Modern Gelli Plate Printing: Sketchbook and Mixed Media Abstract Art

1. Introduction: Hello everyone. I'm Denise Love and I'm super excited to welcome you to my modern jelly plate printing class. It's going to be a blast seriously. In this workshop, we're not just going to explore the jelly plate printing, we're going to give it a modern makeover that's all about using top notch papers and paints to create some seriously cool art. We're talking about making your own sketchbook filled with funky painted plates and turning your prints into abstract masterpieces that are going to have you going, did I really create that? Whether you're an experienced artist or just dipping your toes into the creative pool, this journey promises to be an absolute blast. So buckle up for an artsy adventure like no other. 2. Class Project: For your class project, I want you to put all the skills and techniques we've learned into action. And create your very own abstract sketchbook or freestanding piece. Feel free to experiment with colors, layering stencils, and mixed media elements. Let your creativity flow without boundaries. I can't wait to see your unique interpretations of this process. Remember, there are no wrong answers in art. And your masterpiece is a reflection of your individuality as an artist. Let your imagination run wild and let's celebrate your creative achievements together. 3. Supplies: Let's talk about our supplies in this video. You definitely don't need everything that I'm showing you. But I want to show you all the options and the things that I think about and consider. When I'm starting like a jelly plate project, I've decided that I want to fill up some Sketchbooks with some jelly plates. I have a couple sizes here and I'm going to work in the Strathmore Mixed Media Books. They are a couple sizes. I found a couple at Michael's, I found some on line. The one at Michael's is a soft cover book, which I really thought that was very interesting. The ones I got on line were hardcover books, but I still want to have like just a little collection of funky plates in my sketch books. Both of these are mixed media pads. This is a 5.5 by eight inch, which is 14 by 21.6 centimeters. And this one is 7.34 by 9.3 quarters, close to an eight by ten, which is 19.7 by 24.8 centimeters. They're both 90 pounds. Jelly plates tend to do better, the prints tend to do better on smooth paper. That's not super heavy. You can do it on heavy paper, but I tend to like medium weight papers. Personally, for collage papers, I like really thin papers to do jelly plate with. I am working on mixed media, 64 pound smooth paper in these books, and you can see where I've already started playing, that these make a really good surface for interesting funky prints. That is what I'll be working in for my sketch books. I recommend a smooth paper, like a mixed media paper or a Bristol paper, rather than a cold press watercolor paper, which has a lot of texture to it. You could use hot press watercolor paper to that'd be fine. Just try to go for something with smooth surface so that the surface doesn't interfere with the print that we're pulling from our plates. You could also use freestanding mixed media paper sheets of paper, and these are also U smooth. They're a little heavier than the sketch books. These are 184 pound paper, which is a nice heavy weight actually. In the other jelly plate class that we did, we used this heavier paper and it makes beautiful prints. I like it because it takes a variety of media and it's smooth. You could use hot press, watercolor paper. You could use Bristol Board. I also have a Bristol pad here because I thought I might want to experiment on the Bristol pad. This is 96 pounds. It is a little bit lighter than that mixed media and it's smooth and it's going to make a nice weight for a paper that's another option for you is a recycled Bristol paper. That's the papers you'll see me pulling out and using in class. I like to have quite a few pages handy. That's why I have three sketch books and a couple of pads of paper. Because the jelly plate printing, when you get started, it's very addictive. It goes pretty fast. You want to have lots of paper that you can switch out things because you want to be letting some things dry while you're maybe getting creative and putting paint on something else while it is very thin layers of paint. And as we're building up the layers, they're very thin layers, so they dry fairly fast, but you still want to give some of those pages time to dry in between some of those layers. That's my paper. Then for the jelly plates obviously need a jelly plate. I've got several sizes of the plates I have probably every size that I think they make and shape. I have the great big plate which I'm not going to be using today, but I do have it. The two that I'll be using today are new. But I got plate, you can tell I use these at a lot of times. I don't clean up in between the plates. It's a pain to clean up, but at the same time, they stay in better condition if you do clean them. That's why I'm going to start with a fresh new plate today that I've had for a while, but it's hadn't used because the other plates I have, I've gotten nice and dirty. Same with this great big one. I've gotten it nice and dirty. I'm going to be using in class probably the eight by ten inch jelly plate because it's a good size for doing the sketchbook wide open, like this, like a whole page and seeing what the print does on each side. It's also a good size for this little bit larger. Book that I got. It should be able to do a whole page of these then. It's also still okay for the nine by 12 paper. We'll be like inside with our print and have a little frame around the print. But that's perfectly fine too. And we can trim that frame part off if we just want wall to wall paint. Eight by ten, I think for me is going to be the best size to experiment with, but they do come in other sizes. Five by seven, you can get six by six, you can get shapes. I've got square, oval, octagonal. The reason why the shapes are fun is because then we can paint a shape and then print a shape within our design. It doesn't have to all just be the flat print. I will be pulling out the shapes. I may be pulling out like that, five by seven because this might be a good smaller thing. That we can then partial page print in something to be interesting. Five by 78 by ten and funky shapes is. I think what I'm going to be going for today, you want to have some things to draw patterns in the paint or at least I do jelly plate makes these little scrapers that are soft and won't damage your plate. You don't want to use hard scrapers or things with points. I've got some of these little scrapers in a hard plastic. You don't want to drag these hard plastic or pointing things or anything that's going to pierce the jelly plate. You don't want to do anything that's going to pierce into the jelly plate because it's going to ruin the jelly plate. You want things that are soft. Silicone jelly plate has a little collection of different shaped combs that you can get those online if they're still available. I've had these for a long time. This I use as a stencil. Sometimes you can also get the catalyst wedges, which I know those are available. These are silicone wedges. They're good for paint. They're good for the jelly plate. They've got a smooth and then lots of different shapes. That's a great option for making patterns in the paint. You could also use cardboard, very interesting cardboard shapes. This is corrugated cardboard inside of a packing box. You can see how that would make a really interesting texture on your jelly plate. I also like things like punchinella. This is the metal sequin waste left over from punching out sequence. It's like a metal ribbon perfect for stencils. I've got a couple of different sizes of the punchinella. You can also get stencils that have different shapes. I like some of these from PM Artists Studio. I also like stencils from Tim Holtz. Also have several favorite stencils from Stencil Girl. Just to give you some ideas on different stencils and things that you might consider as part of our work today. And then we'll just see what we can create pattern wise and funkiness wise. You also want some rollers, so you need some Breyer rollers. And these are in Breyer rollers like Speedball makes these and they're usually for printing processes and stuff, but we're going to be using them to roll paint onto our jelly plate and create smooth layers of paint to then print onto our paper. They come in several sizes. I do like having the smaller size and the larger size. I think this looks like it's a two inch and a four inch up. Two, yeah, two inch roller and a four inch roller. If you only get one roller, get the four inch roller. But I do think it's fun to have different sizes. You definitely need Breer rollers for your jelly plate. Here's another mark making thing that I just happened to get yesterday at Michael's. Look at these little silicone brushes, I thought that was a cool thing. There's other silicone brushes from Catalyst Two at the art store. Well, this is Princeton art brush, so maybe that's Princeton rather than Catalyst. But look how fun. Oh yeah, I think it is Catalyst H, Look how fun those are. Look at some of these silicone brushes with patterns at the end. And this one came from the craft store with these little patterns. I thought, oh, fun to make stuff in our jelly plate. That's some more options. And catalyst, wedge, catalyst square one. I love those. Okay. The other thing that we're going to need is paint. I use lots of different kinds of paint on my jelly plate. All acrylic, but lots of different types. A lot of times you can use craft paint. I like better paints than craft paints when I'm doing elevated jelly plates, I guess you could call them, because these are more artistic rather than crafty. I will use the nicer paints from like the Blick. Those Matt acrylics are some of my favorite because they're not shiny. You could also get nice acrylic paints like Liquitex basics. These artists loft ones are nice Liquitex. Basic ones are like a nice student grade. These are like a nice level two out of their three levels of grades of paint, but they make really great jelly plates if you're having trouble with your paint drying too fast and you're getting frustrated because depending on where you live, the paint may dry faster than where I live. You can add paint retarder to your paint. Golden makes a retarder and you can mix a little bit of that in and that'll give you a little more work time with your paints. So just be aware that is an option that you can do. Another thing, I've got these flat paints by Golden. I like these because they're in these little canisters and they're not shiny. That's a good option. I also like to play in these little fusion mineral paints. These are furniture paints basically, but their colors are so amazing and they're a natural mineral paint that I have just become obsessed with these. They come in big little pint pots, but if you find somewhere where they have the little sample size pots, they're perfect for your art room and just collect all the colors that you just love. I may be pulling some of these out and these are fusion mineral paints. You can see you've got lots of choices. You can also pull out heavy bodied paints. They may be thick, but you could add a little water to them. I've got Golden. I've got Windsor Newton. Just pick a few that are your favorite colors. You could work with those also. That's another choice. And then once we get to the point where we're adding layers and we want to create, say like our own stencils, because we've created our own stencils in the last class two and I still have those. But I do think it's fun to make our own stencils or masks where we have areas that we don't have paint. And then when we put those down on our paper, we end up with interesting shapes and things that are unique to us. I thought today that we could make some more stencils or masks to make things with. I make those with Uo paper. Upo paper is basically plastic paper. This is the 74 pounds, which is a fantastic weight. These are plastics. They will take a little wear and tear. Whereas a piece of paper, if you get it wet, it starts to disintegrate. It's going to tear. It's not going to last. I can still be using the stencil ten years from now because it's the Uo plastic. And as long as I take care of them, which for me, that doesn't mean anything more than stacking them and keeping them nice in the container where I keep all my jelly plates. As long as you let the paint dry in between uses, you can still just keep on using these as your own custom. One of a kind, art stencils that are going to make your art unique to you. We can just make all kinds of shapes and I'll show you again how we cut these out. It's very easy. I'm just going to draw on the upo paper the shape I want. And I'm going to take my exacto knife and cut a shape out on a cutting mat. And we'll get these yummy shapes. We'll see what we create in class that I do that on the Upo, I have the nine by 12. Upoi also have the smaller pads which are approximately five by eight. That's a good size also, but if I want to do it on these larger pieces, I might want a larger paper. I just have it available. One other thing that I thought we could do while we're doing is create some collage papers basically as elements that we could then put as another layer on our paintings before we finish them. It doesn't have to be all of them. This may just be a few pieces of collage that you use here and there throughout your sketch book if you wanted. But there's a couple of things that you could use. You could use really heavy tissue paper. I have some onion skin paper, which is a very nice translucent thin paper. I also have from, I think these came from Costco or Sam's. Let me get that out of the way. A great, gigantic box of heavy weight dry wax papers. And these are basically for restaurants, and they're deli papers to wrap sandwiches in. These are a perfect weight for making some collage papers. I like the collage papers to be thin so they don't build up too thick as you're gluing them down. That's why I like say like this onion skin or this deli paper or really heavy tissue paper. They're perfect for layering and painting and creating. I thought just having some of these available and making some papers for ourself would be fantastic. But these are cheap. You could get a whole big box. This is also the paper that I used to put in between artwork to store them if they've got something on them that I don't want to get on other pieces of paper. These dryer wax papers are fantastic for having available in your art room for lots of different things. You get these from the grocery store too. It won't be as big a box, but it's the same thing. Looks like a waxy dry paper that liquids wouldn't like soak through so you could wrap a sandwich or whatever. That's what those are for. All right, so now that we've gone through most of the supplies that we're going to be doing today, you don't have to have all of this, but at the minimum you need some paper, a jelly plate and some paint. And the Brayers, that'd be the minimum. And we're just going to see what we can create today. So let's get started. 4. Cleaning Your Gelli Plate: Let's talk about how to clean our jelly plates. You'll know at the beginning what we need to do. I told you that I just let mine get dirty and store dirty. But that's really not the best way to treat your jelly plates. They'd say that once you pull the plastic off of your jelly plate, not to put it back because usually that's going to create some bubbles and air holes below the plastic that weren't there originally. That's going to create weird divots on your jelly plate. I generally have the plastic on one side and I take the plastic off the other side and I use that one side and I let that plastic live on the jelly plate. But on these older pieces, the older plates, I've taken that plastic off both sides. I do actually had one that I had, just put the plastics back on, didn't even think twice about it. Put it back in my packaging. The next time that I went to use that plate and I pulled that plastic off, I had these great, big giant divots in my plate that I'm like, what are those? Like where an air bubble got caught and it just created a permanent indention in your plate. You don't want to do that after the plastics have come off, Don't put them back on there. What they tell you to do is take a piece of printer paper or just paper, and put that paper on the jelly plate and store it in your package with paper on both sides. That's what I've done here on just bigger piece and you can see I put it away, dirty, dirty. That's not good for your jelly plates. I want to tell you these are mostly like a mineral based gel product and they don't last forever. The more you take care of them, the longer they will last. But baby oil, like Johnson's baby oil is basically a, a mineral oil. This is what you want to use to clean your jelly plates with. Basically what you're going to do is squirt some mineral oil onto your plate. You can spread that around and let it sit and soak and do its thing. And then you'll be able to come back in a bit and get all that paint to come back off. You can see on here, I've got some of it on my fingers as I'm just putting it on the smaller plate. You can see that I can just basically rub this paint back off with my fingers very easily because this one's fresher. I was playing with this plate yesterday and I just didn't clean off the extra paint when I was done. But if you will clean off your plate in between at the end of the day, it'll be fresh and clean for the next time. Then usually what I do with that is I have some shop cloth. Sometimes I'll just come back, wipe that jelly plate down, make sure I've got everything off of it that I want to get off of it. And then cut a piece of paper about the size of the plate and put the paper on there. And then store that in its package and we're ready to store it. These where you've let the paint basically dry, super good. They may take a while for that mineral oil to do its magic. In that case, you might put some oil on there and just let it sit for a while and soak in and soften up that paint and then come back and clean that plate. Another thing that I do sometimes because I've got baby wipes, non scented, just plain baby wipes over here on my table. You could also use a baby wipe to help you come back and get the oil back off. After I do this at the end, I don't want the oil on there and then the paint on there. And then do my plates, unless I'm looking for some interesting texture, usually this is the last step I do. And then I put the paper on and I put it back and store it. And this mineral oil soaks in and keeps the plate fresh. I don't normally clean it and then use it as a printing plate in the same day. I clean it at the end and then I store it away and let the mineral oil soak in and dry and not be so oily on the top. That is how we're going to clean our jelly plate with some mineral oil. Baby oil is good. It's good for your skin. It's not harmful if you're playing with your hands and you're working it really on your plate. Put some baby oil in your office. Yeah, this plate may be ruined. I've left so much paint on it, but I could come right now, put paint on top and see if some of that will come off too. Because we paint will reactivate some of that paint. But that's been drying on there probably a year. I've probably ruined that jelly plate. This is why you want to clean the plates before you put them away. If they've got a little bit of paint speckle on there, not a great big deal, but that really is probably more than I even should leave on there. Just make it a habit when we're done for the day to clean your jelly plate off with some mineral oil. Store it with a clean sheet of paper, then put on top of it. Then the next time you want to use your jelly plate, it'll be beautiful and ready. All right. I'll see you back in class. 5. Layering Basics and Pulls: I thought we could start with some of the basics. I've just taken some of this cannon, Excel, recycled Bristol paper, which is a bright white surface. It's a good surface, it's a 96 pound. It's a nice weight. And I've just cut these pages in half so that I could work on the smaller plate and just see how this works. I thought I would pick a couple colors and we could do a pull and see how that works. These are just the master's touch acrylic paint. This is Liquitex basics. These are more of a medium body paint. I want you to start off with a little bit of paint and see how far that goes. Because these paints do go a long way and you're basically going to be rubbing these on the plate. You want thin layers, you don't want great, big thick layers. I do want it thicker than that though. If it's too thin, add some more paint. You'll know if it's too thick once you start painting stuff because it'll be squishy, like your paper will squish around. Probably come back and put some paper down under here. Let's do that, because I'm going to be a little bit messy, apparently. There we go. You want a nice layer? You don't want it so thick that everything's going to squish around when you put your paper there. Then I like to have a piece of, usually printer paper, but I'm going to use what I have over here to set this on and get all the extra off of. This is how I clean the roller Then If there's too much paint on the roller that it won't move, then I peel the paint off the side here. It just peels off, but I do keep you can have a piece of paper there and that can be like your junk paper that you're creating on. You can have a piece of printer paper there. I just picked a piece of whatever I had the onion skin over there. Maybe that can be a piece of collage paper. Then you want to put the paper straight down on it, don't squish it around. That's why I'm saying if the paint is too thick, it'll squish around on you, whether you want it to do that or not. And then do your first pull. That was a pretty good pull. There's a little tiny bit of paint on there for maybe the last time I used the plate. The plate is pretty clean. Then we're going to pull a second pull. The second pull is my ghost pull, and I call it a ghost pull or a ghost print because you just get what's left over and you're now ready to say, okay, let's do the next layer. Maybe on the next layer I'll do a different color. You're just squishing it around until you get it where the whole thing is covered. Add a little more paint if you need to. I almost think at this point, it's fun to not cover the whole thing and let it do its coolness like this, Roll that paint off of there. Here's what I like about leaving the plastic on the one side. I can actually flip this over and match it up to what I've already done and see what I've got going on there. Then we can do our pull look out pretty that is. Then we can come back and do our second pull of the leftover. That's why I like the clear on the one side because the sun fun, that is layer, you can keep on layering on top of the. Once you get that several layers going, you will want to let these start drying before you continue layering more on top because even though the layers are thin, it's still wet. Paint the acrylic dries pretty quick but be working on a whole bunch at the same time. Set this to the side, let it dry a bit, and then you're ready to maybe do another layer on top of that. That is our first pull, our ghost pull, and how we can layer paints in there. All right, I'll see in the next video. 6. Mark Making: Let's talk about doing another layer on here. But maybe doing some mart making in our paint. Before we put that over on our paper, I'm looking at what I've already got on the paper versus where we've gone from here. We could do a layer of white. That might be fun. What I'm going to do is get the paint rolled around and get that started. And you can see as I'm doing this too, we can make some interesting marks just with our Breyer and how we put that paint as how we scribble it around here. We can get some interesting marks just like that. We can also now play with some of our mark making tools that we talked about, the little rubber combs, any of these things that we talked about. Let's use this catalyst wedge. Let's just pull some paint out of here. It's a very thin layer. It's just going to take maybe a little bit of. We'll get that off of there. Let's see what that does with a little bit of mark making and the white. And I can line that right up and then we can pull that off and see what that did. Look at that we could go ahead with our ghost pull. We just line it up in the end. Our ghost pull might just be collage paper. It might be one that we swap and do the first pull on. As we get further along, you'll see we'll have some paint stuck onto our piece as we're going. That's okay, we're just going to continue to layer in here. Now let's do something completely different. Instead of covering the entire plate. How about if we just cover part of the plate with one of the colors? That's fun. Then always just do this as a habit. What if we take, say, one of our mark making things and we come in and just drag some marks out of here? Then I'm just going to wipe that off. Let's see what we got here. And we put the paper here. I think I might want this on the bottom. Oh yeah, Look at that. We've still got paint on our things, so let's just do a ghost pull. I didn't line it up. That's okay. Look at that. The second poll was actually better than the first poll when we did that. That's an interesting thing. And different observations that I want you to make as you're doing this. If you're like, oh, I really loved that and I wish this was over here. Now, you know, as we go forward, that was super cool, painting it, doing a pull and pulling, the second pull for the more interesting design. Let's see what else we got all kinds of paint over here. I really like these little half tiny tubes because then you can use a whole bunch of colors when you do that. And then the ones that you used the most of. Well, that was your favorite. Okay. What if we took some paper or we could do U po paper, but what if okay, this is random. But these are over here and they're the right size already. These are just some watercolor paper, which I really like, but they're the right size. And I can keep using these. Like what if we want to do like a partial, something like a stripe, say in like a color like black. We can tape it off, we can mask it off, we can make it where we're only trying to cover like one part of the jelly plate. Not only did I not cover it, I just pulled it back off. When I did that, that was interesting. Again, always be rolling the Brayer off on your scrap paper so you're keeping it clean and you see how we're creating really a nice pattern there. Then we can pull this off, we can use those again. What if I randomly want this stripe to say, be somewhere right here? Let's just do it right there. Let's just do it be. Oh yeah, that's cool. All right, And oh yeah, super cool. Check that out. Super fun. All right. This little section is all about mark making and figuring out what you can get. See now that might be way too much paint. In a case like that, what I might do is rub some paint on. I already know it's too much because it's given me a pattern. So in that case, definitely have some scrap papers to the side that you can then you rub some of this paint back off so that you're not stuck with way too much paint on that roller. All right, so what if we did this? All right. We're going to try something different here. We took a stencil. This is a PM Studio stencil. What if we took a stencil and did this pattern and pulled the stencil off? Look at that. Okay, then I'm almost wondering what if we should do this on our ghost. Pull one and just see like what did that give us? And you just want to press down nicely, Don't swish your paper around at all. Okay, that's interesting. The reason I did that was because when we did this one, it had a cool pull for the second one. Let's see what the second one does. It may be too matchy, matchy. I might not be able to see it, but I thought it would be fun to experiment. That'll be fun going forward playing. Okay, that is not as vivid as I thought it would be on the second one. That's very interesting, but that's another thing that we could do. We could do stencils, pull some paint, see if we're liking what it's doing. And then we can do a whole bunch of pieces in that way. All right, that is all about mark making in your paint and just seeing what you can get on some of these upper layers. One thing I want to remind you about when you're mark making on the jelly plate, do not mark make with anything that is sharp or hard or that will make a dent or a scratch or damage the jelly plate. Make sure everything you're mark making with is a paintbrush or some type of soft silicone tool that will allow you to drag across it but not stab into the plate itself. You don't want anything like a pencil or a sharp tool. I like to use these dip pens. And you don't want anything with a tip or a point that's sharp. Nothing that's plastic. Like these hard plastic ones that's too hard. You want anything that you're going to pull or mark make with to be some type of soft, rubbery silicone tool that's not going to stab into your plate and damage it. All right. I'll see you back in class. 7. Creating Stencils & Masks: Let's talk about making some stencils or some masks here for our paintings. I'm looking at the ones that I've already made. I've got some little circles and some little rainbow shaped ones, and bigger piece with the circle cut out of it. Some of these are pieces that are cut out and I saved every single piece. Just looking at what I've already got and what I might like to have, maybe I want to focus on in a new collection going forward, you can see how I just out and cut out and cut out and another like rainbow shape. I don't throw any of the pieces away. Every piece I cut out has another piece that can have a shape that I can use from it. I just save those. I'm thinking like what can we cut up today? I'm going to get out a piece of U Po paper. I am working on a cutting mat that I'm not cutting into my paper, cutting into my table. These you can get at the arch store. You can get them at the fabric store. This is a Blix self healer mat that I have. It's a pretty big one. I have a smaller one too, but I don't know where I've hit it from myself. What I like about po paper is you can draw on it. You can set yourself a line and draw a pattern, design a hole, whatever it is that you're thinking. And then you can use an exact knife with a nice sharp blade. You do need to maybe change the blade out if you've got a dull blade. And I'm going to use an exact Do knife to cut a pattern out because you could try scissors, but that only work if you're cutting like big pieces and you don't have anything in the center. Scissors will work too. Then I'm just thinking, what do I want to maybe have a design of? Maybe I want some botanical. Oh, that would be fun. What if I went outside and got like a maple leaf? You could do just spit ball and ideas here for you, but you could go outside and maybe get a leaf and then we could draw the leaf. That's one idea. Especially good if the trees still have leaves on them. We could draw random odd shapes feeling like an odd shape day. Maybe I want some odd shapes and you see how nicely you can draw on a piece of U Po paper. If it's something like that, you could cut it out with scissors. But maybe I want the outside part of this also. I can draw myself like a guide. Then I can just take my exact knife and follow that line as close as you can. It doesn't have to be perfect then if your blade is dull like mine apparently was, it won't cut all the way through the paper, but you just pick the paper up slightly and get that out of there. You want to press down pretty good. You want to go all the way through the PCU Po. You want to work away from your hand. You don't want to accidentally pick it up and slice your finger. Just be careful and go slow and cut the entire design out of your piece. The paper is very thick and my knife is dull. So now I can see that that didn't even go through the paper, but I can pick it up and follow that cut line that I've created. Actually, it's almost easier with the paper slightly picked up. There we go. It's very thick plastic. You just have to experiment. I need to change the blade on my knife then if you have a piece. Because here's the thing about this too. Somebody asked me, how do I make stencils out of U Po paper cutter. See we can cut out and refine with scissors. Their I don't know what they were using, if it was a cricket or one of those other ones. This paper like stretched under their dieplate, It does have that little bit of stretchiness, unusual feel this paper is. But you can see I'm not using one of those cutters to cut something. I'm going to cut this right here. I've never used those little cutters. I don't know how to use those little cricket things, but you could use stencil blank on those cutters and that would probably work out really well for you. I'm just going to create myself some random, interesting shapes. Maybe I would also want something like I did with this watercolor paper and I might want some lined pieces that I could use that I could continue using. I could just take a ruler and cut that. You can feel that it didn't go all the way through. But with a straight line, I could do more than one pass. There we go. Now I have a mask that I can use. I want you to do this. I want you to create yourself several interesting individualized shapes that you can then have as some interesting custom masks or stencils for your work. Some of these could be some straight lines on one of the other ones that I did over here. Let me just pull those back out for some ideas. I did this big piece right here, like out of the corner of something that's very interesting because when we're working on our piece, we could then mask off like a whole section or different areas and get some interesting spots that can create just an interesting bit of paint and then no paint. Then on our page, we can have in just a certain area a color of paint or something. These are how we can make some interesting areas of paint on our piece. I do like this L shaped, something weird, come out of it, shape, That's an idea for you. I also like little shapes like this. You can just cut those out of each other. I like shapes like this. This made really interesting or it was just color around, color on the inside. What was making me think of maybe something like this. Because we could have something like this and maybe have a series of interesting shapes. Perhaps on our piece, that would be something that's interesting. I'm just giving you some ideas and things to think about there. I want you to start just creating abstract, nothing super special or different. Just something that can be you, that you can cut out of this piece and be like, oh, that's pretty cool. I could make one of those out of a piece right here. With the way that I cut this, I could have some shape right there. Let's just go ahead and cut this. Now that cut nicely, I must have had something on that blade. I bet I did. I do all kinds of stuff with these blades, glues, and who knows. And see, I can cut this right here. And now that'll be the whole corner of something. I'm picking up the knife, I mean the ruler, when I'm doing this, let's just. There we go. Let's just get our scissors and finish that. I keep pushing the knife on the ruler with that. There we go. All right. Now that's a cool, interesting shape or something that we can do with paint two. All right, so I like that one. I've got some squares here I can do different things with. Let me change my blade out. All right. This is a whole little exacto kit I got off Amazon a while back which are pretty cool. They've got like all kinds of different knives in here and different blades and replacement blades. And it wasn't very expensive if I can find it all, link that, but it's very fun. And it's just a whole little set of Exacto knives, stuff that come in a little tin box. These are pretty easy to change out if you've never done this before. These just unscrew, just hold this part right here and like screw it out and the top part comes a little further out as you're doing that. And will release the blade that's in there and then be careful throwing these out. If you could throw this wrapped up in like a paper towel or something because it's got a sharp edge and you don't want to stab yourself on that in the trash can. Now, you can put the next blade down in that same slot to be very careful. Because it's a sharp blade, you just push it down. I'm working with the blade on this side and my hand on the non sharp side. Then once you've got it in there, you just tighten that right back up and that blade is then ready. That's how easy it is to cut a blade. Then you could then choose to do some kind of like interesting design, like a curve, like let's do a curve. You see how easy that cuts with a nice sharp blade. You can do that with scissors too, but we could do a two sided little funky curve. Be very careful you are working with a knife that could be some more stencils for us. I can just go ahead and cut that straight. That could be some interesting little trio. Just get creative here, I want you to see how many little shapes and masks and stuff that maybe you can cut out a one piece of paper. And see what can we create. I've got a few to block off some paint. I've got a few to make some shapes. I've got some funky shapes over here and look at all this paper that I still have to create with. This is definitely going to be some fun, challenging, interesting things that maybe you can create. And I want to see what stencils you come up with. You can use regular paper, like you could take a piece of that Bristol paper and make yourself some mask. But it's harder because the paper is thicker and it's only going to last a few, a few days. A few times that you use it, it's not going to last forever, whereas the plastic paper will last forever. You don't have to use U Po. You could use report covers, that clear stuff that is report covers, you can use stencil blank, all kinds of stuff. I happen to have Upo paper on hand and I thought that'd be perfect. This stencil that I use that I bought from PM Artists Studios, it's Upo paper that they used to make their stencils. I'm like see great minds think alike. Something like this to me would be really hard to cut on a piece of Po paper. You just have to get in there and be really precise. Let's just try this. Let's just be really precise. I'd need like a magnifying glass to get it really good, or just patience. Alright, let's do this. Look here. See a nice sharp knife makes it easier. Look at that, I did do it. If you like botanicals, you might do like a set of leaves that would be pretty, just kind of funky squares, something like that. You'll definitely know when you no longer have a sharp knife because it'll be too hard to get through your paper and get it cut out good. But a nice sharp knife, and there we go. All right. I'm actually loving that You might take a day and just make yourself some stencils and be real careful cutting them so that you don't cut part of your stencil up that you already did. Like working away from what I've already cut up. Be careful of your hands because you're working with a knife. Look at this. All right, there we go. Some fun pattern like that is super cool. I want you to practice and play and cut out some stencils and some shapes and some masks. I'm going to cut a few more shapes and mask out of my paper that I've got left over one sheet of nine by 12 goes a long way. Look at all these fun shapes that we've already created. All right, we've got some stencils out. I thought it would be fun to just play on our little ghost piece and just see what would that look like with maybe something on top. I'm going to use some of this little mineral paint just to see what do this paint versus other paint. Do this paint maybe a little bit thick because it looks like I'll let it dry a little bit, but let's see if I can get enough paint moving around. I need to get enough paint on the piece. There we go. Let's see, maybe that's enough paint. But basically this is how we're doing it. We're using it as a little mask painting in that little section. Then maybe picking the mask up, maybe I want to do this outside of here too and see, let's just see what it really looks like with a whole little section done. Who like that, that right there as I'm pushing stuff everywhere else. All right, then the goal here is to pick up this and be left with this and just see like what does that look like? And this is my little scrap piece. You're going to waste some paper, you're going to practice some pieces and say, what can we get if I do this or that? That's, oh, look at that now. We can see what it does if we left it outside. What it does for the inside of the stencil. That's the goal with this, I want to see what can we get with some different stencils. What if I made one that looks like a strip thing over here that's fun. Can stick that down. We could pick a different color and do that with a different color. Let's do that with this one. This is a yellow, like a oak or yellow one. Just get some paint out there. I've still got some green on my roller, but that's all right. I'm mostly trying to stay within the mask area. Let's just see how that can do. I need a bigger table when I'm doing stuff like this. Let's pick this up then. I just let those dry. I don't even worry about wiping them off. Maybe we'll come right through right here and just see what that does. That's super fun. You may not be thinking that's the most beautiful print, but it is still very fun to see. Let's just put this right here in the middle. See if we can get that on there. It is fun to experiment and see what can we get this paint to do? How can I push these prints further? See, now I've got some little ghost of that color in there. I like that. Something like this. We could take our viewers, let me get one of those out and see if we cut this down. Would it be something super cool? Maybe I'm all about cutting art, like what if I took that right there? Look at how cool that would be as a finished piece of abstract art. Even on the jelly plate. Things that I do, I always look at them and think, do I need to cut that down? Where could I cut that? Ooh. Ooh. Look at that right there. That right there is super cool. So you can see what I'm thinking and where I'm going, I'm looking to elevate these little prints into something amazing. I actually love this one, just like it is. But if I wanted to cut it up, there's so many good options in here that I could cut up. I don't want you to look at the jelly plate and think, oh, who look at that one and think, oh, I hate it because this is maybe what you ended up with. I want you to look at it and think, okay, now could I cut that up into something that really works for me? This was our ghost print. It wasn't even like our real thing. I still have something amazing that I could pull out of it if I didn't like the entire piece the way it was. I want you to be thinking about these things as we're going through and creating stuff. Look at it and think outside the box. And think, okay, what else could I do to this to make it more interesting? All right, I will see you back in class. 8. Making Collage Papers: I was thinking that we could get started by making some collage papers. This is a new jelly plate. I will try my best to keep it clean compared to the jelly plate that I left paint all over. I think it would be fun to just play with the different paints that you have. Different mark making tools. Get out your stencils, whatever it is that you've got that you want to play with. Get that out. And practice with collage papers. What I've done, I think I'm going to play with these Fusion paints, which are like the acrylic paint. Whatever paint you've got that you want to play with, get it out. And I just want to have all the colors available. So I'm putting all the colors out over here because I got a bunch of them. There's a little booth, that little local antique market that has all those, and I want a whole series with those paints. And then I think I'm going to get a palette knife out because I think it's easier to scoop paint out with palette knife. Got some paper over here for my breyer to rub on. Got some stencils and then I've pulled out like ten sheets of this jelly paper. And it's okay if it doesn't go edge to edge, it's basically going to go about for here. But I just want to create some interesting papers that we might consider using later for collage stuff. We can do one layer, we can do two layers, We can just play around and see what can we create. It's and I also have maybe we'll just start off with the acrylic paint. Look at this green gold. It's a bigger plate. A little bit bigger thing of paint is going to be needed, but you still don't want too much paint on it. You want thin layers. If you get too thick, it's just going to squish around the paper and stuff. Just feeling. Maybe we could do something like this. Maybe you can get out your favorite stencils and we could press some stencils and just see what would that do. This is a random flower, stencil, I think it's from stencil girl, but just play around then let's just do it. I'm just going to smooth this out. Just let it do what it's going to do. I know these have a fold in it. I'm just not worried about that. Then we're ready to pull that up and just see what do we get and how did the stencil do? Did the stencil do anything at all? I actually, because of this color, can't really see much stencil work. That's an interesting observation. What if let's do some white in with the green? I could have done my go because now I do see some stencil work there. But let's do white on top of the green and see what that gives us. That came up pretty good. My paint didn't dry super fast, so I don't feel like I need to put the paint retarder in there, But I'm just going to work in layers. There's going to be paint left on from whatever the last layer was and we're just going to go with it. Just going to eyeball, it doesn't have to be perfect. This is paper I'm using for collaging and whatever else seems fine. So let's just see what we get. Oh, that's different. And the paper is picking up bubbles and stuff. So let's definitely take that and do another one and pull a ghost, pull. I can see some wrinkles and some marks on that. That's pretty cool. Yeah, I say look at that, that's interesting. Now, this one I can see some of our stencil. That's interesting. Then after you create those papers, put those to the side, move on to the next color if you're wanting it to be completely clean without this leftover paint shining through. Because that's going to come on to our piece. If it needs to be completely clean, then go ahead and take this moment to clean your jelly plate with your baby oil. And then do like a pull that's not important, so that you clean that mineral oil off of the plate. And then you can start again with a clean one. I want to blue look at that and I can do a ghost pull. We could actually try. I don't want to do it with that. Let's try one of our markers and see what we get. Making marks in here. If that shows up what I was saying. If you like botanicals, you might go outside and pull some leaves off the trees. You might can squish some leaves down on these and see what that gives you for a pull. So that's, that's different. I can see some of the green underneath. There's a whole lot of pattern going on there. I like this dark color that might be interesting with something on top or we could just use it like it is. We could take a paint brush and just paint something on here. Let's paint, say like this. Let's, you could paint panicles on here too, but I'm just going to paint some marks and then see what that gives us. You want to go fast? Well, got off my line there. All right. Before that can draw on there. Let's go ahead and see what that gives us. Ooh, look at that. Let's do a ghost pull on this other side. Okay, I'm liking that a lot actually. Good one, good one. So we've still got a little paint on there. I'm okay with that. I'll just come up with the next whatever it is I do. I'm going to try this kind of pretty color here. Just going to put some paint down to see what we can get. This one is blue, pine, blue pine is a pretty color. Going to see if I can mesh this around some. We're going to have some panes gray and maybe some of that white coming through. We're going to have just where it's the jelly plate is, looks like it's repelling. We're going to have some of that. We could here a little bit and just see how that does. These are going to be a little different on these light papers than they are when we go to the heavy paper. That's going to be interesting to see the difference there. Oh, look at that. That's a pretty color, we could mark make on top of just the poles. Like we don't have to put it on the jelly plate. If we don't want, we can just come back and mark make right on top of this paper. Oh, look at that. I'm luck in that one a lot. Let's this one right here. Let's say we want to mark make just right on top of this. What if we wanted to do that Same gray. This is lamp white, so it's like a whitish gray. What if I wanted to make right on here, don't feel like you have to do every layer on the jelly plate. If you have something specific in mind, paint right on top of the one that you just created. Gives you a little bit more time to work with it and you'll get some interesting marks and patterns that we're not really going to get any other way. I'm all about mixing things up. Doing a little bit of mixed media work with different materials. Starting off with your base is one thing and then moving on to something else on top, it's perfectly fine. I don't consider that cheating at all, I consider it getting to wherever I need to get to create whatever I need to create. If you want to just throwing some more ideas out there. If you wanted pencil mark on this print, if I put pencil mark on the paper and then put it on the plate, that pencil mark might bleed onto the plate and not come off. I've seen that happen. I can do pencil mark on this at this point and make it like another layer on here as I'm going. That's something to think about too, just throwing some ideas out there. If you look real close, you start to see some of that work that we did and then I'm just going to set that to the side and that's ready for us to do something with. I actually like this just the way it is. I'm going to go for that if you wanted to. I really liked this one right here where we did these. Pulled the paint in the middle. Let's go ahead with this yellow paint. I could do whatever color, but I like this yellow. Let's do this yellow. And I need to get something to pull paint with. I've got one of my catalyst tools. This might be the time that you use a retarder. If you're going and it's drying too fast on you, just judge that how it's working and how you're getting pain off. I'm moving fast. We'll see what that does. All right. Let's do a ghost pull. That one's pretty, but I want to do a ghost pull because it's not totally seeing that pattern. And I feel like on the second pull I might see that pattern. I'm just pressing down pretty firm to try to get that paint to transfer over to this paper. Oh yeah, that's what I wanted right there. Look at that. It might be on the second poll that you get what you're really, really looking for. That I'd say is what I'm really, really looking for. But I like the contrast of the one where you, where you have more paint and less pattern. That's pretty cool. I want you to, here's some more that I've put over to the side. I want you to make a whole bunch of these and just have some stuff available as we go to get. I don't think I like the green gold, but it was interesting to try. But I want you to make a bunch of these, try the different techniques out, use the thinner paper, because these are the ones that we can now tear up and use as little collage bits on pieces later. I think this is my favorite one where I did some paint on top of it. Get creative work with all the different little techniques that we've talked about. And create some pretty thin collage papers. And I'll see you back in class. 9. Working In Your Sketchbook: I thought for this particular video we would jump into our sketchbooks and just see what can we create. And I've got two different sizes. I've got three books here. What I like about having multiple books is these get wet paint and then you'll have several layers, then you'll want to let those dry. But might want to play and do like a little marathon paint session like I think I'm going to do. You want to be able to set that to the side? Go on with the next idea and just see what can we create feeling like I'm going to work in the three sketch books for this video and just make a bunch of layouts and pages and then we'll go back and evaluate what we did and we can add finishing marks and do stuff like that. I want you to play with any acrylic paints that you've got, thicker paint, seems to work a little better. I'm going to also work with some heavy bodied paints just to give those like a little try out and just see what we can do. I'll start off with burnt sienna, tighten buff, and tighten Mars pale. I want the lower layer to this burnt sienna and the upper layers to maybe be these lighter colors and this burnt sienna to shine through. I'm just going to give it a try out and see it is going to work. Is the paint too thick? Paint is thick, find if we smish it around, we get a better coverage. And my goal here is like lots of little thin layers. Not a great big layer that's all solid, that's just perfect. I've got my scrap paper over here to write things on to wipe it off. As I'm going, we might consider maybe some little marks that was just the edge of a thing. Then I'm just going to open these and do them as one big layout and just squish that down as good as I can. I'm going to have some extra paper over here. Let me just get some of that out. Then I can use these as my ghost pulls or I can move to the next scrapbook. Scrapbook sketchbook page. This is the Bristol paper. I'm just pulling some sheets out to have ready for ghost pulls, and then I'm going to pull that up and see what did we get. I did leave a little bit of paint on there from yesterday. Oh, look at that first layer. Oh my gosh. That is some prettiness. All right. Here's where our spare paper comes in. Just pressing down nice and firmly. You could also, if you feel like you're not getting a good enough Atesesian, you could take like a clean Breyer, go over it with that. That's always an option. And then we will pull that off. Just got that center piece. That's what I was looking for just to see what's going to pull off. All right. I want the CNA layer to be pushed back. I'm just going to play and see how we don't have to make it solid either. We could here and there. I want some of that bottom layer to shine through. Let's just do this. I'm just eyeballing it. I could flip it over if I wanted to see exactly what that sat down on. But just wanting to go with it and see what we get. Nice. If I want to pull that off, I can. Or at least most of it. Oh, yeah. All right. I'm wanting this to be the top layer. Let's just see what we get. This is a pretty color, it's very light. It may be really super close to that Titan that I just used. But let's just go with it, not going for anything specific. When I started off thinking, what is it that I'm trying to accomplish with say, this particular sketch book collection? I want it to be something where it's natural, maybe earth tones. See, we could do this way too, if you had that plastic on the back side still and we could judge it, that's another way we could have done that. But I want to stay within like say, a color range of earthy tones, maybe grade down tones, maybe tones that are not brighten in your face. Okay, That was actually really cool. I'm going to set that one to the side and let it be drying and doing its thing. I think I'm going to take the second book and see what we can get off of this as our ghost pull. Look at that and just work it some more. We could look like we could do some of one color and some of the other color. Swish them around and see what we end up with there. That could be super fun. I just want you to start thinking, what if I did this? Or what if I did that? Or how could I get a little bit of creative with the paint going this way or going that way? I just want you to see what can you create if you think in the terms of what if I did this? What if I did that? Because that's how we learn and experiment. And really the goal here is to find some stuff that I'm like, whoa, I love that so much. And then how can I translate that into say, a piece of art on just paper rather than in Sketchbooks? Oh, see now that right there. All right, Let's get our little ghost paper. We're going to call it trash paper, but it may end up being something we like. You never know. Oh, see more layers. We'll get there. All right. Actually love that, just like it is. And I'm thinking, what if we did like a little stencil grid there? Maybe in. All right, check it out. Let's do this in this Titan buff. My goal here is to to do like several layouts in one color way and then I'll maybe switch to another color way. All check it out. What if we did this? Let's get that color on there then. What if we put this over here? Maybe with the clean one. We just roll that right on. Well, didn't do anything that was interesting. All right, maybe we'll get it this way. Let's try. It might not get anything, but what's worth a try, This is how we discover. Okay, it really blended in. We didn't get much off of that. Let's do this ghost poll. I should have done a color that was more contrasty, was maybe a different, like maybe I should have done that, sienna instead. Let's do that. It's all about your trials and experiments. What happens if I do this or what happens if I do that? See, now that we've done that, we kind of know, oh, that's what happens. Did it work? Did it not work? What was successful? Not as successful. All right, let's try this again. This is that stencil from PM Artist Studios. It's like wonky. It, I think is the name of that one. All right, let's try it on this one and just see, are we going to get any of that? See that much better. We might do a ghost pull on this side and just see if we can pull any little bit of extra off of. Oh, yeah, see that right there, contrast color, definitely the way to go. Let's just pull the rest of this off of here with our extra piece. And then we'll just leave that for whatever it is that we're doing next. Then you'll notice by the time that we've just done that and we come back to this, this is fairly dry. And we can add some more stuff to it if we want. I might think on this like what else do I want to add to that? I really liked what that did. I really like that. Maybe. Let's go with this creamy color here, the Titan buff. These are all golden acrylics. These thicker paints that I'm pulling from, I'm going to pull from my little fusion paints and other paints, and we'll just see what we end up with. I want you to try all of the different paints that you have, but I'm going to just see what am I getting as I'm layering and adding stuff with the different kinds of paints? I already know I like all those colors though. All right, let's see what that did. All right, not enough contrast. I can't see that I really did anything in there. I think what if we throw in maybe a surprise color? We could throw in this grayish white. Let's just try it. While I'm thinking about it, you don't have to put all your color on here with a bra. You can come back and put color on with a paint brush with something like that silicone piece. You can let that be your marks that you made. We can make patterns and designs not just with stencils, but with the way that we spread paint on. All right. Thinking that gave me a little bit lighter. I'm building some layers here. You'll notice that gave us a little bit of that whitish gray color in there. I love that. Here is Chesler, which is a dark color. What I could do, just got that on here, left over a little bits. What I could do, we could make a pattern out of this. Do you'll want to do that color? I don't know. Let's see. I don't know if I'm there yet. Maybe this green. Green is really pretty. It is conservatory. See what we could do. Do some lines and patterns and just see like what did this give us? Let's try that. I'm not even going to rub it in very much. See if I can get that off of my piece here. I do like to try to clean the paint off as I go. Then let's just see what this color is going to be on here. Oh, I like that. That was pretty cool. All right. So I don't want that on the next thing, so let's go ahead with our trash paper. Just see where we're going. Cool. Got a little bit of paint left on there, but I am liking what that's doing there. That's fun. All right, so I could do like a little edge of this piece here. Oh yeah, see that was pretty cool. I could go on to the next layout and just let that be on that layer. All right, got that started. All right. So I can keep on with whatever colors I'm thinking and I'm feeling like I want to go with some neutrally earthy. This is Kam, kam, AK, HAM. These are the fusion colors. I'm just going to play in some of these for some of my layouts, use whatever acrylic paints you have. Don't feel like you got to get anything that I'm using at all. Just play with some of the stuff that you've already got on hand as you're experimenting and learning. Because the goal here, my goal, is to fill up my little sketchbooks with interesting layouts. And a little tip here, if you feel like you didn't let the pages dry enough in between going to the next page, if you're working real fast, you could put a piece of wax paper in between these pages to keep them. Look at that. My really like maybe I want to go with some of this green. Now. I know that I've got a lot of paint left here on my plate. So I know that that's still going to come through, so that's going to give me a really interesting pattern. Hopefully here on this, you don't even have to cover the whole thing. Get creative in where you lay the paints down. Oh, that's pretty cool. So what I think maybe some of this lamp, white on top. Let's just do it. Just be brave, Just go for it. I like getting creative. I like being brave. Be brave. It's just paint, it's just paper. Don't worry about messing it up, it's not going to bite you. I have to remind myself to be brave because, you know, I look at this stuff too, and I'm like, oh, now I really like that. I'm scared to mess it up. But don't be scared to mess it up. You can always make it again. It's just paint. Oh, look at that. That's some prettiness that we got going on there. We could say, can I get any of that to lift off? Let's see. Oh, oh, look at that. Let's move this jelly plate for a second. Look what that did. That actually was super cool, so the pain is wet. I'm going to take like this clean one did better when I squished it with my hands. That right there, look at that. Made the coolest pattern in there. Super cool. All right. So I do want some little patterns in here. I feel the patterns are feeling good. All right. So what? Can I get any more pattern on this here before I add the next thing? Oh yeah, see, look at that. All right, so let's see here. What do I want? I think I'm going to go to the next layout. Or I could, I could too start doing some on this big pad because I really like these colors. I don't want to paint all over the covers. I need more tables around me thinking that if I do the white on here, that I might pull some of this green with this pattern, with this. Next let's try this. This is that lamp white, I think it's a grayish white. You can pull these in any of your acrylic paints if you're looking for something similar. All right, so let's let's put the plate on top of the page where I can judge that. And I already know that I'm probably going to get paint all over the covers of my sketch books. I'm okay with that. They're brown. We could always go back and paint the covers later. Just chalk it up to oh, oh, oh, oh, look at that. That one pulled all the existing colors that I had. Look at that one. Oh my goodness. Okay. That might be my favorite layout so far. Oh my gosh. That on that one. All right, so maybe this should have been my junk paper because that one's really beautiful, just like it is. All right, let's pull these back over, Man, that was pretty. Now I kind of want to just do big layouts. All right, so let's go ahead and flip our page here, feeling like we've got this one over here paints mostly dry. I had this initial layout in here too. I really like these colors. I like how we've got some stripes of something in there too. I want to keep that in mind. I actually like this with the green stripe like that. I don't think I'm going to change it up anymore at the moment. I'll flip to the next page. And I do try to get that binding nice and wide so that I can get that to lay flat. Let's do that over here too. If you've got one of these lay flat books, that'll be even better. This is rose water. This is pretty all right? I'm thinking rose water. Like this pinkish color, maybe this brown. All right, I'm filling this pink and brown. Let's just do it. I might throw in some of this white lamp. White, which is grayish white. Let's just start with that. I'm using my silicone brush to do that with because I know I can peel paint off of it, even if I let it sit there and get all over it. All right, let's just mix this around. This is so pretty that I'm almost want to do it on that big page instead of in this little page. But let's just start this and then I know that I like that big book for clean up. That was amazing. Now I'm excited about the larger book there. Oh yes. Look at those. All right. That's some pretty stuff. Let's get that center a little stripe up. Oh yeah. Super fun. We're getting fun stuff there. You know, our trash pieces there. We could. Okay. I think I'm actually going to maybe we want a stripe in here. Let's do this. Let's take, before I do that, let's take these pieces that we made, a stencils, and let's experiment. I've got this piece that we made as a straight, I thought I had another straight piece because I want it to be. Here we go, throwing stuff everywhere. I wanted to give me a line right in here without too much. Without it being too hard. Okay. All right, let's do that right there, filling that. All right? And then we can pull our little stencils off. Now we've got a line. I just put those to the side to dry. I want that line to be here. Oh yeah, Look at that. And we could come back in here and pull that further if we needed to. Like, don't be afraid to really get that to do what you want if it didn't quite do it all the way. Oh yeah, I like that. Then what we do, something like that down here at the bottom. Would that be the bottom? I think this would be the bottom. All right, let's get our little stencil back. Maybe I want it to be about right there. It's not quite long enough. So we'll just add the second one right here, I'm thinking on this side. All right, let's just see what we got there. This paint is about the consistency of these tube paints, like these right here. I like that. It's not too thin, it's not like your high flow paints. It's got enough liquidity in it that I can smosh it around pretty easy. There we go. I like that. Pull that up. There's a little bit up here. I'm okay with that. Just go for it. Oh yeah, Look at that. Okay. I'm good with that in that. Want to see what does that look like. If I pull a pull now in this book. Like in doing one sided at the moment. What if we do the whole thing in color? Oye, maybe I want to do it in this kind beige color. This is just a pretty big, it is called algenquinn. A, L, G, O, N, Q, U, I, N. Yeah. Let's just do this. We're going to see how cool this is going to be on this one, All right? Put that lid back on it. All right. Let's see what we got here. So this would be a good exercise for pulling these colors back off of here because it did a really good job. So I could start fresh with that next thing that we did. All right, let's do it this way so we could judge it again right there. And then when we come back and do the whole other side too, we don't just have to do the one side. I just was getting excited The way that turned out, look at that one. Holy cow. That one's amazing too. Yes, yes. Okay. So I highly recommend the big book. It is super cool. Now I want to, let's just do some stuff on the big book for a minute because I'm thinking that I like the size and these are big enough that we could just cut those back out and that could be the piece of art if we cut that out. I do like having the leftovers of stuff that we did in our main sketchbooks. That was very cool. I'm going to keep on playing in these books. I want you to experiment and play in your Sketchbooks. And I can't wait to see what some of your layouts are. So I'm going to keep on working in my sketch books for a bit before I move to some larger pieces, and then I'll show you what I did. 10. Trying Multiple Colors Per Layer: I wanted to show you something else that I was doing as I was going on that first set of videos, that first set of paintings that we were just doing. I started out with one color on each of these, did one color per layer, but what if we do multiple colors on the layer? How could we get something different there? I did this really beautiful one with the blues, then I did a bigger layout, just picking up the scraps, it turns out so cool. When you mix the colors, I thought, let's just do that. Let's just mix the colors and see what we get. You can just get creative here. You don't have to use anything that I'm doing, Pick the colors that appeal to you. And you could do it in stripes. You could do it all over like I'm doing. Just pick a couple colors and say, all right, what's this going to look like? If I squish these around and you don't want to put too much paint on your plate, you may have to do a pull of the colors if you load it up too heavy. But let's just see what happens if you do something fun like this. Then I was like, maybe we could pull some paint with a stencil and see what that gives us. This is a fun way to play in some color mixing. Then I've got my, what is this? I believe it's called Walk Net Artist Studio Stencil. I think it's called Wonky Net. Oh, look at that. Look at that. You already got some paper here. I think I'm going to go down this way because for some reason I'm way off on my other page there. I want to make sure I'm actually getting on the pages here. I could then even push it further. If I'm in there I can push that further down into that seam and may get it where it's continuous. Let's see what we got. Oh yeah, see that's what I want right there. Look at that. Look up. That that's exactly what I wanted. Oh my goodness. Pretty. Pretty. And we could come back with the ones that we already have started and pick up these extra corners, extra paint on the one that we've already got going. That's the way that we can scrap up paint and add to our bigger layout. All right, so fun. I want you to try multiple colors with this. We could even do this where we did a whole big solid like center area. Let's do something right in here. Then on the outsides of that, maybe some darker colors. See how would this work for like say, an abstract, whatever we're making. Could we get those to really give us something yummy and abstract as we're going here? Let's see. All right, let's just see what we got. Okay, I'm trying to not completely get everything covered, let's just see what we can get. Leaving whole like color blocks of color in certain areas basically. Let's just go ahead and open this book real tight and I think I'm going to do what I just did and lay this right on that. Well, that was crooked, but that's okay. And then I can really push that down into that seam. Let's just see what that gives us when we pull that off. Oh, look at that. Oh my gosh. I wonder if I can come back and drill that pattern in a little bit. Not wet enough. All right. Not wet enough, but that's okay. Then this is looking pretty cool. I'm going to put this white one on here and do a big pull on a big page and clean our palette that way. Let's see what we can get in our big book. We could go ahead with our stencil, stencils and we could try to pull a pattern out of here too. And just see like what can we get with some of those? Let's go ahead and pull this page here. All right. Just trying to get that all the way on. We could get some shapes out of here too. Oh my gosh. Look how pretty that is. All right, let's set that to the side and let it dry. You know what we could do? Just keep thinking out loud here. We could do like an abstract in the middle and start layering stuff like this. Let's do this in our big book, but on a clean page. And start doing this little game here where we layer in some stuff. Let's just start this. I'm going with some blues and greens because that's what I'm feeling. And just see what this kind of thing would get us. Oh yeah, we're getting some cool stuff now. I can put some white in here. Not white, this lamp white, kind of a grayish white. And then pick a new page. This one's still wet, but I'm going to go ahead and see if I can get a new page going. Ooh, look at that. That is super fun, and I'm probably getting paint on my other piece, but I don't even mind look at that flat over here a little bit. But it looks really cool. That looks super duper cool. All right. Loving where we're going with these. I might even take this and see if I can pick up any more just seeing if I can add to it. Basically, I want you to try that. I want you to try two or three colors and you can layer with just a little bit of pattern on the piece with just some scribble and lay that on your piece. And you could also whole color with two or three colors and try to do one color and a second color and not completely mix them up and see what we can get. Then you could do some like this where you're just scribbles of paint on there. That's really fun and cool. I want you to experiment with multiple colors and multiple different techniques. All right, I'll see you back in class. 11. Dragging Soft Tools Through Paint: Another thing I was thinking that I wanted to remind you, don't forget about is drawing and dragging things through our paint. We can do this on one level, we can still have paint there from another layer. That's fine. But what if we had some of those silicone brushes that I was talking about? This is the cheap ones I got at Michael's. But even like some of the bigger spreaders, drag that off some of your paint there, see if you can make some interesting designs. I'll see if I can get this lined up pretty good because I want it to really be a good one. And I'm going to press it down to the seam there. Then we can see how in the drag gives our pattern. Oh, look at that. Now, that is super cool. And I did another one that was off the page, but still just as cool with like some green in it. Still that's super fun and gives us a very interesting design and pattern and that would make a cool abstract. Then I could even come over here and see if I can pick up any of that extra on a different layout. Let's just see if we can pick any of that up. Of what's left? Not really. We picked up a tiny bit in the center, but that's okay. We can put something right on top of this and I can add another layer onto a piece, or it can be a new piece altogether. I think we've got the yellow. Maybe I want to do this with peony, which is like a light pink. I've still got a little bit of yellow here on my brush, my silicone spreader then. Because what if we did this and then dragged one of these through there. Look at that then Maybe in the big book, because I'm actually digging this quite a bit. Maybe I'll do it this way. I can see where it goes. There we go, Right there. Oh yeah, I'm feeling good about that. We look at those colors that are shining through from the other pieces that we just did. I hope we pick up some of that. Oh, look at that one. Look at that one. See, the more you do, the better they get. The cooler they are. I can see that being a whole piece of art right there all by itself. All right. So just keep in mind, I want you to be mixing colors. I want you to be dragging stuff through it and just seeing cool things that we come up with. 12. Evaluating & Finishing Sketchbook Pieces: Once we have done quite a few in our sketch book, even filled up our sketch books, then I want you to start looking and evaluating and thinking, all right, what worked? What did I really, really love? Say for instance, for like this set in the big one. I really loved this where there were multiple colors shining through and I could see all the differences that we had going on. We had the line there, We had just a bunch of interesting things that we could then look around and play with. Then as I look at these also, I might start thinking, is there anything that I could add to this that would complete it for me? Like for this layout over here, I'm pulling out some of my papers over here that are my collage papers. But is there anything, say in the collage papers that could complete a piece like this for me? Could I put a collage element on there? Could I do some of these markings on there that would complete that for me? I really like this here. Let's just start looking at these and thinking, is it complete? Is there something else that would be interesting? I actually like this side better. Let's just do some evaluating and think, let's just cut this white edge off. Could we add an element onto this one to complete it? I am actually really liking this element here. It doesn't even have to go all the way like most of the way. It would have helped if I'd cut that straight, huh? But most of the way or something like that coming in from the side. I really love that. What you might do with the collage elements is have some map medium available. And we could just put these down with some map medium. As far as your brushes go for using map medium or with your pieces. I do have a brush or two that I just used for glue with the map medium. I'm just using the Liquitex ultra map medium. We can just put some of that down on our page, it dries clear, then I'm ready to just glue this piece right on top of that. Because it's very thin, it's not going to add a lot of weight to my page. Just going to glue down very easily. And the medium is just going to blend in. And I'm not going to have an issue with that actually, really like that. I could look at that and think, does it mean anything else? Could I have added another element to that? You can tear your pages if you want and just see, could we get another element that we liked and just test it out. Because I do like that right there. Also pull the map medium back out of the water. I could glue that down. I could even got glue different directions. Can make a whole collage page out of this with different elements. But my main goal is not necessarily to do collage with these. It's to make beautiful, elevated abstract art. Pull out all your abstract techniques with and just see what can we get when we're all done. You can use other glues too, but this tissue paper is basically, it's the thickness of tissue paper is thick enough for that to finish out your piece with just the map medium. That's one thing that we could do. We could also come back in here and now draw and make marks. I've got a stabilo Woody, and I could come back on here now and do some abstract mark making. I could come back with my gold if I wanted to add some gold to this. What do you enjoy? We can add to that, but I like the black look at how good that stabilo. Mark makes on our piece. It just draws on everything. It's like a giant crayon and totally brings out my inner five year old because it's amazing how easy it is to make marks with that. All right? I'm actually loving that. I don't want to get like to doodly, I don't want to add too much to it and cover up the loveliness that we came up with the jelly plate. But I do want to finish out the pages where I'm like, okay, I feel like that's finished. And now that I feel like that's finished, now I want you to evaluate your other pages and think, okay, what else could I add to this? What else might I like? You can add more paint at this point. We could look at this one and think, wow, I think it could use some type of dot or stencil work or yeah, let's do that. Let's just pull out stencil that I'm just gaga over. We could do some stencil work on this with a particular color, using the same paints that we're already using. That one had, I think, a sienna. Let's get that back out. It was our thicker paint. I'm just going to put this on my. Well, that was not it, that's the raw. Let's, we're going to use the raw Sienna because I put that out. I think that was the darker color. That's okay though, because I think this will complement what we've already got going on in here. Let's just do it. I'm just going to strategically add some stencil work to my piece because I like working with stencils. Sometimes you can get some interesting things and we can pull that up and look, and see if we're even getting what we wanted. I do actually like that. I want to come off the page over here. It doesn't have to be so much paint that it changes the whole thing. But it might be enough to be like, oh, look at that. Take a little that right up here. Maybe a little extra. Oh yeah, see I like that. That's yummy. Do we want any mark making in here? Let's see, Maybe I actually have, I think I think it might be gold, gold woodie. Let's just see, is that a gold wood? It is a gold wood. Maybe some lines in here that are very subtle. Doesn't have to be Jump off your page at you like that. White. That's interesting to do some mark making in there. We can do hash marks, dots. You can go back in with some of the normal abstract things that you like to do. I like that a lot. I do feel like it needs a point of contrast. Is there anything that we could come back in with some pastels. Which I like the pastels because I can get a darker color in there. Like look at this color, oh, that is dark. I can make it water soluble, so we can make it blend in. Just testing color here on the side for a second to see which one do we really, really want. Here's a dark brown, that's too dark. Let's just go with that original brown I picked. All right, let's see. What do we want to do? I want to do, let's just be brave. I don't even worry now about things like, oh, I'm going to ruin it. I don't even think that anymore. Because most of the pieces, I don't start with a goal in mind. I look at their little loop de loop. I didn't even intend how fun. I just want to jump in and go for it. Just be brave. I'm not trying for any particular thing when I'm done. So with this, if I've got pastel on it D, I'm probably going to hit that with the pastel fixative so that it doesn't run into the next page. I also could separate these pages with some wax paper so that I know that one is not going to bleed onto the next page. I could separate these if I wanted to keep them pretty in between evaluating these. That's just a little hint there on how you can keep on moving without stopping while you're working. I'm just going to size that out, then we'll keep that pastel from bleeding into the next page. Look how cool those two pages are now. I'm super happy with that. This is something where I'll look at later and I'll come back and I'll get some ideas from. And I can see what worked and what didn't work. What I might want to do again, what I don't want to do again. I love when you come back and evaluate and you think of stuff like this on a piece like this, maybe I want to come back and I could do some mark making on the entire page if I wanted to. I like a dark brown. We could maybe use this fusion color. I could just take a brush and I could do some mark all the way down or I could get a stencil. If I wanted to stencil this. Just get creative here. I think I'm going to do some marks with the tip of my brush. That's pretty cool. I like that. I could do some collage work on this if I wanted to. I could also do some of our stencils that we made. I could have done some stencil work with our jelly plate. All kinds of things that we could do here. But I think for the moment, I'm pretty happy with where that's sitting. You don't have to finish every one of them out to like a fabulous piece of art. Like these two I think are a fabulous piece of art. But some of these could just be backgrounds that are waiting for whatever that next great idea is. Whatever the great idea is that we're going to come up with for our bigger painted pieces, let's just put a piece of wax paper right here while that paints wet so I can keep on going. This piece, I actually, really, really love it, makes a really cool abstract. And if I were going to keep it, I'd probably trim this out. If I were going to use it for like a piece of art for somebody. I love that, just like it is actually. I don't really want to change that up. Okay, this piece right here, I'm over the moon about it is amazing. This piece right here, I could maybe add some collage work. I could add some pastel to it. I could think about what I might want to do with that. And then I got into this yellow ochre pink feel where I wanted to play with that again, because I liked this piece so much that I wanted to play with that again and drag stuff through it. That's where I was, that with these, I actually really loved this one. And this is a really pretty subtle background for something I could add to the top of that. I really liked this one where it had all the stencil work in it. Some of these you can see how they're really beautiful backgrounds for whatever our next thing is, you don't have to finish your whole sketchbook in one setting. Some of these you might want to live with for a bit and think, okay, what do I want to do with this? Or you might be making a piece of art or something and think, okay, now I know what else that needs. Some of these. You might love so much that you're like, wow, let's cut that out for a piece of art. I do consider cutting up the sketchbook if I find I love something enough if we go back like this right here to totally love that that's a finished piece of art. I could move it up a little bit if I'm thinking of composition. And I could have this line right here on the lower third and this pattern at the top, that's one of my favorite. We could look back at some of these other pieces. Like when I said that right there, that could be finished right there. We could also do it like this if we wanted to be taller. So much good stuff. Some of these we're going to consider as backgrounds for future things. Some of these I would consider finished art like this. This is finished. Look at that right there. That piece right there. I am loving that we could even come further down. Where that right there. See, I love that. Then this piece here, totally feeling this right here, that's a finished piece for me. What I want to do, okay, we've looked at those. Actually, I want to evaluate the little ones before we move on, because I want you to use these as inspiration for your bigger pieces. This right here, totally a finished piece to me. I could frame that out and that would be done. I loved that these are more like a big background for something, or I could pull that out and I could frame that. It's still beautiful like it is. We might do some mart making on this piece. This one could use some scribble, maybe some dots. We could finish that out with a piece of collage. I just want your brains thinking here. Look at that one. Super cool. This one's even cool. And I would leave the white bit if I framed it, love that got on a kick with the yellow in this one. But all of these right there, perfect Where I was dragging just one, it almost looks like from like the kitchen store, one of those butter things that you use on the grill and you just drag these through that paint while it's wet, everybody needs that one. I really like this right here. I totally frame that one. I would use this as backgrounds. Maybe add some collage or some dots or maybe some writing. If you do writing, I love those. Let's see what we did in this last book here just to evaluate. Because I want you to look at these and think, okay, what worked? And now what can I take to a big piece? Look at that. See, I love this. It almost looks like alligator skin over here. That's so cool. Again, like alligator skin, these are more like little backgrounds. I think this is more like a finished piece to me. I could frame that out just like that. Those are definitely yummy, yummy. I could mark make on them if I want. That's more of a background for me. I really love how the white is in there from where we did that stencil work. So that's super fun. We can maybe mark make on this. I love this one with the long drag marks in it. That right there could totally be a finished piece for me. I love that. I want you to look at your pieces after you've done your sketch book work and decide, okay, what could I do to now elevate these particular layouts? What did I like? I want to collage and mark make on top of them and then finish those out slowly As you're thinking of what you love and what you want to add to it. You don't have to finish every piece the moment that you start creating. You save these for later ideas, and then I want you to take these ideas into our bigger piece that we're going to create. So I will see you back in class. 13. Creating Larger Pieces & Cutting Them Up: Let's take a look at doing some larger pieces. But real quick, I want to look at trash piece that we were using to scrape up the extra paint. Look at that right there. That right there is a super cool abstract that I think I would definitely keep out of this trash piece. I could come over here too and look at some of these and see like what works out of this. I'm going to keep this one in mind for later. And I might still be using it as my trash piece here too with this, because I could do pulls and ghost pulls and then have a trash piece left over. I was really obsessed in our sketch books with the yellow and pink sets that I did. I just love this color way. I loved some of the things that came out with that ochre. I'm just looking back at some of the pieces that I did and thinking of the elements that I really liked. I really liked the dragged paint. I liked the combination of the colors of the ochre and the pink. I really liked this white of that stencil that, that pulled off when I used that stencil. I also like this pink and brown combination. I might be considered doing some of that then in our bigger book, I really loved these combo pieces that we did. I liked where we added some brush marks on top to finish our piece out. I really loved this piece with the pink and the yellow and the lines through it. I did quite a few of those. I love this one right here. This one right here. Actually, if we look at it with our view finder, I can definitely see a lovely composition coming out of this with the lines and the colors. It's lovely. I'm going to take those inspirations forward and use those on my piece here that we create several pieces. This is a case of work on lots of pieces and then evaluate them after you get them on there. I'm going to work in the ochre and a light pink, maybe some brown and pink and maybe some of that blue that I liked. I'm just going to start spreading paint, making some ideas. And then I've got my Bristol paper over here to the side in the larger sheets. It's just time to put some of that experimenting into play. Let's just get started. My jelly plate is extra dirty because I've just gone from thing to thing to thing and I'm okay with that. I'm just going to keep adding paint to it. I could clean it off with the mineral paints if I wanted to. With the mineral oil? With the baby oil, I could. But I think I'm going to go with what I got and just get started and doing some polls and seeing where we can go, Ooh, ooh, look at that. Oh yeah, I might add some more layers or I might not. I might decide that that's so cool that I'm going to leave it just like that. We're going to just play with all the techniques that maybe we started with in our sketch books, because at this point now there's definitely some things that I think are cool. There's some stuff that I really love. I think I'm going to do another pull right on top of this. If you're wanting to be more exact, you could put the paper down and put the jelly plate on top of the paper. Oh yeah, See that's pretty cool. But now I want some other color coming back through almost a little darker. Maybe I will do some yellow. And I don't know what other color might we do here. Might just do some pattern on this yellow with my Wonkie PM Artist Studios patterns. That's pretty cool. Let's see if that gets us anything because there's actually, with the color way that I'm using, there's not very much contrast. That's pretty cool, though I might consider on a piece like this, how can I add some contrast? What else can we do to really make this stand out a little better? Start evaluating your things as you're going thinking, okay, what can I add to this? Maybe for us that maybe some brown. Let's see what that does. It still, it's all about play for me. I'm not really trying to create something. Oh, look at that. Let's see if we go the other direction. I'm trying to create something amazing that I can sell. I'm trying to and just experiment. All right, let's go back on top now with this P. I just want you to pull out all the stops at this point. What can you do to now get this pushed a little further for each of your pieces? Maybe for this, I want to go ahead and move to another piece of paper. I'm using this Bristol paper because I like the weight, 96 pounds. I don't necessarily, oh, see, now that's pretty, you can use the mixed media paper which is a little, I like the lighter weight papers with a lot of these feeling like maybe something like halfway with some mark in it. Let's see, See I really liked these drags. I want to control where I put this, let's flip it over like this, where I can actually see where that's going to go. Then we can pull that right off. Oh yeah, I like that. That one's super fun thinking that we're not getting any contrast on some of these. I might add some contrast with other materials at the end. But it is fun to maybe start off with a darker color and build some lighter on top of that. Perhaps that might be one way to get some contrast. And I'm just dragging through with some of my silicone tools. We could even drag the other way and just see what that's going to give us, a clean piece of paper. I feel like that's two pieces because it is, oh, look at that. Now, I feel like we could come back with say, a pink on top of that. And we'll have some of this like for another piece we'll do, I like that ghosting of a pattern that we've got there. We're going to use that and pull a piece with this as a lighter on the background. Just see what we get. Clean paper that I probably just put paint on. That's okay. Oh, look at that. That's super cool. Now, that might be nice with some yellow on top that I can maybe drag through. We're just going to build layers ideas till you get to the point where you're like, whoa, coolest thing I ever made. Don't be afraid to not cover the whole jelly plate. Then maybe we'll drag through one side here. I want to control where this goes. Right there we go. And we'll pull that up. Oh yeah, look at that super pool. And I might do some of that on this other one that we already started, a ghost pole. That's fun. Then where do we want to go now? We can, we just playing, we're layering, we're adding ideas and just thinking maybe I want to go in this yummy blue direction for a bit. I could mix that with some of this yummy green. Don't ask me what all these colors are, I don't even know. I'm just pulling them out. This prairie sunset, this pony, this was conservatory blue blue pine. I'll just mix these around a little. I might go ahead and pull some of that paint off with a stencil. Oh, look at that. I like it. I need some more Bristol paper out of here. You want to have a couple pads of paper as you're going because you're definitely going to use them. It's addicting making these, even if there's nothing else besides collage backgrounds, and I've got several collage classes, you can check those out and just see how you can play. Oh, look at that one. That's super cool. All right. Actually love what the stencil did on this piece here. Okay, so what do we want to do now? Let's just keep on playing. We could come in here with some colors that I like, this mars pie and that tightened buff. That was really cool. We could actually come through here, oh, you know what else we could do? Let's do it on a new one though. We could, Let's go ahead and get this out. This is that thick paint so you can see how you can work with medium thickness to thick paint. But I don't like the thin paints because the high flow paints are almost too thin. All right. Let's start with that right there. New piece of paper, please. All right. We'll get that on there, Get us started. Whoa, look what that did. That was super cool. At this point. I could come through and do some designs. Let's see, what do I want to do? I want to, I don't know. Let's think about this. Maybe with the brown, we could. Let's do this with this walkie thing. Let's just put some paint on it and then draw on the jelly plate. We'll get that to come on off of there. Then come back with our piece. You can flip it over if you needed to see where that was going, look at that. All right. That was super fun. Now we can put paint on top of that, pull to another pol, let's do the yellow. I'm filling yellow ocher, whatever you want to call that. I'm getting paint everywhere. I'm going to have to change out my drop cloth after this little project because I'm just going to get paint everywhere. This is a vinyl drop cloth that I work on behind these because they're pretty for filming, like a vinyl photography backdrop. They're good for protecting a table surface. Then once it gets too dirty or I get a lot of pastel dust everywhere, then I just change it out for a clean one. That's pretty what else we could do that I didn't pull out for the other things because I was not thinking about it. But our we can paint our little shapes with some paint and color and stuff like that. We can do those down on our page. Maybe we'll do it with like a little bit of pink. Now, I can come back on one of these and see, Let's see which one will show up on it. Show up on this one. Now I come back and then we can do shapes. Don't forget if you've got any of these little small ones. They're perfect for shapes and patterns. And that did a really nice edge detail there. That was cool. All right. That's another little idea that I was thinking earlier and I didn't end up doing it on my little pieces. It is super fun. I'm thinking maybe Let's do with this gray. I want to do an abstract painting piece where we get a lot of the design before we even get it on the paper. I did that one time with doing like one color on the inside and then surrounding that with some color and then they didn't really mix perfectly. I have the yellow still on there. I could clean it if I wanted to, my baby oil and just clean it up really good, but I don't want to want to go ahead and just see what I can get here. All right. So I'm not trying to cover the inside with my solid color, I'm just trying to see what can we get. Let's see if that did it. Sometimes it's just an accident and you're like, how did I get that? Oh, that's fun. Not quite what I wanted, but it's fun. Maybe this pull off will be better. Let's get another piece of paper and do our ghost pull paint all over my hands. Look how pretty that paint is. It's like this. Look pretty pattern. All right, let's see what we got. Oh, look at that. That's super fun. Actually, I can build on that. Let's build on that with some real thin layer of pink and see what we get. All right, there we go. I like that. Ooh. Look at that. That's pretty, let's build on that with this yummy gray color. Maybe up here, maybe with some drags. Let's just go for it. I'm not even being super careful about where it lays because I can trim these up. Oh, see that's pretty all right. Maybe with some of this lighter color, we can pull some of this lightness out. Oh, look at that. What if we just did that right there? Okay. So, I'm going to flatten it a tiny bit, but I don't want to be too flat. I look at that. Oh, look at that. Okay, let's do that all. Let's see what we get here. Oh, that's super fun. Okay, I like that. I might do that on this other piece just as a ghost pull, just to get that extra off over here. On our junk piece, we'll see what we can get there. I'm definitely going to have some major cleaning to do after this because these paints are now good and stuck on here. I'm thinking, now we've done quite a few of these. I want you to keep going and make 1 million of these if you must, because usually I must. It's fun to just keep going and playing. It's addicting. If you make collage papers like we did earlier in class, that's addicting because can you ever have enough thin, pretty papers that make something cool? I don't know. I don't think you can ever have enough. Let me shut up some of these paint cans and then let's just take a look at what I got for now. And then what did I love? Is there one in here that's maybe a piece that I consider that could be finished or added to. Because I'm actually really loving this piece right here. I feel like if I cut that right there, that's a finished piece. I'm actually going to commit and cut this up. Sometimes you don't have to cut any of these up. I like to cut up art. It's the most favorite part of creating that I like to do. I like finding compositions within the bigger piece. Let's say let's just get our cutter out and cut this with the cutter because why not? All right, it's not perfectly, there we go. This thing has a little wire under here that you line stuff up with. And I didn't even realize that's what that wire was until one day. I'm like, what is this? And it just dawned on me, even if it's not, like, perfectly straight on here. So you're not cutting it straight with this line that's up here. You can get it straight with whatever you drew on your piece. How cool is that? I can just line it up with that wire. I don't like genius. Whoever thought of that. Look at that. Okay, this one, love it. All right, let's set this one up here and let it do its thing for a moment. While I'm looking at some of these others, actually liking this right here, I think it can use some contrast or something else in here. Let's see. Because some of these I actually want to commit to something on this one, because I love this right here. I like this. Let's just go ahead and say on our trash piece, we like it. We'll cut that out. Oh yeah. Look at that. Oh yeah, Look at that. See that piece right there? Crazy enough, but I love it. Let's sit that one back over here. Let's look at what else we got left over, so this we could save for something else. I don't throw any of these pieces away. I do try to keep them and evaluate them. Think about them. I'm wondering, do this piece right here. Feeling like I do. We can move these and look at this from a different angle. I filling that one right there, Let's just commit. I like that one. Then after we've got the little pieces where we like them, we could come back then and add extra marks and things. After we're like, okay, this is it. Then we can come back and embellish our finished composition. I like to search out compositions rather than stressing out on something like the jelly plate trying to get exact things I like to play and have fun and let loose. And then search out interesting things, going without a plan, but maybe planning colors and ideas. And then seeing what did you create when you were finished? Look at that. Oh my gosh. Look at these. Oh, so amazing. All right. Let's see, what else do we got? Got anything else that we can do out of these? If you want to leave them big? You certainly can see. I feel like that right there. What are you thinking? Are you thinking that one with me feeling that right there. But you can definitely leave these as big pieces. Don't mind either way. This is a double mat that I got at Michael's. I like the double because then you can cut to the bigger size and then it frames out to the inside of that. Anyway, I got those at Michael's and I just like seeing it, what it looks like framed because then you get an idea of oh, how cool it is actually finished and what it might be framed up. I like cutting stuff up. I start with a bigger piece and cut down, but you don't have to do that. You can certainly go with the great, big piece. If I had a piece that I liked enough to leave large, I wouldn't cut it up. Good one. All right, let's see. I also liked this. Let's see what we got out of this here. See like right in here, I like those half circles coming in from the edge. Then this down here at the bottom. I could do it where I've got this at the top. That might be super cool. We could also come in this direction and come in from the side. What do you think of that? Almost feeling that I could even come further over and have one. Okay. Yeah, I'm thinking that right there. All right, let's set this up so I can draw with everything I keep throwing down. Here we go. Okay, I'm feeling that composition wise, I like 23.13 and I like that these little half circles are at the bottom, peeking out at us. I like that. Oh yeah, that one. Look at that. All right. Let me get this where we can see that. Look at that. Yes. That's exactly what I was hoping for. Okay. Out of the large ones that I've already painted, these are the ones that I really, really liked, my trash piece that was so amazing. So these are the ones that I liked. And then I'm thinking, does it need anything else? Can I do any extra mark making? I'm almost feeling like on this one it could use something else. Could it white dots? Could it white lines? Let's see. 14. Finishing Marks: Now the white Woody is fun. I could also do white posca pen. I've got plenty of little white Posca markers that was not started. Let me find one that's started. See, now that might be fun having some white marks come up on this, maybe even some dots. I can see some lines and dots could come through. Let's just commit now that I did that, I like scribble and things that go off the frame and you're like, wow, what is that? Where does it go? What else is going on there that I'm thinking that's really cool. Okay, so that is really cool actually. And I got a big gray Posca. I'm almost not wanting that, I'm almost wanting some pastel oil pastels. And look at here, I've got like a pretty gray oil pastel. Like I could do some type of great big mark. I am thinking, great big mark. Do I like that color? Like this color? All right, so this is a, Karen can do some type of line. This is going to blend in. When you get close, it's one of those things that you're like, oh, what's going on there? Oh yeah, see, that is exactly what I needed. It's way subtle, but when you get real close, look what that does. It's an interesting what's going on there. I feel like I could use a pencil in there just as some extra mark making something that maybe going to be very subtle. Until you're close and you're like, oh, look at that extra detail. Oh, yeah, definitely thinking that pencil, yeah. Oh, look at that. It's very subtle. Just an extra element in there. All right, so that one, I would definitely say, nicely finished. Let's look at these others and see is there anything else that we would add to them. Because that one definitely needed that. It's got oil pastel fixative on it. So of course, I would finish it with some oil pastel spray fixative so that, that oil pastel dries and that senelie. Okay, so definitely I would call done, let's see, this one I really love. I'm thinking, what else could I add to that? I could go ahead with some pencil in here just to give it some little movement marks, just interest as you're getting closer and looking at it. Okay, I love that. Also liking the pastel so much in that piece that I'm looking at it thinking, could this use a little detail like that? Because I've got plenty of yummy greens here. That's too bright. That's too bright. Oh, here we go. This one's more like. Oh yeah, see this one. This one is like a moss green. Now, do we want to have dos, Do we want to have great big lines like we just did? I'm feeling like I liked those and we could even follow our stencil basically and fill some of that in if we wanted to add that detail over here. Definitely feeling that now that I thought about it, look at that like a little detail in between the little white lines of that mesh. All right. I like it there. Let's just come on down to the end of it. Look at that. Look at that. And we could even add just a little bit of green along further so that it's not like the only bit of that green. Just some extra interest. Look at that. All right. Totally digging that one. Totally digging that one. I'm loving those two now. This one I'm thinking it looks pretty darn good like it is. I could come back in with some pencil because I like the pencil and that would be some extra see. Totally needed that. Oh yeah, Yeah, Yeah. Some of the marks that you end up enjoying using are going to become like the signature things that look at in your pieces. I love that. I want things to be my signature things. Look at this color, feeling like this color might be cool in here, It's cool on there. It's like a green gold. If you look at things and you're like, I don't know, I don't want to commit. I'm scared. Save things until you're brave. Like you've practiced enough and you've played enough, and you're like, oh, I know what that piece needs. It needs this mark I just did. I want you to just practice and play and experiment, and work on all the pieces that are your ugly pieces, so that you're not scared to mess them up. Then the pieces that you're like, wow, this is the most amazing thing I've ever created. I don't know what else to do with it, but it's not done. Put those to the side until one day after you've played and practiced enough, You're like, I know what that one needs and you can finish it off. And maybe that one day is a year from now, maybe it's five years from now. Just save it until you're ready to mark on it or make some color copies. And practice on the color copies and then one day you're going to be like, I got it. This is it. Okay. No, I don't like that. Oh, yeah, I like this. Let's what do I like about this though? Let's see what I want to do. Oh, yeah, that's what I wanted to do. Look at this one. All right. So that one is a yum. Yum, Okay. Now we got these and I just got to decide, are they done? Do they need more stuff on them? Let's see. I feel like this one could use some stuff. What could we do? What do we want to do? We want to do some pencil. I'm just going to go ahead with the things that I know that I like, that I'm working and I'm thinking, oh yeah, these are adding the elements that work for me. Then I can come back and add some other elements to it that are experimental, like lines and stripes in a color that I wasn't even considering to begin with. Because look what that did to that little outside bit. Completely perfect like that. Totally added some yumminess for me. And then I might come back in here to the wrong color. Let's see, that one is like a yellow. I don't know, I might be done with that one right there and I could come back with some stencil work. Maybe a color in a stencil that I like would be an option. Or if you're like, I don't know what else it needs, you could stop right there. I think everything could use a bit of gold. Let's do that. Let's get some gold out. This is my favorite Ai gold mica paste, which I've actually got in a fine line applicator. Got the gold ink in an applicator. This is a cure talkie, gold mica ink in a fine line applicator. What I like about this is we can do shapes and lines and circles. What I like about this is I could spread it along the piece and I could take like a palette knife and spread that out like that, Almost feeling like this is what I want. Let's just commit gold right up this side. Yeah. Oh, yeah. So that. There we go, That's what I want. There we go. Okay. I'm liking that didn't spread out as far as I wanted. So let's do another line. Oh, look what I did. It's very interesting how this spreads differently on these Jell plates than what I normally get. I love that. All right. Yummy. Okay. I'm liking that. What I really like about is how shiny it is when you shine it. I think I'm good with that right there. I could add some dots or I could, but I don't know. Does it need dots or something? I don't know. Let's see. I'm just going to have to think about that one for a bit and see if it's finished in my mind, I think that gold paste, you could use any gold paint to do that with. I could have used some of my golden gold paints that I've got down here. I could have used some of these golden iridescent gold paints. It could have done the same thing, play around with your different materials that you've got, but I think I'm going to call that one for the moment done. And then look at this one and think, does this need anything else? Maybe we could add some extra details in here and maybe use the gold ink. Let's try the gold ink, Pull that back down, shake it up. All right. So what I like about the gold ink in a fine line applicator is you don't have to use a dip pen. You can shake it up and then you can go, I find that if you hold it down at the angle as you're working it, you get a better control of the ink. If you do it straight up and down, the ink just flows out really fast. I'm actually like in that, even thinking like maybe some gold dots, you might not see the gold dots necessarily just staring at it. But it'll shine in the light. You can be as careful or sloppy as you want to be thinking right in there. Then we can look at that in the light and that gold will shine. All right? I'm liking that a lot. These are my individual pieces. You can see how I'd definitely cut some of these out of my sketchbook. If I liked some of them, you could easily make those into individual pieces of art. I want you to play on the big pieces. If you like the entire big piece, keep it as it is, don't tear it up. You might also consider on these pieces some collage material. This would have been pretty with the collage on it also, definitely all the different things that we talked about. I want you to experiment and play and mark make with all the tools that you have in your art room. Start thinking outside the box and thinking how can I create some yummy backgrounds that are going to make amazing abstracts? I can't wait to see what you're creating. Definitely come back and share those with me. This is one that actually was a collage paper that I actually liked. The entire big piece that would have made a great large piece. Just play and experiment and see what you can come up with. I can't wait to see those. Definitely come back and share and I'll see you back in class. 15. Final Thoughts: Well folks, we've reached the end of our artful adventure together. I hope you've had as much fun as I have because we've just scratched the surface of what's possible with the jelly plate printing and mixed media magic. Remember, art is all about exploring and experimenting and expressing yourself. Don't stop here, keep pushing those creative boundaries. Try out new techniques and keep those sketch books filled with your unique and beautiful creations. Hey, if you ever want to dive back into the world of art, you know where to find me. Until then, keep making art and embracing your inner artist. Cheers to your artistic journey ahead.