How To Paint Abstract On A Big Canvas

1. How to paint abstract on a BIG canvas: Hello Lovelace and welcome to my class on how to paint abstract on a canvas. My name is your libido and I've been painting abstract since 2012. For me, painting is all about problem-solving and very harmonious use of color. So if you like what you soon right behind me, then you might want to take a look at this class. This is not a class on how to recreate this exact painting, but more a way to let inside my studio and see how I approach a painting, how I approach colors and mark making and texture. And then for you in turn to create your own abstract paintings. 2. Color Theory: Lets do quick dive into color theory. Before we start. This is a color wheel. And what do you want to be aware of when painting abstract with lots of colleagues is that colors opposite each other on the color wheel. So for example, yellow and violent, they will create a muddy brown that looks Nazi. And the same goes for reds and greens. And blues and oranges. Always cross these. It's not gonna be pretty if you mix them with each other. But if you place them next to each other, they can create a really vibrant, strong effect that enhances the painting. So if you planned colors next to each other, like you have a yellow and then you have a yellow green in the new figurine renaming. And many of the target is to go from yellow to turquoise. That's something you can do. Something that's ammonia said something where you won't create Matt. But if you then from the turquoise or these, if you have that on your brush and you go exactly into a deep red right afterall. So personally, I use a warm yellow, a primary yellow, magenta, and real dark Prussian blue. And I also have a turquoise on hand and the viridian green. And I don't do too much, enter the signal, read into the oranges. I create these when I use some of the neon pink with a yellow. But I make sure never when I have the warmer and warmer yellows, never to go into turquoise in order to keep my palate clean, in order to keep the vibrancy of my paintings. Some artists like to double their colors like their user, viridian green, Not right out of the tube, but they put a bit of red in it to tone down the vibrancy. I personally am not a big fan of that. I don't like tone down colors as you might be able to see, just from looking at me, looking at my paintings, I live for vibrancy. There's a reason I used neon colors or in neon pink, a fluorescent pink in my paintings. There's a reason I use highly pigment and colors and, and take care of the color wheel. Whenever I paint. 3. Composition: There are so many good classes on composition and focal points that I will only very, very shortly dive into this. So you know what I'm talking about? Basically, if you have a rectangle, you can use the rule of thirds to divide it into equal sections. And if you want to make it easy for yourself, you will set the focal point at either of these crosses. So for example, you can make a focal point where making a very detailed doc, something right at this section. And you have created interest. It's much more interesting than having focal point is right smack in the middle. You can do that as well. But this works better for some reason. So if you want to make it easy for myself, have focal point at either of these crossroads. I don't go like I don't when I started painting, I don't start out with, Oh, my focal point will be here. I just laid on color and I move the canvas around. And when at some point a composition emerges by itself, I find out how I can make sure that the focal point will differentiate itself and be stronger by itself compared to the rest of the painting. So this is my focal point. I can do the same as well with having a light pot in the middle and lot of darkness around it. So you can do it either way. And I also talk about adding detail to a focal point. So if this, for example, is your focal point, then I will, for example, have Movement leading up to it. So the I traveled across it and will be led to it. And then also Texture and do not move details surrounding it. Also, if you're not sure, you're contrast is big enough, the values between your different kinda saw strong enough. You ten. Just a quick example here. Let's make a new ten this. So, okay, we magenta and yellow high. And then we have dark blue. That's almost black. We do things with it. And hey, let's also add some hate turquoise. So if you're not sure, okay, this looks kinda cool, but I don't know if there's enough contrast and different values in it because this could be all like this could be the same. Bonuses is really hard to see. We can take a picture of a painting at this stage and just put it into black and white mode. So in this program, instead of taking a picture, make me the picture black and white through editing. And this program, I can just use one of these, one of these filters. And you see we are very dark, so you have very, very light and we have submit hones in between. If I look at this composition wise, I would then decide, ok. So this kinda can work. Maybe make a wash with a dark tone and get rid of all of this to make this the focal point and those at some detail. Oh, let's see. This is a very, very simple way to create a focal point. They have very many different ways and this is just really sought. Quick way to explain what I'm talking about the terminology. But this is how I go about it. 4. Art Supplies: So first things first here are all the supplies are used to paint the painting behind me. Collapse. Really important if you use colors that might be dangerous or panes at risk of damaging the skin. Always take care what your label says. And it says no excessive skin contact, habitats, paper pellet or a normal palate. I personally prefer paper pellet because you can just get a new page whenever you're done, no cleanup needed. My absolute must have colors and those are my primers as well. I use primary yellow, quinacridone, magenta, absolute favorite pink in the world, and Prussian blue. I also use a lot of titanium white. This is Lucas brand, titanium white. That's a bit more liquidity is what I prefer. Fluorescent pink system three, data around me, best, neon pink I found yet halo turquoise, the radian shoe from Holbein acrylics, also heavy body acrylic to get different facts and textures and your paintings you wanna use mediums. Is a gloss medium, a fluid medium that It's almost like watering down your acrylics without the damage water can do to the pigment and heavy gel gloss, both from golden because I use golden colors and they, I know they will play well with each other. Water containers, brushes, different sizes for different marks, some balls to mix the mediums in our uses for the fluid medium and I'm heavy gel medium on my palate palette knives. Now that we have all the supplies we need, we can begin to paint. 5. Layer 1 - part 1: I usually start out with a colour combination in my head. For this one, I wanted a really dark navy blue and a mix of like peachy neon right next to it. It didn't turn out the way you wanted to, but they never do. I always start with this initial color combination and then they surprise me and something else happens, but I still like it. So the way I start out, I get my pallet ready and get a clean palette for cleaner blank canvas. And I organized my colors, I start lightest to darkest, so it's yellow. I get a bit of white and they're always make sure to have a decent amount of white on my palette, magenta and Prussian blue. I also squeeze out a bit the green and the Turkers, because for this painting, I want to use all the colors. I really like to use paint tube directly on the canvas. So before I start going into the color, I did my brush into water first to get it a bit wet, wipe off the excess. And then I start going into the colors. I try to move my brush constantly and always in a dance like motion across the canvas. And music plays and a really important part for me in painting. And also standard EC, me standing annealing. Occasionally, not only to reach different parts of the canvas, but also to remain free and I'm Hindemith and my movement. So if you ever feel stuck or not loose enough, make sure to change either the angle of your painting or the way you hold your brush. All the music you're playing in the background. I made sure to record as much real-time footage of me painting as possible. There will be at least one time-lapse video in between. And in some cases, I am listening to music while painting. In that case, I will strip the audio and put different music on top because of copyright issues. You can always for wat to play speed of the video. If watching me paint at normal realized speed becomes the boring. I personally, when I watch other people pain and watch instructional videos on painting, feel it really important to have the real time footage. Not only comes me, but it also shows me how the paint is laid down and also doesn't give this wrong idea of how fast the painting comes to life. Painting can take a really long time and each mark is set with a purpose. So in this day and age where everything needs to be fast and available now and you need to be perfect. It's something you'll learn in a matter of days instead of in the middle of years. I feel like stepping back, slowing down and showing you real-time and what it takes is really important. So in the beginning stages and also later on a work occasionally add water as I go. Not only am I really, am a bit precious with my pains because they cost so much money. So I want to make them last as long as possible. But also I really like the watercolor effect it creates. So watered-down pains don't have a good history. And being able to stick to the Canvas, it's something along the lines of the medium and the acrylic paint and the pigments that would one day have get destroyed by adding too much water, but you can make sure then the pigment will not fall off the canvas. If you go over again in the end with an acrylic medium and bond pigment again to the candidates. So really lock B effect water has on my paints, in my paintings I like the drips. You can see me use tripping a lot and I really like the Sheehan is of it as well. 6. Layer 1 - part 2: I normally, when starting out with painting, I don't add white to early. I usually want to build a good underlayer of translucent paints first to have something that will show through and create depth and layers and the end. But this time around, I think I started too early with White. The first layer therefore looked bit Fletcher mean, and we'll compare that with different layers of mediums later. I really like the different marks you can make with your brushes. So I you will use and almost Dr. rush for scrubbing on my canvas, I will load the brush with water for drips. And translucency is either use mediums for translucency is I will use mediums for impasto painting for almost like a butter cream texture of pigment. Okay. So I always make sure to pain besides early on, I'm not a big fan of framed canvases, so painting the sides of my, of my odd wax is a must. Oops. See you next week. Switch have rush sizes as often as possible for different marks and the smaller brushes will be used where you want to draw the eye of the viewer. It will create more detail while bigger brushes helped you express the movement. And that's bands like the whole canvas and draws the eye to the Ben focal point where you can add a bit more detail, the smaller brushes. That's wonderful. Whenever I introduce a new element into my painting via the new color or a different size brush. I make sure to put it on different spots on the canvas to make it as cohesive as possible. So for example, in this case, I put a bit of neon pink in the middle here, but it's not staying in one spot and put it also a bit to the left. And I repeat the neon pink I already put to the top, left and right. So when your eye recognizes the neon pink, it will travel across the canvas. You lead the eye of the viewer. And by doing small things like this, where you want the eye of the pier to go. Sweet. It usually takes me 15 to 20 minutes to cover canvas until the point where if I would continue working on it, I would model the colors. So this is the moment where I step back and let it dry and maybe work on a different piece. In the meantime. 7. Layer 2 - part 1: That's a good point also to just change your pain border clean your brushes, are you can use this time to ten canvas around and get a bigger picture of what has been happening. Because here, when you're with a big canvas and you paid really close to it, you get lost in the details for you fast taking a step back every 20 minutes or so and see if you're going where you want to go is good practice. Also turning your canvas can help you get unstuck. So if you don't know where to go next in your piece, what color you want to add, like which details gonna be your focal point. Turning the canvas around can help get clear on what this finding is trying to say to you. And trying to become also when you tend to use your brush up and down a lot, just turning your Canvas helps you break out of that fresh pattern and give you more variety. So when i then, after giving the painting bit of time to drive, when I then go back and again, I sat out in this case, we're putting the toys color already where there is turquoise to create ducks again, I also use a similar color like the green to create almost blacks colorful docs because I never use blight and never use black, but it do NAEP dogs and my paintings for contrast reasons, I normally layer or the dots on top of each other credit colorful blank. So I've turquoise and then I might add Prussian blue, that's my darkest color. Then I add green again, and then I add quinacridone, magenta because green and magenta together, you normally say create a muddy brown because it's green and red, but they are so dark, they almost create a violet black and then add the real dark Prussian blue to it. And it's just a colorful, really, really dark, dark. And you can either let them dry in between before you add a new color on top or you can see what happens if you try whacking them, went and read. You see me squinting my eyes a lot while painting. It helped me see the value so that really lights in the doc, docs in my painting more clearly. And then he can see them in order to see the overall composition. And if the ISS is already compelling Albany to trade more dogs or where I need to create more lights for the contrast to be stronger? Yes. I also use my paper towels to remove paint from a canvas with a bit of water and remove the pain I just laid down when I feel I made a mistake. And you don't want that to be that occasionally removing paint or parts of painting and you just like Don gives you another form of texture. I really like. It's almost like the paint is, it's resolving into kinetic. Okay. So paintings for me, constant Problem-Solving. The moment I laid down a color, I need to balance it. I need to find its brought that its cousin, I need to create harmony or this, this is at least what I tried to with my pieces to create. Not only tension and contrast, but also ammonia tension, harmonious contrast that's nice to look at. That makes you feel things and that just catches your eye. Okay. 8. Layer 2 - part 2: Always remember to keep painting besides, and I'm telling you it's so much easier now while painting. And then later on when you finish, just keep painting your sides. That bag on the canvas, squint your eyes so you don't get to loosen the details in the early stages. And if you don't like something, wipe it off, why bid-offer could still wet all paint over defense dry. I can make a lot between dry scrubbing and like choosy dollops of color in the Canvas. You can create interest in detail with layering, the scrubbing, while the thicker laid on paint can be worked with weight and which it lat long the width, and create different hues with surrounding colors. So I always make sure to use both methods a lot. Okay. Sure. Okay. For instance, see and the swoop scoop. 9. Layer 3: So after another 20-minute session, I usually use the drying time to take pictures and videos for my Social Media, for my Instagram, for my website. I edit them on my phone and I applaud them to Dropbox to save storage space. I also pose to my patriotic and I answer comments on social media. I drink lots of water. I use my regs on my drying times for my paintings to be as productive and sharing as possible. When the painting dried. In this stage, it looked way to call it for me. I didn't like it at all. So what I did to work against it and mix the yellow wash, I use the fluid medium with my primary yellow to change the temperature of the piece and the whole feeling drastically and the drips that creates when it used medium, a lot heavier than when you use water, sticks to the canvas so much better. It also leaves a slightly raised texture, so it's not nearly as much as the heavy Zhao I will use later on. But it's already a way to create different forms of texture. New piece. Okay? Yes. The one thing I see beginner artists do is be stingy with their pains. And I get it. I've been there too. I had to save up in order to avoid the colors I wanted the thing. And so the more generous you are with your colors, the richer your painting will look in the end. You can fought an amateur painting pretty easily by the amount of pain they didn't put on the canvas. So next to the yellow, I edit, call turquoise wash. By the colors mix, they create a green that compliments the rest of the callous. Well, a green direct came form, but you wouldn't have had the same effect. But Terracotta that's already on the canvas and the yellow that's already on the canvas mixing a green, we'll make a green that fits the overall feeling of the canvas because their colour components are already existed on it. I also mostly at the turquoise watch where there's already a lot of turquoise happening. So I tried to stay true to what I already laid down in this instant. I will turn the brush and my handle lot Web painting and I use a different side and edges of the bristles are more dynamic movement across the canvas. And see for yourself and try how moving your brush in different ways helps you make different marks. 10. Layer 4 - part 1: Initially, my painting was too cold for me and I went in with a yellow wash to warm it up a bit. The thing is now it was way too yellow. I showed an in progress picture of this painting to a friend and she said it reminded her of mangoes. I don't want my paintings to remind people of mangoes. So again, I have to go back in. Well, obviously I had to go back and because it wasn't finished, but now I had to go back in and reduce. The yellow line is the way you go about it is I use a smaller branch and go into the colors I already have on the canvas. In this case, I defended the quinacridone magenta. And where this magenta on the canvas already, I just add on top of it. This creates depth. This helps me make a smooth transition between the pain that's already dried and create new elements on top of it that merge with different layers I've already created. Occasionally I will also introduce some agenda or then different colors to other parts of the painting as well. But for starting out, for finding my proof for getting reacquainted with painting, I add the same color where already exists on the canvas. Yes. Okay. Okay. Okay. Now it's time for the heavy gel gloss. It's almost like butter cream. For your painting. It's almost like frosting cake, the official hers impasto. If you've raised texture on your painting, it just adds a heavy chunk of texture who you're painting without wasting expensive pigment. And I start out with adding it where the color is already. So I have the yellows on my palette after pinks and I have the blues. And I just add a bit of a heavy gel gloss into them and add those butter cream streets where they already belongs. So yellow on top of yellow and the ducts to dogs. And then after I did that for HD, I added as a contrast to other colors as a pop. So a light blob on a dark spot or yellow next to a violet. As a complimentary contrast, I will add more texture closer to the focal point of the painting where I want to draw the eye of the viewer. And at the same time I'm very conscious of the flow and movement within the painting. So I will work with it and then again, occasionally break it and you have to experiment a bit and see what works for you. And also with the impasto painting, never forget the edges covered the edges. 11. Layer 4 - part 2: Okay. So it's cool. Okay. Okay. I get slower in applying color the clothes. I come to finishing a painting. I stepped back and I just look, give yourself the time to just look. 12. Layer 5: While for the first four layers you saw me create and paint in real time. For the fifth layer, I have a timelapse for you. I needed more darkness and also more coal towns in the piece. So I'm adding Prussian blue where it hasn't been before. I'm also adding a tiny bit of glue into the why to have an icy cold Wyatt to add to the middle. And then again to work against the coldness of the blue and the warmness of the yellow, neon pink set exons. 13. Layer 6: So let everything dry. And I think at this point I also turn the painting around again. I was solenoid and this painting because it didn't go the way you wanted it to. I decided to be radical and added in neon pink wash over it. Normally I only go with one or two washes the piece. I've already had several washes down at this point and adding a third color like this. And on top of the yellow Washington Turkers wash, it could go really wrong. I also told you that listening to music is really important for our painting practice. And this is what I did. I put on a track list of really upbeat music to keep me going in order to move forward with this piece. You can't hear it for copyright reasons, but I was jamming. It just wasn't going the way I wanted it to. And I will almost completely hover this whole painting in neon pink. At least it looks like this. The good thing with washes though, it dries a lot less vibrant than it looks initially laid down. And the neon pink creates wonderful mixes with the colors. And then he's wonderful new tones and shoes. I also need to stand up just to have unhindered movement and to become unstuck, I have a bigger brush. My movements become bolder and more erratic, just a lot less inhibited. And that's what this piece needed at this moment. That's why I also had to use a music which makes you move. Find music that makes you move. If you're unhappy with the painting. I edit a tiny bit of pink wash to go back to my initial idea of a peachy neon opposite a dark blue, adding the yellow, neon pink, orange. And then later on I will go in with a bit of white and then add a bit more wide mall. Why didn't more white and so on. Because this painting is full of metazoans at this point, adopt dogs. I needed different light pinks and low contrast, but then the piece, it needed to lighten up a bit. From. 14. Layer 7: So this is a new view for you. I decided to have a handheld camera for this because it's really hard to show you the whole painting and also how I move my brushes. I decided to show you more personal and close up view of me painting. I'm really not nice with my brushes. I never buy expensive brushes and ice grew up a lot. I really go mainly for the cheapest option. And if you want to paint the way I do, I would advise you to do the same. The more annoyed I get with a painting, my brush strokes become. So. If a painting really pisses me off, it has a really good vibrant energy. 15. Layer 8 - Final Layer: So when everything is dry, I go in again with a turquoise wash this time on the right side. And quinacridone magenta water on the left side. I try to live out pass a really, really like if I go over them by accident, I will use a wet paper towel to clean them off. Again. At this stage, I make sure to look for the values. I tried to make the darker parts of the painting even darker and the lighter parts lighter for maximum contrast. And what I also really like about the wash. And this particular layer is, I put, in the previous slide, I put light pink, pink wash, Liniang pink wash mixed with white. I put those on darker parts of the canvas. And when I now go over it again with a wash, those lighter parts begin to glow almost it looks like a neon sign. And it gives this piece an eerie but still cheerful quality. I really dig. So this final layer of turquoise and magenta watch helped it all come together. And this really energetic piece I couldn't have even envisioned If I tried pushing further and further, getting rid of things that don't help me create this painting. 16. Sign Your Work: So lastly, when everything is dry and you had a good day or 24 hours to look at your painting and determined, yes, this is finished. I really like this. It's fits with my series. I want to have that on a wall is soon as possible or uploaded to my shock, then it's time for me to sign it. You can turn it around again if you haven't already decided which ways up or down. But normally when I finish a painting, the last word 100 around is the way it's going to stay. So I will get an acrylic marker from postcard, and I'll make sure that it's all Jews out and ready to go. And it might even practice my signature on a scrap piece of paper or my paper pellet, and then just assign it. Now it's done and I can take pictures and uploaded to my website. 17. Bonus Painting: So this is a bonus video of one painting that happened in just one sitting. And I can't tell you how I read this is I can't remember the last time I did it. It just happened. I'm happier. Took it on camera and yeah, it looked so R4 and energetic tummy and so crashes that I couldn't bear to go back in. I left a blank canvas on display. I left the raw marks on display. I really, really, really, really lacked the unfinished training of this and the raw feeling of it. And I thought, after, really haven't you worked painting, you just solve. This might be a perfect contrast that paintings can be created differently. And I really like both paintings equally. Very much. 18. Thank you for watching!: Thank you so much for watching everything. This is, this is how I usually go about painting. A big, big painting like this on a big canvas like this. It usually takes me a couple of weeks honestly, for this one you saw how many times I come back to it and we did it, gave it completely whole new look because I was unsatisfied with the Vive and the feeling I got from it. So I keep working on our specific painting until I can't stop looking at it, until it makes me so happy that I just am consumed by the feeling of it, the moment it's so interesting to look at, or it makes you fuse it in a way that you just need to stop and put the brush down. That for me is a moment when a painting is finished. Thank you so much for watching. I hope you got a decent look into my studio practice, how I approach a painting and can you set for your own studio practice? And while it might inform your way of painting in the future, I hope you learned something new, either in terms of mediums and how or how to use pigment that paints with each other, high pigment paint with each other. Definitely leave a review below and also let me know what else you'd like to see in the future. I'll end before you go, please make sure to post a picture of your own class project below. Thank you so much for watching I mean your libido and see you in the next class.