Learn Abstract Painting from the Masters

1. Introduction to the class: Seven abstract art projects based on art history really master artists because some of the master artists that I use in this course are still alive. My name is Do Char and I've been an art instructor many years. I've taught at college and I've taught in schools and community groups, just about everywhere. The first artist will cover is from Japan, and her work emphasizes pattern. Second artist will touch is Claude Monet. And I call this one obsession because we're going to talk about repeating something that you love. Monet painted his water lilies for more than 20 years. Georgia Keefe also did the same thing with flowers. Then we do what I call is color studies. Where there's artists like Mark Rothko and Joseph Albers who created abstracts just by using different colors against each other to see what would happen. Then we'll touch mark making. Jackson Pollock is a person that did a lot of mark making. He would splatter and splash his paintings until he got a good composition. We also talk about pattern as a message. Damien Hirst used pattern in his work. Shirin Neshat pattern in her photograph. And Agnes Martin created huge paintings. All patterns. Then we'll discover feminist art and the Gorilla girl, They created posters and paintings that they put all over the place. Then we'll talk about Judy Chicago and American Feminist. We'll also touch Hilma af Klint, who in 1906 painted her inner cell. Then we'll add gold to our painting. Gold has been used in different cultures for many years. We're also going to talk about using lettering to create a painting. There are a lot of paintings to create in this course, your project. For this course, I want you to choose one of your projects and post it. Choose the one you love the most or you think was the most successful. Explain why you love it. You love the composition, the color choices you made, any reason that you really loved it. And share this with your fellow students. We often learn just as much from our fellow students as we do from the instructor. Sharing is important. Join me in my course and let's have some fun together creating some really interesting artwork. 2. Learn from a great Japanese artist : Experimental abstracts where pattern dominates Yay Kusama, sorry if I'm not saying it right, she's a Japanese artist that is obsessed with pattern, mostly polka dots, but she does pattern extremely well. She was born in 1929 and she has been working with installation related to pattern, especially dots, for most of her life. She's just really good at it. For this project, we're going to let ourselves be influenced by her and we're going to create a painting with dots. For this painting, you will need a foam brush, masking tape. Acrylic paint brushes a canvas with a strong painting surface like a board. Paper can be used, but only watercolor paper or a really heavy paper, a water container, rags, and clean up materials. Now the materials don't have to be exactly the same, but something very similar. Let's look at the video repetition of shapes. In this case, we've chosen polka dots. I'm dividing my canvas into three sections, one on one side and one white part on one side, one white part on the other. Then in between, we will have masking tape. I didn't show you how I put on the masking tape because that's too easy. But what I am doing right now is taking acrylic gel and just rubbing it on the side of the masking tape. This will help give you a really straight edge. I let it dry and then I painted it with pink and it wasn't good enough. I'm painting it again. The goal is to put one coat of plain color. Plain color is the deal. Now we're going to take a round sponge and make poka dots on one side and then the other. I'm going to be doing different colors, just keep watching, the first color is yellow, the second color is green, and we're mixing blue with the yellow to create the green again. Stamp, stamp, stamp, Just pick your spot, your favorite spots. They don't have to be the same ones I do. You can even go over the edge onto the masking tape and have a partial circle. Now we're going to mix red and yellow to get orange. And my video didn't work. I'm just pretending I'm putting on the orange. Because somehow or other, my video didn't come on. The next color is orange. I have lots of bright colors. I'm going to put one dark color and put it on, that's just black dipped into that sponge and then spread all over the sponge. Doesn't give you the same look every single time. And that's the part that I like. If you want something that's all even then you may have to sponge a couple times on the same circle. But I like the variety. It's more interesting. I'm trying to decide if I have enough now. My camera died again. I did add white pieces here. I just ran out of power. I'm really sorry, I didn't show you how to do the white, but it's just the same stamp, stamp, stamp, as I peel off the masking tape. I can talk to you about it. I just pots that were empty and made sure there was an even representation across the pieces. Here I have the white with the colors on each side. Not bad. But after a while, I decided I like to look, but it might look better if I added color in the middle. I added the masking tape and then chose yellow as the interior color. Here we go. I'm just adding the yellow. Remember, don't forget to paint the sides and also don't forget to put a little gel on each side of the tape. That'll help the yellow color from seeping inside and spreading across the tape. I'm painting that white spot and we're going to see what it looks like with yellow and then you can decide which way you like it. Again, I apologize for not showing you the white, but you can see the yellow. There's a plus. Making those spots is easy. Z activity. I take off the tapes, I have a nice straight line thanks to the gel that I put beside the tapes. I think I might like the yellow better than the white because there's yellow on each side. It works really well. Which one do you like the best? It's your turn now. Give it a try. Choose the one you like. We'll have fun together. See you in the next video. 3. Color field painters did this experiment: Experimental Abstracts, Color Studies. This is a focus on what color will do. What happens when one color is placed to another? Does it seem bolder, bigger, lost? How does green effect red in comparison to green and gray? All combinations create possible results, really. This whole section now is about color studies. Mark Rothko was one of the biggest experimenters with color. He did what was called color field paintings, where he contrasted different paintings with using different colors. Another one that did that was Joseph Albers. He's considered to be one of the most influential painters in the 20th century as a teacher and as an artist. For this, you will need acrylic paint, brushes, a canvas or any painting surface. Paper can be used, a water container, rags, and clean up materials. You don't need a lot for this exercise. I consider this more of an exercise, mind you, a big one of these types of paintings looks great. Let's look at the video color studies. We're going to do two different color studies, and we're going to see what contrasting colors do to each other. I'm going to keep it simple. I'm going to do this in the style of Mark Rothko, simply because it's very simple and very effective, just the way they are. I'm using a blue. The blue can be flat blue, but it looks better. Actually, if you vary the blue a little bit, you have a little bit of dark streaks of other lighter blue. I've done two of these now, one is going to have pink. You've probably noticed in my other paintings that I really like pink. We're going to see what pink against this main color does, because when he did these studies, that's what he was interested in, how the colors that are put together affect you as a person. Now my paint is very thin, I might have to do another layer. I'm going to do blue, blue against blue. This is a very quick color study. When you paint these on a large format, they look absolutely awesome. You leave some color variations within each color. When they're large, they look absolutely great. But it's also at the same time, a study of color. It's your personal interpretation of what you think colors look best together and how they affect you. What feeling they give you, Pink against the dark blue, and blue against the dark blue. I decided to put another layer of pink on there. I decided to show you just in case you thought that that one coat did the job. But I'm using a thicker paint this time. We're going to do pink against dark blue and then a blue against dark blue. I'm just going to paint that and let it dry and see what happens inside the blue. I'm going to paint the pink, create another visual effect. If I was to do this on a large format, I would actually use masking tape to grid it off and make sure my lines were straight. Because this is a study to see if I really like those colors together. I'm not doing that, I'm just painting it by eye, more or less. I'm seeing if these colors look good together. Actually, that looks pretty good. I don't mind that at all. The dark blue, the lighter blue, the pink. It really makes the pink pop. It's like three different levels. I'm going to try teal on the pink, this is dark blue, pink and now teal. And see what happens and the visual effects those create. The teal really makes the pink pop more or the pink makes the teal pop. I don't know which way it should be, but I'm deciding that when I paint this on a larger format, if these are the colors that I want to use. This is called color field painting. You're trying to create a visual effect. Is that the effect I want to create? Is that a quiet effect, an exciting effect? What am I trying to create? And are those colors working? That's what you have to decide. So here's the pink and the blue. Which do you like? This one you decide, choose your own colors. And we'll see you in the next video. 4. Mark making is all about expressing your inner self : Experimental abstract mark making. Some artists like making a mark. It's the big part of their painting. Marks. Marks create different means of expression. You can have bold, angry marks. You can have soft, easy marks to provide the texture for a background of your paintings. Other times, marks are the subject of the painting, Jackson Pollock. His work, The Marks, the subject of the painting, the leader of the abstract experiment. He's the leader of the abstract expressionist movement. He used to drip or pour paint onto the canvas and he would do it on the floor. You could see. So he could see how the marks would be from every side. He's very well known. I love Kai Gio Kuang. If I know I'm not saying this right, but he's a Chinese artist who uses explosives to create marks. I love the idea that he experiments with materials to create marks for his paintings. I also like in vote, a German artist who does large scale drawings that are influenced by music, philosophy, or phonology. She's a professor of conceptual drawing. Now for this painting, you need acrylic paint, brushes, a canvas board or paper, water container, rags, and clean up material. Let's watch the video. Marks out lettering, mark making using letters. I'm going to use paint and stencils and create marks with paint. So I'm going to paint around the letters. I'm going to create a pattern and different kinds of marks I like the brushy look that I'm getting here. Really, it's all about the marks I'm using, different sizes of stencils and letters. And look how brush I leave it. I want the marks to show. I'm going to do different colors and overlap them all. Next one I choose another color and I add more marks. I'm adding a lighter color. This time I'm just creating a pattern. The marks are all overlapping and creating that pattern. I'm just brushing over everything. It's more of a random effect. I'm not choosing anything yet. I'm just creating the marks and the pattern and letting them overlap. I let it dry in between each layer. This means that you might need to take maybe 23 evenings to do this. Keep in mind the a curling dries within about 10 minutes. You could do quite a few in one evening if you wanted to. If you wanted to take it easy, you could easily just spread this out over several evenings. I'm doing the same thing every time. I'm just brushing completely like this and creating a pattern. I'm letting the marks dominate the marks are more important than anything else. Now I'm creating a dark purple and I'm watering it down. I'm creating a wash that will go all over the painting and just even out all the marks. I'm unifying the marks because everything will have a purple tint. And that'll help me decide what to do next. This is often what I do when I can't decide what the next step is. Usually the reason I can't decide what the next step is is because there's too much variety and it's hard to decide. I keep adding like this and brushing, just like I did before. I've speeded up the camera so that you don't have to watch me slowly build up this. It does take a little while to brush it, I'm just speeding it up so you're not so bored. And again, the effect is for the letters. I'm more interested in the texture created around the shapes of the letters than I am in anything else. I want the texture, I want the brushwork. That's the important part. It's not the fact that they are letters. I'm just trying to create a mark making type of effect with paint. I just am tweaking a little bit as well. I'm trying not to tweak too much. Next step. There are a lot of steps to this one. Again, I'm going to do a wash, I'm doing a pink wash over absolutely everything. Just neutralizing the white. The white was just too bright. It was just too much for me. I just wanted to have a little more unity to the whole painting. Now I'm adding a wash of blue, but it's a light blue and it's a transparent blue. And I wanted to go all over. I'm very careful. I try very hard to go around the letters and make sure that the pattern stays there. The wash, what it will do is unify the whole painting. Just give me light variations on all those colors. I'm getting blues, pink light areas, but no real dominant ones. And that's what I want. Now I'm going to use a card to make marks, and I'm going to go around the letters and different areas in the painting. Not necessarily just the letters, but I want to create the effect of marks, not necessarily letters again, but just the effect of overall marks and stamp stamp to create the effect of marks that are stretching all over the canvas. I'm not necessarily touching just the letters. I'm combining the marks so that the lead one to the other, I'm trying to create an overall effect for the painting. I'm going to drag a few of these. I'm going beyond the idea of creating letters. Now I'm working on creating a painting. Here it is. The color didn't turn out as well in this one, but I really like the effect of the marks and the paint, creating the marks. Your turn. Now you create a new painting, and we'll see you in the next video. 5. Meditative paintings can be fun too: Experimental abstracts. Pattern as a message all over. Pattern is another way to create artwork. We're going to use repetitive pattern. We did this with the polka dots, but we're going to do it differently this time. It's usually, in this case, what I'm aiming for is the play of colors against each other. We're going to aim for a different kind of pattern. Pattern is everywhere. Damien Hearst, in our current time, is an English artist and art collector. And he's one of the young British artists who dominated art in the UK. And he created patterns. This pattern, I call this more or less meditative pattern, visual patterns. Shira, same thing. She was an Iranian that works in New York City. She put pattern on her photographs. This created a very interesting effect. The artist that's going to be our influence today is Agnes Martin. She did what I call meditative abstracts. She was born in Canada and lived 1912-2004 These are large linear elements. She would create a pattern of overlapping lines and created them on a scale that would fill a wall. These were very large. When you stood in front of them, it was almost a relaxing atmosphere that it created. Or also just like a relaxation, or if she used brighter colors, it could do the opposite. Let's watch the video for this project. You will need acrylic paint brushes, a canvas or a board or paper. You can use either one, a water container, rags, and clean up material. Now, your brush might need to be simple for this project, I'm working very small, I'm using a small brush. If you choose to work larger, you will need a larger brush. Let's watch the video. Experimental Abstract Meditative Abstracts. What I've chosen to do is just do exactly like Agnes Martin, what I'm going to do is create a pattern of very neutral colors and see what happens. I'm starting with like a beige off white color. I'm just making stripes. I've speeded up the camera because it's very boring to see me make stripes. Try to aim at being fairly even stripes. You can create another illusion by varying the stripes. I'm going to change the color to have a little bit of a gray. I will work on stripes going the other way. Now, these are very brushy, very quick stripes. If you wanted to get a more even look in your stripes and more straight, less wiggly, you would use a square brush. Here, I'm using a very small brush and going very fast. What I'm going for is the overall effect. If I was working a very large painting, I would be making my stripes a little more carefully. But this is like a test painting for me. I often do a test painting so that I know if I really want to do this painting, see if I like to look or if there's anything I'd change. When I do a test painting like this, I'm deciding if the colors are right, if the width of the stripes are right, if there's anything I want to change for when I do a larger piece, When I choose to do a larger piece of this one, I can decide, okay, I may want to start with a different color. I might want to start whatever you decide. Every time I do a row of stripes like this, I'm changing the color somewhat. I've changed the color to a lighter one. I had big, then I went to a light gray. Then like even lighter gray yet now I'm going to a white. I'm a fairly even consistency in the stripe. It's similar. If it's not completely straight, so long as it's similar, it doesn't matter. I'm trying to create a pattern, I'm trying to see if I like this meditative idea. I'm doing a test piece to decide if I want to do this on a very big canvas. I would start at the smallest size of about 36, 36 for this painting, because it's mostly effective on a large scale. These small scales give you a good idea, but they don't really create that same impression. Look at this up close. Imagine it, 36 by 36. Give it a try. See if you like it. If you want to build your own that's large. See you in the next video. 6. Feminist topics can challenge you : Experimental abstracts discover feminist art. Now, the Gorilla girls were some of the very first feminist artists. And what they did is they created posters and artwork with text and images made by females and of females, both. This was in the 1980s. They'd combined graphics with eye opening facts and figures and posters and put it all over the city. Judy Chicago is also an artist that's considered a feminist and an educator. She did a whole series about birth. For this project, you will need acrylic paint, brushes, a canvas, a board paper, any kind of painting surface, a water container, rags, clean up materials. And one thing that I didn't put on this list is a marker, a black marker. So let's watch the video and you can see what I mean. Inspired by feminism, now I've decided to choose a necklace. So I'm going to repeat the shape of a necklace. I'm going to do this all the way down across the paper I've decided to do like Judy Chicago. And repeat and create a pattern. I'm using a necklace which is predominantly a female object. I'm going to repeat it to create a pattern. I'm using colors like pink in order to emphasize the feminist part of it. So females are often known for wearing pink. And I'm going to use pink and purple, so I just painted in. And I'm going to just block in all the colors. At first, I'm blocking in the pinks and then I'll start blocking in all those other areas. The first step in any painting is blocking in. And that's the slowest and probably the hardest part, because you have to wait for everything to dry. Now the pink is dry. I'm adding grays. I wanted a neutral to see if it work. I'm testing out colors. At the same time I fill in the necklace areas with the gray, then I will work with the central image. First, I'm adding a bit of gold jewelry and gold go well together. Most of the jewelry is made with some kind of gold. Gold has to be part of it. I'm just going to block it in. Maybe the gold will peek through. Eventually when I start adding the necklace piece, now I'm adding bits of purple. I'm repeating the linear shape of the necklace, the cord that goes around your neck. And I'm going to do this on each side, That's what the purple is. I'm doing this part now because when I start adding the middle part, it will be very hard to do this way. I can paint on top of the other areas just like this, and it's just that much easier. Then I block in again. Remember blocking in is the first step, and then you add the details. I'm adding a small one there and one right here. I'm blocking in with blue. I have pink, gray, gold, purple, and now blue. These are all colors that go well together on the color spectrum. Here, I'm using a paint marker. I'm going to create the lines with the paint marker. I love these paint markers. They're just paint in the marker. You can get them at any art supply store or on the internet. It's actually paint in there. It's not really a marker, it's like a paint spreader. And it's a great way to make lines, very even lines. This works really well for this painting. Now I'm going right over the masking tape that's on the edges. When we take off the masking tape, it'll be that much easier. Now, I want to repeat the colors. I'm adding purple. I'm going to do that all the way down. Remember, for this piece, what I'm doing is I'm creating pattern a little bit like Judy Chicago. I want to repeat the colors, Repeat the shapes. Now I'm adding pocalots down the middle, creating a pattern repeating again and a line. I'm repeating the line that I made with the marker. But this paint, actual real paint instead of marker paint is actually brighter. It's not as even as a marker, but I like the effect. The idea is to create a pattern that repeats itself. Remember I'm copying the style of Judy Chicago. Now I'm going to take off the tape, see if I like it. Go quickly here and we'll switch to the end of the masking tape. You don't watch me struggle with this masking tape. Here it is, all done. But outside, I need a black line. I need to create a little more drama, but my marker isn't working very well. I got another one. Finally I have a marker that works. I'm outlining with the darks. I'm going to outline each one in a similar manner so that I have repetition. The idea is to repeat colors. Repeat shapes, and create a visual interest, something quite interesting to the viewer. Then that's up to you. See if you really like it. In the end, I'm just going to have patience. I'm just going to paint over these. I repeated pinks, purples, blues, gold, white, grays. That creates a great effect to add a few darks on the side. What I want is to create a visual tension. I want my eye to be aiming towards the circular shapes in the middle. I'm also creating a pattern and the design by the end, I want repetition of shapes, repetition of colors. I want it all to be like a visual face. I should be intrigued by all the lines, all the colors, and all the shapes. If I were to do this on a large scale, I would probably aim at exaggerating one piece. I took this and I put it through a Photoshop and I enlarged the center areas. I think that would be more interesting if I had to do it over again. That's what I would do your turn now. Create a piece based on repetition. 7. This Artist painted her inner self: I call this section the unseen world of Hilma. It's a very special section, and I wasn't sure how to label this one. Hilma, Alf Clint. She began creating abstract paintings in 1906. And they were beautiful, bold, colorful shapes. They were references to the physical world, but also to her spiritual world. She created what she felt inside, that's what this section is all about, is creating something, patterns, designs, a painting that is inspired from inside of you. We're going to create a painting that's in the mode of hilma, Alf, Clint. For this painting, you will need acrylic paint, brushes, canvas, a board or paper. In this case, I've used paper, a water container, rags, clean up materials. The option is paint pens. I'm going to be using paint pens in this, but you can also use a very fine brush that very carefully apply. You don't need to go out and buy a paint pen if you don't want to. Let's watch the video painting. The internal in this painting, I've decided to just use Hilma as an inspiration. I'm creating shapes. I'm starting with gray. You can copy these shapes or you can create your own shapes. What I'm aiming for is just a relaxing painting that is happy painting. The internal for me is something that's very joyful and playful. That's my goal. Your goal might be different. You have to think about that. I'm going to apply some of this paint right away and then I'm going to let it dry and keep adding afterwards. Keep in mind that when you're pattering like this, it's best to let it dry and then wait again. At this point, it's best if I let it dry. One of my rules is to repeat the design here. I'm, that's why I added that third pink stripe. I'm repeating the design. I'm going to be doing that throughout the whole process. Now, one thing about a balance painting is that you repeat shapes. You repeat colors. You don't make everything the same all the time, but you create something that is very similar. White is a good color. My goal is playful. That's what I'm going to do. I've let that dry and I'm adding yellow. I'm choosing colors that are playful. Pink, yellow, blues, primary colors. They're really well known for being very playful colors. I'm adding a bit of purple to the intensity of the painting. It's very calm and I want to make it a little more dramatic. I'm adding a wash of purple here. I'm still going to have the pink there, but there's going to be little bits of pink that will be peeking through the purple. And there's going to be a purple hint across this one. I've let it dry and now I'm adding more white. I have two levels of white. I have a purplish white, and now I have a pure white. I'm deciding this as I go. I made a plant in my head, but as I apply the paint, sometimes what happens is it changes. My whole plan changes quite a bit. I've decided that on the spot sometimes that it would be better if I added this amount or this line or something. That's what I'm doing now is I'm changing up the design that's in my head because I think the design would look better if I had a little more light areas here, a little more dark areas there. As you're creating, you're going to be deciding, you see my gray hair again. Here we go. I'm adding a marker. Now, when you're choosing a marker here, I'm just using a Sharpie. But if you're concerned about archival quality, you can buy markers that are archival. Sometimes I would use a paint pen, but my paint pen ran out just before this video, I decided to use the Sharpie. It's quite a trip for me to make it to the art supply store, it's over an hour away. I've decided to use the Sharpie for this. You can substitute with a paint marker if you like. I'm just outlining the shapes to make the boulder brighter. More contrast, remember, my goal is happy. I want something bold and bright, and joyful. I keep adding. Be careful, make sure that your paint is dry When you do this, if you get acrylic paint on your marker or your Sharpie, that's the end of your Sharpie. It's not going to work anymore. As I take off the masking tape, I get a better idea of what the painting looks like. It's looking way better right now with the white line around it. I'm getting that feeling of happiness that I was aiming for. Is it a happy painting? I think I think I've done it. Here we go, I like it. How about you? Which way does it go this way or the other way? Anyways, your turn now. We'll see you in the next video. 8. Adding gold to your painting will change it completely: Adding gold to make your work look precious. Now, gold is very common and it's been used for centuries. Here in this icon, they've added gold to show the preciousness of the image. Other cultures have done the same thing. On the left, there's gold from a Chinese artist, and on the right is gold from another middle Asian country. Gold is used everywhere. Gustav Klimt, one of my favorite painters, he used gold too. And he added it to many of his designs, especially when he created patterns like this and created portraits with a dresses that had a lot of pattern and he added pattern behind. For this project, you will need gold paint. An old painting, realistic or abstract, it doesn't matter. Acrylic paint brushes, a canvas painting surface or board. Actually, your old painting is just fine, a water container, rags, and clean up material. In this painting, I'm painting over an old painting with gold and you'll see how it changes everything. In fact, we're going to look at two different variations of ways that you can use gold. Let's look at the video, Adding Gold. Here I have an old painting of a bird. It's an okay painting, but it's not great. What I'm going to do is cover it with gold and add one more element after the gold. And you'll see it changes the whole look of the painting. It becomes a whole new painting all by itself. You could pick an old painting, you don't have to pick a bird. You can pick any painting. I just picked this one because I had it handy and it's been sitting around for a while and it just needed that little extra, something that I couldn't figure out what to add to. This is this is what I'm going to add to my painting. I'm just using gold paint. You can use any brand that you like. The brand that I'm using right now is called seller. It's a very good semi transparent gold that you can see a little bit of what's underneath that gold once it's dry. And I like that because it creates a variations in the goal. I'm just adding it and filling in the space. I'm just adding it that way. That's all you have to do. I should have speeded up the camera a little more. I did speed it up, but not quite enough as far as I can see. Just take the time you need to fill out everything and see what it does. There's no rush. You can take a whole evening to do this. It really works well with landscapes, it works really well with portraits, it works really well with abstracts. Just a little bit of gold on an abstract, and it looks awesome. It adds a little something else that often was missing in the abstract. Right now, gold is very trendy. Art does have trends. Gold is becoming a trend at the moment in the art world. I'm almost done. Then I will let it dry. I will do one more thing. I like it. There's varieties of gold, lighter, darker. It works well for me. I'm happy with this. I don't want a big flat gold area. I want it varied. This is exactly what I want. Here it is, dry now, it still needs something. I'm taking the lid of ice cream pail. I'm just going to create a nice circle. This is an easy way to make the perfect circle. You paint the edge of a lid. This is the edge of a small pail. Then it's easy to get the circle right because all you do is flip the lid over, place it, press, press and left and see a perfect circle. Now I can add other things to it. I'm going to be adding dark. I'm going to add a dark all around the circle. It's going to help highlight the gold. Sometimes I like to add an orange or red color and then paint the black. Because what happens? The orange or the red color peaks through orange and red, with black and gold looks absolutely fabulous. It's really, really good. That's something to think about, an idea for you. You can just go around the berries or go over the berries. You can choose. I know you're not going to have a bird like this, just in your own painting. You get to choose if you're going to cover everything or not. Sometimes I'd like to just cover everything and just have a perfect circle, but it looks neat as it peaks through right here. Sometimes it depends on how good my brush is moving that day. Sometimes it's a little harder for the brush. I'm adding a little more gold. And this is a trick. I use my finger, I hit the bumps. Now, this painting was a collage. It's bumpy all over. I'm adding bumps. I'm adding gold just to the highlight of the bumps. This is where your finger is, your perfect tool. You just put some gold on your finger and very lightly just touch the top of the canvas. Don't rub hard, just go very quickly. Keep going like that. If it's varied, if it's brighter, gold in some areas and lighter in others, that's okay. That makes it a little more interesting. See how already this painting is way more interesting than it was when we first started. The black was too black and too flat. Now we're adding a bit of gold just like this, and it's creating a more interesting painting. It looks not quite like a bull's eye, but it's like we're zoning in on the bird when we're looking at it. It just creates a focus for the bird. Now, add the gold anyway you like, have fun with this, it's a great way to change up a painting. Your turn now, and then we'll see you in the next video. 9. A second example of using gold to change your painting: A second way to use gold. This is an old abstract painting and I'm going to add a bit of gold, just paint it in, it changes up the look of the painting. I'm adding just a few lines and some different marks in there with the gold, just like this. Then it changes up the look of the painting. Instead of a blank, ugly looking spot, I have like a gold spot. And I'm adding a few gold lines. It just adds a little bit of extra to the painting. I have black next to the gold really helps it shine. I'm just adding these lines right here to guide my eye through the painting. The gold goes from top to bottom. It's got one larger area and it still needs something. I'm trying to add one more black. Is that enough? And a few spatters wrecks the white edge of my painting, but that's okay. Here we go. We have gold lines black, and if you don't like the black at this stage, you can wipe it off, except on the white part because there's no paint there. Wherever there's paint, change it up. I think it looks best this way, don't you? This is a great little edition. It probably saved this painting. I've added gold and I've added more darks, and now it's more interesting. It's bolder and there's more parts that I can look at. It's your turn now. Find an old painting. Change it up with a bit of gold. See you in the next video. 10. Lettering can lead to unusual results : Using letters by Doria here. We're going to use letters that I cut out in card stock. We're just going to paint them over and over again. We're going to use them. I want that brushy. We're going to leave that brush look there and keep going. I want one more letter. I want that brush look everywhere. We're using lettering for this and leaving that brush effect there. Now I let it dry and now we're going to use another color and we're going to overlap it. We're going to make sure that color goes a little bit everywhere. But except where the stencils are, you just keep it going and you brush and you brush and brush. You keep going like that and you just fill up the paperwork. Just keep brushing. Hold down your stencils and now let it dry. We're going to change color again. I have the same stencils, I've just flipped them and rearrange them in a different spot, and I'm adding purple this time. Notice that I'm keeping that same brushy texture. I want to keep that texture everywhere. I want to keep that consistent throughout every layer that we're going to do. I don't want to flat effect, I want a brushy effect. The brushy effect leaves some of the color underneath. And that's what I want to happen. I want to add a new color, but at the same time have the other color show through. Now we're going to add a wash just to unify everything. It's a wash is just a water down acrylic paint. And we brush it everywhere and it evens out the values. Now I have values that are similar in color and as well similar in value. Now I'm going to add whites. I'm going to brush the whites. Keeping with that brush effect that I had before, I keep going and adding the brushy effect. You can choose where you put your lettering. I'm just choosing these spots. You can choose whatever spots that you would like. The only thing that's important for me is I keep that brushy effect that I have had. Every single time that I've added a new color. I'm creating a texture more than I'm creating letters. The letter is second only to the texture. I want to keep that texture there even when the letters aren't there. I'm adding the texture just like that. It's not very complicated. I still want to leave some spots where the lettering is, Don't cover everything. Just some areas that I have that brushy effect throughout the paper. I better stop soon. Okay, here we go. Now we're going to add another, we're going to add a pink wash. I'm going to tone down the whites. This is another way of adding another color. As I add to the whites and everywhere else, I'm changing the value. I'm creating a light white. Then I'm creating like a pinkish purple, and so on and so forth. Now, for the blue step, for the blue, here we go again. It's a wash. It's a wash. And the wash is very thin paint. I want to add very thin paint. I don't want to add deep paint. I want the colors underneath to show. I don't want to wipe out all the colors that I had before. I just want to leave them there. Then I let this dry and see what it does. I have little bits of pink peeking through. And it's more of a design than it is anything else. Now, I'm using my card that I've used in other videos, all I'm doing is adding pure white line and creating a pattern. I'm highlighting the letters, but at the same time I'm not staying on the letters. I'm adding that line everywhere else. I want to create a pattern design. I want a focal point. I want an area that my eye goes to. My eye goes to, thanks to all these lines, to the darker areas that I have there. Like the areas that are darker, pink, purple, these lines all lead to those areas. This is called an all over pattern. It's actually difficult to achieve. Take your time doing this one. It might take more than one evening. Now the photo turned out a little darker than the real item, but you get the idea this way. Your turn. Now, try using letters to create your abstracts, and we'll see you in the next video. 11. Conclusion and a bit of advice: Conclusion, we can learn a lot from famous artists. They have developed a style uniquely their own. Sometimes that took years for them to develop. Keep that in mind when you're doing your painting. We can try out their techniques or their concepts to help us grow in our own practice. Sometimes we can adopt the techniques, but usually we can rarely recreate them. Like the original artists, we naturally add our own spin to the technique. Don't worry about copying. I'm sure you'll add your own spin to whatever technique you've learned. Thank you for joining my course. I hope you had a lot of fun and I hope to see you in my next course. See you soon.