Artful Experiments: Blending Watercolor and Gouache for Abstract Masterpieces

1. Introduction: Hello everyone. I'm Denise love. And today we're diving into the world of watercolor and gouache, from abstract samplers that spark our imagination to larger pieces that'll steal the spotlight. We're all about Blending opacities and Textures and ways that will make your creative heart skip a beat and the excitement doesn't end when the paint dries. That's what our creative mark-making takes the stage. So grab your brushes, bring your curiosity, and let's explore the magic of watercolor and gouache together, ready to make some artful memories. Let's get started. 2. Class Project: Your class project is to Create some abstract artwork using the blending techniques, opacities, and creative mark-making that you learned in class. Don't be afraid to go beyond your comfort zone. Let your instincts guide you as you explore the blending and mark-making techniques. Try creating both a smaller and larger version of your abstract piece to see how the techniques translate the different sizes. Engage with your fellow classmates by sharing your progress, asking for feedback and celebrating each other's artistic achievements. Remember, this class project is all about expressing your unique artistic voice through the techniques you've learned, how Fun with it. Embrace the unexpected, and let your creativity flow 3. Supplies: Let's take a look at the supplies that we'll be using in class. So I'm gonna be pulling mostly watercolor and gouache. So I have quite a few of the holbein Gouache. I have a little bitty containers in this great big set. So I'll just be pulling a variety of colors from the ones that already just happened to have here on hand. And I like these little bitty ones because then you could test out a lot of colors. These came in some of my boxes that I get. And at the arch store there, the great big ones. But what I've discovered like with this, I've got the Irodori Spring Set. What I've discovered with the buy-in a set like this, I was buying it because I was just kinda gaga over this light pink. What does that that's actually called coral pale cool. And this one that's called light ocher. So I was buying it because of these two colors, to be quite honest. And after I got it and I've lived with these for awhile, I'm like, Oh, well some of these other colors just aren't in a color palette that I would normally want to be using. These get a lot less use because I'm white. And then I've got gray and silver down here. And so those get some good use, and the pink and the ocher get some good use. And these were just kinda wasted on me. So what I would recommend, if you could get the little ones to test out lots of colors that would be great. Or go by specific colors that you think that you'd actually like to use, which is what I have since done. And I got a gold and I got a pretty Moss Green. And you see that kinda fits along in the color palette that I already kinda like. So I do recommend if you could go to the Art store and just by some colors that you already like. And I'm using watercolor gouache. You can reactivate it, keep on using it over and over like a watercolor. You can also get Acrylic Gouache. I've got liquitex, holbein mics makes an Acrylic Gouache. Those are gonna be more like Acrylic paint in the fact that they're permanent once they dry, you can not rewet them. So I'm not gonna be using those in this class because I like to drip water and things and watch it bloom out. And even though I want the opacity and the translucency of the Watercolor there together. I want to still make blooms and things in it and maybe reactivate it. So I'm gonna be working in watercolor wash personally. And we do talk about the difference in gouache and Watercolor. Gouache is a medium that fits in-between watercolor and acrylic paint. And it's re-activate able with more water. And I use it with water and actually use Gouache like what I use watercolor with more water than maybe you would use it if you were like in Illustrator or something. It's more pigmented usually than a watercolor, and it dries opaque. And it usually is, I'm a fairly solid. But on the pieces that I was doing in class, we'll see that some of the marks that I made underneath on the very bottom layer will see that those actually he's still shine through. So that was an interesting lesson to learn. Marks underneath. You're going to still see him. That was good stuff. So definitely some Gouache. Pick your favorite colors, match a color palette, match my colors, however you'd like to do that. Definitely some Gouache. And then I want you to pick some of your favorite watercolors and I've got some that I'm using in class. I'm using definitely this iridescent Topaz. And I've just kinda practiced in plane. And this one I thought was real pretty in a couple of the pieces that I did. So you don't need a lot of watercolor, but pick something that's going to blend in with the palette that you've picked. Because part of what we're doing here is we're experimenting and playing with opacities. And you can certainly use the Gouache by itself and water it down and make it really translucent and use it real thick and make it really opaque if you don't want to mix mediums, but I love to mix mediums and play and kinda see like, oh, this is what that does, or this is how that reacts. Because I had some interesting discoveries as I was using this iridescent color that we'll see using it next to the Gouache. That was kinda interesting and you won't discover these things without all this play. I'm also using my SoftAqua Raphael number zero, quill brush through most of the class. That's one of my favorite brushes. I'm using a pencil and some of these. So I just grabbed my Pitt Graphite, Matt Pencil and 14 Because currently my favorite Pencil, but I like Graphite any form really. I'm using some posca pens. I'm also pulling a couple of cubes from the Color Cube, couple of pellet cards from the Color Cube. And I'll link this below the video for us I'm looking, grab the box. This is colorcube to buy sarahrenaeclark that I pulled these out of. And I didn't start off thinking, I'm going to work with a color palette. But as I was pulling my colors together, it helped me deepen the color palette that I was already kinda leaning towards using, which was this ocher, a Burnt Sienna, and this lighter shade which was real close to this iridescent Topaz. And I was like, Oh see, now I could deepen this with a darker color and a black. And I could make this a more complicated and interesting color palette than if I just went with three colors that I was gonna go with. So I have been obsessed with playing with color palette cards and expanding the color palettes that I might consider it beat to be using in my Art. And making the color palettes more complicated and outside my comfort zone then what I was normally doing. And so I've pulled a couple that just magically worked with some of the colors that I was pulling out to play in, in my sampler pieces. And it helped me go, okay, here's how I can expand that passed the three colors I was playing in. So the Color cubes, one of my favorite resources, you can get it online. You can look on Pinterest for color palettes. You can look at the Design Seeds website and get color palettes. You don't have to buy these. I just like these because I can hold them in my hand and I can compare them in person and I'm on film, so it makes it easier to film it. Lots of good reasons to have that. And it really helped me expand my colors lately. I mean, you'll see in several other classes that I post that I bring that out because all of a sudden, I'm like, Oh yes, this is such a fantastic resource. Okay, so I'm actually using two different papers in class just because I have them use whatever you have on hand. But I'm using the Sennelier a nine and three-quarters by four and a quarter sheets. This is 100% cotton pad. I love this paper actually. It's really nice. It's got a nice texture and it is kind of a pad that's glued down. So you will need to take a palette knife to get that Paper separated. But I liked it because it gave us some unusual shapes and you can take a piece of paper and cut it into thirds to so you certainly don't need this pad. I just used it because I had it. I thought it was FUN to make some really long abstract landscapes with it. And then the rest of the class, I'm using this Canson Heritage 140 pound cold press paper, 100% cotton, because I just happened to love and prefer cotton papers. Cotton papers let your paint stay wet a little bit longer and they let you work with it a little more than cellulose papers are student grade papers, but use whatever you have on hand. If you have the Canson XL paper, that's a good, less expensive kind of student grade, but good quality paper that I like to play on a lot too, so that'll be a good choice. And I've also got some Artists panels that I tape stuff down to. So a lot of people asked me what these boards are and that's what it is. It's an artist panel. And I'm using some painters tape to tape my paper down. And then I'm also playing in a few stencils. I've got a couple that are my favorites. This Tim Holtz, Halftone circle one, stencil Girl Corrugated cardboard. And then this one is the Crafters Workshop. I think this one is maybe sell it sells. There's like cells and cubes, cubist that come as a little packet to. I'm using these quite a, quite a lot. So I'll link those below the video. And then I pulled out Pastels. You can use Soft Pastels, oil pastels, you could do NEO color to crayons. Anything that you want to mark make with doesn't have to be Soft Pastels. I know that a lot of people kinda shy away from these and the oil pastels because then you have to use Pastels spray on them. But I was playing in these today, so I thought I'd bring them out. And these are the sennelier half sticks that I have just put in a FUN antique drawer. And that's most of the supplies I believe that I pull out in class today. So let's get started. 4. Difference Between Watercolor & Gouache: Let's talk about the difference Between Watercolor and Gouache. And we can even throw in Acrylic Paint like what's the difference in the three? Because gouache is kind of a medium that's in-between a watercolor and acrylic. You can get watercolor gouache, and you can get Acrylic Gouache. And what it is, it's more pigmented than a traditional watercolor, and it's opaque when it dries. So that's kinda like the Acrylic side of it. And it's flat, so it dries with a matte finish rather than a shiny finish. That Acrylic usually dries. And what I like about Gouache is that it's Matt and it's opaque. And it has the properties of the Watercolor when you use the watercolor gouache. And I like that, you can re-wet it and I can add more water to it to make it more transparent if I want. But I have some choices with the gouache, and I really liked that about that medium. And I think it's a medium that a lot of people shy away from because they're just don't know what it is or how to use it. So you can get Gouache in Watercolor. Traditional holbein is the one that I have quite a few of because I got a few tubes of it and then I liked it enough that I got some more. So I'm using a holbein Gouache in class today, and it comes in a couple of different sizes. It comes in this little bit larger size. And it comes in this a little bit smaller size. And I like to smaller sizes because then you could test out more colors and see what it is that you really like. And then I like the bigger sizes when you figure out what are some of your favorite colors. So that's the watercolor gouache that I'm going to be using. And then just to kinda talk about some of the other ones out there. There is someone in little containers. I've got a couple of these and I'm not sure how you say pluck cat, tariff, gouache. Designers, colors, tempera, Extra Fine quality, but that's one that kinda came in. One of them Art boxes and stuff gotta Color option that maybe I don't have any other ones. You've got some other brands, liquitex, Acrylic, Gouache. So I've got some of those which I won't be probably using in class, but I could, it doesn't really matter if I'm not trying to re-wet something again. So I could definitely use that in class today. But these come in different containers. Then our holbein ones did. I think this is an interesting container because you can just pull the top off and it's got like a little nozzle that you could work with. And what you could do to if you don't have a bunch of Gouache, but you have a bunch of watercolors that you really love is you could take a little bit of your Watercolor, say like if you've got some Daniel Smith and you want it to be more Gouache like you can add some white gouache to your watercolor and make it more Gouache, more Guangxi. Give it that opacity. It might lighten it a little bit because it's white, but it'll give it that opaque opacity. So you could play in some of your favorite colors of the Watercolor and get a few basics in the Gouache, like white and I have like white and titanium and grays and this Acrylic. Think those came in my monthly Art box. I don't think I actually bought any of those. And then the holbein also comes in Acrylic Gouache. So I have a couple of colors of that because again, that's one that randomly came in were Art boxes. I love getting those Art subscription boxes, Sketch Box and stuff because you get all this amazing stuff that you might not, you know, try out. Like that's where I got some of these little ones. And then I'm like, Oh my gosh, I'm like, you, I love using the stuff. I need to start playing with that in my Art Practice and get some bigger ones. So it introduces me to all kinds of things I wouldn't normally even consider looking at the Acrylic Gouache. Those you can't reactivate. So once they're dry, they're dry just like an Acrylic Paint. But the difference in an Acrylic Paint is that's gonna be shiny and the Acrylic Gouache is not going to be shiny. So important thing to know about that. So just to give you some examples of like the, the Gouache, these are some Matt Gouache, Matt gouache and Watercolor. And I use Gouache a little bit like watercolor. So I'll probably use more water than what you would use if you were using it as an illustration type Paint. Because a lot of illustrators use the Gouache for illustrations. It's really good to use right out of the tube with barely any water. I tend to add a lot of water like I'm using it like it's watercolor. And I get that kind of translucency in there along with some areas where it's pretty solid and you just get some pretty effects that way. Also, my goal here is to experiment with the watercolor and the Gouache and see the differences. And I have watched out my different paints here in my painters color diary. I love this thing. It comes with a nice divider sheet. And then you can swatch out your pieces and see How transparent or opaque it is. And this is my Gouache Page and the colors that I have sinned, I can easily look at it and say, Oh, I want to use whichever colors that is that arm trying to use. And you can kinda compare that to say, your watercolors on a page further. And you can see that these are much more opaque, much more opaque, and this is a little more translucent. And I kid if I could have made these in a way more translucent by adding more water in there instead of making them as heavy as I did. But she got to use your supplies in a way that makes you happy. So I had made some of my Daniel Smith colors more opaque by putting that white gouache in it in a video one time and somebody commented underneath it, no, you're ruining the transparent qualities of the Daniel Smith. And I thought, well, that's kinda limited. And you're thinking of your supplies, if you're going to put rules on yourself or what you can and cannot do with the supplies. I don't want you to get hung up on what you're supposed to or not supposed to do with your different Art supplies. I want you to start thinking, what if I did this? What would I get? And I want you to start taking on the mode of an experimenter and experiment with your supplies and push your supplies and directions that you didn't even think they would go. Just see what you could get. And then if you come back in the end and say, Oh yes, I really do like the transparency here and that's how I'm going to use it, then that's fine. But don't start off thinking, you can't do that or you can't do this. Because, because now you've limited your mind. You've put yourself in a box that you're not willing to step outside of and get creative with your Art. So I want you to start thinking, what if I did this and not worry about what you're supposed to do or what this is supposed to do for you. So I'm going to be playing in the Daniel Smith watercolors and the holbein acrylics. There are different brands of watercolors out there. One of my other very favorite brands are these cure talk your watercolors, which I may or may not pull out. But the difference in just to throw this out there. The difference in the cure talky watercolors, these are Japanese watercolors and they are created a little bit different than Western watercolors. I think I have these back here at the end. I like to ride on the front. What I have switched out in this little painters diary, and it says mature talky ones are back here. Yeah. So the difference in these, the Japanese watercolors is they have more pigment generally than the traditional watercolors that we're used to. And they're a little more Matt when they dry. So they do look different. They look different than the Gouache, but they also looked different than traditional watercolors. So you want to swatch everything out so you can see what you're gonna get. But what I like about these cure talky ones is the Color Range and the fact that you get a different look with them, they've got a different binder. It's more of a glue binder than the gum arabic binder that we generally use in watercolors. So it looks a little different and it looks interesting and it's got a different creaminess. So if you've got some of those that you want to use and I might pull some of these out to it just depends on what projects we're working on or what we might want to create. But those type of watercolors are Fine. Also in this, in my mind, is kind of like a step in-between a Watercolor and Gouache. Whereas a Gouache is a step between a watercolor and acrylic. You can see it's like another little nuance there in a little line of paints. So just wanted to give you some ideas there on what the differences are. I use Gouache like, I use watercolor for Abstract work. And you can use a thicker watered down. So it just kinda depends on as you're working, what you end up liking for your opacities and the flow. So these are some older pieces that I did that I'll be inspired by today. Okay, I'll see you back in class 5. Warm Up Gouache Landscape: I thought we could, we could do to get started just warming up is make a little set of abstract landscapes very similar to the one that I showed you in the last video where we were talking about the differences in Gouache. Because I find those fascinating. And it's really nice and fine just to play with the colors and see how Gouache kind of works. And I'm gonna be using sennelier, 100% cotton, watercolor paper or 140 pound. Because I like the size. This is not in two-thirds by four and a quarter inches, so it's already like this tall size, but you can take a nine by 12 sheet of paper and split it into thirds. That would be fine to just using it because I have it. And so I'm also going to be using a stencil. So I got out a couple of stencils over here that I thought that we could play in. So I'll tell you what those are as we get to them. And I kinda thought, what if we did that yummy ocher and pink kind of look. So I'm just gonna put some out here on my disposable palette paper. So this is G 827 light ocher. And then this one is G 812. Pale coral also have irregular ogre over here. In addition to the light ocher, I wonder what the difference in color is. Kinda very similar, but maybe a shade darker. So you could do yellow ocher to just using the ones that I'm feeling kinda go. And intuitively, this is Pearl Copper. And I thought, what about a little tiny bit a Copper in there. So that's gonna be, uh, perhaps. And then I've also got some silver, which, uh, kinda like a little bit of silver, but I think I'll go with the gold. I'm thinking goal for the Stencil just to try it out and see what it does. So I might put some gold out here in a second. Then I think I'm gonna go with this color palette and I'm gonna do these with Winsor Newton, bamboo brush number four. And I like these brushes because they're very hard to control. And basically what I'm going to be doing is kinda holding it very loosely and then running my color up the page kind of sideways, very lightly. And you wanna make sure you've got plenty of water. It's more Watercolor. Raphael, we're kind of doing a little bit of the adding some transparency in what the Gouache, in addition to using some of it opaque. But it's a little bit about practice and trial and error. Some kinda coming from the side. And you see if you've got it where it's not really hitting the paper like you were thinking, maybe you don't have enough water. Maybe you could use some more color. Maybe you're just feel in your way out here with the paper. Whatever papers, your favorite paper, just kinda give it a go and see how it's going to do a little more water. Maybe. You can see how using it with the more water you really getting it more like a watercolor effect. And that's kinda why I wanted to do this first. Just to get you play in with the gouache and just kinda figuring it out and what it does. Now like doing more than one because we just do one. You're more likely to do something you don't like and then you're like, Oh, I didn't get it. I didn't do it. Didn't get the technique. I don't like it. Whereas if you do three by the time you get to the third one, maybe you've kinda, you know, got that technique down pat. And then with this, I'm just going to come back in here and spread some of the second color in here. I'm thinking like we're at the mountains and then we're at the sunrise. And you see the mountains go up off into the ether. And some of it is kinda pastel is it gives further back and maybe it's a little heavier as it's further forward. And it's just trial and playing and experimenting. And this is abstract, so it doesn't actually have to look like a real Landscape. And you could be inspired by real Landscape colors. You could go ahead and take some photos and use some of your photos as inspiration for your color palettes when you're doing something like this. Look coppery, that is. Alright, let's see what this Copper does. Never used the Copper. It's gonna be interesting. And you can see this, they're wet, they'll still kinda blend and do their thing and you'll still get some interesting effects in there. And As they start to dry, there are kind of like Watercolor. They, they then kinda sperm up. You can even try with your non-dominant hand. And if you're getting too precise and you're like having trouble loosening up, see if you can do it with your hand that you don't normally use, but I find it easier if you just hold it very lightly, kinda from the side and just swish it and just see what you get. Once it does dry, come back on here with another layer. You don't have to be done with the one layer if you're like, I'm not getting it. The look I want let me add some more on there. You could come back and do that. I think on this one, my favorite ones is gonna be this first one. All right, and then once we've got it to this point, I let it dry and then start thinking of what Marx might I want and what colors might I want those marks. I've pulled out a couple of stencils that I really like. This is still drying. There's a brush brush hair on here and the paint's still wet. So you might wait to the paint dries before you try to get a brush hair off, but that's okay. And I had a little bit it looks like pink color on here. So that's something that consider two on your using stencils that have paint on it isn't going to bleed onto our piece as possible. We're going to try them anyway. And one of my favorites is this one here by stencilgirlproducts. It's S two to seven, and it's called corrugated cardboard. I love this one. Another favorite is this Crafters Workshop Stencil, T CW 456s, because it's got these kind of weird lines that are kinda antique look and also love Halftone circles by the Tim Holtz Stampers anonymous collection. So those are the three that I've kinda pulled out. And I think I wanna do one of them in, say like this Pearl color. So I've already got the Pearl on my pad of paper. And I'm going to use an artist sponge. These are just round Sponges that I cut into quarters. And I like having these because it's just a good size when they're dry and I can have several of them. And I just kinda tap that into whatever it is that I'm going to be using. And then I kinda smeared around the Stencil. You can smear it, you can tap it, your choice. My goal isn't to have perfect Stencil. My goal is usually to have just some indications and some lines. I think that's where that dark color came from. So start on whichever one is not your favorite. And just see how it's going to work for you and give it a little test out or test it out on a little sample piece and just see what do you get C, that's kinda what I'm looking for. Yes. Or like dots. Let's do this one right here. And it's just a little bit of trial and error and practice and play. That's what I wanted. Oh, yes. I just wanted to just a little slight a little bit. Just turn it this way. Maybe I'll do that right there. Oh, yeah. I just want a little bit in there. Okay. Let's let's do that. And I got corrugated cardboard. I could also get out gold. Let's say I really like these. I like this one. Let's get the gold out. So I'm going to use the gouache again, Pearl gold. It is the Gouache metallic gold. It's a pretty color. And hopefully that'll be what I like. We'll see. So I'm just going to flip this sponge over to the dry side. Gets some of that in my sponge. And when I do stencils, I don't like to do the whole Stencil like a square. I like to just use parts of the stencil and just weave my way around and just see, oh, do I like that? Do I not like it? I don't want to I don't want it to look like it was a bunch of who see, that's pretty I don't want to look like it was a bunch of stencils more. So I just want it to be implied that I've got different interesting things in there. Oh, yeah, like that. Also have that Stencil is very much like a pizza piece of a punch in our so let me just show you that punch and Ella is sequin waste. It's just the metal piece of ribbon that they punch sequence out of. So this, you can usually find roles of it or maybe some little pieces of it. On Etsy. You might combine some on Amazon if you're looking. But it's not like a regular Stencil. It's the sequence, it's the waste of sequence. And you see how it's very similar and look to the Halftone circles. And there's other circle stencils to that you might take a look at and say, Oh, yeah, like this or I don't like that. Just depends Just play and experiment and see what you can come up with. Oh yeah, look at that. Now like a little bit of bleeding in there. It just kinda just kinda gives it an overall a little bit of shine. Like if I pick that up, hold that till the light you can kinda see that shine in there. So I liked the little bit of shine. And then you're just kinda start evaluating what else does it need? Do you need some writing in it? Do you need some marker in it? Do you need something on top? Do you need another layer of your paint because it wasn't thick enough? That's possible if sometimes I've done that, if I've thought, Oh, I need some more, I might go back and start adding more in there. That could to be like if you added way too much water, maybe you want less water, more paint, and then we can get some that next layer can be more opaque for us. Like I really feel like we need some opacity now because it's very watercolor and translucent. And I wanted to have some differences. I want to know that I used Gouache. So way, way more Paint, whole lot less water is the way that you can get some differences now as we layer on top of what we already had going like it. And why, as I like to say with Abstracts, if you don't love it yet, if not, if you're like, Oh, I don't know if it's finished or if you're like, Oh, it's not good enough. Let's start over here. I'm just not good enough yet. You don't have enough layers. So keep adding some layers in there. That's my favorite saying if it's not good enough yet, more layers. Super fond. Alright, we need to let this dry and then we can decide, does it need anything else? Do we need some pencil mark in there? What what would finish that off for you? That's kinda what you're thinking and looking at. I almost think that maybe with the gold, I could have had more gold in there. So that's something to consider. Did you put enough do you want some writing? Because what we could do is we could come back with our gold Micah ink. Shake it up pretty good. It's my favorite ink. And just a regular little dip pen. And I could come back in here with some writing. Could get some lines going. This is a very fine nib, so some of that you might not see until we get closer. But it is in there. I can see can definitely see it in there. And I like when you have extra things, some things that you need to get close to look at, like what is this? What do we have going on there? I like when there's some of that also like when there's obvious things that you stand back and you admire as you're standing back. It is a very fine tip on this nib. And I think one other thing that I might want me wash that nib off. I'm going to get out my favorite nib. You can get out Pens, you could get out posca pen. You could do all kinds of stuff here. But I think I'm gonna get out my favorite nib, macaca Maury dip pen because this one lets me do some circles. So I'll get the ink in there. And then I'll get it started. And maybe I want some circles in here. Just my own preference as I'm playing. And I'm kind of overlap in the tape here because it'd be kinda like the same project that kept going. Right. Got a lot going on here. Now, every time I do these, they turn out different and I use different Paper and that gives me some differences. And sometimes I'm like, Okay, now I know how that paper reacted. I love it or not love it. Now I can start evaluating what am I liked, not liked me. Just close the ink before I get it all over myself. And then at this point, I'm going to peel the tape and take a look. So let me move the paint out from under my hand. And then let's just take a look at what we got and how good this paper or does not tear with tape peel. Thank goodness. I like paper that resist tearing when I pull tape. And that's kinda how your piece is going to look finished as you're working on it, you're thinking, Oh, hot mess. But wait till you pull that tape and see what we get. Then you're like have like a finished piece that you're like, Oh, that looks better than I even expected. I'm surprised every time about how pulling tape is so magical. So I can see right now, I think this middle one might be my favorite. Actually, these two are my favorite. This one is okay, but I don't love, love. And if that's the only one I did, I'd be like, Oh, it didn't work. These two super fond. Now these look like a pair that can be framed together, not completely dry, so I do need to let it dry. But as these layers up here are drawing, you can see there different opacities and they're kinda Matt. And you can see where that gold kinda shines. So that was PFK-1. So this is a FUN first exercise just to play with the gouache. Use to the Gouache. What's the Gouache gonna do? So I hope you enjoy your own abstract mark-making exercise here. And I'll see you back in class 6. Gouache & Watercolor Samplers: I thought it would be fine now that we've played with just Gouache, Let's start experimenting with mixing in some watercolors and seeing what the differences are. And I have put some of the Sleeping Beauty Daniel Smith color down, and I still had the light OK. Or by holbein and the PEO coral by holbein and the copper over here. So I'm, I'm kinda just going to use some of these colors that already had here and just see like what ours, some of the differences that I can get, you know, is the Watercolor, like super transparent compared to the Gouache, you know, let's just play and see if they blend. And what we think. And maybe I'll get a little heavier gouache because I like actually like pink and ocher quite a bit. That's like color I've been obsessed with. And so I've got a little bit more pigment in there and less water just to see kinda what that's going to look like. And you can do this with, you know, all your colors, really little sampler pieces like this. Until you're like, haha, this is the one I want. This one's really pretty Let's see. So let me just pull some more colors over here. Because I got lots of little colors and we'll just see what we can get. If we love any, then maybe that'll be something that we do on a bigger one. I love this Ash Green. So let's put a little Ash Green out. And this Daniel Smith, is that your desk that doesn't Topaz put that out? I don't know if I'm going to like it, but I might I might love it. You never know. I just wanted to see. And then what color would we want to maybe put with that? Let's see, what else do we have over here? We could put some other watercolors with it if we want. What about this one? Let's just see what this hummingbird blue might just totally ruin it, but it might be perfect. Let's just see. This was Daniel smith here. This little one came in a little samplers set of iridescence stuff. Alright, let's see. We'll put this little, forget what it is. Let's grab some of this one. And I'm just using my soft Aqua Raphael zero brush to do these little samplers. It's my favorite little go-to brush just to play in. Here's that. Gate delay wouldn't expect in that wrong color. We may have to redo this. This is exactly why we will look at that look with that watercolor. Does that Watercolor pushed the Gouache to the edges. That was an interesting experiment there. Now we know, Let's do something over here. This iridescent color and see if we put that Gouache next to it, what it does, Let's try it again. Iridescence are super transparent. All right, let's pick up this. Yummy. Oh, now it's blending in, so it's not so bad. But boy, that did start off kind of throwing me there. That was interesting. I know I'm kinda liking it now. I kinda wanna go back over here. Oh my gosh, that was such a surprise. Let's throw out this Burnt Sienna. Who? Yeah, this is gouache. And just see if we throw some Burnt Sienna and these. And I am using a hopefully less water, more Gouache as I'm picking up the Gouache, she colors. So I'm trying to at least honor. The Gouache. Burnt Sienna is kinda bright. All okay, so, so far I'm actually really, really loving This Ash Green with this Daniel Smith. We're trying to like work our way up to, let's try this Paeony Gouache. Try to work our way up to what would we want to create as a bigger piece. And you can see why you'd kinda wanna stay here in these colors for awhile because you don't know what they do. Let's try out some of these other ones. This is the holbein Irodori Spring Collection and It's where they have taken some of the individual colors and just kinda pull them together into a look, this Moss Green. They've kind of pulled these together into They collection that's very spring-like. It is. Some of these are very bright. I don't know that now that I have the set, I bought it because I was so obsessed with these two colors that we're here at the end. And then here's antique silver. So this was the colors that came. And I bought it because I was obsessed with the pale coral and the light ocher. That's why I got it. If I look closer at the colors, I should have bought the two colors I wanted. Because some of these are not anything that I would normally pick to use. So that's kind of interesting. Exercise. If you get one of these sets and then looking at what, what would you actually use out of that? Do you really like it at all? That's kind of, uh, an interesting test. I actually like this iridescent Topaz so much that maybe you want to fix this green. This is the Gouache. That's pretty, that's that. Holbein. Moss Green. Who now I'm feeling the Moss Green. Who That one's kinda, I don't know about that. That Burnt Sienna went crazy at overwhelmed everything there, didn't it? So a good rule of thumb on some of this is if it's a color that's like insane, like that, that might take over everything. Use it sparingly or try it out first before look at that. So again, this iridescent one is kind of pushing the Gouache wash. How funny is that? That is so funny. Wonder what would happen if I mixed a little bit of Gouache with that iridescent, what I get, look at that. So you can mix the Gouache and the Watercolor to keep that in mind. That'll give me kind of a different opacity in my pieces. What if we did the copper? The copper over here, this is the Gouache. The Copper Gouache. I'm gonna kinda fill in a little bit of copper in here. So that's really pretty. What else are we fill in? Let's try this crazy color, which I have a little bit out already. What do we want to put with that crazy color? Let's see what watercolor is. Do I have over here? Oh my gosh. What about opera pink? That's crazy. I do like the opera pink, but I'm not feeling it for that. Over here. See when you have too many choices, this why this is fine to start narrowing stuff down and kind of figuring out what maybe you would like class C. So what do we like? Okay, just kinda play in here. Looking around at the colors. What if we use some of the Sleeping Beauty, which I thought this was a really pretty color. And then we mix that, that was that Daniel Smith color. What if we mix that with that? Gouache, the hummingbird blue. Just kinda see what we get. And then maybe we can throw some silver gouache in here. This is the antique silver. Just because I want to see what it's going to do. Some of these are just because we want to see what they're gonna do. And that one's kinda crazy. Now as these are drying, let me tell you, I really, really loved this one and I really, really loved this one. How crazy is that some of these you can't really judge till they're dry. Maybe if we put some Copper in here now I'm just filling like a nut because it's not doing anything for me. And I'm thinking, what if I did this or what if I did that? Let's throw some other stuff in here with, let's just try this ocher. Really fill in those two. I thought I wouldn't fill in that, but man, I'm feeling that one. Was that even was that the Burnt Sienna and Ash. Okay. I think it was I think it was these three Topaz, Ash, Green, burnt sienna. I'll have to watch this video again to make sure that's what that was. But I'm really feeling like this colorway. I'm I'm liking that. And then this one. Was that this and the copper that Paeony, it was a little bit crazy, but I'm pretty sure that Was that a little bit of Paeony? Yep. Okay. And I think we could've had that little iridescent Topaz in there. Okay. Some feeling those two those two right there I'm feeling good about okay. So I'm putting those up there so I don't forget what that was. And then we've got another square here. So what are we going to put here? And this is just your first step. We still have on top of this, we got some mark-making that we can do. Prussian blue. Let's see what that is. Let's see, and what about Prussian blue and meiosis blue. I probably said that wrong, but look at that. That looks like the color on there too. It's a GGA 861. Alright, let's see. Okay, So Prussian blue is like a royal blue. Who? It's very royal. Look at bat or all right, let's try this lighter color. It's very, very light. Oh, that's actually really pretty. You can see how these just really kinda throw you really good surprises like Okay, I'm definitely kind of dig in that color there. And then what if we through some of that Daniel smith, Ash Green, that little not Ash Green, the iridescent Topaz. What if we threw that in there and just see like what? Oh, that just totally makes this stuff run. That is just insane. How it does that? That's crazy. Whatever is in that Topaz totally makes the wash spread and run from itself. How funny is that? Let's put some more of this blue in here because we totally lost the blue. It went it ran for the border. Oh, yeah, I liked it before. I just did that, so okay. Let's stop there. Alright, so what I want you to do and let these dry, but what I want you to do is I want you to do 100 of these if you need to test out all your little Gouache colors that you have, test out with different combinations of watercolors. One of my very favorite things to do is to pick color palette cards. So I'm going to show this and probably every class I ever do because it's such a good way to pick color combinations. But I loved these color cubes and they are color palette cards. And you can look on Pinterest. You can search color palette cards on Pinterest. What I like about this is if you struggle with color and you're kinda doing like I was doing and you're like, I don't know what color should I pick? Something like this is gonna give you a cohesive set of colors that will blend and work beautifully without all of the struggle that you're doing. When you're just looking at Paint tubes, thinking what goes together. Now you know what goes together and you can kinda see how it worked. And you're like, Oh, let me try these colors and they don't, doesn't have to be exact. We could get real close. Like for this set right here, I'm kinda seeing that, that was the write-up here is this color and this Burnt Sienna. Now I can see, oh, I could have gone a shade darker with some black and some yellow. So this might be some marks that I add on top. It might be something that I consider adding as we're going. And because I liked that one so much, I might go ahead and just pull that card out as inspiration for a larger piece. Because I've been doing color for a long time. And I have a degree in design and we studied color in college and most of the years I worked with blueprints and drafting. And so I find picking color and seeing all the different things that could go together. Just as challenging as most of you do. Because I might pick out like for this, I picked out three colors. So that could have been this, this, this. But it never would have occurred to me to go deeper with that color palette to the other two colors that might have pulled that together for me. And so even just kinda looking through these, I'm now inspired by colors. Look at this, see this one could have been like those greens and that pink. I'm now inspired as to what I might do for mark-making on top, like this one right here, I kinda have this green and these pinks are kinda in here. And now I'm like, Okay, I could go deeper with some deep, deep purple and that would make that color palette work better for me than just where I've stopped. So actually like mentioned those up like that. And here we are in this light color palette. And you know, my goal with these color palettes isn't ever to be completely exactly the color on these cards. My goal is to work with in a color palette and be inspired by it. So this is the colorcube volume to that. I just pulled these out of my sarahrenaeclark. I love these color palette cards though there's two boxes. So there's 250 of these cards in each box. And it's my own personal challenge this year and for the next several probably to work my way through all those color palettes. That I'm challenging myself to use things that I never would've thought of before. But how crazy is that, that I can actually pull a few out now to inspire my mark-making. And what I put on top. I love that. Now I've just kinda got out of a color, right? And I'm not looking at it thinking, Oh no, what am I going to put on top of that or what am I going to add to it or what other thing can I go with it? So I love that there's 500 of those because man, I could challenge myself for awhile. So if you struggle with color, look on Pinterest at good and you put color palettes and the search bar, and you can get tons of options. You can go to the Design Seeds, DC-SIGN SE EDS. That was like the original color palette source that I ever found years ago. And those are free color inspiration. But these I like because when I'm filming and doing stuff on video, I can hold them in my hand and I can hold it right up to it and I can start looking at it and I'm like, Okay, now I know where I'm going. So after you get to this point, we're ready to do some mark-making. Once you do like a whole bunch of these. And I've kinda holding my colors up here that are really, really liked so that we can be inspired. Once you get to this point, now we're ready to see what can I put on top of these? What marks are gonna be interesting because these are my samplers. These are how I'm figuring out what's the next step. I can put anything on top of these that I want. The goal is opacity texture layers. What is it that's gonna make it interesting? We could come back with more gouache if you want to mark make with gouache and watercolor, you could do that because, you know, something like on this one, we could do a really fine paintbrush. This is a two slash zero sapphire Robert Simmons brush. But I have plenty of this gouache over here in this copper color. And we could mark-making with our paints, a paintbrush on top of the dry paint because I already had that Copper that we worked in there. That's the perfect choice to now add some interesting something to the top of this. And I like dash marks, and I like dots. And I like vines that we've through things that happens to be some of my favorite mark-making things. And so Fine paintbrush is a good thing for adding some details. I really like that right there. Do we want some overhear? Do we want some dots that one's still wet. See, we can come back with little dots. I love that. I say Okay, I'm feeling good about that. And then I can look at this other one. Do I want the same color up there? I don't know. Do we want that up there? Let's think about this. So I came back in with the same colors I had going there. This one had some copper, but I got plenty of that almost when it come back in with something dark and maybe something yellow. What about that? So we wash that brush off. Let's think about this for a second. So if I wanna do something dark, that could either be a heavy Pencil. I like my heavy Matt Pencil. This is my 14 be Pitt Graphite Matt Pencil. So I could mark make with this. I can also come back in just the one, some ideas out there at you. My Posca markers, I love Posca markers. And this happens to be the 0.7 millimetre nib on this and I like that and I like the Fine, the extra fine nib. This one is more like a, um, it's more like the finer pins, like your Pigma pins and stuff that maybe you like to use. I like to use them. And some of the favorite things that I like to do is, you know, lines that we've in and out of each other. And sometimes I'll put little pearls on that. And you gotta keep in mind too, like the big, how big is your tool versus how big is your piece of Art? So now that I did that on this very small, fine, delicate piece Art, I might have wanted even a finer line than this gives me somebody used my Fine dip pen with a black ink. That would've been good. But now we've started it. So we're gonna go ahead and commit and use what we've started with because this is our samplers, this is what we're using to figure these out before we move to the larger piece and gets stuck because we haven't worked out some of the issues that maybe we've run into. We get stuck sometimes. And this is the way we can figure some of these things out and work our way into the piece Art that we were meant to Create. Because I'll be honest, when I started to make this class, I was gonna go this way. And as we have progressed in color samples and stuff like that one just totally total is total dud. That's a dud. I like this one, but it's now not the direction I want to go. Now that we've done this, I'm like, whoa, this is the direction we're going And it's amazing how we kinda change our mind as we get going. So I'm kinda filling like on this one we could use a little bit of Stencil work and already know because I've got this color palette up here. I could do some yellow ocher on there. What about yellow ocher? I've just pulled an Acrylic Paint for this. Right? You're going to move this sheet out of my way. And I could do some, a little bit of stints laying on top with some yellow ocher. And this all just kinda helped me, as I'm going figure out, was this the right choice or not? I've got a few favorites stencils that I know I pulled out and showed you. Got something that looked like big organic circles. I got little squares. I've got these that look like little, kind of like this one. This is stencil Girl Stencil. It's uneven lines. I'll link these for you. I'm kinda thinking, do we want a little lines? Do we want dots? Do we want these funds sketchy looking lines? Do we wanna go crazy and have like a flower in there? It's all kinds of stuff that we can do. But I'm kinda feeling like I want some of these crazy lines here. Oh yeah. Oh, that's totally what I wanted. Okay. Alright. That was good for working that out. So I do know that color palette with the undertones and a little bit of gold on top would be pretty, we could even done that in gold, ******** on that and gold. My very favorite gold is this CACM ore paste. And I've got lots of different goals that I've tried. But somehow sometimes you always come back to your first, your first love he. Alright, let's just do this. We're going to overlay it kinda slightly, but not exact. I just want it to kinda be decided. Alright, so I actually liked the goal better because it's shined. Look how shiny the gold gets. Oh, okay, I'm kind of fill in that. And then over here we can just kind of test things out and see what do we want. So over here, we have that deep purple. That deep purple would be something pretty owner if I've got a deep purple over here. Let's see what this is. More of purple. It's kinda purpley, purpley though. Let's see. That dark new bus kinda bright. So kind of thinking It's something real deep would be pretty. Maybe I should make some of that with a black. This is deep violet. That's alright, Let's just test it out. We might, we might have wanted some of that with some black, but we're kinda in there. And we can just see like, what do we want to add on top of this? We don't have to add anything on top of it. I just think it's funded play and experiment while we're here in our samplers. And then as we get bigger, I'm going to use this one that looks like organic. Whatever's oh my gosh. That's totally what I wanted. Okay. That's fine. So here's my my little just kinda samplers stepping outside our comfort zone to see where we might want to go for a larger piece. Definitely fill in these two. I can see where I need to do like some little tweaking as we're going. But I'm feeling like we've got some FUN color palettes that I'm going to experiment with in class to make some bigger pieces. So I will cut these apart. Let's just say, and then we can save the two that we really love for something bigger. But look how good those turned out. Then I'm just going to trim this and they'll separate little pieces on my little paper trimmer. Alright, so I will see you back in class 7. Quarter Page Abstracts: This project, I'm going to do a little set of four, look different than our samplers, but I'm being inspired by this sampler that we made. And then kind of filling in with some colors on a color palette card that I found. So this is the colorcube to 56 card that I'm loving for this set. So I went ahead and put out my Ash Green that by Gouache, the holbein Gouache, the Burnt Sienna holbein Gouache, because I'm going to stay true to what I decided I liked all my sampler. I've got the iridescent Topaz ready to go. So I've put those three out on, that's Daniel smith. So I've got those three out. I've also think I'm gonna do a little mark-making. I've just taped off a large piece of Canson Heritage non by 12 piece of paper, which is what I've used throughout class except for that Landscape project. Just because it's happened to be the Paper ahead, use whatever your favorite paper is. It's not Paper important. Whatever paper you have on hand. And I think I'm gonna go ahead. And actually for this set and we get a little set of four, maybe do some mark-making. And I'm using a color right out of the Color Palette there because it's got this nice, pretty dark color right there in the middle. That's a little different than I did there on artful samplers. But those were inspiration. And now I'm going to do some favorite things as we go a little larger. So I'm gonna go edge to edge. That's what I was going to do a little different on this set of four rather than in the middle like I was kinda doing. And each one I'm gonna do, you know, maybe a little bit differently. So maybe for this first one, I'm gonna do some green on the edges. And then on the next one, I'll divide that up a little bit and just see out of the four, you know, what, what did we lie? What worked out best? What gave us the, the best opacities versus transparencies. I kinda wanna see how we can really push the gouache and watercolor together and just see what, what can we get? What if, what if we do this? We'll my end up with something that were like, whoa, never even thought this was where I was gonna go. Which exactly happened to me on those samplers. Totally did not end up where I thought we would. I had a totally different picture in my mind as to what I was gonna do for these projects in class. And I love that in Art. I want you to try to be flexible enough to change your mind when you find something that's like, whoa, totally did not see that common. I just put paint all over my table over here. I was going to wipe it up real quick. But I want you to have that flexibility in your Art. Even if you start with one thing in your mind, you know, if you see something amazing, don't be afraid to pivot. Which is exactly what I did today in class. I pivoted this whole class because of what I got on those samplers. And I think that's amazing when you can get creative and do that pivoting, okay, so I know that this stuff is very transparent. And so I think there could be a little bit of this green in my brush and so I don't even mind now even Hayden it kinda loving it. And I'm just going to go ahead. This is that year doesn't Topaz. Just seeing where we can go. Be brave. It's my new favorite saying I'm gonna get some shirts with that printed on it and we'll start wearing them when I'm up here in my Art room or maybe in April, maybe I need an apron with be brave on it. And then as you're painting and you're like, I don't know, obscured. You can be like, don't be scared, be brave. Got real thick there with that Topaz and that was nice. I like that. Let's get some thicker Topaz he strips and here, I don't know why they're called that Topaz though. It really is more like a green gold that's iridescent. See you look at that. Look at that. Alright. Alright, what's this Sienna gonna do? Oh, Be brave. This is the Bieber right there. But you know what, we liked it in our Sampler. Because really at this moment with that right there doing that, it kinda looks like orange blood. Like I just spilled blood on my piece. And I don't know I don't know, like a hot mess just occurred. I really like these three tones together. Why did I go ahead and put this other tone in there? I liked it like it was I can hear you saying that to yourself. I have people tell me on some of my videos they were yelling. Don't do that. Like the videos or interactive. I loved that you were yelling at me. Or if I'm cutting stuff up because, you know, I love to cut up Art there, like cut that one right there and there'll be like you moved on. I'm like, Oh, alright. I don't know about this. Let's come back with some of this. Here. Doesn't sun here. Not picked up the orange when I did that. I know it's Burnt Sienna but it looks orange. And check it out. I'll check it out. We can totally look how pretty this blooms out. I can see as I put that down there that we were getting some pretty blooms as that was kinda blending and then kinda fill unlike maybe we come back in here and add some more pretty kind of bloomin somehow works best when you do it on damp paint. But I liked that it adds to our layers. Let's do this on this. You gotta do it when it's damped, not wet. That's just wet. It just kinda does more. What it's doing. That was orange. Alright. Let's kinda crazy. So as we're going, I like to do sets of say four because there's always something that you're like, okay, I'm kind of love in this. There's always something that you're like, Well, total hot mess. Glad that wasn't the only thing I painted. Because if you just paint one, you hate it. Bad Paint day. But if you Paint for and out of that, you get to there and you're like, totally amazing. And you get to that your light is still a great Paint date because you're still excited that you've got the two that were so amazing. Let's see, Are we still on with our yeah, that was the right colors. So we definitely need to let this dry before we can mark-making on top of it because I can see this Burnt Sienna actually dries to a much prettier, not so bright color. And I think that's why when this dry and I was like, whoa, look at that. And I'm hoping that we're gonna get that same effect here on these larger pieces. So let's let this dry so we can come back and mark-making on top of them. This has dried and it did darken up quite nicely. So just kinda goes to show until something gets a little darker, maybe we can't tell exactly what's going on in there. And I'm kinda fill in like maybe I want to put some Pastels on top of here. I don't know if I want to do oil pastels are Soft Pastels, but I do love adding more texture and layer and dimension on top of the pieces. That's always FUN. So I do have, these are the Sennelier a half sticks that I have over here in a drawer. So I'm going to use maybe some of those and we'll set it to the side. And then also have the Sennelier oil pastels over here because I love Pastels. I'm not, I don't know if I see any that really are the right color. What I what I also noticed is the pencil that I put underneath really shows through all of it. It totally showed through the opaque of the Gouache as well as the Watercolor. And even in the areas where the Gouache was nice and heavy, it's still, you can see what's underneath. And that was kind of an interesting experiment to see that. I'm going to see that no matter what. And so that is a good lesson, no matter what you end up making. That's a really good lesson to learn because that's kinda important to know. What if this was an important piece and you did that and you thought you're gonna get some of that covered and it didn't. So that's kinda of a good lesson there. And so now we just need to decide what do we wanna do on top. I already know that I liked on our sampler. This yummy stencil with these odd shaped lines also have one that's called corrugated cardboard by stencilgirlproducts. And it is s227. It looks quite a bit like these lines, but on the bigger piece, I could get it to go much larger. So that could be the same type look, even though I'm using say like a different stencil, I get that same kind of look going bigger. So I like that. I also need to consider I liked Black and it was real tiny here on this little bitty piece. And now I'm doing a bigger piece. Do I want some like bold black, something on here? Lines, dots, brush marks, something bold. I'm kinda, kinda wondering, do I want to put out like some black paint because I do have some black gouache and then I could mark make with black That's something that we could consider. Or I could do Black Pastels, I could do black pen. So many choices. Let's just jump in. We're just going to it. So this is like a dark, not quite black, but it's real dark. And I really love which ones to are really loved. So I really loved this one, kinda 11, this one, kinda love in this one. I'm not sure about this one. So let's start with the one that we're not really sure about. And do something exciting. And then we can be like, Oh, look what we did that was kind of amazing. Like I'm kinda like in that. So now I like that so much that I'm like, Okay, I could totally dig that on some other pieces. And with the pastel now this is powder, it's definitely going to shed. So what I don't wanna do is I don't want to blow this all over my table. So what I'll do after I get some of this on here is I will tap it onto some paper towel and then I will spray so spray fixative for the soft pastel so that that stays put. And then if you've got oil pastels on there, I've got oil pastel fixative that you can hit that with. And that will keep these Pastels kinda set, kinda set them up because these always shed and the oil pastels never really seemed to dry. So I definitely want to hit those so that even though it's not gonna be like like it glued it down, it's going to be a little bit more like it's holding it in place on top. But you could still probably smear it. But that's the nature. It's powder. You're not glowing the powder from underneath. You're trying to set it from the top of there. So just be aware. These are just kind of things to be aware of. Oh, I like the that the darkness here kinda gives me. Can you use my I like something to focus on. Like it it all the sudden kind of anchored it like a little bit of black sometimes does. Some people think that every piece Art needs just a little touch of black to kinda anchor it in. And I don't really think it needs Black per say, but I do think that a lot of times it needs something to anchor it and I love how that worked and check out that color. You definitely, if you're working with these Pastels, need a microfiber cloth because you can get this off your fingers and kinda keep working and you don't get stuck there. So I pulled out some other colors, but I think I'm kinda happy with this black on there. And I might need to go ahead and tap off that powder. So I just get some paper towels to do this. And I'm gonna do it this way. And I just tap that down. And if you need to blow it, take it outside to blow it, but that right there, we'll set that for you. Well enough. At this point, I could go ahead and lightly spray it with the fixative. I'm going to resist because I'm inside filming. But I would just set that with the fixative and then continue going. I'm all set mine at the end, but just wanted to kinda give you some ideas. So I'm also going to go ahead and maybe lay some Stencil work in here. I know I liked this gold. This is my cure talky go Micah paste. I also have like a nice substitute. What I had found as a good substitute are these golden iridescent Acrylic paints. And I've got iridescent go Fine. Iridescent, bright gold Fine and iridescent deep gold Fine. And I think the regular Fine When is my favorite. So that's a good alternative. For gold. I'm going to use the one I want to use because I got it and all of it. And I want to I want to use it. So let's use it over here first. I just kinda do the little rubber here. I'm not worried about that. Not worried about it too much. I like to go ahead and just rub them. You can dab them, you can do whatever your favorite Stencil method is. So do all the testing on your least favorite before you work your way around to your favorite. And I'm definitely liking these, so I'm gonna go ahead and do some more of that. And again, like this, I don't do the entire stencil, I just do bits and parts and just let it kinda do its thing. I liked the surprise and I liked the way that some of this add something on top that maybe you didn't even think about. And totally speeds up creating because you could have done this by hand. You can, you do all this by hand? I just like how fast Stencil work speeds things up if you find some that you like or you make some of your own and I'll make some of my own to see now I'm loving that one right there. I like to Okay, and then we had black dots. So we just need to decide, do we want black dots? Where's our lovely seven millimeter posca, right here we are. Now the dots to me or whimsical. And I just need to decide, and I've got my little hand Stick over here. This is the piece. This is a Paint Stick from the paint store to stir up five-gallon bucket of paint. So it's basically like free or cheap. And now I just start on the one that's your, whichever one you wanna go for. By this point, you shouldn't have a pretty good idea of where your Abstracts are headed. And if you want some yummy dots, where you might want those, I'm gonna go over here with the dots, dots or whimsical. Lot of times I like white dots. But in this one, we're gonna do Black Thoughts. I'm kinda still following my inspiration piece with the lines and the marks that we did on that piece. With this, I'm just holding this up off my paper so the Stick is not actually touching my paper. So if there's anything wet or anything that would smear, I'm not touching it, so I'm not going to smear it or powder that would smear. That's exactly why I like having something to lean my hand on because it's hard to do dots when your hand is up in the air. But if you've got something that you can lean on and it's not touching your paper, you're protecting that surface. Alright, I like where that's going. Now. I just need to decide. Do I want anything else on here or are we good where it sat? And I'm feeling pretty good actually. So I might not use any other Pastels. And so that Soft Pastels spray would definitely be the one to use. And I'll make sure I've got all the Pastels stuff off my fingers. And then I'm going to pull the tape and cut these up and see what we got. And, you know, nothing say in right now you have to be done. But sometimes you need to look at the piece, peeling the tape gives you a different look. And then you can kinda decide, is it done or does it need something else? And you might can decide better if you can actually see the piece, whether it's framing, which is why I love to peel tape. Calc. Good. These look when I really love is the textural difference and the visual difference Between the Gouache and the watercolor. Look at that. How love the differences in the opacities, and that's Matt. And then the watercolor that I added in there, that's very, very transparent. Alright, so let me cut these up. I'm actually going to spray this really quick and then we'll cut it up. These came out so good. And let me give you a little warning here on Pastels. If you've got Pastels on the edges like I did on these, you could use a soft arrests or eraser. I like this pin to high polymer soft eraser because it's really nice for getting dust and things off the edges. But once you spray these with the fixative, anything that might have been on the edge, it could possibly get out on the white frame. But most of the time pieces aren't like this, are framed in with a Matt, so I don't even care, but if that's going to bother, you, don't use the Pastels, pick something else besides the pastel. It doesn't bother me. So that's why I like using Pastels. But look at these. I already said the one that was my least favorite. Still my least favorite. I think it's the way I did that composition. But these other ones, like this one love, this one love, love. And I like the shiny bits in there. And I like that. There's just different elements and textures to look at. I love this one. And if you get close, you can see the transparency differences between the watercolor and gouache and where the Gouache gets really thick versus really thin. And what happens when water makes that kinda bloom out? Look how cool that is. So these are super FUN. I hope you enjoyed these pieces. They were based on our sampler piece that we did, and then we pulled that together color wise with the Color Palette card, I found that just fit right in with those colors. So hope you enjoyed this project. I can't wait to see what yours end up looking like. I'll see you back in class 8. Half Page Abstracts: I thought I would go ahead and do the one that was inspired by this little sampler here. And I'm gonna do just to set a to, I like to do sets of one or two to just kinda break the ice. And if one's my favorite than yea, and I'm not to worry about whether I like both of them. I can do one as my experiment and one is the one that's gonna be like the piece Art that I love that day. And so I'm just going to get these started and play and put these colors down and just see where we can end up with today's pieces. So I've put out Paeony as our purple, the Moss Green and that yummy iridescent Topaz by Daniel smith because that was the colors as I was playing that I ended up just being like, Wow, check these out. These are amazing. And so I, again, I use the Gouache, like it's Watercolor. I'll let some areas be thicker and some be thinner. And sometimes I like to hold my brush very loose and roll the brush around and just see like what, what can we get? What can we do today? I do like that this dries a lot darker than it looks on there or else I've pulled the wrong thing. Like that was what we use though. I don't see anything else that's close to that, but that may be brighter than what we used. I'm going to have to go back and watch that sampler video. But I did love how are iridescent Colour kinda repels the Gouache too, that was PFK-1. So I'm just when I'm doing here with the Daniel Smith, just kinda getting some of that in there and letting it do its little magic. Got a little shape difference go in here on these two. I kinda liked it. The shape is different. Look at what this is doing in here. I don't know how this is going to dry. But look at that. Amazing seeing all that right there. Oh my goodness. My, that's the Yummy notice. I might just come back in here with a little bit of this purple and just work some more in here and just see what can we get. Let's just play. I like adding some texture and some color and some surprises and not trying to get anything specific, not working on any particular Composition really I liked this kind of randomness, the colors, the way things move and flow and where we end up. And I'm kinda good with just kinda letting it do its thing. And you what we might can do, I'm going to use how about some of the green with some of the iridescent mixed together because you can mix these, you know, there's no, there's no right and wrong. Don't let somebody say, Oh, you've done that the wrong way or that's not the way it should be. I kinda wanted some loops in here that you're all yam. Okay. I just want some, just likes a couple of little loops out of there. I'm actually really love in that. So maybe we should have a little loop in here to like just just to see oh yeah, 11 that alright. I think that's the Color. She could tell me without me going back to look at that video because I took a few hours to take a little break and come back up here after getting some lunch. And I'm terrible with remembering stuff. Like I might be doing something and then come back later and think, Oh my gosh, how did I even do that? And so I'm glad a lot of this is on video because now I go back and look at the video with you. I think I'm going to let these dry because these are looking yummy, yummy. I'm going to let them dry and I'll be right back. Alright, this is mostly dry. And I just want to point out, look at how Superfund this whole corner is right here with the way that Paint kinda went up in with the two Gouache is kind of blooming into each other. How pretty that is. But it's like my favorite part right there. I don't want to cover that up. And I think on the little sampler piece, I just used, I really dark purple, which I like deep violet. And did a little Stencil marks on here that thought was real pretty. And I also had like some marks with this copper color which I don't think I've put in you that out. But I should have maybe use that iridescence in there instead of the copper. But man, I loved the iridescent in there because it's got this really pretty very slight shine in here that I'm like, Oh yeah, love that. So actually had a little tiny paintbrush over here. Here we go. I did make little marks with this Copper, so let's use the Copper gouache And we can put some little lines or marks in here or dot's kinda fill in like maybe some dots over here. And they don't have to be big and bold and knock you and your face. It's more like a subtle detail that as you get close, you're like, Oh, what is that? Kind of like doing it with a pin? It's exact us a little tiny top on this brush. See how pretty that is as exactly what I was thinking. Alright, I think I like that right there. And I liked this Stencil that I've pulled out and I did a little bit of the purple in there and I think I'm gonna do it kinda coming along the belly of these just to see like, what, what would that do for us? So I've got little Artists sponge here. It's dry. I'm just putting that right down into the Acrylic Paint. And that Acrylic Paint was just a deep purple, I think. Yeah, deep violet by liquitex basics and will be a little careful or I don't want it to be all under the cells. I want it to be a little cleaner so you just have to shut to be careful. I don't want it everywhere. So I kind of worked my way around the Stencil, but not necessarily like the whole stencil I just wanted here and there. See what we got. Okay. I don't like that. I do kinda like the Stencil though, so maybe a little bit down here at the bottom. Oh, yeah. See, I like it may be in touches but not write down the middle. Oh, well, see you got to figure these things out. That's the only way you're going to figure it out. Okay. I like that. I liked the little bit on the top and the bottom. And some people had said, and one of my groups that they get frustrated if they're stencils aren't perfect. And I don't get frustrated if my stencils aren't perfect. I don't mind. Doesn't bother me a bit. What if we did like a flower on here? Maybe in what if we did something on top and white and bring some white back? Let's just try this. This is just all about play. I've got some heavy body, titanium white here. Just to play. We could do it in green, we could do it in any color we wanted really. Alright, we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna play, let's play on the one that we don't love. Then when you come back to the one that we're like, okay, I still liked that one. Just see what we can get. Totally changed it. Look at that. Oh, yeah. Totally. That was what I'm thinking. Alright. Okay. Look how pretty that is. Just a little group. Okay, So I'm actually liking that enough to add some over here. And It's okay if adult turn out because we've had fallen Painting. See that's what I'm thinking. We'll get back to see that. Look at that. That's exactly what I'm thinking. Okay, Let's see. What do we like over here? I like this with that leafy thing right there. So let's go ahead and go with that. Most of the time I start off pieces having no idea who look at that, have no idea where I'm going. And I like creating Art that way now. So used to create Art. And I'd be thinking, I'm going to draw a tree. I would go to draw a tree and it will look terrible. And I would hate my whole day. The whole Art De just was terrible because whatever I thought I was trying to Create didn't turn out. And that ruined my whole day. Whereas now I'm like, Let's just see where we can go. We don't have to go anywhere specific. It doesn't have to be great. What if we did? Okay, I'm just thinking out loud here, but what if we put gold on top of one of these with some punch and nella, punch and L is mother favorites Stencil. But see, I like to create like intuitively and I used to get so mad if I had an idea where I wanted to go. So now I don't start anything with an idea. I'm just like wherever we end up, that's where we end up. I'm going to like it because it's gonna be a good Paint day because it doesn't matter where I ended. I wasn't expecting to end anywhere in particular. Punching nella is my other favorites densely and get it off, like Etsy or eBay, maybe Amazon would have a roll of it, but you don't need a role love, you just need a piece or two, or you can use that Tim Holtz, Halftone, circle one. But I'll have punch and ELA, it's sequent waste. The metal stripping that they cut little sequence out of. And it comes in a couple of different sizes. I've got one that's bigger, but I like this little bitty one. It's one of my favorite. I'm just using this with my favorite gold, my cure talky goal paste, which is sometimes easy to get and sometimes not so I think I showed it earlier, but I'll just show it again just in case if you have to get or if you're interested, you'll have to. This golden, heavy bodied iridescent gold Fine. I like the Fine. Just the middle one, not the bright and not the dark. Because it's really pretty and it's close to this, and that's probably my second choice for gold. Now that I've gotten several and tried, I liked that one. Look how pretty this is. Now it's just got a lot going on, but it's still pretty alright. Let's put some of this overhear. Oh, yeah. Oh yeah. It's your birthday. And we could even do some gold ink on here. Why not? We got it out. We've kinda straight off of where I had in my mind intended to go. Just seeing if those are Paint. If you ever get something on your piece that's like a scarf and you're not sure if it's Paint or if it's something else. I really liked this little eraser. But those are Paint. So we're going to remove with them must have like splattered as I was going. And you know what, if you ever get something outside your piece that splatters like that, you come back splatter more Paint or do some little gold dots on the outside of your piece, that would be cool. Okay, so I'm actually thinking bold circle in here. And I just wanted to something subtle that I could think, come back and drop some little pearls on it. Something soft that maybe just sparkles in the light. You don't quite know what's in there until you get closer and you're looking. Alright, I think that's where I want my gold and my dots. And then you just need to look at it and think, Is there anything else that I wanna do here on this piece? So is there, is there anything else that we need? Do we need any Pastels? There's a lot kinda going on all ready, almost feeling like we couldn't be there and maybe some deck old edges might be the thing to do at the end. So let's do that. Let's peel the tape. Let me move the paint out from my reach. And I'm gonna be using my big deck old age Ripper. Maybe we'll put us a pretty deck old age on one of these and see how that kind of finishes it and makes it pretty, I like these as a pair. That white shining back through, kinda made this for me. Alright, so I'm gonna get a piece of wax paper so I can flip these over on the wax paper and my dual edge Ripper. It's my favorite tool. I love this thing. It's got a really choppy edge and a really soft edge. And I actually do these from the underside because I'm kinda eyeballing how far I wanted on each side and then I'll turn it back over and eyeball what I want for the other sides, the top and the bottom. And you just tear the paper towards the ruler. And that's how easy that is. The reason why I put the wax paper down in case I have anything on that board. Just in case there's some random Art Supply that's still on that board. I don't want it on the front piece of my pretty piece Art here. And your edge is thought to be perfect. We rip them on chat so that they're not perfect basically. Okay, So let's see. So we got about that much space on this side. So I want to come in. We've got about inch and a half. An inch and-a-half. So I wanted to come in to where about half an inch. About three-quarters of an inch. So maybe three-quarters of an inch from our piece. So about three-quarters of an inch in. Sorry, I'm kinda like in it. Okay. I'm filling it. You fill in it? I'm filling it. So maybe about here where I want it. So let's put it right here. And what you could do is then you want the same amount on this other side. Let's see if we like where that was, that yes, we do. We could come back in and kinda gauge it on that piece of paper and then we'll know we're at about the same distance. So easy. That is now river from the back because if you'll notice, this has like a little ledge on it, but if we flip it over, it's nice and smooth. So I definitely want to rip that from the backside. Then I can kinda look at these pieces and say, do I liked the way I painted it, which was this way? Or do I like it one of these other directions better? I don't know. This one kinda looks like a face with a flower in her hair and her fancy hairdo. I think I want to look at it this way so I don't see that every single time. So if I cut both of these at the same distance, we'll have a little pair there. But I just wanted to show you how easy it is to your edges and have a pretty piece that's ready to be float framed. Alright? So hope you enjoyed this project. I can't wait to see what you create with your next color palette that you do. And I'll see you back in class. 9. Finishing Sprays: Let's talk about finishing these pieces. If you're not putting anything on the piece other than the Watercolor, the Gouache stencil with Acrylic Paint or something like that. It doesn't really need to finish. I will just store these and clear plastic archival Art sleeves until you're ready to have them framed. If you're doing like this one too, has just watercolor, gouache and acrylic paint on it. I wouldn't finish that. If you're using Soft Pastels or oil pastels or something on here, that's going to continue to shed or smear, then I would fix it. So these I've put on the soft pastel fixative, but you gotta keep in mind with the fixatives, any whitespace if you had any powder out there, it's going to actually kind of like accent that you had powder out there and you may or may not like that and once you fix it, it's fixed. So you gotta be real careful and you might even consider fixing it before you peel the tape, if that would make that easier for you and then that would keep that border white. But usually these are framed into with mats into the piece Art. And so I usually don't care. But if I was really uber concerned, I'd spray the fixative before appeal the tape and then I'll peel tape. If you're using oil pastels, usually you would want to fix that with an oil pastel fixative. So I'd use this Sennelier oil pastel fix it did because they never really seem to dry. So you do need to go ahead and hit those with some spray. And you gotta be careful with Sprays depending on what you've used. It may dark in your piece to the point where you're like, oh, that ruined it. Like say Pastels on pastel paper. If you fixed Pastels on pastel paper, it completely darkens it. It never lightens back up and you've basically ruined it. Usually when I'm using Pastels as a mark on top of say, watercolor. I don't have that issue, but I would always do a test piece. If you need to add more things on top of these layers, you don't want the layers to move. You could use workable, fixative cry on makes a good one That's acid free, it's archival. And this can be used as a fixative for the powders to and you could spray that before you peel tape just like that soft pastel fixative. You could use a varnish on top if you just absolutely have to. I would use like a satin or a matte varnish if you could. Just depends on what you can find. And I will do a sample before I did the permanent piece to see if I even liked what it did. So those are some options for finishing. You don't have to put a finish on it at all. These could be just fine. In a vicious watercolor, you could put a layer of wax on top of watercolor. But again, I would do a test because you could use cold wax is kinda just a nice waxy coat to finish it. I don't usually finish my pieces. That's my own $0.02, but I don't sell artwork out in the public. I usually keep it. I store it. I use it for samples. I framed pieces for my house. I give pieces as gifts. Just depends on what you're working and your preferences are, but that's some of your options. All right, I'll see you back in class. 10. Final Thoughts: Well, my fellow Art adventures, we've reached the end of our colorful escapade. Can you believe how much we've explored together from those first experimental blends to the final strokes that brought our Abstracts to live. It's been a whirlwind of creativity. Remember, Art isn't just about the finished pieces, it's about the story we've woven into every stroke and splash. I hope you felt the same exhilaration and joy that I have throughout this process. So keep those brushes wet. Keep those imaginations vivid and keep pushing the boundaries of your artistic horizons. Feel free to share your creations, questions, or civil your thoughts in the comments. After all, Art is a journey best taken together.