Hey, this is Eric from Cafe Watercolor.
Thank you for joining me in this new painting video.
So it is Chinese New Year, and this year is Year of Mouse.
So I thought to do a painting of a little mouse,
that will also be interesting exercise
to paint something a little bit small.
So we start off with a nice loose drawing for the painting.
And we'll start out by just doing some big general shape,
it is always important to get the big general shape down
before you move into any of the detail.
So I get the big shape of the head and the body,
and I start to draw the ear and the eye.
And one thing that's kinda important
is that you want to make sure the alignment is correct.
And one way you can do that
is by using the feature as the reference,
so the eye and the ear, they should be lining up the same,
they should be parallel.
Now, little mouse is a lot more simple
than doing a human head, so this is relatively easy.
And even if you get a few things a little bit off,
it's not going to look too weird
because it is not a human head.
But getting the placement right is still pretty important.
You don't want the eye and the ear to misalign,
that's going to look awkward and break the perspective.
And speaking of the perspective,
this image is a little bit tricky
in terms of the foreshortening it has
because we are looking at the mouse almost head on,
so we're looking at the head, and the body,
and the rear leg, it's all behind the head,
so it got this foreshortening going on.
So my suggestion is to try to watch out for that
and try to think of it in three-dimensional space
and just focus on the head a little bit more.
The body and the leg is a little bit out of focus
in the photo anyways,
so we're trying to make it a little bit loose
and a little bit fade back in the distance.
So I changed the shape of the head a little bit,
the nose feels a little bit too low.
Now, after that I start to make
a little bit darker mark here and there,
just to make the drawing a little bit cleaner
and I start to erase some of the construction lines,
some dirty line that doesn't need to be there.
And I make some quick indication
of where the whisk is going to be.
And I'm going to start my first wash.
So I am going to premix a little bit of color
and I only mix a little bit
because I'm still going to mix most of the color on the fly.
But this serves as a reference
for me to mix warm and cool colors.
So as you can see, I got two mix in area,
one is for warm color, one is for cool color,
and the bottom big mixing area is going to be other colors
and the dark, dirty color.
So I'm going to start doing the first wash.
So the lighting of this photo
is almost the backlight a little bit to the left,
so you see some strong rim light of the fur
on the back and the left,
the face is almost completely in the shadows.
So the first wash we are actually just painting
the shadow value,
but pretty similar to the skin tone video from last week,
even though we are painting the shadow value,
doesn't mean you paint it very, very dark,
still keep it transparent is just a little bit darker,
a little bit more opaque than pure white.
So a little bit of warm gray for the first wash
and leave out the highlight.
You can always go back and add more values later.
So I'm doing a little bit of wet on wet
while the wash is still wet,
adding a little bit of cerulean blue, and other colors.
This will make the color look more interesting and vibrant,
and also give me a step ahead.
So here I'm mixing a moist, a little bit more opaque mixture
for the darker color fur.
And while I'm doing that,
I'm also painting the same color fur on the back,
so the body as well,
since there's still leftover paints on my brush,
use them as much as possible without reloading your brush.
And it's kinda essential
to reuse the color you have on your brush.
So you don't have to go back to your palette and reload
and risk the wash to be completely dry.
And before the first wash is dry,
I'm connecting the bottom shadow shape together.
So it's important to group your value
and connect the shape as much as possible.
So this is still part of the first wash,
but we're already defining the value and light and shadow.
Now I'm mixing a little bit of a reddish orange color,
a little bit more to the left side,
and start to paint the ear.
Now, the ear is pretty transparent,
so don't use any color that's too opaque,
especially for the first wash,
get a little bit hints of the red color,
like the bloodstream underneath the skin.
So the first wash right now is in the damp stage,
and I think it's a good time for me to stop,
let it dry and to start doing the second wash.
So I use hair dryer to blow it dry.
It's pretty important that you need to know
when you should be stopping and not overworking.
When your wash is dry past a certain point,
it's better for you to just leave it alone
and let it dry before you work on it again.
If you work on it too much,
you're risking it to create some bad cauliflower edges
and the wash is not going to look clean.
So the second wash is the time
that I really start to lay in the colors.
So I'm mixing a dark brownish color
for the dark part of the fur.
And notice the tip of my brush
is actually not that sharp, it's a little bit split out,
which is good because I actually want to use that
to create some dry-brush effect to give the illusion of fur.
Switch to a smaller brush,
so I can paint a little bit more in detail
and leave out the highlight for the whisk.
In the beginning, I wanted to use masking fluid,
but first I didn't find it,
and second, I want to be able to paint this one
without using the masking fluid.
So just carefully paint around the shape,
paint around the highlight.
And while that shape is still wet,
we can add some more opaque paint,
some thicker paint, do some wet on wet.
There're still subtle value changes in the darker fur area.
So I use wet on wet to give that soft transition,
will be very helpful.
Bring a little bit of warm color to the back.
So a little bit of value to the back.
And I soften the shape whenever I need to,
just by using a little bit of water, clean damp brush.
And here I started to work on the background.
So I'm mainly using the cerulean blue
from Mission Gold Paint.
So their cerulean blue is a little bit different,
it got a little bit more of the warm tone,
a little bit to the greener side, which is really pretty,
so I've decided to use that,
pretty similar to the colors in the photograph as well.
So it's very important,
now, you want to keep your background as clean
and as consistent as possible.
There can be some value changes within,
by you want it to be mostly soft edges.
So I'm using a bigger brush for cleaner wash
because bigger brush holds
a little bit more water and paint,
it will be easier for me to do a bigger area wash.
So adding a little bit more paint,
make it a little bit more opaque,
wet on to wet while I still can.
The left side of the mouse is where the brightest bright is
because that's where the light is hitting.
So I'm painting around the edges
and I try to keep it a little bit rough,
so it gives the illusion of fur,
so it's not a perfectly round hard edge.
I'm adding a little bit of the color while it is still wet.
It's already starting to dry, so I really need to speed up
so that background will be mostly soft edge
with soft transitions.
And I bring the background in
to the shadow area of the mouse.
This will help the mouse
to feel like it is belong in the environment.
When you have background connect to the main subject,
it always help to integrate your subject into the background
and that makes the picture whole and unify.
And while I'm at it, I am painting using a very dark,
and dry, and thick mixture to paint the contact shadow.
So the contact shadow is where the mouse
is actually touching the surface.
That's the area where no light can get in,
so it's very, very dark.
And I want to do that while it is still wet
so I can have this soft transition from very dark, to dark.
This will create more depths and dimensionality.
So I decide to leave the bottom just white,
so it feels like the mouse is standing on the edge,
just a little bit of the graphic choice
and mixing some darker flesh tone for the feet.
And it's okay if a little bit of the dark sipping in
it's mostly in the shadow anyways,
so two front feet and one of the rear feet.
And again, we soften the edges as needed.
So most of the translations I see
is Year of Rat, rather than Year of Mouse.
And I don't know why do they choose rat over mouse,
it just doesn't sound very cute.
I mean, you want to say Mickey Mouse, not Mickey Rat,
it just doesn't sound right.
And also, nobody's gonna tell you
to move your rat to a specific area
and double-click, right, it just doesn't sound good.
So I'm just gonna say it is the Year of Mouse,
it's a lot cuter.
And I'm pretty sure painting this cute little mouse
is more fun than painting a big rat.
Okay, so I'm starting to work on the features,
so I'm using almost pure neutral tint for the eye.
So I'm using the tip of my brush to paint the eye
and leave out a little bit of random highlight,
the eye is reflective,
so make sure you leave some highlights out.
And I also soften a little bit of the edge in the eye
with a clean damp brush so it doesn't look that harsh.
Now I'm darkened the shadow underneath the mouse head.
So this is going to push the depth a little bit more
to pull the head forward a little bit more.
So in this case, this dark value is going to help
the head to pop forward.
And that's another reason why I connect
the background color to the shadow,
because when you have the shadow shape integrated
with the background,
that's going to unify them into the same background.
So when people see that,
their mind will associate the background
and the shadow shape.
So the head, since they are not part of the background
and the shadow, it's going to get separated.
So here I'm just grabbing a little bit
of leftover dirty warm gray and add a little bit of detail.
This should be pretty light.
Just a little bit of detail
to make the fur look a little bit more sophisticated,
but that's pretty much it.
So I want to darken the shadow
on the back of the mouse a little bit more,
add some more cooler color to push them back even further.
So here the contact shadow
is actually not completely dry yet,
so it started to create a little bit of cauliflower edges.
So the way I fix that is to make a thicker mixture
and just paint over it.
So it takes out the moisture,
that's going to create the cauliflower edges
because you put thick paint into it.
So I didn't paint a little breadcrumb in front of the mouse
because I seen that it's going to be a weird shape
as competing with the head, so that's why I didn't do it.
So the painting is pretty much done,
the last thing I do is to darken the background
because I want the light on the left of the mouse
to pop out a little bit more.
Because if you look at the reference image,
you can see how luminous those white furs are.
So here I'm just mixing more opaque darker mixture
for the background, and I start to kind of carefully
paint around the background,
and again, leave out some of the highlight.
And while I do that, I'm soften some of the edges
from the background just to give it
a little bit of the soft edge.
So that will create the illusion
of the light sort of glowing,
and that's going to look good after it is dry.
So I add even more dark wet on to wet next to the fur.
So now that you can see the light,
it's really starting to pop out.
One of the major difference between watercolor
and other mediums such as oil,
is that oil you work from dark to light,
so when you paint in oil, you add more white paint,
you add more bright color on top.
But when you're working on the watercolor,
you cannot paint white unless you use squash
but that large area of squash is not going to look good.
So it's very important that you paint the surrounding dark
if you really want to push that contrast,
so you preserve the light
and you paint the surrounding dark so the light can pop out.
Here is the finished painting.
I hope you enjoyed this little painting,
and Happy Chinese New Year.
If you enjoyed this video, please like and subscribe.
You can also go to my website at cafewatercolor.com
to download my Fast Track Watercolor PDF Guide.
Thank you, and I will see you guys again very soon.