Paint Two "Faux Mat" Abstracts!

1. Faux Mat Intro: We're going to create what I call faux Matt. Basically we're going to use tape around certain types of paper to create a mat on your painting when it's done. These are two different types of abstracts. One is going to be like this on acrylic paper that has a linen finish and it really looks like a map. And I'll show you the tricks and techniques to getting this nice crisp edge. And then the other one is what I call it a flowy abstract. It's got elements, but a lot of whitespace soothing, color palette. So let's get started. 2. Supplies: Let's look at, talk about the supplies that we're going to use in this class. So as far as paper, I use two different types in this class. I use a watercolor paper and it really doesn't matter the brand they use as long as it's a decent quality, I would not buy the cheapest. And I would make sure that it's a £140. So I have a different varieties I'll use sometimes I use the Fabriano students. Or you can do professional. You can use Strathmore, there's 300 series, which is a yellow cover, and then the 400 series, which is best. They say it's biased. I'm saying I'm not saying it's fast. And then Canson also has a good watercolor. It does not need to be a very expensive, but again, I wouldn't go with the cheapest. You definitely won't get good results if you use the cheapest. So that's the watercolor paper the other painting has done on this acrylic paper. You don't have to use this. You could use watercolor paper for both. I just wanted to show you this because it's got this linen finish. It's nice and heavy. It's £246, really thick and it just makes a nice, it really looks like a mat on the edge. So if you're not doing the reason that I use this for the one with acrylic painting and Afro gouache is that it's doesn't absorb the way of watercolor paper does. You'll see when we do the paintings, but I just wanted to show you both. Then for pallet paper, I just pick up any palette paper, really keep like a half sheet of it and use that often is from my palette and just throw it away. Or sometimes I use a piece of glass like this and then scrape it off. So those are a couple of palette options. As far as paint. What I use mostly in this class is gouache and acrylic wash. Lately It just seems or an acrylic that I've been using more agro gouache than regular gouache. So what's the difference? Well, I do have a YouTube video about this, I believe, but going into more detail, but in essence, acrylic paint has size properties to it that make it permanent when it's dried. So that's why when you paint something in acrylic and you add water to it after it's dry, you can't get it. They won't move, its will not be reconstituted. So they've added those acrylic properties to the garage. And all of these, I have three brands here. I'll show you a acrylic or acro gouache. And that makes the gouache permanent. Unlike regular gouache, which is an opaque watercolor, it does not have the acrylic added to it. So you can paint it. It'll dry, and then you can reconstitute it with water. Neither is good or bad. It just depends on what you're doing with it. So I am going to show you these three brands of gouache just so you have options just so you know what's out there. And then you can also just use acrylics for this class. The flowy painting we do will flow better if you've got some gouache. Gouache or gouache or watercolor. The acrylic when you, you can do it, but you'll just, sometimes you'll feel that the acrylic doesn't want to move on watercolor paper the way that the other paints do. So I would experiment with everything. So this is the Liquitex acrylic gouache. It you'll know the difference because it has the black top was there. Let me get let me get a bottle of regular head. Here is the regular acrylic liquid texts. Soft body is the white top, so the black top is the auricle gouache. That's one option. Mostly what I tend to use those Turner for acro gouache, the price is really great for the quality. And I just think the tubes are easier to deal with in travel with but personal preference. And then another brand that I use, an aqua brush, which is a little more pricey, is the whole Bain. And it is thicker. And it can be challenging in the sense that it just dries fast, so you just need more water when you're using the whole vein. Compare it to the Turner. But the opacity and the color is gorgeous. Alright? Of course you can use acrylic paint. I use nova acrylic, sometimes I use Liquitex, I use golden. Whatever acrylic paint. Again, don't buy the cheapest, but you don't need the top of the line either. So the other thing that you'll see me use a color or two of these. These are the abstract 3D liner and it makes like a 3D shape. It's kinda fun for abstracts. You'll see me use a variety of pens, my favorite, by the way, I have links to most of the stuff on my website that Suzanne our.com under supplies. So I have these because it's so hard to figure out. Just tested so many white pens and gold bands. But anyway, I have links to these, that linear ball signal is my favorite white pen. They're not, none of them are perfect, but these are my favorites. And then my favorite marker is the pilot gold marker, hymns these sizes. I also like the Pentel gold pen. Again, links on my website, I'm looking for it. I think I packed it because we're getting ready to leave town as far as brushes. So you'll see me use a variety of round or bright shaped bright is the C If I have any breaks right here. So sometimes I'll use a liner. This is a velvet touch liner. A bright shape is just a square shape like this. And sometimes I use these when I'm using, are doing more precise work. And I want a round brush. I do like the Princeton velvet touch brushes. But the only real unusual versus you'll see me use in this class are these two, which is a liner to make really long fan lines, and then a fan brush that makes just really interesting textures. Then neither of these are fancy or expensive. You can find them if pretty much any art supply store. I do use the white pen in the class. And then I also for texture, use some oil pastels. And this set is Mongo, which is a nice brand that I've found through camera where originally found it, But Amazon has a really good price. Also Jerry's art around McCarthyism. I believe they carry them, but anyway, I have a link to them on my website and it's a set of, I think 48 colors. And the quality has been great. So that's that. And for varnish or finishing off your paintings, I like to use either a workable, fixative by crime on if I'm going to continue to work on it. Or a I'll put these in the supply list or a liquid texts matte finish spray. I use sprays because I'm working with paper and I just find that they're easier to use. Let's get creating. I did want to add that. I talk about this more in the class, but this is the other supplier, the frog tape. And it is a frog tape comes in blue, green, and yellow. Each one is a little bit less adhesive and this is the gentlest one, which is why it doesn't peel the paper. It's really nice and thin. And I find it works better than even what they call artists paper, Artist's tape that I've tried. But if hardest tape is all you can find online. But usually this is probably available most of the world through Amazon and its frog tape. But like I said, I'll show you more in the class. 3. Faux Mat Beginning: So this is kinda fun. We're gonna do a matte painting. But before I, we take this up and I'll show you what that means. I just wanted to show you that use the pallet paper alive. And that's all I use when I travel. But I've been experimenting with this piece of glass. Now, if you go to an art supply store and buy a glass palette there like $30. But this is just a kitchen cutting board from Amazon for half that price. And it works really well. So I had this painting there and now I'm just taking this is one of those razor scrapers that I stole from my husband and my garage. He doesn't know, but it's my mouse. And it's really easy to get the blade out, to scrape off the pain is, and if it's not as easy, you just give it a spray with water and minus will show you my spray bottle, which I love. I use my spray bottle because it's a Mr. When I am working in the paints are drying and i'm I want some more time. And I also got this at Amazon, but it does really light listen, spray mist. I think it's actually a face mister. So we'll drive that off and then we'll get going on this. I just wanted to show you that palette, that glass palette I've been using. I think I'm going to transition to this rather than the paper when I'm at my home studio like this. Now what I'm want to show you is in this class, you can use acrylic paper, watercolor paper, or mixed media paper. For this. I've done this with all three of them and it works fine. But I was thinking that for this, see how this acrylic paper, it almost imitates the look of a canvas. It's got like a linen, a feel and it's much thicker. Remember I said it was £246. So I think of the three papers that have tried this technique with, the acrylic paper is lends itself best to it. So what we do is we take the sheet of paper and I've got some plastic here, but you can do it. Meet you obviously don't want to do it on a surface that you care about getting paint on. My table has four millimeter plastic on it. And then this is just a sheet that I could do it straight on the plastic. This was a sheet of something that we were throwing out and I thought, no, I can use that in a studio. But here's the secret ingredient. This is frog tape. Let me get the case and show you. And it comes in. It's called painter's tape, but it comes in different colors depending on the adhesion. So this is delicate surface. The yellow, I know people have used the green and the blue successfully. I liked this one because it never, I'm tears my paper because it's done is it's the lightest adhesion of the three. Let's see here. They call it, they say it has paint black technology, but whatever it is, when I put it on, It gives me a nice clean edge. And I've never had pant leg through. And then when I remove it, it removes really easily. And this width, it comes from different widths. So depends on the size you want your map to be. But what I like about this technique is since this is a nine vital sheet, we're going to put the tape on it and then paint inside. It gives us kind of a unique look at the edge. And then also, when you're all done, you have something that you can frame and without a mask because it looks like it has a matte. And I also like how? Because we're going to just sell it and build up some layers. You'll have, you'll see at the end, you'll have, you'll be able to actually see and feel the edge of the painting where the tape comes off. So those are all the reasons that I think it's fun to do. And I just used the width of the tape that way I don't have to measure and worry about it. So I take the tape right to the edge and I just carefully on the edge down here. And up at that corner. There we go. And then I do the other side and then top and bottom or whatever order. Okay. So you want to have probably a little more than I have here going over just to hold the painting down. So I'm going to add a little bit just so that when I if I'm being brought, it doesn't come up. Okay. So that's the frog tape. And now let's think about what we wanna do here. So our painting is just gonna be this size. Can I do go around the edge and make sure that's really adhered along this edge. And then I'm going to paint freely. I'm not going to worry about whether it's passed on the tapes of the tape will be filled with stuff. So first I'm going to just do some gesso to build up some yummy ness on the paper. And we'll throw in some paint. I like to mix paint with Joseph just because I already have something going on. Let's maybe let's play with something. Jennifer. Why don't we try like a plum. Here's a magenta and I've got a Payne's gray or an ivory black and we'll make it dark plum for our background. Why not? Here's a Payne's gray. And we can do that right on the right on the paper. Let me just get a larger brush. This is Jessica that I've just put in a kitchen jar. And now because I'm using gesso, oh darn it, it's clogged again to get my this is a knitting needle, believe it or not, from the days I used to nip bead Perses he has I know I know it was many, many years ago and it was, it was actually fun. You know, those beam passes from Victorian times. That's what I was knitting with those tiny knitting needles. Okay, we're not gonna get a true problem because I'm using gesso, which is white. So we're gonna get something short of what everybody is clogged today. We get whatever we get is that I just locked lots of sick Googliness on this paper. So I'm going to come around here with us Just so I'm going right up to the edge, I mean, past the edge of the paint because I want that. I was talking about where you can feel that started to paint. This will have to dry quite awhile just because it's it's thick. So we could throw a couple of other things on here before we let it dry, just making sure I have it painted to the edge. With this tape. I haven't had yet to worry about it leaking past the tape. Just trying to get suggestible off my brush so I don't waste it. And why don't we try a little more of the Payne's gray and just make some marks with it. Let's make kind of a focal point in this area here. I'm going to darken it a little bit right there. We can even kind of go like that. And why not? Because we're a little fluorescent pink in there. I met first layer. Didn't want to come out. Okay. Well, let that dry. 4. Faux Mat Layer One: Now you may have noticed, is this dry that it buckles and the different papers buckle to a different degree. But I'll show you a trick and how I fix that after the painting is done. So we're going to ignore that for now. Alright, and give out some goodies, some oil pastels, and start some mark-making. I think what I want to try and this one is making because I like to vary things, some larger shapes and things. Let's see how we like that. And you want to make sure and go off the edge with this whole concept of the foam mat so that you're getting that effect. Love that turquoise woody. Trying to sharpen couple of these. You know, what's funny is the stimulus come with a marker. I mean sharpener and I don't know what I did with it. I'm going to have to find it because it's particularly fat. Marker. Color wise. I am just grabbing what is occurring to me because we can always change it. And it'll just be a lower layer. I think I've mentioned that the these are Mongo supply or oil pastels. They're really quite nice for the money. And the color of the pigment, the richness of them, really happy with them. We've lasted quite a bit too. I've had these I would say I would probably have these eight months. Now, you can see that there are some colors I used more than others. In fact, let's do something. Let's pick a color that it doesn't look like I've used much. This is sort of a gray. And what else have I not used much of this tan color. Let's use those. I should be using this more. It's pretty tiny hint of green. Let's see what they call it. Dark, cool, gray. And then this one is the pale ochre. That's pretty too. I tried every time I sit down to create to do something new. Probably because I get bored easily. But it does keep me always learning something. Okay, So these are larger shapes. Now, see, we could come in with just a few more designs with CRAN. And of course you could do the same style of painting really with just one of these mediums. I just kinda like playing with all of them. So I use them all lime green and it's one of those colors I was talking about, but just brings everything to life. Liking this. What else we could we could do? We could take the liner, script liner, get some paint, some thin marks. And how about a yellow? I do like these Liquitex containers. They're just easier. If you're doing a small painting to work like this. I love that Strong bit of fluorescent there. It's also really fun exercise to actually, I'll show you the tape to tape down several of these, you know, like if you have space, you know, 34 or five of them. And I was thinking of doing a class on this, but let me just show you real quick. So I didn't I used scrap paper and which already had marks, which is why they're not really clean around the edge because I was just messing around. And I took all these scrap papers and put tape around them and then use the same colors and just went and did different things from painting to painting to painting. I think that'd be a fun class to do. So, being really random, especially at the beginning, a little more thoughtful at the end of them. I think I might want some yellow here in the center and makes it a little bit of weight. Remember, weight increases opacity, especially if it's a gouache or it just so happens the same color as the tape. It's funny. It's a little hard to I'm trying to, you know, you can do fits with your with your hand and look at the beginning. It's a little viewfinder or, you know, some people have those viewfinders. You can make a little square cut out on a piece of paper and look at it to try to see it without the yellow tape. I think I'm going to lighten those up. Create a bit more contrast between the lights and the darks. Maybe take my liner. Do a couple of lights lines up here. So you can get acrylic to go or Agra Bosch to go over oil pesto. Just have to have plenty of paint on the brush. I like that. Pale yellow. I'm not really wanting to cover a lot of the background. I'm going to do some, but I'm kind of liking that purple is a background. So I'm thinking what I wanna do is a pale turquoise and some spots and then maybe peel the tape and see how it looks and then work somewhere on it. Whereas nowadays say that I want to pick this up. Okay, So let's make some pale turquoise I'm going to grab. So turquoise can be made if you don't have it. I'll show you with a lemony yellow. So not a warm yellow, not like this one. And a blue. Let's see, depends on the blue. I don't think I've tried this particular blue or yellow. So let's see what happens. They'll get a regular bright brush. Just a tiny bit of that. Blue. Because any more of the blue, there we go, It's getting a little more turquoise. Throw some white in there. And that's pretty check the color on a scrap piece. It's pretty color but I think I want it lighter. I'm going to add more white. You go. It's amazing how much you use. It's incredible. That's my goals or white like crazy. So it's a turquoise. It's a bit muted compared to one that you buy. A color that I always think it's a beautiful color. But I do buy a turquoise just because you can get a real HOPWA. Green. I don't think you need to spend money on greens, but turquoise. Oh, did you say Oh my gosh, my turquoise exploded. Well, okay. I'm going to clean that up. You right back. 5. Faux Mat Reveal: Oh my goodness, that was funny. So I've got my turquoise here. What I did is I used a palette knife and put it back in the bottle. Got the pale turquoise, but it's a little more minty than I want. So I'm going to add just a touch of his yellow and get it a little bit warmer. Alright, let me think. I'm just going to come through. That's pretty against the purple. And it is peanut man. Various places. Just hitting some of these with a second code. And then I'm going to let this dry. We'll take off the paint as the funnest part. I mean, take off the tape. Then we might put the yellow gone. We may be able to see what else we wanna do to this. So we're going to let this dry. Alright, so I came back to this and took a look at it. And I wanted to add some more white and some lights. I came through, I recorded all this but snack foods, so I'm recording it again. I did this lighter pastel and I just wanted a little more contrast. I really like it, but I wanted to bring in some of the white. And I also know that our format is going to be white, so I just wanted to have a bit of white in here. So I also took the white Posca marker. It was a happy accident because as I was priming it, it started dribbling. And so I just went back and got the splashes of paint. Of course, you can do that by taking some white paint and wetting your brush with it. Making, I don't wanna do it again because that's enough weight on there, but you get your paint wet with the white and then you can just hit it against your hand. I just got some water on there. That's fine. This is all dry. And you can make splashes that way you can practice on another piece of paper. And while I'm thinking about her, well, I just something about the palate reminded me to tell you if you use glass like this, makes sure that you scrape it off before you use it again. Because if you start putting paint right where you have paints, see that you'll get these pieces of paint in your new paints. So when I come to paint, if I scrape it off and it's a little harder to scrape if I haven't, please breathe it with water. You can see it's still not that bad. It would be a lot easier if I gave it a little spray and then came through. Just like that. Make sure you put your razor sharp and then you can clean up your stuff. But yeah, you don't want to paint on top of the glass these bits of paint, because you'll, you'll get them, they'll come up and be in your next painting. All right. So that's that on that. This is drying. I wanted to make that a little more white. So I'll see if I can just do it this way so I'm not disturbing it too much. I just wanted it to be because it's not quite dry. There we go. What the Posca marker can blend with the color underneath. The I think I have woody underneath there. So alright. Now when we take off the yellow paint them, That's the exciting reveal. And then we'll also see if there's anything else we wanna do to this painting. And it gets rid of the yellow so we can see it more clearly because right now, of course we see so much yellow. Alright, so let's have the big reveal. Again, this is just so fun because it's got a nice clean because we've had paint on it. It's just nice and clean. And I pull gently. This way. I don't pull up, pull back slowly. Just go slow. Careful. Hold down a corner, make sure it's once we uncover this pretty white mat, then we're going to be in danger of getting paint or something else on it. That's, I already see a little something. Show you a trick that can move that. It's trying to remove it with the bank tape and I got another mark on there. So we're gonna keep, firstly can try water course. So again it goes slowly. Peeling. This is coming up easier because this is my second time doing it. So yours will be a little bit because the recording field, so just know that yours will be a little more taut and just carefully. Alright, so the first thing we can try, especially with this Lynn, any papers just taking a dab of water and a paper towel and seeing if that gets it up doesn't look like it is. So then the next thing to try, I'm gonna go get one and show you is a magic eraser. Believe it or not, I have seen it work. So I'll go get that and let's see if it cleans it up. But I want to show you look how this linen texture, the mat that you get. The you can hear, listen to the page. It really looks like we painted a painting and then stuck it on this paper. And with this linen texture and heavy paper, That's how it feels. Now you have to be really careful to not get it dirty. That's the hurdling. And if we continue on the painting, which I think I want to do a few things once it's all dry, then I have to be really mindful of not getting a dirty. So I'll be back with a magic eraser. Okay. In case I don't know if you don't have these in your country, but this is what I'm using Mr. Clean Magic Eraser, and we'll see if it works. I'm going to, this is a new clean one, just going to wet the corner. It's coming off. You want to waste as little as possible because it will eventually degrade the paper. But this paper is so it's got this canvas texture. So yeah, it took it off. And now I just have to be careful not to get fingerprints and everything else on this on this pretty white edges that we've got here. So I would just be a little more careful than I normally am. Wash my hands before I come back, set it aside while it dries, and just be a little more careful. So we'll come back after this dries and see if there's anything else we want to do to it. But what I love about this as I did it on a nine by 12 paper. Now it's got this beautiful edge, and I do need to sign it. And then I can stick it in a frame that I can buy. And you've made yourself some artwork. Alright, Let's let that dry. 6. Faux Mat Finishing Touches: Okay, Now that this is all dry, my spots are removed. I'm being careful with my edge here. I'm looking at it and I think I want to do a few things. So when I'm maybe intensify some colors. Yeah. I'm just feeling like I don't know. It needs something. I'm not sure. Sometimes it takes me and going through it and doing a few things to Cl, so that's good, that's happening to show you. So I'm taking the woody when I'm scraping, it's upsetting the oil pastel underneath. So that just means I need to switch to oil pastel. I could also use yellow acrylic paint. Now that I've already disturbed that, I'm thinking about what, so I don't really like these three white marks. So let's go over them. It's just about figuring out what you like and don't like and playing around. And not too many things you can do or irreversible. Which is nice. That looks better. This is where I have to be careful though with the pastels to get it on here. I'm thinking that some of this pink might be nice in here. I just want it to have more inch. Highly technical artistic term. Maybe I will take we could use this, but we, we talked towards the hand on that. And I think the, you only get a few colors of posca pens will of course get your favorite colors, in my case, are the colors that I always feel like make everything pop and turquoise is one of those for me. So I would have turquoise posca for sure. You hate turquoise and pick something else. I want some stripes somewhere. I'm thinking about where, where I can have them and then what would they medium would I use? See how that works? Something up here, maybe. Pause guys agree, they will go over just about everything if you're light, I went over the oil pastel there and just lightly. And you can come back and do more coats once it dries. To get that opacity. I'm going to cover up this white with something. Let's see. Do I want maybe an orange? So as I said, in another painting, the oranges, one of those colors they want to use, it brings things to life, especially against purple. Usually I'll make that bigger over there. And a great way to rub in oil pastel is will your fingers one, but also pencil eraser. See if they've got one here that's clean. Just clean it off by rubbing it on some paper. See if we can get it. Just mirrors it really well. I'll clean that orange off and then I'll smear this dark gray over here. And only you and I will know that there used to be three white blotches there. Pencils are also great. Just to make marks. You can do some small. They'll go on top of acrylic. Just something satisfying about little shapes. It's saddled with a pencil, but you still see it. And this, this, this color, you can cover up some of those white dots. I like some of them, but some of them I don't. And it adds interest anyway because you can kind of see it underneath. Business, a pretty color. What is this? Salmon pink. So pretty. See what I mean about being careful. I'm going to have to use my Magic Eraser again. What we could do is peel up like we did, and then take a look and see what you think it needs and then retype it. It's an idea. Just seems like too much work. But you could just make sure your hands are really clean, but I'm liking it better. It's starting to pop for me more and speak to me a little bit more. I'm going to what I recommend, you know, where we stand away from it. We haven't done gold. You know how I love my gold. Let's do some bits of gold. Get my pen working. Please recommend doing that away from your project. Because sometimes these, if you shake it, I've had that happen as a happy accident. And you get drifts, see like there's a drip that just landed. There. Might not be where you want to drag. This one hadn't been used in a couple of days. Here we go. And just taking a really light touch because I'm think of it as trying to lay the ink on the paper. See that rather than pressing because it got different things on here that might not enjoy. The pressing too hard, might disturb it. So just going gently, making a variety of marks here, I'm circling some of those white dots, not all of them. Tracing over this. And let's see, I'm thinking about my eye moving with the gold. And we want to do some here. And then with my fat pilot gold, I'm going to color in these up here. That way. I've got gold coming kinda throughout. And we'll assign it while I'm here with the pencil. I think the only other thing that I wanted to change is that I'm nitpicking here, but that white dot there. I'm not sure I like it. So what I'm doing is this helps you is cover it and see what you think with it and without it. Actually you're kinda like it with it. But I'll do that sometimes, you know, do I want these two, I like this shape, cover it. Alright, so let's finish up. Why not? Since this is a very colorful piece. Now using these, you're squeezing their 3D. So you're squeezing this bead basically. That's why they're called 3D liners. So I'm going to squeeze squeeze it out and you do, you practice a little, but it's not like we're being really precise here. I have to think about, okay, a little bit here. And maybe just something coming here. This stuff you can put over anything. So I'm being careful not to scrape up the oil pastels. And maybe just a couple of dots down here. When I want a handle fluorescent, either grab this one. For lots of ways to get fluorescent. You can use the ink. This is Liquitex, acrylic ink. You can use paint. This is Liquitex acrylic paint. And there are fluorescent jelly rolls and fluorescent Prismacolor colored pencils. Colored pencil. It just depends. Let me do a little bit somewhere to show you how it works. If it's on top of the syphilis, an orange, it works if it's on top of acrylic. But it wouldn't if I tried to do it here on the oil pastel, it's just going to scrape up the oil pastel. So let's see, let me stick with the fluorescent pink rather than the orange just to show you how adults make a mark on the acrylic here, but not on this, on this oil pastel. I think I've done enough. Go one more magic eraser cleaning to do. It's still a bit wet. And I think we're seeing why. I probably could have done more of the painting when it was still taped up. Then I don't have to worry about keeping it clean so much. Okay. Well, thanks for joining me. I hope you make one of these. Now, the buckling that we talked about earlier, we're going to let this dry and I'll show you it actually has gone away. Largely. There's a little bit. So I'm going to show you what we do once this is dry, this acrylic, this liner is going to take a while to dry. Once that's dry, I'll show you what we can do about any buckling that remains. 7. Flowy Painting 1: Beginning: So for this abstract, we are going to start with a piece of nine by 12. Or if you have an eight by ten, that'll work to watercolor paper. I'm just using a Strathmore student grade, which is the one with the yellow cover. They call it the 300 series. They call them better and then they call the 400 series best. So I'm just using which is perfectly, perfectly good. And then I've got my tape. This is the it's not quite an inch. It'll be in the supply list, but it doesn't matter as long as it's whatever kind of margin or format you want on your painting. So it's really up to you. And I go just a little bit past the paper because that's the only thing holding it down. And I just line up my edges carefully so that, you know, my border is going to be. And you can do if plastic like this, this is from the hardware store. Think it's for ML but which just means it's thicker. It's a it's a bit thicker as plastic. And put it on your no, this was probably the two ML that I've doubled. So hurrying and just do it on a piece of cardboard. Methylene chloride to make sure I get this straight. Okay, so we've got our paper taped and you just want to go around the theme and make sure that you've sealed it. Make sure your hands are clean. And we're going to create a simple, This is my, one of my little sketchbooks and where I started experimenting with these kinds of abstracts. And what I did, and this is I made a background of a color and then these designs over it. And they're just inspired by nature, the forms of nature or the way that leaves and things move and are shaped. Who's not? In this particular style? There's not any right angles. Although I've seen a lot of beautiful pieces of art that way. So this is just this particular exploration I was doing was, you know, more about fluid movements. And I use, I like using the Navy is my dark. Can either use paint or ink if you have it. And some of this is paint and some is ink. But I'm going to stick with paint on this one. So since that's probably what you have and we'll see what we come up with. I usually start with my the dark paint and whatever dark you choose. So it could be black, it could be a plumb, it could be a navy, a really dark green, whatever you like. And as far as colors, I just pick three or four of my favorites when I'm in the mood for that day. So I would stick to three or four. We'll see we'll see as we go. But you don't need a lot of variety of color in this. Now I'm just getting out my Turner acrylic Gouache. This is the black blue. You can make it with black and blue. You don't need this color. And I'm getting my brush really saturated as I store it here. And then I'm just going to start with some coming down and pressing and then lifting. And trying to be really just loose and playful using the interesting shapes and M variety of lines. So this is a big brushes as a twelv. But if I go really lightly, I can get a thinner line and then I can press down like this. And I just think that these sort of organic looking shapes and lines are fascinating. And so I'll maybe come off of here. You know how you see branches and leaves and vines and things like that. That's kinda what I'm thinking of. But very loosely. Yeah, I think that's pretty. And then we'll take another color and we'll come back to the blue. And this came out quite a bit brighter than when I use the ink, which is fine. But one of the techniques you can do too is if you have these neo color 2s, this is a Prussian blue and I thought I had navy, but maybe this is just my Prussian blue. It looks darker, so let's try it. But while this is wet, you can come down here and do something like this. And part of it will interact or spread. And I could even take my brush if I wanted and drag some water through. It. Just adds another bit of interest. Maybe I'll bring this like this. That's pretty. I've also been really loving a lime green. This is called fresh green, but you can mix it by taking a yellow. It would usually work better if you use a lemony yellow. I'll just make some and show you, rather than a warm yellow like this is a warm yellow, those cadmium yellow medium. It's just gonna be I mean, it can it can work too. It's just a little bit different shade of the lime. And then you take a bit of turquoise or a light blue, like a cobalt blue. And it doesn't take much. You can see there's a lime color. I think I want it a little more yellow, so I'm going to add a bit more of this liquid texts. This is Liquitex, acrylic, gouache. But I used acrylic here. So you can see that I'm kinda throwing it all in there. And with this, I'm going to be even more playful and just kinda see what shapes and interesting things can happen. They don't control the brush too much. And when to add a bit of pink to that, that I have in my palette to, to tone down. The center of this. Pink would be on the opposite end on the color wheel. So it's going to tone down lime and I'm just taking that little bit toned down color through the middle of this for some dimension, I'm holding the brush really loosely, making sure to add some water and taking these little tendrils off. I might bring some of this over and make some teeny tiny little or maybe not so teeny-tiny. I feel like I want some circles, so I'm gonna get a different brush because well, I could use this one. I'll show you. It's just yeah, there's planet is over. There's plenty of water on it. To make a nice circle. That circle. I'll call it a blob. And I don't want, I don't want an actual circle, just a shape. A blob shape. Maybe vary the size a little bit. And there's some drips wanting to happen because my brushes so wet, so let's embrace that. I've put some paint on my brush. It's nice and wet. I'm gonna just smack it. Here we go. Make sure you're not wearing clothes that you care about or you've got a paint shirt on or something. When you do that. And that'll take a while to dry as well this then we will choose another color, which I'm was thinking I would do pink. I want to do something on the neutral side. So I think we're gonna do this ash green. We can always add pink highlights later. So this ash green is really a, this is by whole day and that's a gouache charcoal brush color, but you can create it by doing a bit of green, a bit of blue, and white. It's, it's basically a really pale gray, may need a tiny bit of black. It's a greenish, bluish gray. But you don't need to create that color. I'm just sharing it with you in case you want to. But I'm going for a neutral. So whatever. I'm I'm, what I'm thinking of is that I've got two braids here. And so that I need something that's on a neutral side. And that's why I'm grabbing this. I'm adding a lot of water. Still got my same brush. And I think I'm going to come up here. And the same kind of movement. Just get some of the paint down here on this. But the other thing I could do, okay, so a couple of choices. I could just come up here and go through here. Or I could color in, you know, bits that this has made. And since I can do this first and if I want to cover it up, Let's do that. Let's do that so that you can see how that works. And I'm not worried about filling it all the way in because, you know, this is a loose piece. What is fun Go is at this stage to put that down and then take some paper towel that's crunched up and get some texture. Like so. And that's just, you know, Ryan's me of maybe lichen on a tree, a moss. I like it a lot. So I think I want to try another bit over here. Maybe over this way. Do that again. I'll fill that in. Just be careful that when you have plotted, you know that you turn your paper towel to dry spot and black before you bought it again. Otherwise, you'll take your blocks and put them on other parts of your painting. Isn't that pretty? Maybe we'll do a little bit more down here. I know I'm varying the, you know, the color or the because I've got it's lightening up which is fine, good. And it's blending a little bit less, which is pretty, I'm just kinda looking at it, saying, Well, this is really interesting and pretty, um, what am I going to do next, or am I going to take this color and do something with it? Um, and I'm, I'm definitely wanting some smaller lines. So I think what I'm gonna do is take a small, this is a too wet. It put some of that color in. And think about where I might want some really fine lines just as a contrast to these heavier ones just makes it interesting. And I can do them anywhere I want. I can come in here and kind of do something like this, you know, so that there's just a different type of thing going on there. Let's do five. You know how I am about odd numbers. And I like that. Then I can come down here, maybe do the same thing. Make these sort of different lengths and kind of wandering a little bit, not necessarily all in one direction. This gives the viewer, the person looking at your painting something else to look at, something else to discover in your painting. I'm thinking, well those still have to dry. Thinking. I'm thinking if there's anything else I can do before it dries, just kinda whip out a bit more. I don't like how chunky It's looking there. So I can take my brush and rub that crayon a little bit. Softener. I like how it bled here, the gouache. And then I'm thinking about the next color. And a bit of orange may be really interesting. Orange you can of course, make with yellow and red. I just happened to have some here, but you really don't need to buy all these colors. I think this would be a good place to use the fan brush. There's all kinds of fan brushes out there. There's small ones, big ones, they're not expensive. I think these are from. You know, Michaels or one of those types of stores. But it's a really fun thing to have to get a bit of some color in a different way, make a different kind of mark. So I'm going to take that and this is really more of a yellow. I'm going to add some red to that. It's a little bit too yellow. Red here. It'll only take a tiny bit, make this more of an orange. Wow. I thought I used a tiny bit and gotten very, very red very fast. So this is where it's great to take a scrap piece of paper. Anything you have is fine. I usually have several papers around. I actually really like that color. So I'm gonna go with that. So this brush can be used in so many interesting ways. We can do something like this. Fun. It's fun. It's good to practice because you can decide if you want longer bits, shorter bits like that. And you know where you want that Pinterest. And then I think it would be good to take the same color and do some smaller dots. So I've got a smaller brush here with a round brush. This is a six. I'm getting it nice and saturated with color. I think this is mostly dry. Well, even if it isn't, It's okay if some of these blend, because that's part of the beauty of using watercolor or gouache. I am turning my brush because that will get me to make a different shape. So it's not all the same kind of mark. It just looks more natural and organic. Allows me to make different kinda going different directions, different sizes. And I think it would be pretty to take some of this, but lighten it up a little bit. And maybe coloring right here. Just to move the eye around. You notice that I'm not worrying about staying within the boundary because then it creates interest where it overlaps. It's turned it to green, which I like. And then if I look at this and say, wow, that's intense, you know, do I want that much intensity right there? I could experiment with blotting. And if you wait a bit, you'll obviously pull up less. So I did get some texture there but I didn't pull up as much pain as I did here because I just gave it just a second. And gouache dries hypoglossal, especially dries really fast. But I do like how that looks. I'm going to do a lighter version of it, meaning I'm going to add, use the same color but add more water to my brush and come up here and do the same thing here. Little more water. So that enlightens it up. And those dots have dried, which is pretty because now they're underneath. Now, this is where the yellow tape is. Kinda can be kinda distracting. So you can almost like take your hand and make a little rectangle and look at your painting and try to see it without that yellow border. To help you judge. You know, because it looks like it has tons of yellow in it, right. Because of the border. So we just have to try to, you know, playback, look at it a little differently. It's gonna do a little plot there. I love texture. Let's see. I'm going to stand back. And I think this, this has some interesting elements and I'm not sure that I want to like, I know I don't want to clutter it up too much. I think we're at a good point where we can let this dry because we're going to look at them making some marks with maybe some gold, some pen. You know, some things that can go on top of the things that we've created. And so I think I'm going to let this dry and we'll come back to it and see what we wanna do next. 8. Flowy Painting 2: Finishing Up: Okay. The oblique, this is nice and dry. And I noticed some things that I wanted to change was other medium or something. I feel like this lime, it's just too bright. It's kinda dominating. So we'll figure out how to address that was maybe oil pastels or paint or something. And in looking at it, I'm thinking about do I want to introduce another color or do I want to just stay with the colors I've got? Those are some of the things I'm thinking about. Also along those lines, do I want to add oil pastels a bit, or Neil color crayon or Posca pen. And I think I do. So certainly metallic gold pen. But I thought first I would use the posca. Think about, do I want fluorescent in this? Or do I want to keep a little quieter? I could do my standby turquoise, which I love. And I want something. Hoping here maybe even just some white lines like we did, like I did on this one. So that's probably a good place to start. Let's see if my white pen markers are just notoriously challenging. So I always keep a piece of black paper you can see to warm it up and get it flowing. This is my favorite, but it sometimes misbehaves. It's the uni-ball signal pen. So let's see if we can get it to work. And I think I'll just take these kind of like this. Just doing something a little unexpected. And some circles would be nice in here, I think. Going different directions. I'm glad my white pen is behaving today. I love how that looks. I'm thinking about how I how do I want to tone that down? I could do it with certainly with white. I could also do it with you. I could take a pink color over it. I could take some pen over it. I could even take some colored pencil. Any number of potential strategies to get it to calm down a bit. I wanted to come down too much just a bit. Maybe what I'll do is take this more kind of Holloway green and see what that does. I like that because it kind of ties it in to this. And I can even rub it in a little bit. Then maybe come through again. A lot of this process is kinda looking, thinking about what, where your eye is going. So with this kind of design, my eyes going up and then down and up and down. And stopping, you know, to look at these interesting things in these interesting things. And I'm thinking I want a gold leafy things somewhere. And I kinda want something here. So I think I'll do almost like a branch coming out of here trying to make it, you know, in the same vein of gently meandering and maybe long narrow leaves. I tried to almost make these, um, you know, if I want this look, just very Curvy, graceful, almost like the way you think of a ballerinas arms. Because this is obviously going to be a feature. So taking my time, making them going different directions. This is something good to practice. Maybe before you do it to get the look that you want. Now, debating, do I, what? Do I want to leave them lined like they are? Or do I want to color some of them in with the gold? So while we think about that, I'm gonna come over here and do some sort of things like this and gold During the direction. And the shape a little bit. And having go off the paper. Because that'll look interesting when we peel the tape. Here. Things kinda fun to do is to find bits of the watercolor that we made and then kind of line that we're following that natural fit that the watercolor made. I think I want to add some darker lines up there. The white I like, but I've got some Jelly Roll pens and one is like a color has this. Just got it recently because they don't put the colors on it, but it's sort of a slate is how I would describe it. I think it's going to match this, but now I've gotta decide where I want to put that. This is where I looked through my sketchbook for inspiration on what kind of marks do I want? Do I want lines? Do I want a shade? I haven't done any squigglies. I do like my squigglies. I think I'm gonna do another one here. And maybe just some small marks here in the same pen. Just thinking about textures from nature, shapes, patterns. This is a little bit of a metallic, almost like a cuter. I'm still in bothered by this great green. Plenty of the things that I'm gonna take my ivory, posca. Just tone it down. At least parts of it. This is, you can do the same thing with a weight. Paint wash is just take your white or off-white and make an offer and, um, have water, so it's like a wash. Just it's more translucent. I use this panel a lot this way. It's really good at I would say, my most used color because I use it to push things back. Which is to say, calm them down, make them less. In the foreground. You know, like that what we did, what I just did there, I think really helped. It's still a pretty green but it wasn't it's not screaming at me anymore. Now I'm just messing around. What isn't that what we're doing here? So messing around o in fact, let's use the gut. The one that I use a lot is the fat one of this color. Let's use that just, it will hardly show up, but it creates another kind of texture. Just put some of it here like this. Jelly Roll ran a little bit. That's okay though. It will create pinterest like that in here too. Just out of ivory color that makes the white show up more because it shows a little bit different than the light. This is kinda fun. Just gonna, it's gonna come down that one side of the stem. Like what Pepin. It's just a lot of experimenting. You know, you, you, until you, this kind of thing and experiment and play. Allow yourself to play with different materials, different surfaces. You just can't, you can't grow much. And if you hold yourself back from that and I know it's hard to say use up supplies if you don't, you know, if you're not sure you're gonna make something worth it. But I encourage you to play like this. You'll learn what you like and don't like and want to replicate and try somewhere else. I think we're getting pretty close to time on this. I like what the ivory dead. Yeah, this is the PC eight K, really fat one. That does interesting things. Now, do I want some lines anywhere else? I'm going to stand back and take a look at the whole composition. I'm kinda holding my hand to see the, I'm making a little rectangle so that I can see it without the the tape. And I think I think it's I think it's got enough going on. I think it's interesting. You only bit I'm wondering about is do I want some of this green here? But I don't think so because the green is coming up in there. So I think we're gonna drum roll, peel off the tape. So much fun and you can obviously change, have things after you've peeled potato. The only thing is and I speak from experience, it's really easy to get paint on those taped up edges. So I do try to as best I can to to look at it, go away from it, come back and make sure that I think it's done before I take the paint off just because I'm on my table here in my hands. See, I mean, even just now from doing that, taking this off, I have to be careful. If you do get something on that edge. A magic eraser with a little bit of water, which is a product we have here in the States. I don't know if it's in other places, but you can remove some things from paper. I'm just going to peel these bits up. Now to this tape is really good about not pulling up pieces of the paper. But what also helps is, you know, pulling this way instead of this way. So full the tape back against itself and slowly, slowly. I haven't had this tape. One time it ripped a teeny bit of the edge, but I was pulling too fast. I was overeager. One is I love doing this with the tape because it's so rewarding, it's so dramatic. I did forget to sign the painting though. You know what, let me do that before so that I don't have to touch it. That way. We have less of a chance of mucking up the edges. Okay, Here's another side. Sure. My hands are clean. Three sides. And I think there's this size tape gives a perfect border for this size paper. It's a little less than an inch. I'm really liking it. So much better without the tape, isn't it? Okay. I actually don't think I want to do a thing to it. I like how the edges came out. I feel like it's balanced. It's interesting. I'm pretty happy with that. What did we use? I guess color Y is 12345. I guess we used more like six colors, not counting the sleep pen and the gold. Alright, so this is a great thing to try. It's a great way to experiment with your brushes and see what they do, see what marks they make, and with your gold pen. And just have fun with it. Go forth and create.