 Hey guys, how are you today? We are here with another video for art joy of sharing And I'm gonna just bring you my some of my favorite quick watercolor tips, and you're thinking what I don't do watercolor That's okay. These work with any water soluble material for the most part so I just want you guys to play an experiment with your art supplies and your mediums and This if you follow me on social media, you've seen this before this is my eyeball journal that I've been making I Don't know why my muse is screaming at me right now to paint eyeballs I have no idea and she's already telling me when you're done with the eyeballs. I want you to do lips. I Don't know what the deal is but anyway So I have done these mainly in watercolor to start and then I do the highlights in white gel pen Then I am inspired by the artist Debbie Weir who have spoken about on the channel before to do sort of a doodly eyeball and Start with again with watercolor, but then add pen marks and Doodles to the eyeball to make it something really interesting and these are actual people's eyeballs are not compilations different people that I actually know You'd be surprised how different they can be so we're actually going to do another eyeball And I'm going to just show you something really quick I need my phone. Okay. Oh, go right. We'll do my eyeball So the first thing I do on my phone I use I paint from the photos on my phone But the first thing I do is turn off the auto lock the goat thing that makes your phone go to sleep Every phone is different But if you have an iPhone go to settings go to display and brightness and it'll be set to 30 seconds stand Usually click it to never Then go out and go into your camera roll Find the photo that you want to paint in my case. I got to go back to my eyeball album Yes, I have an eyeball album And I'll find my eyeball bags and all There it is all right, so The first thing I always do is trace the photo trace the eye now if you're not comfortable with that print out the eye and put the carbon paper between the eye and your page and then just Trace over the picture and that'll leave the impression of the eye on your page You can print the picture too and rub the back of the picture with Charcoal or with a water-soluble pencil or crayon and then trace lay it Rubbing side down and then trace over it and to leave the impression on your page I'm going to just sketch it. It's not about being perfect and We'll see how far I get this might I really kind of and not crazy about drawing my eye. I've Done it before my face before and I usually Doesn't usually throw me So I always I start out the same way every time I Usually leave some light pencil sketches in this case. We're gonna like draw my bags and Boy My eyebrow is not in the picture, but I'm gonna pencil it in If normally though if their eyebrows not in the picture, I don't put it in there just like that All right, so we're gonna get our brushes wet We've got our cut our waters colors off to the side here You can use any brand if you do have them. It doesn't matter the brand. This is just a spray bottle with some water This helps me get my paint wet any cheap spray bottle Okay I'm gonna grab just a medium-sized round brush. This is a Utrecht round number eight Six one five zero dash R Utrecht is a company owned by Dick Blick I am going to mix up a quick Flash sort of tone With what's on my palette and I'm gonna add some like Van Dyke brown over here to these orangey colors So the first thing you want to do is you want to start off light with water color My first tip to you is start off light and work your way darker when you're working with Acrylic you can start off in either way. It doesn't matter and if you get something in the wrong place You just let it dry and then go back over it later with water color. You you can't take it back normally. So I Will put just a little color in the shadow where I know that's gonna be because I wasn't sure of the color and Then I will just add water. No paint And that was okay, that was a little dark, but that was okay where it landed because There are shadows of my on my eyeball in the picture in those spaces now. I'm just adding water I'm blending it out. I don't mind the splotchy edges, but I don't want any harsh lines So I'm just rubbing the paintbrush around on the paper moving a little bit of pigment that I have there around Until I get it the way I want now while that's still wet. I Know that's a little dark, right? So I'm gonna go in to those places on the photo where it says To me that it's in shadow, and I'm gonna add some more of this While it's wet water colors always gonna follow the water Always it's simple that way. I'm gonna add a little bit of this darkness to the eyebrow I do have pretty dark eyebrows, so At least for the moment All right, they are turning gray, but okay I'm gonna do the same thing up here where I'm just gonna blur the underneath line a bit Bag is under my eyes. Thank you dad. Thank you grandpa so And I was tired the day I took this picture which was is okay because I really one of the things about doing Artwork from photos like this is I really want all the different Nuances that are in each person's photo now. Maybe you're watching this near thinking. Okay. I do not paint at all That's okay. What about doing a collection of work in collage of just eyeballs or just lips or whatever Maybe it just a particular flower or tree. You could do that. Why can't you? That would be fun, too. I'm gonna take some brown. I have dark brown eyes, so I'm gonna start with Raw umber violet and see Should be this one Yeah, mix just a little bit of orange into it put it again, right? We said what did we say start lighter work your way darker put a little bit of pigment and then add a lot of water If you want to have a texture in the paint you want it sort of be blotchy Or grainy put some salt in the paint while it's wet let it dry naturally and when you come back brush the salt off Into a garage can it's going to leave an interesting texture onto your work. You also can do that with Plastic wrap So while the paint again is wet you can scrunch up some plastic wrap push it down into the wet Paint and let it dry naturally and it will leave an interesting Mark into the paint. It's a little bit darker of a brown Generally your eyes are darker around the outer edge of the iris and lighter towards the center If you're doing your own eye get a magnifying mirror like a makeup mirror if you have one or take have somebody take a super Close-up photo now. What if you go in with a pin? You're like, okay. Wow. That's way too dark This is a mr. Clean magic eraser or at least a piece of one while that's wet take your eraser and do this It won't pick up all of the paint, but look how much it did pick up And different pigments will stain and more quickly than others Yeah, some of that depends on the quality of the paint you're working with but Generally you can take some of it back With the magic eraser and it needs to be wet So you can't do it when it's already started to dry So if I do this look how much it picked up and Then I'm just kind of turning it to a cleaner corner And it's picked up a lot of paint. It's also left an interesting Texture into the paint So mr. Clean magic eraser works really well The other thing so I'm gonna let that dry for a little bit before I add more layers because right now the paints Just gonna keep mixing together and get something muddy rather than layers of interesting colors on top of each other So now what I would do is I would go back and Mix up a little bit darker color darker flush tone color and I'd go back to work on one of the parts that's already dry and we'll let that iris part Dry a little bit. Just let it be now again So just put a little bit of the color on and then blend it out with what just plain water Most of us here that are watching our mixed media artists So what does that mean that means we're not going to restrict ourselves to just watercolor So if you do something like this and you realize something I do quite frequently to be honest is Forget to leave my white spaces go back with a gel pen Let the paint let the watercolor paint dry and go back and add them back in with a white gel pen that works Just great. Trust me. I've done it a lot of times Now what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go in with some pink right here The tear duct right and then you also have a little bit back here. Sometimes there's a little rim of redness around the eye Add a little bit of the color go in and add some water if you get too much pink We have our eraser. Look what that did That made that almost just about perfect Not too light not too dark Took just enough away Okay, I'm also gonna use the pigment that's on the page to add a shadow Over the eye because there would be a shadow from my eyelid Which is in the photo. Okay, I need to make that iris the colored part of your eye a lot darker I have pretty dark eyes See what's happened right here. The paint has started to bleed We've got our Mr. Clean Magic Eraser handy It's my favorite painting tool So the other thing I'm finding is I'm distracted because the pupil is still White so we are gonna paint it black. No, we're gonna again. We're gonna let that center part drive it Okay, I'm blending blending adding our colors blending the shadows Lifting paint when we get too much in the wrong place like there See what I did, but look all done all taken care of So just keep working at it at some point usually I have to let it dry because usually I Am too big of a hurry and I just want to you know, have it look a certain way Some watercolor pigments are more staining than others So if you get too much of something in the wrong place, you can always take it back again You can take some of it back with your Just plain wet brush or the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser, but you may not be able to take it all back So you do want to be a little more cautious. I find it a challenge But that's not it doesn't have to look any better than that I will come in here and I'm gonna do this because this is too white down here And I'm gonna do the same thing up here And we're gonna dry that and I'll be right now comes the fun part because remember what I said about us being mixed-media artists Okay So here's another quick tip about watercolor when you're playing with watercolor Especially but at any time when you're working with watercolor or any other paint You don't have to stick to two traditional methods For instance, I didn't leave any white space. Where's the reflection in my eye? So I'm gonna put it in with a white gel pen There are some little reflections down here on the bottom There's light a light ish spot up here You can also with gel pen while it's wet take your damp watercolor brush and Just move it out a little bit so the line is not that harsh There are some like white spots here and then I can take my black Big pen So just have fun with it. That's the main the main lesson here is just have fun with it. Do something interesting unique it May not always work out. You don't have to be like me and show it on YouTube But have fun with it and there are lots of like painting shortcuts like this And we're gonna be showing you lots of them this month over an art joy of sharing So I and giving you quick tips and helping you all out I would love to see what you can do and is this the best eyeball I've ever driven Drawn no, but that's not the point. So I do Okay, so I've got some cold press watercolor paper. I've got some of my watercolor paints. You can use any water soluble Materials for this it should work just as well with water soluble ink Maybe some of your crayons. I'm not sure about that definitely paints whatever brand that you have I'm gonna show you in fairly dark colors so that you can really see what I'm talking about So I'm gonna start off always by getting my brush wet Don't start with a dry brush always get it wet in your water and then Just tap it off on a rag I'm gonna go over here to my palette. I'm gonna pick up this dark sort of black purpley color Which I think might be pains gray mixed with a few other things and That's not enough water. That's not very wet. So let's grab some more water So we can reactivate that pigment a bit there we go Again just for the purposes of this demo the color doesn't matter So one of the things you can do with watercolor is Put a bunch of pigment down. I'm gonna actually grab some more and then take some table salt Regular table salt this happens to be coarse, but it could be whatever table salt that you have This is what I had downstairs and just drop it into the paint and you can see already. Can you see already? Let's zoom in You see already how that's already starting to pick up some of the paint It'll leave an interesting texture in your paint. The only thing is that you need to leave it sit here and Don't touch it Okay Next thing we're gonna do I'm gonna grab some more pigment over here Now say you're paint working on a painting or a background and you're like, oh, I don't like that color So the thing with watercolor you should always start lighter and work your way darker You can't always take it back, but sometimes you can take some of it back One of the quick easy ways to do it is with a piece of a mr. Clean Magic eraser That's right. A mr. Clean Magic eraser. It won't take all of it back, but it will most of the time take some of it back Look so I always keep a piece of this in my watercolor kit and have usually one around the desk somewhere Another quick tip if you want to again get some interesting texture in your work Maybe something a little different than the salt Again, I'm just I'm using kind of muddy colors because I actually have to clean off the bottom of my palette So I'm just grabbing what's down there You can take a piece of plastic wrap now I don't have a piece of plastic wrap because we actually don't use it that much in the house I'm trying to get away from it, but this is a piece of a thin plastic bag It should work. You want to actually crumple it up. You want it to be wrinkly but it should be plastic so that it can be pulled off and will stick to the paper and then Push it down into the paper Like the salt you need to let it dry one more thing a White crayon, this is a regular children's white crayon nothing special. I am going to take this white crayon I'm gonna do this So the wax and the crayon will protect the paper underneath it from picking up pigment Sort of like expensive masking fluid would only in this case. It's a lot cheaper Look at that When the paint dries the watercolor paint you can actually Gently wipe that paint off the wax You don't have to I usually just leave it look at that You also can carefully Come in on the just on the white crayon with your again your mr. Clean Magic eraser my favorite art supply Right How cool is that? Let me zoom out. Hang on. I'll be right back. Okay. Now to be honest These are probably not as dry as they should be but I'm really excited to show you So this is the plastic wrap and as you can see the plastic wrap will push the pigment around and leave an interesting texture In the paint again, this isn't actually plastic wrap This is a piece of a thin plastic bag It'll work to each one will probably give you a little bit different texture But isn't that cool and then of course we have the salt Again, it's not as dry as it should be a smeared a little bit, but how cool is that? So simple easy quick tools you probably already have lying around your art room and or kitchen somewhere And if you have kids you definitely have white crayons You don't need to get the whole box. You just need a white one. They probably don't need it to go grab a white one One of my favorite things to do when I'm out at a restaurant is ask for the kids menu. They usually come with crayons They don't always have white, but they usually come with crayons So that's it for this month So just some quick watercolor tips that I hope you play with and experiment with and enjoy Play with your paints play with your supplies. Have a great time Check out the other people that are sharing quick tips in our joy of sharing I'll try to leave some of the links in the description below if not all of them There isn't our joy of sharing Facebook page and of course, you know, they have their own our joy of sharing channel and Weekly live broadcasts on Thursdays So don't forget to like share and subscribe to my channel and the others that we would all really appreciate that And above all go out and have a great time and do something nice for yourself because you deserve it And I'll see you later. Bye guys