Mosaic Mix-Up: An Abstract Mixed Media Class

1. Introduction: [MUSIC] Wait until you see what we're going to be making today. Hi, I'm Denise Love and I'm an artist, photographer in creative workshops that teach how to work in both traditional and digital media. In this creative course, we'll be exploring the world of abstract art loosely inspired by my love of mosaics, blending the two together to create unique and beautiful pieces. We'll start by doing small color studies where we'll experiment with different color palettes, marks, and separations. This will allow us to get a feel for the different techniques we'll be using throughout the class and to discover the styles and techniques that work best for us. Next, we'll take one of the samplers that we've created and go bigger, creating larger, mixed media pieces. This is where we'll really get to dive into the world of abstract art inspired by the separations created in mosaics, using our new found techniques and knowledge to create truly stunning pieces. Finally, we'll take another one of our favorite color palettes and create a large bold painting, with the purpose of cutting it up into smaller pieces to create unique smaller paintings. This is where we really get to see the beauty of our abstract mixed media come to life as we turn our paintings into stunning smaller pieces, full of texture and interesting marks. Whether you're a seasoned mixed media artist or just starting out, this class will provide you with the tools and techniques you need to bring your abstract mosaic, mixed media vision to life. I'm passionate about the arts and having fun while you create. Join me in this class and let's get started. I can't wait to see the beautiful pieces you'll create. [MUSIC] 2. Class Project: [MUSIC] Your class project is to create your own mosaic masterpiece. In this project, you'll create a mixed media abstract piece inspired loosely by mosaics. The goal of this project is you to experiment with different materials, colors, and techniques to create a beautiful and unique piece that incorporates the element of mosaic design. I can't wait to see the pieces you create. Be sure to come back and share those with me and I'll see you in class. 3. Supplies: [MUSIC] Let's talk about the supplies that I'm using in class today. I'm starting out making little color palette colorways experiments with little sizes to think, what colors do I want to make a bigger piece of? What worked? What didn't work? What do I end up loving and not loving? I thought let's picks four color palettes and do four small samplers. I'm using the Blick Matte acrylic paint. I like these because they're Matte, and the other thing I like about them because I love Matte paint is they are nicer than using little craft paints because I have plenty of these yummy little folk art paints that I loved the colors. But this is a step up from your craft paint. If you're liking the different Matte colors, this is a fun way to do that. You can use any acrylic paints that you want to, you can do this in watercolor, you can do this in gouache. You can do really, this lends itself to any supplies you want to experiment in. In these oblique colors, I've got orange deep warm gray, yellow oxide, sage blue, red light, white, purple matter, black, amethyst, and burgundy. I did use all of these in the different little sampler sizes that I was creating. That helped me get to what bigger art projects I wanted to use. I'm also using my Kuretake Gold Mica paste, which is my very favorite gold. You don't have to use gold, you can use whatever color you want because these are the top mosaic swatches of color. Because we tape our pieces off and we paint large swashes of one color. I use the gold as one of my top colors here on this color palette here. You can use whatever. You can have a metallic paint. If you've got some metallics that you like, you can use those. This just happens to be what I've gotten, that's what I'm using. Also loved my posca pens, so I use a white one and a black one in class. [NOISE] I also have a exact dough knife and this is really handy for helping you lift tape off your painting. Because of the way we're taping all over the painting, this will help you if you paint the tape completely down as I hope you find the edge. I've got a little exact dough knife that I like. I'm also using couple of paint brushes. You can use any paint brushes you want to get your paint on your piece. But I'm using this half-inch Princeton select oval mop. A couple of times I used the round blender number 6. Few times I used a little bristle fan. I don't know the brand, it's so tiny on there I can't read it. Number 2, whatever it is is number 2. [LAUGHTER] Got us to pillow pencil that I've used a couple of times. I used a few neo color crayons. [NOISE] So I've got that handy up here. I also used some charcoal because I got some new charcoal and I thought, let's play with these. These are created colored art chunky charcoals and look how many colors they came in. These were fun to experiment with and compare them with the darwent extra large charcoal that I have, [NOISE] which I love and I wanted more colors. These are harder, these are softer and a lot flaky or like the they really can get really heavy on there, and you'll have color just everywhere. These are a lot harder and it make a tighter line. It's really interesting comparing the two types of charcoal, and I did love playing in a few of these in class, so that was fun. Then I'm just working on extra large Canson watercolor cold press under 40 pound paper. You can do these on any paper. For the little samplers I like this paper because it holds the paint well and it's inexpensive [NOISE] for play. I'm just doing that with the large and the small projects because I had quite a bit of this. Then I've got a few mark-making tools that I was using, minor little jelly mark-makers. But you can get the catalyst wedge mark makers with the little pieces cut out. Those are fun to play in. I know I've got some of their hiding from me. [LAUGHTER] I'm using these to just mark making dragged through the paint. That was fun. Then I think that is. Most of the supplies, I've got a heat gun I was using to dry my paint. [NOISE] I love these microfiber cloth for cleaning your fingers if you're working in a chalky medium or pastels, and that charcoal or pastels good for cleaning your fingers off, and cleaning your table, and cleaning everything basically. Also is using artist tape. You can use painter's tape or artist's tape. These two are painter's tape. This was an artist's tape. This is pro artist's tape, I think I got that on Amazon. [NOISE] I also use artist's tape from Blick. About three-quarters of an inch is the size I usually use. But also use tons of Painter's tape from the paint store. On the littler projects, [NOISE] I use the smaller tape, and on the bigger projects I thought we should go bigger tape. These are painters tapes from the paint store, and I really liked this great big one for these big pages, but I'd have a variety that I'm tearing from. Then I got a little painter's palette over here and some water. That's basically all of the supplies that I was pulling out through class. Let's get started. 4. Samplers: Testing Color Palettes: I thought today that we would start off our mosaic painting with some small simpler pieces where we can play with supplies and experiment with color palettes. I want you to cut a large piece of paper, this is just the Canson XL, 9 by 12 sheet of paper that I've cut into fours, so you take a large piece of paper, cut it into smaller sizes, and tape it down on your paper. Then I want you to treat each square as a different mosaic and just see what we can come up with. What we're going to start with is paint the whole thing and let it dry and then we'll lay out a tape layer, paint on top of it and pull the tape up to reveal what's left of our underneath painting like a mosaic or like a stained glass feel. I'm just going to try lots of different things. I got some chunky colored charcoal, creator color, and it's got 12 different colors. If you saw my charcoal class, you know I already have the Derwent. But the Derwent only has a few chunky colors in here. Then I saw this and I'm like, look at all of these yummy colors. These are still in their little packages, and I can almost see a benefit to leaving them in their little packages because charcoal is messy and it's going to get all over our fingers but let's just pull it out. Come on out here little color. I like this kind of peachy color and there's also a darker peachy color and this yummy gold. Not worried about getting anything on the other sheets, we're going to be painting lots of layers here. Let's go ahead and pull this out and just give it a go. Thinking on this top one, I want to do some type of orange and yellow, maybe a touch of pink. I'm just going to start marking, doing some yummy mark-making. It would be nice to keep these in their containers because their containers have the color on it. But you can see you really got to pull these out. Let me tell you every time I get a new art supplies, immediately I get like 15 new ideas. Look how pretty that color is, that's yummy. Look at that. I don't know if we'll see this when we're done, but it is an easy way to just get mark-making started. I love this yellow. I like drawing on a page before I do anything else because yummy scribble marks and things like this just help you get past white page paralysis. I don't know if you ever stared at the white page and you're like, oh, I don't know what to do here, I'm stuck. When I'm working with charcoal or something that's powdery, I like having these microfiber cleaning cloths handy because it gets it right off your finger and then you can keep on working without having to go wash your hands. I don't know if you have any of these at home, but you should rush right out and buy some of these from the cleaning supplies at the grocery and at-home supply stores and they are amazing. The next layer up, I'm feeling like I would like to do some is neo-color crayons. I have a lot of colors, but I have some that are just here in my little thing, my little antique tin that I like. Let's just pick a blue. This is Payne's gray. Never can go wrong with Payne's gray. You can see how these are a little bit like the intuitive painting sessions that I like to do. some experimenting and pulling some stuff out, I'm thinking, what can I do here? Let's experiment. Let's set the charcoals to the side. I've got stuff everywhere. On this third one, I have some different pencils here that I haven't ever played with. These are the Derwent graph tint pencils. These are like the colored graphite paints that I love so much. Look at this, I'm kind of feeling like what about green and teal? This is meadow and ocean blue and it just gives you a chance here to let loose play and experiment when you're doing something like this. Yes, we'll probably end up on top of that. Coloring and stuff painting. This is a soluble graphite pencil and a 6B. Even though I'm going to cover a lot of stuff with different colors of paint it's always nice just to get it started so that we now don't feel paralyzed by all the white page. Then I'm going to paint on top. You can use anything to paint on top, any of your acrylic paints are great. But I'm thinking orange and yellow here, so I have some Blick Matte paints. I got yellow oxide, orange deep. I feel like I want to experiment with some of these. How about warm gray? Because I went to the art store. These are brand-new. I went to the art store and I was like, I really love the one tube of this that I already had, which was like grayish blue and I'm like, I love that so much because it's Matte. It's a lot better quality than say, the craft paints because I have several of the craft paints that I've done things with. It's a much nicer quality than a craft paint and it's that yummy madness. It almost feel like this would be that step up that artist's quality from the craft paint and the mosaic abstracts are super cool. You might do this and think, yeah, this is my jam. I want to do some big ones. Let's squeeze some of these colors out of here and work on this first one. The goal is just to cover the page to be honest because when we're done, we'll be doing other stuff. What if we start to experiment? I've got a fan brush here. See what this fan brush can give me. Look at that. I've got just some other paintbrushes. This is a Princeton select half-inch. Maybe we'll come back in here and start just adding some paint. You don't have to cover every inch of your page. If you like, that mark-making that you did underneath, you can leave that in there. You don't have to make every inch paint. Because I do like some of this yummy deep red. Once we take this off like a mosaic, you'll see how we were completely changing everything anyway. Going to be a third paintbrush for this gray. Let me just pull out a third brush here. That's another Princeton. That's the lunar blender. This one is the oval mop. This one's going to be a little bit thicker with that paint, but that's okay. Look at that. That's interesting that a gray added on here really changed that up, didn't it? I'm just not even worried about where the tape is, not really thinking very hard about composition. I am just going with the flow. Then we could take and draw on top if we want like. I could now come and scratch through this. That didn't make much of a difference. [NOISE] I want you to look around and pull out all your toys and different things. I've got some of these little rubber brushes from the jelly plate that I could, that's exactly what I wanted. I can pull out anything you've got with an edge or a corner or can give you some mark-making. Go ahead and pull those out because we can drag them through paint. We can make some texture. That's pretty cool there, but let's go ahead and move on to the next one. This was obviously way too much paint for that little tiny piece, but we're going to go with it. We did yellow and orange and gray. I'm going to set that to the side. Well, I'm going to go ahead and move it where I'm not going to use it. Orange and yellow, so we're going to call that our first color palette, and then we're going to do some stuff on top of that. Let's leave that where it's at, and then I'm feeling like maybe some pink and lavender. Why not? This is red light, this is amethyst. Because on top of that mosaic, I'm already feeling in my mind, what if I did a deep purple on top of that as the mosaic part? I have this burgundy, which can you see the little trio there? I like that, I'm not putting that one down yet. But I'm feeling on top of this, what can we do that would be a contrast? Look at that purple matter. I think I like that purple matter even better, purple on top of that, I don't know. Let's see. Might have to pull out a raw umber on top of that might be nice. Might have to pull out a thicker paint. We don't have to decide right now though. Right now we are just going to put down the paint. I've got that mop brush back out. Actually, now that I've got these three, I might put this medium color in there. You know what? I didn't pull out my white and black. I always like to have white gesso because I like using the white gesso as white paint and as a mixer with the other colors. Let's go ahead and put this out there. Thinking maybe even white on top of our yellow or black we could do white or black. Just that water-soluble graphite pencil. So you can come back on these and start doing favorite marks of yours. Just don't worry about where stuff is sitting because I always approach a piece of art as I can cut it up. We know I love to cut stuff up. Then I also approach it as we're going to do this as a mosaic so some of this underneath isn't going to be as obvious. There we go. Let's leave that where it sat for the moment. Then third one, what's a third color that we can use here? Maybe yummy, sage blue, because look at this color, this is almost the color that I've been trying to achieve every time I'm going for a blue-green, but for some reason, even though you see this color and let's just put some. See, look how pretty that color is. Even though you see that color in a lot of places, you know what we don't see? We don't see that as a mixed paint color. You can mix it. Yes, you can definitely mix it yourself and I got white paint here, so I might just put out some regular white paint. You can definitely mix it yourself, but sometimes when you want to sit down and just play, it's fun just to see what the play can be with what you've got. Let's do this minimalist. Let's do, see, that's the most perfect color. Because we're putting on top of a water-soluble pencil, we're getting a little bit of those colors in there. Look at that. I used to get frustrated moving paint around because I thought I had to sit down and paint a masterpiece. If you free your mind of that kind of thinking and just be like, let's just push some color around and see what we get, and we can always cut it up, you all over sudden enjoy your painting sessions so much more because you're not upset when you're done and you're like, I didn't create a masterpiece, this was a terrible day. I mean, I used to leave my art table angry, like angry, [LAUGHTER] but now I'm like, I'm excited every time and you guys get to look at that, and I'm excited to see like what does the paint do if I do this? Or what does something else like a pencil on top of this do? What happens if I scrap through stuff? Now I enjoy a lot of this process that I never let myself enjoy before. Man, do I have some fun at my art table? Let me tell you another thing that helped that. Getting into a regular painting practice which making little classes and workshops forced me into regular painting. Now I'm up here at my table every week making fun stuff and I'm like, can I create today? I approached it in that direction rather than what I was trying to do. Now I'm loving this blue and I'm almost wondering if I mix in with some black. Even though I'm not going with a completely different color way here, I'm wondering if I do black with some blue, how I can change up the look of that. So as you're going if you see something that you're like, yeah, I'm loving this. Don't be afraid to change directions and see what that's going to give you or, you know what? Maybe I'll just use the black and white, how about that? Then maybe the mosaic part on top could be that blue, [NOISE] which is just like the little spitballing and the little, I know you're thinking what is that term? All of a sudden I've used it a bunch. But it's just brainstorming and thinking out ideas and you're like, yeah, this is going to work and you get excited because now you've got a plan and you're like, let's just try this plan out. [LAUGHTER] Let's just drag through and see what that does and come back again on top. What I really love about taping stuff off because you guys know I love tape. That's my favorite part of the art process. If you're drawing and painting and creating and you're like, this is my favorite part. I want you to start thinking how can I include my favorite part in my art pieces? That's what I do. I know that this is my favorite part, it's the peeling of the tape so now I think, all right, let's take that paper down. [LAUGHTER] Now I'm just drawing through here just making marks with the brush. This is an excellent way too to be like, this worked and this didn't. Like to figure out what's going to work and what's not because that's now our final piece of art, so we've got some room to play. We're going to have to dry this before we can even go any further so I'll be back. [MUSIC] 5. Samplers: Extra Mark Making: [MUSIC] I've let this sit and dry. I feel like on some of these I don't have as much mark-making or fun stuff going on as I was thinking I might like to have. I'm thinking that we could come back and do some mark making on top. I don't want to do with wet paint at this point, but maybe posca pen, any acrylic pen that would dry real fast, maybe some neo color to crayons, maybe we'll just come on top and then add some additional just marks and fun things that might shine through the mosaic part once we get that on top of here. [NOISE] You could do the marks all pencil. These yummy stabilo pencils, they're the mark all on everything, that would be a good choice. Maybe we've got some dots in our future, so let's just do some of that. Once you paint the mosaic part of it and we pull that up, you might think, oh, it needs a little more, whatever it needs, and you might decide to mark on top of that as some finishing bits. I do love dots. We don't have to just do a white or a black, you could do a color, you could come back with your gold on. I'm filling some gold here in money or future. What if the top layer was gold? [LAUGHTER] That would almost be very stain glassy like on one of these. Now, I'm feeling maybe gold on the top of the yellow and orange, just thinking out loud here, thinking the deep purple on top of this one, so let's put that there. I'm thinking maybe white on top of the black one and then maybe black on top of this blue one. I've got white and I've got black and I've got the purple and the gold. I'm feeling like those might be my top colors. I certainly could have done different. I could've done blue on top of one of these or something else, but just play in here. Little crayon. Let's go with some posca pen. Again, not super worried at this point about where I'm putting stuff. The more of these you do, then you might think, "Okay, now I'm ready to be more deliberate and the choices that I make, I know what I like, I know what I'm trying to achieve and I want to be very specific about where I stick stuff and what's going to be my signature marks and things like that, but at this point that you're just doing your first one of these, I want you to not get so hung up on where everything is going and how it's all working together. I want you to start by experimenting and figuring out, "Oh, I like this or, Oh, I didn't like that [LAUGHTER] because there's definitely going to be some stuff that you're like, oh, that was a bad choice, but you know what, now you've learned and then you think, Okay, I don't have to make that choice again. I love that. What if we take our black stuff stibilo, which I've got one right up here, black stabilo, and do some mark-making here on this one. Sometimes if your mark making is like too perfect and the lines are too straight and you're like, Oh, I don't like that. If you'll go with your non-dominant hand to do some marks and drawings, you'll get a lot more organic feel. We like dots, how about a black Posca pen? Oh, yes. [LAUGHTER] I've got some colored Posca pens right here in my desk. I've got them on this little shelf right behind the part that you can see. I'm feeling like maybe let's be crazy here and let's pull out a colored paint pen rather than the white and the black, which feels very safe. To me, it's a safe way to go, but we don't always need to be safe when we're making art, we need to step outside our box and think, "Okay, this is how I always do it, I'm comfortable, what can I do to shake that up?" I hope that you see in each one of the art classes that you're doing with me, I'm always trying to shake it up. I want to be using new supplies. Let's pull this one out and go with a color up here. Let's try this one. We're painting on top with a really deep purple, but we can pull this out, or we've got yellow. I wonder if yellow would show up on it. Or I've got gray, and I got pink. [LAUGHTER] Maybe red. Oh, my goodness. I need you to vote. Which one do we want? Let's see. Oh, am I filling the yellow. You know what? Let's do the red. Let's just really step outside that box because on top of here I think we're putting the purple. Look at that. Oh, yeah, red and pink. That's not really in my normal color ray. Super fun to step outside your comfort zone, especially with colors, because if you think, I'm in a rut, I don't know what else to do it's because you've got yourself stuck doing things the same way with the same colors and you're not adding in anything that makes it exciting to come back and paint. Now, the reason why I want you to use something like pencils or paint pens or something like that on this layer is because I know it's going to dry really fast. After I'm done with this initial set of mark-making that we're doing, I'm going to tape these up and we're going to paint on top of it. I don't want that to stay forever, but just know in-between each layer if you decide to paint on top of one of these instead of where doing, then you'll just have to wait for that paint to dry in between the layers because to put tape on top of the paint, we're going to have to have it dry. Look at that. [LAUGHTER] I love that. We're going to have to let this dry and I'll be back. [MUSIC] 6. Samplers: Strategic Taping: [MUSIC] I just left that a few minutes to make sure the painting was dry. Now, I've got some artist's tape. You can use masking tape, painter's tape, anything like that. Basically what I'm going to do is tear these little strips into something interesting. I'm going to tape off bits of all of these paintings, so that we've created a mosaic. We're just going to paint on top of this tape stuff, and then we will peel the tape off to see what we got. Wherever the tape is, that's where our underneath is going to show through. I want some thick areas of paint, some thin areas of paint, because I don't want to paint everything I just did, I want to have a little bit leftover. You can start thinking a little bit more about composition at this point. If you're thinking, I think I want some horizon lines or I want some stripes, or I want some dots, or I want something just crazy, I don't know what I want. This is the time to just start thinking, what might this look like? Or you can do like I always like to do, and just be real haphazard about it, and just see what we get when we're done. Because it really is the most fun way to paint. [LAUGHTER] I like to just see what comes out of me. [LAUGHTER] We could do some stripes down here. Let's do some stripes. I'm looking for organic edges on each side, personally. You might like yours all to be straight. Thinking my watercolor abstract class that the mosaics that we did, they might not have been all cut in yummy different shapes and sizes. I think I was just using it right off here and taping down parts. Let's just see what we can get. The taping off part, it'll just take a while. You just take your time and just see what can I get if? All the exposed parts we're painting on top of, I want to make sure that you understand that. Any where that's white, it's going to be shining up underneath. [MUSIC] If there's any spot where you're, I love this so much, cover that with tape, so that you see that. I like this area right here. You can get thicker with it and you can layer over here, so we get a really wide area that we're going to see. I'm actually not thinking that hard about what I'm looking for. I'm just taping willy-nilly randomness here. We'll just see what we end up with because I like being surprised. [LAUGHTER] They say, if you've ever read those love language books, which I'm not sure I've ever actually read the books, but one of those love language is gifts. I think that's my love language. I like presents. I like surprises that are a gift. When you're peeling, tape off of things and you're revealing the tape around it, it feels like a present. I love that. [LAUGHTER] Probably why this method of art-making works for me as well as it does. Because I'm going right in with my love language in the way that I create. [NOISE] How funny is that? If you're thinking you're crazy lady, I agree, I am crazy. [LAUGHTER] And you know you love me for it. [LAUGHTER] [MUSIC] Let's see what we got. Because your first ones might not be your favorite, but we're learning a new technique here that we can take to a larger piece. The first piece, we are going to now start filling in paint. I've got my yummy gold here. Let me start off with a clean palette. Then I'm going to put this Kuretake Mica Gold. You can use gold acrylic paint, that would be fine. What I like about the mica so much is it's so vivid in its color. I'm going to get this little mop brush, washed out of color here. Then dry that, awesome, so I'm using that Princeton half-inch. Not going to be able to read this after I've finished painting half-inch select over mop. You might need to just go pressure edges down, my goal here is just to cover up anything I've left exposed. [LAUGHTER] So glad I did the gold here. I'm feeling excited just putting that paint on, look at that. [LAUGHTER] My goodness. You guys, this will be the most fun you have at your art table. This is how you figure out what is your style. Because now you're playing and you're experimenting and you're thinking outside the box and then you're deciding, I like this, or I like that, or I do like this, or I don't like this. Now you're making conscious decisions. What do you like and not like. Let's move on and paint the next one. We decided on this purple to go on top of here. This is purple madder, in these acrylic matte paints, my blick. I went to the art store this weekend, you guys. Yesterday, and then I'm like, we got to get in there and play today. I'm so glad that you guys are playing here with me today. That's too much paint, but we'll go with it. I might not have put enough tape on this one. If you're like me, you're always going to doubt the decisions that you made. Just know that's part of the process. I don't worry now either usually about am I going to ruin a piece. Because if I like a piece and I don't feel like it's finished, set that piece to the side and come back to it later. Then you can decide later, is it finished? We might should have gone more with the tape, but there we go. We're going to do black on top of the yummy blue and white on top of this black one over here. Let's put some white and black out and be ready here. Blue gets the black on top. I love matte paint and I always mix my paints usually with the gesso to make it matte. Because gesso mixed in with the paint will make the paint matte, and allow you to layer things on top of acrylic paint. Because acrylic paint is basically plastic and mixing in that gesso makes it matte. No wonder these higher-quality than a craft paint, [LAUGHTER] matte paints really appeal to me. I also I'm a big chalk paint lover. I love all that yummy matte paint in any form I can get it in. Because when you frame stuff and you put it under glass, the glass is shiny so you don't want a whole bunch of glare underneath a whole bunch of glare. [LAUGHTER] I like matte paint on the wall. Well, I'm not a shiny paint person, I don't think. It's interesting the things that you learn about yourself as you sit at your art table randomly talking to the camera. [LAUGHTER] It's like I have an invisible audience. I'm just chatting away to an invisible audience that I hope is one day there, I guess. [LAUGHTER] Just trying to get that nice and solidish. Let's see what we got. Let's start over here with the gold. Let's put this backwards. How about we just dry this real quick? [MUSIC] 7. Samplers: Revealing & Evaluating: [MUSIC] These don't take long to dry, but I went ahead and dried them with a heat gun. If you have trouble peeling paint with your fingernails, have a little X-Acto knife handy because then you can get the edge of the tape that you can then start peeling. I've got a little X-Acto knife just sitting here if I have trouble peeling tape. I'm just going to start very carefully trying not to dig my finger into any paint, but I want to be very careful and just peel the tape off. Let's see what we get. Look at this. My goodness. Then once we're done with these, we can then think, I want to make a big one. What do I want to make color-wise? What did I love or not love off of these samplers? I always love to make samplers. I always like things that look like stained glass. My mother made stained glass and it's always fascinated me how beautiful stained glass is. I think I got all the tape there, so let's pull all the top tape and then we'll pull the tape around and truly reveal it. But yes, she made stained glass when she was here and I always just thought it was so beautiful and amazing and the vision that she had for the glass always loved it. I have several of her stained glass pieces and I love them so much. Creating that kind of look in a paint scenario really appeals to me for that reason. I think I got all the tape up. Look at that. Let's flip it back around. It would be really funny if later you had a random piece of tape come up from somewhere that you missed. [LAUGHTER] Can you Imagine. You're like, what is that? [LAUGHTER] See, this is the perfect thing about the little X-Acto knife. Maybe you've got tape in the middle of the piece and there's not really an edge to grab onto once you've painted it down, definitely have a little sharp tip. You're not trying to dig into the paint. I'm going in straight. I don't want to dig into the paint that we've put down, just trying to release a corner of the tape. I feel like there's a tape right there. Yes, there is. Now, should I have painted some more black right there? You can still keep working on them even after you peel the tape. These are going to be your initial first looks and impressions and then can do a final mark-making paint session once you get all your tape up and you're like, this would be perfect if I did some extra scribbles or did some dots or did some whatever it is that you're feeling. You may have to feel around and see is there an edge that's tape or is that paint? I'm not sure. That was a little bit wet but I've got it mostly dry. Let's peel the white one. I can still see all the tape on the white one. Really the black one was the one that was the hardest to identify where the tape is. It's funny when I was in school I had to do a lot of drafting because I did design work. Yes, I drafted back before computers. I always remember drafting tape when I peel it's sticking it on my hand because I'd be just not around a garbage can or whatever. Then getting a whole bunch on there and then making my hand raw because the tape was pulling my skin. Not hilarious. The things that we bring with us later in life that make a little memory. Let's peel some tape and reveal our little mosaics and just see what we got. Let's see, which one did I do next? This artist tape releases pretty easy. But if you have trouble with tape pill on your paper, if you'll heat up the tape a little bit with a heat gun, that will release that tape. If you're doing watercolor, you don't usually want to use a heat gun on your paper as much because it stops the wonderful things that watercolor does, but it also releases your tape so try hitting the edge of your piece with the heat gun. If you're having the tape, tear your paper. The tape that I'm using is just some artist's tape from the **** Blick and you can get artist tape just random brand off Amazon. It's just called artist tape. This is pro artist tape is this one. I find that the artist tape work a little bit like the painter's tape that you can get from the paint store. I love painter's tape because it also releases pretty easy, but I also pull at an angle, steady, not so fast. I'm not trying to rip the tape off, but I'm pulling at an angle, being very steady and I have very few issues with it peeling off my paper. Here's the moment. I'm excited about this one. I haven't really stopped to look at them yet, but I can pull the tape. I did pull the tape poorly here at the end. If your paint is still wet, that could be an issue also. I'm really excited. Check it out. Really excited with this one. Because the metallic part on top makes that three-dimensional almost like it's very dimensional. I love those colors, and I love that shine. I love what the mica or the gold accent does. Let's take a look at this one. I like it like there. Where do we like it? I don't know, I like it right there. Almost like the page is smiling at me. I do really like this colorway. I can see larger pieces in that. This is the one I did tear the paper. I don't know, I'm not feeling this one, but it's okay. I do kind of like it. It's got some good things going on it. It's got some good elements, some mark making, some movement. This fun element in the center. I don't know, it's not my favorite though. Let's see. This one's fine, but again, maybe not my favorite. Kind of feeling like I could cut this up and I'd like it to more. This one I'm feeling like I could cut these up. See like right there, that right there speaking to me. I want you to look at these in ways that you're thinking. Not my favorite. Why is it not my favorite? What can I do to make it better? If we just do that right there. Now I feel it's a strong composition and it's something that I can work with going forward. I love the movement and the marks. I just had to cut off like1/3 of that to get there. Let's do that. Let's just cut that. I'm feeling like probably about there. Let's just commit. [LAUGHTER] I'm going to go ahead because I have cut this and we're going to take the white edges off. Then these could still be used as micro pieces of art. You could give them in a card, they can be framed and matted. See, that totally made that piece of art amazing. I love that one now. Can we get that? Can we get some love for this half, we'll save this for collage stuff. See, now I'm feeling that. I'm not quite feeling that. I'm feeling at the moment, if I cut that right about there, some right about halfway into that right there, then I'm feeling like, I got something here. See I do like this for collage. Look how pretty that is, or a bookmark. You can include that as a little original and a card you send someone. Yes, I know people don't send cards anymore, but you know what, people like to get cards, you could make an effort. [LAUGHTER] In this, do we like a certain part of this, like right there? Maybe that's a better composition right there. I'm feeling like right there, right where that line is. Let's just cut that. Look at this. This is a gorgeous bookmark that I might actually use as a bookmark. Let's go ahead and claim that for ourselves. Look at that because I like to read. Look at that. Super pretty. I'm loving that. [LAUGHTER] Let's see what we got. Do we love it? See now, that way. Sometimes you just got to move things around until you're like, that's how that's meant to be. See now these two, look how pretty those two are. These are just like they are. Now we're going to look at that and think, is there a colorway that I can make larger and do a big piece and just do the whole sheet as the mosaic and see what we get. You can think a little bit more about composition and color and marks. But I'm loving that right there. I'm feeling a bigger one with some yummy striped off gold, some gold coming in from the edges. I don't know, but I'm feeling like this might be my bigger piece. Can't wait to see what colors you tried and the marks that you made. Let's move on to a big project. [MUSIC] 8. Painting Large: Background: Now that we have done our four little samples, I decided as we were painting, that I truly loved the one with the gold on the top. I liked this one a lot and ended up loving the cut down piece of the black white. The blue is probably my least favorite, even though that is my favorite color, blue. But these look the most striking to me. Out of those two, I might create two big pieces and do one as a big piece like this. One is a big piece that maybe I cut up into yummy, dynamic abstract compositions. I love doing these for composition sake because now I could look at this and think, oh, I could make that larger. I could do big white thing and then white cut ups here on the side and create a larger piece that mimics the smaller piece. These are really nice if you do a whole bunch of them and you make yourself a note book and maybe put that in the notebook and write some notes about what you liked or not liked, and use those for guidance later. But for this piece, I'm going for this. I'm going to make a big one. Then I happen to think we're going bigger. Maybe, the smallest tape isn't the best choice. I actually have a couple of sizes of tape over there in my tape stash. I think I'm actually going to play with this larger role because I could take off bigger sections on a bigger piece of paper. But I have these other two sizes here just in case I need them. Like the little ones, we're going to paint this, let it dry, which doesn't take very long and then we will mosaic on top of it. I've got some paint brushes. I've got my three colors that I originally used. Then looking at the sample, I also had some mark-making in there. I've got my little mark-making pieces. You can get these in lots of different forms. They've got the these catalysts, wedges have some cutouts in them to, you might look at the art store and see what options you can find. Then I'll also be using a black pen. I think that was probably the stuff below and the black Posca. I've got everything available that I think I used originally. I'm going to start and I probably marked underneath what I marked underneath this with the charcoal. Let's pull the charcoal back over here. Completely forgot the yummy charcoal. But let start with the charcoal. Because now looking at this piece, I can see areas where I very obviously have that charcoal showing through. I want to be able to replicate some of that. I can see that charcoal right in there. Let's just keep on, keeping on because I loved how that turned out. Another thing that's fun with the charcoal is, I got stuck right there, is, if we wet our brush, let's just say this fan brush, we can come through and smear that charcoal because charcoals water-soluble. We can move that around with some water. Spearman some more. How fun is that? Super fun. At this stage, not really thinking composition. Which direction is it going to face when it's done? I'm just in here mark-making and adding first layer. Because as you build these layers, you build the interest. Come through here, do some favorite marks, experiment, do some new marks, and just see what can you make this do. Now this charcoal, I think, is a little bit tougher than the Darwin charcoals that I have. Because I have those right here, let's just test out that theory because these I think are chunkier, like softer. See, totally chunkier. Now that I've got it on there, let's just get it on there. Very interesting observation that I have just learned about the charcoals is the brand. You're going to get different looks and feels. Look at that. That's super fun. Definitely going to get different looks and feels from the different brands of charcoal. These are a lot. Just I don't know if compacted more, it staying together better. It didn't crumble like this one crumbled when I push down. Interesting observations that we can make as we're playing and experimenting with some of our art toys. I call these art toys because I have had fun. It's like a toy. These are toys for adults. This is all intuitive. Do what feels good to you. Just see what you end up with. We've got the charcoal, yummy. Then I'm going to go ahead. I've got some tape on my brush. I'll go ahead and put out our colors. We got the orange deep yellow oxide, which is a favorite of mine. It squirts out so fast, I might use that bottle way too fast. Then this one is the warm gray. I'm just going to start working that onto my page here. I almost want to work this away rather than this way, but it's not the way my table is set up to film. But you know what? Getting outside my comfort zone. Painting in a way that I might not normally paint in is a very interesting way to just mix it up. I also think I want some white. I usually use the gesso, but I don't need gesso for the matte paint, but I do want some white. I could put some black, but I'm not feeling black. I'm feeling white though. That's really neat about working in a orientation that you don't normally work in is then when you reveal and peel the tape and reveal and you start moving stuff around and look and you're like, "Oh, I like it flipped around, however." But if you're not painting, intuitively like I'm painting and you're wanting to be very specific about where you place things then paint in the orientation that you need to be with actually seeing things. [LAUGHTER] You know what else we could do that I haven't done on any of these, we could squirt some water on these and see if we can get some drips. Just dripping it down there. Then I've got my cloth right here that I can just wipe that up with. We might be thinking, let's loosen up. Let that flow a little bit. Look what that did. Super fun. I'm not even worried about what's in my paintbrush. I'm just using it one color after the next here. I realized because why not? Unless you want clean color, I don't mind my colors mixing some. Before it gets too dry, I might come in here with some marks. Look at that. Something on my art table is moving. I think it's that charcoal. It sounds like a little mouse you out there. [LAUGHTER] Who might take the back of our paintbrush? Let's do that. Look at that. Do some little marks and smears. I like that. Take your time on some of this. It's not meant to be super fast, and how fast can I whip something out? It's okay if you take your time and really think about some of the things that you're adding to your painting. I like to do a little bit more intuitive and faster and just whip it on there, but if that's not your style of painting, you don't have to do that. But you might try stepping outside of your box and doing that. Then I might try stepping outside of my box and being more deliberate and thinking really hard about where am I putting this and why am I putting it there? What two composition am I looking for? So, do the opposite of what you're normally doing on some of this. I'm really loving what I got going on here. Maybe if we turn it and look at it, and just see what does this look like from another orientation. I could come in here and do some dots and some other things. This is my round blender brush. But maybe I could come on here and just do some white mark making with something bigger than my paint pen, which is normally what I'm mark-making with. Different brushes will give you different marks. If I mark make with this mop brush, I'm going to get different marks than I just got so play with the different brushes and see what the different marks are. That's where there's like a little mouse over here. With a fan brush like look at this. We can get little stripes of color. I love that. I love that little area right there now. That's a favorite. The fan brushes become like a newer favorite for me. Because if some of these fun marks that it makes, so I do love my little fan brush. If you don't have one of those, you're missing out on some fun, super fun. There's a lot going on in here that I can already see. We just wipe off some of these. Let's look back at our inspiration piece and see what else we have going on in there. I've still got some yummy marks going. I've got the black and the black dots that we still want to do before I tape everything off. But I'm really feeling good about the colors. I had a more of a gray on there than I seem to have go in now. If everything's too wet and you have a color dominant that you didn't realize you had dominant before and you want to add to it, you could draw this a little bit and then add some more color on top, and that'll let you get that color on there. Let me draw this a little bit. Here we go. Not 100% dry, but a lot drier than it just was. I just hit that with the heat gun. I think I want to come back in with some more gray because I did notice on the piece that I loved so much. It had a lot of gray in some of the areas and marks through the gray. I like this little zigzag because look what that'll let me do. Yeah, see that's exactly what I was thinking. [LAUGHTER] Alright. Let's put some more gray out here and give me some more areas that I can do that. Yeah. See, I'm loving that. Might go right on top of some of the stuff that we just made and do some lines and feeling that. Then just glancing over there at my piece, maybe dry enough to yes. Totally dry enough for some stabilo marking. Let's just go ahead and do some yummy, yummy marks. I'm loving this. Just things that will add some interest as their peak in through the yummy gold sections that we're going to have. Again, if things look too stilted or too perfect, do that with your non-dominant hand and then get some extra organic feelings in there. Yeah, I see like totally not perfect when you get to the hand you don't normally write with. Then let's posca pen it. I've got my pin right here. Alright, we're ready for some dot action. These would be perfect also for collage work. Like you could lay your collage in there before you started painting on top of it. Then mosaic on top of it with the tape with some solid color on top. These bits are just shining from underneath. That would be really fun project to do. Also using this type of technique. Still wet. I don't want to put my hand down on this. But a lot of times what I will do is I have a big wooden ruler. Sometimes these are yard sticks and stuff. But if you're working on an area and you don't want to put your hand on something, now you have something that you can put down over here, hold up on this side and you can put down and work in area a lot more exact than just free handing it in the air. Fun way to keep moving even if your piece has wet areas and you don't want to stop playing. Because sometimes let me tell you I'm having so much fun at my art table I'm just not ready to get up and leave. I'm thinking, but I got to let section to dry. This is what you can do. Look at that. You're yummy. I know it looks like big yummy mess big yummy mess. [LAUGHTER] But like I always keep in mind and this will make you feel better at your art table. If you've painted it and the compositions not exactly perfect, you can trim it down to where it is perfect. Don't be scared to cut up your art. Yummy. All right, so I think I need maybe right down here in this area. Then we'll draw this tape off some big areas. Paint the gold on top. Yes, I'm loving that. Then when you're done too, if you're thinking, I needed. If we look at this and think, I should've put some dots over here. After you're done, you can come back and add a little finishing touches. You don't have to put your stuff down and think, okay, it's done and I don't love it. You can add finishing touches. Okay, let me draw this and then we will be ready to tape it off. [MUSIC] 9. Painting Large: Taping & Finishing: [MUSIC] We've let this dry enough, I believe that I can start taping some stuff off and I'm going to go for the bigger tape and I'm using this as my inspiration and I like the big chunky stripe, we're going to just see what we can get. Keep in mind that the part that I cover up is the part that we're going to see when we peel the tape. This was the part that was left open. Let's just go for it and see what we get. I've got a longer piece of paper here. I'm just going to tear these, I want it to be a little bit organic. I don't want a straight line, so I'm going to tear pieces off of this and maybe just come right along. I like this right here a lot. I really love that right there. Really maybe we should keep that and have it on down to about right here. I really love this right here, so I might be trying to keep this little part right there [LAUGHTER]. Got some little tiny pieces here that I could put down in here to give me just some differences in here. You might look then at what parts that you're seeing and thinking, I love this. Let me cover this up. I love this here. I love these. I love this area right here. Get real close to the edge so it's harder to get that tear where I want. Going to stick things on my hand. I've got a multiple pieces go in here. What I might do is have a stripe right here where I like it. Then another piece about the same length, tear this edge. I'm going to tear the edge for the other side of that and see if I can just have one big organic-looking window. I did a big window but actually wanted the little stripes, didn't I? I just got totally off of what I was thinking. You know what? Let's go in here. Probably got sidetracked off my little stripes [LAUGHTER]. Let's just add some in here before I forget to do some strikes because I know I liked it. I don't want to not have it. There we go. But it doesn't have to be exactly like our big piece. If you're pieces are a little different than the little one that you made, that's okay. It doesn't have to be exact. Having to remember here, this is what's going be gold. Let me just move these a tiny bit. I have the other piece sitting right over here. I like these big chunky different gold sizes. The part I've left open will be the gold part. How about if we do that? See now filling this [LAUGHTER]. There we go. That's what I'm thinking [LAUGHTER]. Do we have enough taped off? Let's think about this because this is going to be a lot of gold if we don't have enough taped off. I'll leave any area. Say, I like this area right here with this these little dots. I liked this area up here with the little dots. Maybe I like more of that area. Let's use this somewhere else. Let's make this bigger here. How about that? I like these little circles that we drew down here. The side, less straight. I don't like it to look super over, super straight and stiff. I want it to be more organic. Let's do that right there. What are we thinking? Let's get this where we can look at it. I'm feeling that. Let me just get our edges down and I'll care much about the center of the tape as much as I do the edge [LAUGHTER]. That's going to be very interesting. Let's just go for it. I could use a gold paint, but I'm going to use my mica paste because we all know I love that shine and I'll have it right there to put more out. I've just got my half-inch little mop brush here. Oval mop, half-inch Princeton select is what? This brushes. Let's just cover it up. Then when we're all done, can see if we need any extra marks and we can trim it. If we don't love it, we can cut it [LAUGHTER]. This top layer though, this where I thought the most about the composition. I didn't want anything right in the center. I wanted my elements that were interesting to be off to one side. This is definitely the point where if you're going to spend a ton of time thinking on it, let it be the composition part that you're thinking the longest and let the painting part be the fun fast part because as you can see, we can cover up quite a bit. We might cover up more than you intended, less than you intended. What's left is going to be a fun little hodgepodge of a surprise [LAUGHTER] and it's the surprise that I love. This's the best gold paint ever. Going to order me like gigantic case of it and just have it because it's one of those art supplies where you get and you're I'm going to use this and I'm like, I want to use it on every single piece I have. I want to use it everywhere. I love how shiny this mica paste is. You can get gold watercolor paint, you can get gold acrylic paint. That's got a pretty shine to it. Just pick out whatever your favorite thing happens to be. This happens to be my favorite [LAUGHTER]. Made in Japan and shipped over. I think the first tubes I ordered came from Japan and it took like three weeks to get. But now there are some places that stock this. **** Blick sometimes stocks it. Sometimes you can find it on Amazon, St. Louis Art Supply, I think I might've seen it on; just Google Kuretake gold mica paste and you can see some different options. These are feeling fun. You see how if we're not worried about finished outcome, how much less stress we have at our art table. I'm telling you I leave my art table feeling good every time I come up here and paint. Did we get it all? Feel like we got it all. We're going to let that dry a second and then we will start peeling tape. [NOISE] Love it. Then we'll see if there's anything else we need to do to this. We are mostly dry, so let's peel some tape and see what we got. I'm going to peel the blue parts first. Look at this [LAUGHTER]. I've got my little knife over here to poke the edges. My exact dough knife and you see how I can just get right under the tip without digging into my painting. Look at that. I love that one. I did dig into the painting right there. I'm going to have a little bit of paper peel, with it up. That might be a spot where I come back and add some extra paint. [NOISE] We'll do that right now. I got to paint right here. If you do that, don't despair. You can come back in and touch things up if you need to. Blend it in like it was always meant to look like that. Wallah, you have fixed an area where maybe you peeled it while the paint was still wet, basically not completely dry so that it was really tempting for that paper to not release. I'm peeling these maybe a little faster than I normally would because we're here together and I'm on film. Look at that. Let's peel this big one. I got to spot right here. Let's just lift it right up, right there. Look at that. See the reason why some people find abstract painting so hard is because it's hard to let loose and just go with the moment and see what you get. It's hard to release that control. When you're doing a project like this, it's all about the release of control. Let's peel this and see what we got. Doing it at an angle. I'm trying not to rip the paper there because I don't want to tear my paper. I made a little tiny, tiny white edge on this. I didn't go big edge, I went a little tiny edge. But I do still like an edge because it still completes a piece. It almost reveals the finished piece of art when you got tape, you can peel [LAUGHTER]. These colors. I'm loving these colors. I'm feeling like there could be one or two areas that I could finish off with, say some black dots are some black marks from my posca pen. But I'm feeling this one it's feeling good. Be real careful, just go slow, steady pressure at an angle. There we go. Let's see what we got. Super fun. Look at all that gold. Now we'll say, I did the opposite of what I did on this little one and I had way more gold, and I had way less gold on the smaller one. That is interesting how I ended up with the smaller sections. I made the gold look more like the stripes in this one, whereas this one, it's the underneath paint that is shining through. Let's just look at this from all the directions and see. See now that way, and we can look at the fourth direction, but this way feels better. It's a little off from the way I painted it. I painted it and looked at it from the other direction, but I'm feeling this direction. Look at that. That is amazing. I actually really like this direction too. This one reminds me compositionally-wise a little more like this pink one that we did. Love. I actually like this enough that I don't want to cut it up. I do feel like I might go in and evaluate and think about this and maybe do some marks, or some black dots in here. But I think for my own purposes, I'm going to live with this for a little bit and decide, does it need more? I'm really feeling it this way. Does it need any more marks any more attention? Where do I need to focus on? But men, I'm loving this one. I actually want to paint one more of these in the black and white and just see if we can get some super cool pieces that we might end up cutting up. But that was a lot of fun. I hope you had a lot of fun painting a bigger piece after your smaller piece, that was your inspiration. Guys check out that as a fun little pair. I love those and I'll see you back in class. [MUSIC] 10. Large Cut Up Abstract: [MUSIC] The black white piece was my least favorite when I was painting and when done. Well, this was my least favorite actually. But the black, white one ended up I was like, I don't know. But then when I cut it up, I'm like, oh my goodness, totally my favorite. I thought, why not paint in that black, white color palette on a bigger one and then even if it's not my favorite, once it's as a big piece, I can cut it up. I'm thinking time for cut-out piece and maybe we'll love it. But I'm not expecting to. I've got my white and my black. We can even throw some gray in there because I've got a gray here. We don't have to do it exactly like our piece. But something similar is fun. Let's try with the both the gray because black, white, gray, not what we have going on there. Why not? Let's just put out a little bit of these paints. I'm just moving these other paints out of my way. [NOISE] Got my white. Oh look at that. I put down two blacks. That's okay. I'm going to need it. [LAUGHTER] Put the gray up here. I'm going to need it. It's a big piece of paper. Let's start out by drawing on our piece and just get started. Let's just do this with our non-dominant hand and see what you can get. This is more than anything, just to get you started. It eliminates, for me, white page paralysis where you're like, oh, my goodness, where do I put this? I don't want to mess it up. It gets rid of that because you know what? Now you've already messed it up. The other reason I like starting out on this Canson paper, it's cheap. Lot of times you can get it, buy one, get one free, which I happened upon a sale where those who buy one get one free. I went back three days in a row because I got some and the next day I thought, I didn't get enough. I need to go back and get some more. Then I did that for a third day. Now I have a closet full of paper. What you do, buy the paper when it's on sale and then by the time you get to using it, you don't remember what you spent. That's really helps me out because if I think, oh no, I spent $10 on this piece of paper, I'm never going to use it. It's going to be precious. But if I buy several of that paper, put it in my art closet and then one day I rediscover it, I'm like, hey, let's try this paper. Then if I'm like, this the best paper ever, why have I never used this. Then I might look at the price and think, oh. Let's not paint ourselves. Which I'm terrible at painting myself. Now let's just get this started. Now that was a lot of painting. I just sped it up really fast. But I wasn't doing anything that I didn't already do throughout our samplers and our gold one. So I didn't want to leave you out of the painting and just come back with this part right here and say, well, I'm done. [LAUGHTER] I wanted you to be able to still see some of that process. If we look at the big one that I did off of my little inspiration piece, it's a little lighter. That's interesting. When I added in that gray and the white, I just went a lot lighter than I did originally. Very interesting. I might play and do that again. I'm looking at it, thinking, do I love this as one big whole piece? Yes, I actually do love it as one big whole piece, but I think I could love it even more if I cut it up. I keep handy over here in our art drawers. Some little pieces of mat board and some little pieces of squares. I've cut out of watercolor paper so that I can take a look at these in different sizes and say, does that work better? Yes, that does. That works better. [LAUGHTER] But do I see a big piece that works better before I cut that little piece out because I'm actually feeling this right here. For some reason that composition, it's talking to me. But I also like that right there. Now, as a bigger piece, this really works. Do I have two pieces? I don't know. Let's look at different orientate. Look at that one. Oh, see now that could be a much better composition for us than what I was just thinking. Don't think I have enough paper there for that to be two of those. But I could definitely do that. Then maybe I would have enough room leftover for that one. I am feeling that. Think what I'm going to do is get my paper cutter up here.z I could do like I normally do and cut it with scissors, but I want them straight. I'm thinking that I really love this one and I do love it right there. Then if I end up with enough leftover for the other orientation, I'll go with it, but I'm going to try to line this up right where I think it was that I loved it. Right about there. [NOISE] Probably help if I got my paper away from that paint. [LAUGHTER] Then let's just see, is that enough leftover? Can I shift it a little bit if I have to? I do think I'm going to have enough leftover. Good. We'll just cut that. Look at leaves. You'll notice when I painted, that when I peeled my tape, I didn't let the paint dry enough, so I peeled accidentally some paper with the paint. But I just went back in and painted over the part where the paper peeled with some more paint and you don't even know I did that. [LAUGHTER] If you're wondering what I did at the end there, that's what I was doing. Check it out. I wanted to trim that white edge off. Let's trim that white edge off and now. Let's see. Where did I trim now? Right there. Now I'm going to want to trim this one right about here. We could trim it a little larger, it doesn't matter, but right about there. Look at this piece that's left over. Now, I'm feeling that one right there too. Sometimes when you start cutting these up, other things start to appear. I love that about cutting up artwork. See, look right there. We can basically leave that like that. But I do think I'm going to trim this edge off so that it looks finished even before I'm at it. Look, see what we reveal when we cut this stuff up? [LAUGHTER] That is amazing. Oh, my goodness. No, I'm loving this. Let's trim this edges off of here because I know I like the top of that one. Didn't trim that very well, did we? Might have adult blade to cutting big thick pieces of paper can do all your blade. I do keep extra blades handy if you've ever wondered if people change their blades on these things, yes, they do. [LAUGHTER] Check it out. Let's see what we got here. Oh, see, look at that right there, right at the top. Look at that right there. Let me trim off this right about the middle of those dots right there. Oh, look at that. That one's cool. Let's cut that white edge off of that one and keep that one. Look at that. That one right there is so cool. Let's come back on this one because I feel like, say if I trim those, they are similar size. Oh, look at how many pieces you get out of something like this? Way more than I was even expecting. Meant to trim that tighter. That's okay. We can make this a long skinny piece of art because look at that right there. Look at that. This one, even though that mat's dirty, gorgeous. I feel like I'm done cutting up. Let's take a look at what we got. Big piece. [NOISE] Look at that big piece. Oh, my goodness, little piece and then yummy little scrap pieces. Check it out. I'm loving this here. Loving that one. I hope you had fun checking out our little fast paint. We didn't do anything different that we didn't do in the other projects in class. But I loved painting one more just because I loved the little piece so much. I hope you enjoy painting some of these for yourself. These were super fun. The bigger piece that we did, cutting it up into littler pieces, make some art so much more enjoyable than worrying about all the elements and composition as your painting. I really love these. I hope you enjoy doing some of these and I'll see you back in class. [MUSIC] 11. Final Thoughts: [MUSIC] Hello everyone, and thank you for taking this mixed media abstract class, loosely inspired by my love of mosaics. I hope you'll enjoy the journey of discovering new techniques, exploring color palettes, and creating your own unique art pieces. Before we wrap up, I want to share some final thoughts with you. First of all, I want to encourage you to keep practicing, experimenting with mixed media abstract art. The more you create, the more you'll learn and grow as an artist. Don't be afraid to make mistakes. Mistakes are simply opportunities to learn and create something new, embrace the process, and have fun with it. Remember, have fun with your art. The most important thing is to enjoy the process and create and let your imagination run wild. Don't compare your work to others. Everyone has their own unique style and vision, and that's what makes art so beautiful and special. Lastly, I want to encourage you to share your art with others. Showing your work to others can be a great way to build feedback, build confidence, and connect with other artists. Thank you again for taking this class and I hope you continue to explore and create mixed media abstract art. Remember, the journey of being an artist is never over. It's a constant process of growth and discovery. Keep creating and I can't wait to see what you come up with next.