Learn How to Paint a Portrait of BUTTERFLY DREAM with Acrylic - Paint & Sip - Step by Step Tutorial

hi there i'm michelle the painter from berkshire paint and sip and this is paint and sip at home [Music] all right so today i'm going to be painting butterfly dream and i'm going to be sipping on my earl gray tea and if you enjoy this process i do hope that you like and subscribe to my channel and that you also check out my patreon page where you're going to find additional painting perks so let's get painting and let's get sipping all right so for my materials today i'm going to be using a stretched and primed 16 by 20 inch canvas if you're painting along with me you can certainly switch up the size but that's what i'll be using for my paint today i have acrylic paint my colors are titanium white burnt umber which i'll call brown mars black fire red cobalt blue burnt sienna which i'll call rust fluorescent orange and deep yellow and of course you can switch up the colors if you'd like to but that's what i'll be using for my tools today i have a standard number two pencil and then i have three brushes i have a half inch wide flat bristle brush i have a number six round synthetic brush and i have a number two round synthetic brush and i will refer to these as small medium and large as we go through the painting process and of course you can switch those up as well too if you like if you're painting along with me you'll probably want to have a cup of water for washing your brushes as well as a paper towel for drying your brushes and down below this video i will be providing you with a couple of additional resources that can help you through your painting process one of them is a link where you could purchase the same exact paint kit that i'm using from the large canvas to the pencil i'm using you in the paint and all that good stuff so that's down there for you there's also a link where you can download a free image of the final painting so you can print that and use it as visual reference as you go through the painting process and there's also written step-by-step instructions down there for you as well and that's all we're going to need today all right so we're going to do for the first step is we're drawing an outline for the head so i'm going to be using my pencil and i'm going to give you some markers we're going to connect our markers and then by the time we're done we'll just have a profile shape for the head we're not going for any detail we're not going for nostrils or lips or eyes or anything like that we're just in essence trying to give ourselves a profile so we have a good section that we can put a base color on in a minute so what i'm going to do is i'm going to give you a couple of markers my first marker that i'm going to give you is right about here so this is about six inches down my canvas or a little bit more than a quarter way so if you kind of eyeball about halfway down your canvas then you go about halfway between there and the top of your canvas you're a little bit maybe about an inch or so below that half or that quarter way mark so that's my first marker my second marker is going to be right about here so this is a little bit to the right of the center of my canvas so if this is the center of my canvas i'm a little to the right and i'm about almost three inches up from the bottom of my canvas so that's my second marker what i'm going to do with the first one the second one is i'm going to connect them with a diagonal line this does not have to be a perfect diagonal it's just something that is going to give us a starting point to build off of as we're building that profile so i've got myself a diagonal line the next marker that i'm going to make is down here on the bottom of my canvas i'm in about a quarter of the way in my from the right hand side so again if you were to kind of eyeball halfway left to right and then go about halfway between there and the end of your canvas you're about four inches or a quarter of the way in then the next marker that i'm going to make is right here this is about i would say about two inches away from here and it's maybe about three quarters of an inch away from my designated diagonal line that i made and we're going to make three more subsequent dots and i'm just going to kind of guide you as to where they are these are going to be points that will hit when we're making our um our profile line so then what i'm going to do is i'm going to travel maybe about another inch and a half up and i'm just if you were to go um look at it this way i'm a little bit to the right of this marker just maybe an eighth of an inch and i'm up maybe about an inch and a half i'm also i would say maybe about an inch away from this line in through here so something like that then i'm going to travel about another two inches in this direction and i'm a little bit farther away from my diagonal line this is going to be the tip of the nose and then i'm going to go about another four inches or so this is my next marker this is going to be the um kind of the farthest point out of her forehead hair her bangs in through here so this is going to represent the chin the bottom lip the top lip the nose and the forehead and all we need to do now is just connect the dots so how we're going to do that i'm going to start with an easy one so we're going to do the chin down to we'll call this maybe the neck area so i'm going to bring this down just a little bit in through this area and then i'm going to just kind of curve it over and meet it with my my mark that i have at the bottom it does not you don't want it to be a super straight line we're going to give it a little bit of movement this is going to represent her chin this is going to represent the point to her bottom lip so what i'm going to do is i'm going to bring this in just a little bit and then i'm going to bring it down just a little bit like this and then i'm going to give it a little bit of a bump to meet here so this should be a continuous curve in through here to represent the chin this is going to be the point to her bottom lip this is the point to her top lip so what i'm going to do here is i am going to bring this in just a little bit like this i don't want to bring it all the way into here just a little bit like that and then i'm going to give it a slightly curved diagonal line meeting this point in through here so this is the point to the upper lip this is the tip to the nose so i can't just connect those with a diagonal line so what i'm going to do is i'm going to go from my nose i'm going to bring this back in through here a little bit like this and then i'm going to go ahead and meet this marker in with this marker in through here so that's going to represent the the top lip and then the nose and then what i'm going to do i've got to connect this marker all the way up to here so this is going to be my nose the bridge of my nose and then my hair in through here so you could almost i would say connect do like a third of the way down between here and here so maybe about somewhere in through here and go almost all the way over to this line maybe about a half of an inch away that's going to give you this curve of her bangs and through this area in through here and now we can easily connect this to here as the bridge of her nose and so not every person or child has the same shape to their nose so if yours ends up different than mine mine is just a an imaginary little person here yours can be made to represent somebody in your life you make it however you want it to be and then i'm just going to connect here to here with a slightly arching type of motion and maybe your hairline is going to look different than mine i'm just having some straight bangs into here and then we're going to switch brushes to our large brush you can certainly tweak this all you want but i'm going to put my pencil down take out my large brush and get ready for the next step alright so we're going to do for the next step is we're painting the base coat of our young person here so i'm going to use my large brush and i'm just using brown paint so i'm going to utilize this kind of a earthy type of color to as my base tone so this way when i go to do my hair and i go to do my skin i've got a nice neutral type of um color to work from with that's got some deep tones in it whenever i'm doing skin or hair or anything that i know has a ton of layers and a ton of dimension in it i do like to do a base coat that is of the darkest or seemingly one of the darker tones within that entire area and then i build my way to the to the lighter stuff on the outside so this just for me makes my process a little bit more simple of course i've got to slow down when i'm going into the nose and stuff i don't want this to change shape too much on me and if you wanted to you could certainly use a smaller brush as you are going around the edges in through the nose and the mouth and stuff like that but you'll have plenty of opportunity to tweak them and to make any corrections or modifications as we go through the painting process so don't worry about this coat of paint being perfect either it can if if it ends up looking a little streaky or ends up looking uneven in certain areas don't worry about that because again we're going to be putting a lot of layers onto this skin in order to make it look like realistic skin so this again is just intended to be the base coat and then we will be using this same brush for the next step so once you've got the entire face paint or the entire head painted in with this brown color you can wash and dry this large brush and get ready for the next step all right so we're going to do for the next step is we're painting our background black so i'm going to use my large brush and i'm just using black paint i'm not doing any special brush stroke my whole goal here is to just get an even coat throughout the entire background so you might find depending on the kind of brush that you're using or the type of paint that you're using that you might want to do one or two layers if after you get done the first layer after it dries you can still see little pieces of your canvas through then you could certainly do a second coat if you wanted to but black usually covers pretty darn evenly so you know that will be that'll be your judgment call but for me i like to have especially when i'm doing a flat background like this i like my paint to be of the same thickness so if i have some spots that look like they're that like they're bumping you know they have some height to them i will just kind of keep painting it over and over until i have a nice flat surface but you might like that textured look from your paint brush that's again a personal preference so you can see i'm kind of staying away from the face for a second just in case i had some wet spots still along the edge of my face so i'm just giving that a second to dry as it what that's why i started over here on the left but you could certainly if yours is dry just go right for it and then as i come towards the face i am going to be in essence just kind of painting around the face i'm going to be pretty um careful about keeping the exterior outline of my face but if you accidentally bump into it or you you know accidentally shape it a little bit in a way that you don't want to don't worry you'll again you'll have that opportunity to just kind of come back and make any corrections that you want and if you wanted to use a smaller brush as you're going along the edges of your head that's okay too and of course you'll see you'll see that i'm going to slow down as i go around the face just because i want to again keep that profile that i have already established on here but it might change a little bit i'm sure when i get to doing the hair and stuff like that i'll especially on the head i will um i'm sure my my hairline is going to change a little bit but going along this face here i do tend to go a little bit slower just so i can get that nice evenness to it and keep the um the profile that i have already designated and i just might have clipped off a little bit of her nose a bit but that's again that that happens so especially when you're using a bigger brush as i'm using and i'll just you know when i after my paint dries i'll go back and if i need to make any little modifications to the shape of it i certainly will and again you can see i'm just kind of slowing down and again you could certainly use a smaller brush if you wanted to as you're coming towards these um more delicate little areas that were that i'm doing right now and then once you've got this all said and done and you've got your outline all done and if you've made any little modifications or tweaks that you need to again i might wait a minute and um see if i need to do a second coat on my black but you could certainly if you feel like yours is all set and ready to go we are going to be utilizing our let's see what are we going to use for the next i think we're going to use our let's use our small brush for the next step so once you've got this all done you can put your large brush away take out your small brush and get ready for the next step all right so what we're going to do for the next step is we're going to designate where our facial features are going to be going so i'm going to be using my small brush i'm going to be using black and brown paint and we're not really looking for too much detail in here we're just kind of saying okay where's our nostril going to be and where's the little part to the edge of our nose and where's the eye going to be but we don't need to do a ton of detail in this step and we're also going to designate where the where the bangs are going to go to so i'm using my small brush i'm going to put brown and black on my brush at the same time the first thing that i'm going to do is my mouth in through here so we already know that this is like the top lip and this is the bottom lip well the mouth is kind of in an open position so what i'm going to do is i'm going to come diagonally back from this mark maybe about two inches in through right about in through here and i'm going to make myself the inside of the mouth with just black and maybe a little bit of brown paint on my brush at the same time so her mouth is going to be open because she's just a gasp at what she's seeing in the in the air so she's got her mouth open a little bit and it's okay to leave a little line between that opening and your background so that way you always know where it is we're going to have a little piece of skin on there later and her lips and all that good stuff so if you leave a little bit of a gap that's totally fine and then i'm gonna just pick up some more brown paint on my dirty brush so this way what i'm doing is i'm just kind of designating where the bottom of the lip is gonna go just giving myself a little bit of a guideline as well as the top of the lip so i don't need to go all the way black in this case scenario i'm really just saying okay here's where my edges of my lips are going to go so that way when we go to paint it we're not curious or we don't get confused as to what parts are going where so then i'm going to just move right up to the nose in through here so this is the top part or the little bubble part of her nose and it's going to come down in through here so i'm just kind of giving myself a faint little line in through here i'm going to give myself a little bit of a nostril i think i need a little bit more black paint on my brush to give myself a little bit of a nostril so when doing a nostril it doesn't need to be just a firm hole in the head so i've got it kind of firm on the right hand side and then what i'm going to do is i'm wiping my brush off of my paper towel and just picking up a little bit of brown to get that to to get it to kind of blend into the little bit of the skin as it's coming out of the nose so that's something that we can work on a little bit later too but it just gives you a head start as to that nostril not just being a firm black hole in her face and then again i'm just reloading with a little bit of black and brown i'm to put my nostril or the exterior part of the nostril somewhere in through here and again i'm just kind of giving myself a little bit of a guideline so that way when we go to paint it all in we'll have a good a good spot for it so my eye i'm going to have coming where this dips in right here i'm to the right of that maybe about an inch inch and a half and i'm going to give the exterior shape of the eye something like this like a little curved line this is going to be the bottom part of her eye and through here and then the her eyelid and the top part of her eye is going to go somewhere in through here and then maybe somewhere in through there for the eyelid type portion of it i'm going to bring a little bit of this dark color down in through here and then maybe put a little bit of darkness in through here just to act as a little bit of that shadow on the bridge of the nose but again all of that will come as we as we add more information to it if you wanted to you could completely paint this whole eye area in but i want that eye to be really bright and sparkly so i'm going to leave just that brown base on there and then the other thing i'm going to do is designate where my bangs are going to go so i have again black and brown on my brush and this is i'm gonna have her kind of looking like she's got some a nice brand new kind of haircut with well maybe not brand new but definitely have these um uh almost like a straight type of bang area but of course you could certainly make yours whatever way you want and again the black and the brown is really acting right now as like a little perimeter for me as i go to paint the um paint the the rest of the information and i just don't need to over paint so by giving myself these um barriers or these markers it really helps to speed up my painting process as i go through the entire um entire work so just know that my my process is definitely a you know how can i do this in an expedited kind of way and still get all of the information that i want so that's what i'm going to be doing in through here so the next step that we'll be doing is we're going to be using our large brush so once you've got all of these areas kind of designated and again they don't have to be perfect at this point we will be utilizing our other painting techniques to finish it but i'm going to be putting my small brush away taking out my large brush and get ready for the next step alright so what we're going to do for the next step is we are putting our background glow into the air so i'm going to use my large brush the colors i'm using are yellow orange white and if i need to i can use a little bit of black as well so this is meant to be just dreamy and airy and just kind of all culminate in the brightest spot right about here so i'm going to be utilizing my orange and my yellow to give me almost like this airy stuff around my main glow part i know that provided i don't use white on my brush the yellow and the orange are going to be see-through so as they dry based on how thick they are on the canvas they will get lighter and darker so i will have a natural gradation of these colors prior to me using white once i start using white you won't be able to see through it as much and it will get brighter but until i'm ready for that i'm not going to use white so i'm going to start with some yellow on my brush and i know that i want my brightest area to be in through here so i can just kind of start that really bright area i'm going to add orange to it in a minute and i'm just going to kind of get it to be really kind of glowy in through here i want it to look as if it might have been arising from somewhere below so i'm just going to kind of put all these little swirly type of marks this is where your inner artist gets to just kind of be let loose into the imaginary world of a young child's fantasy imagination kind of thing so now i'm going to pick up some orange and i'm going to do in essence kind of the same thing put a little bit in that middle bringing some out towards the edges maybe bring a little bit into the air over in through here and then bringing some down in through the atmosphere so to speak down in through here i'm gonna want it to be darker down here so as it dries if it doesn't turn out dark enough for me i can always come back in with some of that black but i'm gonna just let it kind of fester and do its thing here for a minute and then i'm going to start to add a little bit of white and yellow to my brush to get this center area to really start to get nice and vibrant and again i know it's going to turn darker as it dries so this is just getting my getting my glow started i guess and if yours is not the you know if you want yours more yellow or more of the pink orangey kind of type you certainly can adjust yours whatever way you want to this is this is your beautiful glowing painting you can get it to be as bright or as dark or maybe you want to put purple in yours or green or another color that is something that's special or meaningful to you so you just really have as much fun with this as you want to and then i would say you know let it dry for a minute and then if you do want to add more onto it feel free to do so we will be adding more when we go to add the butterfly later as well so if yours isn't exactly as you want it now don't worry you you've got much more time and and steps where you can add and you know make it as energetic as you want to and then we're going to be utilizing our medium brush for the next step so once you've got your glow on here you can put your large brush away take out your medium brush of course i'm just going to keep wanting to add to mine take out your medium brush and just get ready for the next step all right so what we're going to be doing for the next step is we're painting the contours onto the face so what this in essence is going to do is we're in essence kind of putting the shadowy areas and and the lighter areas into the face in order to tell the viewer where all the contours are the contours are going to be like your cheeks your chin how your chin like bumps out the contour from like the top of your lip going into the side of your face your cheek where your nose kind of dips in by it by your eye and through here maybe where your eye dips in up and through here so we're in essence right now giving that map onto onto the skin so i know that this whole side of the head is in essence in the shadows because my light source is over on the left hand side of this little girl well kind of up and to the left so all of my brightest spots are going to be like on the tip of the nose on this edge of the face and maybe on the chin into here but i'm still going to have a little bit maybe underneath her eye and at the top of the cheek so in my head i'm going to kind of work my way from the dark stuff into the light stuff we will have another step to the skin so this is really just the building process as to where all of the contours are and then we'll finesse them in a future step so i'm i'm going to use a bunch of colors i'm going to use black brown rust yellow and white so i'm going to start with black paint on my brush i'm going to be putting black down in this bottom right hand corner because this is going to be the darkest area of the head and it's going to work its way into the light so i'm starting with some black on my brush now i'm going to pick up some brown just to make sure that that black blends in with my brown that i've already established as my base coat so i'm giving it a natural kind of blend or gradient from the dark to the light i have to decide where else i want some darkness but i want to make sure that this kind of blends in nicely so i just picked up a little bit of rust as well this is going to start getting me into some realistic skin tone or at least the base of a realistic skin tone the burnt sienna or as i like to lovingly refer to it as rust will provide us with a a nice natural look underneath the um underneath this the lighter areas of the skin that we'll be putting on in a bit and i'm using just a circular type of brush stroke to get this on here you could certainly use a dotting type of technique or a rubbing type of technique if you have a different kind of brush that you're using as opposed to what i'm using but i'm just kind of using this circular brush stroke with like the side of my brush to just get these colors to blend in i want it to look nice and dark underneath here but i don't necessarily want it to go all black so i can use some of my brown with a little bit of my rust this is going to again get me to transition from a darker area underneath that chin into a lighter area over by the um over by the edge of the chin that we're looking for so i'm just kind of rubbing this in in through here i feel like i have a little bit too much paint on my brush but i'm going to carry this over into here just to give me that nice natural tone that's working out nice it's giving me a nice nice deep tone underneath here so i know that one of the contours is going to be or where it needs to dip in is right along here her chin is going to pop out and right next to here is going to dip in so i'm going to put this area right here a little bit darker i'm going to use a little bit of black and brown on my brush right underneath this edge of the lip and through here and i'm going to get that to blend in with that rust color that i just created something like this this is going to give me a nice transition from the bright from the brightness of the chin into this darker area so as i work my way into the lighter area of the chin this is where i can use rust yellow and a touch of white on my brush at the same time this is going to provide me with a nice light spot on the tip of that um chin and i'm just going to get it to gradually just kind of blend its way into that darker area that i created so you might opt to create a custom skin color which i will do when i go to put my final finessing onto my skin but right now i'm just using kind of out of the tube colors so that way i can just get the um the main area on here and then i will finesse it with with a real more realistic kind of um skin tone so i have similar to how this dipped in here with the darkness i'm going to do the same thing underneath the nose so a little bit of brown and black on my brush at the same time i'm going to take this right underneath the the edge of the nose in through here so again my lightest area is going to be here because it's catching the light from the sparkling butterfly so i'm going to get this to stay on the darker side right on this side of the face so this is just a little bit of brown and black i'm really not doing much on top of that base brown that i had but i'm again just kind of finessing it so it looks like it's more of a realized color and a final color so now i'm picking up similar to what i did here rust yellow and a little bit of white to start this light little area above her um above her lip and again it doesn't have to be the final color right now this is just kind of giving you that information that this area in through here is in fact catching the light of the sparkly butterfly that is is happening i went into the lip a little bit that's no big deal these colors you want them to kind of just blend in with one another and if you accidentally go into your lip by accident that's okay you can correct that on your on your final pass through i need these two areas to blend in together so this is where i'm going to start to get into the lighter area because this to me is going to be her cheek in through here and it she's got a a younger face so she's got a little bit of her cheek is kind of coming in through here as well so i'm going to use my rust yellow and white as my highlight kind of color but i don't necessarily need to go as light as um i did on the tips here so i'm going to go from the corner of the nostril down to the corner of the mouth somewhere in through here and then i'm just going to kind of rub this out into my my cheek area up and through here and your paint might not go as far as mine does you might come to a point of where your paint just stops moving because it's already dried on you that's fine just you can keep painting a little bit of layers on top of it but you want this line to in essence kind of blend in with these two sections that you just did so i know that this neighboring color was the rust so i could just pick up some of that rust get that to blend in and then this was brown so i can just pick up some of that brown and get it to blend in with the brown area as well and again doesn't have to be the end-all be-all color this is just something that is allowing us to understand where these contours are sitting on the face so i've got this lighter area up in through here i think i'm going to go yellow rust and a bit of white to make sure that i have this area in her cheek nice and light but not necessarily super white it's catching a little bit of the light from the um from the butterfly i'm going to put a little bit of lightness underneath her eye and through here and again right now i'm just kind of telling the story as to where the light is catching and how the face is shaped so i've got these contours emerging as i'm adding these lighter colors i needed to kind of blend into the bridge of the nose but i don't necessarily want it to be too light so i'm just kind of letting this blend in naturally in through here and then i'm going to go ahead and give her a nice kind of bright spot on the tip of her nose so again white yellow and rust are my colors and i'm going to give her a nice bright spot on the tip of her nose that i'm going to then kind of blend in with um with the rest of the nose but i just got to slow down because my my my nose will grow very quickly if i if i don't slow down here so that's where my my brightest kind of spot is going to be maybe a little bit on the bridge of the nose and maybe a little bit on the edge of this nostril maybe it's catching a little bit of the light on the edge of that nostril and then i just get them to blend in with the neighboring colors so i picked up a little bit more rust and yellow without washing my brush this just allows me to blend it in with that bright spot that i just put on there making sure that i've got a little bit of a blend from this brightness onto the right side of the nostril so when i'm doing contours my biggest thing is i'm i'm so thinking about what where that light is hitting and how it's going to re how it's going to affect the thing that's next to it so if if i have a nostril in through here the part that is closest to my light source is right here but her nose is not flat so it's going to have to gradually get darker as it goes into the shadow so that's in my head what i'm always trying to think of is what what is happening with that light the light as i'm feeling it right now is going to catch the the bridge of her nose in through here so i'm putting a little bit of that lightness in through here and then i will get it to blend out or fade into the rest of her skin now i know i've got the hair to contend with oh up here so i'm just going to kind of uh bring a little bit of that up in in between those pieces of hair even though i know that i'm going to be putting some pieces of hair on top of it this just makes sure that it is kind of like a seamless transition from one area to the next and then i just kind of keep fiddling with that bright spot that i've i've designated as the contour or the part that puffs out the most on the bridge of the nose and then i'm just getting it to blend into this darker area over on the other side of the nose and then as far as her eye goes we're going to treat her eyeball separately but as far as her skin goes i feel that her eyelid would have a little bit of a bright spot or be poofing out the most have the most contour or the most um area that kind of sticks out the most maybe she's got a little piece of skin in between here that sticks out a little bit so maybe there's a little eyelid in through here that sticks out a little bit and then i just get it to blend in with the neighboring base coat which is brown so maybe a little rust and brown gets it to blend in bring a little bit up into those pieces of hair and then you just kind of keep finessing it as you see fit i think i want this just a little bit lighter on this cheek and through here so just a little bit maybe more white rust and yellow to get this to just pop out a little bit more i might do the same thing underneath her eye and through here just to make sure that i've got enough enough of that volume where i'm looking to have it so and again we'll be adding much more detail when we go to finesse the all of the correct value or tones of the skin in a little bit but this at least gets us started we can see where that cheek is starting to pop out we can see obviously the nose and the nostril and all that good stuff and then we are going to be switching to our small brush for the next step so you can fiddle with this all you want but don't feel that you have to bring it to its final resting place as of yet but you do want to put your medium brush away take out your small brush and get ready for the next step all right so we're going to do for the next step is we're putting our lips our little tiny cute tooth and our tongue so we're kind of finishing the mouth i'm going to be using my small brush the colors i'm using are red white um probably some yellow orange well we'll just start with red and then we'll go from there so what i'm gonna do is i'm gonna color the lips red i don't really need to do um anything fancy with the base coat of them because we already have the brown on there so the brown is going to allow us to get this red into a really neutral type of dark red which is a great base for when you do lips because you can always just build the lightness from that deep red kind of color i want this to look like i've got a little bit of her other side of her lip or skin or something over in this corner here so i'm just putting a little bit of information in through there then i'm going to go ahead and do the bottom lip and of course you can certainly adjust yours as you see fit if you feel like you need your lips to be a little bit poofier or a little bit smaller or whatever you feel um is going to work out for for yours you can certainly do that i'm not bringing this red all the way to the corner of the mouth because i feel that the um that the this particular young person that i'm doing that they're the red part of their lips just kind of morphs into the skin around the edges of their um of their mouth so i'm not going to bring that red all the way to the edge so once i've done this then i'm going to put a little tongue in there so i'm just still just using red paint at this point and just gonna put a little the little um information of a tongue bean in through there then i'm gonna uh wash my small brush i'm to put a little tiny tooth on there so i don't want it to be this bright white like chiclet kind of tooth i just want it to be the um the impression of just the little edge of the tooth coming out so i've got brown and white on my brush at the same time and i'm just putting a little kind of diagonal line i'm going to wipe my brush off on my paper towel and then i'm just going to kind of fade it into the the lips i don't i don't want it to be anything more than just a little tiny illusion of a tooth in through there now i gotta put a little highlight on my lips so they don't look flat so you can really make your lips as pink as you want or as pale as you want or as peach as you want you can really kind of tweak them into whatever um brightness or softness that you want so i think what i'm going to do is i'm going to use a little bit of rust white and maybe a little yellow just to get myself like a light skin color i guess and then i'm going to use that as my as my highlight of sorts on the edge of these lips so you when when doing lips you don't necessarily have to add a highlight around the entire thing you want it to look nice and natural you can put a nice light edge where it meets the skin and that's going to um with a so it's light then a little dark where it almost like dips in and then a little lightness where it kind of meets the skin along the edge and through in through here so that helps to again give a little bit of form along the edge of the skin as it's meeting the mouth area and i'm dipping my brush back in red just so i can get these colors to just make sure that they're talking well together and i'm curving this highlight to tell the viewer what shape the or what direction these um these lips are in so and again you can keep tweaking it all you want on the top and then i'm going to do the same thing for the bottom i've got my light skin color i feel that it would be the brightest over on the side where the light source is so i'm putting a little bit of it in through there and then i'm just kind of doing these curved lines to tell the shape of the lip in through here and of course then i would sit and just kind of tweak make sure that the area that's dipping into the mouth that that translates as dipping into the mouth so if i want it to be a little bit better of a blend i can put red with a touch of black on my brush to just get this little section in through here to look like it's dipping back into the mouth some you know you can do the same thing with this little area up into here too if you wanted it to look like it was curled up a little bit more you could just bring a little bit more of that shadow up in through that area in through there and then i would add that little light line around the lips down in through in through here to again just give give the um information that this is in fact the edge of the lip something like this or the edge of the skin that is meeting the lip i can put a little lightness in through the corners of the mouth as well that will help to again show that a little volume of skin right around that mouth area and we'll we'll tweak this a little bit more as well i'm going to go pick up a tiny bit of white paint just to make sure that i have enough of a highlight right on the edge of these lips going nearest to the light and making sure that it looks nice and round and that feels nice and round to me so i'm gonna think i'm gonna call it on those and if i have to tweak them at all later i certainly will do that but they're looking they're looking pretty pretty good to me and then we're gonna be utilizing our small brush for the next step so you can wash it and dry it and just get ready all right so we're going to do for the next step is we're painting our eyeball so we're going to we'll do all of the other information on the skin and the eyelashes and stuff at another step up we're just going to concentrate right on the eyeball right now so i'm using my small brush i'm going to be using blue white brown and black and how i'm going to do this is i'm going to just put my colored part of the eye in place so i am using blue and white you of course can make your eye whatever color that you would like but right now i'm just going to designate um about half of the eye for this for this dark or for the colored part so i'm going to just give it a little bit of a curved line in through here and then i'm just going to color this whole portion in with my blue and white and i'm using both the colors on my brush at the same time which is going to provide me again with that natural variation in the tones if you look in anybody's eye there's always different variations in the tones of the of the color within the eye you can even kind of polka dot it a little bit if you want it to be really really light a lot of eyes will have a dark kind of circle around the exterior of them so you could certainly put a little darker ring around the exterior mine actually looks lighter on the exterior so you could certainly you know fiddle with that if you wanted it to be a little bit darker feel free to do so and then i'm going to wash and dry i think i wanted a little bit lighter on the inside so i just added a little bit more white to my brush i'm going to add my pupil and all that good stuff in a minute but this is just my my colored part that i'm fiddling with probably more than i need to right now and then once i've got that on there i'm going to wash and dry my small brush and this is going to represent the white portion of the eye but i only want it kind of white right where it's nearing the eye the color part of the eye the most and then it's going to get darker and darker as it goes into the little corner of the eye so i'm going to start with just white paint on my brush and i'm going to give myself a pretty bright area right in through here and then what i'm going to do is i'm going to wipe my brush off of my paper towel and i'm going to pick up a little bit of brown and i'm going to get that white portion to just kind of blend in with the neighboring dark brown area and then if i need to i can add a bit of black to my brush also to get it to go even darker into the corner of the eye so this is one of those steps less is more i hardly have any paint on my brush and i'm just kind of maneuvering that light white spot that uh the light area of paint that i had and just kind of blending it into the the neighboring um darkness of the eye in through here and then if you needed to or wanted to you could certainly put back a little tiny bit of white on your brush if you if you made this a little bit too dull you can just kind of keep elevating that little bit of a white spot in through there so now i need a pupil so i just wipe my brush off on my paper towel and i'm putting a little bit of black paint on my brush just making sure my the tip of my brush is in control so i'm going to have the pupil just kind of up towards the top of the eye because i want her to i want it to look like she's looking up at the um sparkly butterfly so i'm just going to kind of put a pupil in this area again we're going to be putting lots of stuff on top of this this is just a building process but my pupil is going to go somewhere in through here i'm going to just make sure this top portion of the eye has a little bit of darkness there we go in through there and then i'm washing and drying my brush and i'm going to put my twinkle or my sparkle on my eye so there's a lot of sparkle on my on my color part of my eye because i have this big beautiful butterfly that's making lots of twinkles in her eyes so you can really have so much fun with the intensity of your twinkle on the eye but i just put white paint on my brush to start and i'm going to do this little maybe a diagonal kind of marking in through here and then maybe there's a whole bunch of little twinkles over in through here and i'm going to put a whole bunch of little twinkles in the front so i'm really just putting a lot of white kind of polka dots throughout the um throughout the eye just to give it that a real intense sparkle to it once we put the sk more detail around the eye with the skin color that'll make more sense and it'll make it look even more realistic but this is just kind of getting it started in order to um give us that information if you wanted more color in your eye you can certainly pick up more blue and just keep fiddling with that but i wanted this is one of those steps because we're doing it in this um order where we're not seeing the rest of it come to fruition yet i always um steer you to kind of wait to cast judgment upon your your end product until we have all of the other pieces of the puzzle in place because it will it makes a lot more sense once you have all of the pieces of puzzle in place so this is all i'm going to be doing on my eye for now and then i'm going to be using my i think i'm going to switch to my medium brush for the next step so once you've got your eye in place you can put your small brush away take out your medium brush and get ready for the next step alright so we're going to do for the next step is we're actually going to finish our skin so i'm going to use my medium brush i might switch to my little brush if i need to but for the most part i'll use my medium brush i'm going to be making myself a lighter skip skin tone and i'll show you how to do that in a minute but when we go to do this our primary focus is to add the brightest of the bright highlights and make sure that those bright highlights transition into the dark area and that it's all and the skin is nice and smooth i do want to elevate my cheek area to make that a little bit more brighter my tip of my nose my bridge of my nose so everywhere where i already kind of designated highlights i'm going to elevate them a little bit more and then get this to be a where it's being where it's glowing from the beautiful butterfly i'm going to get it to glow even more on my canvas so one of my biggest tricks when i'm doing skin is i love to layer i've already layered like four layers so far i just keep layering and layering until it gets as light and as soft and as smooth as i want it to be um because when i think of skin i think of my own skin and how there's many many layers that are involved so to me when i'm layering on the paint in these small layers it adds that iridescent type of look to it that you can't get with just one layer this is where you can see through the layers and it adds more dimension to it so that's how i'm going to tackle this and i'm going to be using not a lot of paint on my brush at any one time and i'll be doing that rubbing type of technique to get it to build into the brighter areas my again my brightest area is going to be in through here on the tips of my nose and here and here so to make my skin color i've chosen to make a very rosy pink kind of um skin but i will be adding white or making lighter versions of it or darker versions of it as i go into um the darker aries so this is the skin tone that i'm going for how i got to that was i used a little bit of my rust yellow orange and white and then i just started spinning it together and i said okay well that looks pretty good but maybe i want it a little bit lighter because i know that i'm going to be on that really dark background so i would pick up a little bit more white and i would just keep adjusting it until i felt that i had the value and the tone that i want so you might want to use your own skin as your inspiration you might want to use your child's skin or your neighbor's skin or your best friend's skin whatever person or being you would like to emulate on the skin tone you can certainly adjust it accordingly but those are the colors that i started with and then i just keep adjusting them um as i see fit i want this a little bit more on the rosier side so i just added a bit more of that orange to it and then like i said when you get it into the color that you want just know that it will turn darker when you put it on your canvas because of that undercoat that we have anyways so as i'm doing this i will be utilizing white as well so i just i had my color on my brush and then i just wiped it off on my paper towel because i never want to have too much paint on my brush so i'm going to start up in this eye region i know that i want there to be a little bit more lightness up in through here i want some on her eyelid here and maybe some coming back in through here i think i want this mark that i have like this i i'm i'm thinking i want this to be more in this range like this so i just kind of cut that off you can i'm adding a little black to my brush so you can see that i'm putting this little crease of sorts in through here and then what i'm going to do is now that i've got around that eye i've got my areas that i that i want to be on the lighter side i'm just going to kind of brush this into the neighboring paint itself i don't necessarily want it all to go as light as that so i'm just kind of allowing my brush to blend it into the neighboring colors and you can always pick up more darkness so in through here i want this to be a little bit darker and it's going to fade into the darkness underneath her hair so i'm going to pick up a little bit of brown just to make sure that i maybe a touch of black too just to get this little corner of the eye to show as if maybe there's a little crease underneath here or so a couple of little wrinkles on this side of the of the eye but i definitely want it to stay nice and dark over on this right hand side but still show that there's that contour of sorts um with the shape of the of the head so i've got that in through there i think i'm going to end up putting a little bit more highlight on that in a minute but right now i'm just making sure that i've got all my my nice skin in place i'm going to put a little piece in through here i love the little skin in the corner of the eyes i always think that that makes it look so much more natural when you can get that on there i think i'm going to put some some lightness up in through here in her nose get this to blend into the um area going down into her face into here and you can see as i start to build this next layer of skin it's really going to start to come to life and i may after i i'm going to leave a little bit of darkness in through here after i'm done doing this i might just need to add that little pop of brightness right on the tip of the nose and you know maybe on that little cheek a bit but this is definitely going to get the majority of the skin finished by just using this next value or this next tone lighter and again you could make yours pinker you could make your if you wanted it more pink you could actually use a little bit of red in your skin tone i'm adding just a little bit of red right now so you could see what would happen if i added a bit more pink to to the cheek itself this is going to give it that more youthful kind of look if you if you add that tiny bit of of that more rosiness to the um to the equation so you can really um have fun with the with it being on the pinker side or on the more um i don't know mature side with it being more you know of a tan kind of version as opposed to it being pink and rosy but you can certainly have fun with that and then again i'm gonna just kind of get down in this mouth region where it transitions from the cheek into right in through here just making sure that it looks nice and natural so if i need to i can go back into my brown or into my rust which was the darker colors that i used over here on the right hand side just to get those to blend in with one another so knowing also what you used in that section next to it will help you to create that blend and get it to transition from the light area to the dark area typically in the dark areas it would be a little bit more on the cooler side with more grays or purples in that darker side but we've got such a glowing illuminating force here i'm making mine look more on the golden kind of warm side i do need this to transition in into here in a nice natural way so it doesn't look like it's two separate pieces so i'm using that skin tone plus maybe a little bit of brown just to get this to transition nicely in through here and again it doesn't have to be perfect but if you can get it to look natural that's i guess the the main goal in through here and then of course same thing on the transition into here i think i want to make this little corner of the mouth a little bit lighter into here so i just added white with a little bit of that skin tone maybe a touch of yellow getting this little corner i always think that's cute on little adolescents that that corner of the mouth that just is i don't know just super duper cute it's not a it seems to just you know i see it or it sticks in my head on on younger people when i'm doing portraits how they have that little crevice of um or that little like poof of skin right on the corner of their mouth it just gives them that more like baby baby soft skin look to it to me so i'm just kind of getting that to be represented here in the corner of the mouth and maybe if you wanted a little bit more of that lightness coming up on that lip you know you can certainly like i said just kind of tweak this as much as you want um i think i think i need this to be a little bit lighter in through here i feel like this is a little bit flat so if you feel like it's flat you know when you when it's drying because we have such a dark base underneath which was intentional on my part because i like having the dark base as a as the foundation as it's drying when you're building these lighter layers it may end up drying darker than you anticipated like i want this a little bit lighter in through here um so you just kind of keep adding those little bits you can even add the same color on top of it that's going to just make it more concentrated and make that um that highlight more effective so as it's drying if it in fact is drying a little bit too dark for you just know that you just kind of come right back in and keep adding little bits of information and highlights until you've achieved that lightness or that brightness that that is going to tell the story of all of those areas kind of popping out on the face and and giving it that volume that you want and coming back down into the chin sorry if i'm hopping around here i'm kind of hopping to the places that are catching my eye at the moment so i'm gonna get this uh the tip of the chin nice and light in through here and then just get it to transition into the um the side of the chin so just kind of getting getting it nice and bright over here on the edge and then just picking up that skin color that we had created just to get it to to blend in and then it'll just kind of fade into the darkness over here so maybe the rust color is the color that you use to get it to fade into the darkness and if you go outside your lines like i just did and i just painted into my background that's okay you can your background is black so it's a very easy background to come back and and make corrections around the edge of your of your little person here so i'm just kind of getting this bright spot on the chin to to blend in with the rest i might go a little bit darker under this chin here so maybe a little bit of brown and black and again i'm just kind of going with what i'm feeling is a good form for this face so you might again if you're if you're going for a person that you know you know representing you know your little sister or your niece or your you know maybe it's a little boy who's you know gazing at this beautiful butterfly you can certainly make these contours to look like that person so if the chin is a little bit smaller or larger or the face is a little bit more slender or more you know more full you can certainly tweak it to whatever whatever you'd like so i'm going to go ahead and put the the bright little highlights on the on the tip of the nose so i'm going to have a really nice bright highlight right here making it a nice little button nose in through here and when i go to bring this highlight back i'm still thinking of the contour of the of the nose so it doesn't just have to be one bright spot it's going to tell the story of the shape of the nose so if the nose is rounded it's just going to kind of come come off in a gradient type of way and i'm going to get this highlight to go on the top in a just a little slender line up in through there and then coming down the the tip of the nose i might have a little bit of a highlight coming down around this around this edge and of course you can certainly tweak the the shape of your nose a bit maybe i'll have a little bit more of a bright highlight right here on the edge of that nostril in through there maybe this comes just a little bit more in through here and you know this is this is the time where i you know i might end up stepping back letting it dry stepping back doing a little couple little tweaks i want a nice highlight up here too so i just put my skin color plus white on my brush so i can put a nice highlight in through here and again i'm i'm thinking all the while where my where's my light source it's up and through there my lips i might have um they might be bump one bump for this side and one bump for this side so maybe i have two little highlights in through this um lip type of area where it gets a little bit darker in the in that little center area but all the while i've got to get it to transition down onto this side of the face so again not using a lot of paint on my brush making sure i can kind of transition it a little bit i still want below that to be a little bit dark and my nose is looking pretty good i need some lightness on the bridge of my nose so again i'm going with my skin color plus a little bit of white for those lighter areas so this is going to add that lightness to the bridge of the nose and you can of course you know bend this into whatever shape of a nose that you would like it to be i'm having mine just a little you know a little cute button nose but you could certainly make yours into whatever shape that you would like to and then i think this is looking pretty good in through here just putting my head back a little bit i think i want that eyelid to be a little bit lighter so maybe a little bit in through here is gonna get that to pop out a little bit more and i also again know that i'm going to be putting these big beautiful eyelashes on in a minute too which is going to help to bring the the cuteness factor into into this so again a little bit of white i just kind of keep fiddling at this point making sure that i've got all of my bright little areas where i want them to be and just elevating it as much as i want so i think this is looking pretty good i might you know step back for a minute and let it dry and see if there's anything more that i want to do to mine but that's about the the gist of what i'm going to be doing with it and my these cheeks i always want to make my little my little people cheeks i always want to make them nice and and full and and with lots of volume on them but you can make yours whatever you want and then we're going to be using our we're going to actually use our large and our medium brush for the next step so you can keep fiddling with yours as much as you want to and then you can put or wash and dry your medium brush and your large brush i'm just kind of tweaking the edge of her nose here a little bit and then you can get ready for the next step all right so what we're going to do for the next step is we're painting some hair so i'm going to use my large bristle brush and my medium brush and i'm going to start with my large bristle brush to kind of get the movement and the majority of the hair on and then i'll use my medium brush to get single pieces maybe kind of coming in front of her face so i'm having mine a little blonde um straight wavy hair kind of hairstyle but you could certainly have yours whatever color that you would like i just thought that this would look nice with the glowing butterfly that we're going to be painting so i have pre-mixed myself a blonde color for the hair so i've got it right into here how i got there was i used yellow brown orange and white and i just mixed it together similar to how i did the skin color but more on the tan yellowy side for for it to represent blonde hair but maybe you want yours to be brunette or black hair if you wanted yours to be brunette you would just go a little bit lighter than brown for your highlight colors because you've already got a brown base and if you wanted to go black hair you've already kind of got a brown base that you could use kind of as your highlighted type of um tones and you could just introduce black and maybe a little bit of um like a lighter tone for the um for little light streaks and highlights so this is about where i'm headed with mine and it can be you know similar or not similar whatever is comfortable for you and then once you've got it in the color that you would like what i'm going to do is i'm going to take a little bit of it on my large brush and what i like to do is i'm going to take my brush and i'm squishing it on the side of my palette so this way my bristles kind of get squished together and i can control where i want the streaks to go so i can have multiple streaks happen at the same time i don't need to color the whole thing a hundred percent what i'm going to do is i'm going to use the corner of my brush or this the slender side of my brush and just give myself these bits of highlights especially where i feel the hair kind of curves or the forehead kind of curves in through here i'm going to give little pieces kind of coming off of the bottom we already have a nice place that we've set as our place marker where those bangs kind of stop um their length so you can certainly tweak that all you want when it comes to the dark side of the hair the top i'm going to add some brown in that in a minute but right now i'm just kind of getting some of these highlighted pieces on here and i'm pulling it in the direction that i feel that these pieces of hair would come come off of the head and as i come down onto this right side i'm going to be pulling some of these in front of her face so this is going to give me a lot of movement to it and it's going to help me to build in my opinion a pretty natural looking body of hair and again you can see that i'm leaving some some darkness underneath it and i am going to be adding some some dark areas right now so before i start adding my single pieces of hair i'm going to take my brush and now i'm going to pick up without washing it i'm going to pick up some brown paint to get these lighter pieces to make sure that they blend in with that base coat that we had already established early on so this is just helping me to make sure that it all pretty much looks like it belongs together you could even bring in a little bit of black over here on the right hand side which i might do in a minute but i just kind of want to see if i can get this to be as exciting as i want before i start tweaking the real deep shadows um along this right hand side so i've just got that brown on my brush right now i can still see some of that some of the darkness underneath there i've got some good movement on this forehead and this is where you would bring a couple of pieces out past your outline so that's where it would make it look a little bit more natural and in that respect i think i am going to add a touch of black so i'm going to wash and dry my large brush just because i feel this is too bright up top and i might want to add a little bit in through there so i just washed my big brush i'm adding a touch of black to it just to get this to transition a little bit more naturally from the dark side of the head into here so again not much you could also utilize this if you felt that you wanted a little bit more shadow underneath your your bangs in through here if they you know if you felt like you needed anything in through there and then if you felt like you wanted some more um definition or um contrast in your pieces of hair coming out over in through here you could certainly add a touch of the the black that'll help you to give more movement to it and separate the pieces of hair a little bit more and then once i've done that then i'm going to switch to my small my medium brush and i'm going to add individual pieces of hair with my blonde color and a little bit of white so i have the tan or um creamy color on my brush plus a little bit of white i'm picking a bristle off of my canvas as we speak plus a little bit of white this is going to add my individual really you know high contrast glowy pieces to the tips of the hair allowing for it to really accentuate that um where that glow is coming from and you can add these little pieces on the forehead if you wanted to so this is just a fun step where you would add more individual pieces i definitely want to add some coming into the face you can add a touch of water onto your brush as well and or you could utilize your small brush if you felt that you wanted um your your brush wasn't providing you with the the movement that you wanted or the singular strands of hair that you wanted you could certainly utilize your small brush to accomplish that so i'm going to put a couple of longer pieces kind of coming over the side in through here maybe even a couple crossing over the face a little bit maybe get these pieces to make sure that they make sense i think i'm going to have a couple more maybe catching some beautiful light in through here and this is where you know i'm telling the story of the little waves in the hair i'm telling the story of where the light is coming from uh you know so you can really have fun with this make as many beautiful you know strands that are just catching the light this is where a painting comes to life when you're when you're starting to add these little tiny details that really speak volumes as to all of the information they just kind of accentuate everything that you've done well i guess i picked up a little bit of my skin color on that one um that's okay i'll just work it right in this is where all of that hard work that you've put into place now starts to to really take form and and pay its dues so to speak um with all of these little tiny pieces yeah this is looking nice and then we are going to be we're going to utilize our let's utilize our decisions decisions i'm going to go oh small brush let's go with our small brush for the next step so once you've got your hair done you can put this medium brush away and fiddle with this all you want i mean this is your your little your little person you can make this as exciting as you want um you can put your medium brush away take out your small brush and get ready for the next step alright so we have another step that we need to do to this adorable young person's face and it's putting on the big fluffy eyelashes so it's one of my favorite steps to do on a little person because it just makes them that that cuteness just is like okay you have the best eyelashes in the whole wide world you little person every adult wants those eyelashes but the little kids they get to they get to have them so i'm gonna do those now and i'm gonna be jealous with every little eyelash that i put on i'm gonna be using my small brush i'm going to be using black and white paint but i'm just going to do them black first and then i'll add some little white highlights so i'm going to take my small brush and i'm adding a couple of drops of water into some of my black paint so this way it makes it like an ink consistency and i'll be able to get these nice well not on my palette but on my canvas i'll be able to get these nice tiny little lines with it and then what i do is i take my brush and i spin it on the side of my palette in the paint and that will make my brush nice and pointy and then when i go to do these i'm not going to press very hard so that way they will i won't they won't be too thick so for my eyelashes to make them look nice and natural i clearly want them to come out of the lid and kind of have a nice like curved type of shape to them but they also would come down from the lid and curl back up so that's where you're going to be able to see a lot of the volume is when you bring them down past that eyelid and kind of overlap that um overlap the lid a little bit or the eye ball itself a little bit and then i'll just kind of keep fanning my my brush a little bit so i've got these light little fluffy ends to them without them looking too too wide for one piece of the eyelash and they can be long they can overlap into the eyelid you can really have them as long as you want them to be i've got them coming in this front portion in through here i'm just being careful not to call cover over all of my colored part of my eye this will also help to make that top part of the eye look as if it's in the shadows because that's what will naturally happen to the top of the part of your eye it looks like it's in the shadows because of the eyelashes and then what i'm going to do or the eyelid then what i'm going to do is i'm going to do some on the bottom so again just a little bit of my watered down black paint i've smudged my hair i'm going to have to fix that in a minute and then i'm just going to bring a couple of these down over this bottom eyelid in through here and i'm not pressing hard i just want these to look nice and gentle and long like this little kid always has long eyelashes and then once i've got them on there then i'm going to add a tiny bit of white paint and again you can use it in a watered down kind of fashion and add just a little flecks of highlights i'm wiping my brush off on my paper towel because i don't want too much paint on my brush if i overdo it i can always come back and dull it back down but my brightest spot is going to be on this curve in through here because that's the curve that's catching the most from the light source so i'm just going to add these little little bits of highlights in through some of these eyelashes and keeping that curve in as much as i am jealous of these eyelashes and then if you did too much you can always come back with a little bit of the black to dull it down a little bit and you can always do a little bit of that highlight down in through these ones as well and then we're going to be using our medium brush for the next step so once you've got this done you can put your small brush away take out your medium brush and get ready for the next step all right so we're going to do for the next step is we're painting our beautiful glowing butterfly i'm going to be using my medium brush and i'm going to be using white and yellow paint so how i'm going to do this is i'm going to first just put my butterfly in place with some white paint but i want my brush to be under control so this is where i'm going to take my brush and i'm going to spin it in my paint on the side of my palette and that gets it nice and pointy for me and i'm going to do my butterfly's going to be kind of tipped to the side so i'm going to have it occupying this space in through here i'm going to do the bottom wing that is closest to us first i'm going to start it somewhere in through here and then i'm just going to kind of make it go like this and you can have your butterfly wings in whatever direction you want or whatever size you want it's your butterfly you can do whatever you want with it once i get the shape of the wing in then i'm just going to take the white paint and give myself some little streaks going throughout the center of the wing just to give it some you know decorations of sorts then i'm going to go ahead and do my other wing that is closest to us so i'm going to start it somewhere in this vicinity and it's going to go all the way up into here up into here like this so i'm going to bring this down and something like that and then on this side i'll bring it down and i'm going to have it kind of meeting in the side of that first wing that we did and then i'm going to take my white paint and i'm going to give it some decorative just kind of streaks throughout it i'm just going for a nice almost translucent look to my to my butterfly wings but you could certainly do any type of decoration that you want and then i'll put i've got a third wing that i'm going to put on in a minute so i'm just making sure that i can see some of that background behind it my third wing is going to be on the other side of this one and i'm going to have the tip of it coming right about in this vicinity and the front of it is going to end up right about here so i want it in a similar kind of curve as this one so i'm going to take this from here and just go something like that and then the back side of it is going to be similar to here and it's going to end up about halfway up this wing in through here so i'm going to take this and just give us something like that and then i'll give myself a couple of decorative loose streaks inside that wing and through there and then i'm going to put the body on my butterfly so my body is just going to occupy this space in through here so i'm going to come up just a little bit from here and out and then i'm going to cross it into that intersecting point and then just bring the tail part down in through here i'm going to give myself a couple of little antennas and i want it to kind of look like it's looking at my little person here so i'm going to make it that's why i'm kind of leaning it in that direction so my antennas i'm gonna do kind of in this direction like it's kind of looking at this little person something like that and then what i'm gonna do is i'm going to pick up white and yellow on my brush at the same time and i'm going to give myself a whole bunch of sparkle dots all around my um my butterfly so i'm going to have some coming out of the tips of the wings they can really come out in any type of direction that you want i want this butterfly to look like it's magical so i'm going to have little dots and sparkles and stuff coming out from everywhere from the little tail to the side of the wing you can really have it you know as sparkly as you want you could alternate your white and your yellow so you have some white dots and some yellow dots and you can have some you know that have both colors in them so feel free to make this as sparkly as you want it i'm going to add some yellow to my wings in a minute but first i'm just kind of making sure that i've got enough sparkles coming out of my of my butterfly and as i do this i'm thinking that you know i want them to have almost look like they're spraying out or they're just you know fluttering out from the um from the butterfly so i'm putting more around the interior of the butterfly and i'm getting them to get more sparse as they get farther away from the butterfly and maybe they even get smaller maybe their little teeny tiny dots the farther away that they get but you can certainly use your own sparkle knowledge to create your um effervescent little marks throughout your painting and again i'm just kind of now i'm going to get my hand and i probably should have started on the left hand side and worked my way to the right but you know i'm not always the smartest when it comes to adding my sparkle dots but you can certainly put as many as you want i'm gonna definitely have a whole bunch coming up in through here and they can be big they can be small whatever you want them to be is totally up to you the whiter they are the obviously the more they're going to look like you know just twinkles but if you add the yellow with them that's gonna you're gonna have a variety of sparkling dots so that contrast in the colors will make them look even more either three-dimensional or even more with um you know that extra added um punch to them and of course like i said you can have as many sparkles as you want and now once i've got as many as i want i think now i'm going to add a little bit of yellow into my um into my butterfly's wings so i just wiped my brush off on my paper towel and the reason why i waited a minute before i added it was because i wanted the majority of the white to dry so when i add this yellow on top of it it's going to be super bright so or as yellow as it can get so i just put a little bit of yellow on my brush and now i'm just going to add a bit into my wings so i've got some bright yellow within my wings and then if i needed to or wanted to i can elevate that white a little bit more as well so i could wash and dry my brush and then pick up more white to get any more brighter areas within my um butterfly because sometimes again when we're when we're painting um on top of a dark color with acrylic paint the acrylic paint will tend to be translucent so as it dries it might get a little bit darker so if you're painting white and you're like oh my god it's not every time i put a layer it just gets darker as it dries just keep building the layers on that white you'll eventually get it as as white as you want it to go but sometimes you you might need that couple of different layers to get it into that intensity that you want and then we have one tiny little step left to go and it's going to be with our small brush so once you've got your beautiful butterfly on here and it's as bright and glowing as you want it to be you can put your medium brush away take out your small brush and get ready for the next step alright so we are on to the final step this is the final step of every painting which is to sign it so i usually sign mine in the bottom left or the bottom right i'm going to be using my small brush i'm actually going to be using orange paint today to sign my painting i'm going to go in the bottom left hand corner i sign mine with my initials but you could certainly sign yours with your first name or the date or a symbol or whatever you want for your identifying mark to be that's totally up to you and that is going to conclude this painting i hope you enjoyed the process i hope you painted yourself a very youthful magical painting and i look forward to painting and sipping with you again sometimes

Channel: Michelle the Painter

Views: 17,860

Keywords: how to paint, paint and sip, acrylic, painting, beginner, simple, easy, step by step, learn to, how to, paint, realistic, beautiful, best, top, stunning, inspirational, pretty, art, wall, reflection, girl, fairy, mystical, dust, blowing, flying, floating, over, towards, mythical, spiritual, spell, child, boy, youthful, young, portrait, face, baby, skin, butterfly, glowing, glow, blue, eye, hair, looking, up, sparkling, sparkles, twinkle, candle, light, dark, room, night, dream, dreams, dreaming, moth, insect, blonde, mouth, open, nose, profile, gold

Id: TuLGdzQzXcc

Length: 90min 6sec (5406 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 25 2021