Create Art Journal Pages with Styrofoam Printmaking

1. Introduction : there. I'm Charmaine, the artist and maker behind the Skill share channel, and I'd like to welcome you into my dining room studio. Normally, I'd be working in the spare room that I keep on my art supplies in. But today and my husband is at work, and I'm free to spread all my inks and papers all over the kitchen and the dining room. So I'm loving all this extra space. And today, when I'd like to share with you, is an easy to learn technique that will allow you to take a little bit of printmaking into your art, journaling and other mixed media art projects. It uses very simple materials, very few that are expensive and very easy to dio. You'll be using a simple sheet of styrofoam to create a print that can be used over and over in a lot of different ways. To embellish those art journal pages and other projects. In this class, you'll learn how to take a sheet of Styrofoam, create a simple drawing and using just some block printing inks and a few other art supplies that you probably already have on hand. You'll be using that to make lovely prints. Simple basic prints. Double prints. Prince on Jess owed scrapbooking paper prince of your own watercolor paper and you'll even learn how to take your leftover inks and create beautiful prints that can become backgrounds for your art, journaling or your other forms of mixed media art. So join me in the next video and I'll share with you a list of easy to obtain supplies that you can use to get started on your own project. 2. Supplies: For this class, you'll need to gather up a few of your basic art supplies as well as a few specialty supplies. You'll need a plastic table cover or some sort of covering to protect your work surface. We'll be using a pencil, a ball point pen and some printer paper to prepare your stencil. And you'll also possibly want to use the watercolor brush to make some of your backgrounds , and you'll need a pair of scissors to cut out your stencil. Get it ready for printing. You want to have on hand some watercolor paper or watercolor pad paper. I like the can Seuin watercolor papers or the artist's loft from Michael's will be using the's for some of the backgrounds that we create for your printmaking. You can print on just about any kind of material, but if you're going to be using something with a lot of water or watercolor paints, you will want this thicker, heavier paper for some of the processes that will be using. You can also use a lot of the other papers that you might have on hand card stock or scrapbooking paper, even tissue paper for something that you're going to use in a collage. Old maps could be just it over and used for printmaking. Even your own rejected artwork can be reworked or covered up or used in some way with your prints. I'll be demonstrating a few different techniques that you can use for preparing your papers for printmaking. Jess Oh, and a foam brush for applying the Jess Oh, come in handy. You don't want to use your best brushes for playing Jess. Oh, water based brush markers could be used for some of our techniques and also watercolor paints and a cup of water for brush cleaning. I'll be demonstrating with watercolor magic liquid colors, but your pan colors will also work. You will need a few specialty supplies for printmaking, and I'll have links to these under the your project tab on our page. The first thing you need is some Styrofoam to work on. You can use a cartons or the bottoms of meat and fruit trays, but for ease of use and consistency and size, I like to order scratch phone board from Melissa Dog or find it at my local craft supply store. It's just a lot easier than trying to gather up all those other materials, and I'm all about easy. You'll also need some speedball or other brand block printing inks for this project. I like this little set here by speedball because it does include your three basic primary colors black, white and a little bit of gold. And you can pretty much make any colors you would want just from the inks. In this set, the last thing you'll need to add to your supplies is a Breyer or a roller for your inks, and a smooth surface for rolling the tanks out on the tray on the left was purchased from the local craft supply store. But you can also use any smooth, non absorbent surface like the Styrofoam plate and old kitchen plate and Old Trey. Pretty much anything that will not absorb your inks and will allow you to roll them out smoothly. That should do it for supplies. Remember, if you should need a link to any of the supplies I've talked about, please take a look under the your Projects tab, where I do have links to many of the supplies that I've produced in my demonstrations. For now, though, gather up your supplies and meet me in the next lesson so that we can get started 3. Preparing background papers : in this lesson, I'll share with you some ideas for background papers that you can use for your printmaking . You can start with watercolor paper. This is the artist loft bought a clerk had It's a cold press, £140. Another brand that works really well is the cancer in watercolor pad. Also, 100 and £40 these air nine by 12 which is a good size for what we're working with. I like these two types of papers because they're not really expensive. They have a slightly textured side and a very smooth side, and they're nice and thick, so they hold up well to water media. So using papers like this, you can create your own watercolor backgrounds. Be demonstrating that technique later in this video. So something like this you can also roll inks over the paper to create some really interesting textured backgrounds. And if you happen to be a scrap booker and have scrapbooking supplies on hand, thes are scrapbooking papers that I had on hand. I like this one. It has a really pretty you're destined effect. This one has a little bit of texture. And then I had some that had rather bold print on them. So I went over them with a little bit of liquid Tex acrylic gesso to dull down the surface . Here's another one where you can see the difference, the words as they were. And then I told them down a little bit to make my print show up a little better. So that's a personal choice. I did another example of one that could show you the difference. I have this really pretty music kind of scrapbooking paper, and I like this. But depending on the colors I'm choosing, I may want it a little more subtle. So I put some Jessel on that you can even just so your own brush lettering, which is what I did with this practice piece that I had. So in this video, I'm going to share with you some simple techniques for creating the watercolor paper, and I'll do a little demonstration in this demonstration. I'll share with you how to use the liquid text it krilic Jess. Oh, it's a surface preparation medium. It's usually used on to prep a canvas or even heavy duty watercolor paper to take your paints, but it also conserve very nicely as a way to mask out parts of an image that's a little too heavy for what you want to dio. So I'm going to use just a little dab of it on a paper plate to make it just totally disposable. And I like to use thes brushes, these little stare out foam brushes. They're great because the Jessel can really ruin your good brushes. And you're probably not going to want that. If you use the just so straight up as it is, it will give you a fairly heavy covering. You will still see the image underneath very faintly as it dries, and you can brush it in. So I'm going to just brushed straight, Jess. Oh, here and you can see as you smooth it out and it dries. You will begin to see your image coming through. If you want hit little, a bit less coverage and a little night or touch, you can wet your what you're start for your little phone brush, get a little water on it and add that to your just So So you're Jesse's been watered down slightly, and when you brush it on, it will be more liquid. It will be quite white when you first put it on. If you like a lighter wet, just dip your If you brush in the water and have a little water over the top, get it wet and then you can take a clean paper towel. Unfortunately, I don't have a clean one at hand, so I'm going to use my blue one from the previous demonstration. You can also wipe a little bit of the just so off. This will work really well for justice, then moistened with water. It's a little more fluid, and it's easy to brush some of it off with a paper towel. So now I have address a piece of paper. The's brushes can usually be rinsed off a few times. They're not meant for long term use, and they will eventually basically disintegrate in fall apart. But there a good way to use materials like this that would damage your good brushes if you're like may you also have plenty of paper's practice papers, the flops and the failures, the things that you can't throw away. But you're not sure what you're going to do with them yet. This was old brush lettering practice head around, and it was done almost a year ago. But what I'm doing is taking water on a brush and reactivating the paint's. These were done with water colors, and I'm going to brush over them to begin to spread some color. And then I'm going to go back to my liquid watercolors. He's the colors are very similar, and now that it's nice and wet, I'm gonna take a little bit of the green and just brush some of it over my letters. I don't even have a place here, right? Accidentally glued something onto their and peel it back off and arranged. Look a blue so you can reuse a lot of those papers that you just sort of put aside, figuring, Oh, maybe someday I'll find something to do with that. And you can get that in Stark. A slight issue wanted to pee and my letters air. My writing is beginning to fade into the background, but it will create some nice textures that I could use later on a print. So did little mix of the green and the blue dark blue water, and how something really, possibly really need to use, and I didn't tape this paper down so you can see that it's beginning to curl. If that happens, simply let your paper dry. And once your paper is dry, you can weight it down overnight under heavy, a pile of books catalogues something heavy. Hang on to the help glue there as well, adding some texture. So I'm just simply reusing, ah, page that I have done in the past to create something another fun way to do a word background. Something with letters or words is to use your Tom bows or these aren't this one. How here happens to be a Tom Bo? There's a Tom Bo I also have in this mix some artist's loft, um, water watercolor brushes, the brush lettering pens and you can simply right some 100 words that one's very dry. We'll skip that one, and once that's in place, you can go back to your water and your brush and simply brush over these again, creating so the words will fade into the background as you create the colors with the water and fresh again. I didn't take the time to tape this down, so there's a little bit of curling. So now I have a very soft background and a very faint image of the words that I started out with. So one more way to create an interesting background for your prints. One more way to get interesting backgrounds for your mixed media, art or art journaling pages is done as we're cleaning up the ink after we've done the printmaking. These papers were created as I cleaned off my ink rollers, so I rolled them over. I rolled the dirty roller over my papers, and then I actually took this really nice, really pretty paper, handmade paper. And I literally pressed it into the trays that I had my ink in and picked up whatever color remained. So this is a really nice way to clean up your inks on and not waste anything. So as we're doing the printmaking, I'll be demonstrating that says, I'm cleaning up from the different colors 4. Make your stencil: in the following lessons, I'm going to show you step by step, how to go from a simple line drawing to a multicolored print on the backgrounds of your choice. These prints have had their colors layered, one on top of another, and these are single color prints that have just overlapped one another. So you'll find that these things technique of using these little Styrofoam pieces to create your print provides a very versatile medium. But to get started, we're going to have to begin withdrawing. I'm using scratch phone board. It's economical is it says right here. Economical, easy to use. And I do have a link to that on the class pages, and the one of using is six by nine. I find it's a good size for printmaking it because it's useful on many excises of papers. So to do my drawing, I'm using a piece of computer paper that I simply folded in half. It's going to be slightly smaller then my styrofoam, which is actually a good thing, because it will keep you from getting too close to the edges on your print and look, if you within that size frame when you're working on your scratch phone. So let's get started because Styrofoam doesn't allow you to have the refined details that linoleum block carving will allow you to dio. It's best to start with a drawing that is very simple, like this outline drawing of the flowers that I have done because the simple or the drawing that you're working with, the easier it will be to cut out your shapes and work with them, lining them up with your inks. So I'm just basically going to use this as my guide, and I'm going to show you how I got started on this particular print that I did. So I started over on the side here, and I just created kind of a doodle shape for the center of my flower. And to keep things simple. I am working with just four pedals, and there's sort of a little bit of a heart shape, so I'm gonna come around and kind of do the initial shape of a heart, and I'm going to do a similar shape of a heart on the other side, and they don't need to be funny races. That's the nice thing about starting with the pencils you can erase out what isn't quite working, and they don't have to be perfectly symmetrical because let's face it, flowers in nature aren't. And then I'm going to put kind of a back pedal behind that and create my pedals. I like that softer look in there with my pedals, and you can have little little lines within your pedals just to have a little bit of texture and interest to the end result. And then when I added my leaves, I did. The large leaves pretty much taking up most of my space, and little tiny cutely is poking out from underneath, and I have my drawing. So keep your drawing simple, whether you're doing florals or a fish or a butterfly or bird. Whatever you're choosing to dio, keep it large. Keep it simple, and I'm starting this. That's 1/2 sheet of computer paper pencil and my drawing. The next step will be to press your drawing onto your phone, my phone, and I'm going to put my drawing in place on my phone, and I'm going to use a ballpoint pen for this because of ballpoint pen rolls. Nicely. If you are concerned about your paper slipping. You can tape it at the sides, but usually I just kind of jump right in, and I'm going to press firmly because my goal is to get an impression onto my Styrofoam. As I'm working, you just don't need don't need to press so hard that you tear your paper, but you do want to give it a firm push so that it goes through the paper and puts an impression on your Styrofoam. So I'm just going to basically follow my guidelines and press my shapes in. I can also add a little bit of texture to the center of my flower if I want to, and we don't know how it's all dressed in now. When you pull your paper away, you'll see your image, but you won't feel a very deep impression. So what you'll need to do in order to get a good quality print, you will now need to press your image a second time by following your initial indentations and push in a little bit harder to impress your pattern. And if you do slip outside the lines that you originally drew in no worries it might add a little bit of texture. Ah, slight double image. But all of those convey quite charming when you're doing. I am a prepped. So now I have it ready to go. Now, of course, I have on this background here that I'm going to want to remove before so that I can use this. And at this point, I'm not going to cut these two pieces apart. I'm going to leave them connected. So I'm going to cut this out, and I'm going to go just slightly to the outside of my indentations. It won't hurt anything because technique, if you do actually cut on the lines, but I like to leave a little early weight. Also, one of the nice things about not having your print your stencil for your print completely symmetrical is that it's going to make it easier. Teoh. Identify how tow line it up when you're putting one color on top of another because you'll have some unique shape that you can match up rich. Allow your colors to come together just a little more precisely. You'll often hear printmakers referred to a terminally call it registration. Your prints are lining. In other words, your colors. Air lining up the way you'd like them to so that the colors don't have a blur or a place where they're not completely lined up with this form of printmaking since you're using it for art, journaling or mixed media art registration or a perfect line up really isn't terribly critical. Okay, we now have our stencil ready to go. So in the next video, I'll share with you how to begin making those first print layers. 5. Styrofoam Printing Techniques: before we start the printmaking process, I do want explain a little bit about how this is going toe work, working with this type of printmaking iss what we call a subtracted process. In other words, we have this entire print, but as we add layers, we will be subtracting or cutting away parts of the image that we want to have remain the original color that was put down. So when you're doing this kind of printmaking, it's best to make multiples at each stage so that you have some variety and what you're doing because you can't go back easily. You can sometimes put those pieces back together and still use them, but it does complicate the process. So I always like to make four or five images of my original print before I cut anything apart and go to another step in the process. It's a little caution there on that. I'm going to be using some commercially purchased little trays for rolling out Anna Breyer . However, if you don't have all of that on hand, the Breyer is it pretty essential. But you can also use a Styrofoam plate for an old dinner plate, anything that won't absorbed. The ink will work just fine for rolling out your inks a roller you pretty much need to have , and you are going to need to have some block printing inks. I like this little set by speedball because it contains the six million colors that you would need to pretty much mix whatever you want. So you have red, blue and yellow your primaries. You have some black for darkening and some white for lightning's, and they do give you a little gold. You can buy prepared colors in speedball and other brands, but I find this works just fine for pretty much anything I would want to be doing the other thing you'll see me using as this little gadget here. This is by Melissa and Doug. It's actually used for a variety of crafting supplies, but it allows you to press smoothly to push your ink into place. However, you'll also see me just is often using a rolled up, crumpled piece of paper topple, and sometimes that serves the purpose better. So as you're getting ready to get started with your print, making some type of trey or plate that's non absorbent to roll out your inks. Your Breyer roller some means to press your print peace. Paper towel is nice for keeping your surface a little bit cleaner and the paper that you're going to print on as a general rule of thumb. When you're doing any form of layered printmaking like this, you'll want to start with your lightest colors and gradually get darker. Because although these inks are pretty opaque, they do 10 because of the nature of the Styrofoam itself to allow colors from underneath to show. So I'm going to create a very light yellow for my underneath color, and I'm going to a little yellow here, and I'm going to put a pretty equal amount of yellow and white. See how that works and all you need to do at this point Israel your links together with your roller until they're blended. This distributes your ink around the tray, which also helps with getting it on to your Styrofoam without a lot of lobbying. This is a pretty nice amount, and what I'm going to do is work from center to top, and I'm just going to roll it up with my egg and then I'm going to turn it and mineral in the opposite direction. If it looks like it doesn't quite have enough ink, I can add a little bit more once my ink is spread out, going to take the paper that I'm going to print on, and with this over, put it into place, lay it down, gently. Press it gently but firmly, and above all, try not to allow it to move so that your inks don't smear. They are very moist and liquidy, and they will easily move and slides. And I'm right now. Just using a paper towel depress. It works quite nicely. It's very smooth if I needed to get a firmer press. This has a very smooth surface, and I can, and this might come in handy later when you're doing smaller details. I'm just going to gently peel this off, and I have my first print and I can see I didn't press is much in a couple areas. But all in all, it's a nice print. I can see my lines. I have a nice bit of yellow on that, and I'm happy with that. So what I'm going to do next before I do anything to my Styrofoam. I'm going to re ink it. Generally, you can think it twice before it needs to be rinsed off because it'll just have too much ink on it. In the ink will begin to gather in the creases that you've created, so you'll want to wash it off after about the second use. And I'm going to create several different examples using this same technique for this one. I'm going to use that paper that I just showed that have the words on it and I'm going to stay with. I'm staying with the yellow. You could change colors at any point, but for purposes of clean up and just for the planning in general, I like to stick with one color scheme. When I do a print, Siri's think that, and I'm going to reapply. Think to my terrible I'm going to put this one at a little bit of an angle. No, just because. And I'm going to leave that in place, and this time I'll demonstrate with this little tool, and I'm going to spend a little extra time making sure that I am pressing well around the edges of my Styrofoam as well as the center because that's where my print was the least clear the first time I printed. You'll also notice that I printed my 1st 1 on a paper that was plain but yet would have a strong contrast in color. This could be really helpful in letting you know if there's any area on your Styrofoam that should be carved out a little bit more so that it shows up better, given a little extra attention and there you have it, and you'll see what this one. Because the yellow is semi sort of transparent a bit. My words are coming through just a little bit, and it makes for a really pleasing look, especially when you're doing mixed media or any type of art journaling. So there's print number two. Now I'm gonna take a little break, and I'm going to wash off my print. But before I do, it does have some color that could come in handy for some other purpose later on. So I'm just gonna grab a piece of paper. But I have handy here, and I'm just going to use up whatever INC is on there, even though it's not going to give me a real strong print. This could come in handy later to be cut up paper or something that I can cut up or use in some other way I'm getting and I'm gonna flip it over and do it one more time. This is taking off excess ink that might be on there. It makes it easier to wash your Styrofoam off and there's a whole lot less ain't going down your dream. There we go. I've got almost all of it off. I have this nice little extra prints, so I mean, take a minute to go wash this off. Thank Okay. Once you've rinsed off your Styrofoam, make sure that it's very dry. I just put it on a dish towel and took a paper towel and pat it dry. When you're doing. Now we're down to our third actual print. You're probably going to find that you need to replenish your supply of ink. So I'm going to mix up again a little bit of yellow, and you're It may not be exactly the same color as think that you did for your first prince , but really, in the scheme of things, that is not a problem. to mix up a little more of this like Ellen, and I could see that it's pretty close to what I had before. So so far, I have my original my first print that I did on this brother. Pretty lavender paper. And then I have one that I did on my Jess owed scrapbooking paper. And then I have my little extra prints when I cleaned off my print tray, and now I'm going to take that paper that I created in the earlier lessons with my Tom biomarkers and then the water to spread the color. And I'm going to use that for this one. So once again, I'm going to You've got my friends gonna be careful not to get your fingers on the ink surface because that will leave a little fingerprint when you turn it over and press. This is a larger piece of papers. You move things out of the way of it, and I'm going to flip this one over and going to possibly do a double. Not sure. I think this one's gonna go here in this corner. And again, I am going to use my pressing tool to get those edges in really good. And if you don't have a pressing tool, just use your paper towel and put a little extra time and pressure onto those edges on. You should be perfectly happy with those results. Nice. I have a print that I'm very happy with now. What I'm going to do is flip it in the opposite direction, and this one's going to come off the page a little bit, which is like any other piece of artwork, perfectly fine. So I'm going to read Inc. Okay, free ink, my hope for one more friend on this one. I'm going to turn the other way and because I said I don't want an inky surface, even though it's protected with my tablecloth, I'm going to put this corner on my paper towel a little bit, and I'm going to this one right here. So part of it is going to come off the edge just a little bit. There we go and have another piece ready, and now I just have my cleaning up to do, and for this one, I'm going to just go back over this one. That was kind of light, and I'm going to try my best to line it up. This is a good way to practice that when you're at this stage, because you'll dio a considerable amount of lining up later on when you layer your colors. I'm going to press that Access Inc and the spot that bad, Actually, not bad. It oft a little bit of oddness in my pressing, but that worked out pretty well. Alright, What I'm going to do now is show you what to do with excess ink. This is a piece of handmade rag paper that I had on hand and you can see that I have some color already on here. And what I had done to get some of that color is to take my Breyer and I could just roll it across. And what I'm doing is using up. I think that might otherwise go down the drain, which is not the best of ideas when you supplies. So this is a good way to use your supply to create some really nice background papers that could be reused again for other projects. Um, I can also take this little corner right here where I didn't put my print. I'm going to stay away from about here on up. But I can do that. Here can a little color doing here? Use up some of my ex. Just have a little scrap for cutting up so lots of ways that you can make use of those extra bits that you have. You can even take your paper and literally press the paper down in two. You're in time, I think so. And pick up. This is just that leftover computer paper from my drawing. I'm just going to press it on my tray and pick up. It's not Inc. So now I've reduced the amount of pink bits on my tray off Breyer and on my little print. And if I wanted to be even more diligent about not sending stuff down the drain, I could take some of it off like this, but you'll find it's pretty sticky and doesn't cooperate the whole lot. So at this point, yes, it does have to go to the sink, and all you need is a little bit of warm water and set it out on a total to dry, and we'll be back in the next lesson to share with you. Had it had the next color 6. Adding Layers of Color: Okay, we're ready to think about a second color. And before we do that, one thing you want to check after you've waited about how I would recommend at least a couple hours in between inks. This feels slightly tacky because it's a little bit humid today. You don't want your ink really wet when you apply the second caller. So depending on the thickness of your ink, you may need to wait an hour or two, and you might even need to wait overnight. Right now, though, I think this could go. It's been about an hour and 1/2 and it feels pretty good. Now. I could decide that I'm going to completely separate the leaf from the flower at this point . Go green here and maybe right red or something here. But I personally, in my work, I like a more subtle sort of transition. So what I'm going to create next is going to be more of ah golden orangey yellow that will still look good if a little bit of it is showing up when I over print the green for the leaf. But I want my flower to go into an orangey red sort of tone from this particular print. So I'm going to mix up my colors in order to create that. So knowing that I'm going to start with my yellows, I'm going to go ahead and do my yellow just like I did the first time. A little bit of white, because I don't want to go really dark too quickly. And because I want to stay in the orange tones, I'm going to add just a little bit of red. And I'm going to start with a very small dab of red to see what I get, Mr Mixing. And my goal is to have kind of a foreign g yellow color, not too dark, not too light, something that would still be believable if it showed up in the edges of a leaf. And you can see the difference pretty clearly up against the yellow that I'd printed first . So for this layer, I am going to completely over print the entire design. So I'm going to put this Thank you. Now, when you're doing this layer, I've got a little bit much in those that tells me that that area has worn down and I'm going to need to take my pen or something in there. Use a toothpick to kind of pull some of that out of there. It means before I go too much further, I'm going to take my pen and deepen those lines Just a little bit. The toothpick will working that out. Now what? I'm going to dio what you want to do here is lying your print up as close to exact as you can. And that's not always easy. I had students when I was teaching elementary and middle school who could do an amazing job of lining their prints up. I was never quite as good as some of them, but I have in place and again I'm moving. Teoh, I'm going to oppressive. Not too bad. I have a little bit here where it didn't quite you can see. It didn't quite line up perfectly, but I am happy with that color. And I liked the way little bits of red pop out here and there. Give it a little bit of variety, so I'm going to go ahead with this and use it on all of my prince. - I do really like that peachy color and I'm seeing just little bits of yellow popping through underneath. So I'm liking that at this point. Now what I'm gonna dio it's time to stop for a moment and wash out my print. What I'm going to Dio is sure with you how to make a little slight change in my print that will alter the way the center of my flowers Look on, my next two prints actually take my scissors and cut out the center of my flower completely for the next couple of prints that I'm going to do with this peach color. So going to trim those out, this could be a little bit challenging. You always need a pair of manicure scissors sometimes if your details are small, but again progress, not perfection, especially when we're doing handcrafted printmaking. This is going to allow a little bit of my first color to remain a part of my design. So I'm just gonna do this little bit. Start with Also, my inks have been used twice, so I need to recreate my peach color. So put some yellow on some white, Yeah, a bit of her head. I may have just a little bit too much ink which in and of itself is not huge problem except that it can cause you to have way too much ink on your roller. And that can cause a lot of clumping in the lines of your image that you may not be totally happy with. So what you can do if that happens, we don't know. You know, it's like I always say, Don't waste your ink. I'm gonna grab a Styrofoam plate and I'm gonna put a little bit of it off onto the plate and put this one aside and I'm going to use this smaller amount first, and I think it needs a teeny bit more yellow. It's looking a little more orange than I like it to look. So I'm gonna bring him a little bit more yellow community to open in YouTube as well. Once you if you find that you like doing this, you can invest in larger tubes, color no past a little bit longer. I think that's pretty good. So now I'm going to roll this one house. I was going to go on this print. I'm going to do the large one that was fully on the page. So what this is going to do well again. Line it up its closest I can to the original print. You can see I have this little opening here. And where that opening ISS, I'm going to retain the yellow that was in the original center of my print. Now there's nothing I can do to put that back, and that's a very tiny piece that was somewhat ruined during the process of cutting it out . So I am forever without that middle section. But that's OK, part of the process. And there we go and you can see I have a little yellow center and I have a very nicely layered print there as well. And I'm going to do the same thing on the other flower. Cool. A little up from the original trade. This one looks a little bit more red coming from the original Trey. I would not have it, and I'm going to again like I did the first time I'm going to lay this on the corner. One nice thing about having ribs imprint on there about having this cutting out going on. It does help you with lining up your print because you can see if the cutouts air lining up properly at this one's not as well lined up, I can already see that it slipped a little, slid a little bit from the I think Have you got slightly off? You can see some yellow coming through there, but all in all looking good, Going to do all the rest of my prints in the same manner using up all that excess ink that I created from my last go round here. You know that one has a crease in the paper. So no, not too wonderful. But that's OK. So I'm going to stop here, and I'm just gonna do a little cleanup with my Breyer and my thanks and a little bit discovered previous paper and maybe grab something else that i e. This is just a piece of computer paper because you just know when you need just a little bit of color for something else that you're doing. So I'm gonna finish up grabbing some of this color to use on other pieces of paper, and I'll be back in the next video to share with you how to separate the leaves from the flower and add their own unique color 7. Add color to the flower petals: it's time to do a little cutting because I'm going to have a very clearly distinct difference in my colors. I'm going to go with some greens from my leaves, and then I'm going to go with a deeper going into a more reddish color for my flowers. So the first thing I'm going to Dio is cut these two pieces apart. I also want to cut out the rest of my middle so that I can leave just a little bit. My color that's underneath, showing through. So I'm going to stick with the same three colors that I was using. I'm going to have my yellow and my right, But this time I'm going to have proportionately more yellow, then white, and I'm going to add a little bit more red as well. I'm going to mix these up, so I want to go considerably darker than what I've been doing. I want to go home or to the Reds, but that bit of yellow and white was going to keep the red going in almost two of a salmon kind of color, orangey red that I think will look good with the colors that I already have so that's rather nice. It's not a huge contrast, though, So I want to have a little bit more red in that. A bit more contrast we have here. I think this might do it right here. We've got certainly spread going in with that. I'm liking that it's red without being a pure red because it has that yellow mixed in. So I think that's going to work. And I'm going to start with this one, which is sort of my almost like you ever call it a test to see how I like it if it's all gonna be working the way I wanted it to. So I'm going to roll out some of this very pretty. Oh, I like that nice color that I'm here and seeing my prince wearing down just a little bit. So I'm going to get my toothpick out, get that bad and for this Now that I've got it like this, I'm going to just be lining up my flower. His best is that it could line it up, and it does help. Now I have the center cut out, so it's kind of helps helps with seeing where that needs to go, and I'm going to put this on a paper towel. And I like that right. That has a nice, bright, bright look to it kind of pop somehow purple as well. Go to my word. My word picture here. - And of course, now I've used my in tray in my print twice, but I still have plenty of ink, and my print looks pretty good. Styrofoam looks OK, so I'm going to see if I can pull one more out of this. But notes are it has a little It's a little bit off in spots, but all in all, you like it. Now I am going to take a moment to go rinse off this little guy because it's kind of over overdone with the inks. And I'm gonna just press it on this rolled off paper right? Was rolling off, I think, from my last round, and I'm just gonna use it up on here. Make a light little floral print. These can be kind of fun later when you just need a little bit of a light print for a background for something else that you're doing. So keep that. That looks nice and I'm gonna go wash this up. Okay? I'm behalf with a clean being piece of Styrofoam to finish this print, and I still have plenty of ink on my tray, so I don't need to remix. And if that and this is the one that's off the corner. So once again, I will line this up on my paper towel before I print, and we have another. So I have three this double on the Lillard's and my original one, and I do still have a little bit of ink. And I do still have that when I was doing on the purple. Although it this side isn't so good, this side is still nice. So I'm going to go ahead and use this last little bit up, and you don't actually kind of nice. And the colors came through really nicely, so I'm happy with that. Go ahead and just use up the last little bits here on this one. That's me. Not quite perfect. I don't have very much income this so it's going to be a much lighter prince, right? There you go. And I pretty much used up my ink have just a little bit of ink left on things. So I content. Use it after a little bit. And you can keep savior Styrofoam pieces because they can be used in other ways. That's definitely used up quite nicely. You'll be able to use it in other ways, so there's no need to get rid of it. Okay, I would hang on to it, save it for other projects because you can wait. So now my thinks they're all used up and I'm ready to mix up some green, put my leaves on, and my prince will be finished. 8. Add color to the leaves: okay, Time to review a little color theory. Since we're going to be doing green and I don't have any green ink in this box, I'm going to make use of the good old art school color. Real lesson knowing that yellow and blue we're going to give me a green. So here's my yellow and I need to blue and I'm going to start with just a small amount of blue and see what I get. I want kind of a nice bright green rather than a dark, heavy green. You can add white to lighten this, but one of the things that you'll notice when you do add whites to a color like this grain , it's going to flatten the color a little bit. This is one that had some, White added. You can see that the color is similar, but it's been flattened out a little bit. So for right now, I'm thinking I might I might flatten it a little bit. That's a little bit right for what I'm doing. So I'm gonna take just a dab of white. - This is a little trick you can dio if you wanna have a little bit of that background color showing, but you don't really want to cut out great ragged areas. I'm taking the handle end of a paintbrush, and I'm simply pressing. Ah, wider gouge in the center of the leaf. And I'm going to see if that will give me the effect that I want with my leaves. Because when I'm going for is a little bit more of the golden peachy color under me, And this might be a way to get it, but still have it be somewhat soft. So done that. So for right now, I'm just going to do that. And I'm going to have a little color. This is why we do so many prints when we print make. Because there's always going to be something that you want to change. That isn't quite the way you'd hoped, Penso. You want to change it out a little bit? I'm gonna try this one right here on this image that had the increase in it. Just so that I can see if I'm going to like this. See if it will do. Okay. There. I'm getting a little more of what I was looking for a little bit more of my background color is showing through, and that gives it a little more interest color wise on that, I could even if I wanted to. I could even press in a little bit on the tip, sketching a sketchy little press in. And that's going to change the way the ink goes on as well, cause it's going to add a little bit of texture, which could be interesting as well, because they think will be on there just a little bit different in that area. So it's kind of like sketching into it just a little bit pressing it down. And I don't know what this is going to do exactly that. Why not try? You can see little bits of there might be a little bit of a texture on that leaf. Put that on here. Now, mind you wants you to do something like this. It's done. There's really no way to go back. I had some creative students in my middle school classes trying to figure out what used to do that they don't usually work through well, and there we have a little bit of texture in my life so I could do some different things two leaves, but that I like a little bit of texture, a little bit of pattern. And I'm getting a little bit of that golden color going through it. So that one I'm happy with, I'm gonna finish up here with these last two. And then in the next video, I will talk to you a little bit about your project. Because now that we have the prince to this stage, colors have been layered. You could push this still further if you wanted to buy taking away more sections and layering yet another color. I usually don't. This usually works for me, and I'm pretty happy with the results. But you can if you want Teoh still push it further. I could see possibly cutting away the two smaller leaves and changing the color of the large leaves. Be one possibility. That might be interesting. I just finished. And the original My word, Pan. I'm pretty happy with the results here. I'm going to clean up and I'll meet you in the next video 9. Your Project: project for this class is very open ended. You can create use your share with us your rolled off backgrounds. Sometimes when you're just cleaning off a print and cleaning off your roller, you can get some beautiful backgrounds that are very inspirational to someone else who might be looking at your work or share your print that you've done on a just a piece of paper. This one was the one that I demonstrated with on the just road scrapbooking paper or take some of your own paper. This one just had some water color swirls all over it, and I used only the flower petals and overlapped the colors. And then I took a little piece of Styrofoam and created this little middle section that I printed and stamped on top. So do things like that that it could be really fun. This is the same basic idea. I took some wet watercolor paper and splattered it with purple and yellow liquid watercolors printed on it, and I like that that really turned out well. This is an example of a print that I'm not totally happy with because I had some blurring of the EEGS. The details are not real clear. The center is kind of all one color. So I'm going to take my Cray pas oil pastels, and I could do a little bit of added work on these and bring out some of the details that weren't showing up so well. I can and lines shading the background on this just never has really been something. I was particularly found up, so I'm going to snip it away. Using my fancy scissors is my students used to call them. - I have this cut out and I can actually doesn't quite fit on there. But I have my other papers that I created so I could possibly put this into another piece of artwork, Glue it down later, add it to something else. Maybe it will end up on my map as part of a picture. Uh, maybe it will end up kind of stands out really nicely on there. So I can mess around with all the different papers that I created over the course of this project and possibly come up with Now those don't work. It doesn't really show much. Maybe my just sewed music. So lots of possibilities when you're putting your final project together 10. Wrapping it up!: you for checking out the skill share class. I'll be looking forward to seeing your project really soon. And if you have any things that you've learned experiments that you've been successful with or tips to share with the other class class community, please don't hesitate to put that information in our discussion threat. Ask your questions. Share what you've learned. Let me know if there's something I could do to make this class a better experience for the next person who joins the class. And if he really did enjoy this class, please give me a review and passed my link along to a friend or family member who might also be interested in learning more about adding some Styrofoam printmaking to their mixed media artwork. For now, though, put down that screen, get out your art supplies and just play. Remember even Albert Einstein that great scientists said play is the greatest form of research. I see So