Transcripts
1. Hello: If you've wanted to try painting abstracts, but you've been a little intimidated by the thought of it or just not sure where to get started, then you are in the right place. In this class, I'm going to show you how you can create a collection of many abstract paintings using acrylic paint, mixed media supplies, and your initials or any letter you choose. My name is Michelle and I'm a creative explorer and abstract artist. I love to create abstract art, whether on paper or in my art journal or on canvas. I've been painting with acrylic paint for well over 20 years. I started by taking painting classes in a lakeside village outside of my hometown in central New York. The early 2000s, I relocated to Germany and I'm currently living outside of Cologne. In this class, I'll show you how I like to prepare my paper. How I make my initial marks on nearly all of my abstract paintings. How I like to layer my paint and how I add juicy details to my painting with mixed media. I'm excited to show you just how simple and fun it can be. If you follow along and paint with me, by the end of this class, you'll have four abstract paintings. Let's get started.
2. Class Project : In this Skillshare class, your project is to create at least four abstract paintings, following the lessons in this class. I chose this project because painting this way takes the guesswork out of making abstract art. This project isn't focused on composition and rules of making abstract art, but rather it's an exercise, using strokes that are already familiar to your hand. I've made stacks of paintings this way. Therefore, I know that by painting following these lessons, you'll be able to learn what kind of brush strokes you like. You'll learn by experimenting if you like more of a dry brushstroke, or if you like brushstrokes loaded with paint. You'll learn if you prefer using only one brush or if you prefer to change your brush while you paint. You can experiment with leaving white space in your paintings, or you can cover every spot with paint. It's up to you. You'll learn which Maxmedia supplies you like to layer over your acrylic paint. You're giving yourself permission to experiment without being so concerned, as to the outcome. This technique is a great way to test out new color palettes. The best part is when we paint on small paper, it somehow feels less intimidating than painting on canvas, and you can do this over and over and over again. Beginners, this is a class for you. Artwork of this size can easily be scanned into the computer and scaled up to become an art print. Add it to print on demand products used in social media, and of course, you can send it to someone special. I will make a list of all the materials I use and load it into the resources section, which can best be accessed from Skillshare on your laptop or desktop. Look underneath the video, you'll see a tab labeled "Project and Resources." Click on that tab and you'll find the PDF off to the right. You'll also see a green button that says, "Create Project." Up next, I'll go over the materials you need to get started. See you in the next lesson.
3. Materials : In this lesson, I'll share with you the materials you'll need to get started. First of all, you'll need some paper. I'll be using 140 pound watercolor paper. You probably don't want to go any lighter than this, because you don't want your paper to buckle under the weight of your paint. I'm choosing to use hot press paper because I love the smoothness of it and the way the paint glides across the surface. But if you prefer a rougher texture, go right ahead and use a different paper. The size of the paper I will be using is A5. I recommend either using this size, or five by seven, or four by six. For this project I wouldn't go any larger than these sizes. You will need to adhere your painting to your surface, and for that you will need a low tech tape. I use this pink tape by Tesa. I get it in my local hardware store. If memory serves me correct, the equivalent to this is blue in the US. You can also use this Scotch removable tape. This works great. You can even use washi tape if you can find one that's wide enough. Of course, for making an acrylic painting, we need acrylic paint. As you can see I'm not very brand loyal. I like to try every brand out and pick and choose my favorites. I'll be using the color palette you see here. In my painting today, I have the Nishan pink, Chinese blue, olive green, fern green, Van Dyke brown, and Gesso. Don't worry. You will find a complete list of all the materials I use, including these paint colors, in the project and resources section. In the next lesson, I'll be discussing with you how I like to mix my paint and why I like to mix my paint with matte medium. If you choose to also mix your paint the way I do, then you will need some matte medium and little pin pots like these. They are 35 milliliters or one ounce, and you can get them on Amazon. We'll also need paint brushes. You will see me use these four in the class. I have a number 20 flat brush. I have a number 10 flat brush, an 18 round, and a six round. These are all synthetic bristles. These are not expensive paint brushes and I prefer to use paint brushes that are not so expensive so I don't cry when they get gunked up with paint and I have to throw them away. I don't only like to paint with paintbrushes, I also like to paint with old gift cards, that I slice up. If you have any laying around, or an old credit card, old hotel key, I highly recommend you try painting with them. It's a lot of fun. You'll also need a paper towel to wipe your brush on. A vessel of water is also a good idea, and maybe something to mix on. You'll also need some mixed media supplies. This is just a small amount of what I like to use. Most important for this class to start out with is a colored pencil. Then I would like you to choose whatever mixed media supplies you like. I will be using Posca pens, a China marker, metallic pen, and these oil pastels. Again, you'll find a list of all the materials that I use, including the colors if you're interested in using the same color palette, in the PDF labeled Class Resources. Join me in our next lesson where I will show you how I like to mix my paint. See you there.
4. How I Mix My Paint: In this lesson, I'll be going over how I like to mix my paint and explain to you why I like to mix it this way. Now, what you're looking at here is a tray that I keep on my painting table with my, at the moment, favorite colors mixed and ready for me to go in these great little paint pots. I paint in my art journal on a regular basis. I don't always have time for a big production of mixing my paint and getting everything ready. This makes everything so convenient. I need to give credit where credit is due. I learned about these paint pots from a fellow artists on Instagram named Carolina Della Valle. I'm so happy that I saw it on her account. When I look at my palette here, I can see that I could maybe use another green. I'm a little heavy on the blue. I've got quite a bit of reds. Let me go ahead and show you how I like to mix my paint to get the consistency that really makes me happy. Well, I will often mix my paints from the primary colors along with black and white. In this class and in this lesson, I'm really more focused on the consistency that I like in my paint by mixing it with matte medium. If you are interested in learning how to mix your paint from the primary colors, there's a fabulous class by Lorien Gonzales here on Skillshare called acrylic painting; learn the basics for beginners. She has several lessons devoted to learning the color wheel and how to mix your paint. Let's keep moving on here. I have my paint pot and I will just remind you this is a one ounce paint pot or 35 milliliters. You will need something to mix your paint with and of course we will need some matte medium, I have two different ones here. I like them both equally, but I think for this lesson, I will probably use the liquid text because there is a little bit more in this bottle than in the other one. The green paint that I will be using here in case you're interested is called chrome green light by Lukas Cryl studio. It's a really pretty spring green. All I do is squeeze a small amount into the paint pot. I start with less than I think I need because by the time I've added the matte medium, I can have sometimes a pretty full paint pot. It's important here to mix it really well, scraping all the sides, checking the consistency. There is unfortunately no magic formula for this, you just need to play around with it a few times to find the consistency that you really like. I can tell here for me, this is still a little bit too thick, so I add more of the matte medium and just continue to stir. Now, you're probably wondering why do I go through all this and add a medium to my paint instead of just buying a paint that's not as heavy bodied as this one, and the reason is I like to have the flexibility of using the paint as thick as it is when it comes out of the tube, or I like to have it more of a glaze by adding matte medium to it. Let me just show you a little example. Here, I've prepared two pieces of paper. I can show you on one side what the paint is like with the matte medium, and I can show you on the other side what the pain is like straight from the tube without the medium. Take my brush. Now, this paint on the paper plate is straight from the tube. It's really such a pretty green. It goes on nicely, has a little transparency on its own, can layer it and make it very opaque. Let me just clean off my brush and try and get most of that paint off of it before I dip into my paint pot with the matte medium. One stroke and I think you can already see the difference. One, the paint just glides so nicely over the paper once I add the medium to it. Two, you can see that bit of transparency that I have and I really love layering paint like this. Well, in a future lesson, you will see me only painting from the paint pots. It was really important for me to demonstrate the effects that you can get by using paint with matte medium along with paint straight from the tube without it in one painting. The other reason that I like adding matte medium is exactly what's in the name, it makes the paint a little more matte, which is my preference. I also like my paint a little on the gritty side. I will very often add gesso to my paint pots as well as the matte medium, and you'll see that in a minute. Now, if you look at these pages left and right, you can see, I hope, why I like to paint this way with the paint directly from the tube and the same color with the matte medium in it. I can really get such beautiful effects in my painting without a whole lot of effort. Now, let me take this same green that I've already added to my paint pot and add some gesso to it. I don't want to add too much because I really don't want it a lot lighter. I could use clear gesso but I have the white here on my table, so I'm just going to use that. Adding the gesso gives it, as I said before, that little bit of grittiness and I personally really like that. It also modifies the paint even a little bit more, I have to make sure that I stir this paint really well, mix the gesso in. Of course the paint is now a bit thicker and I will have to add some more matte medium to return it to the consistency that I had previously. Not very much, stir again, mix it all in there. Now, if you're wondering, why don't I use water? Why do I use matte medium? Well, a good reason for that is my painting teacher, she always said to me, "Don't add water to your acrylic paint. Use medium." It's just stuck in my head. It's not to say that I don't use water in my acrylic paint, but when I'm thinning the paint down, or changing the consistency of the paint, then I prefer to do it with matte medium as opposed to doing it with water. I've cleaned my workspace off a little bit. My brush is mostly clean, and I would just like to show you how the paint looks now that I've added a little bit gesso to it. The layering effects really makes me so happy. This little piece of gesso here, my paper doesn't make me happy, but the effects that I get by layering this paint are really fun. I'm going to speed this video up now and just continue painting a background onto this paper so I can use it for another project. I'll let you watch, or you can skip ahead and go to the next lesson if you'd like. In the next lesson, I will discuss with you the reason I like to start my paintings by using my initials. See you there.
5. Why Initials?: Why should I use my initials in my artwork? You've probably already started thinking about that. Let me give you a great reason why, and that's muscle memory. What is muscle memory exactly? Muscle memory is the repetition of a task until the brain just remembers how to do it automatically. When you write in cursive like I'm writing here, do you think about how to form the letter? I bet you don't. You probably learned it in third grade like I did, and you've been doing it for so long now, the letters just form themselves. Let me let you in on a little secret as to why this is a great way to start our artwork. That is, it takes away the fear of the blank white page because the first marks we make are already familiar to our hand. After I had been making art for awhile, I sat down and took a good look at what I was creating, and I would see some similarities in my artwork. What I noticed was, most of the shapes I was making resembled an M. The other shapes I was making resembled Es. These familiar shapes that I've been making for years were now showing up in my artwork. Now I start nearly every painting the same way. By warming up my paper, or warming up my canvas, by using the letter shapes that are most familiar to my hand. Now this is how we are going to be starting out our paintings. We will take four small sheets of paper and tape them all together. What I've done is taken a picture of these pages and put it into my iPad. I'm going to show you an example of how I write my letters before I even start on my actual painting. Here we are. I'm in my iPad and I'm writing an M over the four sheets of paper, going over the tape, just writing an M. You could call that an E, you can call it a cursive L, whatever you like. This is the shape that I like to make a lot. What's really fun when I paint like this, is that if you look at each individual paper, it's already a piece of art on its own. Let's zoom in and look at this one, for example. We wouldn't just make these marks if we were using a single piece of paper, or these marks. But look how creative they are. I'll put this image in the resource section, and if you have an iPad Pro or a tablet with Procreate, you can try this out on your own. Otherwise, I encourage you to take a blank piece of paper, or four blank piece of paper, and try it out before we start painting. In the next lesson, we will get our paper ready and make our initial marks. See you there.
6. Inital Marks : Okay. Are you ready? It's time to get started. So I'm speeding this part up a bit, but you can just see I'm taping my paper down, trying to do the best I can to tape it evenly, and make sure it's nice, and flat, and smooth along the edges. There we go. Taping is done, which means it's time to start making our marks. Got my pencil in my hand, and I'm just going to start making my M, like we did in the last lesson on the iPad. Only this time it's on real paper. Hold your pencil loosely and just sweep your hand across the page, and it´s as easy as that. Here we go with my favorite letter E and a few m's here at the bottom. It's that easy to start an abstract painting in this way. Once you've got that complete, we'll move on to the next lesson and start painting.
7. Let's Start Painting: Here it is, the lesson you've been waiting for. It's time to start painting with my flat brush. I add a bit of the Van Dyke brown mixed with beige and I sweep it across the page. My brush is dry because I like these dry brush strokes. I'm following the letter shapes that I made earlier. There we go. First paint is down, you can take a breath. Let's keep following over our marks and you're probably wondering, "Why did we do it with pencil if we're just painting over it?" Well, the reason is, and it's hard to see here on the screen, but when your painting is complete, you'll still see the pencil marks through the paint, which gives it another layer of depth. What I do here is I take a little bit of white and I just rub it in to the edges of the still wet brown paint. This gives a bit of color variation to the painting by simply adding white and mixing the colors that are still wet together. We do these long sweeping motions over all of our pages at once, but when we're finished, don't forget, we have four individual paintings. Now I add a little bit of the Venetian pink next to the white. Now, at this point, I don't have to continue following along my letter shape, but instinctively, I just did this. But if you want to go completely in the opposite direction of the shape that you've made feel free, go right ahead. It's your artwork. I just loved this. Do you see the variation in the color? That looks so nice. Now here you might notice I've changed my brush and the reason for this is when I change my brush, I get a variation in my stroke. Adding white to the Venetian pink, it's already a little dry. I don't want to add too much here because I really, really like the look of that. Let's rinse out my brush. I see a few areas that need a little something. Now I'm going to take some of this Chinese blue, it's a really, really beautiful blue. The next shape I'd like to make or stroke I'd like to make resembles an L. Now let me go ahead and make a second L. Why not? I have two Ls in my name. Now I don't want them to look identical, however, because I want the paintings to look different from each other. So by adding a little white here, I'm blending this in, I make sure that while I've put the same stroke basically next to each other, I'm differentiating them a little bit from each other. I don't want you to think too much as you're painting. I want you to paint intuitively and just let each stroke take you to the next one without too much thought. Going back and forth with your colors, even if they're in the same tonal range, just gives a little more depth to your painting. Again, it's hard to see here on the camera, but just this little variation between these two blues is very striking. Because I added the medium to my paint, you can see there's a bit of transparency which I also like a lot. Rinse my brush again and then I wipe it off on the towel because I like the dry brush strokes. I'll take this fern green, nice dry brush stroke. Now let's make another E here. The pink was still wet and I love the way these colors blended in with each other. I go in with a little bit of the olive green. You'll notice I go back and forth, both colors, a little bit of white blending in here and there, but in this particular layout, I've decided to keep some whitespace. Now, here's my Handy Dandy gift card. Most of the paint is dry, but in some of the areas where it was a little thicker, it's wet and I can get these great texture marks. Yeah, like that. A little bit of white, I think I'll start at the top. When you see my hand go off camera, I'm wiping the card on a towel that's next to me. I'm going to let this dry now and I will meet you in the next lesson to add another layer of paint.
8. Let's Keep Painting : In this lesson, I'm going to show you how I go in and rework a few areas of the painting that maybe I didn't love initially, and continue to add a few more layers of paint over the already dry first layer. Take this area for example. I didn't quite love the mark that the card made, so I add some gesso and I add some of the Chinese blue, and I just go back and forth. I don't have much of a plan, I just see what happens and what develops as I go along. You notice I have changed my brush, I'm now using a round brush to get different strokes and different marks on this layer, from the layer of paint that I previously applied. This is another corner, I don't love this part so much, so I just play around a little with the green and with the brown until I find something that I can live with. I love this spot, I love this spot. This is good, so I think I'll leave that. That helped that corner, let me intensify it a little, it's like a commitment here. Good. Redefine this M. Go in now with a smaller brush and do what's almost like doodling with a paintbrush. Just add marks and shapes, and it's almost like going wild with the paint now. No, that's not wild enough. I'm making some marks, I'm sorry you can't see them so well behind my hand. I'm just adding a little green and a little white and then a little more green and making marks. Now I'm almost done here and I will let it dry. I hope that you will join me in the next lesson where I discuss the materials I like to use for adding details to my paint. See you there.
9. Adding Detail Part 1: In this lesson, I'll go over some of the supplies I like to use to add detail and mark making to my paintings. I'll show you how I use a sheet of blank white paper or even the edge of the tape to test out my supplies, before making any mark on my painting. I'll start by demonstrating Posca pens, which are water-based paint pens. They come in 55 colors, and are fabulous to layer over acrylic paint. This is the Posca pen in beige, and I'm already thinking it's a little too brown to add to this painting. Now, this one is my most used color. This is ivory. This one might be a little hard to see on the screen, but I like to make marks with this, whether it's squares, which are my go-to mark or these little square dots. This is another one of my favorite colors, this is light orange. I love the way this looks on brown. However, I'm not so certain how much I like it next to the Venetian pink. Let me test it out here. Yeah, it's only okay, it doesn't really stand out for me. I like to add metallics to my painting. This is the Uni-ball Signo pen in gold. Looks really great on the brown, of course, on the pink. In silver, this pen is from Edding. It's very similar to the Signo pen. It might be a little bit finer. It's also a great color. Looks really wonderful on the blue. This is a China marker. I like adding white detail to nearly every one of my paintings. This here is my absolute favorite black pen. This is the Platinum Carbon pen with a fine tip. It has permanent ink, it's refillable. It's a little stubborn sometimes, but it makes really fabulous marks, and I use it in a lot of my artwork, whether over paint or line drawings. I really like to use it to make these wonky, irregular stripes, and paintings where I have left quite a bit of whitespace, I like to take these spaces and fill them in with some detail. I'd like to show you a few examples of some finished paintings. Here, I've added stripes with the carbon pen and these scribbles that I've just love to make. This painting here, I have used the China marker. I love the look of this. This here, I should pull these out and show you. These are student quality oil pastels that I most likely took for my kids. This orange here is so beautiful on the Chinese blue. I'll put it aside and most likely use it later on. Let's keep looking through some examples. Here, you can see again, I have filled in the space with stripes. There's the orange oil pastel, the scribbles, and here, is the Posca pen in ivory. You can see here again, that China marker and the Posca pen. Told you I like squares. Now, you can see this is the same color palette, but I've left less whitespace and made these dotty lines with the silver Edding pen. As usual, I've added squares with the beige Posca pen. Again, line detail with the silver pen and the Posca pen in ivory. China marker, Posca pen. Here, I filled this area instead of stripes, I made little stones, Posca pen in the corner. Here, we have some more scribbles and stripes. Let's go to the next lesson and make some marks.
10. Adding Detail Part 2 : In this lesson, I'm going to start adding details to my painting by using a China marker. A China marker, also known as a grease pencil, is made of hardened colored wax. It's like a cross between a colored pencil and a crayon. Take a tip from me, what I obviously didn't do, cut your string before you start using it, makes it a little easier. China markers are resistant to moisture and fading. All I'm doing here is making marks across all four pages. Maybe I should think about sliding my board down a bit so it fits in the shot and you can see what I'm doing. You didn't miss much here. I just added some scribbles. I'll take my Posca pen. I decided on the ivory. I'll go in and you guessed it, make some squares. At this point, I'm not thinking too much about what I'm doing or where I'm putting the marks. I'm just doing what feels natural and makes me happy. I don't know how else to explain that. That's how I'd like you to work also, just experiment. You can always paint over it. Here, you see I've just made a line going across all four pages. What a surprise, another square. I think here, I'd like to break up this area of darkness by putting some more squares in there. Take the orange, I won't add too much of it because of the Venetian pink. There's already a little bit of the orangey color in there. But a little bit on each painting just makes a pop of color. We've now reached my absolute favorite part of a painting and that is when the tape comes off. At some point during a painting, especially a painting like this, you'll look at it and think, Oh my gosh, this is crazy. But then the tape comes off, and it's almost like a little bit of magic. I'm never quite sure what my painting is actually going to look like until I've removed the tape. It's a surprise every time and that feeling doesn't get old. I just love seeing these crisp, clean edges and look at that. A collection of mini-abstracts. Now, I take a little time and I look over each one of these paintings individually and analyze what I like and what I don't like. I've decided these paintings need just a little more oil pastel. You'll watch me here as I go along and add a little bit of brown and a little bit of white where I think it needs just a little more movement or a little extra detail in the painting. I've surprised myself because I stopped here and I didn't actually add any black pen to this collection. I hope that you have painted along with me and that you're happy with your paintings. I also hope that you have taken pictures of your progress, and I would be so pleased if you would post them in the project gallery for everyone to see. Enjoy watching the rest, and I'll see you in the next lesson.
11. Thank You! : Congratulations, you've made it to the end. You should be so proud of yourself. Thank you so much for spending your time with me. It's been my pleasure to show you my process and I've really enjoyed making this class for you. You should now feel well-equipped to tackle that blank white page like a pro. I hope you apply these techniques to your daily art practice and please don't forget to post your projects in the project gallery. If you have any questions, I'll be here for you and do my best to answer them for you. If you would like to be notified of any future classes I create, please be sure to follow me here on Skillshare. If you'd like to see what else I'm working on, then come along and follow me on Instagram. Better yet, tag me in your artwork because I can't wait to see it. Thanks again, and I hope to see you real soon.
12. Bonus Lesson: Watercolor and Mixed Media: Welcome to the bonus video. I've been asked multiple times now if I think it's possible to do this project in watercolor, so I thought today I would pull out my watercolors which I will be honest, I haven't used them in a while and give it a go. The brush that I'm using is by a company called Escoda, and it's a number 12 round brush. Here you can see I've made an M for my first name and a G for my last name. I'm going in and laying down the color much like I did with the acrylic paint bearing in mind that I'm using a different medium. I think you can also already see that I've sped this video up quite a bit, I've thought you would appreciate the quick overview and not a 30 minute long video. Today, I just decided very spontaneously to tape down the paper and give it a try. You are washing the very first time I do my own project in watercolor mixed media. The color palette I've mixed up before I started, I went a little more neutral, a little more soft with my color selection and here I decided just to paint this oval that later I won't like at all, but that's all part of experimenting. I wanted to let the other colors dry a little bit and so I decided I would try and fill in some of the whitespace forgetting that if I want the watercolor to bloom successfully which is what I was going for. I need to have it wet everywhere and in the center it was already dry when I started dropping in the darker color. But I just go with it and keep working and filling in some spaces, making marks, waiting for the other paint to dry before going over it again. Here I switch back to the larger brush, I prefer these big sweeping motions with a larger brush but I decide also here to give it another go with adding some dots to create some blooms in the paint. Still trying to make myself like this oval. Now, this color here is such a gorgeous color and I need to look up the name of this Daniel Smith paint that I used here. I mixed this Daniel Smith paint with Payne's gray and a darker purple and this turns out to be my favorite color of the entire painting, which is very interesting because I'm not usually so into purple, but this purple or gray with a little sparkle from the Daniel Smith is really lovely. I just continue to experiment, lay down color in the same manner that you saw in the previous lessons. Because area is dry so I can successfully layer the color over top and the translucency is so beautiful. I'll just continue layering the paint, making marks and once my painting is dry, I go in and add some details with the Posca pen in beige, I'm still not so super happy with this oval so I took my acrylic ink with my finger and just added some detail on top to help splendid in, add another layer. This is what is so much fun about painting or mixed media painting I should say, is adding in the extra details, can make a spot that you didn't love so much into a really great eye catcher. Painting with your finger is always fun, I highly recommend it. Now, I will take a minute and look at my painting and decide does it need something else? I've decided it needs these woody pencils by Stabilo, they're really great if you have never tried them, I would really recommend it. They're not expensive. I don't even know how to explain them, they are not quite a crayon, they're are not quite a colored pencil, they're different than a China marker. If you have the chance then give them a try it's fun to work with them. I just make some marks with them, at the end I don't particularly love all of these marks but it's all an experiment so I just go with it. I'm scrolling scratching into the acrylic ink hoping that it's still wet in some spots so I can add a little texture and this is my favorite pen, the Platinum Carbon pen. You can see by the way, I'm holding it, I'm not trying to get perfect lines here, I want them to be a little more random and then my scribbles which I do love to make. Here's the best part, are you ready? Let's take off the tape. Don't you just love these crisp clean lines, these crisp clean edges, or is it just me? I love them but I'm not done yet. Fun part about using watercolor that I haven't used in awhile is I can use these great metallic paints that I don't use enough. They are such a great accent especially with this color palette which is why I had to pull them out. Adding metallic details in my painting for me makes it feel finished. There are some things you'll see in almost all of my paintings and that is metallic end or line work either with a black pen or white and then the painting really feels more like me. I hope by experimenting, you'll also figure out what makes you happy in your paintings, and please give it a go and post your paintings in the project gallery. I can't wait to see them.
Michelle Grams, Creative Explorer and Abstract Artist
