Transcripts
1. Introduction: [MUSIC] I think I need to
join art supplies anonymous because I'm an addict. I'm Denise Love
and I'm an artist and photographer out of Atlanta. Today, I want to introduce
you to some new products. Sometimes I like to do classes, introducing you new techniques and different things that
you can do with your art. I really love abstract. Sometimes it's fun to do a
class just to introduce you to a new product
that you're like, "Oh, I didn't know
that existed," or "Oh, I didn't know that's
what I could do with that." Today, we're going
to be taking a look at water-soluble
graphite sticks. I love the 6B and the 10B. We're going to take a look at the Kuretake high
viscosity fluid graphite, which is the coolest stuff. It's really very similar to my favorite Kuretake
gold Micah paste. It's very thick pasty stuff. We can spread that
with a palette knife. We can thin that
down with water. We can mix it with some of our
other favorite art supplies like some of our watercolor. Today we're going to experiment. We're going to take a
look at how these work. We're going to take a look
at what they look like, and how they feel, and how we can move them around, and different stuff that
we can do with them and just get familiar
with a new product that I'm going to add into
my art-making arsenal because these two are super fun. I love that 10B graphite
stick. Favorite product. [LAUGHTER] I love
that fluid paste because any pasty art supply
that I can spread around with a palette knife, super fun. I think you're
going to have fun. We're going to take a
look at testing them out and seeing what they do, and then create some
little samplers to really get a good
feel for how they work. I hope you enjoy
experimenting a new supply and I can't wait to
see you in class. Let's get started. [MUSIC]
2. Class Project: [MUSIC] Your class project is to come back and show
me what you did with one of these fun
graphite sticks or the high-viscosity fluid
graphite, either one. I'd love to see, if
you get any of those, what you do with them. Come back and share
that with me. I really love how
the graphite sticks, I can put marks on my paper
and I can add water to it. I could put water on my paper and I can draw through that
with the graphite stick. I can also dip the
stick in water and then make super
dark, inky marks. Super versatile. I love with the high-viscosity
fluid graphite, I love how I could spread
that with a palette knife, I love how I could thin
that down with water, and I love how I can mix that in with some of my other
favorite art supplies, like some of my watercolors. Two supplies today that
are super versatile. I can't wait to see
what you do with them, so come back and share
some of your projects. All right, I'll see
you in class. [MUSIC]
3. Supplies: [MUSIC] Let's take a
look at the supplies I'll be using today. I have my big pads of the
Canson XL watercolor paper. It's an okay paper. It's not a cotton paper, but it is good for just
experimenting with supplies. But I do have an argument
for playing on the paper that ultimately your project
is going to be created on, because if you're creating
on a cheap paper, and then you move over
to the good paper, the good paper does not
react to everything in the same way that a lesser
quality paper's going to do because a good paper
might be all cotton, whereas this paper
might be wood pulp mix and it's just going
to react differently. But just to show you what
we're playing on today, I'm going to be
playing on this paper with some new products because I love introducing
you to new stuff. [LAUGHTER] I've done
that whole series of watercolor graphite classes, because I'm obsessed with adding graphite
into different things. What I really love about it and, this is just the
graphite itself here, is that the graphite is metallic and you can burnish it even just with your finger, like
you do a pencil mark, and you get a shine on it that you don't get
with regular paint. It's super cool and now
I'm obsessed with it. I did a whole series of
different watercolors, making my own watercolors
with the graphite and mixing it in
with other stuff, because you end up with
the coolest effects with the graphite in it. You get beautiful smoky colors and you get that
graphite quality and you can burnish
thicker areas for that little bit of shine. I'm just personally
obsessed with the graphite and I keep thinking of new ways and looking at new
graphite products that maybe I didn't
even know existed. I thought, let's try this out because this new graphite
product might fit into my already growing love of the graphite tools
that I really love. With that being said, I want to introduce you to a
couple of new graphite things that I haven't
really used before. I've got these water-soluble
graphite sticks. These come in a couple
of different grades. I've got 4B, 6B and 10B. In my water-soluble
graphite pencils, I really loved the 6B
because of how dark the graphite is when
I mix water with it, which is why I love
the water-soluble. I'm really thinking
that I'm going to just absolutely love this 10B, which is why I got the set. [LAUGHTER] But 10B
and 6B might be my two go to preferred
ones for mark-making and then adding water to
it and swishing it around and seeing what we get. These graphite
sticks are super fun and that's what I'll be
playing with in class. I also am playing with the
Kuretake fluid graphite. This is a high
viscosity material. What's really cool about
it, it's not a liquid, it's more of a thicker
almost paste form. You can scoop it out
with a pallet knife, which I will be doing
a little bit of, and you can mix this with
other paints and materials. I could mix this
with pigment powder. I can mix this with
some regular watercolor which I have already
been experimenting with. Pick some of your
favorite watercolors that you can mix it up with that and these just turn
out super cool. Another student in class
showed me this fluid graphite and I'm like, "What is
that? I think I need some." Now that I got it I'm like, "Heck yeah, this
stuff is super cool." I'm glad [LAUGHTER] that
she showed me that. I love when people feed into
my art supply addiction. If you've got some
particular art supply that you think I'm
going to go gaga over, definitely share that. [LAUGHTER] This is
one of those items. I'm definitely going to
put it right in there with one of my favorites
because it's super cool. I'm also just going to be using my Number 0 Raphael
SoftAqua brush because that's my favorite brush and I've got a couple of colors I've already been playing with, the Chinese orange
with the graphite, I'll have a little bit
of that on my palette. I'm letting that dry because I would really be interested
to see how that re-wets. If it re-wets like a regular
watercolor or if it does not. I put that on there and
then let that be drying to see can we get
that wet again? Then I might just
mix another color, maybe this Naples yellow just to see what are
the colors can we get mixing this up while
we're playing, just to show you how I did that. I've got a palette knife, it doesn't matter what
palette knife you have. I've pulled out this long one because it was actually easy
to dip into the graphite. It didn't really matter
what shape it is. I can be using in a regular
one. It doesn't matter. Got a spoon if I want, I can take the spoon and
burnish my graphite areas if I wanted to shine them up or I could just use my fingers. Spoon is easier, I can see through it
because this one's clear and I don't end up graphite
all over my fingers, but it doesn't matter. It's really just varnishing
it very lightly. I'm not even putting
any pressure on this piece of paper
that I'm holding. You can tell how easy that is to get that shine to show up. Little spoon and
there's my paper that I've already
cut up into fours. This was just a big piece
that I cut into fours. That is all I'm going to
be playing with today because more than anything, I want to show you
how fun these are and experiment with you and just get you
thinking, look at that, what if I did this or
that or whatever with it? Because this is a thick stuff that you can mix
with other things, you could try mixing it
with pigment powder, you could try mixing it
with acrylic paints, you could try
mixing in some ink. There's some fun things that
you can play with on this. I'm mixing it with watercolors, but I love things that
you can experiment and mix and add water and just see what you get. That's my thought process today. I just wanted to keep it simple and I want you to keep your
mind open to new supplies and go, what if I did this, because that's what
makes art fun, when you just start scribbling
and seeing what you get. That's our supplies
for this class. Let's get started. [MUSIC]
4. Graphite Experiments: I want to get started by just testing out a few
of our supplies. I want to know what
each of these does. I just have a strip
of watercolor paper. I want to see,
what does this do? Is it going to do what I want? I want to scribble
each one of these. Just see, is it going to be that dark yummy look that
when I add water to it? How dark is it? That the fluid graphite
cannot add water to that. What does that do to it? Let's just scoop a little out. It's real thick. It
scoops out really thick. See? Look how that just spreads
out real pretty on paper. Put the lid back on that. I don't want it to dry out
anymore than it already is. Just wipe that off. I'm going to go ahead and play with a little
bit of watercolor. Let me get a tissue because
this one has settled some. We could pick a different color. Maybe I could've
picked the green. Green is one of my favorite too. Let me just get some
of these colors out. I've got a little drawer over here of different watercolors
in my little cabinet. Maybe let's just actually
play with this green. Now that I'm thinking about it, I thought I was going to
play with that yellow, but let's go ahead. We'll get that off of there, but I'm actually feeling maybe I want smokey green instead. It's separated too,
but that's okay. I put out two dabs because now we can see if we
add a lot or a little, we can play with how
much is too much. If we just get a
little bit out here, maybe I'll go ahead and
just hit that right there. Maybe put a little
dab to the side. I can go ahead and just
close that back up, but let's just mix
these two together. Look how easy they are to mix. That was very light. Actually way lighter than
I expected it to be. Let's just grab that extra. The orange, it mixed in real deep and heavy
pretty quickly. That's pretty fun. Let's
just test this out. Now, I've got this tested
out. See, look at that. I want to see, can
I add water to the graphite and make
it spread around? Yes, I can. It's water-soluble. Let's see what we get here. I'll wipe that off before
those dry on my palette knife. Let's see what we get here. A little bit of
water to the four, a little bit of
water to the six. See, you get much
darker with the six. A little bit of
water to the tip. See, I like that dark, dark. Look what happens, if we just put water on our paper and we use
this to go through it. Now, we keep our defined mark, but it's super dark. It is water-soluble to
draw on something wet. Super cool. Look at that. I love that green like that. I love how dark that tan is. I can already see
it's starting to dry. But once it's completely dry, we can burnish the
thicker areas. It's water-soluble. I like that. I love this light-medium dark. I really love the dark. Because I haven't had
a 10B to play with, I want to play with the 10B. Because I already
had this over here, I wanted to see on
the one that I let dry, was that rewettable? Could I reconstitute it? Add water to it. Yes, we can. Super fun experiment there with our different
graphite products and seeing what
can we do with it. Now, we're going to make
some little abstracts. I really encourage you when you're playing
with a new supply, go back to a favorite project. Don't try to recreate the
wheel right up front. Go back to something you
know you like to create. For me, it's little scribbly
abstracts like these. Just see, what can we make
with this? How does it work? How does the material
blend with other items? How does it blend it with water? What exactly does it do? Then you can add it into
your art-making once you know what it does
and how to work it. I like doing a little
experiment like this. I could do this
in my sketchbook, if you wanted to have
a sketchbook record. Once you do this,
it's really handy, if you'll go back and
mark what each was. Just keep yourself a record. Then you're going
to know when you look back at that later, especially if you're
putting it in a bound surface
like a sketchbook. You'll be able to, I love that. How did I create that?
You'll have a record for yourself on
how you did that. Now that we did a little experiment here
with what we've got, go. Let's play. Let's create some
little tiny abstracts just to get our feet wet.
5. Mini Graphite Abstracts: I want to go ahead and just give our graphite products
a little test. A lot of times the way I love to test things is to create
a little abstract. Something I'm going to like
later, I can give it away, I can use it as a gift. You're going to
end up with pencil all over you, so keep a little, I like this microfiber cloth for getting things off of my hands just so that I don't get stuff all over my paper
that I didn't intend to. If you do, these
artists erasers are fantastic for removing things on the paper where
you didn't want it. Keep one of those handy. Just wanted to throw
that in there. With this, I want to see
what does the water do? Do I want to add the water to all the marks or
just strategically? I want to experiment
here and figure out what does this one do for
me if I move these around? Check that, this is super cool. I just love how that
looks right there. Just to keep it one product, let's just try our graphite
paste on a palette knife. I'm sure I could
stick a brush in there very easily too but I want to keep that pretty pure. I just want to see if I'm
getting a little bit that, what can I get here? I'm just dragging that around. I might do several because if I'm looking
at that thinking, "I don't like the first
one," that's okay. Play, that's why we play. Let's just make several because if you make
more than one, I guarantee you'll love
at least one of them. If you don't, try again. It's not a big deal. That's why I have a
bunch of pieces of paper over here so that I can play and we can
paint more than one. Let's just wet all these. Let's set this one up
here and let it dry. I don't want you to do
something one time and think, I don't like it or I don't
got it or didn't work. I want you to really
test that product out. I want you to get
comfortable with it. I want you to play with some
scribbles and mark-making. I want you to get
excited about new stuff. I think that's why I
like introducing you to new stuff because I get so
excited about it myself. I got shiny object syndrome. A little bit less on the
palette knife then I just add. It's very interesting to see how much is too much and do we want to wait for our stuff to dry before we start
spreading it around? I don't like it when
they make a big blob, so I'm just trying to
do less of a big blob. See now that one. I
like that one there. I like doing this stuff with
my Gold Kuretake Paste too. See now, I like that
one a whole lot. I just love to smear stuff
with a palette knife. We would want to let these dry. I'm just wiping
that off and just see what does that
end up looking like? We can burnish. This one
is almost dry so I can actually start burnishing
the thicker areas once these really dry. Let's go ahead and do a couple more because we've got some more paper and
we've got some colors. What if I go ahead? Maybe let's do this
the other way. Maybe I can do some
mark making on here with this wet and just see what does
that do differently? Let's do it just a tiny bit
different than we did the original and see what it
does because look at that. The graphite has started to
move around in the water. That's pretty cool. Maybe I'll just dip
this in the water because now we're going
to get really heavy, heavy almost inky marks. Look at that. Now, those are super fun. They're
completely unexpected. Now, I'm just going to
maybe set this up so it can dry rather than get
it on everything. Look at that. That's super cool right there, almost could do some
fun writing with that. We could use that for some
nice heavy mark-making. We could use that to make
collage papers really nicely. Do the real thick one on there. We could do good mark-making
by dipping that and just drawing onto nice Deli Paper. How cool would that be? See also too, while that
was wet, I could've smeared it with
my palette knife. It smears nicely, the
little ink itself. I could have just come
through and done that right there unless I ink
with this graphite. That was super cool right
there. My goodness. If we say, what if again and we come
back and we do this? Let me set this back
here so they can dry. What if we now pull in some of our colored graphite? Actually, I really liked the way that looked dipped
in this same water. If I had not just
done this experiment, I never would have known that. Now, I can be like, this is one of my favorite
ways to use this. What can we create? Now I know. Look at that one, that one is looking perky sweet. I can come back with my
watercolor brush and I can get one of these
watercolors I've already mixed up with some
graphite powder. I could wait for this to dry but since it's water-soluble, we're going to re-wet it
no matter what we do. We could come back afterwards
and add some marks. Does it matter if
it's wet or not? Because once we add
more stuff to it, we're going to re-wet
it back anyway. That's another little fun way to look at that and experiment. See, now that's
super, super cool. I love that right there. Then we can come back with
some graphite and just see what if we smear
some of this in here? Can we get more and more
excited about this stuff? See now, that one,
that's my favorite. Out of that, my play is today, this one and this one that I initially played
with before class. These two are my
very favorite today. Look at that. These were super fun
and I know this is a super short class but
I wanted to show you a product that I've
never played with before doing something that
I really like to do myself, which is create fun little abstract for my color samples and my testing out of stuff. Because now I've tested it. Now, I've discovered cool things like I
like this really wet. I like the thick graphite
so I can burnish it. I like the water-solubleness
and the darkness of the Number 10 in this
graphite water-soluble stick. Look at all the amazing
things that we just learned. I really like the fluid, high viscosity, graphite,
super cool stuff. I'm really glad I was
introduced to that and we did some fun
little projects. Now going forward, I know I can use this real
thick and I can burnish it. It's going to be
right up there with my favorite Gold Kuretake
Paste that I love so much. Really, I just like
Japanese art supplies, apparently the best. I like that it's not an ink and that it's not a paste like a solid watercolor like the
other watercolor things. I like that it is that weird, high thick pasty viscosity. That's really, really fun. I think that's why I
like this paste too because it's real thick and I can spread it or I
can thin it out, or I could do fun stuff with it. I hope you enjoy checking
out some new products. If any of those
looked really fun, I hope you give them a
try out and then come back and show us what
you did with it. I'll see you next time.
6. Final Thoughts: I hope you had fun
today in class. I really enjoyed
having you here. What did you think about the graphite sticks and that high viscosity
fluid graphite? How cool were those? Is it something that
you think you're going to add into your art mix? Those have so much versatility. I really liked dunking
the stick into the water and make thick
inky marks. Loved that. I also liked marking the graphite stick on the
paper and adding water and getting some juicy dark color in between some of the
mark-making that we created. I really loved that thick
graphite have viscosity paste. How cool is that? Anything I spread with a
palette knife, super fun. I hope you have some fun experimenting with
the new supplies. Some of these
classes are just to introduce you to something that maybe you didn't see before. I want you to look
at new supplies as something fun and exciting and think what can
I do with this? Do some of your
favorite projects. Don't try to recreate the wheel every time you sit
at your art table. If you've got something
new to experiment, go back to a known technique or project that you're like, "I love this project. Let's try this with
a new supply." That's what I did
in class today. I did some fun, little
abstract, easy. I can give those away. I can sign them
as little prints. I can make little
cards out of them. I can save them for
myself as experiments for testing out different
products that I did. They're so versatile. They're so pretty
when they're done. It's not just doing like
little swatches of color. These are like little pieces of art that we created
when we did that. Get your new supplies. Do try out those
graphite sticks. If you only get one, get the 10 and try out that fluid graphite
with a palette knife and see what it does when
you smear it around with a palette knife or you add some water to it and
spread it around. These are super fun things
to experiment with. I like doing more than one so do a little series and then
you'll end up with a couple that you like and
then burnish it and see how that little bit of
metallic sheen comes out. I love exploring
all the aspects of a supply and pushing it to some new limits that maybe
I didn't even think of. Why don't you to experiment with these and
when you come back and show me the
experiments that you did, I want to see your projects. If you've got some fun supply that you think I
can't live without, definitely tell me about it. The fluid graphite is something that another student
shared and they're like, hey, this are neat because
I did that whole series. The graphite classes
and I'm like, "No, I haven't seen that.
Let's get to them." I love finding new stuff. I have that little
shiny object syndrome when I get really excited, when I get something new, I'm like, "Let's
go up to my table. Let's see what we
can create today and just experiment and
create a known project." Make it easy on yourself just to figure out what does
this do? Do I like it? Do I want to add it
to my favorite stuff and create some more
things with it? Do I just want to throw it away because it wasn't
what I thought.? Sometimes things don't work out but this stuff worked out. I hope you enjoy
experimenting with it. I'll see you next time.
DENISE LOVE, Artist & Creative Educator
