Fresh Ideas For Painting Loose

1. Intro: Welcome to eight ideas to help you loosen up and paint more expressively. If you are tired of painting stiff, rigid art, this is a great class that will teach you some simple techniques that you can apply to any subject. In the class, I will be using acrylics and some mixed media, including charcoal, crayon and some different drawing mediums. But you can use your medium of choice, whether you're a pastel artist, oil, acrylic, water color, whatever it is. Feel free to use what you're comfortable with. If you want to explore some simple, effective ideas on how to paint loose, then let's get started right now. 2. Materials: All right. A few thoughts on materials before we get started. I'll show you what I'm using and then you can go, we'll go from there. This is heavy body acrylics. I prefer that. We'll be using some whatever brushes you have, I use synthetic brushes for my acrylic paint. A large medium should do just fine. Some of drawing medium. This is graphite. Okay. And these are some compressed charcoal sticks. So these work really well too. And then, if you have, you know, prisma color, pencils, whatever, something sturdy to draw with should be fine. You can even use crayon. So these are artist grade Karina crayon. That's fine. Flash paints. I may use some of that. As far as paper, I would use just something sturdy. This is 140 pound cold press, but like 100 pound, 110 pound paper. Nothing doesn't have to be archival. It can be the back of old paintings, it can be an old canvas. But again, if you're using acrylic, you don't want to use 70 pound drawing paper because it'll probably just tear as we do this. So again, something sort of sturdy there should be fine. Then the obvious thing, some brags, paper towels, some water reservoirs, things of that nature. Anyway, that's that. 3. Two Simple Exercises To Help You Paint Loose, Abstract Style Art: Time to get loose. In this lesson, I'll work with basic shapes. In this first example, just going to paint or indicate rather a square. Real loose with it here. I'm not trying to impress you with my beautiful square, and there you go. If I wanted to incorporate some mixed media with this, then I can even go a little bit loser with my basic square shape. Now, in example B. I'm not going to take these kind of chances. I'm going to paint everything almost where belongs. We have a shape here, a nice tight square. I'm going to go around that square with my charcoal. So you get the point. The idea was to indicate a shape. This gets the point across for loose artist for someone who has developed their vision and has let go the idea that things have to be perfect or tight. You see pretty clearly there that if you want to be loose and expressive, then you have to go outside those lines a little bit. You have to push things to the point where maybe it falls apart, but give it enough structure that it just holds together. A. Here is my circle. Of course, we have Example two. Painting and indicating that circle. There you go. Loose free expressive. Tight type. And understand this. It's a very simple concept. But I promise you, there's a lot to be learned here. Practice here. You can do triangles, rectangles, whatever you want to do. Simplifying it. Makes the learning easy. If you're trying to paint a finished piece, well, you're not going to be successful if you don't understand the basic idea of painting loose. Well, stop right here. I'm giving you enough information for this lesson, have fun experimenting with it, and I will see you in the next one. All right. Let's talk about edges. Edges are very important because you have lots of them in your artwork. And unless you're dealing with a building that's square or rectangular in shape, then you're going to be dealing with curves. Now, I'm going to continue with using the coffee cup as my example because the coffee cup has some nice straight lines on the sides, and then we're dealing with a lot of curves. This first example, let's say we're dealing with a round shape like that on top, and we have our straight line on the bot or on the sides. And then we have this sort of thing. And I'm going to interpret the logo two here as just a square. All right. So lots of curves. It's okay. Now, in Exhibit B here, I will give you an alternative way, and I think this reads a little bit stronger than the curves. But again, you can make your own opinion on that. Okay. So as you can see, my curves are made up of lines. And I can even get into the logo here. This has a very jagged look about it. You got all these nice angles going on where this reads really smooth. I feel this works a little bit better because the angles can play and they do play off the edges of the paper. We have a lot of these right angles here, and the angles of my shapes are playing off that. And over here, you don't really get that benefit. If you practice, and again, you feel like this is really where I want to be, that's okay. It's not a big deal. But I think you'll find once you start breaking your shapes down into lines like this that the object you're painting, the shape you're painting has a little more character to it and it just sits a little bit better on a square or rectangular piece of paper. All right. So short and easy here and you can practice this drawing as well. So if you just want to use a pencil or charcoal, whatever you want to do to understand this, that's fine, and then you can move into painting as well. All right. I hope you enjoy the lesson, and I'll see you in the next one. 4. Discover the 3 Main areas and the Art of Exaggerating: Really small round brush here. In the coffee cup, we have the actual edges of the cup. If I were to outline the cup, basically, it would look, let's say something like this. I'm not going to do the whole thing because I want to demonstrate the other areas. Now, we also have the object itself. If I were to take a little bit of white, little blue mixture. Let's say I start here and I'm painting the cup. And of course, I wanted to put the logo in there. I can do that. So basically, painting within the space of the object in this case, cup. So let's do a quick recap the edge of the object, and then inside the object. So the body of it, right? The third area will be background. So let's say, I want to use the background to indicate that edge, and maybe I can come in and indicate a little edge here. So you can see how I've used the three main areas to create this quick sketch. And for now, this is what I want you to understand. The edge of your object, and I'll do it again real quick here. So I can create let's see I do it over here, the edge of my object. So I can come in here and start painting my cup. Then we have background. You got it. I can use that background. Quick lesson here. But again, it's really these basics, these little things that are going to help you down the road. Thanks for watching. I like representational qualities. I think it's important to include some of that. But we don't have to stay in the lines all the time. You have to actually learn to go outside the lines. It's okay to go out here with some of these strokes. It's okay to make the coffee cup a little bit quirky, if that's what you want to do. In this example, I will show you how you can do that. Okay. So let's say I come over here. I get nice and loose. So notice right away how expressive that brushwork is. So I'm not doing following the edges of my cup. I'm having some fun because I know I can shape this up a little later on if I need to. And you'll be surprised how much you can start to get away with once you start taking these liberties. And this is really where the work starts to become expressive. Over here, You know, it's like, I want to get there, I want to get there. How come my work isn't loose. How come it's still tight. Well, I mean, this is why you're staying in the lines here. Now, let's say, well, that's pretty wild. I want to bring that in a little bit. We can come in here and put some areas where that cup could be and shape it up a little bit. But it's really the bones of let's say the overall tone of this painting, we're set here in the beginning. You want that to breathe. You want the strokes in the beginning to live in the final painting. This has a lot more of a chance and becoming loose and expressive than this. This is a great lesson for you to work with a lot and get this looseness and how you shape your objects. Once you start to get that freedom of going outside the lines a little bit and knowing that you can come back later and create these edges that will tighten things back up again, then you'll start to take more chances, and that's what it's about. And I do feel that if you want your artwork to become loose and expressive, then you really need to understand that you have to get outside of this paint within the edges type of thing? You have to let things breathe a little bit. I encourage you to work with this a little bit, break it down some? Keep it simple. Don't try to paint complex scenes. Work with basic shapes, which is why I'm using a coffee cup so that you can focus on the exercise. Another quick little exercise you could do almost is just painting circles. What does a circle have to look like? A square. What if I want to do a square? Can a square be This, a square doesn't have to be type of shape. Hope you enjoy this lesson, practice practice, practice. You don't want to take this thing lightly. If you are a tight painter, you're going to have to work extra hard and understanding this idea, this lesson. Have fun. 5. It's In The Details: I like to do with all of my subjects is explore the details a little bit. I think it's important to spend time here because you discover things about your subject that you wouldn't ordinarily see by just glancing at it and then painting. Now, I'm just going to start with the logo. Let's just put down some good old color and I grab a little bit of yellow, a little bit of teal through it down. I like that. But maybe I'm like, I want to really see some orange in there, that's fine. Now I'm looking at different areas of the painting. This will eventually represent the logo. Now I'm looking at something else and I like the top, how the shadow is on the left side, and again, I'm feeling colorful, so I'm going to take some risks here on color and balancing around. I notice that this little dark area right here on that lid. Is darker than what I'm seeing over here, an observation. Maybe I want to include that. Maybe I don't in the final painting. This isn't about a final painting right here. This is the complete opposite. I don't want to create a painting right here. I really just want to explore and do and play and try to find the things that interest me as an artist. What do I want to do here? And how can I do it that makes it interesting for me. I like the act of applying medium. How you apply your medium and how you interpret your medium on paper and how you interpret your subjects is what sets artists apart. If you stay confined in a very representational area all the time, then you don't really get a chance to paint freely because you're stuck within these blows you can't branch out because you don't know how to. You've never allowed yourself to go places and to experiment. Therefore, physically, your body is not going to do it. I won't do it naturally. You have to go here and you have to do it physically, at some point in order for your brain to say, Hey, you know? What about this cool thing we did, you know, a couple of weeks ago where you really went crazy with the color and all that stuff. So you're more than likely to go there again if it was a good experience. So now, here, I just played with light and shave I just had fun threw some color down that could have been the shaved, started here, brought it down in there. I had no intentions of going there, but I was just doodling, letting myself explore and play a little bit. And so now I just doing some negative painting, painting around it, Now, maybe I want to come in here with some shadow. I could care less what the true color is in life, with the shadow. It could be blue or purple, brown, whatever. I'm just going to get something that is dark enough to say shadow. I'm going to put that down. That gets the point across. I'm happy with that. Now, maybe I want to go back to this logo, since it's almost dry. Maybe I want to bring in a few more details. I'm just going to play with my liner brush here, let's see. It's a lot of fun to paint without any pressure of creating a finished piece. You know, when we put that pressure on ourselves that we tend to revert back to what we know. That's okay. There's nothing wrong with that. But I think if you really want to branch out and to give yourself more freedom of expression in your work, then you need more options. You need to give yourself this opportunity to explore because this is where you learn, this is where we grow. Bring that idea of playing with these details over in this area. I'm getting more familiar with this logo, which is good. So if I ever decide to do a finished painting today or get into it at some point, I've got a nice connection with all this stuff. And knows how I'm just staying loose, bouncing around, having fun with it, not trying to put a lot of expectations on myself. At the same time, I'm playing with my medium, right? I'm having fun exploiting what I do. Now, getting back to this, of course, the logo was white and green. So you can see that underpainting of green and blue and yellow. Brown, that's all there. I like those colors. It makes the logo interesting. Now, I can go back in here with a little bit of white and my thin liner brush he missed some of these things. Maybe I want to bring out a little more of the representational qualities of this logo, make it a little more recognizable. If I were looking at this from a distance across the room, I'd be able to say, Oh, yeah, yeah that's a Starbucks cup there and I'd have a connection to it. I would know what it is. That's all I want to do for this particular sketch, but I do have a little bit of room over here. Now, maybe I want to break out my charcoal again, just sketch this lid. I really like that top. I like the shape of it. Maybe I want to put some coffee in there. There we go. Little to go. And so there in that little exercise, I found some freedom. I found some freedom with my medium, found some freedom with my subject, had fun doing it, and I pushed my art to a level. That may allow me to paint looser than I did before. And that's what these exercises are all about. They're about trying to discover different ways you can do things, ideas and techniques for applying your medium? Color. I mean, would I have used a orange background and came back over that with a dark greenish blue color and play with this logo. If I had if I had started to finish painting, you know, I probably wouldn't have. I would probably go a little bit tighter and started in an area or in a place that I was already familiar with. So once you get into that mindset that you're painting, we get comfortable doing what we already know. Risk taking doesn't often happen when you're painting. Whenever you're doing playing, experimenting, well, this is discovery time. This is where we find out things. We are exploring. Sometimes the exploring process doesn't result in anything but a hot mess. And that's okay too because I always have fun doing it. I can tell you this for sure. What I demonstrated right here, you will see a lot in my workshops. I will go over this type of stuff again and again. It's how I spend the majority of my time in the studio. I don't paint a lot. Painting bores me because I know when I'm painting, I tend to go back to what I already know. I like to discover. I want to know what's next for me. Explore, take some risks with colors, take some risks with strokes. Don't try to determine or have any really big premeditated ideas on what you're trying to do. Let yourself be creative. Again, you're going to see me do this a lot. This is the last time I'll be talking about this. Until next time. Thanks for watching and happy painting to you. Okay. 6. How To Develop Loose Brushwork: So, too accurate. Staying loose. Now, for the sake of just having something here to go with, I will say I want my background color. Let's just say and this is true for both of them. We want that background color to maybe be in here somewhere. That's the bulk of that background. Okay. Well, let's say we want that bottle to be in there somewhere. That works. So we have our background. I'll just put back our bottle, and we have our foreground. Those are the basic colors I'm working with and those are the areas I'm going to focus on. But let's say this is ultimately where I want to be. In that kind of final stage, this is what I kind of am after, right? So this artist over here too accurate kind of starts to go there, go, Okay, well, yeah, yeah. I see what I want there. Again, I mean, this is not in the image. Actually, if you look at this color, it's probably more like the background. But just for the sake of this painting, we're going to put it in the foreground. This artist goes, Oh, yeah. I nail that color, right? I've got it boom. He look at that background. I go, Oh, yeah. I see that background color. Oh, yeah. I got you. Awesome. I'm basically representing those colors on this very first layer, right where they should be. Let's go over here this one. Again, this is where I want to be. I'm, well, that's fine. If I know I want to be there. I don't want to go there in the beginning. More of a violet type of color here. All right. Now, we've got the bottle. So that's where I want to be with a bottle. Stick to maybe some transparent yellow, little orange, maybe a touch of the yellow. Good. Completely different approaches for beginning a painting. And it's done intentionally, right? You saw you witnessed it. And for a good reason. And I will share that with you when I come back after this dries, okay? So I will see back shortly. And I will start over here with this one. I'll just go back to my square brush. And again, this is where the colors are going to end up for both of them. That's the deal. You have to kind of keep that mind as I'm painting here, right? So what this artist has done is they've kind of painted themselves and to a little corner here. So we can kind of put another layer on Okay. There's not going to be a whole lot of excitement in terms of brushwork. There there's nothing there for that second layer to go on to make it exciting. Because I went there in the beginning to wary and kind of the same thing for that color there for the this color, I can put another color layer on it. Okay. Mac dag on it. I mean, it's it's not doing anything, but just simply adding another layer to it. So it's making it a little bit stronger in terms of the color. But again, I didn't leave myself any room to play. So basically, everything I'm doing now, it's making a difference. It's certainly adding a little more depth and meaning to those colors and to the painting. But the brush work is stiff. And that's kind of what I really want to emphasize with this lesson, how we can take brush work and make it a tool for painting loose. Okay. So look now at how loose that brushwork looks. And the reason. It looks that way is I gave myself that freedom in the beginning. That background by not going here in the beginning gave me some wiggle room to showcase some brushwork. Of course, as I put that layer on, I'm letting some of that darker color show through. Okay, very important to understand that part and we'll get down here and do the same thing. You see how That is showcasing the brushwork. I'm there. So I can kind of come in here and have some fun. Leave a little bit of that underlayer visible, but look how that brushwork has an impact. Interesting, right? I think so. I love stuff like this because it's really an easy concept. You have to be aware of it. The art of painting loose right here, people, it is unfolding right in front of your eyes. Painting loose. Brush work can be used as a tool to really make it your own, to use it confidently and then to start using it. In your own subjects, not just the wine bottle here. You want to develop that. And as you start to develop it, you start to get better at it, and then that tool really becomes a huge asset for your loose artwork. Okay? I hope you enjoyed it. Thanks for watching. I'll see you in the next one. 7. Coloring Book No No: Experienced artist will often use their drawing material, whether it be in this case, I'll use the compressed charcoal, but you may be drawn with crayon, you may be drawn with your paint brush. But what I typically see is artists start to paint something, they get a little bit of a base down. Then they go, I want to draw. I'm really inspired to put that really cool linear interest in my work. I start to see the coloring book. What that is is basically tracing the entire object. In this case, I will be doing a building and then also tracing the major details and features. That's very predictable. It's very boring and it's not very creative. If you want to merge or mix drawing with painting, then we need to think a little more organically, and that's what I hope to demonstrate here in this first particular demonstration. I will do two of these. I'm not going to get too picky with colors and trying to get it exact. I'm just really going to do it in a way that will make the drawing prominent, get a thin mixture going at first. Again, I'm going to do this in a way that it will really illustrate and show this color and book type of issue I see all the time. I'm not trying to represent the colors I see or anything like that in the local color. I'm going to try to keep the painting somewhat loose. Just going to dip in some water right there. Let's go ahead and get our little shrub in here. I just get a feeling of a background or something here. I'll grab a small detail brush here. And this is the shadow side. So maybe I want to even just add that feeling of shadow. All right. So we pretty much have our base building here. You know, for most part, you know, for most purposes, I think that's pretty loose, but I'm going to let that dry now. Because when I use charcoal, I typically like to let this base layer dry a little bit. And then I'll come back and introduce the charcoal. And then, while this is drying, I'm going to sneak in another one, okay? I'll leave the camera running while I'll paint this one. I'll do it even the same method here. So I All right. So you probably witness there. I added a few details, just a feeling of a sky there. I just simplified it, going to take the camera and really zoom in on this area as I draw it, and then I will simply talk you through it as I do. So again, this is the tight side, and this is the common mistake I see. So the artists come in here and they basically get caught up. And tracing, or in this case, I'll just say the coloring book effect, and they go around all of these prominent edges and details. You get the point there how lost my sh This would be a problem because it's predictable. Now, this is our lose side over here, I want to do it a little more organically. I want to make these lines, maybe hit a few edges, but I also wanted to flow better, get away from doing every single edge. A really good way to do that sometimes is simply look at your darks. Let's say, I have a cast shadow here, so the lights coming in. This area would be a little bit darker and also have a dark side of the house. What I like to do is look for entry points and a good entry point sometimes is simply getting into these darks. Also, keep in mind, whenever I talked about using charcoal about using pressure pressure into the surface, also taking the charcoal and turning it on its broadside and using this part as opposed to just the point. So the point sometimes is okay, but it's nice to mix in some really thick lines as well. What I want to avoid is getting all of my lines the same thickness. I'll go back after I do this and show you the charcoal sketch I did in the beginning, so you are reminded of what I'm talking about. Here's my entry point. I want to go right into here, so I can get a little bit looser with it. Okay. And so I've got some nice expressive lines there, and there's no fear in that. Now I can come in here and say, Okay, well, that was fun. Maybe I want to throw some feeling of some trees or something and then use this as an entry point. Into my chimney. Now, let's say this is all working good. And I just want to maybe fill a feeling of any old thing there and tie that little thing into the bush, okay? So now, I'll pause right here and we're going to take a zoom back and look. I even threw a little bit of energy into that window, but I didn't trace the window. I didn't go around it. I just threw some energy in there. And then, you know, We'll see how that looks. Now we've got a better perspective on how both of these look together. Notice how the lines here probably grab your attention a little bit more because this sort of energy and getting that intensity. Then also being somewhat unpredictable and fearless, more of a carefree way of adding linear interest to your work grabs your attention. Much more so than this. I didn't go around every single detail. I was real loose with how I represented things. Over here, even though this is loose, these chimney stacks by a lot of standards, this is much looser. I mean, these squiggles are should really say scribbles. These are simply scribbles, and this is a scribble. Over here, this artist got locked into the windows, a composition. If I were just to just draw that window, Basically, the artist did this over here, you know, we got something like that, right? The chimney stack, you know, we got this sort of action going on over here. Okay. Have that action going on. This has a little more personality to it. But I also want to bring to your attention something I did there that's very important. It's really as critical as just being fearless, which is what I did here. I didn't care if I ruined the painting. I just like, Hey, let's just put some line in there, and let's be care free about it. But what I did though is I found that entry point. That is so important because if you can't find an interesting way, to introduce the drawing. It just doesn't blend well, it doesn't flow well with the painting. Because charcoal is so dark. For me, I like to introduce it from a dark. I try to find values and tones that would look good. Then that way, like I did there, I can get in there. Scribble around a little bit and then work my way into the painting. So I consider something like that an entry point. Here, I just simply didn't even think about that. I just went in there and started tracing the outlines of my subject. Then that's kind of what you want to think about when you start incorporating drawing, in this case, charcoal into your paintings because I think this will go really long way for you and will certainly help you create more interesting lines and more interesting paintings. Hope you enjoy this lesson. See you in the next one. 8. Timid versus Loose: This side, I'll go ahead and go with the timid first, Tid is just an attitude, it's how you approach it. I'm going to try to put that energy into this as I do it. I'm going to zoom in on here. To this side, so you can get a better feel for what's going on. Let's say you even understand the idea of having an entry point at this stage. You're like, Oh, yeah, the way Robert use those darks to introduce a dark medium, which is still charcoal. Let's say you start in here, you're like, Oh, like, Oh, yeah, like those scribbles he did. So I'm trying to put some interesting strokes down here, but notice the energy. Notice how cautious Everything is. Okay. So I'll pause right here. I really want you to see the impact there. Now you can probably see some of these lines, but it doesn't doesn't take you grab you and shake you and demand your attention. So here's my I want to use this as my entry point, very, very similar. I'm going to go intense because that's what I feel when I look at that. Now I can back off that. I'll go intense back off of that. And I'll go intense back off of that, go intense. Okay. All that's working good. And fine. I mean, I can put feeling of some letters here or whatever, little design. You make that a little more energetic, right? We'll back away from it. You can kind of see how these lines now pale in comparison to this. But this has enough, you know, variation You know of these light lines and dark lines that it's not like totally screaming at you. It just adds some energy and personality variety to this piece. And we're over here, you can see the line, it's there, but it just doesn't have that same confidence, that same comfort level that you feel an artist has with their medium as this. In terms of using line effectively, going for it and not being too timid. I think there's a drastic difference between the two of them. It's about building familiarity. It's about being comfortable and having the experience to get you there is key. You don't get that in 10 minutes. Put yourself in a position where you constantly practice these things. Work more than you think you need with it and it will benefit you big time. All right. I'll see you the next lesson. 9. Smudging: Technique. The smudge technique is a great way to showcase lines in your artwork. It can also showcase brushwork or however you see it fitting in to your creative process. What I will demonstrate here is the concept. I will just use charcoal to break down the overall view and what I want you to get out of these lessons. Then I'll show you a technique using Acryli then I'll show you how you can apply it using mixed media. In this case, I will use acrylic and crayon. The idea behind the smudge technique is we want to put down a block of color or charcoal. Smudge a little bit, rough it up. We get soft edges. I'll go ahead and demonstrate that. I'll rough that up. I think I'll go a little bit more here. Hey, we got all this space. Let's use up all of this. Why. Get a bigger boulder line here. Okay. Now that I've got mainly the soft edges. I mean, up here is we got a little bit of linear interest going on there or line work, but I use that to showcase line. This is a good technique, and you can even come in here if you want and smudge a few edges there to make it blend a little bit more. When I'm using really bold lines, I really want to put this energy into my work. I tend to not want to jump out and smack the viewer in the face. Now, over here, I will give you more of a subject so you can put this in context and see how that can work when you're actually using a painting. Okay? All right. So I've taken the liberty just to add a little a base here. I did that using yellow iron oxide. Now, I've got a little lizard and crimson here. I'm going to mix that with my yellow iron oxide. Maybe a little touch of blue for fun. And just going to quickly put down my wine bottle here. Okay. A lot of division there. We got this kind of a lighter yellow background. We got this darker burgundy color. There's not much opportunity to do this. We're going to create the opportunity, right? So I'm going to take the same burgundy color or the same two color as the yellow lizard, maybe a touch of the blue. And we're going to just work that around a little bit. Okay. I'm going to obviously focus over here. In this case, I'll use a napkin just because I want to continue to paint. I don't want to get too dirty here. We can even make that a little bit darker so we can come in here, play with some blues and just really go outside those lines a little bit. I think to make a really big impact. I want to allow that to dry because if I start to go over it now, chances are it's going to blend into that layer to the touch. Now, I am going to use a number six outliner brush. These are a lot of fun to work with. I'm going to go in here. I'll go into that background color there. Throw some white in there and really get some nice clean pops of yellow. I'm just adding a little bit of water to this mixture. That soups it up a little bit. It will just come off the brush a little bit easier. Load it up. I'm going to work from this background color. The idea here is I'm using this smudgy area to showcase line. I can just balance that out. I'm going to use this one. This is this brush, I know, something like this is more common. You guys probably have something like this as part of your tools or brushes. I'm going back into that lizard and crimson. I'm mixing a little bit of this sap green in there. Again, load it up. Look at this smudgy area. How can I introduce this line? I want to create this energy and bring it up. Look how that gave that feeling of these Lines. And this is no different than if I were doing that. So if I picked up my charcoal and I did kind of what I did there, that's using lines. So I'm not thinking I'm going to block in the painting or draw or paint a shape or anything. I'm thinking I want to showcase these lines. Of course, it's a little more obvious here because you're dealing with a thinner brush. But in both circumstances, that's lines. And we're using the smudge technique. So if I wanted to develop this painting more I mean, I could make it more believable. I mean, I could go in here, you know, add that feeling of a label, and we can kind of get in here and add some more body, you know, to this sort of thing. But, you know, as I work it forward, I want to try to keep in mind that those lines are part of the art. I don't want to disturb it too much. Let's say, for example, we had this smudgy color. Maybe it's still getting lost over here, the shape of the bottle. I mean, we can come in here and maybe tone this yellow down with a little bit of this kind of pinkish color, and we can kind of create more shape and chisel n, some of the areas if we feel like. But again, I will try to leave all those interesting lines, those nice chunky marks and work the painting forward but protect those as well. This is one way to think about using the smudge technique, and now I'm going to give you another example of how we can do that using a slightly different medium. Take the liberty again to add the little block of yellow there. I'll do the same idea. I'll go ahead and grab my wine bottle color. I'm just going to be a little bit maybe a little more freedom here with this one. I'm even going to take some of this background color. I'm going to smudge that in a little bit more. All right. So this time, I'll use the palm of my hand. So the back of my fist basically or whatever part that is. Now I'll add a little more color. I'm going to go in here to my lizard, little touch of the blues and good. I'm just going to use that and now I'll use my fingers. And that is how that really kind of creates Okay. A nice blending look. I've set the table to create these lines. Whenever this dries, that's what I'll do. I'll come back in. We'll use some artist Gray crayon to pop the line. D to the touch. I want you to say hello to my little friends here. This is a C Artist Gray crayon. I'll work with here. Look at what I have, think about my basic shape. See how much fun that is. We can add a little bottom right there, and we have our little triangle, a lot of fun. Because this smudging kind of set the table for that. It really took those colors this burgundy, in that yellow, and it kind blended. I gave us a real soft transition of colors so that the painting wasn't so stiff. We didn't have a background that was yellow, a wine bottle that was burgundy and was really, really tight. We had that kind of beginning like this, and then we can come back in and use that line and give it the form, just enough form. People say, Oh, yeah, that's a wine bottle. I can look at what I have there. Maybe I want to start with the shadow area. Okay. What do I have? What am I looking at here? What does this thing need to make it a little more believable. So I can come in here with that background color I had originally come in here. Maybe add this shape. I'm just touching. I'm careful not to cover up a lot of those marks. We get hit the top there. So just kind of blending, almost smudging that color with those lines so that we get Okay. We get the shape, but it's not covering it up. Now I'm going to go in there and focus on the bottle. I'm going to really pop that burgundy color. Maybe add some of this really in blue to it. And we have our shadow going on here. Notice how I'm leaving those yellows in that line. That's the key. We don't want to put this in there and then cover it all up. Just indicate a little piece of a label. I think that I'll pretty much, you know, give you the feeling of the wine bottle. One thing I do a lot in my studio is I doodle and doodle isn't a mindless thing. I'm pushing my creativity. I'm trying to explore how to do things, how to manipulate my crayons, how to get the most out of my brushwork. These little techniques like this have developed for me over time. Anybody can take these ideas and apply them. That's why I'm sharing them with you so that you can enjoy painting, working with mixed Media as much as I do. I hope you enjoy this series of lessons. Enjoy working with the smudge technique. If you have any questions. Let me know. If not, Enjoy experimenting. Bye. 10. Recap and Projects: Congratulations on finishing the class. This has been a little bit of a journey, I'm sure, hopefully you are able to gravitate to a few ideas and techniques that will loosen you up, perhaps explore mixed media, whatever the case may be. I want to thank you for your support and remind you that you can upload your studies that you created from this class in a class project. I will occasionally come in here to skill share and see what you guys are doing, if you have any questions about what I've shared with you, or you need some feedback or something? Just let me know in the class project and I will do my best to help you out. Thanks again. Have fun and I'll see you in the next one. Okay.