Alcohol Ink After Party - Paint a Beach Scene

1. Introduction: In this class, you will learn how to paint a scene with a beach and a palm tree, painted using alcohol inks. Hello beautiful people. My name is Trina Brandon. I have a passion for color and a passion for people. That's why I love teaching here on Skillshare. I have many identities. Among them. I am a children's book Illustrator, a surface designer. I license my artwork. I'm a mixed media artist and I'm also a founding contributor to the alcohol ink Art Society. I just love coloring. My favorite art supplies is whatever I have in my hand. And in this class I have alcohol inks in my hand and a paper towel, which is the key to painting a lovely beach scene. This art party is targeted to those of you who like vivid colors and want to create a beach scene using the inks, something to add joy points to your environment. If you have never used the inks before, I recommend that you take my introductory course on alcohol inks, which is available here on Skillshare. You don't have to go to the party first. You can come directly to the after party. I'll share the basics of using alcohol inks. In this class, I will cover safety and supplies. How to safely use the inks, what to be aware of, how to create a background of a beautiful sky, water and beach. How to paint a palm tree and foliage to add interests in depth to your beach scene. I'll also show you how I find references for my scenes. Creating vibrant and interesting artwork with alcohol inks is easy and fun. For the class project, you'll create a greeting card if you've taken any of my classes, you know that I love creating greeting cards as a project. It's a great size to test out new techniques. It can be a nice gift to add joy to your home. Practicing the techniques you'll learn on a small surface gives you the opportunity to get to know the techniques on a small scale and then apply it to a larger scale. The techniques I'm showing You can be used on other surfaces as well that are friendly with alcohol, inks, such as metal and glass. You can use your new skill to create a lovely artwork, to hang in your home, gift to others, or sell your art pieces for extra care. Art is also a way of self-care to help relax your mind. When you participate in class, you'll see how easy it is to create a lovely beach scene. You'll get to experience how the inks blend and dance around together. Each scene will be unique. It will be fun and interesting to see what everyone is making. So let's get started. I'll see you in the alcohol ink after party. 2. Your Project: Hello, I'm glad you're here. In this project video, I'll tell you the steps to making a greeting card for your project and also why I chose this for our project. I chose a greeting card for this project because it is something that is functional and beautiful. A greeting card is a way to let someone know that you care or display it as a piece of artwork in your own space to create joy. If this is the first time you are trying to use this technique, the benefit of trying out on the size of a piece of paper, the size of a greeting card is that you can practice the technique on a smaller scale, which can easily then be applied to a larger scale. So let's talk about what you'll need to make a greeting card. You'll need acid free glue or tape, scissors or a paper trimmer and a piece of card stock cut to the size of your base card. Your art piece will fit on top of your base card. I used a five by seven inch size for my art piece, which is a common size for greeting cards in the USA. If you want to layer your card, you'll need a complimentary color card stock. Once you finish your art piece, you'll trim it to fit your base card and adhere it with the glue or the double-sided tape. If you are giving it away, you can write a message inside. I do have a bonus video included in the alcohol ink art party class here on Skillshare, where I demonstrate how I assemble my greeting cards and add a little details to give a customer touch. As well as I share several tips on assembling a greeting card. You can check out my Skillshare profile for the link. There's also a direct link in the student handout. Also in that bonus lesson, I share how I organize my alcohol eggs. Please take photos or scans of your creations and share them in the class project gallery. If you have any questions, please post them in the discussion area. I'll be checking it often, as well as one of your classmates may have the answer. So let's get started with our lessons. Safety and supplies is up next. See you there. 3. Safety and Supplies: Hello and welcome back. In this video, I will be explaining the supplies used in class and safety practices. The supplies and products that I'll be using in class are listed in the student handout in the class resources. Safety first, the smell of alcohol can sometimes be strong. So be sure to work in a well ventilated area, open a window, or have a fan in the room. The inks are very pigmented and will stain. You will want to wear old clothes and also gloves. Recover your hands with a barrier cream. Cover your work surface. I use a reusable craft mat. I also will use an inexpensive plastic tablecloth underneath which I can reuse. Never put the inks into a spray bottle. There's resin in the inks and you don't want to get that in your lungs. Do not use the inks with things that come into direct contact with food or beverages. And the other thing to be aware of is the incus flammable. Please be mindful of these safety precautions as you use the inks when it's warm enough. I set up a table in the garage with the door open. I learned that from my neighbor Nita. Of course you will need alcohol inks. There are many brands of ink. I'll be using pin, yada, ranger, and Mirabeau. You can use whatever brand you have. These techniques will work the same. If you want to know more about the different brands, please check out my alcohol ink party intro class here on skill share. A few tips for your inks. The inks dry pretty quickly. The more ink you use in an area, the longer it takes to dry. Put the ink taps back on when they are not used for long period of time. I usually close them after I'm finished working with a color. If they do get clogged, poke a pin in the top to clear the nib. Another thing I like to do, color-code my top. This way, I will not put a black tap on my yellow ink and contaminate the color. You'll need some type of paint palette to drip your inks into. I just use this inexpensive paint palette. You'll also need some isopropyl rubbing alcohol. Alcohol comes in different percentages. I'll be using 99% to add to ink color and a lower percentage for cleaning. You can start with whatever percentage alcohol you can find in your area. Just be mindful when you use a lower percentage that could change the color and intensity of the IQ. I pour the alcohol into smaller bottles for ease of use. You go watercolor paper is the paper that I'm using in class. It is a popular surface for the inks. You can use the front or the back. It's in the papers section of the art store, but it's actually a plastic you bought is my favorite service because it is very forgiving with the inks and it blends lovely. U-boat comes in different types and different weights. I'll be using the white paper. You can also use the translucent or heavy mixed media. All will produce a similar results. I'm using a four-and-a-half by six inch piece of Bupa paper. A common greeting card size in the United States. You can buy the paper in a larger size and cut it down to the size you need. I often do this because it's less expensive to buy the larger size paper. You will need paper towels. Will use paper towels for techniques and clean up. Here's a tip. Save your paper towels for collages or backgrounds for other artwork. You'll see that they're really pretty after you use them for clean up. You'll also need a paintbrush. I'm using a size one. But depending on what size paper you decide to use, you may want to use a larger size to seal your artwork. Use a water-based sealer. There are many different types for this project. I'll use a spray sealer if you have another water-based seal or you can use that as well. It may also be helpful to have a piece of scrap cardboard slightly larger than your art piece. Other found items around the house that you can play with to create marks and make texture are welcome. To get started. You do not need all the ink colors. You can just start with a few. Here's the slide with the complete list of supplies. As well as you have this list in the student handout with links. I've also included a photo of the color I used. You can take a snapshot if you want. They are also listed in the handout. If you have any questions, please post them in the class discussion. The next video is a lesson. I'll talk about reference photos and show you one way to paint a sky for your beach scene. See you in the next video. 4. Paint the Sky: Hello and welcome back. In this lesson, I'll talk about reference photos and also demonstrate one way to create a sky. When I draw or paint something new, I like to use a reference. It helps me to get to know the subject as well as some color ideas. One of my go-to sites to find references is Unsplash. It's a royalty free site. I added the link to the site in the student handout. I found a few photos of beach scenes and I updated them in the Student reference section. The name of the files include the photographer's name so they get credit. This first photo I'm using for color inspiration. I noticed that the colors gradually change until it gets to the dark blue, which is the deeper water. And then changes to the lovely light teal. That's the shallow water. Then at the bottom we have the cream color sand. Basically you see the colors change horizontally and the dark blue is our horizon line. That's the effect I'm going for in my little scene. My plan is to bring my sky about halfway down my paper. Don't worry about the strait water line. We'll address that in the next session. Right now we want to paint the sky. There are variety of ways to lay down ink for the sky, creating the background with this technique that I'll show you is easy and the results give a really pretty sky. I want to have some variants in the sky, so it's not one solid color. I'm using two shades of blue, a light blue and a medium blue. I have my window, open, my gloves on and my clothes and cable protected. I put a small piece of double-sided tape on the back of my tuple paper to adhere it to this cardboard. That way I can hold the cardboard when I want to move my scene without touching my artwork. The first thing I do is clean off the surface with the alcohol to make it free from dust, fingerprints, and dirt. Now it's ready to receive the ink. I have picked out my colors for the background and remove the top so I can move as quickly as I need to. I'll be applying a thin coat of ink so it will dry quickly. I'm going to drip color on one side and use a clean paper towel to move the ink across the piece of paper horizontally. I'm right handed, so I'm dripping on the left side. If you are left-handed, you may want to drip on the right side. That way you are pulling the color across the surface, which gives a more smooth results. You can do whatever is most comfortable for you. I start by adding a little line of alcohol, which helps to spread the ink smoothly. Using my paper towel, I pull the color across off the edge. I returned and do it again slightly moving, the sky flows nicely. I also created some movement in my sky by swerving a little. I continue this process until I'm happy with the results. It's smooth and the color goes all the way across. If I see anything I don't like like a spot. I can repeat the process. Just be mindful that the more alcohol you add, it will lighten your sky. The idea is to create some movement and variance in the color. This technique naturally creates some lighter areas which matches what our real skies look like. At this point. I'm happy with my sky, so I'll stop here. Don't worry about the bottom of color. We'll address that in the next lesson. In the next lesson we add the water and the beach. See you there. 5. Paint the Water and Beach: Hi and welcome back. In this lesson, I'll show you how to paint the water and the beach. We see in the photo that the horizon is sharp. To get that sharp line at the top of the deep fodder, I use the same method to pull color across my scene, being mindful of the line, using the same technique as for the sky. I pull color across with my clean paper towel ready. I will make it as straight as I can. I'm using dark blue and teal colors, painting the shallow water simultaneously for a nice blend. Dark blue at the top and the tail a bit lower. Add a little alcohol also to make it smooth and flow nicely across the page. Because I am working on you Paul paper. A very forgiving surface. I can repeat this process as many times as I need to. Adding a little more ink as I need to. Personally, I don't throw any paper away, although I have decided to start over. I'll save that badly colored surface for another project. Here I'm going to add a little more ink to try to get a sharp line. I'm trying to pull straight. I see that my line is going higher than I want to. So I'll drop in some more sky color to bring that sky down a bit lower. Pulling across with a clean paper towel. You will find it can be a bit of back and forth until you achieve the look that you want. If you are having a hard time getting that straight line, try turning your paper upside down or even vertically and pull down the color. You may have better results with that. By pulling the paper towel and color across additional times, I create some lines and variance and the water that naturally happens. My goal is to create enough of a color difference so that you can see where the sky ends and the water begins. Next, I add a little bit more teal to deepen the color. To add highlights and the water, I'll add a small amount of alcohol to the paper towel and lightly swipe across. The beauty of using the inks in combination with this forgiving paper is that you can always redo the scenes. I really have not used that much ink. And I'm still on one piece of paper. Moving to the sand, I make sure I have a clean paper towel and I'll drip vanilla along the edge of the bottom while trying to leave a little white space between the water and the sand to represent that little foam edge that you see between water and land. I want it to be a little darker so I add a little more ink. And then I let it set just for a second. Then gently dab my paper towel to create some texture from the pattern of the paper towel. And now I have my sky, my ocean, and my sandy beach. My deep ocean is not as dark as my reference photo, but I'm okay with that. Once I get the palm tree up in the little scene, I feel like it will all come together. So look at your background and see if it makes you smile. If not, you can add more ink or wipe away or reduce some sections. In the next lesson, I'll add a palm tree to the beach. See you there. 6. Paint the Palm Tree: Hello and welcome back. In this lesson, I'll be painting in the palm tree. I don't need gloves for this next technique because I'm using a paintbrush to apply the ink. If you have sensitive skin, you may still want to continue using the gloves. For my palm tree inspiration, I'm using one of the other photographs from Unsplash. I plan to place the tree on the left side of my little scene. I take a moment to look at the shape of the tree, the shape of the palms. I'm not going for realism, I'm just looking for inspiration. And then I'm going to paint in my own style, as I recommend to you, it's good to understand the shapes and subjects in your art, even if you're not going for realism, to paint specific objects, I'll use a more controlled method for painting with the inks. I have a palette here with individual sections where I can drip the different colors. The inks are reactivated with alcohols similar to watercolor. With this technique, we want to focus on using a small amount of ink on our paintbrush. That way you have control of how it flows. The good news is, if you do make any mistakes, let it dry and paint over it. I encourage you to have fun and experiment. I like to paint a guide of my subjects very loosely. Make sure your background is dry. I'm using a dark brown for my trunk. Add a little alcohol into the brown of dried ink to reactivate it. And then use a small paintbrush to dip into the ink and draw the guide. I have my paper towels handy so that I'll be able to dab off any extra ink or alcohol. Use a very light touch when I paint the guide, my apologies. It may not show up on the video very well. I'll try to make them a little darker. I pick up my brush and paint again lightly. The more pressure you use, the more ink and alcohol that will be laid down, which could cause the ink to spread beyond where you want. I paint the trunk thicker at the bottom and thinner at the top. Taking my time and dipping into ink as I need to. I can tell when I need to because I run out of ink or start dry brushing where my smooth lines kinda skip. It's important to make sure that your brush is not too wet with ink to avoid the ink spreading beyond where you want. You can see I dab off on my paper towel is often as I think I need to. As you paint with the inks, you'll get a feel for the consistency of ink and alcohol on your brush tip. Whenever I dip into alcohol, I dab on my paper towel. Clean your brush between colors and alcohol. Before you paint on your scene, make sure you dab your brush on the paper towel. For the palm leaves, I dripped into colors of green. Plus there are likely some other greens in my palette from past painting. That does not bother me. I'm just looking for a variance and my leaves, the ink has dried, so I need to add a few drops of alcohol to reactivate. I refer to my reference photo again to see the shape of the leaves and the direction and slowly add the lines. Adding more ink to my brushes I need to, my plan is to paint the leaves with spaces in between them on the first pass and then come back on a second pass and fill in more leaves. I encourage you to take your time and allow yourself to practice finding the right amount of wetness in your ink. I started the stem pulling in the direction to create that palm tree shape. I'm getting a dry brush effect and I like that for the leaves. So I go until the paint runs out and then I dip back into my ink. If you're ever concerned that you have too much ink, dab it off on your paper towel. I feel like I need another palm in that opening, so I draw it in and add leeks. I add drops of ink as I need more in my palette. Be mindful not to drip ink on your artwork. As soon as I open that first bottle, I realized where I was right over my artwork. Since this is fresh ink out the bottle, I do not need to add alcohol. I dip into the ink and dab it on the paper towel since it's right out of the bottle. I paint around for the second pass of leaves. Next up, I'll finish painting the palm tree. 7. Finish the Palm Tree: In this lesson, I'll finish painting the palm tree. You can see in the photo that the palms also have some brown leaves. So I'll come back in and add brown leaves. My brown ink is dry, so I'll add just a small amount of alcohol from my cleaning container. The ink is brown. The cleaning containers brown. It's okay. Another thing to be mindful of, our drips of alcohol that sometimes clean to the brush above the bristles. Those drips could drip onto my art work and cause a big blob. So be mindful of that and just tap it off on your paper towel. I add in some brown leaves, not everywhere, just here and there. Oops, I had a little bit too much alcohol. So I'm going to let that dry and I'll show you how to cover that up. I'm glad that happened. Painting reminds me of cooking is not how well the dish turns out when it comes out of the oven. It's how well you can fix it before it hits the table. I clean my brush because I'm going back in with green. Here's a tip. Turn your paper towel to clean off your brush so you're cleaning in a clean area and don't pick up that old color. Whoops, area has dried completely. I go back in and paint the leaves sharper in small strokes. I fill in all that area that had too much alcohol. I'll also add some brown. I'll be sure to tap off when I think I have too much ink or too much alcohol. I'm looking at my leaves. I want to bring up the palm branch in front, so I add more leaves to that branch. There's also a center at the top of the tree called the crown stock? Yes. In case you were wondering, I had to Google it. It's called I paint in with a mix of sand color and brown following the shape from the reference photo, I see that each branch comes out from the stack. So I want to paint that to match. Palm trees have those little horizontal lines up the trunk. Depending on the color of your tree, you may want to use a darker color to add lines, or you can use alcohol to remove some of the trunk to create those lines? I am going to use alcohol because I have a dark trunk, a dip in the alcohol and dab off excess on my paper towel and paint in the lines. It takes a moment before you see the effect. If you want more contrast, repeat these steps. After I add in the lines, I just take a moment to look at my tree, the overall tree against the background, and I'm happy where I am, so I'm going to stop here. In the next lesson. We'll add some foliage and details. See you there. 8. Paint the Foliage and Details: Hello and welcome back. In this lesson, I will explain how to add painterly foliage and a few details in the little scenes. Here's an opportunity for you to use any found objects to add texture to your scene. I'll be using my brush, but please feel free to experiment texture. I will use the same greens from the palm tree to paint the foliage around the base of the trunk. My plan is to paint in some loosely painterly foliage around the trunk base and then add a little detail. I scribbled and dabbed the brush to create a bit of background. Leave some space so you can see the SAM through the foliage and make it darker in the front, lighter in the back. Now add some leaf shape details. Another benefit of the inks is that they create a natural texture and blend. So you do not have to work too hard. Next on to the beach. To add texture to the beach, I'm going to try to spread the bristles with my finger and then dip it in the brown. I'll just tap my brush around the beach for some interest. I dab, dab, dab until I'm happy. Here are some other scenes I painted. I'm planning to make all of these into greeting cards. In this one, I put the tree in the middle and painted a different shape for my palm leaves. I added in foliage and x scribbly way. I pulled the color in the sky, I added a little purple. And you can see I did not pull across all the way, but I like the swirled in the sky, so I stopped. And this is why the trees in the middle, this scene, I created more full palm leaves. I painted the foliage and that same scribbling way. I disliked that technique. I like the look of that, the painterly look. I also painted the beach with a curve. That was just a matter of how I pulled my paper towel. In this next scene, I put the palm tree on the right and experimented with trying to get some highlights and the water using a paper towel. Again, I used a small amount of alcohol on the paper towel to create some variation in the water. I think I went a little overboard, but I still like the overall scene. And then this one, I added quite a bit of purple in the sky and put in less beach. There's lots of ways to make your beach scene. I encourage you to have fun with it and put your own style into it. In the next video, I'll show you how to seal your artwork. See you there. 9. Seal Your Artwork: Hi and welcome back. In this lesson, I will be showing you how I see all my artwork. To seal ink, our work. You want to use a water-based sealer. Spring varnish is a great way to produce even results. Be sure to spray outside. You want to read the directions on the can, follow them. You can set your painting upright or flat. Spray three light coats. And the reason you want to spray light coats is to reduce the chance of pooling. Starting off the piece, I spray, let it dry, spray, let it dry. And one more time spray and let it dry. I also included a link to a video and the student handout for how to sell your artwork. Be sure to let it dry completely before you handle it. Up. Next is a video where I share my reference journals with you and tell you how I use them. See you there. 10. Bonus - Reference Journal: Hello and welcome back. In this bonus video, I will be talking about the benefits of keeping a reference journal. A reference journal, holes, examples of different techniques. You've tried. Things that you can refer back to. You can add notes of the steps that you took, what worked, what didn't, and any other information you want to include. So here I have a couple alcohol ink journals that I keep. This first one is a mixed media journal. It's made by Canson. It was actually a nine by 12 size, but I went to my local office supply store and had it cut in half for a smaller version. So what I've captured here on these pages about my alcohol inks is once I put alcohol ink down, what types of pins that I have still work over the ink. And also, since these pages were mixed media, I put down a jest so underneath to make sure that the inks would not soak into the paper. That's one technique, another technique you can use with your alcohol inks. If you don t have tuple paper or like a glossy paper, you have a matte paper or even watercolor. You can put Jess so on top of it and then use your inks. It's not quite the same results that you get with you or paper or the smooth ER, papers. But it does allow the inks to mix together and create some interesting results. On this page, e.g. I. Dripped ink and then use the different pens that I had to ride on top to see what showed up. Well, here, I stamped circles, then dripped ink and created this diary of all the different ink colors that I have. Here's another example where I just dripped ink. And as a reminder, all these pages were covered with Jess so before I dropped the ink on them. So here I was just making a record of the different colors for some new inks that I purchased. Here again, I was just trying out pins. So I, after I put the JSON, I tried dripping color and using a paintbrush and a pen to create a little drawing here and then try different pens. So that's an example of one type of journal. Another journal that I have here. I actually have a binder and the sleeves where I inserted different pieces of art that I did and put notes in there. E.g. on the cover. This was a class I took and so I put the notes for what I did in the class and how I created this little scene as well as here. This was actually an embossing folder that I put some UPA paper through and then send it through the embossing machine. And it created these like ridges. And then I use the alcohol ink and dripped it inside and painted inside the little ridges to create this little scene. So that was a lot of fun. Here is when I first learned about alcohol x. I don't have any notes because by the time that I started keeping this journal, I had already a few pieces of alcohol, ink projects just saved up and I thought I need to put these in some kind of journal so that I can keep track of all these different techniques. I really loved how these turned out, so I just have them on the front. I know that this is when I discovered Kenyatta gold and how beautiful the gold is with the inks. This is another example of some of the information that you may want to keep. These are my Copic markers are alcohol-based and I also have some spectrum Anwar markers. And so I created a color wheel basically of the different markers that created the color wheel. Here also I was dripping based on the color wheel, the Ranger. At one time they were called Adirondacks and now they're call Ranger, but it's the same manufacturer, all the different colors that I had and I just loved this strip. As a matter of fact, this is a strip that I use in the class. Here are just other examples of trying it with glue, drying it with stencils, dripping alcohol on top, and getting these different cool effects. I just basically wanted to share this with you to show you an example of what you could do with a journal and the type of information that you would keep and that you could look back on later for the techniques you really enjoyed or the things you'd think. I'm never gonna try that technique again. Just to give you an idea of some of the things you can keep in your reference journal just based on the experience and the experimentation that you do with alcohol inks, it's easy to save it so that you can look back later and think about what you really enjoyed about certain techniques or which techniques you never wanna do again. I hope this gave you some ideas. Up next, please join me for a quick summary. I'll see you there. 11. Summary: Congratulations, you have finished the class. I hope you learned some new techniques, enjoyed painting your beach, and just had a good time. In this class, I covered safety using alcohols and supplies for making a beach scene. Preparing your paper to receive the inks. A simple and fun technique to paint a sky and water background with a palm tree. And finally, how to seal your artwork. I hope the bonus video gave you some ideas for creating your reference journal that you can use for the inks as well as other mediums. Be sure to save the student handout with a summary of the steps, the list of supplies with links and additional alcohol ink references. If there's one thing that I hope you take away from this class, it's saying how easy it is to paint with alcohol inks and create something that brings you joy. Kindly leave a review. I'd appreciate knowing what you thought about the class as well as it lets others know what to expect. Also, please follow me here on Skillshare so you'll know when I release a new class, if you post your artwork on social media, please tag me. I'd love to share your artwork with my followers. My Instagram handle is Trina Brandon. All one word. Thank you so much for joining me. See you next time. Take care and stay positive.