Paint With Me | Watercolor Hedgehog Tutorial | I Go Slow

It's gonna look crazy, I know, I know. This is- especially animals in paintings, like, there's always this really ugly stage and you're just like, what am I doing? Hey friends, welcome back to another video. My name's Emma Lefebvre and this week we've been painting some sweet spring animals. We've painted a bunny, we've painted a duckling, and today we're gonna paint an animal that I actually have never done. And I don't know if it's, like, a spring animal. Like, are- I mean, all animals are all-season animals, I guess. I don't know. Either way, we're gonna be painting a hedgehog. I haven't done this before, I'm a little nervous, but we're gonna make it work. So let's jump in and get started. Okay friends, today we are on our last animal of the week. Today we are painting a hedgehog. I have never painted this animal before. I think I might have, like, a long time ago, but not a realistic-ish detailed one, like a cartoony kind of one. So this could go either way. But I think it's gonna turn out great. Positivity. So we've already painted this little duck and bunny this week, and now we're gonna paint the hedgehog. I have kind of a rough outline-ish. You can see there's, like, two ears here. I've tried to do this multiple times, but I still haven't actually painted it. So I'm gonna break down how I think I should draw it, and then we're gonna get to painting. Let's go. I'm gonna start off with an oval shape for the head. I like to break down my animals into simple shapes. It helps the process. Then the nose is gonna kind of come out here. It's, like, a little, like, just a little bit further than the oval. It's, like, this little kind of rounded square shape, okay, with a little bit of a boop kind of coming back there. The other eye is gonna be over here. You're not gonna see too much of it, okay? It's kind of like a side perspective. And then the other eye is gonna be kind of right in the middle of the oval. See that? Do you see the face? Do you see it? I can see it. Okay, and then from the nose here, you're gonna come back right to the bottom of the oval here, like that, and then another line slightly down. So this is, like, the mouth area, and then this is, like, the chin. It's gonna come back here, but we're not gonna do too much with that, because it's gonna be a lot of, like, fur and spikes. Then here we're gonna create the ear. So it's kind of like this C shape, like that, like a little mountain. And then the other ear here, you're not gonna see much of, but you can put it there if you like. All right, and then, because there is so much spikiness going on, um, I'm just gonna do this large oval shape like this for the body. I don't want it to be too detailed, because it's going to be mostly spikes, all right? And then this part kind of comes down. I don't think, do I want to do little paws? I feel like that scares me, but maybe we should give it a go. Um, okay, so I feel like it has, like, these little legs. The tiniest little arms, they're so cute. Okay, so like a triangle, okay? I'm gonna do a little triangle here, like that, and then at the edge of the triangle, they have these little claws, boop, like little, little fingers, okay? And then the other one, hmm, we're gonna put down here. It's like there's gonna be, is there gonna be fur back there? I don't know if we're gonna see the back of this, like the hind legs. Oh, we might. Maybe we could do, like, a little foot back here. This looks weird already, but we're gonna make it work. Okay, we're gonna have another little hand here. It's not really attached to anything yet, but there's just gonna be a bunch of fur, all right? This is mostly the snout, and then this is, like, all fur down here, okay? Now, like I've mentioned in my other videos, if you do not like drawing, if you become a patron of mine, you get all of these tracing templates with the lowest tier membership, okay? So if this is not your thing, you don't like drawing, you just want to get right to the painting, you can always become a member of mine, and you'll get that in my YouTube videos all ad-free and extra bonus tutorials. Okay, I think we got it. I don't know if my ear is too far. I feel like my ear might be a bit too far. What do you guys think? This, yeah, I feel like, I feel like it's a little too far from the ear, or from the eye. I think I need it just, like, a little bit closer. And the eye is actually, like, a circle. It's not, like, an oval. See, I started going right for that cartoon kind of look again. So let's do a nice circle. This one you only see a little bit, so it's, like, half of the eye. All right, now this is the tricky part, is kind of, the face is, like, this white fur, right? And then it kind of blends out into this darker nose. So I'm going to start by lightening up my sketch, okay? So, like, the hands, the nose, all of that. And what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna wet up the whole thing. Even though we're focusing mostly on the face, I just want it to blend together, I think. So we're gonna, yes, this is what we're gonna do. Maybe except for the ear, okay? I'm gonna take some water and put it all over my hedgehog. Not necessarily the hands. Do I want to do the hands? And just kind of, like, around the ear, and then, like, spikies there. But the face and the nose. I keep using my dirty water. Here, I have clean water right here. Okay, I'm gonna skip. Oh, and then this side is gonna be fur, so it's just, like, a little bit, you see, of this side of the face, okay? But we're just gonna fill in this whole area with water. Ah, forget it. Let's do the, let's do the little paws too, okay? All right. Now, the face part here, right by the nose, is more of, like, a grayish brown, so I'm gonna grab this brown. I'm gonna add, I have a little bit of black and a little bit of brown, and I'm going to tap it in here, like this, where the nose is, okay? But it kind of blends out into this white fur. But anytime we're doing a white object, what we need to focus on is painting the shadows of the white, rather than focusing on painting, using white paint to paint it. Does that make sense? So I'm gonna do little, kind of, fur strokes coming back to the nose, like this, especially a little bit more dense right where the nose kind of is, because that's where the darkest part is, right around the mouth. God, I'm hoping this works, okay? And then, then I'm just gonna start grabbing, like, minimal paint and just doing little, just a little bit of light, kind of brownish-black fur strokes. It's gonna look crazy, I know, I know. This is, especially animals in paintings, like, there's always this really ugly stage, and you're just like, what am I doing, okay? But see how there's, like, a slight bit of, like, this furry kind of texture, just little lines, that's what we want, okay? And then, as the fur starts to kind of reach back here, it's gonna start blending into those spiky bits. Now, for the spiky, here's, like, a little hedgehog, kind of that I'm following, but doesn't have the hands, so I'm not, but see how the dark part is? It's gonna be harder to go around and leave those white areas, so what I'm gonna do is use white paint for the tips of the hedgehog after. So I'm going to make his back darker, and we're gonna go over top with white paint. So I'm gonna start bringing this around where those spikes are gonna be, okay? Just gonna apply the color first. I'm kind of skipping the ear. I'm gonna go around the face. I'm gonna wait to do the texture and the outline in a second, just this, a bit of black, okay? Now, I want to add a bit more darker brown, and I'm gonna start doing, like, little texture where the spikes are gonna be, and we'll do the white part on it after, but I want to draw these kind of lines using wet on wet to get this fun spiky texture. And then, as we go to the edge of the hedgehog here, we're gonna go right off with that shape so we get that spike. Get it? And I'm just using my brush. I, like, put it down and then kind of move it close to us, like that. Now, see? Because we wet up the whole thing, how it's kind of blending the white part of the face is blending into the back. That's what we want, and we can even bring in some lines like that so it blends in more. Now, if you feel like it's blending too much, we can always add the white paint after on the face too, okay? But we really want this texture from the wet on wet, so I'm just trying to add these kind of spiky... And the trick to getting this texture without getting all those blooms and it taking over, not having a lot of water on my brush. My brush is, like, just damp. There's no water in there. Like, I might add a little bit, but it's mostly paint, and that's how you control the wet on wet technique, okay? Where you're able to get these little lines without them exploding everywhere, if that makes sense, okay? Yeah, we're gonna have to go over this part with white paint to kind of get this furry texture. All right, then... I kind of want to push this back a little bit. Then we're gonna let this whole thing completely dry. Okay, so now that it's dry, we can continue. Okay, so on the face, you get longer, thinner white hairs, and then the spikes are actually... They kind of look a little bit more like chunky spikes, right? So it's nice, thin hairs here and chunkier spikes. Typically, when I'm doing animals, I don't do a lot of the fur, but I kind of need to show it here a bit, right? Let's do the nose first so he looks a little bit better. I don't know. So actually, I'm gonna use my size 2 round, okay? So I have a darker brown here, and I'm going to just do my little kind of rounded square there. I'm gonna leave kind of a circle there, and then I'm gonna fill this in like that. Already better, right? You add that nose, you're like, oh, you start to look like a real animal. Then I'm going to add a little line here for the mouth. Again, starting to look a little bit better. Then I'm just going to darken this part up just a little bit to where it kind of leads to the eye. Now, I want to just add just a little bit of darker fur here, so I'm just going to do these tiny little lines, really, really faint, so light. This brush from my travel set is also great for tiny little details. The point on it is amazing, okay? But you don't want to go too dark. You want it to be really, really light, okay? Then it's actually a little bit darker around the eye too, so I might just take a little, just a light wash of this brown. I'm gonna go around the eye here, and I'm just gonna kind of bring it back to the nose a little bit, because it needs to be a little bit darker here. I could have done this with the wet-on-wet earlier, but I forgot. Then that looks a little crazy, so I'm gonna wash off my brush, dry it a bit. I'm gonna blend out that edge so it's not such a harsh shape. I just want it slightly darker around the eye. See that? You can kind of just blend it out. We're gonna be doing some white strokes over top anyway. Just tap it there a little bit more. Maybe the same kind of thing over here, a little bit darker, but not too much. That. Okay, let's do the ear now. The ear is like a dark brown, more like a grayish brown, so I'm gonna do the ear here like this. I'm gonna add that color, and then I don't want it to be such a harsh line of where it ends, so I'm gonna add the dark color here like this, and then I'm gonna wash off my brush, tap it on my paper towel, and I'm gonna blend out that edge into the face just a little bit. Again, wash off my brush, dry it, and blend it out so it's a soft blend. Okay, and I'm gonna do this one back here. This one you can kind of just go around like that, just darkening it up a bit. Okay, now for the detail, except the feet, they're kind of like a light brown, so I'm gonna mix it with a little bit of this pink, and I'm just gonna do just a little bit here, just adding a little bit of that light color like that, and then I'm gonna wash off my brush and then just blend up the edge into the white kind of fur. Cute! Okay, now it's time for the detail, my friends, and this could feel like the scary part, but it's not going to be scary, so I'm going to take my bleed-proof white ink for our white details. This is a white opaque paint, so if you have like a white gouache, even a white gel pen, this could work. Okay, and what I'm going to do is I'm going to start doing some white fur coming from the tip of the nose upward, that's a lot, goes kind of like around the eye, and you just get these really light kind of fur strokes. Now like I said, I typically don't do a lot of the fur on animals all over, like our duck, I didn't do that, but I feel like because this animal is just so textured and it's like such a distinct texture that it has, you kind of have to, and a lot of the fur isn't dark, so it's not as overwhelming, I find. When you have like dark fur, it can really just look a bit too much. I'm going to add it right here, there, just so I can water it down a bit. When you have dark fur, like if this was all dark, I feel like it would be too much, and I'm just using the lightest amount of pressure to get these really light line strokes, and I'm just flicking with my wrist a little bit. Okay, going around the eye, and then just tiny, tiny, tiny ones down here. Okay, then, okay, this is kind of where I'm nervous, the spikes on the back, I'm going to just use the tip of my brush, I think, to do these spikes, and I'm just like dabbing, and hoping for the best. Now if I was doing like a really realistic one, the spikes are really cool because it's like this dark brown into a light brown kind of gradient for each quill, but I don't have time for that, so I'm just going to use the tip of my brush to get that kind of triangular tip of the quill shape, and just dabbing. Also make sure that your points, it's going rounded, so like when you're dabbing your brush, I'm not going to point it this way right here, you want it to be coming out, so your strokes going out like this, okay, and that's going to help it make it look a bit more like circular. You don't want it to be like in a line all uniform necessarily, you want it to be a bit more staggered, but change the position of your brush depending on which way the quill is facing. So up here it's pointing up that way, okay. I feel like I might have to do a little bit of darker bits in here too, just to make them stand out a bit. Once we do the eye, it's going to be like bam, the cutest little thing you ever saw. Okay, I kind of want to just see what will happen if I add a little bit more brown, like some darker bits in there. So there's not like a lot of detail, it's kind of, the white's a little bit still wet, so it's kind of blending in. You can do some dark in between, but I feel like the white is enough, you don't need to do a whole lot. Maybe towards the bottom, we'll just make it darker because there would be a natural like shadow at the bottom. It's up to you though. Meh, like that. Okay, let's leave that and then you can always do like a couple more like little, little hairs down here that are just a bit darker. Really, really light, thin, thin, thin strokes though. And then this eye, let's make this eye pop. Okay, feel free to use a fine liner if it's easier to control instead of a paintbrush to do the eye. Okay, see look how cute he is! Oh my gosh, I love him. Okay, and then over here, leave a little highlight. I'm gonna add a little bit more darkness down here on the nose like that, then maybe a little bit on the ear on the inside here. Okay, never drawn a hedgehog like this. I kind of love him. He's super cute! Just adding a little bit of darkness on the ear. Oh my goodness, so cute. Okay, like that. And then just like a little bit more shadow on the legs here, I think. Just a little bit of darkness at the bottom. Okay, so stinking cute! I love it. I'm gonna do just like a little bit of an eyelid around, just like a little line kind of going around the eye like that. There. And there we go! Oh, he is so cute. I think there's also a little bit of pink in the nose. There. And we are done! Okay, so there's our hedgehog. There are three kind of spring-ish animals. I don't know what I mean by spring animals. All animals are all year-round animals, aren't they? But either way, they give off these beautiful spring vibes. I really hope you enjoyed this week of our animal tutorials. Let me know what you think in the comments below, and that's about it. Thank you all so much for watching. I really hope you enjoyed it, and I hope you learned something. Don't forget to subscribe to this channel and follow me on all my other platforms for tons more content. Have a great day, guys. Bye!