Transcripts
1. Introduction: [MUSIC] Hello, I'm playing
in the acrylic inks, and today I have a
really fun class that's super easy
that I think you're going to love playing in. I'm Denise Love and I am an artist and photographer
out of Atlanta, Georgia, and today we're going
to play in acrylic inks. I'm playing in inks because I particularly have fun with those and I like the way that they
move and react on paper. You can do this
project in watercolor or any other inks that you
want to experiment with. It'll work with a variety
of different mediums, but I'm going to be
playing in the inks, and I can't wait for you to see some of the stuff that
we're going to do today. We're going to start off making some littles in several
different colorways, and I'm going to call these
minimalist because they're not necessarily like one element on here so that
it's super minimal. But when I say minimalist, I'm saying pick two colors, maybe a third is a
mark-making element, and see what you create. Keep the supplies
and the elements and the different things
that you're working with to a minimum. We're not going back and then embellishing really
heavy on top of these, I want the abstract aspect of these to really shine and see
what can you come up with. Then if you get your
piece and you're like, okay, now I feel like I need to add more to it, then go for it. [LAUGHTER] But I have so much fun
just experimenting with the pure color and
the different papers because I experiment
on a couple of different papers to be like, okay, what would it be if
I worked on rough paper versus smooth paper
versus cold paper? Fun stuff. Look at all
of these that I created just as I'm [LAUGHTER]
talking to you. What I like about
these is several of these inspired my larger piece, so I want you to create
some little pieces and then come back and
create a big piece. Like here's my little
one that I really loved, and the piece that it
inspired. I love that. I love looking at
things and thinking, okay, now how can I
make that larger? Then I did this
yummy little piece and inspired a bigger piece. I like the challenge that
you get when you're thinking small and then thinking
larger, so super fun. Then this piece, actually the colors are what
inspired me here, and I created some of
my little cut apart. Again, keeping in mind
minimal supplies to create the most impact that I could create and
these are my favorite. I can't wait to
put these on like a little white piece of paper to frame it out and
then have it framed. [LAUGHTER] I always like to
do a little cut-up project. Even though I might not plan to do it, as we're starting, I got so excited with these colors that I'm
like, let's get one up. [LAUGHTER] Today we're going
to play with our inks. We're going to keep our
supplies minimal and see what really cool abstracts
that we can come up with. I hope you enjoy
what we're doing. I can't wait to see the
projects that you create. Let's get started. [MUSIC]
2. Class Project: [MUSIC] Your class project today is experiment and create
a lot of little pieces. I created a lot of
little pieces in class because I wanted
to play with colors. I wanted to play with
different papers. I wanted to
experiment and really get some of these that were
going to be my very favorite. Then out of those, what bigger pieces or other
pieces that I inspire. For instance, these pieces
that had the magenta in it inspired my cut-out
piece that I did. Then I cut out lots of pretty
little art out of that, which I'm going to mount on its own little white paper and then they're ready to frame. I also did several in this color way that
I've then made a piece that I'm
absolutely in love with. You can judge which
way does this go? Which way does it look best? Which way is it talking to me? [LAUGHTER] I love
that about abstract is everybody's going to have an opinion about which
direction it could go. But I want you to go ahead and create your littles
and then come back and show me your big that
that might have inspired. I'm pretty excited to see
what colors you pick, what compositions you go with, how it is that your colors
matched and played. I can't wait to see
what you went with. Come back and share
those with us, and I'll see you in class. [MUSIC]
3. Supplies: [MUSIC] Let's take a look at the supplies that
we'll be using today. Because we're doing
minimalist abstracts, I want to keep the
supplies minimalist also. Pick one supply to paint with, whether that be acrylic
ink, watercolors. I like something that's
really high flow for this type projects so watercolor is probably
your best alternative for doing this project. But look around your art
room after you watch some of the videos and see what
you have that you think, oh, let me play with this today, and just see what you
can come up with. High flow acrylic
paints may even work. They're really half low ones, but I like the inks
because they're really highly pigmented and
they're super-duper flowy. [LAUGHTER] I've got some
painters tape so I can tape off some smaller projects
using inks today. I've got the Daler-Rowney, a few colors in that FW and I've got a few
of the Liquitex. I have randomly
just a smattering of colors and a few metallics. My metallics are the Liquitex, but it doesn't really
matter what you got. Pull out what you
got and what you might want to
experiment with today, whether that be these
inks or some watercolors. I've also got a couple of brushes that I'm going
to use because I'm going to put water on
the paper and dab color in and then maybe mark
make with some items, so definitely keeping it as simple and uncluttered
as possible just to say, what can we create with
these items today? I'm going to be using cold press 140 pound watercolor paper. This is the perfect project to experiment with your papers
if you have rough press, if you've got hot press, if you've got cold press, if you've got all cotton paper, if you have a nicer
quality paper, then say this medium
quality paper, this is a time to experiment with those papers
because this is the perfect project to see how it reacts with
each type of paper. I'm going to be using that. This is just a big 9
by 12 pad that I got. These are fun because you can get these sometimes
at your craft store, buy one get one free. A lot of times Michaels does these, buy one get one free, or half off, or
back-to-school sale. I think this was a
back-to-school special, and I buy several and
then when I want to just mindlessly sit at my
table and maybe create, but not think too
hard about what I'm creating just to see what
I might end up with, this is the perfect
paper for doing that. Then I've also got some
water and I'm going to try to keep that be what I use. If I'm going to do some mark
making on my papers with the dabber that is
in my ink bottle. But some of these
dabbers are rounded, and in that case, I might want to play with a wood skewer or something like that if I
want to mark-make. I could also play with any of my favorite
mark-making tools, whether that be a
mechanical pencil, or a piece of graphite, or a Posca pen, if you want to
throw a little bit in at the end, you
certainly could. But that's where I'm
going to keep it. I'm going to keep it simple. We're going to do
some color testing and then we'll do
some small projects, and then maybe
that small project will inspire a
bigger piece for us. Let's get started. [MUSIC]
4. Other Paint Options: [MUSIC] In this video, I just want to do a
quick demonstration. When I say that you can use other materials besides
just the acrylic ink to do these projects, I thought I would just show you an example of what some
of those could be. You could use watercolor inks. You could use
high-flow acrylics. You could use watercolors. Even on these acrylics, you could use the fluid acrylic. I'm just going to show you. [NOISE] You probably could do any kind of acrylic if you
had enough water added to it. You could also do
pan watercolors. For this what I'm doing for most of the projects is
I'm putting some water on my paper and then I'm
using the acrylic ink to create my box of
color basically. Just to show you, this is the ink. Again, I'm just going to
put some water on here. This is watercolor ink. Look what that does. The watercolor ink
spreads really nicely. Let's go ahead, put a
little bit of watercolor out on our palette
and you can use the pan watercolor it
doesn't have to be the tube. You just want to get some
water on your paper. Then I'm going to get some
of the color on my brush. Then I'm going to
come back in and dip my watercolor into my square and just work that a little bit. I want to just work it until
I've got it how I want it. What's nice about watercolor and some of these others too, you can dip other
colors in here. You can add a little more color if it's not intense enough. But that is basically what I'm thinking with the watercolor. You would simply get
it on your brush and then dip that into your square. If we do a really
fluid acrylic here. That's the high flow
and this is the fluid. I'm basically treating
them the same way. I'm going to put some
water on the paper. I'm going to make sure I got
a lot of water on my brush. Get some of that color going. Look at that. That one
spread out really good. High flow, [LAUGHTER] nice. Little more water on the paper. [NOISE] Let's just
go for the fluid. You can see really too, if you have thicker acrylics. Look at that one,
spread just as good. [LAUGHTER] If you've got any of these little acrylic things
those would work great. You can see how once we get into our projects
and you're watching me create the pieces
that I'm creating, you can see how
you can substitute the ink for quite a
variety of products. As long as you can put a
little bit of that paint on your paper and get it nice
and wet with some water, you can use basically any
type of paint that you want. If you've got the
thicker acrylic paint and you want to give that a try, just put a little there and water it down really
good and then tap your brush into your water that you are creating
your abstract with. I hope that gives
you a little bit of an idea of what I'm
saying when I say, you can use other things and here's how they
would work for you. I'll see you back in class. [MUSIC]
5. Color Swatching: The first project that
I think I'm going to do today because I have
a bunch of colors and I'm not really normally
a color swatcher. But today, I think
we're going to do a little bit of color swatching just to figure out what
colors do we have. I'm going to do it in a
way that's interesting. I'm going to take
a clean brush and clean water and in the projects, I want to put water
on and dip the ink on the water and see how it spreads and flows and
what color I end up with. For my sample sheet, I think I'm going to
do the same thing. I'm going to put some water
and dab a color in it, and then underneath that I
can write what color that was and that's what
we're going to do today. Then I can just line
them up here beside my color palette as I'm
going so that when they dry, I'll know what
color I put where. Let's just align those. I want my neutrals. Let's see, I've got all these
blue-green in that range. I want to maybe play with colors that I haven't played
with before possibly. I'm just going to line
these up in a way. That might be too many
for the first line, but maybe the second line. Let's just see and try
to do this thoughtfully. You can see I've got lots of colors
and I just pulled them all out to say, what
can we do with these? Then the liquid texts
ones I've got over here. I think that one's yellow ocher, what's that? That's
yellow oxide. No, it needs to be shook up, so a lot of these make sure you shake it before you use it. But when you do that, make
sure the lid is on it because I have definitely done a few oopsies with the lids not being on my inks accidentally. I've got white, but white is not really going to show up. I've got this fine warm gray, which is an Amsterdam color, I like that, and then I've got these
which are my metallics. What I'm going to do now
that I've got the lineup, but I don't really
want to move it because I can just
open each one, dip it on my water, and then move to the next one and I can
come back and say, what color was that? Let's just start with
the outside here. Let me get my dropper open, just going to do a little
swash of water and then a dip of ink and I will
just let it do its thing. That's the way I'm going
to do each of these. We could add a little extra
water if we wanted to. Where's my clean paintbrush? Here we go. If it's not really moving around and I
want it to move around, I can do a dab of water on here and just
get that to move. I don't want that right
there, so picked it right up. Once we've got that one, put the lid back on, grab the next
color, shake it up. I think I've got too
many on each row here that I've created,
but that's okay. I line them little further
over as I use them. Look at that color
that is yummy, that's turquoise by FW. I'm feeling that one's going
to make it into something. That's the feel I want. I want to put that
color on there and I want to get excited
about what it's doing, look at that one. That one is indigo. I'll do indigo and
paint gray leaving just a little bit of
room underneath these to be able to write these
colors once this is dry. Look at that, yummy. I just love inks, they
are so highly pigmented, they still give you a
watercolory feel so you're getting some fun. I love that one. You're going to
hear crazy noises. This is antelope brown and man, I do love the antelope brown. Let's start the next row here. See I've already filled in
these three colors personally. Just dip in some water on that, see what it does. Just start that right up there. Burnt umber, next
one is burnt umber. I think that was red earth. This one has a big
glob of color stuck on it and I don't
want that stuck there. Let me grab that. I want to get that big
blob of color off here. I'm just going to grab it. The thing about the
acrylics that are different than the watercolors is they're very watercolory when you put them on the paper. But when they dry, they are no longer able to reactivate
it, look at that. With watercolor,
you could easily reactivate the color
and do more to that. But with these,
you can't do that. Once it's dry, it's dry. That one's called flesh tint, I think portrait pink. I don't think I've ever actually done this, but now that I have it, I'll always know what colors I have and then I'll never
have to do it again. But it's unimportant. I'm not really a square
color-swatching girl. But with these I feel
like for this project, I want to be able to say, I want to use that and that. I want to be able to have a definite opinion
on the color I want. Just looking at the
bottles I'm going, maybe I want this,
maybe I don't. Whereas I did a color
swatchy project in another class, the landscape, atmospheric landscapes and I didn't it in a little
bit different way, hence whatever favorite
color swatch sheets ever, because the colors run down the page and they're
so beautiful. But I feel like, look at that color. Can you see that color with one of these, pretty. Let's put that one there. I'm being real careful
to keep these in the order that I
did them so that in a minute I can
come back and very easily write each color. That one's pretty too,
it's like the same color. Let's see, this is
crimson and magenta. It's not the same color, but it does look very close. Let's go ahead, I've got
a green over here hiding. Look at that color.
That's crazy color. Look at that. It spreads out to a neon
yellow, that's different. Let's start up here
with these Liquitexes. Another thing that's
interested in doing this is we could mix
two colors and be like, what would this do if I took this color and dabbed
it with the next color? We might do a little
bit larger project where we're doing that. Let's add some water
to that there. I have discovered on some of these Liquitexes, especially the
metallics, they don't run the same way that the FW [inaudible] do. Of course that one did, so
that just made me a liar. But on the metallic ones they do something different
sometimes, I have noticed. It's not necessarily bad. It's just an observation of
how did the supplies work. Really actually now
that I've said that , let's put this here. You can see that it
keeps real heavy color where these spread out
a little differently. It's just interesting
how these are doing. I love this warm gray. I love it so much that
I was doing a project, I just dumped the color out on the project accidentally, definitely wasn't on purpose
and I was like, "Oops." Got a little ink run-off
there on my paper. If you get little pieces
that end up on your paper, resist trying to get
them out of the way, because you can do it in a
bit when they're all dry. You don't want to smear
those into your paints. Got some bronze. Got some gold. Now this is all
the colors I have. I like that I'm going
to have them all on one sheet labeled underneath it, and then I can pull this out. So I'll know what
I got every time, and I can pull out
the right color. If there's a favorite
color and I use it all, I'll be able to refer
back to the sheet, to say, "Oh, that's that color." Once you get one of these
with all your colors, now I could be able to be like, "I love these, and I love this antelope. I love that one." I can see what colors
I'm tending towards. I can also see that I
don't have an orange, so I may have to get an orange because I like orange
and pink together. I don't have a true red, but maybe I could
take a little of that red and a little that yellow
and mix it up over here. Let's just take a
little bit of red, let's just make ourselves
an orange and see, and a little bit of, let's use this toned down. Let's see what we got here. Going to just put them over there and test it
out and see what we get. We can mix colors,
that's my point. You don't have to use the colors straight out of the
bottle if you're wanting like say an orange or
something out of your setup, we could make some other colors. Let's get a piece of
watercolor paper. I usually have a lot
of scraps around. But before I film each class, I clean up my workspace so it's not overwhelmed
with lots of stuff. We could do some color mixing, and if you do some color mixing, make a little swatch
of it and right underneath it the two
colors that you used, particularly like that,
so the orange is fun. If you get a color
that you're like, I don't have an orange, or a green, or a blue, or whatever that I love, look at what you
do have and see, could you get close to
one of those colors. That's a really cool orange. In a case like that
I could still lay water down and scoop it with my brush and tap it in for the project that
I want to do today. Once you get all your colors out here, let everything dry, write each color underneath it, and we'll have a little
master color sheet. It's also really interesting
to see which one's separate and balloon out and make interesting
colors and stuff. This one right here, which is this red earth,
really separates, and granulates, and balloons, very interestingly, which will really add to our
yummy abstracts. Can't wait to use that one in
something, maybe that one, and this one here, which I think is this one, which is the sepia. Feeling that one
and a sepia maybe, maybe this green and something. I'm going to let these dry. I'm going to write the color
names under each color. One little note here
in the process of writing my color names
underneath my colors, I realized that two of my inks, and I think it's just these two, are actually watercolor
inks by [inaudible]. Just to show you that this inks, this is the watercolor ink and this is the watercolor ink. They're acting just
like the acrylic ink. The only difference with the watercolor ink is
that you'd probably be able to reactivate these colors if you added water
to them again, whereas the acrylic inks you
wouldn't be able to do that. Any ink would do this project really easily,
or even watercolor, just to throw that in there, that a couple of these were watercolor inks in the bottles and I didn't even realize that. I'm going to finish
writing the names, and then I will see you
in the next project. [MUSIC]
6. Creating Small Pieces: For this project, I want you to pick a couple of colors and we're going to start experimenting on a small-scale so that we can then move up to a larger piece after we have figured out our
colors and stuff. So after I wrote
all my colors on here a couple of these we're still wet when I picked them up. But that's okay, I can still see the colors. So what I've done is
I've just taken a board. This is a piece of cardboard
actually that came in a box. It's not perfectly straight. You really do want them
to be perfectly straight. But for this particular
play project here, this would be okay. So I've got my water, I've got my two paint brushes, the one that I can do some extra dipping
if I need to and the one that I'm going
to create shapes with, or I can create
shapes with this, any watercolor brush
would be all right. I've also got some mop brushes, so this is like a
little tiny mop brush, I guess we could say
and a big mop brush so maybe we'll pull
that one out too. So let's go ahead and
have those ready. I've taped it off into fours. I want to do four
different projects. This is that cold press paper. I think I want to experiment
with different colors. I know already
that I love these. I really loved this
green and this purple and I wouldn't even
say I'm a purple person, but look at the green, purple, and this oxide, super pretty. That red Earth is
really calling to me. I like this turquoise. I'm going to work in
the colors that are speaking to me today. Every time you
come back to this, something else
might speak to you, but let me just pull
some of these out. I've got the indigo, I know I love that. I love this olive green, and I love that turquoise. Let's see, I also love Payne's gray. So let's put the
Payne's gray over here. I love this antelope Brown. Good one. So I've got these four, I liked that and I've got the purple like so we love that one. I also like this yellow oxide, which was this yummy
soft mustard brown. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. I think that I like that. I like this quinacridone magenta also so we might
put that over there because maybe that would
be a really cool abstract. Then I liked the metallics. I don't know if I'll use them, but I do have them
over here to the side, so I know I love those. I think I'm going to push
all these other ones out of the way for
the moment and focus on the ones
that are really speaking to me today and
I want you to do same. I want you to make your
little color chart and then look at all
the colors and say, oh, I do love this red Earth, let's pull red Earth over here. Look at all the
colors and say, okay, these are the ones that
are speaking to me. Let me move these other ones out of the way so
that they're not even messing up the conversation going on with me
in this piece art. Let's take a look. I think I'm going to
do a lot of these because you want to do some
sections and let them dry, come back and add a
little more and do some mark-making and that's
going to be the process. So I have a couple of
these taped off and ready to go so I can experiment. I have my color chart back here behind me
so I can be like, okay, let's do whatever,
whatever, whatever. I almost want to start with that olive green so let's
just pull that out. You can take the lids
off of your pieces, shake them up and
take your lids off. But let me tell you.
Once you do that, don't pick them up by the lid. If you don't remember that you have those lids
unscrewed because I have done that more
times than I even care to admit and
be like, oh crap. I had a moment when I didn't want to
be saying, oh crap. Well, I'm going to
loosen these up for the camera and
we'll hope I don't make some big mistake. Got colors back here. We got all our colors open. Loving the antelope brown
and the olive green. So we are taking a
look at these two, let's do those two. Maybe the purple lake
and the olive green. Even loving this yellow
oxide over here. I don't know. Let's just see what we can do. So let's go. We've got the antelope brown. So what I'm going to
do is just maybe make us a water section
and put some ink in. This is the time where you could manipulate it a
little bit if you want, because I don't necessarily
want it to look like I put a big drop right in
the middle of my abstract. But you just work it. Maybe I'll put one over here. We'll dip a little bit of this maybe along the edge
and look what that did. So we're going to
let that dry and I'm going to move on to this
next section over here. Maybe I'll do this
with this mop brush and just see what organicy
shape we can get. Maybe with this little
purple. That's fun. While it's wet, we can
move it around a little, but I want to play with these and then let them
do their thing. There's that. Maybe on this one, I'll start with the red
Earth. That's interesting. Look what that did.
You don't have to do two of each color splotch. I'm just going along
with the flow here and seeing what are we going
to end up with if I do this? Let's do some of this
Payne's gray here. That's very interesting. I might want to move that around a little bit with
my little extra water. Then I can come back. Let's see, I liked Payne's gray, maybe some of this antelope. If they're not touching, you could do another
little section. If they're going to be
overlapping or touching, then I would definitely
let those sections dry. So I'm going to let these dry
and pick up my next board. I've got another one here. Let me say, you definitely want to
do a bunch of these because some are going to be amazing and some
are going to be terrible. If you'll do a whole bunch, you'll be really excited about the ones that ended up amazing. The ones that ended up terrible, won't be so upsetting. I'm just saying, from
personal experience. That is a color, look at that. Let's just move that
around a little bit. I really love the
choppiness of that side. I don't want everyone to be like a perfect
straight whatever. Or maybe I domostly. Let's see, what do we do
there? Let's do this gold. I'm not thinking too hard about composition
at this point, I'm just thinking where do I want to put these inks and
maybe have some ink spots. As it's drying, what do I want to
maybe end up with? For the moment, this is
your time to experiment and see what can we create? Let's see, I liked
this red Earth. Let's play with
that a little bit. That color is crazy,
look at that. I went really heavy on
that one, didn't I? Let's just let
that do its thing. I like magenta and
maybe the gold. Maybe that can be
magenta and gold. Let's see. What else? I want
to try the antelope again. I want it to look a
little bit like a lake. What am I going to do that blue? When we're all done, some
of these may orientate this way and some of
them may orientate tall. We'll just see what
we can end up with. Look at that. Maybe we'll come up this way with some of the maybe the green. Let's see. I like green. Let's do the green up here. Then maybe we'd add a
little extra, maybe not. Let's just let
that do its thing. It's doing some fun stuff there. I want some of that brown
to go outside of that line. We could take the end of a
paintbrush or a skewer or something and we could go ahead and make it do some
fun stuff while it's wet. That's fine. A little bit
of mark-making in there. Not fine. We might love
them and we might not. Let's just see.
Let's let these dry. The first one I
just did ink spots, the second one I've done, let's drag the color through it. What's above these dry and
then we'll come back for the next thing that we're
going to add to our abstracts. Here's our first set that
we were playing with. It's not completely dry, but it is dry enough for us to maybe play
a little more in it. I really love this antelope. I think I want to play
with the antelope and maybe some Payne's gray and just see if I
add some of this color. Maybe right here touching it a little bit and just
let it do its thing. Let's just see what we can get. Then maybe over here
I want some yellow. Let's just let
that do its thing. But let's do this green. I like green. That was cool. Then this was the magenta, but it looks different
than my magenta up there. Was that the magenta? That might've been the red
earth? That was the red earth. I think I want to put
maybe some Payne's gray in with this red earth
or maybe the antelope. Antelope is fine. Let's
do some antelope. That's okay if they touch
and they do a little. That was way too
much ink on that. That might never dry. If you do way too much ink, just take a paper
towel and just stick the edge and soak
up some of that so that you don't feel like you ruin your piece and it's going be way too heavy and the soaking up might
give you a cool texture. Don't be afraid if you
need to soak some ink up. Now that I've said
that I might soak up. You don't want to
soak up too much. I want the ink to do and dry its thing and have
very dark areas. I'm going to let
that do its thing. Then over here,
maybe a third color. What color do we want? Let's just do it right there. Maybe we want the green.
Oh, yeah, look at that. We could let that
dry if you wanted, or we could go
ahead and come back in with some mark-making. I think what I want to
do is a little bit of mark-making so that it
actually almost blends. Let's do that. You want to be simplistic. You don't want to overdo, but a few marks
in one direction, a few marks in another
direction might be good. Well, I like that one.
We could do circles. I'm just drawing with
the Payne's gray, just using the ink dauber. It doesn't have to be any other supplies than what you've already got
that you're working with. Look at that one. What we could do too is we could take a paintbrush
and we could do a little bit of like
a water splatter, like a color splatter. If I get enough water
and gray in there, I could get some splatter. Then you're going
to have to just set them to the side and let them completely dry
and do their thing. Let me set these to
the side and pull back that other set we
were working on.
7. Finishing small pieces: [MUSIC] Here's our other set, so we're just going to need
to take a look and say, "Okay, what else do
we want to do here?" I think that might've
been the red Earth again. I know I have magenta out, but I think I might
not have used that. Let's use the magenta
with this yellow. Let's just come over here, drop [NOISE] some magenta in. Whoa, look at that. Then I might take the end
of the paintbrush here and do some mark-making
with that real quick. That's fun. Then
what do we want to put with this yummy turquoise? I'm feeling indigo. Let's pull some indigo out, and then let's see. Maybe we want to just do something while
coming out like that, and just see what we
get. Look at that. Part of the fun of this
is [LAUGHTER] just being crazy with where
you put the water, and then seeing
what the ink does. That's pretty cool.
I'm working that. You do want to be careful
picking it up though. I just made that go, "Oh, let's stop right there." [LAUGHTER] I want to pick
it up and move that back, but it's not going to
move where I want it. Let's just pick a little
bit of that water up. [NOISE] I'm just soaking it up with the edge just
to pick a little bit up. I do like it. We're not going
to really change the look, but we'll soak a little
bit of water up. There we go. Let's just do that. Now we've got this red Earth, I think I want to put
the antelope with that. I love the antelope
for some reason, but let's just do a swipe. [NOISE] That's cool. Then over here
what do we want to finish this one off with? We want to finish it off with
may be some Payne's gray. Let's let that do its thing. We can let it dry and
mark make after the fact, but I like it when they blend
in a little bit with it. [NOISE] I like that one. You can do like I'm doing. You can pick one color to be like the last little
mark-making color, or you can pick a different
color every time. I've got some other little ones that we're going
to look at here in a minute where I tried different papers and just
different colorways, so we'll see how
they ended up too. Then do we want any
little splatter? Maybe. Maybe I'll put this on my
disposable paint palette here. Just a little bit of this Payne's gray on
this paint palette, so I can pick it up with my
paintbrush a little easier. [NOISE] Let's just see. Yeah, that's what I want. Just a tiny bit too. I don't want it to be so
much that it's overwhelming. That one might be my favorite. As you're doing these think, which one do you
want to do bigger? What do you think
is going to be your favorite for maybe
a bigger project? I'm feeling like that
could possibly be my bigger project, so we'll see. I want to set these
down and let this dry with the other set, and then we'll see what they
look like when they're dry. These are 99.9 percent dry because I
actually went and had some lunch and made myself leave my art room so
that I wouldn't be tempted to touch any of these. [LAUGHTER] Look how amazing
some of these look. We can even change direction. I'm so in love with this color combination,
it's just amazing. I did this purple
and this green. I really love this one which
inspired my bigger piece, and I don't know if the bigger piece is
going to turn out as stunning as the little
piece but now I can cut each of these out and
frame them separately. What I like now is we can turn
around and look at them in different directions and see which way is most
successful for each piece, and out of this bunch this
one doesn't grab me as much. This is why I want to
do more than one at a time because I love this one, and I love this one,
and I love this one, and that one is
just like, "Okay." I'm not as excited
about that one, but I still love the
other three that I got. On this one we tried
that same yummy feel. Man, I love that one too. This is a great layout for me. I've got something
on the bottom. It will split there at the top, so that one's super cool. I really loved this colorway, so that's definitely going to probably be a project that I do. Just looking at the
different directions, I like this one. Long way the best. [LAUGHTER] It could be
like a George Jetson car. There's the person
sitting in the car, and we're zooming out. This is zoom at the back. [LAUGHTER] I like the
two blues together. Again, this one that's the
redder than the antelope. That's probably not my
favorite colorway personally, but I do actually love
this piece much more than I loved that first piece that I tried with that colorway. This is a super fun project, and I want you to make
pages and pages of these experimenting with
different colorways and the different marks. At this point too
if we wanted to we could come back and add
more on top of this, but in the spirit of
my intentions today; minimalist, I'm going to stick with just what
I've already done. I want to stick with the inks, I don't want to have so many extra supplies coming in here. If you're doing this in
watercolor then you might pick a marker, or a paint pen, or some other art supply to do all the extra
marking that I did with the Payne's gray ink
or you might even consider getting one ink and
doing lots with watercolor, and letting the ink
be those yummy marks. In the spirit of minimalism, I'm going to keep these
fresh like they are. Just know that I love this one, I love this one,
I love this one. This one's fun. I love this one. This one was fun, I'm on the fence about that one. About 50-50. We ended up with 50 we loved, and we ended up with
50 that might go in my collage pile to tear up
and do other things with, but I definitely have some
pieces that are going to inspire the larger
pieces that we do in class. That's super exciting. I'm feeling this might be one, this could be something, this could be something. I'm pretty excited
with my experiments. Let's go ahead and look at doing something a
little bit larger, and I'm also going to experiment
on some other papers. Let's take a look at my other paper experiments
in the next video. [MUSIC]
8. Paper Experiments: [MUSIC] I went ahead and did even more ink drawings
on different types of paper because in this
experimenting part of figuring out the
colors that you like, and the marks you want to do, and the different designs
you want to come up with, part of it is what paper are you really going
to love to do, create big projects on later, and I love to experiment
on things like this to see do the
different papers work? Do they not work? Do I love it? For most of the projects in
class I'm going to be using that Canson cold press
watercolor paper, but I thought it would
be fun to just look at what these other papers do. What I have here on this piece
is some Arches hot press, and these turned out really fun. I love the green
and the antelope. Again, I tried antelope on all of them with
different colors. I did the magenta, the turquoise, the Payne's
gray, and the green. That was really fun to say, "Okay, I like this
as a base color. What do I want to go with that?" That was super fun. That was the hot press. I also experimented
with the Arches rough, that's the hot press. We've got the rough and
also experimented with the Canson Heritage which is a nicer upper line of
the cans and stuff. We're using a medium line
on the ones I was doing. These were on the rough, and then this last
set that I have, we're on the nicer Canson paper. I like experimenting,
and playing, and learning on cheaper papers, and then when you get to the
point where you're like, "Okay. This is my thing. I'm making some stuff
that I'm going to sell or I'm going to really be proud of," then I
like to step up to a nicer paper when I do that. For the Canson Heritage, I decided to just play with
antelope and Payne's Gray. Man, I'm going to tell you
I love all four of these. Once we cut these out
because I'm going to cut these into their
own little pieces, I can then decide which
direction do I really love each piece to go
but these are fun. This is one of my favorite
colorways I think on this set. This one too, I'm in
love with the purple and green especially in the areas that I let
them mix and blend. Look how beautiful these are. I love this one, I love all four of these. I like that this one's
a little longer and we have a little touch of
purple on each side. i like that this one's a little more compact there with
some green in the middle. I like that this
one's a little taller and we could go different
directions with that. This one looks like a blob, but I still like the colors. It's not my favorite
composition of the four, but it's interesting to see and experiment how this turnout. I actually liked the rough
paper on this project. I liked the way that the
watercolor looks on it in comparison to the other choices that I was experimenting with. The rough paper does take a little more water
almost to get that ink to spread because
it's got more tooth to it. It didn't spread
differently actually, it just looks completely
different than these that are on the cold
press and the hot press. It's a different look for
all three different papers. I want you to try this. Whatever papers that
you may have in your stash that you
either try it or wanted to try or get
some papers to put in your stash to be able to
pull one out and say, "Well, this project was so cool, how would it be if I used it on this paper or that
paper instead?" These were fun. I
loved this colorway, in love with those. This was fun to experiment
with one main color and then a secondary color
in there, so super fun. I love how all these turned out. This was a friend project. Definitely experiment with different papers
on some of these if you've got some or you see something that looks
really interesting. I'll see you back in class. [MUSIC]
9. Evaluating for color and composition: [MUSIC] A little bit about composition
because with abstracts, a lot of people think
abstract's really easy and then they do it and
they're like, this is hard. [LAUGHTER] One of the
reason why I like doing little pieces with different colors on taped
off pieces of paper, is because then you get to experiment a lot with
different colorways and different layouts and
different configurations and then you can see what
you liked and didn't like, and how they worked out. But if when you cut these out, almost have different
thoughts about some of them than I had originally. Because now you can evaluate each piece individually and say, that is its own little piece of art ready for me
to sign and frame. It's amazing how good some
of these look, cut out. Like I said, this
one that looked a little bit like a blob. Now that it's cut out on
its individual piece of paper and turned in a different
direction than I had it. I'm feeling like it goes this
way and it looks so good. I almost want you to paint
all your little ones. Let them dry. Do any little bit
of mark-making, look how good this one looks. Do your mark-making and let it all completely
dry and then cut them out and then take your
inspiration from each piece. I know I was taking
my inspiration from the pieces while they
were in their square. But now that they're out of
their square almost like this one better this way rather than the
way I painted it. It looks like this. I like this one this way. I love this one this way and I actually didn't like this in the full squares
where they were all together and I love to, if you pick one colorway, like I was experimenting
with the rough paper, which let me tell you, a rough
paper might be a favorite. Because these look
at that series. I almost want to
go back now and I may do it as part
of my own project. Do a big rough paper of this colorway because this
rough paper just looks so cool and it looks different than the hot press
and cold press. It has more texture and the ink, it just the way the ink reacted
to it, it's super cool. Whereas this is a cold
press this is a cold press. This is a hot press
and I can tell the difference because this has a little bit of a
watercolor texture to it and this one doesn't. It's completely smooth and let me tell you all
the ones that I did on that hot press
when I cut it out. They look so cool. I love the experiment that I
did on this hot press paper. That's a hot press one. Cut them out, now we're looking at compositions and trying to evaluate what worked
and what didn't. For me, this one
still doesn't work. [LAUGHTER] But that's
an interesting lesson because the one that I loved, which actually is
not that different. You can see, we've
got boop, boop. You know, we've got a
little bit of mark-making. It's very similar in the layout, but to me this one works. This one doesn't. I want you to experiment
with threes off-center, elongated versus
more like a square, and just see how can you get that composition
to work out for you. [NOISE] This one probably
looks better this way to me, I liked that there's a swash and one color versus another color. I almost wish on this one we did like we did
on this purple one, where we had just a dash of
that color may be down here. This is too another
reason why I like to go back and look at these and say, what's working for me and
what isn't working for me? This one I actually
like quite a bit. I didn't like it as much while it was still
in its square, like it like this and I love that there's this
dark element over here and then you've got some of the elements
circling all of them, I like that particular
draw that color out. Think about things like this, off-center it, can we draw the color out
in some of these? Where are we going to
have our dark element that I have focused on
with some of these? Look at this, I love these black and antelope
ones and I like that. It's coming in. We've got another element here, so we've got some movement. We're on the third for where
they combine there we've got some little dots
and lines drawing the eye around the piece. I don't want my pieces
sitting like in the center. Unless it's got some
other movement and direction or color or something drawing the eye into
a a different way. I want to like
this one this way. I do like this whole
little series that I did. This was on that
nicer Canson paper, I believe because it's the heavier watercolor I've
got the watercolor texture, but it's a heavier cotton
feel, I can feel it. I like this one a lot. But almost wish I had
this little bit of a gray extended over here. That's interesting to
take a look and say, it's almost there, but what
would have made it better? I think if I had
extended that gray a tiny bit that would have worked better for
me on this one. [NOISE] I think I
like it this way. I like that there's some
dark here and some dark here and we're
moving around that. I want you to think, how can we get some movement? Where is your dark
element going? And maybe not center
the dark element, but put the dark element to the left or the right
or up above or below the center and see what can we get on some of
these compositions? Let's see. Almost like it better that way and I liked that
we've got some direction. This is not my favorite piece though and I liked that this one is cut up
in three different units. That was a particularly
favorite one of mine. This one almost wish there was a green element on this side. I didn't care for that
particular layout. This one though I do like a lot better than the other one, feeling like it goes this way. It's interesting. You
might have thought, I liked it better that way. Abstract artists,
unusual and interesting. What I like about this one is we have some pull out
of that color, not just the black, the dark paint gray
that I was doing there. Pull some of the other
colorways out of there. It doesn't have to just
be the dark like this. I pulled the brown out. I want you to take all your
pieces when you're deciding. I almost want you to cut
them out before you do your larger pieces so that
you can evaluate each piece. Because now I like that
better than I did as a set, and like this one
in this direction rather than the
direction I painted it, interesting there and this
might be my favorite. I love that one and the one that looks like a sailboat almost. Hope you have fun with
a little project. I hope you do a ton of these. I want you to just be thinking a little bit about composition, but I want you to move fast. I don't want you
to get hung up on it and when you cut
these out then say, this is what's working, this is what's not working, and that's how we
grow in our craft. I will see you back in class. [MUSIC]
10. Cutting up art: [MUSIC] In this project, I want to randomly do one of those bigger sheets
and cut it up. [LAUGHTER] I'm just
going to lay some color on here with the different inks that
I want to play with, and then maybe do
some mark making and see what part of this
would we really enjoy. I feel, based on some other pieces that I've got sitting
around me drying, that may be I want to do this
in magenta and the yellow, and some paints gray, which you'll remember these
are still wet and drying, but I want to go ahead and
get this project drying. You'll remember that
we just did that in our sample or class and
I'm feeling I liked that. let's do a big cut-out
piece with those colors, and we can just be random here where we put our color
swatches and you know what, if you love the piece
that you create doing this and you don't
want to cut it up, that's fantastic too. [LAUGHTER] Look what
I that just did. I'm not thinking of composition, I'm not thinking of where
am I putting each color. With these cutout pieces, they're meant to be fun. I want to mix up and lay down color just anywhere that
I'm feeling inspired to, and we can come back
and add water in here. We can do some mark-making. These might end up
looking terrible, but they might end
up looking great. [LAUGHTER] When you're all done and you cut something out, you could possibly even come back and do mark-making with
other things at that point. We can touch the edge there
and look what it does. That was really fun the
way that ballooned. You can even come back and drag some of
these inks out further. I could go ahead and drag
with some ink on my brush, and just see how those mix. I can grab a different brush. Just see if I roll
this through here, what we'll end up, look at that right there. The goal here is just to cover our page and come back
and do some mark-making. I could've been a lot more
line, line, line, line, line like I did on some
of the other pieces, but it's fun to just
experiment in this way. I can get the color
to move backwards. I think I want this to dry
before I start, or do I? Maybe we want to go ahead and throw some
paints gray in here. I like the way it meshes
with the other colors, and at the same time has some areas where it's
just that gray bar itself. Look how fun that is. Super fun. Then I've got a little
tiny paper cutout from something else I've done, and I can just come through
and look now and be like, look at that right there. I'm already feeling I'm
going to like one of these. [LAUGHTER] This is
my favorite part when you're just happy a little. Look at that one right there, happy, wonderful
little surprises. I love the way that color
is doing there, so yummy. That's all we're
going to do on this. We're going to set this to
the side and let it dry. Then when this is dry enough, we will come back and cut
some little pieces out. I feel there's at least
one that I might love, like right there,
possibly we'll see. I need some ink up there,
though I don't know. Let's just real quick. You can wait till these are
dry to do the ink on here, but I like the way we
get when it's wet. But once it's dry, especially right in here, we could come back
and add ink on top of that and
it'll be more of a crisp rather than blend
in like that's doing. Let's let that dry and we'll
come back to this piece. This one is dried a bit more, I thought I would just
take my ink and do some more smearing around before we get to the
cutting of this. I like this extra
marks that we can get when some of it's dry and some of it's still
doing its thing. Maybe we can come back in here, add some other lines,
some other dots. We might like these dots. I know I like dots. Let's go ahead and take this opportunity just to
add some extra in here. Then once it's completely dry, we'll be ready to
explore and cut this up. You can use your paint
pen to do this too, if you've got a little
Posca paint pen, this will be great
for paint pen stuff. But I'm trying to keep in my
mind minimalist abstract, minimalist colors,
minimalist supplies, that's where my mind is sitting. I don't want to come in and add 15 different types of art
supplies on something that I'm really trying to
go ahead and keep it a little more minimal
and just see what I get. Well, I like that little mark
making that we did there. As they're drying the lines
are a lot more crisp, whereas when they were
wet they blended. I'm still loving this right
here. Right in there. Look at that one
where we've added those dots in there,
maybe right there. I'm feeling some good
stuff in this one today. Let's go ahead now, set it to dry for real,
and finish drawing. I think I'll walk
away from my art room and set myself away
from temptation. [LAUGHTER] Now I'm
thinking about it. Before we actually walk
completely away we can mark-make and do some
dots and other colors. It doesn't have to always
be the gray or the black that I'm
trying to use here. But what if we came back in
with this yellow that we were using and add some marks and
dots and colors in that. That was too big,
but that's okay. An extra fun little park here, throwing something in a color rather than just the dark gray. Come back in here maybe and draw some shapes with
one of your things. At this point, you
can't be thinking of, oh, I want to try
this, but well, I ruin it because
if you're always thinking am I about
to ruin this piece, then you're never
going to learn how to step outside that
comfort zone and get some really
crazy amazing things that maybe you would
not have got otherwise. This is the piece to experiment with and
don't worry about, oh no, I don't want to ruin it. I don't want to change it. Maybe I don't love this piece that I thought I
was going to love. But we'll see,
this is a piece to experiment and play
on, and just see. That's why I like to do
a whole bunch of these. Once you see when
we're all done, how many of these actually
did playing in class? [LAUGHTER] Some of these are
not going to be successful, and some of these are
going to be amazing, and it's the amazing
ones that make exciting. If you only did one and
then you're like, oh, I don't like the way
this turned out, then you're not going
to come back and do it again or you're not going to come back to your art
room and explore later. You're not going to have the fun that you're
meant to have. If you'll do a whole bunch and then pick out your favorite, then you get really
excited because you've got some really great pieces
that you didn't expect, and the other pieces
we can just use for collage stuff in other projects. I don't mind having
leftover crappy looking art because I can cut it up and make it
into something else. [LAUGHTER] I love
to cut stuff up. [LAUGHTER] Let's let this
dry and I'll be back. [MUSIC]
11. Finishing our cut up art: [MUSIC] Let's take this piece. Look how pretty
these colors are. I love that it's
basically two colors on the main part and
some Payne's gray, so we'll color it three colors. But I love these little areas where the pink and
that yellow meshed in. What are we using? We're using this yellow. What are we using? I think
we were using these two. But I love how
those colors blend together in the
areas where we let the wet water takeover. We have some very
dark to very light, I love that, and then I love
the contrast of the black. This was a fun piece. If you like it when
you're done as it is, like you don't want to cut
it up, then don't cut it up. [LAUGHTER] But I do love cutting stuff up and I
have lots of little pieces, little frame things here
in different sizes. I've got five by five, I've got five by seven, and I've got a six by six of just watercolor paper that I've cut strips of and
then tapped together. This one is, I think three by three and then this is like, I don't know. What is this? Four by six maybe, three and-a-half
by four and-a-half so little bigger than
this three by three. Because I thought maybe if we
like a little bigger piece, we don't have to cut
little pieces out of these because I'm actually liken this, in my mind I'm looking at the composition and the
color and thinking, do I love the composition
and the color that I've got? I had somebody in
a class asked me, do I cut the mat myself and no, I do not cut mat myself. I got these at the craft store
so you can just anywhere that sales frames always
sales pre-cut mats. Definitely go and grab some different sizes of these to just see what you can get. Then as you're looking around
for your favorite pieces, turn the paper all around. It doesn't have to stay the
way that you painted it. Like that one's really
fun right there. But I really loved this
section right here. When I was visually
eyeballing it, I liked that there. I like this little black
decoration that's on there, I like these whites, I like the movement that
we've got going. But I also liked what
was going on there. I like this size. I think I'm going to make some little mini collages today. These don't have to be great big giant pieces
of works of art. Micro collages are really nice if you just take a piece of watercolor paper and mount
these to the watercolor paper. I'm going to do this right here. I'm thinking rule of thirds when I'm looking for my key element. If I cut the paper into threes and cut the paper into
threes the other way, where those four points meet, or like a third of the paper, a third of the paper both directions where
those thirds meet, that's the most interesting
section for the eye. This right here falls right
there on that bottom third and these dots move the
eye throughout the photo. I'm really loving this one. Let's just go ahead
and claim that one, I don't think is really
going to get much better than that there.
That one's amazing. I'm going to go ahead and
cut this out of here too, because this pencil is blending into the point where
I don't want to lose it. Let's just cut the
first one out. [NOISE] Then we'll see what we got left and then
all the scraps of the things like this I save
because they make perfect collage papers and I really love this maroon color. It's so delicious. [NOISE] There we go. We'll cut this right here. All these little scraps that
we end up with, save those. Look how beautiful that is, oh my goodness, I love that one. Let me say, when I say take a piece of watercolor
paper and mount that, we can take a big piece
and we can cut out a bigger square and that can
mount right in the middle of that square and be
our finished piece. I love that. It's probably what
I'm going to do with these but let's just
see what else we got. I really loved
this area up here. What do we think? See I
like the way these come in. I like it right
there on the corner. Maybe right there, I'm still
thinking rule of thirds, what elements are in there? Is our eye moving
around the frame? Yeah. Let's go ahead and cut that and
let's just clean it. Sometimes I will do all my
drawings at the same time, but this has so many marks and stuff that I'm afraid
if I don't go ahead and cut the part that I loved, I will cut the wrong thing. Which on something like this, it's very easy not
to be able to see all your marks and you
cut the wrong thing. Then if you've got a
pencil mark left on it, you can come back and
trim. Look at that. See all my pencil marks. [LAUGHTER] I'm just going to trim all the little
pencils off here. Look at that. Completely different yet
you can see that it's part of the same little series. This is a pretty leftover piece. I'm really loving this element where we drew the circles in. Look at that, if we
turn it this way now the elements at
the bottom and we have movement coming in. We have these dots over here. Look at that one. Let's just think because I do like
this one up. Look at that. I'm filling that right there, claim it. Let's
claimed that one. [LAUGHTER] I love this
whole piece of paper. This was a good choice
to go with that magenta and that yellow
that ocher color. Good choice. Little bit outside my normal
color choice selections, a little bit outside
my comfort zone but that's what I like about
doing projects like this. Look how pretty that
is, oh, my goodness. Let's step outside
our comfort zone and make something
we didn't expect. I'm feeling that way. Oh my goodness, I get so excited with the cutouts because I'm not going to create
something like that. If I'm liking that. If I'm painting, I'm
just not going to end up with a finished
piece that I love. I'm going to do
something where I'm like, I don't like
how that turned out. I'm going to do this
and right here. Lets claim that one right there. I want this a little more
to the third which is like why I'm putting
it right there. I want that to not be centered. There's nowhere else to go
if I come further this way. I like it where the circles, you can't really see
the bottom of it, we've got some nice tension
there in the piece. I like that. This is not colors I wouldn't
normally play with. In doing projects, especially like this
for our workshop, I do all kinds of stuff
that maybe I'm not going to do on my own sitting
in my art table. It's like I give myself an assignment and
then say, okay, we'll see what we
can create and I love discovering things that I wouldn't have
discovered otherwise. Look at that [LAUGHTER]. I think I'm definitely,
I don't know. I'm liking that right there. These other pieces, we could cut these up for little gift tags. We could use these
as collage elements, which I particularly
liked to do. Look at this piece right here, that's super fun as like a
collage piece or a gift tag. I could cut this up
as gift tags or just leave it like this and put
it in my collage basket. I got some really
super fun pieces. I like that piece a lot. We could cut a
bookmark out if we had enough for like a bookmark. One of these could be a
bookmark like that right there. Great bookmark, this
one right here. That would be a pretty
bookmark, that right there. Anyway, here we go. Pretty. I'm loving
all four of those. I hope you enjoy minimalist. Two colors and a mark-making, something that's what I want
you to focus on with these, but look at how beautiful
these turn out. It's so much fun, I've used colors I wouldn't
normally gravitate towards, these are beautiful. Hope you'll love this project. This is one of my
favorite ways to create, so I had to slip one
in on this one too. [LAUGHTER] I will
see you next time. [MUSIC]
12. Going Larger: In this project, let's take inspiration from
one of our smaller pieces. They're still drying,
so we're going to talk about these when
they're all dry. But I'm really loving
this one right here, which looks like a
sailboat in a little bit, but it's very cool
abstract to me. I like the way the bottom comes down and I like that it's gray. I love this Antelope in here, and I like the green, but do we want to do
something besides the green? Maybe. But I think
I'm going to go for one that's like this
on my larger piece. Let me just see what we can get. You can take the piece
down if you want. Well, we probably
should do that and that'll keep the paper flat. That's going to be my inspiration
for this larger piece. I like to go ahead and
get some ideas going. Then maybe you let some stuff
dry and think about it. Or maybe I'm so inspired
like I am right at this moment that I want to
go ahead after I've played. I'm like, here's some
of the colors I love. Maybe I'm going to
go ahead and scoot onto a bigger project and
just see what we can get. I'm feeling that way. Let's just go ahead. Let's get some clean water because I got some
dirty water there. I'm going to do some of this and then we
can be letting this dry as we move back to our other little projects,
which I really love. I love working on multiple
things that are dry, so when I come back, I have all kinds of
fun stuff to play in. Let's do this one in
the Payne's gray. Man, I just love this gray. It's not coming out like
some of these other colors. It could be that I
haven't older bottle. But I still love
what the gray does. I might take my brush and
scoop some of this around, or we could just let
it do its thing. But I don't want any
little circles here. Somehow I've got
a little pink in here. It's all right though. Super cool. Look at that. I'm loving that. Let's come up here. I'm not going to
touch that color. But I definitely want enough
water on here where we're going to see some fun
stuff with the Antelope. Look at that do its thing. Let's just get a
little more movement here with this darker shade. Wow, look at that. Super fun. Now, do we want to go
back with the green? Because the green was
pretty darn cool? Or did I really like one of these other
colors even better? I don't think so.
I like that green. Let's just see what
it's going to do. This is all in
green. Look at that. I want to come down a
little bit with that water. Look how pretty that is. Then I want that to dry
and I'll come back in with some yummy mark-making. We could at this point do a
little mark-making but really feeling like I want it
to be partially dry before I start trying to move
some of this color around, and if you've got any buckling or
great big puddles of water that you might not
love, or maybe you love it. If you love it, leave it.
If you don't love it, soak up a little bit of the water before you set
it to the side to dry. That'll just keep
that giant puddle that'll move that
along a little faster. Then if you need to move any color around
when you do that, you can come back
in with your brush. Wish that brush had brown on it. That was very interesting. Another thing too, and
we might do one more of these is you could dab other
colors into your piece. You don't have to leave them all separate like I've
done on this one. Some of the other
ones I've really let those colors bleed into
each other and I love it. I'm going to set this to the
side and we'll let it dry. I might do another big
one just off camera just because there's
another one that I've done on that sheet that we were looking at
that I particularly love, like this one right here. I might go ahead and tape
another sheet of paper down and create a bigger
one of those too. Let me set this to the side
to dry and I'll be back. This one is not completely dry, but before it's completely dry, I want to come back in
and do some of that mark-making that I did like on this smaller inspiration
piece, and just see. What can I do? While there's still
chance for some of the color to run
in and add to it, what can we do? That's super fun. Might want to go ahead and have some
splatter on this one. Let's just see. Just rubbing that brush all in there
and let's just see. Look at that, oh my goodness. That's really fun. I think for now I'm
going to set this to the sun and let it do its thing, and then we'll see
it when it's dry. Here's the other
piece I painted in the speedup for the
second large one that I was thinking of. Look at this. This one, I do want to move these inks around before
they're completely dry. Just why I'm coming
back into this one now. Fun. I don't want too much. It's called minimalist
abstract for a reason, but I do want some
splatter on this one. Look at that. Get some
of that going in there. This one might be my favorite. That's why I like
to do more than one because the other one don't
turn out like you thought, one of the other two or
three or four that you did might turn out
like you thought. Then do we want to let
that dry really dark? I think I do. Why not? We are going to just
let that do its thing and see what we get. I could also take
this opportunity to move things
around if I wanted. I could come back and
add a little more color, but I'm really feeling
it like we got it. Let's let that dry and
then we can evaluate. I'm trying not to do stuff where you're not
going to see it, but I thought this is so thick
right here in the middle. What if I took some
of that and just very gently coaxed it over
here a little bit, and maybe coaxed a little
of this, this way. I think that would
be better than maybe the big dark being
just in the center. Now we've spread that
out a little bit, and I feel like that's going
to be a better composition. Now I'm going to let that dry. If I've still got too much ink, say like right there in
the center, don't forget, you could take like
the edge of a cloth and you can soak up a little bit of your puddle so that
it's not so dramatic. But some of these dramatic spots are the most interesting, so I wouldn't soak
up too much of it. Just a dab if you need to. Now let's let this dry. Checkout how our big
pieces turned out. This is the piece that I
painted that was inspired by our little piece here
on our little pieces, and I'll be honest, I do love
the little one the best, but I am still loving this. The reason why I
like to do a little and then let it
inspire a big piece, whether it be just a duplicate
of the piece that we did or changed up
a little bit is because then you learn new challenges of how
to take something from something small and relate
that to something big. Did we use a bigger paintbrush? Did we get the proportions
in the same that we wanted? Did the ink do what we
expected? That kind of thing. I think you learn a lot by
starting off little and moving to a larger
piece when you do stuff like this, and
that's why I love it. Whether the piece ends up your
favorite or not is beside the point because I like to create more than one
piece at a time, and I'll be honest, the
second piece that I created, inspired by this piece
here on that same paper. This I'm in love with. I mean, that turned out amazing. I could have that
framed just like it is. I could tear the
edges and let it have some nice deckled edges. We could do a lot with that, and I love the
simplicity, two colors, and I just let them blend a
little, did some speckle, did some marks, but it's all in just the two colors,
talk about minimal. I want you to take several of the
little pieces that you did and let those inspire
some really large pieces, and see if you'll do like
maybe four or at the minimum two but do like four of them and just see
out of that four, did you get at least
one that you love? I got this one that I love, so I'm super happy with this. What I really love about
the bigger you go is the more blooms and separations that you
get in the paint, and that's what I love. I love it with the watercolor and I love it with the inks. I love that it's
not all the same. Just boring, straight color like it's just as
pretty on this little one. That's the aspect that I like, the separations in the blooms and the interests
that that adds. I'm not looking for big color
washes of the same tone. I want that interest in there. Love that piece. We could make it go
different directions. I'm almost thinking, it looks
really nice like this way. I think I might
leave it that way. Looks really nice in several
different directions though. Depending on where
I would hang this, I'd have to say which
way we want that to go. This one same thing
we could make it go, I love it that way actually. Turn these if you don't love the piece in the
direction you painted it, turn it around and
see what would it look like going other ways. I don't think it
looks right that way, but I do actually
love it that way. I love it more that
way. Isn't that cool. I like this one this way,
but what if we turned it? That's pretty cool too. I think that might be my favorite piece. I do really love
that one too though. Definitely do at least two, four or five or six if you want to just
sit here and play all day and you can throw them on the floor in-between
each one you paint, let them dry, and then come back and show me your favorite one. I can't wait to see what
you're painting today, and I will see you
back in class.
13. Final Thoughts: [MUSIC] Hope you had fun today experimenting with
minimalist abstracts with me using acrylic ink, but you're welcome
to use watercolor or any other inks that inspired you or that you
happen to have on hand, and I hope you got
inspired to create a whole bunch of pieces
with this technique. I'm looking forward to seeing the different pieces
that you came up with. If you did the little pieces and then that
inspired a big piece, I definitely want to see what big piece your
little pieces inspired. This one that I did of the bigger piece that
my little piece inspired, it's definitely
like one of my very favorite that I've created. I'm pretty excited to have a
new piece of art to take to the framer and add to another
gallery wall in my house. Because let me tell you, I'm make a lot of art,
I collect a lot of art. This is the best way to display a lot of art is to have
it in gallery walls. I don't live in a big house, I live in a little townhouse because I'm not
going to mow grass. [LAUGHTER] I'm running out
of wall space and I was looking around the
other day and I thought it could
go up the stairs, because its got a
real tall ceiling and we could just
fill the whole thing. [LAUGHTER] I get really excited
when I'm making a class, and I end up with a whole
bunch of pieces that I love. I hope you get just as excited sitting at
your little art table, playing in these little
projects that I'm giving you and I can't wait to see some of the pieces
that you've created. Come back and share
those with me, and I'll see you next time. [MUSIC]
DENISE LOVE, Artist & Photographer
