Loosen Up and Be Free Abstract Painting!

1. Loosen up Intro: Sometimes when we create, we have a plan of care or even a loose plan is usually what I have. But what about creating was a no particular plant, just being free and loose and letting color be your guide. That's what we're gonna do in this module, and the result will probably surprise you. So I'm not going to give too much away except that this is a good place to breathe, get a cup of tea, and take all the pressure off. Just, we're just going to get colors and create and see what happens. 2. Supplies: Okay, My idea is let's look at supplies for this project. So I did not use any sort of expensive paper. This is a watercolor pad from Hobby Lobby and a lot of times they'll do the half off sale. So I picked us up for 750. This is just a 12 by 12, I would say no matter what paper you use, don't go center than a £140. But we're going to cover it with gasoline paints so it doesn't need to have a specific nice watercolor tooth to it. So you're just going to get something like this doesn't have to be squared. This is 12 by 12. And then also speaking of Jericho, I put my Gesso in a smaller container, but gestalt is a in case you don't know it's a surface prep. So what it does is it keeps the paint on the surface. So instead of if I were to just put paint on this, actually, this is my little kinda trial and scrapped. But you can see here the paint goes right into the paper and doesn't sit on the surface of the paper. That's why in my sketchbooks. And if I'm using acrylic or even Apple gouache, if I'm doing this kind of abstract, I will almost always just saw the paper otherwise what happens is the paper seems to soak it up and use more paint. It's almost like primer. Think of it. If you're painting your walls at home and the paint server will tell you to prime it. Otherwise, you buy your expensive color and you put it on and it soaks in and then you put it on and put it on and put it on your waist, more pain. And it just gives me that texture and layer that I like when I Jessup. All that to say why I just saw which you can do either you can use watercolor paper, you can use a mixed media paper. You can use really any paper that, like I said, it's £140. Okay? Then we're going to use acrylic paint. And you can use what you have for this exercise. After all, it's about being loose and free. I used Nova color. I like their pigments and I find the sum of the colors to be amazing. And the pigment intensity and the paint is very good for the price. When I compare it to even like Liquitex basics. Or I've also compared it to have a YouTube comparing it to the center LEA abstracts. And in fact, I think I might have that page in here. It just didn't have the same pigment as the record. It had better pigment because what I'm trying to say, I don't know where that went, but you could watch that YouTube. Anyway, the point is that I like nobody. That's the bottom line for acrylic. And I am I've got whatever paint you're using and I should have nobody asked me to put together a bundle. But funny enough, I guess supply chain issues. I want fluorescent pink in the bundle and fluorescent magenta. And because of supply chain issues, the pigments have been hard to get, but they're having to resource these so the bundles not ready, but you can look for that if you're interested. I've selected 14 colors plus white. However, whatever you have, just to get the range of colors. Basically, I think of the traditional primaries, which we learned in elementary school that these were the primary colors, red, blue, and yellow. Every I remember being taught every color can be made with these three. Well, if you've ever tried that, it's not really true. You can get close like you can kinda make a turquoise depending on if you have a light enough yellow, like you have a Hansa yellow or a lemon yellow, you can get a nice turquoise with these two. But you can't get, you can't make a magenta. With these. You could try it until you're blue in the face. No pun intended. So if you notice, if you look at your printer cartridge, it will be what some people call the modern primaries, which is a cyan, yellow and magenta. And so you would want to have these primaries as well. So you could just take these and these and mix tons and tons of colors. So those are the essentials. I'm just turning them over so you can see the colors instead of the white cap. And then I have, like I said, my favorites, so I have fluorescent pink, magenta. And then this a couple of other things. Payne's gray I use as my dark or a navy indigo. It's they're very similar. So just grab some acrylic colors. But at least have those. People will say, how do you get those bright colors? It's because I'm using either if I'm using my aqua brush, I'm using an opera pink or red, or I'm using a bit of fluorescent in many colors, which gives us that pop. So I'm just trying to make sure you can see some of these. So just a range of acrylic colors. Blues, some magenta or pink and some reds and yellows. And you'll be good, some sort of turquoise. Then for brushes, for this kind of work where I'm really being loose and free. I'm not, I'm not using fancy brushes that I would use for, say, my nicer brushes that I use for floral that I'm being more precise with. These are assortment of GPS. This is also a Master's Touch. It's a chisel blender, number ten from Hobby Lobby. And this Creative Mark is an off-brand that you can see at heart stores. And same with this one. Well, this is a Princeton, but it's not a nice person and you can see how it's a cheapy. I think I have a link to these on my website. Under supplies. In my website you'll go Suzanne our.com, then Resources, and then you'll see books and supplies. And I have links to most of the stuff there. I don't have the Nova in there yet because the bundles not by the way, just in case you don't know about Nova color, that you can't buy them in stores. You have to buy them online. They're made in California. So you can go to their website and find out, okay, Then I love to use gold markers, gold paint pens rather. And I do have links to these on my website. I have three thicknesses, these i've I've just tested a lot of gold markers for how long they last and that nice gold quality that I want. And these are the three I've ended up with. The Pentel for the same marks and then the pilot for the medium and the large. Of course you want something for your water. This is like really liking this plastic jar lately It's a peanut or almond butter jar, but it doesn't make as much noise people have told me in my classes when I'm teaching and then I, rooms in the glass is sometimes makes a lot of noise in the ear. Sometimes I'll use inks. Gold ink is one of my favorite to spray on liquid texts is very nice. Then I will also sometimes embellish or decorate my paintings. Sometimes I call it putting jewelry on with posca pens. These are three of my favorite colors. They come in different thicknesses. And if you haven't worked with paint pounds, you just have to remember that you have to shake them before you choose and then you, This is already used, but if it's new, you will have to prime it. You're pumping to get the ink out. And these are fantastic. There are cheaper ones. But most of my students, when they try the cheaper ones, come back to these. It's better to have fewer colors of these just because paint pens are really temperamental anyway. And I'm not saying that particles are perfect. But you can put them on just about any surface and they behave better than most paint pens. A couple of other supplies I use sometimes are the woody seeds, are these fat pencils? There's 31. So like a colored pencil and a wax crayon. And I can't remember what the three, the third thing is, but I did a whole video on YouTube, but I use them sometimes for texture and they're water-soluble. Then the other water-soluble thing I'll use sometimes is the Neil color crayons. And they'll just kind of bright pops of color on top of abstracts or florals. And just give me a definition and texture. I used quite a few oil pastels in this project. I really liked this set. It came in a nice big wooden box. I think I do have a link to it. Yeah, I do. Because I love it. It's the Mongo from Amazon and they've been really nice quality, really rich colors. You can see the turquoise gets used the most. But I've had these well over a year and they're holding up really well. There's just nothing like the color intensity and nice for the later stages. So the other thing that I use, there's a variety of pallets you can use. You can use pallet paper, which is a paper that one side of it is very shiny and the paint won't soak into it. Or sometimes, especially if I'm traveling, but I'll just have a piece of pallet paper. This is cut in half. They come in pads. I'll show you the pad, which I do have homing to come and pads like this. And it's just handy. Third, inexpensive, this is $5 for 40 sheets. You can use the whole sheet and then just toss it. And sometimes your palette paper ends up looking really pretty. Why I've been using also in the studio is a piece of glass at either a piece like this from a photo frame or I have a larger one and my easel, which is a glass cutting board that I found on Amazon. And this whole setup I did put links to because I had so many questions about it, but it's my sprayer, my blade, and my glass. And so all I do is spray and actually, I think this is the last time we use this with just regular wash, so it will come up really easily. And then when I'm ready to paint, I just scrape it up and clean it off and I have a clean palette. I've been doing that lately more in the studio then on the pallet paper. But the pallet paper when I'm cleaning, as I often do at night. See this is not coming up, scraping up the way acrylic does because this is regular gouache. So it's more like a watercolor. So all I really had to do with this was wet paper towel. But I wanted to show you how I get the acrylic up. But when I'm painting in front of the TV at night, I have a little sort of lap desk. I need to do a video about that. People asked me about how do I set up in front of the TV. But one of my things is just these half sheets. Palette paper is what I use. So that will get you started. Remember it's a loose and free class. So if you've, you know, whatever pants you God will work for this. You could even use watercolors. Okay, Well, let's get started creating. This is gonna be fun. 3. Prep and Layer 1: Alright, so let's just so our paper, I've got a twelv by 12 sheet of watercolor paper. This is, you know, I I think it's Master's Touch which is available at Hobby Lobby, sometimes half off if you're in the US. But the point is that it's, it's not a super nice paper and it's fine though it's £140. I would never use anything thinner than that. But we're gonna just to lift. So we're not looking for a coke quality of water paper, watercolor paper that's going to help our watercolor flow because we're not using watercolor. And jostling is pretty simple. We especially if depending on how much texture you like and I like a lot of texture. I'm gonna get a scrap piece of paper just because I keep knocking on my plastic underneath here. And then I have to clean my plastic, which make a lot of sense because that's why I have plastic. There's not worry about it, but anyway, um, so, yeah, you're just working the JSON to the paper and you can see I have a little bit of paint and my jaw which is fine. I don't care for this. When you're jostling paper. What we're doing is it's like a primer we're at when we put Joseph on top, that means that the paint that we apply afterwards is not going to soak into the paper and there's nothing wrong with it soaking in it. But if I want more texture and I want that feeling of layers building up, then I use gesso. When I'm using acrylic or acrylic scrub wash. If I'm using gouache, then I usually don't gesso, but it just depends. It just depends on what kind of effect I'm doing. Am I doing? Okay, where I don't want lots of layers. I want the paper a bit smoother and I want the paint to soak in, can bleed and so forth. Then of course I would not use gesso. So the thing that just so does for this kind of exercise where we're just being free and loose is it adds texture and I can put scratches in it and things like that. Even before starting the painting, I can do things like this. I can take my hands if I've got gloves on and make, you know, lift up marks, I can do stuff like that. The back of my brush, I can take something thinner, like a paperclip and scratch in it. It just it just kinda depends on what you're doing. It is definitely not going to bleed the way. If you're used to watercolor paper and you put gouache or watercolor on it or even acrylic. And you see that kind of pretty effect where the paint flows into the paper and into each other. Well, that won't happen if we put Jason, I'm gonna so just knowing, experimenting with what you were thinking about, am I doing kind of a textured painting here and exercise or am I doing the kind where I just want to see how the paint goes on the paper and flows. So pretty much done here. I'll add a few little. Use a palette knife. Then you can rush through some of it. You can take the brush and just showing you different ways of adding texture. If you wanted to, you could take a paper towel and do some splashing. Remember let that dry. Right? Are you ready for some complete freedom? I've got just a piece of 12 by 12 here. And some acrylic colors to start with. These are our ANOVA colors, which you can order through their website if you're interested. But acrylic, they're just a good quality for a really good price. You can't buy them in stores. You have to buy them on their website. And but the price is good anyway. I'm actually looking at picking some favorite colors with them and making a bundle with their pain. So we're going to just start with, I'm putting some colors here on the palette. And really being free with color and hair brush, I'm gonna get white, which this is my Gesso. I just put it in a smaller jar. I'm gonna get a little bit a yellow palette. Let's see here. Use this knife. You can see that I've been double-dipping. Can't help myself. Sometimes I get so excited. And where's my paper towels? Use this. Actually, I'll just clean my palette knife on my paper. Let's get a little bit. I've got this new fluorescent red is very exciting. Little goes a long way, but it's great also to mix, you'll see to make other colors. Gloves are fine and good for this kind of color everywhere. And same with this fluorescent magenta. Beautiful. You can do this if you want with your, you're getting your pains out or you can apply a color with a brush. But you can see I'm trying to be really random, at least especially for this first layer. And then here's some blue. And what else do I want on? Something dark, I'm going to grab some Payne's gray. I like a dark blue or Payne's gray, which Payne's gray is a dark blue for my dark. But I ran out of it in Manila color. So I've got to Liquitex basics Payne's gray, which is fine. Whoops, I didn't eat that much. Alright, so I just have a few colors here. Oh, I know one more color. More. We're going to do this blue-green, which is gorgeous and mixes up beautifully. Okay. Wash her way above this palette knife so the paint doesn't dry on it. And I'm going to wipe off some of the thicker paint just because I don't need so much and I don't want to wait for it to dry. Okay. I think this is a dry pretty quickly. Air. All right. So got a really bright I've got dark crescent, got white. I use white more than anything. And we can make a lot of colors with these. So the first thing, so what I'm looking at doing is getting just a square shape brush. This is a, they're called brights, but I just like comScore shape, right? Doesn't describe it very well. I don't think so. Got several of these in different sizes. This is a four and these are not good brushes. This is a, this was a decent brush Princeton summit, but I've wrecked it. So I don't use my I do have rights that are nicer like for my floral work or if I want to do something more precise, but I don't use that for these because I tend to like to take the corner of the brush and scrub. And, you know, that's just not going to make the brush last. So I separate out, what I do is I keep my scrubber brushes and one jar like this. He's an old pickle jar and then my brushes that are still decent or in another jar over by the ys. And you do want, I mean, you can use a watercolor brush for this, but you're just gonna get, you're gonna get acrylic paint on it and so forth. Unless you're doing this technique with watercolors, which would work too. Okay, so let's start by grabbing some white, and I will put a little bit of white on my palette so that I don't muck up my white completely. And this is this particular type of abstract. The hardest thing is loosening up is just getting yourself in the frame of mind of not thinking. Do some great quotes by Monet and Gauguin and says on the impressionists, the ones that were really innovating. And they talk about how they paint better when they don t think. That's, it's hard to do. So that's what this is just going to help us practice. We're not going to worry about the outcomes of painting and whether it turns into a masterpiece or not. We are going to use this as an exercise to loosen up, play with color. Try not to overthink and more feel. So. When you're creating like this, you're thinking about the feeling that you have with whatever makes your heart sing. So for me, I'm thinking about when I go into a botanical garden like the one in Naples or the one in Sarasota that I went to last year. And just, it just makes my soul gets happy. Even just looking at Bloom are some interesting leaves makes me happy. So when you think about for you, what do you find beautiful? Maybe it's the pattern on some bark on a tree or some moss or a scene, a landscape scene. There's, I can get excited by the texture on a, on an old wall in a Island. The way that the wall texture looks, the painted, crumbled and so, but whatever you enjoy looking at, you're going to think about that feeling as you're doing this expressive style painting. So you're not thinking about trying to do anything in particular other than some color and shapes that you may like, but you can use. You'll see there's not a lot of specific shapes. But you're thinking about that feeling. Is it excitement as a column? How do you feel when you see things that you really love? And then choosing colors that you like and making colors that you like. So that's what this is really an exercise in, just loosening up and it's going to take layers of us letting it dry. But it'll be an adventure. So I'm just grabbing a couple of leaves and mixing them to make it like a peach. And I'm just going to start applying some color. Like I said, for some reason I like to hold the brush sideways, but then later when I want more coverage, I'll probably hold it straight up and down. And I kind of stir with the side of the brush and just explore color so I can get very excited about color like that color. It's pretty and I'm just going to put it on various places. And being playful, discovering color. And the only, the only I would say not rule, but if you start mixing complimentary colors, meaning colors across from each other on the color wheel, you're going to get mud. So in this first layer, I'm just, I'm not overlapping too much or at all. And then we'll let let it dry. And what can help you stay away from mud is sticking with obviously letting colors dry in between, but also sticking with cool colors, and then doing warm colors or vice versa. And a great way to remember that is there on the side of the color color wheel. You have, you're looking for macro level to show you. I'll put it up on the screen. But on one side you have your cool colors. And on the other side you'd have your warm colors. I really like this green. And it seems like I'm mostly scrubbing the painting. I don't wash my brush. So washing brush, it depends on again, when I'm mixing. So if the brushes pretty dry now, it has some paint, but more than washing it, I'll wipe it with this technique because I want a little bit of that color in there to kinda make the whole thing cohesive. So if I grab some of this magenta and I have the tiniest bit of green on my brush. Who doesn't matter. In fact, I want a little bit to kind of tone it down and make the color more interesting. Plus then I've made it my own. I don't use the colors right out of the bottle except when we cleaned our brush. Occasionally you will see we will have to clean the brush. You know, when you're going from say dark blue or blue to yellow. Well, if I didn't want any green, then I definitely want to watch my brush because I would've made green. I'm just falling in love with color, playing with it, scratching it in various places. And, you know, this fluorescent, how like I said, it's great to mix. I'm just going to grab some. And it makes it makes a variety of colors when you mix it with things. So it's just fun to play with. And I'm also thinking about, I'm always adding white or the color so that I can get lighter colors and darker colors. I think I want to put some dark sand before I get too far along. So here's an example again, I'll probably just wipe this brush. It's already cut. Oh my gosh. Just scrubbing the size of it is rough on a bridge. My grabs onto my Payne's gray and it's going to mix a little bit with the the pink I have in here, which is just fine with me. I'm just, you know, when I work with darks, really what I'm thinking about as, you know, how if you see anything really, but everything had the shadows. If you think about flowers, if you look at a bouquet, even her, if you look at things in a botanical garden, they're going to have shadows obviously. And so that's how I think about applying darks and lights, is I don't, I don't even have objects here particularly, but I'm thinking that a shadow would be along it if it were an object. So it just kind of doing something like that. And let's do some light yellow. So you saw that I didn't even wash my brush and the Payne's gray, but I wiped it out with a paper towel. There you can see that I got close to making mud because the purple on my brush mixed. But that's a nice neutral and you know, all the colors can't be the star of the show. So I don't mind. 4. Letting color be your guide: Alright, so I've got some color here and I'm actually liking looking at so far. I'm thinking about one of the colors I love is just taking this pretty much all forms of turquoise. But I still got some yellow and pink on my brush. But you're taking that blue-green. I think it should be cool. It really is a jade color and adding a bit of white and then whatever's in my brush to soften it. And I'm doing a mixture of Marx. And I can do some shapes or outlines just as much as you can. Trying not to analyze. Because what's the worst that can happen? The worst that happens is that we learn about some colors and brushes and paper and we have fun. And the painting is no good, like nothing that you'd want to hang on your wall. That's the worst that can happen. It's pretty funny. We get scared, but creating when that's the worst that can happen. There's not many places in life where the worst that can happen is not bad at all, right, so let's enjoy it and let's just enjoy playing. And tried to get out of our own way. I at least get out of our Only when it comes to fun. I'm going to change brushes because that one's just really mucked up with stuff and I just put it in water. I can deal with it later. That's why it's nice to have a few brushes going. And now I'm just looking at color and feeling like I want some, maybe like an orange. So I'm going to mix some of this yellow with this fluorescent. And some of the white. See what kind of orange we can make. Already needing more weight. It's amazing how much weight you go through. One other shapes I like to make is a pot, you know, like flower pots. Try not to make it in the middle though. And I love like this on my patio, I have five or six pots with flowers on them. Can I just loved the shape of hot. So sometimes I just come through and make sort of a pot shape. So for your shapes, you know, think about what do you like. What's even in your home that you like? Is there a particular shape of a piece of furniture? Or maybe there's a shape or a design on a road that you have, or a throw pillow, or a color. Maybe it's a color that you love. Now I'm just it's actually good to talk and paint like this because it's keeping me from overthinking. That's why sometimes I do. I've done, I've created some pretty cool paintings while being live, you know, on Instagram or something, or while watching TV with my husband. Because I'm not able to overthink that color is a bit. I don't know. It's not very exciting, but I always remind myself, not every color can be the star of the show. And let's see how about some light. Maybe with a thinner brush. Well, first I want to do some kind of chunks of white. So let me stay with a thicker one. And I'm just again, I kind of just go in the late we're shining on it. Would it be kind of on the outside of some of these shapes? That's the extent of my thinking because I'm trying to think. One of the other shapes I love is arches. Like I grew up in South America. And the homes, they're sort of Spanish colonial style, has all those pretty arches. So I tend to like some of those here in there as well. Now I'm thinking I want to make a cobalt blue, which is just a, well, this is cobalt blue but then I like to mix white with it. Just get a really like a lapis lazuli color. And why is tough? Because I have to get another clean brush because it doesn't you have to make several coats to get it to show up as weight. So just know that about weight. If you want, if you want it to be sort of a a light bit of white, then you don't need to worry about it. So even though I've made pots, shapes, I'm not necessarily going to put plants in them, but I have done that before. And these, I've said, Well, I'm gonna put some leaf coming out of there. I don't think it's kinda fun to have something realistic in a painting that is not representational. I think it's kinda interesting to have, have that. What I love about these fluorescence is you just, you don't know what color is going to emerge because they're just so powerful that when you mix them, it's just a surprise. It's funny that that magenta streak that I made at the beginning by cleaning my palette and life is, has arrived. I think it will mostly survive. I like it. It's certainly a focal point. Can't miss it, can you? I'm just kinda well now I'm thinking I've filled the paper with color. We've got some interesting shapes and colors. And I'd like the, this, I just want this blue to be a little lighter, those cobalt. So I'm just going to grab a brush and take that same cobalt and more weight. And one of the things I really liked the effect of if for some reason that's interesting to me, adds depth is to take a lighter version of the same color. Put it on top so it's barely noticeable, but it just adds dimension and texture. So that's what I'm thinking about now. These are things that I've discovered by lots of painting. You know, that's what I mean by this kind of activity because your goal is, rather than say, I've got to produce a gorgeous painting that will come is more for you to figure out what you like and don't like. And what you think is interesting and what you like, how you'd like to create it and all of that. And that's just doesn't come unless you do it, right. Make sense? Yes. If you can do it with a spirit of fun and excitement, then you want to jump out of bed. There's people in my Facebook group going. I can't wait to get out of bed in the morning and go in and paint or I couldn't fall asleep and it was three in the morning. And I'm painting because there's there I'm so proud of them. It's hard to do. They're staying with the feeling of fun with it. Instead of, you know, the, the voice that it takes away our phone and says things like that, terrible or blah, blah, blah. I've got a smaller brush here. And as I'm talking, I'm just taking some of the ongoing over some of the elements that I did. I like what I have, so I don't think I need to add a lot more. I just want to add some dimension. So I'm going through, like I said, there's some later, so here's my turquoise. I'm going to go over that with some, with a lighter version of it. It can be lighter or even different. So you've got a little bit of yellow or something to make it just be a slightly different version of that same color, monochromatic. And I'm going to need more white there to make it show up. It can be darker too. So it doesn't necessarily need to be lighter. If you're trying to do this, it can be darker. So let's do that. Let's go over here and make it dark green. But you can see how many colors I'm getting with just what did I start with? 1234567, including the white and the Payne's gray. Now I'm going to make a lighter green. Make some scratches on my pot over there. Only you and I know that these are pads underneath there. And I love the bits of fluorescent peeking through. So remember also to stand back. And at some point, you know, this is a good point to stand back and just kinda go, alright. Where do I feel like it? Do I feel like a color is missing or do I feel like something needs to change? And what's jumping out at me now is that this is, I want some of that brightness, but it's a little, a little too much for me. So I'm going to let's take some white and what's on my brushes, I turquoise. And just cover some of it. Now and see how that goes. When you have this many bright colors on your palette, you're gonna get a lot of bright colors on your paper. And so you might have to let yourself get a little bit of mud and your paint mix just to calm it down. Like I've already got all kinds of things in my little brush because I haven't watched it. And with this yellow it's made a nice mustard. So that's what happens to me. I like blue, I like that mustard. I'm going to use it somewhere else. That was from the original palette and I've cleaning there. I like that. But really I could stop at any point because I think this is, you know, this, this met our objective. I think it's interesting. I played with color. I had fun. But I can't so hard to stop because every time I get my brush into the paint over here and a different color comes out. I'll let just go ahead and put a big leaf here. Why not make a leaf coming out of this pot? This is also good for letting go of, you know, well that doesn't make sense. Why is there one leaf coming out of a pot? Who cares? We're just playing here. I like that light color. So I might come over here and do some. Again, I'm using that side of a flat shader. I like these little marks that funny the things that we say blue, I like that. I have some bits that are trying. Yeah. Alright, so I'm going to do something else that I'll show you something else I'd like to do. I'm going to take you could use paint or maybe I will use I use the Payne's gray and just get a very small brush. So I'm gonna get this as a tool and just make some little dark that type of things within one of my lighter shapes. So that's probably going to be here and just fill it all up. There's always to me, basically black and white adds interest to anything. So this is a way to get, like I'm white and I'm not making these shapes a random size and shape. You can do stripes. But you'll see how once we do this, your eye will go right there. And I'm going to do it somewhere else too. I see another spot. Let's do it up here. I'm doing it on the lighter spots. I'm just so it shows up more. It's funny because if you get learning to do this, but if you tell me to paint a realistic looking flower are kind of my version, they're still pretty abstract. Now that is a much easier task in a way than a painting like this, because it is, I've got a reference I'm looking at. I'm basically just kinda copying with my eye. I mean. But when you're doing something like this, where you're just painting with a feeling and then you're letting shape and color guide you. Challenging but also very free and I am feeling like I want to lighten that right there. So now I'm just looking at color going IN value. Where do I, where do I want it to be lighter or darker? This is good practice for thinking about how to lighten and darken. Going back over some of those areas. And my magenta fluorescent magenta is definitely really bright, which I love. But I am going to just take a little bit of a dry brush with some of that off-white and get a little bit just a little pelvic tone down so that it doesn't dominate so much. So I'm going to grab some of this. My wife that I'm using, which is Jesu. Yeah, just here and there. Like that dark there though. I'm going to bet you should act doesn't anyway. That's the Payne's gray mixed in with a little white. And the other thing that's fun about Payne's gray is that you, when you want to do a smaller version of it, you just get a pencil because it's really the same color of the pencil. So speaking of which, it's a good time to grab a pencil and maybe if there's some dry areas, do some little things. Just some I like swirly lines. Let's see here. Where might align be interesting. You write in here. So this is the exercise, you know, to just, and you can do these since they're fast, you just kinda do one after the other. And just like I've got all these paints out, I could go start another one now and just practice, practice, practice, and discover things you like, things you don't like how your materials work on your paperwork. You look at your pattern and shape library, try out new things. All that good stuff. Because I could, even from here, I could grab some oil pastel and do bits of that. Purple and green. Looks so fun. So now it's okay to say I was going to stop and look at me now see, this is what happens. Sometimes just a chunk of oil pastel in a color you like is just makes you so happy. Like let's see, Let's words my turquoise. It's the one that's the most worn-out. Here it is. I don't know what I'm gonna do when it runs out because I bought a whole set, so I don't know how to get just the this one. But that's doing the same color, but it brought out a little bit. I'm going to force myself to stop here soon. But it's so fun. Kilo. So if I want to keep going, I mentioned this, but I don't want to alter the colors too much. I do what I'm doing now, which is taking the same color that was a light green. You can see a little bit, but it's not overpowering. Keeps me from going too crazy. Here's a peach color. And every time you add this, it adds texture and interest. I can go get him. Wait, lighten that up a little bit more. I can play with line. Maybe you've already done that here and rub it in if I want. Okay. I hope that this helped you with the idea of enjoying the experience rather than the outcome and getting your paints out and then just doing a bunch of these and just trying to be free. Maybe even either listen to something for some reason for me, when I listened to a podcast or a class on an online class, I just have it running in the background and I might get some ideas, but also it's just keeps my brain from overthinking. So That's a tip tool is just maybe for you, it's music for whatever reason, music doesn't work for me. I'm not sure why, but it just ends up distracting me, which doesn't really make sense, but it is what it is. Whereas a podcast or verbal stuff ends up occupying the part of my brain that allows me to create, just like apparently talking to us. You would think it'd be the opposite. But anyway, alright, I am going to stop, go forth and create. 5. Fooled You!: Now, what if I told you, What if I fooled us into not overthinking pan, just creating for fun and you know, trying to let go of the outcome. And then we have our, our result of that. And we say, well, what if I tried to make this more of a finished painting? You know, what's, what's the harm in that? Well, absolutely nothing. And you learn a lot by taking something like this, which has some good stuff, and then figuring out how you would go about fixing any issues and maybe making it something that you like better or the fields for more finished in layers are, are always, you know, you could, you could just layer and layer and layer and keep learning on the same painting if you wanted. So let's try that. Let's take this to the next level and just look at it and talk about it and maybe play with it. So when I stand back, I left it overnight and I look at it. This dominates. I feel like too much. Even though there's some other cool things going on. It's kinda all I see when I look at the painting. So that's one issue. I see there are some areas that I really like. I like kinda what's going on over here. I like, Let's see. I kinda like this in here. I like some of this over here. And do that exercise. I was telling you about where you take a picture of it and look at it and said, you know, from a fire or further away with the perspective. And the other thing I noticed that for some reason most of it is going this way, which is there's no problem with that, but I keep wanting to balance it. So maybe we'll do something with that. And some of the marks to me aren't doing anything like these two here and this. And so I'm just going to kind of play and not talk through this part and then I'll talk afterwards about what shows up. But i'm, I'm going to work intuitively and then I'll explain it and whatever there is to explain afterwards. Okay. Let's have a chat about what I've done so far. So I covered up, you know, you saw me cover up some of this mark and just see what that does. Then I brought some lights and to balance it a little bit. And I'm making some marks that are going that way slowly to straighten it out. And then these little sort of flowers started to appear. And I like how those look. And let's see what else. I haven't done anything about those, but I probably will. And I brought some of this correlation. Kind of the color there wasn't, you know, we had just thrown it on there and so it needed more layers. It still needs more layers, I think, but we can do that with oil pastel two. So now, um, so this is obviously a focal point because it's so bright. But I feel like to a little too much. So I might do something there, some oil pastel or something. So let's see where the rest of this goes. Okay, So let's chat. This is, you know, that was talking about that process of color discovery. And when I add something and say, I'd like this color I fell in love with. So I did the dots here and took them in that direction because you will still try to balance it out. And then I put them here and here. And these little, then the artist came to look like these could be almost like stems to, you know, these red flowers. So kind of loosely playing with fat as good. Same thing here, makes it show up a little better and outline those leaves a little bit. Added this to the pot shape so that it's not leaning that way and covered up those a little bit, which either I can leave the way it is or I can put something else on it. The other thing I think needs to be done is just this white thing here. Isn't doing anything for me. But I'm at the point where I would have improved it. And I would pretty soon stop again and give it distance and decide if there's anything else I wanna do. I do want to put one more dark and these flowers, Let's see here. So let's think about what to do for now. I think probably what I'll do with that white spot is just take your color over it and let it dry and then decide, once it's dry, if I wanna do something else to it. You've got pink on my brush, just going to wipe it off and grab some of that color. Sometimes that's all it takes is just a little bit of a layer underneath or on top. And then it gives you, you know, something to look at differently and decide if you want to do anything else to it. I think I will given how it looks, but it'll at least get coverage. And we'll play with this area too. But that's the process. You know, it was something like this is giving yourself distance. The other thing we could do different ways to cover up or tone down something like that up. Of course I could take some paint, a light wash of paint, you know, something like this and tone it down. Or I'm just, I show you a couple of ways. Even rub it off at already, toned it down or it could put dots in it. I don't want to cover it. I definitely like how how it's still bright behind it. But that kinda did it. I could put lines through it. I do want maybe for some balance, some tiny dots in this area because I'm looking here, we have this. That are AI comes up to here, over to here, down to here, and just something tiny in here which we could actually, it's dry so we could go ahead and start with our metallic gold. I haven't done a lot of oil pastel on this yet. So we'll do a few spots for that. And then we'll put it away and I'll see how we feel about it tomorrow. So let's do these little guys. Okay, So I've got, you tell it the metallic gold here, here. So that my eye moves around. And now let's just do some oil pastel and then we'll let it dry. I'm gonna be looking at kind of the same color on the same color a little bit. So here's a pale green. Okay, So I took the same color, similar colored oil pastels and just kinda went over some of the painted areas. And, you know, probably you can't even see it from where you are. But when you look at it live, you can see the bits of texture showing up and interests. When you have the pastel, especially the texture. Then I still wanted to soften some bits of this. So I did some oil pastel on it. I just wanted the bits of the brightness showing through and not for it to be overwhelming. And I feel like I've done that. This mark here is a bit garish and that's what oil pastel they're so great for. They can instantly cool something down or add texture. So definitely improved it. And now I feel like it's something that I can work with. You know, I could say it's done now or I can like I said, come back tomorrow or another day and see something else I might want to play with. I encourage you to do that kind of thing, to just experiment, play. Trick yourself, like we did in this painting. You know, trick yourself into not feeling like it's too precious to be free. And you'll be surprised that the result, when you do that, it'll just for you, you know, you won't feel as restricted or as precious about the creating. And as I said, the worst that happens is that you learn something not a bad, worst outcome rate. You can see that I can kinda play like this for forever and that's what's so fun. Mixing and blending oil pastels blend really well. If you have a color you want to make and you don't have that color, you can blend other colors. And I do that. I'd see him having trouble stopping. This is what happens. Look at that texture you get on the watercolor paper, even though we just wrote it, it's still, I love that with an oil pastel. How you get that? Okay. I promise this last bit I'm doing. It's so fun though, isn't it? 6. Examples and Varnish: Well, I hope you have as much fun doing these as I do. They're incredibly freeing. You just have to remember. And it takes, it does take practice. It sounds crazy, but it takes practice to at least for me, it does, to be loose. I think. I think of I'm Steven Tyler on American Idol when he said, it takes a lot of money to look this cheap. And I think it takes a lot of time and effort to be this loose. It's just kinda the same concept. So anyway, I wanted to kinda talk about the finished painting, the different things we did to it. And just give you some reminders on the thinking about composition, thinking about variety. In terms of elements. We've got here some little ones, some larger ones, and some lines. And I'm thinking about moving the eye around with color and shape. But also trying not to direct the eye away. We fixed that, you know, that thing that was going off to the side. Which I think started by me cleaning my brush at the very beginning, remember? And so what we ended up because of the way we started solace, we ended up with these just delightful little pops of color that we left alone. And I, I'm just really happy with it. I like all the bits of texture. And I just wanted to show you, once you're in this kind of mode, you can just keep going. And so here are some that I've just done the same way, the first version of color and shape. And this is one layer and we'll see what comes next. And then you can even do too. I think I did these two, I laid them how and because they're such similar colors, so there'll be a nice pair when they're done and whatever they end up being right. But I hit with the same goal once I have the color on my brush. And then I did another layer where I'm starting to add some elements. And then who knows where I'll take them from there. But I probably will keep working on them together because they're a nice little pair. And all of these were Nova color paints. Just so you know what the brightness is. And then this one is probably midway through like we did on the class paintings. Same with this one. And there's just, it's just a lot of font. That's what they give you something to work with. Here's another one that I think has done. Probably. So I hope you can play with them in any size, shapes and arm. You can make them to your liking and the color palette that you like. I always try to teach people have really my goal is to help you get in touch with your unique. I hate to use the word style because people get so wrapped up about what is my style, what is my style? But really for you to express what you like, you're obviously drawn in my classes because there's something you like maybe like the colors, maybe like my style of teaching. But at some point, you will develop and play with your own colors and your own Marx and shapes. And it's, and it's really what you like. That's, that's what the deaf, That's how you narrow it by deciding and learning what you like. I did want to talk a little bit about varnish options. The completely nontoxic holder free. How unnatural is this guy a fixative? And I do have links to these on my website. This one, it definitely works. I had sprayed it on. So the hardest thing to get fixed, our dry pastels, which we didn't use them or not, the oil pastels put the powdery ones, but I have used this stuff on the powdery pastels and it did take several coats. But it worked. I mean, you can't rub off the pasta. So this is nice because I can sit here and do it right in my studio. It'll look wet though. So I wouldn't use this on any, I would definitely not use it on watercolor. I would only use it on things that are acrylic, fixed pesto, nothing that's going to hit liquid and then run. So not regular gouache and watercolor. Other than that though, for anything like this, this will work just fine. In fact, you know what? Since we're here, I'm going to go ahead and spray this and you'll see then how it has a because I haven't well, now, it might be I haven't used in awhile, so it might be oh, yeah. It is clogged. I'll have to wash that out. It's cosine. Let's see. The ingredient is kerosene. I don't know what that is, but it does work. It's just that a teeny tiny little hole here. So I'm going to, I've had this happen before now I think of it. I'm going to have to soak, take this off and soak this in warm water and then maybe take a toothbrush to it. So I guess I can't show you that planned on it, but I thought I'd try. Doesn't want to come out. Okay. So when I'm most of the time though I'm spraying outside and if I'm still going to work on something where I think I might I'll use workable, fixative by cry lawn. It allows you to rework so you could spray it. And it'll kinda capture everything you've done so far, but allow you to continue to work on it. And then when I'm all done, I'll use one of these two, the liquid texts, matte varnish or the crown matte varnish. I like a matte finish. I some people like gloss. It's totally personal preference. I feel like for me that allows me to see the painting better. Gloss, throws light off. And it just, I just feel like I can't see visually touch the painting as well. But I use both of these. The only thing about this one is that it also gets gummed up and they tell you right on the count to when you're done spraying, turn it upside down and spray till nothing comes out. And I ignored that. And because I thought it would waste some product. But then it gets gummed up and then that's no good. So don't ignore it like I did. So anyway, have fun being free and exploring and you can do these in the sketchbook, of course, they're really geared towards that as well. And check out all my other classes on Skillshare. And I'm trying to do a new class at least once a month. I enjoy it so much and it seems like you all do too. So thanks for joining me, get creating.