Easy Abstract Squares

1. Introduction, abstract squares : Hi, everybody. I'm Gabby. I'm an artist and a teacher, and I live and work in a small town in South Africa. This is my second skillshare video. I enjoyed making my first one and connecting with some of you. I think my second one is hopefully going to be even better, as I have definitely learned some skills along the way. In today's class, we are going to be creating a little piece of abstract art. It is going to look something like this. Obviously you are going to create it in your own way. Yours will not look exactly like this one, but we will be working with acrylic drawing ink and with fine liner and with any other materials that you want to. During this class, you will learn about pattern. You will learn about line. You will learn a little bit about abstract art. You will learn about color. And you will learn about balance and contrast. You will also have time to relax and to enjoy yourself being creative and to find your unique voice. I am super excited to be starting with this lesson. Let us get going and begin. 2. Materials, abstract squares : Before we begin with this lesson, let's talk a little bit about the materials that you need so that you have time to gather them up. I will be working with a range of acrylic drawing inks. Now, these drawing inks are a South African brand, but you can use whatever drawing inks you have. I find it best to use a drawing ink that is waterproof. These acrylic drawing inks are waterproof. It just means that when you put a layer down, when it dries, it dries waterproof. So if you put another layer on top, you don't lift the color from underneath a drawing inks color choice is up to you. You will need masking tape, not too thick. This is fine. I think this is about a centimeter, maybe 1.5 You could go a little bit thinner, but don't get any thicker than this. You will also need some paper. I am working onto a four paper. I like to work between on 280-300 grams so that when I use a wet medium, it doesn't crinkle the paper. If you need to buy paper and you want to go to the shop, you can ask for either watercolor paper or a mixed media paper. Any paper that you can use a weight medium on. You will also need a thick pen, waterproof, plus a range of fine liners of different thicknesses. My very favorite fine liner in the whole world is a naught point naught five, which is extremely thin. I start with that. Then I usually get a number one and number three if you want to a number eight. But it's also not set in stone. Whatever range you have and if you only have one final liner, that's also absolutely fine. You will do perfectly fine with that. A pencil. A couple of different paint brushes for this project. I'd like to work with flat paint brushes. I've got flat paint brushes here of different sizes. I also have a really thin ballerina brush. As I tell my kids to paint in some of the tiny details, let's see what I've left out. You will need a ruler. You will also need a tray to mix your inks in. You will need a water bottle or a with water in it. I think that's all we need for today. You will also need a bit of time to do this. This is a delightful, meditative, easy exercise. I've spent the whole day creating mine, and I had the best time ever. I'm looking forward to sharing this with you. Let's move on to our first lesson. 3. Lesson one, divide your page : To start this project, you're going to need to divide your page up into blocks. For this size piece of paper, which is an four size, I would usually divide it up into six blocks. But you could also divide it into four or into nine. That's entirely up to you. You are going to use the masking tape around the edge of your piece of paper to create a nice border and a bit of a barrier for the ink. Your masking tape goes down nice and neatly along the edge of your four piece of paper. Make sure that you cover the whole edge. And make sure that you press down the masking tape quite firmly as we don't want the ink to get underneath the masking tape. Take your time. This is quite a fun start to the project as it allows your head and your heart to start connecting to the creative process. Once you have put your masking tape around the edges, you are now going to find the middle point so that you can apply a strip right down the middle of your piece of paper. This is entirely up to you if you want to measure it. If you want it to be absolutely perfect, then go ahead and use your ruler and just make a little mark so that you have a halfway measuring point. If you have a very straight eye and you don't want to measure it, then don't measure it. I've got quite a skew eye. I always end up with blocks of different sizes, which annoy me a little bit, so I just quickly put a little.in to measure the size of the block that I want. Once you've finished creating this little grid, you have finished this process of putting your masking tape onto your piece of paper. 4. Lesson two, draw thick and thin lines : The next step in this process is super easy. Take your thick black marker here, I'm using an art liner. We get these in South Africa. I'm not sure if you get them anywhere else. But any waterproof thick black marker is fine. And start drawing some curvy lines across your page. They can overlap. It doesn't really matter how you do them. I am just working from side to side and crossing the page with these wavy lines. I am thinking about where I'm putting them. I'm thinking a little bit about composition. Not too much, you don't need to worry too much about that. But what you do want to get are some of these black lines all over your page. Just draw straight over the masking tape. The masking tape is going to come off later on, but for now, don't worry about it. You can draw right over the top of it. Just keep adding lines until you feel like you have enough of these thick black lines on your page. I tend to move around the page quite a lot. Some people start at the bottom and work upwards. Other people start at the top and work downwards more sequentially. But I like to move around and keep checking to see where I need to add some extra information or some extra details. You'll see. I pause in between my drawing and just have a look to see, Okay, up in this spot here, I need to add a little circle, or I need to add another little line. It's entirely up to you. The next step is to add a thinner line using your thin, waterproof fine liner. Don't use your very thin one. I am using a size three here, I'm taking the thin fine liner and just adding some extra lines. It works very nicely if you work in different directions here and you just keep adding your thin lines. Once again, just using your creative eye to decide where the lines are going to go. Remember, there is no right or wrong here. There are no art police. No one's going to come and tell you you're doing the wrong thing. Just have some fun with it. Do just connect to your intuition Because your intuition is going to tell you, I need a line here or I need a circle here. Or the space is too empty or the space is busy enough, I don't need to do anymore here. Just keep following your intuition. I like to have some music playing while I'm working. That really helps me connect to my creativity. Remember to breathe while you're working. Relax your shoulders and make sure that you're sitting comfortably. This is such a meditative process. I love the quietness and the calmness of it. Keep adding your lines and your shapes until you decide you have enough, that your page is full enough, and that you have a balanced design with thick black lines and enough black lines to make sure that your heart is happy with this design. 5. Lesson three, add your first layer of ink : I have got this far, I've done the thin lines in the thick lines. Now it's time to add some ink. What you will need for this is a tray to hold the ink. I really like these six deep well palettes. We can use that for the ink. You will need a water bottle. This is just an old glass bottle. Tahini is my favorite. You will need some acrylic drawing inks. I told you a little bit about them before. I've put on an apron because these are waterproof drawing inks, and if they go on my clothes, they will never, ever come off. I have collected a couple of brushes, different thicknesses. I really like flat brushes for this project and I'm ready to go. What I'm going to do first is I'm going to just put a little bit of water into each of my trays, just a touch. The acrtic draw ink is very bright, which is lovely. But what we want to do is we want to start with just a pale wash, first of all, and then we can add stronger ink to work with a brighter color on top. These are some of my favorite colors I'm going to use. This is a turquoise and I'm going to put just a couple of drops in of the turquoise of the yellow. This is a golden yellow. I think that's about six drops. This is a pro se cyan, so a primary blue, In other words, a beautiful emerald green. You can choose any set of colors you want. It doesn't really matter. These are just some of my favorite colors. There's the green. This is process magenta. In other words, we might also call it primary red. I chose purple as well. There we go, a couple of drops of purple. Mix them up a little bit. Just make sure that you wash your brush in between colors, that you keep your colors nice and clean. I'm ready to start with a lovely set of pale wash in colors. Now the fun really begins because this is the time to add color using one of your flat brushes. Dip it into one of the in colors that you wish to start with. Start just by creating little areas of color. There can be little blocks, there can be little stripes. There can be straight lines. They can be curved lines. Just make sure that you have a little bit of each color in every single one of the blocks. You can see I'm making a little circular area. I've done a stripe down the edge. And remembering that the masking tape is going to block off some of that color, that wherever the masking tape is, you will not see the ink. Well, hopefully you won't if you have pressed it down firmly enough. Once you've finished with your first color, then you can wash your brush and start with your next color, doing exactly the same thing, little areas of color, just small, lovely spaces of delicious color. Oh my goodness, can you hear my dog drinking water in the background? Her name is Finn and she is a very thirsty wolf dog, and you might also hear the hardy Ars in the background. It's the joys of living in the country, and I must say, I absolutely love creating art with my animals around me. I welcome the drinking sounds and I hope you enjoy them. And that they bring a little smile to your face slowly but surely. Keep adding all your colors. You can overlap them a little bit. If you overlapped your green with your yellow, it would create a bit of a paler green. That's absolutely fine. You do not have to cover your entire block, so you can leave some areas white. You'll see here I'm using the pinky color. There was a little bit of blue left on my brush. So you'll see a slight tinge of purple, which is absolutely fine. Just play with your shapes. Play with the colors. As I said before, there's no right and wrong. The only thing you have to do here is have some fun. When you feel like you've done enough shapes with your thicker brush, you can always change brushes and use a thinner brush to put some patterns and shapes. Well, you're not so much using pattern every now and again, but to put your shapes or adding areas of color in with your thinner brush. And you'll see here, I'm connecting the blue with the little yellow squares, which allows the blue and the yellow to bleed in together slightly, which gives us some lovely areas of green. You can experiment with that too. You just want to be careful of not going over too many of the colors with all the other colors. Otherwise, it ends up with a grungy brown color. But experiment with that. Try to make sure that you've used all your colors in each of the blocks, and that you've got a nice balance of color over your entire page. When you've finished with your color and you're happy with a balance of all your colors over your page, use a piece of tissue just to mop up any areas that have little puddles, especially where your masking tape is. I finished my first layer of ink. Now, I'm not going to pick it up because it's weight and I don't want it to run. I have dabbed some of the pools of especially along the tape. You don't want to have too many pools sitting on the tape. You have a choice now. You can either leave it to dry because you do need it to be dry before you go on to the next step or hair dryer is your friend, you can dry it with a head dryer. I own head dryer. My friends all laugh at me because I only use it for drying out. I don't use it on my hair. My hair is wash and go. This little pink hair dryer is used exclusively, as you can see, for drying out words, very useful if you don't want to put your work out in the sun or if you don't want to wait. I'm a little impatient. I like to be able to go on to the next step as soon as I can. I'll be using this to dry my work, and then I will be back to show you the next step. 6. Lesson four, add your second layer of ink : My first layer is now dry, and you can see it's quite a nice pale wash. It works really well on this watercolor paper. It gives us a nice effect. I always love the edges that are created with watercolor and with ink on this paper. My next step is going to be to add another set of color. And this time I'm going to make it slightly darker, which means we've got a lovely, pale wash, and now we're going to have a slightly darker color on top of that. Because this ink is waterproof, it means that I can put any color on top of any color. It won't pick up the color from underneath and it won't bleed. Here we go. I am going to add a little more yellow. A little more purple. A little more green. Probably about as much as I used before. A little more of the blue and a little more of the turquoise. I'll mix them up and then I'm ready to start with my next step. Here we go. You can see the ink is definitely darker than the layer underneath. I am using my smaller brush to add smaller and finer shapes on top of the thicker layer that is underneath, a little overlapping is lovely. So you can see where the yellow overlaps that green. You've got a lovely grass. Green starting to happen there. Do focus on putting some shapes on top of ink colors plus putting some smaller shapes in between over the white. Remember, you don't have to cover all of the white. Just fill up the space so that there is a nice balance of shape. I have left a fair amount of this process on this lesson, just because I thought it would be nice for you to watch and just to see how the process gradually unfolds. So do enjoy watching this. How delicious is this magenta over the blue, making the most beautiful purple? I love color so much that sometimes it feels like it makes my mouth water when I make colors that just absolutely delight all my senses. And this is half the joy of, it's almost not so much about what you create, but what you feel and what you experience during the process of creating. You can see that your page is becoming more detailed. Now with more and more little patterns and shapes. You do want your page to be quite detailed and quite decorative because that is really going to help you in the next step. So have fun adding as much as you feel like you'll see. I'm not being too particular about actually painting in shapes, So that's not the point to fill in the shapes that you've created with a pen, rather to create shapes and interesting details and overlapping sometimes. If I've got quite a lot of ink, if there's a bit of a puddle, I will also use the back of my brush. I use the back of my brush a lot and you can pull the ink out to create stripes. You can even use the back of your brush to create a little dots where you have a puddle of ink. Just turn your brush over and find a way of extending those ink shapes with the back of your brush. It's a lot of fun because it gives you a bit of organic line or organic shape that looks a whole lot better than if you'd use the front of your brush. Or maybe not better, but it just creates a bit of interest. While you're working. Pause every now and again just to check in, Look at your work from a little bit of a distance just to make sure that you've got a nice balance of color, balance of detail, and a balance of shape. Balance is one of the design principles and it makes sure that your eye can rest easy on the page. Can also work with weight on weight. So you can see here, I'm adding a bit of the magenta on top of the weight yellow ink, which allows the ink to blend and blur a bit. That also gives you a very nice effect so that you have some lovely, crisp edges to your shapes. And you have some edges where you have a little more blurring or blending. Add some little dots with the back of your brush wherever you feel like it. Little dots like this dry beautifully, and they make a really nice fine detail in your design. Once you're happy with your design and you have enough detail and images, you can use your hair dryer to dry it. If you're impatient, like me and you don't feel like waiting, just bear in mind that the air coming out of the hair dryer might cause some of the weight areas to run a bit. It doesn't matter too much in this design because you can always work with that. Once your work is dry, it is now time to take off the masking tape. I love this part of the process because I love seeing the nice, crisp lines and you'll soon be able to see whether you pressed your masking tape down firmly enough or not. A little trick with taking off masking tape is that sometimes when you try and take the masking tape off, it tears the paper underneath. And if you're anything like me, that just doesn't work. I hate it when that happens, keep using your hair dryer. As you pull your masking tape up, just heat it with the hair dryer. And that allows the glue on the masking tape to melt just a little bit and makes the masking tape a whole lot easier to remove. You'll see here that I didn't actually press the masking tape down quite well enough. I have got some little areas that have bled through, but we'll talk about that a little later. But it's certainly not the end of the world. And you can still see these beautiful, crisp edges that have been created by the masking tape. This really makes my heart happy, these lovely crisp edges. 7. Lesson five, add detail with fineliner and ink: I'm now taking all the masking tape off. You can see in between there are a couple of little areas that the ink is bled under the masking tape. It's really important to the masking tape to press it down firmly. Our officer didn't press it down firmly enough. But for this, we will call it a happy accident. Now, a happy accident is when something happens that is unexpected. It means you don't plan for it often, it's not something that you want. The trick is here is not to throw this away. It's not to discard, it's to go with the flow. For me, that's quite important in art making to go with the flow. Often that flow brings solutions and creativity and things that you would not have thought of before. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with these tiny little marks in between. Although I don't like them much, I'm going to just let them be. And I know that as I start working, they are going to turn into something that will make this work more interesting. Our next step here is going to be to add some fine liner. Is maybe to add a little more ink. I love how each little block is now starting to create an identity of its own. As soon as you take the masking tape off, then all the joining lines in between are obviously gone. Although those joining lines and the lines on the designs themselves still connect to each design, each one is starting to find its very own voice. For the next step, you are going to need your fine liners. You are going to need some penta crowns. If you feel like working in color, you can keep your ink because we can add some more ink on. Yes, I think that's about it. Please get your fine liners ready and anything else you wish to use to add color and we will be able to go on to the next step. Now I'm going to start decorating with my delicious and fine liner. I am using a Naut 0.1 here. I think you can go thin, you can go a little bit thicker too. What I'm doing is that all the little corners, I am just going to round off wherever a line crosses another line and there's a sharp corner round that off. This is a lot of fun. It's also really meditative and it is part of a mindfulness exercise. If you can be somewhere quiet and somewhere calm, this is a really wonderful way of just getting into your body and being calm and present. With this exercise, I am going to show you a little bit of the process for this block and then a bit later on for the last block, just so that you can see how it unfolds. What I often do is outline the ink shapes. You can do this if you choose, you don't have to. Then with your fine liner, you add any kind of pattern or decoration into either the white areas or on top of the ink. There is really no rule here at all for this. Just keep working, keep adding to your space. If you see an area that feels like it is too blank, you can add in some extra lines. There is no rule against that. Once again, use your intuition and keep rounding off those edges as you go along This mindful art where there really are no rules. Rather just advice and some guidelines is a truly wonderful way of reducing the cortisol hormone in your body. A cortisol is the hormone that is created when you are really stressed. And one of the things you want to try and do is reduce hormone as much as you can. Working with your hands like this and being in this mindful place increases dopamine and serotonin. Those are the field good hormones and those are the goodies. Those are the ones that you want to encourage to be increased as much as possible. I truly believe a daily practice of mindful art is a wonderful way of keeping your whole nervous system really healthy the more you work and as you go along, the more little details you add. You might want to take a large area and divide it up into smaller areas. You can put in stripes, you can put in dots. You can really do anything. You could even put some little words in if you feel like I quite like playing with words, as well as just adding areas of line, although it looks very complicated. Actually step by step, it's really simple little dots, little lines rounding off the areas, just going with the flow. And most important, having fun seeing if you can get that critical voice in your head. Just to keep quiet for a little while. Sometimes I have to say to my critical voice, Hush honey. Not now, I do like to outline some of my ink shapes because at the same time, it gives me the opportunity of joining them and of adding some extra lines and detail in between them. Sometimes I, as I outline a shape, a new idea or concept comes to me. With artwork like this, it's really important to come to it with an open mind because there is absolutely no way that you can know exactly what you're doing right from the outset. So it is 100% about following your intuition and really going with the flow and letting the work talk to you. Just letting it unfold step by step and not overthinking it too much. Keep playing, keep adding. And make sure that you are relaxed and that your heart is happy. As part of this process, you can also add more ink. If you add some darker ink like you see I'm doing here, you will see that it adds depth to your work. I tend to work a bit with a black fire liner first and then add some in. It dries very quickly when you're using just a little bit at a time like this, you can see that I'm using a really tiny, tiny paint brush. I love a good, fine paint brush. Make sure you don't leave it standing in the water. Otherwise, the bristles tend to get damaged. I like to make sure that when I'm finished working that I use my fingers just to make the tip nice and sharp so that it's ready for when I want to use it. Again here, I'm just adding some more of the ink and it's not over everything. It's just in some selected places. Some places you'll see I'm putting it already put down in color. And other times I'm going to add some more ink to the white area. That's entirely up to you here. You can see I'm adding a bit of extra green just to make that side bit darker. And I'm going to leave the other side lighters that we've got a nice contrast and a nice balance happening here. The further along you get in your block, the finer the details are going to become. You can add, you'll see I'm adding a little stripes like this and I've added little dots. You can use any thickness of fine liner here. I'm particularly attached to this very fine one. But it's also nice to use a slightly thicker one so that you have a contrast of line as well as shape. The more you work on it, the more you can find a place inside of you that's quiet. The more you're going to find that each little shape and space in the work is going to talk to you in its own way. And it's going to tell you, I need a little more pattern here or I need a little detail here. The more you can hear or listen to that voice, the more you are going to be connected to your artwork. That's what helps you improve. But to grow in your creativity and in finding your own voice. This is indeed your very own voice that is speaking to you. Oh, block one is almost complete, and I must say, I am pretty happy with how it looking so far. I am liking the balance of the different shapes and patterns that I've used and the balance of light and dark ink, as well as areas of black, areas of white, and areas of color. 8. Lesson six, working on the blocks : Block one is finished and I am really happy with everything about it. I shall continue onto the next block, and I will keep working block by block, adding similar shapes and patterns so that there is a bit of continuity. Once again, you can add absolutely anything from stripes to dots. You can make the ink, you can add tiny little details, you can add extra circles, You can add extra ink. And as your blocks grow and develop, you will see they will start working together and you're getting this really beautiful collection of little square abstract designs. This is the very last block. I have completed five blocks, and now I'm working on the last block. There is always a sense of excitement for me when I am nearing the end of the project. And sometimes even a little bit of sadness because I really get involved with each one of them. And I love doing them so that sometimes I almost miss them. But it is lovely to complete a project, especially one like this that is so mindful and is such a lovely, easy space to be in. Remember about those happy accidents? So when you do something that doesn't work, you can leave it for a moment, go onto a different space, come back, and by the time you come back to it, you will have thought of a way of fixing it. Or what you've done in the meantime will sit next to it and you won't even notice it. And of course, you're welcome to use any ideas of mine when you're making your own. I hope you are feeling excited about creating your own design and I would love to see them. I really enjoy seeing students work and interacting with all of you. Borrow my ideas and use them in your own way, with your own voice. In any way you like. Remember that creative confidence comes with practice. Just like anything else. Just like a sport, just like a musical instrument. The more you do it, the more you practice, the better you get. So some people are born naturally creative, but even those people, the more they practice, the better they get. You just have to show up and create it doesn't matter what it can be. The smallest drawing. If you create something small every day after a year, or even after six months, you are going to see how much you have improved and how much you've learned. And best of all, how much fun you've had along the way. As you work, keep moving between the ink and the fine liner. Remembering to make your ink a little d that's going to give you such lovely balance and such lovely contrast with the darker ink next to the white and the black lines showing through the ink. I've had the best time creating these little blocks. I hope that by sharing this process in a fair amount of detail, that it's given you lots of ideas about how these sort of things unfold and actually how easy it is to create one of your own. I do hope that this has inspired you. 9. Some more examples : These are some more examples that I made using exactly the same technique with ink and fine liner. I also added a little bit of watercolor paint from time to time and some Penso Crown, so you can really add anything you want. Then you will see at the end, I took the little squares that I made in the beginning and cut them out, turned them into hearts, and made them into little fun Valentine's Day cards. I do quite like to use and reuse my artwork in different ways so that it is functional as well as beautiful. I hope you have fun making your own designs. 10. Your Project: Now it's time for your project, for you to work on your own. This is Tinton. He always helps me with my art. Grab your piece of paper and your ink. Make sure you've understood what I did and how I worked. Remember just to have fun and to enjoy yourself. This is supposed to be a fun, relaxing, wonderful experience. I would love to see what you've done. Please share with me. I like to see your pictures and we can chat about it. Tinton here says he would like to see your pictures too. Enjoy it and have fun. And I'll see you in my next video.