Acrylic painting for beginners - making a lasting sketchbook of colour recipes and techniques

1. Hello - what are you going to do and what might you learn?: although I'm every other. I've seen an illustrator on painter for 28 years. Professionally, today I'm going to teach you about acrylic painting. This class is suited to complete beginners. If you painted before you may find the project itself is really fun to do. I'm quite useful. Wasn't much going to be teaching is how I personally prepare different types of surface to paint with acrylic. I'm also gonna be teaching about the different formulations there are. There are four that I know. So I'm going to be going through differences between those Andi. By the end of the course, you should know that sort of create painting. You're drawn to what you want to develop, Andi, you will have. If you've done a project, you will have a great reference to yourself. And what you're going to create is the pain recipe and technique book. It doesn't have to be beautiful. You mean what you could be more like me and simply want to have it is a practical reference on make quite a mess of it and you'll see you know mine isn't particularly beautiful. But what I do find beautiful is the color combinations. Andi I really enjoyed mixing my colors. I show you a basic palette off 10 colors. I knew you always have. When I paint, I sometimes introduced other colors too. You don't have to use the same colors with me. Use what you have. If you have any questions, a tool during the course. Do message me below all you can find me at every other bucking in on instagram. Next, we're going to look at the tools that you might need. Now we made this this video so that it will work with ALS. Courses are going to be teaching about critics you're not gonna need. Everything is in that video. I'd recommend watching it at least once. Now what you definitely need for your project for this particular class is the sketchbook. This one here is daily around the students catch book. I really rate these paper inside is lovely and think, and you can paint a lit without it buckling too much. And that's what we want. We want something quite steady you don't want a schedule has got in paper, so I would recommend those highly. I also sell my own design sketchbook. It doesn't matter what size you have. You could have a 51 like this, which is what I'm using. Wait. Did you say for thes particular ones are available? Limited edition available in my Etsy shop in campaign to paper. So you're welcome to buy those. They have a very, very similar quality of paper on that perfect rental. Donaldson paintings. I'm fine. I haven't really They haven't really buckles. So next let's on tools. And then shortly after that, I'll show you the color palette that I use. I think it's quite important if you can watch all the videos right up until the project section before you go out and buy anything. But it would be nice if you're going to try to experiment with all the different formulations to perhaps pick a color from each of the formulations at the very least, so that you can mix them and see what facts you can get. I hope you enjoy it, and I'll see you later. Okay, 2. What you might need as you learn acrylic painting: way. Yeah, - Okay , - way . 3. How I prepare paper for painting with acrylic . . .: I'm going to show you now how to prepare your water, your freshly stretched watercolor paper as if you're going to use a critic like it's water color. So you're not a nice, smooth, bright white background. If that is the case, so we need Teoh. Let's take yourself yourself in a big rush. Andi. Choose the plain gesso, which is suitable for all flexible surfaces. I know this is flat, but once it's peeled off, it becomes a flexible surface. I'm just paged on. There's already some water on this brush, so it's extremely easy to paint it on, I said to aim for a smooth coating, but you don't have to. When I first left our college, I used to deliberately use a dry brush and get so and paint it very randomly on top so that I had around him surface. Here I've come covering every little bit of the paper, so you still see the texture is going very much depend on how you want to paint when you when you're discovering what you like to do. As you can see, when you do this, the paper buckles starts to buckle again because it's re absorbing the water and that's fine. You just leave it to dry, and then you can either put another coat on if you decide you want to paint in color. Or rather, if you decide you want a color background before you paint any more color on before you paint your subject, then you would. You could just paint that on top. That would be fine. Similarly, at this stage you could introduce cover because I very rarely paint like this anymore. I'm going to introduce cover to it now so you can see how that would work to. I'm going to use a roller so you can see the effect has. And if I use cover, I've actually mixed the mixture off, um, high flow black in here. So that's this one. Carbon black onda a little bit off. Follow blue in the in the thick paint and there was also a little bit of water in the bottom here. So put those two colors. So the two different preparations, if you like, which really does not matter at all, I'm just going to do a bit on. You don't have to do it like this. It all this is just something I'm doing today to see what happens. I really wanted to show you the action. That's a roller creates or rather the effect it has. It creates its own text, two particularly over this paper. Obviously, if you had a ridged, very textured board Candace board under here, the effect would be different. This looks almost like a print so you can leave it, and I'm just going to leave it to dry and then come back and at more color depth does make a nice noise. Yeah, so I'll leave it there and then I'll show you another technique letting coming. And then you can use all these techniques. I'm showing you on campus or on board. The only difference. If you were painting straight onto would, for example, you could use the more textures Sandoval guess so. If you wanted to do, you really wanted to build up a lot of texture, right? Let's leave that to dry. This one's now dry, so I'm going to try to introduce a little bit more depth to it. But I want to see what happens if I use the next layer. If I use map to medium with This is by liquid tex with some of the golden open, slow drying acrylics. They're thicker than the, um, fluid or the high flow, but they will with the map. Megyn there still be quite transparent, so it will be interesting to see what happens. So I should end up with a sort of the nice purple. For this is a green shade, so it's not going to be it'll. It won't make it a little prevent it from being too bright pink. I hope we will see. Turns out whatever. However, it turns out you can carry on adapting until you're happy with the results. So please don't worry. Just experiment. I mean, I'm experimenting to. To start with them is going to use. Have a nice mix the colors again and see if you get a bit of a feel of how it might work. It's a beautiful color, really help me and you'll see when it goes over the white Terriers, it's going to look a lot brighter. So if that's something you particularly like, knew you could do that, you could start with this process and miss out the underneath. But I do like the depth that you achieve like this So I didn't even need I didn't need nearly as much paint as I put on a rather need as much met met medium as I put on. So you could do that. He could introduce your brush to brush it out. If you want to see what happens. In fact, I guess so A stiff brush to brush it out. Okay, Work into those little areas that you may have missed. You can look it starting to take off a little bit of paint to be aware of that because it does, especially this heat does Dr Very, very fast. And I quite like some of those strikes. I'm going to get back into it now. I've done that with palette knife. Just swallow that. This would be a perfect background for some kind of nighttime scene or first seen. I think that No, I was going to see it. May it may spoil it, but I want to see what happened to open the roller across. It sort of modifies it slightly. I was lifting off, but we're getting almost back to that texture that we had underneath, which is understandable because this is how I created it. But I like that. And I think I'm gonna leave it there again with all your tools. Clean them off with circum water dearly. I'm just wiping one on a print. I'm going to take him into the house now. Getting a good wash. This is a piece of watercolor paper that I stretched early room Andi. It's all completely dry now. And you see how flat it is. And I painted it with one layer off, just the ordinary gesso. Now I'm going to show you what happens if I use the pastor ground. The texture critic Primer on. I'm gonna get a color, I think, actually get burdened. CNF This one, Andi, spread it all over this to make another a further layer. But again, just the background. So they opened that up. It's the sort off Miss Looks like Very refined porridge is really grey sort of color, right? I'm going to use a mixture off something called nickel iso gold on burnt sienna. So it'll be a very warm background. But again, it would be very dark if I wanted to be dark. Then I could paint this in black, perhaps or mix up with black and black with some brown first and then put a layer of this over the top. That could be quite interesting, but I have actually got, um, a wooden surface, which I could do that on to see what happens right. Anyway, we'll try this one. Get my palette knife against, scoop out a little bit of their somebody. Take so much as I did with the I guess so that little you jump and then take my eyes. Oh, screeching better. It's rather a lot again. It's run onto the paper. So that would be because, But this is primed. So perhaps it won't have such an effect as the just like strange Arrested Goal. Fruitful color. Oh, it's just nothing. This is why dual that paint. It makes me very happy. Look at the veils. I love that transparency in texture. On the sound of it to you can hear that it's very granular. It's like the finest sand. She's joyful, and it's so personal to you. The way you leave things across your paper will be different from the way I do. I'll just leave it there. I could go on forever with this. I haven't got very much paint on it. I'll just use my wet white to clean my holy night way. Yeah. Hm. Now that showed you how to prepare your paper. If you want to paint on it, if you don't know how to stretch paper, please do watch my short class that you'll find under my profile, which is all about stretching. What kind of paper? It only takes 15 minutes to watch. Andi, I show you what I do if I want to simply paint on a piece of cartridge paper from my sketchbook to on. In that case, I wouldn't stretch it, but I do do something else to So it's worth watching. If you're a complete beginner and you've never stretched paper before, really, you need to stretch paper when you know you want to completely flat surface after you finished. For example, if you're going to have frame a piece with amount around it over the top off the water color, then you will want the water car to be flat. And so it looks beautifully. Christine, if you've got some bumpy, wavy piece, it's actually quite difficult for somebody to appreciate it because the light will hit it on, then they'll be shadows created by those bumps. So if you're going to be doing professional watercolors that you want to be framed for a show, for example, then you're definitely going to be wanting to stretch your paper. And when I say what colors, I mean a critics to painted in a watercolor style, and now I'm going to show you how I prepare a canvas ceasing. 4. How I prepare canvas . . .: This is a simple Qassam canvas. When you're starting out, don't go and buy the most expensive linen canvas you find, unless that's what you really want to do on your made of money. Um, experiment with slightly cheaper canvases, this one is wrapped all the way around and stapled. It's a Windsor Newton canvas, and you prepare it with this gesso, not the Sandoval one. This is golden, but there are plenty of other guests owes available. This is great for flexible supports. You can mix as much color or as little as you want in it. You'll need to either build it up slowly as I'll show you here. Or put the guests I want quite thickly again, adding color or not entirely up to you. But to start with, you could even use a brush a bit. Largest this just to paint it white. So that's one of the ways obviously you carry on doing this and you to do it alone around the fives. I'm going Teoh. Add cover to this at this stage. As you can see, I hope you can see that. Not sure if you can. There's actually size in the campus on the campus surface, and it's resisting the water that shady. One of the reasons why it's so important to prime your fam ous because your paint without a primer just doesn't it won't perform the way it's supposed to. So just get Haven't I already have is not one that I've set up, especially it's one I've been working with, so it's very messy. Um, I'm just going to choose a few on and to this For that, I'm going to use a slightly smaller brush was still very much bristle brush studio hog bristle Phil bit on this size 12. I'm just going to That's a world ran Andi, do what I like to do, which is lovely, loopy swells all over. I'm gonna create quite a neutral background, um, with possibly a still life in mind for the future. I'm a means of mid tone. Really? Because that way you can at dogs Onda Obviously plenty of lights. Um but you have, ah, useful background color be true. But it really depends on the subject that you want, um, toe having a piece. And of course I'm someone like me. I build up layers anyway, so I might start with this new tone and then paint something darker on the top and then even send through a little. You could do that with this. Even though I'm not using Sandoval gesso, there's nothing to stop you from scraping into your work. It's just always said it with canvas. It's slightly more vulnerable if you're gonna be scratching into it that you you're too vigorous, you might make a holding it, for example. So that's why I particularly enjoy painting on wood myself, because there's no risk of doing that at all. So that's quite a neutral color. Don't just quickly show you one of the paintings that I got on the wall to give you an idea of what I mean by two different tones. This one here you can see underneath this is painted on wood. You can see underneath that I had a quite a warm, pale background. I let that dry, and then I painted quite a thin wolf. Oh, um, black on gray over the top, and I used a bit of the pastoral ground, which has a lovely texture. And then I sounded it'll. That's quite a random fashion. You continue working until you can see that you've eliminated away the white patches that sometimes do you come through, you see there's still some there. His paint isn't very thick, it's not very draw me. So it's easy for the canvas to repent. It going to add initial my favorite so lately. Get it, isn't it? Isn't that easy to just prepare campus, not knowing why you're doing it? I'm doing this for demonstration purposes, so the placement of the color isn't something I've greatly considered. I'm using a little over kind of 11 to blue color now, and pink is this comes mix up on my palette. But like like these colors together, I'm not going to worry too much because, honestly, some of the best paintings I've ever done has been done on paintings on top of paintings that that either I've started deliberately thinking all that. That's gonna be a nice background, and I've made some kind of abstract shapes and different colors that I've liked, and it hasn't been a successful painting in its own right. I've left it and then I've been inspired to paint something I've seen in the garden, and I grabbed a campus think that'll do on DM painted on top of it on do the colors from the background. I've been so useful working with negative space. This is quite for me. This is quite interesting. I do really like the colors already. I spent a few more patches like that. I'm sure I will use this at some point for painting. You can see how you can spend hours just doing this Building something up. Another technique, of course. You turn. Use this on the campus. Just have a little You can get some lovely texture if that's what you're interesting. You may have a still life, for example. And you know where the teme, exactly the tables going to be and you might want to do is sort of texture four to help a zoo, a background for your the texture that you're going to render for a tablecloth, for example. So almost like that I have actually been a bit naughty with this on and in the past no, cleaned it off that well, So that's one of the reasons why this texture is quite strong. Is it has its own pattern er on here already and that effects what it does to the paint. I don't really mind because it's quite interesting, although for this particular campus I wouldn't leave it like that because I that's not what I want. Um, of course, you can scrape and make ridges, if that's what you want to dio yuk unblessed and your colors more, get some fight. Interesting effects. Of course, the more I do this, the more the colors are going to blend together. And this sort of soft gray cover I could imagine picking out a horizon or harbor or something in Brown and Greg and quite dark cutters. As a contrast in, this could be the sky area. That's anything but I don't need to go into composition and that sort of thing here because I just simply want to show you some techniques, which you can then experiment with in your recipe book. Now I've got some orange in this, I think gonna brush some of this out that I don't want to keep all of those random effects . That's really interesting like that. I think I'm just gonna leave that one. It's quite pale, it's not. It's paler than a lot of ones that I prepare, but it's quite pretty. I think it could be quite a theory of background. And then whatever I paint on talk, I think I would paint in quite contrast in color, So we'll see. But it's intriguing to me, So we'll see what happened. If I do, you do that well, make sure to show you in one of my other classes the next class I'm gonna be doing will be about abstract painting with a critic Andi composition. So it may well appear in that Ariel. There's another one I did recently, and you can see what I mean by the size resisting the paint. This was quite thin paint, I suppose, very similar to what I just showed you. But now I can see exactly where it needs more prime ing with the guests. A Andi, I'll do that later. Something else you could use if you like me prefer a much more rigid surfaced is canvass board. So this is just a piece of cotton canvas that's been wrapped very, very tightly over what I imagine would be layers of cardboard and then seals behind Ondas. Very rust surface on, and you can use Sandoval. Guess on this one, because it really isn't particularly flexible. But it is very portable. Andi, this is one I did in spring, which is obviously a background is very loosely painted from life. But I've left it there simply because I like it as it is. I may work on it next spring when the tulips come up again. Um, but I wouldn't do a lot more on the sky because I particularly like that. As it is. Another thing you could use is past aboard. I've only ever used this a couple of times, and I'll show you. I'll turn it over in a minute. But these are made in my company called ampersand. I got I get nearly all my art materials in the UK from Jackson's art or a local shop to me in Norris Cole Gerald's, um, but this is its story for very hard, and it has a really robust surfaced. It's sort of a Ziff. It's got its own. It was like a clay board. You can really scratch into it if you want to. This extreme year of us do, you can build up layers and layers paint and that I created a pattern with this. It's quite 19 fifties, I think, and I used last different techniques that dry brushing Andi stamping with the edge off a bit of sponge like that scratched into it there with a scalpel blade. Andi. Actually, it was either scalpel blade or it's the end of a compass and then revealed the yellow that I put on underneath. I've done little patches of yellow because you can see that that's a different color that's more like yellow ca. So that's a technique you can try and your sketchbook. But obviously you won't be able to do scratching out so much. But if you use a little bit of pastoral ground over a color that you've got underneath, you say paler color and then put passel ground on, let that dry or include color, then you could do something similar. But I'll show you that when we come to the recipe book. So that's that one. This is another painting I did very, very different on Passel board. That's my favorite shirt. This you can treat in a very similar way to the way you treat would which I'm not going to show you 5. How I prepare wood . . .: here. I have a piece of birch plywood ongoing. Teoh, prepare the ground. It's just four millimeters thick. Andi, I'm going to use a Sandoval hard gesso on a brush. In this instance, I'm going to add a little pink. I'm just going to for this one. I'm just going to take some flow big door, but that I have to have that on my permit. I'd like to make that deeper. Beauty of this is that you can add to it as you go. There's nothing to say. You have to stick to one color Earth, so I'm gonna add little red. Just be a little instinctive about it. Really Little of the cooler red on a little more off the thicker pink. Let's see what happens. I like to brush my paint on in a loopy Mellon. Obviously, if you were preparing your watercolor background, you'll be doing your white gesso and you wouldn't need to worry about this at all. You just want to make it beautifully smooth and then wait for it to dry and then paint on top. It's quite interesting. I'm going to use a roller again. This will show you different sort of effect you can get with different sorts of material. You can leave it like that. Or you could scrape some off if he wanted Teoh because that's tangible. I can get back into it and I can destroy inside these ridges off if I want. If I'm going to see if I was going to leave it like that. But I think I might just concerned on and straight through, see what attacks reveal that looks a little bit like him to make sure I don't drip everywhere a little bit like tie dye or something. But I always see these backgrounds I create. I will see the Mr Sort of under Vails, I suppose, if you like. And sometimes you get backgrounds that you just think it's so beautiful, you really anyone to put a little bit of a little bit on top of them? If anything, I would say this is one, but I do like it. It's interesting. It looks quite abstract. Okay, so he could lots of different techniques you can use. Clearly, you could make painter much thicker background in this Andi or you could leave it like this and then paint some thin layers over the top. But that just gives you an idea what you can dio to create. You're background on wood. I'm gonna leave this to dry, and then I'll probably son down some of the ridges them, and then I may or may not put more cardamom. I think we've covered all the surfaces now. 6. Examples of acrylic painting styles using my work: As you probably know, a critic is really versatile. You can use it in a watercolor way. This is probably the first illustration I ever did professionally for Homes and Gardens magazine, and you can see how transparent your critic is. I've used it on stretched watercolor paper. Very smooth. Actually, this is them. I think this is Hamamura What kind of paper? Which is incredibly smooth. I'm quite thick, stretched it. And then I would have covered it with. I guess so. But quite roughly at that time, I really liked the variety, actually still do off a hand prepared painted textual background on top of smooth paper, ironically, But then you do get areas where the color really pulls on Guy. That's what I really enjoyed about this. This technique. This is how it turned out in the magazine. Completely different. But the same such technique I used to do romantic fiction administrations again, all and critic, but a very much a watercolor style. This one was actually I got my flatmate to take a picture of me, and I use that for my reference. It's just got fun. You can see how theocratic sort of pulled around the guest anywhere it's darker would be where the guest. So I brushed it on very dry in a drive manner, and that gesso wasn't in the areas where this this dark sort of speckle ing the lighter areas would have bean, where the guests I was was thicker. So that's something to bury mind when you're preparing your surfaces. Here is another one I did, but I liked very much at the time. This one here is a fashion during I did near the end of firm Our college on It is mixed media, but it's the same technique. It's all sort of watercolor style. But then I drew over the top with very dark pencil, and that's that. Another, more recent piece is this was color style colors. This is on campus board. I sent to use the plane normal gas so you could use the one the Sanibel get. So for this, because it is a rigid support, so that would be fine. But I just used a thin layer, so you very much got campus texture coming through, which in this instance I like because the mark making that I've done is it's so lively that the fact that the texture of the campus comes through, it doesn't detract for me. If I were to do something very simple and plain on top of a textured canvas like this, I think I'd find it. My I would be drawn to this texture far more. But because there's so much going on in this, it works quite well. It almost enhances enhances the way the color pools on the on. The texture, because it is so is so thin in areas. So this would have been a combination of high flow. Andi. The more it's a runny the critics, I just don't remember stuff in my head what they call the fluid, the fluid critics. That's right. But you, could you achieve this effect just by watering down your thicker critics? That would be absolutely fine. But you can see that a lot of the white off the background shines through this. Which is the more the technique that you use for watercolor a very different approach. But a similar style is this one over here. I've got it in the frame without any glass. This is all this is this black paper here is actually the back of my sketchbook, Um, which I as I I'm a bit of oddball in that I When I do, you sketchbooks, I tend to. If I love something I've done, I tend to tear it out and either frame, it'll stick on my wall as an inspiration or something, but so I actually had virtually empty sketchbook. So I told this page out. Andi created this little painting, which I really like, but you can see the difference from here. The this, this paint. There's a lot of white in it in order for it to stand out from the black paper background. There's no gesso on this, so you don't have the sort of luminous white, which makes the colors bright, so you have to build that into your own. Um, you were in pain, so I'm using much thicker, a bit much thicker paint Here on. There's a lot of white in each color, apart from the red. Just suppose that's quite pure pigment. It must be a little in there for two shining. You can see here that there's a lot of white, and this was turns it much more of a pinky red, and that's probably close to the pure pigment from the tube use very thickly. This is very impressionistic, fast, joyful painting, Um, which is definitely to my taste, maybe not tears, but that gives you you can see the difference. Styles are not similar at all, but the effect is very different. This is quite a quite dull overall because it's got the black background but is lifted by the inclusion of white in the pigments. And you can see strong brush strikes as well, offset by the very smooth background. So the background does not detract at all from the paint in this, whereas here it enhances it. This was this was a piece from directly from my sketchbook, which again doesn't have any guesses on it. It just means that the colors are flatter. The paper absorbs light and pigment, so things are just slightly more muted. I suppose as to longevity or longevity, whichever one you want to say. I mean, I would imagine that if you've got a piece of prime to paper has been stretched and you've got guess over it, it just gives it a little, maybe a few more years. Well, maybe 10 or 20 years of life, something like this without any guess. So it's probably going to be if it's kept out of the light. It will probably last, you know, 90 100 years. I don't I don't know. That remains to be seen just before I go on to show you work that I did with acrylic, but in a much thicker way. This is a sort of hybrid style. I would say This is acrylic all critic, but I painted directly onto the paper. There's no prime ing involved in this tool, and it almost looks like Do it on. There's another one there. Um, I used to quite a dry brushing technique with this. This is kind of one of my signature styles that I do have developed in the last few years, where I just have quite a dry brush and then dip it into some quite wet paint. Andi, move my breath very far list, and you get this lovely sort of almost like wax resist effect on. Do as I say. This is on plain paper, so it does work, but it just means that if you make a mistake, you can't really hide it. Other than Of course, you could scan them in, and then you could clean up any mistakes if you spilled over it spilled over the edge or your the shape that you had. You weren't that happy with. But if you use I mean, as I did here, this is good paper. This is the arch paper that I love. But if you have, if you're working like this, you could work in a sketchbook and still get a lovely effect. Sometimes we feel inhibited if we've got very precious paper and it makes us a little anxious. And if you're feeling anxious, particularly this style using a sort of water color directly onto the paper, then then you know it's not going to go as well as perhaps it might so practice on in your sketchbook if you want. If you like this particular way of working a sort of hybrid between thicker paint and a water color, as you can see, I worked on top with thicker acrylic in areas to get details like this. Very fine feather edge. This is a piece I did for a book. The gift book. I must have done maybe 50 or 60 paintings in this shape off very still lifes and flowers. That's what I think. And I used a tiny bit of oil pastoral in areas. But mainly this is quite dry paint. I only used acrylic, the normal heavy body acrylic on quite a dry brush and water. That's all I use. I didn't use any Matt medium or anything like that. This was published by Hallmark a few years ago. There's a birthday card again. Exactly. Same technique. I would have primed the paper. This is stretched paper. Gervasi cut off Andi. I painted with water and heavy body acrylic. That was all This was an Easter Bunny card for Gibson Greetings, which is now part of UK Greetings. They were probably by main clients or throughout the nineties and early two thousands and again, exactly same technique. And to show you a finished product, this is a book I did for Ladybird Books, which I did on several pieces off stretched watercolor paper. I obviously printed it that one as well. I did with a little cat. This is an example all the same technique, and you can see here. I didn't use any precious paper, but I saw out a little piece off pattern that I hadn't used quite like that. But I didn't want to do anything with it, particularly on Die. Simply brushed my paper from my sketchbook. That's what it is with a couple of layers off acrylic paint. Quite thinly, but not too wet. That's the thing waiting for that to dry. And then I painted on top. Um, created this little bird now, then put into a real repeat pattern with some other things I painted in the same way. And you can see here how I've used the background color to show through some of the birds so you can work with sketchily over color at this on, it adds, it enhances the frustration on the top. This one is a Christmas card design I painted recently, which I is on Wood Onda. As you can see, I must have I think you'd pink as a background with my guest. So to start with are you Sandoval guests over this one, I would have painted the pink over the top. Perhaps it may be with a rola or brush on. Then I've put the darker blue over the top all over it. before we painted any of the illustration. Andi. Then I let that dry and I sounded it back. So you got this lovely texture, which I hope you can see around here that comes through. So you got various shades off warm oranges and pinks coming through. I really love this sort of effect. It gives a great depth and richness and interest. Onda. Of course, if you got wood to work on, you don't have to worry about any buckling on defectively. You can keep working on it until you're happy without any worry off destroying the surface . Here's another on wood where you can clearly see for a script with the palette knife on the past of ground and lots of bright, high flow color. I would. This is this is, ah, mixture of probably follow blue um, white and a little dash of yellow but personal dark gray in the background, too. So several layers of paint on that one. This one here is a piece of paper that I stretched, but only using masking tape, which is something that you can do when you haven't got time, or you just want to do something quick. You can just get yourself piece of wood. Andi, put your paper on, tape it up with masking tape and then paint on it. This is quite a rough piece of watercolor paper, quite thick, so that's something to bury Mind the thicker the paper, the easier it is to do this sort of thing. Now with this, I've just painted from the look of it, several layers of color. I'm probably changed my mind about what I was going to do on. I just wanted to do a little header for my instagram feed when last August, and I've All I've done here is I've used a But in this studio, I used a rubber brush. You can get some rubber brushes, actually have textures, sort of has a bit like of rubber fork almost on. I dipped in my guests over, and I just painted these letters. Andi, you can. That's another thing to remember. You can use your guess so to build up surfaces on top of your background, so don't feel it was has to be something that's kept just to prepare your surfaces. It's very useful for building up areas of texture and as you can see this is white on black , so even when you paint over it with layers of color, it's going to look very different than painting over black. It's going to lift areas, so that's something to bear in mind if you want different areas or you want to bring areas forward, um, on top of dark areas, it can be very useful for past sins and obviously texture in your work as well. Well, I hope that gives you some idea off the versatility of chronic. You can use it on all sorts of surfaces. This is cardboard I had lying around the studio, and I just thought, Well, why not do quick painting? Um, I've used painting quite a fluid. I would say it's almost halfway between watercolor and oil painting technique for that one . This is one of my favorites from a few years ago, when I just sat in my garden in the dappled sunshine Onda painted over cameras had already prepared probably years ago. It's got lots of layers off paint, which is a technique that I love to use because you always get surprises. You can softened. You can wipe away paint as you've as I must have done here, I think, to create these soft effects, which looked like pink leaves almost. But it's just the background coming through, have rubbed with probably either my finger or even the famous wet wipes. Um, so that's in effect. That's a technique to bury mind. And then this paint here is also a lot thicker. The paint in the background is thinner, and I've painted more thickly towards the end, which is the way is more off the oil painting technique. This is one of my favorites. A more recent one. I had a large, thick piece. Oh, what color paper that I tore out of a part. I think this is a cancel paper. Andi. It was one of this pre stretched paths, so it's all gummed aside. So I was able to work on it without any worry of it buckling, and I was quite free with the way I painted. I used some areas with paint very, very thinly and others much more thickly up there. On this, I turned into a gift wrap designs, which is now for sale in my in paint paper shop on Etsy Andare not in the high street. Yes, you can see how you can use paint quite Finley on. Then, when it's dry, go back over with the same color but a different tone to create depth. It's good fun on this area here. I love the way the paint is semi transparent, so some of the background color shows through. Well, I hope you find that inspiring, seeing the different ways that you can use acrylic. Obviously, this is the way that I paint and you're going to paint in different way. But you might to know by now whether you want to approach it in a more watercolor style or whether you want to approach it in more a thicker, more gouache like or more oil painterly like way. This particular one, I would say, is a combination of the two, which is probably my favorite personally, and that's the way I feel. My work is developing Onda. Uh, the reason for doing your project is so that you can experiment with these different ways of working, and then you will discover yourself what you prefer to do 7. Your palette and the different acrylic formulations: Now I'm gonna show you how I make up my color palette. I'll either use a plate like this with the wet tissue paper, as described in Tool the deer, or I'll use my stay wet palette. But I was having at least 10 key colors from which I mix everything. I have arranged cool colors on and warm colors on my neutrals. So this is my cool blue. This is a couple blue, and sometimes I use ultra Marine instead. It just depends what's toe, hand from what I I feel like doing so. The other cool colors I use are the coolest read that I had, which is nap from crimson and my pink, my absolute essential. This is Quinn Accredo Knee magenta. I'm not quite sure how you say that, but it looks a bit Italian to me. Is that one? And then the cool yellow I use is yellow light hands, which you can you can see. It's really almost Neil that you could make some wonderful greens with that and simply, of course, particularly this blue. This is the green shade off follow blue. I'm using an open critic here, but that's I would use a a thick one. Normally, I just happen to buy things because of the color. But I'm gonna talk more about the different formulations later on. My warm red is not full red light on my warm yellow. I was struggling to get enough is cadmium yellow medium and you get some really lovely oranges of those two mixed together. And, of course, my neutrals. I usually put a big group of white in the middle on a little bit, depending on what I'm doing. If I'm doing a, um, a painting with a very dark background, I'll have more of this, but just a little bit of miles black. I never used to use black at all. I was very anti it for years after I left our college and I mix everything that makes all my colors from very few colors, and I never missed it all, probably because I painted in a very watercolor style. No, I find it very useful, but primarily for background tone. Neutrals can really offset bright colors, and it's a brown. This one's burnt sienna so I might use I might add, other colors like yellow car perhaps, or portrait pink, which is a really lovely light, peachy pink, the skin tones and things I always turn to mix my colors or very rarely would ever paint straight from the tube. But there's nothing wrong with that. It's just that's not the way I've ever ever done things. So those are your 10 essential colors. Now let's look a tsum formulations of acrylic so you can prep. Decide which appeal to you most. Here are the four formulations off Golden Critic paint. First, the thinnest is high flow. Acrylic sees a suitable for use with dick pens airbrushing, and they have a drink like consistency. So they're great for watercolor techniques. What kind of style techniques I should take. This one here is the next thickest. This is golden fluid. Critic. It's a bit like the consistency off double cream that's a lovely new color. To me, Green gold is good for dry brush application, as well as fine details on if you mix it with water. It's also good for pouring and spraying, and you can use it for glazing and staining. I personally think that if I were keen on watercolor on, I knew I didn't want to draw with depend, then I probably would choose this one. This type of critics to experiment with the next thickest is actually the open the critic. These are slow drying critics. That's the key thing open. The critics were a bit like oils. They're slow drying, great for blending, shading, glazing on the paint. It really does take quite a while to dry. You can mix all these planes together, but do be aware that if you paint this for example on it, still I still wet. If you were then to paint with any of these over the top, then this would not dry properly, and you'll get a strange kind of resist effect. Next, we have heavy body, this one here, you can see how three d you can make this. You can really build it up quite thickly. Similarly, you can do the same with the Golden Open. I did these examples a few days ago on This is completely dry. It's dried very glossy and hard. This is still Tuckey and what? That shows you the difference, and you can dilute this right down to a sort of watercolor effect. So they're incredibly versatile. Andi, you can experiment with all of them if you want to. Or you could just make a decision about which to buy yourself. A set off doesn't turned up to you. I've got a few of each. But for my project, I'm going to be experimenting just with the heavy body, sometimes up to you, which you'd rather use. There are 49 colors of high flow to choose from 82 to choose from with the fluid critic and 79 palace to choose from in the open selection the most are the original formulation 123 colors in the heavy body. I've done a few experiments now, as you can see by all this, but it would have just taken hours to go through all with you or at least an L A anyway. But there are various key things from doing this that I wanted to make it really clear. This effect here that I particularly liked is actually the thing that I'm going to warn you about in the sense that when you've got an open color, the slow drying, slightly thinner body paint Andi is not yet dry. If you then use heavy body and possibly any other thing. Any other formulation over the top is going to prevent it from drying the way that it should. So that's why that's happened, even though I doubt it of this was water, it's created this sort of resist effect, which I think is really interesting, is not the way open paint would dry normally. But you can still mix open paint with any of the other paints, Andi, then use it as a single paint. That would be absolutely fine. There's no worry with that. Of course, it will retire to your paint slightly, so it'll take longer to dry. If you do do that after I left Art College, one of the jobs I had was to contribute to this introductory book about the critics, Andi High at the time, very much to use acrylic in the watercolor style, as I've said, and this is another example of it, this piece was exceptionally large. I had to have a slide made of it. It was a one size, but it it works really well tightened up to. But nowadays, if I were to work in the style like that, I would definitely use high flow or fluid acrylics and dilute those because the pigment would be much stronger. And there's another example. One I did of my best friend Karen adopt college again. That one is a one, So you do you get a good idea. Now I hope off the sort of thing that you can do with acrylic to make it look like water color. On this, I would have painted on very smooth paper again, just with the flexible guest over on top and then acrylic, and that was it. I didn't do anything else on use those two. So it's the things. It's almost time for your project, and now I've shown you a lot of different material on some of it will be useful. Some of it you'll already know, I'm sure. But what I'm trying to do is give you a good grounding in what sort of paint that is available on the kind of effect you can get with it on. When you're doing your project in your own sketchbook, use what point you have if you want to paint more like our painter newspaper perfectly, I would advise, particularly if you're a beginner. Starting out with a heavy body acrylic. I have used both open critic Andi Heavy Body, a critic in a painting before Andi. I did experience and problems. I didn't realize at that point that there were problems with the conflict off the slow drying open acrylics on the heavier body on top. I was just using open in a couple of different colors just because I didn't have those colors and heavy body. So I just used them exactly the way I was heavy body. But it didn't mean I was very some dragging on, some sort of almost resisting as a paint fought with each other. I do think that you mix the two together before you put it on the campus or the paper or whatever your sport is, then there's not quite so much of a problem, but it will always be more slow drying if you do that, I know are bang on about this of it. But I think it's important to really grasp that. So if you do have both formulations, experiment with them on paper and he will see what I mean. And then you'll get a bit more of an idea as long as you're aware of what can happen when you could be far more deliberate about how you use the paint. It may be the articulate, the facts, and if you do, then you'll be able to achieve that. That's a little extra Newt for you. Similarly, if you're a watercolorist, more you want work more in a watercolor style than either choose the include critics in the Little Buffels or the high flow acrylics, which you can use with a dip pen as well if you're interested in drawing lines. Mawr illustration. That way uh, she's one of the other because obviously these paints are quite expensive. So should I start waffling on? We can start exploring. Let's get on with the project. Okay. See you later. Bye. Oh, actually, no. Before said by If you've got any questions and you don't feel I've covered enough in this class on you have burning questions, then do definitely get in touch. You need to get in touch by writing below in the comments section and I'll reply to that. Or you can find me on instagram. Gabriella Buckingham, easy. So I'll see you later on. I really hope you enjoyed in your project. Okay, Bye. 8. Your Project part one - Colour mixing...: Hello. I've just popped up again quickly to say this is where you're going to need your sketchbook , the paintbrushes that you've got but really, for the kind of mixing year and against anyone paintbrush. But you may want a few different sizes when you come to experiment in any spare pages that you have after you mix your colors. This is a messy stage. It's good fun, but you will need to allow each page to dry so you could work on. You don't have to do a page of colors and then leave you half blank like I did when I first started. You can work on a double page spread every time that might make it easier over you'll it will make. It will be quicker for you if you do that way. I'm Condon show you quite a lot of what I did, and you're welcome to use it through it all. What it'll it's up to you because it's quite simple what we'll be doing. But it's really few to discover what you like. The colors you like, perhaps a different color combinations. You like Andi, the techniques that you might want to use in the future. When you start out on an actual painting, whether that's going to be on canvas or wood or even on stretch paper, I hope it's going to prove to be a helpful exercise for you on a great reference for your future painting career. This is the very first page of my project. I've just written down every color that I'm using, and now I'm going to add a few extra colors so you can choose whatever colors you have. We're going to be creating our own color palettes. I've got 11 colors here. I've added ultra Marine. I'm going to also add a little bit of light blue violet, the light portrait pink. Some couples violet hue I shall put near the pink between. Think of the black. I'm going to use Payne's gray as well, just to see what difference it makes. The whole point about this project is it. You're exploring what colors you can make with the paints that you have on the techniques as well. It's important to make sure you put your pencil toe hand doing this project so you can write down every color you use and any gesso or different mediums. You can see how much bluer Payne's gray is than black, so you will be able to create some very different colors. I think using that next, make yourself your own key. So, Captain, get a medium I've put See why? Light yellow hands er were yellow light. Answer my prayer l y and so on. You choose your own way of remembering, but do make sure that you right down, whether you write it down in full or an abbreviation next to each color what you've used. I mean, here you can see I vary between using on an acronym or the full color, but it's incredibly helpful. If you do have a key, you think you'll remember. But believe me, you don't. Once this is dry, we can go on to make some colors. So what I've done for each color is I've written the name of the color of the top. Andi, I've done that color on its own underneath the title, so I'd suggest you do something like that for here. I was going to go over it myself. I have not felt crimson with follow blue, and over here Kabul blue with Quinn occurred only pink a little with black. It's a really warm, deep reddish back. Andi burnt sienna with white with white and I thought a blue. So they're gonna put an arrow because I hesitated there. When I'm looking back at it, I'm thinking, What else is in that? So this one And then I moved sideways and use that combination and then added some thorny blue Down here I've just got ultra Marine Plus in Apfel crimson and here I have the white with natural crimson Onda A little off the quick adona pink So is this one. Plus, this one comes out here. I'm trying to use roughly half and half each time I mix. So here I bought see why which I've just gone blank. Just double check my key. That gives an example Why c why Katima mulilo Cadmium yellow on Dwight plus natural crimson . So now I'm going to see what natural crimson is like mixed with the colder yellow, the more greeny lemon yellow, the yellow light hands er So I'm just going to get a brush full of the crimson. Rinse it off on a little lemon Simba, similar sort of amount and they just mix it on the page now. Obviously, the colors are going to be slightly more muted because they're being absorbed, the critics being absorbed by the paper. So you're going to get a bit more Ramat look, but you should get the color information, which is the most important thing before I forget what I did here and C plus yellow light hands, and that's the same. They're just less paint unless you so make your notes in such a way that you understand what you did, and you could make it as fun as messy or as beautiful as you like. So work your way through your circle of paints, making sure that you have natural crimson with all the other colors. I'm going to do a couple more because I've added some more colors, not full. I'm going to get a little bit of claim gray and see how that changes it. Pains grows quite a bluish, a bluish black. It's a lovely, almost like a deep, deep, deep, deep purple se PG Up here I mixed the doubtful crimson and white on top of the guests, but I'm just going to mix the net. Fill with some portrait pink to see what happens there. Steve Blob and to those colors look lovely together. So portrait pink Claria continue like that and work your way through ALS colors systematically until you have a book full off wonderful color as you start to do your mixing. You'll discover, of course, that at the beginning you'll be mixing your color for that page with every single other color that you have on your plate As you go through, you need to decide whether or not you're going to. For example, with this, I've got the yellow light hands er mixed with Kabul blue to get this color and then as you work through so you decided to mix. Do your couple blue page much later on, it's up to you whether you want to mix couple blue again with the yellow night hands I just told you not to hear, but I have what I have done. Yes, I did, you know, right hander and white, because, of course, you do run out of space, but it gives you an opportunity to perhaps makes another color into it. And so what do you make a note? As I've discovered it's so important to make a no, because you're not going to remember what colors you used. Unless you do that, that's a beautiful color. So don't be afraid to mix other colors in as long as you do whatever you like, as long as you remember to write it down. So you avoid any frustration discovering a beautiful color and realizing you don't know how you made it. You have more space if you don't repeat yourself right, I'm not going to make us another one of those colors that I introduced at the last minute after after except my 10 colors. So this is like to portrait pink, which is a color I use fairly often, I suppose, really, especially if I'm doing people painting people. So that's the calamities. Now I'm just going to mix it with other colors, and here I've got gesso underneath my page on my paper, not on this side, and it does make a difference. If you look at the Paynes grey I did. Also here you can see so a slight shine on some of the colors you might want to see that on . Obviously, the paint doesn't sink into the paper as much. Which is why I've got very definite sort of scrubbing brush marks. But there's a really lovely colors in there, so I'm quite excited to see what's gonna happen with this one. So that's it on its own, it's gonna do a narrow there. I think I even I won't forget that. No, thanks. So, excuses squeaky chair. I'm going to makes a little bit of it with some yellow just to see how that changes it. This is the company merely respects a warm, lovely, warm color. In fact, I probably did this back here somewhere. Um, his company Miller. Did I add any of the portrait pinko? Yes. Here I did PP portrait pink. Not quite the same because I've got the balance slightly different. I probably had a bit more okay about having more pink, so I was gonna Griffith more pink Doesn't really matter as long as you do. Write down what you did, because it's pretty obvious that it must be must just be that there's more yellow in this than the other example. So, plus, see why caffeine really than I remember. And so I think I'm gonna speed this bit up now Before I do, I'm going to add some light blue violet to this one. I think this might I wonder Thistle 10 inches with a gray color. It does, yes. You start to know. The more you do this, you can really anticipate the colors that it'll turn into. That's a tiny bit more pink. That's a lovely, lovely, warm gray, beautiful color, right plus light blue Violet not really will speed up Now I've done my color mixing as far as I'm going to you for the project. I've mixed up some neutrals on dive mixed up some of my extra colors like blue Violet. I've just done this one hand started to create some pages with thistles the passel ground but with natural red light and cadmium yellow mix into it And this one here is same passel ground with ultra Marine on natural red light. So I'm going to experiment with some colors from top of here. This is very much an experimentation. Do you? You mustn't feel that you have to do any particular thing. Think about what you want to discover what I'm going to do next. Now that I've actually mixed on my colors is go through myself and decide which colors. Ah, my favorites. I'm just going to choose. I think I'll start work by choosing mid tone colors that I really like on. Then I'm going to put those on a bit of paper in my sketchbook and then find other colors, I think, look great next them that I love. So I'm gonna go away and do that. Now, I've chosen this one here with the clinical donor magenta and cadmium yellow. No, I've been flexing. You hear that? I'm thinking. Which would go really? Well, I like this one. I would love you That still not quite try. So I'm gonna get some likely violet on magenta as well. That should interesting, because, of course, it's got magenta in it. That combination. So it should. I mean, that's a nice combination that as it as it stands, should look good. Texas. I should just write this down. I'm gonna ask myself What kind of neutral would look good here? I think Gray of some sort would look lovely. Um, look at my neutrals Page and have a thing of that. Actually looks really lovely. That's quite a lot of from kindness. Burnt Sienna. You like that? In fact, these two look good. Do you get the idea? So the next stage would be to mix up some of this and then another, then another color. Little bit of brown. It's a bit of black. That's nice. Anyway, ground on why? Mm. I like that. No, my instinct says that I want Cem. I want some blue in this become a pellet to write that down before I forget. Yes. Bl on white. Okay, then I'm achieves a blue so you could see what I'm doing. I'm sort of keeping one eye on this side, another on this side, but I'm gonna have to get down here. This is nice. The ultra marine blue with white. Like that ultra marine that cut it with white, right? Mm. Nice clothes. So you get the idea, and you can go on then to experiment by mixing a few months to see what happens. Slightly more tricky, because I'm still using my sketchbook as a mixing palette. Just need a little dab of each paint too much. And then that was likely Violet, this little dive again. And of course, if you see if you spot a color combination that you love while you're doing this and just leave it with that. I like that partly because I can see the red. The glowing, orangey red coming through That's one of the joys of painting is if you have that happen whilst you're actually painting on a still life or something and definitely leave it alone . I like that lesson, but with no gente you might try and put half a magenta on this side. So all right, put oh, free colors except magenta. No, since you beckon, you bit sneaky and just mix of it magenta into this side to see what happened. See what color comes out? Uh, makes it. Obviously, this is quite thin. So is not got the richness. And you do get a little bit of paper to the wearing out, All a bit of paper texture coming through. Yeah, yes, I definitely prefer this to that. Me that looks a bit doesn't great with that, even though obviously it's made up of that color. They that looks nice together though. That combination, so with oh full not to this point might do that. So you invent your own way of doing this. If you want to go down this route, you may be quite happy just sticking Teoh. Doing these colors that's possibly or probably is enough. Just as I'm sure you're aware there's plenty of more mixing you could do. You could even do it on a planet and then just door little elements. So you wanted to mix all these three colors together. You could put it there and then just put a bracket around them or something. Just make notes. It really doesn't matter. This is a working document. It's not supposed to be something really beautiful. It would take days and days and weeks and weeks of work to create something beautiful that have the same purpose. Okay, I'm going to stop there with the color palettes because I really want to get onto some techniques and exploring those 9. Your Project - Playing with techniques part 1: What I've done now is I've mixed up this color to one side. Andi. It looks a lot thicker and it looks more blue than than this. So just keep adding a little more until you get the cover that you're happy with. Officer, I'm blending this quite a lot, so and it's thicker. So I'm not getting the sort of specially effect and two tone effect that there is here, which is actually really appealing. But when you're painting on a canvas or something, many will you will get these sort of effects happening just depending on how you paint on whether you mix or your pain before you put it on. And they do say, If you're painting, you should never mix the paint on the canvas. But sometimes it's good to ignore shit because you can get some really unusual effects. I'm going to take this color, which goes on coincidently the background. I'm gonna put it on. It's quite similar to this, but I used the same yellow but with natural red light. So it's just hasn't got so much thinking it, that's all. But this is pastoral ground mixed with this color that I'd already mixed up. Andi, this is your chance now to perhaps get a Lina roller and put your passel ground on. Or you could just brush it on, as I did here, fresh it on, allow it to dry and then paint your color on top on. Then you can see what it's like just to paint with a sort of color of the top and how that effects the way you paint. No, I'm using you may notice. I'm using the brush on the side, something I'm very keen on doing, and you can see you get this lovely effect. Well, I think it's lovely anyway, where the bristles of the brush in the paint just pick the most raised parts off the past. Around up. Of course, you can wet your brush. This is your chance to experiment and see what happens if you brush it. Brush it the other way over. Even we meet me holding the brush in the mall. Traditional fashion. You can still get this lovely effect of the background coming through the dryer the brush gets. This is a chance now to perhaps experiment with some soft gel here. I'm using hope you can still see it. I'm using a bit of baking parchment as a palate because I've got my I'm trying to keep my color separate on the palace itself. So you just get a little tiny bit of glass out with my palette knife? Put it down here. From what? Vettel, we've got an apron on, so I'm just gonna use that white. My palette knife, I said, Get your books and then you could experiment by mixing your color in directly into the jail and seeing what effect that has. You still get that dry effect, but not quite so much. It spreads more. It's thinner. It's more like a veil off color. I'm going to go and dry this off with a hair dryer. That's what I suggest you have to hand as well. That's dry now and now. I want to see what happens when I use Matt Medium over top of half of this, creating a glaze. So that would be a fun experiment for me because I don't do glazing that often. Um, just to show you if you can see on camera, there's only a slight sheen to this gloss medium used like this. Think of the paint with the gloss medium, the more glossy it is, you might be able to see it, but the shine there. So that's entirely up to you. Whether you ever use gloss medium. Andi, I think I showed you how good it is as a college medium. If you've got some tissue paper or something like that, then you can use it like glue and then brush over, put the piece on the brush over the top, and it'll it'll just stayed put there. So that's not the use for it. But I'm gonna get Samat medium, and then she is different color to go over the top. Um, I think I should I'm going to use some kind of I might use that brown color. I'll start off with friends again with a tiny bit of black, just to see what that's like. Okay, so I'm going to get Matt me tempter here. This is the big cortex. Professional one you're already using. Ready to be small brush on All that's in Ben Sienna. Mix that in there. On a little bit of black. This Well, um, with white. Yes, White. That's a look. Do you happens just gonna brush it on starting off over the white so you can see what it's like just over the white and then gradually go across. So far, color like this does is it meets everything. It makes it much more subtle. So this shows you that ah glazed is useful for knocking back areas. This has turned what was actually quite a garish color combination into something much, much more muted. I'm gonna do a little section with a much brighter color. It's going curious to see what happened. And I hope when you're doing this that used to start to feel curious, too, about what colors you can create by building up layers. I'm gonna drink it with a big loss this time, Onda much brighter colors. I'm going to use a little bit of the natural red light and then that's a very, very bright color. So you'll be interesting to see how it affects it. One thing I've gotten to do so far is write down what I did. So you have to do that in a minute. That's nice, too. That was a lovely debt. I really like that. Mm. That's beautiful. It makes me think it looks like a a screen print or something. Or lithograph. In fact, that's gonna make into a note myself down here. That is that, Phil, Red light and close there on that one. Boss Matt made you with burnt Sienna, plus white plus black. Now, I know if I want to create something that looks like that, I know exactly what to do. I know I've got my recipe. Yes, it's several layers, but it's a great exploration. Of course, I've got the area down here which I could do more on Andi, I'll come back to that now. I'm gonna go on over here. I want to experiment a little bit with putting some lighter colors on top of a dark background to show you how you can get a lot of pattern and texture. I mean, and then knock it back as well. So for that, I'm going to use my white pains, but I need a different brush. This is where I'm going to use my fan brush, which, unfortunately, I managed to get a critical to some point which were wash off. So I'm gonna try. First of all, I'm gonna try a completely dry in the white A man make a social because a person so you can see how this might work. Oh, I got Christmas on my mind. I need to design my entire Christmas range. I've been very slow about it this year. It was quite Christmassy, but I'll leave that because I probably do something else on this side and I'll go away on dry this all with a hair dryer now and I think this is dry. Um, we're just double check. As you can see, I use my finger to test that. And then I thought, I may as well make some other little shapes is what I'll do is I'll color some of this and leave some of this white just to show you the difference that you get. So if this is meant to be slightly Christmassy, I think I'll do you some of these green just to see Well, it would be like so a little bit off the lemony yellow if you could see me mixing that probably not just found right. But in the lemony yellow on the Farlow Blue should very right greeny color. Andi got Tony down with some of this. Actually, this is the gloss with a little bit, and that's all red in it. That turned that down slightly. And then I was paint this bit over the top. Andi, have a cesspit. Pair that. Phil. This don't just do that whole. The whole section on Put little net sel I am I saying, that's all I mean quitted credo knee, I think maybe yeah, like passing that background. It's a lovely purple color. You can see how the white it's just just glows. It's a lovely, glowing pink. It really brings. Those elements are really brought forward. It's again after let that dry a little. I'm just going to see now what difference A fine mix up. Does not feel red with Samat medium just to see who it comes up. Very similar. Very similar effect. I have got enough here. I just get about just while I'm waiting for this to dry. This is what you will find. I hope you will find when you're when you're doing this is that you're suddenly get ideas about what you want to discover because that's all it is. There's nothing clever about it. It's just discovering what's interesting to you personally. Yeah, that seems that seems more of an intense red. I'm not sure how it is. Very similar broke up there. Somehow, it's not letting as much. It's not letting as much of the yellow come through. Possibly I just used it more thinly with the gloss. So when that's dry, I'll be able to assess that. But I think it's a bit stronger with the mat. Interesting. So lucky. But that's definitely my favorite. Okay, this is dry, it note isn't I have to go back to the hair dryer. Bear with us, they say. I just made a note of myself. It may be I put too much water in with that Matt medium. That could be when the reasons why it's more off an intense color because in a way, the map medium itself is transparent, so you don't really need the water in it. So I don't really want to cover that over because that shows what the original color was like. But I might do just quickly doing a little bit off Matt medium without any water. So I'm drawing my brush off from apron Get to Matt Me, Jim Onda, a little dab off the natural red light just makes that in there. Let's climb 10 so much in just to see if it's any different, that'll just a little bit more intense. I think the one that took it is a bit. That's something else I'm gonna have to experiment with. I think in the future and God like pattern. Yes. You can see, as I'm taking it off in a very unconventional way that it becomes mawr like the color that I like a best. I've removed too much, really. But we'll help you getting the idea of what I'm trying to do. But ultimately, your book is gonna be very different. They will just be the things that you discover. What? So for this one, I want Teoh knuckle this back and make it quite dark. And yet you'll see you mean the fact that I use quite a dark pink over the top of that that comes up still stay up. So I'm gonna get my wide fan brush, actually. Sure, Go right off it. Andi, I'm going Teoh out a bit more. That medium to this one here and then some black. Think Payne's gray as your pains. Great as kind of bluish black on, then mixed up together, and it should not everything back into into this distance, but you'll still be able to see the tree. That's the aim. So something like this is a great way off viewer at doing administration of doing a nighttime administration on making sure that all the main forms that you wanted to be visible did actually show up. But they didn't look like they were in stock sunlight. Um, of course, if you got moonlight shining, you could have. You can paint other trees on top, for example, in a much in color without a glaze over the top, and that will make them pop against the more muted background. So that's the idea it's going to try scratching through with my white pencil. It's a lovely feeling, actually. This is because it is a long, hostile ground, so I can feel this is like sandpaper texture underneath. Well, I'm scraping. - This pencil is a deterrent. Watercolor pencil, Chinese white because you could just use an ordinary pencil just scraped through. See what happened with that. What it is doing is just scraping really is not really making much. It is making a bit of a month, it's gonna be never to. There's much more subtle than White. I'm just going to carry on experimenting. Now it is up to you how much you want to watch. But do you start your own pages and have an adventure way? 10. Your Project - Playing with techniques part 2: This is one of my favorite spreads. I'm just going to see what happens if I take not so crimson mixed with follow blue Andi Samat medium and make some circles over here on top off. Yes. So with that so crimson, the question out of this to get the similar cover faculty was coupled blue This one couple blue Andi burnt Sienna so called blue burnt sienna on the red, which is basically that I'm going to make some soft gel gloss with some not feel crimson and then roll Use the line a roller right at the top. So I'm going to use my plate up here and then paint some onto my roller so hopefully won't be too thick. Let's see what happens. This is over gesso here misplaying paper over this side. So the nice effects has got lovely transparency and you can see the depth. You can see where the pink background waas on how much paler it is over the plain paper with gesso. I like that. Look personally. Let's make a note now. Just do a little here with a paintbrush. See the difference? Do you like this texture? So what? It's dry be interesting to see what it's like if you paint over, see how much it builds up the color. Of course, you lose a lot of the Livy that so crimson like it, calling it literally that soul crimson. Think I'm just tired. Area that Fulcrum's and what I'm going to do next is choose one of the colors that I liked very much the area medium violent, mixed with Payne's gray. And then I'm going to mix it with some pestle ground. It's understandable. Hard guess. So here's my pastor. Ground dollars for that too much because this is only a small a five sketchbook, and it doesn't matter if he doesn't feel the whole page because it's just literally to experiment with. It's not complicated tool, but it's just really about finding what you can do and what you like. Um, just off already got some coloring somehow on a tiny bit. This convicts that a little there before I had the cover together, so I should get a sort of quite a textured, I guess so. Down. Just get this mix my brushing, obviously, because there's guess own here. It makes it a real pain really pale purple. So I'm going to add a lot more off the Paynes Grey. Yeah, just blow up. Makes it a bit that I'm going to use my very old card credit card or not actually credit card. But it's that sort of thing. It seems to be coming apart now with some kind of discount card for and garden center. That's what it was that no longer accepts them. So this is where it's ended up. Ah, that this makes it really interesting. Textural background. I've screwed quite a little. And then 20 of the angle use You can drag it around. That looks like a nice view shape. No, I like this. This is definitely technique I want to use in the foot painting in the future. I like stripes as well. Of course, this is a very first layer would be doing that so you'd be painting a lot more on it. So really, you have a lot of phone with backgrounds without any anxiety, their role of such So that's passed a ground. And guess so with color. I didn't right at the start. I'm going to sweat over here as well to get the access all and then I could have that to experiment on tooth, right? I'm going to allow that side to dry. And on this site, I'm just gonna put some Swiper Grissom gloss gel just to see what happens. It's fun doing this. I hope you having. I hope you'll tell me having a lot of fun doing your project. It does look a mess when you put you might be wondering what is she doing? But I think it's quite valuable, certainly has been valuable for me. Okay, now I'm going to take my soft gel close on. I'm going to use the roller, this roll up, roll someone. So get another pallet life scoop a little bit out. Can. You probably don't need much. Maybe that's too much. Pretty sure that will be too much to the point. So this was still slightly wet, although just pretty first, trying to please I'm in the sunshine. One doesn't seem to be lifting much off a tiny bit tiny, but it kind of that is coming off more now, more you press. I can see that it's uplifting the background off at this point. No one to add a little bit more color. So just going to have a quick flip through and see what I'm inspired Teoh to use with this over the top. I think something quite what woman would be interesting like that. So that's burnt Sienna and the clinic Adoni magenta. So I'm just going to look, if you blocked on that there a few blobs move pink quick, Adoni it's randomly. And then the band Sienna, some with pink and some without And then I'm gonna put the rolled over the top again, and then I'm gonna go in and cut lunch for my family. Well, I love those colors. I think I'm only going to this comes together that gorgeous. That's a really, really lovely grayish blue, Really like those colors together. So I'm not going to merge the whole lot. I'm just I just merge half to see what happens when I do that lovely. I do like these. These colors that gorgeous. What a small thrill that is for me right now. I just came here, do that Nothing is wasted. I'm cleaning my no, no, to laugh. And then I think I got lovely little page of my sketchbook so heavy that inspires you to do something similar. I've come back. I'm thinking that I want to experiment to see how I can lose full of white. Um, but then work in the light with Well, I'm going to see if I can lose all the white, but still use this texture. So it's going to a strike like that with some Matt medium Andi paint gray in it into here. I'm gonna add a little bit of black slightly slightly to blue for what I want to do. Okay, So in case you didn't notice, this is but baking parchment, which I find so useful we get through a fair amount of it, must have it. They're just stroking their own. I've got I just was dry brush. Joy distinctions the paint and then mixed into the mat medium. So I haven't makes it that well. You got different stripes of color, but so I did. You probably don't want that. If you're trying to create quite smooth blended background, you can see how quickly it starts to dry. That first strike that did is already tried, and they're not completely so, but it's sort of lifting off slightly, So I haven't got perfectly flat color. That's fine is really what I wanted to do was get a thin coat and they let that dry and then go over the top with Cem paler paint and see what it picks up from underneath to hit pics of any of this texture. That's one way, and then I'll try something down here when I also wants to remind you when you use pastor ground, it means that graphite that you use on top is incredibly easy to draw with. Really picks it up. Unlike if you try to paint on or rather draw on on this close medium, that really doesn't like it very much. So now I'm going. Teoh. Use just some. It's like a small brush just in black paint in this brush. I'm gonna wet it diffident in black paint. Just bring over here. This is not extremely six paint. Of course, it's going to resist baking parchment thinner It is. I'm just going to lightly brush this over the top to see what that's like. That gets quite a nice wasn't going for my notes. She well, just double check. It's a medium violent. And here Andi was Payne's gray under there? No, there's not much space for me to make notes about this, but perhaps you have to try going to do that. My aim was to trying eliminate the white. Really? But I do you like that with some of the grey showing through? This would be so some white there. But it is a very different effect. I'm not sure that I like How so Sticky, This particular Matt Medium waas with the paint it's really got. It's quite patchy because it drives starts to dry so far, So you're kind of disrupting it as you go over the top. It would be best if you do it. Bigger brushes possible. Makes it really well. And don't go over your first brush tricks nearly dry. So I'm gonna accept another color. We'll be back in a minute. Have mixed up a sort of peachy color with the light portrait pink Andi, the mat made you that makes it really well. And I put a little bit burnt sienna in there too. Okay, So I'm just going to do a little stripe here festival to see what is picked up of anything . You're down this way once you do that, there's really very little difference between these two background colors. Um, here there's not a vote. Not a lot. The difference, Really. It just depends what you want to reveal, how much you want to allow to come through and really very little off This texture comes through it'll that's what it seems to may signed side a little bit more. Here's revealed. Say for sure, yes, particularly here. It just depends. I mean, if you if you were using doing this on the canvas and you had built up more texture and you put your a new lock wanted to lose a white bits, then you could use this Matt medium mixed really well, better than I mixed it with a large brush. And then you still be able to work over the top with a drop with dry brush techniques like this and pick up a lot of the texture that was underneath, trying to destroying. So far. Try some up here as well. You do that using from side of my brush because such love, new textural effects, you can see how the background color does definitely effect the color even put on top off the The thinner it is, the more the background will show through. Of course. Don't forget to make a note of what you did. I'm going to add some color to this. Now I hope that seeing what I've done so far inspired you to to do your own on. Just use whatever you have. And don't be afraid to combine things. There aren't any rules you need to. You're the artist. You can discover what works for you and mixed mediums. I haven't even done that yet in front of you. So that's probably the next thing I'll do. I'll make some soft jail with my mat medium. And they're two different brands. But that doesn't matter. See what happens? Something I've got, which is certainly not essential. I've never even used it. Is this Micah Pearle Mica Flakes? So I might experiment with a little bit of that. Just for fun. Okay, I'll be back later, and I cannot wait to see what you come up with. I just want to show you how I did this. Very thin. Find glaze off. I think use this sponge addicted in some water and then dipped it just straight into the pink paint and then stripped it straight to it on here, instead of a list tickle, tickle the paint onto the surface really shows up over this higher area for more that it does on the doctor. Not just dipping this in to some purple meat. Purple? Yes, um, the medium violent believe that bad carry on. 11. Your Project - Playing with techniques part 3: just experimenting right at the end of my project. Andi, I have used that brownie Goldy color I created and they discovered that so nice with blues . Andi just scraped across this background I prepared this background is just Matt on gloss medium that I mixed together with neat follow blue with its own. And then I just brushed it randomly with a large brush of my page. And you can see how it really picks up texture. But these lines trying to do to be on the bottom of the page. But now I'm going to just paint completely from my head at the top and see what happens way . So here's my finished project. That experiment that I did with the strange Micah did not work out beautifully. Thistle. I liked this texture that I got with a palette knife very much under here. This is a mixture off using the fan brush. Andi Cem gloss medium. I think it and just scraping it around to make this flower shape. So really like that, these I really like I think that they would work really well, has abstract pieces that were much larger. If I do that, you get the idea, particularly at the top one, so there's quite a few layers there, but they're also everything. It's definitely worth experimenting with your colors. Find some favorite colors and do something like that. See what? You can create this texture. I loved what you already know. This here I used the end of the sponge. That's the rectangle end to create a sort of printed block effect. It was a nice texture. So here I was playing with color on transparency. I like this coral red with the minty green on the addition of the purple blue thing that works well as a color palette. Another favorite, you see. Oh, yes, this But here I didn't show you. How did that? But this is an example of creating a dark background. Andi, some textural interest in this case. I used lead pencil to make pattern. Then I went round it with Cem. Guess I think in this case, not even my paint just to block areas out. You could obviously then change this grayish white gesso into either a brighter white or a pastor color. What else did I really like? I like this violence very much. I'm not quite so sure about the actual still life itself. But the colors I used, I think they have potential. I started off using this palette up here, but then I couldn't resist introducing some of these colors. But this is a sketchbook is not supposed to be perfect. And there are definitely things that I do like about what I did this. I loved the color combination to maybe you've seen that already. This color combination I like very much. So that's something I'm going to revisit on. I did some more textural work. This looks like features thing. I think I was very happy with the way that turned out on my little ghetto bird. I think that there's a color experiment that works really well. Have you seen this one on desire? Enjoyed doing this very much. Just building up the color and seeing what comes through and how different color underneath can affect the color that you put on talk. That was an interesting exercise. So I suggest you do something like that for yourself. Choose a selection of your favorite colors it created, and then under here is past aground over gesso. And this is This is literally on the cover off my sketchbook, Onda. And then you can put layers of color and see how they're affected by each other. This is a lovely element there colors a gorgeous in that. Now, I'd love to see what you did, but I'm just going to say a quick goodbye first, no. 12. Final thoughts..: well done for getting to the end of the course. I know it's incredibly long. It did feel like that to me, too. I do hope that you broke it up into manageable chunks, and, of course you could if you're watching this before you've even watched the course, which I know can be very tempting if you have already got lots of tools yourself on your bit familiar with acrylic painting or you're quite familiar with a credit painting. But you just want to do the project for yourself. And then what? Introduction Class Number seven. With this after the after the Tools video, the one that has the palate. And it's just to see what I do on, then perhaps dip into all the other videos between that and this one, and I'll give you a good idea off what to do If you're a complete beginner. I hope you have watched all of it because you'll pick up quite a lot, I think just by watching somebody else paint and then when you're working through your project in your sketchbook, you're going to become a lot more familiar with acrylic paint. Make a mess. You stroke your brush across your page. Try it different angles. Try painting, printing it with a very delicate way in trying lots of different brush sizes. I didn't really do that. I obviously know what I like to do. So I tend to veer towards a kind of quite messy brush when a painting an old brush that has that can surprise you. But there are moments when you want to paint the rim off a vessel or something like that when you want a very, very fine point and you want to get clean lines. So experiment with those of things as well. Don't be rigid about it. Don't just think. Well, I must just do what Gabrielle did, because that's not the point of it all. But you should come out feeling a lot more confidence about what acrylic that does. What you can do it more important me on. Do you just have really tasty color recipes? That's what I'm hoping to see now, because I'm so keen to see what you come up with. I would love to give the 1st 25 of you who post your project, whether that be one double page spread or a few a little gift. So just contact me all. I'll see that you've done it and I'll contact you on. I'll send you a digital download so you can print out this original piece. But this is a piece of credit work that I did on paper from my garden. That's one of my favorites. I hope you like that. You're very welcome to just say to me to let me know, because obviously I'm not going to check every minute of the day Z when people uploaded. But I'll try to check daily, certainly in the early days of class, because A really keen to be there for you If you've got any questions so I might contact you or just contact me. You let me know when you've uploaded your project. I'll make sure that you have all the information about the tools that I used and all ones in the video below, so that you can download them from the class notes on Guy will put some interesting reading materials on there, too. I don't go into come a very little in this class. Um, I am very much instinctive about color, and I know there's some fantastic classes on skill share about coming theory. If that's what you're interested in, I personally think if you're mixing coming yourself, you'll soon learn what you feel goes together. Different artists have very different color powers. There are probably millions and millions of colors that one could mix up. Um, Liberty has time for that, huh? Everybody has their own colors that they're drawn to on color combinations that make me feel happy, Onda ones that make them feel less happy. So, depending on the atmosphere you want to create in the painting, you'll use colors according me on doing experiments like this. I'm gonna help you with that, and my next tells I'm going to be encouraging my students to do a piece of abstract work in a critic for their wall. And if you don't this class, you're halfway there, so I do hope you'll check that out. I'm hoping, very mind that I'm now talking to you in mid September. I'm hoping that I will have that class available, and probably the third or fourth week of October. If you want to know when my next last is the easiest thing to do is to follow me on skill share and then you'll be notified any time that I create something new, I'm really looking forward to seeing your work. And in the meantime, if you've got any questions at all, well, any problems or you want to say something about this particular plus, just let me know in the comments below, and I'll reply as soon as I can, but, you know