Abstract Painting for Beginners

1. Intro: Welcome to another Skillshare class. This class is abstract painting for beginners. And some of the things that you will learn in my class are color blocking out a layer, some of your colors. I'm going to go over some dry brushing, different scraping techniques, as well as creating some fun textures. By the end of this class, you will have a fun new expressive painting to add to your collection. So let's jump right in and get started. 2. Art Supplies : Some of the supplies that you're going to need for today's tutorial. Of course, your canvas. So you can have one with the raft edges or without. And when I have a palette, something to put your paint on, of course your palette knife. And I have two different brushes here that I used. So a big one for the background and then a smaller one. This one is a 12 and this one is a six. And these are from Jerry's art or Rama. If anybody's curious, the pro white line, the Creative Mark. They are nice affordable brushes for acrylic painting or gouache. And we have some phthalo blue here, and some ultramarine as well. Some Mars Black. We have some white, and then some thaler green. And then also we have a bright bubblegum pink. Or if you have a hot pink, that will be a nice color as well. And then just a gold. This one is actually from the Dollar General here in the US, but actually it looks really, really good. So I recommend if you see that gold paint, That's a good deal. More quick thing. Here's some ideas for scraping tools. This is from the Dollar Tree, but for today's painting, I do recommend something a little bit smaller. This would be for larger paintings, but it's a good idea or a ruler. So this one has the little edge. You can pull and drag it down and still hang on to it. So that way you're not sticking your fingers on your painting. So a ruler or this worked out really well too. This is just the top of an old spatula and it's one of those like silicone ones. So it cleans up pretty good too. But this is nice for the painting we're gonna do today, because it's smaller and you can do a little bit more of a controlled area as we go. And now we're ready to get started and jump right in. 3. Color blocking & Layering pt1: I'm getting started with the turquoise that I made here, which was the white, some ultramarine blue, and the yellow green. And I would like to mention that if you have a turquoise that you actually bought from the store, it will definitely be brighter, but that's okay. Unless you have somewhat of a neon green that you could mix in, that will help boost your color a little bit too, but it's not necessary. There's a few different options there depending on the paint that you have. So I'm using my turquoise and what we're doing here can be referred to as color blocking. I'm gonna get down the first layer of the turquoise and the deeper blue that I made. My deeper blue ended up being a cross between like an indigo and oppression. We mixed the thick yellow with a little bit of black, which had somewhat of a green tinge to it. So I ended up putting in a little bit of ultramarine as well. So it just goes to show that you really do have to play around and mix your colors. Sometimes things look better than others. It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with your level. It just practice. Certain brands will definitely look a little bit different as well. So I'm just going to continue on here and cover up the canvas with our first layer. And just a bit of the white. Here. I'm going to add some minty green. I just use a little bit of white and yellow green. Just because my blues, they're a bit hard to see on camera and I want to brighten it up. So this minty green will match our color scheme here. Now that I have the first layer on there, I'm going to switch to my smaller brush here. And depending on how much paint you made, you may have to go in and make more. You can feel free to do your edges as well. If you have a wrapper around Canvas. And as you go in with your second layer, you can take a little bit more paint and start to leave some of the brushstrokes. Not everything has to be super blended. 4. Layering pt2: Here I'm just going along and still filling in where I see any tiny bit of whitespaces or where I just need a little extra paint. And I wanted to add in here that also I used some of the ultramarine with a tiny bit of white. So if you see that the blue has a tiny bit of a periwinkle tint to it. That's why. But it looks nice and we have a wide variety here of all our blues and everything is cohesive and it looks really good. I also wanted to add that sometimes when you're making your own colors and mixing here, sometimes you will not get the same exact color. That takes quite a bit of practice. So don't stress about it. And that's why I mentioned it looks nice that we just have a variation of all the blues here. I'm zooming in here so you can see the different variations. And I'm going to take a clean brush here just because I know it's dry. And we're going to do some dry brushing. You can experiment with up and down side to side. Gentle. You can try and put a length, putting a little bit more pressure. I see in my corner here I need a little bit more paint. Tiny bit of white peeking through. The next color is that we're going to introduce are some pink and gold. And this is just some paint that I actually found at the Dollar General. It actually looks really nice, the gold. And then I have this little bubblegum pink right here, which is nothing fancy. Pretty sure I found that at Target. But it's nice because there's a bigger hole. So you can dip your brush in there and get out a decent amount of paint. Or if you need to save it, you can use your palette knife and scoop it and put it back in there. Which is always nice to avoid too many strokes those because you don't want to make mud. Either that or you can make sure that your painting is completely dry if you don't want anything to mix at all. I do a little bit of both. Maybe just one more. I always look to see if everything is well balanced. So that's another pointer as well. Now the pink I'm going to blow dry with the hairdryer because I think with the gold, I made drizzle and then experiment with the scraping. 5. Details & Scraping Layering pt3 : And I'm going to use my small scrapers so it's a little bit more controlled. Let's see, depending on how much pressure you apply, you can really suck up that paint. And then there's just the sheer, see the shear, the shear layer there. And let's say maybe this one will go up. So you can go down and go up. You can see always I scooped it up a little bit. I'm just that way. I mean, we can just put a little bit there, but see that's like a completely different type of stroke. Can see it there. Where it's just the little flex. I really liked the gold, so maybe we'll just put a tiny bit. Wherever you think it looks a little bit empty is usually what I'm thinking in my head. Will dribble there. You can always clean that up with your brush or finger to I just I've been painting for so long. It doesn't bother me to get my hands dirty. But this is definitely not the tutorial if you're afraid to get dirty. Okay. Let's see here. I think we're pretty much done for today. I don't want to overdo it. I really, really liked the way that this came out. I think if anything, you can look and see where you may have. Like I couldn't see. I think that's dried out. A tiny bit of like whites. The canvas is showing through so you can just fill them in. I noticed a tiny bit down here as well. That wraps things up for today's tutorial. I hope that you did enjoy this abstract painting for beginners. You can feel free to check out my other class that I mentioned with it's just the tools and learning more about colors if you're interested in that. And I also have some other ones with different painting projects as well. And I'll see you next time. Don't forget to post your projects too. Thank you.