Be Colour Confident; Unlock the Magic of Colour Mixing

1. Introduction and Project Overview: Hello, and welcome to this class B color confident. It really is about unlocking that magic that happens when you start to mix colors. Whether you're a complete beginner and you'd like to have a little go making your own recipes or whether you have already got more experience with color. But you'd like to go back to basics and actually just play again, then there's something in this class for all of you. I'm Don Cord. I'm an artist, designer, teacher, and well being practitioner, and it's a delight for me to be sharing some of my color mixing techniques with you in this class. As usual, it's going to be very relaxed and very easy. We're not going to get really scientific about it and get into proportions and scientific stuff. We're going to use our instincts and intuition a bit more because that's what color is all about. It's a very instinctive thing. You either like a color or you don't like a color. By going through the processes that we're going to go through in this class and experimenting, giving yourself permission, play and just see what colors you like and what colors you don't like, that's really worth its weight in gold because it can have an effect in other areas of your life. You might decide to change your interiors a little bit. You might decide to actually change your wardrobe around a bit. Who knows? There's something in this class there that I'm hoping, in fact, I'm certain will really inspire you as you get to understand color more and you get to deepen your own relationship with it. Just using blue, yellow and red plus a little bit of white and a little bit of black. You'll be absolutely amazed at what colors you can achieve, you'll really begin to unlock that magic of color mixing. We're going to go through the whole process of how to do that, how to get so many different tints, shades and tones, just by adding those three primary colors with a little bit of black and a little bit of white. It's lovely to see all the different colors coming out and you really don't need to have a huge color palette to get all these colors. Those three colors will do it all for you. You can create as many color palettes as you want to. In fact, it can be a little bit addictive after a while actually because really, there's no limit to how many different shades and tones and tints that you can create. I'll share with you the process of three different color palettes that I've gone through. We'll take a look at how to find some inspiration for you to maybe have a go at doing a small composition of your own. You don't have to if you don't want to. You can just play with the colors. That's all you need to do play with the colors. But if you want to create a little composition, then feel free to do so as well. Have a look through some magazines. This is how I got the ideas for my two compositions, also, I'm going to show you my painting process during those two compositions as well. There were parts of the paintings that were very successful and parts of them that were less so. However, I was very happy at the end with the results that I got. So I do hope you'll join me, where we have a bit of fun. It's always about having a bit of fun. And yeah, just having a play, as always, just having a play. So let's get started. 2. Composition & Materials: So I just want to chat to you briefly about composition. I don't want you to get all worried about doing something perfectly or creating a really gorgeous picture or whatever. It's really about you learning how to mix colors and seeing what magic you can create through using the black and the white and the three primary colors. And so just choosing a simple design is absolutely fine. And I pulled this sketchbook out. Knowing that I've got some abstract designs in it that actually date back to 2022, sorry, 2021, and thought that I might use one of these as inspiration for, you know, just doing a little bit of artwork, yeah, to use as inspiration with one of the color palettes. So that's what I was going to do. Use one of these, to get me started. And then this magazine pop through my letter box, and with a nice cup of tea and a bit of a sunny spot, I decided to have a look through. And I was looking at it mainly for the interiors. And then this, of course, presented itself, these lovely vases and greenery, and I thought that these two shapes actually would make quite a nice composition. So that's what I based the left hand composition on. These two shapes here. I altered them ever so slightly. But that was just a really simple bit of inspiration there to get me going with the left hand one. And then, you know, I carried on looking through and wondered if there might be anything else to inspire me. And I came across this page, and there we've got that lovely design there on a doorstop. We've got a similar design on a cushion, there's somebody else's artwork. There's even a box of matches there that have got a really nice design on them. And I even quite liked this shape here and the archway as well. So there are a few things there that appealed to me. And in a way, they weren't dissimilar to what I'd already got in my own sketchbook. But then I looked a little bit further and Okay. I came across this little beauty up here, and I rather liked just that little bit there, that composition alone. And that's what I base the right hand side, more abstract composition on, the little mirror and the candlestick and the little object there. That's what I use for my inspiration. You can see how easy it is just to have a look through a magazine or whatever. Just just have a look around you and see what shapes appeal to you. Just keep it nice and simple. In terms of what you're going to need material wise, the first thing is some decent quality paper. Now, I happen to have actually used watercolor paper, and I buy these pads because they're really good value, and I tend to use them for all sorts of things, not just watercolor. This one happens to be 140 pounds, 300 GMS, but GM squared. But that's 220 grams, this one is 300 grams. This is decent heavy cartridge paper. Just use whatever paper you've got to hand so long as it's got decent thickness to it. If you start using things like copy paper that goes through your printer, then your paper is going to buckle and you won't get decent results. Now, I am also going to be using acrylic paint. You can use these techniques that I'm teaching you in this class with any paint. You might get slightly different results if you decide to do it with a different paint, but the principles are just the same. Now, what you're going to need is the three primary colors. So I have got here primary red primary yellow and primary blue. I could go with a different yellow, which, in fact, I do, or I could go with a different red. It doesn't really matter which red, yellow, and blue you choose to use, but you will get different results and you'll see what I mean when you start watching the little video about color choices where I explain it a bit more there. But basically, you need three primary colors plus a black and white. I happen to have used a titanium white and a mars black. Again, you can get ivory black, mas you can even use pines gray you'll just have to experiment with what the colors are that you end up with. That's all. Then a pencil, a selection of brushes. Again, go with what you feel comfortable in. There's no set brush that you need to be using. A few pieces of kitchen role, and your water jars, and that's it. You're good to go. 3. Colour Choices: There's something magical about mixing colors. There's a process to it. It's alchemical if you like, but when you put two colors together and you create something else, for example, putting the blue together with the yellow, and then you get this whole range of colors coming through like this. I find it really I just find it very beautiful and uplifting, actually. The process of making a color wheel it's quite meditative in a way, as well as being exciting because you don't exactly know what's going to turn up. You don't exactly know what color is going to turn out. So there's always that lovely element of surprise in it as well. That's why we're going to start with this class day. We're going to start by doing our own color wheel because I think if you can paint your own color wheel rather than just looking at it from a picture on a screen or a printed version of it, by actually painting it yourself, you really get to have what I call relationship with the color. You really get to understand much better how color actually works. But we're not going to create this particular kind of color wheel. Actually, we're going to keep it away a bit simpler. And I'd like to make I'd like to do the color wheel just like this, quite a basic color wheel in 12 segments, and we're basically going to start off with three primary colors and then add a little bit of black and white to things to get to those primary colors to get these gorgeous neutrals as well. Now, for this one, I actually used a primary red, which is that color there. Now, it might look a bit on the pink side, it does look a little bit on the pink side, but that's actually primary red, and then that, believe it or not is primary blue. Then we've got here primary yellow. In order to get the different tints and shades, I've then added titanium white, or mars black or even a combination of the booth. For example, if I just look at this here, Let's just bring that a bit closer that way into camera. Believe it or not, this here is red, blue and yellow mixed together, and then with a little bit of black added and then with more black added. This is red, blue and yellow, but with white, and then more white and white again, and even more white, more white, and more white. And this is adding the red, blue and yellow with black and white, so you can see that you can get some incredible monotone shades or neutral shades, as I call them, just from those three colors alone with a little bit of black and white. Now, this is the beginnings of a class that I am going to be teaching in person. Hopefully, we'll also develop it for a skill share class as well. Really, we're just looking at all the different colors and tones and tints that we can get through using those three primary colors. I mean, when you look at these, they're amazing how many different tones you can get. This is a green one here. Then you've got a yellow green, And then a blue green. I mean, again, look at all the different oranges that you can get. Fantastic. You look at violet. When you start adding white and black to violet, you can create some really moody kind of palettes. And then you go to the red violet, which is a much, much warmer tone, and then the blue violet, which is a cooler tone again. These little whimsical landscapes were created quite literally just using red, yellow, and blue, and then black and white. So you can see how easy it is to get a really good contrast and a good variety of color by just using those three. Now, I wanted to show you this before we even start our color wheel because the colors that you get will depend on which red, yellow, and blue you decide to go with. You can see here that these are quite different tones, and that's because I've used different yellows in it. So this one was done using a primary yellow. This one was done using a cadmium yellow, and you can see that this is slightly fresher. It's got a bit more pop to it. It's a cooler tone, but it's got a freshness to it. Whereas, this one is a bit more solid and a bit more earthy. It doesn't matter which one you use. You just need to be aware that whatever three primary colors you start off with will give you specific results. You can see here again that I've used a primary red on this one. But on this one, I've used a cadmium red, and then of course, I've added the white and the black to both of those, but you get a completely different result. That's a slightly pinkier red, and that's a slightly more orange red. So you're going to get very different results. Again, no right or wrong, it's just to be aware of that that when you decide to choose your colors for your color wheel, you might get different results to what I'm going to get today depending on what three colors you decide to start with. Now, because I've already used the primary red, primary blue, and primary yellow on this, for my next color wheel, I'm going to swap the colors around a little bit, but I am going to keep the primary blue, but I'm going to change the yellow and the red. And the reason I'm keeping the primary blue is because unlike this cobalt blue, It still gives a bit of it gives a lot of vibrancy and lightness to it. Whereas this feels very kind of heavy and dark. You can see here, I've used the primary blue there and a cobalt blue there. And I just prefer these colors that I'm getting. So I'm going to stick with that primary blue. So let's have a look at the three colors that I'm going to be using as my primary colors, and then we'll start to do the drawing of the color wheel, and I'll just show you how to measure it out and everything, and then we can get going with it. 4. Starting The Colour Wheel: You're going to need some paper. I've just taken that out of my watercolor book, that's 140 grams, which is a good thickness. If you go any lower than that, you might find your paper bookling but go with what you've got and see how it goes. Go to need a ruler and a pencil. You could use a compass if you wanted to, but I'm actually going to use a bowl and just draw around a bow. I'm leaving some paper around the edge of it because I'm going to paint over the circle. You'll see what I mean once I get going. I'm going to just work out a bit like the faces of clock, you know, 12:00, 6:00. 3:00 and 9:00 and join those up first. Don't worry if you don't get these segments looking exactly the same size as each other. We're not trying to get really perfect here. Okay. Now, in fact, already, I can see that they're slightly smaller than those, but that's absolutely fine. I'm certainly not going to rub them out. I'm going to do 10:00 and 11:00 and roughly 1:00. 2:00. Now, what will happen is if you go to that little point there and then line it up with your mid section with that mid point, then it'll give you where it needs to come to there. If I'm just going to move that round slightly. So they're reasonably even. Those are reasonably even. Let's start off and pull that through a little bit further point there through that mid section. And then the last one. And that gives me the 12 sections. Now, at this point, it might be useful for you to just write on top or right around the edge if you like where you're going to put your primary colors. It's quite useful in the sense that it's a good guide for you. I'm going to use this one as my guide, and I'm going to put this as number one, and that's going to be my blue. I'm going to count through that so that from blue, that's one, two, three, four, five, it's going to be the yellow. That's one, two, three, four, five, will be the yellow. Five, again, one, two, three, four, five, will be the red. That's five, six, seven, eight, nine, that's number nine. When that blue is mixed with that red, which will be that middle section here, that's going to give us violet. Let's just write this down. The reason I'm suggesting you do this is because yesterday, I decided to do a little color wheel and I did it all the opposite way around. This is a good guide for me. You might not need it, but it's a good guide for me, so I'm going with it. That then will be a blue violet there because we'll be mixing the blue with the violet. We'll be mixing the violet with the red, so this will be a red violet. And so on and so forth. So yellow. We're going to be mixing that with the red. So in the middle, it's going to be orange. Here, it's going to be yellow orange, or orange, yellow, whatever you want to call it. Here it's going to be red orange. Here that blue is going to get mixed with that yellow. The middle section there is green. Then it's going to be yellow green, and that one leaves us with blue green. I've never done this color combination before, so I'm really curious as to how this is going to turn out, and I'm going to start off with the blue. So I'm going to put some of this blue onto my palette. I'm using a round tipped brush that's got a point to it because it's just easy to get into the middle into the point because that's how I like to start by painting from the middle outwards. Just pour a bit of water into my little jugs. I've got a couple of water jugs here because I just like to keep the brush as clean as I can. So I'm just giving it a bit of water, but dabbing it onto the kitchen towel here so that I don't have any excess water. Now, This blue paint here. If you look, all paints have a little symbol on the back of the mother front, and it will be in the shape of a square. Let me just show you on here first. So it'll be in the shape of a square, and it will either be a completely blank square like that or it will look like that with the bottom section filled in like this. Or it will be completely filled in. And basically what this means is that if it's like this, well, if it's like that, it's very translucent. In other words, you can really see through it. If it's like this, it's partly translucent, so you can still see through it a little bit. And if it's a square, let me show you one that's got a full square. No, it's not showing on that one. Here we go on the black. Can you see there. It's got a complete square there, which means that it's opaque. In other words, you can't see through it at all. You can see here with this magenta that I'm going to be using that that's partly translucent. This gives you very different results again. I when I showed you the samples of the cobalt blue earlier on, that is a completely opaque paint. So that's why it comes out much more solid. So because I'm using this one here that's only slightly translucent, I might need to put two coats onto it. So it might come out a little bit streaky to start with. And that's just perfectly normal, just so you know. That's me, of course, using acrylic. Depending on what paints you decide to go with, you might have just check on the back of your paints, whether it's watercolor or gash or acrylic to see what your translucency or opacity level is. Okay. Don't forget, turn your wheel around as you need to so that you've always got your brush, not obscured. By your hand so that you can see where you're painting. Now, again, don't try to be too perfect about this. It's really, the whole thing is about experimenting with color. It's not about creating something perfect. It really isn't. I want you to play with this not get anxious about it. But you know, I could create color wheels all day. I don't really need to even do a painting. I could just play with color wheels like this because I just love them so much. Now, that took no time at all, as you can see. So the next thing I'm going to do is, well, after I've washed out my brush is, I'm going to bring in the yellow. Now, unlike the color wheel in the book that you saw, which was done with the primary yellow, this one is cadmium yellow medium hue. So I'm going to put a little bit of that on there as well. This is why I'd like to have two lots of water because the first ones to get rid of the paint, the second ones to make sure that there's no residue of that first paint on it. So I'm going into the yellow now and I'm going to paint that. Wow. That is a real sunshine yellow. That's just gorgeous. Isn't that lovely? That's very nice. Because see how I'm painting over the edges here because what I will do is I will cut this out. I'll cut the circle out and it will go into my resource book. So it's much easier to paint if you can pull things out. Now I want to use half half of yellow to create that green. So I'm going to take half of that yellow to wash out that brush. And half of that blue and mixed together and see what comes out of that. Now, let's just take a moment here actually. I just pull in that other. If we look on this one here, that's the green that was created by using the primary yellow. This is quite a different paint. It's quite a different green. Let's give it a go and see where we go with that. You see what I mean about using a round pointed brush. This happens to be a number ten, but it doesn't matter what size you use, and it largely depends on how big you draw your circle as well. As to how big a brush you need. You can do it, much smaller if you want to. You know, you could even go as tiny as this if you wanted to. It doesn't have to be a big one like this. Right now we've got that green. I'm not going to give either of these a second coat. I'm just going to leave them with those first coats. Now I want a yellow green. The color in between here, what I'm going to do here is take some of this yellow and add that to that green there that I've already mixed. Now, I can play around with this at this point. That doesn't look very yellow we green to me, so I'm actually going to put a bit more yellow into it. Again, I don't want you to get caught up in the exact science of this. You make the color that appeals to you. Don't worry too much about how you got exactly the right quantity. Just go with the color that you like now. I'm just going to see here whether or not that's light enough for me. Yeah, that's quite nice actually. If if it wasn't light enough, then I would have just added a little bit more of the yellow. But that's, that's shade. Let's get that in there. Now, of course, what I'm going to have to do here is to pop a little bit more yellow onto the palette. I should have kept a bit aside, but you'll get into the rhythm of how you're doing it yourselves. Let's make that into a green again into this mid green. If I take half of that, pop it up there so you can see it a bit better and I take half of that yellow. Now you can already see that that's than the green that I mixed there. Okay. But actually, what it is giving me is the bluer green because there's more blue in that mix, so we'll just keep that with that, and we'll add even a little bit more blue. Let's test it out on the paper, and that's a lovely blue green. Yeah. Very different to the other two. I'm quite happy with that. I'm going to put that onto the color wheel as well. I actually, I'm going to add even a bit more blue to that. If you find that your paint is dragging or that your brush is dragging, just pop a tiny bit more water on the edge of your brush as you're mixing it in. Okay. That's very nice. Try and keep your strokes, your brush strokes, you know, nice and fluid. It just gives a slightly better result than lots of little tiny strokes. There we go. As the first third painted, I'll see you in the next session where we'll start with a bringing that to the yellow. Okay. 5. Painting The Second Section: So next, I'm going to add this magenta, quinacridone magenta, which is a much bluer red, in fact. So you had before a kind of orange red, a pinky red, and this is a bluer red. So let's see what this is going to turn out like. So I've already got the yellow. I'm going to put the red in now. And get that onto the color wheel as before. This is where it's really helpful for me to have these names around the edge. I have done color wheels before where I have put them in the wrong place and had to start again. So always a good idea, actually. Now, that's looking pinkish. Well, it's looking very magentish because it is magenta. Let's see with that as the third primary as it were, how that's going to mix in with the other things, with the yellow and the blue to see what colors they give me. Okay. You can see that that has gone on a bit streaky, but it might dry a bit flatter, we'll see. I'm going to mix the yellow and the red now to create an orange. Again, by taking half and half. I'm going to scoop up well, I'll just leave that yellow there, and I'm going to take half of that and add that into there. Wow, that's, that's almost like a red to me rather than an orange. Let's see. Let's put that on and just see I've got green on my brush there I can see. Let's just clean that off a bit more. Roll that around and get that out of there. That's better. Because I don't want the color to be muddy. Let's see what that looks like. I know that is very orange. That is quite orange. Although it's got a slightly terracotta look to it, actually. Quite earthy. I've been painting for many years and played with color for many, many years. I love it that I can still be surprised and delighted, actually. I think delight is the word discovering something. Not exactly new, but discover slightly different shade or a slightly different tone. And I think as well, when we go onto doing the individual segment experiments, they'll come out different colors to these again because you can never just duplicate the same color twice. I'm going to take some of this into that yellow, and that's going to give me the yellow orange. Again, I'm just mixing this until I like the look of that color. I want to take away in a sense, in this class, I want to take away the science of color and just bring it back to instinct. And joy. Now, does that look significantly different from that one? You see, to me, that actually looks more what I would call orange. In fact, I'm going to go over that orange there and I'm going to paint it in that color instead. No rules here. Just create your color wheel with the colors that you feel you like and then play with them as you start adding tints and tones. In order for me to get a yellow orange, I'm going to have to put more yellow into that. You see how I'm really not doing this as an exact science. I'm doing it by instinct and by what I like. Now, that's a much yellower. What I could have done is have added the magenta to the yellow rather than putting the yellow into the magenta. I could have done that, but I didn't. Because I don't like doing rules. There's no rules. It's just do your own thing. Now that's a very nice color. As you will see. Oh, isn't that gorgeous? It's almost gold. That is so beautiful. I must say I'm quite excited by these. I'm very easily pleased as you can tell. That's just really nice. Orange is one of my favorite colors actually because I find it very, very joyful. If as I've done that there, you can see it's almost like the petals of a sunflower. I'm going to leave that because that's rather nice. I might end up giving it another coat, but we'll see. Then, I want to do a red orange where there's more red into that, so I'm going to scoop a little bit of that out and then add more of that magenta there. Let's pull it all in. As you can see, I'm turning the bristles of the brush over and over so that the brush is really getting loaded with the paint all the way through and not just on one side. I think that's different enough to that one. No, maybe not. I think we need to put a little bit more magenta in there. Tiny bit. You don't need, go with smaller quantities and add as you need to rather than wasting your paint. Wow, that's very rich looking. I could even put momagena into there because I do want it to be considerably contrast. I want it to be contrasting to that orange that I've created there. I'm just going to keep working that one and going over until I've got the colors I want it. That's better. Now it's interesting, isn't it that by, by mixing the magenta with the yellow, which supposedly creates a red orange. That to me is more red, than the magenta. That's okay. That's looking really nice. I'm going to clean a palette again and then finish this last section here. 6. Painting The Last Section: So we're onto the last section now so that I'm going to put some more blue here and some of them agena I take half of that into there and half of that into there and that should then give me the violet color. Wow. That certainly is violet. Again, I'm rolling that brush around so that the bristles are really getting loaded up. Now, if I just have a look on here. I think if I compare it to the other color wheel. That is actually quite a blue violet, but I'm just going to stick with that in that half and half quantity, and then see what else happens when I'm going to add the more blue to it to see what the blue violet looks like. Again, it's just allow yourself to play with it. Allow yourself to experiment with it. This is how we learn by doing experiments. Sometimes we don't like what we turn out with and that's just as valid as knowing what we do like. But unless we allow ourselves to play, then often, and not want to produce something that's absolutely brilliant from the minute we put the brush on the paper, when we allow ourselves to just play and not be attached really to the outcome, then it's so much more relaxing. And for me, it's more joyful. That's a big thing, really, not being attached to the outcome of something, but remaining in curiosity is how I like to think of it. Right, I'm going to take some of this blue now over here or this violet, I beg your pardon, some of this violet here, and I'm going to add that magenta to it to give us the red violet. Going to pop a bit more in a bit more again. Might have put a bit too much in there. Let's see. No, that's rather nice. I paint that in. I must say I am really liking this color wheel, probably more than the other one, actually, which is the one that I tend to use most of the time. This one just feels more vibrant somehow. That's really, really lovely. Now, I don't need to clean your brush because it's a combination of the red and the blue anyway, so I'm just going to pull that blue off there, go back into that violet color. I think I need to add a little bit more red to that. Keep mixing that. Just do another test. That's almost like an indigo. Or a Prussian blue even. Fascinating. Fascinating and beautiful. So here we have the finished color wheel. I've put a little gold.in the middle just to cover that little gap, and I'm really loving its vibrancy. So I'm just going to see how that compares to that one really. Now, you can see that well, obviously, the blue was exactly the same. You know, there's a similarity going on here between these. But the minute we hit this yellow orange, this color here, then that changes considerably. That red orange, this is just more vibrant this one. And as soon as we look to the blue violet red violet, that's considerably different. So really, what's made the big difference in this one is the fact that instead of using primary red, I've used that magenta instead, and that has made a big difference. So this is what I'm meaning about, you know, you will get the results that you get depending on which three colors you choose to use in terms of your red, yellow, and your blue. What I'm going to do next then is I'm going to take one of the segments from this color wheel, and I'm going to show you how by adding the mars black or the titanium white, that we can get a huge amount of different colors, different tones, different tints, different shades from that one there. So I'm going to clean my color palette, and I'm going to start with the yellow. It's an interesting one to start with the yellow because you get some really gorgeous results straightaway and surprising results, particularly when you add the black. I'll see you in the next session. 7. Painting with Yellow, White & Black (part 1): You decide how you want to play with your colors just now. You could do a little grids like I've done here. You could do random patterns, like I've done on there. You could go a bit more organized in a sense of like doing grids, where you go from the main color and keep adding white all the way down. Which is what I've done there and on here. Now, what I've done here is I've created grids to start off with, and then I've cut them up. You can see on here, and then collage them because I just felt it made it look a bit more interesting for me. I quite like doing that, but it's very easy to do this as well. That's what I'm going to start off with here with the yellow. I have literally taken another page out of my watercolor book. I do beg your pardon. I did say earlier on that it was 140 grams and I meant to say pounds. It's 300 grams and 140 pounds. Is this weight here. What I've done is I've literally just gone with the width of the ruler all the way across, taken the width of the ruler down. And then gone in the middle of those lines as well to give me slightly narrower grid lines here. I've got white on the palette and I've got the yellow on the palette, and I'm switching because I'm using grids, I'm actually switching to a square brush to a flat ended brush because that just makes it a little bit easier. So again, dipping it into the water. Now, what I'm going to do here is take a little bit of white on its own over there and pull a bit of yellow out and then add to that white there. Actually, no, I'm not going to do that first, so I'm going to just switch brushes a minute because actually what I want to do is to have the yellow right at the very top. I'm just going to put that in there. Again, I'm not bothering about whether I'm going over the edges or not. That's better. So that's my starting color at the top there. So now I'm going to pull in that little bit of white and I'm going to keep increasing the amount of white that goes in it. And just pulling down the grid, a bit more water there. Very simply keep going down each time with more white in it. Pulling some white out of there, putting it into that bit again, and coming down. I mean, you get some lovely shades going on here. So lovely tints very creamy looking. It's almost like clotted cream is this one. Obviously, depending on how much white you add, well then depend on the tone or rather the tint that you end up with. You can keep going and going and going until you're almost at white itself. Now those two look pretty similar, don't they? Actually, if I go back over there and just add a little bit of yellow onto that one, there we go. Not quite as dark as the one above it, but a bit darker than the one below it. A bit more white to that one. Okay. And that takes it down even further. Of course, you can also add more water to it that will make it less opaque. Now, I should just say at this point that when you add white to it because white is an opaque color as you can't see th it, then even though you might be using your yellow, which is semi transparent, adding the white to it will in fact make it very opaque, so very solid. That's something to be aware of as well. I'm going to pull a bit more white from there. We're down to cream now. Lovely pale cream. And if I add it more white again to that pale cream. We're almost down to white. But of course it won't be. It can't be pure white because it's still got some of that cadmium yellow in it. But you can see where we're going with this. Okay. 8. Painting with Yellow, White & Black (part 2) : Now, I'm going to leave those on the palette there actually because I'm going to mix other things into those as well. Let's just now go with black. Now I have to tell you this, do not need a lot of black. You really don't. It's better to pull in the tiniest bit first and then increase as you go along. You'd be surprised at how sorry, what a difference Black will make something. Let's just take some of that yellow up there. Okay. And I am quite literally going to just pull a tiny bit off look. That's all I've got on my brush there, hardly any at all. Let's mix that in there. Look already how that changes that to this beautiful olive green. I mean, that's always a surprise, isn't it? To turn that round. I mean, isn't that just lovely. Beautiful. So we're going to do the same again and just keep pulling off a tiny bit of black again and adding that to there a little bit more. Not much. Do you know, don't get too vigorous with it. I'm going to keep doing down there, adding that little bit more black. And increasing that tone. Generally speaking, if we've added white, we generally call it a tint, but we're not going to get hung up about these. If we've added a black, we're calling it a tone, but it's not important that you even know that or remember it. But you can see again how subtle the differences are here in those tones and darker again. Now, that's very similar to that one, so let's just pull a bit more black onto there and go over that one. That's a bit darker. But who'd have thought that from yellow, you could get these gorgeous olives and shades. I like this color olive with orange. Find it quite a nice combination. That's the thing when you're doing these kind of exercises that you get to really then find out what colors you like, and what colors you're intuitively drawn to a bit more black into that one. Until you almost get it to, you know, itself. But it will still always have that hint of Khaki about it or olive about it. That's probably as deep as I want to take that now. Just add a bit more water to that because my brush is dragging. You'll notice that I keep turning the page around so that I can easily have my brush in my sight line rather than brushing in such a way that my hand covers it up and then I don't know where I'm putting the line. That's always a useful technique to have. What I'm going to do now is just mess with all these colors that are on here now. Again, I could get very specific and scientific about it, but I don't want to do that. I'm going to go into there and see what produces there now that I had that black on my brush, and I've added it into what was the cream at the bottom. Let's see how that turns out. This is where it gets really fun then because you really start to experiment with what colors you can produce. I mean, that's a beautiful green gray. That's very nice. Again, if I added more yellow to that, it would come out different again. Okay. So when you add the black and white into the color, you get a whole new set of colors. Now, of course, what I could also do from this. Let's just take that color there is, I could then put that color at the top and start adding white to it or black to it, which would give me a whole other range of colors again. You see where I'm taking this. Let's just see what happens, if I take a bit of black there and add it to that half. That gives me that color. If I just wash the brush. If I add white to that other half of it, then that gives me that lovely color. So what happens now if I add some yellow to that one because I've got yellow on the palette. What do I end up with there? Another yellow altogether from what's coming down here because this has got the and the white added to it. Let's add a bit of black to that. Let's take some of that. In fact, let's just scoop some of that up and add it to that black that was over there and see what happens there. So that's not dissimilar to that one there, so let's put a bit more yellow in there instead. And see what different tone we can come up with there. So you could just keep going for hours. You could fill this whole page and more from these three colors. I'm going to add some white to that. See what I get there. Okay. Okay. When I'm decorating at home, I actually when I'm painting walls, I very often mix my own colors until I get the exact shade that I want. Because I just find that, a lot of fun. Let's add a bit more white to that one. No, more white still. Then we go. And that's just a few colors of what we could achieve by doing this. So I encourage you to take the yellow with a black and a white and have a play yourself and see how many tints and tones that you can get. Feel free to paint them in the same way that I have or however you want to do it, cut them up into strips, make them. You just have fun with it and see how you get on with it all. I'll see you in the next session where we have a look at playing with orange. 9. Painting With Orange, White & Black (part 1): I'm going to put some more yellow ontomalt there. And some of that magenta. I'm not going to do all 12 sections because that would be really boring for you. I'd be like watching paint dry, no pun intended. But I wanted you to see the yellow because that's always a real surprise to find that it goes into these gorgeous olive colors. But I'm going to play around with the orange because it is so vibrant and different from the ones that I've got in the other book. I'm going to play around with the orange and I'm going to play around with the magenta and just have a look at what they come out because I've not done those myself before. I think I'm going to go for something like this to start with as the main color. So let's see what I need to mix that. Let's take some of that there. And actually, I want it to be quite yellowy. I want it to be nearer that color there. Let's just pull quite a scoop of that out of there. Now you see there's a bit too much there. Let's put a bit more yellow in. In fact, let's just mix all those together and go from there. I'll use that as the main color in this instance. There we go. I'll do. I'm going to play with these slightly differently. Oh, isn't that nice? I know I say that about every color, but it is, very nice. I must say Yeah, that's lovely. Let's add a bit of white to that. Actually, I've got a bit too much water on my brush there. Just take some of that water off. Put a bit more white in there and drag that down a bit. Going to put another bit of that here. I am quite literally going to go through just exactly the same process as we did with the yellow. But rather than do it in a graduated grid, like I did with the yellow like this one here, going, I'm just going to do this a bit more randomly without the horizontal lines. Because it just again, makes for a bit more of a playful way to do it. I'm also going to leave space in it as well to be able to add some of the orange that's got black in it. And a bit more here. I think I need a little bit more white, don't. They coming out with some really nice shades there, some gorgeous shades, actually. I really like tints, whatever we want to call them. I do feel that color is an instinctive. Yeah. Well, how can I put this? It's an instinctive thing for want of a better expression. You either like a color or you don't like a color and you don't need to analyze it and understand why you do or don't like it. You just have to accept that that's what it is. I'm getting more and more white into this. And really enjoying these shades that are being created here. Very much so. Let's just clean it out and see what happens when we add the black. Again, like before, pulling off just a tiny, tiny bit. I'm going to mix it into that bit up there. Now, we're almost getting an olive color there as well, which is not surprising, of course, because it's got that yellow in it. Don't forget. Let's see that there. But it's not quite the same shade as we're getting over here. This is slightly earthier looking one. Was this has a bit more lightness to it somehow. Although I guess you would call that a bit earthy as well, wouldn't you? We don't need to call it anything really, do we? We just need to decide, do we like it or not. Now what happens if I decide to paint over that with that color? I get yet another tone again. That's also another way to play by over painting. What happens if I over paint this one here? I let's just over paint them all. Now that white was still a bit wet, so that's coming through still. But I've just created something entirely different there. Just by over painting. Colors that were already on the page with that color there. Let's take a bit more black again, pop it into there. Pull a bit more of that orange in. Let's go across the way this time. If I look, that's a work of art just in its own right there. That's so lovely. If you could imagine that on a slightly bigger scale, and then either with some pattern added into it or not, depending on what your preferences, that's already created art for your walls there. I'm going to add more to that because I want a really deep color up in that top corner there. Let's put more black in that again. That's a bit too black. Let's just tone that down with a bit of that orange. And bring that across there lock. I mean, you can see how easy it would be to create art for your walls, you know, to complement whatever color schemes you've got going on. I'll see you in part two where we had the white and the black together. 10. Painting With Orange, White & Black (part 2): So now if I start to add some of this white, let's see what we get here. What kind of graze are we going to get here? I'm pulling that white there, but I want to take it back up into this. Okay. That's just so lovely. So lovely. I think we're going to have to have that down here as well. You know, we've gone from that color there, I'm creating a shadow here. Let's move that. We've gone from that lovely, vibrant color there into this. Where we've mixed the black and the white in with it. And let's go there with that one and see what happens there. Pull some of that. And a bit of that orange there. You can see how I'm just literally pulling color in and really messing here, can't you? Let's go that way. Now, that's quite similar. So I'm going to put a bit more yellow on a little bit more yellow there and pull that one into there with a fraction more of that magenta. A bit more yellow. Let's go over there with that. It's got a burnt look to it now, hasn't it? Nice. Very nice. I think what I want to do down here is just make a bit more of that original orange. Pull that here. We've got a nice bit of vibrant pop down here. Now again, those two colors are the same. What happens if I overpint this one with this orange, let's have a look. Okay. Be prepared to experiment. You can't get it wrong. What you'll end up with is colors that you like and colors that you don't like as much. But that's changed that from that now considerably, and given it quite a different tone. I want to pull a bit of that white into there. Pop that through. You can see what I mean when I say that I really like orange and olive together. I think it's a great combination. Let's take a little bit of that and pop that in there. A bit more white into that one, I think. Very nice. Very, very nice. I'm going to clean the par up again, and then I'm going to keep that magenta on and have a little play with that magenta. And let's see where that takes us as well on this lovely magical unfold of these gorgeous colors that we're mixing together. 11. Painting With Magenta, White & Black (part 1): I rather like the randomness of this as opposed to this grid work here. I'm going to do something similar with the magenta color. I'm just taking it straight as it is. I'm not mixing it with the blue. I'm just going to take it straight as the color out of the tube. So there we've got the first color, and I'll take a bit of that up there and add some white to that. Well, that's almost like neon pink, isn't it? Cracky? Wow. Not as much when you actually get it on the paper. Might do a little bit of grading here as well, a bit of gradient painting and pulling it through just to see, you know, it's an opportunity here to just play with different techniques. Maybe what I need to do is just put a bit of white on my brush and pull that into it, and then use the opposite side of my brush that's still got that slightly deeper color in it and pull that into there. Let's come back to that magenta. Let's obviously still got a bit of white there on my brush because it's not as vivid as the original one. Gorgeous colors, though. I'm not really a lover of well, no, that's not true. I was going to say. I'm not really a lover of pink. That's not true. I like pink as a color, but I notice I don't use it very often in my own work. So this is quite nice, actually, to you know, have an opportunity to do something a bit different here and to maybe start using it a bit more. Here I go again. It's rather lovely. Rather lovely. Pulling more white in. As you can see, Now, you can see here by doing that, I'm creating a very soft effect here. Very soft. You know, by pulling in a bit of white, a bit of pink. And sort of grading it to slightly by just blending that a little bit. So not only am I having an opportunity to actually experiment with the color mixing itself. I'm having an opportunity here to decide how to even apply that color. Okay. Okay. I mean, that's blended really nicely. Let's go up the way here a bit. I'm bringing a bit more of that. Go back into that pure magenta color. No, there's a lot of white in there, so it's taking on that opaque solid pink, which is fine. It's lovely. It's a nice color. I just want to get back up to that. Plain magenta color again. There we go. You can see the transparency of that compared to that one there. You can see that it's it's almost like it allows light to shine through it. Which is what's really nice about these transparent colors. I take that really down to a very pale pink. Don't forget you can add a bit of water just to make that a bit more fluid, and also a bit more transparent. I've got lots of mix in the brush there, but that's okay. That looks rather nice. I'm even going to leave that as it is. Let's bring a bit of that black. 12. Painting With Magenta, White & Black (part 2): Take some of that magenta up there. Pinch a bit from there and add a little bit of that black. Wow, that didn't take much to turn that, did it? For those of you that have watched any of my other classes, you'll know that color has its own vibration. It vibrates like a musical note vibrates. And we instinctively respond to that. Whether we understand why we've responded to it or not. And some colors have a very high frequency, and some colors have a much lower frequency. Depending on the mood that wear in at any given time will respond differently to colors at any given time. It's quite fascinating. Well, I must say those are really rather splendid. In fact, let's add a bit more red there and bring you to here. You know, I quite like happy accidents, me. So when you end up going over another color, I like the fact that you've had an opportunity to create something different yet again. Isn't life full of opportunities. I don't care for that one there, so will I leave it or will I change it? I think I probably will change it by actually going into the white and adding a bit of white over that and seeing what comes out. So we're getting into the grays now. That's a slightly more interesting color than what was there before. Let's add some of the white and the black now to these and see what other colors we come up with. That's rather lovely as well. The thing is, when you're working just from such a limited color range, everything will work together. It can't not because it all exists within the same color range. So it can't be okay if that makes sense. You know, it will all be harmonious because It's all come from the same as I say, the same limited color range. What what to look for though then is contrast between light and dark colors. So for example, I'll just finish painting this bit, and I'll demonstrate what I mean to you. So if I look here now, this bottom section. If if I just put let's not do that. Let's put that there instead. These three colors here are of a similar tone or what we would call value. Okay. That one is a lot. That contrasts quite nicely with that. But these three, if they didn't have that kind of contrasting with them, could look a bit bland together. So this is something else to just be aware of as to how do you create enough contrast, enough value between the colors to make it look interesting and not all very smy. I am just going to get some black there because I think we need a little bit more depth. Here we go. Pop a bit more black on that palette. If I take this color now that I've just mixed and add a bit more into that. That's giving me a very interesting gray, and let's see what that looks like here. Now, that's giving me quite a different contrast to that color now. So we've kind of got, you know, going on down in this section here in this bit just here alone. You know, this is very interesting, even though I haven't painted that one in yet because we've got a very light color there. We've got a very vibrant color there, and then we've got a very dark color here. So we've kind of got light dark. And I wouldn't even call that midway. It's it's it's a vibrancy all on its own, really. So how do we make sure that this section here remains, you know, interesting. Without if I put another vibrant color next to it, that's just going to clash too much. If I put another dark one into it, I think it's going to overpower it. So these are the questions to ask and the experimenting to do with your colors to see what works tonally. You know, the tones or a little bit too much? It's like having big everywhere. When you see rooms that are completely white with no other color in them. Um I notice for myself, I always want to go and put some pop of color somewhere with it. So, where are we going to take something from? Let's just have a look at this bit here. And pop that in there. Now, again, it's not that different tonally to this one. What could I do to that to just make it a little bit more less save me with this or what could I do with this one? Maybe it's this one here that I need to change by just going back and adding more white to that. Let's see what happens there when I do that. Put that into that section there. Although I didn't want it to look white. I still wanted it to look pink. That's better. I I even that section there from there downwards, that's very interesting because you've got lots of different contrasting tones and colors going on there, and this also plays into it as well. But there's something about this bit here that just does not work for me. It's just too to similar. I need to either darken one of them or lighten one of them. I think what I'm going to do is going and lighten that one there with some more white or turn it into a slightly more pinky color. Because that's really. Although the color itself is okay, it's really not working for me in terms of its contrast. This is better. I'm not saying it's ideal, but it's better. I hope you can see that that it's brought a different element to that little composition there. I'm just adding a bit of pattern to add a little bit of fun to it. Feel free to do the same. It's again, a nice way to just experiment a little bit. Hopefully, as you've watched the process of those three different color palettes being created, it's giving you some ideas as to how you might want to play with your colors. My suggestion now is that you take a different segment from the color wheel, each of the 12 segments and play in your own way with adding the black and the white and seeing how many colors you can get within that limited color palette of each segment. I'll see you in the next session. Okay. 13. Abstract Composition (part 1): Here we've got the two different compositions. I'm going to start off with the right hand side one, the more abstract one, I'm going to treat that one slightly differently to how I'm going to treat this one on this side. I'm going to use the whole color spectrum here using the oranges in much the same way that I did a bit of color blocking and overlaying, I'm going to give that I go on here. Now it's a complete experiment. I have no idea how it's going to end up. I haven't got anything in mind at all. This is literally just a playful experiment to test out how some of these colors, how they might work together, how they might overlay, how they might block together. Let's start off with this one and see how we go on. Then I'm going to use this color spectrum here on the left hand side, and I'm going to treat this painting slightly more traditionally. Now that said, You know what I'm like, I like to go with the floor, so it might be that I changed my mind partway through and do something entirely different. Let's just see how we get on. That's the quinacridone magenta and the cadmium Mela medium hue on the palette along with the white for the moment. I'm going to leave that without the black at the minute I that later when I need it. I'm going to start off by actually painting the whole of this section here even over the different shapes. Again, I've not really played in this way before, as I say, it's quite an experiment for myself. Because I want that to be a really vibrant orange, I've put more yellow and less magenta. And I want that to be a fairly palish background, so I'm going to bring quite a bit of white into that. As you can see, I'm using quite a flat wide brush here, which will just make it a lot easier for you know getting those straight lines down. So let's see. Now, because I put the white in, that's made it opaque straightaway, so it might even be that I lose these shapes completely. So let's just give it a go and see. Actually, I'm going to water it down a bit more so that it has a bit more of a transparency to it. Now funny enough, I don't like that color. Straightaway, I don't like that color. That's not going to work, is it. Let's get more white into that and make it paler with quite a bit more water in it. I don't really want to paint over those lines just yet. There we go, that's better. Okay. Now, as you say, I've put quite a bit of water in with that. I can't really go up to that just at the moment because I might end up getting bleed, which I don't want. I'm going to look at this section next down here and treat this as a color block. I want a similar to to that one there, but obviously not the same color. I'm going to pull more of that orange there. Again, keep it fairly watered down and see what I think about that. That's nice. Just take that all the way down to the bottom. As you can see, I'm painting right up to the edges on both of these, and I've put the tape around the edge so that I get quite a nice little crisp white layer, you know, quite a crisp white edging, I should say, around the edge once that's peeled off. I want to get a color similar to this one here. I'm going to bring in a bit more yellow and add a little bit of black and see if I can get that one there. Again, I'm pulling in very little of that magenta. In fact, that's really quite yellow if you look. Actually, I've probably got a bit of white on the brush there, so we'll just give that a good rinse out because I want this to stay again fairly translucent. Tiny bit of black as we know before. Now, that paint has already dried on my palette, so it's actually making. Can you see it's bringing in flaky bits, which I don't want. I'm going to have to remix that bit there. This is a thing with working with acrylic, of course, that you need to work fairly fast. I'm just going to wipe that off the plate and start that little bit again. I've put some fresh paint on there, and I'm just going to keep bringing in that yellow until I get it to the shade that I want to. Remember, just keep going with it until you've got it to the color that you want it to be. Don't be worrying too much about proportions, et. Let's take a fraction of that black again and pop it in there. What I could just test out on this paper here is not quite black enough. Not quite olive enough, I should say. That's better. That's a bit nearer to the color that I'm after. Again, I'm going to keep that fairly translucent while putting a bit more water into it and pulling that one down here now. You can see there that I've already gone over that lovely orange color on the left, which is then creating a different color in the middle. This is what makes it quite interesting for me. Let's just get that paint on and then I can scoop some of it off again. As you can see, I'm going in any direction at this point. Okay. But then I'm going to take my brush and I'm just going to drag it down so that I kind of get a grain where the brush marks are all going in the same direction. I'm going to turn that around a minute. Now, the color that I was after was that color there, and it's, you know, a darker shade of that, but that's okay. So let's see if I can get that one by coming up here and pulling in some of that white. See if we can get a bit closer. And of course, this is what it's like. When you're not using specific how can I put it? You know, you're not doing what I would call proper calculated equations as to how much you should have of one paint and how much you should have of the other. You know, this is guesswork. But I feel more creative doing it this way. That's a bit nearer. That's a bit nearer that color. Whoops. Look what I've just done. I've just gone over there by accident. Happy accident, again, let's pull it up and make it part of the painting. 14. Abstract Composition (part 2): What next? Well, given that that's still a little bit wet and that one is still a little bit wet, I'm going to go with this section here. I quite fancy that being a bit more ready orange. I I don't like it, I'll just paint over it once it's dry and do it in a slightly different color. But let's give it a go. That's a bit too red. In fact, I'm going to pop even a bit of black into that one. That's better. Yeah, that's better. Can you see I've swapped brushes that round. I've swapped brushes to one with a pointy end on a round brush that's got a pointy end because again, that allows me to go with that shape of the circle much better. When I was drawing this out, I did use things to draw around the bottom of a candlestick, various other things. You could of course do it all free hand if you wanted to. This is a little bit awkward showing you this on camera because the board is so big, to try and turn it around where I can actually see what I'm doing. Slightly trickier. Then if it was a smaller board, only had one painting on it. There we go. That's fine. I like that color. That's good. Actually, I like that color so much. I'm going to mix more of that, and I'm going to bring it into this bit here. Now, it might end up being the same and it might end up being slightly different. But let's just go with it. Like I say, this is all, an experiment. Playful experiment. See that color looks nothing like that now because I haven't brought enough red into it, but let's see if I like that color anyway. That's quite nice, actually. Let's just go with that and see what happens when I then cross over these two colors. I'm trying to keep the brush strokes. You know, I might be putting the color on in different directions to start with, but then I'm trying to keep the brush strokes. Eventually, sort of going in one direction because I just feel it helps particularly with this composition. I've put a bit of fresh paint on the palette now because it was beginning to dry up again. So I'm going to mix some more orange. And that's quite a red orange when you look. Very red orange. A bit too red for me, so let's put a bit more yellow into that. That's better. Take quite a bit of that white on this one here. Then I'm also going to put in a little bit of. Take a bit of black out of lock. See what color I'm coming up with there. Now that's a bit too bagish for me, little bit on the bage side. So let's bring a bit more black into it. Okay. That's more what I was after. That's better. There we go. Now, I'm going to paint this archway into that there, it's going to be a bit tricky for me is this, turning it around. So I'm going to paint it and then bring you back into camera with it. Now, as you can see, that's made a very bold statement in that composition there. And what I was saying to you before about how you make sure that you have enough contrast between different tones, brightness, darkness, you know, light colors, dark colors, whether or not it's quite a solid color like this or whether it's quite transparent. So I feel that this isn't really working now. It feels too light weight compared to this great big Solid archway that's now coming. So I'm going to take some of that color there, which again, I've just mixed some more of and given it a second coat. And I'm going to go over this archway. Again, it is tricking me trying to turn the thing around, so I'm going to paint it in and then let you see it in just a moment. Here's the archway painted with another coat of that. Look what it's done here. It's softened that big solid archway. Of course, the paint that I've got on my brush while I'm doing this is less opaque. It's more than what that one was. That one is very solid because it had both the black and the white mixed into that, both of which are very opaque, solid colors in themselves, so you can see that that's why that's really, really solid. Now, I need to decide what or how or what color I'm going to paint these with here. I think I want to go with a really pale color. I'm going to just see if I can get the mix I want with what's already on my palette if I can't, I'll mix a new one. I'm going to take some of this gray actually. Although it's starting to dry up a little bit now, you can see it's drying look. Let's get rid of that. Okay. Now having lost that color that I've just been using. I'm going to create a new one. And I want it to be let's put a little bit of black into this. And then take some of that up there. Put bit more yellow into there, I think. You can see I really am just messing here. Totally messing. As you can see, I've painted the three circles, and they took a bit of doing actually, I'm not sure I'd do this particular composition in a hurry again, but there you go. Again, it's all to play for and just see whether you like doing it or not. Once I painted those in, the two colors here just did not work at all. So I decided to do them in a darker gray, for me, that works now, that's a much better composition. And whilst I got that gray on my brush, because I could see the pencil lines going across there, and I can still see this one here as well. Decided whilst I got that paint on my brush, though, just to do some simple, simple dashes going across that one. I'm probably also going to get my gold pen out actually and just do a very faint line up there and possibly down here with my gold pen. And then I think we can call this composition finished. I'm going to finish it off with the gold pen, take the tape off, and then let's see what we've ended up with. I'm really pleased with how that's turned out. You can see the correlation of colors compared to the sample next to it. And by adding a few little gold dots, few little details, that's really elevated. I'm very pleased with it. I will see you in the next session where we start to do the botanical composition. 15. Botanical Composition (part 1): In much as the same way as I did the abstract painting. This is going to be an experiment. Again, I have no idea what it's going to turn out like. I'm just playing with it as I go along, seeing what works and what doesn't work. It might all work, and maybe none of it will work. But that's the beauty of again, just allowing yourself to play. As you know, I am going to use predominantly this color palette here for this composition. I also decided, actually, just giving it a little bit of further thought and reflection. I'm also going to bring in the green as well. I might just bring in the green here with the foliage, with the botanical section, and I might bring in a bit of green down here as well. Let's see. I've got my book here where I've got the recipes, if you like. Here I've got the green, which is the mix of the blue and the yellow, then it tells me how much proportion of black I've put into each one. So I can very easily look at these and think, right, let's try and get that shade again. So that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to use this as a bit of a reference as well as this color palette as well. So I'm going to start off with the pink and paint this section here first in a very pale color and see where we go from there. Okay. So I've got predominantly white on here and a little drop of the magenta. I want to try and get it as pale as this bit here. So let's take a bit of that there, but add quite a lot of the white so that I'm really just getting a hint of that pink. But you can see, can't you how strong that magenta is. Because that does give it a lot of color. Now, like I did with the abstract painting, I'm going to water this down a little bit. Because I've put the whiting, if you remember, that's making it opaque, in other words, solid. I want to make it a bit more through, a bit more translucent. I'm even going to paint over this leaf shape here as well. Let's turn that round, actually, for the moment to make it even more watery. Pull that down the way like that. But because I know that when I paint them with the green, they're going to have some black and white added to them, that will make them opaque anyway, so it'll go over this pink fine. Without me needing to worry about the pink coming into the green that won't happen. Okay. And that's the first section done. That looks really nice. I want to get the background in first and paint the two vases next and then paint the foliage last. I need to decide what I'm going to do here. I've already decided that I want this to be a greenish gray color. And I think I'm going to also do that a similar color as well. Again, I'm just experimenting. I've not really got a great plan in mind here. Let's just put a bit more pink that magenta into there. Pull a bit more in and see what happens if we pull that up here. You know, like I did with the other painting with the more abstract one. If I don't like it, I can paint over it. You know, that's the beauty of all this, isn't it? It going to turn that around again. You can see I'm using this lovely flat brush because it's just really good for for being able to go down with straight lines. Well, it would be if I had enough water on my brush and stopped it from dragging. That's better. I don't want it all to be the same shade this background, so I am going to be just mixing it up a little bit in terms of, you know, like there, it's a bit paler than it is here. So I'm just going to do a similar thing here. Pull a bit more of that magenta there so that it's got a bit more interest in it. Maybe just down there on the bottom. You're going from dark to light. Now, you can see there that I've already gone over that pit, so let's just neat and that up a little bit. There we go. Bit wave, don't really want that to be wave. You want it to be quite a nice straight line. I want to paint the bottom underneath the first bars in a similar color to this color range here. What I need to do is to go to the original color, which is a mix of the blue and the yellow. I'm just mixing that right now and getting it to the green that I like to start with. Now obviously, I can go dark green, pale green, midgreen That's the color that I've mixed there. It's not similar to that, perhaps a little bit more blue in it, but it's a good starter. And from there then, I need to get it to this stage here, which means adding a bit of white to it. Of course, this is where it's useful for you to write down how you've got your mixes. So you're writing down your own recipes. Let's take some of that white out of there. Mix that into there. Which takes me back down nearer to that color then. That's just to have that on its own in the composition. At this point, just feels away a bit bright, so I want to knock it back or dull it down a little bit, and that's where the black comes in. Again, you know by now the tiniiest amount, and that's then taking me to this kind of shade. So let's have a look at that. It's a bit more lemon than that one there, so I could put a little bit black in. It's very nice. I do like it. Let's just see what it's like with a little bit more black added to that. Don't forget, I'm using mars black. You can add ivory black or you could use the pines gray you could in fact, make your own black like I showed you right at the very beginning by mixing the red, yellow, and blue altogether. That gives you a kind of very deep gray color. That's a bit nearer. We're going to go with that one. So let's move this out of the way and bring this back here. Again, what I'm doing is just getting the color on and then I'll add a little bit of shading where I want it. But I'm just basically getting the color on for the moment. As I started to do a little bit of shading on this bottom bit, I quite liked that color, so I actually decided whilst it was on my brush, I would do that as well. I wasn't going to do that. I was going to leave that almost to the last. But as I'd already got the paint on the brush, I decided that I would go with it. Okay. 16. Botanical Composition (part 2): I was also going to do these bits here as in color the whole background before I did this vase. But I'm not quite sure yet what color I want those to be, so I'm actually going to go with the vase. And I'm going to bring in this lovely dark magenta. I always call the paints lovely, don't I? Have you noticed that's part of my language. Isn't this lovely? Oh, that's lovely. But it is lovely. I'm going to go with that on this main body here. And you'll see that along with my little jars that I use for water, I also use them for keeping the paint still workable. By just keeping the air out, it means that the paints don't dry up. So I'm going to go straight into that magenta there. I'm going to test it to make sure it's bit's got no white in it. No, that's pretty good actually. And then add a small amount of black. Test it out. And that's close to that one there. That's close enough. So I'm going to do the main body of this here. Wow. Look at that, isn't that lovely? Here we go again, isn't that lovely? Okay. Now, my brush has got quite a bit of water on it there actually. It's making it although it's got the black in it, which is opaque in itself. It's actually feeling quite transparent. It's looking quite transparent because I've watered it down quite a bit and I'm ing that effect just at the moment. Keep turning this round so that I can keep it in my side line. I'm just loving that color there. I want this bit here to be quite a bit darker and that bit there to be quite a bit darker. I'm going to add even more black to that magenta. I'm just going to try adding a bit of white to that mix to see what effect I get. I want to put a couple of highlights into this. So I've started off with a magenta, I've added the bla and now I've added some white to it. And let's see if I can get a nice curve going around here. I might be able to, and I might not let's see. Now, then that's a bit wider really than it should have been. But we'll just stick with it, I think for now. I could do is bring that up a little bit. I'm just going to play with this a minute off camera, see what I end up doing with it. I'll bring you back in in a moment to see how it's ended up. There, you can see that I've started to add a little bit of detail to it. I might even add more to that. But I'll just leave that just for the moment. But I think that's also giving me a clue as to what color I'm going to do this background here. That's the color that I've got in my brush there, and I'm just going to add a lot more white to that now or even add that to the white perhaps. Which will give me that lovely sort of pinkish gray color, which I think will be good for these. It'll just help them to pop without it being too dull. Again, I'm going to test that out. On my paper. And yeah, I like that, so let's get that on. Rather than you have to watch me paint this, I'll just get that color put through there and then bring you back in again. As you can see, I've done that background there and you'll also notice that I've totally changed the color of this. It just felt that it was too bright. And of course, the magenta red has a lot of blue in it. It's a very bluey red. So I realized actually that what would fit better with this would be a more bluey green that had a bit more blue in it and torn the whole thing down with the Marz lax. I've also used the magenta paint to go over those stripes that I put in so that they weren't quite so in your face. And I've used this kitchen role to stamp over the top of it to give it a little bit of texture. I've also done the same with this vase up here as well. I've just over painted it with this color so that it knocked that bright green back a little bit, and then I've stamped over it with this just to give that a little bit of texture as well. Now, I did say that I was going to treat this all a bit more traditionally, but I notice I'm not really, and that's okay. Again, artistic temperament, you know, change your mind when you need to. What I notice now though, is that I actually don't want to do leaves on here, even though I can still see them around there. The whole thing has taken on a slightly oriental feel to it. And I think I'd rather have cherry blossom or something coming out of there as well. But because I can now, I can still see the pencil lines on there, what I'm going to have to do is to repaint over all of that, paint out the pencil lines and then go back into it with the cherry blossom. So that's what I'm going to do next. I'm going to paint that out, and then I'll bring you back in ready to do the cherry blossom. So I've painted in that section again there and covered up the leaves, the pencil lines on the leaves. And I've put in fresh pencil marks to suggest branches. I've mixed a nice gray green that kind of is a cross between these two colors here, so I know it's going to work tonally, and I'm basically just painting them in in this one color to start with. And then I'll probably add a tiny bit of high light to them. As I go once this is dry, I might add a bit more shading to them. I've added a few nobles here and there to make it look a bit more realistic, but as you know, I'm not really trying to make it look hugely realistic. It's my usual stylized version of things. So here we are on the last bit now. I've done the branches. They've dried nicely, and I'm taking a Q tip. I'm just going to dip it into water, clean water that is. I'm going to take a bit of that white paint. I'm just going to do it with white because that background is so pale. If I do it in a pale pink, it'll be lost. I'm just going to test it out on there, and that's basically what I'm going to do. Here we go. It's literally just So again, you can see how this little composition has changed considerably from my first concept of it. I've experimented with it. I've changed it. I've gone over colors if I didn't like them. Basically, I've played. I'm just giving an impression really blossom here. I'm not trying to make it a, you know, specifically realistic. I think that's probably enough. I think we'll leave it at that. Then I will go in and put the finishing touch, which basically is the Magenta paint. I'm going to choose a really fine brush for this. I'm just going to put a tiny little like this in the center of each. Little white circle. Now then, will I end up adding something with my little white pen or gold pen? I'm just going to have a think about it. Bring you back in and then we'll decide whether the painting is actually finished or not. 17. The Final Cut: So, here's the final reveal. There's been quite a few changes. You probably won't be surprised. It's taken me a while to really get to grips with using that color palette, I have to say. So I've painted out all of the green. And I've added texture here. I've added a little stencil area there, and I've added some more texture here. And I noticed that it's been quite a challenge for me, actually, using this particular color palett. I mean, I really love the colors, but it's not my natural palette that I paint with. So even, you know, having to paint out the green so that I could get it almost so it, you know, nearly with all in this color palette and not bringing that extra green one in as well. That's been quite useful. It's been a good exercise for me. It really has, and I will play with it some more, and I will play with it in terms of using the pinks with other colors as well. In fact, I just had a bit of a rummage to see what other little pieces of artwork I had with pink in them. And I've just found that in one of my little sample folders, which is a bit of a fun thing to do, excuse me. But the only other thing that I could find was this one, and that only has a really tiny bit of pink in it interestingly. Usually, these are my color palettes here, the blues and the oranges. Or using the blues and the greens together. These were so much easier to paint for me than the one underneath. And as I say, it's a good exercise for me. It's been great fun doing it. Really good fun actually noticing my own response to the colors. So I would really encourage you to have a play with each section of your color wheel and see what you might come up with and also what you like and what you don't like. It's a great way to find out and find out which colors you prefer to work with. I really hope that class has encouraged you to play. You know that's part of my mantra, play, play, experiment, see what results you can get. Some things you'll do and you'll really love them, other things you'll do, and you won't like them as much, and that's all part of the process as you could see in my last session using the pink palette. It's not going to put me off though. I'd love to see what you create. I really would it. If you'd like to pop what you create in the projects gallery, all you need to do is press the projects button and upload it, and if you'd like to leave a review of the class so that other people can decide whether they want to take it, that would be really nice as well. I'm in the middle of a house move. In fact, that's why there's so little left of my studio right now because it's been dismantled day by day. I've got a busy few weeks ahead of me. But I've already got the next class in my head in the pipeline. So hopefully, it won't be too long before it ends up in your inbox. In the meantime, as usual, just take care of yourselves. Bye bye.