Already, I find a project you will find this template underneath the resources section on the right hand side of the Projects tab. So you can either freehand draw your own turtle, or if you want a bit of help download this one and then trace it onto your watercolor paper. I have also mixed a little bit of variety in green through with my solid blue that I had from the previous exercises. I haven't been that scientific about it, I just added a little bit of grain to each of them, and then I've tested them out on a swatch to make sure that they're the right amount of light or dark. It's quite nice to have that natural variation as you move through the tones. So the first thing we're going to do nice and easy is we're going to cover the entire turtle shape with a light wash.

Remember the light to dark, we're going to be using a light wash for our first layer. Just like when I was talking about putting down a flat wash in The previous lessons, you need to plan your strategy. So if you start in the middle, then you're going to have areas where you need to push the wash out in all different directions at once. Otherwise, you're going to end up with with lines where it's dried. So what I tend to do is maybe I'll start here, pull the wash down and join this up and then bring the wash all the way across so that I can finish off from one side to the other. That tends to work for me.

Having said that, if you end up with a blotchy wash on your first layer, it doesn't matter because the other layers are going to hide a multitude of sins. As I said before number one rule make sure that you have enough wash to cover the entire area and then off I go. Keep your pencil lines nice and light or you could use watercolor pencil as well to pencil in the lines. I've made mine a bit darker than usual so that you can see what I'm doing. Yeah, and that is layer one done, as with the other exercises we've done today, we need to let this dry fully, and then we will add on our second layer. For layer two, we're going to be working with a thicker wash to define the areas of the show.

And then to start to pick out the pattern of the flippers, you can look at some reference images and then really just start to make it up you can be as detailed or as not detailed as you'd like. You can see with this one I've incorporated sort of slightly different variations on the color. So either I've achieved that by mixing in like a blue and gray, and then using differing amounts of those as I do each of the sections of the show. So that's something to experiment with. Or you can just keep it quite flat and use one color. So I've got a medium size brush here.

I'll check that my color is dark enough. And then we just take our time and start to pick out these elements. I use my pencil marks as a guide, and I don't paint over them and that way, it helps me to leave that very, very thin space between where we see the bottom layer. So that's an exercise in precision for you to try and make sure you stop your washes from running into each other. I don't usually outline a shape and then fill it in. But I couldn't get away with it because this area is small and I'm painting quite quickly and also it's quite cold here today so the drying time is longer than it usually is.

Also, remember you don't want these to be so dark that you won't be able to say any other layers that go on top of it. If you need to swap to a smaller brush So that's the first section of our shell done without our second layer we are defining the segments of the show. I'm going to keep painting now as I do the paddling on the fence. So there is the second layer completed across the all the fins and the shell. I'm going to come in now and do it a little bit of detailing on the head and do some lines here to sort of show where his neck has turned. And then we'll be on to layers three and four, which is really just adding some pattern and detail to the show.

Some of really, really close we're almost done. finished a wash, and we've finished our layer where we've defined the shell. We've added some patent on the same layer. So we've defined the areas around the fins, and the head. And now we're going to come in with our third layer, and we're going to start to add some patterning on the shell. reference image.

Again, you can say there's this sort of pineapple textured sunburst pattern on the show. I'm going to complete that in two layers. So initially, I am going to use a week wash to do the semi circle and maybe some spokes. And then when that's dry, we'll come in with our line work to really define that last Live with the patents have got down our patent on our previous layer that's all dry and now we're going to work with a really small brush one or zero, whatever feels comfortable to you so that we're not flooding too much paint on and we can get some really nice details. Now I have made sure that my wash here is really nice and thick so that it's going to show up over these other layers. And we're just going to put in some, some final details a bit like highlights to help define everything.

It can be really nice to do this with what if depending upon the artwork using white or Black are really really dark mix of the color that you're working with to add some highlights. And if this wash isn't thick enough, it's not going to show up. If you weren't thin lines, then you use a really light pressure. And if you want thicker lines, then you press down harder. If you want to get really nice straight lines when you're working with a fine brush, I find that you look where you want to go. So rather than watching your paintbrush, you look at where you want the brush to arrive, sort of a hand eye coordination thing.

And here's our finished sea turtle. We've used four layers, wash Define Pattern and line to build up our painting.