Joyful Abstracts with Acrylic Painting

1. Welcome to Joyful Abstracts: Hi. I'm Jessi Raulet and welcome to joyful abstracts with acrylic painting. In this class, we will create a colorful abstract painting, all inspired by the emotion of joy. We'll explore, gathering inspiration, mixing paint colors, and applying them to Canvas to achieve a bright and bold painting. A little bit about me. My name is Jessi. I'm an American artist and the owner and creator of the colorful brand EttaVee. From a young age, art has played a big role in my life, and I feel incredibly lucky to be able to live my passion by working as a full-time artist today. You can find my work in stores such as Target Anthropologie, Pottery Barn Kids and Teen, and many more. I have also authored two books, Happy Abstracts and The right Book. As you know, our class project will be to create a bright and happy, joyful painting that is all inspired by the emotion of joy. My hope is this class will encourage you to paint more confidently with bright and bold colors. You'll walk away at the end with an original piece of abstract artwork to brighten up your very own space. Please follow me on Skillshare so that you can be instantly notified whenever I post a new class or freebies. Also, be sure to share your work in the class gallery, as well as on Instagram. You can tag me @ettavee. I would love to share your creations with my followers. This class is just for practice, so no pressure to create the perfect piece. I myself might not even pick the perfect piece. Let's just have fun and let's dive in. 2. Materials: [MUSIC] Okay, everyone. Let's go ahead and dive into the materials that we're going to be using for our project today. The first item that I will be using will be just plain computer paper and a pencil. What we're going to be doing with this is after our inspiration gathering, I'm going to be creating a quick little sketchy reference sheet based on the inspiration to help me determine colors as well as basic shapes and forms that I'm going to be using for my final painting. Next up as you know, we are going to be painting with acrylic paint. It's a really great paint for beginners and has pretty easy cleanup. Acrylic paint is water-soluble, which means you can use water to dilute it, also if you get it on your table, you can clean it off with water. The wonderful thing about acrylic as well is that it is fast drying, so I find that it keeps up with the speed of my brain as I'm painting, and of course, comes in an array of colors. The colors that we will be using are these six colors you see here, and we'll be using all of these six colors to mix all the colors of the rainbow. As you can see, I have titanium white, turquoise blue, quinacridone magenta, fluorescent pink, primary yellow, and Prussian blue. For this project, I will just be using Liquitex Basic Acrylics, these are wonderful paints for beginners. If you are looking for a more premium paint, you could go with the Liquitex Heavy Body, but for the sake and purpose of this class, it's just for practice, we're going to go ahead and use the Basic Acrylics. It's going to be so fun to see that you can create bright paintings using inexpensive paints. These are the paints we're using. I will be painting on canvas. This is a 12 by 12 gallery-wrapped canvas, that means that there is a nice deep edge to the painting, it's about almost two inches. As you can see, my canvas is white, which means that it is pre-gessoed. Pre-gessoed means that the raw canvas has a layer of gesso on it which prepares my painting surface to absorb paint. For today's project, I will be using three sizes of brushes. As you can see, they have been used a lot. This brush is my absolute favorite brush to use to create brushstrokes. It is from the Graduate Series of Daler-Rowney, and it's the oval wash brush. This one is a size, I think it's like one inch. If you were in the US, then you will be purchasing the Simply Simmons Oval Wash brush, which is the exact same brush just has a different brand name in the US. You can find it at Blick Art stores, Michaels, all kinds of places. My absolute favorite brush. What's even better is that it's inexpensive. I also have this medium-sized brush from Sostrene Grene, which is a craft store here in Europe. It is a filbert-shaped brush. I just like to have different shapes of brushes, which allows me to be able to create different brush techniques and brushstrokes. The last brush that I have is a round brush, also from Sostrene Grene, size 7. With these three brushes, I will be able to create my lovely painting. You do not have to use these exact brushes, I just recommend making sure you have at least one brush that can gather a lot of paint on it, which will allow you to really get some really gorgeous brushstroke shapes. Pretty much the idea is that you want to just make sure you have a brush that is large, medium, and small, and the smaller the brush, the more detail that we'll be able to do. I also have a water vessel that I'll be using to clean my brushes, as well as a paint cloth. As you can tell, it has seen many of paint sessions. I will be using this to dry my brushes after washing them. I love using metallic pens to finish off my paintings. As you can see here, I have a DecoColor metallic pen. These are oil-based markers, and they just add such a gorgeous shine to the finished piece. This can be found at Blick Art store. I just like having different sizes just so that I can make sure to play around and get different effects. I love using metallic paint markers because they just add the perfect amount of pop of fabulousness to the finished piece. I also have a few Posca pens as well. These are optional, but I think they're just really great to have on hand to add detail, if you want to add lettering or small flowers or any kind of little detail, Posca pens are wonderful. They are acrylic-based paint pens, and you can find them in an array of colors and sizes. I also have a stack of palette sheets that I will be using to mix all of my paint colors on. These can be found at any art store. Last but not least, varnish. My favorite varnish use is the Liquitex Professional Varnish, the high gloss varnish. It just adds such a gorgeous layer of gloss to my finished paintings as well as not only does it protect from dust but also UV rays, and it actually makes your paintings brighter. I find that it makes the colors pop even more. This is my favorite varnish to use. This is completely optional, but if you would like to use a metallic paint as well, one of my favorites is the Martha Stewart Craft multi-surface metallic acrylic craft paint, color gold. I just really love the brightness of this paint. This is not mandatory, just if you would like to add a little extra shimmer to your painting, feel free to use the gold. As well as a hairdryer for quicker drying. It's optional if you would like to grab a hairdryer that'll help you dry your layers. Now that we've covered all the materials, we can move forward with finding inspiration. 3. Gathering Inspiration: [MUSIC] In this video, we are going to go over how to gather inspiration for our abstract pieces. Gathering inspiration helps us determine what colors, shapes, and forms we will be using and it will also help with composition as well. I would love to encourage you to be as creative as you want to be. I am here merely as a guide to teach technique, so please feel free to inject your own colors based off of whatever inspiration it is that you pull. I really want you to put your own true mark on this piece, and I think you'll find in the end that it'll just resonate and represent you as an artist more. I just have a few questions to ask that will help prompt you and gets you into the mental state of our topic of joy. How do you define joy? What makes you joyful? What colors do you associate with joy and why? Personally, a lot of my inspiration comes from unexpected moments of color. This can be as simple as driving along the coast during vacation and seeing how blue the water is when the sun hits it just right. It just brings joy within me to see such a radiant and bright color that I instantly just take a mental snapshot, take it back home, and paint something. I also find that moment whenever I'm walking around the streets of town and come across a brightly painted door. It just makes me so happy and it's these little moments of unexpected color and happiness that I use often in my own work. When it comes to gathering inspiration, I find that it's important to be a collector. What I mean by that is that I am always taking photos and documenting things that just give me a little spark of maybe curiosity or happiness. It's often whenever I'm roaming around streets and I see maybe a bright door, I will quickly just snap a shot and keep it in a little library in my phone. What I find is that this is just a really great way to start collecting, to train your eye to always be looking out for colors and just little moments that evoke an emotion within. Many of these images that I've pulled, they're from, just like trips I've taken and we're just like little moments where I've wandered streets over here in France and things that I found were just so lovely. For example, this is a picture of a door and I just really loved how the flowers framed the door. I thought it was really beautiful so I snapped a shot of that. I also just really loved the color of the water. Whenever I was walking along the water, I think this was down somewhere in the south of France and I just thought the water was just such a gorgeous color. Of course, this image has been edited, but the original image like the original moment, whenever I saw the water, it brought me in and I had to snap a shot of it. Here's another photo. Whenever I was roaming the streets of a small village in France, and I just loved the color story that was happening here. You have the yellow wall, but then you have this little green wooden door window thing. I thought what was really cool about it is that you also have this big gorgeous banana plant and all of the colors just went together so you have the green on the leaves that match the green of this little door. You had the yellow in the leaves that match the yellow wall and then the pot of the plant was red, which also pulls in the red of the plant. It was just so gorgeous and I had to take a shot. Start to think of things that make you joyful. Really start by maybe looking through your photo library on your phone or on your computer just to see images that you were naturally drawn to that you found to be beautiful. For my piece, I think I'm actually going to go with this image right here, and the reason why is because I just find something so interesting about the framing of the door with these flowers and I think that could lend for a really pretty beautiful inspiration for my painting. I'm thinking already maybe I'll incorporate some flowers that go across the top of my painting or maybe across the bottom. Just using some form of framing based on this photo and I'll probably also pull out some of the colors to inspire my own color palette as well. This is the photo I'm going to be using. Go ahead and take some time to really look through your photos and just find one that evokes joy in you, something that just makes you happy. It doesn't have to be like the thing that makes you happy, but I think it's just good. If you find an image that makes you joyful. This one, it's not only the flowers that makes you think of spring which is hopeful but also, I don't know, I just feel like there's some kind of something peaceful about it. It looks like a peaceful place, could be hiding behind this door. It's mysterious and beautiful. Yeah, just look an image that really just speaks to you and your heart. Now, I would love to get started on sketching out some ideas that I have. 4. Sketches: [MUSIC] I'm going to get started on some sketches that are based off of my inspiration image right here. How pretty much I want to start this is by just taking a look and observing my image. What is it that I like about it? I know that I like the colors. I know as I mentioned before, I love the framing of the flowers around the door. So I think I would love to somehow replicate this idea. What I'm going to do is quickly just sketch out the shape of my canvas, which is a square canvas. This is what I'll be using. I'm going to be doing wild brushstrokes. Just to get a general idea, I'm going to just create the shape of brushstrokes. It's not going to be exactly like this because brushstrokes are wild and free and you can't really predict what they're going to look like in advance, and so I'm just going to give myself a general idea of brushstrokes. Now, something like I mentioned, what I love are these flowers. Off to the side I am going to just loosely sketch some flowers. [NOISE] This is not an exercise in perfection. This is really just we're letting ourselves explore, we're letting ourselves paint and create intuitively. That's why I'm not really taking my time with these flowers. It's a sketch, it's quick, it's just to get the arching idea of flowers. There are also some leaves and branches I think could be interesting. I'm not sure if I'm going to end up using those. [NOISE]. I do love the colors as well. It's also interesting like these little shadows at the bottom. There's something interesting about that as well. So maybe at the bottom of my image, I'll make sure that I have some darker areas. I'm going to go ahead and sketch [NOISE] that little hits of darkness on the bottom. [NOISE] Remember we're letting go of perfection. This is just to give us a rough idea of where we're going to go with our painting. Next, I am going to go ahead and sketch in some of these flowers. Maybe I will place them there on my piece just to see how that could look. [NOISE] I'm just loosely sketching these in. It could be interesting just to add some flowers across the top, some shadows on the bottom. I think I am going to quickly just pull in some of these colors. I have some pastels over here. Strangely enough, I already have these colors because I just love them so much. Here's a peachy pink coral color. I'm using Sennelier pastels that I picked up at the art store here. It's a French brand. Let's see, I pulled that color from this image. Let's see. I might also pull out this powdery blue. I don't really have the exact color of blue, but I have one that is similar. That's just blue enough just to give me an idea. I like the green. I have something a little similar to that. Look at this little color palette we're building. It's just so lovely. I have purple and I don't really see purple, but in the insides of the flowers, I don't know, it could be interesting. Look at that already just from this image alone, I've been able to pull out some colors that I could use. I might add some orange in there. I do want to warm it up a bit. Even though it's not in the image, it was a sunny day. So I'm going to bring some orange in. This is looking good. This is how we can use our photos to build out a guide and just an idea of what we're going for before we even start our painting. Feel free to just really take your time and sketch out all the little elements that you find within your image. If you have an ocean or something like really explore like looking at the waves, the way that the water moves and taking that out onto your paper and drawing it into a simple form. Next, we are going to go ahead and get started. But first we need to mix our colors. 5. Color Mixing: [MUSIC] Now it's time to mix our colors. I'm so excited to mix colors with you as color is my thing and something that I just have so much fun doing. Before we get started, quick, quick, quick color theory that I wanted to go over with you guys. Whenever we're mixing color, usually we always start with our basic primary colors, which are primary red, primary yellow, and primary blue. In this case, we are going to be using the quinacridone magenta instead of primary red, primary yellow, so that's the same, and then turquoise blue instead of primary blue. The reason for that is because I love using these three combinations to mix my colors, as I find it just gives me more interesting and rich options in terms of colors that we end up with, and the color is also just tend to be less muddy. These are going to be the three primary colors that we're going to be using. As I mentioned before, I also have titanium white, fluorescent pink, and Prussian blue on hand. Now, another part of color theory is that we have our primary colors, which are red, yellow, and blue, but then there are also secondary colors. Secondary colors are achieved by mixing two primary colors together. Primary red and primary yellow make orange, primary yellow and primary blue make green, and primary red and primary blue make purple. We will be doing the same, however, just with these three right here. So let's go ahead and get started on mixing up some colors. When mixing, I always like to start with the titanium white, and I pop that in the center just because it will allow me to pull it into different directions. Going to start with my magenta on top, followed by yellow, fluorescent pink, turquoise blue, and last but not least, the Prussian blue. I do like to spread them out just so they can have some space. First, we're going to mix up some warm colors. I'm going to use my brush to mix my colors. You can use a palette knife, but I personally just like to use a paint brush to mix my colors. We're going to start by mixing 2-3 types of oranges and like a coral. First to mix an orange, we're going to start with our primary yellow. Go ahead and pull that out to the side, and I'm going to take just the tiniest bit of fluorescent pink and go ahead and mix that in. Now you're going to see this fluorescent pink is going to allow this orange to pop to a vibrant, gorgeous orange color. Next, I'm going to just take a little bit of this orange color and set it to the side and snag just a little bit of that titanium white and mix it in there. As you see, this is going to give us a tint of this color. Just added a little bit of white, and now we have a light orange. I'm going to go ahead and clean my brush and dry it. Next, I'm going to mix a deeper orange, and that will be achieved by pulling out some of the primary yellow and taking just the tiniest bit of magenta and mixing it in. Now, I always like to start with the lighter color and slowly mix the darker color in. As you can see, it's giving us a deeper orange. It's starting to turn more of a marigold color. So I'm just going to bring in some of the fluorescent pink just so I can bring it back into my vibrant space. Oh, yes. As you can see, we have mixed up three different oranges for us to use for our project. I am going to quickly mix a hot coral as I call it, since I will be using coral in my painting. Look at that water, doesn't that just look delicious? [LAUGHTER] Okay. So I'm going to mix up a little just like a pale hot coral, and I'm going to achieve this by, actually I'm going to go ahead and start with my fluorescent pink, pull in just a little bit of that titanium white. Mix it in, mix it in. Actually, that's like a really pretty color as is, and I'm going to pull in just a little bit of the yellow and mix it in, and check her out. It's a gorgeous coral color that is nice and vibrant. I'm going to go ahead and clean my brush. Next, I am going to head over to my cooler part of my palette. I'm going to show you guys how to mix a green. We achieve that by mixing the primary yellow with the turquoise blue. As I mentioned before, I always love starting with the lighter color and just take the tiniest bit of turquoise blue and mix it in. A little bit goes a long way here, so make sure you're doing it little by little as not to darken it too quickly. Voila, we have a beautiful bright green. You can also put some aside and add some of your titanium white to it to achieve a more pastel green. If you would like for it to be more teal, you can just keep adding the turquoise to it, you can get a gorgeous teal color. I'll show you just real quickly how to make a darker green, and that's pretty much the same as before. We start with the primary yellow, we grab more of the turquoise and mix it in, and you get a deeper green, like a Kelly green. But the more turquoise you add, the more teal it will turn. Of course, if you wanted to put some off to the side and add in just a little bit of that Prussian blue, you can get yourself a nice, deep teal color. It's so pretty. Voila. Going to go ahead and clean my brush, and I'll show you a couple more colors to mix. For our turquoise blue, I think I'm just going to show you how I would just maybe create a light turquoise just to have some options, a lighter turquoise option, so a tint of the original color, just by adding white to it. There you go, easy-peasy, done. Last but not least, I'm going to show you how to mix purple. Traditionally, purple is mixed using primary red and primary blue. In this case, we'll be using the magenta and the turquoise. I love using the magenta instead of primary red just because sometimes with primary red, the color is more warm and when it hits, the red has a yellow in it and it can muddy up your purple. I just achieve the purple that I like is achieved best with magenta. I pulled some magenta out, I'm taking just a little bit of turquoise, and mixing it up. Check that out, it's a beautiful eggplant purple. Of course, you can warm it up by adding some fluorescent pink, if you want to warm it up a bit, and you can also pull in some white if you'd like to make a pale purple. We just mixed three purples there. As you can see, we've mixed around the color of the rainbow, and we can now get started on our painting. 6. Layer 1: [MUSIC] Okay guys, so I am going to get started on my painting. First things first, as you can see here, I have my canvas ready to go. I have my water, my painting cloth to dry my brush, water to wash my brush, cloth to dry my brush. I have my palette of colors, the lovely colors that we just mixed. Of course, as I run out of color, I'll just keep adding and mixing along the way. I have my brushes, canvas, as well as the lovely reference sheet I have here just so that I know some ideas that I have for my painting. Just going to set that off to the side. I'm going to be starting with the largest brush and working my way down to the smallest brush. The first brush is of course the Simply Simmons oval wash brush. I'm just going to start by creating the background. For the background, I'm going to keep it light and washy. I'm going to be creating a wash. I'm going to dip my brush just so ever so slightly in the water. I want to keep this painting bright and vibrant. I'm starting with bright and vibrant colors. I'm going to go ahead and start with yellow I think. I'm going to take my wet brush, dip it in the yellow. What I'm going to be doing is creating a general shape for my brushstrokes. What I'm going to show you first is how the motion of the brushstrokes are going to go. We're going to go down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up. Just practice down, up, down, up. You can even connect these areas and be sure to go ahead and paint the sides as you go. It'll just save you some time in the end. Down, up, down, up, down, up. As you can see, I've already started creating zones. But I'm not covering my whole canvas. I'm making sure to leave some of that white space popping through. Just a little bit over here, I think. Another tip. First tip, I guess. [LAUGHTER] Whenever I paint from the bottom, I'm always sure just to paint upwards in an upward motion. What that does is that it draws the eye up. You're going to have brushstrokes that are coming down. You see our little brushstroke finish. It's going to bring the eye down and by brushing the bottom up, it's going to bring the eye up so it helps the eye meet in the middle as it dances around your canvas. Voila. I'm going to go ahead and clean my brush. Next up, I am going to go ahead and dabble in. I think I'm going to just quickly mix a pale pink. For that, I am using the titanium white and bringing in just a little bit of that fluorescent pink color and mixing it. Mind you, I do have quite a bit of water on my brush. That's just for this first layer. I'm going to start to fill in areas where I don't yet have the yellow paint. The emptier areas is what I'm going for. It's okay to go ahead using the same down at motion to overlap onto the yellow. Up, up, up painting the edges as I go. Saves me time in the end. Down, up. As you can see, the colors I'm starting with are quite happy and bright because I don't want to muddy down my painting from the get-go. My approach to it is to usually start with brighter colors and then I start to add in my contrast colors as I go. But right now we're just trying to get a general idea of the shapes that we're going for. As you can see, I'm just slightly overlapping. Getting some blends going. I like that. I'm going to finish there with the coral. I'm going to clean my brush. Next, I'm going to switch over to a cooler color, which will be the light turquoise. That was achieved by mixing the titanium white with turquoise. I still have quite a bit of water on my brush. I'm going to start to fill in some more of the empty spaces that I have. Down, up, down, up. Remember I have that blue door in my inspiration. That's why I have the blue living in the center of my painting. Just a nod to my inspiration photo. As you can see, I'm starting to blend in just ever so slightly. [NOISE] Not wanting to cover up too much of what I have already placed down. It's moments like these where I just love just taking my time, letting myself get lost in the brushstrokes, the blends. Admiring how painterly it looks in this stage. I mean, hey, some of you might just want to stop here. Something that's really cool is whenever you're blending over a different area, you're creating whole new colors. As you can see, I'm using the light blue, but of course when it blends just a little bit over the yellow, it turns a nice green. I think I like that. Just going to clean my brush off. I've pretty much almost covered all of my canvas. I'm going to now fill in the last two areas with a color that's going to bring in some more contrast. I think I'm going to go ahead and use this deep orange that we mixed. I believe we used the primary yellow with the magenta and the fluorescent pink. I'm just going to add a little bit of water to that just because my colors got a little dry. I'm going to bring that in to this empty space to punch it up a bit. We don't want to be too precious about this layer because we are going to be layering and layering on top of it. Now I'm just going to let this dry. This is our base layer. I'm going to show you something real quickly. I do see a potential of a muddy mess happening here. What I'm going to do is take a Kleenex and while it's still wet, I'm going to just wipe it away. That's a little tip for you if you're seeing that there's any kind of muddy blending that you don't want, maybe you want it there happening just take a Kleenex and wipe it away while it's still wet. Voila. I'm just going to go in and rework this section. There we go. Now I am going to let this layer dry. See you in the next video where we'll be adding our second layer of brushstrokes. 7. Layer 2 : Now we're ready to move forward with adding our second layer of paint. I went ahead and switched out my water for some freshwater. Just a reminder, you can absolutely use a hairdryer to dry your layers in-between for a quicker painting experience. As I said, I'm going to add my second layer of brushstrokes and I think I really want to start incorporating my coral color as I have in my inspiration image. I'm just going to add a bit more of the fluorescent pink to my palette and I'm going to go ahead and mix up another quick batch of my hot coral color, which was the titanium white, fluorescent pink with the primary yellow. Gorgeous. Now on this layer, I'm not going to be using water to thin out my paint because I want to apply it more thick. As you can see, I have a lot of paint on this brush and I'm going to just go ahead and start to apply it wherever I see fit. But in this case, I'm going to hang near the top, and I'm not covering the whole canvas just like we did with the first layer and keeping some of that initial wash layer showing through. Because what you're going to start to notice is that there's just such a lovely contrast between the watery, washy watercolor effect of the first layer, contrasted with the more solid, opaque brushstrokes that we're getting in this second layer. I'm just going to continue. I'm already loving how it's looking, the shape that it's taking. There no mistakes here. Just about finished with this layer of color. I'm going to continue with the different color next. I'm pretty happy with that. Just looking for any other areas where I would love to see this coral color come through. Just to let you know, I am alternating my brushstroke. In some instances, I am applying my brushstroke just as is like this. But in some instances, I'm turning my brushstroke to the side in order to get those more defined points, so go ahead and play around with flipping your brush both ways. I'm going to go ahead and clean my brush now. Look at that beautiful water we've made. I'm going to go ahead and dry my brush off. I think I'm ready to start adding in some deeper colors, some richer colors that will help bring in some contrast. I think I would like to go ahead and I'm going to use the magenta. I'm going to apply this to areas where I feel like I need to break up the color a bit, so for example, as you can see over here, it's a lot of warm colors and so it would be great if I could just start to bring this magenta in. Mind you, the more water that you do add to your color, the smoother it will flow across your canvas. As I said, I'm just going to break up some of these monotonous areas. I do tend to like to put deeper colors near the bottom. I just feel like it helps weigh the painting down visually. Beautiful. I think I'm happy with how that's looking. I'm going to go ahead and clean my brush, which has of course revealed a gorgeous new color. All right, next up, keeping with the theme of adding in our deeper, richer colors that are going to bring in some contrast and break the painting up a bit. I'm going to go ahead and snag some of my turquoise. My deeper turquoise, just turquoise as is straight out of the tube. I'm going to just put it in areas near the bottom of where I already have existing turquoise. As you can see in this area right here, I really love how this is looking because I added water to my paint and it made it really beautiful and translucent. So you can get those really cool blends in there. I think I'm just going to add just a little bit more. I really like how this is looking as you can see, we have some gorgeous deeper colors happening on the bottom. I'm going to go ahead and stop there on the turquoise blue. I am, however, going to go ahead and tap into that titanium white and mix up a little bit of that light turquoise, which is just titanium white, mix it with the turquoise, adding water so I could just really smooth that color out and it get nice and smooth. I'm going to just go back through. I'm going to add more white. It's not white enough for me. Make it a little paler. Go through and add in hits. Think of them as highlights of this pale turquoise color. This is symbolizing that gorgeous pale blue door in my painting, not my painting but my inspiration photo, I really love that these highlights are adding so much contrast. Just beautiful. Think I'm going to go ahead and let that dry for now, and that is our second layer. While the blue dries, I'm just going to look and see if there's anything else that I want to add before I switch to a smaller brush. I do think I would like to go through and start adding hits of the fluorescent pink throughout before switching my brush. This is fluorescent pink as is just right out of the tube and as you'll see, it's going to just add such a hit of vibrancy wherever it's applied. I'm just looking for areas that are starting to get a little dull and then just add a hit of the fluorescent pink. As I mentioned, I'm doing the top so I'm going down just like from the bottom I go up, from the top, I go down. Moving my brush stroke in a downward motion which will bring the eye in. I love. Now I'm going to go ahead and let this dry before moving on to my next layer, which will be to switch to a smaller brush just to round out my blends and start adding in flourishes and really evoking some more of my inspiration. In the meantime, I'm going to go ahead and get some fresh water and if you want, go ahead and use your hairdryer if you need to dry quickly. All right, see you in the next video. 8. Flourishes: [MUSIC] Now that I have my fresh water, I am ready to move forward with the next layer, which will be to start adding some flourishes with a smaller brush. I am retiring my larger brush, went ahead and switched for my more medium-sized brush. What I'm going to be doing is visually adding movement by using a smaller brush to make smaller flourishes of brushstrokes in certain areas that may be lacking interest. [NOISE] I'm going to go ahead and remix my coral color, but this time I'm adding in more of a titanium white, just so that it's a little lighter. It'll show up on top of what I currently have. That's titanium white, fluorescent pink, and yellow. There we go. Just to show you, I'm just going to be adding smaller brush strokes just like that. I'm going to be doing this in areas where I feel like it's a little muddy, blended, where it could use some hits of interest. I'm just really trying to be selective about where I put this because I don't want to cover up anything that I'm currently loving. Really, just looking for little areas where I can add these in. Like I said, visually, what this does is it just gives the eye different areas to focus where you start to bunch up smaller brush strokes. I'm just about finished. Next, I am going to bring in the famous Prussian blue, and what you're going to see is that it's just going to add even more contrast to my piece. I'm going to thin it out just a little bit with some water. But thinking about Prussian blue is that a little bit goes a long way. As I mentioned before, I love putting darker colors near the bottom. As I said, I feel like it weighs the painting down. It creates a bottom for the painting, so I'm going to start there. Just so you can see how a little bit can go a long way. I'm just going to continue with adding in hits of this Prussian blue, which is so gorgeous. Don't be afraid to add this. I love adding it in areas where colors meet. Gorgeous. Now, I don't want to add too much, but I'm just taking a look to see if there's anywhere else where I would love to add it. I feel like this area can be broken up a bit. This section right here. I'm just going to go ahead and add that in. Just like with the brush before I'm alternating between using the edge and the whole brush. I'm pretty happy with that. I might just add a little bit more, just to break up some of these zones. Gorgeous. I love how that looks. [NOISE] Now, I am going to go ahead and let this dry. If you are using a metallic gold paint, this would be a great time to start adding in hits of your metallic gold paint. I might just go ahead and do that. I have my trusty Martha Stewart metallic paint. Let me just show you how I would go about adding that in. [NOISE] I'm not going to use too much. [NOISE] With a dry brush, I'm not going to add any water to this because I want this to be as opaque as possible so that it can really just pop. I'm going to add this to areas where I have some of my warmer colors just to really get a great pop. What you'll start to see is as the sun hits it, as you view it from the side. I'll see you guys at the end, but you're going to get some really nice reflections and hits of metallic goodness. Not going to do too much, just a little bit. I'm just lightly brushing it on so that it just sits on top. I think that's enough. Next, [LAUGHTER] I'm going to be moving on with my smallest brush and we'll be adding details. See you in the next video. 9. Details: [MUSIC] Okay everyone. Now it's time to go in and add in our details. For the details, I'm going to switch to my smallest brush that I have, it's a round brush. I'm just going to go ahead and start with titanium white as is, and I'm just going to go through and start to add in little dashes of pep. As you can see, dancing them. Not overthinking it too much, this is all about intuition. You can also do small dots. What I find is that these little added details just add a little feeling of fuzziness, burliness, which I feel encapsulates joy. You can do this with whatever color you wish. I personally am just using the white because it stands out against so many colors. If you want to, you can go ahead, you can do stripes. You can do plus signs, hearts, anything that comes to mind. Now it's time to add detail using our Posca pens as well as our metallic markers. As mentioned before, I love the flowers from my original inspiration and I'm going to go in and use the Posca pen to add these detailed flowers in these empty air spaces on top. Just like that. I chose to use the white marker just because I feel the flower pops better. [NOISE] You don't have to do flowers like me, you can do whatever you wish. Maybe you're doing stars. Maybe you're doing jungle leaves. Whatever it is, wherever your joy is found. [NOISE] Obviously, the darker the background, the more your lovely pattern will show. Next, I'm going to go in with my trusty Posca pen or my [NOISE] metallic pen. I love adding the pen on top of the darker blue areas because that's where it really shines, and jumps off of the Canvas. Remember in my inspiration image, I had some leaves. I just loved nature so much, so I might bring in a leaf or two. I'm going to just add some gold center to these flowers. Hope define them better, so pretty. Yes, so feel free to just go through and add in any extra little details and flourishes where you see fit. Don't forget the sides. You guys, we're just about done with our joyful abstract. Please feel free to share your creations in the class gallery. I would love to see what you came up with. Isn't that gorgeous? The way that the light hits the metallic pen and the gold just gives it that extra added shimmer. There you have it. A completed painting that is both joyful, bright, and colorful, and we'll add the perfect pop of Happy to your space. 10. Varnish: [MUSIC] Now that we have our finished piece, we are going to varnish it so that we can protect our beautiful creation. As I mentioned before, I love to use the Liquitex high gloss varnish. It's just my favorite one to use because I feel like not only does it give my canvas a nice finished shine, but it also makes the colors brighter, which I love. [LAUGHTER] I'm just going to show you how to do this and what we're going to need for this is of course our varnish, a piece, but also a paintbrush. My favorite types of brushes to use for varnish are painters brushes and what I mean by that is like a painter who paints walls, [LAUGHTER] a professional painter, a commercial painter. The goal is to find a nice sturdy brush that has a nice sturdy bristles that won't come out and fall onto your piece whenever you're adding the varnish and so the bristles are sturdy, but they're not too sturdy. They have a have a nice stiffness to them, but they also glide as well, so that's what I look for. Then I also have my palette here. I'm just going to go ahead and place a nice amount of varnish on my palette and it's super simple. All we're going to do is we're going to paint from the bottom to the top. We're going to just give one coat that is vertical and then we're going to follow that up by a second coat that is horizontal and that's it. What this does, it just ensures that you get nice coverage on your piece. That's also the wonderful thing about these brushes, is that they get really great coverage. [NOISE] I am going to go ahead and paint the edges as well. What I do is I make sure I go over it. I look for areas that look like they might be pulling up too much with maybe areas that have too much varnish. I just want to make sure that everything is really smooth. You want to make sure your brush is really clean so you don't leave behind any extra unwanted marks or dust. I'm really liking how this is looking. I'm just going to go to one more pass over just to smooth everything out and I'm going to wait for this to dry. Once this is dry, I'm going to follow up with my horizontal layer. Already now that my first layer is dry, I'm going to go back in and add a second layer with the varnish, but this time I'm going horizontally. That just helps us to ensure that we get every little corner covered with varnish and that's it. Just make sure that you really wash your brush out really well to make sure you get all the varnish out so that it'll be nice and supple for the next time you're wanting to use it to apply varnish. 11. You Did It! : [MUSIC] Congratulations on the completion of your abstract piece. I cannot wait to see how it turned out. Please do share your work in the class gallery, so that I and others can admire what you created. If you would like to share your piece on Instagram, you can tag me @ettavee, E-T-T-A-V-E-E, and I would love to share your work with my followers. The more we share our work, the more that we share our joy with others and inspire others to create themselves. Thank you so much for joining me and I am looking forward to seeing you again soon.