Water Colour Giraffe

Creating a watercolour painting of the giraffe.

A simple project to whet your appetite! I produced this 15 minute painting during lockdown. It relies on simple techniques that I covered during our Watercolour painting sessions. If you can't remember how to do them, I have included some links to easy-to-follow tutorials on You Tube.

Use any colours you want to. You do not have to keep to the colours I have used and it's always fun to experiment! Your first step is to draw the outline of the giraffe, if you don't feel confident with drawing one freehand, find a picture in a book or on the internet or use tracing paper to copy mine.

Once the outline is finished, pencil in the main features and as much other detail as you wish e.g. nose, mouth and ears. You might want to include shading patches of dark colour as this will give you a pattern to work with.

Background first!

For this you are going to do simple washes and wet in wet. If you can't remember how to do these, watch the clip by clicking below or read the article 'Wet in Wet'.

• Use your brush and wet the paper around the giraffe

• Chose just two or three colours and mix each separately. Make them quite watery

• Start with the lightest and apply a little to the wetted area - it should spread. Then apply a second colour and see what happens

Experiment!

Try adding different combinations of colours to different areas. you might you might want to add more water to encourage spreading out from the giraffe.

Filling in the giraffe's markings

· Mix up some brown and black, again making it quite watery

· to achieve a darker colour you can apply more coats to darken as it dries.

Let's splatter!

Finally, to finish your painting, it's time to splatter, This is a very easy technique, you just get some paint on your brush and tap it as shown in the photo. If you're still not sure watch this clip where an artist creates a Cherry Tree from splatters.