To start our first image, we're going to start on the background. And I'm going to set aside my mask for now and we'll use this later on. So to make the background, I'm going to make my background to try and look like water light shining through water. So I'm going to use yellows and greens with us. And the first thing I'm going to do is with my brush, I'm just going to paint the background avoiding the actual seahorse here, I'm just going to paint enough water on it toe to wet my paper somewhat. I'll just go around the seahorse I don't have to worry about getting close.

I have a lot of paper here and I'm going to try and leave about a one inch border all the way around my paper where I'm not going to wet it. So once I have my paper fairly well saturated, I'll just make some colors because it's a background and I want it to look very subtle. I'll take a little lemon yellow On my palate, and I'll water that down. And then over here, I'll mix some whatever's on my brush. So I still have a little yellow tinge to that with some of this permanent green and it's a beautiful color. And again, I'll water that down as well.

Then I'll rinse my brush, clear off some of the water and just take a bunch of this very light lemon yellow, and run it in places here. And I want to leave dry splotches of paper around where I'm depositing the color. So we'll stick to an odd number for now and I can always go back in maybe a little here. Then I'll take some of this green, and I'll deposit it and I'll have it run over some of the areas of the yellow and just cover up some of the white. But again, I want white Have the paper showing through. So I'll take whatever is in my brush, keeping it nice and full of pigment.

And it's very subtle so it'll have a beautiful, soft effect. And I'll just create my border. And I'll go over one half of it so the top and then down one side with the green. Then I'll rinse my brush, come back and pick up yellow. And I'll do the same thing opposite it. So I go down one side and the bottom.

So I have my frame here. And now we'll just go in there and deposit some pigment, very lightly. And just again in splotches, no straight lines of just pigment. And I'm budding right up against the seahorse in areas. I don't have to get every place but I just want and I'll switch colors. I just want to create a background as if the water is shining behind it the light and the water behind the seahorse.

Trying to be careful not to paint on the seahorse but because of color so light, it's okay if we make a little, little error. take one more look. Maybe add a little more lemon yellow to a wet brush, and just deposit some lemon yellow here and there. And when I'm happy that I have the background soft and kind of splotchy. I'll let this layer completely dry.