So there are certain mistakes that people make, especially in the beginning. And we make these same mistakes over and over. So it's good to keep track of your mistakes and stop making them and also watch for some of these most common mistakes and consciously sort of avoid making them too. So the first one is painting with the form. So there's a tendency when you're applying the paint, to want to paint it in, following the form following the shape of the edge. It's the easiest way to apply paint.

And sometimes I'll even like do that initially where I painted with the form, but then what you want to do is afterwards, paint across the form and sort of wiggle across the form. You might even preferably actually, like if you paint across the forum as you're putting it in, that's even better. So watch for the way that I'm applying the paint in the demo. And you'll notice that I'm really painting across the form. And that's really important. It's one of the ones that I see my students who've worked with me for a little while, start to get the hang of and it makes such a huge impact in their work, it just totally skyrockets it to the next level, and it's something concrete that you can start doing today.

So focus on painting across the form instead of with the form with the shape of the edge, and again, across the form is like perpendicular to the shape of the edge basically. The other most common mistake is to make the edges too sharp. So having edges that look like cut out like way too sharp, is really common and it really flattens out the form and takes away from the high level of you know, quality finish that you want. So, instead what I'll do is I'll do this little leg wiggle stroke, very fine little side to side wiggle stroke, where you can just make the paint of both sides bleed together. Just Little side. So I call this the wiggle stroke Actually, my students invented that word.

And so it just gives it a little bit of a softer edge instead of having to cut out edges which is the most common mistake. Also, there's a tendency to get indirect lighting having an indirect light and shadow side. So the way that we work the way that we've established the under painting and move to color, we're really making sure to have a clarity to the light side and the shadow side and that's really important. overdoing it with the highlights can be another most common mistake moving into them too soon, doing like big crazy highlight like through the lips, or you know something too soon and too light and too fast. So kind of careful with the highlights. Don't overdo it with the highlights.

Also, having opaque shadows can be problematic. You want to have the lights more built up and more textural and have I mix more oil in when I do the shadows so that They're a little bit more transparent than the lights over saturated colors is a big one. We've talked about D saturating the color and flesh tone is kind of like an orangish color, but it's D saturated. So look to not have like really garish really bright colors all over your whole painting. And then you're having an overstated reflected light is another super common one. So there's like the little bit of light bouncing into the shadows that comes in from the environment.

But what people often do is they'll get really excited about reflected light in the beginning and they'll make the reflected light way to light to the point where it actually competes with the lighting and shadow pattern, and it'll be as light as something in the light side. So watch for that when I get into the demo. And really think about understanding your reflected light. Making the whites of the eyes to white is definitely a big one. It can make the eyes look really like crazy. So the eye is With the same tone as the skin around it, it's just a little bit cooler.

But really make sure you're not making too bright and too white. And also sort of along that note with the eyes, you don't want to have the eyes to outline any. As they move into the demo of the I'll really show you how to really use the construction that we talked about in the handouts which watch before you move to the final rendering of the features. But people will sometimes make it to outlining following that and not getting like the form of the eye instead. So don't make the eye to outlining. Also don't make the lip to outline IE.

The lips have soft edges, all the way around totally lost edge here, and the only sharp edge is really through the center line of the lips. So I think that'll really help with all of your paintings keeping these most frequent mistakes in mind and just not doing them anymore. will take your work to the next level.