Transcripts
1. Introduction to Painting with Inks: we'll be painting today with alcohol ink on you. Po paper is this beautiful northern lights kind of look and there's a moon in the background there. Uh, and I'll take you through a step by step, how to create this on you PO paper. So here's a close up of our seen that will be working on today, and I have to say, Alcohol Inc is just a fabulous medium. Beautiful colors will go over in this class all the materials that you'll need to create this painting using alcohol ink on you, Po as well as we'll go over the inks what they look like. We'll cover you, po paper what that is and where you can get it, as well as how the alcohol inks react to one another and I can use them in a painting. So if you have a hard time finding the U PO paper in your local area, you can also use just a white glossy tile and create the same type of painting on them. And it will be a little bit different on the tiles, and I'll show you how you're gonna want to seal your alcohol ink on you. po versus how you seal it. Using a time, I'm gonna show you how to get this unique look, But you're gonna be ableto use your own colors and you're gonna have your own style in your own way of doing things. But I'm just going to show you basically how I do it. Every class that I've taught, it's it's always interesting to see what people come up with. The end, even though everyone is taking the same classes, 20 to 30 people taking the course, and every one of them looks different. So compared with me
2. Moonscape AI Materials: Well, hello there. And welcome to our alcohol. In course, if you are in brand new to alcohol inks, this is a great starter course. So this is what they look like. This is made by Adirondack. There are many other brands that you can get and they have some great color combos. There always come out with new stuff. So for the moonscape course, we're going to use syllable blue, watermelon and Citrus ing in the class here. Remember, if you don't have those exact colors, if they've changed that on you not to worry, just get something that's really similar. Doesn't really matter exactly what color you use. You can really work with any of those. Oh, grab any red, blue and green and you can begin to mix. Of course, you can try other color combos, and I recommend trying things out as well. So because they're alcohol based, these inks will dry very quickly on you. So what a lot of books will use is blending solution. This is made by the same company, Adirondack. There is also a brand called pinata, which is beautiful little colors that they have, and they have some, um, cleanup solution. And they also have an extender which works similar to this. And you can also use just regular isopropyl 91% alcohol. You don't want to use the 70% because it has a little bit more water to, and it doesn't work quite a swell, so we'll be using you po paper. When this class first came out, you po paper was a little bit difficult to find, and now you can find it just about everywhere. It's poly propylene, so it's made of a more plasticky material. You can also use mineral paper for this, which I often use. This is a little bit thicker, a little bit heavier, and it tends to glide a little bit more on. It does not buckle on you. Where's mineral papers? A little bit thinner, so you'll have a little sometimes buckling, especially when you spray it. Now you po paper does come in a number of different sizes. Five by 79 by 12 They also have some 22 by 30 sheets and then, if you really like and you want to do some really big alcohol ink paintings, they have the roles of it, which is I think I don't know how many yards, 60 yards or something like that. So lots of options for sizes for you. I do recommend if you're new to the to the medium, start small because it drives fast on you. It's still easier to work with. So, as I had mentioned, I used the 91% alcohol. And depending on where you live, this might be a little bit more challenging, defined here in the United States, we confined this pretty much of any, uh, a local pharmacy or even actually, they have it at the supermarket Now here, if you can only find, ah, 99% that works great, Teoh. 70% will work, but as I said before, it doesn't flow quite a swell. But it's great for cleaning your brushes. So speaking of brushes will use just a fine, small brush. Any round brush will work and make sure that it's nylon, so you don't ruin those nice sable brushes from the watercolor brushes their expensive. So I get something inexpensive for this, especially when you're first starting. You also need some gloves to protect your hands because the inks do stain. I would recommend very good ventilation in your area. I also have a video on a vapor mask if you are sensitive to the smell, which a lot of people can be. If you have concerns, check with your doctor. So obviously it will need paper towels. And now, when I first started, I used bounty Riva. Some are being on your brand. Some have a little bit more lint in them, so just be careful of that and you'll see in the painting here things will get in your all callings anyway. They just things will show it from flying in the air. It's amazing, Uh, so you also use just a cotton rag, too. I also have these little backer boards there, foam and my mats. I like to have that with me. Tape that tape down the U PO paper using some type of blue painter's tape or frog tape, something that it doesn't seep down underneath. But I'm gonna frame mine so I don't usually see the edges. Anyway, you need two cups for your alcohol, one for dirty one for clean. If you want to use a Sharpie Sharpie Zehr. Wonderful to get some really fine lines in your alcohol inks. Now, One thing is, you have to make sure that your alcohol is completely dry before you use a Sharpie or it you have a hard time or writing with it actually on your U boat paper if it's still wet and then my other fund thing is gel pen. This is a white gel pen. You got to be careful with this as well. This one's made by unit ball. They have Posca pens. There's a lot of different options for paint pens. Ah, they do tend to not stay white, so make sure if you want to keep it white, you spray it with some sealant and I'll cover that with you shortly and then you could right over it, and it will stay bright white. This is another option for you. We're not using us for the class, but I wanted to make you aware of it. These are spectrum new are markers and these air alcohol based pens. This is another thing that you can use in place of sharpies. It does reactivate the inks, but they're great way to get some fine details in your paintings if you want, and this one actually has a wide nib and a more fine point nib. So those were real fun. And here is what I use to seal my alcohol ings. This is came are varnish can be found here in the U S. Pretty much everywhere overseas. Sometimes you might have a little bit harder time finding this, but you can use Rustoleum. There's a couple other options. Check with the Alcohol Inc. Our community, if you live outside the United States and and you can maybe find out from someone there what they used to seal it with. If you cannot find the came, are and then also the UV clear resistance spray, this will help protect your alcohol inks from fading. And what I like to do is use UV glass for my alcohol inks, and that helps protect them as well. Because they're not like, fast. They're made basically as a craft item. They were not made for fine art, and they are working on that now, seeing if they can prolong the light Fastness of this
3. Prepare the yupo paper by taping it down and learn how to make sure oils are removed before painting: All right, So we're going to get started with how to prepare our U boat paper, and I'm gonna take those two cups that I had and I'm gonna fill those up with the 91% isopropyl alcohol, and we're to use Thies to clean our brushes. And the reason why I have to is that we can rinse off one and have are dirty are dirty cup and then we have our clean alcohol. So when we go to switch our colors, we won't muddy them up. Now, I'm gonna grab that backer board, and you can use anything to tape your paper down on, but you're gonna want to use something so that you can turn your paper as your as your painting on it. Somebody grab my pad of you put paper. And again, this is the five by seven size, and I'm gonna try to get this centered in here as best as I can If you can get those lined up perfectly and want him to do any kind of adjusting once I'm done my painting. Not to mention if I tape it to just 1/4 inch all the way around here when I get ready to frame it and matter, I won't lose any of my painting or have any white spots showing. So that's why I try to center it, Justus best as I can. Somebody just tape all four corners of this up now again, coming down just about 1/4 of an inch in and you could test it by putting your mat over the top of it to make sure that you don't see any blue tape that will. You know, when you get ready to mad it, you will have all of your painting showing. So let's just get this tested out. So the man on top here and we're perfect on here, So everything will be in the painting when we're done, so your fingers can pick up lots of oils, and it will leave little marks on your you po paper. So what I recommend doing is cleaning your you put paper before you start with the 91% isopropyl alcohol, and you just need to put a little bit on a tissue. And as far as what you're using for your tissues, I do recommend a brand called Viva Epic. If you don't have it. That's OK, but it just tends to not leave as much. Um, little pieces air material on your paper. Sometimes the tissues can leave little little markings on there. So you just gonna wipe that down and you should be ready to paint now?
4. Learn how to use a pouring technique with Inks to create a smooth background.: All right, now we have it all cleaned off. We're gonna go ahead and put our gloves on. I don't always wear my gloves, the inks staying. But if you use alcohol, you can usually get it off fairly quickly. Sometimes the darker colors will last a couple of days. So, um, pitting on how much pouring you're gonna dio usually all use the gloves for the pouring part, and then I'll switch to taking them off for today's purposes Will leave them on already. Have ink on my fingers is you could see from the beginning there. Ah, we're gonna be using three colors today. And again, it's watermelon, sailboat, blue and Citrus. And we're gonna start with the Citrus and a sailboat blue, and we're gonna be doing this pouring motion. So what I'm gonna do is I'm taking the caps off of these. I'm gonna grab my blending solution. What we're gonna be doing first is we're gonna be pouring this blending solution all over this u boat paper and you want to be quite generous while you're pouring this on because we want that background to be completely wet and I'm taking my finger and just kind of rubbing this all over the paper and you can see there's a little bit of machine on here and I'm gonna start with my Citrus green and I'm just pouring it. And we're gonna rock this back and forth and you can see how just kind of glides on here. And if you get a little spot that's not coverages. Rub your finger crossed it. You have to do this part when it's completely wet, though you don't want this to dry if you want this nice, smooth background and needs to be completely wet. So I just added a little bit of the sailboat blue in here. Well, still, what if you need to add a little more? You can do that. You can see where it's blending and beautifully with that green, and I'm gonna switch to go back to my Citrus green again. And I'm just layering this down the paper and this is gonna be our sky. You could say I twist in turn, turned upside down. Whatever's easier for you more comfortable for you. We're gonna do our next layer of sailboat blue, and you could see again where it's mixed in beautifully with that Citrus And again, another squirt of the Citrus. I'm just doing this rocking motion back and forth again, filling in any areas that I didn't get any paint, and I was gonna dump the rest of this with the blue cause this is gonna be the water down on the front. But you see how this kind of blooms and expands. It does some fabulous things. Sometimes less is more with the ink. So we just let the things kind of do what they want to do a go where they want to go. So I'm just kind of cleaning up the edge here, just taking out the excess paint. I'm waiting for this to get done moving and seeing what it's gonna dio because it's slowly starting to drive because we have that blending solution in there. It's gonna take a lot longer than if you just use inks by themselves. Some of the colors will dry within, like, six seconds on you if you want to make a little texture conceivable Straw here and I just kind of blowing on it, and you could see how you get that nice movement and then I'm gonna tip it up and because we want a fairly smooth look on this one. This is your sky in your water area. But you say you have to use a straw. I just want to show you really quick what it will dio, and you could play with that later. So when a pop the cover back on this because again it's ink and alcohol based, so we don't want it to dry out on us. Try to keep the covers on there as much as I can. I'm gonna grab my little fine detail brush, and you could start to see how you could make some movement in here. We're toe make this line almost just above center, and this is gonna be our water line or her rise in line and you could see how it kind of blends and moves back in. So this is all about timing on how dry or how wet your Incas. And this is something you really have to play with and you learn as you as you work with the medium and I'm gonna let this kind of rise old looks well funny there, see how kind gives it a nice, smooth smooth look. So this is still wets. It's still moving. I got a little piece of Mars telling you about the paper towels, how sometimes it can leave little, well, fragments of paper or dust or whatever you whatever slowing around in your air will show up on the inks. And sometimes the sentiment in the bottles will show Oppa's well. So I'm doing is taking my brush. And while this is still wet, can't do this one that starts to drive a girl to leave marks on them. But you can see the marks just kind of fade back in and get still moving so it disappears right around it again. But you can kind of pick up any of those little pieces. What time? By the time you're done and you batted your trees and your other things on here, you don't even notice them. And again, I'm gonna make that same line her eyes online here. Soon as I get a few more, keep finding them. We'll go back and make the horizon line down the center here again shortly. I'm just waiting it for it to dry just a little bit more. No, go ahead and give it a shot here and see what is going to do is I'm pulling that pain almost out and you can see where it's lightened a lot, and you put paper does tend to staying with some of these darker colors. I'm just pulling some of that pain now. I'm just slightly pushing down on my paper. I'm going to give this a little bit of highlights in the water hair and again it's still moving. I'm wiping it off, wiping the ink off each time. As I do that, it's Do you see how that's just kind of pills or a back in? But it gives you a little bit of a lightness in here, okay, and then we'll move on to the next section will be adding some trees.
5. Adding Islands in Background: All right. So I'm gonna grab one of my cups, and you can use either cup where you can use a painting mixing Trey, Whatever's convenient for you. I'm escorting a little bit of that watermelon into the cup and then I'm filling my brush up with it. I'm tapping down here very carefully cause I want to see what this is going to dio. You want to make sure that background is nice and dry before you do this step, and you could see where my first put my brush down. It's a little bit more red, and that's okay. It's gonna do some different things, different places for you. And I like the way this looks because this red, really, as it mixes with these blues, is turning more of a purple color, which these air often a distance islands. So I like. I like that. Look, if you want years more red well, what you want to do is just keep adding a little bit of that more of the red paint to what you have on here rather than what I'm doing is I'm kind of mixing it in with that blue. Now you could see this is pretty dark. And even in my little mixing Trey, you could see where I have a little bit of the blue and they're purple. So all I'm doing is making this tapping motion tapping in my trees up and down Tap, tap, tap. The first island is smaller. The second island's gonna be a little bit larger, so our tree is gonna be a little bit bigger. I'm going down to the 2nd 1 I'm doing the same thing and again, you just test it just slightly when you first put your brush down just to see what it's gonna June's, he how much it's gonna bloom, the more wet your paint is, the more it will expand on you. So I'm just kind of filling the brush just the tips of these brushes and kind of filling it in as I'm going along here, cover up the other blue area and you could make these trees a little taller and you can see when I hit that over the second time it was more of a red color. So if you tap on a color that's already there, sometimes we'll do some different things for you. That's the nice thing about inks that it's surprising. It's always offering surprises to you. And as you work with a your you get surprised a little bit less. I'm still surprised after two years working with us, and what I'm gonna do is just rinse my brush off because we don't want this to turn into mud. So I'm gonna rinse that one off really? Well, wipe off my paintbrush and they're going to my clear to make sure that my Russians, nice to clean you could see it didn't didn't discolor it at all. So I have a fresh clearing brush and we could move on to the grass, which is the next step.
6. Adding Grass - Learn to use a layering technique and add grass.: All right. So our next step is gonna be to add some grass and I'm feeling lazy here, and I'm just gonna pour a little bit of this green right here on the tape. And while it's wet, I'm gonna tap into it here, Philip, my brush and you could see where it almost pull That blew right out of the way. It gives us nice, cool three D effect, and that's why we start, usually with the background. And then we we layer this as we come a little closer because this is gonna be the closest to you. And this is also gonna be the one of the latest things that in our painting. So once you get that filled in there, you can see how this is still slightly moving around. And while this is still wet, I'm gonna take my brush and I'm gonna do this flicking motion for the grass. And I'm, as you can see, that the grass is always a little bit wider at the bottom, a little center at the top. So I'm usually putting most of my pressure when I first place the brush down and as I flick it up right. I lift the pressure off of the off of the brush a little bit. So I get this nice, sharp blade at the very top. If you need to load up on a little bit more pinks as it starts to dry, you'll find that it won't move anymore on you so you could add a little bit more paint. And I'm almost taking you. See that line in the background? And as this paint comes up through there, I'm kind of blending that sharp edge raid off of the paper. And these this grass will go all different ways. So you don't wanna have the same direction, every single blade of grass you want to come, come to the left or the right as you're doing. It just makes some adjustments to make it look more realistic. Go ahead and just wrench your brush off Really good. Make sure that's nice and clean and will be moving on to the next section and will be adding some rocks down to the bottom of those islands in the background.
7. Adding Rocks: all right. Moving on to the rocks, I'm gonna open up my sailboat blue again and just put a little bit on the corner here. You don't, you know, use a whole lot of ink and it drives really fast. So on. Lee scored a little bit of time as you move along in the process, and you can see what I'm tapping this in. Look how much lighter this is getting with this blue and the gangs. What that does is it just kind of disperses the inks when you're putting wet ink on dry ink pushes aside whatever is underneath. So that brings that forward again. Looks lighter. I'm gonna go ahead and squirt a little bit more on here, and I'm gonna do the other side very lightly because these are further away. So you really not going to see a whole lot of detail with this? So just maybe a little bit on the very bottom here it was. Just lightens it up, and you see how you could just you can pull the paint right out of there, pulling a great off lightened right up. I'm just kind of bringing this across the bottom here. just to define that line where the water meets the shore area there with the same thing on this side. Maple a little bit of sparkle in the water by saying my brushes still slightly wet and again see how this just lifts up. The ink lightens it just a little bit, so it looks a little sparkle on the water, and that's it's well now. Next will be adding some trees.
8. Adding A Layer of Trees: All right, so now we're gonna go back into the Citrus green, and I already have some here on the left hand side of the tapes of I just adds more to it will reactivate what's there. And I can use the same spot so very carefully I'm gonna put a line down. You can see where it pulled that paint right off of there. And I'm gonna add a tree in here and start small cause of toast. It'll grow big. You don't want too much ink on, there's We have too much ink. It will bloom too large, and it'll just turn into a big ground puddle. So to the slowly and it will continue to spread a little bit. But the thicker this pain is, the less it will spread on you. And usually the more layers you have, the less it will spread. So I could see at one tree. And here let's go ahead and add one more beside this one. And again, I'm always adding a little bit more liquid to it so that it's it stays wet. So I have a little bit more control with the tip of my brush, and you can let it drives for a few seconds and then test it. You get a nice sharp edge without didn't bloom too far out. So that's gonna be good to go. And I'm gonna go ahead and just do this left to right motion by making my trees. He was going to the left to going to the right and doing a little tapping motion. And you can bringing up a little taller. You could see at the top here where he didn't bloom a whole lot because there's a lot of dark ink under there like another one right here beside it. That one I can't see real well, So we'll just continue to work with and kind of move that paint out of the way. We'll do another one back here, very small one, because again, this is further away, this island in the background and so you can get some details of the initial set of trees that we put in. There is just some color in the background, and this will give you a little bit more definition in Those brings things forward in the painting a little bit E think that looks good. So we put our caps back on there, and then we're gonna go into our next step, which is gonna be able be putting a moon in there using a white gel pen, and I'll show you how to do that.
9. Final Details: All right, So now we're gonna go ahead and dip into our alcohol and we're wipe off all the excess, and then we're gonna see where we want this moon to be, which is gonna be right about here. And I'm just gonna dot this really lightly. You could see where I dotted starting to bloom, starting to pull that ink away. UNESCO see how big it's going to get before you go in to add a little bit more to it. I want to tap it again. You could kind of make a biggest circle out of it was kind of pushing that paint aside and then kind of waiting it out and see what it's gonna dio. You want to start small because it will grow on you get bigger and you might not want a big moon. You might want a little one when a dotted again, and each time I do this, it gets a little bit lighter. But it's not gonna get fully really down to the white on this U boat paper because it's somewhat stained because of this blue ink that we've used on here. So what, we're gonna dio once we get this shape in here that we want. We're gonna go ahead and use our white gel pen, and each time I do this, it just kind of makes it a better circle. Ready to my tap it It just kind of moves that paint for the ink that dry ANC aside, you could have slightly adjusted here. I think that's gonna be good. So let's go ahead and grab our white gel pen now. And we're just gonna fill that moon in underneath here a little, a little bit of highlight in the water. And as it comes out, it's gonna get a little bit wider and then just circle this in. You can kind of a Justus. You go along that we can get a nice, bright white moon in here. Couple more little highlights. I'm just kinda scribbling here and there. Make sure you don't go over your rock area in the water, and then I'm going to get a little bit wider as I come out here in the front. And then I think older is. We'll add some highlights to some of these trees back here because that moon shines get a nice highlight of glow on top of the top of the trees back here and also a little bit on the rocks. So I'm not scribbling at all in everywhere, just kind of touching it here and there, defining those rock area back as well. Maybe a little bit on these trees back here. It just really makes them pop out just a little bit. Go back over here and do a few more on these trees, just touching the very tips where the where the moonlight would hit again, Adding a little bit more on the rock area here and our last tree here, we'll put one more tree in the front here. I think that looks good. Now you can go ahead and sign it if you want using either the white pen or you can also use a black Sharpie if you want. I'm gonna pop a mat on here on. I think we're done, but the last thing you want to do after this drives for 24 hours is give it to light coats of the car Maher varnish first, and then once that's dry, you can put a UV resistant clear coat on top of that two. Thanks for painting along with me and trying inks, and hopefully we'll get another class up here soon for you
10. How to Seal Your Ink Painting: And before you seal your beautiful painting, what I would recommend is doing some type of demo painting. So what I did here is I put some inks down on the put some saran wrap on the top of it makes us really cool little pattern, which makes for a great background. Or you can even really mat and frame this as it ISS thinks you can't go wrong. They're just beautiful, no matter what you do with them. But I'm gonna let this dry nice and thoroughly, and you could see that the inks will continue to move a little bit as this continues to dry . So you get there a few through Matt on that that's beautiful. Just does is if you want to take you through some Dragonflies in there, you could do some other little things to it. But for this purpose, I'm just showing you how you want to see all these. So once it's completely dry for 24 hours, what I would do is take the car Maher varnish and it's a spray can. So you're just gonna pop the top off of this and I'm gonna show you how quickly this is to seal this. It's not a real thick coat at all, so it's gonna lightly spray it all the way over, and that's it. And you're just gonna let that drive for about 15 minutes and you want to do this in a very well bedded lated area, cause it's very strong smelling, and you would go ahead and do this a second coat. Once that first coat is dry and what I want to show, you could see how glossy it is. It looks pretty. What I want to show you is if you don't use the car Morvern ish, if you just want to use another type of seal it. So this is a tile that I have here, and this is just a clear glaze till depending on what is in these finishes, the alcohol's will react to it. So for this particular one, if I spray a nice thick coat of this, you could see it reactivates the inks and they move on you. This is one of the number one problems a lot of people have in their first starting out with alcohol inks, and they ruin their pictures, so make sure you use that car more burnish. First let it dry and you could do a light coat of a UV spray, and then you could put this clear code on it. But what I would recommend is going ahead and for the U PO paper doing your ceilings, making sure you have your UV spray on top of it once that's done, and then I would always protect it behind an ultraviolet museum glass and make sure you keep it out of the sun because the inks do fade in sunlight, so good luck with it.
Kellie Chasse, 7 Years Teaching on Skillshare!
