Transcripts
1. Introduction: [MUSIC] The thing that I
love most about working this way is that you really
surprise yourself, and it doesn't take long. I think the fact that
you can build up a painting like this
so quickly and see so much energy and
so much texture and so much boldness is just
really deeply satisfying. Hi, my name is
Dylan Mierzwinski. I'm a working artist and illustrator and also a
teacher on Skillshare. You may have seen me
around on Skillshare with my 16 classes that I have published over
the last few years, maybe you've run into me on Instagram where I love to share real stories and encouragement from one working
artist to another. Maybe you've interacted with
some of my products out in the real world as my art
has been on planners, fabric, greeting
cards, you name it. Today we are going
to be working on a painting of some
botanical blueberries. We're going to be working
from a reference photo, and the reference
photo is going to help guide us in
our decision-making as we paint with
acrylic gouache to create a bold and
expressive version of the reference photo while
still being able to express our style and
our personal interests. Painting this way is really powerful because
not only do you get a really bold and expressive
result from your artwork, but you get a moment to show up and be present with
yourself and be mindful. You get to feel a lot
of tactile things like mixing colors or swirling
your brush in the water, or seeing the paint come out of your brush that just
adds a lot of joy. It just really makes the
here and now, here and now. I think that beyond
the final result, this type of painting
is great because it helps us check in and
just be in our lives. I hope students take
away some courage from this class to keep showing up for their own
creative practice, and I hope that
they really start divorcing their relationship
to perfectionism. It's really so important
to just let that go and to let yourself be
and let yourself create. Not to mention a lot of the mistakes that I
thought that I've made in paintings before have turned out to be those
little elements that actually really surprise and add something to a painting
that I wasn't expecting. In this class I will be working alongside students in real time. Something to note, this
class was recorded live and I got to interact with the audience as I was painting. Let's get painting. [MUSIC]
2. Getting Started: If you are just tuning in, my name is Tiffany Chow. I work on Skillshare's
Community team. I use the pronouns she and her, and I am the lucky host of today's Skillshare live
with our top teacher, Dylan Mierzwinski. Dylan, we're super excited
to have you here today. Will you tell us a bit about
who you are and what you do? Yes. Thank you. I'm
really happy to be here. As you have heard by
now, my name is Dylan. I teach on Skillshare. I'm a working artist
and illustrator so I own my own small
illustration business. I make money by not only
teaching other creatives, but by selling my and licensing my artwork to companies
to put on products like fabric and greeting cards and planners and
wallpaper and murals, and a lot of really fun
things that I get to work on. If you don't mind, I'd like
to share something personal. That is that I am right now currently just
full-blown depressed. I got depression going
on, hanging around. I wanted to share
that for two reasons. The first is that by saying yes to this
and you all signing up, I had to show up today. [LAUGHTER] Just by
us all being here, I know I'm going to
paint today and that's a huge thing and you
may not know it, but you were my
accountability buddy today. You got me to shower, you got my butt in the chair, I've got my stuff out. I know we're going to do it and that means a lot to me
that you're here with me. Also, the second reason
I wanted to share that is I'm not alone. I'm not unique. [LAUGHTER] I'm sure there
are plenty of you that understand and if you're not
dealing with depression, it may be some other form of mental health balance that you're trying to
strike and accept. It's totally okay to
just show up as you are. I am showered but I
don't feel ready. I don't feel amazing today. I don't feel I'm going
to be brilliant, but it's important to
show up and creativity is such a wonderful way to be here and just to show
up and to also be mindful. I hope you don't mind me
segueing into it, Tiffany. [LAUGHTER] The project we're
going to work on today is we're going to
paint an abstract, bold, expressive botanical
based on a reference photo. The reference photo
is nice because it really helps us to guide us with decision-making so that we
aren't having to decide everything ourselves and come up with everything ourselves. But we aren't going
to be recreating a realistic rendition of
the reference photo either. We're going to be
changing the colors. We're going to be focusing on more expressive and
bold strokes and not necessarily the realism of the plant itself. That's great. You might even leave the end of this session with a pretty
painting, like maybe. But I just need you to trust me and
listen to me that if you paint the ugliest thing that ever existed at the end of this, you can still really get
a lot from this session. If you are a
perfectionist and you're already starting to feel a lot of those feelings around
how this has to be good. I want it to be great. A lot is riding on this; it's
not [LAUGHTER] there's not a lot riding on this and
to instead maybe try to focus on the
sensations of paintings. In the beginning, when we paint the
background layer, you get to just be messy with your brush and just
let the color fill the page and just relax and let yourself fill it how you want. Later on when we use
a smaller brush, you get to be more thoughtful and stab
down with the brush. There's all these
physical sensations and things that we need to key into by painting and there might be a bonus that we have
something cool at the end. [LAUGHTER] That's what
we're doing today, we're going to be painting from this photo by
Rachel Coin on Unsplash. It's these really
pretty blueberries. They have two colors to them. There's these leaves, we've got some stems and so we're
going to be recreating that on our page using Acryl Gouache. Acryl Gouache is a paint that
is like an acrylic in that it is bold and it's colorful, but it dries totally flat
and matte and opaque. It's got like almost
a velvety finish and that's how
it's like gouache, but then it's more like acrylic
in the sense that once it dries all the way it's done and you can't lift it back up. It's great for layering, which is why we're using it
today to layer things up. I have seven colors
in front of me and I am going to talk
about how I came up with those colors but first, I want us to get our
background layer down because then
while that's drying, I can talk to you about
how the color happened. But for the background, I'm going to be using
this olive green color. If you are going to be switching
up your color palette, then you basically just
want to look for a color that is medium in value. You don't want to go too, too dark and you don't want
to go too, too light. Something just in
the medium range.
3. Painting the First Layer: We're going to get
this background going. The fun thing about
a background layer is we're never going to get this moment back
where we're putting the first layer of paint
down onto the paper. There is a certain you can
get a quality of texture that you just can't get
once you're layering up. I'm saying that because I
want to water down my olive more than I maybe would if I were just regularly painting, because I want a really
nice variation in the color in the
background because I want it to have some texture. I'm just going to go
in and right now, I'm using a Size 4 round brush. Any brush that you like that fills a lot of
space and that you feel expressive with is
going to do the trick here. You can see I'm trying to not
go in stripes or streaks. I'm trying to keep it organic so that as the paint dries
and I add in more layers, I'm able to continue those
almost little puzzle pieces, and it doesn't get too streaky. As you can see, I already
taped off my paper, just taped around the borders. But if you're working
in a sketchbook, you can just clip your pages or you don't even have
to tape the borders. But it is satisfying afterwards, it's a really nice, gratifying moment to peel the tape off. I'm not trying to be precious, I love that line I just created where that darker olive is touching
the lighter olive. I'm going to leave that. I
don't want to disrupt that. I think that looks good so
I'm going to let that dry. The way I know my painting is
wet or dry is by looking at it sideways and the light will reflect on the water
where it's still wet. I can't show you from
a top-down view, but I can see just by
leaning and looking, it's reflecting a lot
so there's a lot of water in there and I'm
going to let it dry. Let's talk about colors. The way that I handle when
I sit down to do color, I'm honestly not that
great at just choosing a palette, it just changes. I like to first, especially if I'm looking at
a reference photo like this, I'll take a look at it
and I'll make a list. I even have the list
that I made when I was doing the test
painting for this. I'll just pull out what are the main groupings of shapes that I need to pay
attention to here. The first thing on the
list is blueberries. I'm going to need a color
for the blueberries. Then I see leaves.
I've got leaves. I did put the stem as a separate
line item because it is a different color in here
and I thought it was a good opportunity to maybe use a second color if I wanted. Then I've got a background so I've got this background color. Then I also have just my darks. I see like some
really dark values in here that help pull
that contrast out. Once I have that list, I know how many base colors
I want to start with. I just go and I'm
like, Okay, well, I usually start with
the background. What I'll do is I have these little color
swatches that I've made of not only colors
straight from the tube, but also colors that I've mixed. This is a mixed color and I have the recipe
written on the back. I'll just go through
one-by-one and just pick out colors that I
am ''vibing with''. [LAUGHTER] Some
will just stand out on different days and
I'll just be like, this is my color today and
I'll just pull them out and set them aside without
committing to anything. Then I'll keep going and I'll go down the
list and I'll be like, well what am I feeling
for the blueberries? One thing that I did like
about the blueberries in this picture is
there's two hues to them. Some of them are more pink and some of them are more blue, but they work really
well together. I wanted to use
that information as an opportunity to maybe pick out two colors for the
blueberries that are close, but still add some
of that interest. I really just build
the palette naturally. Then once I've got my stack of colors that I've pulled out, I start narrowing it down. I look at everything
that I pulled out. I look at the different
things that need to be filled and I just start filling out the puzzle
and picking out which swatches are going to
be the final colors. That being said, the colors that we're using today as you know, are olive green for
the background. It looks like the
background is almost dry. Then we're going to be
using an ivory white. The ivory white is really
almost just an in-between, between the background and the motifs we're going
to paint on top. It adds a little bit of contrast separation and
this ivory color will help the colors on
top pop a little more than they would if they were
just on top of the olive. Then for the leaves,
I'm going to use a really beautiful mix of ash green with a
little bit of shell pink. Anytime I have a mix
in my color palette, I try to use the colors that make up that mix in
the palette elsewhere, it just helps make
things more cohesive. This is the shell pink that
I'm going to be mixing with the ash green to make
that green so I'm going to pull that out
as a blueberry color. Then since I wanted
another blueberry color, I also picked out, I don't know if it's
pronounced if it's a soft j and it's Jaune
brilliant, or John Brilliant. I always say John
Brilliant in my head, but it's this orangey
colorly, purple color. It's D 038 and
J-a-u-n-e brilliant. Those are going to
be my two blueberry colors and then finally, I wanted a dark
contrasting color for those darker areas that are
really going to make it pop. I like this dark green mix
of dark green and scarlet. Those are the colors we're
going to be using today. If you feel like exploring, I would recommend
you just taking it one color at a time really and just building it
and seeing as it goes because we're not worried about a perfect result,
we really aren't. My background is now dry. There's a little bit
of a wet spot up here, but it's dry enough
for me to move on. Since I want to keep
an eye on time, we're going to scoot along. I'm going to go ahead
and get my ivory white out and I'm also going to
switch brushes for this part. Just so you know,
we're going to hit a few other times like that
while we're waiting for things to dry and I won't be talking
through all of them. Those will be a
great time to catch up with any questions
and everything, so you can be thinking and submitting questions
now for those moments. But I am switching brushes, so I was using a round
brush and now I'm going to switch over to a
quarter-inch flat brush. This is just a
preference of mine. I don't know what
it is, but it just feels better when
I'm putting down these first structural shapes. It just feels right to have this straight edge
over a round brush. But if you want to keep rocking your round brush, that's fine. As opposed to the background which we really watered down, I'm going to keep the
ivory pretty thick. I'm going to look at my reference photo and I'm
just going to start putting down a silhouette
of the shapes I see and I'm not going
to try to be perfect. The first thing I notice
is the stem that comes down to hold those blueberries and then I see
those blueberries. I'm not going to make a
perfect circle for each one. I'm just going to try and
create those voluminous [LAUGHTER] I can never
say that word like balloon-like shapes they show the swell of this little
cluster of grapes here. I said grapes;
they're blueberries. [LAUGHTER] It doesn't matter. Then there's ones in
our reference photo that are more in the background and I still want
to paint those in, even though they're blurry
in the picture I think they help control or keep
the eye line moving. Again, I'm using my
reference photo, I'm looking at it to help
me decide where things go, but if I don't get it
perfect, it's okay. Let me get some of
these leaves down here. The leaves, I really
want to try to force myself to not be too
perfect about them. It's really more about the expression of
the leaf and just getting a base down there for the paint that we're
going to add later. I like having the background
show through in some spots, and having it really
thick and bold in others. I'm trying to not move
too quickly and I'm trying to just trust
when my brush goes down, I'm trying to not over correct. I think sometimes for instance, when I first touch down
and make the stem, let's say I had wanted it to be, thicker or something
or just different. Sometimes when you go back
down and to try to correct it, you actually draw more
attention to the mistake, and then it looks more like a mistake that was
tried to be corrected. If you can just trust and let
your brush go down and at least let it dry because you
can correct things later, but you can't get back that initial first stroke
that you put down. It's like very much a balance of managing your expectations and your urges and your
perfectionism and just moving on, being thoughtful, but detaching and moving on for
the next stroke. I'm getting pretty close here. The next thing that I'm seeing is the stem in the
reference photo. There's a pretty big stem
that comes from the side and my hands are a little shaky because I'm a little
nervous. But that's okay. That's all part of the energy of this piece now and so when
I pulled that stem down, my brush stuttered a little bit, but I actually like it. It looks like a stem in the
light and so it's good. Sometimes fate takes
over and we have shaky hands and it helps. [LAUGHTER] I'm looking
pretty good here. I don't want to
build too much out. What I loved about
this reference photo, and one of the reasons
I chose it is because of the negative space that's framed around the
blueberries and I don't want to
fill everything up. I have to feel like I have
a really nice balance here. Maybe just a quick. Something to hint
at the stems in the back and to
give some energy. I'm going to go ahead
and let this dry before we move on
to our next layer.
4. Painting the Second Layer: With that, do you guys
have any questions? They can be anything.
They can be about art. It can be about mental health. They can be about
what foods I prefer. I prefer nachos and tacos. I'll just spoiler
alert it right now. No questions at the moment yet. But again, please send those in. I do see someone sent one, just a direct message. They asked what tape do I use? It says mine keeps tearing
the paper after painting. I'm using Blick
brand artist's tape. This one has been pretty
good for me because I've had my own rocky
history with paint. Sometimes a bunch of tape paint leaks under it and
then you're mad about it. Or other times no
paint leaks under, but you rip it up and you've
ripped half the paper. This one seems good to
go right from the peel. If you have one that's
a little bit too tacky like that,
don't throw it away. You don't have to waste it. You can lay the, pull a
piece off and then lay it on your palm for a second
and then peel it off. That little bit of hand oil is enough to usually help
release the page. Again, it's a balancing act because if there's too much oil, then it won't stick down. But that can help. What a great tip and also love not wasting even if you want
to get a new kind of tape. What do you think about
acrylic wash versus gouache? It's totally a preference. What I like about
regular gouache is similar to watercolor, is I like that it feels
like you can just not be as precious with it because if it does
dry all the way, you can just add
more water again. However, with
gouache, you never. I don't, maybe I'm just
not practiced enough. I can never get that
consistency back that I had when I first got
it out of the tube. It's not totally,
fully re-animatable, but it is enough that
it feels better. The reason that I love acrylic
wash is because I tend to improvise as I'm painting and I don't always
make the best decisions. As far as layering goes, I can layer and layer
and layer almost endlessly with acrylic
wash and it will just keep building
up on the page. Whereas gouache, you hit a
balancing point where you've layered up so many layers of paint that are
re-animated with water, you can start to mix mud
when you don't intend to. That's why I like to
use acrylic wash. That's awesome.
Thank you for that. Thoughts on mixing colors
with a palette knife. I love it. I have a
mini palette knife. I usually use it, especially when I'm painting
something bigger than this. I'm surprised it's not in my, oh, it's because I
just traveled with it. I use a smaller one. I will say the only thing
with a palette knife is with acrylic wash. When you're mixing,
it's going to make a really thin layer. Once acrylic wash
dries, it dries. Just make sure that when
you're grouping it around, you're trying to keep it grouped together so that you don't
waste a bunch of paint. To also use, there's little leaded plastic
containers you can get to help save your mixes so that you
can mix up a lot at one time, but don't have to worry about
using it before it dries. I love a palette knife. Right now the mixing
we'll be doing today is so minimal that I'll
probably use my brush. But a palette knife is great. Awesome. You want to
take a couple more? Yeah, actually, I
think we'll get going on the next round just
so that we can keep moving, but then we'll have
another chance. Sure. I'll save all
these questions. Perfect. Thank you. The next thing that
I'm going to tackle is adding some color to
the leaves and the stems. The reason that I'm choosing that is because
there's plenty of places in the
reference photo where the leaves are behind
the blueberries. There's a few instances
where that's not the case, but for the most part
they are behind there. In terms of layers, I think it's going to make the
most sense to get those down and then to put the stars of the
show on top of that. I'm going to be
mixing this color. It's essentially ash green, muted, and lightened a
little bit by shell pink. It's not quite a
half-and-half mix. I think it's a little
bit heavier on the shell pink than I imagined. I always think that
the shell pink will be heavier or more
intense than it is. I'm just looking for just
something a little bit lighter. I just have my tube lobbies
next to each other. If I were using a palette knife, I would probably
use a flat surface. I'd be using my glass palette
to mix on, not this plate, because it'd be
too hard for me to get in here and mix it up, but I'm just going
to get water on my brush and see what we get. It went a little bit
lighter than my swash, but it still hits the color
note that I'm going for. It's still a nice cool color with all these warms
that we have in here. My paint is really
thick right now. I've got very little
water in there. Usually I do like
to paint more thin, but it's really hard for
me to resist the urge with a loaded brush like this to not come down and paint with it. I am going to take
advantage of that. I'm going to look at my
reference photo and pay attention to what areas
stand out to me the most, what leaves are the
most important? I think these ones
that are in here above these blueberries are
really important. By important I mean what does your eye see when
it looks at the picture? What are the ones helping
with the movement of this? For instance, I see
this curve happening. I think if I put a big leaf shooting out this
way right here, that's going to throw
off that curve. I'm going to first
go ahead and darken the leaves that help me see that curve that I'm looking at. Now I'm going to clean my brush off and start with a better
mix of paint because now the grogginess
was starting to keep me from having the
brush shape that I wanted. First, it's fun to
go up some paint on, but now I need more control. Again, I'm looking at my
reference photo to see, what's the movement,
where's the light hitting? But then I'm letting my
brush be expressive. I'm not worried about
completing all the shapes. I'm trying to be
loose but thoughtful. I'm thinking before
my brush goes down, but then once my brush goes down I'm letting
it do its thing. See how these little
streaks that I pulled out, they really add this energy, that's a nice visual language
that I'm liking for this. There's no right or
wrong placement. If you pulled out a
different leaf than I did or yours is curving
in a different way, whatever it is, it's all good. I think that's good for, I can always come back
in with more of this color. But I think for an
under, the leaves under the blueberries, I
think that's good. I'm just leaning back to
see how wet my paint is. I think that even though we
just laid this layer down, I'm going to be working primarily not right on
top of those leaves. I think I'm safe to start
squeezing out my shell pink and my
[inaudible] brilliant. Thank you for letting
me know how to say that so that I don't
sound like a dumb, dumb. [NOISE] We can really use
less and less paint here. I probably squeezed out too much for the teal color
for the leaves. I'm sorry, I just want to be
mindful and use a little bit less for the blues. You'll get better at figuring out how much paint you
need as you paint more. You really get this intuitive feeling for
how much you need. I'm not demonstrating that well today by squeezing
out more than I need, but when you're in the zone,
you can really get there. Let's see, I have
my round brush. I think at this point
either brush would work. But since I already have
my round brush going, I'm going to go
ahead and keep that. I'm just going to go in. Again, I'm just trying to
add color. Oh my gosh. Sorry. Now I'm looking more at my piece and less at the
reference photo because now I have enough developing here that I just really want to pay attention to the balance of color because that's
what I'm interested in. I don't want there to
be too much paint, but I do want the
paint to lead the eye. You can let your
sense takeover here. I did put a blueberry, I put one right smack
dab in front of that leaf that was supposed
to be on top of them. That's okay. It can either change or I can paint
back over it later. It's not a big deal.
I'm going to go on with my second color and just
start supplementing that. I don't know, I want one to be
heavier than the other. Since I have a lot
of paint down, I'll probably just
touchdown with the one brilliant in a few places. Again, at this point I'm not looking at the
reference photo at all. Now I'm just looking
at where do I need some variation in color. Then the reference
photo, there weren't any blueberries down here, but I could just
feel that I wanted to touch down there with
the [inaudible] brilliant. That's all that took.
5. Adding Dark Details: What's cool is that this alone could be a really
cool abstract design, but you're going to see that what we're going to do
next is we're going to go in with our darker colors and we're really going
to start defining these shapes so that
it doesn't feel so globby so that when
the eye looks at it, it can make a little
bit better idea of what it's looking at
because this looks nice, but I feel like
we can do better. I think that for me, I don't
want it to be too abstract. I do want it to have a little
bit more form and that's where our dark values and bringing in this dark green
are really going to help. Awesome. I'm going to
look forward to there. In the meantime, we
have a couple of questions from gouache newbies. One was about, is it typical to paint using
gouache on watercolor paper? Then the second one is, any advice on what to look for
in regards to consistency? I think this is for regular gouache between
paint and water. Yes. Wow, I already forgot
the first. The paper. Since the gouache is
technically opaque watercolor, and so in that regard, I like painting on
watercolor paper. I think the texture of it works. If you wanted to use more
of an acrylic or mixed media or even work with
canvas, you absolutely can. Actually, that's one of the great things about
acrylic wash too, is you can paint on canvas and everything and it'll
hold and stay. As far as paint
consistency goes, it depends on what
you're looking at. In general, if you want just the classic
gouache look, then the mix you're trying to
look for is heavy cream. You're going to
want to add water until your paint is
like a heavy cream, so not too watery where if you slide your
brush through it, it fills the space right away. You want a little bit
of viscosity there, but not so much that
it's really sludgy. Unless, like you've seen in this tutorial already
for the background, we really watered
our paint down and that was because it was
going right onto the paper, and we wanted that variation in the lightness and darkness, and we wanted that
texture to come through, and so you can water
it out and get those really nice glazy
layers like that. Then conversely,
with these leaves, there was a lot more paint
than water when I first came down with these green leaves and that really made it thick. Then if you add even more
paint and less water, you get a dry brush effect, which I'm not sure if it
will come out in the camera, but there's a few spots where my strokes aren't perfect
and they have some of that olive showing through
and that's because I had a nice dry brush on there
and it adds a nice texture. It's really your preference. I can feel from
day to day that I have different preferences in my paint thickness that I like. Some days I would like a
really watery, flowy brush, and then other days I want really tight thick paint that I can control and everything.
It's totally up to you. Awesome. Thank you. For the folks out there who are painting with regular gouache, do you think it would
be better just to paint the background at the
end in that case? Yes, I think that that's a
great way to go about it. It can be difficult. If you're doing
something that has really intricate tiny things, then it could be more
difficult to try and paint the background
around it than to just deal with the layering. In that case, I would paint
the background first. Really just as long as
with regular gouache, your background layer is thin enough and you let
it dry all the way, like bone dry and then
layer on top of it, and you're quick, and you don't mix too much on the page, then you should be okay. Awesome. Then one more before I'll let you go
back in case it's dry. Going back to the battle
between the paint choices. Is there a reason you prefer acrylic wash over
regular acrylics? Yeah. It's the opaqueness for me and the thickness of it, acrylics can be a
little bit transparent. You can definitely buy
opaque and matte acrylics, but I think I just
happen to find this first and really
the way that I paint, I really like bold,
opaque, thick. That really just feels
good and right to me. However, I've seen so much beautiful work
done in acrylics, and maybe if I had found those first and practiced
with them first, they would be my preference. It's just, I came
to these first and I really like how they handle. Keep holding on to
your questions. I still have a bunch of my
green mix here is still wet. I'm actually going to use it. Before I go in with
my darkest colors, I think I can actually
use this green as an intermediary
dark to help add in some of the darker values
between the blueberries. Come on iPad, we can do
it. We can do it together. We can respond. One moment. I'm not talking about the darkest defining
moments like these little guys at the
bottom of the blueberries, those are dark little islets that were in these dark shadows. But, I mean how this blueberry is a little bit darker
behind those ones. Those are the values that I
want to strike right now with my green to help carve
out some form in there. I'm just going to go and
this is where I'm going to help reinforce
some of the shape. Already from those few strokes, my eye has so much,
a better information to look at this and see, we have a collection of
something round here. I don't want to do too much, it can be easy to get
ahead of myself. But I'm just going
to look and see in the reference
photo and my page, where could some
separation happen? Again, this half circle is now part of the visual
language of this piece, so if I use that
in other places, it's going to help
the eye understand, we have more of that same
thing happening up here. I think that's enough.
It's just something before we come in
with the big guns with the darkest darks. My favorite, I don't
know what it is, but adding a little touch
of scarlet to green to darken it is one of my
greatest joys on this Earth. The reason red is such a great balancing color
to green to help ground it, is because they are opposites
on the color wheel. They're complimentary colors. Whenever you mix colors that are opposite
on the color wheel, they're going to make
some form of neutral. In this one, if I mix
a little bit more red, we get more of a brown, a really dark,
pretty brown color. If I mix a little bit more
green then we just get a deeper emerald green in there. [NOISE] That's really
fun. I am switching over. I didn't say it,
because you could use a single round brush
for this whole piece, but for this part, I'm going to switch to a smaller round brush. It says it's a size
six long handle. It's by Princeton heritage, but you can just see that
it's much smaller than the round brush I was
using for the main bits. The reason is because my hands are a little
bit shaky and so I don't trust that
I'm going to be able to stay on the point
of my bigger brush. Sometimes I can, but not now. Mama is nervous and mama
doesn't want to mess up, so we're going to help
mama out by giving her a smaller brush, that makes it easier to do more
defined things. Since I do want it to be
more green than a brown, I need just the tiniest
little wisp of red. I really don't need much
to darken this mix. I'm adding it to whole
vines dark green. I just love it. I don't
know why I love it so much. But these little things, me mixing red and green
right now, pay attention. Those little things
that bring you joy, those are part of your style, that's part of you as an artist. I'm going to mix this
green every day if it feels good because
that's now part of me. Maybe yours is a
different color. I really want to be
thoughtful here because I don't want the dark
lines to overwhelm. I just want them to enhance, and so I'm going to be really choosy about
where I touch down, and the first place
is going to be the openings of those
little blueberries. Because when I squint my eyes and look at the reference photo, which really helps me see
the values more truly, that's really what's
standing out to me, are these little islets at the bottoms of the
little blueberries. I'm not going to be too perfect. I'm just dabbing down. I'm not even drawing
with the brush, I'm just creating little dots. Then I also just on
some of these in really choosy spots probably
where my focal point is, which is right around here, I'm just going to enhance
some of these darker values. Now my eye gets pulled right
into there. That's good. That's what we want, because these guys
help the eyeline, but these ones up here and down here help the
eyeline continue, but they aren't the focal point. I want to add in
there little dots, but they're not going
to get any big curves like this one did, because this is the main one. Then for the leaves, I see lines and the leaves
and I want to help. Sometimes adding the
lines to leaves, they act as arrows that help with the movement
of the piece. A little goes a long way
with these darker colors. Now at this point,
for these ones, I'm not looking at
the reference photo. I'm looking at my piece and
trying to balance things and go with the flow of how
I laid the leaves down. I'm going to let this
dry for a minute, especially when
we have something as powerful as this dark color. It's easy to get ahead
of ourselves and I need to let my eyes
rest to take a look. But I'm feeling pretty
good about this. I really love the movement of these darker strokes
that came in and they fit with the
lighter ones that we did earlier with the
ivory and the teal. That becomes a visual language. I have these great dots that
create this nice eyeline. I abandoned the ones that went up here and so
I'm going to let it sit to see if I want to
add any dark dots up here. But I don't think I do because
I think that's going to create an X and right
now I've got this going, so I'm just going to let it be.
6. Finishing Up: A couple of more
technical questions about the paint and things. We have someone asking. You can't reconstitute
acrylic gouache, correct? Do you ever use a
spray bottle to keep them wet or what
would you recommend? Yeah. I live in the desert and so paint drying times
are really quick. I've gotten good
through practice. As you saw, we built this
up one color at a time, and so that's
definitely something to think about is to be
really thoughtful about. That's one of the things
with regular gouache, you can just squeeze out
a bunch of colors on your palette and
just mix as you go. With acrylic gouache, I have to be a little bit more thoughtful and methodical about the order in which I squeeze things out. But you did see that this blue green that I
mixed, it's still wet. I was able to come back and grab more of that when I needed. You definitely do the same way. You get an intuitive feel for how much paint
and water you want, you'll get a real feel for how much paint you need and
how long it's going to last. I do have many spray
bottles that I will keep, especially if I'm doing a longer painting session and I'll just spritz the palette from time to time with some
water to keep it wet. Then there are also, they're called stay wet palette. It's S-T-A - W-E-T palettes, and it's essentially
like a sponge. It's a sponge that you put paint on and it
helps keep the paint. Those are some of my
management tips there. But just being thoughtful
seems to be the most helpful and to just pay attention when you're
mixing your paint. You'll notice if
it's starting to dry and if you need to
add something to it. Awesome. Thank you for that. There was another question
about laying down that initial layer of ivory, is that something you
typically do to establish a layout or composition of where you want to
paint details later, or is it more of a
stylistic color choice? Yeah, that's a great question
and it's a little of both. Which camera is on, by the way, I don't know if I should
be looking on [LAUGHTER]. We're on you right now. Okay. Yeah. Good to know. Wow. I forgot. What's the question, Tiffany,
what are we talking about? It was about laying
down that ivory, whether it was stylistic
or composition. Yeah. I appreciate you. It's for
two reasons. One, yes. It acts as a sketching layer. Before I'm figuring
everything out, it's a low pressure way to
figure out my composition. Then the other part of it is just a contrast boost. Without that ivory
in this piece, I think the shell pink and
the one brilliant would have a hard time really holding
its own against that olive, but I still really wanted to use those colors together
in this composition. It was just a way
to help boost that and to help those colors really
stand out on top of that. I also do just stylistically, I do enjoy how it looks. I like that layered look that
it looks pretty expressive. Awesome. Thank you for that. Do you want to take
another one or? Yeah, let's do one more. Cool. There was an
earlier question. I hope I am presenting
this correctly, but what determines
when you paint in separates or as a
whole composition? Yeah, that's a great question. I think if I know ahead of time when I'm sitting
down that I'm going to be using the piece for an illustration or if I
know what the end use is, then I try my best to look out for future Dylan and
paint things separately. But there are other
times where it's really more about
I need to paint, I need to show up, I need
to be creative today. I really enjoy painting
in a sketchbook. There's sometimes where I don't know where the piece
is going at all. I'm just not really
worried about it. If it turns out that I paint
something awesome that I love that I do want to
use for an illustration, I can either scan it in and
deal with it and cut it out and try to layer it as is,
almost like a collage, or I can paint it again and try to just take notes
as I'm working and say, oh man, I love how
this turned out. I'm going to do
it again, but I'm going to paint the
motifs separately. I know what colors I use and then I'll scan it in and use it. It just happens organically. I paint a lot like this. I really enjoy this. Nothing beats building
up the paint on paint. It just is not the same as painting separately
and compiling. But I do love that process of compositing in Photoshop
and doing things digitally. It's just what am I
feeling? What am I doing? What am I working on?
That helps determine it. Awesome. Honestly, I'm looking at this. I'm sure that after
this live is done, I'll walk away for real and
come back and I'll have a better idea of what if
I would touch this up, but just looking at it now, there's nothing that
really stands out to me as incorrect or my eye doesn't feel pulled away from these
in a negative direction. I really like this
thicker dark stroke that went down because it gives this nice counterbalance
to what's happening here; otherwise, I think
that this would be just too heavy
down on that page. I'm happy with how
that balance turned out and I feel happy about it. I also, when I come back
to review the paint, where the paint is at also, on my palette that
will determine. It's like I see my dark
green is about to dry. Do I want to do anything
with that before that dries. Sometimes the urgency
of the medium itself can really help with decision making
and everything. Do we want to move to the
dedicated Q&A portion? Yeah. Let's before we do, let's do the ultra gratifying. Let's see how my tape job was, and let's peel the tape back. I got a little bit of
leakage near the edge. Nothing too bad. One down. Yeah. Look at that. You just want to hold your
paper down and see how I'm pulling in the exact
opposite direction that the paint was laid down. Pull in nice and slow. It looks like we
did pretty good. I say that now we're going
to pull this top one off. It's going to be covered
in olive underneath. Go. We are lucky ducks
today. Beautiful. You were right, that is
immensely satisfying [LAUGHTER]. Yeah. [inaudible] and it's
just so nice to have that. You can see I got
some leakage there, but even that still looks cool. It's like the mark
of the artist. It's still neat enough
that it's framed. It's not like I blobbed
all the way out there, but it happens.
7. Q&A: Well, I do have a couple. There's still time to send
in your questions folks. We're going to turn it
over to the audience now via me for questions. Go ahead and pop them in
the chat if you have them. I have a few from earlier
that we didn't get to yet. Some of these are
great ones, more generally about your practice. Do you have tips to just start and overcome
that perfectionism? Yeah. I think that one of the best because
I have ADHD and so productivity and
getting started on things, my resistance is
so frequent in this house it's ridiculous. It should pay rent. Basically, the best
tip that I can give is to figure out what the dumbest, smallest next step is
and focus only on that. Butt in the chair
is usually that. It's like I don't even need to know what I'm going to be
doing when I sit down. But I know that if
I can get myself in this room and sit
down in this chair, then I can then focus on the
next very, very small step, which might mean grabbing
my palette of paper, like we're talking real
small here because the chance is that your brain is overwhelmed about some
part of the process. It's scared about
messing up or it's worried about making a mess
or whatever the case may be, your brain is unsure and so it's trying to have you avoid. You're going to zoom
way in and say, "I want to be making, I need to sit, put my
butt in the chair, or I need to open my laptop or I need to close everything on my laptop that is not Photoshop," or whatever
the case may be, but just whatever that
really tiny next step is, that can be huge. Some other tips I have are to remember that it's
a bummer to hear, but it just really
doesn't matter what you make today or tomorrow. It just matters that you do. Taking the power away from your own decision making
is a good decision. I have a little bag of
prompts that I'll use some times and the prompts will have some are different
types of flowers, some are colors that I like. Some just say stripes on it and just pulling a
few out of those and making myself do it
whether I want to or not, that helps. Also asking anybody else
in your life to help you. If you have a creative friend, then you can text them
or call them and say, "I'm in resistance mode, I need you to check-in in five minutes because I need to be painting in five minutes." Or you can ask them, name an animal and a color
and then you can take it. Use your lifelines, use your accountability buddies,
they're really helpful. Set a timer. Set a timer for how
much time is left on what you're doing. Whatever it is, something
about a timer and it just really helps focus my brain
and it gives an end time. Especially if I'm outside on the patio playing
a phone game, that's really hard for
me to transition from that into focused in
my studio and working. But if I set a timer
that's like, Hey, we've got five more minutes of doing this and then you
need to be in there. It really helps me to start
transitioning because transitions and ADHD we don't
like them, we hate them. Anything that's going to help
that will be a big help. Hopefully those are
some tips to help you. Yeah, those are awesome tips. I smell a whole class on those things [LAUGHTER]
in your future maybe. But I didn't know. Any advice on how to pick a color
palette from scratch? Yeah. If the person asking that, if you weren't here
from the beginning, then definitely check
the replay because my process of really taking
it one thing at a time. First, making a list of
what's in the painting, what things need colors
applied to them, and then picking those out
and working them through. Using my swatches and being able to pair things together, that really helps me. In fact, that's the
biggest help to me. Also, I get overwhelmed
by color a lot. If you do as well, start with just one color. In this case, I knew
all the colors. I made the list
of all the colors before I started and
looking at the swatches, I had a pretty good idea that
they would work together. I didn't for sure. I
don't know until I do it. But in cases like in some days when I'm really
overwhelmed by options, I start with one color. What color is exciting me? What color do I just
want to have on my brush and mix
up and paint with? I do that. Then when
I'm done with that one, I move on to the
next color and I just build it up like that. I also tend to do a lot of color exploration in
my digital artwork, and I'll save a lot of
screenshots and examples of color palettes that don't make it through to the final cut. I have this library of color palettes that I know
already work together, and I can shop through
those and be like, that was a really weird palette. I bet I can mix up some
paint to be similar to that. Awesome. One more
technical question here when you are mixing a
large quantity of color, for example for the background, do you typically mix them
together with the brush itself or the handle or? That's where I would use
a small palette knife. Because this guy is
going to really help me make sure that
those pigments and the fillers are really getting well mixed and then I'm not
going to halfway through, notice a streak of one color that didn't get quite
mixed in there. That's the only issue
I've found with using the brush handle as opposed
to it's just so small, you can't really get
a great mix in there. But I definitely would
recommend whether it's a palette knife or even I've seen they essentially look like tiny mini rubber spatulas at
Blick and you can use those. Anything that isn't going to clog your brush
pretty much because your paint is precious and if you get a bunch
loaded up into the brush, then you're just going
to have to rinse it out. It's not really going
to be that usable. I do recommend using
something that's non-porous and that will help
you mix more thoroughly. Awesome. Then I think we have time for this last
little batch of questions which was all around getting started
with art licensing. One was just a general question
about any resources or classes that helped
you learn about art licensing when you
were just getting started. Then similarly, when you felt
your portfolio was ready, what was your approach? Did you just start reaching out? Did you find an agent first? Yeah. As far as there's so many more resources now
than when I started out. When I was starting out, it was really bumbling around and just asking the few people and
a few Skillshare teachers. Honestly it was this
small community where a few people were doing
it and just asking them. But now I highly recommend all of Shannon McNabb's
classes on Skillshare. She is a rock star. She does what I do, but she doesn't have an agent. She handles all of
her negotiating. She does it all. She's really been through
the fire with that. I highly recommend Shannon
McNabb's line of classes. I would also recommend,
there's a Facebook group. It sucks that it's on Facebook, but there's a Facebook group
called Advice for Artists, and it is led by my
agent, Jennifer Nelson That is a crazy
supportive group. People will get in there with really specific
contract questions, and there's just working
artists from all over the world that can help
give their input with that. I think that that can be
really helpful with figuring out having buddies because you can't just learn
it and be done. It's an ever and ongoing process as everything is as
long as you have like a little cohort
group that you feel good in, then you'll be
able to take it from there. As far as getting into it. I'll just say I don't think anyone's portfolio
ever feels ready. You have to do it
before you're ready. I'll just put that out there. But that being said, what helped me when I was getting
into it is I had a very specific product that I was trying to work on
and that was fabric. That was my focus is I want
to get a fabric collection. What that focus helped me with is it helps me narrow down what type of art I would be making because I make a lot
of different types of art and not all of it
is very good for fabrics, some of it is better
for other things. By focusing on fabric,
it helped narrow down the type of art
I would be making. It helped me figure out. I already knew what tools
I would be using for it, using Photoshop and everything. It gave me a clear
success or fail moment. I either get the
contract or I don't. It's not like a nebulous, I don't know when I've
succeeded or not. I knew when I would know
if I succeeded or not. At the time, I think
Bonnie Christine, she was on Skillshare
talking about going to quote market and so that put quote
market into my brain. It was really just
focusing on one thing at a time and saying I'm going to try and get this
fabric collection. Then when I did, it was great. Now I want to work on
more stationery stuff. So I started focusing
on my lettering more and then I got
clients that way. For me, it's been a really
organic process and I was able to take it
that slow because I was depending on Skillshare
more for my income and protecting my artwork from
needing to produce for me. In those early stages, it would not have been
productive for me to put the pressure on my artwork to
need to start making money. It was like, I'm making money from Skillshare
and if need be, I'll go be a waitress,
I'll go work. Whatever needs to happen
in order for me to be able to protect my art-making
energy and everything. As far as your portfolio goes, because I know the question
is on someone's lips out there is your style and
developing your style. I get why we have the
discussion around style, but if just forget
it for a little bit. Just show up and make artwork and make as much
of it as you can and start paying attention to the clothes you buy and the
things you buy for your home, and the things that stand
out to you in catalogs. Because all of those things, just like me mixing
that dark green color brought me so much joy. That feeling is a
hint to me that like, hey, do more of this, and now because of
that dark green at the moment is going to
be more part of my style and that is just a natural thing because I'm paying attention to how it feels for me and what I'm interested in and the
mediums that I like. Sure, think about
style, whatever. But also I'll say that other people say
that they recognize a style in my work across different mediums,
and I don't see it. I think there's a little bit of an illusion that happens
that you might not ever be able to fully grasp
or name what your style is. But if you're showing
up regularly and making artwork and being
present with yourself, a style will come
out. It just does.
8. Final Thoughts: Today, I hope you'll leave some of your perfectionism behind because it
doesn't serve you. It does not. You may think
it does but it just doesn't. I hope that you remember
that showing up and creating is more than
the final result. I know it can be really hard to disengage from
that because it's like, I sat down and made something,
I want it to look good. I get that but there's so much more to be had than
just what you're painting. It's the feeling of painting. It's getting to mix colors that you didn't know
we're going to mix. It's getting to make a mess on your desk and then
clean it all up. There's just so much more than the final result and if
you only look at that, you're just going to
feel you're spinning your tires and you're not a real artist and
it's just no good. I hope you'll show
up and make art for yourself more often and I hope you'll feel brave
to put yourself into it. When I was first starting
out as an illustrator, this weird olive color was not in and I just loved these ugly colors
and putting them together. I just had to be brave
and put them out there when everyone
else was sharing these really cute
color palettes. I just had to be like, here I am, my weird colors. You have weird
colors and you have weird stories and you have
these strange things that all unite to make you,
you, and to just trust that and let it ride even if it feels weird and you can't
see how it all relates. It's okay and you just trust it.
Dylan Mierzwinski, Illustrator & Lover of Flowers
