Easy Fearless Abstract Art

1. Class 1 Introduction: Hello and welcome to the third class in this whole series. So I started with abstract plurals. I went to landscapes, and now I thought of doing something really fun. I plan to do something more fun. Abstract but really intuitive kind of a work. I was working on these really fun pieces to be basically learning. And I thought, why not? Let's make a skillshare class on this. So this is what we're going to learn today. We learn the art of making colorful abstracts with a little bit of representational pieces, right? And this class is going to be structured on only one painting. So I'm going to teach you one painting with a warm color scheme and that's how it's going to be structured. But then in the project section, I'm going to actually teach you this one as well, so you will have an idea of at least two paintings in the whole class. 2. Class 2 Supplies and Materials: Hi, welcome to Supplies and materials. I'm basically a mixed media artist working majorly in acrylics today. I'll just go through the paints that I will be using for this. There is no pressure on the kind of brand that you want to use, the paints that you want to use. I would suggest gashcrylics because that is how we get the texture of this art. That is my only suggestion. I don't have any particular suggestions on the brands. I use liquid sometimes. I also have local Indian brands like Camel and I also have Taiwanese brands which are are something that I don't know, but they are really good in their quality. The colors that we will be using for this painting. Let me just take you back to the painting. This is a painting, the colors that we will be using are Vermilion. I'm was finishing up with this one. This is portrait pink. Any pink or you can mix your color like white and vermilion will make a nice pink. Then I have my lemon yellow which is basically cadmium yellow. That well be using, you can use a lemon yellow as well. There are parts of green that is olive green here. Obviously, I'm also using blue, which I'm using Prussian blue here. Basically a combination of the warm and the cool color scheme. Also we always white. Yes, these are the paints. Now, coming back to the mixed media, I have these Fosco pens, which are basically acrylic pens. I also have these oil pastels and these are in the brand Symbolian, I don't know if I'm pronouncing it right, these are the pastels. I also sometimes work with my son's pastels because I really love them. If you're testing your pastels, if you're buying pastels and you will test them, then a good idea is to just see how they are. If they're smooth and if they give a very creamy, buttery texture, then they work really well. Okay, apart from this, I have to show you my brushes. I don't use any particular brand, but I do like to use a square brush. Most of my brushes in this painting, in fact, all of my brushes are square brushes because that's how you get the texture. These are the brushes that I have used. They're in different sizes and middle size and then smaller size, but that really depends on the size of your paper as well. I also love to use these ka brushes. They're one of my favorites. Whenever I go to ITI just buy them. And I know they're available globally, so I would really recommend them. By no ways kids brushes, they're lovely to use. Okay. In terms of paper, this is an acrylic, acrylic sheet, like a normal paper for acrylic painting. It's a very thick sheet because our paint is going to be thick, so we have to make sure that we have a very thick sheet of paper. These are the supplies, of course, apart from water, a damp a rug, basically to wipe your brushes. And then a palette, of course, I use the palettes which are basically palette papers. I can just leave them and throw them away once they're done. That's the palettes I use. I think the next step in this course is basically I'll go and I'll show you some of the inspiration. And I'll show you something about colors, which will be a quick study of how you can learn to understand what kind of colors you like. It'll be a good homework that you can do before you start this particular 3. Class 3 Colour Studies: Hi and welcome to the lovely portion of this course because I really enjoy this light. As an artist, I feel like there are so many times I am short of inspiration. Every time taking a canvas to actually ruin it is something that I really don't like. Plus, I don't feel it's useful, right? Because I feel that it puts a lot of pressure on me to perform on the canvas. That's why I love to work on small pieces. Whenever there's a whole combination that I want to test, I'll work on small pieces and then I take it back. I was recently working on a lot of abstract. I love combination of yellow and purple and I've been testing it. I work on like four or five, or three or four pieces. And then I'll show you a failure like this one. I always thought that black and red and green would be wonderful, but somehow it did not work for me. I really recommend you working on small pieces. It could be a sketchbook or loose sheets like these. When I was working on this, this is when I realized it's a good topic for sharing it with others and for sharing how to work on it because it's very interesting. It was easy fun, but also the end product was very beautiful. I'm going to go through an activity which will really help you grow your color language, right? We all know warm colors, cool colors. We understand the opposite colors. We understand how we can mix colors. This white, mix black, mix other shades to make it darker, lighter, and all of that, right? But there is a very interesting activity that I do, which is basically, think of your favorite memory. Let's say maybe the day your son was, your child was born. Or let's say maybe the day you went to school, or probably a good day in college. Let's say something to do with your parents. For me, it has always been the first rains. What I do is I make a grid. Okay? I make a grid with at least at least ten plus colors that I have to make. I put up a topic, Okay, this was first rains. Then I mix and merge the colors that I associated with the memory. Now the beauty of doing this exercises, you do this for at least two or three memories, or four memories, or do it constantly, and you will start building the color language that you like to have in your artwork. I think this is what I have done on a consistent basis. Not knowing that this is the help it would actually do to my practice. Basically, I just write my memory, I write the colors. Sometimes when I'm making something I'm able to remember and use the same paints and make the same combination. I also write down the combinations. So I remember this in the next time when I'm doing it, or I can refer to it if I'm trying to copy something or leverage this to make a bigger piece. I try to do that if you see a lot of my paintings at these colors because that's the duty and that's the inspiration that drives my whole collections or sometimes even a couple of artworks. This was a little session, if you want to do a homework on this, I would really recommend take two or three memories and make this a chart for yourself. Make sure you're not using the paint directly from the tube. Make sure you're mixing a couple of paints and using them because that's the whole essence. You are trying to make your own paints. No one can go to the store and make the same paints as you have done it. That is the idea of this color study. Do this and let me know how you're able to work on it. 4. Class 4 Painting Session1: Finally, let's get to painting. Before that, let me show you these lovely abstracts that I have made, okay? They are very easy studies, just basically colorful works that was very less strenuous and very happy and colorful for me. That's what we're going to be working on today. Let's get started on this. I fixed upon this floral bird abstract because I just felt it's much more easier than any of them. I felt because of piece, it will be easy to make. It's a very nice thing for something card or something like a beautiful framed artwork that you can just put up on your wall. Here I am with my warm color schemes, I have a purple which if you don't have, you can easily make. I also have white with me. This is a palette sheet. And what I have done is I have first put in all the colors here. As you can see, I mix and merge my colors. The base for this is going to be very abstract. It's going to be a mix of a lot of colors and shades which I showed in earlier. But the idea is to be very abstract and very organic with it. We don't want to create the perfect ombre effect, rather we want to create the imperfect effect. We sometimes make the shades. Sometimes we're going to pick up directly from the tube, like you will see in the images ahead. I will pick up directly the purple shade that I use for making the base. Then I do everything wet on wet. The idea of wet on wet is that when you put wet paint near the next wet paint, it just merges in and creates these lovely brush marks. Now when you create these lovely brush marks, they have this visual effect on you basically, which is very organic, also a little bit imperfect. And that is the effect I really want to create. I want to create something that is far from perfect. The reason why one of these course love creating these courses is it forces out the perfectionist from us, right? When we force out the perfectionist, we get in the person who is more creative, who's more Gulvil, and who's ready to make mistakes. I now went in with my cool tone. The cool tone is, I want to make the bird. You see, my complete surface is still wet. I'm lifting up my hand and I'm creating this really organic shape of the bird. The idea is I first create the body, then I create the head, of course. I then make sure that the bird has an effect on how represent actually looks. You can see the base. My bird is actually picking up the color of the base as well. That's essentially the idea. We're creating work that is wet on wet. It's organic, it's easy to make mistakes in this kind of work. If you're the perfectionist who doesn't feel comfortable in this activity, then you can wait for things to dry and do it slow step by step. That is also perfectly fine. It's very different nature basis on nature. We like to make art in the same way. That's what we're going to try to create. Now, I just added yellow to the blue and I'm creating the leaves. For creating the leaves, I'm just holding brush completely straight at a 90 degree angle. And just creating something that looks like a leaf. Not necessarily something with a thin brush, with an exact shape of a leaf. This is something which is more organic and abstract. And it's really not forcing yourself to create something that looks exactly like a textbook leaf, You can see that. I'm also picking up colors from the base. And that's happening organically. I'm not really trying and testing to do that now. This is the first session and this is how we have just completed the first part of the painting. I will continue to do the same thing as I keep going on. I'm going to add in splatters in the end. That is something very personal. I like if you feel this is how it is complete, then you cannot add it. But if you feel that you want to add it, then of course you're welcome to essentially, this was my wet piece. And I know it can be a little tough for all of us to make it, but let's go ahead and see how we end the final piece. 5. Class 5 Painting Session2: Hello and welcome to the next part. Basically, our backdrop is completely dry and we have completed it. Now we go in with a small flat brush. Now this is I think a size eight or a size nine. I have gone ahead and I'm now going to detail this further. By detailing it, I mean, I'm going to put in the dark marks and basically the outline that I've already created in terms of the birds. I'm going to go and add more further details to it to suggest a darker shape, size, and a representational image. I've gone in with making some highlights. Basically just imagining a pair of lights probably coming on the bird, if you think of it as a three dimensional object. But you don't want to give it a representation or feel when the idea is to create lights and darks at some point of time. The good thing is to imagine a source of light. For me, it's on the left hand side and the extreme right is what I'm imagining the source of light to be. Obviously part of the bird is white that's facing the light. And then this more darker shades. I've tried to create more detailing within that. Now the reason I have kept this video at the same speed as what I'm painting, because I wanted to focus on the fact that this is a very easy activity to do. Okay, If you see I have made the complete detailing of the painting under 5 minutes, I feel like it's a very easy intuitive practice that you can use for making artwork. The next step is basically what you see is I'm just putting in some details of the leaves here. Alternatively, what you could do is you could go over the leaves with the small brush and make the leaves properly in the exact shapes. That's not something that I generally like to do. I have not done, I have just put some marks further. But if that is something that you would like to do, then I would highly recommend it. Going ahead, I have picked up yellow, blue and I'm just adding different floral elements. Now what this would mean, I wouldn't be able to put a name on it, but essentially, I'm looking at adding some details which includes organic shapes, metamorphical shapes, suggesting a flower, suggesting a tree, or suggesting a branch. Nothing which is very strongly suggestive of a particular shape or any natural element. I now go in with the mixed media. The next part of the video, you'll see me using a lot of mixed media. These are basically acrylic pens. They're from Posco and I love to use them over dried artwork. They're easy to use and they also work very well. And they have these beautiful shades which are luminicent and fluorescent, and they always look nice when you add them to the artwork. Now I'm very loose with the way I hold my pens and that is something that is specific to my art style though I do believe it is something that you could add or probably you could do something like a detailed work, right? You could even do something exactly opposite the next step. What I'm doing here is basically I'm doing a repetitive step of making small lines. Essentially this is call as mark making where you just add a singular mark to the painting, which is just in conjugation. It's one after another. It's just a way of adding, balancing your composition, resolving your composition. Adding more details to your compositions in a sense. Right? I went ahead and now I've started with my pastels, which I showed earlier here. Again, it's just about making these organic shapes that look like leaves or textures or trees that I have tried to add in for the going ahead. As we keep moving and as we keep working on this, I will just add the finishing details. Now these finishing details are like the eyes of the word. I'm also going to go at and add the splatters, which is something that's very specific to me and I love to add them. I've just added some highlights. Is there a way to do this? Probably. Can I put this in paper? Probably no. But yes, I can just share that this is more intuitive and more feeling based versus something that I can put on paper and say, take these five steps to achieve this similar painting. I think that offers you a lot of more freedom. Work that is more intuition based versus something that can be said, okay, do these four steps and follow it as is to make a realistic artwork. This is different and I will encourage you to use your creativity and your intuitive skills to just work on it and help yourself understand how this artwork will look. This artwork is now complete. I feel like this was the final details that I added. And then of course, I played with the older pieces just to see what looked nice and what I really, really liked. And that's about it. 6. Class 6 Conclusion: I hope you had a lovely lesson and I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you didn't take a lot of stress working on it. I wanted to show the final artwork. It's a little wet, but I wanted to show it. This is how it looks. All right? I do think it looks good. There's a couple of changes that I could have made, but I wanted to be true to the practice and just show it to what I have done. But I do think I would like to do some outlines, but this is a really pretty abstract that I worked on and I really enjoyed working on it. Similar to this, Similar to this, you can do many of them. And in the project section, we'll go with this one. You can also do something in which you're finishing the palette. Let's say you've taken a lot of paint in this palette and you want to finish it up. I'll just show you something I made with the finished Pat. I was making this painting and I did not finish up all my colors. I made this with Pat. It's like a pretty abstract but no representational piece, but is like finishing up my colors. And this is something you can really do because it really helps your practice. Again, it becomes to the color study, right? I will like to really remember this combination, especially this one. You know how I made it and what I did. Then you can hang it on your studio, or you can remember it for yourself. Take a photograph of it. Make a collage of it so that you remember it when you go to make next painting. I hope you enjoyed the session. I hope you could understand all the questions. Um, I hope you could understand the whole process. If you have any more questions, just ping me in the commands or you can message me. You can just connect with me anyhow, and I'll be happy to answer them. I'll be honored to answer them. And I hope this process helps you let loose and lets you understand a little bit of your intuitive process and lets you connect with something deeper.