6 Pro Watercolor Portrait Techniques You Need to Try #artshorts #art #artsanddesign

Most people do not realize how much easier watercolor portraits can be if you know the right techniques. So before you start your next portrait let's go over six key techniques that when done right will completely change the way you paint. The first essential watercolor technique is mastering your initial wash of paint. It might look very simple but in reality it's trickier than it seems. I want to show you how to apply your first watercolor wash. Just like with everything and every skill we have to give it a couple of So the first rule is to always tilt your drawing board or painting surface like this. A simple masking tip is enough. The tilt does not have to be too steep. This is just enough. And you will see what that does to watercolor and how that helps to unify your wash. Usually I start the application of the first wash from the top. You apply it by gently adding the watery paint. It must be watery from top to bottom. If you have enough paint and water on your brush the watercolor it should always show you a little bit of excess water here at the bottom of your wash. This is how you know that all the excess is getting away from the painted area and that is great because that unifies it. If I was painting on a flat surface like that and I would let this water just sit here, let me show you what would happen. This is what happens. Some of the excess water can form these watercolor blooms and that's just not something that you want in the middle of your portrait. So just remember when painting first initial wash of paint you always have to tilt your board or painting surface. You have to use enough water to unify and once you're done painting the wash you have to gently remove the excess water from the bottom of your wash so that there is no excess to cause these blooms. So another issue is using dry paint or low quality brushes that don't spread the color smoothly which leaves marks in your wash. Now the goal of the first layer is not to make it perfect because it's just a base to build on but streaks and blooms can be very tough to fix later on and streaks especially take away that soft transparent look that makes watercolor so beautiful. My initial washes often consist of multiple colors but I always paint them as one very watery layer to avoid these problems. Next technique that I want to show you is how to paint hair. You'll need soft round brush for this but it also works with flat brush. When you paint with watercolor you should always have a paper towel on your side. I'm right-handed so I have my palette and the paper towel and water jar on my right side and that is perfect for controlling the amount of water on your brush. So after you load your brush with a bit of paint you can dab your brush onto paper towel that will leave you with just the right amount of paint on your brush. You can do these brush strokes that kind of leave this dry brush effect behind. It's very nice for painting hair or adding some texture to fabrics. We'll paint hair in two layers. First layer is always very light but as I will add more and more layers I will keep on adding darker paint but the brush strokes will still be the same. You will have to practice this on a spare sheet of paper just like I am now. This will give you better control over your brush and better control over the texture. You can also apply this onto a wet surface and do the same. You can get hair strings or parts of the hair that will look a little bit distorted. They will have softer edge. Just notice how different these effects are. So now that you know this technique and you laid down the base color for the face you can go ahead and do the same for the hair. I'm using these simple brush strokes on both sides of the face but since the right side is still a bit wet I'm getting a bit of that soft bleeding effect. Third technique is absolutely amazing. I love it. It's so much fun and that's actually how to create a captivating background for the portrait. For the background forget this. You want your painting surface to lay flat and you want to use your colors like that. Basically you want to do splatter. Let the water create some sort of abstraction. You can join them or you can just let them sit like this. Try to notice if the shape is sort of clean. If it's too messy. If I should unify some edges. What does it look like? But essentially if I have a portrait in the middle I would try to do an abstract shape created from these splatters that surrounds the portrait in some way. You would want to have areas with a bit more pigment like that and areas with a bit more just clean water like that and you can merge colors. Lay down the paint and let it bleed on its own. Do not try to go back and forth with your brush. Just lay down the paint and let it move like that. Now let's add this to our watercolor portrait. I love using this granulating paint. This one is Bloodstone Genuine by Daniel Smith to create contrast and make the portrait pop. There's something about the mix of a smooth face and a textured granular background that I absolutely adore. It's a great idea to keep the color palette simple. I've chosen violets and oranges to add to the background and another tip is to keep using brushes of different sizes to create a variety of splatters and strokes. This adds energy to the portrait and helps enhance the overall mood. Next up probably the trickiest watercolor technique. Adding shadows in the second layer. This takes skill like training your eye to see values and color temperatures in your reference but today I want to focus on the brushwork. How to actually lay down the paint the right way. Colors that I use are Cadmium Red and Cobalt Blue. When you mix them together they create something like this but you can always have the mixture more on the red side so this shading mixture would be a bit warmer or you can have it more on the blue side depending on which color prevails. So this one is a lot cooler. You don't really need more than these two colors to create a whole range of I do not like to paint shadows in way too many layers and to achieve depth in only two or three layers you will need to use a thicker mixture of paint. First layer we paint it with a very watery paint. This one is more like cream. Sometimes even creamier than this. Something like that. First rule is to pay attention to your reference. There are two types of shadow that you might want to paint. First are cast shadows. The shadow on her neck for example is a cast shadow. Can also be found underneath the nose, underneath the bottom lip here. Cast shadows tend to have sharp edges which are not difficult to paint in watercolor. You just lay down the paint and let it dry and the watercolor therefore will form this sharp edge. Shadows that are harder to paint are form shadows. Darker color is transitioning towards the light source but very gradually. So this is what's called a soft edge. How do you do that in watercolor? You can start at the point or area where the color is thickest or darkest and then with water on your brush gently just rub the edge of your paint but you have to do it in a way so that you don't add more new water into this wash then just keep it. Do not mess with it. Usually what happens is that you lay down the wash of paint and when you want to smoothen you do not get rid of excess water and so your brush is too watery. Everything spreads everywhere. Plus this kind of application can lead to watercolor blooms. This is a more controlled approach. So the key part in creating diffused edge with watercolor is to lightly touch the edge with damp brush. But I always use the tissues on my table to get rid of any excess water from my before I even touch the paper with it. When I first introduced this method in my local watercolor classes my students told me that they instantly felt like they could control watercolor so much better than without it and it's great to establish this as a habit. By the way most professional watercolor painters that I've met use a special watercolor sponge and I have one somewhere too in my studio but I'm just so used to the tissues that I rarely use it. If you can get a highly absorbent watercolor sponge it's probably more ecological and I will try to do the switch myself this month. So doing these brushwork exercises can be rewarding because you will see the improvement in your portraits almost instantly. It is also kind of worth noting that paint behaves differently on various watercolor papers and the type of brush that you use plays a big role too. For example I paint very different brushstrokes on Arches paper compared to Winsor & Newton paper. Arches has more texture which gives you better control but you also need more water on your brush to compensate. That does not mean that one paper is better than the other. It just changes how the brush feels on the paper and I find that each type forces me to adjust my technique a little bit. Now let me show you how to finish the rest of the portrait with just these five types of brushstrokes on repeat. Once you learn to do all five of these techniques deepening the portrait is just a matter of adding more pigment in your following layers. Adding eyebrows is just a dry brush technique that I showed you earlier for the hair but I do this with thinner brush and much darker pigment. It gives you a more natural looking eyebrows than if you were to paint them individually and you can do the same for lashes. Second layer for the hair is the same dry brush technique but this time increase darkness of the color, load your brush with a bit more pigment and paint less. Meaning paint only the parts of the hair that do not get much light. This is usually below the face or in tight spots around the ears. Your reference photo is your biggest friend, it is your guide so always pay close attention to it. It will always tell you where the darker parts are. The last technique I want to show you is best practiced directly in the painting. It's classic watercolor technique that can make a huge difference once you get the hang of it but it's also pretty counterintuitive so it takes a few tries to really grasp. This is negative painting technique. The key to negative painting is not how you lay down the paint but where you place it. If you want lighter object to stand out, painting a darker area behind it creates contrast and makes it pop. In this portrait I want her blonde hair to shine especially because some areas turned out a bit darker than I intended and so painting negatively saves the day here by deepening the background where she is. Her hair instantly looks lighter in comparison. You can create highlighted hair strings by using a stiffer flat brush dampened a bit with clean water. When you scrap the pigment with it it allows you to lift it from the page with the tissue. Try not overworking this one. I sometimes get caught up and invent insane amount of white details that don't really go with the overall mood of the portrait just because it's kind of fun to do. I really loved creating this portrait. It's such a great feeling when you make something that you actually like. If you want to see the full two hour long process you can find it on my Patreon where you can also download the sketch or follow the sketching process to learn how to draw anything on your own and if you want to dive even deeper into portrait painting I have a free real-time lesson here on YouTube that is 75 minutes of detailed process where I explain each stage as I paint. If you'd like to support my channel the easiest way is to click like and subscribe and it really helps. Thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next video.