Transcripts
1. Introduction: People have been fascinated by the shape of eggs for
thousands of years. From carving repeating
patterns into egg shells, to raising egg statues, from inspiring paintings, to
turning them into jewelry. Across history and cultures, the perfect curved egg shape has been celebrated as
a symbol of life. Hi, I'm Diana, a mathematics teacher
and a geometric artist. In this class, I invite you
to learn with me how to draw a perfectly shaped geometric egg using a ruler and a compass. The pattern can then
be extended into an egg mandella on
a circular grid. This project can be used as your own rendition of a spring or east.
The greeting card. I'm also going to
teach you how to construct a magic egg tangram, a type of a dissection puzzle, which has captivated humans
since ancient times. To create multiple patterns from a set of geometric pieces, I will draw inspiration from a variety of traditional
egg decorating methods to color in the geometric artwork
created in this class. This course is suitable for absolutely anyone who wants to have fun drawing
geometric patterns.
2. Project & Materials: For the project. In this class, we're first going to
learn how to construct an egg shaped outline using a compass ruler and a
pencil on a piece of paper. Then I'm going to
show you how to construct an egg tan gram, which can be cut up and rearranged in lots of different
shapes as a fun puzzle. And finally, create a mandala of six rotating eggs
on a circular grid, which we will extend
with the compass. You're going to need a
plain piece of paper and card, or ideally, watercolor paper, because we
are going to hopefully use some mixed media to try lots of different
decoration techniques. And you need the thickness and the weight of the
watercolor paper. I will suggest card or
watercolor paper for the puzzle, as well as you need that
thickness of the pieces to rearrange them for
the decoration part. You can use absolutely anything. You can use paints or
watercolor brushes, watercolor pencils, or any
markers or fine liners. I also recommend using
anything you have at home that you think might create some interesting textures. For example, a knife
or a toothpick, or anything sharp
that can create some kind of
scratching technique. Sponges or any net or material, fabric, gauze, anything that
can create other texture. And then of course, we'll be creating
our own texture with fine liners and water brushes. The color brush itself can be used to create a lot of
different textures as well. Anything else you can think of? If you have wooden
toothpicks, knives, forks, there are other things
you can try, masking fluid. Anything you can think of, this is just what I had and what I was keen to explore and certain looks that I have been inspired by, some inspiration. Boards on Instagram and interest with
decorating techniques from all over the world. It's not just Easter, these aren't Easter eggs. Eggs are celebrated
in all cultures and religions as part of different celebrations
That really inspires me to delve into
these beautiful looks. Enjoy.
3. The Egg Construction: We'll first learn to construct a single egg shape and practice on a piece of either
card or printing paper. You will also need a ruler, a pencil, and a compass
with a pencil in it. You can also use a
compass that comes with a pencil lead and not
a separate pencil. The diameter of the
first circle we make on the page will determine
the width of our egg. Then the height will be
about 1.5 times taller. Okay, I'm going to just draw
a line without measuring it, somewhere in the middle
of my page roughly, and then roughly mark
the middle of that line. I'm going to open
the compass as wide as to make sure it will fit
so this is a good width. And I'm going to put the pin in the middle and turn the
handle 360 degrees full turn, making sure that the
lead of the pencil touches my paper until it
goes back to the beginning. Okay, that determines the
full width of the egg. We're not going to need
this radius anymore. We're now going to change
the radius two more times. The egg is made of three
different sized arcs. This half of the first circle is actually the
bottom of the egg. Now what we're going to do
is open the compass from one edge of this circle
where it intersects with the horizontal
line all the way to the other side we're opening now the radius to be the full
diameter of the circle. We've already drawn
something like this. Now we're going to make an arc, only the top half of this
page to about the middle. From here to about the middle. And then do the same
from the opposite side. Tricky with my non
dominant hand, just make sure the
two arcs cross because this is going to
show us where to go next. Now the original center and the new intersection of the
two larger arcs will show us where to draw a vertical line between
these two points. Going to draw a vertical line. Now the reason why we need
this vertical line is to see where it crosses the top
half of the original circle. This point here is
important because we now need to connect that with a straight line with the two outer points
we already used. And we're going to
extend these two lines such that they cross
the outer arcs, just like this, one on this side and one on the
other side, just here. Of course, we now created two new intersections between the straight lines and
the two larger arcs. This point here will be where the new radius is
going to start. And we're going to put the
pin of our compass here and extend the radius
to these two points. These two lengths are the same. We need to narrow this down. Put the pin on here
and just measure both of these two points that should be the
same distance. Just make sure that
it's matching both. Then we're just going to
connect these two points with an arc at the top. I've gone a bit wide, going to narrow it down a bit. There we have it. That's the
top of the egg finished. We have three
different size arcs. The outline of the
egg is now finished. If you were to decorate this
now you could just repeat these lines with a permanent pen and delete the inside of this. But I will show you
that when we move on to making our mandala
made of six eggs.
4. The Egg Tangram: We're ready to construct
our dissection puzzle, the magic egg tangramow
for this construction. It is very similar to the egg outline for
when we color the art, but it does have a few extra construction lines
because we have to actually mark
the correct places where we're going
to actually cut. We will make nine, or in some variations
there are ten pieces. There's one piece in
which, in some variations, people cut that in half
to make 9-10 pieces. That allows for
many more puzzles to be put together
in different shapes. In any case, we need
a new construction. I'm doing this now on a
piece of watercolor paper. The reason for that is that I
would like it to be thicker because this will
be the finished puzzle once we've cut it up. And I would like to be able to color it even if
it's not with paint. I would like to color it with either water color pencil
markers or alcohol in markers. Anything that needs to be a little bit thicker,
this is perfect. Again, I'm not really going to measure because we
are going to cut it. But we do just need
to make sure it fits the initial radius needs to fit at least four
times on your page. Okay, I will draw a
line horizontally, and somewhere in the middle I will mark this starting point. I will open the compass in a way that I know will
fit about four times. I'll make that tiny, Smaller, yeah, roughly because it's
going to be taller, going up. And we need to make sure
that the next arcs over laptop and bottom there's
an initial full circle. This is going to be the
width of our puzzle. Now we've created the
two outer intersections. We're going to put the
pin of the compass on the end of it and open the
compass to the other end. Now that diameter becomes
the radius of the new arcs. These are going to
be the larger arcs and they will determine
the maximum height. As long as you can see that it can reach top and
bottom, that's good. Now we're going to
make a full arc from the slightly longer
than middle to the top through that side point just like this and the
same on the other side. I'm actually going to
rotate this from here, the same to the other side, making sure my arcs are long
enough to cross the bottom, top and go through
the side point. Okay, now we have two new
intersections, top and bottom. We're going to
draw vertical line through those two points. And through the middle as well. That line is going to cut the original circle
in two places. That's important
in the top half. Now we're going to take the new intersection and connect it with a
straight line going through the two side points in such a way that
by extending it, we can cut through the larger
arcs on the outer edge, just here on the
opposite side as well. That will help us
determine the radius of the smallest arc,
which is at the top. Now we're going to draw
a full circle here, not just an arc, because where the circle
cuts the vertical axis, that is going to
be useful for us. We're going to put the
pin on there and make the radius smaller so that
it reaches this point. Exactly. I'm just going
to turn this and make sure that it goes through both. Yeah. Okay. Now I'm going
to draw a full circle here. The top of course, this arc is the one that completes
the outer edge of the egg. You could see the outline, but I also need the rest of it. Because now where
the lower end of this circle cut
the vertical axis, that's a new intersection here. That distance to the center is the radius of the final
circle that we need to draw. We do need an extra
circle for this design. The circle at the end, the smallest one, goes from the middle of
the original circle. It touches that circle
at the same point. That distance is smaller
than that distance. But we need to know where that circle cuts those three
axes in the middle as well. We're going to make
one more full circle. There we have, Now
we need to just go over the lines which we're going to use to cut the
dissection puzzle. I'm going to do the
original nine piece, but I will tell you an extra cut that could be made
for ten pieces. The original cut,
we don't go through the vertical axis
for the entire egg, but we go from the
top to the middle. And then skip that small circle. And then we just mark the bottom end
of that line as well. I'll show you. Start
from the top and stop at the middle and keep
this piece together. And then mark the lower. Okay, so that's the first part. We are going to mark
the horizontal line, which goes through
the center and the two wider parts that
is with no interruptions, that goes all the way across. Okay, then I'm going to connect the two
straight lines at the top that we drew earlier. All the way from the
side to the top edge, of course, the same
on the other side. This is a symmetrical design. It does have one line of
symmetry going vertically. Everything on the left is the same as everything on the right. Okay, finally, two lines that aren't
actually visible on there. But we're going to
connect this point with these two edges of that
last circle that we made. That will create an
extra triangle on here. Again, that's a
symmetrical triangle. Depend on that side,
make it the same. Okay. Now if you visualize
the outside edge, as well as 123-45-6789 pieces, and the tenth piece
comes from people splitting that triangle
into two smaller pieces. Because of the
perfect symmetry den, and even number of pieces, you can create a
lot more designs from the same pieces and create many more
different shapes. I'm going to outline this and then delete the
construction marks.
5. The Egg Mandala: This is now my favorite part. If you've seen any
of my other courses, you will know that
I love a mandala. Anything that I can design in a circular arrangement,
I love it. We're going to create
a six egg mandala. The same construction
for one egg, but arranged looking
outwards six of them. Now firstly, I noticed that my watercolor paper is actually more rough on
one side than the other. I'm going to construct on
the slightly smoother side. It's not as bumpy,
but when I paint it afterwards in many different
ways, it won't matter. Also, we need to be able to fit about seven radiuses
on the page. However, what I'm
going to do is measure my page and divide by
eight, not by seven. That way I'm ensuring a little bit of space
on either side. I'm also using square paper, meaning that wherever
the circle is, I'll have the same amount of
space left on the outside. I just need to ensure that my design can fit seven to
eight times on my page. My part color paper is 20.3 I'm going to round that down to 20.2
Measured it before, and it was closer to
20.2 20.2 by 20.2 I can fit two a 2 centimeters eight times in 20 centimeters. So I'm going to go for 2.5 I could possibly afford
to go slightly bigger, but I want to make sure
my design fully fits. Also, I'm going
to have six eggs, so they don't have
to be as large as the previous ones we've made since they'll be six of them. Okay, so I'm going to turn my centimeter scale
on my ruler upside down, so I can start from zero. Open the compass to a
radius of 2.5 2.5 right? 2-3 That's what
I'm going to use. I'll need to find the
middle of my page. I'm going to measure
the side vertically, 20.2 I'm going to mark this at 10.1 which
is half of my page. And do the same from
the opposite side. Mark that at 10.1 Then I want my original
axis I draw to be vertical. I'm going to draw it this way. 20.2 slightly more,
but it's close enough. Again, I'm going to mark
the center at 10.1 Okay, This is my central
point that I can start the construction from with the
radius of 2.5 centimeters. I'm going to draw an original
circle from the center. This circle is going to create two intersections
with the vertical axis. We just true, this is going to be the center
of the new circle. I need to draw two
below and two above. I'm going to actually draw
them in vertical columns. There will be five
circles of this size along the middle axis, 12 below. Again, at each new intersection
with the vertical line, then two above in the same way. This isn't going to be the
end of the design though, because from that point upwards, it's going to be the
rest of the egg. Each egg is going to lie
here pointing outwards. So that's why we
needed more space so that we can fit the pointer
pipe part of the egg as well. Okay. Now, on the side
of five circles we have, we have now four intersections, which is where
we're going to put our new points of the compass
with the same radius. And that will go through the centers of two circles
that are already there. And I'm going to draw two up, then the other two from
the top and meeting in the middle in the hope that if there are
any inaccuracies, they can even out as we go along and not just
in one direction. Finally, now there are three
intersections on the side of the four circles where we're going to add
three more circles. They will go through
the existing centers of the neighboring circles, the adjacent circles
that are already there, creating this beautiful
flowery grid. So many shapes in this
grid is fantastic. Now I'm going to repeat the
same thing on the other side. I like to tate my
page and repeat here. Okay? So this is the
basic grid done. You can see that it looks like a hexagon shape with three
circles along each edge. It's the circles on each edge that are going to
be the basis of our eggs. Now looking at it
this way vertically, if you look at the top circle, the bottom half
of that circle is going to be the lower
end of the first egg. And then the top
end will go here. Now in order to do this,
if you recall from the basic construction of
a single egg previously, we needed to have
a horizontal line which cut each of
our circles in half. We want a line that goes
through the center. We need to look at
the two intersections of not these two circles, but the ones After we're
looking at these two points, look at the original circle. There's two intersections
with the adjacent circles. We need to look at the two
further away, it's those two. Now, I don't want to
overload the drawing, so we're not going to
draw a lot of long lines. We're just going to
mark what we need. I'm going to align this
and this, 0.1 212. I could draw the line through
the center of the circle. This is how we know
we are correct. It will go through the center, it will go just above that
radius that we already have. However, I don't need to
draw the entire line, I just need to know where the side two points
of the circle are, because that's where we're
going to put the point later. To draw the bigger, I'm just
going to mark these two. Now, I'm going to rotate
my page 60 degrees so that the next corner
is pointing upwards. And I'm going to do the same, not the top two intersections
but the next two. There you go, 1212. We can tell we're
correct because it also aligns with the
center of our circle. I'm just going to mark the
two points on either side. I'm going to repeat
this four more times for all the six
circles that we need. Okay, Now we've created those marks in the middle
of each of the six circles. Now we already have this axis
going through these radii. Then we need to
do the same thing in the other two diagonals, One that goes through the middle and all these
little petal shapes, because this will show us, this will be the
line of symmetry of these two eggs,
the diagonal two. Then we need to do this one, which will be the line of
symmetry of those two eggs. Now each of the
six eggs will have the line of symmetry and they
go in pairs back to back. They're only touching
on the side. There will be a nice shape
in between in the design, a flowery shape,
which will look nice. Okay, now we have these axes. We could see where the top
of each egg should end. Now we've got the marks here. We're going to open the compass wider and do the larger arcs. And they're the ones that will
define the maximum height. Okay, so looking
at the top circle, putting the pin on the
one side of the egg and extending to the other
side of that circle, That will be the maximum width. Okay, now we need
to draw an arc, just the top part, to that
line slightly beyond. Now I'm going to do all the ones in the same direction first. Now I'm going to go
from the lower end, because we've already
done this part. I'm just doing the
same but upside down. In the opposite order
again on the side. And it should end up here, and it should go
through that point. And ideally through that line, there will be slight
inaccuracies, but it's just the guide for the symmetry that
we're after they go. Remember, the pointy end is not actually where
the egg will finish. The egg will be slightly
shorter because it will have a rounded off
edge at the top. But this was the maximum
length we needed to ensure that would fit on the
page of this size, which is why I said if
you leave it eight times, then it leaves a decent
amount of space. Okay, the last bit now
is to find out where each of the smaller top
arcs of the eggs go. In order to do that, if
you remember from earlier, we need to draw the
two intersecting lines through the top part of the original circles
and each of the sides. Again, I don't want to
draw the entire line. All I'm going to do is
mark on the outer large where that line would cross if I had extended it,
which I don't want to. Now I know the radius of each. In fact, I don't need to do
this for all of them now because the radius is
exactly the same for all. I already know where to start. I already have the intersection
where to put the pin. Therefore, I don't need these
for each individual egg. So let's see if that would work. So we're going to
make this smaller. This is where the pin will go. This is how far up
it needs to go. I'm just going to
turn it this way, it's easier for me to
make it more accurate. This is the hardest of
the arcs because it's the smallest and it's
where you risk not having a really
smooth transition. And also when you press,
it tends to move a little, make sure it fits well. Once we've got that right,
I think that's okay. Then we can do all six. Let's try it lightly
first. Okay, that's good. That's nice and smooth. There's one egg here. I'm just going to repeat that. On each of the axis, on the outer edge of where the original circle crossed
these lines that we drew, you only need to connect the two larger arcs
that are already drawn. It's just that, a tiny,
nicely curved tip. Just to continue those
perfectly smooth and curves, the next step would
be to outline just the eggs and then delete the rest of the
construction arcs.
6. Egg 1 Royal Red: It is time now to start thinking about
decorating our eggs. For this part, I will
draw inspiration from different traditional ways of decorating eggs all
over the world. And try and recreate this in the context of using
watercolor on paper. It's very exciting
because for this part, you can use any materials
that you already have. Or take this as
an opportunity to explore things that you have but haven't used
in certain ways. I love to have a reason and an inspiration to
explore techniques, and this is a perfect
opportunity to do so by using things
I already have. I really enjoy working as a variation on a theme
to try different things. I really enjoy finding
different ways of creating textures and effects
on the paper. I'm going to start
with the red egg. Red is one of the
most classic ways of decorating eggs in
Orthodox Europe. A lot of the time you will see decorated eggs painted in red. Either one solid red color or
different shadings of red. The Chinese decorate
eggs in red quite often. I'm going to use two
different reds to begin with. And I would like to use for
the paint on wet paper, I'm using a carmine
red and a series red, slightly different
shades of red. Now, depending on
how big your egg is, mine are quite small, but still enough space to blend and give some
finer details. I'm going to use a pipette to just put a few drops
of water in the paint. I will then use just this size
brush to just sweep some water on the surface
of the first egg. I'm only going to do
one egg at a time, but each of them will be
decorated differently. Okay, That's not a
very big surface area, so it shouldn't take long
to cover with water. I'm going to sweep on just the one edge
of the egg for now. Then remember we can go over these out metallic
outlines later. Again, see that's a different shade, slightly more
purply, cherry red. I do feel like I want to leave that little bit of
white. It does happen. You do see that occasionally
with real painted eggs, the paint isn't going to stick evenly across the whole
shell necessarily. I'm going to gently drop some metallic red
blobs here and there. See it's kind of
dissipating in the rest. Once this is dried, I will see if I can
emphasize anything in particular in the texture once it's dried with some kind of pens perhaps,
or anything else. Or we might choose to
leave it this way. Some of the other eggs
will have more detail. It's perfectly fine to
leave some without. Now, I'm really
liking this here. Can you see how that darker bits formed? I really do like that. Okay, see when this tries.
7. Egg 2 Sporadic Sponge: For egg number four, I'm
going to use a sponge. A small sponge
because there's not that much space inside my eggs. Ideally with some
gaps in between to create some nice texture
on the surface of the egg. I'm going to try one color
of a layer first with blue. I know the sponge will soak
up some of the pigment. I'm going to add some
water to this now. It transfers more
easily into my page. It doesn't have to be too
pigmented to begin with as the effect can be layered. Also quite often painted eggs, the egg shell itself doesn't go brightly
colored at first. Nice, That's nice. It will definitely
need more color added to this, a
different color. I'm going to go for turquoise. I haven't let the first layer dry completely, but partially. I wouldn't mind some
of it blending. You can experiment with complete layering on
dry or slight mixing, but I'm quite curious
what will happen if I add a second color
to the sponge. Before I transfer it, I'm actually going to
add a little bit of purple directly onto the sponge. Some of it will stay separated, but some will mix on the
sponge, which is fine. I've added less water this time knowing that there's
already some on the egg. Wow, that looks really good. Now as you can see, it
can't be quite as precise. Some of it will come
out, but also the edges. Now you can use a brush
to create some texture. In fact, quite similar
texture can be created with any brush, even though my brush is probably not the best
shape for this right now. I do like the color combination. They do seem to be quite
separate at this point. Curious how they'll,
whether they'll blend in, It's not soaking wet, they
shouldn't blend in anymore. But I also quite
like the intensity. If this was on a larger scale, I would probably aim for a
bit more space in between. I am liking the effect and the contrast of the
colors as well. We'll have to see
how these dries might have to add
some white detail or anything later or not. Let's try some more color. I like the intensity, but it possibly spoiled some of the texture
of the sponge itself. I like how this dried. It's not as contrasted
and not as intense color. I do probably regret that last layer without it probably would have looked a bit more sporadic and spongy. It was such a small
surface area.
8. Egg 3 Grocery Greens: For egg number three,
I'm going to go with some herbal greens inspired by those leaves that
you often see as an imprint on painted
or stained egg shells. It's quite a nice tradition. I'm going to blend
a few different, a few contrasting
ones in a random way. Some of my shades are
more cool and some are warmer using some
brilliant green on top of some olive green. I'm going to add peak green
and some grass green. They're similar, but I love the same color with
contrasting shades. What I'm going to do
now is spread some of the color the plants or the way the fibers in the leaves and the herbs goes forward. That's the inspiration,
but I really like how one green on top of the
other stands out so well, and those little florets
that are forming, it's still fairly transparent and not awfully strong color. That's a bit more like a
real life painted egg, but really like how these are going upwards and how the
greens are standing out. You could layer this to
make it more intense or even use a pen later
on once it's dry. But what I do really like
doing on wet work is putting a little bit of white in between the different shades that
emphasizes them even more. It's not exactly the same as the red where we
blend it to colors. This is more contrasting, hopefully doesn't
dry exactly the same and doesn't
completely dissipate. I like how this dried. The contrast that I was
hoping for is there. Those distinctive little leaves and florets are still there, But I'm really happy
with the result in terms of egg decoration.
9. Egg 4 Scratched Scribbles: For Reg number four, I'm going to create texture by scratching some
scribbles on top. Firstly, I'm going to do a
bright orange background. I'm not too worried
about the texture of that because the
texture will come from the details we're going to
add on top with some pens and some regular markings inspired by egg shell carvings or by all these detailed
geometric patterns that you see on painted eggs. I'm going to add a little bit
of yellow just to break up the orange once the
egg is almost dry, still a tiny bit damp, I'm going to first
scratch a few markings on it with a fork and then draw on top as this dried, it left only a little bit
of darkened patch there, which is nice but probably not quite as emphasized
as I'd like it now. I'd like to scratch a
little bit as it's dry. I'm going to emphasize now and add some texture with some pens. I don't want them all
looking the same, I don't want this looking
similar to the other ones. What is going to make it
different is these markings, carvings, scratching into it, just with the white. But the white is
sticking really well. Because of the scratch surface, it's not always easy to find a good white pen on
top of anything, really see it doesn't stick as well as here
where it did not scratch. I am now going to go with black pen and go with
quite a fine pen. I don't want this
to be super uniform even if some colors overlap. I want this to be experimented. I want it to look as
if we experimented, which with it on the
other side of the black. However, I will leave
a bit of space for where the darkest orange was. Okay. So this kind of, again, is not for uniform, just emphasizing
any darker parts that I can see
naturally occurred. This can go this way. I feel like it
needs another one. Just do this on one side of
the white. Again, no rules. Whatever seems appropriate for your particular style on
how yours is shaping up, I do want something
dark contrast. I'm going to put a few little
dots in between the lines. Okay, Now I feel like I
want to go whether layer of dots and I will try this color just to
emphasize Now these dots, you made me want to go
all the way around. I'm happy with that,
that one is done.
10. Egg 5 Circle Chain: I'm ready for egg number five. For this one, I will
actually like to paint the texture rather than as background and
creating texture on top. By this I mean I'm visualizing painting circles in a chain. Hopefully on the circles will be wet and hopefully
that will help the pigment of the paint to just move
around in that specific way. I will go for some
blue and yellow. I'm just looking at what I'm
missing and that will create some green or is this
too much of a contrast? I'm going to go for blue
and green actually, and then see how they change. All I'm going to do now, I'll start with blue because that's the color
that I don't really have much of, the mandell. I'm going to draw, paint some circles like
this with a slight overlap. And see what I mean
by the water carrying the pigment on where I've
drawn it, nowhere else. I'm also doing it not
in an alternating way, but I'm doing straight
columns and rows, roughly. That's because I want these little shapes
in between to form as well, the negative spaces. The negative shapes in between. Now I'm going to go in
with some green as well. I'm not sure if a third
color will be needed, but this is what I meant now. The colors will mix in a certain way just because they touched through the water. I feel like now I'm happy to
actually go for some yellow. I'm definitely going
to go for that now because the yellow, of course, will also
create other textures. Now this is quite small
surface area which is okay, but I also can see
it's not very wet. They are going to start
drying quite quickly. And ideally, you want
them to not dry too fast in order to create that channel of how
the paint moves around. Of course, you can
help it a little bit by moving it yourself, but it's nice to see also a
natural way of it happening. Yeah, I like how
the colors interact and seeing that
here. I like that. Okay, I feel like it
needs a couple more here. This has created a
considerable amount of white space and that's okay. I'm going to do a
splash of orange. Now down here, the
yellow has inspired me. I obviously don't
want to go to brown, unpleasant how it mixes, but I'm also going to
some other colors on top. I want to just repeat this in blue mice. So I'll leave these B
and see how they dry. And then with some pens, we're going to add
some detail again. This is now ready and
I really like it. It's created enough pigment but also texture,
some transparency. Of course, definition and how the waters dried.
It's really nice. I will now go and emphasize parts of those circles though, just to add that little bit of definition and something to pop so it's not
looking too flat. I'll go with some
colored fine liners and not necessarily ones related to the colors that are on there. Just use whatever you have. I will just go and make some circular arcs on just one side of the
circle to emphasize it. I feel this one is now complete enough of a depth with that extra little bit
of splash of color, then a little bit of texture
and slight contrast or just emphasizing and I
didn't around to have the feeling of that
finished complete look.
11. Egg 6 Fake Fabergé: For the last design,
I'd really like to give this fake Fabrije look. I really enjoy seeing that networked color or lack of color and those
diamond rhombus shapes. Now if you have gauze or
any really loose fabric, that would work really well because part
of the fabric will absorb the paint
and it will leave some fantastic texture
if you let it dry on it. I don't have that, but I do have some food packaging
unfortunately, as plastic net, and the plastic isn't going
to absorb any colors. But I really like the
texture and the look of it. And I am thinking, how
can I use that texture? If I just paint over it, the paint will definitely
go underneath. I have tried it, then I
thought of something else. A lot of the time
people use wax to stop the color from going in there in much the same way
as masking fluid. Then it occurred to me
that I could take the wax, the candle and hopefully
rub that on top of this. I'm going to do this on
both sides of my net. I'm doing it in this direction because
for now I don't want to distort the shapes just
like I almost did there. It's not an easy process, but it's just an experiment. Remember, it's an excuse
to see what happens now. In a way, it's good
that my candle and my wax discolored because I
can see where it's going. I can also see it's not
sticking that amazingly well. But I'm going to do this on
the other side now as well. I'm just going to see what happens if this really
doesn't work out. All we're going to do
on top once it's dry. If this fails to create the
definition that we hope for, we're just going to go over with a white pen or a gold pen, or something like this. But what I'm visualizing
right now is a nice deep rich
purple in between, if the egg was purple and it
was wrapped around with this in shapes that will
create marks on top. I'll just do this
a few times until I feel like it's ready. Okay, I'm ready. I'm going to color
this upside down, actually, so it's closer to me. This is what I've managed to do. I could see it's not
going to be perfect. I'm going to use some
masking tape to secure this, but I need to be very careful. I don't want it to move
even if it's not perfect. I want it to be as flat
on the paper as possible, even though I could see
it's not fully possible. I will just have to do my best. You can see how it's
lifting off the page. I know the only thing that's
going to stop the pigment from coloring the
paper is the wax. However, if the wax doesn't touch the surface of the paper, like it's definitely
not doing that there, then that's going to be
very difficult to achieve. I might have to push
it down and hope that the wax itself helps it stick to the paper
temporarily because it's above the surface for sure. I'm going to do this
in the meantime, I'll just put some
water in my purple. I'm going to make
it quite watery. I'm going to very gently just wet the color on top of
this and see what happens. Yeah, I can see that this
is going to be an issue in some parts, possibly all parts. I have tried this
before in preparation, but it's a very
unpredictable technique, which again, is something
I like about it. All right, let's see. I feel like the more
is added, the worse. Because here now I can see how it's going to gather too much
and not leave white space. Having said that, if it dries with that
emphasis on the edges, it's still given the texture and the shapes I
was talking about. Now I could see this one leaking
and joining in together. But in some parts I
can see white patches. In some parts I can
see darker paint. Hopefully, overall, it
will give that shape. I will leave this to dry
with the net on top, Leave it to dry 100% before
seeing what happens. Okay, this is now completely dry and I'm really
quite excited. It's lifted off
the page so I can see some parts, but not all. Some have merged, some haven't. Just need to be very
careful peeling this off, not to damage the
rest of the paper, especially the bits
where we've painted on metallic is
usually quite sturdy. There's a little bit of
wax here still visible, but on the whole,
that's really good. I really like it. Now I
need to tidy this up a bit. How do we get rid of the
remaining bit of wax? I think, well, to lift
off any wanted bits of. Actually, this might be
a good thing to try. As I happen to have this
purple pen weather, I can create some darker edges. Now I'll find my white pen for the finishing
touches on this one. I have decided to go with
some gold dots in the middle, almost like the knots
of where the meets. That reminds me of some
of the patterns on real jewelry eggs
in terms of where meet a few dots here and there and then I'll
outline on the inside with a purple just to
finish this off '.
12. Thank You: Here is the finished
fake Fabrije with these beautiful shapes, and the entire Mandela with
the finishing touches. I added the gold in the middle because some
color splashed out, and I just wanted
a more rich look. And I went over the outline
with the gold again, trying to disguise some of
the other imperfections. I could go around with
a white pen again, but I don't mind imperfections. The overall thing
I'm so pleased with, it's what I was aiming for. Thank you so much
for joining me and inspiring me to go and
experiment some more. There's always more
things to try with, things you have or things
you've never tried before. There were so many
other techniques I was thinking about when
I was planning this. Many changed along the way as I was doing things
and as you can see, even when you've planned
something and do something, you start to think of other
things along the way. I really like my classic red. It's beautiful and shimmery, but it reminded me how
much I love green. Just sprouting leaves,
which is why I call it, reminded me of herbs, which is why I called
it grocery greens. I thought they just behaved
beautifully in the water. The contrasting
of the same color but different nuances
really enjoyed that. I love that technique. As a technique, I'm
definitely going to experiment more with sponges. I do regret the last layer I put because of the
small amount of space. I should have had more
white in between. But the color combination
and the effect is beautiful As usual, the doodles here
are really enjoyed. Very therapeutic to do. No rules, really. This was more of
a thicker texture underneath with things on top. This is something
new I tried and I really like how the water
color behaves like this. They don't have to be circles, there could be lines, waves. I'll be experimenting more with this as well and different
ways of the color blending. I think the little arcs with the pen really emphasized
that and made it pop. I really like this mixed
media feel and this inspiration from real
life decorations as well. This last but not least, I left it last because I was most worried about the effect, but I really like the
look of it in the end. Again, I was able to emphasize the edges with
a fine line of pen, with a pigment, and I was also able to tidy up a few things
with a white pen overall. I'm really happy
with the result. Thank you again for joining me to celebrate different rituals from around the
world and ways of making art in a really,
really enjoyable way. I do hope you share
your work because I do want to see and be
inspired by your ideas. How do you decorate eggs? Have you seen any other eggs
we haven't even mentioned or just splash around with your favorite
techniques and enjoy? I hope you've enjoyed
drawing the egg and learning those perfect curves as the geometry is
not too demanding. I hope to see you again soon.
Diana Reeves, Geometric Artist & Educator
