Experimenting with Paint

1. Introduction: Hi, I'm Samantha Mackay and I'd love you to join me for Experimenting with Paint. This class is all about having fun with art and creating without expectation. Using the techniques and materials I'm going to introduce you to, you'll be creating abstract art in no time. By the end of this course, you'll have 48 mini swatches just like these, but in your own style. You'll create them on large sheets of paper like this, using techniques for applying and removing paint, for glazing and washing, for layering in dry and wet media, and for creating texture in a range of different ways. By the end, you'll have some swatches that you love and some that you really don't like. That's a great opportunity to you playing and learning with these techniques and these styles. Experimenting with paint is like creating without expectation. You won't know what your art will look like from one dice to the next, let alone by the end of the course. That frees you up to play and let go and just see where it takes you, rather than the judgment of trying to create something specific. This class really is about having fun and just letting art emerge in-front of you. By doing so, you'll find your own creative style and form of creative expression. What you'll be able to take into all future projects and even into larger artistic endeavors. This class gave me the confidence to say, I'm an artist, and I really want to share that opportunity with you for you to find that same creative voice. You'll be simply amazed at the art you create during this class. 2. Getting Started: Welcome to experimenting with paint. This class is all about discovery and exploration, it's about trying out new processes, techniques, and styles of painting and allowing surprising things to emerge right in front of you. We use the mating of extract on because it frees us up from creating specific pictures like houses, and landscapes, and people. We won't know what our paintings or look like from one day to the next, and that really allows us this willingness to experiment this freedom to try new things in a way we can't normally. When I first started painting, I thought all I had to work with as a paintbrush, some paint, and some paper. And what I've learned is there's so much more available to me, and the more I learn, the more I find and discover ways which I enjoy painting. And I believe the more you learn about those techniques, the more you'll find your own personal language for communicating through paint. Now, some of these techniques will be uncomfortable, they will be a bit strange, and it will be a bit weird trying them out. But I encourage you to try absolutely everything because you never know what you're going to like and you never know what's going to resonate with you, by the time your painting is done. This class is designed to work through in a logical order. But once you've finished, you're free to dip in and out the project steps, trying the techniques that you liked the most and coming back to the ones you didn't. When you're ready, jump into the next video and let's get started. 3. Setting Your Intention: As this class is all about experimentation, it's really important that we set you up for a success before we get started. I want you to grab your notebook, and a pen, and get ready to make a few notes on the inside front cover. The first thing I want to talk about is your intention. How will you approach your art, each time you sit down to work. Abstract art isn't about creating something specific. We're not painting a house or a landscape. It's about letting it go wherever that happens today. You're not going to know from one day to the next, what your art is going to look like. It's really important that you set an open-minded intention, or a mantra about how you're going to work. My mantra is, I'm open to what might art will become. I use this every time I sit down to paint, and every time that I don't use it, or I have an expectation about how my art it's going to look, it comes out funny or wrong, and I don't like it. It's really important to embrace an open-minded approach and a willingness to experiment, when it comes to this class, especially if abstract art is a new medium to you. Take a few minutes to correct your intention or your mantra, and write that in front of your notebook. Now the other thing that's really important that I want you to put in your book, is to set your objectives for this class. How much time you're going to spend, when or where are you going to work? You're going to work on your own or with a group? What do you want to learn or take away from this class? Time wise, you could work for two to three hours once a week, or 15 minutes every day. You can work in your kitchen, your garage, or your bedroom, anywhere that you can make the mess. You can work on your own or with a group. Sometimes it's nice to see the way other people work, and share materials with each other. But it's also really important to be clear on what it is you want to learn or take away from your time in this class. You've answered all of those questions, and made notes in the front of your notebook, then it really is time to get started, and start preparing our surface for your creativity. 4. Preparing your Surface: Now, it's time to prepare the surface we are going to paint on. In this class, I'm going to run through the materials you'll need. First thing, why do we prepare our surface? When we go to paint on anything, whether it's a canvas, paper, glass, wood, plastic, or fabric, we want to make sure that the paint is going to hold in the way we want it to, that it's going to stick, that our surface will have tooth. Now, there are a number of different ways you can prime a surface, and depending on what you're working on, you will take a different approach. Now going to take you through what you need for this class. We're going to be working on paper, so I need you to get six sheets of A2 300 GSM wet strength paper. Next, you're going to need some gesso. Gesso is one of the most traditional primers available. You can use other things, but I definitely want you to use gesso for this class. Now, I've got two different brands here. Atelier is a bit thicker and the PVR is a bit thinner, but it really just depends on which one you like and which brand your local shop has. Make sure you get 500 mils. I also want you to get a black gesso, just a smaller tub, because I want you to experience what it's like to work on a black surface as well as white. From there, you're going to need some low tack delicate masking tape, these usually come in a purple or a green, a paintbrush for applying it with. Now, just get a cheap synthetic brush, but make sure it has really clean sharp edges for applying. A few other things, you'll need your ruler, pencil, a marker, some really fine sandpaper, and then something to do some mixing in. Now you've got your materials together, it's time to prepare our swatches. How this is going to work is we're going to take each A2 piece of paper, and using our delicate tape, divide it up into eight different A5 swatches. It's going to look a little something like this when we're finished. Let's take our tape and start putting it in-between each corner. Now, don't pull it too tight because once it's wet, it'll buckle. Just gently lay it down with the right length. Repeat that for each side. Now, to get the middle, take an eighth full piece of paper to measure out the center and then again to measure out the side. What I want you to do is lay a piece of tape down each side of that mark, going both ways, and then use a ruler to split the difference and create the same bars down the middle there. Now we've got our paper like this, it's time to add our gesso. We want our swatches to look like this. This is a piece of paper with gesso already applied to it. I want you to create four with white gesso, one with black, and then one with gray, creating one where you mix white and black together. There's a trick to applying the gesso, and I want to show you that now to ensure you get it right when you do this for yourself. Taking your brush, tip it in your gesso, put your brush on the masking tape, and pull onto the paper. This is so we create a seal between the masking tape and the paper, and if we don't do this, some of that paint will leak under the masking tape and will take away from that nice border look that we're going for. Now, repeat this on every edge all the way around. Once you're done, fill in the middle and finish the coat by pulling the brush in a vertical direction across the swatch. That's your first coat for your first swatch. Now, repeat that for every other piece of paper. Remember, four white, one black, one gray. They'll take about a day to dry. When they are fully dry, apply the second coat in exactly the same way. Once the second coat is fully dry, we need to sand back the surface. This is to both increase the tooth of that stickability, as well to smooth out any of those texture or imperfections we have created from the brush strokes. Take your sandpaper, take you swatch, lightly sand over the surface until it's smooth, and use a damp cloth to wipe away the dust. Again, repeat that for all of these swatches as well. Once they're all sanded back, you are ready to go. 5. Techniques for Applying Paint: There are so many different ways to apply paint to a canvas other than using a brush. In this video, I want to show you a couple of swatches around what that might look like and take you through all the tools and materials you'll need for this unit. Couple of swatches first, here paint is being applied with a brush, but you can say there's lots of different layering that's gone on there. Here paint is being applied using fingers to wrap the different colors into the surface. Here painters being applied using a hard edged tool to drag the paint along and here you see the dots underneath, that's a bloom effect from using salt on a wet surface. There's a few things there that we can use. What you are going to need for you to apply paint? Let's start with the paint itself. In your materials list and there's several different paints I have asked you to get. I would ask you to get something slightly better than student quality because what you pay an extra for that pigment will make a huge difference to the outcome of your work today. I've asked you get three primary colors, a white-black, a brown and a gray. I've also asked you to get a combination of transparent, translucent and opaque paints. If you're not quite sure what that is, it tells you about how much you can see through the paint want to supply to the surface. A transparent paint you can see through quite a lot. A translucent paint you can partly see through it. An opaque paint you can't see through it all. It's really important to have a combination of the three for the work that we're doing as part of this course. You can find out if your paint is transparent or not by looking on the back. On the back of the paint somewhere there'll be a box. If the inside of that box is white, your paint is transparent. If there's a diagonal line, it's half black, half white your paint is translucent and if the box is all black, it's an opaque paint. Make sure you have a combination of all three for the paints you're going to be using for this class. Then we're going to need some brushes. I would recommend you get a four centimeter glazing brush, spend a little bit of extra money. Something that will hold the paint nicely and not leave too many lines or marks when you paint with it. Then just have a few other brushes of different sizes and combinations to work with. We need some palette knives, these come in different shapes and sizes. These are some plastic ones I picked up quite cheaply. There's a whole lot of metal ones that you can use or you can just grab some of your utensils out of your kitchen. Next you will need some hard edge surfaces. This is a scraper I bought from an art shop, a set square I found in the drawer. You could use an old credit card, a piece of cardboard anything that you can use to drag paint along the surface. Next I want you to get some sponges. Whether it's a natural sponge or synthetic sponge, something on a role or a stick, really useful for creating different and random effects when you're painting. A few other things I want you to get a syringe or cake decorating bag. Anything that you can push paint onto the surface when you're painting. Next I want you to get something with a fine point, whether it's a bamboo stick or a skewer, anything that can create sort of fine points. Next I want you to get a toothbrush, a nail brush anything you can flick or spray paint onto the surface of the canvas. Just some ordinary table salt, some absorbent paper. I've got some kitchen towel here, but any paper will do. Then some rags always useful for picking up paint and making different shapes on the surface. With that, let's jump into our first technique. Take some blank swatches and the first thing you might want to do is Iay a base layer down. Now I've done this with just using a little bit of paint and a bit of water to paint or rub this wash onto the surface and I've let it dry. Now that they are dry, let's try our first technique and that's scumbling. This is where we apply an opaque paint over the surface of a lighter color in a broken or vial defects, so can still see the lighter color coming up underneath. Now to do this, we need a dry brush. In this case I have a stencil and a brush with a flat head, you can use a palette knife or you could use a rag as well because we're going to scuff skimmer or scrub that opaque paint across the surface. Let me show you what that might look like. I'm going to take some paints gray and gently scuff this brush across the surface. You can see I'm getting this vial broken effect, you can still see the color underneath and I can do that a lot harder as well. You can still see the blue coming through. Now if I do that with a palette knife, it looks completely different. Taking the paints gray again, just dragging the palette knife across the surface. I can still see that blue through the grid. That's scumbling. Next is dragging, and this is where we use a brush or hot edge surface to drag paint across the surface. Firstly with the brush, I got a dry brush here. I'm going to load some paint onto it. I'm going to gently drag the brush across the surface like this. You can see I get this broken uneven effect the way the paint lands on the surface. I can go in different directions. All with that uneven effect, which can be quite interesting on the surface of your canvas. If I use a scrapper it's going to look quite different, if I just apply some yellow paint here. When I drag this paint across the surface, again I get this uneven effect emerging but in a completely different way to the brush. That's dragging. Next is pointillism. Now this is where we use lots and lots of just little dots on the surface in different colors to create this visual effect. You can use something quite small and pointy like a bamboo skewer. You can use the end of a paintbrush or you can apply paint directly from the tube itself. Let's have a quick look at that. Starting with a small brush. Those dots are really small, it's going to take quite some time to add lots of colors and get that effect going but it might be what you're looking for. The end of the paint brush is going to give us something with a bit more impact. Again, there's lots of alternating ways that you can do this. Let's take a look as if we're applying the paint from the tube itself, it comes out quite thick and quite big. Look how big those dots are in comparison. You can add lots of different colors in laid out and lots of different ways to get that effect going. All right, the next effect I want to show you is feathering. This is where we take two colors side-by-side, and use a brush with rapid alternating strokes to blend the colors to get that and almost looks like birds with feathers and hence the term feathering. First let's put some paint on one of these swatches, and I use the blue underneath. Taking a dry brush use our rapid alternating strokes to blend the two together. You just keep going until you have the effect you looking for or until the paint dries. Now obviously that comes out quite dark, I might just add just a little bit of white. Just a little bit easy to see that feathering effect coming out. That's feathering. Next is dabbing, and this is where we take a sponge, some paper or rag and dab paint onto the surface and it gives some really interesting effects. Starting with the sponge. You just dab in a random fashion around the page, letting the paint accumulate and just express itself however it comes out. If we use paper, depending on how crumpled or texture the paper is you're going to get a different effect again. Finally, if we use a rag, that'll look a little bit different too. Experiment with dabbing with lots of different materials just to see what it comes out looking like. Then the other thing that's good to use is a roller. Depending on how much paint, will have thick the paint you put on it, will depend on this random effect you're going to hit coming out on the swatch. Let's get a little bit watery red for this, add a little bit to the roller. You can see we've got some random patterns emerging there. Lots of different things you can do with that and quite easy to pick up. Now spattering. This is lots of fun, but it's a bit messy. This where you got to take your toothbrush or nail brush or even a spray bottle and spray paint onto the surface. Now the effect will also depend on how thick the paint is you apply. Lets use that red paint again. If the paint is quiet wet and runny, you're going to get much bigger drops in a much bigger surface area. If we just use some thick paint, those droplets are much finer. We're going to experiment with different thicknesses for different effects. All right. Extrusion, pushing paint through a tool onto the surface. I've got a syringe which I'll like using and I'm just going to put some thick paint directly into the tube, but you could also put some runnier paint as well. Experiment both ways just to see what happens. Again, you can do dots, you can do lines, or you can even just push the paint out in larger piles. Remember the thicker it is the longer it will take to dry, but it gives great texture to the surface. The last technique I'm going to show you for it when it comes to applying paint to your surface, is salt. That blooming effect you get when you put salt onto a watery surface. Let's get some watery red again just over here in this corner. Maybe never need to apply these techniques to the whole of your swatch. Can be quite interesting just to do bits and pieces here and there. Taking a little bit of our salt, sprinkle that over the surface. Depending on how much water there is and how much salt you apply, will depend on how long it takes to show up. Take a look at the projects state for a photo of this in full effect once it's dried. Those are the eight techniques I wanted to show you today but most of all have fun and really enjoy trying to experiment with these different techniques using the paints on these swatches that you've got. 6. Techniques for Removing Paint: In this video, I'm going to take you through the materials you need for removing paint on the surface of your swatches. Now make sure you download the materials list and follow through as I take you through these materials. But firstly, you want to show you some examples of what your swatches could look like when you're finished. Here's an example of the monoprinting and pulling technique, where a textured surface has been used to pull paint from the surface of the swatch. Here, a coin has been used to drag paint across the surface, and in this one, a rubber scrapper has been used to scratch and pull at the paint as it's being dried. I'm getting this really rough effect going on. What are some of the materials you're going to need? We definitely need some rags and some absorbent paper, things to scrape at the surface with. Whether it's this scraper, your credit card, cardboard, a coin is useful. They scrape this with the edges, are quite cheap to pick up from an art store. You can get a rubber scraper with this sort of end on it, or even anything you could find in your kitchen that might do the job too. You need some textured materials to pull paint off the surface of the swatches to create those interesting effects. I found some kitchen wipe, some foil, some interesting wrapping paper, little foil cup there, lots of bubble wrap, really useful, some fabric and then some crumpled paper. All of those are really great for creating these different textures on the surfaces. Something else you're going to need is a wide carved etch into the surface of your swatch so bamboo skewer, paperclip or a safety pin or all really useful for that. Lastly, just some sanding paper because we'll sand back in to parts of this swatches as well. That's what you need for moving paint from the surface of your swatches. Using one of the swatches where we've been applying paint, we're going to start working with some of our removing paint techniques. The first technique I want to show you is rubbing, and this is where we use our fingers or a rag to rub paint into the surface. I'm going to take some red paint, and literally just rub it in. I'm going to keep working at it until it starts to dry because any status get a different effect on the surface. You can see as I do so, some of the paint is coming off and will remove from the surface at the same time. Now if I do the same thing with a rag, let's find a good spot for it. You can see the paint is coming off on the rag as I'm applying it. You going to dry it into different effects from that rubbing technique. Next, I want to tell you about staining. This is where we take a little bit of water, a little bit of paint and apply it to the surface and then rub into a quite quickly and gently to create this atmospheric look with a soft edges. Now, you can see I've already used that to some effect of these base colors. You can use it as a top layer as well. I'm just be aware that some of the color randominate will blend into it. Let's give this a go. I'm just taking some watery paint, apply it to one of the swatches. Remember you don't need to cover every swatch with a single technique. You can just use small parts as well. Taking our rag, just going to rub into that watery paint to create those soft edges. Rub up any extra, and you can see here, we've got that effect that staining effects coming on well. If you paint is drying too quickly for these techniques to be working well you can add a little bit of Matador or an open medium just to keep them open a little bit longer. The next technique I want to show you is pulling and this is where we use absorbent paper or towel to pull back paint overly laid down. Let's take a look at this. Use this brush over here, lay down some of these red paint, and before it dries, use our paper towel to push into the paint, pull it back. We can see quite a lot of the paint has come off with the towel and we've got a much thinner layer of paint left here. Now, you can repeat this as many times as you like if you'd like to get a thinner layer of paint. If it dries too quickly, you can add just a little bit of water to continue with that process. You get a different effect by doing so as well. An extension of the pulling technique is monoprinting. This is where we're going to use these textured materials to remove paint from the surface. All right, so I'm going to get some yellow paint right across the surface here, push down my kitchen towel, hold that back up and might be a bit tricky to say it but it's quite a textured pattern here. Another way to do this we use the bubble wrap for this, is to apply paint to both the textured surface and your swatch and then pull them apart. Lets put some red paint down here, apply paint all over here. Lay them on the top of each other, press then in and then pull it up and see some of the red paint has come up and one of my other colors have gone down. You can repeat this as often as you like across the swatch just to get different effects going on. Look at that. You can have lots of fun finding different materials that are going to lead different imprints on the swatches. The next technique I want to show you is this Sgraffito. This is where we'll carve our edge into the surface of a swatch to create sort of fine lines and deeper grooves that will create some different relief and look to that painting. This is where we need our bamboo skewer or paperclip to carve it and draw. I can make marks in the wet paint over here or I can use my skewer to carve into the dry paint. That can be a bit tricky, so it might take a little bit of working into it. Now the great thing about this is once those lines dry, you can glaze over with a little bit of a highlight paint that will fill those grooves and make them stand out from the surface even more. That's you circle fader. Another technique I want to show you a scraping back, so sort of the opposite of dragging. This is where we use our hot edge tools to pull and push paint along the surface. Let's start with our scrapper and apply some black paint to it. I pull it across the surface but then we equally going back in and take it off again, pulling and pushing that paint around. We can equally try that with a comb, so let's put some paint over here. That can move a paint around in quite a different way as well. Now finally, I just want to show you what it's like to use this kind of scraping with a point on it, I'll just put some paint on the end there. As the paint dries and I push back in it comes away creating quite a different effect. Some of the other ones right, [inaudible] Okay, so that's scraping back. The last technique I want to show you is sand papering. This is where you take a little bit of your light sand paper, want a dry part of one of these swatches and sand back in to see some of the layers underneath. Obviously, the swatches I have here don't have a lot of layers to them and they are quite a lot. But if you're using a swatch that had lots of layers on top of it, you're going to get a really interesting effect as you carve back into layers underneath. Just to give you a quick demonstration, I can sand by the top of some of these dots so I applied with pointillism. Or I can sand back some of the paint itself. You've to sand to see some of the white that was underneath that. You can use this in a range of different ways. Those are the seven techniques I wanted to show you for removing paint on the surface of the canvas. As I said before, the way you apply those is that it's going to look really different depending on materials you're using, the color is just simply the way you approach the swatches each day. 7. Introduction to Glazes & Washes: In this video, I want to introduce you to glazing and washing and this is where we're going to start to color out our swatches. By color, I mean adding transparent layers rather than covering surfaces with deep paint and this is really we want to make sure we're using those transparent paints we talked about rather than those of opaque paints that you might have. Now, we can use water to create these layers but when we use water, it reduces the intensity of the paint. Hence, we want to use some mediums, they're going to keep that intensity while still creating these optical illusions of these depths and layers within your swatches. Now before I take you through the products, I just want to show you some of the swatches that I've done and what it could look like on when you're doing these glazing process. Starting with this one, you can see here this has a really high shine level, so we've used gloss to create that and obviously we've got layers of yellow, orange and then a green on top. Now again, here this is quite glossy so we use another gloss product with layers of red and green. Now this one isn't as shiny, so here we've got this underlayer, which is most likely a wash, then a matte layer with a semi-gloss over the top. Now here we've used gesso to create this milky veiled effect. I recommend using gesso over using white paints, because white paint is opaque and gesso is not, so you're going to get a much better veiled look for that depth and that translucency. Then finally, I just want to introduce you to interference paints. Now these paints, you can see here in this bottom corner a shiny and have that iridescence to them with this duality of color. It quite translucent in themselves so you can use them on their own or mixed in with a medium or paint and they've change color depending on which way you're looking at them, really fun to play with. Let's take a look at the products you're going to be working with. Firstly, the glosses, I've got three different glosses here, the Liquitex glazing medium, the Golden acrylic liquid gloss, and the Atelier gloss varnish. I'm a huge fan of gloss, I like things to shine, so I do have a few of them. Next is the satin or the semi-gloss. Now these don't change the shine level of your swatch, so if you want to keep things looking the same feel free to add these over the top. I've got worth a clean medium which can be quite useful for various things and then I've got a satin varnish. Then finally there's the matte. Matte will dull down the surface, so this is really good for drawing back into. Now I only have one matte here, this is the Atelier but of course you can explore them in a number of brands whether that's PBO, Liquitex, Golden, or anything else that you happen to have in your local art store. Also, you might need some gesso if you want to create that milky or veiled effect, and you just mix that with a little bit of water. Then finally the interference paint. I've got this gold color here but there are a range of different colors you can get, and I've included those in the notes, you can take a look and pick one you'd like. Obviously there are quite a few products here, you don't necessary to get them all to get started. If working within a group, feel free to buy one each so could explore together. If you're working on your own, watch the next video, read through the notes and decide which products you are going to start with, pick that one up, have a play and then get the next one and we'll keep your way that way. 8. Demonstrating Glazes & Washes: In this video, I want to demonstrate how you going to do your glazing and your washing. I'm going to take you through each product as well as wash. You limited gesso as well as the interference paint. But first I want to make sure you have your glazing brush. I'm not going to use a number of different brushes here today, and you'll start to see that a non glazing brush will start to leave more lines and a great effect is if you can create a glaze. I'm just going to use like a clear color over the surface. Let's start with that gloss. I'm going to mix a little bit of paint, I am going to a tiny little bit of red here with a little bit about medium. Now, play around with the amount of paint and the amount of medium to use. Because you will get different effects and also play around with different brands of paint because different paint will behave in different ways as well. Let's start with a small brush here. Thoroughly mix them together and remember, using a medium with a paint will keep it open for longer, which means it won't dry as quickly. Let's take this gloss and apply it to our swatch. Remember, that's going to dry and glossy and we can still see through it. You can see the other layers underneath it, which is exactly what we're looking for because we are looking to color rather than cover with our paint. It's important to make sure we're using those transparent or translucent paints for this process. Next, let's try an asset or as semi gloss, for this I'm going to use the clear painting medium. I am going to mix it with a little bit of this blue paint. Mix those together. Some paints mix better with the mediums than others, just do make sure they are thoroughly mixed. Let's apply that over here. You can see that in this brush is leaving quite a few lines which you may or may not want. It is catching on that texture as well, which has another interesting effect. Do I feel you need to cover each swatch entirely in a glaze, it's nice to use bits and pieces throughout. Finally, let's try this map vanish. I'm going to use it with a little bit of this yellow. Once it comes out watch, it will dry clear. Mix those together and lets put that over here. Now, remember this will dry with a dull down effect so we can draw back into it. That is glazing. Now, the great thing here is you can now wait for this to dry and put multiple layers of different glazes over the top. Weather they are different mediums that you're using with a different effect or different colors. We can add a blue on top of this and even as the colors mix together, we'd start to see it as green. Some might behave, we added yellow would start to that as orange. You can do that in all different ways. Layering, glaze upon glazed to get different effects. Now. let's have a look at creating a gesso vale. I have a bit of gesso or being mixed with a little bit of water. Let's get a little bit of that. Let's drag that over here. It works really nicely over textured surface. You can say that really catches around those edges there. We can still see through it unlock using the wet wipe, which is our pike. Last I just want to show you this interference paint. Now remember this is translucent all on its own, so you can use it directly or you can mix it with a paint or medium. I'm just going to put some directly onto the brush here. Not very much because you want to use this more as a highlight rather than really covering the paint with them. You really can see how shiny that is. I really like these pints is so much fun to work with. That is glazing. I do want to show you what it looks like to do a wash. I'm going to use one about gray swatches for that. Now these gray swatches don't have anything on them. But it's a great demonstration of how to use glazing and washing over the surfaces. Let's start with a wash. Let's mix, a little bit of paint with some water. Not a great brush to be applying this with those seeing air bubbles that are coming out. You can't see instantly that this yellow is a lot less intense than when we're using it with the glazing medium. But it does create a nice effect. I'm over that bright because you can still get that sense of the gray through that wash. Feel free to have a play around with that on your gray swatches. But just want to show you what the mediums look like on the gray as well. Let's start with the red. Then we will have a look at the blue and obviously you don't have to apply these just with general strokes. You could make patterns with them or just apply them in any different way that you like. Here I combined a semi gloss against the mat. They can look quite different when they dry and have a nice contrast with each other. You can see here I've directly that yellow as the wash and the yellow with the medium, that intensity really shows that quite clearly.. That's what it's like to do washes in glazes on our gray swatch. Just for fun, let's quickly have a look at a black one. You can see here, I've applied a yellow medium and the black really does suck up a lot of the color that will create some interesting effects there. We've applied a red glaze over the top here, and very subtle blue glaze here. A few things you can do with those black and gray swatches. That is everything you need to know that glazing and washing, go get some materials, grab some products, get started and have lots of fun. 9. Introduction to Layering : In this video, I'm going to introduce you to layering with other media. That's where we start to take out swatches and apply a range of dry and wet media to draw into and to create lots of different effects that we're not using paint at all for. I'm going to take you through all the different menu we're going to be using. I do recommend you download the materials list under this unit and so you can follow along. Before I do that, I just want to show you a couple of swatches. You can see what kind of effects we're going for. You can see here this is shadowy, where we've taken graphite powder and rubbed it into the surface. On this one, it was a gray swatch where chalk was rubbed into the surface and then a medium used over the top to combine the two. Here, we've used an oil stick to correct this thick shape around the swatch. On this one, a couple of different inks have been laid over some glazing, I'm using mediums so I'd advice you to do so. Inks, again, these inks are being dropped into some medium to correct this diluted expanded effect. Lots of things we are going to be doing with the medium I'm about to show you. First, charcoal, it comes in a number of different forms, compressed willow or powder, can be soft and heavy, and we can use that for creating sub dark thick lines as well as smudges. Next is graphite. These graphite pencils, graphite powder, number of different forms you can buy them. We've got colored pencils, whether they're normal or water-soluble, both are useful. Then we've got crayons. Whether they're wax crayons or coating crayons, both are available, there's informational notes in your notes. But if you don't have them, a wax candle is equally as useful. Next, we've got pastels. Now, there's two types of pastels. There's a soft pastel that comes out a bit chalkier, where the colors are quite vibrant, or oil pastels, which should be glaze, you can carve them, you can shape them, and you can layer or blend those different colors on top of each other. They will behave a little bit differently. Then finally in the dry media, I've got oil sticks. Now these are an oil paint that's been blended with a binder to hold them in the stick like form, and you draw them straight onto the swatch and then blend them in. You are using an oil paint rather than acrylic paint so it does take some time to dry. Now for the dry media, you will need a fixative to hold those particles onto the surface. If you don't have fixative, you can just use some hairspray. You just lightly spray the surface to hold them in place. Next is the wet media. Firstly, inks, I've got an Indian ink and then I've got a couple different brands, Sennelier and Pebeo. Now, the great thing about this Sennelier ink is it contains shellac. That's how we get that diluted oil defect that I was just showing you on the swatches. This other waterproof inks work just as well, you create some really interesting effects. We can either spread them around with something that's put a fine point, with brush, with the fingers or combine them with mediums. Lots of things you can do with those. Now, the other thing you can use is just simple pens and markers. Whether you've got some permanent pens, some normal pens, some pipe pens, anything you can use to create different lines and marks on your swatches. Those are all the materials you need for layering with other media. Again, we're aiming to put these in on our swatches in-between different layers of glazes and other mediums. Lots of things we're going to be experimenting with. Some of these things you'll have around the house already, some you won't. Don't feel you need to start with everything all at once. But some things you can pick up quiet cheaply from the art store. 10. Demonstrating Layering: In this video, I'm going to demonstrate how we use all those dry and wet media we've just talked about. Let's start with our charcoal and you can use charcoal to create a big thick lines, or velvety smudges as well. Let's have a go at both. As you can see, some thick lines is and you can always smudge charcoal in or you can smudge it in-between, texture lines on your swatch to create this velvety shadow between them. Okay. Next is graphite. Graphite comes in a powder which you can squeeze onto the page and rub in into certain areas, or you can use a pencil to create fine lines and shadowing. We can just rub that in. You can see it has that shine or shimmer to it of graphite, which gives a really different affect to the charcoal which has the velvetyness. All right, next is colored pencils. We've got the normal non water-soluble ones. You just create normal lines with, or I've got the water-soluble pencils and you can use these in a couple of different ways. You can just draw with them as per normal. You can lie them on and use a bit of water to brush them in, giving them a bit of a watery color effect. Or even better still you can dip the pencil in water and draw with it. It almost blends itself as you're working with them. That's using our colored pencils. Next, are our crayons, so you might have some of the conte crayons or the wax crayons. If you don't have either, just grab a candle, because when you draw on the page with that, later on when you layer back in another glaze, it's going to look very different over the top of where you rubbed that candle in. Now if you don't have any chalk, grab some soft pastels, because these work in a very similar way that I create really vibrant colors and very soft, delicate lines. You can very easily blends these in for a smudgy effect. We'll just use this brown one as well and you can use these as a fine line. But I'm bit of a fan of smudging. You can also use the oil pastels and they have more of that waxy greasy feel to them. But the great thing is you can layer them on top of each other and blend them together. You can make them stick or as thin as you like as you rub them in. The other alternative too with your oil pastels is use a bit of turpentine over the top, be careful about how that interacts with the other media on your page. Next is oil sticks. I'm a huge fan of these because this is pure oil paint it's just so vibrant on your page. Now these will dry when you're not using them. You're going to need to get a knife to remove some of the skin around the edge and once you've done that, you just use them as if you were drawing on the page. Then you can blend them in to make them as thick, or as translucent as you want them to be. This, will take a couple of days to dry. If they are really thick you're going to need to give them lots of drying time. But if they're thinner, that won't need so much and remember, you won't be able to add an acrylic over the top of this oil. Be careful you either keep it as your final layer for this swatch or you just paint around it. That's the end of our dry media. I now want to talk about our wet media, starting with some inks. This is one of our waterproofings. It's great if you just you can drip it directly onto the swatch. Couple of ways you can move it around, just literally picking up the page and seeing where the ink goes. You can use a nib or a skewer to feather out the ink to create interesting lines and patterns. You can use a brush or your fingers just to move it around and create interesting looks with them. The other thing I really like to do with think, is mix it with some medium, creates a really different effect on the page. Especially if you're using this Cinelli ink because it contains shellac. Really dilutes and expands itself in a different way to the other inks. You can see here the ink is expanding with these little tendrils out the side. It'll dry in that pattern creating a really unique look on your page and I'm a huge fan of it. I love playing with inks and mediums. Okay, so that is it for the media I wanted to take you through today. Now remember for anything you've used with loose particles like the charcoal, the graphite and the colored pencils, you will need to add a fixative over the top of it just to seal it in place for your next layer of glaze. In the notes you'll find all the details of when to use fixative and went to not. Now we just want to light spray the fixative. Where's some of our. There we go. You're better off having several light layers, rather than one heavy layer. Do remember with graphite, it will dull down the shade of it, so use it really lightly just to hold it in place as much as needed. Now these are just some of the dry or wet media that you could use. I'm sure you've had lots of different ideas and other things you can try and please incorporate as much as possible into swatches. 11. Introduction to Creating Texture: In this video, we're going to talk about how you can create some texture on the surface of the swatches. Up until now, we've been focused on creating optical texture using glazes and layering to see into your painting. Now I want to use materials to create texture that's coming out of your painting. Before I take you through the different materials and products we're going to need, let me show you some swatches of what that could look like. So on this one here, I've used a heavy matte gel medium to create this impact here. On the corner of this swatch, we've used a soft, glossy gel to correct this texture. On this swatch here, we've started off by using a modeling compound on the base and then using a palette knife to pull these ridges into the surface. Then with this swatch here, we've used a stencil with some modeling compound to create this relief in the surface. So we've got wide range of ways you can create texture. So let's start by looking through the materials you're going to need. Now, make sure you download the materials list to follow along and make any notes you want to. So the first thing you're going to need is some heavy body paint. Liquitex has a great range of these. What you're going to do is use the paint to apply directly to the surface in Impasto style. So you can use a brush, a palette knife, directly from the tube or even your fingers to create that real thickness on the surface. Next, you're going to use some gel mediums to create texture. Now just like our glazing mediums, they come in a gloss, semi-gloss or matte format. They also come in a thickness, so soft, regular, and heavy. That tells you how much texture or how many peaks it's going to hold on the surface of your swatch. So as an example, I've just got this one here. You can see here this is a soft, glossy gel medium and over here is a heavy matte medium. You can see it really holds a lot more peaks and surfaces to it, whereas this one's a lot softer. In the store, you'll be able to find swatches just like this to see exactly how these jar mediums will look in real life once they're dry. Let's take a look at how, once they're wet. So this is a soft gel gloss, you can see it looks quite malleable and quite shiny. The next one I have here is the regular semi-gloss gel, so you can see it's a bit thicker and a lot less shiny and then finally, the heavy matte. You can really see how dense this is, I mean it has no shine at all. Now, you could also get jar mediums that have dry media already mixed into them. So this one here has pumice, but you can also get things with fibers, beads, and sand, a whole range of things that you can try if you want to. You can also mix things into the gels themselves, whether it's your sand or your saw dust, I've got some glitter that I could mix in, a whole range of things you can use to create some extra texture on the surface of your swatches. The next thing I want you to try is a modeling compound or a modeling paste. Now, the one I have here is a Talia modeling paste. If you take a look in the notes, there's a whole range of different products you could potentially try. They all work in a very similar fashion, they've got this putty-like feel to them, a bit grainy and they'll dry with a rough surface to them. So you can still carve or sand into them once they're dry. That's unlike the gel mediums, which are much more plasticy, you really kind of manipulate these while they're wet, once they're dry there's not much you can do with them. So these are all the things I want you to try but to use them to create the texture, you're going to need a few tools along the way. So palette knives are really useful for both taking the materials out of their pots and also creating a relief on the surface. You can also use some knives and some folks to do the same thing. A scraper with some dented edges is going to be really useful. Stencil can be used to create patterns as well as using [inaudible] that modeling compound which we looked at. Obviously, some glitter, some saw dust, any kind of dry media you want to mix in, some sandpaper for sanding back once the modeling compound is dry. These are just a few of the things you could use to create texture. I'm sure you've already thought of lots of different things you want to try, so gather all of those up and get ready. Now in terms of buying these, there are quite a lot of things here, so definitely keep your eye out for companies that create these mini sets where we have to be able to compare products next to each rather than just buying large pots that you may not like once you've played with them. Definitely keep an eye out for those. 12. Demonstrating Texture: In this video, I'm going to demonstrate how you integrate texture for your swatches. Let's start with the impasto technique, that's why we're using thick paint onto the surface of our swatch. Whether we apply it directly from the tube like so, or we can use a palette knife, brush or our fingers to move it around and get the effect we're looking for. But what you want is that thickness to see above the surface of the swatch. You don't want to be rubbing it in so it's thin. It has to have that thickness to it. If you can say that, it's sitting quite high above the surface of the swatch there. That will take some time to dry, so try not to bump it until it is fully dried. Next, we want to work our way through these gel mediums to see what they look like. We're going to start with the soft gel, remember this is the gloss. Take a little bit on to the palette. You can apply it directly to the swatch itself, but I find a little bit easier to mix up the color in the palette. Just mix that together and then apply it to your swatch. Why I'm using some of the ones that I haven't done a lot of work with, you can apply this on top of any of your swatches. Wherever you'd like to have a little bit of an extra textual. Let's get that all on our swatch. You can see how soft and malleable this is. Now you can keep quiet, high amount of texture with it, but it will equally smooth away as well. Just decide what text you are looking for. Now you can use a palette knife or any other tool to mold it into shape. Next let's do the same eagles regular gel. This is a bit thicker. This time let's apply it directly to the Canvas. Tag a little bit of our red paint, and mix it together. This will give you a more mortal distracted effect when it dries. Because remember, even though there's a white now, they're going to dry clear. The paint will be more inconsistently moved through that gel. This is a bit thicker than our other one. We can create it into any pink we like. Just use the palette knife to move it around until you get the look you're going for. The final one to look at is our heavy mat. This is really thick and really dense. I'm going to take some of this out. Again, I'm going to apply it directly to the swatch and take a little bit of blue and wave that through because I want it to have quite a delicate finish and with an inconsistent look to it when it's dry. Remember you can carve this and make this quite high or just use the thickness to create heaviness across the swatch itself. You really can make them as high or flat as you like. But all is just about creating a texture on the surface itself. You can use a range of tools to carve into them. I just happened to be using the palette knives. But anything that you feel like using, feel free to experiment and just see what happens. The next thing I want to show you is the modeling compound. This is, where you're going to want some of those blank swatches that you haven't put anything on yet. Whether they want black or gray, it doesn't really matter. Obviously on the black and the gray ones you're not going to see through the modeling compound if you apply across the whole swatch. Again, grab a palette knife and just pull the modeling compound across the swatch. You can cover the whole thing or you can equally put a little bit of modeling compound on a swatch that already has something on it. You can glaze and color back over that later. Now remember this is a party-like when it dries you'll be able to send back into it and carve into it, and creates all different patterns. You can create some really interesting patterns while it's still wet. You can use the knife to really pull it up and create these ridges. Or you can use the fork to create tong marks in there. You can use a scraper to create some just different davits. You could use a cookie cutter, anything you can find in your kitchen is going to be great. Even glasses where you can press in and create different shapes and different reliefs. You can also use a stencil to create patterns in the surface of your swatch. Here I've used a modeling compound and the circular stencil to create this pattern across the surface. It has a nice relief to it. When we add some dry media drawing back into them, and some glazes over the top. You're going to get some really interesting effects with that as the base. That's what it looks like to use the gel mediums, the impasto style, and the modeling compounds. Now to show you what to do once they dry. Once your modeling compound has dried and your gel mediums, it's time to work back in and add more layers to the surface. Here we've added a yellow glaze to the top. Here we've added a red and yellow glaze here. In this one, we've used the modeling compound to embed buttons into the surface. You can, you embed anything you'd like to create a different effect here and then you can sand back over the top. It almost looks like you're revealing something through the modeling compound. Could be a really interesting effect. Let us do a quick demonstration, I'm going to grab some of that gloss glazing medium here, one of our brushes, mix that together, just put that over the surface. The more you drag a glaze over the surface, the more you can say the ridges and other elements of the texture coming to life. Now when you've got these deep grooves it'll be great for using some ink to pull through those surfaces. I'm using some charcoal, some graphite to shadow and create different effects from here. You can have lots of fun with the texture. That's what I wanted to show you for creating texture. It is lots of fun whether you're using thick paint, gel mediums, or modeling compounds. Once they dry, you can have lots of fun working back into them and creating extra layers on the top. 13. Review Your Creations: So I've now covered all the techniques, materials, and processes I want to show you this class. We looked at applying paint, removing paint, glazing and washing, layering backing with dry and wet medium, and creating texture in a range of different ways. So now it's time to look over all of your swatches and decide what needs a few extra layers and what's finished, and make sure you all ready. For the next class, we're going to wrap up and reveal your swatches to the rest of the world. 14. The Big Reveal: Now, it's time to wrap up our painting project. Now, your swatches are dry and you're finished with all your layering. It's now time to cut the swatches and peel back the tape for the big reveal. For this, we've got to have a pair of scissors or pen knife. If you like using a pen knife, make sure you use a cutting board underneath. What you need to do, is cut along the tape edges to correct the border around our swatch. Just put this one in the corner, and make the lines as straight and neat as possible. Once your swatch is loose, gently remove all the tape from the edges. Now as this tape is potentially been on your swatches for quite a few weeks, make sure you just pull it back gently. Especially if your tape is quite thick around the edges, it can pull on the paper, you really don't want that. Still very sticky. There's our swatch. We've got a lovely border around the edge. Repeat this process for all of your swatches and put them around the house, display them. Decide which one's are your favorites, which techniques you want to repeat, and which techniques you are not so interested in for the time being. Have fun. 15. Congratulations & Keep Playing: Congratulations for making it to the end of the course. It's been great working with you as you've gone through applying paint, removing paint, creating texture, glazing, and work with a range of media. I'm sure your swatches looked fabulous now that you've released him from them asking tape, having displayed around the house. There's be some techniques you really liked and I encourage you to keep playing and experimenting with those. Dip back into the project units, finding things you like Look at the photographs, look at the data and learn more about them and what do you get bored of those, they're picking and find some of the techniques that you didn't like the first time around not to experiment with those. You're going to keep learning more and more about your and stop each time you keep playing. It's been great working with you. Thanks for joining from this course and I look forward to seeing you again at the feature bye.