Inkblot Botanical Prints With Watercolor Touches

1. Introduction: Hello, sweet ones. My name is Jaime Randall and I'm an artist and surface pattern designer living in Brooklyn, New York. I started my visual art journey just a few years ago. I was going through postpartum depression after the birth of my second baby, and I was transitioning out of a career in music and looking for other creative avenues. I was also crying into my breast pump and thinking, "I like making pretty things. I still want to make pretty things." That's when I discovered the inkblot technique. In this class, we'll be making inkblot botanical art using this technique made famous by Andy Warhol. We'll be using our own source images of flowers and plants. From there, we'll combine that with delicious inky lines and a basic printing technique. After that, we get to add watercolor for fun. In a world saturated with digital content, it can feel really good to make something physical with your hands. It can also be quite healing. Let the healing begin. Shall we? If you think you can't draw or you've never been to art school. Don't worry about it. I didn't go either. This technique is actually a great segue into drawing and to finding your artistic voice with pen and paper and ink. Likewise, if you're an accomplished artist and you just need to loosen up and have some fun, get some ink on your face and see how long it takes for someone to point it out to you, this is a great technique for you too. Inkblot is so satisfying because it combines all the messiness of life with infinite chances for do-overs. Actually, the mess is part of the beauty and the fun. I just know that you're going to love what we make. Let's make something. 2. Class Project: We'll start by taking our own photos of flowers and plants and printing them. If you don't have access to a printer, you can pull a page out of an old magazine. If it's just for personal use, there's no need to worry about copyrights. Then we'll practice using the nib. Not to worry, we're not doing calligraphy here, just scratching some fun marks with our sumi ink. We'll set up our printing station and start the inkblot magic. Then watercolor. While our ink is drying, we'll go over basic watercolor steps before adding some color to finish our piece. When you're done, you'll have a unique piece of art that you can gift or display for all your friends to admire. We will smile in a smug way when our friends say, you made this? Yes, yes, I did. This process is simple and fun and can be applied to any copyright free subject matter that your heart desires. Don't forget to share your class project with us. I'm so excited to see what you make. Now let's get our hands dirty. 3. iPhone Photo Tips: Okay. So we're outside and we're in my Brooklyn neighborhood. We're going to walk around and see what we can find. We're going to take some botanical photos, and remember, botanical doesn't only mean flowers. It could be plants, it could be leaves from trees, anything, just walk around and see what grabs you. What you want to look for is something that has good indirect sunlight and today is a beautiful day for that. Let's walk around and see what we can find. Ready. Ready. Now, I'm thinking about composition. I'm looking at these flowers and deciding which one is going to be the main focal point. When I figured that out, and sometimes you need to hold the bloom to get the right angle. You tap the focus, and when you have it on your subject, you hold it down. You'll notice that AE/AF lock will come on. At that point, you can adjust the brightness. Then, you can take a shot, turn around, and get a different angle. The same flower at two different angles can look like two different flowers. Take quite a few, so you can be sure you get one you're happy with. So to review, find your focal point, and use the focus tap. Hold it down until it locks, and then adjust your exposure. Oh, and whenever possible, don't use digital zoom, it only pixelates everything. Just get closer to your subject. 4. Materials: Let's go over our materials. The first thing we're going to need is watercolor paper. I love Canson. This is 140 pound cold press. Cold press just means that it has this lovely toothiness. Hot press is more smooth. Canson, I love them. Then we need some Sumi ink. Sumi, it's so delicious, but don't drink it. Whatever ink you get, you just want to make sure that it's waterproof, that it's not water-soluble. Because afterwards, we're going to be applying watercolor so you don't want it to pick up the black and mush with everything else. We don't want that. This is my watercolor. Some of my watercolors, I have too many art supplies. This set is called Kuretake. As you can see, it's very, very well-loved. Then you need some Acetate. Acetate is basically just a clear sheet. That's what we're going to be making our marks on. Next we have our nib, our pen nib, and sometimes you can get a set that come with a whole bunch of nibs for anywhere from 6-$12. You don't need anything fancy at all. We're not even really going to be making very thick lines, we're basically just using the point. For the most part, the cheapest one is my favorite and then we're going to be using a watercolor brush round. So you want to get something meant for watercolor, usually the brush is very, very soft and has a nice point. This one is a size 10 Pigeon Letters. This is a size six, and this is Winsor and Newton, and it's a size 12 Cotman. The bigger a brush is, the more water it can hold so the longer it can spread out pigment. Painter's tape, this is to orient our printing station and it won't hurt whatever surface you put it on. Then you'll have to have some paper towel on hand and a cup for water and that's it. The magic is nigh, see you in class. 5. Nib Pen Warm Up: Welcome to our nib pen warm-up. So we're just going to get comfortable using our nib pen before we actually start making marks for our print. I just want to go over some basic anatomy of the nib pen. Here we obviously have the point, because what's the point if you don't have a point? When you spread it like this, you can see the twines or the tines that those are the things that separate to make thicker lines. Then as it moves up here, this is the shoulder and then there's this middle section here which is the vent and mine is full of ink because I'm not great at cleaning this. So here is our nib pen. I have some watercolor paper, just some scratch watercolor paper. Now we're just going to start using the pen and we're going to dip it in. I've poured my Sumi ink into the cap hear and you can use anything you want as an inkwell, it just has to be deep enough to get your pen in there up to about the vent hole just to get enough ink, and then you start making marks. If you do just a little bit of pressure, you get a smaller line. If you do more pressure. Whoops, see, sometimes you just have to get a little more ink on there. There you go. You get a thicker line and now it's flowing. Oh, now it needs more ink. It just takes a little bit of practice, and it's fun to just move around and just see what you can make. Maybe this turns into a little flower. Now when we're doing our print later, we actually do want thinner lines, about like that. These thick lines are really fun if you're just playing on the page or whatever you're doing. If you're printing on this though, it's just going to smoosh it all. I'll show you when we start printing. It'll just smoosh it, and then it starts to turn blobby. Some blobs are okay, they're actually fun, but if you have too many, then you start to not be able to recognize what you're actually making. If you want to know how much ink is on your nib, you can dab it on the paper towel first and then come over and start moving it around your page. So just go all over the place and make some lines. When you've played with that a bunch, you can put that to the side and grab a piece of acetate, because this is what we're actually going to be moving our pen around on. It just feels a little different, so it just takes a little getting used to. Now we're just going to practice moving around on the acetate. It does feel a little different, and it's actually pretty nice. It's nice and smooth, and this is what we'll be printing with. Just move around a little bit, you can make any marks you want. Also, you can reuse the acetate. You can just wipe it clean with a wet paper towel, and then as soon as you dry it, it's ready to go for another use. Eventually, some scratches will start to appear from the nib pen and then you can throw it out. But I've used these two or three times before getting rid of them, and they feel really nice with the pen. Now onto printing. 6. Inkblot Printing: Before we get started, I want to show you some examples of photos, some that are better than others for inkblot printing. For example, this picture here, I took in Brooklyn and I love this tree. It's just like a little piece of tropical paradise in the middle of the city, but this is not optimal for printing and this is why. Because when we make all these little lines and then we push down on it and pull up, the print on this side is just going to be moosh, it's just going to be mush. It's not going to really look like anything. This is pretty as this picture is. It's not actually great for printing. On the other hand, this picture, though it does have a lot of little details, they're spread out, so that's just fine. We'll be able to tell what this is after it's printed. This is a good contender. Also, you could have a picture with just a few subjects or even one subject. These are probably the best ones for printing. This apple picture would be nice. They're nice and big and juicy and we have some little details here that we can add in, maybe some little dots. This would actually be really fun. I think the one we're going to go with today are these hibiscus which I saw just a couple of blocks from where I live in Bed Stuy. I have to tell you when I first started taking photos of everything that I could find, every flower, every plant that I even remotely liked and I used to not like plants. I was not a plant person if you can believe it. I was shocked to find that beauty was everywhere, even in Brooklyn. Nothing against Brooklyn. A quick note. Be sure to cover your work surface so that you don't get ink and paint on it. I once spilled half a bottle of Sumi and get a coffee shop. Don't do that either. Here we are setting up our printing station. First things first, I've got my copy of my picture and I've taped it down. I've got one piece on the top and one piece on the bottom. It's very important that this doesn't move. Then we're going to take the acetate, put it on top of that. Some painters tape here because we also do not want this to move. Then we're going to take our watercolor paper and put it on top. This one we're only going to tape on the top because we're going to be lifting the watercolor paper up and putting it back down. I'm going to put the tape in two places to make sure that the orientation doesn't change. Now we can lift this up and put it back down. Take a deep breath. Dip your nib in there. Just dab the paper towel with it. I come over here and I'm going to start on this side because I'm right-handed and this way I can work across without smudging anything. I'm going to start with this bloom down here. I'm just going to pick out the lines that I like the most, whatever I want to accentuate. If I don't like the way the flower is angled, for example, I would rather have this petal on top of this leaf, it's okay. You make the rules. Now, it's important to not go for too long. You just want to make a few lines and then pull a print. Because if you keep going too long, then the ink will dry and you just have to do it over again. We're just doing a few lines at the time, pulling a print, and then moving on. We're going to keep going. It is nice to have some variation in line. Remember I said we don't want anything that's too thick, but you can vary the size of the lines that you're making and just experiment. It's a good exercise also and I was terrible at geometry and I realized that I'm still pretty bad at it because I have a hard time associating with what's up here, with what's down here. You're probably thinking, "I don't. What's wrong with this girl?" How does she tie her shoes? The answer is, I don't have shoes with ties. I don't have time for that. See, this is a little more ink than I want. All I'm going to do is just grab that. I'm just going to wipe that up. I don't mind a little splashiness, but if I feel like there's a little too much and I can just wipe it up before I print. No big deal. Just come around the side. Now we've got our basic shape of the flower and you can see I've been pretty heavy handed here actually with ink. Now I'm looking at the inside of the flower and I'm just deciding what details I want to include. Like I said, the great thing about this is that you can just start again. I recommend that you go all the way through and finish the piece, but if you're done with it, you don't like it, you just wipe off the acetate, get a new piece of watercolor paper, and you do it again. I go through a lot of watercolor paper, not just with this. I actually don't do a ton of inkblot these days, but I always use the back of watercolor paper because waste not, want not. Looking at this, that's pretty good, but oh, we've got one big petal there. That does not make a whole lot of sense and that is because I forgot to do this line. Actually, that line doesn't make a ton of sense. That's okay. Someone says that to you, you're like, "Who are you? The line police? Mind your own business." Now I'm just deciding what details I want to include. As I've mentioned before, this technique is a great on-ramp for learning to draw because it shows you that it doesn't take many lines to convey information. As you go along you're making little decisions about which lines bring this picture to life for you. Does it make sense to you because your opinion is the only one that matters here? As I get towards the end, I'm looking around and seeing maybe I was a little too heavy-handed here with the ink. Maybe this line is a little too light. But you want to make sure that you leave plenty of contrast. Contrast in color and in your line work are key to making a really interesting piece. What makes a great piece is really up to you. I'm looking at this and I think we're done. I like this, but it's up to you. It's up to you when you're done. There really are no rules. Now we're going to let this dry, while it's drying we're going to go over some watercolor technique. 7. Watercolor: Onto watercolor. We're going to start by just doing some practice strokes to get used to watercolor on a piece of watercolor paper. The reason why you need watercolor paper as opposed to copy paper, is because you need paper that not only is it absorbent, but it's thick enough to stand up to water. I'm going to grab my number 10. I'm going to start by showing you the wet-on-wet technique. I'm just going to put some water on the page. Then I'm going to wet my brush, grab some pigment. If you're using a pan, you obviously have to get it wet to grab some of that color, and I'm just going to drop some coloring. Look at that. Look at the way that moves. Oh my gosh, it's so pretty. I'm going to grab some more color, something a little bit darker, and I'm going to drop that in. I'm watching it interact, that's nice. That's spiders. Also, if you decided, I don't want that much color, you can wrench your brush, wipe it on the paper towel, while it's still wet, you can pick up a little bit of the pigment. That's fine. From there, we're going to do wet-on-dry. So that means we're starting with dry paper. We grab some color, and just brush it on. You just start playing with the amount of water versus the amount of pigment that you have. Our brush is similar to the calligraphy pen and that you can just use the point, or you can press and pull up thicker lines. If I wanted to make a leaf just for fun, I see I need more pigment. I can drop more color in there if I want. Some people like the dry brush look. That's dry brush. See there's some dry spots in there. The amazing thing about watercolor, is that you can get super close, but if the lines don't touch, see it touch right there. If it touches, it'll spread. But if it doesn't, it just like a little dam, like a barrier that doesn't let the water go through. We're just mark making. We're not trying to make anything. You can if you want, you can paint whatever you like. You can paint some flowers, paint some leaves. But we're basically just getting comfortable with how the watercolor moves around. See this is still wet. That can take some more color. Similarly, you can paint something, you can do a light wash. If you want to do a light wash, then use more color and less pigment. You can let that dry and then you can paint on top of that. Pro tip, don't put your paintbrush in your latte. That's really all we need for what we're doing because our ink blot art already has so much character and even texture and detail. The color is just a little pop. We don't really need to even know how to manipulate, to make shapes, and whatnot with the watercolor. From there, we're going to paint our peace. Pro tip, don't drink you paint water, it's gross. Now we get to add watercolor. As you can see, I started this piece yesterday. I started adding color already. But I'm going to continue with this one, instead of the piece that I just printed because that one is not quite dry enough. We're going to go with this. Now, you can follow your reference if you like, or you can just make your leaves blue if you want. It's totally up to you. Sometimes I make a little plan for my color palette right on the page. You don't have to, you can get a separate scrap of paper. I like orange, but that didn't work. I need a little more pinkish in there. Its a little bit better. Let's try again. Some orange. Sometimes if you want a lighter hue, you just have to get a little more water. You can also if something hasn't totally dry yet, you can pick up some of the pigment with your brush. As you can see, I'm pretty much going with the colors from nature that I'm seeing. When you start doing your watercolor, an option is to think about a source of light. If the source of light is here, then everything on this side or towards the top is going to be lighter and underneath is going to be more shadowy. You don't have to think about it. If you do that, a good rule of thumb generally with watercolor, is you want to start light and then go darker. Because once something is dry, we can't take away pigment, but we can always add pigment. You've made a little, I didn't make my little greens from my color palette. I might make some bluish-green like that. Then you're just going to start laying down color and you want to do the lighter colors first. I myself am not great at doing light washes. I love color and I tend to go straight for pigment, as much pigment as possible. But let's see if I can go on the lighter side. We'll see. I'm getting some water. I just love color, I love it so much. Well, what are you going to do? But I want to change that up. I'm going to put some orange here, and I'm just going to let it mix. I'm going to rinse my brush, and just spread this out with some water. You don't have to stay in the lines. You do not have to stay in the lines. When I grab it from this side, it's a different color, it's a different hue so it adds a little interest. If you feel like you've added too much color, you can just pick it up with a paper towel because it's not dry yet. Just using a little gold. Then maybe I want to bring the pink in. To much water. I'm just going to spread that out on the page. I'm just going to move it around like that. Sometimes when you've got enough paint on there, all you need is a little water. I move this out here. That's one gloom. Then let's do some gold.[ MUSIC] One of my favorite skill share teachers dealing with [inaudible] said that if you don't rinse your paint brushes, they can't breathe. So make sure you rinse them really well. Hey [inaudible] 8. Conclusion: Thank you so much for joining me today. I'm so excited that we got to spend this time together. Don't forget to post what you made in a Project Gallery. I promised to comment, and we can chat. If you'd like to know when I post new classes, give me a follow here on Skillshare. You can also follow me on Instagram and on my website. Thank you so much for joining me today. See you next time.