 Hi there, I'm Sandy Olnok, artist and paper crafter here on YouTube and I'm going to watercolor a llama Thank You card using flora and fauna's new llama set or semi-new new to me llama set I bought this one and I stamped first the little vase of flowers using my misty used a sticky note and then stamped my Llama and then I just put sticky notes around the square and stamped that little Little flag thing in there just so I could create a pattern on his blanket I thought that would be fun to make it a little bit more interesting. I am doing a split screen here with my palette on the left It's a little bit off time. Sorry about that, but it is It's hard to do these split screen things But anyway, I wanted to make the llama bigger so that you could see it So it's a little out of proportion Compared to my palette on the left. There is a video on my palette and how I made that and what the colors are in it And etc etc and on something like this the colors don't matter a whole ton And if you want to use some other watercolors and use the techniques that I'm about to use you can try that as well I like my Daniel Smith colors just because they Are the most transparent that I've discovered a lot of the other colors that are watercolors that I've had in the past Have been a little chalkier. They come out a little bit more like a gouache than a watercolor And these are from tubes that I squeeze out into my palette but here's why I wanted to show you the palette itself so I could show you how I'm mixing this the Transparent purel red for the blanket. I went directly from the pan and Through the color on because I wanted some richer color here. I wanted a really soft little bit of black I didn't want to go too crazy with the lunar black. I wanted it watered way down So I mixed it up in the palette. I'm not a big palette mixer I like to mix my colors on the actual piece itself on the paper I like how that mixes better and I get some more interesting things going on But there are sometimes if I don't have a color I mix it on the palette and Here I don't have a really light gray Well, there is no such thing as a light gray because you use well watered down black to create that and And so what I'm trying to do is create a little bit of a dry brush look on the right hand side Where I'm trying to make it look like it's fuzzy so I'm putting a second coat of it with a little bit more pigment in it and Making it a little darker gray so I get two tiers of that gray color Just kind of going over the areas that were already done And I'm being careful right around the blanket because I didn't want to pull the red accidentally into the gray I am one of those people that doesn't have patience Usually have some sort of an error where I've gone and stuck my brush in something that I shouldn't have and that's just how it goes So I decided I was going to do a little bit of my greens here first and paint a little bit in my flowers I realized later I could have done my sky first instead of worrying about doing all my leaves But whatever, you know as long as you wait for things to dry Usually not in too bad a shape and it didn't wreck my project here or anything to do them out of what might have been the normal order but one of the reasons I wanted to do a little bit of background on this one and Create a sky is because he doesn't look very white when he's just against white when it's a white Lama against white paper So I'm gonna just create some kind of lumpy mountain shapes and I'm painting the negative space above them Using some of this phthalo blue. I think I grabbed the red shade or the green shade I don't know what that was you can look in my palette if you're worried about which one of those it is But I wanted to use it very light So again, I mixed up just some very soft With lots of water in it in my palette and then I'm using some clean water as well and allowing the color to sort of trail Up into that top section if it decides to move up or you can go in like this and just tap a little bit of color In there and then move it around with a clean brush Mostly dry brush if you keep adding water to it You'll get blooms and I like to try to control the blooms So they only happen when I really want them to Instead of when they feel like it because that's where they come from is putting too much water Into an area that already has pigment in it because the water will push away the pigment And you want to be able to control that to use it to your advantage when you want it and not when you don't And I keep going back to that little pile of paint in my palette and One of the things that helps to in controlling that the blooms is to make sure when you dip that brush in Don't just tip dip the tip of your brush in there You want to make sure your entire brush is filled with That mixture of pigment and water If you have water in most of your brush and then only pigment in the tip Then you could end up pushing out water when you lay that brush down and that might just suddenly gush all over your paper Depends on your brush these silver brushes the black velvet line that I use They do that just because they hold things really well They'll hold a lot of water if you put a lot of water in there. That's just what they do So I recommend making sure you're careful in how much water You work with and and just practice a lot the more you practice the more you'll get a hold of how much water you have in there You'll know a little bit more But there are still some times when I have that issue. I I don't I don't know how much is in my brush Or I forget that I dipped it or whatever so It's not something that is that becomes completely automatic, but it does become easier over time So we use a little sap green to create a really light Hillside behind him before we get to the mountains So I have a little little depth a couple different layers of color Just pull a little bit of that down Underneath of my llama And I'm using more water on the outside You know stick my brush in the water and clean it out so that I don't end up with color going all the way The outside because I like to have it sort of softly disappear off the edge In most areas well and as you can see I like to have that watercolor edge that that rough kind of almost dry brush edge In some areas and then soft in others and here I'm just going to create a couple of shapes to create some lines along the mountains and you can You can make them solid shapes if you want But I think this gives a little bit of texture to them Aside from just having a swash of well blended color Just having some lines in there It's makes the mountains kind of craggy and that sort of thing and these llamas live in the high country where there would be craggy things So that seemed to work well for me Now I'm going to add some lines to it in a little bit But if you want to draw the mountains in there first you can do that and then paint them But I find it's a little easier sometimes to wait until after it's painted because if I decide to alter the shape of the mountain While I'm painting I can alter that and not have to worry about staying within lines, etc So I'm just going to add a little bit of color to a couple of the flowers and things and And the basket and then paint my little blanket details That sort of thing so I'm going to add a bunch of different things in here Just to add a little bit of fussy detail Now on a card like this I have the focal point as My very busy image with the busy blanket and the busy Little pot of flowers and things and then the background is really soft So it's creating a contrast between the foreground and the background That really makes that foreground pop Here I'm trying to make sure my purple doesn't bleed into my yellow because I didn't wait for it to dry And I was looking at it and giving it the evil eye hoping it was not going to make a mess Because that's how things go when I paint things just like to bleed all over So next I'm going to just go through and draw my lines with a sharpie pen And if you're doing this at the end, it doesn't matter what kind of black pen it is Just draw your lines on it because you're not going to paint over it But a sharpie pen you could watercolor more if you Needed to do that you needed to add a little more color So I'm just gonna have a little tiny bit of grassy lines right along his feet just to ground him On the scene And then that is just about it. I decided I wanted to add a little tiny bit of detail in the Little harness on him Because if I had added that while I was before I had painted the gray I would end up with all kinds of red in my gray didn't want that So there you go finished card. I just die cut it with a little Border die that has a little bit of stitching in it little piercing Just to add a little difference to the edge And add it on to a card base Hope you enjoyed this video if you did click that like button you can click on my face to subscribe to my channel There's watercolor classes over at my new art classes website You're welcome to check that out and I will see you guys another time. Have a really really fantastic day See you later. Bye. Bye