Abstract Art for your wall in seven simple steps

1. Hello: way. Hello, I'm Gabriella Buckingham. I'm an artist and illustrator. I live in the UK today. I'd like to encourage you to paint the EU through painting your first abstract piece. Of course, you may wish to simply paint from something that you see on abstract it That's entirely up to you. We're going to go through subject matter a step five or possibly step six. I get lost anyway. It's actually quite a simple course. I'm just trying Teoh encourage you to think about various things before you start your work so that you have the best chance off coming up with something that you really taste with. I want you to feel really free when you do this work, not worrying about trying to earn money from it or anyone else thinks it's for you to experiment with. You may want to do incredibly busy abstract or something very, very simple. This piece behind me here looks clipped, simple and what it is. It is quite simple. Um but you see me paint it and you will see the site problems that I had with it. Onda Also, I paint this one a swell on camera. I'd actually already started this painting before I before I began recording. So I don't get into the preparation off the campus. And that's actually a bit of birch plywood anyway. But, um, I don't go into preparation because in my previous class, I very much did go into preparation of surfaces. And in fact, if you're watercolor artist, I have got a very short course about stretching watercolor paper. But then again, if you're watercolor watches, you probably Ordina has to do that. So just let's move. Um um, anything else asked me any questions you like throughout the course. If you get stuck on something, you can't quite make up your mind about which colors to use or which composition you prefer , then get in touch. I'm here on the skill share every other day or so. Andi, if you want to contact me on Instagram, then please do because I'm there every day at some point and I will see your message. I put all my details in notes to have a look at those, and you'll also find notes there on color and composition. Teoh, Um what else? Oh, yes. If you have got Pinterest account, it might be helpful to look at the boards I'm going to be going through on your own and then pick out the images that really spoke to you so that you got your own reference to draw from when you're deciding on your compositions on working out what sort of colors you've been to use etcetera on. The other thing to say is that there's nothing wrong in this instance. In copying another artist's work, you're welcome to copy either of my pieces. That's fine. And I think I've in my Pinterest boards. A few of my pieces dio come up, so you're welcome to take an inspiration from those copying other peoples. Were is fine if all you're doing is creating something for yourself and you're learning from it. What is not fine is if you post the work of your own on social media or anything like that , or try to sell it without crediting the artist and saying that it's a you know, a copy off their work. So just bear that in mind other than that you please just do whatever you like. Make your own replica of some fantastic piece of abstract art. Nothing wrong with that stool. If you enjoy the course, I'd be so grateful if you'd leave me a good review. That be fantastic. Thank you very much. And do you check out my other classes as well? If they have any interesting, that is so only the course. Step one. How large is your artwork going to be? 2. Step 1 - How large will you paint?: you'll see from these pieces of mine that abstract work and come in all shapes and sizes. I personally amused, working fairly small, having worked as an illustrator for nearly 30 years. So working larger than you would normally is exciting step to take for this particular course. I'm hoping that you feel a sense of freedom because what you're going to be doing is just for you what you should forget about potential clients or worrying about whether or not you're influenced by other people. This abstract is tiny, but it looked really, really sweet in a small room or as part of a display of lots of other work of, of a variety of sizes if you're used to working. But that sort of size, then to make a leap up to this sort of size or even larger might seem enormous. So perhaps you might want to start with this sort of scale. This is a canvas that's 30 centimeters by 30 centimeters. This one here, the purposes of this course I'm gonna be working on this scale. It's a gesso panel that is 16 inches of 16 inches. Andi, I really like this one because well, For one thing, it's birch plywood, so that means it hasn't got a lot of GIF. It's lovely paint on. If you're going to be scratching off on playing with texture, this is actually already guess owed. It comes, it says On here. It's a fine tooth surface that's delicate, delicate enough for glazing and detail, but tough enough for the most rigorous painting techniques. It's got on acid free effect. The critic Gesso Ground, which is lightly textured without it to tell you white. No preparations required. This one is a piece that I painted last week on. I actually put my own guess I want it as well, because this on the prepared surface, it's quite a uniform texture, and I wanted something a little bit more interesting. This has a great pattern because there's actually another painting underneath this. So that's something else. Very mind. If you've got work lying around that you're not happy with on you don't really know what to do with it. Perhaps pobre even paint over it, and you don't even have to cover it with white. You can use the color that's there already as part of your design. It really depends on what you come up with. This piece here is a work in progress. It was clearly a still life, a semi abstract still life, because you can tell exactly what everything is about from areas in the background, I would say, and I don't want to change that. Too much was, I love how it looks. It's 60 centimeters by 60 centimeters on a deep canvas, probably about an inch deep, maybe an inch and 1/2. Andi, It's very different from working on the birch plywood because it does have give Andi. I've worked in a much more fluid way on the paint is thinner and again this has got this piece has got a lot of under painting. It's actually had maybe three different paintings underneath it before I've settled on this fourth piece because of its size is not the sort of size that would dominate an entire wall unless in a small room that it would work really well. I used to live in a Victorian flat in London, and we had those cast iron, narrow fireplaces and I can imagine it above. One of those is just the perfect size for that, but If you got an imposing mental peace that you want to do a peaceful, then I would suggest that you need a canvas. It's at least a meter across. Let's have a look at my Pinterest board art on walls so that you can see seven different scale artwork either being worked home or on the walls. Andi. It might inspire us to the sort of scale that you want to work at. You can see here the third picture along off at the top, an artist working on several pieces at once. You can find out who she is if you go to the board and click on the picture. But that is a great way to build up a cohesive body of work. If you've got a thing and you're not just doing this purely for a one off, and that was a great way to build a collection. And also it's a really good way. I'm not being too inhibited. If you can afford to get yourself several campuses and work on a few at once from your sketches, then it's a very effective way working on the far right. I don't know if this is the artist, but probably is, you can see how an enormous wall has been covered by some quite large paintings and some very much smaller ones. Don't be afraid of just sticking with the size that you're happy with if you're if you're more of a realistic painter, but you've never, never experimented with abstract at all, then you might want to have a go at doing something mawr familiar to you in terms of scale but very, totally different technique or subject matter. Whatever you feel most comfortable with, it's just fun to push yourself into something. But larger. I've discovered you might want to go for a collection off medium sized pieces. You can see here on the far right, the young artist with her very graphic, semi abstract work. A set of three, which was really well. In fact, it is not such a three is. It's too, and she's drawing an incredible pattern, only actual wall. The picture in the middle shows one of my favorite artists, Elaine Pentathlon, with a medium piece on an easel. On a much larger piece in the background, you can see she works in all sorts of sizes, all sorts of scales. This particular piece of an easel would look fantastic in a intimate bedroom above a chest of drawers or something like that on a dark navy wool. That's just my taste, I guess I could imagine it there that it would sort of glow and be the focal point of the room. So perhaps you want to go for something that size, which I think it is more manageable if you're not used to large scale work. The image next to it was obviously enormous. Andi was quite corporate looking. There's no off your subject matter at all, but it goes very much with the surroundings with the deck or on the the graze on the blacks of the leather. I don't what sort of home you've got that something else to consider. If you're going to make something to your living room, have a look at your colors in your living room and maybe think about using some of the accent colors. The artist over there on the left. I would say it's more of a naive, impressionistic style rather than abstract, but again it shows you how different scales of work can look beautiful together. So don't get too hung up about it. I just want to help you make a decision about what you're gonna go for. This one on the far right is quite tiny, really. For a space like that, I wouldn't normally go for something quite so small. But that's quite a interesting shape of our work is quite unusual. Maybe you've got a canvas unusual shape lying around that you might want to use. These two at the bottom right are by Lola Donahue, who's a quite a famous young abstract artist. And I think looking at them, they're probably roughly the same size, which I think is quite if you want to scale up. But you don't want to go sit for something as large is that then that size is really good. It's about a about a meter by meter. I think it's very is imposing enough to fill a wall, or rather, to become a focal point and you don't need and the other pieces around it. This piece on the far left is quite small for a small wall, and it, but it's a beautiful focal point. It works really well with the warmth off the red wood table on the softness of the cream lamp shade. I love this one on the fall left again, said Someone's studio. It's absolutely massive. I've never worked on anything that large myself. But I do hope to one day, and you can just see the joy of energy and fun that artist had. So think about the atmosphere that you want to convey with your paintings. Well, do you want to be sophisticated A bit like the one on the third? So in the middle, I was gonna say That's a sophisticated palate, but the imagery itself is really joyful and quite naive. You can see that it's a bird, it's flowers, so it's not a pure abstract, but it's definitely abstracted. It's simplified and it's very graphic, actually, so you might want to consider that sort of style. I'm going to go on to show you some other abstract styles shortly. So there we are. I hope that's giving you an idea off the sort of scale of work you're going to make 3. Step 2 - What style of abstract art appeals to you most?: looking at this Pinterest board that I've made about abstract art, I hope will help you decide what approached abstract. So you want to take in your own work off these images? I wonder what you'd have on your wall. The top left image shows incredibly simple abstracts, pure color, changing in depth, slightly on form. They're actually made more interesting by the inclusion of the sculpture underneath. Slightly to the right and lower Dell is another very stylish and calm abstract off to irregular shapes. These combined to create a darker third shape. Do simple graphic shapes attract you? Perhaps that is something that you want to create. Put on your They are deceptively simple. This particular image could have been made purely on computer, so it would be interesting to experiment and see the effects he could get. You could create a couple of simple shapes like that in paint and send them back, and you get an incredible color over lack, Andi other and some of the background color coming through as well. So that's something to consider, right at the other end of the scale of obstruction, this Elaine Pantaloon piece, the 2nd 1 along in which we know clearly what everything is, has a charming simplification and distortion of elements on the use of flat color with texture. Lanes also painted the landscape next of still life. The mark making on distillation of what she saw is delicious. This is probably right up there 11 way, one my favorites in this whole board. It's more abstract than her still life on the far right you can see a monochrome piece by Gerhard Richter is really concerned only with mark making and tone is impossible to tell what inspired it. It really leaves that here to interpret what they see for me, if you look closely, there are fine lines in triangular shapes, and this does seem to be inspired by mountainous like landscape, perhaps similarly to police is below and to the left of this one, take a similar approach only with color. I find it harder to interpret these, but I imagine they, too, are inspired by sense of space and landscape. And there's a three other landscapes there which are more clearly landscapes but still very much abstract. As we scroll down, I've chosen some passion like abstracts. A couple very clearly inspired by flowers. Onda Glorious riot around it forms on the far right that have wonderful color and could be inspired by almost anything. If I look closely at it, I see furniture and plugs were computer most. It has a deceptively naive look about it. I love its clarity. It's very different to one of mine on the far left, which is purely about color and mark making. That was a piece I did on a piece of a four paper. It's something that I intend to in large at some point and see if I can create something in those colors and achieve the same sort of effect on a large scale. You could use collage in your work. See this so collage like elements in the one the 3rd 1 along here? Well, they I suspect that that was done on the computer. We look here. You can see columns use on the far right on this plant, sharp cut out edges of paper stuck over more expressive painting could look amazing or even sharp pieces. Or even you could even paint some expressive, colorful painting on pieces of paper and cut those up to create interest in your work if your key interest is in color, but you're finding it hard to settle on the subject or uncomfortable without a subject, and using geometric shapes could be a perfect way to explore those relationships. You look at the piece on the far left, which uses primarily triangles. It makes a very strong design, and yet it explores variations of tone and shade within orange itself. Letters are abstract shapes. You could design something that includes a phrase or is based only on letter shapes. Here's an example. You can see what it is. It's a rainbow, but it's no rainbow colors. It's very much, um, subtracted from in that way and has a no you feel but uses lettering. And still, life is a great subject matter. For obstruction. You can choose a few objects that you love. Paint those in the way you know, Happy fool. You might only want to paint the shadows. They make all search for the color bouncing around the old objects. We'll make a tonal painting. We'll take a much more illustrative approach to still life, as Elaine Pantaloon does. I invite you to look through this board and choose your favorites to inspire you. Ask them to your own board. We'll make screenshots to refer to when designing your piece. I adore this cute yellow chunky floral. Where is it? Just keep going down. Bye, Mrs Yuko Goto No, Mizuki Gatto. It's a total contrast to this incredibly detailed piece. A bit low down this one here on the far left. It's a work by I don't know how to say this. You get canned incredibly detailed. Andi must have been hours and hours, days of work in that piece. I'm not sure what size it is that I'm sure if you click on it, you can find out a lot more about her. Well, now you must have seen the huge range within abstract work, from semi realistic through to pure marks or color that completely relies on interpretation . What's exciting is that abstract work allows you to concentrate on what you feel well, what you feel is important rather than having to describe everything as it appears, what is important to you and your art. We're in this instance for this class. What do you want to see on your wall as this piece is just for you that I don't hesitate in saying that. Don't be afraid to copy someone else's work. You can learn so much from doing that. You could choose a piece here. If there's something that really draws you and try to emulate it, use the colors. Use the style, even the composition, and create yourself a wonderful piece of artwork that you're delighted with on that is an incredible piece of learning for you only do that if you've got no intention of selling it or passing it off as your own work crews. Now let's go on to look at color and tone. 4. Step 3 - What colours will you use?: you may not be into color. You might want to go purely monochromatic to sit your monochrome home. But if not, then to help you choose the colors you're going to use in your composition, look at your home Onda. We've decided you're going to cite your work. Is it a dark room? Do you want your piece to blend in with your deck or or pop out like a flame? If you're new to painting a new, too abstract work, I'd suggest keeping things simple. Choose three or four colors that looked good together, plus white to mix in off these colors. Choose one that has a dark tone to it so that you were able to use some of that mix into the other covers. Bahir Variety of Shades Look at the top left palette here. This is not what by Dan Reeves All the colors are soft and muted, and there's a variety of tone. The warmest color, the pale pink probably has a similar tone to the pale grey. If you were to scan this in as a black and white image, there'd be similar tones. Yet the pink pops out due to the contrast of the two darks beneath it. If the artist had stroked this pink over the pale grey, then it wouldn't have any impact. That's not to say you can't lay a similar tone. Similar tones next to each other. Look, rest ful, and we all need a place to rest our eyes, particularly if you're painting for a living room space. Look a Elaine pantaloons. Still, life next to this with a lemon, not huge amounts of darks here it has a gentle atmosphere on her. Use of the purplish gray really sets off the lemon yellow, using tones of complementary colors. In this case, yellow and purple is a great way to make a painting vibrant yet harmonious At the same time . Because she's not used bright colors, she's used muted variations and complementary colors. If you want to knock back a yellow, for example, you can simply add a little bit purple to it, and I'll be much darker. Similarly, you can make it lighter and softer. If you had white, you might want to choose a couple of sets of complementary colors. Teoh to begin with, just to experiment with a darker color and a white and play around and see what colors you can create. Just with his limited palate, you can vary the tones using the white and your choice of dark color. I hesitate to say Use black because I personally don't it can be a bit deadening if you're using it as a mixing color, you could have two complementary colors and 1/3 say, for example, you chose green and red. You may choose a bright red, a bright green onda, a deeper follow blue, which is a greeny blue as your dark and use those three colors to combine to create as many different shades with each other on the addition of white. For this project, I want you to have fun I don't need to worry about Is this a tertiary color is a second recover any of that. I'm going to cover that in a separate course at some point. See what colors grab you here for this project. I wanted to have fun, and if you spot a colorful combination that you celebrate over here, see if you can mix up those colors, put them next to each other in different combinations in your sketchbook so you can see which ones are rest ful on which make each other pop from the others. Here, you can see how the bright but pale yellow orange really sings against the cool blue gray of the road. Hot colors will always contrast recall colors, and this is a complementary combination that makes that even stronger. These colors are a bit further down there, mainly wall pinks, reds, browns and golds. But there are cooler, dark blue shades and pale cool grey in some of the photographic imagery, these contracts that balance and depth to the colors. Look at the interesting color on this budgie really cool yellow minty green lifted by the warm orange beak and the bright, coupled blue, which in relation to the mint green looks hot. This is a really fresh color palette. If you've decided that you want a deep, rich color palette for your abstract painting, this forever floral palette on the right side off center is really deep and strong is lifted by the white poppy, which draws your eye. But also you can see how beautifully the orange off the unopened poppy really glows against that lovely purple e blue in the background again. Another use of complementary colors, but the different tones so much, much deeper blue than the direct opposite, complementary off the of the pale or bright orange. Let's go down a bit further if you look at the image on the left. The origin purple of the ceramic bowls is tempered with a pale warm pink on the olive green of the table, and it makes a really interesting palate, perhaps with tiny amounts of that scarlet red. You can see how the spoon glows against the green as it's complimentary color. The green is no, again, is not a direct complimentary to my eye. It has some red in it. Therefore, it's darker than the spoons direct opposite in it. But it's more harmonious and deeper because of that. This retro palate, just off center to the right, is, um, is fun. It's sort of sweet color palette. If you look at the photographs, you can get an idea off the neutrals that was set these colors off Chocolate brown would look amazing with that. It's kind of say, chosen or deep dove grey for something cooler. It's key to have neutrals in your color palettes. This pumpkin image shows three neutral shades of the gorgeous deep rusty brown. This would make a great color palette for those of you that prefer car muted color but with a bit of warm. Look how many variations of pink there are in this stack of books and see how the dark green of the leaves sets them off. Green and pink is lovely combination. You've also got quite up neutral shades. In that photograph, you got cream. Andi is probably black, but you could use a deep bluey brown instead of black. If you're like me and you want to avoid using black tonal contrast is another way of making elements come to the foreground. This paper crown that the dark haired women is wearing stands out from the image farm or that it would on a fair head woman. The dark red on be mine prevents the image from being too gentle or in separate. I love these two moths images, one of the left just for its color, and the image on the right shows how the very saccharine yellow and pink combination could be strengthened or prevented from being too saccharine by the purple gray of the branch and the deep green of the background. Look at these colors on that stunning hummingbird. Nature is absolutely incredible. Of course, you can go and find your own images, and you probably already got your own Pinterest board with coming on it. So this is an opportunity to look through your own boards. Onda Pick some really unusual color. What color ways that you practice never tried before to continue looking through my board of any boys that you have and choose at least two or three favorite color combinations. Love how this red pops from the from the blue green of the background. That's really strong. Okay, so have a good look through on then. I would like you to take those kind of that you chose and just play with them in your sketchbook before you even create your composition. What kind of something that you find difficult. You can read the notes, which I'm going to attach with a simple picture of the color wheel and that will show you in basic terms. What colors complement each other. So you've just got something in front of you, obviously there in front at shades of each color, so bear that in mind. If you understand nothing else, know that complement complementary colors intensify each other. For example, two shades of red next to each other will appear softer and even muted, depending on the shade. But put one of the roads next to agree on the red will look redder on the green, greener in real life, for example, a brown eyed women will look better in blue eye shadow. Then a blue eyed woman would and vice versa. Next, we'll look at composition and subject matter. 5. Step 4 - Elements of composition to bear in mind: There are lots of elements to consider when you're thinking about composition. I think we're such a visual society now that much of this is subconscious. So don't get hung up about having to think about all the eight elements before you create a piece of work. I'm going to mention as many of the of the elements a zai can as I go through my Pinterest board here. But I also make sure that I addressed them in some notes that you can download. Unity is important. It's simply whether or not the elements of a painting look as if they belonged together. What is one element? Look as a place. The glowing painting on the far right has the harmony of three figures read across all the figures on the bright blue sky, which is the focus, one of the elements just touching each other as if linking them together. The dark areas a color draw your eye across the canvas from Figure two, figure up, down and up again. This painting has all eight elements of good painting, one of which, first, though, eh static subject is movement by the angle off the red bench. It's perspective on the echoing like shape of the figure in the front, your eye is very much lead up to the blue sky. Balance is a very interesting element to composition. It can create a harmonious painting or unsettling one. If it's not there, imagine the second painting on the phone left. Imagine that without the figures arm outstretched, you'd want to scoop the woman up and moving near the center. The arm grounds the women to the painting. I can't decide what the focal point is, but there can be more than one, and I think that's the case here. Look below and you'll see a painting that has incredible movement and is less balanced. It's saved by that crucial mid pencil shaped that looks as though it's journeyed from the far left. I think that the geometric composition under the three girls on the phone right there looks unbalanced, particularly with a strong, heavy black contrast. Another one of the elements to one side near the left edge. I'm sure this must be deliberate. There's a lot more space on the right is much lighter. Unfortunately, the right hand edge has been cut off, so you can't quite appreciate it. But do you look at my Pinterest board for the full effect? It does have rhythm, another earthy elements of composition. It has it through its repetition off triangular shapes on pattern with the repeating color values. The dark abstract here on the far left has a great sense of depth and movement through its leading lines, the edges of the field and the subsequent tilt of the horizon. There's a feel of perspective and your eyes led around by flashes of Kabul blue. I think it's really delicious, this one. Printers that have a central focus and obvious Bannon's have a calm feel. Do you look at it, this pink one on the on the left. There are also there to vertical pink lines, either side at different heights. This gives a sense of movement and containment at the same time. The deceptively simple abstract to the right, with three horizontal panels on three smaller shapes on a neutral background by William Scott, is a large painting. It's nearly two meters across, and so clearly illustrates the rule of thirds, possibly even the golden mean. It has strong proportion, one of the key elements. Because of this, the relationship of the big and small, the near and far, and I explain the golden mean in the notes that you can print out. But the rule third is about more simple. If you mentally divide your surface into threes story into thirds. Both ways, the intersection of all the lines are pleasing areas. Place key elements. This piece places key elements between the lines. Perhaps the falling pale Grey stone is exactly on an intersection, though. Either way the composition where it's beautifully I really like this, like to slip off the edges, edges off the panels as if reaching out to cushion the falling stone, trying to contain it. If the top Navy blue panel where as short as the black ones, then this painting would definitely look out of moments. The square pink, biased abstract just lower on the left, uses the rules of thirds if you analyze it not religiously, but enough to make it interesting, pleasing composition. Don't be afraid to copy one of these works for yourself as before, this one here is a great example off all over pattern. That's probably the strongest pattern, and movement will be the strongest elements of this particular composition. There is the most important things. There's an energy, a sort of a slight tilt to the right, on a lot of contrast, with the deep, dark tone off the background and the light right, happy colors on the foreground. And there's a great contrast in terms of line. Andi more blocky shapes as well. If you go through the rest of the board, you can click on more information. If you want to know about the golden ratio, for example, scroll down here. Well, this one here is a great example. Off movement and using direction. We're using lines of perspective on different angles. To make a composition incredibly dynamic. You can see here a diagram off the rule of thirds on a tool narrow grey shape. As you're looking at these, I hope you're getting confirmation of your subject matter. Do you want to paint an abstract landscape? A Still life? Here's one by Alain Pantsil on with elements going off the edge. But notice the two viewpoints. You can see that lanes painted the flask straight home, and then she's painted the cup and saucer. That Go also goes off the edge from a different angle looking down on it. And we've got three elements of red here to which leads the eye around Andi. The person like background balances out the fact that the foreground goes right off the edge of the painting. Maybe you want to do something more geometric, organic, something more like this section here that has no obvious relationship to the real world. Now onto your sketches. 6. Step 5 - What is your subject?: I know. I said it was time for you to get on with your sketches, but I wanted to say a bit more about subject matter because I want this to be simple and fun for you. Don't wait to be struggling. Thank you. Watch like paint. Think about where you're going. Time this piece, something that you hang in the bedroom is gonna have very different atmosphere from something that you hang in the kitchen. So, for example, in the kitchen, you might want to. If you're some other enjoys painting from life, you might want to choose five very different contrast in bits of kitchen equipment or utensils or even fruit and vegetables. All very different scales on bond sizes and colors and arrange them in a lovely composition . Paint directly from life. If you're painting for your bedroom, you may very much want to paint something incredibly abstract that doesn't have any representation of objects at all. It could be pure color. You think about math, Mark Rothko. You just did blocks of color on glowing of emerging strikes from behind. That was never figurative. But I don't know enough about him to say what Earth he was feeling or thinking, but I'm sure that was quite a lot of thought behind it. And he chose color to represent emotion on the weight off remarks that he made. Where he divided his painting up probably represented different emotions. Different importance off feeling. Andi he reaches in colors. That meant certain emotions to him. So, for example, in the bedroom you might want to use reds and pinks. ALS the passionate colors that we associate with love, perhaps with a little bit of contrast with a set of steely grey blue or something to represent time times. When is no all roses because it never is. You could paint something incredibly private because this is just for you. It may even be a cathartic exercise for you. But the point is, if it's abstract and you're simplifying everything down or creating your own symbols for your feelings, nobody else needs to understand it. You're not revealing everything about yourself, particularly if you if you take those feelings and you construct a composition that works well in terms of what we've discussed in the composition section, think about what you're most interested in. If you like painting from life then perhaps find Cem favorite objects to paint limited to three or five but have some sort of relationship. But they're all quite different shapes and arranging them in front of you and trying out different sketches. I've got some examples here off little sketches I did on just a own A four paper Andi. I try experimented by. I closed in on a zoomed in, visually on a shell on this one. And then the same show does appear here on a much more zoomed out image. And I was just playing around with different compositions like this. And you can see I've tried in this particular case, I get more rectangular because that's just what my sketchbook is like. But if you know you're going to be painting on a square, then draw yourself some outlines like this in square ships. Where form. Get your objects Onda. Arrange them in different ways and think about how you might crop them at the edge. If you would even do that, what do you? Can you zoom in on things or whether you're going to make things incredibly simple? No realistic tool, but just use that line off the object on the and then you'll see what I mean when we go into the next bit, because I show you how I treated this in paint. So that's another way to do to get started even before you do and painting. Sometimes it's easier to do a few of those and then pick out maybe two or three that you feel with your most successful compositions. And then you can take your colors that you want to use on. Play around in your sketchbook following those compositions, rather than spending a lot of time trying to compose with paint before you've even really thought about it. If you like the idea of doing abstract landscape and you could pop out with your sketchbook on, find view that that stops you in your tracks. Work out. What is it that that's so great about? This is the angles. Is it the tone ality, the different colors that you see the shapes of the trees the way the wind blows them and change their angles? Makes a really strong sketches in black and white and maybe just some color notes. You could take a photograph, of course, but just don't rely on painting from the photograph because that can often lead to too much realism. Andi. Too much detail where there doesn't need to be any. So you have to really analyze what it is about that landscape that you're interested in. So I think that is the beauty off. Abstract work is that you can paint. You have more freedom to paint, how you feel. What most important thing about what you're seeing is, if you're someone that likes pure cover and in some sense is it's it's more of an academic exercise. You then just need to choose the forms that you're going to to put the color on TV if you like, so you've got. It's a slightly easier job in some ways in that you really do need to concentrate on composition. Andi, think about the weight off the shapes that you're going to put onto your canvas, not just the weight. The the difference in scale. Andi how dark colors recede on like colors come forward. Are they going to overlap? What kind of relationship of these shapes going to have? Make sure your shapes are sufficiently different, whether that's in tone of color or shapes themselves on the scale. If you If you like storytelling with your painting, you can use evidences of everything. Andi, make one of those wonderful paintings that has so much detail. Andi, you could you pay for many houses, abstract people, stars, whatever, whatever. You could make something incredibly pattern like and really rich and full of imagery, something it might take you quite a long time to finish, but would be a great talking peace. You could just paint a feeling. Think about what you're trying to convey, what room your work's going to be in, how you want to feel in that room. What do you want to be thinking about? As you look at a painting? Andi, what colors would can't convey that feeling. If you want to feel relaxed, you're gonna want to shoes. Com soft colors, perhaps with a little bit contrast. If you want to feel joyful on energize, you can watch his warm colors probably yellow as your primary color. I mean by primary didn't mean bright ever. I mean the main color, the main focus color would be would probably be yellow, and again, you need to think about how what the light is like in your room, actually a swell. That's the other thing. If it's a very gloomy room, depending on what you want, you're going to need. You're either going to want to paint quite a a bright, neutral inspection colors. By that, I mean lights, colors that come that pop out or you're gonna want to paint something very rich and deep. But with a bill losing a contrast that leaps out at you. That leaps out at you like hot pink and red. Um, that sort of thing. And I didn't show you some of those example. But, like in the culture section, Oh yes, and the other thing materials. If you're scaling up, you're gonna need to use bigger brushes. I go through all the materials I currently use in one of my previous classes. It's the longest class, but you can easily go into there's a I think that's a section in there that's just says materials you'll need. And just watch that. I think it's last about 10 minutes, and I go through everything. But I have since then I bought a few larger brushes, comes on to a bigger so if you haven't got anything. Launch Then just use the largest precious that you have and choose your canvas eyes accordingly. OK, I hope you have a low to fund doing this. And I'm really looking forward to seeing what you come up with. Get to the stretching. 7. Step 6 - Sketch out some mini paintings: I would recommend that you get your sketchbook. Andi, start to make some many paintings, use the colors you think you're going to use. Try a few different variations. Andi. Create many versions of what you might scale up. Obviously, Now you've decided what shape your artworks going to be, whether it's gonna be square, rectangular or possibly even circular. Then you can mask, often area or just draw a simple frame in pencil on and create your composition within that this is marked one of my sketchbooks. And I'm currently doing the 100 day projects this April under when you're watching this. But I created this in April 2019 on. That was very first when I did. This is probably my absolute favorite, and I think it would look fantastic on watercolor paper, but I am actually going to try to replicate it on a piece off birch plywood, and I know that I'm gonna have to create a background color to place this on. So I have to make a decision about that, and I'll do some little sketches for myself in paint that doesn't love you on White. It may be that I do a darkest gray and then paint white on top of that. Before then, use these colors. This is actually a critic, but I very much use it in a gentle wars cut away. So it will be a challenge, and I don't know if it's gonna work, but that is the fun of this, this one. Here, you can see lend itself farm or easily to canvass piece or something in the paper, because there's lots of texture in this one and scratching out. This is one of my favorites. Andi, I'll show you how I'm going to create this. I still have the same problem in that This is obviously a white background, so you'll see a bit later. What I do with that. This one was really about color. It ended up looking like a bit of an abstract landscape with strange trees. But I do love these quite acid pink with the acid yellow on the rich petrol blue. This one I loved because I used a brush that's very new to me. It's a dagger brush, and it has that very tapered Ferriol there, and when it's wet, it creates his lovely, strong and quite sharp long triangles, ribbon shapes, but I really enjoy doing You're welcome to have a look at my 100. A project has got the longest hash tag you from B Ever heard, I trust, if I can remember it, it's exploring abstracts through color and marks. It may be abstract through color and marks, obviously, if you if you follow me on Instagram, which is just my name Gabriella Buckingham, you can easily see that. But what I tried to do for everything I did, I photographed what I did alongside the implements. I used to do it so that will help people if they want to turn replicates. A similar of effect. These two are quite similar in approach is just lots of layers of color on again with this one. I had a quite unusual tool here, a robbery. So the brush, it's called Catalyst by Princeton. You fancy doing some very regular stripes and scratching through your work, then that is a great tool to have another approach you can have. You may have decided already to do this is to make hundreds and hundreds of interesting abstract marks on a background color or texture background. If you could imagine this multiplied at any three or 45 times on a very large a one canvas with different layers of color behind Andi Ah, huge variety of marks that could be absolutely stunning on a plane wall in the in your living room. Something like that. This one here was inspired by Patrick Herron. Picture from book that I fought recently, This one funnily enough, when I finished it. If you look at these little circles here, this really made me think of friends work. I've never actually met her. But someone that I follow on Instagram called Jane Hylton. So, Jane, if you're looking at this, apologies. If you think it's very similar to work on, even more apologies. If you think that it isn't this one here. So this will little that It reminds me very much of the 19 seventies when I'm doodling I often do triangles and this is this was very much a doodle, but I really have always liked pink and brown together. Onda orange and the mint green really freshens it up. This mark here I made with a bent piece of cardboard. This one is really simple. I think I started with the a big wash off pink with a big fat brush and then I just squid aled like that with some warm gray and green. It looks very, obviously like a landscape, probably because mainly because I put these very loose monkey trunks on the bottom. But it may be that you want to do on abstract landscapes something that looks a little bit inspired by something you've seen or that people can relate to very easily. That is an approach. You could take this one here. It was really fun to Dio began with this. It wasn't that exciting was just a very simple kind of spiral e shape, but with a lot of color. And I thought it looked a bit bright. So I just got this page, which at the time was completely empty on, smoothed over and pulled it back. And I had this lovely mono print of orangey red, which I then field in, and I think I flipped it back over onto this one. At some point, you can see here This yellow was picked up over here, So that's something else to bear in mind, too, when you're doing your painting there's nothing to stop you from transferring dollops of paint from another surface onto your work. I'm peeling it off to get a similar sort of effect. You can really play around. You don't even have to use brushes you could use. I don't know tweaks from the garden or leaves to do this kind of effect. It really depends whether you're looking for something very crisp and clean, or whether you're interested in texture and unusual marks. This one here I was inspired by a bank of daffodils when I went to the Lake District last week. Obviously, it looks nothing like daffodils, but is purely about the color on the landscape. I really miss those mountains. I also did this this morning. There was literally just playing around, mixing color for something else I was doing. And then when I looked at this at the end, I thought, That looks just like an abstract piece of work, and I really like it. A couple of just that sort of thing happening to me is this piece of card here is just enough cut from a piece from old car designed that I printed, and this was actually me color mixing with leftover paint on. I thought it would be really fun to do it as an abstract painting in itself. So this is what I did. I need Teoh handhold the camera so that you see all of this. So apologies for well, the waffles. So I put this slightly over to that side. Keep sketch there. Then you can see you can compare the difference. Could you see all of it? So there. I hope you can see the entire painting and can compare the original sort of scribbling painting that was just a pilot for me, Onda the finished thing and see how I changed it. I probably had the yellow on the gray too far in there, possibly slightly too dominant on the on the new on the big campus. A little bit hard to say, but I made adjustments so that it hangs together so that Shihezi how some random piece of scribbling content into a final painting. That's quite an old one. I did what I don't know you or so ago. I never did anything with it, but it's very loosely based on a vase of flowers, but it is very abstract This is quite a flat, clean looking piece of work, so you can play around with simple shapes. If you were stuck on abstracts and you weren't really sure what to do, you could find five objects that you like around their house and examine them and draw them in different ways. This was the shell here, which I looked at very, very closely, and I enlarged it. So if you imagine that for somebody that could be quite unappealing, abstract if it was enlarged se two enormous a one canvas that could be quite interesting, it was fun to do on. I really enjoyed making all different marks with different sorts of brush. So do experiment don't have to do this is obviously very realistic. But again I zoomed in. So think about that. Think about scale if you are someone that's interested in painting from life, but you want to do something a little bit less realistic than that could be an approach you take again. This was part of the same subject group. It was just the leaf, which you could see if there, too, which I took all the color out off. I kept my palate very limited to gray on blue, obviously, with some white on a tiny bit of pink. I created this, and this also shows you how you don't always have toe have odd numbers for things. This was quite well with just two objects, but I think it's because the shadows are so strong that they're almost like another object in themselves for this one here, but much more traditional, I would say that's a semi abstract. There are abstract marks. Sure, it's not realistic on this flat bottom cup certain, not realistic, but it's based on a real cup. You know what it is, and you can guess what everything else is. I do think that works really well. It's but it is quite traditional. So it's entirely up to you whether you're gonna go for something very modern and contemporary and simple, or whether you're going to go for something. Set essentially looks like what it is but is simplified from here. I was playing around with the same objects in different compositions. This shows you have a composition can what Nice leave Something goes off the edge because there's enough going on here in that direction that it works that one's not so successful. Something about it is not quite right, but still fun to do. Nevertheless, in a previous class, I did, um, which was all about creating your own paint recipes and critic techniques. I did some semi abstract work here on. If you're interested in finding out how I did this, then do you have a look at that class? It's a long class, but the people have actually stuck with it. I found it very helpful. I've had some lovely reviews, which I'm really grateful for. Next, I'm going to show you how I took this sketch and put it onto a 40 centimetre by 40 centimeter piece of art board. 8. Step 7 - time to paint or watch me do some...: There's several layers of color on here, but they were very muted. But this has got quell of interest, or it's something that I had already worked on. So there's a kind of pattern er or looks like lilacs. Andi pale pinks on. There's a little bit of green here to just texture. Sometimes is enough for, um, a piece to be appealing texture in combination with color for me. Andi, it certainly adds depth to have all these colors, so you may be completely different. You may want something extremely crisp and very precise. I'm going to go on and mixed my paints. I'm mixing my pink to do my first swish. I've tried this a couple of times, and it's it. I can't quite get the same effect as a bit of red to make it that warmer. I can't quite get the same effect. And I've used my baby wipes. Incredibly useful. I'm gonna make sure, but quite a bit. Paint on there. There's a lump. Okay, I'm just gonna have to go with whatever comes out. So wish me luck. So energy. Yeah, I like that. But I stopped using, so I'm gonna just go around here, Andi. It's almost like I'm painting a letter. Actually, in this one streaking up that will do not sure about these lines. There just been to what? That out? Because I find that too, too distracting. We'll leave the rest this bit down here, and we think I'm going to use different parent life, even though I don't think I did that for my sketch. That I want to try something gets the best of the yellowy pink over there. Just see what happens. It will be It will be different on. And I mean, I quite like that, too. I might just do something a bit smaller here to see what happens. That looks to I quite like it, but it it seems like it's in the wrong place. Actually, he's down. I've actually just clean this bit off slightly because I thought it was coming down too low . Andi, having tried to do this the word shape here, I actually don't think it really works with this. I can't achieve the same effect. Paper is a lot easier to paint on this sort of thing. This is birch plywood, Andi, obviously three great thing about it is it's not gonna buckle, and it will be ready, long lasting in some instances, if you conformed to you, just think of this is think of your large piece as an experiment. Andi. It is easier said than done, but try not to get too hung up about it, looking exactly at your sketch cause it's just not going to. I love those colors and believe that because I like that. I might just see what happens if I put this boot drool but this yellow crayon onto it. I very rarely use mixed media A t least not this in a painting in the painting, I usually just stick to acrylic. I use it in different ways. I use it very thickly, and I You think you did in a watercolor way. I did. Omar win on Bond August Rennes Portrait Challenge. I just did manage to do eight on the very last one I did of Anita Roddick. I use critic again, painting on wood, but I did it in the style that I used to do when I first after college. I did lots of kind of realistic people, but in a very watercolor stop style, no I could see I quite like that. I guess with that yellow into their I'm beginning to relax a bit more. Now it's difficult when I'm thinking about C filming it. Andi, you seeing what I'm doing? Because even though I talked myself quite a lot on every talked myself, that is what I'm painting. That smudges of lipstick looks three little pink fish having a chat. I'd really like to try and find a way off replicating this. At least this the energy of this sweep that comes around. I mean, it's very delicate it so I don't know it started to happen here, but then I stopped. I wondering if I could use another brush to do something similar. I'm gonna get you, I think a dry brush from being hit. Maybe something so toothy like this that can't actually hold a lot of paint. It'll it'll make a very different sort of mark. I'm just gonna have a go, and I'm gonna add a tiny bit off the reddish, the red into it, make it a bit warmer. Is looking a little bit suffering a moment. I think it's doesn't need that yellow in here, so I found a way of doing that as well. Possibly using that crayon anyway, so see, sleep around. No, that's nice. Totally different. But I like the energy. And is it a scuffed scuff marks? And because it's slightly warmer Impaler over that pink. That more harsh pink? No, I find like that a lot. Good. Then I think I'm going to use this out here as well. Just it is quite different from the sketch, but I like it. Okay. Now, to work out this yellow, I think it's scratched through. So just over here, I'm gonna mix. You can't see you on doing, but I'm using this to mix a little bit of pale yellow into white. This is an ancient stay weapon. It which you can probably guess from. Looking at it. I need to buy myself a new one. A much larger one. All right. I'm just gonna scrape. Yeah, I don't quite different a little bit fingers. And if you're not sure about something, you can just delete it with your wet white if using critic. Okay, so up here you're my sketch. Got a nice thick but a paint and it looks like I just jerked the knife. It could also be a very flat edged brush airbrush used on the side. I just sort of stamped. I've decided to use this tool. I think it would be the best thing for that. I'm going to see how it works out. I want this to go right up to the top, see what happened, huh? And then marks like that very different again. But the feel is there, and I really love those marks would've been nice if it out just slightly bigger and not dissimilar marks. I like the fact that they go off the edge like my original does. It's not this dark. They got a little red drink it DACA possibly You did a touch of that. That blue color she didn't have. But I got some good. A little bit of this blue. Just see if I can comix with that little It's better to blue into the red and pink and it just makes it assault murkier, murkier pink, but more dramatic. Ah, we have a bit of yellow in there too, which I like. Yeah, that will do for that bit. No, broken my fingers out. I'm soon put my implants and have some water because of crazy Felix going to dry on them on . Let's get these over. What? So you can see what I did originally? Andi, I'm going to use my phone this time just to make this maketh e white marks a little bit bigger. So these like bubbles, But they've also not got the, um, the holes. Well, do something about that in a minute. To come quick and then a different scale. Use another different finger, and then my little finger for the smaller marks. This time you can see where they're going. Where is he now? I really like this bit. This cut away black mark. So I think that happened accidentally before. I'm just going to see if I am literally just come in. And I think I might have left it too late. So this is where my baby, what could be helpful? Yes, my books. But I do rather like this relief month, and I've got I'll zoom in on areas after I finished, so you can see what I'm talking about. That's quite a three D raised area of paint, which I like. I don't know if I can get middle of this one. Get something to reveal the duck underneath area it really is fun. Doesn't have got red on there. That's it. So the any bit that remains to do now in a couple of different bets is the white in the middle and white over the pink at the bottom of the painting. Leave this up slightly, you see from C. See how it's looking so far. And by the way, this here is baking parchment, which I used to mixed colors inside my palette and also on top of the table. When I'm working as well before I carry on with the white areas, I just want to look at it on the wall. Andi, doing this, I can see that I'm not that happy with the placement off the pink swell, it seems to be slap bang in the middle. No, at this point, short of scrubbing it without, there's no much I could do to the actual pink. But if I'm hoping that the way that I place the white will really change my perception at least off the placement off that pink, but this is definitely something you should do instead of just rushing ahead like I have. If you've got any dance, it'll just put it on a wall, sit and contemplate what you've done. Andi, don't get too hung up on following your sketch because things are so different when they're scaled up on you may need to adjust the marks that you make. Teoh alter the composition on the balance off the peace. 9. ...watch me finish my first painting: right pieces I'm going to tackle now. Oh, this area here in this area here and I may or many not add a bit more because, as I mentioned, this is a rectangular piece of work, and I've transformed it onto would rather transcribed it but know very accurately onto a square piece. Andi, Now this is looking to central, but I'm hoping that with the white applied that that is going to look a lot more balanced is the moment is just to me. It just draws your eye to match that part. I'm gonna use my lovely big fat filbert and some white paint. There may or may not be a little bit of your own. I put my sketch of here Bet really it started. It's ended up being quite different, so I won't worry too much about that on. And I think it needs to be slightly different shape. I do like the fact that it starts in the sketch. I've tossed it from these pink scuffs, so it doesn't really overlap. Just see, that's quite nice, slightly evil believe and it's not. And so it se This is where now I'm going to just pull it but medium this time it really is a teeny weeny weeny bit of this. This is normally stuff that you would put in your water. It's very new to me. It's not something I've really used much. Just put it on that and it will be. Make the paint very transparent, I think. But some time ago, I can see that I used on the sketch. I used my fingers to sort of squish the paint around. Can I like this? I'm making it slightly more angular than the rest of the painting. But again, you know, this doesn't I'm gonna do that as well. In my sketch, it very much looks like my thumb plays a great part in it. But as you can see, I'm just playing about now, Onda also in the sketch. This section has the dark background, but you can see now I hope you can. It is looking less. That means that still fairly central, but it's more over to the right. Well, im happier with that. I'm not so sure about my smudge in this instance might wipe some off. Obviously, experience means that you have mawr of those happy accidents because you're less anxious, but because I'm painting to camera, I'm inevitably no as relaxed as I would have been if I was just playing around. They were quite like that. It does. It does, definitely balances it. It makes it less saccharine as well. I actually feel like I want to do it. Puts him right here, too. But there's can just gently brush. She was gonna happen back just like that. So is picking up some of the fiber from some paint I had on there much, much of your own. A little thread them. I got like that. I quite like the idea of this coming up and then So it's sweating through, but you can't see it, and then it comes out the top, so that's completely the opposite of what I did there. But I like it. I think I still like you. Don't want to put any more in there. That might mean I'm not sure how much I I got up. I captured on camera then, but I have just scribbled on the the fourth in areas of white pinky white placed on top of these three. And I was just talking about how It's the pattern maker in me that loves that sort of element because you could spot in there and then down here and then lead your eye around the painting. Andi, I'm wondering if that's finished. I think it's a case of living with it for a while to see if it still bothers me a little bit. That this is so much over here would have been better over there and get more. Um, I've got an urge to do something here just a little bit of pink, but that might pull this back even more. So it's something that he's thinking about. Do you like I find it interesting? But what one thing, actually, what I will do because I've got this lovely, so greenie color coming through the background and it's, I suppose it is echoed here. But it would be nice to get some a little flash of that green color as a color in its own, a solid color in its own right here in the foreground. I think so. That is something I might do next. What? I was thinking about what to do. This is greeny grey color that I've mixed. She's looking a little bit too light. Now, Um, I just did this little white flick here because I felt this was too pale. But I do want to lose this scratched out mark. And I like that. It was of impulse, but I think it works well with these. This sort of action, that sort of feeling. One way to decide. I was playing around with it with a little bit of the white paper with this color on, um, front inside where it might go again. I want something that's of loose. No, by quite like it over there, I find that quite appealing. This is a little little trick you can use. Or of course, you. These days you can use your digital. You take a photograph of your artwork, Andi, in something like procreate, you can draw on top of it to decide how to alter the composition or whether color on color works well or not where it should go. So I need to decide. Why do you feel that? I want something here. And this color, if I can mix that is I think that will finish off nicely. So you're gonna get it. Carry on trying to get that color. That's to farting green and dog just at a time Brown curricula meted That's getting better . Do you love kind of mixing is wonderful. You can look a color. I just find incredibly satisfying to mix color. It's kind of it's almost instinctive, but I think I have got some kind of knowledge in there somewhere about color. Andi. I will do, of course, specifically on that I think just a simple one, because people get very anxious about color mixing, and I don't really think it's necessary is about experimenting. And if you know your complementary colors, then that is the key to all of it. You know, like that. It's changed so much from this, but that doesn't really matter. In fact, I'm going to get rid of this now so that I'm not distracted. I think I need to live with it a little while and decide if it needs a little more. I like that. I like that green on the side very much. My 20 is quite not pink, Mr Have in the last few years, and I think these meet it. Cooler colors offset, offset it nicely and make it more but more sophisticated. I I'm still a bit bothered by this C shape. I can't seem to escape that. Something that I roll either live with or results some way something that viral either live with or results some way in some way. So let me ponder that our shoes and little close ups. Oh, some of the areas I really liked the three d effect of my fingerprints up here for any of these. I mean, if you imagined just little tiny sections of this painting blown up really large would make very interesting abstract pieces. But of course, it's just so difficult to reproduce those marks the marks that you make you happy with to then create them again at a larger scale. So you either just accept that and go with it. So I've tried to here or you work a smaller scale. I hope you can see the difference. I added. Some white here made this white strong gurnal angular, and I did this little white patch. They're too. I'm much happier with that. So just keep working with your piece until you're happy with that 10. ..in which I paint another sped up!: way. Yeah. Oh, my camera decided to stop recording, but I'll make sure take a photograph off this painting so you can see how it looks Way. 11. Good luck and hope to see your work: thanks so much for watching on, particularly if you were kind enough to watch me painting because it was little Heston's, but I tried to keep it simple. Andi, I'd suggest that if you're a beginner that you do the same. If you need to ask many questions, please. Dio I'm on instagram nearly every day so you can just take me. Or you can message me privately. That would be absolutely fine. And we can either have a private messaging chat or I can comment on anything that you post . It may be that you want to post some sketches here, works in progress in your in the project section on, asked me a few questions about which you think would be the best sketch to take forward. Be delighted to help you anything that you want to ask me. Try and be specific as you can about the question rather than just saying What do you think this is any good? Because that is such a subjective thing. I really hope that you feel able to post something even if knowledge is is just a thumbnail Sketches. I hope that you produce something your pound off, in which case, please post it here. I would absolutely love to cheer you on. I'll be checking in here on skill share every other day, at least. So don't worry. It'll if you haven't got it. Scrap account. That's not important. Time to get building.