Hand Painted Pots - Create an Art Garden in Your Home!

1. Welcome!: Hello, I'm Evan night in I'm, a freelance illustrator and owner of Fox and Crow Paper Co. A small stationery, greeting card and gift company Plants are wonderful whether you're growing herbs to brighten your meals or high oxygen plants to improve the air quality of your home. Or you just like being surrounded by the beauty of nature. Plants really improve the quality of life, and they're great to have around. Having hand painted pop through plants just brings more joy and creativity into your home, and they're a really, really great gift for plant lovers in your life. In this class, I'll share several different materials and techniques for creating beautiful hand painted pots. If you'd like to get in touch with me throughout this class, you can find me on instagram at Fox and Crow Paper Pro. I'm happy to answer any question to have and I look forward to hearing from you. Thank you so much for taking this class. I can't wait to see what you create 2. Materials: So let's talk about materials on. There's a variety of materials that you can use to paint your pots. The first material that you'll definitely need is so I highly recommend the terra cotta pots there, you know, affordable. They hold paint really well. You can get him at your local garden supply store, even get him online. I'm gonna be painting a kind of medium size because, like a six inch pot and a three inch pot. But these same techniques would also apply for during, you know, a really big plant, or you just need more of each material to do it. One of my pot examples. I'll be using acrylic paint, which, if you want to just work with materials you already have around the house, that would be a good place to start on. And they don't have to be the high, highest quality acrylic paints. The reason these acrylic is because it's a polymer based paint, which means it's plastic, so it holds strong for a really long time. It's waterproof, it's really fantastic. So you may want to seal your pot with something like this. So this will. Terra cotta. It is it's breathable so water can get through it. And, um, it could eventually degree the paint. That being said, this is not 100% necessary. I have. I live in Florida, so the sun is really, really bright, and the rain could be pretty intense in the summer. And I have a few planters that I've had out for over a year that I hand painted and did not use his Onley acrylic paint on and they're going strong's. So if you don't want to get this, you don't have to. But if you're really worried about longevity, then getting a seal is a good idea. So, um, if you're working with acrylics, you'll need a big brush like this to get the base of your pot painted in, you know, a solid color. Or you might want to do different colors for the base, and then you'll need small brushes to do your details. And, um, the other kind of pits that will be using are really fun. But you aren't might be less likely to have laying around would be a spray paint, and I would use a spray paint for the base of the pot on its with the spray paint. You would get a like a really even color all around, whereas with hand rushing might get like some variety of color. So it sort of depends on what look you're going for in what you enjoy. Doing more spray paints a little faster. So if you are wanting to do like a bunch of pots of gifts for people, might be a good idea to spray all the base colors all at once. The other material that we're gonna be using, which you probably you may be less likely to have used before or have lying around our paint markers. Now I love paint markers, and I highly recommend that you give him a try. The brand that I like the best are the on the deco color, and you can get them at Blake and getting online. You can get him at any art supply store. Really, Um, they are really fun and fantastic and allow you to get little details and, um, I find, like I'm able to be a little bit more free and loose with them, actually, so I always get ones that are fine line, which is like a pretty small line and extra fine line for teeny tiny details because I like doing all sorts of teeny, tiny little details. These a really fun. And most of the time, when I introduce students, you know, friends to them they, like, end up getting really into them and figure out all sorts of fun things they can use them for. I actually just got myself. I treated myself toe like a bunch of different color ones that I'll get to use. So I'm excited about that. And let me see. Is there any other materials that will need? Yeah, the on this depends on what kind of a maker you are. So some people like to work really loosely and just have an idea and start going at it. Some people like to really plan out what they're going to do and have it drawn before they start painting. Both ways of working are awesome. It's sort of like whatever works best for you. Whatever brings you more joy in your process. But this is a good trick. If you get a white charcoal pencil and you want to draw out on plan what you're doing first . Let's see, I wanted to do another flower right here. Um, then if you don't like it, it's really easy to just go. We kind of rub it away and it disappears. So if you were to do that and then paint over it, but some parts were sticking out then at the end, when the paint dries, you can just rub it away like that where, as with a with a pencil, they tend to be a little sharper, and sometimes they'll dig in and you'll see those pencil lines through the paint or beside the pain. So that's a nice little thing to get for yourself. If you're someone who likes toe drawn, plan out the details of what you're doing, so those are all of our materials. For one of my pots, I'll be doing just acrylic paint. And for another pot, I'll be doing theme spray paint and paint markers so you can choose. You know which video you want to go forward with when you're making your pot, the last material would be your plants, so you might be someone who's already growing a lot of plants, and you can, you know, propagate, make clippings and use your pots toe start new new plants from the plants you already have . But if you're looking toe, purchase some new plans. I highly recommend that you take a look if there's any independent nursery use or plant shops in your area. I have found that the independently owned plant shops that the people put a lot of love into their plants and you're likely to get the best quality plants. And when you spend it, independent businesses, you keep the money in your community. And it's just a good thing to Dio. If you live in my area in ST Petersburg, Florida, or the surrounding areas, I highly recommend you check out Wild Roots. It's my favorite plant shop, and it's independently women owned business. Um, and she always has the best plan, so just a little plug there. 3. Acrylic Painted Pots: Okay, so we're all set up to make our painted pot with acrylic paint. So I'm gonna be using I keep all my acrylic paint in this plastic box, and I just use the top of it as a pallet. I have my big brush. I have my paints. Now I'm gonna do this pot in, like a light pinkish color. I have this deep magenta and titanium white. I'm gonna mix them here. You wanna have enough paint to cover your pot entirely because it's really hard to mix the same color twice. It's no big deal if you don't and you have a little variety. I happen to like how that looks. But if you're really wanting it to be one solid color, then mixed extra paint mix more paint than you think you'll need. Okay, so these are brushed now. Usually, when you're painting that you have water tow, wash your brush and maybe to make your paint a little thinner. This is a project that I really only use water tow wash my brushes because I want my pain to be pretty thick. I wanted to really cover my pot and not be translucent at all. so I'm not adding any water to my paint, and I'm starting off with a dry brush. So that's the color that I've made mixed together. It's a light pink, and I haven't really evenly mixed in there cause I wanted to be a pretty solid color. Okay, so we are already to paint our pot. What I'm going to do first is turn this upside down. There's not like a you don't necessarily have to do it in this order. It's just how I like to do it. So I like to get the bottom first, spread my paint all around until it this way spread all around. I'll do probably a second layer, although actually this pain is going on really nice and thick. I might not even need a second liar, but, uh, let's see going around now. And I don't want my pain to be too lumpy, because if I leave like a big clump somewhere on, it'll it can peel off. So you want the paint to be, you know, thick enough that it covers the color completely, but not so thick that it's like glob, you know, and something different about using a paintbrush rather than spray paint. Is that gonna get brushstrokes? So that's something you'll see in. And if you want to use this technique than you embrace that so it's a pretty flat color, but there's some texture in it. Like how it looks. It's a more paint on our brush going around here. Actually, I might wanna wait. I'm gonna wait to do this bottom part until the top part arrives and I can turn it over. Now I'm gonna do my little based part of my pot have done the top of it. Okay, Now we got to be patient for a little bit, So acrylic paint dries really quickly. If I leave this for, like 45 minutes, it'll probably be dry enough to go. But what I usually do just to make sure it's extra dry and that I'm not gonna have any problems, is I go away from it. I go do something else for a little bit because otherwise I get too excited. And I, uh and I want to paint it right away. So I'm gonna go distract myself for a minute. We'll be right back once this is dry. Okay, so we want to wait long enough for our for our first paint painted areas to be dry. But excuse me, we don't want our paint are mixed color to dry, so you can always, you know, put some plastic over it that helps keep your paint went and fresh for acrylic paint. So But really, if you only wait like 5 10 minutes for it to dry, then it should you. The glob of paint that you've mixed won't be a problem. So let's see. Let's test this. If they're still little paint what they're So we're going to turn this one over. We're going to start painting the bottom here. It's okay. Winning. We'll get it all painted. You don't have to. You have to bark. I see. Find around here. And any time the paint gets, you know, starts to be a little bit sparse. So I'm not covering the whole thing. I just do another little dip in my big brush. My big brush. Let's see. No, Still got a little spot that needs painted over here. That's okay. Put that down. That you would actually put it right up against there. Now, let's see. This is looking dry and that that I can turn it this way. Now get a little more. Paint will eventually be a plant in care, so you don't really need to paint the inside. But I think it steals it nicer. And if you're giving it to someone is gift without a plan already in it, then you wanted to have a nice you know, fully pointed looked. So painting the inside of this now got a dip. And when it starts to get dry like that, that means you gotta read it back in your paint. Let's see, just again covering it with paint. You want it to be thick enough so that the paint completely covers the color of the terra cotta, but not so thick that it's gloopy and gloppy. You want to really take your time to spread that pain? Uh, now we'll probably do a little time lapse here, so you don't need Teoh. Watch me slowly painting this whole pot. - All right, there we have it. The base color off our first pot. Now, before we start doing our details with our small acrylic brushes, we're gonna want to let that completely completely dry. So it's a good time to go. Make sure your brushes washed and completely clean so that you can use it again in the future and to start thinking about what colors you're going to want to use on your pot. All right, are on. Pot has had enough time to dry, and we're ready for our next steps Now here's where. If you're someone who really likes to plan, you might want to get a piece of paper and some, you know, colored pencils or markers and draw out what you'd like to dio. Umm, I generally like to just start like having again start painting on it, because if I don't like what I paint, I can always just let it dry and then paint another layer over it as a base color and go again. So that's the way I enjoyed toe work. I mentioned the, uh, the pencil, the charcoal pencil. Before that you might want to use. And this might be the sort of like medium between. Drawing it out on a piece of paper would be just drawing. Something's let you know what your plan is on here, so I sometimes use that I sometimes don't for this pot. I am going to use it because spacing is important. So my vision for this is it's like it's a pink pot and I want to do, like, really bright blue purple flowers, kind of going around it and then maybe an abstract pattern of blue towards the top of it. So I'm not 100% sure how it will turn out yet, But I have that base. So I'm just gonna plot out where the flowers will be here. So I'm gonna do just like a little line here. The flower will come up this way. I'm not even gonna draw the detail of the whole flower. I'm just letting myself No, I probably want to do it, maybe four, so that it's even so I'm gonna go over here to the other side now do a line, and then about halfway between those two would be right here. Then, uh, on the other side of that would be over here. Okay, so I'm gonna need to mix my color, so I'm gonna just do the green right now for the for the sten and Leafs of the flowers. So I'm gonna go over here back to my palette, and I think this will be the right green, but I'm gonna put a little bit of it down, and then I see I'll show it to you so that right there is the green that I put down. It's nice, but I want it to be kind of muted because I want the thing that stands out to Billie the Blue Flower. So too muted a little bit on this background. I'm actually gonna add a bit of this pink can. This stuff isn't You don't necessarily need to know it or do it for your pot, but it's just always fun to think about colors. Uh, see some adding a little pink over there and I'm taking the green and I'm mixing it in. See, let's take a look at that. This right here is the color I'm mixing. That looks like a little too pink to me. So I'm gonna do another scoop of the green and mix that and all right, that's starting to look good to me now, before where we thought before we did the base of our pot and we didn't want there to be any water that picks who wanted to be sick. We still don't want our paint to be too watery at this point because we want it to be opaque or, you know, we don't want it to be translucent. We wanted to really, like, be a strong color, but we might need a little water. Teoh, help the paint. You know, be smooth. Help the paint move. So let's see, I want to take this little brush. Teeny, tiny little brush because I want again. I don't want my stems of the flowers to be the star of the show. I I just I'm gonna want those to be pretty thin, so I'm using a thin brush. I'm picking up my pots just now, And that's where I drew the first line. So I'm gonna go right ahead. Paint a line like that. Cool. Now, water accident. I'm gonna want to do my I don't want to do some leaves, so I'm gonna go this please. What's cool about acrylic paint is is it? It's thickness, especially if you don't add water in. So if you don't like something, you can always just paint over it. And if you, um or you can add like layers of detail. So I'm just doing these leaves and stems very simply right now. But I can go back in later with another color and add more detail onto it, if I would like. Okay, so we have our first flower l a little leaf there. Now, I'm gonna finish this. Normally, what I would do if I was painting this and not teaching at the same time is I would use my green paint and I would go around and I would paint each of the stems first while I have that color ready. But because I think the best way to teach you is to do is to show you, like, you know, one it. Oops. Oops. One area painted on Ben to go to a time lapse. You can actually really see the details of me painting it. I'm going to do it in a slightly different way. So I'm gonna complete this flower, and then I'll do a shot where you can see the whole the whole process in detail. So actually, this is good that this happened because I can show you something important, which is I'm just gonna any wet paint take off there and I'm gonna take, um I guess I'll take this brush. So you have a mistake like that? You get a little bit of your color. Still have my pink color there. Let's go over it. Like that. Oops. This brushing, little wax. Latest washed. It paints less thick. That's okay. Go over it again. And when that dries, it will be the same color as the background. And like, it was never there. Okay, so now I'm going to get my blue color. I really like this ultra marine blue, and I'm gonna put that down on my palette. No, it's OK when he okay, um, I actually I almost never use a color just out of the tube. I usually mix. Always makes it a little bit, but this ultra marine blue is really the color that I'm looking for right there. So I think I'm actually not gonna mix anything with it. Go ahead in here. Oops. And I'm gonna start painting my big blue flower that I want to really stand out. You see it? Let's see. - All right. There you go. There's are our first flower. Okay, so now I'm gonna switch your camera. and gold so that you can really see the details of so there you have it. It's a pretty simple process to just use acrylics. And again, if you want to use your triple thick glaze or any kind of glaze to just keep it extra safe that have real longevity. You would spray this before, for you started using the acrylic paint. Then you would paint it. And then once it was dry, you would spray it again. You can get these ladies in glossy or matte. It really depends on what your aesthetic preference iss that's about it for the acrylic painting. Sometimes I like to do work like this where it's there's, like a lot of negative space, and it's just a little bit and that's awesome. And then other times I like to do, like, really busy, you know, full plans, and it just depends on what you prefer. And what's nice is you always can add more right, so I might leave this for a few days before I put a plant in it to see if maybe I do want to fill in a few more flowers in these negative spaces that were maybe I like it just like this. It depends. You know where you're going to put it and what your preferences are. So that is it for doing an acrylic like a just acrylic paint pot. Our next video will be about using spray paint and using on Art Deco color markers. So even if you don't have that those supplies yet, it might be fun to check it out and do some new kind of pots. 4. Paint Marker and Spray Paint: All right, So we're gonna move on to our, um, our spray paint and paint marker pot. But before we get going on the pot, I really want to take a moment to introduce you to these paint markers, the deco color paint markers. So when it comes, it'll come each one individually field in plastic. You just take that all. And I'm gonna show you the difference between the extra fine and the fine line. I recommend you get both, but depending on what your style is and what you're looking for, one might work better for you than the other. So this is the fine line, and you can see that tip right there. Now let's open the extra fine line so you can see the difference. It's like, almost like a Sharpie size and then, like a fine tip pens, eyes. So when you first open them, you'll see you won't be able to actually hear all gravel scrap from my paper on using to protect my table. They're not actually able to paint with them yet. You have to prime them so you can prime them by taking them and see this. Yeah, and pressing them down on a surface on again. Not a surface that you don't want stains. So this I have paper down here. The's paint markers will stain like for real, for real. You will not be able to walk him out. There we go. All right. We're starting to get our colors here. You can see the kind of wine that they make. They're nice, nice and right and opaque. The color is really great on these, and I will do the same thing, will shake it with our extra fine line. I'm shaking it and then I'm Fred hopes that blocking and then I'm pressing it down over and over again until the ink comes out. So I've opened my windows because these they're not great. Teoh breathe in an enclosed space, they're pretty safe. I've even used them with kids before, but I have a chat with the kids about safety and about, You know, if you work like this really close to it, that it's not gonna be good for your head. And so, you know, make a judgment call on if the kids your your kids or the kids you're gonna do a project with can handle this the safety of this? Obviously, no, like, really, really little kids who might put in their mouth That wouldn't be good for anybody. So, um, let's see. We're gonna do the extra fine line. So right here, you can see with these lines. The smaller lines are the extra fine lines, and the bigger lines are the fine line. So and you can get really, really big ones, too, of all different sizes. These are the ones that I find the most useful in my work. So when you've got your windows open or you've set up to work outside, you've got something covering your surface. Then you'll be ready to work with. So let's get to propping our pot so I'll head outside in a moment with my spray paint to paint my pot. If you like again, this would be a point at which you could do your on your your glaze coding spray on your terra cotta before you start anything and let that try. If you're wanting that to be extra safe from the elements and then you'll be doing your spray paint, read all of the directions on your particular spray paint to make sure, using it safely. Spray paint should not be used inside. And if you're using it for eight an extended period of time, you're gonna be wanting to even outside where a face covering. So I'm just gonna be doing one pot, so I'm making a judgment call to just carefully do it and not bring too much in. All right, let's head outside. All right, so we're outside, and I got my paper to put down. I've got my terra cotta pot right here, and I've got my spray paint so on. The first thing I'll do is I'll shake my straight up. No, actually, I'm gonna move you guys down. Worry. Okay. All right. So I got down first. Like this. Do a test spray. All right. That's looking nice and bright. We're not gonna want to get too close ups. I take a look at this. How nice that is that colors so bright and strong. And then I'm not going to flip this over this way till that paints dry. So to put this guy down and I'm gonna dio sorry. My dogs running towards go away winning. That's not good for doggies. Okay? All right, So we have to be patient for a moment while that dries. Looks like I might have even gotten a little too thick on you Can do multiple layers with spray paint. So, uh, you want to kind of keep it at a distance and get an even level? I might be doing it a little too closely right now in my effort to try to keep it all in frame on the camera. All right. Something finger touch tests that's nice and dry. Flip that over. All right, this is super fund for this one of, actually, I'm gonna have to really do it sideways, So I'm gonna head over to the grass, and they don't want to get spray on this pavement right here. Okay? Sef We're gonna get to spring this, all right? They will be it down so you can actually do down here. You see it? Normally I would go around it. They'll turn it for you. All right, then. We want to get the inside, too. All right. It looks like we got it. So you have your spray painted pot now, And, um, just to know, on spray paint, you can get glossy spray paint. You can get mats. Brave paint. I tend to like how Matt things look, so that's what I got. Um, and it's a really you'll see that. It's like a very nice solid color. We're ready to work with our deco color markers right now. So just a quick note about color palettes. You could do a totally beautiful piece of art using one caller or two colors, like sometimes it's really nice. Did like I might take a pot like this That's turquoise and do just white on it. That's really subtle on and pretty for this kind of in the mood. We did some flowers already, and I'm super in the mood to do a really floral pot here, so that's not what I'm gonna do this time. But that's a super fun thing to do, to to just pick one color, and it's more cost effective. You only need to buy one color them, so I'm gonna do flowers. So I'm gonna do need to pick out colors for the stems of the flowers and for the flower part of the flower. Andi, since these are all new on new paint markers, I just treated myself to a bunch of new ones. I need to prep them all. So I'm going to use, I think, by lying yet these will be my three colors off three different color stem. So, like a forest screening a little limey green and turquoise green on. And then for my flowers, I'm going to do on definitely this tank. These are shown me that I got to take the plastic off of, um, so the pink and this red. And let's see, I think I might do orange or yellow. I'm gonna put the pink and red on first and then decide if orange or yellow will go best with it. So I'm gonna prime all of these on all of these colors and the ones I'm doing now, I'll do some extra fine details at the end, but the size that I'm propping right now, we're all just fine. So I'm gonna together take him up. They want this fall, take him up, okay. And then I'm gonna open them, and you can do a couple at a time like this, and let's see out of it over here. Can you see I'm gonna move up? So you can. So and you'll see I'm going like this. And sometimes it takes a long time, but you'll start to see. Let's see what we starting to see it on the orange. You're starting to see it. A little bit of the color come down in the pink. You're seeing it a lot, and you want to just gently. You don't want slamming them just gently up and down like that until you're seeing color appear. So those two are ready. So I'm gonna go ahead and close those and put them in my ready use pile. I'll do these three. And again, I'm gonna put them just right on my paper Evenly and down. Up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up! They don't want Teoh injure my markers at all. Right now I'm just gently going up, Down, up, down, up, down. And then as soon as one, the yellow started to show color. So I'm gonna put a cap on that. But my ready pile And OK, both greens are starting to show In my last two to arm, I read her quite restrictive again. Cut down, up, down, up, down! That turquoise started working. Oh, I already did that for quite one earlier. Okay, Red, take it down. Down, down. Okay, so I find this really enjoyable to do. Some people find it annoying, but it's it gets your markers ready. And you only have to do that every so often you have to shake your markers. But you only have to do this thing the first time you use. All right, So I'll do the same thing with this video where I'll start painting here, and then I'll switch to a time lapse so that you can see from above. You know what? What we're up to. So let's see. I'm gonna pick out the first garment, this'll one. And I'm not gonna draw anything out now because I wanted to be, uh, really, like, full and things layered over each other so it doesn't really need to be planned so much. It's just all at as I go. So get that 1st 1 on, and then I'm gonna add leaves on right now to, and I'm gonna dio patterns in my leave. So lines in my teens And since I have this color out, I will go around and at a few of these right now. So my details and and I'll layer more of this color in later, but I like having my colors somewhat evenly distributed. So So we bought our second pot. Uh, you got all our flowers painted on, and I want to show you an example of something that you could do with the extra mile marker . You can do all sorts of stuff and what's great about the um yeah, I gotta get going. What's great about the deco color or pit markers in general is that you can layer them over each other to in there, and they're totally brightened, opaque, which is great. So I want to add, like, kind of this, like almost Disney ish sparkle stars in here to make the whole thing feel like a enchanted flower forest. So I got my extra fine marker set up the same way, and I'm just going in and doing a little star detail, so show you I'll do a few and I'll show them to you. So this kind of little detail, and if I wanted, I also could go in and do something like Let me L d one is an example for you. I could go in on top of this, say, pink flower and paint over it, uh, paint over what I've already had painted and kind of do a bit of an outline on it and add that kind of detail like I just did on the pink flower. Um, or even like, let's see another one. Let's do on the orange. Just like a little dot details that just had a little extra something. I always think that these little details really bring you in tow. Whatever little world you're creating more, that kind of a thing can also be really, really nice. But mostly I'm gonna leave. I'll do a few more of the flowers with detail, but mostly my detail are going to be these little magical type things. So we've got our happy little part of for two happy little pots and you can mix. I often times will do an acrylic paint base. And just cause I have more of that around on, um, or color variety with it. And then I will do you no details all the details with by Deco color so you can kind of mix and match things in whatever we're due some decisions for your final as I'm finishing these little details on my hot. My little magical sparkles everywhere. I want to talk about the Deco color markers a little bit more, so they they dry pretty quickly, But you might want to take before you kind of like rotate to the next area, or especially for rotating the area. To go down on fabric or down on table, you might want to take a moment and blow on it. What I usually try to do is do with section, let it dry for a moment and then flip to the next side. So I mean, it shouldn't take more unless you're doing like, you know, putting maybe even too much paint on or layering too much. It shouldn't take more than 30 seconds to a minute for it to dry, and you should sort of it is pressed down on it, and there's like a little like, kind of a blob of color. You can take that off, or you could just blow on it and give it an extra moment. Teoh to dry. All right, 5. Thank You!: Thank you so much for taking my class. I can't wait to see what you create. Please post your pots here on skill share. Or if you'd like to, you can find me on Instagram at Fox and Crow Paper Crow to share what you've made. If you enjoy this class, you might want to take a look at my other classes on creating family crests, greeting cards, artists, prints and stickers. And please take a moment to rate this class and let me know any other classes that you'd like to see for me in the future. Thanks so much body.