Fun with Mixed Media Abstract Art | Suzanne Allard | Skillshare
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Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Lessons in This Class

    • 1.

      Intro

      2:58

    • 2.

      Project Overview

      2:44

    • 3.

      Gathering Inspiration

      8:12

    • 4.

      Supplies: Paint Types

      14:59

    • 5.

      Supplies: Other Media

      14:35

    • 6.

      Creating Intuitively

      2:59

    • 7.

      Painting #1, Part 1

      15:39

    • 8.

      Painting #1, Part 2

      10:39

    • 9.

      Painting #2, Part 1

      8:32

    • 10.

      Painting #2, Part 2

      6:45

    • 11.

      Painting #3, Part 1

      9:25

    • 12.

      Painting #3, Part 2

      10:38

    • 13.

      Painting #4, Part 1

      14:10

    • 14.

      Painting #4, Part 2

      8:56

    • 15.

      Painting #5, Part 1

      7:01

    • 16.

      Painting #5, Part 2

      7:03

    • 17.

      Review and Flattening Tip

      6:22

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About This Class

Fun with Mixed Media Abstract Art 

Have you ever wanted to create interesting mixed media abstracts that have different elements and an organic feel but didn’t know where to start?  We are going to do that in five different paintings!  I’ll show you how trusting yourself, experiment with different media, explore nature’s inspiration and learn to enjoy the process of discovery that yields results you’ll be pleasantly surprised with!

What you’ll get in this class:

  • Learn about a large variety of media from pens and ink to wax crayons and pastels.
  • Learn about the differences between gouache, watercolor, acryl gouache and acrylic.
  • Learn how to make your watercolors more opaque.
  • Learn how to create more intuitively.
  • How to keep your viewers eye on your painting.
  • How to look at a painting and evaluate it for balance and composition.
  • Learn how to layer crayon, ink, pen and acryl gouache on top of acrylic.
  • Learn how to use neocolor crayons one and two to add texture.
  • How to be playful and free as you explore shape, marks and color.
  • Learn how to trust yourself!

Who this class is for:

Maybe you’ve been painting and would like to learn how to approach different styles of abstracts or maybe you’ve never painted.  Either way, come along and be inspired and supported while you learn to create with an encouraging teacher guiding you.

Additional Resources:

Download the Class Resources

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Check out my Website

Subscribe to my Newsletter

Subscribe to my Youtube channel

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Favorite supplies Here

You can download the class resources here.

Meet Your Teacher

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Suzanne Allard

Floral, Abstract & Creativity Teacher

Top Teacher
Level: All Levels

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Transcripts

1. Intro: Have you ever wanted to create those calming and interesting abstracts that have different elements and media and an organic field but didn't know where to start. We're gonna do that in five different paintings in this class, I'll show you how trusting yourself, experimenting with different media, exploring nature's inspiration and learning to enjoy the process of discovery will yield results. You'll be pleasantly surprised with, hi, I'm Suzanne Allard and my passion is creating art. It exudes joy and encouraging others to express the creative spirit which I believe we all possess. Did you know that I didn't start painting until I turned 52? I've learned just about everything I know in online classes like this. And now I license my art for products, celebrate genomes, prints and various products on my website, as well as teaching online. In fact, I now have 30,000 timeline students across the world on different platforms. I want you to know though, that I was terrified at the thought of even learning to paint. I have always done something creative like knitting and faulting and quilting. But I thought painting was for real artists. And I did not think that was me. So that's why I became the teacher that I needed. Super encouraging, real dry, relaxed, fun, supportive, and not overly technical. As a teacher, I pay attention to the mental and fears, struggles and creating because I know that's what helped me back for years. Of course, I also teach you a technique composition, what different media can do and how to tap into your own creative spirit and style. This class is designed to really help you relax and be playful so that you can bring that loose, intuitive feel deal work. Whether you're just beginning or you want some new ideas and inspiration to shake things up a bit, you'll get value out of this class. When I create classes, I taught throughout. What I'm creating is my thought process. When I'm looking for what I'm, what I'm trying to fix. And students tell me they really find value in that. In fact, I get no slip this one from Alyssa that touched my heart, so I wanted to share it. Melissa says, I can't put into words how much joy is giving me to learn to paint by following your classes. I'm a mental health therapist. I love my job, but it's very stressful. Learning to paint with your kind of companionship and just the right level of challenges and tips is making a huge difference in my life right now. Thank you. From the bottom of my heart. Wow. Thank you, Melissa. I've organized this class to get you in the organic inspiration. Make sure you watch all the videos. We will start with a project video, supply of video, inspiration video, and then there are all of the modules for starting and completing five organic tab striped mixed media paintings. We'll finish up with lessons learned and a discussion wrap up. The class is organized to get you in the flow of gathering organic natural images and patterns and then playing with some of those in the paintings. Don't be surprised if you start seeing patterns and shapes everywhere after taking this class. Alright, I'm thrilled to have you here, so let's get started. 2. Project Overview: Okay, let's dive into this project and a little more detail. We're going to use a variety of media to create five different paintings. I chose this type of painting CH, because it is so freeing and logistics, flooring, having fun and learning a lot will create five different compositions in different color palettes with a variety of mark making that draws inspiration from nature. Nature is the best inspiration. I show you how I source pictures as inspiration. But of course, you can find bark or bits of moss or leaves and all kinds of things when you're outside. I'm endlessly taking pictures of interesting textures and patterns in nature. Does my husband crazy? We will start with supply videos that cover much more than you need. I use supplies that I have and I enjoy and I show you all of them, but I don't want you to feel overwhelmed with my supplies. Dash, remember, I'm a professional artist. I have acquired these over a few years. The last thing I want you to feel is that you can't do this kind of painting without all the supplies I show you in fact, what I love about this style of exploratory abstract mixed media is that you can do it with very few supplies and colors. The reason I show you a lot of options is just to educate you and make you aware of what's out there and what I like. Case you fall in love with a medium or an effect and want to add it to your stash. So please use what you have. You will find things to add along the way. After supplies. We'll look at the sources of inspiration. What I'm looking for that has an organic feel. And next we'll start and finish five, complete eight by eight paintings. Of course, you can use any size paper you want. Please post your projects to the project gallery. It's easy to do and I love seeing them. Just snap a photo with your phone. And then when you're in the class, just select the projects and resources tab. And then click the neon green button that says Create Project to upload your photo. You can also ask questions or start a conversation in the discussions tab. I love interacting with you and read and respond to all comments and questions. I've included some resources, including a supply list for you to download. There are links to download these resources in the class description and also in the project description. Under projects and resources. I hope you create lots of these mixed media abstracts. I can't wait to see what you create posted Even if you don't like it or you don't think it's done. I guarantee you'll learn and have fun if you embrace the process rather than the result. So download the resources, get the supply list, inspiration videos, and let's get creative. 3. Gathering Inspiration: Inspiration can come from just about anywhere for this kind of piece. So let's take a look at some of my favorite sources. Pinterest, of course. And if you just put in patterns in nature, you will get kinda see that one. So many evenings. Also go to my Pinterest board and see the ones I've already saved. But I've got, I made a board called natural patterns. So let's go there. But you can search yourself and make your own Pinterest board by just putting in patterns in nature and flipping through mushrooms bark. That's a beautiful bark. And you just save it to your board like so. It's where you can really get lost in this look at this macro photography of a butterfly wing. Amazing. You can see how you could spend an entire afternoon doing this. You do have to be careful though a lot of Pinterest throws in a lot of junk advertising and things. But also though, you'll see like somebody's artwork. And sometimes it's hard to tell. Sometimes the botanicals look like a painting. You just want to make sure you're not copying somebody's painting, but Let me see if I can find one. Well, that's a pretty obvious example of a, somebody's painting, but this is somebody's RUG based on a pattern, but you just want to watch that. Let's see. Mushrooms are amazing, aren't they? Bark mushrooms? And so many beautiful patterns in nature look about one. So let's go back to my board. I will show you what I've got. I view things, I have a natural patterns for botanical cells. Then I just do a pattern inspiration. But hopefully you can get inspiration from gardens, bases and bowls. So let's take a look at some of these and then we'll look through some of my books. Natural patterns. There's just so much inspiration. In fact, there's one in here. I thought this one we could use is a loose kind of composition for this one. And we don't need to make perfect circles, but we can play with that. And then look at these barks, mushrooms, look at that twisted Yummy, notice right there. Plants. So that's a natural patterns then I've got a botanical cells. I mean, that is a rapeseed leaf with the light hitting the specimen from behind. I'm going to incredible. And again here, when you're searching for botanical cells, you do have to dig deep and make sure that's not a painting that someone created. Because people are doing that. Because it's so inspiring. All right, Let's see. Horus, flowers and gardens always provide inspiration. Look at those. Even though I'm not planning on doing any flowers per se in this, I'm keeping it more abstract. Look at those stamen the way they're coming out there. And then seed pods, seed pods are fabulous. I think in this kind of composition. Bases on bowls might seem a strange place to look for you, but I love people design really interesting patterns on these things. So you might get an inspiration from a beautiful vessel because they think they are also inspired by nature. I generally work to, like matisse used to say, or it was quoted as saying something about using nature as your inspiration even though you depart from it. Look at the texture in this photograph. Let's see. Here's a close-up here. Yeah, this one. It's incredible. That's beautiful. Patterning. You can make a board I'm foliage. Let's see if there's anything else here that applies. I mean, I can almost see inspiration and any one of my boards, but we'll keep it to the ones that I showed you, the natural patterns and botanical cells. So that's pictures. You can also get inspiration from. You may have a seed catalog or this is one of my favorite books. You can tell by all the places that I've marked. It's intended to be a flower or a recipe book where you learn how to put a bouquet together. And I've never followed it for that. But I like the way they do these individual photos here because I liked the spread here because there's some beautiful bark. This leaf pattern is beautiful. For each recipe. They kinda lay it out like that on this, even the background they've used with the wood. I love. So I use it for that. Sometimes. I also use it to inspire painting bouquets. But like here's some artichokes, beautiful flower recipe book. And I do have links. I'll make sure I do have a link to this under supplies from my website, Suzanne our.com. I have a whole bunch of supply links, both on Amazon and on Blick Art supplies so that you can find these things. Even my grass, look at that pompous grass. And then this is just the indoor jungle. For, again, I'm not thinking of particular leaf shapes, but there might be some inspiration in here. They don't do a lot of close-ups. They're more, it's more about how to create an indoor jungle in your home. But there's just something about the photography in this and the plants everywhere that I love. The way they are draping down. It helps. When you start a composition like this to just look through, you don't necessarily have to pick a photo like just getting this in your eye and your brain. It might show up later like those holes and those leaves. Maybe that'll show up later. The dots here. Sometimes it's just like an almost like a pre painting sponge session with your brain, you know, putting some pictures like we just did, inspiration into your brain before you start playing so that you can see what shows up. Alright, so let's begin. 4. Supplies: Paint Types: Alright, I thought it would be easiest since there's so many potential supplies to use in something like this. And also I don't want you thinking that you have to have all of this stuff. You don't, but I just want to show it to you that way you can decide what you want to get and what you really love. And it kinda potentially expands once you get into artistically. Let's talk about paint first. Paint generally is in, well, aside from oils, We're not going to talk about oils, but in the abstract and watercolor. Watercolor that you're used to, that you hear about all the time That's translucent. And you use paint with water and you, your colors go on. There's no white watercolor. If you want white in a watercolor painting, then you just use more water. I'm just doing a real basic watercolor properties lesson here. And so this is watercolor. So if I wanted it to be intense color, I would use a lot of pigment and if I want to lighten that, I would just keep adding water. Occasionally blotting it with a paper towel. If you using really good watercolors like these, There's so much pigment in them that you have to use quite a bit of water to get it to fade. I'm trying to make a graduated fading little more water. And you can see that that's how you lighten with watercolor because it doesn't come with a white. Now, having said that, you can, if you've got watercolor, this is just a tip. If you've already got watercolors you need, don't want to buy any gouache. You can purchase just some white gouache like this. This is a whole Bain gouache. And you take a little bit of that and mix it with your watercolor. And you can get that opaque color. Using your watercolors. You can get it darker by just using, again more pigment. I can get some pigments straight out of here, mix it here, and get a using the white gouache. So that is one way to experiment with the properties of gouache by only buying a bottle of whitewash. I'm just, it's not the same as gouache, but it's a fun thing to play with if you just, if you have watercolors already and you want to play with that. Alright, so watercolor is reconstitute with water. That means that if this dries on here, I can come back tomorrow and just get some water and revive it and use it. That's the same property that regular gouache has. So in this class I'm going to talk about when I say, how many either say regular gouache or acrylic gouache, at least I hope that I remember to say that each time regular gouache means, is that it has those properties of watercolor. There is no acrylic in it and it can be reconstituted with bladder. And that's the first paint I started with. I started my florals with that. And I just love it. So that means that if I take this color, which is just a yummy color, this cell it on, and I leave it just like that with no It dries to a hard thing. I'll be able to come tomorrow with water and revive it. That's it. That's why regular gouache is considered a watercolor, is just an opaque watercolor. So you might say. So here's some, see, there's a little kid who has been in the studio that was a cat hair. So this is more opaque than watercolor. You can see that even though I used a lot of pigment, that bit of watercolor, It's still translucent. This is opaque. And of course, if I want it to be even more opaque, I add white. And white just levels up the choppiness of it. I happen to love that. Just intense pigment. I also, I will also tell you just as a tidbit, It scans really well. The opacity without the shininess makes quash paintings scan really well. I think the shininess that's can be an acrylic. Shows up in the scan. Sometimes it just makes a sheen on the scan. You may or may not be scanning your paintings, but I just throw that out there. Gouache is also what was used in the 1800s. It's a French word but by the French and others. And painting, wallpaper, designs and things like that. It has a really interesting background and I love it. Now to confuse you even more, most brands make both. So here's Turner's design, gouache, which is regular gouache, know acrylic. And here's their acro gouache. Alright, so whole Bain does the same thing. Let's see if I've got a tube. Here's whole veins, acro gouache. Their regular gouache tube doesn't look anything like this. Let me get one to show you. It looks completely different. Even though they're both holding. This is their Apple Watch. And you kinda have to read closely because it just says gouache right there, right. And then you read it, it says hardest acrylic polymer. This is whole veins, regular gouache. Then you got Winsor Newton. I love their regular gouache. And I am not sure if they make an acrylic wash. Actually, I think I might have just seen it, but I don't have any and I don't need anymore brands. So I'm fine. I love their regular gouache though. Then you can find other brands are glad. I mean, I've collected over the years variety. This is a decent brand. I couldn't even pronounce it. Lucas is a decent. Just don't buy if you're buying gouache, well this goes for any paint. Don't buy the cheapest. You'll just, you'll just be frustrated. They don't have the same pigment load and you just won't get that. You'll say, why am I not getting those juicy colors? Because you've got cheap paint. This is another brand, Martha Graham, that's decent. That's artists gouache. I've talked about watercolor. Let me write this down here. No, watercolor. Then this is watercolor with white gouache. And then this is just regular gouache. Then let's do acrylic gouache. Alright, so it's a relatively new invention. All of a sudden, I can't spell Akron. It is. Some people think, I guess I'm one of them in a way that it's the best of both worlds. The best of the caudate qualities of gouache, along with acrylic paint. Acrylic paint dries quickly and it cannot, and it's permanent. It can not be reconstituted, reconstitute with water. So that's the same with acrylic gouache. But you still get that chalky opaque paint look that I love. And that intense pigment is just, there's more pigment and gouache than acrylic. So if I do say, because go bright, Here's whole beans, opera. And one of my favorite colors that I use is an opera, which is really just a fluorescent or opera pink, opera red. And this is gonna give me that opaque because it's so bright, it's hard to see that let me choose another color. It just makes your eye go what? I usually use it, mix it with something. I'll just mix it with this. Or I paid a blend it with something or use it in very, very tiny quantities. Let's see, this is gonna be kind of a muted green. So of course I mixed it with a solid down, which is regular gouache. Okay. Let's get some alcohol wash of color that you can see. The sacral gouache is very, has the same properties of acrylic. What Z The sense that you will not be able to reconstitute it once it's dry. So there's pluses and minuses to that, right? If I have it here on my palette, I think that's what this was. It's not coming back to life tomorrow. I cannot reuse that. It is not gone. But I really like it for lower layers of something. So let me see if I have an example of a painting here. I do use them both. I really do. I don't feel like you can only use one or the other. I ended up because I want to do layers. Let me just use this as an example. These lower layers are probably acro gouache because then they don't have to worry about them getting disturbed when I do the top layers. Even though gouache, if you're careful, you can paint over it. I've done many, many paintings with just regular gouache. And if you just let it dry, this is almost dry and I could show you that we could paint something over it. Let's get this and get another regular gouache color and just show you that you can paint over it. It's just it's not permanent. So it's just, it's just another tool you don't need. Let's see what color will show up for you. Maybe some red. If you already have gouache, you do not need to go buy Apple. Gosh, if you're a hacker, gosh, she did not need to go buy regular gouache. I guess that's what I'm trying to say. Use what you have. But I just wanted you to know the various properties so you can decide. So I'll show you, you can paint very easily right over. The regular wash. Doesn't get disturbed at all. If I were to work at a lot though. Here I'll mess this one up to show you if I use too much water. So let's use a lot of water. Come in here and say we're going to start painting, you see that? You mess it up pretty quickly. So if you're going to be layering, I'll go back to this one. Keep the water minimal and don't floss, don't scrub. Now, by contrast, this one is dry. I'll take white so you can see it. If it's completely dry, I can come on top of this acrylic gouache and do things just like I could on acrylic and it won't disturb. So I can layer. I could also make clean up my brush. I just don't have to be as careful to not disturb it the way I did with that one. If it's completely dry, I've done this before where it's not completely dry and it'll disturb. So if I keep working at it, I'm gonna disturb it. But it just gives a little it's a little more permanent. It is permanent, especially after you let it drive away. So I just wanted to cover the different types of paint and I'm not using them. Then the next one would be acrylic. Just a regular acrylic. When I use acrylic, I use mostly Nova, which is a brand that is available only online and Nova Color. And there's if you're interested, there's Suzanne Allard bundle on their website. I'm the colors that I've picked out an artist bundle. But that is going to be playing acrylic. It's not going to be chalky and opaque the way acro galoshes and it is permanent. Of course. I do find that their colors are pretty, a lot of them are pretty opaque, which is why one of the reasons I went with them, like this, cobalt blue is very opaque. So if you've got acrylics, you can use them. In this class. I just wanted to introduce you and kind of do a little primer on these different types of paint. Alright, now let's talk about all the other kinds of fun supplies. 5. Supplies: Other Media: Hi, I just painted some actual gloss on there. So that week I can show you how some of these work on top of that. I also want to mention that on my website under the supply, which is Suzanne allard.com, there's a supplies tab and I have links to all my favorite supplies. Pretty much all of these are almost all of these. There's Amazon links and then there's also Blick Art Supply links. If you'd rather shop through public. I think I might need to add these. I think I did actually. You can find links to all that, all this stuff there. Although I need to probably have the Daniel Smith do a Chrome. And this is a color that you're going to fall in love with. Its one other luminescent colors. But it's got a, you'll see you in the class. It's got this soft metallic. So there's a few specific colors that you might like of these Daniel Smith watercolors. Alright, so there are various other tools that I use besides paint. And these are just kinda grown over the years to be a lot of fun. And for Marx and texture and interests, oil pastels or one of my favorite. The thing about oil pastels is you want to use these. Think of them as one of the last things to use or, or at least not, you're not painting on top of them too much or really at all, because oil needs to be sitting on top, you can put them over things. But think of them is either by themselves, like you can come. I love sometimes just taking one of my favorite colors and just making marks like this. You could paint around them. I have painted over them with a really translucent color just to play, I'll show you this. It's just that with a watercolor. I think it's fine, but if you're thinking that it's going to adhere, it's not. So you could do something like this. And that's okay if you want that effect around it. Like whack with complex resist. Okay. So that's oil pastels. I use them all kinds of marks on top of paint like this. I just love them. They're juicy, yummy. And then the other thing I like to use are two types of Neil color crayons are made by Qur'an dash. I don't even know if I'm saying that right, because it's Swiss. But we just call, it seems like we're just calling Neil colors. There's 2s and 1s. So you'll see this in the class too, but the ones are resistant. Think of them as like a wax crayon that we had as kids. And so they behave this way, but they're a little more interesting to paint over. And you'll see that one of her paintings. And then I'll show you just the Neil colors are water-soluble so they can be reconstitute with water. So let's get a brush and show you. If I wanted to paint, I've even done some sketchbook paintings with just the neo color crayons. As almost like my watercolor. See how you can just add water and move them around so you can have texture underneath like that. Where if I kept scrubbing, it would completely disappear, especially if I use a stronger brush. And by contrast, the neo color ones, the wax pastels. If I take, let's take this pretty luminescent green over, look pretty over the orange. It's kind of a green, even though it's called oceanic. It's got a little tiny gold particles in it. It's delicious. See how I'm gonna get that. Resist feeling. They're completely different behavior than the neo color two's. Okay. Alright, let's see what else I want to show you. There are also these woody 3M ones, and I don't even remember if I use these in this class. This is a bold one that's pretty, these are three and ones because they are sort of a hybrid of these things. The, you can move them around with water if you like. But they also feel like a crayon and then a colored pencil. Sort of waxy in a way like an oil pastel. And you can get different color. You can get some really bright pops of color with them on top of paint like that and then just leave it. Okay, Let's talk about gold pens because I use a lot of them. I have links to all these on my website, as I said. And I use this brand for my well, it's called they call it extra fine, but I think of this as extra fine. Like a paint. That's alright. Pilot gold marker. And this gives me a nice demonstrate it for you. You have to find these and pumping. Hopefully I haven't. Sometimes they stick them in. Oil pass narrow means, rely on them. Let's see. Let me get you one that works. In the meantime, let me show you the Finland. I use this a lot in the class. Alright, let me give you one of these. It works and we'll talk about it. Okay? So this is actually my favorite thin gold pen that just the color of the goal. Amazingly, there's, some of them are kind of greenish. This is a Pentel sunburst. And it just gives a really nice line and color. So I like that link to it on my website. Look with all this stuff. And then the pilot gold, this is the thinner one. So it'll give, like on top of I'll show you close up. It really gives a lovely gold. I show you the larger one and then you can make, I loved making sometimes baby latches with these truly dry, you know, that metallic gold finish, which I'm kind of obsessed with. You may hate it, but I just wanted to show you in case you like it. Then I use, I did use one of these, introduced them in the class, but I'll just show you how they work there, the abstract 3D liner, you do not need this. I just thought I'd show it to you. And you squeeze and it will make a 3D line. You can do dots. I'll just use it sometimes for an accent. Here's the thing about supplies. When I really want you to hear me, you could literally have none of this. Find some crayons from your kids or grandkids, grab a couple of magic markers, a few tubes of paint. You'll see how few colors we use in the class. And some brushes or a palette knife or even a fork from your kitchen and make marks and make this kind of painting. I'll show you how we use. We're going to use a really cheap chip brush that ends up creating one of my favorite paintings. So the brushes themselves don't really matter too much in this class, the only thing that you'll see me specifically use is a couple of this one that I just showed you. And then a really fat brush sometimes, but you could, again use you can take a household paintbrush and use the edge of it like that. I think I used one of these fat, wants to get those big chunks of color. But you could use this again. And then sometimes I use what's called a bright, which is really just a square brush to do very like. Another just sort of signature thing of mine are just think something I enjoy is taking that I'm painting with a bright and making these sort of square shapes on top of other colors. So that might be hard to do with with a round brush because you're sitting there trying, but who cares if you want to make if you have a round brush and that's all you have, something like this, then you make the shape a little different. You just go like this. You just kind of draw in your square and fill it in or do another shape. So I just don't want you to feel like, Oh my gosh, I have to go buy all the supplies or it can't create the C, that's perfectly fine. In fact, you might like it better because it's a little more Boulez rigid looking. You can make little marks with a round brush. I would rather you start with whatever you have than not starting at all. Or that Thank you. Can't start, don't be a supply in class collector. Well, it's great to sign up for classes and have supplies as long as you're using them. Look at this, look how yummy that oil pastel is. You just caught my eye. I just love how creamy they are. And the other thing that I use in the class is a bit of ink. Again, you could just use acrylic paint or if you don't have any gold, or if you don't have any liquid gold, then you could get the gold marker. I will say this is a really fun thing and not too expensive. This is Liquitex acrylic ink. Iridescent, bright gold. And I'll use it either I'll mix it right in with wet paint and let it spread around. Or sometimes they'll just use it to make shapes. I should have shaken this a little bit more as getting chunky. I need to shake it. But I'll do dot drops like that and they dry really beautifully. And then it goes one of my favorite darks. So I do use some of this organic ink. Organic. It's not organic. Indigo ink. And you can do just with the droppers and really sort of loose lines. And then you can come in with your brush and move that around. Even. Got some yellow paint on there but get it to bleed anyway. Now I'm getting into the class, but I just wanted to show you. This is so much fun, just playing with your supplies and seeing what they can do. You'll learn something almost every time. Something about the way something interacts works doesn't work. There's not many rules that I know of that I follow, except that trying to paint to cover over these oil pastels is not a great idea. You can over the goodies because they're just not as oily. Okay. If you have any questions about supplies or comments, just put them in the comment section. Let's get to it. Let's give these things out, get whatever you've got and let's start. I forgot to discuss paper. Well, I do mention it in the modules, but I wanted to just put a little bit of time. Lately I've been really enjoying these eight by eight sheets. I do like Square and I have 12 by 122. You could use that. Of course you can use any size you want. You don't need to use square or a block by block. Here's what I need. This is a really inexpensive brand by Hobby Lobby. Sometimes it's 50% off and put the sheets are individual sheets. They're not attached in any way. When you see something is a block is bound at sometimes all the edges. But in this case it's just two edges. And then when you're done, you just take your palette knife or even a kitchen knife and slice sender and go across and remove it. There's really, it's personal preference. Some people like the black because it allows it to drive more flat. But you can easily flatten your artwork. After the fact. With a little trick. I'll show you in the wrap-up video. You can also use, I'm showing you a variety of brands here. It doesn't really matter. I wouldn't get the cheapest. This is a studio watercolor. This is a watercolor as well. Cold press. Cold press simply means that it has texture to it. So you want that for this kind of painting, the hot press is very smooth. For it's for a different style of painting. You want that texture, so you want to make sure it's cold press and then you want to make sure it's 140 pounds or more. Thin watercolor paper is no fun. So those are my only tips. This is just Pilate paper. I use different brands. I have a link to one on my website with the paper as well. You don't need palette paper. It's just a nice tool to have because you can use your paint. Then throw out, you're just throw it out and get a new sheet. But you can use a ceramic dish as well, because unless you're using acrylic and then you might not want to. Okay, So those are the paper basics. 6. Creating Intuitively: So this type of creating can feel very freeing, but also in a strange way. It can feel intimidating because there's no direct path. So we're nothing we're copying. When we paint something more representational, like a bouquet or a landscape or a flower, we may do it in an abstract style, but we're still painting something that is familiar to us and looks real, at least to some extent. That's why I wanted to chat about this process and how important it is to approach it as an exploration or an experiment. This takes the pressure off, which is a creativity killer. If you can think of yourself as an explorer and embrace this process, I guarantee you will have fun and learn so much about yourself. And what you enjoy creating and expressing. Creating is like a dance between cognitive thinking, kinds of decisions and intuitive feeling experiences. We go back and forth. And this is a skill actually, it's helpful to become aware of how much time you spend in either place and when you're in either one in the process. For me, I tend to give a little think about what direction I want to go in. I gather some references, usually photos, and then I think of a color palette very loosely. I may choose blues and greens are limited palette or I go crazy palette. I won't spend much time in this initial stage. I just want some loose ideas because I don't want to be boxed in and shut off the intuition. Then I may think a little bit about composition and then start playing with materials, as you'll see in this class. At this point, do your best to shut off the thinking and just play. Then you can pause along the way as you see me do to think about what's happening. That's what the process is. Think, feel, think, feel. Sometimes I switch back and forth within minutes. It takes getting used to. So be gentle with yourself. When you feel like you're getting tight, you are probably thinking too much. So go off, scribble aggressively on a piece of paper and newspaper with a black marker that always reliefs tend to inform me. Take some deep breaths, take a break. But on some music, refresh your tea, go for a walk or anything like that, and then come back to that feeling intuitive place. It's almost as if the intuitions always there, but absent the thanking, you don't really have to create intuition. It's more that you want to move past the thinking voice in your head and get to the intuition. This is where the play and experimentation come in. I tell students to channel their inner five-year-old. If you've ever seen a four or five-year-old create, they do it without inhibition, usually was complete freedom. This is how we learn about what we'd like to express, what our materials can do and what we often get happy accidents that we can use in the future. So rule number one, be kind to yourself. Your own encourager role number to focus on the process, not the result. Explore and play. And rule number three, Have fun. 7. Painting #1, Part 1: So this is the one that I've already done. And we may, we may do something similar or we may pick up like this I really loved. But we'll do for this one, let's do, maybe we'll call this one the mushroom abstract. And I'm going to start playing with ink. I do not have my paper coated is just the watercolor paper on a block. And I'm going to just be playful and let everything that we just looked at. I'm letting my drop would just now I think I'm going to take my spray bottle. Let's see what happens when we spray it after the fact. Oh, okay. You got to see that close-up. How fun is that? Where it's dried a little more. It's not moving the line which is fine. Let's just get a little bit of something, something going. It's really pretty interesting. We're going to have to let it dry. Well, we can do a couple of things before it dries. We can take, one of my favorite things to do is to take metallic gold into something like this because it dries, sort of spreading like this. So let's get some golden there before. And then we'll let it normalcy. Use a dropper again. This is my liquid techs, iridescent, bright gold. Getting kinda chunky, which will be interesting. Right? Thinking if there's anything I wanted to before it dries, because anything I want to add maybe a bit of turquoise over here and it kinda blend with this. I've got my cobalt turquoise light Winsor Newton. I'm just going to take a little straight out of the two. Mix it with some water here on my palette paper. Maybe I'll do it some dragging. Holding this brush really loosely. You can hold it like this is to keep me from getting too tight and overworking and to keep the movement and shapes from being more organic and less rigid. Right? I think that's a good place to we just have to see this could take an hour or more to dry. So I will remove it from the block with my palette knife. In this block is connected at just the top and the bottom, just two sides, which is nice, It's enough to hold it down. And I've ordered another block so that I don't have to I could leave it on here. Well, it dries, which would help it from buckling. But for the purposes of this class, I want to start another one. While this dries, we can always flatten it after the fact. I had a couple of ideas. This was the first one we started. It is dry now and a little bit bent, but we can straighten, flatten that out at the end. And I thought it would be, I want to add like a botanical is small, the panel Goleman has a drawing kinda just coming off of this. I don't know which way. Maybe kinda coming around like this. So I'm just going to use my Pentel. This is my favorite thing. Gold pen. I have these on my website, Suzanne our.com under supplies. And then for the little bit thicker, I like this brand, the pilot I've tested so many times over the years. This is where I've landed for consistency and what I want. So I'm just going to kind of look at this and draw, actually going to drop the other way. So I'm just going like this. So I have it to look at. Kinda come up here with some little delicate branching things. I'm just going to continue this way trying to keep it loose. And I'm looking at the photo for inspiration, but I'm not copying it exactly. Once you get the idea, you don't even need the photo. Photos though of nature can help you from trying to give two symmetrical. And we have a habit of thinking that nature is very symmetrical. And so when you have a real reference photo or a little branch or live flowers and foliage, then you can keep from getting to linear and two, matching, matching because nature is just not that way. I want some of this over the blue. I'm serious. Type B vaccine if that's about what I want. You didn't want them. Another little surprised going up this way. I don't mind that this is a broken line. Gets soft. Yeah, I like that. It just brought a little elegance to it, didn't it? I like surprises. The unexpected. You could also do something like that. You know, right there or see if there's anything else that is inspiring. I got my book upside down now. Okay. They're just shapes. In general when I'm doing something like this or really any piece of art, I'm thinking about a variety so small and delicate, with larger and bolder. And something needs to happen here. It could just be a color surprise. I was thinking about grabbing this pink. I'm just literally doing a few shapes like this. Right here. Let me go do orange, we get to green. And then maybe do some drawing on top of it. I think I'll do that. I think I want to try this opaque gouache with bright shade brush, which is a rectangle. Let's see what we think of just a bit of water because I don't want it to water down. You don't want it to be an exact rectangle. They do want the edges a little bit rounded. So that's why I'm fussing with it a little bit. That's just, you know, no right or wrong. The third one down here or up here. So you can kind of just see what feels more balanced. This is already coming down here. I think I'm gonna go up. Just making sure it's really opaque. I went back super chalky pigment and feel, which I think contrasts nicely with the more transparent watercolor. Like that. It's a little surprise. And your eye it comes to kinda looks at this. Or maybe it comes here first and then kinda travels along this line over here. Some of the gold. To think about, if we want to add anything else. Got the oil pastel, got gold ink, we've got turquoise. Woody. He could just intensify a little bit here. Sometimes I like to do the same color, the same color, but in that case, I don't feel like it did match. So let's see if we come up with a little bit later. What that does. This is the oil pastel. Like a little bit better, but now I want to sort of under paint some of the other and take it out. So there's a couple of ways I can do that. I can use paint. I can also use cream colored posca. Sometimes I do both. I'll start with the positive as the first layer and then go over it with pain. Sometimes I mess around so long that I don't like it. That happens. Learning is how you figure out what you like. What you don't like. Experimenting is what I meant to say. Like this. I want to make bigger works. I can go like this. And it makes the line, you know, go backward because I've covered it. All right, Let's let that dry. Just a process of layers because once this dries, I might want to do something with those, or it might not. It might come back with oil pastel on top of that and might not. It's a matter of deciding what I what I like and want to keep and what I want to play with covering up. We're changing. 8. Painting #1, Part 2: Okay, so this is dry and as I look at it, when you do this sort of free form stuff, things happen and some of them are good and some are not good. And what is bothering me from a composition point on this is this here, because you always want to keep the viewer's eye on your, on your piece of paper, on your art, on your picture claim is it's called anything. So when you were making marks, you do want to think about guiding the viewer in. And I do that kind of instinctively now, but this keeps guiding me out right here. Even if in the way to tell is if you cover up something, look how much better that looks. Just it's just it's drawing knee down here and then I'm kinda getting lost. So I might just use your own. You can take it away and then bring it back and go where does man, I go immediately for me on this one, my icons here. And then it comes down here. And then even though I know there's more to look at, I fall off the page. So that's something to watch when you put things together. And this was experimental and playing. So I'm not worried about it, but I want, I just wanted to point out the learning. But we're going to, we're going to, I'm going to paint over that just so that we can continue and keep going with this. And at least for our purposes, we're going to so-called fix that. Because even with that done, It's still doesn't feel like I love it. So what I was going to show you a couple of ways and it probably won't fix it, fix it because that's Inc. and it's gonna be hard to cover up and then it's going to look like we covered it up in a lot of times. I'll do that in a painting and it'll become part of the painting. But when it's something like this which is off the page, It's hard to fix. Now what you could do is let's say you really loved it except for that, you could matter. And your mat could come like that. You could, this is an eight by eight. You could do like a six-by-six or 7-by-7, probably 7-by-7 mat. And just have it would look like white would be coming there, which would be fine. I guess you could even cut, cut some of it off and frame it. But since we're just playing here, I'm going to show you a couple of ways. But what I've done this before, you find out that paper isn't actually white, white, do you think it is but when you compare it to white paint, it isn't his white. So I'm going to try first some regular blush, meaning no acrylic in it. We know that this is ink, so this is permanent. And I'm just going to take a really clean brush and clean water obviously. I've probably added too much water on my brush. Yeah, this is too watery. Let me plot it. Sort of try to hide that a little bit and then see what else we want to do on this. I've got a few ideas. Some of the ideas are coming from me wanting to show you some, just some different materials. So we might end up crowding this painting a little bit, but I want to show you some different things. So actually that's covering it pretty well. But still it would show. I'm just going to come in here and kinda imitates organic shape that it is. All right, Let's let that dry. See what happens. Alright, aside from that though, I wanted to come in here and do another coat of the Posca marker. On this side. See how I have to prime that, pump it. And why did I want to do that? I just wanted to cover up that line a little bit more. A call tie in with the rest of this. Professionally that's covering surprising a while the regular gouache. Now, just to show you, one of the things I like to do with oil pastels is Come on top of a color that I painted. Remember this was the, the gouache and I think it was Apple Watch. And with a very similar color on top of it. I just liked the way that adds a texture and interest without being overwhelming. So we can first try that color. Doesn't really show it up. I've got a few peaches here. See, this one's a little darker. Yeah, that's kinda interesting. Yeah, I dislike that bit of texture on top like that. So don't remember that mark. Maybe it was there. The other thing I'm thinking about just because again, I want to show you some new some variety materials. I think probably I would stop on this one. Because there's a lot of interests in the way this kink traveled around. And so I think there's enough going on here, but I do want to show you little things that you can do. These, I found these abstract center. Liners. I started with just, I think these two colors, which are I think this is ochre and rows fluorescent when I recently picked up. Here doesn't go because who doesn't even more gold, right? I picked up the turquoise for the same reason. I also just picked up silver. So I think that if we went with that concept of same, same, same, we could take this ocher and just do some bits. Now, what else to tell you about these may get a sample and show you is their 3D. So that's, it'll stick up, but I don't let me show you and you have to squeeze them pretty hard. So you can make lines and you just practice with it because if you push it and you're gonna get that groove. But if you just kinda go along the top, squeeze some down. Squeeze so hard that you can kinda get a line like that. Sometimes I'll just use them for dots. Almost like if you've ever made a cake, frosting squeezed or things. It's very similar. You can do these little dots. So I always do these last because they take a while to dry because you can imagine it as 3D. Chunky. See. So just keep that in mind. I'm put it over here so I don't sit another piece of paper on it. And just to show you, I think I'll keep it minimal and maybe do some dots on top of these. Kind of flatten them out. Yeah, that adds a little something without maybe making it too busy. And by the way, this technique with white, you can come in afterwards and let's say you decided, gosh, I think if there's anything I want to take away, well, I'll just do this for demonstration purposes. Let's say that you didn't want this coming down this far. You can push it back. Art is about bringing forward and pushing back. So let's say you wanted that to fade. You could do a couple of coats of white and push it back, and then you can bring other things out. So that also helps with composition. If you're finding that there's too much going on and it's beer, there's too much competition for your eye. Then you can push some things back. I've done that. Let's say, let's say I had painted these with fluorescent and they were just, you know, which I love. You'll see I use that. But sometimes it's depending on where it is. If it's over here, it'd be too intense because all your I would do is just keep looking at this, which it does a little bit because there are different color than anything else, but it's not to me so dominating, overdraw that, that I don't enjoy the rest of the painting. But if it were, you can just come with either an off-white like this in paint or you can be in paint or ink and just cover it and it'll just soften it. So see, that's drying. This actually worked pretty well. It really did kinda soften it. I'm just kinda blending in the edges. What's nice about gouache is it'll dry with the texture of the paper. It won't it won't feel like it's sitting on top of the paper the way acrylic night. All right, so looking at this, I think it's interesting. I don't, I'm not in love with it the way some of the others that we have in the class. But it is very interesting and we learned a lot. And I particularly like, I also like to, when I do this kind of exercise, say what did I like most about this one and what don't I like? So if I were to review this one and I liked this branch a lot, I like the way the ink is behaving in here. This just really lovely. I like these three things over here. I like the gold. I really don't like this in here. That's really instructive to do because especially when you work, if I were working in a sketchbook, then you have the sketchbook filled with all kinds of things that you like and didn't like. And in fact, I will show that at the end of the class, just flipping through a sketchbook and being able to learn from that. So at this point, Let's see if this one's writing. I'll go ahead and sign it. And we will call painting number one. Done. 9. Painting #2, Part 1: So for this one, let's try a completely different way to start. Let's take a large watercolor brush. Doesn't have to be this big. This is 16, but you may have this is a ten. We can use that. It's more likely what you have. And I do want to start with some ink, but this time, let's put it on the palette and get a little water into it. And we'll do that. They will just sprinting. It kind of spreads here and here, not in the whole page. And I wet my brush and I'm just going to touch that indigo ink. This is prayers is Brits isn't a kind of a half-moon instead of a circle which is actually giving us a jellyfish look, isn't it? Kinda go with what shows up? That's what I love about this process, is hard to over control it. Those are actually really lovely. Okay, now, let's think about something else that might be fun to do. Let's bring in some of this orange. This is, I'm going to see how orange this is because this is a Quinacridone. Sienna. Sienna tends to be sort of brown, coppery side, but this is a brighter one. So let's see how it works. Use that same large brush. And we'll make a sort of circular thing like these mushrooms and see what happens. It's really red. I'm going to make some of the deep yellow gouache with it. It's going to change the the watery mess of it because it's washes more pigmented. So that'll be interesting. And again, I'm using this brush really loosely. I don't really want a perfect circle. I loved the way that's blending in. And we could do another one here. It's blending in with the then see how that's more pigment it, I added more water to my brush here. I can add even more here. Just touching down, thinking about natural shapes we saw. This is almost like some of the bark. And then I think the turquoise really wants to be there next to some orange. That's what they told me. This is one of the most amazing colors. It's not cheap, but it little goes a long way. It's the Winsor Newton designers gouache, cobalt, turquoise light. Since it's gouache, I'm not wasting any of those here because it can be reconstituted with water. I want some of this to touch the orange and beautiful greens that happen. I have more water like in general, to reduce the intensity is the painting goes outward. So more watery stuff would be on the exterior here. That doesn't always happen because you can see that the pigment here is moving that way, which is fine. My darks though got lost a little bit. So I'm going to add some of the just dab a little bit more. Well, I guess let's see. We could do the ink or we could do the indigo watercolor. Let's just do some ink. The ink is more intense. So it just depends on the effect you want. I was losing contrast. They were just getting that happens. But I don't know if you can see what this is doing now. Bring it up. The beautiful texture is this bleeds into that. And let's see. I'm going to show you a little bit of ink here. But it'll be okay because it's kinda that. In fact, it happens sometimes what I'll do is take the ink and throw some brush better so that it looks like part of it. So let's just do that so I can show you in a dip your brush in the inking brush already has water on it. You can practice on another one. You want first, so we can set this aside. Here's a scrap piece of paper and practice, just like that. Hitting your brush. Make a little more water. Will do it on this one. We're just playing. So I'm not worried about ruining this. That's the thing with these you don't want to get too attached to is if you start getting wrapped around, oh, I'm going to relate to them. It's going to cut down on your experimentation and your, your freedom, your play. The goal of these is to explore, experiment, learn, Have fun. So you don't want to get too caught up. And I'm just adding a little more Turkers there because I've lost some of that intensity that I love. There. You know what I'm thinking now? Composition wise. It needs something here, but it doesn't mean a lot. It could be some dots which I could do. I could do more of the indigo ink dots. I could also do some gold dots. I could do both. Well, that was a blob. My ink is getting hold and thick. But once it's dry, it doesn't matter. So I just take from that one and I don't want it to be too much on the circle shapes. So I'm going to make these a little more irregular looking. Then the gold on top of the indigo always looks amazing. Let's get a little bit here. Let me shake it up better. This is a new one actually, so it shouldn't be I think I just didn't shake it enough. Sometimes you have to have it again. You could use a brush if you want. I just find the dropper is easier. You don't have to clean off my brush and we'll get this ink brush, which is not the best name for it. Alright, I think that's at a place where we should stop and let that one dry. This is just a series of playing with these, letting them dry, coming back to them, seeing what other media we want to add and having fun and learning along the way. 10. Painting #2, Part 2: Alright, so this is dry and let's figure out what to do next. We've got, I'm just kinda straightening a little bit without some gold here. Some really interesting textures and bleeds there. I'm thinking of something with the gold pen. Just to center it a little bit more in the paper. The composition needs something here. So I was pulling out this plant book. And it could be lines. It literally could be something really, really simple. This is kinda pretty what about something that kinda comes along the side? Tenderly? I'm actually even like the lines. I'm going to try not to overdo it because there's a lot already going on in this. Nice leaves. It's always hard to not let them look like hearts. So it helps when you put in the veins. I want to talk too much and I'm trying like that because it will make my pen move. But we need one more here. I think. We can just do the tenderly thing like we have here. Just a little bit of surprise of something. Then. Just botanically fan of organic. Some of the pictures were looking at patterns. I'm just kinda centering. It. Doesn't have to be perfectly, but if you were to frame this, it would feel off kilter tonight. Have balance. Your signature or believe it or not, can help do that too. I can just do that while I'm here. Let's see what else. I think I might want to bring some of the gold and do some little patterns through here. Like that part that we looked at. We can also take metallic gold pen and do some larger number those leaves that have the dots. I don't want to cover too much of this bleed because it's lovely. But the dots and nature are a variety of shapes and sizes. So just make sure you don't make them too uniform. So that they have that organic feel. Really liked that gold on the turquoise. Just doing some of the main stem without heavier pen. Colors came out like almost a tree and here is where I'm looking and going. Do I stop? There, anything else I want to do to it though? Maybe just a few more here. I always make these kind of go off in a direction. I want them to look almost like they're floating on a breeze. I mean, this is really interesting through here. I don't think I want to do a lot more and nothing's calling me now and saying, you shouldn't really do more. So I'm going to call this one down. 11. Painting #3, Part 1: All right, Let's play it some more. I'm thinking I want to try some of these chalky or washes and get some of that texture in there and see what happens. So maybe these pinks with the turquoise. But I want to show you a couple of different ways we can use different media. So let's pull out the neo color crayons. These are the ones that are water-soluble. There are also wax ones, which are not water-soluble. So you can play with both. But for this one I'm going to use the water-soluble. Well, we can so that you can see what they're like. I'm just going to throw one of these into. I just got these and I use the oil pastels a lot, but I wanted to try these. So I've been playing with them a little bit. We'll go ahead and make some marks so that we can see how they react underneath the paint. So let's do you have an indigo because I'm obsessed with indigo. These here it is. And I'm going to do some of those Salt Lake shapes. Loose organic field. Then we can take a similar color with the wax. Neil color, one. That's how they calculate. Actually, this is this is my two. This belongs down here. Get this one. I think I mixed them up. Good thing they're labeled. Let's take a different color. If we're gonna do the pinks, Let's see. Well, let's just use a little bit of this and see, so they call this one new color ones that permanent wax pastel. And then Neil color twos are water-soluble wax passed out. It doesn't seem like wax could be water-soluble, but that's what these are. And let's just do a lineup. Let's do something like we saw the mushroom sort of pattern. Maybe a little bit of that. Something like that. Let's see what that does. And thinking about what else I went to play with. We can take a little bit of this peach colored oil pastel and do things like coral, doesn't it? I'm kind of like these colors. Right? You haven't used paint yet. But I'm thinking I want like a turquoise large shape here. So I'm going to wet my brush. This is my same turquoise gouache that I can reconstitute with water because it's regular gouache, not acrylic wash. And I'm just going to drag this up here really loosely. You can use you don't see a drop fell there, which I'm fine with because we're just Could be happy accident. We can also take my favorite tools, which is a fan brush and maybe do some things like this. I like the simplicity of this. And I really liked the peach. I'm thinking about what might be pretty inside these. I wonder if a bit of this orange would be pretty. Keep going back to the orange. This was actually my turquoise and my brush though. So it's mixing to make a green. I'm deciding if I want that. Let's see what that looks like. On a scrap piece that's sort of a brown rust color. It's pretty I think I'll leave it. I think I'm just going to dab in here, which will activate some of the new color. Gram, because remember this one is water-soluble, so it's going to mix. Just wouldn't get more water. We should get kind of a interesting organic feel to it as these blend. I'm not going to put water everywhere. But they weren't enough touching. I want them touching so they can bleed. And then we can come out here a little bit. Maybe incorporate that. Just adding more water to my brush and coming out here. Hello, but it's getting bigger and bigger, isn't it? I can dab color into that water. It's very interesting. Definitely a focal point. And let's take this is the wax pastel, remember, so it's going to be permanent. So I'm going to take a little bit of this Quinacridone sienna that we had here on the paper. And bring it over this and get some wax resist going. You can see it bubbling over. Even though I'm using a similar color, I'm going to have a little bit to change it so it shows up better. It's pretty cool. I have that shows through, doesn't it? So this is a way you can see the difference between the new color one and twos and how you might want to use each one. Very cool. Makes me want to use it again. But I wanted to keep these simple. So I'm not going to overdo. I'm thinking about I really liked those. So that's what happens in this process is you might finish four or five of these and then find one or two things that you learned or discovered or like in each one. And then you can take that and, you know, do more with them. So I think our next one, we should use the wax more and do more of this to play with it. Now, I want to let this dry because I want it, I might want to come back. I was thinking that some that some of this shell pink because it when this is dry, would be pretty on there. So the others are not quite dry yet. The gold, it takes the longest, But they're really interesting. Let's take a look at this one. The first one we did, I used a lot of water. Then take a while to dry. Yeah, there's still water there. So look at this wax resist there and then look at the bleeding that's happening on that little shape. All right. Let's keep playing. 12. Painting #3, Part 2: Alright, painting number three is dry. And I thought we would pull the Pinterest board backup and this is my leaf board. So if you go on to Pinterest and you follow me, look for leaves. Of course you can make your own. And I'm just kinda looking to see what feels inspiring to do. Like over here. Something not super heavy. I'm a light side because we have some chunky stuff here and this is substantial. I think something on a finer sign, like very tiny leaf or even just something wispy maybe like this. It'd be nice if we could do it in gold pen, which is what I've been doing. You can also try. Let's see. I loved the Micron pens, but let's see how this one's doing because I've gotten them in. This is a newer one. I've gotten them into the pastels too many times, so sometimes they get mocked up. But this one seems good. I wonder which way it went this to face. He's lying. So you could come down this way. They could actually come up that way. I think I went back and I'm going to try really hard to make it wispy. Like good practice like this a little bit. It's how you hold this lightly so that I'm not doing that, which is fine, just not what I'm looking for here. Let's do a few more, longer ones. Then. I want to take the same pen and maybe do some just shapes. And I can ink, but I can add water to this pretty quickly. You can get before it dries too much and get something happening there. Just because I don't want the lines to be too to what what am I trying to say? Too much, they're barely see it, but I'm doing those loopy things so that there'll be some space. They're just looking for it, looking at it for What else I might want to do. I'm feeling like I want to take that, pick up that orange that's in there. But we use the wax pastel and get the oil pastel on that color and just maybe make some marks here in that same orange. So I'm starting to tie things in a little bit. And you have got the Navy in pairs from Navy there and bear indigo. And then the orange. Then this pink and turquoise might be fun to do those square shapes again, but maybe make the smaller and more square. So I'm going to take that same great shape brush. And to get these opaque, probably have to do a couple of coats. And then maybe I'll put some gold on top of them. I love when my workspace gets overtaken by supplies. That's a good thing. I'm trying to make these really chunky. I'm laying or clearing the pain on pretty heavily. Feeling like I didn't like the way those were empty. So I'm just dabbing in a little color, leaving some of the outline showing some of them. Whenever you've got an element out that you can go ahead and sign with. Just sign while you're there with that element. So it could be a color of paint in your brush. It could be a pen. I think this is done. I'm just going to let that dry and do really another thick coat of the gouache to make it really pop. It won't take long to dry. That's the beauty of gouache, especially acrylic wash. Which of this is? That just means that they've added some acrylic to it. So it cannot be reconstituted with water. Once it dries, it's dry. It does dry very fast. While that's drying. I had this thought. Might not be a good thought, but it'll be fun to try of taking the pen and just making the base of some of these a little bit heavier so that they're more pronounced and also less the same length. Can you give it more movement in a way? I have another idea. Yes, I know I can't not do the gold pen. It seems like I just wanna go around. Some of these is a really fun thing to do. You take that organic shape that showed up with the, with the watercolor, you know, which was really unplanned. And then you go around, around some of it with a pen, following the outline in it. It can be really interesting. And I just felt like these guys needed a little bit of something to bring them into the picture. He's just me thinking about what I want to play with. Based on some of the pictures we've seen. The shapes and patterns. The fact that I love metallic gold. Alright, I think we're ready for how often go the opposite direction then. If I did it this way, then when it's dry, I'll go the other way. Dr. And just that amount of time. Okay. I think it's done, but if I look at it later and when I do something else, I will come back. What I think is really sweet. It's got some interesting bits. 13. Painting #4, Part 1: All right, so for painting number four, Let's go in a different color directions. Let's play with the pinks and greens. You find obsessed with the turquoise and orange. Let's change it up. And of course, I want you to use any combinations of colors that you love. Piece of glass here I'm going to use as a palette, another palette situation I like, and I do want to use more of these wax. So let's do, let's start with some shapes that are, Let's pick something specific from this book. Look at those. You can just open it up and those are kinda interesting. Seed heads. I'm not making them as precise as they are. They're kinda octagon, let's see, 123 pentagon shapes that I'm not taking it quite literally. Remember to stay playful. And I think it was also Matisse. Might have been somebody else with one of the masters said that our job is not necessarily to create what we see in nature. I mean, people do botanical drawings and very precise and that's great. There's nothing wrong with that. That's just not of interest to me. I liked when he said, Our job is to create the feeling of it. The feeling. Rather than an exact literal representation. Look at that solo. See, oh my gosh, so beautiful. I'm going to make it touch. I have no idea where this is going. You guys asked me all the time, do you have a plan when you start? A lot of times now? I do not. These are cool though. Okay. What if we did just coming up like this? And then a larger one. And then maybe a fat one. Little. They have green dots, they have green and I'm the base of each of the little thingies, so we could put some of that. And these are the wax pastels that you could also use, oil pastel. The ideas that they're going to resist. The paint that we put over m. Let's take which they broke. So I'm gonna take my little since it's pointed foot a little bit of green in there. It's looking like amoebas now, isn't it? Let's see what other inspiration. That's pretty. Maybe I don't need anymore. Well, I know it will do. We will put some stems on here. Sort of be suggestive of stems. I love geranium leaf. Look at the shape of that leaf. Let's get some paint out now. Try for that shape. Well, very loosely. I want to get this olive, this is the olive green Winsor Newton. A little bit of that. Actually, I can use my other side of my palette paper, the pallet paper for gouache I like because I can reconstitute with water and it's just easier to keep track of. If I use my glass palette for that, then I might forget that it's there. And just see if we can make using this. Maybe add a little bit of this to him. This is that oceanic Duo Chrome with the parole quality to it. It'll just give it a subtle like luminescence. Got it all stirred up. And I'm just going to very loosely, I'm using this fan brush because it You can keep you from getting too tight and precise. Pretty. We're going to do another one, but I need a little more green. Right now. This feels like a very disjointed separate elements type of creation, but that's okay at this stage. We can address that. See how this brush kind of makes you be a little more playful. Living dangerously trying to do align with this thing. While laughing. Man, you can, you don't need the fan brush. Of course, I just wanted to show you. And then you can smooth out any fetuses you don't want. My oceanic watercolor is gotten pretty dry. It's years old, but it's fine. It's watercolor. My aunt used watercolors and she would have them for 1015 years and just reconstitute them. All right, let's see what happens now. If we take some of this chalky gouache, which is put on top of the resist because it's not remember, it's not gonna be transparent the way watercolor is. It's going to be more opaque. So the resist might show up differently. And I'm going to let these things bleed. Yeah. It does behave a little more differently compared to reuse the water. These still resisting. It almost looks like we painted on top. And if I see, it does allow me. I go a little thicker. I can cover up bits of it. That's kinda fun. Make me get a little more opaque and places. An interesting effect. That's what I loved about quiet. She can layer. That's interesting. We'll let that dry. And let's try some of this opera rose. This is a really bright, if it says opera is bright, think homeless, fluorescent. And there's a red over pink. But they pop, will always be a focal point. Notice that I'm holding the brush very lightly. Just allows for a little more freedom. I'm just playing. That dangerous to play. Sometimes it feels scary. But if you check in with yourself, there's no actual danger. Now what to do with these? I think we take that. I have some here. Yeah, I do some of that wash and had a bit of green to it. So we get that resist. It's more of a lemony feel. And add more water to this one. So it's a little later. Maybe not that late. Maybe take my gosh isn't dry. So it's not blending a little bit, but that's okay. We'll see what happens. Pretty teeny tiny dots are kind of fun. I could also just spatter my brush down here. Let's do that. Be more of a organic field. So remember when I said we'll work on unifying. What I did is I brought some of the green over here, the pink from here to here. The opera pink, the yellow throughout. The composition is still need something here just to balance this. So I'm thinking about maybe another green leaf structure here. The other thing that's bothering me composition wise is that these leaves are the same size. And I usually don't like, I want variety. So I can make one of them larger. And if I did that, it's gonna be this one. And I would just do it very lightly around the outside here. Maybe bringing some more of this. You know, what I think I'll do just to balance it out is just some simple strokes like we did on that scrap paper. Whereas the scrap paper, sometimes the things you're doing that are not thinking of looking at them and going really like that. Like the way these came out. And all that was was this big brush and his sideways like that. At them warm Senate? Yes, I do. Okay. Let's lit painting number four. 14. Painting #4, Part 2: Okay, a little painting number four cell. There's some really things that are really making me happy here. The colors. I don't know if you can see that the soft, metallic golden hear a little bit in here. These dots are just so fun. I feel like these almost. I think what we were doing, these leaves were doing geranium leaves and now these feel like uranium flowers. And I just really like it. There are a couple of things that I'm feeling. One is that It's not quite in the center. There's it's pretty close. It's just that this is coming up high over here and maybe not as much over here and it doesn't listen. I'm not trying to suggest that a successful painting has to be right in the center. You can find, I'm sure you've seen abstract paintings where there's just some color over here and then something white space, but there'll be something out there, something to balance. It might be the tiniest little mark. So we'll practice that maybe just some tiny marks here to balance that having us here. Then I thought it also be fun to maybe play with color on color with these geraniums and do some. This is fairly translucent. It's watercolor. So I thought it might be interesting to take some lighter gouache shapes and just put them in here. Not too many. Then maybe we'll take the gold pen over here. I'm not sure. So let's do the shapes first. And these are just, there's no one right idea. That's what's fun about this process. We're, we're playing and we're learning about what we like and don't like. I'm just taking a little bit of this. I love this color, this solid on Turner gouache, regular wash. And I'm going to add a little white to it. I'm gonna get a nice shaped bright Mason with a good edge on it. I probably will you add a little yellow to get solid on. I just want kind of an opaque color, but I need a little more yellow and mix and match the aggregation of the collage all the time. Just being aware that if I'm doing that care, if it's reconstituted with bladder or not. I think I'm gonna go a little lighter. This might also help balance out the heaviness here. Who's named the contrast will be nice. We shall see right here, am I putting these in any particular harder? Yeah, I kinda like that at ties in its hoping drama, I see this similar color here. Maybe that's why I thought of it. I don't know. It seems to help the balance a little bit. Right now about those gold lines. We can do another little branch ie thing. We could just do lines. Lines might be a nice contrast. Let's try some of those. Sometimes just sort of almost like here. I'll do them on a scrap. You can tell the scraps are a big part of the process. When you do something like this and almost like a fence fence post and I don't do them exactly symmetrical. Something like that can be just really interesting. So what I'm thinking about now still wet here. You can kind of overlap here. Or do I want it more up here? Well, let's start and see. And try not to be overly fussy when you're doing something like this because it will look like it was overly fussy. Instead of just looking more spontaneous, even though we did put thought into it. We want it to look spontaneous. Bring it out further. Sometimes I'll do lines and they end up being my favorite thing about a painting. That's fine. Now I'm just looking at it saying, Does that help the issue that I was noticing? And I think it does. The other thing that might help it is just a kind of whimsical set of leaves coming off of here. I always like to make my leaves. If you look at nature, they go in every direction. They're not symmetrical. I do think in terms of odd numbers. I think this is fun. I wanted to maybe come up here and be a little more. Coming out there a little bit. Little ones since they wanna do add numbers. I'm just compositionally, it keeps that. I guess naturally we like to look for pairs and it keeps the eye from compartmentalizing and putting him pairs. I'm going to go over these with a little more of the white color we made and warm it up just a tad. Which means add a little more yellow, lighten it up and try to get it sick here. I think this one will be done. Whatever that means, right? It will feel complete to me. That's what done means. That it feels complete to you. That it doesn't see, feel like something's missing or that. And by the way, I'm going in brushstrokes, the opposite way, just to kind of get good coverage. It's really some artists, some of the masters of painting should look finished. Leave something to the imagination. I like it. I think that's gonna be a good place to stop and think about your signature in these kinds of paintings as part of the composition. So like if I'm thinking about this rather than always going to the right bottom corner, I think it needs a little something right here. Since I'm going to use gold pen, It's going to be part of it. And I think that that's you can even sign in anywhere in here, anywhere in the painting you want. So now I feel like it's balanced. I feel like it's interesting. It has contrast. It is on a lighter shade. There's not a lot of dark here, but we have some dark on the stems. We have a little bit of dark in here in this data, bits of dark in the crown. But there's so much yummy stuff happening here that I don't want to keep adding and messing with it. And sometimes to coats is enough. But I may look at this and say like These are looking really opaque and nice, but I might want to add more to those. I don't know. It's probably enough. All right. You are done. 15. Painting #5, Part 1: So for painting number five, I thought we would use in a very, very expensive art supply. Just kidding. These are bristle brushes from the hardware store and I think they're like $0.50, maybe valor. And they make just great marks. And so we'll just make maybe more like tree bark situation on this one. Color wise, let's stay with the pinks and greens. Since they are so pretty. And I'm going to wet this brush. And I've got, if you can see on my palette, I've got the olive green at this end of the brush, in the oceanic at this end. So I'm going to get some interesting variation. I can go like this. We saw some park that was like this. Maybe grab a little bit more orange. Here. I did center mostly the I guess we can go a little further this way. I love that. You said we were gonna do pinks or we're going to add some pink and because, why not? A chip brush and I'm going to have a little less water. And at this time, he can control a lot of what happens with the amount of water. So I plotted it out with a paper towel. I do want intent more intense color, but I'm trying not to overwork, so I don't want to dip the brush into much that make sense. I love the way that pink mixed with the orange. These are two, even though Look, I have 1234. So I need to mix it up a little bit. Now that was a big chunk of the pink I had to work at, but try not to disturb it too much. You try to let the things settle. Okay. Because enough of the pink. Now I think I'm going to come back in and dabble a little bit with a small fan. You could also use just the edge of the chip brush. Something that gives you, I'm basically just dropping in a little bit more color where I wanted. You could use the edge of any brush actually. Because as it disappeared and we lose some of the intensity, that's all. That's all I'm doing is bringing some of that back in. Same with the pink. Before it dries too much. Not in all places. I just want to not lose it. And then same with the green. Some of the greens really faded in watercolor is trade as they dry. So if you do that, I create, I try to think about making it. This doesn't want to come out, making it more intense when it's wet because I know it's going to fade. This is already dry, but I can get in here and get a little bit of movement going. Like I said, you could do this with any brush. And I do love a little bit of that. Let's just get the tiniest bit of turquoise just to get some of the bluer tones that we're here. There's some blue that was coming through there. It's lovely. Little bit there. Delegate little painting. I think it's, you can't see the luminescence, but it's there from that Oceana color. I'm going to dab a little bit of that up. You can dab up watercolor paint really using a brush just so it doesn't. But let's leave that and come back to it. I was thinking about doing a spray on it. But we can always do that afterwards. So let's wait and see how we like it after it dries. Me. Show you a close-up though, the fun things that are happening in it. I mean, honestly, you could just take it just like this and frame it. And it would be a lovely little bit of color and interest in your home. 16. Painting #5, Part 2: Okay guys, this is so exciting. I'm so happy this happened in this class because this is exactly why I loved this type of painting. Remember, we did this with the GP hardware store brush. And I don't know if you can see it. I know you're all going to want to run out and buy that. That ready to go. My watercolor, the one with the metallic in it. But here is the dual Chrome oceanic, because whatever you add it to, it, just get the softest, most beautiful sheen. Okay, let's see and make sure you can see this. Alright, so this is why I love this happy accidents. So we did this and it's really cool the way it is. But if you turn it this way, look what it is. It turns into the landscape. And these look like trees, and these look like trees behind those trees. Then these look like trees and maybe rows of we were just an upper Michigan and the summer with the with the vineyards and you know, through reminds me of rows of vineyards and maybe these are fall trees down here or something. Who knows? Anyway, I just love that. I honestly think I'm not sure I want to do anything with it. The only thing I thought of was so let's say you want, let's say you didn't like the whole landscape thing and you wanted to leave it this way. Well, then you could come in with our botanical cells. And I thought this would be cool in there, just drawing in a very faint cold pan along here, or even in here, these little types of things. And I might do that anyway, just because I want to experiment with you, even though I liked the pain and the way it is. But let me look at that. So yummy. So you could do a lot of things to just come in here with a little bit of detail. But if I turn it this way, then my brain starts to say, Well, it's a landscape. So you'd have to do landscaping type markings. Maybe come in here and put a tree trunk and some branches. And then think about, well, what would you do here if anything? But I just really loved the way it is. So I think to make, so this is already a focal point. The I kinda comes here. He either here or here, and it comes down here to these colors. And then you could make a case that you could do some other things down here. But this is like drumroll. Do. I add some little goal tree trunk and some branches? I wish you could all vote right now. That would be fun. You'll have to let me know in the comments, WE should have shouldn't have added them or yes, you should. But since we're in the class, I'm going to just something subtle and we'll see what we think. It shouldn't show up much. So I don't think it has the capability to ruin this. And I think it might bring it a little bit, a little bit of structure and not too much. That's pretty. I just did three little tree shapes to kind of go behind that foliage. And I do feel like something's missing, something really subtle as missing down here. So maybe we'll just come in with something really delicate since this whole painting is pretty delicate, Isn't it? We don't want to come into something like this. When you have a really sensitive, delicate painting, soft painting, come in with dark black ink or anything like that. We want to keep in this subtle place. We could come over here and just do some little organic shapes. And sometimes people will talk about how much, how much of creating. This is a sort of cognitive thinking process. And then how much is intuitive where you don't want the cognitive there? And it's a great question. I go back-and-forth and I think you just saw me do it. I talked about cognitive cognitively, composition, what what might need or want. And then I just started as I was talking to you and this idea came to me intuitively. I like it because it was a little, it needed a little something here. Not too much. On this one. Making the signature part of the composition. I'm going to, this is the other place that it's a little bit light. So I'm going to sign it now so I can see if that gives it enough. And I'm going to put sometimes I signed with just my my my initials like that, but sometimes I do my whole name if I want more of that on the painting. So this one though, I just want to keep it simple since we talked about it being simple. So that gives a little, something there, kind of a little bit of gold here about GoBear. Maybe we could come in these almost seemed like tree trunks and just come through them like that. Let's see. The other place that I was thinking might need something is over here, but I want to make it really subtle. So that's airways. And I also don't quite like this green part is much the teal here. It's just the way I remember I did that afterwards and it didn't blend really well. So I'm going to try to accomplish two things by using dots, which are fantastic way to push something back and also add interest. I think that's all I'm gonna do. I just think it's so sweet. I'm I'm gonna be framing this one. It's perfect for a bathroom. And look how easy it was. We literally took that brush when this way, dab a little bit of coloring, let the color bleed. This is just very rewarding. Alright. That is painting number five. 17. Review and Flattening Tip: Let's review these and see what we learn. So this is the one that I used as an example that I had made before. And you can see here the ink, the gold ink is here and here, some lines. These sort of, this is probably my favorite part. These little cell-like structures. This is pretty cool and organic there. Family went to painting number one. And remember those 3D bumps are really sticking up. You can see them and they're, they're finally added. They almost look like spores in nature or little barnacles. I really liked adding this little detail. I think it'd be really interesting in abstract art to add with all of this. That's not representational. The contrast of adding something quite representational is nice, meaning that its representational meaning that it looks like something that we recognize. And we played with pastel on top of paint here, ink, ink below with the indigo and then ANC above with the gold. And then some posca pen here. And more oil pastel. This is the one that we covered up the bottom here. And I thought of another way that I've fixed the painting in the past where something like this has happened because you can see the gouache there, the contrast. So what I did is I just took the goulash all the way around and made it part of the painting. Kind of almost like painted in the background, but not the El Nino, not every little bit. And it really was a, it was a good solution. It worked in that painting. Then we did this one, which is just either I love all the bleeds here, the turquoise with the orange and the ink. You can tell the ink behaves differently when it bleeds than the watercolor does. And I just like that. The variety. We also did some representational details there. And a little bit of sort of, I don't know, maybe mushroom me thing here. Some gold dots. This really looks like a tree, doesn't it? Or a mushroom, see the stem. Then this painting, of course we can hold these anyway, we want this was a fun edition to get inspired by that bit of grass. We did the resist wax here and oil pastel here. Some sort of organic looking elements here. And pen and paint and that this was the fan brush. So much fun. Then we switch color palettes and just kinda went from, I don't know, the organic walk in the woods field to spring is here, a field. And we worked on composition with this one, giving it some balanced down here. And it's just a happy little painting. And then, you know how I feel about this. I just love the simplicity of it and the little bits that we did. I don't think I'll be adding more to it. So now I'm going to show you how you flattening these, see how they're just all a little bit warped. And when you go to frame them, some of them would work. This one, I think I already flattened, but it will work better for you if you flatten them. So I'm going to show you that next. I'm so glad that you joined me in this class. I had a bunch of fun creating along with you. And I wanted to remind you again to please put your projects in the project section so I can see them. And if you feel so inclined, review always helps our classes on Skillshare get more visibility. And I wanted to show you how to flatten these artworks. It's super easy So you take your artwork and maybe it's a little bit worked like this one. And you take a paper towel, you're going to wet, but you're going to squeeze almost all the water out of it. So it'll end up being really just a damp paper towel. And then you're going to lay your cards on a clean surface. That's important. Sometimes I'll use the kitchen counter or I've got some tables here in the studio. They are clean. And if you don't like, here's a book from the library, so you could even put it on that. But let's just pretend that because I want to show you how to use the book as a way that this says you are a clean surface. And then you're gonna take your damp paper towel and you're going to put it on top of the back of the painting. Remember it's the back, but the painting itself is on the underside. So here's my wet paper towel or damp. Damp. And then you're going to take books that cover the whole makes sure they cover the whole surface area. I sometimes will stack two or three books and leave it overnight. And you will wake up to the flattest part work you may have ever seen is really nice. Now if you wake up and you go to check it and it's still a little bit damp. You'll take off your bug in your paper towel. And if you're still a little bit damp, can you can take a dry paper towel and do the same thing and leave it another night, and that will absorb any moisture left while still keeping it completely flat. So that's a little tip for you. Happy creating.