 My name is Sammy Bailey and I'm a recent graduate from the University of Newcastle. I studied a Bachelor of Natural History illustration with honours and I'm here today to share with you my watercolour painting process. I will also touch on some of the exciting things that have happened to me since graduating. So firstly I will be painting an emu. Now if you already know me you will know that ugly or unusual animals are my area of interest, which is why I recently came out with my first children's book, The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Ugly Animals. When it comes to watercolour, there are many different techniques available in order to create the textures that you need, but the main ones I'll be focusing on today is wet on wet and wet on dry. I'm using A3 Arches Hot Press 300gsm watercolour paper with a range of Windsor and Newton watercolor paints. I'll pop up an image of those materials in case you're interested, but these are typically found at most art stores. You can see that my palette has a decent range of colours, but this has been built up over time and I would only recommend using a few at the start to get used to blending your own colours and not relying on premade ones from a tube. The goal is to be able to recreate whatever colour you need just by looking at it and you need to develop those skills early on. When it comes to brushes, my rule is as long as it's soft to the touch but still relatively firm or dense when painting with, then it's good to go. I also prefer to use imitation brushes rather than from an animal, so I mix and match my brands to suit. The first brush is for large areas, the second is a lot more stiff and dense and I only use it for lifting up excess paint. The third is for texture, the fourth is for medium areas and the last is for details. I don't like round-ended brushes because I find it harder to read precise. I like them nice and pointy. Starting with the eye, I apply a small bit of clean water to the area with my smallest brush and then pick up the desired colour from the palette, placing it onto the page. This helps with blending the general colour and minimising the appearance of brush strokes which can create a less realistic appearance. This technique is known as wet on wet and I will use this for majority of the underlayer of my painting. I will wait for it to dry just a little and add in further layers as I go. This will allow them to blend in slightly with each other and not to become a muddy mess. It is important to be patient with this medium because it is very unforgiving. Moving on to the neck and face, I will start using my larger brush to fill more of the area and push through the ugly phase as I like to call it. For me, this is the hardest part of the painting as I always struggle to see the end piece or the light at the end of the tunnel. But it is important to push through as majority of my favourite paintings have had the most severe ugly phases and I was very near throwing them in the bin so don't give up just yet. So this might be a good part to touch on some of the exciting things that have happened since finishing uni. I was approached by a publishing company at the start of my honours year to create a children's book based on ugly animals. I created 60 paintings in total and wrote the text. It came out in September 2019 and the ugliest have since captured the hearts of Australia as well as those overseas with it to be published in the UK, US, China and Russia in the near future. One of the most surreal experiences was having my own segment on ABC730. Ever since I was a young girl I loved weird and wonderful animals. I've always had a weird array of pets. And being featured on Studio 10. Okay, back to painting. Now you can see me using my textured brush to assist me with parts of the neck. This is done using the wet on dry technique where the paper is dry but I'm using my wet brush. It doesn't allow the layers to blend into one another and is better for detailing. Now I didn't actually realise until watching this part back at slow motion but when I'm doing details like hairs or fine lines I will often pretend to do it first through a few strokes. Thinking back at the reasons why I realised it is probably to make sure I have the right motion and position before actually putting brush to paper. Strange. But these points of a painting are my favourite. I love seeing it come together and being able to add on the details. I will once again use that textured brush to apply my paint. But this time tell me create the appearance of wispy hairs. Using a wet on dry technique I will continue that up the neck and onto the head but leaving a large part for my smallest brush to make the other hairs on the body. That way I have more control than with the larger brush and I don't place hairs where I don't want them. So aside from my brief 5 minutes of fame on the TV the biggest surprise to come from the book was actually a letter from Sir David Ambrer. When I first realised I was going to be creating a book I wrote a list of people that I wanted to get a copy to. The top of which was Attenborough. Like many others he had been a huge inspiration for me. So I wrote him a note, drew a little picture in the book, packaged it up and sent it on its way. Around one and a half months later I found a letter in my mailbox that looked rather fancy. And here it is. Now we are at the final stages and this is where I will add in some white wash to help me with the appearance of highlights and add any final hairs or wrinkles. Finally I will scan it in at at least 300 dpi and adjust the colours in Photoshop that were lost during the scan. Done and it only took 5 minutes. Wow I wish. Well thank you for tuning in and watching my process of watercolor painting. I had great fun painting this emu and hopefully some of my tips might help you too. At the end of the day there are no rules when it comes to art. You might find that some things work for you and others don't so just take whatever advice helps you and create your own guidelines.