Transcripts
1. Introduction: Hi. I'm Robert Joyner with paint loose. Have excited to share the essential skills for painting with acrylics. Thanks, Crayon. A shark. Now, in this class, I will cover each medium individually. I will give you a lot of tips and techniques on how to apply them to achieve a desired look . I will also cover how these mediums mix. Now I'm a mixed media artist. I like to blend my mediums, then use a variety of them in each of LA paintings. And I can tell you is the skills 10 weeks I teach you in this course that make my paintings what they are, they are essential. Hence the title. And they are critical to the development of the artist Because because how you apply your mediums to your surface has a direct result on the out. A lot of the tips and techniques give you will help you avoid a lot of the common mistakes many artists make. When using these mediums, your project is very, very easy. You don't have to paint anything finished. This course is more about teaching the fundamentals skills. So just you can use basic shapes, lines, whatever your heart desires. But um, do them follow through with it because that's where this course in the time you invest watching these videos will benefit. You can't wait. Teoh just teach you these very, very basic skills. I know it will improve your artwork, and we're kicking things off with an introduction to eat the medium's and why I prefer these over the other options.
2. How To Use The Platform: In this video, I
just wanted to go over the Skillshare platform. I know some of you
know how to use it, but I know there are
many others that simply don't understand how
to create a project. How to add more photos, texts, and things like that. What I will do now is pull up one of my classes on Skillshare. This may not be the
class you are learning, but it does have everything we need to cover what I wanted to share with
you in this video. This is my watercolor workout
basics and beyond class. And you've got the
main video here. Obviously. If you wanted
to make that video bigger, you can click that and the
top right hand corner, and that will enlarge the video if you want to reduce
that size again, come up here to the top
right-hand corner, click it. And that's going to bring up your navigation menu on
the right-hand side. Now if I hover over
the video with my mouse down here
on the lower left, you have play speed. For some reason you
wanted to slow things down or speed things up. You can always change the speed. Keep in mind if you do change, it just makes sure you
go back and set it to normal if you
want to, in fact, see at a normal speed, you can also rewind
things 15 seconds. If you're watching something
you wanted to see what happened within 15
seconds together, you can click that and
then I'll take you back. And now 1515 second increments. You can click it three
or four times and go back 45 seconds a minute,
whatever you want to do. If you want to make
a note of the video, you can click this little pen That's going to
bring up your note. And that's a good way to remind yourself if something
interesting happen there. And you just wanted to
sort of jot something down that sort of
clicked in your mind. This is your volume. So if it's CBC, this slash like I
have now lets you need to unmute it so you're not going to be able
to see the sound. If I click that now, I can now hear the video
if it were playing, this would be subtitles. So if you wanted to
have a subtitle and the various languages
here, you can do that. You may not like
having subtitles. You can put subtitles
off on the top of that. So if you don't
want to see them, That's how you get rid of them. Again, we can go full screen with that feature in
the lower right-hand corner. So if you wanted to see this and this largest
possible resolution, that is going to be
the option to do it. Okay, So again, that's that one. So that tells you a
little bit about how to navigate some of the
options on the video. Over here on the right. So long as you're in this mode, we can scroll down and
see the different videos. All videos that you
have watched all the way through should
have a checkmark. If you want to again,
get rid of that, you use this button in the top right-hand corner,
you can get rid of it. And then here we see it. Now down here, we
have some tabs. We have the About tab. So that's going to be the class
description that I added. I will often add other classes that you
may be interested in. So throughout the course, I may say if you want to learn more about how to
plan watercolor art, be shorter, checkout the link
in the class description, and that's gonna be right
here in the About tab. So if we scroll down, we can see all of
these are links to different classes I have. So that's a little bit
about the about page. Reviews are where you can see how awesome reviews that the
students left on the class. Here, our discussions, discussions are very
important because that's how I'm
going to notify you about each new lesson of
when they're available. You will see, if you scroll
down, you'll see discussions, you'll see where there's some
different things going on. This is important too. So if you have questions about the class or a
lesson you watched, then you can use this
discussions to get in touch with me and I'll try to respond
to you as soon as possible. You can also share links
and the discussions too. So if you have something
you want to show me, you can always link it up
and I'll be able to see it. Here. You see I can
start a conversation, I can ask a question up and
share project and so on. Speaking up projects,
if I go right here, this tells you a little
bit about the project. So here you'll see each lesson
has a project well almost, but the point is to get
involved and started doing the demos and projects
shared in this class. And here you can scroll down
and see all the students that are posting projects that there's one do
you want to explore? You can click on
that and just see what an awesome job the
students are doing, getting these different
projects and things done. Of course, you can
comment on these two. So over here on the
right-hand side, you can click on that. You can share a little feedbacks and encouragement,
whatever you want to do. If you look at my
project right here, you're going to see that I've got a detailed breakdown
of all my lessons here. So each time I post new
lessons in a class or a demo, I always break it
down and give you a really good description
of what's going on. Now you may want to
create a project. Now, since I already have one, are you going to see
that I don't have the option to make another one. But here is a class that
I don't have a project. You will see this green button
on the right-hand side. To create a project, all you have to do
is click on that. And that's going to bring
up your project option. Now the first thing you'll
see is a cover image. If you want to add
a cover image, just click on that and then
navigate to your image. So I'll just select one here. So I'll select this one. And then that's going
to upload the image. Once it's uploaded. I have the option here on
this slider right there to enlarge it and then
sort of move it around, however I want that to be seen. And once it's done,
click Submit. Again, this is just
the cover image. You can go ahead and add
a title and I'll say, awesome class by Robert. If I can spell that right, that would certainly help. Description. Hey, took a three-week class. And here's what I did. Now if hit Enter, That's going to bring the
cursor down here below. And then I can add an image. You see down here, you can see, you can have three options
to add more content. So if I click on image, I can add another image, so I can click on that and then you have to
give it a second. And then that's going
to upload the image. Now I can click Enter and you see I can write more content. I'm like, This is my
cool fish painting. Now, if I wanted to add a video or link and
maybe you're like, Hey, did you happen to see
this picture, whatever. You can double-click on a word and then you have a
link option here, and you can paste
the link in there. Just make sure you
hit the Check button to make it active. And now I can hit enter again
and then add more images. That's how you can
make your project. If you don't want anyone
to see your project, you can click this button
here to make it private. But once you're done,
very, very important, scroll back to the
top and hit Publish. And as soon as you
publish your project, that's going to be visible
for everyone to see. So that's publishing right now. I'm just going to
give it a moment, alright, and then there
it is, right there. So I just added my projects. So let's say you want
to edit your project, you click on that again. And now you come up here to
the top right-hand corner. You can click Edit, and now you can scroll down. Make sure you put the
cursor where you want it. So if I want the next image or the next video or whatever
to be below the fish. I can come down
here and click on the end of the
sentence, hit Enter. And now again, pull in my images or wherever it
is that I want to do. Again, make sure you hit
published when you're done. And then that's
going to save it. You just have to be patient
and let Skill Share save it. Another thing you may
want to do is share your project on social media. So you have this
Copy Project link. You can copy that and share
that wherever you wish. Over here on the right-hand
side, you can hard thing. So if someone did a project
that you really like, you can give it a heart. You can share a comment and say, those fish are amazing, and then hit posts and
that's going to share your comments with whoever
it is you're talking about. So again, just good
stuff to know. And I think if you learn how to use the projects
is very useful. And teachers can often
see them and hopefully they do and they can give you some feedback on
what you're doing. The last thing I want
to share with you is right here under the again, we've got about reviews, discussions, and then
project and resources. These resources
are downloadable. If the class has images,
resource images, whatever the case may be, you can click on the
link and that's going to download it to your device. So I hope this video helps you out and that you
understand a little bit more about how to navigate
the Skillshare platform. And then of course, the
courses that are taught there.
3. Materials: Let's talk about materials. What I will show you here. And this lesson is what I feel the only supplies you really need to get started. And the one overall theme that I want to take away from this, in addition to what you need to get going is simplicity. You always simplify. I will go over my very first recommendation. And that's just a small Vier bound sketchbook. Uh, this is about a 5.5 by 8.5 sized paper and great put thumbnail sketches. If you want to paint, then you want to work out your ideas with a simple drawing. And the best way to do that is I have a small sketchbook that you could take anywhere, and it's affordable, and it will save you a lot of money. Okay, um, I draw with a number two pencil. You can buy these things by case. They're very inexpensive. And again, this is probably the most important part of your supply list. Okay, if you're not working out your ideas, you're not doing your quick sketches. You're not working on your drawing. Then your paintings will suffer. Okay, So drawing pad and a number two pencil. Now I'll look a paint. I prefer heavy body acrylic paint. Now I will go over specific colors when I move into the palace area. But for the most part, I prefer having body artists grade Okay, acrylic paint because they're very thick in the beginning, and then you have the option to fit him out with water. That's a much better set up, then. Working with a thinner, more fluid paint has already runny basically, and you don't have the option to create a thick, buttery stroke without adding a medium. And again, we want to keep things simple. So I recommend heavy body acrylic paint. I don't necessarily have a brand that I would recommend to you, but good. Just simply get professional gray paint and you won't need very many hues. And again, I'll go over that a little bit later. The next thing will talk about his brushes. This is an area where artists will really overdo it. Some of this would depend on how large of a scale you paint on, but in the beginning we're going to keep things small. OK, you would do a lot of small studies a lot of small paintings. And then as you advance, then we can take things a little bit bigger. So a small or medium sized around on these air, all synthetic brushes, they're probably all less than five or $8. But, you know, medium size or smallest, fine. I'll put some recommended size is down on the list, a small detail type of brush. This could be a very small round as well, and then a flat, a flat would get a medium sized. So if you want to tone the canvas and a little bit of a broad stroke, then you've got a nice flat work with. And then these get some nice corners and things like that, too. But those three brush is really are all you need in the beginning. A Sfar as a pallet on this is just a simple paper palette. I like these for beginners because you can put your pain out there at the end of the session. Weaken, ball it up, throw it away and you're done with it. There are obviously a lot of other palettes to choose from, but I think something like this is good. That way you can have your session and then discard your paper, cause chances are you may not have a studio set up where you could leave things out. I mean, you can use I've seen artists use paper plates and different things, but this should do the trick for you. Next thing I'll talk about is paper in campus, so we need something to paint on. This would be the upgrade. Okay, This is a pain board, so it's very firm and they use acid free recycled materials to make this. And this is by Fredericks, and I've I these from blink art. But depending on where you live, you may have or not have access to that website. Never recommend just a medium grade quality canvas. You don't need to get premiums, portrait style canvas and invest that kind of money and something that you're practicing on . Okay. And when it comes to canvass, honestly, I would say in the beginning you don't even need it. But I know some artists simply like to paint on a canvas that you feel like it's a little bit better material or surface to work on. But, um, you know, if you go this direction, keep him small and then consider the boards for the surface would recommend would be the paper. This is 100 £40 cold press paper, this acid free. Now, even though it's 100 £40 cold press, you may think, Well, that's from watercolor, but this really I wouldn't use for water color. This would be a very low grade paper for bark other painting, but it's ideal for acrylic. It's got a little bit of texture to it. You can buy them and cheats. So I buy these large 22 by 30 inches sheet and then I reduce them t like this. This is 11 by 15 and of course, you could take this and continue to break it down to do small studies. And that's what you want to dio. But painting on paper is very, very affordable, and the beauty of this is you don't have to put just so on it or anything. You can simply use it straight out of the package, tape it on your board and you're ready to go. But in the beginning, you want to keep the cost down because you want to do a lot of studies and If you start to invest money in a bunch of canvas, then you're gonna throw your money away, whereas with paper you campaign on it, flip it over, pain on it, and so launch. So again, 100 £40 cold press paper. This is a fabric Godeau and blick Brenda get from Dick Blick Art. I will leave a link for that if you're interested in having a look. But we could certainly look around at other venues that sell supplies and get a compatible paper. Now for the paper generally will put it for a board, and this is Peter four. So it's a little bit thick, so it's got some body to it, and it's great for putting your paper down. And then what I do is use masking tape. Go across the top or the corners, and it gives me a good for surface. And, of course, if I have a table or something, a painting on this kind of keeps the lot of paint that goes off the edges on the board versus messing up my mane paint area. But the Gator board is very good, and again they sell these in larger sheets. He's selling the smaller sheets so you can kind of up to by whatever size you need. But again, I would imagine you're gonna be painting small. And the beauty of this is you can probably put three or four small little paintings on here one time, and then you can work on one of the time. It kind of rotate around and get on a nice system. So the gear board works good. Is lightweight, is very durable. I've had this board for probably six or seven years, and it's still working great. So I mentioned the masking tape. You probably want a little bit of masking tape, or you can use clips or whatever to put it on the board as well. But in any case, you need something to attach your paper to the board and take this one. Also, you may want to opt to have three or four ease boards, because that way you can get there. Not are 10 paintings going, so if you work on one or whatever, you can put it aside and then bring the other board out and working with some of those. So it's kind of a nice way to keep your paintings ready to paint on basically, and then you can kind of access and quickly. So, anyway, that's my report. Now let's get in twos. A couple more things here. So this is just a reservoir, it accordion style. So it kind of collapses, which is good for storage. Um, you can also use a mason jar or something like that, but you want a reservoir to hold the water, and really, you need a couple of, um, you need one for cleaning your brushes and the one for fresh water, which we will talk more about later on as well. But you need something to hold your water, and then the another thing I will talk about is Mr Bottle or a spray bottle. Acrylics tend to dry fast, so though depending on your environment, whether you're in a dry or human environment or whatever, they tend to skin over pretty quick. So to keep them, you start to see that you can spray here, paints down or miss them, and that will keep them waste longer. Sometimes things come up and you have to leave your you're painting or yours paints for a while, so if that ever happened to spray it down as best you can, And then hopefully we come back. That extra moisture there has preserved your paints. Okay, so that is all you need to get started with painting. We don't need anymore. Again. Simplicity is the key. And there are certainly other materials and mediums We can mix with acrylic painting, but this is about getting started with acrylics, and so we'll keep it right here. Okay. Hope this video helped you not see you in the next.
4. Beginner Palette: let's talk about colors. So this would be what I would recommend for getting started. But here's something I would tell you. These were some of the Onley colors output on my palette today. I've been painting for over 15 years and I feel by keeping it simple, which I know you've heard me say that many times now in this getting started serious is the best way to go. So this dive into it Burnt Sienna, this is a lizard Crimson. This is a cat red, medium, ultra marine blue So ruli in blue. And then this is a cad yellow and then here. And this big one gallon tub is titanium white, and I buy a lot of right cause I use a lot of weight. But obviously you may not want to buy jars depending on your budget or by in this large of a quantity. But the nice thing about this is, if you do have left over paint that's not tainted, basically haven't mixed it with anything. At the end of the session, you can always put it back in. Also, it's we were cost effective. So you get it. We buy in bulk. You're basically getting it a little bit cheaper, and I would say the cons would be their take up more space. And if you travel or you paint outdoors on there a little bit heavier to carry around, of course, you can always get some small Tupperware or something like that to put him into, to travel with. But anyway, sticking on the theme here, I guess for colors, I don't feel this pallet right here will give you a lot of variety. You can obviously mix your greens you can. With your sienna and ultra marine blues, you can get some lovely, transparent, dark shades. You can also make sure oranges, and then you can get you like a yellow joker like a lighter brown Hubei mixing the yellow in the CNO So all in all, you can do what you need to do. Occasionally, I will add orange or maybe a guest color. I get, you know, to my palette, but I tend to keep it very simple because I think you can do everything you need with a simple palette if you understand how to mix your colors and, more importantly, if you understand value in tone. But Now you're violence. All that. All this stuff is achievable right here. So you don't need to go out and buy 30 different colors of paint. Your just simply wasting your money. And then you have all of those Hughes on your palette. You'll run out of room. And then, of course, you have to make 500 decisions about color when you really should be putting paint to your paper and canvas and getting down to business. OK, so that's my advice on colors and hopes. Hope it helps you.
5. Palette Mangement: Let's talk about palette management, and what I want to point out to you is how the colors are placed near the edges. Okay, and what that does that leaves me a large mixing area. I've seen artists just randomly put them out, and that is going to become a little bit confusing as you start mixing your Hughes. The other thing I want to point out is how I group my Hughes together. There are a lot of theories on this, so if you want to try other options, that's fine. But I'm just going to share what I do here. And then you can decide if it works for you or not. So I have my blues together. So cerulean otra have my reds together. So the cat medium Eliza Rin yellow and then my Sienna. The other thing of new is where I keep my white on the palate. So it's all from the other side by itself tend to do that because I like to keep the white separate from the pure mixes. Okay, so in other words, if I want to mix a violet are based violet with ultra marine and crimson, and I would do that over here. Now, if I wanted to mix that violet with it, I want toe say lightning or tent it That would take some of that mixture pulled over here and then add white to it, believing the base violet over here. So this I would try to avoid putting white in any of these pure mixtures. Okay. And that is because white, when mixed with your acrylic, your pure colors will make it opaque. So any transparent quality of hue may have is immediately gone. And I think maintaining the integrity of the transparent quality four color is a good option tohave. But if you start mixing white all over the place and the next thing you know, it's gonna mix into all of your colors and you may not want that. Okay, So I will tell you as you begin to paint, things kind of can get carried away from you, and eventually the palate will get a little bit messy. But if you if I start out with this idea that I will keep my pure, transparent mixtures to say in this 2/3 and then try to keep my white mixtures down here in this third, then I have, ah, pretty good chance and maintaining a separation between opaque and transparent mixtures. Okay, so anyway, that's how I lay out my palate. That's how I manage my colors. And if you want to give it a shot, that's great. If you want to try another option that, of course, do whatever works for you.
6. Applying Acrylics 101: I now want to talk about applying acrylics. So with acrylics is a water based medium. Because I use heavy body. I already have a really thick paint. So what I would do is just take actually a little bit small. Use this brush right here and now this is just some Failla blue straight out off the to All right again, this is artist grade heavy body acrylics. And this is just 100 £40 cold press paper. I do not put any medium on that. So I do not just so it or anything thing canvass board I use and canvas pre stretch canvas . I always get that Jess Oda's well, So they've already got two or three coats of gesso on the canvas. And with the paper, I simply just don't I don't need it. So I like the textures that they have as they are. So I just simply don't use any sort of a Jessa. One it. Now what I do is I like to always let so I have some water here. My brush. OK, he can see it is dripping a little bit. Now. Get the excess water off of it and then I'll pull some paint down into that. And what that does is it dilutes the paint a little bit, so it's not as thick. And then I can get some nice, long, clean strokes. So demonstrated there and then show it. Here is well, now, uh, that is simply what I would recommend for your acrylics again. That is just simply cutting it with a little bit of water. Now you have to be careful about going to thin. Okay, I would. That is not really gonna be good for the quality or really the longevity of the pain. The way acrylic is constructed, you need a certain amount of pigment, toe water ratio that's gonna hold the pain together. If you get it too thin over time, that will fade. It is fading because it will flake. So it may maybe three years and maybe 10 years or whatever. But in general, you want to avoid this water color type of look. All right. If you want a hue, that light, they simply have Teoh, um, tent the color with white. So, in other words, you know, if you start to see that watercolor look and you're gonna very glow again, a glow from the paper and you're using something saturated and that stains like fail. Oh, that. You know, that could be a problem to your paintings. And you don't want your customers calling you saying that half their painting is flaking off and they can't see anymore. But anyway, you know this again. I like to put my brush in the water, give it a couple of shakes and then just can't take it down into it and then get it to a nice consider consistency and then put it down. Um, if you're looking for lighter hue with color, you're working with lighter than what you put down that I would recommend starting to look at tempting it. Okay, now, a common mistake many artists make. I'm just drying my brush off camera, and actually, what I'll do is I'll move to a different brush is they used the pain straight out of the tube and they don't dilute it, okay with water and they don't don't really use a wet brush, so they'll get this sort of look And then, as you can see, when I apply my strokes, it comes off very chunky. and it's not a very fluid look have seen complete paintings done in this manner, and it just it just simply doesn't work. I mean, you may want to use a dry stroke like that and bits and places, but for the most part, if you start to paint with your brush and your paints are too dry, then it's it's just not going to read well, and it's not gonna have good clean marks on your work. So I would do the same on the canvas, and you'll see that it just simply doesn't cover that well. So that's a tip for you with acrylics. So I understand it's a water based medium. You don't really need a medium. In my opinion toe. Add to the colors to make them more fluid. I would recommend getting the heavy body so you can break it down into a thinner mixture and just use some good old water and, uh, you know, and just make sure you avoid thinking them too much. Okay, so anyway, that's my advice for you. That concludes this lesson, and let's get to some more interesting stuff in the next
7. Don't Make This Rookie Mistake: during your session, you're going to come to this point where your water, both dirty and the cleaner water become murky and a lot of amateurs will continue to use this. And as you can see, it is really, really contaminated. All right, so very, very short video here. But let me tell you, this is very important when your water starts to get like that, all of these this contamination, which is nothing more than just leftover paint that was only a brush. Pigments and things like that. Um, bull darken and ruling your colors. So whenever acrylic dries, what happens is it pushes the contamination and dirt and things the particles to the surface. If you had these greyish colors and live times, it will, there will be more of a green or blue, but they're very gray. The your paintings will have a glow to a room, and they will either be very gray and greenish type of color or blue. In any case, you don't want that. Okay, so this is kind of something unique to acrylics that you need to understand. All right. So, again, when your water is dirty, you gotta change it. If you don't you will be painting and your think. You you're putting down colors that are wonderful and clean and crisp, but when it dries, it's gonna look totally different, And chances are it's because the contamination in your water and in your brush is so intense and saturated that it's coming to the surface.
8. Recycling Unused Paint: a little bonus tip here for you. You're probably gonna have a lot of bad sketches and studies like this one, and you're going to have leftover paint on your palate. That's a shame to throw this away. And this is tainted two months to put back in a jar or to save just not enough there to make it worth my while. So what you can do is already have a little yellow on my brush for my demo. But I can just kind of scoop right into these and take that and paint over these sketches and things that went bad. I'm not really trying to erase a memory here. It's just simply a good practice to do because you don't waste your paint. And what you're doing is you're just putting down what is essentially ah, ground or a neutral to begin your next painting And what I would do here, of course, with the to rip that out, put it aside and go right on to my next one. So here I've got blue, so obviously that's a rule. Ian is very intense, so I've got some white on my palette. Take that. Put it down and we're good to go. So that is essentially again, a start of another painting. Okay, so a little bonus tip. Therefore, you don't waste your paint. Go ahead. Put that down as a neutral and then you've already got something started for another painting. OK, so that's it.
9. Learn Two Methods For Acrylic Painting: All right. So a few ways to apply acrylics and I will divide the paper in half here, scrap piece of paper. So don't mind all the little marks there. They don't really apply to what we're learning. I'm going to use a base orange. So in the first example on this, create a basic shape here and that would be a que wet it down a little bit. And I don't work now. I will come over here to the left side and do the same exact thing putting down cute. So with the cubes in place here, I will work with the one on the left and the application method that I will demonstrate will be working wet and wet. So working when and what is exactly what it says, right? You have wet paint on your surface, whether it's paper, canvas or whatever, and you're going to apply a layer. So I put down this a layer of the base orange, and this a our little light source is coming from the top left and both examples and I am going to work directly into this wet paint, OK, and I will go ahead and apply my lighter value to the top. Clean my brush, and I'm going to get another biggest mixture here. I think I underestimated how much I wouldn't need And then a work. And now, on the left hand side here or the right hand side, I would take a little bit of blue and mix them, but that a touch more the red. And I'm just going to cool it off a little bit more. Create my shade side, okay. And this for the record and for fun. Here, I'll go ahead a shadow. All right, So what does happen there? Basically me were wet and wet. You are blending. All right. So you're blending the original layer, which was this base orange with whatever you put over top of that. OK, typically, we blend. Um, the marks become a little bit smoother. Okay? And that will be a little more obvious than I do the wet and dry. Okay, so the idea is we're working this method. Um, know that you're gonna get a little bit more of a smooth transition so that the colors going to blend a little bit more. That brush works blend. So basically, if you take this color and then this color and then this color and imagine when they're wet that you're just blending them like that. Okay, so they're going to get mingle a little bit more. I'm going to let this dry. Okay? So I want that layer to dry, and then I'll come back and add the same idea over top of it. Okay, So dry to the touch. And now the original layer isn't going to be disturbed. Okay, unlike hurry here home whenever I painted into that, then obviously, is going to disrupt it just a little bit. So now I just get my base, um, shadow or light source. You can see even dragging that across this paper, that the kind of has a little bit of a texture to it. So this is cold press paper for those of you that know a little bit about watercolor paper . So it is not smooth. Okay, so it's gonna have a little bit of this kind of rough to it, but notice still lies. So even when I create, like a cube has very hard edges. But even when I did that, I mean, they're not quite as Chris is what I have over here. And obviously this is very safe to because when you work with and wet no, those colors are basically mixing, so it's like having those colors on your palate and mixing them up. So you gotta be careful right here. But I'll get into that right near the end and explain a little bit more about kind of the dangers and pros and cons, I guess of working with both. All right, so I have my mixture here for my shadow sign and now this to keep him similar. There's still a little kind of shot over there, and we're we're done. All right, So, as always, alluding to earlier, a minute to go in any way higher edges. Okay, They're very crisp, and we work wet and dry, allowing a layer to completely dry before you come over. Top of it is safe in terms. All of you have less chances to create money part. Okay, you work one and wet the advantages you're getting of the option to blend your colors. That is good. So if you want soft edges, well, you're going to need to probably work. Ah, weathered wet. But it can be bad. Okay, So if you start to put too many mixtures in here and you you beat it to death, then you're gonna be in trouble, okay? Cause your paint's gonna come out very muddy. And that's not really what you're after. Okay, Now, I'm not saying just because you work what, and what you're gonna have money, color. I'm just simply saying, when you use this method, you have to know where you're going at all times. Okay? Don't ever just paint a circle because you're gonna end up in a money money place again when dry. You have? Ah, no, that lee way of saying hey and I can put a color down, let it dry, come back over with another dry layer and not going to mix these layers together. So, uh, but you wanna have a little bit harder edges? All right. Both You know, applications are very suitable. And truthfully, um, I used both of, um and a painting. OK, so there's times when I will work. Why didn't wet for the obvious reasons of getting soft edges and to make things blend a little bit more. And I know when to stop and then come back with a dry after drives and then put a nice, crisp layer over top of that Teoh for whatever reason the painting calls for. But just know that you know, the basic idea working with ah critics are the two main things right here. And that's why didn't wet and then wet and dry. And as I move forward with some demonstrations and things like that, I will You will hear me use this term quite a bit when wet went dry. So I just know what they are. It's good idea to create some basic shapes here and work with them. Come. Obviously, if you're doing things like a circle well, a circle or ah, sphere. Okay. No, it doesn't have these hard edges. So it may make more sense to get in here and create this soft mean here. Okay, So ah, but you can also do it with dry, too. But when you do it with your dry technique, you just have to know, um, that you're gonna have a little bit harder edges there, and that's not what you want. Ah. Then you have to create some variations of color and make them blend a little bit just by using tone and different values. But anyway, that's the gist of it. And now you know what? When what is and what wet and dry is and what they're pros and cons are in terms of painting with acrylics. All right, Thanks for watching.
10. How And Why To Tone The Surface - Project Part 1: Another great technique with acrylics is to use a tone on your surface. All right, So in other words, if you don't like starting with a very white surface, whether it's canvas or paper, this is paper. That's a good idea just to put something down, all right. And you can also think about the color you want to use to tone your surface. For example, if I know I'm going to be painting a lot of blue. So if my colors and my design is dominant blue that maybe I want to use an orange or a red or so or peak or something like that, that would contrast and pop that blue if I'm using green. Well, maybe I want to use arms. OK, that sort of thing. So this is just a teaching example here. While I was using watercolor, I never throw this stuff away. Not because I wanted for memories, but because I know I can reuse it, especially for Krilic. It would be hard to paint watercolor over this, but for acrylic painting, this paper is perfectly fine. I could use it just like this, or I could simplify or or maybe get rid of some of the chaos that's here with these colors and marks by simply toning. And so I'm gonna take a little bit of my lemon yellow. Here, have a little bit of white down here is well at the bottom. I'm just going to create a nice, warm value there and OK, by using a little bit of white into this mixture. Okay, What it does is a mix it opaque. Okay, so if you're not familiar with that, I'm off. Say it again. Any time you makes a white with a color, it's going to be a pick. Eso white titania wife Pain is very opaque. And then lever you use it. Just know well, the color you're applying and mixing it with, well, a new longer have transparency to it. And that's good. So long as you understand, you don't want it. And it's not a surprise to you. So what I did right there is I simply toned the paper. But I also I was able to do it over a painting or a sketch of what is this? Could have been anything. A bad painting, a scratch. Ah, study. And now I can bring it back to life. Right? So I am going to use that as I move forward. Okay, So, in a nut show that is toning your paper always keep in mind you have options with your colors. Um, if you again. Our you know, our type of artists that you like to play in, things out, You know where you're going, then use it. Use a color that's going to help you. Of course, you don't have to do it. One complete, Hugh. If you know you've got blue in the sky, you can put a little bit of orange. If you know you got no other colors or whatever in the foreground, you can use a complementary color for that as well. Okay, so you don't have to use one. He can use a variegated type of tone. OK, so that is toning your service.
11. Beginner Acrylic Painting Tip For Blocking In - Project Part 2: next thing I want to cover is understanding blocks of color or layers. Okay, so this just think about it first is ah, block of color. All right, so if I have to see a row of boats here, it was going pre mix a little of something that I think will work. And, you know, I know there's gonna be lightened shadow hitting these boats, so I need ah, base color. Okay, that's going to help me out. Okay, so it's going to So I'm not going to start to fuss with a bunch of different colors right away. Okay? So I can come in here and just lay down a big block of color here, and there will be some reflections coming down in the water and things like that. Now off to the side here that say, I'll have a little peer or something so I could get a little brownish. Ah, mixture going here, Work that kind of lay in that little here, go in the distance. Let's say I'm going to have some buildings or whatever happening back there. I'm just going to quickly put in something that could be some buildings, all right, and we can kind trick with that over now. Those buildings can be useful for the parts of the boat as well. So I'm just going to change that you a little bit by adding some white, maybe pool again. Some of these warmer values and just kind of creating a warm base. Great. Okay, so now, No. So I'm not getting fussy with anything. I'm not trying to worry about details right now, okay? I'm just blocking things in. Now. I've got the sky and lay in same idea, something that may resemble Scott. And now I have some water. So I used to have a little bit of this green and blue. I think that'll work. Okay, I'm gonna punch it a little bit more. I want to also switch to a little bit bigger brush and then lay in some of this where the water will be. Complete it, damn it. And I just kind of Sprinkle a little bit of that darker value up top. And I'm just using the side of my brush to trick with that end, blocking things in. As you can see, nothing is defined at this stage. Okay? That's why they call it a block in. So from here, you can start to develop things you can, depending on your approach. If you wanna work, why didn't wet? You can start to go ahead and do that by adding some darker values. You can also have lighter values. Um, and so one, um or you can work wet and dry. Okay. For this example, I'm going to work wet and dry. So before I do, one thing I'm going to add is a lot of these boats have these little kind of, Ah, a water line there at the base of um and it's kind of a nice red. So I'm just going block in a little bit of that before I go and just kind of change it in a few places by adding a copper red. All right, so a block is done. I'll see when I get back or when this dries. So the block in is done. And this is a really smart way to work now, whether you're painting, you know, still like with fruit flowers, whatever. For beginners and really you know, all the way through your your painting into advanced stages of whatever everybody used the block in stage because it helps you start to lay in your main areas of color. And then because quickly look at these and see how they relate to each other. Okay? And it's a much better approach than getting in here and trying to put details in way too soon. Okay, You don't You don't want to make that mistake. And a lot of artists do. Okay. So again, blocking in is a smart approach to acrylic paint.
12. Easy Step By Step Acrylic Landscape Video Demonstration - Project Part 3: So I'm working. Um, but into dry. Okay. So nice and dry here to create the next beautiful layer, right? That's what it's the beauty of all of this is. So once you block it in, let a drive. Then you got a lot more options and wiggle room. Okay? You're not worried about blending and to the colors that you'd already put down. So I'm going to mix up a based green here and touch a little bit of read into it and let's see, I think something like that at work, and I want on the say a nice shot right there. And maybe there's another little shadow coming down here is Well, go ahead and mix that or blended. Take it right on into the reflections. And now I do the same thing. But I want to push this more to a blue. So not everything is the exact same. Okay, so I've got that action going, and maybe I want to touch a little bit of that blue over in here. So we have a little bit unity there in harmony with those blues. And now just going to get nice, cool grey year and something a little warmer, but not not not too bright. You know, You never want to use The white is white if you don't have to. Okay, say that. And now we can start to Di Elin some of these real houses and things like that that could be going on. And I'm going to use some of these greys to create some shadows and different things that could be going on. I'm gonna add a little shadow to this boat and cool that off a little bit with some blue and again running a cash shadow. They're probably not quite dark enough. So not dark enough. I think that'll work and something like that. Now, I'm just gonna pull those darks down into the water like that. I just use the tip about brush there. Teoh indicate some of these windows. This brush is kind of big, and it's kind of mangled. I'm in the end, so I don't want Teoh make these marks are too big. And plus he gets a nice, random stuff that way as well. All right, so that layer is pretty, pretty much, um pretty much done there. Background where? I had that nice light gray going on? Um, I can go in there. I don't want to do too much because it is the background for I do that, though. It's gonna add a few highlights on these boats, and it's kind of pulled that weight down into the reflections as well. That's all wet on wet technique there. Okay, you know, this kind of splashing my finger around the technique is wet, wet. Okay, we'll make it a little bit darker. It's a little balloon over at and just want to indicate a little break on some of those buildings there. That's all you need. And so this is all you know, the first layer, and we're adding that second layer to it. And already, you know, it's starting to come to life a little bit, and now I can start looking at adding some verticals. So to do that, get a little bit of brown going here and say, I have some post and different things there, and we can take that right down into the reflections again. And I can use a nice blue tanker, those boats in the water. It's looking good now, a very small detail brush here just it's got nice fine point to it. We're going to take a nice clean blue here on. Just start to work a few reflections in there And, uh, you know, sometimes you got to get just get a few down to kind of see where you are, and maybe we have a little gap. Um, between these boats, then that's pretty good. And that would make a little separation between these and that could go a little bit darker , maybe touch a yellow in there and start Teoh it is laying. It's a nice dark reflections. Okay, has, you know, as the water recedes and gets further and further away, you don't want a lot of movement back there. Okay? And just to make an interesting make sure, we add a little different color in there as well. A different hue. And this is just a little liner brush here or signature brush. Since we have ah, kind of a light value in the sky, I want this rigging to show on the boats. I think it's kind of an important heart of making this subject unbelievable. So I'm going to use that a little bit darker value than than was there too. Indicate some of these Good. And now you know, all of this as I'm going is drying pretty much. So. We start you work with acrylics, you'll notice that the dry time on this stuff is incredibly fast. And then that's a good thing if you understand it, um, and know how to work with it. And of course, for um, for some of you, that may be a bad thing. So if you're coming from like oil painting, you're gonna have to get used to how fast this stuff drives. And now that's pretty much it s so he saw how the first layer was a block and and that kind of set the tone for when I'm doing now and again. That's the beauty of working with this With acrylics is things can happen really, really fast for you, and you don't have to wait for things to dry. But if you start to get used to that block in, um, and using to your advantage, then things will get a lot easier for you, that's for sure. And now it's just a matter of adding, ah, little highlight here and there, and that's it I think where this base green is on. Some of these boats in the sunlight here can come in here and just pop a few of that few of those and distant bits and pieces Here. You see, I lost my shadow there. That's all right, but I'm quick little sketches. Quick little studies like this to get your feet wet with acrylics is so important. And for new artists, I mean, you don't want to try to take on too much too soon. I mean, that is just a common mistake that I see over and over over again, and it's easy to do. I mean, I know there's just, you know, so much information out there videos and you're different things. You can watch, but you have to remember in the beginning is all about getting your feet wet. You don't have to create huge award winning paintings all the time, and you really don't want Teoh. You want to spend your time, um, learning the basics, starting small and having wins when you win. Uh, you know, it's a good feeling, and it's much better than, um, taking on too much and then getting rejected, and we get rejected. Of course, it it doesn't feel good. You kind of walk away with a bad experience and you want it to to learn from things like that. That's OK. Way Want to learn from it? Move on and not make the same mistakes over and over. OK, let's take the tape off. Starting with Ace. Very, very simple block in. You were able to see how they help me in terms of building this painting up. Okay. And everything started from right there. Had I not done that, I'm very confident that this painting quick little study here just simply would have been a different experience. Okay, so I encourage you to take your time when you're working. Always consider, um they're blocking things in working, intelligent, intelligently and using some of these ideas in your approach. If you do, then you're going to struggle a lot less. And then the ultimate goal, of course, is I'm just going to add some of this rigging in here in the reflections. And we know we have success like this often. Then you move were likely to come back and and do this over and over again. And as a teacher. You know, I want nothing more than to create a positive environment for you. And so they you don't make a lot of the same mistakes I did when I was learning number one And number two. You start making some incredible art. Okay, That's the name of the game. All right, so we'll leave it right there. Thanks for watching. And I'll see you in the next.
ROBERT JOYNER, Make Art Fun
