Live Encore: Paint on Your Stuff to Make Usable Art

1. Introduction: We think of art a lot as these different areas. You have to have certain brushes, you have to have certain canvases, you have to have certain materials, and I don't believe in any of that. We can find and create art with anything we have. Hello, my name is Adam Palmeter, and I am a mural artist, comedian and teacher. I love to paint, and I get bored easy, so I paint anything I can. Now that can mean umbrellas, notebooks, iPads, especially walls, that's what I love to paint. Murals mostly, I've spent the last few years traveling around the world. I have murals in 14 different countries and counting. Today's class is all about stuff. I love to paint stuff, the unconventional things you might have lying around the house or something that you use all the time, which could be a little prettier. Today's class, I have an iPad that I've been carrying around with me the last three years, which could use a little bit of dancing up. Let me show you the very simple brushstrokes that I use, and then alongside me, you're going to be able to paint some really cool art, and hopefully have the greatest time of your life. It is my hope after this class that you have a piece of really cool artwork, a new skill to show off to all your friends and hopefully some fun functional new art. Just so you know, this was a Skillshare live class and I got to interact with all these students who got to paint alongside next to me. All right, so grab your brushes, your paint and some stuff, and let's get to work. 2. Anything is a Canvas: Just to introduce myself, my name's Danny. I am here on behalf of Skillshare hosting today's session. Really excited to be here, really excited to make some art. Adam, what are we going to be getting into today? What do you have planned? We are going to be painting stuff. Basically, anything. As what you might call a digital nomad as someone who travels around, it's really unconventional for me to paint things on canvas as much. So a few years ago, I started thinking about, well, what can I paint that'll be functional, something I can take with me. Yeah, just started finding things in place of canvas that ended up either being really eye-catching pieces of artwork, but also just now I've got this eye for the unconventional. Even walking through a store, I'll see a toaster and I'm like, yeah, I want to paint that. Anything's a canvas. Yeah. Speaking of that, can you share a little bit about how you got started in painting and unconventional surfaces and why you like painting so much? Yes. When I started painting, I actually went to Lisbon, Portugal when I started traveling around. It was difficult to find canvas or even a place to paint. I found one of these, big old umbrella. Now, an umbrella is surprisingly like a canvas. It's actually a large space. It has a black background, which is something I love to use. But also, you can find umbrellas way easier than you can find canvas that it turns out no matter where you are. But yeah, it holds the paint really well. It makes a great gift. I made this one a couple months ago now, just using standard acrylics. It holds, I use it in the rain when I'm on my long emotional walks. But yeah, this ended up being the first thing I've started painting. Since then, it's anything. Let's see. I have here my keyboard holder. As you can see, it holds a little bluetooth keyboard, but I was able to paint this with acrylic paints and this is a really nice keyboard holder. But in terms of functionality, now I'm really focusing on things, what are people using a lot that we can dance up, that's what I like to call it. We have face mask. This is a face mask that I made. Standard face mask, it's just made out of cloth and I used a metallic gold paint for it. This is probably, I'd say maybe the pinnacle of functionality meeting my creativity. Because maybe, it is for a pandemic, but why can't it be about you? You can look good in one of these, you don't have to have your typical run of the male face masks. Yeah, this has been something I've been really excited about making. Outside of that, I really just look for certain types of flat spaces to paint. Here, I got one of my notebooks. I like to use this background neon yellow, I thought that will look good with a black. Then, as well as you can see down here, this one has white and gold paint on it, but I think everyone uses notebooks or binders. I painted coffee mugs. I've painted laptop holders. Really, I've been pretty stuff crazy and just looking for stuff to paint on. Today, I'm going to be painting on the back of my iPad. Awesome. Those are so cool. I imagine that the emotional walks under the umbrella just get a little bit deeper with the artwork over your head. It does. You're walking through the rain with a really pretty umbrella. You're having a tough day, then maybe someone says, hey, that's a really nice umbrella, and that's how you meet your wife. I'm hoping maybe that's how it's going to work out eventually. Love it. I wouldn't be too surprised. It's a pretty darn cool umbrella. I mean, if that's not a Skillshare class, I mean, I don't know what it is. One hundred percent. One last crazy question toward you. Can you share the craziest thing you've ever drawn on or made it bizarre on. A couple of things actually. The craziest thing I've painted was over the summer. I was in Colorado and I painted an outhouse. This was for around the world, if you're not familiar what an outhouse is, it's an outdoors bathroom that people have in rural areas, it's usually just a big wooden box. When I was in Colorado, at the beginning, this was in June, I couldn't find a lot of walls where I was, out in the woods. I'm on my hikes I came across a property that had an outhouse, it's something to be said when you're called to a bathroom, in an artistic way. But nonetheless, I was. Really, I would say it's probably the strangest question. I've had a knock on a stranger's door and say, hey, I would like to paint your bathroom. That'll usually shake up anyone's day. The coolest place that I've gotten to paint is actually a few weeks ago at this place called the Akumal Monkey Sanctuary. This is in Akumal, Mexico. They taken all sorts of animals that had been trafficked or abused, and they helped to raise them. I got to paint a giant wall in a flamingo enclosure, which is a lot of fun because all day, the flamingos are very curious, and loved to come up, and start poking around, who's this guy? As I'm painting the wall, I'm getting nibbled on left and right by flamingos, which is probably something that will never happen again. But it was definitely something where I had to stop and think all right, this is actually pretty crazy. I'd have to say, yeah, the outhouse and the flamingos are probably the two best places. Yeah, not too shabby. I think I'd like probably be dreaming of now, playing music somewhere and flamingos just coming out of the woodwork. Super cool. It is that magical, to be honest. They're beautiful birds and they really sound like dinosaurs. It was a pretty interesting day. Awesome. Really cool. Cool. Let's get into it. 3. Class Materials: Before we get started, I'm going to share with you the simple materials that I use so we can start painting. Some of the things that I'm going to be using I got right here. This is my chisel-tip brush. This is always 3/8 of an inch. I love to use chisel-tip brushes because, as you can see down here, it actually helps me with these points here at the top where it's thicker and then it gets thin pretty nicely here at the end. If not, your standard flat tip brush will work fine. I use this and then I just use your basic acrylic paints. This is just Studio Acrylic, probably the cheapest stuff you can buy but I like it. It is a high viscosity which really has a lot more body to it which is [inaudible] watery paint. I love to use this, a paint brush. Here's the thing, if you are painting something like this, as you can see this is a flat surface, I don't think it's real leather, but a plastic leather, once I'm done painting this, if you want to get maybe a few more years or a few more miles out of its use, because this is functional artwork, these are things we're using, I grab a can of this Rust-oleum. It is a transparent coat. So you throw this on, I put some tape over the zippers and the parts that I didn't want to get any of this on, but it's like a little clear coat like a candy coating, but it gives it that extra shine, that extra shimmer, and also protects it a bit better when you're putting everything in your bag and whatnot. Basically, paint, brush and a piece of stuff, that's what we're looking for today. 4. Basic Brush Strokes: Next, we're going to start with the very basic brushstrokes that I use in all of my artwork. The type of artwork I do is actually quite meditative for me. It's abstract art. As you can see here at my notebook. It's a confined space. I like to think of it as a an artistic, choose your own adventure jigsaw puzzle. We have the space, we have our parameters, and it's really just about creating the shapes that fit perfectly all around. As you can see, there are some layovers and such, but there's a lot of negative space. We're going to put this beautiful notebook aside for a second. Let's put this over here. This is what I do; I use for this exercise basically two different brushstrokes. We're going to make this real easy for you. We got our first brushstrokes. Now, my brushstrokes go from top to bottom. I don't use any large strokes for this. This is all just basically comes from your wrist and on up. It's going to be a little like flicking motion like this. If you all want to practice, go 1, 2, 3, very good, you're all fantastic students. Let's see here. I'm going to start with this beautiful paint right here, another acrylic. This is a beautiful teal acrylic, my favorite color. Actually, you can get a nice little shot of that. Look at how delicious that is, am I wrong? I'm not wrong, and that's nice. I'm going to be using this paint right here. Basically, it's super simple. Like it says here, from top to bottom. We're going to push down. I'm using a chisel tip. The point of the chisel tip is going to be on here first. We're going to be pushing it like that, and then real quick, so easy. Now this is abstract art so you don't have to be good, but it does help to get a repetition in the muscle memory of this kind of brushstrokes. We have one right here. Again, what I do is I'm going to go across. As a right-handed person, I'm going to go, let's see, we have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. What we're looking for here is the spacing between the brushstrokes. It goes usually from longer to shorter, and it's that kind of repetition which is going to get you very similar brushstrokes. I'm not going to do one and then take a minute, and then do another and take a minute. It's pretty simple. Again, they start from the top and go right down to the bottom, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. I'm feeling like a rebel. There we go. Here we go. As you can see, again, it goes from longer to shorter, paying attention to the spacing. My artwork really depends on the muscle memory and just doing the same stroke over and over again. I've probably done this thousands and thousands times, but it is that easy. I think it says meditative. You have to take a little time with it. But again, let's start from the top here, 1, 2, 3. Now another thing that I'm doing here as I'm making these strokes, you can see here it starts to curve in. If you wanted to do 10-15 of these strokes, it'll start to curve in, in almost like a quarter circle. I like to think of palm trees when I'm doing this, they are all kind of aiming towards a central part. Let's see if we can finish out this one by going as far as we can. Let's see, 1, 2, 3, cool. As it gets nice and small. There we go. Kind of looks like almost like a seashell. Yeah, that is from the top to the bottom. These ones are fairly large. You can try and scale it down a little bit and even do smaller ones. This one is really just these tiny flicks here. Let's try over here, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Like I said, I'm thinking of it as a jigsaw puzzle. When we're dealing with a space like this, we know the parameters and it's all about filling it in. Starting with larger strokes, you can make these palm leaves. Then in the smaller areas we fill them in with the smaller palm leaves. Then after that, we even just start doing little single petals, I like to call them. The first brushstroke is from top to bottom. Give it a shot. The second brushstroke is what I like to call the remix, it is from bottom to top. This is pretty self-explanatory. Taking your same brush, and now instead of starting this side with the pointed edge of the chisel tip against the paper. I flip it upside down, so now it's backwards, and then going from bottom to top, the same way, just the opposite direction. We're going to start down here, up, up, up, and up. Now it's more dominant for me to go from top to bottom versus from bottom to top, but it gives you, I guess, another tool really to use for this kind of painting. Let's try this again. Let's try to make little longer strokes, and again, I'm going to push our tip here, and up, up, up, and up. The paint starts to thin out a little bit as you use it, but that actually adds a lot more depth to it. As you can see some of the paintings directly behind me, it uses a lot of depth perception. The thicker the paintbrush is when it touches the paper, you're going to get a more density of that paint, so it'll have a little more contrast of whatever you're painting. As you drag it out, it'll start to lose that paint and kind of be a little more wispy, not have as much definition, but something cool to paint though. Let's try again from bottom to top: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Again, let's pay attention to the spacing between here. A lot of my artwork really relies on that contrast between the brushstrokes, that's usually what I focus on. It may seem like a very quick movement, it is, but take your time with it. I like to count them out in my head, becomes part of a meditative process for me. Then we can even do these smaller ones right here, like boom, boom, boom, boom. Just like that. Those are basically the two main brushstrokes that I use. When they all collect together in different directions, which we'll get to watch when I start painting my iPad, you'll start to see it forms this floral, organic, multi-directional, again, jigsaw puzzle I could think of it as. That's where we are with our brushstrokes. Please show us an example with a flat tip brush. It's the same principle. I don't have a flat tip brush on me at the moment. It's the same principle. You can really just choose a corner of your flat tip brush and lead with that corner. It's really more about the motion and it's about the brush pressure as well, actually that. If we're going from bottom to top, even if it's a flat top brush or a chiseled tip, you can still just lean in hard with one of the edges and flick it up, and being aware that your brush is actually leaving the paper, your brush is actually coming off the paper as it slides. I love using chiseled tip brushes, this is my main squeeze. But yeah, flat tip brush, same principle. Jessica [inaudible] a round brush. Round brush. Yeah, round brush. Do you have any other tips about different types of brushes? Are you always a 100 percent chisel brush? It's weird to say I'm 90 percent chisel, but that's probably the truth. I do use chiseled brushes for most of the time. Unless I'm doing a very large mural, then I'll start with standard hardware store brushes, and most of those are going to be flat headed brushes. But when I do the detailing, when I do the palm leaves, then I'll use a chisel brush. I have used round brush before, and when you push the edge of the round brush onto the paper and make a straight line, it's actually quite nice because the bristles start to actually open up a bit. They pull back in as the brush leaves the paper, so it makes this really nice, almost teardrop shape in a way. I'd love to see what you're making with your round brush. That would be pretty cool. Well, with our brushstrokes finish, should we move on to our main piece of stuff? Yeah, let's do it. 5. Painting Your Stuff: Big Strokes: We can start painting our stuff. First, we're going to start filling up the space with larger strokes. I am going to be painting my iPad cover. I've had this iPad cover for a while now, it has been well-traveled. As you can see, there are a couple of dings here, a couple of dings there. Then we're going to cover this up. I'm making that look way cooler than it was supposed to look. I'm going to be using just my acrylic white right here. I think it's got a nice contrast with this dark background. Now because I'm right-handed, I tend to work from left to right just so I'm not dragging my hand across through any wet paints. But I also live dangerously. I'm going to mix it up a little bit. Here's the thing about Stuff is that you can move it around. Feel free to move it around. You don't have to all paint in the same direction. Everything I do is very multi-directional. I tend to flip around my canvases or wherever I'm painting, every time I am painting something new or during the process. For our initial strokes, trusty iPad cover, you've had a good run. I did a good job keeping you clean, but now it's time to make you pretty. Start our jigsaw puzzle. I'm going to start up here in the top corner with our initial first stroke, our top to bottom, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Pretty cool. Few things to check out here. It's almost like a suede feeling cover I have here. It's got a little bit of tooth to it, a little bit of grit. What that does is actually it makes a lot of the paint here collect in certain spots and pull off. I really like it, it's very organic, really abstract. It's got a little bit more texture to it. But it is starting out okay here. When you are doing your brushstroke also sometimes play around by taking the brush, keeping on its side, and doing strokes. Or as you're doing the strokes, see if you can pick the brush up a little bit. The chisel tip brush, which I like is actually pretty sharp. You end up getting sharper, more condensed lines right at the end of your brushstrokes. Let's try this again. Now I'm going to shift this a little bit over here and again, top to bottom, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and it goes right up against the side here. I love to play with the different directions. As you can see, we're going to be working around a couple of things on my iPad here. We've got the little coal right here, and then this also for the camera right here. The rest of it is pretty scot-free, but usually I like to keep about as far away from the obstacles until the end of my composition. Then that way I can fill them in with a really small brushstrokes that start to do a little bit of patchwork and keep everything together. I'm going to move this again here. Let's see, I'm going to start from the top, 1, 2, 3, 4. Then just go to right off the edge bit there. It's looking pretty all right. Now we can play with other brushstrokes. Even if I'm at the top to the bottom, the same brushstroke that I'd been doing when you turn in to do the bottom to top, you can also just go straight across as well, you don't have to go exactly from the bottom to the top, but using the same brushstroke, flicking to the sides will work just as well. Let's say you've got here 1, 2. That's coming out pretty nicely. Again, always paying attention to the spacing between your lines. That might be the only thing that stays the same throughout any of these paintings. Then let's try some from the bottom, fill this in. One,2,3. I did some small ones here, and now we can even get a little bit smaller. Taking just a little bit of paint. This also the great thing about this type of painting. It uses almost no paint. You can really get more bang for your buck when using these paints. Now on the inside here we're going to do some pretty small ones,1, 2. Don't be afraid to overlap two. Let's do an example. As we mentioned, the ends of these brushstrokes are pretty thin. They don't have a lot of paint on them, they are not a heavy contrast. But if you do a heavier contrasting paint over it, it gives it way more of a sense of depth. Let me show you here. This one's going to start a bit thicker and I'm going to pull it right across some of the thinner ones. You could see it creates, there we go. It creates a nice cross-section. But also the wispiness, it gives it a lot more depth. Don't be afraid to cross over. I usually save that for the end of the painting just to see where composition-wise, the thicker paint is going to work. As you can see on this one, I really paid attention to the curve. You see all of them are aiming pretty much towards the same area. I like to think of almost like a wave, like the water being pulled in a little bit. But I think that movement really pulls your eye to different parts of the composition and makes it pretty cool. Now I'm going to try from the bottom. It kind of break down. I'm already feeling relaxed. Let's see, I'm going to turn our canvas. There we go. I'm going to do is someone shooting right across. Let's say, 1, 2, 3. There we go, and down, put some small little palms. Again, don't be afraid to go right up to to the edge or whatever you're painting if that helps you. See I'm being really careful right now, I'm not to put my hand into the wet paint because I've done that too many times. We're going to keep on painting top to bottom. Now, I like how it is a little bit messy. It's got a little bit of texture to it, and I don't know, for me personally, I think that really adds to the abstract, the abstractness of the artwork, if you will. It is still pretty organic. Yeah, I've tried to use some [inaudible] right here along this. Boom, Oh, that's nice. These nice thin lines. It's not to say you can't get that with a flat-tip brush, I haven't used a flat-tip toothbrush in awhile. But yeah, if you can do that, go right ahead. But the chisel tip brush really does make some pretty sharp lines. 6. Painting Your Stuff: Small Details: Now we can use the smaller strokes to fill in these gaps and empty space, as you can see here at the end, at these teeny tiny corners in here. I can't do a full stroke in there. What we're going to do is I make the little petals. If you paint, I like to load up a chunk right here on the end there. I'm using one, maybe two strokes. Really going to make this small. Goo, goo. Look at that, that fits perfectly. Jigsaw puzzle. Let's see, here we go on this side. I'm going to grab here. It is very much like an artistic exercise as well in terms of getting a more confident brushstroke, I know my work really relies very much on having the confidence to be able to just make large swipes over and over again on a wall. But that all comes back to a practice of just doing the same thing over and over and over again. But it does translate from the macro to the micro because you get a better idea of composition and what's going to work for you. We've got this whole, once we make this prettier and there we go 1, 2 and really curve this one in. Let's see where we go. The lines start to overlap a little bit. But it's got that wispiness. I love that curve right there. Really does help me remind me of palm trees. In Mexico it's not that hard to forget about palm trees. Let's see. Where else? How about right here? Then you have a direction like this. There we go and it's coming together nice. We have this whole section in here, this long section. Wondering what to do. You know what? I'm going to fill it in with some smaller strokes. It's really just fitting into the right spot and seeing. It's really a game for me, I try not to touch the edges, I sometimes want to touch the edges, it's a constant battle inside my head, but don't worry, you don't have to engage. You can just have little strokes just like that. On the other side of this palm and even in this small section right here. There we go. You can also start with larger brushes if you want to to get some larger lines and then fill it in with smaller brushes, with smaller brushstrokes. When I do my mural work, that's actually how I start. I start with very thick large lines and I use that as the backbone or the structure for an entire wall and work around everything I've done to begin with with smaller strokes, so it starts to descend. Couldn't get a couple right here. [inaudible] Curve that one in. Make sure we're centered. I didn't hear anyone scream, so that's good. Now let's try this. That overlaps a little bit. I like that and someone said it's pretty dreamy, it's wispy. Enjoy that very much and we got this little space in here, not for long. Got him. Let's get, there's one and there's one, and there's one. Now, this the fun part for me, I love filling in all the small part, little bits and pieces here. It's a little game. You can always paint more, you can't paint less. Sometimes I get a little too much paints, then I just can't sleep for weeks. No, I'm just kidding. I'm not that hard on myself, but it is easier to paint more and leave a little bit of that darker background or whatever background you're using to really help with keeping the composition a little more equal all around parts, just make it nice and balanced. That's the word I'm looking for. 7. Painting Your Stuff: Layering: Now it's time to start layering some strokes to add more depth. So as I'm doing these little overlaps, as you can see right here, this is where you're going to want thicker paint on the thinner paint. You can find areas of your painting where obviously it's a little harder here, and then it's a little wispier right there. This is where I like to put my petals. I'll overlap and I'm going to use the same color here, but feel free to play with color combinations. For this, I would probably want to do maybe gold pedals or something like that. Metallic paints have a really cool way of changing color depending on where you're looking at that from. So it actually, as you walk by a painting with metallic paint on it, the light hitting it helps to change the painting a bit. But I think let's say with like blue or white, I'd like to put like a gold on top of this. But for the sake of this class, we'll stick with this one color. Right here, nice and wispy, a little lighter colored, I'm going to load up some of these white paint here and just put a few of those petals in there. That gives it a real sense of depth. Let's try on this side. I'm getting closer. Little bits and pieces, and right up here on the edge. There we go. Right next to the camera there. Then from bottom to top, there's a couple right there. Now it's all about filling in all these tiny little spots. See what else we got here. I could fit one right there. One on this side. Then overlapping a little bit there. I think this just needs a few more, maybe there. I'll start putting a couple of thicker petals. Yeah, this is the part we can do those collections of smaller petal, I usually do two or three of them at a time, sometimes even singles, but it's just a heavier a chunk of paint on top of the wispier part. The good thing about this paint is that it usually dries pretty quickly as acrylics do. It's not oil paint, which take 500 years. So this paint will dry quicker and because a lot of it is just dragging your brush and thinning out the paint as you paint. It'll even dry that much faster, but a little chunks will take a bit longer. I do recommend if you're painting anything functional to give it a full day to dry, especially if you're painting a face mask. You don't want to put that on right away because next thing you know, you're just smelling paint all day and you'll feel funny. So we do not endorse that. How about one right there? I think I might be getting close to finishing this one. It's good to take a step back every once in a while, look at the composition as the whole and think about, is it even that really sticks out to me to some parts need a little more. Again, it's hard to paint and a little less, but you can always paint a little more. As I'm looking at this, I might want to add one more here. Let's do another one there. Those little ones that really make it I think that really starts to bring out the depth and make it look pretty cool. So is my favorite part of the painting when you're almost to the end and then somehow you screw it all up. No, I'm just kidding, you don't. Just don't be so hard on yourself as well. This is good. Cool. I'm into it. I'm really happy I was able to steal this iPad this morning. No, I didn't steal it though. Daniel is nervous. It's like Skillshare supporting a crime, I hope not. It looks to you whether to be stolen. Yeah. It's seen some stuff. Overall, I think this is what it looks like. Let's add one more, how about this. I'm going to get pretty brave and go on this tiny little strip. Yeah. I think I might just about be done. Right there is my new old iPad. 8. Finishing Your Piece: Finally, I'm going to share some tips with you on how to make your art last as long as possible. Again, depending on what you're painting on, this is a faux swayed, almost like a velvety texture. Using something like this, using a good transparent lacquer over it, it may have a different effect that I'd like to have. It might actually soak it up and make it maybe a little too shiny or actually really dark in it. You could make a test patch. However, the night pad case isn't really that large of a piece to do a test patch on. But anything like a hard plastic or a faux leather or something. Anything that's smooth and solid will take on that lacquer way better than anything that's a little bit more textured and a little more porous. Now, all the stuff that I paint, you know, it's not forever, but you will get a few more miles out of it if you use some protective lacquer. I highly recommended it. One question I have is about other materials. I guess materials that might be harder to keep the paint. Talking about clothing or other commonly painted materials that you have any tips on painting. I'm personally interested in clothing, but also just like shoes or are there anything commons thing that you've noticed different paints tend to work well with different techniques. For whatever reason, this high viscosity, the metallic paint seemed to hold way better and just have more life to them than your other standard acrylics. Yeah, I think this one has hold onto material quite well. For the mask, this held really well. As you can see, it's really bold, it's nice and shiny. A pro-tip for this to paint these, I know it because it's difficult to just lay it flat and paint on top of it, you could blow up a balloon or get a small ball and wrap it around it so it keeps the structure of a face and a bit. But this will last. I've made these before, you've washed them in the washing machine, I would not recommend drying. The dryers probably not going to be your friend unless you want hot bits of paint all over your clothes. You might, who knows that could be your thing. But in this case, anything with clothing material, I look at it as like, "I'm going to paint this and I'm probably not going to wash it. I don't know what I'll be using it for." This thing I hand wash and it works fine. Again, I don't dry it. That holds out. But, yeah, again, I don't too much experience. Shoe sounds interesting though that might be a fun one. But usually things with moisture, so for the umbrella, for example, that stays. Again, it'll start a chip a little bit if you do choose a painted umbrella and you go in the rain with it and use it, dry it while it's open. Keep it open so the rain will beat off of it. If you close it, then the moisture will stick the paint together. Always keep in mind, is the paint going to be wet or moisturize, and is it going to be touching itself? Because then it'll start to peel off. But if it stands alone and then you keep it dry, it should be just fine. 9. Q&A: Now we're going to open it up to some questions from the students in the audience. How do you choose your color palettes? How do you choose your colors based on what you're painting? Because just about every canvas painting is going to be different, most of the times I'm painting walls, but usually it starts with a white or a black background, usually something very neutral, and then I'll start with one bright color, and then a complimentary color, which is usually metallic after that. In the back over here you can see I have a black background, and I used this pink, almost like flamingo pink, and gold works really well with that, and the same thing over here. Basically I use a metallic teal, gold, and black. I usually focus on one color, it's going to take over the entire canvas, and then just a small accent colors. Again, the reason why I choose metallic paints is because the contrast between a neutral matte paint is going to look really nice with a flashy gold on top of it. You're not only getting contrasting color, you're getting contrasting texture, and I think that really helps make a more vibrant canvas or mural. Awesome, and then we got another good question about how you actually get your paint set up. Do you typically paint straight from the tube, like you were doing in this class, or do you sometimes thin it out a little bit with water? Usually it's straight from the tube. Thicker paint the better for me, because in a way it's like painting with icing, I love to see a texture on it. I like to see it raised off of whatever it is I'm painting. But usually when I'm painting murals I'm always thinking about, is this going to drip? A lot of my lines will thin out, or be really thick at the top and thin at the bottom, and if the paint's a bit too watery it collects at the top and then you get this nice drip coming down, which does look cool sometimes, but if I'm not intending to do that, I always err on the side of getting a thicker paint. Got you. Okay, so straight from the tube and that's basically keeping it as thick as possible so that you get that texture? Yeah, straight from the tube, you'll never have any problem with it thinning out too much, I guess when you're painting like this. But the thickness of the paint really helps at the beginning of these brushstrokes, really helping them stay nice and bold, and vibrant, so yeah. Cool, on top of that got a question from a Cat about the painting over your left shoulder, the pink one. How did you get the pink to be so solid? I guess it would be lighter colors, how do you get them to be really vibrant? Oh man, great question. What I do is actually I mix it with titanium white, so for that painting in particular I took my tube of this ultra fluorescent pink, squeezed a whole lot of it into a cup, and then I mixed it with this just plain titanium white. That's really not going to lighten the color as much as you think, but it will give it a very solid background, and actually just make the color much more vibrant. Again, I play with that when I would do with hot pink or something, especially on a dark background, the paint can get lost in that transparency. Adding white to any color, especially a bright color, is going to thicken it up and give it that backbone to keep your colors nice and bold. Got it, great. That's a great pro tip for mixing in the strong fluorescent color. 10. Final Thoughts: Thank you so much for joining my first Skillshare live, and I hope you had as good of a time as I did. Go out there and start looking at the world a little bit differently. What can you paint, what can you make a little bit better? I think inspiration starts to feed itself. The more unconventionally you get, maybe the more creative you've get. I am a sucker for the unconventional and I love to see the weird stuff people paint. I'm always trying to taught myself, this is me saying I would love to see the stuff you've painted so I can steal your ideas and make them mine. No, but if you can do that and share them in the class projects because inspiration, you just inspire other people. One of my favorite things to do is to paint unconventional walls. If you want to hear more about that and how I paint large bureaus, go ahead and check out my brand new Skillshare class on turning walls into art. Thank you so much for joining me today for my Skillshare live, and if you want to find out more about where I am in the world, you can find me on Instagram at Adam Palmeter, or follow me right here in Skillshare to check out all my classes in one place. Thank you very much.