 Welcome to Monet Café. I'm artist Susan Jenkins. I am happy to bring you a watercolor tutorial of an adorable little fluffy cute rabbit. It was last year around this time that I actually did some watercolor paintings of some sweet little rabbits and I never uploaded any of the footage so I thought this time of the year is a perfect time to share these tutorials. The theme this month in Monet Café is new life, the beautiful time of year in spring where flowers are blooming and life is flourishing. I hope you'll take a moment to like this video, subscribe to this channel, hit that little bell icon right next to the subscribe button to be notified of future videos and if you would consider becoming a patron of mine on my Patreon page it helps to keep this free content coming plus you get extra goodies and extra content and it's only $5 a month. Alright here we go with the supplies. Of course I need some water. This is watercolor paper and for this bunny painting I'm using my little travel watercolor palette. It actually has a little spot where you can put your thumb in and hold it just like a palette, like a paint palette and I have various tube paints that I've put into my travel palette. These are some of the colors. If you're a patron of mine I will send you a photo of my palette layout. I'll talk about my brushes as I work but I believe I only use three of these brushes. The reference image is from pixabay.com and I will provide a clickable link to the reference image in the description of this video. Now the surface I'm working on, I'll talk a little bit while I sketch, is an Arches watercolor block. I've taped it off because I wanted to do a few of these bunny paintings and I believe I've taped it off with masking tape to result in four paintings that would be approximately five inches by four inches. Now if you're curious about this watercolor block made by Arches, it is 100% cotton paper. I do have an Amazon product review video I did on this particular product sharing why I love it. I love how it's called a block because it's glued around the perimeter. It helps to keep your watercolor paper very flat. Now it is quite expensive so if you're not really doing a lot of watercolor and you're just trying to get started there are other watercolor papers that I recommend. Arches does sell another watercolor paper pad that is a lot less expensive than this block but if you're interested in the block I will also provide the link to that product review video in this description. Now for me with something as delicate and gentle as these cute little bunnies and this one in particular, he was so darn cute, you want to make sure you keep this very loose and not too rigid. He's very gentle and I wanted to get his gesture correct. His little foot was just kind of tucked in so cute and he just had the neatest little pose and position so I was taking my time a little bit to make sure I got this right and also an accurate sketch especially when doing things like animals or people is really going to help to enhance your painting looking professional. And now I'm going to speed the sketching portion up a little bit but I just wanted to note take time with your sketch. It is worth getting it right and I prefer freehand sketching but if you need to use a grid method or some other method again just be sure you get the the little gesture and the anatomy of this bunny correct. Now that's a micron marker. I like these markers for watercolor. They don't bleed when you add water. You can get them with very fine points and I wanted to stress very delicately with a very fine tip just where that little baby nose was and the mouth on bunnies, that little curve part like is on cats and on bunnies is very delicate. It's very little so make sure you don't overwork that. It's just very it's barely there and now I'm just kind of getting in where the eye is going to be. The eye for me with animals and people eyes are very important. You want to make sure you get them accurately positioned and also they are the window to the soul so you kind of want to get those right. And you can see from the reference image that the other eye isn't showing but there is kind of a little indention between the head and where his cheeks kind of fluff out where you get the idea of where the eye would be and I'm getting just a few little lines in to give myself kind of just some idea of where things are and then I'm actually going to erase a bit of the pencil lines. I don't want it to be so hard. Again this is going to be delicate and here you'll see me using a kneaded eraser to do just that. I'm just knocking off some of the pencil and now it's time to paint. I will be using my Princeton size 12 brush you see there but I decided for the background to use this large Chinese watercolor brush that is Prussian blue that I'm mixing up. I may have added in a little Payne's gray to that as well but I wanted the background to have that dry brush feel at least to begin with. So I made sure I added enough water for it to flow but also to leave a few of those little white spaces. You see how artistic and sketchy that looks. I really like that especially to begin with I don't like to get too tight and so I'm just kind of giving a nice little background around this little bunny and notice how I'm holding my brush too. When you hold your brush with your hand position like this rather than cinching up on it like painting with a pencil it's going to result in a more painterly outcome and a loose style and so you see I'm just really keeping this very loose. Also too I recommend using the largest brush you can especially for beginning stages and keep that hand flowing. It does take practice at first. Now I know if you see in the reference image where is the shadow you can see it's on the left side so the light is coming from the almost the upper right but a little bit in front of the bunny too but we're getting a decent shadow on his left side and you can easily see where that is. So I'm using this same color of the Prussian blue to create somewhat of a monochromatic beginning and I do this a lot with watercolor painting. I think it helps me to have my values correct which I talk a lot in my pastel painting tutorials if you have not been on this channel very much. I have a lot of pastel painting tutorials but I happen to love watercolor as well and I've had some of my subscribers saying more watercolor please so that's why I thought I'd pop in this little demonstration or painting tutorial that I did of this bunny. So I love watercolor but I like to approach it with a painterly style. When I first started painting with watercolor I had no idea what I was doing and I painted almost like a paint by number. I would draw something then I would fill everything in and notice too sometimes I am using kind of the point of the brush. I'm still using this large Chinese watercolor brush so sometimes I'm using the point but often I will lay the brush on its side to get large swatches of paint and it does help to keep that loose style. That's what I love and watercolor has this beautiful ability kind of like it just did right there to have creative accidents, happy accidents and by having enough water to paint ratio you allow it to do what it does so beautifully and it did take me quite some time to kind of get the the knack to get in my groove with watercolor. So that's why I recommend a lot of little practice pieces and just having some fun. I do have a beginner watercolor tutorial on this channel. Maybe I'll put a link to that in here actually just playing with color creating something called color caterpillars where you're practicing on mixing color and again working on your water to paint ratio. Now you can see I'm gradually adding more darks and that is something I like to focus to in my watercolor tutorials is don't get too dark too soon because you can't get that light back. There are some little tricks to do it but it's never quite the same as preserving the light that's inherent from the white of the paper. So that's why I take my time and I build up my darks often adding other colors for color interest and I am really just looking at shapes, shapes and values. Now I do know that his eye you can see that is totally the darkest thing. His eye inside of his ear and a little teeny weeny spot where his little mouth is. But again I want to keep that so delicate because he's going to look too harsh if I don't keep some of those marks just very very gentle. Now I'm just putting in a little warmth now. I'm adding it's more of a little bit of a magenta kind of like a but but it's toned down it's kind of neutral there's some warmth hitting him from the light source and I also wanted to point out that of the three bunny watercolor paintings that I did you saw the other two at the intro to this video this one is of a style that is more of my favorite way to paint. I had a recent watercolor tutorial in the last few months that is called intuitive watercolor and it's a more painterly style. It has a little more freedom. The other two bunnies that I did were a little bit more a little tighter and perhaps a little more realistic I could say but I really like this kind of loose painting and I thought this particular bunny really lent itself towards some creative energy. Now you can see the the blue of the background has definitely dried and I'm adding a little bit more of a magenta it has a little more warmth a little more purple to it this is what I was talking about with layering my darks and you can create some interesting colors you want to be careful with it to a degree because you don't want to muddy your colors you can glaze or layer like this but you know just just kind of don't overdo it and this helps me when I paint in this way of not getting too dark too soon to get my values correct because if I went in and just made the background black like is in the reference image first of all black would have looked very flat and I also wasn't sure if I wanted it to be that dark so you give yourself a little room artistically to explore when you go don't go too dark too soon and here's where obviously I am deciding to add a little bit more dark with another interesting blue and I'm doing a little negative painting you see how I'm using my brush now this is the Princeton size 12 brush I'm using here I have switched brushes but I did the negative painting to create a little bit of those the whisker shapes that are on the side of his face there still keeping my strokes very painterly and loose and having what's called loose painterly edges they're also called lost edges where the edge is not a hard line it's kind of just a division between values and a very subtle division so I really like those painterly edges like that and I've only sped this video up slightly you should still be able to see exactly what I'm doing and I am going to be adding some music to this and you guys just watching me paint I have a lot more to do for this month I'm having so much fun with my patrons with many things that we've got going on on the Patreon page and also to I have another big project coming up that I'll be announcing soon so but I wanted to make sure I got this little rabbit video to you because I thought you know what this might be the perfect time of year to share this tutorial and I also like to point out that I am never shy about sharing my faith and my faith in the resurrection of Jesus Christ and even though we get a lot of bunnies and a lot of eggs this time of year that's not what it's about it's about the new life that we can have through Christ sometimes I get a little commentary on my comments on these channels when I share those things but I look at my channel as a chance to celebrate the Lord celebrate creation and being able to create we are made in his image and also just celebrating the joy of sharing that with others and the hope that we can have that is so needed in this very lost world so I hope you can keep in mind what the holiday that's called Easter is about it's not about bunnies it's not about eggs but they are cute right so enjoy this tutorial to music I will be back at the end and if I have time this month I'll try to upload at least one of the other bunny tutorials in watercolor now I do have some flower watercolor coming I have like four more of those to upload this month oh my goodness I always have more videos to edit than I have month to create them all right guys I will be back at the end enjoy the music hope you enjoyed this watercolor tutorial of this adorable bunny and if you try it of course if you're a patron of mine you can share it in our homework album I love to see the work from my patrons and if you're not a patron of mine you can share it on my Instagram page just tag me I'm at Susan Jenkins artist and I love to see what you do all right guys be blessed happy resurrection day and happy painting