Paint Abstract Flowers

1. Introduction: Welcome to the exciting world of abstract flowers. In this class, I'll be your guide as we explore the fascinating process of simplifying and abstracting for forms to create stunning artworks. Throughout this course, you will learn how to paint loosely and utilize design principles to infuse rhythm and unity into your paintings. Get ready to unleash your creativity and embark on a captivating artistic journey. 2. Loose Inky Sketches part 1: Project one is going to be a really simple contour sketch of our study that we have here. I want you to not feel too stressed or too particular about this. I'm going to encourage that you use some really cheap paper. This is just really cheap drawing paper it's very thin. You can use even printer copy paper. I don't want you to be precious about these. I want you to just be free to experiment and play with mark making without worrying about wasting good materials. Get yourself some cheap paper. This is an A three sized pad, but you could do A four if you wish. I want you to get some ink. This is permanent ink from art spectrum. You can also get Liquitex Ik. Back on for its f. Liquitex. This one here is Tila. Some sort of ink. It doesn't matter what the brand is, whether it's permanent or water based, but we're going to be sketching with brushes and different implements with the ink to create some loose and expressive studies of our floral arrangement. For this first step, I want you to focus on monochromatic. We're not going to add in all of the colors that we see in the foliage or the flowers. I just want you to work with one color. Choose like a dark color like Sepia or black or indigo and focus on just light and dark and creating lines and marks and not worrying about the colors that you see. Before we go too far into creating abstract paintings of these flowers, what we need to do first is do a bit of studying of our subject. So the best way to abstractify something is to really understand it because that way you can play around with different elements, push things to the edge, pull things back, and have a lot more fun when you are comfortable with your subject matter. The first thing we're going to do is some really loose contour sketches of what we see in front of us. I am going to put some photos of my display in the description area of this somewhere so that you can use this reference as well. Or you can work with whatever is in front of you. For this one, I want them to be very loose and We're not worrying about detail or accuracy. I guess accuracy is a better word. We're not worrying about accuracy, we're really looking at the shapes that we can see, the different petals, the different leaves, what happens when things are touching each other, the negative space. These are going to be just really loose and fast sketches. I've got a bit of ink in a cup here and I've got a really thin liner brush. I'm just going to start with any area of the display that you can see in front of you. There's some of these azaleas falling over here. We want to encourage these drippy loose expressive marks. This is a really good opportunity to play around with different brushes and different tools to make some of these interesting shapes and marks. But I'm really just looking at the flowers in front of me and allowing my eye to follow around the edges and find some of the shapes. These are going to be really loose and not accurate at all. I want you to just play around with different mark making. For example, these mini hydranges. I've got this really intricate texture where there's lots of little petals or little clumps of flowers next to each other. I'm just playing around with different marks to see how I can represent that. Then we have bigger leaves coming out of them. I can see some of these more daisy type shapes. Maybe I'll paint that in really loose like this. I'm not looking for accuracy at all. I'm just playing around with the different things that I can see. For example, it's a quite a nice Jasmine. Trellising down. I might add some more of that over here. Even though it's not, it isn't over here in the display, there's more room over here. I'm going to just pop some over here. I'm looking at how that Jasmine is what's the anatomy of the Jasmine? You can side to see that it's got these trolley bits and then every now and then, one of the flowers is more open. Maybe I can more like that. Then there's lots of little closed buds. They all trail down like this. What else can I see? I can see there's a leaf. I think it's actually Jasmine leaf, that kind goes like this. What else can I see? There's some bigger leaves over here. I'm I'm not taking I'm not trying to capture the whole bouquet or the whole scene here. Just different elements I can see you can add in the vases and the things that the containers that flowers are held in if you want to have a little bit more context to your sketch. It has this really one I've got has this really n zigzag pattern on it. I might include that. You can change the sides of your brush as well. You want to go for you've done some areas. Maybe I'll go for a slightly still a small brush, but it's more of a flat gung brush. Maybe I can use that to create different textures and shapes. And there's maybe some darkness. You hold the brush flight really in a different way. So the start on sort of holding it further back, see what what shapes I can create. I'm going to freshly paid, I'm going to do another one. I want you to do quite a few of these each time that you start one, have a look at a different element or a different area, or maybe change the direction of your setup or choose a different photo, and try look at things from a slightly different angle. Also, think about scale, maybe do something really large, zoomed in or something quite close and play around with different viewpoints, but still keep it very, very loose. This time, I might start with. Maybe I'll start with a slightly larger brush. S. I'm going to start. You see. Another thing that you can do as well, is get like a bit of a water bottle and sort of spray on your paper first before you start sketching. What that's going to do is it's going to encourage the ink to spread out in quite random ways. So again, I'm just playing around with the shape of those hydra flowers that I can see. Got some really nice, quite dark leaves. So I sort of fill in those leaves. See here. We just do some of the big shapes with this brush and then change back to a smaller brush. So just move around as well. So again, I'm not worried about making a perfect composition. I'm just kind of playing with what I can see in front of me. Because we're going to be using these initial sketches as our references for our final abstract florals. So the more of these that you can gather up, the more material you're going to have to work with later. So don't skip this step. Don't think that it's unnecessary, or it's just a way of warming up. We are going to be using these pictures later on to help us with our finished artwork. So have fun with it and try and do a as many as you want, really, but make sure that you've got a good selection of different sketches to work from. Here's some of the shapes that I can see here with those daisies. I'm putting them in a different place to what I can see them in front of me because we're not painting this exact composition, we're just using this as a reference. Even some of these trailing bits of Foliage that coming down. See this brush makes a really nice leaf shape just by pushing it onto the paper. It's going to a nice point. Even adding in a couple of these, I barely have to do anything to make that leaf. It's just the shape of the brush that's doing it. Just suggesting some of those little round bits and pieces. If you're using ink, even if it's not, if it's a permanent e, you can still use it with water. Maybe some bigger shapes down here. Playing around with making interesting marks with my brush. Because this is going to help inform me later on with what I decide to do. Now maybe I'm going to switch it up and pick up what the skewer. Some of these puddles over here with the ink. Still wet. I can use this to scrape into that wet ink and make some more marks. Different sized shapes. Or I can dip it into the container of ink that I have here and see what happens. It's like a more of a stick effect. We can just some dots with it. That's nice. I like that. It's kind of indicating like the centers of those flowers a little bit. Yeah. Sit in the brush and go over some of these areas that have dried, create some more lines. There's no rules for this. You can do as much on one as you like, or you can just do a couple of marks on one paper and then move on and start another one. I like my paintings to be very busy. I'm happy to just keep adding and adding and adding. But if you have more minimalist tastes and you don't want to have such a busy sketch to work from, then just stop when it's not quite as busy and start a new one. But it's really important to just have fun and don't put pressure on yourself to make anything spectacular. These are not finished artworks. This is why I recommended that you put them onto very very cheap thin paper because then you won't be tempted to make them perfect. They are just simple, quick, really fast expressive drawings that is going to create inspiration for you to work from later on. Oh. 3. Loose inky sketches part 2: I'm going to freshly page, I'm going to do another one. I want you to do quite a few of these each time that you start one, have a look at a different element or a different area, or maybe change the direction of your set up or choose a different photo and try look at things from a slightly different angle. Also, think about scale, maybe do something really large, oed or something quite close and play around with different viewpoints. But still keep it very, very loose. This time, I might start with Maybe I'll start with a slightly larger brush. I'm going to start. Another thing that you can do as well is get like a bit of a water bottle and spray on your paper first before you start sketching. What that's going to do is it's going to encourage the ink to spread out in quite random ways. Again, I'm just playing around with the shape of those hydra flowers that I can see. I got some really nice, big, quite dark leaves. So I sort of fill in those leaves. Se here. Just do some of the big shapes with this brush and then change back to a smaller brush. So just move around as well. So again, I'm not worried about making a perfect composition. I'm just kind of playing with what I can see in front of me. Because we're going to be using these initial sketches as our references for our final abstract florals. So the more of these that you can gather up, the more material you're going to have to work with later. So don't skip this step. Don't think that it's unnecessary, or it's just a way of warming up. We are going to be using these pictures later on to help us with our finished artworks. So have fun with it and try and do a as many as you want, really, but make sure that you've got a good selection of different sketches to work from. Here's some of the shapes that I can see here with those daisies. I'm putting them in a different place to what I can see them in front of me because we're not painting this exact composition. We're just using this as a reference. Even some of these trailing bits of foliage that coming down. See this brush makes a really nice leaf shape just by pushing it onto the paper. It's been a nice point. Even adding in a couple of these, I barely have to do anything to make that leaf. It's just the shape of the brush that's doing it. Just suggesting some of those little round bits and pieces. If you're using a inc, even if it's not, if it's like a permanent e, you can still use it with water. Maybe some bigger shapes down here. Playing around with making interesting marks with my brush because this is going to help inform me later on with what I decide to do. Now maybe I'm going to switch it up and pick up, I've got this skewer. Some of these puddles over here with the ink. As to wet. I can use this to scrape into that wet ink and make some more marks. Different sized shapes. Or I can dip it into the container of ink that I have here and see what happens. It's like a more of a stick of effect. We can just dot with it. That's nice. I like that. It's kind of indicating like the centers of those flowers a little bit. I do some of that here. Sit in the brush and go over some of these areas that have dried, create some more lines. There's no rules for this. You can do as much on one as you like, or you can just do a couple of marks on one paper and then move on and start another one. I like my paintings to be very busy. I'm happy to just keep adding and adding and adding. But if you have more minimalist tastes and you don't want to have such a busy sketch to work from, then just stop when it's not quite as busy and start a new one. But it's really important to just have fun and don't put pressure on yourself to make anything spectacular. These are not finished artworks. This is why I recommended that you put them onto very very cheap thin paper because then you won't be tempted to make them perfect. They are just simple, quick, really fast expressive drawings that is going to create inspiration for you to work from later on. No. 4. mixed media studies part 1: The next part of this process is going to involve starting to introduce color. For the first project, I really wanted you to focus on line and light and dark and shape and patterns and just focusing on contour drawings and looking at all the interesting shapes of the flowers without worrying about color. But now I do want to start introducing color in a really loose way because I want to encourage play and experimentation and just having fun. For this project, you can start adding color and you can add it using any medium you like. For this one here, I just added a bit of colored ink. I started with the CPA ink on top, and then I've added some colored ink to fill in some of these spaces. This one here I just did a lot of the drawing with the colored ink and filled in different shapes with color. This one here is a combination of ink and also some oil pastel. I've started with ink and then you can work over the top. With the oil pastel to create more color. It's really up to you to just play around with whatever mixed media materials you have at your disposal, in your studio, to start adding some colors. You can see that it's still very interpretive and I'm not making anything look accurate at all. I'm still just looking at shapes and textures, but I'm adding color into the equation. I'm going to do a demonstration. This time, I think I might actually change the orientation of the page. I'm still using really cheap paper. I don't think I showed you this previously, but this is just anson what are we? Extra white drawing paper. It's only 120 GSM. It's not very heavy weight paper. Just standard drawing paper because I still want this to be very loose, and I don't want you to get fussy about what you're doing. Keep everything light and playful and fun. Just repeat the same processes before, except this time, we're going to add color. The first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to repeat that process of sketching with the ink first. I think I might start with the CP again. Running out a bit, a little bit more in here. I do like to water it down a little bit as well. I'm just going to add that and little splits of water on the paper too because I do like that effect. I'm going to get my thin liner brush. I'm going to start to just sketch out some things that I can see. There's this really interesting long branch that I can see. That's starting out over here. It's got clusters of leaves on it? That leads into some azaleas, like I say, here. These like really fun curly curly petals on them. They've got their own leaves here. I'm just glancing up occasionally at what I can see in front of me without spending too time studying the shapes. I'm going to have another one of these. Down here. I'm going to make a few marks and things over on this side, but then I'm going to switch from using the F using that in, I'm going to switch. I've just got some other inks that sitted over here. I've got a bit of pink. I'm going to water that down just to smidgen and maybe add in So different shapes with colored ink. There's different color. Still azaleas, but they're of these really bright pink. Maybe I can use this as a fan brush. Mas like a different mark. Go in behind some of these ones here. Pick up a bit of yellow. There's some yellow folage in here as well. So just have fun with mark making. I'll get to a slightly bigger brush. I've got a bit of green here as well. Maybe I can go over some of the green that's here, even filling some of the stuff that I see, let me get a little bit more of that. This is actually green, the golden or fluid acrylic, getting a bit of that white color and then adding water to water it down even more. I can use my brush to make different marks. That. Now I might use this green here to do some negative painting and leave some of those shapes of the hydranges behind. Instead of instead of painting that hydrange I'm making the leaves in and around and behind, leave that shape. I can split a color around as well. So a little bit more yellow sps. It's all about experimentation and having a bit of a play. 5. Mixed media studies part 2: I might bring some of those yellow daisy type shapes maybe out over here. Just to fill out this side of the paper a bit more. I got like these really cute red centers. These alias that original inc has dried a little bit. I can color those in and do some mark making inside. What I like to do as well is just add something else that has a totally different mark. For example, these oil pastels, I can go over the ink and the water color with these and just add in more shapes and more colors. We add in some of these petal shapes, and some fun marks a bit of darkness as well. This is quite a dark blue. Maybe in here, I might like to add add some dark blue colors to indicate some negative space in between some of these leaves and things. Break up the color a bit. Don't worry about your artworks appearing messy or busy. This is just an experimental stage. We're not creating finished, completed, hang artworks. We're just playing around with textures and color. If you take away that mindset of this has to be This has to be something finished, something special, take away that mindset and instead just focus on the feeling of creating art and the feeling of adding in colors and seeing what happens and experimenting with different textures because the end goal, remember is to create something that is semi abstract or even completely abstract. That is going to be the end goal of all of this practice. If you're focusing at this stage on making things look very realistic, Then you're taking away that goal of abstractifying. Even just adding in blocks of color like this and filling in some of that paper with a color is going to create an interesting texture. You can do some more of the little flower marks. I'm not really thinking too much about the colors that I'm picking up. I'm just thinking, lights and darks and am I adding in, something that's adding to this or am I making it worse? That's really what I'm thinking of. Maybe you can add in some details and some of the bigger leaves. I want you to create a series of these messy scribbly patterny textured artworks using a bunch of different media because this is what we're going to be referencing when we start to create our final artworks. The same as with the other drawings that you were doing, if you're not into this business, you can keep it more simple, if you wish, stop at an earlier stage. That's totally up to you. But I just want you to play around and have fun. Oh. A 6. Main project materials: Now that all of that experimenting and practicing is out of the way, we are going to start moving into creating some more finished pieces. We're going to be using our sketches that we created in these first two steps to help inspire us and direct us in our creation of our abstract floral arts. We're going to be painting on any substrate that you like. I'm going to be painting on paper just because it's convenient. I'm going to do a couple on paper first, and then I might move on to a larger one. So this paper, while this was very cheap drawing thin paper, I've moved to thicker paper. This is 100% cotton watercolor paper. It is hot pressed. I think it's 300 GSM from memory. It's a bit more of a sturdier paper. It's more of a finished artwork presentation paper. The artwork that I create on this paper here, I wouldn't have any problems selling on. Was this paper, it's too thin. I was just meant for experimentation. We're moving on to slightly better materials, that's what I have this paper here. Now, what I also recommend, we're going to be working with acrylic paint. I always recommend that you when working with paper, create a ground for your artwork. What I've done here is I've just covered my paper in this yellow. This is actually Nicolso yellow. Just to create a colored ground to start with, so that when we're building up things, you don't get the paper shoving through. I've just gone ahead and blocked this background into all of the pieces of paper that I plan on using for this project. We are going to be working in a series, so it's always good to have more than one surface prepared. In this case, I have three of these pieces of paper ready to go. To begin with, I'm just going to choose one of my sketches, and I'm going to use this as a beginning point. I'm choosing this one here because I really love just the looseness of it and the descriptive shapes of these leaves. I think that I can take it further when it comes to layering acrylic paint. I'm going to have all of my sketches around me while I'm doing these artworks. You won't be ten. They'll just be out of sight, but I can see them, and I am visually referring to them while I'm creating. I suggest that you do the same thing when you are starting out your painting too. Before we go too far, I just want to talk a little bit about materials and also color choices. While we're creating this painting, it doesn't really matter what colors we use. It's really going to be up to you and what kind of mood and what kind of feeling you want your painting to have. But there are a few tips that I can give you to help you create a more harmonious painting and a painting that is going to visually work together a lot easier. The first hint or the first recommendation that I give you is that you work with a limited palette. A limited palette basically means that you narrow down three or four colors and you stick to using just three, three or four colors. For example, a limited palette could be something like quid akon violet, I can never spell that and que blue and bleached titanium. That could be your limited palette that you could maybe have that yellow ochre as well. If you start with just these four colors and you continue your painting just using these four colors, everything that you create, all the colors that you mix, and that you combine, and that you layer on top of each other are going to work harmoniously. It's going to work together and you're not going to have any clashes of colors. Even if you make muddy colors, they're still going to work together. It's always a good idea to start out with a limited palette. You can always later on, if you feel like you need to add pops of color, introduce other colors into the palette to see what happens. For example, you want a real bright color, you can introduce something else. But at least to begin with, for the first few layers and until you reach that finishing stage, start with some colors that you are comfortable with using and mixing and stick with those. I do always recommend that you have at least one dark color in your palette, and of course, white. I don't have white here in front of me at the moment, but I would always include white in my palette as well. But it's really good to have a dark color and a white because you need those to help you with contrast. If you don't have a color that is dark enough, everything that you mix is going to be quite neutral and mid value, and nothing is going to be dark enough. You need to have a dark color. It could be pains gray, it could be a midnight blue and indigo, it could be black, even though I personally don't like black. You can introduce anything you like as long as it has a dark value to it because this is really important to help get contrast. Having a color wheel with you is always going to be helpful because it's going to help you make decisions about what colors that you can introduce and what colors are going to work with each other. For example, if you want to keep everything looking very harmonious, you want to use colors that sit next to each other on the color wheel. For example, a yellow orange, green palette or a green blue palette, or a red violet and orange palette. These are going to work really nicely together to create a really pretty varied monochromatic palette. However, there are also different things that you can do with the opposite. For example, red and green, red violet and lemon yellow green, blue and oranges, introducing versions of those colors into for example, if your painting is predominantly blues and violets, introducing a orange or a yellow orange into your painting is going to create a really interesting contrast and it's going to make the colors look really vibrant and exciting. Sometimes having a color wheel in front of you is going to help because you could be holding it up and thinking, Okay, what's going to work with my composition and play around with those colors? To begin with generally, I like to start with a limited palette that has primary colors in it. A blue or red and a yellow of some kind. Because with those, I know that I can produce a version of every color that's in the color wheel. They might not be as vibrant as this because it depends on the saturation of the colors that you're using, but I know to a certain extent, I can create orange, purple, green, red, blue, all of the colors that I need with a primary. It can be any red, blue, and any yellow, and those colors together will make a version of every single color. So for this painting here, I'm going to be just to start with focusing on these three colors here. I have Qin aquitone violet and quone blue and nil Azo yellow. I'm also going to be using unbleached titanium to help lighten these colors, and I'm also going to be using titanium white to lighten them again as well. Because this isn't quite bright enough. F with this palette here, I can get lots of greens and purples and blues and different things. You can choose any colors you like. You don't need to use the colors, or the brands that I'm using here. These ones are fluid acrylics. This one is a more heavy body acrylic, and this is a heavy body acrylic. It doesn't really matter what paint you use because we're going to be playing around with layering and experimenting a lot of the colors anyway. But they're the paints that we be looking at. I also want you to have quite a few different tools available to yourself. Some scrapers. These is like a silicone wedge. I've got just some really simple paint scrapers, a spatula. I've got some of these. These are again, rubbery brushes. I also have a whole bunch of just regular paint brushes as well. Because we're going to be playing around with layering a paint in different textures, creating transparencies and scraping paint back. You want to have lots of tools available to you that you can experiment and play around with while we're building up the layers in this painting. Get yourself all set up and ready to go and we are going to have a bit of fun playing around with 7. Building background layers: The first stage is is going to be involving us creating an interesting surface that we can pull these shapes and these colors out of. We're not worrying about sketching a composition or anything like that just yet. I want you just to layer down. I don't want you to worry about compositions or anything like that. I just want you to play around with layering down paint. The first thing I'm going to do is add some I'm using this catalyst tool to se this paint on You can use a spatula. You can also use an old credit card, but I'm just scraping away, and I'm going to pick up a little bit of the blue and a little bit more of the white. I'm just going to blend these on the actual page. And play around with creating a surface. Now I don't want to get rid of all of the yellow. I do want to keep some of that on the page as well. A little glimpse of it here and there. But I want to build up a surface. C flip the page around. Maybe introduce a little bit of a different color. Maybe we can introduce a bit more of the Nicolas yellow with a bit of the white and blue and that's going to make some green colors. Whatever you want to do. Really. This is a part of the painting process where anything goes, and it's a chance to just create something fun and interesting and pretty, and it really doesn't matter what you do or what you lay out because all of this can be covered over and much of it's probably not even going to be seen later on. We're just creating an interesting surface to begin with. Maybe I'll change over to smaller little speculate and I might mi up a bit of say, more of a neutrally brownish color maybe. I'm going to scrape that through in a few places. There's quite a lot of things that you can do to help build up texture in this underpainting stage to create interest. While the paint is wet, you can use the back of your brush to sce patterns into the paper into the surface like this and reveal what's underneath. Click it over. You can create different marks? Sorry, that was a bit of a noisy. Motorbike went past that. Just playing around. There's no rhyme or reason or I don't know the word like planning involved in this. I'm just playing. This is like a pen, that's doesn't really work that well, but it does make really nice scratchings. You can also play around with transparent and opaic colors. So most of the colors that I have here are the liquid colors. Most of them are transparent. Let see if I can find the indicator. This one here. See how you can see hold out up and focus. You can see that those black stripes through there, and you've got this box down here that is empty. That indicates that this is a transparent color. This one here has a bit of a line through it. That means it's a semi transparent. Let see. I don't think I have any here that I'm not I've got a liquitex one here there. See how that is just a block a square. That means it's opaque. You can play around with different opaque and transparent colors as well. For example, the nickel azo yellow is very transparent. So if I were to pick it up on its own and say, scrape it down here, you can see a camera. You can see that it is transparent. You can see the marks that are behind it, whereas the, the unbleached titanium is an opaic color. So if I put that on here, you can see that you can't see through it pa. You can play around with opaque and transparent washes and layers. So for example, if I mix these two together and spread it around because of that unbleached titanium, some of it is more opaque than the other. Here we have just time lapse of me laying down these initial marks and textures and colors onto these pieces of paper. There's really no rule to this. I just have fun. You can layer as much or as little as you want. 8. adding floral elements 1: Once you're happy with this first initial loose covering of the paper. We're going to start to build up each of these paintings to be more of a abstract floral. You can push this background layer as far as you want. You can add heats more detail and textures and things than what I have here. But I decided to stop here so that we can keep moving on. But the main thing that I want to point out is that you don't want to get it too muddy. You can see the textures are still quite clear and each texture has its own impact. Nothing is blended together. It's not just all smushed and blended. You can see there's still sharp edges, there's blended soft edges, and each of these swipes of color are intentional and visible. If you just have everything blended together and diffused, you're not going to get that these sharp contrasts of color and shape. These are going to be important to have as we start building up the painting. Now you may end up covering most of this layer up. That's just part of the process. But it's always nice to have these areas that you may end up maybe creating negative shapes with or keeping some of this showing here and there. The more interesting textures that you have and the more variation in color and texture that you have in this layer, the easier it's going to be to have it work into the painting laser on. If everything is blended too smoothly and all of the edges are very soft and smooth, it's going to end up getting lost in the painting and it's really not going to help you in any way. So I'll just suggest that you do try and keep it quite sharp and erratic and jagged, I guess for this initial layout. Then as we progress through the painting, you'll find that you can soften edges anyway. But that's just a little a hint or a tip that I've noticed that when I do this and I blend everything together too much, it doesn't quite have the same impact. Just keep that in mind. What we're going to be doing now is I'm going to I think I might start with this one here, move these to the side. If we're going to start to draw out and layer up more intentional marks. We're going to start to create a bit more of a intentional composition. As I mentioned before, for this particular one, I'm going to be using this reference here. Now, these are quite loose references. I'm not going to keep everything exactly the same, but I do like the placement of these three elements. I like the leaves that are coming out and the shapes in it. I'm going to keep this in mind as I'm creating and layering. In order to do that, what I am going to do is a really quick, loose sketch, I suppose, over the top of this, just to help me remember where my elements are going to go. We don't want this to be a precise sketch at all. We just find my liner brush. But I do want to create that drawn feeling and those drawn elements into this. I'm going to choose the blue because it's quite a dark color, but I am going to water it down so that it will flow similarly to how the ink flow. I'm just going to start by blocking in and placing in some of the elements that I want in my expressive floral paintings. For example, I really like the shapes that these hydrange balls create. I'm just going to really loosely indicate where I want some of those to be in my composition. I can even use this to start to draw in some of these leave shapes. Just just some random marks. Again, using lots of water, just to blend things and smooth the edges. I don't want anything to be too sharp at the moment. It's really important when you're creating this loose abstract painting. If you want to have a lot of variety in what you can see. Variety can be color, it can be the shapes. It can be contrast, lights and darks. You want to avoid everything being too much the same. I'm keeping that in mind when I'm putting these marks down. I don't want to create too much symmetry or to too many things that are the same. S. Draw these lines. I'm going to create some splashes as well just because I really like how that breaks up that surface, like that. A lot of the marks that I'm making at the moment are very transparent. You'll see that you can see through this color, this blue. Now that I have this rough layout in place, what I'm going to do is I'm going to start to piece together certain areas. For example, I want to bring out some of these shapes of these hydranga tie flowers. I'm not doing any detail on them at the moment. Just adding in some white. Why that's a little bit wet. Maybe I will add some texture to the edge of it just because it's fun. Same with this one here. My there's another one up here, I think. I'm thinking about the shapes of the flowers that I have in my composition and I'm slowly starting to add in areas that represent those flowers. They may not be the exact shape or placement, but I'm starting to think about where I want them to be. I can do that by like I just have here, blocked in the actual shape or I can also do it by creating negative shapes. For example, if I get a bit of a a pale green in here. Now block that in. Then suddenly, another one of those flower shapes is happening in here. That's indirect negative painting that I can start to build up. What I'm doing is, I'm using this tool here, which I think it's called a color shaper. It's like a little silicone brush basically. I'm using that at the moment. Add in touches of color. I'm using a bit of green at the moment, just to get some greenery. 9. adding floral elements 2: You'll get some. Some dock. Some duck shapes, some hands ofs. Bump together. I'm slowly building up areas where I'm taking away some of the background with my tools. Another thing that I like to do as well is to disrupt something that I've just created. That's a bit too perfect looking a little bit to the placed. You can scrape things and mess it up a little bit. Actually really like how this patch of red here. Now that I've placed these flowers, this actually looks like a vase, and that is totally random. I didn't plan on that happening, but the way that this is happening here, I quite like how that's giving a bit of a base to these flower shapes that I've added in here. This is what happens when you create a abstract background to start with. As you start adding in elements of your design or things that you're wanting to put in. Suddenly areas start to become visible and your brain will start to work out. Hold, hang on a minute. That looks like a vase. Keep an eye out for those things while you're layering and creating because they will start to happen and you can choose to go with it, or you can choose to ignore it. If you didn't want to have a vase, and you're like, Well, that's looking too much like a vase, you could just block it over with something and get rid of it. I actually quite like it at the moment. I'm going to keep it there for now. But it's interesting. Let me continue to just build up on this and play a little bit. Because I want to keep that, I'm going to start to introduce maybe a bit of a background. Mix a lot of ballooning here at the moment. I'm going to go for a bit of a orange. For example, block this in, like that. Suddenly that vase is emphasized more. It's really interesting patterns and textures in here. I can keep that and emphasize it. I've got a bit of a scraggly brush here at the moment, and I'm just using that to put a bit more opaque paint. So far a lot of the paint that I've been using has been quite transparent. It I'm going to bring in a bit of opaque color. Just to help define some of these sass. A little bit more. I don't want to get rid of everything, but I just want to play around a little bit with some negative space. That. I highly recommend that you create these paintings in stages. Don't get you fixated on one painting at a time and putting everything in until it's complete, get it to a point where there's stuff happening and that it's becoming interesting to you, and then put it aside and bring in one of the other paintings that you're working on. Move it to the side, put it away, don't look at it for a little while, and instead bring in a new piece and start building up on that one. If you want to dive in and create a bit more of a spontaneous painting, you don't have to sketch anything necessarily first. You can just go in and start blocking stuff in where you see it. For example, I can start adding in some blobs of pink to indicate the azaleas that I've got in my composition. Let me just start putting some of these in. That. Again, I some splotches. I've got those blobby hydranery themes. Maybe I can just start locking in shapes and textures that to me represent what those flowers look like. They like this. I'm going to just plop them around wherever I feel like it at the moment because decomposition will develop more as I'm going. That some yellow yellow green leaves and things. Similar to what you did with the ink that you start drawing with your paint. Let's make actually a bit of a darker blue, for example, so I can again push my brush around and start to create drawn elements over the top of my background. I want these to be more prominent. So this is like another way of starting. As you sort of going, you can add some more textures into those flowers like they were kind of a bit more bobbly. So you just added some scribbles. I've now made a start on another one. This was a more blow it down and see what happens. You can see still I haven't covered over all of the background. As I come back in and work on top of this and add more details and more things and take things away and add things, the background may slowly get covered. But that's just another way of jumping in. Instead of hesitating and wondering, what am I going to do where I'm going to put it, blah. Just jump on in and add some stuff because this intuitive abstract w of painting involves a lot of decision making. The decisions can't be made until you have marks on your paper or on your canvas, that you can then decide whether you're going to keep it or take it. Does it need to be darker or lighter. Is this too busy or is it too clean? Those decisions can't be made until you have something there. Even though it might seem intimidating or scary, sometimes it's better just to dive on in and put something down, so you can then make decisions about the process later on. 10. Design principles 1: So this is what we have at the moment. I have these three. Let me just I have beginnings of three artworks here. It's nothing spectacular at the moment. You have to remember that every painting is going to go through a stage where it is chaos. A lot of painting, especially painting in this kind of intuitive semict way. You spend a lot of time creating chaos and then trying to pull that chaos back in again. It's perfectly normal for it to go through a phase where it's just mess. This next part of the process is to start to wrangle it back in again and start to pull out areas of the painting that you'd like and that you think are interesting and push away areas that are not working. And we start to just build up the layers and the textures. Now, I do want to remind you that we are painting abstract flowers. We are not necessarily trying to get these paintings to look real. They're not realistic paintings. It's more about texture, color, and pattern. Out of the three, I would say this one at the moment is looking the most representational, and that's purely because of this vase shape here. Because of that, suddenly our brain is telling us that these white blobs are flowers. This one here is definitely a lot more abstract still because there's no defining point to it. You could be this way. You could have it this way. There's no as. I guess, there's no theme that's telling us what this is yet. They're just shapes. This one is you can see maybe this could be representational of a vars or even the light bit here. It's going to be a context. But if it doesn't have any context at this point, that's fine because remember we are painting abstracted flowers. So it's all right for it to be a very loose interpretation. Doesn't need to be anything too representational at this point. But what we are going to do now is we're going to start to add in more information and slowly build up our paintings to a point where we're starting to feel happier with them. I might start with one of the ones that are a little bit more vague. So even with some of these ones here, for example, I still haven't quite decided even which way it's going. Originally, I think I painted it like that, but actually like the movement that's happening up here. When we're painting with abstract, we need to think more about the design elements and principles that we can use in order to make the painting work without having to have a specific subject matter. The design principles are things like rhythm, pattern, contrast, movement, value. They're the the elements that you need in a painting. That are relevant to what it is your painting. It could be anything. You could be painting a landscape, a portrait, a flower. It doesn't matter. You can use those design principles and elements to help you make decisions about where things should go, how the paint is applied, what color to use next. When we're using more of an abstract approach, we need to rely more on those design principles, than we do if we're painting something realistic. Because with realism, you've got things like the details and the representation to work with. Was whether it's more abstract, you haven't really got that. You need to use the design principles such as balance and pattern, for example, to make your decision about what to do next. By thinking about the design principles and elements, we can use those to help us make decisions about what to do next. Now, you don't have to use all of the design principles. There's quite a few of them. Best to pick out a couple that speak to you and speak to the art that you want to create. Generally speaking, I work a lot with Things like repetition. Repeating color elements, repeating marks, repeating motifs. I also like to have texture. A lot of visual texture, not necessarily physical texture. I don't like using texture pastes or things to create bumps in the canvas, but I do like visual texture. Rough and smooth, these visual textures and brush strokes that are visible. I also like to use a lot of movement in my paintings, visual flow and interest. I like to use a lot of variety as well in my paintings. Variety keeps things interesting. Variety speaks about or refers to different elements, thick and thin, opaque and transparent, big and small, making sure that the marks that you make and the decisions that you make in placement vary. Everything doesn't look the same. It's not like repetitive in the way that all the marks are the same size or the brush strokes are the same size. Instead you get variety. With the marks and the brush strokes that you're making. The questions that you can ask yourself for example is the value in this, do I need to play around with value more? In this particular example here, a lot of the values are very similar. A great way of working out whether your values have enough variety in is to actually take change the painting to black and white and have a look at it black and white instead of color. You'll start to see where areas of dark and light meet. For example, there's quite a lot of value contrast here, for example, but not a lot here. These values are all very similar. They don't have as much impact as this part here does. You can use values to help define areas. You can use the value to show where the flowers are or where the vase may be. You can ask yourself, what about value? Where do I need to add value to make this more interesting? Another thing you can talk, ask yourself is like the texture, for example. Are some of the textures confusing? Is it too much? Do I have not enough? For example, in this area in here. At the moment, that all blends in together and there's not a lot of definition between any of those elements compared to over here, for example, here there is quite a lot of definition between the different elements because the texture of these is in a different direction to the texture of that. This is more of a scrape and this is a brush stroke. They have different textures and it's more interesting over here than it is over there. Now, it really does depend on your own personal taste as well. You may make different decisions to what I'm going to make. There is no right or wrong decision. It's all about experimentation and playing around with what it is you're creating. The best way to see what works and what doesn't work is to try it. You think to yourself that, the values between these two areas aren't quite strong enough. What can I do? To fix that. You may think, well, I can get a brush with some thick paint and I can paint that in here, or maybe I can get some transparent paint and create a glaze over this instead to bring this out. Which one's going to work best? You don't know until you try it. A lot of this is going to be experimentation or putting something down, seeing if it works, if it doesn't work, try something else. But the beauty of that is that all of those little experiments that you do is what is going to build up the painting and create interest in the painting. It's going to create a visual struggle that the viewer can see and they can see where you've made decisions to take things away and add things in, and it adds to the depth and the interest of the painting. Don't be afraid or worried about making too many choices. You can keep building and building and building as much as you want until you are happy with the finished result. 11. Design principles 2: The h I o. Oh. Oooh Too I did just want to jump on here and talk a little bit about the color mixing and the color choices that I'm making. So I'm still using the same limited palette that I started out with, which was the blue, the red, and the yellow with some white. And so you can see that I'm still keeping the colors fairly similar. Working with lots of just greens and pinks at this stage. The beauty of, as I mentioned earlier, using a limited palette is that it really doesn't matter what combination of colors of these three colors are mixed together. Even if they're muddy colors, if they're dirty or they're neutral gray colors, they're still going to work within the context of the painting. All I'm doing in order to again, play up on that design principle of variety is I'm making sure that I have some really vibrant versions of these colors and also some quite muted dull versions of the colors. You can see that that brownish color that's in the vase area. That's made with the magenta and also the yellow. The flowers are also made with magenta and a little bit of yellow. But I've changed up the intensity of those colors by adding cleaner mixes. But because they contain the same thing, they work together. So just keep that in mind that I haven't introduced any other colors into my palette. I'm still just mixing up the colors as I go. What I'm doing now in this bottom corner is I was finding the color of that vase a little bit distracting. I'm trying to play around with a few more muted mixes. Because I want the emphasis for this to be more on that flower area. I don't want the attention to be drawn to the vase. Because really it's more like an impression of a vase. It's not even a specifically painted vase. I don't want the attention to be down there too much. I'm introducing some more neutral colors. When I introduce a color somewhere in the painting, I always add it in other places. You'll notice that I'm now putting some of that similar minty green color in a few other areas of the painting to travel it around. And by building up those layers, it's really going to help make the painting look really harmonious as far as the colors go. So you can see here a bit of a closer look at all the textures that I've been creating by scraping and painting thicker layers and thinner layers, drawing back into it again with the back of my brush, and it's creating a really interesting surface. 12. Finishing up 1: I just wanted to talk a little bit about the process of creating abstract art. Generally, abstract art isn't just about throwing paint on canvas. A lot of people tend to think it's quite an easy way of expressing yourself artistically, but there is a lot more thought that goes into abstract art than what you initially think, and it's often misinterpreted as being a easier than it is. Deliberate art is really a very deliberate and thoughtful form of expression. So it's not as random as you think. Even though it may look like I'm making random marks, it's got a lot more thought behind it. As I mentioned a little bit earlier, in regards to design principles, this is what I'm thinking of in my head while I'm adding elements to this painting. Let's talk about why design principles, like repetition, value, pattern, and balance, et cetera. Make abstract art or at least help you create abstract art. So Patterns guide the viewer's eye. And the viewer's gaze and create a sense of rhythm and flow in a painting. A skillful use of patterns can really elevate a piece. As you can see, I'm creating these dotted spldgy patterns on the hydrange at the moment. This pattern will be repeated on the other hydranger shapes, and it will help to connect those elements and create a layer of visual interest. Pattern and repetition of visual elements, such as specific shapes, types of lines, or particular colors can be strategically employed to establish rhythmic and cohesive sense of unity within an artwork. This deliberate repetition can guide the viewer's eye across the piece, creating harmonious visual experience and reinforcing an overall aesthetic. It can also deliberately draw attention to a certain area. You can use it compositionally to help guide the viewer around your painting into certain places. If you look at autumn painting at the moment, see how the repeated circular shapes give a sense of movement and harmony. I've got those hydranga blobs moving around the painting. It's all about creating a dynamic visual experience, really. Then there's things like value, which is all about the lightness and the darkness of a color. By playing around with value, you can add depth and dimension to your work in this painting, the various values of greens create a sense of space and form, and also changing up the values that you're using. Going from dark to light and creating that contrast is also going to add to the visual interest. Because we're working with something that is not necessarily representational. We need to rely on other elements besides the obvious the obvious, I'm I trying to say here. We need to rely on other elements other than the fact that we're painting a flower to create interest in the work because we're working more in an abstract form. I hope that makes sense. Anyway, there's also things like balance, for example, which is about creating stability in visual harmony. By distributing visual elements like color and shape and texture, you can create a sense of unity in your work. Things like traveling around with the color. If you're adding in something a new color or a new element, adding little touches of it elsewhere in your painting is going to help you with your balance. Making sure that not everything is in the center of the painting, or not everything is just off to one side or the other. You need to make sure that visually eye moves around the composition and around the painting in an interesting way. You can use things like line, pattern texture values to solve those problems. This is what I'm thinking of while I'm painting. These are the things that are going through my head. It can be overwhelming, especially if you are quite new to creating art. Creating abstract art is not necessarily easy. It does take a little bit of thinking outside the square and accepting that things are not going to be perfect or representational. That does take a bit of practice and it takes a while to switch your brain from painting something that is obvious to painting something that is a little bit more abstract. Having this step in between. What we're doing in this project is creating a semi abstract flowers. Having that step in between extreme abstract and representational. Means that you've got a little bit more leeway. You know what flowers look like. You can manipulate the shapes that you're to look floral. We don't need to go extremely that does make it a little bit easier. But just try and avoid creating something that's too representational. Try and force yourself to remain in that space of semi abstraction, and just see what happens. Yeah, I hope that was helpful. 13. Finishing up 2: I'm now jumping back to this first piece that I started with, and I'm beginning to think about how I can resolve this and finish this off into somewhere where I'm happy with it. At the moment, a lot of the shapes that I can see in here are very large, very bold and ish, the hydrange shapes, and even some of the pinker flowers are very rounded. I've decided to come in now with a different, a different pattern. That is the thinner representational of the what was that called Jasmine that was in this arrangement as well. By adding in this different element, it's creating a bit of variety in this composition. It's not all the same anymore. I've now added this finer detail. Instead of having all of those rounded shapes, I've now got a different element. It's a thinner element. It's more representational of the drawings that I originally did in that first project, those inky drawings. I really liked those elements. I wanted to make sure that I had some of those loose inky drawn elements in these final pieces. Which is why it's always good to have those original sketches in front of you because they're going to help to remind you of what it is that you're wanting to do. If you're stuck and you can't quite decide, well, what mark do I need to make or what can I add? Refer back to those initial drawings and those loose inky sketchy splogy drawings, and have a look at some of the marks that you made while you were creating those. And you can come in with either thicker paint or thinner paint or even elements like crayons or pastels, and you can add in different marks to increase the variety in your painting so that everything doesn't all look the same. It's a fine balance that needs to be created in these paintings, where you want to have the repetition of elements, but too much of the same thing is not a good thing. You have to find that fine line between having enough interest in the painting, but it's not too repetitive. Yeah, it's a game. It's a lot of adding and taking away. But you can see here that I'm now adding in that similar blogy kind of passion that I had in the previous painting because I think it's a really strong opaque mark that is different to everything else that's there. It also helps to highlight those hydranga shapes because they are very blobby shapes in that particular flower. I'm just going to bring this one back in again for a minute because I'm still not quite happy with this one. There's something bothering me about this shape here. It's a little bit too heavy, the balances not really working. So I think I'm going to actually turn this into a round of vases and cut it off down here. So this is where you can make decisions like this. Nothing in your painting is set in stone. And sometimes it's just not going to work the way that it is. And so you need to edit and change things around. And, you know, make decisions. I mean, if I decided to do this and then I didn't like it, I can always change it back again. You know, it's really not the end of the world. If I decided that I should have kept it. But I think that I needed to change it. I'm just going to add in a few different marks and things. Already, I am much happy with that decision. Because now you've got this beautiful negative space shape down here, which makes this area a lot more interesting than just that straight vase that was there a minute ago. Adding in a bit of, I can create an abstract indication of a bit of a shadow maybe, which again just adds another element to this picture. L et's get a bit of this orange as well. Maybe we can play around with the color on here too. Maybe it's a table and that's reflecting a bit of that orange. I'm instantly much happier with that. What else can I do to this now? I haven't added any of this turkisy color in here. Maybe we can come in with some of that. Just to highlight a few of these leave shapes. Then I need another grain. Second. It's big a bit for. He's big. Between. We add some of these pink elements as well. Again, I'm using a bit of variety in my marks by adding in these little dot shapes, that could represent the Jasmine that's trailing down maybe in a more of a abst All right. I think that's looking much better. Changing just that one element has made a huge difference to this particular piece. I think it's definitely coming along nice and. I think I do need to just brighten up some of this orange element. Maybe I'll bring in more of the ni Azo yellow. Changing up the colors a little. Spreading it around a bit. Using really gung missing brushes is fun too. This is like a really gungy brush. If I tried to do anything precise with this, it would not work, but because I'm trying to just create interesting marks, it's perfect. H with that one now.