Moonlit Forest Acrylic & Resin Class

1. Moonlit Forest Acrylic & Resin Class Intro: If you're new to acrylic painting as well as resin. I'm Cheryl and I've got the perfect project for you. Come on, let me show you. In this class we're gonna be creating this moonlit forest scene. We're going to be painting all the images with acrylic paints. We're only using three colors. We're using a Payne's gray or white to lighten it up for some of the layers and add black to darken it up for other pieces. We are going to do four different layers of painting, including the base coat and add a thin layer of resin in-between each one of the coats. This is a very beginner friendly project that's gonna take the intimidation out of using both acrylic paints as well as resin. The nice thing about having a resin layer in-between is it immediately adds dimension, as well as the different colors we're choosing four different ways. Class comes with a supply list that breaks down all the supplies that you will be needing to complete our project. It's also linked to where you can find your supplies that's gonna save you some time sourcing your product so that you have more time to do your crafting. Come along with me, let's go start creating this project. 2. Painting the Base Layer: All right, so I've got my wood panel here. I've already painted the back and the sides. And we're going to be doing our image on the inside. And then we're going to be pouring resin layers in-between each painting layer. I've got three different colors of paint here that I'm using right now. Zinc white, Carbon Black, and Payne's gray. I'm going to put a bunch of the Payne's gray on there because that one is the one that we're gonna be using. Most right now, wet my brush. I'm going to paint basically around the edges as almost like I'm gonna be making a little bit of an arch. Right now. I'm concentrating on the back and then I'll do it up the sides here. This is the layer that's gonna be far behind. Well, it's gonna be the very background layer, so we're not gonna be seeing a lot of detail from this layer other than say, the center. So I don't need to be super precise with my painting there. Now I'm going to start adding some white as we get to the center. I'm going to mix it in with the Payne's gray. Mix it into the paint that we already have there. Right now, I'm more concentrating on getting the paint down. Will be working quickly because I don't want I want it to go this way. I don't want the paint to dry completely while I'm doing this. I do want nice transitions from my dark to my light. Get lighter and lighter as we go to the center. But not to completely white, just a really light Payne's gray. You'll see I have a light side of my brush and a dark side of my brush. Every once in a while you'll see me flip it and it's because I've gotten the brush the wrong way. Little bit more water just to help it flow a little bit better here. I think I'm gonna be going a little bit lighter outside. Well, let's get that centered down first. I'm going to end up having my moon rate in that area. So I want to have lighter area there. Once again, it doesn't need to be perfect because this is the back the painting. But I just want to make sure that I got an area that's highlighted. Gonna be the glow from the moon or the sun within the fog. Acrylic paint dries fairly quickly, but you do have some time to be working with it here. So now I'm going to work on getting the outside a little bit lighter, closer towards the edge. Because the layers that are gonna go over top of this are going to be the next layer anyway, is going to be a little bit lighter. Actually, a little bit darker, sorry. My background. So I don't want my background to be too dark. You can see I'm ignoring the bottom part. And that's because we're gonna be working in different layers. So this bottom part, he's gonna be covered by the first couple of layers anyways, I'm more concerned with how this background is looking. Your paint gets a little bit hard and a little bit sticky to spread. It just means that it's starting to dry. A little bit of water will help it move a little bit better. Nearly there. Now I want to paint up the side with my Payne's gray. If you don't have enough already, you're going to want to give yourself a little bit more. Definitely need a little bit more. You definitely have to make sure that this is painted because if it's not, it's gonna be trapped within the layers are resident in. You're probably going to see we want to make sure that we're hiding it nicely. It's not really their weight right word. We want to make sure we're having a neat side to it so that when we see it in their resident looks nice. Then this bottom part here, I can just get painted the Payne's gray ware. I got some of the gray on top of the black and the front here. That's okay. It's going to get covered. If I get it to the point where there's too many spots to the front. I'm going to repaint it at the end. Again just so it has a nice appearance. Makes sure that we don't have any of the wood showing on the inside here. Once you get it trapped in resin, you can't fix that. If there's one showing and you can try hide it. Easier to just cover it right now. Last but certainly not least, this bottom right, this part here is going to end up being covered by a tree anyways, so I'm not too worried about that. I do want to get a little bit lighter right in that center section. But I don't want to be using my huge brush for that. I wanted to using a smaller brush. For this. You might even want to wait until your background is completely dry so that you're not picking up the Payne's gray. And I'm going to do that. I'm going to wait for it to completely dry and then I won't be painting that in, but I'll see you in the next video. Next video, we're gonna put a thinly or a resin before we start working on our forest. 3. First Resin Layer: All right, so I'm ready to pour my first layer of resin. I'm using moss epoxies art pro resin and it comes into part Part a and Part B, and you use equal amounts of each. If you Google most epoxies calculator, you can find a calculator to her, figure out exactly how much you're going to need for your space. You're just gonna need to measure it and then say how thick you want it. I've already done that and it needed four ounces of resonance or two inches of each part. I've got it mixed. I've mixed it for my three minutes. If you're choosing to use a different resin from what I am using, follow the mixing instructions for that particular brand, and then follow all the safety protocols that they require. And I've got that done right now. So let's pour the first layer. Was got lots of bubbles in it. I've got a heat gun to my side here that I will be using to remove all of the bubbles. And I typically will for the first half an hour to an hour just depends on the progress or whatever. I will regularly come back and remove any bubbles that have risen to the surface. We use my mixing spatula here to help move my resin around. I want to make sure it goes all the way to the edge. And I'm doing it only doing an eighth of an inch coat. I don't need a thick coat. You'll also want to make sure that your pieces level because you want that resin to dry evenly. And if you've got it slanted in any way, shape, or form, It's going to flow to the lowest point and you'll have an uneven coat. I've got up to all the edges, removed the bubbles. So I'm going to use the heat gun on a low setting. I don't have any tips on it, so it's got a wide nozzle to it. And just remove any of the ones that have risen to the surface. Got them all for now, but there's still going to be bubbles in there that will continue to rise. Like I said, for about the first half an hour, I will come back every 510 minutes or so to remove any of the bubbles. At that point, if I'm still seeing bubbles will keep coming back. If I don't really have any bubbles to pop, then I will leave it as is. I also have just an old from a container that I'm going to put over it to protect it from any dust. Now for this particular project, we're gonna keep layering residence. So some of them, some of the layers if some dust happens to fall in there, It's not a big deal because we're gonna put another layer on, but it's a good practice to be covering your work to protect it from dust, especially when we come to the final layer at this one here. So this needs to sit. I usually let it sit for a whole day for this particular project, probably about 12 hours. We could do the second the second layer for the painting and stuff like that. But it all depends on how warm or how cold it is sometimes as to how much it has cured. So I'm just going to wait until tomorrow and do it when it's completely cured, will see you in the next video. 4. Painting the Second Layer: Alright, so our layer of resin is completely dry. Now I'm going to mix, create a mixture of the Payne's gray plus the white. I want it to be just a little bit darker than the background rate or boat here. Going to use a palette knife to mix it simply because otherwise all that paint is going to be sitting in a brush. I get washed out in the water so there's no point in wasting it. I've got a small round brush here a little bit, so the paint flows a little bit better. Piece of paper towel. The trees that I'm painting in the distance. So that's why I'm using my smaller brush here. I'm using a rounded one so that I can also use it for doing branches and stuff like that. When I do a branch, I want to start with the trunk and then slowly move it out while lifting my brush so that it gets thinner there. They don't have to be too detailed because like I said there in the distance, so you don't have to get a lot of detail on them. Just nice to get some branches on them rather than just having sticks basically sitting in your forest or in your scene. Like I said, with the branches, same goes with the trunk of the tree. As you go towards the top of your piece, just lift your brush up to thin out. Make the trunk a little bit thinner. Because we're gonna be doing several different layers. You're not necessarily going to see all the detail that you're going to be putting here. Some of it is going to be covered by future trees, but you don't know exactly what is going to be covered on what's not. So you definitely still want to have some detail in there. Let's get another branch coming up here. The nice thing with having the resin surfaces, if you do something that you really don't like, you could take a Q-tip and lift it off. Just a little bit. Forgiving that way. This one's going to be a little bit smaller, just you don't want all of your trees to be exactly the same size. You also don't want all of your branches to be coming off at the same level on your piece. You want to vary. It. Also makes sure that each tree looks a little bit different from the other ones. Have some branches crossing over others. Do another one and also don't make, make sure they're not spaced out exactly the same throughout your whole canvas because that looks a little bit wrong as well. You can do some that are slanted over a few lake that had been blown by the wind. Alright, I'm gonna do one more on each side. Like I said, some of these might actually be covered by layers in front, but that's okay. You'll still see. Bits of it, you'll see some of the branches coming out from behind. So you definitely want to make sure that you'd like the look of it before you start. Because if you stop and there's something that you don't necessarily like about it. You may be able to cover it up with a future layer or you may not. The neat thing with their resin in-between each of the layers is it's going to add some dimension to it. The lightness of your paint is also going to add the dimension or the lightness and the darkness between the layers. But because we have the resin in-between there, That's also going to add some dimension to it, which is going to enhance the look of it. Your trunks don't necessarily have to be completely straight like you think can be. A little bit wavy, little bit wonky. Sometimes as I'm pulling my brush up, I like to twist it a little bit. Here. They don't all have to be long branches coming out. Some can be small, short ones, and also different angles coming out. I think I like the look of that. I have a fan brush here and I'm going to take that. I'm just going to add some bushes. Shrubbery. You can do it with a fan brush. I also have a filbert brush. Oh, here it is. That I also like to use for this one tends to be a little bit stiffer. You can be a little bit more aggressive with it. See that little bump that we had from the first layer is all gone now because we've covered it up. It doesn't need to go all the way to the floor because we're gonna be putting other layers on top of it. But I do want to make sure to get some shrubbery in the background there. That path there was a little bit too dark. Just lightened it up. Alright, I'm going to leave it like that. 5. Adding the Second Resin Layer: I decided to film the resin part anyways, I've got my resin all mixed. Like I said, same amount as yesterday. I'm doing same amount. His last layer I'm doing all my layers, the same thickness. Pour it on, get as much out of that container is possible. My container looks fuller because I'm using a different container than yesterday. This particular one is also silicone, but it's a little bit softer than the one that I used yesterday. And I just I find this one a little bit easier to clean up. When I figured out my resident mounts, I did it an eighth of an inch thick. You could do it a 16th and habit of bitter layer if you find that they're a little bit too thick for your liking. I did it because I definitely wanted to be able to see, oops. The dimension. Definitely wanted to be able to see that there was different layers. The other thing is make sure all of your acrylic paint is dry before you put the resin on? Not because the resin would affect it too much because acrylic paint dries fairly quickly and by the time you've mixture resonant probably yesterday. But you don't want to when I'm moving it around with my this is a popsicle stick that I use to stir it. I don't want to accidentally affect my acrylic paint. And if I happen to have a thick layer somewhere and I touch it, I'll move it around and I don't want to do that. I'm just making sure to make sure that my resin goes to all of the edges. Once I've got it down or make, once I've made sure that it reaches every edge, I'm gonna take my heat gun and I'm gonna remove the bubbles. And like I said last time, I'm going to continue to do that for probably about a half an hour. I found yesterday after about a half an hour, there wasn't really any bubbles coming to the surface, so I do still watch it for a little while after that. But now you've gotten on a low setting. One of my favorite parts I just loved watching. I just copying the bubbles. Almost mesmerizing. Make sure you get those corners because they tend to have a little bit. They tend to kind of hide him, of course, of the legs are up the edge of the screen and the shadow, sometimes they're a little bit harder to see there, so make sure you don't miss them. All right, those bubbles are pot. I'm going to continue to watch it and once again, I'm going to put something over top of it to help reduce the dust that might get in there. We'll see you tomorrow. 6. Painting the Third Layer: All right, we're ready for our next layer. I'm just going to lighten the Payne's gray out just a little bit. Not as light as I did it for the last layer. I want it to be a little bit darker than that. There we go. Then the trees are going to be just a little bit bigger as well. I think I'm going to do I'm going to do some with my smaller round brush and some with my bigger brush just so that I ensure that I have different size trees. I think I want my gray a little bit darker. I want to be able to see a difference between the first layer, or sorry, the second layer and the third layer. There's not much difference quite. There we go. Do one thicker, one. Friend. I'm just going to twist my brush a little bit to make it smaller. Just want to do right here. You can slightly go in front of one of the ones from the past layer if you want. I went cover them completely. Otherwise, there's no point in them being there. But you can absolutely have them. Overlapping. Leaves the words when I'm concentrating, I'm going to use my smaller round brush for doing the branches and I twist it while I'm moving it around. I get different streaks with my paint. Well, as lifting it up to make it a little bit smaller. As the branches go. Have some going to the side off of the frame. I'm gonna do a smaller tree rate in here. Just like the last layer, makes sure that your branches are not all coming up at exactly the same height in the same angle. Make sure to have little sub branches off of those. Another tree right here. Matter if they're a little bit crooked. Trees are not all perfectly straight. You can start seeing how having the lighter layer below it makes it look like it's a little bit off in the distance. I'm going to put a little owl sitting on this branch here, but I want to make sure that my brush is a little bit pointed, so I have a bit more control. I might even use a smaller brush than this because I want to make sure that I don't get them a little bit too big. All right, so I've got to just a small brush here. I'm first doing upside down teardrop, but with feathery edges for his tail. Then I'm going to do It's kind of a combination between a circle, an oval. I don't necessarily need it to be a circle, but I want it to be little bit flattened. I'm going to really point my brush. Get his little ears in there. And if he's not as opaque as you'd like, then we'll just wait for the paint to dry and add another layer to it. I think I'm going to put one more tree right here and then I'm going to add the greenery to the bottom. There we go. And I'm gonna get the brush and just add and I'm doing it a little bit lower than the brush from yesterday. I want to be able to see that stuff behind there. I've got something that's a little bit higher, that's totally fine. And completely on purpose. But I just don't want to cover up everything from what I did on yesterday's layer. Make sure to go all the way to the edge. There we go. Next step, putting the resin on. I will see you in the next video for that. 7. Adding the Third Resin Layer: Alright, I've got my resin mixed and I'm ready to pour. My paint is pretty much dry. There's a bit of texture here that from the brush that isn't completely dry, but I'm just going to pour anyways and I'm going to avoid that area when I'm spreading things around just so that I don't move it. Now I'm getting low on resonant my bottles. So here's a tip. If it's cold in the area that you are or if you're getting low and it's apart to get the resin from the bottom of your containers, put it in some warm water for I don't know, 510 minutes. It's going to make it more fluid and it's going to make it run quicker. That way you'll be able to get more out of your containers. It's always a waste to have to leave something in the container that you can't get out in order to use resonance expensive enough as it is without having to do that. So just a quick little tip. It doesn't need to be too long. I had it in for five minutes while I was painting is when I had it in the warm water. Doesn't need to be hot, just needs to be nice and warm. I do find when I do that as well, I get less bubbles because the bubbles tend to rise to the surface. While while I'm mixing because it's more fluid, they just come to the surface easier. Alright, we've got everything covered. No, let's get all the excess bubbles out of there. Now I already have a little floaty in here. I'm not sure exactly what that is, but the way to get it out, I always have a little toothpick to the side and I use that to pick anything out. I just keep using that wall is curing. You'll notice if you have to do that, it's curing, it gets thicker and thicker and there is a point where you're like, I probably shouldn't do this anymore and then I tend to stop. Sometimes when it's fairly thick, you can still do it and it will still have enough fluidity to it to be able to move out. If it's something like this that you have several layers on top, you don't need to worry as much about it. But when you're doing a final layer and it needs to be perfectly, you don't want to be messing with it. Alright, I've got all the bubbles out for now. I'm going to continue to watch it for the next half an hour or so. And if anything rises to the surface, I will remove them. But for now I'm going to cover it. And I'll see you in the next video where we'll paint the last layer. 8. Painting the Last Layer: Alright, so our resin is cure. We're ready to paint to the last layer. So I'm going to use the Payne's gray. And I'm going to darken it this time just a little bit with some black. Mix it together with my palette knife. Very first thing I'm gonna do is I'm going to paint my paint stencil. My dear, you could transfer an image and paint it, but I have this stencil here that I quite like. I'm going to use that. I'm going to use a small stencil brush to start, especially with the antlers. The thing with stencil, with the paint, less is more. If you use too much paint, you'll end up having some seep underneath your stencil, which is not ideal. So better to do a lighter coat and have to do it more than one time due to heavier coat. And quite frankly, I might be doing to heavier coat just because I'm trying to get it done within one video. So I might get a little bit of slippage. But what I'll end up doing is just probably cleaning up the outline if that happens. I'm just going all the way around the edges and it's just an up and down pouncing motion. And I have a small stencil brush here that I'm using. Make sure you lift it straight up. So oh, actually, no seepage at all. So that's perfect. You want to lift your stencil straight up so that you don't have smear when you lift it up. Now I'm going to paint a couple of more trees. And actually with the last layer I had intended to add a pine tree and just kinda got so mesmerized with the other trees that I didn't do it. So I'm going to do a couple of pine trees with this layer. I'm trying to make sure that I don't completely cover my owl. I just like the texture difference of having some pine trees as well as good a little hair there, as well as some bare trees. This one here I'm gonna do, I'm gonna make this one a little bit taller or taller than the other one, just like before, you don't want your trees to be exactly the same. You want them different heights, different spacing. This one's going to end up covering a little bit of the deer. I'm using my little filbert brush here for this. You could also use a fan brush to do it. I just find I have a little bit more control with the filbert and I just kinda like how it ends up a little bit better. I'm going to do a smaller one right here. I have three of them. Differing heights. That's all I'm going to add for this layer, I'm just going to add a little bit of brush on the bottom of the forest floor here. If you prefer not to do the pines, you could just do the same trees is that we had before. I just liked the look of the different style of trees and it's more natural because in a forest you don't have where we live anyways or where I live. You don't have just one type of tree if several different types of trees. So I just like the difference in the texture. Then same as the branches and stuff like that. Make sure that your branches are unevenly spaced. If you go look at nature, you're not gonna have everything evenly spaced or you might have some, some trees that are symmetrical, but in general they're not really very symmetrical. So there we go. I'm going to let that dry completely and I'll see you in the next video where we're going to pour our last Lira residue over top. 9. Adding the Last Resin Layer: Alright, or paint has dried. We've got our resin ready Here. We are ready to pour. This being the last coat of resin. You definitely need to make sure to be very vigilant, especially in the first couple of hours and make sure no dust or hairs or whatever from the air flow into it. Resident seems to attract little fluids in the air and it affects the finish. And we would like to like it to be as smooth and glass-like as possible. You definitely have to make sure to cover it for this one and make sure to watch it for the first little while. I'm just pushing into all of the corners. Already made sure that its level because we want to make sure that we get a nice level finish. Just making sure you want to make sure it gets pushed to all of the edges because otherwise, it'll be noticeable if it doesn't reach the edge. Especially on this last one, the other ones. Because there was layers going on top of it afterwards. You had a little bit of leeway for forgiveness because layers that were on top would fix anything that might've been missed. But this one being the last layer. We definitely need to make sure we get it all the way to the edge. Need to make sure it's completely level. Need to make sure to watch out for the little dust particles. So I'm gonna take my heat gun and coupled the bubbles. Like I said, with this being the last layer, I'll be making sure to be very vigilant. Hairs. Bubbles. Be ashamed to put all of this work into something and then end up meeting to another coat because they've gotten something about Miss. Alright, I'm gonna let that dry. I'm going to make sure to cover it. I have a toothpick toothpick here standing by. I'm going to check it every day, you know, 51015 minutes to start and then slowly make that longer and wash it, pick out anything that happens to float into there because sometimes even when it's covered, things get in there. I will see you tomorrow in the next video, I'll show you how to clean up all the resin cups. 10. How to Clean your Resin Tools: Alright, so we're done our project and now we've got all of these resin cups to deal with. I typically I have several cups, so I typically will wait until I'm done a project and then just clean a bunch of cups at one time, you'll end up with this little disk at the bottom of residence, so that is easy enough to pick out. But what you also get our drips and spots of resin all along the outside. So I thought I'd tell you a little cheat a little tip for getting those out easy enough. What I like to do is I'll roll the cup in my hand and I find it easier to do with the ones that are more flexible, the smaller ones are more flexible. This one here, not quite as easy, but it still works. And then I take some duct tape, cut to length of it off, put it around my fingers with the sticky side facing out. This is the one I did. I use it to grab all of those little dots from the outside of the cup. As I'm twisting it around my fingers. Sometimes they'll have to grab a second piece of tape. But it takes a lot of them out quite easily. That there's one right there, but that is completely clean now ready to use for my next project. You don't ever want to be mixing resin in cups that have those drips and dots and whatever, because that will mix into your resin and they tend to float to the surface and affect your finish. Once again, take a little disco kind of piece of tape. You can also do this with packing tape. But I find this silver duct tape to be just a little bit sticky, a little bit more durable. And it just it tends to get them out a little bit quicker. I found when I was using duct tape, I'd have to use more tape to get them all out. Just a couple. And then you can also use that to take them off the outside too, but the outside doesn't affect your residence. So I took typically don't worry about those too much. When it comes to the thicker cups, exactly the same procedure and I always twist on here because I found it, find it just loosens those pieces on the side of the cap a little bit. It makes it easier to take them off. I do find with the thicker cup, I do have to do this a few times because this particular cup has ridges on the inside and the resident likes to stick on. This does take the majority that out and then anything that's left after you use a few pieces of tape. You can just pick out with your finger. Now on this nearly done, I'll keep working on that one. But yeah, that is a nice, quick, easy way to get the resin off of your tools. If you've used popsicle sticks disturbed, I tend to put them aside and let them dry and cure like that. And I'll just keep reusing them until it gets to the point where I can't actually scrape the sides and the bottom of my container easily while I'm stirring it and then it'll just toss it away. But you can also get ones like these that I use quite regularly, didn't use them for this class. But they've got a silicone coding, so they're resin just picks right off of them. I've already cleaned these ones so that you can use as well if you want to be able to raise, want to be able to clean off your mixing tools. You can use this silicone sticks as well. 11. Moonlit Forest Acrylic & Resin Class Thank You: Here we have our completed project or resin cured beautifully and we didn't have any dust particles or anything land in it while it was curing. If by chance when you're creating this, you happen to have something that falls into your last resin layer. You just put another thin layer resin over top. And to correct that there's not really any other way that you can do that. I hope you enjoy creating this project with me and had a chance to follow along and actually create while I was showing you what to do as well. Once again, thank you so much for joining me. I hope you enjoyed this class and learned a lot while you were at it. I hope it took the intimidation out of creating with both acrylics and resin. Remember the supply list is linked with the introduction video that's going to tell you everything that you're going to need, as well as linking it to where you can find your supplies if you left the class with some questions still, please don't hesitate to reach out and ask. I'm happy to help. I will see you in the next class.