Acrylic Painting Warm Up - Loosen Up - Loose Painting Botanical Flower Vases

1. Introduction: Welcome to my acrylic painting warm-up class, where we'll focus on loosening up with a flower vase. Have you ever sat down to paint and you didn't know where to start or how to get going. These Firebase projects smoked your hands and brushes loosened up before you start painting, a more involved painting. Or they will become your mini masterpieces for the day. They are great for trying out how different colors work together. Maybe you have a palette of colors in mind and you want to try them together before you commit to them. Not only are these great warm-up pieces, they can be great, quick, cute gifts, or they can be low-priced pieces to sell to get more interest in your art. I hope you'll join me in creating multiple versions of these expressive flower basis. Let's get started. 3. Painting Vases: To get started, I have my stack of 109 by 12 watercolor papers. I am using £140 paper for this, but any kind of paper that will accept acrylic paint will work. And I have black acrylic paint ready on my palette and a small flat brush. I'm going to have the video playing at a higher speed for a bit while I talk. And then when I'm done talking, I'll slow it down so that you can see how fast it actually goes. I like to start by remembering to keep my work loose, work fast, and don't think too much. I find I end up liking my work more when I do this and I definitely have more fun. I'm going to paint a series of ten bases with stems, one right after the other. This is called batching your art work or you do multiples of basically the same techniques and colors all at the same time. The saves time, and you already have the supplies out. So why not make more than one similar piece? You'll notice as I get about three of these done, I realized that I forgot to paint the lines to indicate the separation of a table and a wall. So I will go back and add those in and then continue doing that for the rest of the time. Trying to think of as many shapes of basis as you can while you paint and add as many stems as you want. And remember, keep loose, work fast and don't think too much. I'm going to slow the video back to normal speed now and continue the rest of the vases and stems. I start by drawing an oval opening for the base on this one and making a rounded bottom. I add as many stems as I feel looks good starting some from the top and sweeping my brush down quickly. And starting from the bottom and sweeping my brush up quickly. I'm going to continue painting the rest of the basis using the same techniques, just different shapes of basis. And then at the end of this video, before you go to the next one, you can either let your papers dry or you can go right on to adding the colored flowers in the next video. 4. Painting Flowers: It's time to start painting flowers. And I am again going to be batching my artwork, working with one color at a time and moving from base to base. And when I am done, I will have ten different flower pictures that I can leave as is, or add more to them. These flowers are gonna be so easy because they are basically blobs, just a few brush strokes for each. With a large brush. The brush I'm using is a flat one-inch brush. I'll speed up the video and you can see how I painted five of my papers with blue flowers, five of my papers with purple flowers. And I did about three or four flowers and each one trying to space them out. And remember, keep loose, work fast and don't think too much. Hi For the rest of the paintings, I'm going to continue working with one color at a time and pulling out different paintings to create many different color combinations. This is also a good time to try color combinations that you want to experiment with. If you end up not liking them, you didn't waste much time trying out how they look together. As I'm painting, you'll see that I have a tendency not to wash my brush between colors. The choice that is up to you. You just want to make sure you don't mix colors that won't work together. Like I would not use yellow and then purple without washing my brush. First. If I want Brown flowers. I'll speed the video up again and you'll see that I continue to paint about three or four flowers of each color on each painting. And they end up putting three or four flower colors on each painting. I don't allow for any drying time. My paint is still wet when I add another color. As you are working, think about filling spaces that look too empty. And you can also overlap flowers. If you don't have enough space. When you are done, you can go right to the next video and start learning different additions. You can add to these paintings or you can let them dry and do the rest of the videos at another time. 5. Addition #1: In the previous videos, we painted basis and flowers and you can leave your lovely paintings like that, or you can choose to add more to them. There are a lot of different things you could add to change the look of your paintings. And we'll explore one option in this video. And then you can do the rest of my videos for more options. I have one of my paintings here that I felt that either stand on its own or benefit from something a little more. I have another one I use this technique on, and it isn't really simple addition and it will help you loosen up. I have black paint and a small flat brush, and I'm simply going to make imperfect circles. I'm going to remember to keep loose, work fast and not think too much. I want this to be a quick activity to get my body arm in mind loosened up. This was a really quick addition. And with this addition and all of the ones yet to come, you can paint them when your flowers are wet or dry. I usually work when they are wet because I do all of my steps in one sitting. Please join me in the next video for another easy addition idea. 6. Addition #2: Edition number two is simply adding background color to your paintings. I like to paint with a dry brush so I get an uneven look and I usually use one of the colors from my palette that isn't already in this painting for the wall. And then a color that is in the painting for the table. And I usually don't wash my brush between colors. I like to leave whitespace between the flowers are based and the background. It makes it easier to keep this as a fast painting. And I think it makes the flowers popcorn. I also like to use a wide flat brush to paint the background because a lot quicker and I like that. It kind of stops me from trying to be perfect. It helps me accept any mistakes that I make. I also like to paint between some of the flowers and stems to give the idea that you can see through the flowers and that they are not one solid mass. This, I have to slow down a little bit far because this is a smaller space and I have such a large brush. Please join me in the next video to see how I combine additions number 12 for a whole new luck. 7. Combining 1&2: In this video, I'm gonna show you how combining the first two addition ideas can create a whole new look. I have a painting here that I've already painted the background colors on, which was shown in the edition number two video. With a small brush and black paint. I'm going to paint imperfect circles on the flowers like I did in the edition number one video. I've already done these and other paintings, but by combining the two, it creates a whole new look. Please join me in the next video for another edition idea. 8. Addition #3: In this video, I'm going to add another idea that you could do for your paintings. By painting the vase. A whole new look is achieved for your paintings. When I paint the base, I paint just like I did with the background close to the black lines, but leaving a little whitespace in-between. Please join me in the next video, where I combine all the ideas so far into one painting. 9. Combining 1 2 & 3: I already have a painting here that I painted the background on, which we practice in the edition number two video. And I painted the base like we did in the last video. Now I am going to add imperfect circles like we did in the first edition video. So now we've added quite a few elements to this painting for a completely different look from the rest. Please join me in the next video for another interesting idea. 10. Addition #4: I wanted to first show in this video how adding metallic acrylic paint to the background can add a new look to these paintings. Now that I have the background painted, instead of adding imperfect circles, I'm going to add imperfect squares and move the brush quickly and sometimes overlap the squares. By adding squares to the flowers, it creates a cubist look and breaks up the space for a whole different field. Please join me in the next video for another idea with squares. 11. Addition #5: In this video, I am going to add a checkerboard pattern to the table area of the painting. I am using metallic gold for the first color and just using the width of my brush to make the squares. This checkerboard idea gives me the feeling that this vase of flowers is on a kitchen table that has a checkerboard tablecloth on it. Now I am painting the second color in the checkerboard pattern, purposely making the shapes imperfect with whitespace between the two colors. This creates an implied white line between the colors without actually painting a white line. Please join me in the next video where I add loose flower drawings to a painting. 12. Addition #6: I already have a painting here that I have added a checkerboard pattern to like we experienced in the last video. Now I'm going to use a permanent marker to draw on quick gestural flower shapes. I tried to use a few different types of flower drawings, and I don't always stay completely on the painted flower shape. I just use the painted shape as a guide for where a flower would be, not necessarily for what size it would be. These are all quick drying, staying in line with the idea that these all can be quick warm-up paintings. Please join me in the next video where I recap all of the paintings we did together. 13. Our Finished Work: I hope you enjoyed painting with me and I hope you will upload pictures of all of the paintings you made for others to enjoy. If you want a warm up before doing more tedious in both paintings, you can always do these quick flower paintings. And remember to keep loose, work fast and don't think too much.