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Learning to paint is time well earned.

• I hope you felt good about your little lion.
• Ready to silence the negative worry-voice and get out your paints. 

You will need more time for this learning to paint exercise

Because there are two toys in this lesson, it took me 58 minutes to paint it.

You definitely deserve this time for you.

Again, I know you will paint another beautiful little painting.

And I know that will add something positive to your day.

Color Mixes For this Learning to paint exercise

• The yellows
  • This lesson repeats what you learned about painting your yellows on your lion.

• The reds are simple. 
  • We use the true red (#014) 
  • lighten it with orange yellow (#076)
  • darken it with the purpler-red (#022). 
  • If you add permanent rose to your purple, then also add some to the darker areas of your reds.
• The greens use the emerald green (#114) 
  • lighten with the yellow (#052). 
  • dull this green slightly with the orange-yellow (#076). 
  • darken it with light blue (#143) 
  • or darken further with dark blue (#149).
• The purples use the “purple red” (#022) and either blue (#143) or (#149)
• Also, you can see that the purple we mix with this little watercolor palette, doesn’t have the “zip” that the toys have in real life.

Fixing the Unexciting Purple Mixes:

• I added permanent rose to our expenses. 
• If you want your purples jazzier, you can get it here and add it as a last layer in two days when it arrives.
• Permanent rose is a lovely transparent pigment and will paint over your dried painting with no problem.

This lesson shows you a “Mess up”

I didn’t wash out my water container before I started this little painting (too much of a rush…)

• Twice, I contaminated my “clear water wash” with yucky leftover sediment from the bottom of my water container.
• If dark color was going over this dirty wet area, it wouldn’t matter. However, the lightest greens were going to float into this wet sea so I had to fix it. 

Here are three ways to fix mistakes

• Wash the area farther out with more water (For me this didn’t do much)
• Lift it by pressing it with a clean paper towel (Again, so success)
• Blast with a squirt bottle of water
  • So I blasted it …

This all happens early in the video.

Why the green need to be dulled down

There is a little color theory in this setup. See more information here

• The red feet of the duck sit on the back of the green dog.
• The red color bounces into the green.
• Since red is the complement of green () , it dulls the green where this happened.
• In the painting, I dull this green with the dull yellow (#071).
• I use this instead of a red or even the orange-yellow in this palette because I didn’t want to darken the value of the green very much when I dulled it down.

The video tutorial walks you through all of the above.

Soon you will have another beautiful little painting 

AND THE BEST GIFT TO YOURSELF AS YOU DISCOVER THAT YOU DID IT again!

If you need the total supply list, you can get it here

Templates for the Simplified Soft Toys Series are here

PS. If you decide watercolors are something you are excited about, you can look at more detailed posts with more extensive (and sometimes expensive) supplies here. 

Plus some of the “how” and “why” of making paintings here.