellow, again meeting the white of the paper. Another area to be concerned is where this oranges around the eye. Depending on how light that is, you'll still see the outline. So you may want to lighten it where the orange meets the white down here, where it meets this little white triangle at the very top of the head. Now an easy way to lighten these lines is with a kneaded eraser. So just get yourself one of these. And then if I want to lighten this line here, just going to pad it. And you'll see that line is now lighter than it used to be. I can also do it up here. Not really rubbing, just padding. Again, that line is lightened. So for my Outline, I'm going to keep it pretty dark because it needs to be seen on camera so that you can see what I'm doing during the tutorial. However, at your own home, you'll want to make sure to lighten those lines as much as you can while still being able to see them. Note that you don't have to worry where a light area meets a dark area, such as here where the white right here is going to be going up against the black of the head. And that's because when I paint, I'm going to be painting over this pencil outline with the Black Sea. You won't be able to see it. By the same token. This highlight here is a little bit bigger than I want it to be, so that I can paint over the outline with the black and with the sepia when the time comes. The last thing that I want to say about Your Outline is think about where you want to put it. As you can see, I put my outline so that it basically meets where my tape is on the board. And a couple of lines weren't quite long enough to reach that tape, so I just extended them a little bit further. Now that's not something that you have to do, but it is an option that you can consider. When Your Outline is ready, it is going to be time to paint. Will start our next lesson by painting the light Colors in the toucan. I'll see you there. 9. Light Colors: To start our Toucan, the first thing that I'm going to do is wet this area on the throat. I will get close to the edges with my water. Then I will get exactly up to the edges once I have some paint on my brush and can better see what I'm doing. On the backside of the throat. I can even go over the edges because I will be painting over this area with black and won't be able to see the pale yellow underneath. I want this to be pretty wet so I can get lots of paint flow and can keep my colors light. I'm going to use my medium brush to paint the Chest so that I can more easily reach into this tiny corner. As you can see, I don't need a lot of paint. Once I get a little on there, I wipe off my brush and then pull the paint on the paper up into those other wet areas. I'm keeping everything nice and light. Now is the time when I will make sure that the paint and water will come up to the edge on the left side. Again, it's okay that it's bleeding over on this right side because I'm going to be painting over that with the black and we'll never see the yellow. Next. We're going to do the Beak. Again. I recommend watching the video in full before you get started. Good idea in your head of what you want to do here, because you'll need to work very quickly while painting the beak. I'm going to put down water over most of this area because my brushes so big, I'm not going to worry about getting close to those edges. Again. I'll be able to better see what I'm doing when I have paint on the brush. I want this to be wet so that I'll have plenty of time to do everything I need to do. I'm using my big brush and I'm going to lay down my yellow. There is a lot of paint flow and that's what I want. Now that I have paint on my brush and can see where I'm placing my strokes. I'm going to get into that corner and paint carefully. I want the deep yellow to go into this corner and sort of make a diagonal up to about where the black on the tip meets the duration of the mouth. It is flowing down out of that area and that's okay. We want that. I've put down as much yellow paint as I want. Now I wipe off my big brush and I'll pull up the paint to this top area. I'm just taking what's already there and moving it around a little bit. I want this area to be vibrant, keeping in mind that it will dry lighter than it looks now, I'll add a bit more yellow in this central area. The next thing we need to do is add our orange. I'll clean my big brush thoroughly, then use it to pick up some orange. I'll start by painting in this corner. It's dry here since this is one of the areas I didn't cover with water. Now that I have the paint, I can see where I'm placing it. It's okay that this area is dry because we're going to meet up with a wet area while it's still plenty wet. I want the orange to go as high as the serration on left and then move diagonally downwards along the line that I painted with the yellow. Once the oranges down, I can wipe off my brush and then do a little mixing where the two colors meet. After that, I'll let the paint flow naturally. The next thing I'm going to do is add those vertical dark orange lines. I'll switch to my medium brush for this. And I'll make paper is still wet with my orange on my brush. I'll make little squiggles down to the line where the serration is. I find it easier to draw the squiggles down from top to bottom. So I'm going to flip the toucan over. Make sure you still have enough paint on your brush, and then paint the second half of the squiggles. The last color we're going to add to the Beak while it's wet is some warm black to represent the shadow under the Beak. I'm going to clean my medium brush, then pick up a little bit of the warm black and charge the area with the black. For the most part. We'll let it mix naturally rather than blending it. Finally, while the Beak is still wet, I'm going to get a little orange and smooth out the edge of the bottom of the Beak. The next thing we're going to do is paint some light yellow into this area. You don't have to do this wet on wet. But I like having the water there because it helps me to keep the colors light. I'll add enough water to make the area wet. I add just a tiny bit of yellow, then wipe off my brush and push the paint to cover the whole area. The last thing we're going to do is make a really light wash of the Wing and the back of the body. I'm going to add enough water to make the area wet so that I can keep my colors light. I will be using my big brush and my cool black for this area. Although I want it to be light, I have to keep in mind that it will dry lighter than it looks. Want to add a little more black than I think I need. Between the water on my paper and the water I added with my paint, I ended up with some petals. I use my brush to pick up this excess liquid. Squirrel brushes like this, silver brush, black velvet are very thirsty and very good at picking up this excess. With that, we are finished with painting or light Colors. In the next lesson, we'll focus on the eye and the Beak. Come join me there. 10. Eye and Beak: In this lesson, we'll begin to paint our two cans. I will continue to work on the Beak. Let's get started with the orange area around the eye. I'm going to use my medium brush for this section. I'm going to put down enough water to make the area wet. Then I will mix an orange color by combining my warm yellow and my warm orange on the paper. As before, I will not get my water up against the edges of the outline. But instead, we'll wait until I have paint on the paper and can more easily see where my brushstrokes are going. I'm putting down a little excess water, but that is okay. As I will pick up the excess before I paint, I'll start with the yellow. Now that my yellow paint is down, I'll wipe off my brush. Then push the paint right up against the edges of the Outline. After that, I will clean my brush, pick up my warm orange, and mix it with the yellow. I'm adding just a little bit of orange as it will easily overwhelm the yellow. Once a little is added, I push the paint around to fill the area. Next, I want to add some shadow using my warm black. Before I do that, I will test and make sure that the area is barely wet so that there isn't too much paint flow. I think this seems a bit light. So I'm going to add more orange and then a little more black. There's a heatwave where I'm filming this. So it dried faster than I expected. I can see that the orange around the eye is still lighter than I wanted. But we can fix that during our lesson on adjustments. We're going to add a little bit of shadow here in this triangle. I'm going to make the area wet to help keep my colors light. I won't add much. And I'll push around what I've added to cover the entire area. We've been doing a lot of wet on wet, but now we're going to do some wet on dry. We're going to put red at the top of the Beak. For that. I'm going to use my nap, they'll read and my medium brush. I'm going to paint the edges off camera as it is easier for me to see what I'm doing and paint accurately. It's time to add the shadows under the serrations. First and foremost, make sure that Beak is 100% dry so that you don't create blooms or other unwanted patterns when you add the water. Then you can add water to the first four serrations, bringing the water about a half-inch below the saturation line, just as you did in lesson seven? Use your small brush and aim for the water to be barely wet. Unfortunately, I accidentally did not record adding water to my first for serrations. But it is the same process that I will repeat with the remaining serrations. I'm going to add warm black at the top corner of the triangle that the serration forms. It's a little more challenging with the first two since they are curved areas and not pointed. But I just aim for the deepest part of the curve. I move the black around in each iteration to cover the entire area. Again, this fourth iteration has water, but I'm not going to paint it until I've extended my wet area like we did in lesson seven. At the end, I paint my last for serrations all at once, since I won't be extending the water any further. I think the shadows under the serrations look a little light. So I'll repeat the process to darken them. The last thing that we're going to do, just to keep this toucan simple, but still get the look that we want is to add some warm black paint over the pencil line to finish the mouth of the toucan. That is the end of this lesson. In the next lesson, we'll complete what we started in our first two lessons by finishing up the two cans head. I'll see you there. 11. Finish the Head: In this lesson, we're going to finish painting the areas in the Head. We'll start by painting the tip of the Beak. It's going to be darker at the tip and then fade to a lighter black towards the back of this area. This area is going to be wet. I'll use my big brush in this area. I will add black to the tip of the area and then wipe my brush off and pull the black to the back. I'll do this a couple of times. I'll use my medium brush to tidy up and bring the paint to the edges of the area. Note that there was a heatwave while I was filming this, and this area dried more quickly than I expected. I fuss with it a little longer than I should have. And I didn't get the gradient that I wanted. I have to stop and leave it as is. But I'll work on it again when it's time to make final adjustments. Now we'll paint the blue around the eye of the toucan. This is actually blue skin, not a blue iris. You don't have to pay it wet on wet. But it does make it easier to keep the colors lighter. I'm going to start by adding enough water to make this area wet. I'm happy with this level of blue. And now I'm going to add the wrinkles in the skin. I'm going to wet the area Dry until it's barely wet, which does not take long in this, whether I then dropping the blue the first round of blue drops that I added, spread a little more than I wanted. So I will do it again. It is also helpful to keep your brush dryer. You want mostly paint with just a little water. I want to make more changes to the blue around the eye, but it is drying quickly. And I don't want to accidentally paint on areas that are dangerously Dry. I'll let it finish drawing, then work on it again when I make adjustments. The next thing we're going to do is add the black to the back of the beak. I'm going to keep it darker at the bottom. That will represent both the shadow areas where these areas curve underneath, as well as the light that reflects from the top of these areas. I'm going to get the area wet for good paint flow. And I'll use my cool black and my medium brush When your painting, be sure the black paint goes over the pencil marks in the surrounding lighter areas so you don't see the marks? I didn't have a lot of paint on my brush. So as it comes off, I can continue to paint upward, creating a lighter black. As I near the top of each area. I'll only do the bottom section as I need it to dry completely before I start the upper section. I want this area to be a little darker. Add some black on the bottom half, wipe off my brush, then pull the paint up to the top again. While it's drying. I'll add sepia to the eye. This is the iris of the eye. You'll have to decide for yourself if you prefer to have a lighter iris so that you can see the pupil or a darker one for a more natural look. Here are a couple of examples from some paintings I did of an Emerald toucanet with a lighter iris on top. Choose whichever you like and paint accordingly. If you're not sure, aim light because you can always darken the area later. This is such a small area that I'll paint it Wet on Dry. Now that this lower section is dry, I'll repeat the process from the lower section. On the upper section, the irises dry now so I can paint the pupil. I'll use my cool black for this. As with the sepia, I will paint this Wet on Dry. Be sure to paint over your pencil outlines around the highlight with your black. With that, the eye and Beak or finished. We'll move on now to darken the Wing section of the toucan. Come join me there in the next lesson. 12. Darken the Wing: In this lesson, we're going to darken the two sections of the Wing. The first thing I'm going to do is add more color to the Wing. I want this to be fairly wet. I'm going to cover the area of the Wing. Plus I'm going to have the water go off the edge at the upper back. I'll pull the water onto the upper back where I want the paint to bleed from. But I'm going to carry my water a little further down the back. The trick here is that I'm going to leave a slight line of dry paper between the Wing and the rest of the back. So the paint only bleeds from the area at the very top. An example of where I will put down my water is on this outline in blue with a pink line to represent dry paper. Due to the heat, I have a little extra water on my paper then is ideal, but it's still not sopping wet. I will add my cool black to the Wing using my big brush. I'll start with a lot of paint at the bottom. Then I'll dab off my brush and pull the black up towards the top. Because I want the black to bleed into the upper back. I'm going to add a touch of extra black at the top because I put down some extra water to prevent my paper from drying in the heat. I ended up with a little excess water. I'm going to drive my brush and use it to pick up the excess. When that's done, I can see that the area is not as dark as I want. So add some extra black while it's still wet, and then pull the paint upward again. For this section. In the next, we will need to take several breaks to let our painting dry between sections. When you're painting is completely dry and not dangerously Dry. Come back to this lesson and we'll darken the upper wing. As before. We're going to darken the Wing from the bottom and pull the paint towards the top. But this time we're going to leave the bottom half alone and add our Black starting at the line mid wing. You can see here that it is helpful to have a dark pencil line at this mid wing area. So you can see it through the black paint. As before, I will make this section wet. This time. I will not add water to the upper back at all. I will keep it only on the upper wing. I will use my big brush for the water and for adding cool black paint. There is a little more water than I want. Soil dry off my brush and pick up the excess. I'll add the black starting at the line mid Wing. My goal is to get the bottom half of the Wing very dark and then pull the paint up. Once again, I wipe off my big brush so I can pull the paint up to the top of the Wing. I didn't repeat the entire process to darken the upper wing a bit more. Take a break to let your painting dry completely, and then come join me in the next lesson, where we'll paint the back of the neck and the Chest. I'll see you there. 13. Neck and Chest: It's time to paint the neck and Chest of the toucan. We'll start with the neck and back of the Head. In this section, I'll cover the area with water so that it is Wet. I'll put the black on the left with the warm black on the top half. And the cool back on the bottom half will let the two black colors blend in the middle. And we'll pull our black colors to the right, creating a gradient with a lighter color to the right. I'll start by painting my warm black at the top with my big brush. As I'm painting, I find that it is a little more with than I'd like. But in this heat, the extra water will help to keep the paint from drying too quickly. When I switch between my warm and cool black mixes, I clean up my big brush, but I don't worry about it being super clean. A tiny amount of one color and the other won't overwhelm it. Once my paint is down, I wipe off my brush to pull the paint to the edges. I also do a little blending where the warm black meets the cool black. I'm using my medium brush here to have a little more control and helped me get to the edges of this section. There's no paint on my brush. It's just lightly damp. As I continue, I add extra black to each area with my big brushes needed and smooth out the edges with my medium brush. Even with the extra water, the corners of this area are drying very quickly because of the heat. The upshot is that we only need the lower corner to dry before we can move on to paint the chest. Take a moment to let your painting dry. When your lower corner is thoroughly dry, you'll be ready to continue the lesson. Most of the area I have just painted is dangerously Dry. I can tell that the lower corner is completely dry, so I can continue to paint. We have just a little bit of chess that we will add our cool black to. I'm going to use my medium brush so I can get into the details and keep the edges clean. This section is small and we want it to be very dark. So we're going to paint this wet on dry. I'm trying to limit the water in my brush, but at the same time, I don't want to dry brush. I want the paint to fill in the area, not just sit on top of the bumps of paper. I want this area to be very dark. So I'm adding extra black paint to the area. Some of the area is starting to dry a little. But because I'm going to paint over everything again, it'll make the area evenly wet. If you want to try something different and your paint isn't drying too quickly, you can always take your small brush to get a little bit of black on it and add just a bit of texture. I'm using my small brush to add a few random feather lines coming off the chest. I started out with my paint a little too dry, but I added just a touch of water and the line smoothed out. Again, this is optional. If you don't like the look or if you're concerned that you're not going to pull the Technique off, right? Then by all means, just leave it be, it'll look just as beautiful. And there we have it. Our toucan is essentially done. We'll take a break to let it dry. Then we'll join up again in the next lesson to look at what adjustments we want to make before we really say that this toucan is done. I'll see you there. 14. Adjustments: The painting is done and it's dry. Now we can make any adjustments that we want. So we'll review our painting from left to right. First. I was having trouble with the paper drying in this area because it was so hot. I want to smooth this out and make it a little bit darker on the right side as well. Another area where I want to make an adjustment is I want to deepen the orange around the eye. With the area in blue. I want to see the blue Beak darker to represent more of the folds in the skin. And other things that I thought about is darkening the back of the Head and Neck. Well, there's a part of me that would like it a little bit darker. There's also a part of meat that's very happy with how it is now. Because I don't have a clear reason to change it. I'm going to leave it as is. That's something that you can keep in mind with your painting. If you're debating whether or not to make a change, err on the side of not making any changes because it'll probably work out for the best. For the tip of the Beak. I'm going to get the water close to the edge. Then wait until I add paint before I reach the edge. I'm going to make this area wet. Again. I'm going to mostly repeat what I did earlier, but I will add more black to the right half of the area so that the gradient isn't as significant. Once my paint is down, I'm going to use my medium brush to pull the paint to all of these edges. My brush is damp, but without any paint on it. Now that I'm finished with the tip of the Beak, work on the orange around the eye. I'll use my medium brush to add the water to make the area wet. Then I'll add yellow and then orange. When I switch to the orange, I'll be very careful not to add too much as it will easily overpower the yellow. Now I've wiped off my brush so I can push around the orange I've already put down. Once my colors are down, I can see that I don't need to add any more black to the shadow area. The colors are translucent, so I can still see the black that I added the first time. Now let this area dry completely so that I can paint the blue area right next to it. I'm also going to darken the yellow in this triangle under the Beak. The yellow is currently the same value as the nearby Chest. And I want different depths of color. I'll add just a little bit of water to make it wet and help keep me from darkening it too much That looks like more than enough paint. I'll wipe off my brush and then push the paint around. I would like just a little bit more black in there to make the shadow more distinct. But I want to let it dry first. Now the orange around my eye is dry and I can repaint the blue. I want this to be barely wet. I'll start off with more water than I need. Then pick up the excess water once I've spread the water out. In order to see where my water is, I'm going to lift up the painting. I want to make sure that the water is going all the way to the edges because I don't want to mess around with the water. Once I start adding the blue, the water needs to be in place because I'm not going to paint the area. I'm just going to charge some parts of the area with blue paint. When I add the paint, I want it to be pretty thick so that it doesn't travel too far. Even though I tried to work quickly, the heat got the better of my painting and some areas dried out. As I said, I didn't want to mess with the water once the paint was down. But I didn't wet hard edges either. I lucked out and was able to barely add some water to get some paint flow without having waterflow into the other wet areas and disturb the paint. This is a good reminder though that working with something barely wet, drying out quickly. So make sure you are prepared and perhaps wait to paint during a cooler time of the day. The last thing I'm going to do is paint over that triangle with a tiny bit of wet black. I want to keep it very faint. I'll do it a little differently than how we painted it before. So I can show you another option of how to paint this. I'm going to put down just a little bit of black thing, come back with water on my brush and push everything around. I will dab off my brush, wants to get rid of excess paint and water, then finish spreading the black around. There we have our final toucan. Take a moment to enjoy the wonderful creation you've just made. When you're ready, come join me in the next lesson where I'll wrap up this class on wet on wet painting. I'll see you there. 15. Final Thoughts: Congratulations on all of your hard work. You've taken the time to learn what wet on wet is, experimented with different levels of wetness to see how that influences your painting. Practice. Several wet on wet techniques and put everything together in your final beautiful toucan painting. Thank you for joining me on this wet on wet journey. No matter your skill level, I hope that you've learned something new in this class and that you'll continue to practice wet on wet techniques in your future paintings. Before you leave, be sure to take a picture of your toucan painting and post it to the Project Gallery. The link is found on projects and resources. Create project. I would greatly appreciate it if you would take the time to leave me a review on this class. Knowing what you did and didn't like about the class will help me to make the next Skillshare class even better. Finally, if you're ready to develop your skills even further, please check out the other classes that I have to offer on skill share. One class that might be particularly helpful is my plan for success class. This class will help you to reach beyond the Tutorial and apply your watercolor painting skills. Reference photo of your choice. Once again, thank you for joining me and I look forward to seeing you again in another Skillshare class.