Abstract Painting Design, Values and Composition Masterclass

1. Introdution to Design, Values & Compostion: Welcome everybody, and I'm really excited to share this new class with you. This class is going to be about composition or design. How we design our painting, how we make it extra special. I'm going to be talking about composition, design, and value. Those are the two most important things in a painting. Not necessarily the color. It's the design and the value. It's where your eye goes to in a painting, what springs out to make it different and have an impact. And if you put your design, your competition, and your values together correctly, you're going to get really fantastic paintings, which will make all the difference in your understanding and knowledge of this when you look at paintings that you've already done. And maybe sometimes you think, you know what, it needs something extra, but I don't know what to do with what I'm going to teach you through this class. It's going to help you understand that better and know how you can put something extra into those paintings that will bring it alive and make all the difference in the world. We want to be happy and feel satisfied with our painting and not look at it thinking, you know what? I'm not sure what to do with it. I feel certain that by the time you've finished doing this class, you'll have a real understanding of what to do to make the difference in those paintings. Now it's quite interesting talking about differences. When we think about differences, It's all the things that make us feel alive. And if we're going to a party, it's something that we don't do every day. So when we go and get excited and we get dressed up and we go and it's great fun. A different event in a week if, if we're working and we've got the same old routine, nothing stands out. But then when something does, it makes us feel great. It's her birthday. It only happens once a year, so it's different to the other days. The same with Christmas and other events, Thanksgiving or whatever. They're special times in our life that we remember and break up the routine. If you think about that in relationship to your painting, you want to make that painting feel different and it to stand out. So if somebody is actually looking at it, they get an impact. They get a feeling of, Oh wow, that's amazing. That's really different. If we know how to use our values and our design, it will make it different. So it will give it that impact where somebody looking at your work will know what to look out. They'll take a journey around it. It'll inspire them and you'll feel great. So we've got quite a lot to cover. And I want you to get prepared to have some fun to really elevate your understanding of your work and to take it to another level to make it really exciting and different. So let's get started. 2. Why Compostion Design : So the first few things that we're going to have a look at in this class. We've got basically five key points that are important to remember. With design. Design is the arrangement of your shapes in the areas in your painting where you put your shapes is important for your design. So we're going to go into that in a lot of depth. The second thing is talking about your value. And the values, as you know, is the difference between the light and the dark in Neil painting. The third thing is to understand that your design and your value are the most important things in the painting. That's what takes your eye around. It catches those focal points. If the value and the design are all very similar. If everything is the same value, the same shade, the painting isn't going to be as interesting as it could be. So we're going to have a look at how we can design the painting such that you go on a journey around it. You often hear me talk about having a journey in a painting. And this is what it's all about. It's where your eye goes, how you follow a painting through itself. And the design and the values are more important than the actual color. You can have a look at a lot of black and white pictures that have fantastic design and fantastic value. And it draws you in. So it's got nothing to do with the color in that respect. We're going to talk about value and color later. But what we're going to focus on is having a look at how we can design and compose or composition of our picture to make it really exciting. And then the, the most important thing is, are those differences. As I was mentioning to you before, differences in our life make us excited and stand out there, standout events. And the same thing applies to your painting, to your art. We want to make something stand out. We want to make it different. So those are the key points that we're going to be covering. And I'm going to show you them what we'll need to be able to do that. But I just want to emphasize those important things. The take-out from what you're going to get in this, in this class. The things that you're going to need really are a sketchbook because they're going to be as references. So you can refer to them when you need to remind yourself. And some black and white paint, some black and white pencils. That's all you're going to need to begin with to start this process. And I'm going to walk you through it so you can see what we're what we're going to do. So let me get those out and then we'll get we'll get started. 3. Exploring Differences: So I'm starting off talking about what I mean by differences. But before we actually get to that, what I've done is I've included a list of emotions. Because if we start to understand how we want to express our emotions in a painting, we get to understand how we can use those as difference, differences in our painting. So you, you absolutely know the differences. If I was to say e.g. here, just put a little dot. Okay. It's very controlled and it's small and it is what it is. However, if I was to do this here, that's completely out of control. It's just, you know, whatever it is. I could be feeling frustrated, angry, you know, hacked off with things. And there's a great difference between the dot and this area here. It could be such that I do a little dark box here. It's different again. Or I could do a box that's empty which has got all of them have got a different feeling. And I could just do dots around and they've got another feeling. But see the difference. It's kinda becoming sort of interesting because I've got so many differences. Now, if I was just to repeat this and repeat this and repeat this, you're just looking at the same things. But as this is, we've got an emotion, we've got a different difference in feeling. From the little dot to the random scribble, to the square filled inbox, to the empty box, to the dots. And it's interesting, and it's different. It's rather surprising. What I want you to think about is to do something that you wouldn't normally do. Might be that you're very detailed with your work and everything's very precise and ordered and down to the last perfection of the line. So in that case, I want you to jump ship right onto the other scale and do something that's crazy. Equally, if you're used to doing something crazy, go into something a little bit more detailed. Now, I'm going to include in the downloads a list of all things that are different. Obviously small to large as obvious, dark to light is obvious, but I'm going to give you a really good list of things that you can look at to give you that idea of differences. So that kind of starts us off with this idea of how you can make something different in a painting. The tendency is, is that we tend to make things the same size, and it's usually the size of a fist. So you might put something down here and you might put something over here. And you might put something over here. And relatively they're all the same size. They're different, granted, but they're all the same size. We want to find something that's really different to go in that. So again, I could put something over here, which is very different. I could put something here that's different. Again, I could put something here that's different. I could make one of these smaller. So I can change this altogether. By filling that in. I could actually make this one that much bigger. See how much more interesting It's becoming. Because we've got different sizes, different shapes, and a different feeling. I could do something crazy on it. These are just to help you get a grasp of how you can make something more interesting. Rather than just go with the same size in each place that it's kind of normal. The idea now is to make it a bit more crazy. Now actually, when we think about, about this idea of design and values, which I'm going to come to in a while. Designing value, makeup. Muscle man or so, give or take. 80 per cent of a painting. Interestingly enough, color only makes up 20. Now, you might think that's the other way round. But actually if you've got your design worked out properly, your eye will be focusing on the design and the value rather than just the color. Now, could I make this more interesting? Well, I could now at the moment, our eye is probably going to the darkest bits. Remember dark against light. So obviously this one is a focal point because it's very dark. Maybe then we come over to here, which again is very dark, so we need something else that stuck. So even if I filled in this dot here, your eye is going to go here, isn't it? Now if we want to go round and picture, then we've got to find other places to make a different shape and make a contrast, make a different design. So e.g. if we wanted to bring the eye over here, maybe what I might do adding something in here. Now, can you see how we're moving to those places? Without even thinking about it. We're looking at the contrast in places. Maybe I can do some things to alter that down here. So you can see how we're moving to those places. So maybe we want to do something that brings our eye around the pain that the paper find something more interesting here. We might do something up here, which again brings our eye to that. So can you see we started off with just all things being similar size and then we've changed them. We've added some different value to it. And our eyes are going to those reference points and going round the picture. So the exercise for you to experiment within your sketch book is maybe do something that you normally do. If you're very neat and tidy, then do a dot. And then do something random. If you're normally random, then transfer it to something else. What we're trying to do here, the aim is to bring out as much of ourselves as possible. We want to express ourselves. How do we feel? Even just looking at that, this is a feeling. It's quite restrained, isn't it? There's a, there's a feeling here of craziness. While we might put some crazy in here, or here, we've balanced it up. It's not quite as much as that, and it's not quite the same as that. But we've balanced it up. We might want to get a little bit neater. So we might straight in a line here. So it's very, very, very, very obviously straight. And we've got no rough edges. On the other hand, if we want to bring this in, we might ruffle up this edge. You see how interesting it starts to become. If you want a little bit of calm and we want to just soften things a little. We might desk port, something common. That our eyes are still going to our reference points. Design points. And these ones are kind of secondary, aren't they were not looking at those first. We're looking at these first. And that's the point. That's the very point. I want you to have a little play yourself with some shapes and do the opposite. If you just start off with something and then see how similar are they and how different could you make them. And have a go with that? And then we'll come back to the next stage. 4. Design Painting Examples: I just want to show you a few paintings that will explain this even more than I've been showing you. So say e.g. we take this picture here of Salvador Dali. Now, the shapes are amazing. We're back to squares, circles and triangles. But look how interesting it is. Look at the variation and the parts where your eye is going to. What I want you to do is do a little journey around this picture. Where are our biggest contrasts? So we can see a really big contrast here coming off to the side here. And it's taking us around to look at this lovely little shape. None of the shapes are the same size. Look at this one here. Again, our eyes coming to here. Look at the black line here that's bringing us up to here. There's black around the top here. So you can see all the variation of those shapes, which makes this picture so interesting and you get involved in it. That's the point. It's surprising. Now let's have a look at this one here. This is a mirror. The three of them are actually Miro. It's this one particularly that struck me was this one. Now look at all the variant shapes and hear from the very small shapes here. Catching our eye. Very big shapes. Look at the lovely contrast of color. They're all interesting shapes and they're different sizes. Even though this is quite big and this is quite big, It's broken up. We come to eye hits here, it's coming around. Look at the lovely shapes in the face here. Coming round. Look at the shapes here in these squares and the circle. And again, look how different they are in size. Over here and over here. It hits a wonderful kind of childlike painting. It draws us in. We get the excitement of it. And it's fascinating. And really you, you can do yourself a great, great service of going and looking at some of the masters who could master this tremendously. And it gives you that idea. Now you will start to recognize it when you're looking at paintings and also when you're looking at your own. And we're going to have a look at this a bit later. We maybe take a couple of your paintings that you've done that you feel you're not as happy with as you could be. And see what you could do to create interests and those differences. Now here's one of my favorites. Here is Kandinsky. Now look at this. Wonderful all the, all the ****. I mean, most of the shapes are rectangular, but then you've got this surprise here of this leaf shape. And you might not be able to see it on camera, but there's a circle underneath there. Which again breaks up these blocks. But look when all of those blocks are the same size, they're all different. And you've got these different angles of them. Look at this lovely little shape up there. Your eye comes up here. It comes through here. Look at this lovely shaped down here. So again, you've got that wonderful interests and difference. This shape here, the leaf shape is completely different to all the other shapes. It gives it something magical. And then we have a look at this one. If you can see it again, it's condensed skates and it's small. But again, you've got the variance of the different shapes from tiny little, very thin to very thick. And it's so interesting, we've got this little one up here. Your eye can't fail, but go around that picture. I just wanted to really validate what we're talking about to help you understand and see how putting those kinds of differences into a picture can spark it off. Can you imagine if that wasn't there, it would still be interesting. But it wouldn't be magnificently interesting. Soon as you've got that, There you go. Oh, it stops. You, you think about it. And that's the point. We want somebody to stop and think about what we've painted. And then there's an intro into it. So if you can go on Pinterest or take an artists that you like, if you've got any books or go on, on Google. And then just go and study a few of the paintings and see what they've done for you to be able to jump out and see that as a difference. And you'll have fun looking at it and then it will make a big difference when you come back to actually doing your own pink picture. So we'll come back with more in a minute. 5. Free Drawing and Design: Having looked at some of those pictures now, we're going to refer back to what we did again in the abstract Made Simple course on our free drawing. And what I would like to do is to do some free drawing and show you and then see how we can put what we've been talking about in relationship to our design into our free drawing. So I've just divided my page into two. And again, I'm just going to relax. I'm going to do something just free and easy. That's it. Okay, hopefully you can see that. Okay, now, I've got some nice interesting shapes here. It's all the same, the same kind of line and whatever Exactly. It's free drawing and it's an interesting, nice design. I like it. But then how am I going to actually compose this to make it even more interesting? So just for the sake of this exercise to show you a quicker, I'm going to darken some areas so I want to be able to create something that's really, um, that much more exciting. And I've got all these different shapes. Some of them are similar in size and some of them aren't. So let's change it up a bit and see what we could do. So e.g. I've got this lovely big shape here. So I could make some outline on this shape here. I'm just going to bring it to here. And then I've got a shape in between, which is really nice to have a look at this here. And I'm going to make that darker immediately. Obviously, your eye is going to go here. Now let's see what else we can do. So I might just bring this down and make something here. Obviously, you can play around with this as much as you like. I mean, it's so lovely exercise to do, particularly because we're doing our free drawing. How we can, how we can change those up a little and make them very, very much more interesting. Now I want my eyes to go around. So maybe I cut this one here. Just take an area here. Maybe I'll put another line. So can you see how our eye is going? So I'm just going to have a look now and see how I'm feeling about this drawing. And I really still want to do some more interesting things with it because some of the lines are just really lovely and interesting. Excuse me. Maybe I can do something a little bit smaller down here. I've got a little triangle here. I could actually make the triangle bigger. Here. I am again, my eye is going to those places. Let's make this a bit safer. You see how interesting it's becoming. Just from that free drawing. I've got an interesting design happening where we're following through with our eye. We've got points, focal points, points of interests and differences. Which is fascinating. I feel like doing something here. And again, that's brought another idea to it. What I'm saying is it's kind of a face and like a bird's head, I'm just going to turn it round. So you can see that too. I hope you can see that. And I might carry on doing it this way because it's a different perspective. But you can see what's happening and how interesting it's becoming. I get the feeling that I would like to make this bigger. So I'm going to bring it down here. It's very much bigger than everything else that we've got going. And let's have a feel about. What else we could possibly do? I could just bring a line here. And I could have got something from here, which is another different kind of shape. I feel I could put something in here. So it's kinda coming together as a very interesting, sort of an interesting design about where our eye is going, what we're looking at first, I could spend more time developing that and see what else I could do. And you know, the more that you do I do it with this one this time, the more you do these three drawings, the more interesting and the more practice you get at doing this kind of design. So you're actually seeing where things will go before you even start to paint. So I'm just going to go for it with this one. And it's wonderful. They're sort of like live a bit like doodles. But you've got to, you've got an idea and a structure to work from to to actually compose your design it. I can do. Now, tell me what's wrong with this. I wonder if you can say, isn't that size very similar to that? Not a lot of difference in size of these two. So maybe what I need to do here is I need to extend this and fill the whole thing in. Now see how different artists, it's definitely different to this one. Now, obviously, we're just looking at those two. So let's make some differences. Let's maybe put adopting up here. Right? You can see what's happening. I'm going to this dot, as well as these two shapes here. Now, Let's do something else. Let's say, okay, we've got all straight edges and we've actually got all straight edges here. So we could do something different on that as well as different on this. So maybe I can do that. Maybe I can do this. See how different this is two that we've got a nice contrast of those two. Maybe over here. I put a dot there quite like that because we've got one that's open and one that's closed. And this one's a little bit bigger than that. We could rough this up a little too, by perhaps something like that. Can you see how, when you start thinking in this way, how you can really expand what you've already done. Let's carry on with this one a little bit more so you can see our eyes going here, It's going here, It's going here, It's going here. We've got this interesting thing going on in the background. Maybe we do something else. Maybe we do Something like that. So all these points are points of reference, of points of interest, and they're all different. None of those have the same. None of this is the same. Let's balance it up, down here. They become fascinating. So have a play doing this with your free drawing. When we go back to have a look at say, that lovely Miro. It was a fun, childish kind of drawing. Wasn't it? Interesting how that worked? What made it so interesting was the design where your eye goes, what you're looking at, it has an impact. You would actually look at that and say, oh, that's interesting. And using our creativity. And then we're using our right side of the brains to start with our left side of the brain. Secondly, to put in our design and we want to be able to balance those two up. I don't know if you remember me saying to you, but when you think about your painting or your drawing, if you take a ruler on the right side of the ruler, you've got creativity and on the left you've got skill. And the idea is to try and bring those two things together so we still remain loose and creative and interesting on the right side. But then we bring the skill side in to make that something really incredible, to really enhance that creativity. And this certainly is going to go a long way to help you achieve that. Get this design concept in your mind. You'll design and then your values. I'm going to come onto values in the next video, in the next lesson. But at the moment, just get to, get to grips with how you can impact your design. I could, I'm looking at this and I think I can do a lot more with that one. This one, I'm kind of liking it simple, but it's interesting. And I feel it's got an impact. And it's got those differences, which I really have a go with that. And then in the next video we're going to have a look at those values. Okay? 6. Free Painting Examples: Now it's time to have a look at values. And we've talked about this a little bit in the abstract, made some course. I want to really embellish their small. And one of my favorite paintings when we're talking about contrast and values and design is this potassium, very famous painting, Guernica. And I've actually seen this in real life in the Prado in Madrid. And it's like unbelievably fantastic. But we'll have to just make do with the book for today. So when you have a look at the design and the contrast in here, It's essentially the tone values between your grace and your whites and blacks with lots of different tones of grace. So if you get a chance to have a look at this, just study it, to have a look how it's put together and see where your eye is going. The difference between the darks and the light, the contrast. And then subtle contrast. Just have a look around and see where your eyes going at such a dramatic painting and really expresses his devastation at what happened in the Second World War in Guernica, which is a story in itself. But you can really feel the passion and the anger and the angst and the 0, the trauma going on in this picture. And it's all in black and white. So it's really worth having a look at. So let's, let's get to actually doing this ourselves. So hopefully you've already got your gray scale. Put one in the downloads. But I would really, really, really, really, more really. I'm recommend that you do this yourself to get to grips with how these tone values go from white to black and grading all the way through. And we can use this with all different kinds of thing. It's fantastic reference. If we're looking at a painting and we want to see what tone is that? What tone is that? What tone is that? We've got this as a reference, how dark it is, how light it is. So we can use this as reference all the time. So you can download it on the downloads, but actually even copy it and do your own and experiment with it. I've talked about it before and I'm absolutely not talk again. But it's kind of our main go-to tool. This and the color wheel are your two things that you really should not be without. Okay, so let's have a go with this now. If we were just to let me just take this, I should have gotten Australian sorry. Let me get one of them pictures that we were doing before on here. And again, if we have a look at these two pictures that we did before, they're both very interesting. This one is, it's clearer. This one is shouting out is a bit, isn't it? There's a lot going on. This one. There's some nice spaces between the shapes between now. And I've mentioned it before. We want places of interest and then we want quiet places. You could say, we want loud conversations. And we want soft conversations on this one because it's quite loud all over. There's not okay. We've got the spaces in-between, but it's very busy. There's lots going on on here. So I'm going to come back to this later, but I'm going to show you how we can do that with paint. And then I'll come back to this and show you on this on this picture. So we're just going to need some black and white paint. For now. I've got my gear on my wet palette. So you can see I've got that ready and I've got a brush with the black and the black brush with white. And we're going to just sort of play around and see now the purpose of this is our design, competition and our values. And we really want to deep dive into understanding this, because now we're going to relate this to color. If you've got it in black and white in your mind, then that transition is going to be very much more straightforward than if you just went straight into color, because then we've got values of color and daddy, daddy door. So let's have a look at it in relationship to to just doing it in black and white. Now, we could do both. I'm going to do one with this with shapes and won a free draw. So you can again do the same experiment and play. I'm just giving you examples. The point of this is for you to go away and practice it and get to grips with how it works and how you can use that in your own painting. I just want to kind of give you a guide to help you really design your paintings to get the most elevated picture that you can and to enhance maybe pictures that you've already done. So e.g. let me let me go here first with just some shapes. I'm going to put just a dot here in black. Right? Then maybe I do a shape down here. So obviously we're going to be looking, there's nothing else to look at. But it's interesting. And there's just those two shapes. They're very different that we're looking at differences. Let's do something different over here. And then let's do something different here. So we've got four shapes and they're all different. They're all very strong. We're just looking here. We've started, we've started making our painting. And then we want to have a think about what else we're going to do. Where are we going to go with this? So I could e.g. we want we want to set everything down to start with. Let's make this one even bigger. Let's change that up and you get a different kind of thing altogether. So that's a little bit bigger than before And bit different. Let's do something. Let's do something with this. Okay, so those are very loud. Loud conversations. Could put just something else here. Let's put something in here. At the moment is going here, here, here, here. But we want to do something interesting, but we don't want to take away from that. So e.g. if I was then to decide to go a little bit quieter on this, to put some things in between. We're still going to see this. Even if I did, was to do this, let's go actually a little bit lighter on that similar shape. But you're not going to be noticing it as much as the darker shape. Now, look what happens if I was to do this quiet conversation that we've got the loud conversation in the middle. Okay. Let's go even lighter. Because we can really do all kinds of interesting things with different values and not take away from the design of the picture. You see how interesting this starts to become. I could go even lighter. I could put some light in here as a contrast next to that. Now it doesn't necessarily matter so much then if our shapes are similar, because we're not looking at those as much as we're looking at our focal points. Even this, It's interesting because we've got two shapes similar, but we're looking at that one that's just kind of like a shadow after it. I could then think about doing something like he does get another pen. See this? Right? Now, what would happen if I then got a different kind of line, very thin line. Again, it's interesting. It looks fascinating. I, I really like that. Let's go, let's go with this white one here. And I could just see if this is dry. I could do something interesting. Here. Now, that changes it, doesn't it? Our eye is going here. We've got a loud conversation, but we've also got some of the white dots in it as well. I hope you can see that. I'll make them a little bit bigger. Still a bit wet. Hey, I just want to wait till that a bit drier. Let's, let's carry on doing something interesting with the quiet conversation here. So we could just bring this around. And we can go over, you see, we can put the design together. We can do all kinds of interesting things with it, with the background. But we're still looking at our focal points. We're still looking at those differences. So we can, we can really do a lot in a painting with looking at the quiet conversation and the loud conversation. Let's go a bit darker. Now let's use this one. Just got to black. And let's go for a midterm. If I was to bring this over here. We've got the darkest ones. And we've got this one which is around about six. We've got the lighter ones here. This is very light over to here. This one is about six as well. So we could do something in-between. This is kind of a darker one. So let's do something here. So it's, it's quite strong. But it's not as strong as the others, is that we could actually do something else that's interesting. I hope the paint is going to be where we can start actually doing some things with some layers. I can take this over here. Right? Let's have a think. We can do something here with this one. We're still not moving away from our actual design. If I put something down here, it even brings our eye through to here as well. So we can start really experimenting with how we can use these contrasts and values to design a really lovely picture. Now let's go to this. We've got a little bit more variety, haven't way now. This one is up in the 78 area. That one about the same. So we've got all these different values, but we're looking at our shape, but let's make the shapes a little bit more interesting. Let me just get another brush here. So if I'm looking, I feel that this needs to be older. So let's make this one a bit bigger. Okay? I think this one could be stronger. Let's do something like this. Then. Bring it down a little bit. If I wanted to, I can highlight this. So I could put something under hoping the paints dry. Some white into here. See how our eye. Now that becomes the loud conversation. You see how interesting it is. So I hope you can have a play around with this and see what happens. I'm going to do something a little bit more interesting over here. I don't like these so much. I'm going to actually bring it over. So we've got a layer over here. I'm going to layer it over here, here, and here, and here. It's fascinating. So we've got something interesting going on. I love it when I'm displaying, you never know what's going to happen. So that's actually specifically putting shapes in the place without any free drawing. And Nino, dependent on how you feel, will be dependent on what shapes that you do. There's a sort of a various kind of feeling around this paint, this painting. But you're definitely knows where to go. It's going to here, it's going to here, it's going to here, it's going to here, it's going to here. So we're moving around. The quiet conversation behind it. We know it's there, but it's not distracting from our actual design. I mean, I can even just put some other things in here. I could put some dots down here and have a look brighter. I can come over here with something. So we're getting I hope you're getting what I'm saying here. What maybe I might feel like doing is that paint dry. I could actually bring this down here. Take it over there. 7. Creating Different Shapes : Now I wanted to show you something else. I'll do it on here and then we'll come to a free drawing with the other. Now what we could do this is all kind of pieces of bits of shape joining it together, seeing loud conversation or focal points. And then how would the, the value we've got the others, but they're not shining light on the picture. Let's do something. Again. That's very different. Let's have a look here. And I just want to show you something. If we do, say, Let's do something very different here. So very bold here. Right? Now, where is your eye going? Well, at the moment, the greatest contrast is here and here. So we want to do something interesting with that. So let's have a play. And maybe what you could do is if you were to take your kitchen roll, let, let's do something a bit different. Let's do this. What might happen if we were to roll it row? That's kind of interesting. How you can just play. What's going on here is I've got some nice little bits going on. We've got this lovely texture here, but I'm still going as the focal point to that line. However, Let's see what would happen if we did this. Now. If we came here. Now we're going to hear, now we're going to hear. It starts to become interesting, but we've got this going on, but it's not a focal point, It's a quiet conversation. This is a loud conversation. This is the loud conversation. Now, let's change this up a little bit. Let's see what would happen if we did something like this in here. Immediately. We're going to there. So we all know we've used the light. We're using the dark to highlight the light. We're using the light to highlight the dark. So it's fascinating, isn't it? So now let's do something a little bit more here. Let's do something here. That knife here. I'm going to scrape this in. So it's different again. We've got a little bit of texture going on. So we are going round this picture already and it's so, so, so simple. Let's try something else. Let's see if we can set to white. If we were to do something. We want something up here. This is sorry, my dogs are barking. What I was doing was saying, let's try something different here. Now, see how we're going around the picture now we've got so many interesting differences. We've got this heavy blocked, but we've broken it up. We've got some points of interests in there. And this is taking us round. We've got obviously a big focal point here. Now let's do something here. We could do something again. That's a little bit different. Sabbath thing we could do. We could do. Okay. So we've got the quiet conversation, we've got a softer conversation and we've got some movement taking us around the picture, see how simple that is. And particularly if you wanted to do something like landscapes. The same principles apply whether it's with abstract painting or whether it's with landscapes or portraits or whatever you might like to do. Flowers. You still got to have differences. You've still got to have focal points to make the painting stand out. Look what happened here. Now if I just did this here, I've got the dark against it. So fascinating when you have a play with this of things that can happen, I'd know what I want to do here. I'm just looking, I want to make this lighter. It's dried off. Simple little design, but it's very effective, isn't it? So, have a real good play with this. We're gonna do one with a free drawing now and see what we can come up with that. 8. Free Painting & Values: Okay, got these two here. Now, I'm going to see some free drawing here. Okay? This is my first one. And, um, yeah, it's rather, rather interesting. So let's have a look at what we can do this with. Quiet conversation. Loud conversation. Why do I want the eye to go? So I'm going to first of all take this. What's interesting to me at first glance is that this shape and this shape are the same size more or less as is this one. So we want to break that up and make it different. So first of all, I'm going to, I'm going to fill this one in here. Let's see what happens. So obviously that's a nice focal point. Let's put a focal point and down here, this is a different shape. Okay? This is a very similar size to that. So what I'm going to do here, I'm going to make this triangle a lot bigger. Because we want those differences. And we want the difference in shapes. We want the difference in size. So now you're kind of thinking and assessing for yourself how that will work in your picture. Still it needs to be more. I think that's taken off the page here. Let's take it off the page there. Let's go really vague here. Very different, which is fascinating. Let's see what we could do here. It's not the same. Have a feel of what might go here. Let's come around here. So we could do something. Okay, so we've got focal points. And now let's do the quiet conversation and see what happens. Now, say e.g. I. Was to come in here. Even though it's the same shape, similar size. If I was to put a quiet conversation in here, it still doesn't take away from shape here, Does it was still going there, even though that's a little bit bigger. Let's try something over here. Let's divide this. Let's have some straight line in here. That's different again. Even though this shape is similar to that, if we do it in a quiet color and the quiet tone, It's okay, it works. Now we can add some other interests into this. So I've got these nice lines. I can still do something with them. I'm going to see if I can go a bit lighter here. Get rid of that and then it will get lighter, too much gray in it. And then we could go darker on this. See what would happen if we went quite dark on that. On here. We're still going to focus points. We've got this playing in the background. And really how that works. We've got lots of possibilities here to do what we like. Because our focal points are here. Now I could change these out over a bit because they look a little bit static at the moment. So I could come round and do something here. Could bring this down, bring this down and come through. And interesting how that's, that's really nice. Then I could do is just start this out a little. And I will see the layer of the black underneath, which is really nice. Let's have a look what we could do here. We could bring this round here. And we could maybe put something in here. Again, interestingly, it's highlighting, can you see how we can really go to town with some fascinating designs? I want to go a little bit darker in here. Let's put some more black and see what happens. If you don't like it, you can just paint it out. Let's put some dark, darker in here. Nice contrast. Come all the way round. It's a nice tone that it's not distracting. Okay? Now that lends itself to doing something else, to balance something up. So we could put something here. And a bit of a different shape. Let's come here. Let's come here. You see how it works. Let's put something down here that's going to highlight dog. And we could go Come here. We could put some things in here. We wanted to. But we're still going here, here, here, here. This is from our free drawing. You can see how we could build this up. I would like to let this dry and then play with it with some other pain to my acrylic pens and see what happens. Keeping our mind on our design. Here, I could feel my switch on the switch. Let's go here. Yeah. Make a really nice contrast next to this here. So I'm painting it all in, but it's not distracting from the actual design that we've set up from a free drawing. So you've got different options here. Yeah, it's kinda quite fascinating. Let's put something in here. Layers, if this layer over here. Let's do something with going back to this because this was nice. See what would happen if we did something with this. I've got some paint on here. Let's do something completely different. Put some paint on here. We don't want it all kinda neat and tidy. Interesting textures arrive. Yeah, like that. I might do some more of that. So can you see how playing this playing and having fun? Let's see what will happen if, what will happen if, if you've got that going? Let's just put some different things on here. Then. You never know what might happen. I love it. It's becoming fascinating. We can go on and on and on and do some, really can take some of this out. We can leave some of it in. You know, we've got some other kind of dots and things going on. This to me is to static. So let's do something else with that. I'm going to take that piece of code it's really worth. Now. Let's go to another piece. Fun, fun, fun. I'm going to put some black on here and just go over that. Let's see what will happen if we were to do that. Yeah, that's great. That's kinda taken that blockage and thus away. We could enhance that up here. Okay, Let's come back here. Let's go over one of these. Make a line here. We want some straight lines. We want some. Let's do something here. We want something down here that's more, put something here. So you can keep playing and playing and playing. But make sure I'm over that little. So we've got a contrast of both. Yeah. Yeah. So play and play and play, see what you come up with. It's very exciting and very interesting and really good. I know I keep saying it's really good fun, but it is That's the thing. You know, there's, there's no, there's no rule and regulation. You can really do what you want, how you feel. I might decide to how with all this, I'm going to paint over it and start again. But if you do that, you'll be amazed because you'll still get something going from underneath. And that's absolutely fine. You know, to see just what might happen if what might happen if in fact, I'm going to do that now. I'm just going to get my tool and we'll have a look and see what will happen with that. Okay, I've got my lovely squeegee thing here. So what I'm going to do, I'm going to get my white paint. And I'm going to I'm going to run it. Make sure it's okay. It'll come out, which it will. I know it will you will you will put something down here. See. I'm okay with my squeegee. I'm going to take this I'm going to pull it all the way over here. And I'm going to put it here. How interesting is that going to get rid of the paint on here, not to waste it. I'm going to take a bit more off here. I can take some more off here. I can take some more here. Isn't that great? You see what you could do? I can do all kinds of things with this. The pushing it down quite firmly. Take that thing top here. Here. Okay, so we've got some amazing possibilities. It's taking that paint off here that we can do to get our Contrast, get something interesting happening. So we want now to get back to our lights and darks and our design. We might take, let's see what would happen if I take my knife. Can I get through to hear yeah, I can I can start doing some other things because I know that the dark underneath. So I can start to create new drawings in this. And I can see what happens. Let's see if I was to do my scraper. Again. Interesting things going on. I can come back to it with some paint. I can put some paint in here. You see how you can just develop some amazing pictures. Doing this. I love what's happening. It's really interesting. What's happening here. Like this here. We can just play and play and play all day. I can get very carried away here. Okay, so I hope that's given you some really good ideas of how you can do this design. Where is your eye going now, I'm looking at this. These two are the same. So I immediately want to feel as if I need to change that so I can change it in different ways. Let's change it to metal. Let's let's do some more of that. Okay, That's better. I can go in really dark. Once it's dried, I can make it much darker. See how my eyes going up here now. We want something darker over here. I like this shape that's under here. I think I might have to wait till it's dried because I'm just picking up paint because it's so wet. It's kinda coming together, isn't it? You can see what I'm getting at. And you can have a play with this. Okay. Have fun, see what happens and put them in the Facebook group. And I'd really, really like to see what you've been doing. But most of all have some fun with it and enjoy. I'll see you on the next video. We're going to do some color with this on the next video. Okay. 9. Colour Value Scale Greys: In this lesson now we're going to talk about value with color. Now It's very interesting. Subjects and people can tend to find it a little bit confusing. So I want to really go into this in some depth so you can really get a grasp of how you can evaluate the value of color. Now, we come to our gray tones or tone values 1-10. So the idea really is to have a look at color and see what value those colors are. So if I was to have a look at this ocher, yellow ocher, and I come to the gray scale of it. What value is it? It's round about eight on my scale here. You can see that then this is a Mars red. So if I come down to this one, what value is that? Well, it's really dark. So I'm 9-10. If I come to the yellow, this is really saturated yellow. Where is that? Well, again, I think that's around about 6.7. If I come to the lighter yellow having mixed a little bit of white with it, I'm more to 55 on here. So the exercise that we're going to do is see for yourself how you can discern the colors in values. Now you remember that we did this one. We were looking obviously this black and white and then the different values that we got from here. So for the exercise, I'm just going to turn this over here. I've drawn some grids here. And the exercise one is to have a look at the colors. Do your colors, and then have a look at the value. Now you can pick any two colors that you like, but try and make one dark and one a bit lighter. For my colors, what I've chosen here is Payne's gray and a yellow ocher. So the, the exercise is very, very simple. Just draw yourself a couple of rectangles and then put a line down one of the sides. So we're going to evaluate what the, what the value will be. So I'm going to take from the tube, so it's completely saturated. The Payne's gray, It's a beautiful color. I love Payne's gray. You can make so many different colors. So let's put the Payne's gray in here. It's nearly black, but it's not quite. And it's going to be kind of obvious where it's going to go on the gray scale, on our tone value scale. When you go through your own colors. Interesting to do this with as many colors as possible. And I'm going to show you different way of doing that. And to start to train your eye. Because really this is about training our eye. The more you do it, the more you'll understand it. To begin with, you can be a little bit confused with it. But the more you practice, the more, the more astute you color sense will become to what the values are. So it's kind of it looks black, but it isn't. So if we were to come to the value scale here, it's really in-between those two. So 9.10. So what I'm going to do and what I suggest you do is to then see if you can get that value in the black and white. And it might take you a little bit of time. But I'm going to mix here some of the white. I'm not going to need too much white because I'm going to have to use probably a lot more black. So as I add the black here, it's not black, black, it's a very, very dark gray. So I'm going to use this as a reference. And if you haven't done this already, then please, please, please do because you'll find it so, so helpful in your painting. Get your interesting contrasts and you're interesting tone values in your contrast. And that's kind of like the point. So I'm just coming over here to see a little bit more black to that. And let's see if I can get it here. Yeah, not bad. It's probably a little bit dark. So let's go back to a little bit lighter. It takes a little bit of time to work out with your color. The actual tone value. And you'd, you'd see this if you took a black and white photograph and you'll see your turns, talked about that before. So that is black with a tiny little bit of gray. So you can see now that those two values are the same, right? So now let's go to the opera, which is going to be more interesting to see where the value is on the value scale with the yellow och-re. Let me come here to enter brushes. Let's put the ocher in here. And beautiful, saturated yellow ocher is such a fantastic color to mix with so many different things. So in choosing your colors, you might use the same. You might go different. Practice it with lots of colors to see how you can start really recognizing the value of it. As we've said before, the design and the value are essentially the most important in the painting. The color comes later, but we need to know what the color values are before we start that. So let's have a look at this on our scale. So let's turn it this way. Where do we think this is? I would say it's about it's about a seven. You see that? On my color, on my term value color scale. So let's then start mixing that white with the black to get that, to get that gray. So I'm going to add a lot more white here and see if we can we can get it. It's about a seven. Let's see how that is. Yeah, that's about right. So you beginning to understand how this works in relationship to finding the value of a color. All right? And if you practice this, you'd be amazed then how you can find some really beautiful harmony in your paintings. So that's our first exercise. And really have a go and try and find just using two colors to start with the value of those colors. Okay? 10. Colour Value Scale Colour: Let's go to the second exercise. What we're going to do in the second exercise is we're going to look at how we change the value through adding black and adding white. Now, what's the difference? The lightness when we add white to the color, we're adding a tent. When we add black to the color, we're adding a shade. On this here I've drawn out my little grid again, sorry, I put a line down that. Ignore that. So we're going to go from light to dark with the Payne's gray. Now it's going to be interesting because we've seen how dark that value is of the Payne's gray. So it's going to be our side. It's going to be about here. So we're going to put that in. On this side. This is our actual Payne's gray. You can see it's very dark already. So we're going to lighten it up then slowly adding the white. Now, we've done quite a lot of this. If you've done the color mixing course, you will see a lot of things that we've done, but we didn't do it as specifically as we're doing it here. And that's the point I really want to deep dive into understanding how this really works. So now with that saturated blue, Payne's gray, I'm going to add little bit of white. Not very much. So easy to go to make it lighter too quickly. Then we're going to have a look here where that will go. Right? So let's put that in here. So you can see, I hope the camera subtle difference with just adding the tint of white. Then we're going to safely, when we were at nine. And then this is seven, so we're going to add a little bit more. Go to eight. It's very subtle. But you can see how you can get so many beautiful tones by I'm adding the black, adding the white, and finding the tone. It's a really, really brilliant exercise to try. Let, let's try a little bit more white M2 here. Let's come into here. It's light, it's still so on and so on and so on until you get right to here. So I'm not going to go through all this because it's fairly obvious how this looks. I'm just going to take that off. I'm going to do is show you then the lightest. So I'm taking pure white and adding a little bit of the gray. It's minute. So I'll come to here. So it's nearly white but not quite. Right. You can see how this works. If I was to mix black with that, I'm going to go a really dark, dark. And you can see how that will work. Then let's try it now with the ocher. I'll just get this started with the yellow ocher. So if we looked at that, where are we? What tone are we here? I'd say we're about to seven. Okay. So let's come to here. Right? Line it up here. So we're a seven. So actually put the opera into the seven. Right? So let's put this in here. So that's the actual color. Okay, so this time, let's go and add the dark to it. Because we added the push this down a little. We added the light to the other one. Just for the exercise. Let's add black to it so we're creating shade. So I've got my okra here. I'm going to add tiny bit of black. And you'll start seeing that you'll get a lovely rich. I'm gonna move this along because this is number seven. So we're making it a little bit darker. Maybe that's too dark. Can you see Possibly, Let's see. Might well-known. No, actually it's ok. So you can see that it's really a very worthwhile practice. And you can have a lot of fun with it because it really broadens your idea of color. Now let's add a little bit more black to this. I'm going to go really dark. It's getting there. Oh, that's beautiful, rich green. This is adding shade. Now you can see, if I wanted then say I've got the yellow ocher here. And I want you to do is shade of it. I'm just going to add some black. It's so simple. Once you really understand this, you really get how this works. Then let me add a little bit more black or really dark here. Put this one in here. And that's really a very warm black because you've got the ocher in it. Okay. Then obviously the same thing if we did the light. So let's have a look at that rather than me go through the whole thing. They hear. You add a little bit of white, a little bit more white cow and carry on, carry on, carry on. Til you get to the end here. Let's just clean this off so we haven't got any of the dark cognitive tool. I'm going to take my white tiny bit of okra and come to the light here. The lighter than that actually. See, you just have to play to get it right. That would probably be a two. We want to go to a one. Yeah, that's better. Okay. So that is tinting. And adding the black is adding the shade. Okay? So if I wanted to carry on with that, I can go whichever way I want and just add a little bit more and a beautiful color. I try these as much as possible to really familiarize yourself with how the values relate to color. And then when you come to do whatever design you want to do, you've got some subtle changes in your values. Then if you put a dark value next to a light value, you're going to really lift a painting up. Hope you found that helpful. And I'd spend a little bit of time on this and have an experiment with different colors. And we're going to come back and have a look. Now how we can see our values with using the limited palette that we're going to use for painting. Okay? 11. Colour Contrast and Values: So what I've done here, I've divided my page into two. I've just put some tape down the middle so we can have a play with the colors. And I'm emphasizing play, right? We want to find are designed to what we want to do. And then see how we can use all that we've learned about our values in making our differences and making the design in our painting. So I've, I've got just this, the same palette, the Payne's gray and yellow ocher and black and white. So I'm just literally going to play, I don't know what's going to happen. I just want to explore the possibilities and C, so I could do a free drawing. I could do some of it free, and I could do some of it as a shape. This is fun and play. We've got I love, I love how that's working. Let's put something up here. Now let's if this is all dark, I want to start with dark and then build it up and then see what happens. So let's go saturated color. So I'm using the op crow just as it is. And let's put something here. And this is what we call a loud conversation. We can really see it. It's really standing out. Let's make our okra With the blue. We're going to go kinda greening. So let's put something down here. Let's put something here. Okay. Now that's not to say we're not going to go over it. But we're just kinda starting off with some ideas and using our saturated color to see what happens. Now, let's then explore the mid tones. Using the white with the blue. Let's see what happens. If we come here. Now, the contrast isn't massive. Who is it? It's not brilliantly. Let's have a look what's going on with that. Whereas this one, There's a really nice contrast of both of them. So let's have a play around with it now and see where we might go. It just kept another one to a smaller brush here. So I'm going to go to a soft conversation, something that's just subtle. In the background. You can see how this might work. It's kind of enhancing what I've got. And interesting. Let's come much, much lighter. E.g. I don't really like this very much. So I'm going to do something here. I'm going to just make it a little bit more interesting. Let's see what might happen here. I'm still keeping this nice shape. And let's go add a bit of yellow, green to here. Where is my I going? I'm still going to hear I'm actually going here because we've got a, a really loud conversation on top of that. I'm going to here, I'm going to here now what do I notice about this? This is the same as this. So what do I want to change? I want to change this. So let's do something completely different here. Let's go much lighter over here. I might take it right the way down. Completely changes it. We've got some different ideas that we can do with using our saturated color and different tone values and see what happens. Now let's go shift it from here, because we've got quite a lot of the ocher with the white. Let's go really pale on the blue and see what happens with that. I'm taking my white again. And I'm just going to go really, really pale on the blue. And it's soft, subtle. I can do an awful lot with this because. The soft conversation. Let's do something down here. Let's come right across here. I come right across here. Let's see. I can keep going. I can change the design, but I want to always have in mind where am I, I is going and the values and the contrast of the color. Not much contrast going on in here, and it looks pretty dead to me. So I'm going to let that dry and then we'll come come back to him. This again is not looking great. I'm still a little bit wet. Let's do something here. We're just building up and building up that we're looking at where our eye is going. What we can do, Let's go into here. Let's have something a little bit darker down here. Not too much. Do something down here. We could balance it out up here. And we've got this here. Let's do something here. Something here. So we can do an awful lot of things and with this combination and see what happens. So then let's do something completely different on this side. So say e.g. I. Here. I'm going to do something here. Obviously our words are I going it obviously going to go to the edges of this one is a bit defendants might get sick. And then let's do something. Yeah. Just really doing big shapes. Now, obviously our strength is still here, but we're adding in here. And let's go a bit darker with the okra up here. Okay? So we've got some contrasts. This is obviously the main contrast. So let's do something with this. Why is it? Okay? Let's compare. Use a bigger brush. And let's put these over here. Something a bit different because we want differences to see what will happen. So I'm going to take the blue. I'm going to mix the blue with a bit of black. And I'm going to come. Obviously that's very different to here. It's very different to everything else that I've got. And if I was then to do something similar, here works because it's a different, it's a different tone, but it kind of starts to look interesting. Then if we put something really contrasting next to the dog, I could come here, can add some interests. So we kind of building up an interesting design with our shapes and seeing how this will work for our design and our saturation. Right? That's all kind of like shame. So let's do something different. Let's come in and do some of the blue. Blue. And we could do something here, something here. And let's put something really dark here. We've got some nice contrast. So eye's going to those places, see something different than here. See how that can come together. Suddenly you get in some really interesting designs. I just want to do something here. Okay? You see where I'm going with this I could fill then some of the background with very quiet conversation, but I've got some loud things going on. We could make this more interesting by going really dark on that. I'm going to add some black to blue. And I'm going to put some here. We can do all kinds of interesting things with the knowledge of what kind of colors that we can get, I can do all kinds of subtle colors now in the background to give the painting extra depth. This is kind of soft here. Let's do this here. But if it's kinda interesting, gray, I can start putting some different things in. If I want to. Then I could have say something like this brush. This one needs something here. Put something over here. Do all kinds of things that will make differences. With this black. Like that. We've got some different textures. Let's do something different with this because we can play play, play, play, play. See what happens. Just having a look at contrast and differences. Contrast and differences. Because the contrast with color and differences with shapes and differences with color. So you picking up on your values and the color is secondary, you want to see where our eye is going. What are you looking at here is fascinating when we start looking at it in that way. And you just need to play and explore and see what happens. Paint over it started again, do something else. We've been looking at that the longer way, different tools and different textures. But understanding your values in your color. When you take your child out, have a look where your control so your darks to lights. You don't steal your midterms. This probably needs some lighter here. I can already see that needs something very much lighter. Going on. It's not light enough. Make it even lighter. Let it dry this, take this paint off here so not contaminating it. And let's go to here, which is a lot more white in a lot more white. And something down here. I can do quite a lot of different things. And it's going to enhance, but doesn't take away from the design here and do something here. Come up through here if I want numerous amount of things to make it interesting. And you'll have fun with it. So I can carry on playing here all day. And I hope you I hope you got the gist of what I'm, what I'm talking about, and how you can use the tone values of your colors to create some very interesting paintings with the design and make the design really pop. So next one we're going to actually do a picture and really have a play with now we've played with this, we're going to go on to the next one and see what happens with that. 12. Discover Your Colour Palette: Okay, so once you've filled all this in, you now got an idea, the color palette that you using, whatever colors you're using, how many darks and lights you can get on both colors. Now let's have a look now we did a little bit of this with the color mixing, but it's interesting when you're starting a painting and you deciding on a pallet, you get to know what your palate can do and you can try this with as many colors you like. But I'm going to just try it with a limited, this limited palette of the Payne's gray and the outcrop to see how many different colors I can get from it. Then when you actually come to do the painting, you've got a reference of what you're mixing to get what tones and colors from just those two colors and a black and white. So if I was just to start this very simply by saying I'm going to add, this is just the Payne's gray. So if I was to add then some white to the Payne's gray. I'm looking at here. But just for the sake of it, let's put it here. Okay. And then if I was to add some yellow, some okra, what would happen? Okay, I'm getting a beautiful green here. If I was to add some more awkward to it, I'm going to go a little bit lighter. So I'm exploring my possibilities for my painting by doing all these fun little things to see what might happen, then what would happen if I added some white to that. I've got a beautiful olive green. If I was to add a little bit of black to that. Don't want much. I've got a lovely gray, gray green. See. If you've done the color mixing, you will have explored this. But I really suggest that before you start a painting, when you've decided on the colors that you want to use. So you've got an idea, experiment with them to see how far you can take it. Now let's see what would happen if I just did annotate this off. If I did the yellow, just the yellow ocher. Let's put that here. And the blue together. Well, we know that we're going to get a green because it's yellow and blue. But a bit more. This is more or less 5050, perhaps not quite a bit more blue, go a bit darker green. So you can see how many beautiful colors you can make from just your small palette. So I could go darker and darker. I mean, I'm adding shade really because the blue is so dark. I'm actually added any black here that you can see how just keeping, adding blue, the beautiful tones of green. While it's lovely. Then if I added some white to that, what would happen? Obviously, I'm going a lighter green. Let's come back here. That's gone a little bit different. You probably can't see the subtlety of that on the camera, but I can see it here. So I'm going to add some more white. And I'm getting some beautiful gray, very warm gray because you've got the yellow as a base and more white. And obviously it's going to increase the tent because we're adding white. So, you know, making a painting from these beautiful colors, you'll find that you're doing something completely different that you've never done before. And it expands your whole palette and, and, and, and painting possibility. Because you've used all these different tones and needs different tints and shades from jest, in this case two colors. Now what would happen say with this one? Then if I was to add a lot more yellow, Let's see where that might take us. It's going to be very warm gray and it had a bit more. You can see how beautiful it can turn out. Then obviously we could go to like we did here. Adding the light, the white to the outcrop, all those beautiful tens. So let me get another tissue here. And adding white is going to be tinting. It gives us contrast to the shade. So let's come to here. To here, adding some white to this. This will be white. And again, you see, you would put, I'm going to show you. So you want a nice contrast in your painting. If you have this, even to be in harmony with itself. If I was to take the blue, added a tiny little bit of the opera. Alright. I put it next to here. Harmonize, but there's a beautiful contrast. Get what I mean. So in doing this exercise, you can find your contrasting colors and your values by adding the white and the black or adding more of one color to the other. And you'll develop a whole beautiful range of tone values in your painting. By doing this, It's very exciting. Obviously, we could add other colors if we wanted to. I could go right to the opposite and add different tones of red because that's our complimentary color to the green. Then you can again try out all the different combinations you can get from using the red. And you'll find your amazed with what you can achieve with just using this method and using your values making differences. I could come back onto this side. Let's say I want it to have a different contrast using the same colors. I could go to this gray here. I've got another interesting contrast. Not quite as much as that, but nevertheless interesting too that you put it up here. It's subtle. Your understanding, I hope you know what I'm doing to show you how you can really expand and create some beautiful tones in your painting and those differences. So let's put this into practice now. Now we've done the central exercises. I hope that that will show you all your different possibilities and options with a very limited palette using your tone values. Don't forget this. Where do these come on the chart? So if I got contrasts here, obviously on these two, they're a great contrast on this one. There isn't so much. I might want to add something else here to give that a real sparkle. Let's have a go and see what happens. Okay. 13. Beginning the Painting: So I'm getting prepared now for the do it on the canvas. I just wanted to show you that I've got my tools ready, all the things I think I might use, I don't know whether I'll use all of them, but the whole point is to be prepared. I've got my sponges, I've got palette knife, I got some scrapers. I've got a lovely rubber brush here which I love using. And I've got different sized brushes, whole collection of different brushes. These are my favorites. So get prepared. I've also got my palette ready. Again, I'm going to be using limited palette. I'm using cadmium orange, primary blue, yellow ocher, black, and white. So I'm going to keep it simple. I've been just playing with some designs and I've just done a simple drawing, just free hand to see where I might go and have a play and see where it takes us. So again, you can do some sketches of what you might like to do. Take some ideas from some of the things that you've done with your play. I love doing sketches and just sort of singing and playing around with them, seeing where it might go. Okay, So really this is about creating our design. So we're going to start and we're going to let it develop to see where our design and our values are going to be. Different values of very opaque paint, more translucent, the contrast of the colors. So let's get started and see where we go. Now one of my favorite things to do when I'm painting is two. So it's quick and it doesn't take too long, is to use a sponge. So I'm going to just put a bit of white on here and a bit of opera. And it's going to mix together on the, on the canvas. What I might start off with doing is just giving it a spray, just dampen it down a bit and absorbs much quicker. And maybe just go over that with another sponge, wet it down. It's much easier to do. So let's get started. I've got this on here. It's going to mix, well, give us a nice very, very quick covering. Which is what I love to do. Because it's so quick and easy done and it doesn't take too long to dry. Decide about your palette, what colors you're going to use again, do an experiment, see how they will make and go from there. Now, it's still obviously very wet. I'm going to add little bit more white to this. I want to put a little bit more white in congest really, it's sort of like glazing it. An undercoat, as it were, gives it some nice textures and lifts it up. See where we would go with. Again, it gets you in the flow. Is kind of interesting. Okay? There we go. That's a nice beginning. So now I'm going to put some actual paint on. And I'm really sort of start developing my idea for my design and using the colors. These are first layers and it can always be changed. And so I'm never worried about that at all really. So if I was to start, I'm going to actually start with some of the orange, with some white. I'll build this up as I go. So I'm going to bring this down here. It's just lovely to to just let the paint flow. And because it's still quite wet, it's going to move really easily. So I've got this lovely color here. Just for the. Because I've got the color, I want to kind of balance it up. So I'm going to bring a bit down here. Now, the color of this might change, but it's just going to give me an outline of where the color would like to go. I'm also thinking that I'm going to bring some color in here. So you can see I'm just relating the thing flow. Blend it out a little. So it started. Now. I want to now have some contrast going on here. So I'm going to go darker. So I'm going to add some more orange. This time I'm going to mix a little bit of ocher with it. Just so I changed the tone. I'm also going to add a touch of black. There's a contrast again, it might change, but at the moment, that's really dark against there. So that it's a nice beginning because it gives me a foundation. So I'm going to bring this down here. Nice contrast between the two. Straighten that up a bit. Okay. Then I'm going to be having a look at where I can put my first focal point. I'm looking here and deciding where that might go. So i'm I'm feeling that it would first of all, take some of that off. I'm going to put some down here. So immediately my eye is going to this corner with that shape. And then I feel I'd like to do something over here. So I'm going to put different kind of shape because again, we want differences. So bring this over here. You can see how that's kinda set already for our, for our eye to go from here to here. So we want it to go round. So I'm going to need which I might just put in later. But you can see how that works, how that would work. Now then I'm going to come now to doing some, maybe some blue into here, some different soft blues. So I'm coming over to here, put some of this and that lovely blue and white in more. Now that's kind of very bright. So I'm going to lower it down with a bit of a black. See how that's toned it down a little bit more white. And again, we can change this. Where do I feel that would like to go? So I'm going to bring it in here. Lovely contrast to the color. Now what I like to do is blend that out. As we go. I'm going to start adding a little bit of white in here so I can blend it into color, so I don't want it just flat. So it's going to go lighter and lighter as I go. I might change brushes so I can really get to the light a bit into here. I'm going to come into here with the white. And then I'm going to blend. So I've got some nice contrast and different, uh, different textures Going on. Bring it around to here. It's kind of quite interesting at the moment. And then I want to balance it up here. So I'm going to do just something, just something around here. This might change that kinda, kinda like that idea. Then I'm going to come really softer up here. So a lot more whites still with a tiny bit of the blue, but not very much. Just attempt with the white. Again, we're looking at contrasts and where the eye will go. We want our focal points and then our quiet areas. So you see that softened it down tremendously. Now we've got a lot of background stuff that's empty. So let's have a think about how we can bring some of that together. So I'm loving this color that she's just very, very, very, very soft with the blue. So let's kind of enhance that. I'm going to put some down here. A little bit more blue with it. It out. Really nice feel to it. And then detailed to the white. And then blend it out a little bit to the okra. So it's not just all a flat surface. And you know, he wants it to be interesting and intriguing. Then I might just bring up a very light blue, maybe just great down a little bit more to bring you in here. So we've got some different values going on, really coming together slowly. Let's have a look here now, what we could do down here, again, I'm going to come back to the blue. And I'm going to go darker blue. Let's see how that will work. If I was to bring that down here. You can see the difference in the values, the darks against the light and then this is very contrasting. But it's both. It's dark. And I got an interesting shape here. So yeah, it's kinda coming together. Let's have a look what we'll put down here. I think we'll go back to the very light, blue, very, very, very light and bring that in here. So we've got some interesting turns going on. Might change that. Not sure it's enough. But there's a kind of a nice start. And it gets his going out here. Just a little bit. Here's bit of texture going on. And the texture's nice. Coat the black. But actually, you know, it's kinda causes an interests. And I love this kind of kind of happy accidents because it leads you to somewhere else. I'm going to let that dry and then I'm going to come back to it and we'll carry on. 14. Building Up The Layers: So I'm going to carry on with this. I'm going to put a little bit of music on and so I can concentrate. And then I'll do, I'll tell you as we go what we're up to. So you can see that I'm developing the layers and looking at the different tone values and contrast, creating the shapes. We've talked, talked about that quite a lot. And I'm keeping the balance of the painting. So the darks coming up here a little. So the eye needs to be going round the painting. And which I've talked about so much. But it's so important when you're at this stage of your own painting is to be having a look, you know, where you're going with it, and what is standing out. What is your statement? And what do you want people to have a look at? So what's kind of interesting about this design are these various focal points where you've got the sharpness of the shapes and then the software area, which is a transition. Now what I'm doing here then is obviously adding more focal point and adding more difference. And you'll see as I go how that will play out. It's sort of keeping you involved in the painting. So always sort of adding extra dynamic points of interests, focal points. So these are the things to be thinking about when you're doing your own painting. You want those contrasts in order to make it fascinating to move around. If it's all one thing, it's difficult to get the right feeling from it. So when you're actually putting your design together, see if you can really have a look at those variations. Variations. You know what we've been talking about? The differences, the town values, the contrasts. So you've got stopping points and quiet points, focal points and soft points to keep you involved in the picture. And that's the main point about it. So I'm just going to carry on and see where it's going to develop. I'm sure it will make some changes as we go. But just so you are aware of where you're looking at the picture, it's interesting here what I'm doing now is I'm balancing it up with the contrast of the black. I'll actually go on and increase that a little. But look at the balance, see how your color is, see how the shapes are, how they're relating to each other. And, um, as you, as you go so you get a feel of it, um, as you're progressing through your own painting. So I'm just going to carry on and I'll come back to you later. Okay? Okay. You can see how the painting is progressing. And I've made a few changes, which is, which always happens. I mean, the painting tells you where it wants to go to. And you can go with the flow with it. You can see the different tones and different contrasting colors and how this works together, the soft areas and the strong areas. And then you're adding some details and extra interest. And it's fascinating really when you're doing this with the painting, you're so involved with it. It's a wonderful feeling. And it's difficult to explain because you're in the zone when you're doing it and it kind of tells you do this and do that. So you can see here a little, or you did see they're a little bit on the close-up, some extra details. And in the next video, I'm going to show you how you can really add those extra details which can make all the difference to a painting. You might think it's finished. But just adding some extra final touches can really enhance what you've already done. So I like that shape there. It's kind of balancing the circle. And that sort of came to me that that would be an interesting thing to do. And I think that's worked really well with a similar color, slightly different tone. But you'll see then on the next video where we're going to take it to really finish it, and to then have the final painting and what you'll be able to do with your painting. Okay. 15. Finishing Touches: We've got this far with it now. Let me just turn it around so you can see it that way. Interesting with the composition. And you might say it's finished. But what I would say is now it needs loosening up and tightening up. So how are we going to do that? And looking again at the design and the textures and the values and all that kind of thing. So the first thing that I feel the tide like to do is just change some of the texture a bit. Now, how I'm going to do that is I'm going to do that with a sponge. And it's sort of like a glazing really. So I'm going to just do a little bit. What I did when we first started. That is do a little bit of glazing and with a sponge. So just very gently, I'm going to just get some other textures happening with it. So it's not, it's not too flat. And it adds some difference to the overall thing. So I'm not sure whether you can see that. Clearly. I'll do close-up a bit later. But it's just giving us a little bit more interests of the texture. And a glaze over the, over the color. Blended it. It softens it at the same time. That's kind of interesting how it works. To do the glazing. I kinda like that field. I might also do a little bit of that down here. Not much. Just a little, maybe a touch more white on that. Now I've got a very damped sponge and I've just got a tiny little bit of the paint on it, so it's not going to be too much. It just says it's going to add a little bit more interests. We'll just kind of soften some of it, learning some of the N. And the kind of given it a bit more depth. Because all this, this can quite flat. And we want some variation. We want those contrasts, we want the differences. So I've done that over here. So I'm going to change the sponge and go to another one. I'm going to do something similar on the blue. Not too much, but just a little too. And change it up slightly. Might work. It might not, it doesn't matter. But it's just gives it a little bit of extra texture. Difference. Yeah, that's better. Doesn't look so flat. Just glazing over very, very softly. I'm hardly touching the canvas. It just adds something a bit different to him. And I might do the same over here. Just for interest sake. Okay? So that just gives us a little bit more depths. We might even consider doing a little bit of that with the orange. So not very much. Just using the other side of the sponge here. Don't want it too much. Yeah, that's lovely. That looks much nicer. Just takes away the flatness. And that's interesting. How's that work? Do a little bit over here. Okay, so that's number one. Number two, what we've got to think about is edges, straight edges, soft edges, and these edges here, but they're a little bit wonky, so I don't want to straighten those up into bits. So what I'm going to do with that is I have quite a few acrylic pens and I've also got some pencils. You can basically use what you would like. This is just a black acrylic pen. So what I'm going to do here. Is get a very straight line because it's a contrast to the non-straight line. So I'm just going to put this in here. And you'll see the difference. See how, again, it's a focal point, It's very strong. So we can do that. Obviously you paint, but I like to do it sometimes with pen because it's a bit easier. I'm going to do another one here to make this very straight. And adds to the, it adds to the contrast of the wobbly lines and the straight line. So it's adding interests. And I really like that. Now, most have got the pen. I can actually define some more of the edges if I want to. Just a little. I don't want them straight. These are one needs to be wobbly. And it's kind of interesting because when you see it like this, you wonder how on earth did you get such a thin line with the brush? Well, it's very difficult to do it with a brush. So it's much easier to do. And it just kinda defines this. It's nice because you've got the harsh line and then the soft line underneath. I might just do the same here. You have to keep taking the time to get the ink working. So I'm just going to come down here just gently. I don't want anything too harsh, but it just defines it and little. And it's all these little extras that make a difference to a painting and finishes it off. So you can see that's a little bit more defined. Now, Let's have a look over here. I'm not really happy with how that's working. So I'm going to go back actually with paint and I'm just define that better. So again, I can do that using a ruler or whatever you want to use. So I can get a really straight edge. And it's so much, when you're looking at contrast between the edges, it makes a difference. The soft lines and you've got the harsh lines off carefully. You can see it's a focal point. And our eyes kind of going round here. And that's the point, really. That's what we're aiming for and just pulling this in a literal. Then again, using the pen. You can actually define your corners a little bit stronger and get them a bit neater. We want, we're looking at nytimes loose. That's the key to it. Here. I want to define this a little bit more. To come down. Some interesting. Let's have this one coming down to, let's go over to here. Because this looks still a little bit shabby. So I'm going to just define this a little bit more with the pen. And it's just a bit easier to do it then using the brush. Now to get another one. I think I'll just do what I wanted to do for now. That's better. Again, you know, it's a focal point, It's an interesting point, contrasts. And we want our eye to go round the painting. Now, my thinking is with this is to just kinda do a bit of a wobbly line around here. I don't want it straight. I just wanted I'm probably just in contrast with all the other straight lines. Just defines it a little bit differently. So when you're assessing your own painting, just have a look at the soft lines, the hard lines, the hard lines, soft lines, hard lines, soft lines. And that will make a difference. Now the next thing I want to do is I want to do something a little bit. But I love doing it. I've got a white pen here. And I'm literally just going to do something. Again, just very loose on it. It can be whatever you want it to be, but suddenly it changes. A painting. It kinda adds that extra interests. It's put one up here. And I don't know, I love doing this stuff. Let's put one around here. And again, it's taking us around the painting and I really enjoy that. So those are our finishing touches. And take it to where you feel happy with it. There's some interesting textures going on. It's our turn this around so you can see it the right way. You've got your, Obviously there's, the design is very strong. But you've got these points where it's taking you around the painting. And this is the whole point. You've got different textures, different values, the contrast of colors. And that's what you want to be looking at when you're doing your own painting is bringing together those textures, the design, the values, and therefore the composition. So I hope you've enjoyed doing this yourself with your own design. And this gives you an idea of how you can approach it and what you can do for yourself. 16. Roundup: I really hope you've enjoyed doing this class on the design and values with your composition. And it would be wonderful to see what you've come up with and put them in the projects. It's always great to see your work and, and get some feedback and I always love to see them. So please put something in there and we can have a look at them. And talking of which, if you would like to see the rest of my series based on the theme that we've been doing in this demonstration there on my website. There are now ten paintings and it's on joy Fe artists.com. And you'll also find on their little e-book, free download on five great tips of color mixing that I'm sure that you will find really helpful. Also, don't forget to check out some of my other classes that I've got here on Skillshare, particularly the abstracts made simple because really that's the forerunner to this class, doesn't really matter. But I think that if you do that combined with this one, you'll find it tremendously helpful. I hope to be putting some more classes up soon. So until then, Happy painting and take care. Bye for now.