Acrylic Painting For Beginners: Create Expressive, Colorful Abstracts

1. Intro: [MUSIC] I'd love to be able to paint but I can't even get a straight line. I've had that so many times before, in fact, many beginner classes focus on realistic painting and if the painting then doesn't look like the real thing, you get frustrated. Abstract painting silence your inner critic and it's so much fun. My name is Cornelia and I'm an artist and designer. I've been working as an art director in advertising for about 20 years. What I often missed in this job is the freedom to create my own rules and that we're painting comes in. Abstract painting is my creative playground where I can experiment and just have fun, I then enjoy sharing my discoveries in my classes. This beginner friendly acrylic painting class has three sections: basic material knowledge, design theory and class project. We'll start with the basic properties of acrylic paint and mixing colors. You'll learn about the tonal value and how to use it to guide the viewer's eyes through your painting. We'll take a quick look at color theory and put together a color palette. Then we're ready to start the class project, a series of four small abstract artworks. The paintings are built from five to six layers and for each one you'll use a different type of mark, color consistency or tool. We'll create interesting contrasts through expressive strokes, delicate patterns, gestural lines and collage. This class is great for beginners who have never painted with acrylics, for advanced students who want to get started with abstract painting but also for people who are just looking for a relaxed painting project. No previous knowledge is necessary and we are using the simple painting materials. You will learn to work intuitively and focus on the creative process. At the end of this class, you will have four unique artworks that you can hang, sends as greeting cards or post on social media. Let's get started [MUSIC]. 2. Overview & Class Project: [MUSIC] Welcome, good to have you here. This class is well-suited for beginners because we'll start with the very basics. There will be a lot of hands-on exercises so that you can practice working with your paints and applying the design principles that I teach. The class project will then be a series of small abstract paintings like the ones you see behind me. Let me give you an overview. We'll start with the basic properties of acrylic paints and an exercise where we use them in different consistencies. Then you'll learn how to mix all the colors of the color wheel from just three basic colors. In the next section, we'll tackle tonal value, the shades of gray from white to black. As an exercise, we will be painting a value scale. Then we'll talk about contrast and do another exercise using different proportions of light, medium, and dark values. Next, we'll practice identifying the lightness or darkness, that is the value of colors. We'll use the color swatches which we painted for the color wheel exercise and sort them according to their tonal value from light to dark. Finally, we'll use all of that knowledge to create a color palette for your class project and we'll try it out on the practice sheet. Then we'll get ready for the class project. First, we'll prepare our paper, talk about using a viewfinder and the benefits of painting in series. The next lesson is about how free abstract painting enhances your creativity and how limitation and imitation can help with the learning process. You don't have to get everything right the first time either, because acrylic paints dry quickly and are easy to paint over. Finally, it's time for your class project, four mini abstract paintings. We're going to work small because the small size makes the blank page less intimidating. You only need a small workspace and it keeps material costs to the minimum and that helps you to be more bold and feel less. The paintings are built up from 5-6 layers. For each of them, you will first practice the stroke and techniques you will need and then immediately apply what you've learned to your class project. We'll start the first layer with a painting knife or a plastic card and experiment with paint application. Next, we'll create the second and third layer with bold expressive brush strokes using two different paint viscosity. Then we'll focus on delicate, almost meditative patterns and train our fine motor skills and brush control on the way. It's time to get more lively again. We'll draw an impulsive line that conveys emotion and brings movement into the image. Finally, we'll analyze our pictures and put the finishing touches on our composition. Collage is a great option for this, as you can work with trial and error. Since the project consists of several layers and some of them need drying time. It would be ideal if you could prepare a little space for yourself where you could leave your painting materials. That way, you don't have to overcome that barrier of getting things ready and putting them away each and every time, and you can get started painting whenever you have some spare time. For the class project, please document your progress by taking a picture of each layer and uploading it. To create a Class Project, select the menu, "Projects & Resources" and click on the green button. You can upload a cover image and enter a project title. Then you can add more images and the description of your work or ask for feedback in the window below. Finally, you click on "Publish". You can edit and add to your project at any time in the future. It's up to you to decide how comprehensive you want to make your class project. The minimum requirement though is to take one picture of the finished artworks and upload it. However, it would be amazing if you've documented the process of creating them by taking a picture of each layer. Last but not least, I'd be happy to see some of your exercise sheets. In the next lesson, I'll give you an overview of the materials you will need. After that, you can already get out your paints for some practical exercises. See you there. [MUSIC] 3. The Materials You Need: [MUSIC] Hi and welcome back. Now, let's take a look at the materials you will need for this class. Most of them are definitely artist materials like these paints, for example. Some things can be substituted by everyday objects. For example, you could use a plastic card instead of a palette knife. Though let's get started with acrylic paints. [MUSIC] Acrylic paints are extremely versatile, readily available, and most brands have an affordable line of paints with a decent quality. You can use them thick like oil paint or thin like watercolor. They are great for working in layers because they dry quickly and are water resistant when dry. That means you won't reactivate the previous layer when painting over it, that's going happen with watercolor or gouache. If you already have some acrylic paints at home, perfect, use those, but if you have to buy them, here are two tips. To start out, you only need the three primary colors and white. I like to work with cyan, magenta, yellow, and titanium white, which is an opaque bright white. With primary colors, you are very flexible because you can basically mix all the colors of the color wheel, enlighten them by adding white. All primary colors mix together, create a very dark gray. The real black is, of course, much darker, and if you want to use it as a pure color in your image, or to mix with other colors to create darker muted colors, it is, of course, useful to have a tube of that as well. I'm going to use black for our practical exercise on tonal value, but if you don't have black, you can use any dark color. If you have a favorite color that you'd like to use all the time, or if you'd like to work with neon or metallic colors, it's definitely worth investing in an extra tube of these colors as well. Acrylic paints are available in two different qualities, artist grade and studio grade. Often this cheaper paints also go under the names student grade, standard, or basic. The difference is that artist grade paints contain more pigments and are therefore more expensive. For our purposes, I recommend using studio grade paints from a well known brand or the private label of your art store. They are less expensive and I don't like to have that cost factor in mind when I use a lot of paint. [MUSIC] There's special paper available for acrylic painting, it's pretty heavy and has about 400 GSM. Watercolor paper or mixed media paper works as well, just make sure that you use at least 250 GSM, better get 300 or more. For the exercises and color swatches, I use inexpensive 200 gram watercolor paper from the private labels of two different art stores. The types of paper I use for painting are 400 gram acrylic painting papers by Canson and Fabriano. The Fabriano Pittura Acrylic Painting Paper is pure white and has a slightly ripped texture. I bought this paper in large sheets, but it's also available in paper pads. The Canson Acrylic Paper is natural white and it's grains reminds me of watercolor paper. [MUSIC] For acrylic painting, it's best to use synthetic or bristle brushes because they are quite inexpensive, have a good firmness, and are easy to care for. I wouldn't use expansive natural hair brushes like watercolor brushes, because the acrylic paint tends to dry near the feral and starts to push the bristles apart, and sooner or later the brush will be ruined. For this class, I use three types of brushes, a Flat Brush Number 10 for the color swatches and the exercises, a smaller Round Brush Number 2 for the patterns, and the Big Round Bristle Brush for the bold strokes. If you don't have a brush like this, you can also use a larger flat brush, a thick round bristle brush, or a painter's brush from the hardware store. I also use a painting knife for mixing my paints and to create expressive marks. If you don't have one an old credit card or any plastic card will do. [MUSIC] For the textural marks, you can use a variety of pens and drawing tools. I recently discovered these very cool squeeze tubes of heavy body acrylic paint from Sennelier. I bought two cost to try them out and I really love the effect. They have a very fine tip and you can use them to make delicate three-dimensional lines like I did in this piece. Other options are acrylic markers or pastels, pencils, or crayons. Keep in mind though that water-soluble materials can smear if you apply another wet layer on top of them. [MUSIC] I use all things as a palette, sometimes I use plastic plates like this one, and I also have a tear-off palette, which is made of coded sheets of paper. I really like to use just plastic foil like these document sleeves that are open on two sides or these ring binder pockets. To have a white background, I just put a sheet of paper inside, and then I can mix the colors right on them. Here I have a sleeve that I've cut open and used many times, and therefore, it's covered with some paint residues. If I have some leftover paint on this palette, I just put a sheet of tissue paper over it and make a monotype print. For this, the pain must still be wet. Once the paper is completely dry, you can peel it off to reveal your hand printed collage paper. To add paper elements to your images, you obviously need some glue. I use matte medium or glossy medium and as the names imply, they dry with either and matte or a glossy surface. Alternatively, you can use a craft glue or white glue, it's relatively thick but can be diluted with water and applied with a brush, it dries clear and shiny. The advantage of making your own collage paper is that you can match it exactly to your color palette, and you only need regular tissue paper for it. Of course, you can also use any other colored or textured paper and sometimes I even use the pellet dirt, that is pieces of dried acrylic paint. [MUSIC] To cut the paper, you'll need a cutting mat or a piece of sturdy card stock as a base, also a ruler, ideally one that is made of metal, a utility knife, and a pencil. To stick my paper pieces to the corrugated cardboard, my cutting mat, or the table, I like to use masking tape or painter's tape. Try to find a tape that doesn't stick too much. Alternatively, you can also try washi tape. That was a lot of information, but don't worry, you can download the materials list from the projects and resources section. In the next lesson, we'll take a close look at our paint tubes. With most brands, you can find information about the opacity, light fastness, and the pigment on the packaging, and knowing about that can help to avoid frustration later on when using the paints. See you in the next lesson. [MUSIC] 4. Acrylic Paints: Basics: [MUSIC] Let's take a closer look at the properties of acrylic paints and find out about lightfastness, opacity, and pigments. Acrylic paints are made of pigment, water, and binder. The binder is basically the glue that holds the pigments together, and also makes them stick to the surface. It's made from acrylic resins and water, and it's white as long as it's wet. Acrylic paints are water-soluble and can therefore be diluted with water. You can clean your brushes with just soap and water as well. There are brush cleaning soaps for this, but admittedly, I use regular hand soap most of the time. After I have removed most of the paint and washed out the brush, I lather it one or two times and move the bristles back and forth to get out the paint residues which usually settle neutrophil. Acrylic paints dry pretty quickly. While thick layers of paint take a few hours to dry, thin layers dry in just a few minutes. Here I've set my timer for five minutes and my guess turned out to be pretty accurate. Once the water evaporates, the resin particles in the binder fuse together and the paint becomes water resistant. Acrylic paint holds especially well on fabric, so it's better if you don't wear your favorite shirt. The binder is also responsible for one of the paints specific qualities. Acrylic paints are relatively elastic. You can even pull off the dried paint from your palette like a foil or bend your paper or canvas without cracking the paint. It's also good to know that acrylic paints dry a little darker, this has to do with the binder having a whitish color when it's wet, making the colors appear lighter. However, when it's dry, it becomes clear and translucent and the colors look a little darker. Now, if I were to ask you to paint an evenly opaque area of color with no visible brush strokes, and you end up with this, what has happened? Let's take a look at our paint tubes. Have you ever noticed those little square symbols on the paint tubes, they indicate whether the paint is opaque, semi-opaque or transparent. Paints that have a completely filled black square are opaque, and it's easy to paint a flat even area of color. If there's only an outline square, the colors are transparent, which you'll notice when painting. Paints with a half-filled square lies somewhere in-between when it comes to opacity. Cheap paints often have a bad opacity as well, but some pigments, such as ultramarine blue, for example, are more transparent by nature. How can you make such colors more opaque? First, you can apply a second layer of paint, sometimes this is not an option, for example, with these brush strokes, because a second layer would change the look of the stroke a lot. If you know your color is very transparent and you don't want it to be, you can add a tiny bit of white, this will change the tonal value slightly, that is, the color will be lighter, but it will also make it more opaque. Lightfastness indicates how resistance the color is to fading when exposed to light. It's often indicated by plus or asterisks symbols. The more plus signs, the longer the color lasts. Neon colors always have very poor lightfastness, so not even one plus sign. That means they fade over time. With other colors it varies. On the tubes, you can sometimes find abbreviations for the pigments that were used. If a color is mono-pigmented like this one, it contains only one pigment. Other colors like this royal blue are mixtures of several pigments. For example, this blue contains PW6, which is titanium white, and PB15, fellow blue. Next time I'll probably won't buy this tube, but the pure fellow blue, because mixing something with white is very easy. By now, you probably know more about acrylic paints than most people. Especially the knowledge about opacity is hugely important. When you are aware that not all pigments are equally opaque, you can save yourself a lot of frustration later on. In the next lesson, we'll take a look at paint viscosity. See you there. [MUSIC] 5. How To Dilute Acrylic Paints: [MUSIC] Water-based acrylic paints have only been developed in the 1950s, so they are relatively young. But there are a lot of products on the market and the main difference is often the viscosity. We will only be using basic acrylic paints because we will use water to change the viscosity. But it's good to know what all those terms mean anyway. There's a short overview. [MUSIC] Heavy body acrylic paints have a high viscosity that is a stiff, buttery consistency that retains the brush strokes very well. Basic paints or studio quality paints have a medium viscosity and lies somewhere between heavy body and soft body paint. Soft body are paints with a low viscosity and creamy consistency. They create a flat paint surface where you can hardly see any brushstrokes. Fluid acrylic paints have a consistency like heavy cream. They can be painted, poured, or sprayed. High flow acrylic paints are, for example, acrylic inks. They have both a watery consistency and high pigmentation. To make your paints thicker, you would have to add some medium heavy gel. But to make them thinner, you could just add water. But why are there so many liquid paints on the market then? These are the reasons. To create an opaque layer without a great deal of texture, it's convenient if the paint has the right consistency out of the tube. Soft body paints are easy to spread and you hardly see brush marks. By diluting the paint, you reduce the pigment concentration. The colors become lighter, less intense, and less opaque. Liquid acrylic paints have a thinner consistency and a high pigment concentration. If you thin your paint with a lot of water, the binder, that is the glue that holds the pigments together and also to the surface can't work properly. This can supposedly result in some problems like flaking or cracking and it's called under-binding. Paint manufacturers therefore recommend diluting acrylic paints with 30 percent of water at most, that is two parts paint to warm part water. [MUSIC] I tried to cause under-binding on purpose. It said to happen only on prime surfaces. For my experiment, I painted a sheet of watercolor paper with primer. On the right side, I have the unprimed watercolor paper, where the pigments are additionally held by the fibers of the paper. I started with pure color and then repeatedly added a portion of water until I went from a ratio of one to one colored water to an approximate ratio of one to six. For each mixture, I applied a lot of paint on the top and a thin layer underneath. At the end I also added a little airbrush medium to the one to six mixture to see if that made a difference. Then I did the same on the unprimed watercolor paper. [MUSIC] The result was a very minimal abrasion of color with an eraser, regardless of the thinning ratio or the addition of medium on both the primed and unprimed paper. Just using my finger, I couldn't get any paint off at all. Other than that, I noticed that the binder left shiny spots where the paint had pulled. The issue of color intensities and other thing. If this is my normal paint and I thin it, it gets lighter and less vibrant. Where there was a puddle of paint, there's still more pigment, but in the thin layer, you can see a strong difference. In comparison, here I used watercolor ink and although it was just as watery as my diluted paint, it has the same color intensity as the pure undiluted acrylic paint. The bottom line is that you don't need to worry about under-binding for this class because cheaper acrylic paints seem to contain so much binder in relation to pigments, that dilution is not so much of a problem. However, if you have encountered flaking or cracking acrylics before, I'd love to hear about that. Just drop me a comment in the discussion section or in your class project and tell me what kind of products you use. We'll now be using our acrylic paints in three different viscosities. First, directly from a tube. Here we usually have a medium viscosity for studio paints. Second, diluted with a little water, like a soft by acrylic paint. Third, diluted with a lot of water as a glaze. [MUSIC] For this exercise, I'll use an opaque, semi-transparent, and a transparent color in three different consistencies. I masked off nine fields on a sheet of watercolor paper. For the first segment, I will always use a dry brush. You can notice that with the rough watercolor paper, you can see bright spots because the color doesn't run into the hollows. But when you brush gently back and forth a few times, you'll get an even coverage. For my second segment, I wet the brush before I pick up new paint and mix it to a creamy consistency. Now, the brush collides over the paper a lot better and the paint is easy to spread. But you can already see some brush strokes and slide transparencies in a few places. I'm smoothing out the paint by letting the brush glide gently back and forth. For my third color patch, I'll use my brush to add water until I have a small puddle with liquid color and now, you can see the brush strokes quite strongly. The paint is very quick and easy to apply and you have a watercolor-like effect. Next, I'll do the same with my semi-transparent and transparent paint. Let's fast forward, so it doesn't take that long. You can now see that in the first field, there are no brush marks at all. In the second, we see a few, and in the third we already have this watercolor effect with lots of visible brush marks. Here, the transparency and brush marks are already similar to this field. It gets more transparent as we go and we have brush marks in all fields. Here again, we are more transparent to begin with. It looks almost like this area here and consequently, we have brush marks in all fields. [MUSIC] As you can see, there is no magic formula when it comes to adding water. The paints' viscosity differs from brand to brand and sometimes even from color to color. The best option is to try out your paints and get to know their properties. Now, that we've already practiced painting with single colors, in the next lesson, we'll use multiple colors and learn about the basics of color mixing using primary colors. See you there. [MUSIC] 6. How to Mix Acrylic Paints: [MUSIC] Now that we've taken a close look at our pen tips and tried different viscosities. Let's move on to mixing colors. For the class project, you don't actually have to know how to mix colors, but it will make you more flexible and also save you a lot of money. [MUSIC] You can mix all colors of the color wheel from the three primary colors, cyan, magenta, and yellow. You'll save money because you don't have to buy so many colors. It's fascinating to watch how the colors mix and a new one is created. By experimenting, you'll find new color combinations, and a great benefit is that mixed colors based on the same three colors harmonize very well. [MUSIC] The color wheel is a tool from color theory. It shows which colors have to be mixed together to create another color and also helps you to find matching harmonious color combinations. To paint a color wheel you need the three primary colors. Primary colors are often described as the colors that can mix all the other colors. This is a very simplified definition because it's definitely impossible to mix all colors that you can see with just three primary color pigments. Originally, red, yellow, and blue, were perceived as the perfect primary colors. But this theory was based on light and not pigments. With the invention of synthetic pigments, color photography, and color printing, these three colors were replaced by yellow, magenta, and cyan. With cyan, magenta, and yellow, you can cover a wider color range and mix brighter colors like this green here. If you don't have cyan, magenta, and yellow, you can still make the color wheel with any other of those colors. Because cyan is just a specific blue and magenta which has a certain red. [MUSIC] Instead of making a classic color wheel with the compass, we'll paint color swatches, which we can arrange in a circle as well. The advantage is that we can use the color swatches later when we create our color palette. We'll also do an exercise where we sort colors by their tonal value from light to dark. That's what a color cards also come in handy. For my color wheel, I use true yellow, wine red, and cobalt blue from a very economic brand called Goya Cretan. The colors actually look very similar to the magenta and cyan from other brands. For the sake of simplicity, I will now call them cyan and magenta. You'll need at least 12 blank cards for your color wheel, though, I always cut a little more so that I have enough in case I want to repaint a card or create additional swatches. Inexpensive watercolor paper works great for this. My cards, are eight times 10 centimeters. The exact size doesn't really matter, but having a decent dimension is useful as it's easier to judge a color if you see more of it. I always leave three centimeters of empty space underneath where I write down the colors, names, and sometimes even make small dabs of paint of the colors I've used. Let's start with the transition from yellow to magenta. I always start with the lighter color because it's easier to darken a light color than to lighten a dark one, you wouldn't need a lot of lighter color for that. I add a small amount of magenta to my yellow. I want to get a yellow-orange first, then an orange, and finally a red-orange. Maybe it's easier for you to mix the secondary color, the orange first and then the tertiary colors, yellow orange, and red-orange. When painting the color cards, I make sure that the paint is applied as evenly and opaquely as possible. This makes it easier to see the tonal value of the color later. If you always wipe the brush thoroughly before you rinse it out, your water will stay clean for a longer time. Rinsing will be faster and it's better for the environment, and the sewers. Sometimes I also use a second water container to clean the brushes really well. This is very important now because we can't have any magenta in our yellow cyan mix. When transitioning from yellow to cyan, its hugely important to start with the lighter color that is yellow and add just a smudge of blue. Blue has such a high tinting strength. This time, I paint my color swatch right away. But as I continue mixing, I quickly realize that my yellow-green is too yellow. Then comes a nice grass green. For the blue-green, I wipe the brush first because I want very little yellow in this mix. By the way, take care that you mix enough color because it's very annoying if you have too little. Here, I've almost run short. I quite like the gradation from the blue to the green, but I didn't hit the yellow-green so well. That's the beauty of color swatches. I can just paint myself a new one, and swap them out. For the transition from cyan and magenta, I'm taking a fresh brush because my water is already too dirty to clean out the use brush thoroughly. I started with my magenta, and slowly add blue. First, I mix red-violet then violet, and finally dark blue. With the dark blue, you have to try out how much purple you can mix in without it becoming purple, but as dark blue as possible. I always paint my color swatches right over the edge by not having a white border. I can later on, better check how the colors match, because I can have them right next to each other. Here we have the full color wheel. Now I can try to mix color black. This is really a matter of practice because you have to get the right ratio between the three primary colors. This time it took me quite a long time to get it right. I make additional swatches with the remaining paint and now I'm mixing all three primary colors with each other and with white to get muted and pastel colors. If you have other tubes of paint, now's a good time to make color cards of those as well. It's very important to write down the names of the colors you use on the color swatch so you can remix them again later, especially if you use three pigments or other colors than the primary cause it will be really difficult if you don't remember. Sometimes I also like to make smudges of the colors I used as a visual reminder. Color mixing is such a great exercise to warm up and get loose. It's playful and fun and there's always something new to discover. I'm looking forward to seeing your color wheel. Please take a picture and upload it to your class project. In the next lesson, we'll talk about an extremely important element of design, tonal value. You will need your color swatches again though, in the lesson after that, where we will be talking about the tonal value of colors. See you there. [MUSIC] 7. From Black to White: Tonal Value: [MUSIC] Welcome to the second part of this class. In the next three lessons, you'll learn about some useful principles. First, we will disregard color completely and just look at black and white to learn about tonal value. Then in the next lesson we'll find out how value and color relate, and after that, we'll use that knowledge to create a color palette for our class project. So first of all, what is value? Value defines the lightness or darkness of an element or area of an image on a scale from white to black. White represents the lightest value and black the darkest value. [MUSIC] Value is responsible for contrast, shape and depth. Our eyes are attracted to the areas of strongest value contrast. These are the areas where light and dark are right next to each other. That's where we look and we can take advantage of this to guide the viewer's eyes to focal points. So we can make sure to deliberately include high-value contrast at several places in the image to create focal points and guide the viewer through the artwork. In complete darkness, we can't make out any shapes. As soon as light comes into play, values appear, creating a three-dimensional impression and informing us about the texture of the object. Value is important for spatial depth perception. Things in the distance have less contrast and more similar values because there's already a lot of atmosphere in-between. That is, similar values make things look more distant. Strong contrast, on the other hand, makes things appear closer. [MUSIC] Yes. Although we might not focus on an exact reproduction of a form or a realistic impression of spatial depth, as for example, in a landscape painting, the value has its own right and importance. It gives the abstract image just as much structure and depth and directs the viewer's case through the picture with the help of value contrast. [MUSIC] We'll now paint a value scale from white to black in 10 increments. It's not that easy to get even gradation since acrylic paints dry a bit darker, so it's an excellent exercise in mixing paints. As a guide, I'm going to set up my first attempt in front of me, and for you, I've prepared a template to print out. I taped off two strips of 10 squares each because I want to try it two times. First I start with the pure white color and add just a teeny bit of black. Black has a very high tinting strength, so you have to be very careful not to go too dark right away. When you get close to black, you might have to wipe the brush a little bit so that there's not so much white in it and you can get darker colors. Then I try it again, but this time going from black to white. You'll notice that it takes more light color to lighten a dark color than the other way around. Now it's time for another brush swap because mine's already so full of color that it's hard to get the light values right. If one patch doesn't turn out quite the way it should, just paint over it again. You can now divide the values into three groups. Light values, medium values, and dark values. [MUSIC] If you feel like your image lacks this certain something, it often has to do with the value distribution. You can see that we have a large area here with very similar mid-tones. Now, I've structured the mid-tone area using collage, darkens the darkest color even more and added contrasting elements in other places. Now let's look at the resulting color. You can see that the value contrast is more important than the color. Because even though I had a strong color contrast between the complimentary colors, orange and blue in the first image, the image was quite boring. [MUSIC] Apart from value contrast, there are many other types of contrast as well. Contrast, after all, is by definition, a strong difference. It creates variation in our image and makes it more complex and interesting. We can also hold the viewer's attention longer because there's just more to discover. [MUSIC] Now we're talking about a quantity contrast. Sixty to 30-10 is design principle that is, for example, used in interior design when it comes to color. But we can also apply this principle to adjust the proportions of our three value groups to make the design more exciting. Note that the percentages are not setting stone, but rather a guideline to create strong differences. For example, we can use mainly light values, some dark values, and very little medium values. To get a feeling for the principle of value proportion, we will now create three small pictures. In each piece we'll use a very light value, a medium value, and a dark value. I've made a couple of sketches for this, and I'm going to transfer one of them three times on my watercolor paper. The paper is taped to my cutting mat and I've divided it into equal-sized squares. The composition should be relatively simple as this is not a drawing challenge. You can work with the circles, stripes, or other geometric shapes. However, it's useful if you use similar shapes so that we're not distracted by the shape contrast. Concerning the distribution of the areas, I've tried to stick to the principle of most to some to very little. I use white as the lightest value, black as my darkest value, and a mid value, gray. As it turns out later, it's better to use a very light gray for the lightest value and not pure white. I've already made sure in the drawings that the areas have different sizes, and now I will distribute the tonal values differently in each image. For example, I'll start by making the largest area medium gray in the first image. Then in the second, I'll use the gray color for the medium-sized area, and in the third image, I'll use it for the smallest area, then I do the same thing with the other two colors. This is not about painting the areas as exactly as possible, but we also don't want any gradients at the edges. I've had to cut out my pictures because I use pure white for the lightest value, and without the tape, you couldn't see any difference to the rest of the paper. Now, you can observe where you look first. Is there a single point of focus? Or does your eye move around in the image? In general, one can say that you first look at the area with the highest value contrast, and then at the less contrasted areas. You can also get a feeling of depth, such as in this image here, which reminds me of outer space with planets that are closer and further away appearing illuminated or not, and you can notice how the basic mood of the image changes due to the different tonal value distribution. [MUSIC] Hopefully, these exercises have shown you the importance of value and how you can use it to change the mood of the image and direct the viewer's eye. In the next lesson, we'll discover how value and color relate. See you in a bit. [MUSIC] 8. How Value & Color Relate: [MUSIC] In the last lesson, we have spoken about tonal value. When you're just looking at different shades of gray, it's relatively clear what's a light and what a darker value. But when it comes to color, it's not so easy anymore. Basically, every color has a tonal value. Most people would recognize this blue as a color with a dark value and this yellow as a color with a light value. But with other colors, it's not so clear anymore. Seeing the value of a color is something that you learn with time and practice. But for now, let's start by defining a few terms that we need when talking about color. Hue, saturation, and brightness. Hue refers to the pure color at it's highest saturation. It's what we mean when we say color, for example, red, yellow, or green. Saturation refers to the intensity of a color. A completely desaturated color appears gray. We desaturate a color by mixing it with a complimentary color or a neutral color, like white, gray, or black. That makes the color more muted or dull. The value refers to the lightness or darkness of a color. You can change the value of a color by creating tints, shades, and tones. A tint is a color that has been mixed with white. Tints have a lighter value than the pure color. A shade is a color that has been mixed with black. Shades have a darker value than the pure color. A tone is a color that has been mixed with white and black, that is with gray. Depending on the proportions of white, black and the original color tones can have a lighter or darker value than the original color. Tones are desaturated, more subtle colors that can be easily combined with other colors. Now, let's take another look at the color wheel. This time in grayscale. You can see the colors have different values, but you can also see that different colors can have the same value. Here, for example, green and orange. [MUSIC] As a matter of fact, we first look at the area of highest value contrast. Regardless of the color or the subject matter, color is less strong than value. Although these colors look quite different here, the tonal values of beta and green are identical and the neon, red, and gray are also very similar. This area is at first glance actually only perceived as one thick stroke. Let's take another look at contrast, form, and depth, now in terms of color. Neon red and neon pink have a similar value and are almost perceived as one stroke. Such combinations have their own appeal, of course. But if everything's the same, it gets boring. In black and white, he's definitely not seen much. What really stands out is this stroke. This is where we look first, these edges here. This is where we wander along. At first, we're not going to look in here, these strips here, they are also interesting because there's value contrast for those, the shape and size contrast. [MUSIC] In the last lesson, we've already established the tonal values important for perceiving form. If we use the same value for all sides of a three-colored cube on a colored background, the cube will blend right into the background when we remove the color. However, if we adjust the tonal values using tints and shades, the shape is still visible in black and white. [MUSIC] Tonal gradations are important when it comes to spatial depth. By assigning different tonal ranges, light, medium, or dark to your foreground, middle ground, and background, you create a sense of depth on your two-dimensional surface. Pay attention to the tonal value of your color. [MUSIC] It's time for a little exercise. For this, we'll need the color swatches we made for the color wheel. I'll use additional mixed colors from the primary colors and white as well. You can also use the grayscale we made in lesson 7 to help determine the tonal values of the colors. To do this, just hold it right next to your color and compare the brightness. Now, you need an evenly bright non-sunny spot and a white background that won't distract from the cards. The color swatches should all be dry because you remember, acrylic paints dry a little darker. Now, arrange the cards from light to dark according to their presumed tonal value. When you're done, take a picture, convert the picture to black and white on your phone or computer. This way you can see the values of the colors and check if you have guessed correctly. The menu probably looks a bit different on your device. I select the ''Image'', go to Edit and tap on this little icon with three circles that stands for color. Then I have to scroll up to get to the option, black and white medium. Make sure to use a color conversion that is as normal as possible and doesn't lighten light areas or darken dark areas. Now switch around the swatches and take a photo again. Check the values in black and white until you find the right order from the lightest to the darkest value. You can keep the last photo for future reference. Now, divide the color swatches into three groups, light, medium, and dark values. Again, you can take another reference picture for later use. [MUSIC] I use this method quite often when I'm putting together a color palette. I want to make sure that I choose colors with light, medium, and dark values. But also during painting when deciding which color to use next, and I want to make sure that the next color has a different value. [MUSIC] In the next lesson, we're going to choose colors from each of the three value ranges, lights, mediums, and darks, to create a color palette for your class project. Don't worry, if you have lots of swatches with medium and dark values. There are very few pure colors that have a light value right out of the tube. But as you know, you can lighten the value of the color by adding white, that is by mixing tints. See you in the next lesson. [MUSIC] 9. Create a Color Palette: Hello again. By now, you can determine the value of a color, you know about the importance of value contrast. Let's talk a bit about color theory and how to harmonize colors. Then we'll put together a color palette. There are no universal rules. Our cultural and personal background influences how we perceive color. A color that triggers certain feelings or evokes memories for you, can have a completely different effect on another person. What we perceive as old-fashioned, retro, or modern, is simply based on our visual experience, that is what we see in everyday life. For example, when I was a kid, it was unthinkable to wear pink and red together. That has definitely changed. In short, there's no right or wrong when it comes to color combinations. Even though there isn't a right or wrong, you can use color theory in specific color harmonies to find matching visually appealing color combinations that have a nice contrast. These color harmonies are especially helpful when putting together a color palette, but they can also help you when you take stock of the colors that you already use in your piece and you're looking for a color that matches well. The monochromatic color scheme uses only one color and it's mixed with white, gray, and black. In the complementary color scheme, you use colors that are opposite to each other. Complimentary colors are the most different colors and therefore have a high contrast. They neutralize each other. You can use them to mix muted colors or even gray. The split-complementary color scheme is a variation of the complementary color scheme. Here, you use one color and then the two colors that are next to the opposite color. For example, yellow, dark blue, and red-violet. In the analogous color scheme, you use 3-5 colors that are right next to each other. The triadic color scheme uses three colors that are equally spaced out on the color wheel. For example, cyan, magenta, and yellow. The tetradic color scheme uses two complimentary pairs. For example, yellow, green and red, violet, and orange, and cyan. I like to approach color intuitively and playfully through trial and error. This allows me to find color combinations that I might not necessarily have come up with if I had just used the mentioned color schemes. Colors that go well together are related in some way as are, for example, analogous colors. However, there's a trick that turns any color combination into a matching color palette, harmonizing colors. There are two ways to harmonize colors. First, with a mother color. To visually connect any color, you can mix a small part of one color, in this case, pink, into all the other colors you use. Second, with a mud color or a chromatic black. For this method, you mix all colors of your palette together to create a dark gray-brown muddish color. Then you add this color to all the other colors. No matter which of the two methods you choose, you get colors that have something in common and that makes them very harmonious. Here are a few tips for choosing colors. Using colors you like at the moment is never a mistake. A few colors are easier to handle than a large number. Neutral or muted colors pair well with saturated ones and make the bold colors pop even more. You can, for example, paint 60% of your image in similar hues, use neutral colors for another 30%, and excellent colors such as a complementary color for the last 10%. I often find my color combinations by chance on an untidy desk, in nature or while folding laundry. Just keep your eyes open and take a picture when you see an exciting color combo. [MUSIC] For your color palette choose 4-6 colors from your color swatches. Look at them in black and white with the help of a digital device to make sure that you have light, medium and dark values. I have two lights here, three mid-tones that are pretty much identical, and this is my darkest value. My color swatches are mixed from a variety of different colors. To make them match better, I'm going to re-mix the colors, but now I'm using as few different paint tubes as possible. The new colors will, of course, look a bit different from the ones on the original color swatches because I'm using different base colors, but remixing them exactly it's not the point. It's important that they match well. To see how the colors work together in a painting, I paint samples of color on a sheet of paper and make sure that all the colors butt up against each other. I find that sometimes I really like my selected color swatches, but then it just doesn't work in the painting. I really like this color combination right now. I'm not so sure about the orange. The yellow-green doesn't touch the ultramarine blue yet. I want to see how that goes with it too. I'm using my dirty brush and the blue to harmonize it with the other colors. I like that even better now. Now I'm making new swatches of mixed colors. Since my green is the only pure color, I add a bit of magenta and yellow to harmonize it with the other colors as well. Now my color palette is ready. Above, you can see the original colors, and below the harmonized ones. I didn't exactly stick to one of the mentioned methods for color harmonization, but the important thing is that all of the colors also had some of the other colors in them. You don't have to make color harmonizing a science, and you don't have to do it at all. It's just good to notice method so that you can use it whenever you need it. I often approach color very intuitively and don't care for any concepts at all. Sometimes I like the result and sometimes I don't. Either way, I've learned something. Also with acrylic painting, there's always the option of painting over it and starting again. In the next lesson, we'll discuss paper size, the advantages of working in series, and we'll prepare our paper. See you. [MUSIC] 10. Preparations: [MUSIC] Welcome to the third part of this class. First we'll prepare our paper. Then I will show you what a viewfinder is and how you can use it. Finally, we'll talk about why working in theories is so helpful. By the way, the starting point for this class, we're 10 centimeter wide paper scraps that almost ended in a wastepaper. But that would have been a shame. I started doing small paintings. As it turned out, the combination of the small size and the feeling of not using valuable material, we're quite essential for the success of the pieces. I hope this works for you as well. [MUSIC]. Here I have the format I like to work with 10 times 10 centimeters. Of course you can work a bit larger, but doubling the side length from 10 times 10 to 20 times 20 centimeters means quadrupling the surface area. I've made some pieces with a painted area of 13 times 13 centimeters and it worked with the same brushes, but it was already a bit at the upper limit for this style. Larger brushes wouldn't have hurt. [MUSIC] As I mentioned earlier, I like to take the paper to a piece of corrugated cardboard. That way I have clean borders, which on the one hand looks nice, but it also reduces buckling when thinner paper gets wet. As we're using thicker paper, it's more important to keep the paper from sliding around when you paint, depending on how much white margin I want to have. I overlap the tape between 1 centimeter and 5 millimeters. You end up with a painted area of 8 to 9 centimeters side length. Now, place the pieces in a group of four on a piece of cardboard and tape them down. Make sure that the overlap of paper and tape, it's about the same on all sides. Gently brush down the tape with your finger to keep the paint from getting underneath as much as possible. [MUSIC] Once you know your final format, you can make a viewfinder. For that, you will need a sheet of paper in a neutral color. While painting, you can use it to cover the surrounding area and the strokes that go over the edge and look at your painting as if it was in a frame. This helps you to determine where you could add some elements. I'm going to make another viewfinder of white paper. I use a triangular ruler to draw a square in the middle of the paper make it a tad smaller than the taped format so that I won't to see any tape in my cutout. If I have nine centimeters from tape to tape, I make the cut out with 8.5 centimeters side length done. Let's try that right now. Fits perfectly. [MUSIC] One advantage of working in series is that you stay loose because you're not so focused on getting the one image perfect. After all, you have several attempts. Working in series speeds up your learning process because you get visual feedback after each stroke. For example, if your stroke is too wide, you can make it less wide in the next painting. Series also makes sense from the viewer's perspective. The images are connected to each other and our variations on a theme similar to music. That way the viewer doesn't have to constantly engage with something entirely new and can find out what he or she likes more easily. Is it the shapes or the colors, or the arrangement of the elements? I usually work on 3-4 of these series at the same time. Because on the one hand, I'm quite impatient and I like to use the drying time and work on something else. But on the other hand, the series also influence each other and I get new ideas. Lastly, I would like to add that quantity leads to quality. It's simply unrealistic to believe that you do one painting and immediately end up with a masterpiece. But the chances that you end up with one piece that you really like are much higher if you paint four simultaneously. In the next lesson, we'll talk about the benefits of working in layers above limitations and imitation. [MUSIC] See you there 11. Painting in Layers: [MUSIC] Painting in layers is exciting because there is transparency and overlaps and you can create visual depth and play with showing and hiding things. It also reduces the pressure of getting it perfect and boost your creativity. What's so beautiful about acrylic painting is that you can have as many layers as you want. You don't have to get everything right the first time. If it just doesn't work out you can cover it up and start all over again as I did here. The texture that has already built up doesn't hurt at all, instead makes the painting even more interesting. By not having a specific end result in mind, you can boost your creativity with every brush stroke, with every new layer, you create a new starting point. You constantly need to decide how you want to go on and where you want to place your next mark. Sometimes things just don't work out as intended. The stroke is not loose enough, not well-placed. All the colors as in this case too transparent. Here there's this greenish color that's created by the overlapping of yellow and blue and I don't like it at all. At first you might think ouch, now I messed it up. But then you just keep going because those are the moments when you can really practice creative problem-solving because now you have nothing to lose. You can leave your comfort zone and try something new. [MUSIC] The process I will show you in the upcoming lessons involves a specific sequence of steps in terms of paint application and tools. There are countless other possible combinations but it really pays off to stick to these guidelines at least once. Restrictions not only reduce the feeling of overwhelm but can happen when you are confronted with an abundance of possibilities. Limitations also stimulate your creativity because you have to explore the possibilities within these limits. In the beginning when you're learning something new, it's very helpful to imitate someone else's process, to follow in someone else's footsteps to make faster progress. Then you can adapt the process to your needs and your star. Because often we better know what we don't want rather than what we actually want. You could for example change the order of the layers, use different painting tools or try another size. That's it as far as layers, imitation and limitation are concerned. In the next lesson we're going to start the class project. We're using a painting knife or a plastic card to create the first layer of expressive marks. I'm looking forward to it. Let's go. [MUSIC] 12. Expressive Marks: Painting Knife: Are you ready for your class project? Finally, we're getting started. For the first layer, we're going to use a palette knife or a plastic card to create strong expressive marks. But before we do that on our final artworks, let's do a little warm-up exercise to get a feeling for the tools and the marks they can make. [MUSIC] We'll use undiluted paint straight from the tube and we need a good amount, 200 gram watercolor paper works great as a base, but you could also use old paper bags, for example. Let's start with the painting knife and test how different pressure affects the marks. You can press down the Spatula hard and pull it down. This will give you transparent areas, but also thicker ones at the edges. You can also let it glide gently over the paper for a layer of thick paint, this works especially well if you tilt the palette knife towards the paper so that you can spread the paint with the surface of the palette knife. You can switch between one and the other. That is press down hard, reduce pressure, and then build it up again. This way you can vary the transparency of your marks. You can move the spatula very slowly or fast and impulsively, you can make straight lines or curves. I can start straight, make a curve, change direction, go back the other way, and then turn until I have a mark I like. I can also go back in and add some paint. Yes, now I have a pretty complex mark. As you can see, I can also build up a ridge of pain by pushing the spatula than to squeeze the paint add. Now this will have to dry overnight. Let's do a second page, this time with the plastic card. The narrow side of my card has about the same side length as my painting knife. I'll use that one. Pick up some paint and do the same exercise as before. Press down heavily, slide it lightly. Obviously, my card is a little bent so the paint applications and even vary the pressure, move quickly with a lot of paint, make curves, and random combinations. When it comes to handling and marks, the card is very similar to the painting knife, and you can also cut it in half to make smaller marks. Let's recap. [MUSIC] You can experiment with pressures, speed, and direction. [MUSIC] For the first layer of your class project, pick a color from the color palette you created in Lesson 9. It doesn't matter if your first color has light, medium, or dark value. I've already mixed my color and now I make my marks quite quickly. That's it already. Here's another example. With this layer, it's important to mix plenty of paint so that you have enough to make thicker layers. Before I put the palette knife down, I sometimes visualize the stroke and let my hand hover over the paper. I also tried to get a little variation in it. If I don't like a mark, I tried to do it differently next time. Because this is a larger format, I use a plastic card instead of my small painting knife. Here we go. A quick tip on composition. Don't unintentionally place your mark exactly in the center or symmetrically across the page, that would draw a lot of attention. You could hardly look elsewhere. You can, of course, go over the mark again, add some paint and change it around. But I have to say from my experience, it usually doesn't get any better. Here I really feel like I've all worked it. I'll better leave that alone for now. Depending on how thick you apply the paint, it can take up to a few hours until the paint is completely dry. Making the first mark on a blank page is really amazing because everything is still full of possibilities. Mixing the paints usually takes the longest at this stage because making the marks is so fast. My advice is to not change the marks too much in the beginning because then you lose that spontaneity and you just get a big blotch of color. It also doesn't really matter if you like the marks or not. This is mainly about getting started and having something to work with or work against. That's what we'll be doing in the next lesson. Before you continue though, please take a picture of this layer and upload it to your class project. See you soon. [MUSIC] 13. Bold Brushstrokes: In this lesson, we're going to create two layers using a large brush. For the warm-up exercise, you can use any paper like packing paper or watercolor paper. We'll start with pure paint and a relatively dry brush to create opaque brush strokes with rough edges. As a contrast will use highly diluted, watery paint in the next layer. For this exercise, you'll need a large brush like this flat brush, or this painters brush from the hardware store, or a bristle brush like this one. You can dip the brush in water before using it to prevent the paint from drying near the ferrule. Use some cloth or kitchen paper to get out most of the water because we need the brush relatively dry. If your paint has a creamy consistency like this one, you can use it straight out of the tube. If it's too thick or sticky, you can add some water. Then make your mark. We're aiming for a pretty opaque stroke with rough edges. Depending on how much paint you've got on your brush, you will either get a solid or a rougher stroke. You can vary the way you are holding your brush to make your strokes look differently. If you hold it very close to the bristles, you have a lot of control. If you hold it further back, you have less control and that way you can create wobbly strokes on purpose. You can hold the brush like a pencil or from above so that the brush handle is under your palm. Also, you can rotate the brush and make all sorts of movements to create interesting marks. By the way, I'm doing this standing up because it allows me to move my arm more freely and I can also see better what I'm doing. You can drag the brush slowly to make solid strokes, or you can move it fast to create rougher marks. Let's try another brush. It's always good to use a very inexpensive brush because then you can do all the things you normally wouldn't do with a brush. You can, for example, press down heavily so that the bristles are spread apart and then twist and turn. You can make very energetic lines or set the brush down hard and just smear the paint. If I have leftover paint, I spread it on my palette and place tissue paper with the shiny side into the paint while it's still wet. The paint can soak through the paper a bit, so if you want to avoid getting your fingertips dirty, you can put a spare sheet of paper on top while smoothing it out. And that's what the back-side looks like. When it's dry, you can just peel it off to reveal your own handmade collage paper. To sum this up: You can experiment with speed, movement and brush grip. Once you have a good feeling for your brushstrokes, you can tackle the second layer of your class project. I'm using this green color here because it contrasts well with the dark blue And I'm trying to do strokes that change direction. To protect the environment and keep your paint water cleaner for a longer time, first, wipe off your brush thoroughly, then dip it in water and wipe it again before washing it out properly. Here, I again select a color that provides a good value contrast to the one below. Since this pink would be too similar in value, I'll use the very light pink. Compared to my color swatch, the mixed paint looks a bit lighter, but since acrylic paints dry darker, it's perfect. Then I load the brush with plenty of paint. I take care not to repeat the same curve or the direction of the previous stroke. So I try to start from a different side and follow a different direction. If too little paint gets onto the paper, you can go over it again. My paint is a little too sticky and I definitely need to add some water. To avoid hesitant brushstrokes I practice the movement holding my hand slightly over the paper before I make the mark. And only then I put the brush down and actually make it. Unfortunately, my paint is still too thick, so I go over this several times here, but usually it doesn't get any better when you do that, though, sometimes I just can't help it. Make sure to not cover the previous layer completely. All layers should be partly visible until you finished. That way you keep all the tonal values you chose in your color palette and create spatial depth. For our next layer, we want to make a glaze, that is a transparent layer of watery paint. I start by adding water to my container with my dropper tool and then I just use the leftover paint that is still in my brush. At the beginning it's better to use very little water so that you get a smooth mixture without lumps of paint. And then you can add water little by little until the mixture drips from the brush. Load your brush with as much paint as possible. The goal is to get different transparencies. This is perfect. There's a transparent area in the middle and at the edges the paint runs together and it's more opaque. You can draw your lines however you want. And as you can see, unlike the last layer, this time the edges are smooth. You don't have to paint perfectly curved lines, of course. You can also do spots like this or any lines. And I can also add more paint as long as it's wet to create darker areas. Another option is to let the paint drip onto the paper. You can spread some of it and then add more drips. Of course, you can also do quick strokes again or experiment with your brush grip and create fun blobs of color. Be careful when lifting the paper because the paint is very runny and goes right over the edges. Also keep in mind that a highly diluted color naturally becomes lighter and more transparent. That's not so noticeable where the paint pools together, but when it's applied in a thin layer, you can see the paper background or the layers of color that are underneath very well. You can of course, add more paint in certain areas to achieve more coverage. But basically transparency is the characteristic of this layer. To summarize this: You can experiment with the amount of paint, drips and speed. I've already mixed my next color and now I'm adding water with a brush. Since this is a light color that already has a thinner consistency, one brush load of water is quite enough. Be sure to deliberately overlap strokes and avoid marks that almost touch. These areas where marks almost touch attract a lot of attention. If you work loose, like we do, this can happen unintentionally, but don't worry, since we work in layers, we can later on fix it if necessary. In this case, I haven't harmonized my magenta with the other colors yet. So I add a small dab of red and also paint a new color swatch. Here I'm putting down a few drops and not making my mark in one stroke. Here, I let the stroke run out a little thinner. I catch myself tracing the light pink line just-in-time and quickly change the direction. After all, I want to see parts of each of my layers till the end, so I'd better not cover everything. Finally, I add additional paint in some places, have more variation in transparency. I just love those impulsive brushstrokes. They add so much fun and you get a result that looks cool pretty quickly. Don't forget to take a picture of each layer and upload it to your class project. I think it's so interesting to document the process of creating an artwork, and I'm really looking forward to seeing your progress. In the next lesson, we're going to take it a little bit easier and add some delicate patterns. See you in a bit! 14. Delicate Patterns & Brush Control: [MUSIC] After all that expressive mark-making, let's slow down a bit. We're doing delicate patterns to create contrast to the bold strokes. This contrast really adds much to the appeal of the paintings. At the same time, drawing those graphic patterns with a fine brush is a great exercise for your fine motor skills and your brush control. You might even be able to relax, and get into the flow state while painting. [MUSIC] Since this can take a while, and we're working with a small amount of paint, it helps to spray the palette with water, every now and then so the paint doesn't dry up. Proper paint consistency is very important for this. I add a little bit of water to my paint. It should be thin enough to go off the brush very well, but not yet too transparent. If it's too thick or there's a glob of paint on your brush, you can't draw fine even lines. [MUSIC] For thin lines, you need a fine brush tip. It helps to roll the brush on your palette like this to remove excess paint that has been pushed back towards the feral. Now, you can pick up a tiny amount of paint with the tip of your brush and draw another fine line. You'll need to repeat this process very often. There are all kinds of patterns. You can try small lines that are directly underneath each other, or you can offset them a bit. You can make dots, and for that, you touch the paper very lightly, but you can also press the brush down and make such marks. For short lines, you can make the movement just from the wrist, but that only works up to a certain length. It's much better to move the whole arm and keep the hand and wrist steady. You can also try which direction is easier for you. Maybe it's more comfortable for you to slide your arm to the side. But whether to the side or to your body, either way, you can draw longer straighter lines than if you just use your hand and wrist. Wash out your brush frequently, so that the paint doesn't dry up near the feral. There, it would push the bristles apart and ruin the brush faster than necessary. In addition to parallel lines, zigzag lines or waves are also good practice for your fine motor skills. If the lines become too thick, you are either pushing down the brush too hard, or you have too much paint on it. In this case, rinse it out thoroughly and wipe off excess water. If you want to draw longer lines, it's better to hold the brush further back. That way, it's more angled towards the paper, you can make a more fluid movement, and you can also see better what you are doing. However, when I'm painting small circles, for example, it's easier for me to make thin lines when the brush is more upright and for that, I hold it closer to the feral again. To get a better feeling for the transparency of your colors, you could paint on top of other colors, for example, on your color palette practice sheet. If the color is a bit transparent, you can apply a second layer of paint over the dried paint, but maybe it's okay if it's transparent. They're on the rules. [MUSIC] The flow state, also known as being in this zone, is a mental state where you are completely immersed in an activity, in showing the process and sometimes even losing your sense of time. Painting patterns is a great way to get into the flow state because it offers just the right amount of challenge. You need to focus on the task at hand but it's not overwhelmingly difficult. It's that balance between being under-challenged and over-challenged that's important to achieving the flow state. Go ahead and make some patterns. I'm looking forward to seeing your practice sheet. [MUSIC] You can experiment with paint viscosity and opacity, brush grip and arm movement, patterns, and parallel lines. As for patterns, you have a couple of options. You can use just one pattern and leave white areas blank, or use several patterns in different colors and fill in all the white areas. The patterns can look like they're behind or in front of the brush strokes. Since I don't have any oil pastel in this turquoise, I will use this color for the pattern, and this cream white for the chest to align. I'm using a new brush here that has never been used, and it's quite stiff. You have to first soak it in water and then the protective layer comes off, and the bristles become soft and flexible. I'm going to start with some stripes here. I like when the stripes look as if they were behind the brushstroke. I'm drawing them as if they were made of one continuous line. These lines are still short enough to do out of your wrist and it also helps to keep away from coffee beforehand. For the next section, I change the direction of my lines by 90 degrees, and then I use the paint a little thicker to make small dots. I'm starting to think that the turquoise might be too dark, so I mix a lighter version. In the other two pictures, I've used the stripe pattern like this. Because I don't like the light and dark dots in the first one so much, I apply the new pattern to this picture as well by connecting two dots at a time to make short lines. This is a great example of how artworks in series can influence and push each other forward. You don't have to make a large patterned area, sometimes just three brush marks like this can be totally enough. Here, I've already worked with two different yellow patterns, but I think this piece could use another color. As I don't want to add a completely different color, I mix a pink that is in-between my light pink and my magenta. It turns out to be too dark, so I try to damp some of the color off while it's still wet by adding a little water. It doesn't work so well, but I quite liked the effect. I continued to use this emergency solution on purpose, and depth or patterns after painting. Here, I'm still missing a bit of contrast, so I keep adding dark marks until I'm satisfied with the amount and shape of them. Next, I add lighter brush strokes in areas of similar dark values, to create interesting focal points here as well. Finished. I just love the first three layers, because they are so impulsive and I always need some time to get into painting the patterns but once I'm immersed, time just flies by. It's really that contrast between the fast spontaneous strokes and the slow thoughtful patterns that you can feel in the paintings that adds to their charm. What did it feel like for you? Do you prefer the impulsive strokes, or are you more at home with the control patterns? You can write about your experience in your class project, and don't forget to add a picture of this layer. In the next lesson, we're going to take a more loose approach again and add gestural lines. [MUSIC] See you there. 15. Spark Emotions: Gestural Lines: [MUSIC] Look at what you've accomplished so far by now your paintings already have four layers. Now we're going to add a gestural line, that's a line where you can see the movement the artists made. They are very spontaneous and gray to convey emotion. However it's a bit risky and if I already like the painting very much, I'm often afraid to ruin it and it happens that I'm not happy with the result. But on the other hand, these lines can become a very important element of the image and add so much interests that it's really worth the risk. Besides, we still have the collage in our back pocket and we can fix a lot of things, so let's be courageous. Our paintings live from contrast. There's not only value contrast, but also the contrast between the different strokes well, we've been slow and deliberate with the patterns, we can now put strength and emotion into our lines. The line can create a strong contrast with the background or it can be more subtle. Sometimes the effect isn't as strong as expected. Here for example, I wanted some yellow color in the picture, but the line turned out rather subtle, then collage is a great option for adding more elements of the same color. One thing to consider when choosing a drawing tool is your color scheme. Sometimes I deliberately add a color to my color scheme because I want to use a particular material like the 3D liner here after all, I'm a little more limited with my drawing tools because I can mix colors. If I didn't plan it, and there are only two colors left for my color scheme, the first thing I do is take a look at my drawing tools to see what colors I have available and choose the color for my chest or line and the color for my pattern accordingly, for this exercise, chest grab some drawing materials and regular copy paper or a sheet of watercolor paper and try to make different kinds of lines. For example, I have these acrylic markers, I can make big sweeping movements or small ones, I can draw squiggles or zigzag lines. If you want to make pretty bold quick marks, you're better off not using fine liners. They might not survive going over the textured surface of your painting at high-speed when using brush pens, you have to be more careful with the tip as well. Also makes sure that the colors are light fast, otherwise they will fade after a short time in the light. Colored pencils are great to play with, you can apply different pressure to create light or dark lines. Pencils are also excellent. I use a relatively soft one in six B, you can make both delicate and bold lines or something that looks like a signature. I also like to use these 3D liners. First, you squeeze them until the color comes out and then you can make amazing lines by squeezing constantly. Finally there are wax crayons or oil pastels. I feel very comfortable with these, I like the texture of the lines and they come in different qualities. For example, this is a very soft oil pastel called new pastel and it makes very rich, thick lines and you can also smudge them if you like to. You don't always have to make big lines in your painting, you might just want to add little doodles like this, or you're getting patients quickly and go like this. I'm really excited about seeing your chest roll lines because I think it's like handwriting. Everyone's looks a bit different, so please post your practice sheet in the class project, you can experiment with thickness and shape, density and pressure, texture and speed.[MUSIC] I only have two colors to choose from that are leftover from my color palette. I didn't love the orange in my color palette exercise sheet, but I take a photo and look at the values anyway. But as I've already noticed in less than nine, the orange has a very similar value as the green and the turquoise so it doesn't make sense to use it for the textural lines over exactly these colors, therefore I decided to use baige. Before I put the lines on paper, I visualize them and practice a few times in the air, then I take a deep breath and just do it. I tried to go mainly over the dark areas of the image where you can see the baige very well to find the best place for my lines, I first take a picture and switch it to black and white. I already have a pretty good value distribution but especially in the middle of the first picture, everything is pretty much the same medium gray. That's where a light line would look good. Originally I was planning to use black on my line, but I wouldn't get a very good contrast in many places, so instead I'll use white to add an interesting line in the red pink area and save the black for the collage. I visualize and practice the line in the air again and then I put down the mark on paper and if the direction doesn't feel so good, I just rotate my paper so I can make it fluid motion. Although this line is very subtle, I like it quite a bit. Did everything go well? These lines are often good for surprises. I'm looking forward to seeing your result anyway, so please take a picture of this layer and upload it to your class project. In the next lesson, we're going to analyze our paintings in terms of value contrast and see if we can improve them. [MUSIC] 16. Collage & Composition: We have created a lot of visual interests by now, and that comes mainly from playing with contrast. Contrast between impulsive and controlled, between rough edges and clear edges, big and small, many and few, transparent and opaque. Adding collage elements is completely optional. You could just as well add a pattern or more paint with your palette knife. Maybe your paintings are already finished and then you can skip this step completely. It's also good to know when to stop. [MUSIC] When I already like painting quite a bit, I become more cautious with each layer. Sometimes a sudden insecurity comes up. The fear of making a wrong decision that I can't undo. Collage is a great way to combat that fear of making a mistake, because as long as you haven't glued it down, it's not final, and you can move elements around and try what looks good and what doesn't [MUSIC]. Now let's take a step back and look at each of the pieces. I use my viewfinder to have a calm area around them and my phone or tablet to take a picture and look at the values in black and white [MUSIC]. Now I pay attention to where my eye goes and how it moves through the image. These are the areas of highest value contrast. I can add lighter or darker elements where my eyes didn't go so much. If I'm going to put this little arch here, the eye will be drawn to this spot [MUSIC]. Now before I show you how I continue on my project, I want to share with you three questions to help you analyze your art works. Do you have several areas with good value contrast? Do you want to add or rather cover something? What size or shape are you not using yet? I still haven't quite given up on the orange, and so I'm trying some small pieces of paper here. It's pretty subjective, but I just don't like it. I think the image needs something dark over strong value contrast, and this dark-blue collage paper might do it. Sometimes, you have to change your plan because it doesn't work out as expected. Yes, I like it much better this way. You can also use the collage elements to cover up areas like this heavily textured area here. To determine where I could add something else, I'm looking for high contrast areas first. My eyes go here, here, here, and here, so really everywhere except maybe here. I think something would look good in this area. I'm placing my collage paper here and moving it around until I like the position. Now, it's time to glue everything down. If your brush has been in water, you should dry it off first so you don't water down the medium. I like to hold the paper piece down with a finger on one side, lift it up, spread some matte medium under it, let it fall back and cover it with matte medium on the surface as well. Then I do the same with the other half. Of course, you can do that with smaller pieces. Then you have to try to place the collage paper exactly where you want it, because it's hard to move it once it has touched the matte or gloss medium. I also use the matte medium as a finish over my oil pastels so they don't smear anymore. Be careful though, when using water soluble crayons. Then you have to tap the medium on very carefully and quickly, because the moisture in it will activate the pain and smear it [MUSIC]. When you're done, it's time to peel off the tapes. It's best to do this very slowly. But even if you're careful, very often, you'll lift up some of the paper surface. If the collage paper goes over the tape, you have to be extra careful. When it's thin enough, you can tear it very slowly. But it also doesn't hurt to use a ruler and press down firmly while you pull the tape off. That way, you can avoid tearing into the picture. If the paint is a little thicker, I wouldn't try to tear it. That just doesn't work very well with elastic paints. In such areas, it's better to work with a ruler and a utility knife and carefully cut a little bit into the paint. Here it works great. If the tape tears or the paper starts to tear, I start again from the other side. That usually helps to avoid larger damage [MUSIC]. It's hard to avoid tears completely, but there's one thing that helps that medium. It makes an excellent paper here. You simply brush it under the tear and then with light pressure over it so that the paper layer stick together again. You can also press it over any other area where paper fibers have been slightly lifted up. Try to find out in which direction you have to move the brush to best move down the fibers. When it's dry, you will see almost nothing. Congratulations, you did it. I hope you are happy with your art works and I'm looking forward to seeing them so much. Please share a picture with me and the other students. If you haven't created a class project yet, it's a great time to do so now. You can also ask questions there or comment on other student's work. In the next lesson, I will give you a short summary, some ideas on what you can do with your art works and how to continue learning. See you there [MUSIC]. 17. Final Thoughts: [MUSIC] I hope you have enjoyed this class and learned a great deal from it. We have covered a lot of ground from the first step to the finished artwork. Let's recap. The first part of the class was about the basics. We took an in-depth look at our working material, Acrylic paints, studied their properties, used them in different viscosities, and learned the basics of color mixing. In the second part, we focused on the concept of value. You learned what tonal value is, how to recognize it in colors, and how important value contrasts are for a successful image. Finally, you used this knowledge to create a color palette for your class project. The third part of the class was dedicated to the class project. In the beginning, we prepared our paper, talked about working in series and painting in layers. Then we looked into the variety of marks we can make with different painting tools. You practiced each of those marks and worked through your class project layer by layer. In the process, you brought a lot of contrast to the paintings, on the one hand by the use of tonal value, on the other hand, through the marks and the tools you used. Finally, we analyzed our artworks in terms of value contrast and finished off the design with collage elements. [MUSIC] In this class, you have acquired a lot of basic knowledge. What I've shown you is a good starting point for further experiments. You could try multicolored strokes and gradients, colored backgrounds, different collage papers, or even everyday objects like sponges, packaging materials, or kitchen tools to make marks and patterns as I show in another one of my classes. If you like this class, you might also enjoy these classes. Feel free to click on my name, and this is my profile. Also, don't forget to hit that "Follow" button so that you'll be notified when I publish a new class. If you have any questions, you can post them in the Discussion section, I'll do my best to answer them. What do I do with my artworks? The paintings look especially good when they get a passport too and the frame. Whether in the bookshelf, on the wall, or at the workplace, these small works of art always make a great eye. You can also add inspirational quotes to them or use them as greeting cards, maybe they even inspire you to do a lot of work of art, or you really dig into it and make it a 100-day project that you share on social media like I did. The most important thing you should take away from this class is the joy of painting and playful experimentation. Play is so important for creativity. When you're playing, you don't have a result in mind, you don't put pressure on yourself, and you're open for the abundance of possibilities. I hope you've enjoyed this class and it made you want to create your own abstract artworks. If you liked it, I would love for you to leave a review and also don't forget to upload your class projects so that we all can admire your work. If you share your project on social media, you could tag me at cornelia_zb_design. I'm glad you've joined me. Thanks for watching and participating. See you next time. [MUSIC]