How to Paint Like Beatrix Potter

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well hello everyone and welcome back to another video from doing it ourselves now I am a huge fan of Beatrix Potter I have been ever since I was a child now funnily enough I didn’t actually read the Beatrix Potter stories as a child um I actually was introduced to Beatrice Potter through a set of cartoons that were made um animated versions of the stories now at the beginning of each of those cartoons was a little live action sequence uh filmed in the Lake District at Beatrix Potter’s house I fell in love with berri Potter because of that uh I just saw this woman sat on a Hilltop with an easel painting the countryside because it started to rain she then ran down the hill back to her little cottage uh where the fire was lit and she sat down at a very similar table to this to write a letter and she drank out of a spoed cup um with a teapot and obviously all of that inspired my life today so I’m a huge fan of berri’s Potter and I’m an artist and recently uh I’ve made it my sort of Mission to decode Beatrix Potter’s painting technique now there’s not a lot written about it so if you’re an artist and you want to paint like Beatrix Potter well where do you go let’s talk berri Potter’s technique where did we start so I guess the first thing to start with would be paper now if you think about watercolorists um most watercolor painters will paint on watercolor paper but berri Potter actually used something called laid paper now that’s a very old-fashioned paper it used to be handmade years ago um and it has ridges in it very slight ridges and actually uh it probably most people would have used that for writing on but apparently artists years ago especially watercolor artists always use laid paper now I have some handmade laid paper here now this is made uh in a factory a very small Factory by hand in the Lake District and I actually visited that um that place uh so what we’re going to do now is we’re going to show you a little segment where I went to the factory and we’ll talk about how laid paper is made by hand and then once we’ve done that we’ll come back and uh and we’ll do some uh do some drawing [Music] w [Applause] [Music] right we’re [Music] here well everyone welcome to the Lake [Music] [Applause] [Music] District today we are in the Countryside just outside Kendall and we’ve come to a place uh on a private estate and it’s called the paper foundation and we’re going to speak to somebody called Tom and the people there and hopefully they say that they might be able to make me exactly the same paper the beer trick Potter used using the same methods and the same materials so let’s go and check it out [Music] I’m Tom um I run the P Foundation we were set up for 4 and a half years ago to make handmade paper and at the time um handmade paper in England was kind of dying out because the last paper makers were retiring without any apprentice and it was actually set up by Mark Cropper who his family own a paper mill here in the village and have done for 175 years and so he wanted to maintain that Heritage and the skills and knowledge around the craft of paper making so I joined to do that and I learned how to make paper from these last two people making it and started to make it and since then actually we’ve got a lot of interest in the in the paper we’re making from people like yourself who care about the quality of the materials they use so it’s been kind of as grown from there 4 years ago and Sam and Johnny joined us as apprentices and that was another thing we’re trying to do is um kind of perpetuate the skills and knowledge so that the craft has got a future as well it’s lovely to meet you Tom and thank you thank you so much for inviting us down today because well I’m I’m on a bit of a mission to to try and recreate um the way berri Potter painted her illustrations and um and one of the missing pieces is is the paper that she used yeah obviously I’ve done a bit of research I found that it was a a laid paper well you’re in the right place now we make papers for artists and printers and book binders and whatever but at the start what we actually focused on making was conservation papers so these were meant to match historic papers and we sell them to libraries and museums yeah so that’s what we do here I mean a lot a lot of these papers are laid generally we make La paper and as you can see it’s got the kind of it’s got those ridges isn’t it yeah yeah so that that would give you that effect yeah and then these papers are made from flax okay linen flax which would most likely be what she was using yeah um but we can do a bit of research into yeah into that so do you think it would be possible to make me a paper um very close to what she would have used yeah definitely we love to yeah that’d be amazing okay Tom so do you want to show us uh talk us through the process of creating piece of paper the old fashioned way yeah sure um so we start in the beta okay and the paper is in many way made in the beta but in here we’ll add water and whatever fiber we’re using so generally for us that’s either cotton hen flax um and this is about 180 years old wow and under this cover we’ve got there a wooden wheel with bronze bars um so this wheel is made from mahogan and phosphor bronze and this will spin during the beating and underneath it there’s the bed plate and the bar’s touch and cut cut the fiber and Pan the fiber and it comes out like this which is is kind of Porgy um stuff this one in there is cotton so once once we have the pulp like that M then we make paper from it so Johnny here is making paper we we’ll put the PK in the bat and dilute it to a certain level to get the right weight mhm um so this is 100 GSM laid paper for um it’s a book paper yeah okay so um just stirring up the pulp into that um which helps it not to knot up so keep it keep it moving um that helps and then we’re going to FP the mold into the and then you’ve got to get these uh these waves going across the mold so that the pul meshes together the F mesh together um which helps it to have the sort of no clear Direction um traditional wave making paper so I’ve just removed the Deco um there are actually a few little knots in here so I’m just going to try and pick those out otherwise they go into the into the press and then it’s a bit harder to get out later just going to cooch this which is which means to put to bed so we’re just going to put this sheet to bed so Felts and you wouldn’t be able to pick that up at the moment but it goes into the Press um under 40 tons of pressure and then after that you can actually handle it it’s still wet but you can still handle it um yeah so that’s this side of the process um so once the paper’s been pressed um it comes out like this so in between each Bel you have the paper it’s now it’s still very damp but it’s got enough strength for you to peel it off the F and then we stack it just a stack of wet paper um and we press it again and then what we’ll actually do with this paper is peel it apart again restack it repress it and that we want a pretty smooth texture because this is full um printing on so as I said if we wanted it rough we would dry it straight away yeah but we’re doing multiple pressings to get the right texture so yeah once it’s peeled and pressed um we’re trying to get as much water as possible during that stage and then we either hang it up to dry or dry it in a dry box between like under pressure so then it will come out flat um but once that’s done it is ready to go come like this so tell us about these Tom um so these are called paper molds and one like this which has got these uh lines running along it is a laid mode and a wo mode is like that it’s got a perfectly flat yeah uh mesh it’s like kind of SE okay um and as you can see on this one it’s a laid mold with the Victoria watermark on yeah which has got you know Victoria sitting on a throne in this kind of oval shape well thank you very much no pleasure nice to meet you thanks for coming cheers [Music] so I just want to thank everyone at the paper foundation for giving me that amazing tour and showing me how laid paper was made and is still made um in a very few places so I’ve got some of that paper here very controversial I’m not actually going to use that paper today I’m going to use a different kind of paper um it’s the same kind of paper but it’s a modern version um because in this video I want to show everyone how berrix Potter did her artwork what she actually used things that aren’t available now and what you can use uh in today’s world um that will be like a modern equivalent because not everyone can just go to their local art supply shop and pick up handmade paper so I’m going to be using this uh it’s made by Canon and it’s called Ingress Videl So today we’re going to be using that because that’s what you can get if you want to do what we’re doing here today um but in the future I probably will use the handmade paper for a different video like a real authentic um so I have using that paper I have prepared a pencil drawing um I’ve done that off camera just because it’s quite a long process uh a pencil drawing but I do need to do some finishing touches to it now so we’ll do that now okay so today I’m going to be using something called a writing slope now this is an antique writing slope and actually I made a video about this previously and I’ll leave a link in the description if you want to watch that all about this writing slope because it was believed to be owned by Beatrix Potter herself you know it feels really authentic if you’re doing Beatrix pot inspired artwork and you’re actually using her writing slope that’s really special but because it has a beautiful velvet finish silk velvet I don’t want to damage that so I’m going to put a sheet of leather over the top to protect it so we can make a mess on that and it won’t damage it so there we go this is my pencil drawing um uh I’ve kind of put in some of the Shadows like here um and I’ve outlined it quite strongly now her sketches were very loose she would do sort of loads of different sort of circles and different things to S of map out the shape but um I’ve got this to a place where I want it how did berrix Potter do those beautiful um outlines that she used to do so what she would do is she’d do a pencil drawing and then she would um use ink to outline it all uh and what she would do is she would use a waterproof ink something like this this is a India ink um and she would use something like that and something like this now this is called a dip pen now this was um Turned by hand in Texas believe it or not and it’s the only place I could find one made of Ironwood now Ironwood is the one of the most dense Woods known to man if you put this in water it will sink whereas normal wood will float so uh you have this and it’s the only one that has the end small enough for these miniature nibs now these are called a crow quill or crows quill nib so there we go that goes on there and then obviously you would then dip in your ink the next part is to as I said is to do the ink outlines now the reason that Beatrix Potter did that um is because if I was to take this pencil drawing and use watercolor to paint over it I’m obviously dipping a brush in water and then I’m painting over pencil that pencil is not completely insoluble it’s going to start to smudge and by the time you’ve painted the whole thing those beautiful outlines the crisp outlines have all but disappeared so uh we going to use we are going to use what berrix pot you used to use and that’s an India ink and and when that dries it’s waterproof now berri Potter used to use uh old-fashioned India ink which is actually shiny now I know she used that because I read one of her letters and she was talking to her publisher about the printers and she was saying obviously when her original paintings had to be photographed uh so that they could then be hand engraved onto copper plates for the printers she was worried that the black ink reflect light and not be visible on the photos um but nowadays you can get matte India ink she would have loved that so we’re going to use that but just so you know if you are a purist she used the normal shellac based India ink okay so this part is always the scariest part because pencil you can you can erase that if you make a mistake um but this ink once it’s on it’s not coming off that looks okay yeah now I usually follow the pencil drawing uh I don’t follow it to the letter if I want to change a little bit I can do that as you can see with this you can get really fine lines but if you press you get a thick line uh so it’s sort of very versatile now a lot of people these days most artists would use um just pens like sort of you know with ones with ink in them uh and they come in different nib sizes but you just don’t get the versatility that you get with a proper oldfashioned dip pen now another thing I will do from time to time is actually use this this is blotting paper with a little roller so I occasionally I’ll just go like that and that will take any excess ink off cuz there’s nothing worse than smudging it sometimes these little marks like this are nice they’re just to sort of indicate the fur Direction the way the fur lays so the F sort of laying that way you’ll put some of these little lines like like that [Music] so another technique that berrix Potter used which well obviously i’ I’ve made observations obviously with most pieces of artwork you’ve got to imagine your light source so in this situation and the light is coming from the side directly here which is casting Shadows you can see Shadows here Shadows all behind here there’s little Shadows under his feet now what I normally do is I imagine the side where the Shadows are I’ll probably put the outlines thicker and more intense um and then the side where the lights hitting the object I’ll make the lines much much finer so here for for instance we’ll do just a really fine black line like that but here we’ll do them quite pronounced and quite thick almost like that there we go and that also will help to give the impression that it’s 3D uh and that it’s more realistic okay so I’ve finished the black outlines uh we’re going to move on to the the bits that are further into the back of the picture the things that aren’t going to be as obvious we’re going to outline those with a brown ink but first of all I just want to mention what I’m going to do is I’m going to put a list of all the products I’ve used the paper the inks the pens everything in the description box of this video um and then obviously if you want to find any of these products you can actually just Google them um and and get them yourself there we go so right let’s move on so I’m going to be using next I’m going to be using cpia Inc right so what I’m going to do is these uh these leaves these are a raspberry plant so the raspberry leaves I’m just going to go and sort of outline them with some of this brown and the brown will not look as obvious or stand out as much as the Black Ink now berrix potty used both colors um of ink sometimes she would just outline everything in brown which would give a much softer look sometimes she would outline everything in Black and that would be a very very much more bold graphic look something like Peter Rabbit the illustrations they were all done with black ink but as she uh she progressed in her career she sort of um she did artwork a little bit finer and used a lot more Brown ink now as you can see here these outlines these leaves the edges of the leaves are defined but they kind of they sort of drift into the back ground a little bit they’re not so in your face so obviously this is the main focus the rabbit and the watering can that’s real in Focus so that’s very graphically outlined with black these they’re a little bit softer so we’re just going to just follow some of those pencil lines um but obviously anything like in the background here that will all just be watercolor and it’ll be very soft and it’ll be very sort of soft focus cuz what we’re going to do is once we’ve actually outlined a lot of the stuff in ink the things that we’ve got outlined like the rabbit and the watering can I’ll probably use an eraser and take away some of that pencil so it gives a really clean look so that when the waterolor goes on it’s just watercolor and um ink outlines you haven’t got that sort of sketchy pencil looking showing through the paint [Music] [Music] okay so I’ve finished the ink outlines I’ve obviously done the black and I’ve done the brown now I’m happy with the amount of sort of definition I’ve put in there I want to leave some places that aren’t outlined so when I paint I get a nice soft effect in the background but what I’m going to do is I’m going to use this eraser um and then just try and take out some of the pencil in the places where I’ve put the ink outlines because I already have the sort of the outline and the the sort of the shading for those with the ink but obviously the places where I’m going to do a soft painting with no ink outlines I’m going to leave that pencil in there for now so I kind of if I raisee it I won’t know why I’m painting so so I’m just going to go in take some of this out let’s take out some of the pencil and funny [Music] okay so we’re ready to paint now well let’s talk about paints now berrix potty Ed watercolors um we know that uh but we it’s very difficult to work out what color she used uh it’s not written anywhere so I’ve worked out what color she used by doing some detective work now there was a book that she released a coloring book in 1911 I believe and it was called Peter Rabbit’s coloring book now in the front of that book she instructs the children or whoever’s painting to use five colors now I I know for a fact that she would not have have listed five colors if they’re not the colors that she used um because she lists instructions of how to mix certain colors from those five colors so let’s talk about the colors first of all she used one called Crimson Lake now you can’t get Crimson lake anymore anymore nobody makes it um uh I think one manufacturer does make one but it’s not the same formula now the reason nobody makes Crimson lake anymore is because it’s not light fast it’s actually um it will fade very rapidly in sunlight so nobody makes it anymore uh unfortunately but I was able to obtain a jar of the pigment uh the exact formula so I can actually make some paint now there is a paint company uh called well it’s actually a pigment company the same company that I got that from uh it’s called krema pigments and they make Crimson Lake from the same formula which is made from cenal beetles uh and Alum uh which is like potach I believe uh and I’ve actually managed to obtain some uh a one pan and the p M um but most manufacturers don’t make it anymore but if you want an equivalent color you can use one by Windsor and Newton which is called permanent Carmine now how do I know that permanent Carmine is exactly the same color as Crimson Lake well first of all I managed to obtain one tube of crimson Lake from the 1970s before it was discontinued actually two tubes now that was really expensive that cost me almost like A1 just for those two uh but also I have something amazing amazing I have two original color charts from around 1910 which was the Edwardian era now I know from a fact that berrix Potter used paint by a company called George rowny and Co and I know that because when I was reading her book of letters she was talking about the painting process to her publisher and she mentioned going into the shop in London which is actually the original shop is next to where fortam and Mason is now um and she mentioned going in there to buy paint so I know that she was using George rowny paint now we’ve got two original color charts from that period so let’s go into them and we can find if we look a bit further we can find Crimson Lake now I’ve done Swatch tests I know that Crimson Lake look at that the original colors from 1124 years ago they’re still like the day they were painted um really fresh and we also have another one here which we’ve got slightly smallest swes um and Crimson lake is on there um they’re both exactly the same color they were very difficult to obtain and the actual person who had bought them off said he wanted to donate them to a museum but he was really happy that I would that I would take them because I’m going to use them for something important which is working out what colors she used so I know for a fact from doing Swatch tests that the modern equivalent to Crimson lake is permanent Carmine by Windsor and Newton so if you want that color buy that because the original pigment will fade and it’s difficult to come by okay so that’s the first pigment uh there’s one more pigment that she used uh one more color that is not obtainable anymore and that is gambo now I do have one tube of gambo from the 1970s also now why is this no longer made because it’s toxic uh and as you can see I’ve got a jar of it here which I had to obtain through various means and they’ve got a skull and crossbones on the jars saying that they’re poisonous now how is it poisonous what will it do to you if you ate that well you’d be sat on the toilet until you die basically you’d sort of you’d um you’d evacuate your soul into the bowl so uh and actually what’s really interesting is actually in the Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit painting book when she’s listing what pigments or what paints to use she actually says do not dip your brush in the paint and put the paint in paint brush she says do not put the paint brush in your mouth because you have a bad had tummy like Peter Rabbit so she obviously had experience with that but we do have it we have managed to obtain it so if you want to be really authentic we can mix our own paints and use that um very carefully but if you want a modern equivalent uh we obviously know I’ve tested the original color and the swatches from the book with the new color uh Windsor and Newton make one called new gambo which you can buy now and it’s a very very very good copy it’s almost the same it’s a little bit less transparent than the original but it works so we’re going to be using that today because I want to use paints that you can get a hold of so that’s the first two pigments is um Crimson Lake and gambo so we got those covered now there’s three more paints that she used uh she used antp blue still made today using the same recipe an twerk blue it’s it’s like Prussian Blue but it’s add had some white added to it so it’s a little bit softer burnt sienna you can get that from most paint Brands I know that Windsor Newton’s burnt sienna is an exact match to what she used to use now that’s the last one sap green sap green is a color that you can get but Windsor and Newton’s sap green and a lot of other brands is nowhere near a color match to the original so I used the color swatch is and I went through different brands and I found that sap green by Daniel Smith that’s an American company Daniel Smith make a sap green that is an exact match to what Beatrix Potter would have used so we’ve got Crimson Lake new gambo antw blue burnt sienna and sap green there we go I’ll list those in the video description so you can get those if you want let’s let’s start took a lot of research month some months of research just to find those colors and get the right pigments and a lot of money just so that you don’t have to there we go so you know now right let’s start painting so let’s get some some uh some Paints in the tubes now she uses five colors now you can uh you can mix a few of these different colors together all of these colors you can use to mix anything including black uh burnt sienna you can mix that with some of the antet blue which will make a dark brown which is great for rabbit and animal fur like mice and things like that so let’s get some of the colors in and new gamb there we go need a good brush now maybe this one looks nice A little little tiny one I think I’m going to start with the leaves now I like to use a really fine brush and I know berrix Potter used a technique called a dry brush technique and that is where your watercolor is is not you don’t mix too much water with it and actually what you use is instead of doing washes of color like some water color eyes do you actually kind of use the paintbrush almost like a pencil and just do little Strokes with not too much water uh and with thinned out paint and then you just kind of build up texture by adding layer and layers and layers of small brush Strokes uh and I found actually I’ve got some really expensive W like the finest watercolor brushes in the world um made with kolinsky Sable and all of that um you know Windsor and Newton Series 7 used by Queen Victoria for her paintings and actually I found that for the best technique these synthetic brushes they’re synthetic Sable they’re cheap and actually they’re the bristles are much stiffer and they just they’re just much better for for this kind of thing so that’s what I’m using cheap ones now I’m not going to just sort of color these in I’m just going to try and add some of the texture of the leaves to start with I think the color’s good it’s a nice [Music] green so again so obviously where the light hits these leaves they’re sort of they’re a bit more shiny in the middle and they sort of reflect less of the light around the edges so we’re just going to darken the edges a little bit like that and obviously we’re not just going in with a big wet brush and just ding paint all over thing we’re just literally using this like a pencil with minimal paint on and just doing it more like like as I said earlier just like almost as if you were using a pencil and that’s how beerx Potter did a lot of her illustrations obviously some of them she used kind of like washes some of those are really beautiful that she did but her work was very precise um it was precise but you wouldn’t know it you know it it just had a I don’t know it just had a look it was sparing it was economical but precise I don’t know how to describe it that’s looking really nice actually that brown is not too smudged and we’ll put some of this brown and layer it up into the Shadows [Music] [Music] so I’ve finished the the leaves um you can see there’s some shadows in there and some highlights you know it it it has texture but it’s not too detailed it’s it’s remember we’re doing sort of berrix Potter here so that’s kind of done so the next thing I’m going to do is I’m going to work on bunny um because he’s got lots of fur and lots of texture and lots of layers of different Browns and then I’ll probably do the water watering can next and then we can do the background after so let’s do bunny oh by the way these pencils if you can see that I managed to Source these these are George rowny pencils now that’s the same brand that beix Potter used and these pens pencils by the way are actually 100 years old and I have 10 of them I think 100 years old how special is that so we’re using this pencils from the same era that Beatrix Potter would have used and they are better than old fashion ones uh the BET sorry they are better than modern ones I can tell you that little bit of the blue more [Music] so it’s finished and actually I’m quite pleased with it I mean maybe I’ll come back in a few hours and just do the like the little finishing touches but I think that actually as an illustration for a book that would be I think I’m actually for once I finished an artwork and I’m like I like it because I normally don’t normally like look at it and go oh disgusting and then it takes me a week before I have to look at it again and go oh it’s all right but actually that for once it’s nice and You’ shared in the process um and it’s something I’ve really wanted to do for a long long time because when I wasn’t doing YouTube videos for that last year I was doing all of this research I was just going crazy I was like what paper did she use where can I get it and oh and this pigment where can I find and I’m doing research for hours of my ADHD is going overdrive um but it’s all come to something um and I just want to say thank you for watching also um now the basement kitchen project it’s a really long project um I’d like to be able to move a bit faster but I can’t I obviously I can’t afford it so what I’m going to do is I’m going to make some prints of this drawing and I’m going to put them on my website so there they’ll be available on there when this video is released um and all the money from the sale of these prints will go towards the basement kitchen cuz the next thing would be to get some electric wiring and things put in there lights so that I can work in there um when the Sun goes down um and that’ll be amazing to get electrics and heating in there so that when the windows are in during the winter we can sort of finish it all off maybe even finish it so that we can have Christmas dinner in there that would be amazing so these prints are available on my website my website is called ww. doingit our.com or one word doing outside on word um they’re available on there there’ll be 39 EOS which is about $39 um the shipping is included so there’s no extra shipping costs you can pay by credit card or PayPal um and they’ll be shipped out within a few weeks so yeah they’re available and OB as I said all the profits from these will go directly to finishing the basement kitchen so that we can have it ready and display the Spode and we can have a tea party down there that’d be amazing so thank you for watching and I’ll see you for another video really soon thank you

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