Transcripts
1. Intro - Simple Fall Watercolor ACEO Project for Beginners: have you looked in trees and you're in. Ah, was all of the beautiful colors of the fall and the very intricate details of every single leaf have felt a little overwhelmed with all of those details. Maybe you're a new artists or new watercolorist, but you just want to get that nice little simple feel of fall in on your painting. Well, today I want to show you how to the simple Little island the easy way. Hi, I'm Kelly from Kelly Chassis Fine Art and I have been teaching students from all over the world how to do very simple, easy, step by step watercolors. So today I want to show you how you can very easily create a fall feel more abstract painting with a lot less pressure and a way for you to have a little bit more fun with your water colors. And his course will cover a wet in wet background. And how I layer these will also be using a black Sharpie will be doing fine details and also some white wash. And really, this whole class is about having fun. This is why I teach is just about experimenting and enjoying yourself So I'm super excited for you guys to sign the class. Make sure that you do create a project in the class 12 finished. All you do is click create a project. You can upload the image here, make sure that you have a project title in that and then down below, you could just start typing and telling us a little bit about your project. Once you're done, all you to do is click that publish button. So I hope to see you guys inside the course. And I look forward to creating something very simple and elegant with you for the fall.
2. What is an ACEO or Artist Trading Card: So before we dive into the actual painting, I wanted to talk a little bit about what a CEO is and what it stands for. Yeah, basically, it stands for our card additions and original, since you also may see people discussing them as 80 sees or artist trading cards. And initially they were meant for trading, and they were not meant to be sold. But they have become quite collectable, and people are selling them on eBay now, one, etc. The key to an A CEO is measuring the artwork at 2.5 by 3.5 inches, basically the same size as a playing card. It's a fabulous way for you to practice if you're just beginning with art, it helps with composition is you're working in a really small size. It also, I found, is a wonderful for working with watercolor because a lot of times people can't work fast enough in those larger pieces before the water starts to dry and then you're working with different layers, and one side's dried are one side hasn't and it can create a lot of blooming on your painting or can create a lot of variances in the colors. So a C E O's are a wonderful way to start with watercolor. And that's why I chose to do this one for this particular painting because we're working with and wet, and this is just a very quick and fun way to paint a false seen. So let's get ready and we'll go over our supplies and needed next.
3. Materials: Let's do a quick rundown. Avoid only for materials, so you will obviously need artist trading card size or a C E O sizes, and you can find them on Amazon. They saw him a little. Packages basically 2.5 by 3.5 artist trading card. It's usually watercolor paper. This one comes a pack of tens, usually about £140 cold pressed paper to work on. And then I like Teoh. Get these little mats here now. I did have these cut locally, and I have them size down a little bit smaller than that 2.5 by 3.5. And that gives me a little bit of room in here for my paintings. I sometimes like to leave a little bit of white space. I like to be able to adjust it a little bit, so that's always a good idea, unless you plan on covering the entire area. So as I had mentioned, they do sell the little pieces of artists trading cards separately. But you can also cut your own, which is what I dio. You can just use any type of paper. This one happens to be arches watercolor paper. I love arches. It's a little bit higher quality brand, and this is £140 cold press as well. So feel free to cut them yourself or to get the packages. They're really not all that expensive. So I have some blue painter's tape here. I just like to take my edges down a little bit, working the small so it doesn't move around you Only some water color or water colors. And I'm using my Windsor Newton brand here. This is the artist quality paints. But again, you could use a Cotman or really any brand of watercolor paints you want to use and that I'm just gonna be using a small round brush here. Maybe a number two number one would work. Um, maybe something smaller. If you want to get some fine details in there, we'll also need some whitewash on some water, and that is all we'll need to get started. So we're gonna start first with doing the wet and wet background
4. Background wet in wet: hi there, and welcome to fall reflections. So in this course, we're gonna start with our wet and wet background. Now, when you're learning to paint what in wet? The first thing that you're going to figure out is Do I have enough water? Does not have enough water and that really takes some practice. He's a CEO. Sizes are perfect for that. So you can do a couple of these even at the same time if you wanted to. So we're going to start with wetting the paper first, as you can see here and then I'm adding a little bit of blue to this. This happens to be ultra marine blue. If you don't have ultra Marine, you can use any type of blue, and I'm just gonna dab a little bit of color in here. Now, we need to work fast with this. I'm gonna add a little bit of yellow to this to start our background here. This is going to be where the islands are, and you can see how what that is. It's really spreading a lot. The best thing to do here is test test your area. See how much bloom you have it. You can see this is blooming quite a bit. This is probably more than what I would normally like to dio, but I want to be able to show you, um, what this will do when you have your paper a little bit too wet before we start with the next color. So as you can see here, this has turned more of a green, obviously yellow and blue green. So we're gonna keep going with this. And this does get a little buddy, But I'm okay with it because it's fall colors and you really have a lot of brown's and orange and yellows and reds in here anyway, so it almost looks like a foggy morning here. So we're a little bit of orange to this, tapping that in there, and you can see how the all these colors just blend in together. Well, let's go with Cem. Read here again, tapping it in and see that bloom. It's a really blooming ally. And this is what we wanted to do for this first step. This is the the background. This is gonna be a little bit more muted. It looks very vibrant right now, but once we'd drive this within with a blow dryer. This is going to soften a little bit. I'm just watching it Bloom here to see how far out that's gonna go, and the paper is already beginning to dry a little bit. So the red is is still quite bright. It's not going out as far as your where your blue waas. You can see where it stopped when you can try this with any color. I do this a lot with beautiful pinks and purples. It looks absolutely gorgeous with that. So it doesn't have to be just a fall painting for this. You can do any type of color comedy you want, so I think I'm okay with that. We're gonna go ahead and below dry this now. It doesn't seem to be spreading anymore. So you're going to see here how the color changes once I add a little bit of heat to this now with a blow dryer. You do want to do this with a very cool setting. And I do have this about six inches from the paper. I'm looking straight down here, so it looks like it's a little closer than what it actually is what a cool setting and not too close because you don't want that to move your paints around. So you want a nice soft air, and you can also wait for this to dry on its own as well. But I just like to speed up the process. It makes it a little bit quicker, so you can see the color changes in there. You can take your hand and touch the paper to feel if it's cool and you could tell if it's dry or not, because the next step, you're gonna want this completely dry so that we could add a little bit more details to this.
5. Adding more colors: now gonna be adding some more layers to this. No, this is completely dry. Take the back of your hand. You can touch it and that you shouldn't feel any coolness at all. If there's any coolness, your paper might still be a little wet. So you want to make sure that is warm to the touch, and the reason I do that is because of you. Add any more colors to this. It will bloom if it's still wet, so you'll get little spots on there. So it's very important that this is completely dry before the next step. So I'm gonna be using a little bit smaller brush for this, a little bit more fine detail going to start with a little bit of the yellow. Now, this is more concentrated color. Now. I'm not using a lot of water with this. You can see him dipping directly into my paints. And if you have a lot of water, what happens is you won't see the yellow. It won't show. It would be more transparent. The more water you have so highly concentrated pigment for this one, which sweat your brush, dip it in and then you should be able to see it over the orange. If you have enough pigment, we're just gonna make little tapping motions, little marks in here, and this is going to give us the illusion that are there are trees behind there were gonna be layering this with a couple different colors, similar of the colors that we had used during the first wash. You can see how much more concentrated this is. This is not moving now that paint is staying exactly where I'm putting it and just using the tip of my brush making these little tapping motions here. No, this is also a great spot. If you dig in any little areas that you are unhappy with, you can cover those at this point so you can see I'm just bouncing back and forth between my color still layering. And the more wet that I get this more, those colors will blend again. And as we build upon this, you might find that your colors were just blooming too much. You may need to stop dry it again and then continue on. You can see a little bit here where the orange has bled into that red, and that's not necessarily a bad thing, either. It's all about what you like, so now it's looking a little dotted. You're wondering, What are we doing here? We want to continue. It always goes through those stages a lot of times when you're working with watercolor especially, and I've said this in my YouTube videos a number of times where you go through the stages of I love it, I hate it and you just really need toe work through them with watercolor Elena. A lot of folks who get frustrated with watercolor and they find it to be one of the most difficult mediums out there. But you can do a lot with watercolor a lot more than what people think. So it's really more forgiving. Then, um, what people will tell you sometimes would be working with acrylics. Are you working with oils? I'll hear that a lot of water colors the hardest, but it doesn't have to be what do the work for you. So I am. I blended a little bit of that. We're adding a little bit of the yellow Oakar and then maybe a little bit of green in here . Now it's a tad and That's just to show that there might be some trees out there that have not changed color yet. So it's getting there a little bit more detail in here. Let's give us another blow dry, and then we'll be doing 1/3 layer on this.
6. Layering: Now that we have those layers in there, let's do Step three, which is using some white wash for this. Now I use whitewash for lots of things. It's just my easy way of putting white back into a watercolor painting. Now it makes it more of a mixed media. It's not, you know, as traditional watercolors would say, it's not completely watercolor, so we'll call this a mixed media now on. Using the whitewash is just a way to work with your water clippings without having to use the first guitar. The masking fluid. This is my little cheat, so we're going to be scoring just a little bit of this fresh in here. You don't need a lot. A little goes a long way with wash and wash is non transparent. It's more opaque, and you can add a little water to it to make it more transparent. Or you can use it restraint from the tube, and that makes it more of pure white. Now you do have to be careful not to go over it too much because it can pick up the colors underneath because wash does reactivate with water. It's a little bit different than using a mixed media watercolor along with, let's say, some pen and ink or some acrylic white paint. Because once those air dry you cannot change any of those so you can see her. I've just taken that wake wash and just put a little bit of reflection in that water, and that is what separates that. And I will go back in and put in just a few little trees here, getting just a little bit of details in here Now. You don't want to go to too far with these, and my brush is fairly. Why do you probably could go a little bit smaller if you wanted to have a finer tipped brush? But like I said, we're doing Morrell. But like an abstract reflection here now and the reflection down below, of course, we want a mirror. What we've done on the top, as close as we can. It doesn't have to be perfect, and then we can add a little bit more of the leaves on top of that, honest to come for some of that, so that looks like they're just kind of peeking through there. And the key to reflections is trying to do the same thing on the top as you do in the bottom. Remember, if you've got water ripples and things like that, it doesn't have to be perfect because that's going to change in the image below. Let's give that a quick blow dry once again is we don't want to work with this too wet specially When you're putting little lines in here, you don't want that, too yet to blended. If you had something with water, it's going to do that. So I think we're gonna add a little bit more trees in here and let's go with some white birds will go back to that wash, and I'm crapping myself a smaller brush for this. We want this to be very fine. Anything about those old oak trees of those older maple trees are a little bit larger, so you're going to see their trunks a little bit more than what you would see. Maybe a birch tree. Birch trees just tend to be a little bit thinner, so we're gonna pop in just a couple using my tip of the brush very carefully here. I've loaded up again on the quashed. This is pretty thick. It's not as it's not thick, like toothpaste. You do want to add a little bit of water to it, and that will make it move a little bit better for you. If you're the pain is too thick or fugue wash is too thick, it tends to skip on you. I will also do that. If it's too dry, it will skip on you. So if you want that real fine line you almost wanted, like, house paint would be the consistency of that so that we have the Birgenair licious at a little bit more leaves to those we'll see yellowy green color. Most of my birch trees in my backyard are yellow and green with the leaves, so gonna tap in just a little bit of that color in here. We haven't lost theirs yet. A little yellow joker. This is where you find you can add lots of trees to this, or you can have less trees in my classes. It's all about you all about what your taste is, so you can take this in any direction you want. I'm just giving you how I do it and you know, does not to look just like this one. It's a matter of fact. I'd rather you go in your own direction. I want you to experiment and try things so you don't have to have the trees exactly in the same spots that I'm doing it and background. Anyway. There's no way can duplicate, especially when you're using wet and wet, because those paints will go where they want to go. All right, so we've got most of the details in there. I think we're going to go with just a few more here in red, and then for the last part, we're going to, um, use a little bit of a black Sharpie for some really stark details. I like the red lot of those little burning bushes and things got. Have you ever seen those are using along the edge here? We'll tap just a few of those in there and again, I'm just making these little thought motions. I'm not actually painting a bush, he's This whole thing is about just adding color and dots, and your I will fill in the rest for you again, mirroring the the image on the bottom. And I've used that line that horizon line right across there with the white wash. That really gives it that nice separation. And I love that red. So I'm gonna pop a little bit more red in here. This is my favorite color. Relieves that real bright, vibrant red. So if your favorites orange, you might want to pop some more orange in there. They're So you know, I was gonna tell you this earlier that a lot of times people will try to put all the details in the beginning when they're working with watercolor. And that is really the problem. You want a layer it. The more you layer, the more details you can get in there. So try not to get everything in the very beginning. That's why we dry it in between and add more layers. Dry it again and I'm more layers. So next will be using that Sharpie marker for some final details.
7. Outro: so we'll be finishing up here using a black Sharpie for a few more little details, and I'll be using the fine tip Sharpie. You can also use your micro pens or any little find tip marker, and you don't even have to use black If you don't want to, you could use some dark blues. You could do some dark greens, really totally up to you. Something's popping in a few little rocks in here just to give us a little bit more of a separation and then maybe a few little squiggly lines in here for some fine branches. You're not gonna see a lot of this because you're across from the lake and you're looking at this from a distance, so there's really not a lot of detail, and that's why I don't zoom in a whole lot on this painting of his wealth. It's best almost to look at things in a blur, so you could just see where color is and just see little bits here and there and let your I really fill in the rest. It's especially for something this small, so that's really all you need in there. Just a few of those, and I'm going to do a little bit more definition here. Maybe a few more rocks. It was like a little bit of a rocky coast we have here. We're we're at and I will zoom in just a little bit here so you could see and I'm not hitting every spot. I'm skipping a few areas and let's put a little bloom here in the water. So I'm just making two little dots connecting those lines and bring a little back on him a little big. That's all there is to it almost looks like a little crab. If you turn it sideways, then maybe get a few little ripples in the water here. You could also use the white wash for the ripples as well. And that's all all there is to it. Simple, easy, quick fun. And I hope you enjoyed this. If you are new to me, this is your first class with me. I'd love to have you follow me to make sure you put that blue button and you'll see any new classes that come up in the near future trying to do one a month, so I would love to see your projects. Please make sure to post them down below. Don't be shy. We want to see them. We want to check them out. We want to see how you're doing. And I would love to have you follow me on Instagram. If you want to check out what I'm doing over there, I try to post daily on there. I also have a YouTube channel where I do post weekly on their some demos for you. So please head over there, Check that out. Subscribe to my channel on post. Let me know you came over from a skill share. If you are posting on Instagram or on any social media platforms I'd love to hear from you and one more thing before I go. If you would leave a review, I would greatly appreciate that. Let me know how the class was for you. If there's anything I can do or change to make them better I'm always trying to improve my courses for you. I look forward to painting with you again in the near future. Thanks so much. And I hope you really get to enjoy the fall colors
Kellie Chasse, Artist + Entrepreneur + Educator
